FOR a week after my return to the cottage, I lived in my shell and took stock and thought. David and I slept in the relatively dry living-room while I systematically dried out the other parts of the house.
Outside it rained steadily, hampering the drying process, but effectively immuring me indoors, which was where I really wanted to be. I was so happy to find I wanted to be alone. Every day that passed without my being lonely or bored seemed like a feather in the cap of my independence. In a queer way it also seemed like a present to Toby—one more day when I hadn’t needed him. I wanted him all the time, but not in a craving, grabbing way, not so desperately that my need was stronger than my wish that he should be left alone.
In any case, I had to occupy my mind with more practical details. There stretched ahead of me at least eight months before I could go to America with any real excuse or sense of purpose; that eight months must inevitably be filled with profitable labour of some sort. For hours at a time I lay on my back on the sofa, half-hypnotised by the grey drops running endlessly down the diamond-panes, over the ridges in between, and on down at a slight tangent, feeling warm and lazy and broke and happy and alarmed all at once.
My assets were few, but definite. I could type. I had a car. I could act after a fashion, though I hadn’t for years—not much use, that one. I could cook, sort of. There was almost no category of work I felt myself to be intrinsically ‘too good’ to have a go at. But naturally, some things appealed more than others.
At the end of the week, the weather changed; I woke one morning to find a different sort of light in the room. Rising to peer over the back of the sofa, I perceived a pattern of sunlight on the curtains. I hurried to draw them, stopping on my way to prod David, who was keeping the most irregular hours—my hours, almost, which explained why he was still fast asleep at half-past eight in the morning. Outside, the garden was a pale glittering mass of water-drops each cored with a tiny spark of reflected sunlight. I threw open the windows and breathed deeply of the sweet wet loamy air. It was so intoxicating after a week of frowst that I immediately put on my gum-boots and climbed out of the window. It was lovely to sink ankle-deep in the wet earth and feel the mild water stains soaking through my pyjamas as I was caressed by bushes and curled brown leaves.
I wandered about happily, shivering as much with delight as with actual cold, getting wetter and wetter, my gum-boots gleaming like patent-leather. After a bit I went in again and fetched David and a ground-sheet, setting them down together on a bumpy bit of lawn. He promptly crawled to the edge of the rubber and onto the jewelled grass, but I didn’t think it mattered much. I sat down beside him a few minutes later and shared my hunk of bread and butter and marmalade with him, washing mine down with a mug of tea while he swigged his usual, his icy hands clutching my bare ribs, his head hidden inside my jacket, his muddy feet stamping a tattoo of pleasure against my thigh. I sat thinking how lovely it was not to care about getting wet and dirty, and not to have anybody around to tell me what a bad mother I was. After our meal, we rolled around together until we were both thoroughly soaked and filthy; then we went indoors, I threw everything we’d been wearing into the sink to soak, and we had a joint bath.
I had no special bath for David; we always bathed together. It was the high-spot of the day. What I used to do was put him down on the bathmat, climb into the bath when it was really hot, soak myself a bit, and then run the cold in until it was the right temperature for him. Then I’d take him into the bath with me and wash him and play with him, until he’d had enough; roll him up in a towel and put him back on the floor, run more hot in and wash myself, and then get out and dry us both at once. This was a most delightful arrangement for both of us; the only drawback was that he refused to take a bath without me, and several times I had to undress and get in with him even though I’d had my own bath separately.
While I was sitting there that bright morning, holding the baby between my knees and making his plastic duck swim under water, my mind perfectly unencumbered by any thoughts of a practical nature, an idea suddenly popped into my head. What I really needed was a job I could do in my own time, like the typing I’d done in the L-shaped room. I wondered suddenly if I couldn’t set myself up as something—preferably something a bit more lucrative and less dreary than typing, possibly something creative. ‘Cottage industry’ was the phrase that inevitably leapt into my head. The difficulty was, I wasn’t really the handicrafts type; I couldn’t even knit. Nevertheless, I whiled away a few moments with a pleasant dream of collecting sheeps-wool from the rhimy hedgerows, washing it, dying it with vegetable dyes (home-made, of course) spinning it on the decorative spinning-wheel that stood on one of the landings, and then embroidering wool panels of my own designing. And selling them for large sums. I finished the dream off neatly, sighed, and began soaping David’s back.
