‘It was wonderful! You are wonderful, David. I love you so much.’
Leaning on one elbow, he studied her body, familiar in his imagination, caressed, glimpsed, but until now never seen by him. She wasn’t that much younger than himself, yet she seemed such a girl compared to his own conception of himself; her naïvety, innocence almost… yet she had been so uninhibited with him. But wasn’t that part of her innocence? Giving and getting full pleasure without self-consciousness, making her first love-making into a kind of precious deflowering.
‘You don’t need those things, David. I went to Harley Street and got myself fixed up.’
She was right: because of her sophisticated action, sex had been beautiful, a new experience for him. He had not been with very many girls, and none that had given any forethought about how to make it beautiful.
Looking down at her he thought, she is perfect. Not a blemish, not even a mole or freckle. He traced her body as though drawing her in outline.
‘Burne-Jones would have loved you. He would have draped you in embroidered fabric, put a lily in one hand, a dish of pomegranates beside you, and painted you with your mouth just open, as it is now.’
She took the compliment gracefully, as she did everything.
‘Even without your clothes you look expensive. You look as though you come from some great house called The Cedars, where you have a Nanny Bryce, and a gardener, and a daddy who owns a factory and gives you white MGs and diamonds.’
‘I’m still just a bit of a tart who books a hotel room and brings back a sailor on leave.’
‘Expensive tart. I’ve never been in an hotel like this. The Savoy. For Christ’s sake, what would my Dad say to this?’ Their room had flowers, drinks and a room-service tray.
It was the night of a victorious march-past in London to honour the men who had been involved in the scuttling of the Graf Spee. The country had been in dire need of it, to proclaim some good news for a change. David Greenaway, who had not yet been able to exchange his seaman’s round hat for an officer’s cap, and was still awaiting his new posting, had been at the Battle of the River Plate. Eve Hardy, without saying where she was going, had packed an overnight bag and gone by train to London to watch the march-past.
At another point along the route, Vern and Nora Greenaway too had watched. Vern had caught a glimpse of Freddy Hardy’s girl in a First-Class compartment of the same London train on which he and Nora travelled, and had guessed rightly why Davey was not spending his twenty-four-hour pass at home.
If Eve Hardy was anything, she was a romantic. If she could do nothing else worth while, she could give herself to a returning hero. Not altogether selflessly, for her first venture into a true liaison was altogether quite as wonderful as she had expected that it would be.
‘What are you smiling at?’
He outlined her features. ‘Lovely, lovely tart.’ In his grammar-school years, he had discovered the Pre-Raphaelites, D. H. Lawrence and Eve Hardy all within the same short time-span.
‘Would you like to get married, Eve?’
She stared at the ceiling and considered, smiling. ‘No, David, let’s wait. Let’s be lovers for a while. Secret lovers. Whenever you get leave, wherever you are, I will come to you.’
‘I don’t think you’re serious about me.’
‘You know that is stuff and nonsense. How much more serious can a woman be than to give a man her virginity?’
He laughed aloud. ‘Eve Hardy, you could scarcely wait for it.’
Married or not, he wanted her very much. It was not so bad if their affair had been between a rich boy and a pretty girl from the local newsagent’s. A man may take a girl up the social scale, but not the reverse. He could never imagine her living in Naval married-quarters, not even if he got promotion and it was in officers’ accommodation.
She was right, they could wait. They had nothing to gain by marrying.