No, but something of the sort. What could I do? Surely I had some kind of flair which could be useful? Abruptly I envied Dottie, an old familiar feeling that I hadn’t had for a long time. Dottie had taken herself in hand, channelled her talents, been clever enough to get herself a niche in the fashionable world where they could best be put to use, and where she could embellish them with new skills. Any fool, I suddenly thought, can have a baby. But not any fool can support it.
My early-morning pastoral elation was cooling with the bathwater. I was getting goose-flesh, and not just from being slightly chilled. The lonely feeling, the helpless sense of being too small for the battle, could lash back in a moment, like a bent branch, if one didn’t watch it. I clambered out, wrapped myself in a bathrobe which had been warming in front of the oil-stove, and dried David while the water gurgled away with a passionate resonance. The sun had gone in, and I felt rather like having a good cry all of a sudden, which wasn’t wise in front of David who had recently begun to sense my moods like a dog and respond to the bad ones with sympathetic howls. So I quickly got him to bed before the mood overwhelmed us both.
It was just about time to dry my eyes and start thinking about lunch when a car drew up outside. My heart gave a little lurch of joy which told me more clearly than the unexplained crying-fit that the feathers were fitted very insecurely into my cap; almost any visitor (except the plumber) would have been welcome just then, even though the house was a mess and I was still looking like the wrath of God in a pair of pregnancy slacks and one of Addy’s age-old smocks. When I saw Dottie’s behind emerge from the car, followed by the rest of her lugging a large carry-all, I couldn’t get outside fast enough to greet her with hugs and glad cries.
She noticed my red eyes immediately.
‘What’ve you been bawling about on this gorgeous morning?’
‘I’ve been bawling because no one was coming to lunch—as far as I then knew,’ I said, taking one handle of the hold-all. ‘Good God, what have you got in here, geological specimens?’
‘Toys for my godchild.’
‘I must warn you, his tastes aren’t very sophisticated. His favourite thing at the moment is a rather oily length of old bicycle-chain.’
‘And bottles.’
‘Ah! There you may find a more appreciative response.’
She was dressed for the occasion in tight trousers, tucked into very smart leather boots, topped by a hip-length jacket of tartan wool with a fringe.
‘I do wish you’d try to look a bit more dowdy when you know you’re going to see me,’ I couldn’t help saying peevishly.
‘My dowdy days are over,’ she said. ‘Only women like you, with no need for sublimations or compensations, can afford the luxury of dressing badly.’
We went indoors and she flopped down on the sofa. I threw a log on the fire, which was burning sluggishly amid yesterday’s ashes, wishing I’d done a bit more housework in the morning.
‘How long are you staying?’
‘How long can you put up with me?’
I looked at her sharply, remembering quite suddenly that it was not Saturday.
‘Indefinitely, but … what about your job?’
‘What job?’ she asked, with a one-sided smile.
‘H’m. I sense a crisis. Have a sherry before you begin.’
‘Forgive my ingratitude, but this is not an occasion for sherry.’ She plunged a hand into the hold-all and came up with a bottle of Black and White.
‘I’ve got no soda,’ I warned her.
‘Soda’s for good days.’
We drank, Dottie eyeing me over the rim of her glass with a rueful, ironic expression.
‘Well?’ I asked.
‘Well! The job has folded. Not the job only—the whole enterprise. Bust—kaput—down the drain. Pity. It was fun while it lasted.’ She shrugged, a casual gesture which didn’t fool me. Dottie had waited a long time for this particular opportunity, this potentially gold-plated niche within a niche—buyer for a new and wildly with-it boutique in Sloane Street.
‘What happened, exactly?’
‘The happy young couple who started it with the aid of large wedding-presents from their respective daddies decided, six months after the nuptials, that they’d “made a nonsense” as they put it. Strange how they both used the same expression, though there the similarity in their stories ended. According to him, she was frigid and neurotic; according to her, he was kinky and wanted to tie her to the bed-posts, among other exotic delights. All very sad. And strange … they looked so normal. But then, who’s normal these days?’
‘I am,’ I said. ‘I think.’
‘Only because you live in the country,’ she said obscurely. ‘There’s no “normal” any more. If normal means average, you’re the kinky one, believe me.’ She sighed deeply. ‘I don’t even know if I’m normal any more. Is it normal to choose the chaste life when one could be getting tied to bed-posts or rolling about on grubby mattresses in discothéques every night? I’ve been told so often lately that I’m a freak that I’m beginning to believe it.’
‘Which is what you’re doing here.’
‘The whisky is making you very acute, Janie. But then, you always were pretty perceptive, even before you opted for the life of a happy cabbage which I suddenly so envy you.’ She poured another drink and stared at the fire. ‘What a really wonderful smell that is—wood burning.’
‘It’s apple and pine, mixed. I agree it’s wonderful.’
‘And is that actual beeswax I smell on the furniture?’
‘No, Johnson’s Glocoat. But it’s nice.’
‘Christ, I’m going to cry.’
‘No, please, don’t you start! It’s too much. I’ve been at it all morning.’
‘It’s this bloody business of being alone,’ she mumbled, her face in her hands.
‘I know. Do shut up, please, Dottie.’
‘You’re lucky. You don’t know how lucky you are.’
‘Yes, I do. But right now I’d give half my luck for half your ability to earn your own living.’
She looked up at me through a ruined eye make-up.
‘Is that what you were really crying about—money?’
‘Sort of. Partly.’
‘I’ll lend you some.’
I shook my head. ‘Thanks, but that’d be no good. It’s not only the cash I want, it’s the feeling that I can cope.’
‘You’ve coped up to now.’
‘So have you.’
She stared at me. ‘Ah. I see what you mean. No, past successes or gettings-by don’t really help at crossroads, do they?’ She dried her eyes and leaned her head back, staring at the ceiling. We sat silently for a while and at last I said, ‘What about food?’
‘Not hungry, really.’
‘Bowl of soup?’
‘Oh, well …’
She fed David for me and seemed more cheerful. I was full of sympathy, and yet I couldn’t quite understand why she was so basically upset. She’d been in and out of jobs before, and would surely not find it hard to get another now, though perhaps not quite so close to her heart’s desire. I knew it was something deeper, a pot-hole in the long cold valley of being unmarried. It was some days before I pieced it all together from snatches of conversation here and there. It was all fairly hard to pin down or explain, but after my experiences in the L-shaped room, though hers were on a much more sophisticated level, I thought I understood.
‘It’s the parties,’ she said, ‘and the dates, and the things you hear at them. It’s not just that most of the conversation is shallow and brittle and all the worn-out words for cocktail-talk; there’s a viciousness there, a feeling of inner bankruptcy. I sat next to a young writer at a dinner party the other night—the sort of man one thinks one would like to meet, until one meets him. He’s very ugly, with a beautiful, aristocratic wife who sat across the table smiling tenderly at him all the time he was telling me in a low, continuous mutter what a shallow, boring bitch she was. On my other side was a politician you often see on television, holding forth on brains-trusts—he’s supposed to be one of the white hopes of the future—and he was quite seriously propounding his theory that the best way to control the population in the East was to blanket the Orient in homosexual propaganda and try to turn as many young men as possible into queers.’
‘He was joking.’
‘Was he? Nobody was laughing. Then at another recent party that I got invited to more or less by accident, given by some tycoon in the rag-trade, one of the guests got a very little bit tight and made a speech about the host, highly laudatory in tone, from which it clearly emerged that both of them were nothing but very successful crooks. The speaker stood there cheerfully making jokes about the dirty deals they’d done together, and the whole room was rolling about with carefree laughter. What’s so lousy, Jane, is that while there’ve always been crooks and bastards and hypocrites and all the other species of human insect, they’ve never felt free to get up at parties and boast about it until just recently. Nobody’s shocked any more—not by anything. It’s not done to be shocked. You have to accept everything, like some sort of garbage-disposal unit that opens itself up and makes happy laughing noises while every sort of rottenness and filth is tipped into it. I tell you, I’m afraid to go out with men now. They’ve all got something disgusting to tell you about themselves. All they want from you is that you shall listen and not be shocked, so they can go away feeling there’s nothing the matter with them. Well, I tell you, I won’t do it any more. When they start, I just tell them I don’t want to hear. If they insist, I don’t try to be unshockable—when I’m shocked, I act shocked, and then of course it’s their turn to laugh. The ugly, frightened sound of that laughter is something I can’t describe. Sometimes I feel they’re wiping their dirty minds all over me. That’s why I won’t go to bed with them any more. It’s like acquiescing to them as people, and I don’t, not to one in fifty of them, not to one in a hundred.’
Of course this didn’t all come out in one long speech, but in dribs and drabs, over a number of days. I was appalled … even the L-shaped room, and the denizens of its surroundings, for all their squalor, had not been as sordid as the picture Dottie drew for me of the smart set. The thing was, she didn’t strike me as the type that would attract that sort of thing unless it were much more universal than I had imagined. She seemed to be saying it was so intrinsic that it was impossible to avoid—except by burying oneself in the country, about which she suddenly harboured rather unrealistic notions of purity and sanity and vicelessness. As a sort of balancer, I told her about the plumber, but she simply asked if he’d actually ‘tried anything’ and when I said no, she said in that case the gleam in his eye had probably been a reflection of my own slight guilt-complex and that even if he’d pinched my bottom with his size-4 pliers, it would have been merely a nymphs-and-shepherds type frolic compared to what she was talking about.
During the first few days of her visit, while she was unwinding, we didn’t talk much about me, and my plan-making was held in abeyance. She grew more and more relaxed, less and less smart as the few clothes she’d brought lost their immaculate perfection, and (it seemed to me) more and more deeply entrenched and unwilling to return to London. Not that I minded. Though her conversation was frequently depressing, her company in general was a joy; for Dottie could never be gloomy for long, and even her gloom was often shot with humour and mimicry. David loved her, and she him. I began myself to dread the moment when she would inevitably have to depart to renew the battle.
One morning in the village while we were shopping, she paused to look through an empty bay-window overhung by a ‘Shop for Rent’ sign.
‘What was here?’ she asked.
‘All-sorts shop,’ I said. ‘Very dingy, doomed to fail. After all, we have a tiny supermarket now.’
‘Don’t,’ said Dottie, whose current fad was shuddering at all manifestations of urban progress. She lingered on, peering through cupped hands into the dusty interior. ‘I have a fellow-feeling for failed enterprises at the moment,’ she said. ‘Could we get the key and go in and look?’
‘There’s nothing to see—just an empty shop. A bit sad, really.’
‘Still … I’d like to.’
She persisted, so I took her to the estate agent’s and soon we were standing in the shop. It was, indeed, quite empty, except for some cornflakes cartons stuffed with paper and rubbish, a dusty counter and some broken shelves still festooned with a tatty oil-cloth frill attached to rusty thumb-tacks. The floor was bare boards, the walls papered with a flowered pattern gone dark which reminded me irresistibly of the L-shaped room when I had first gone there.
Dottie was running her hand over one section of wall.
‘There’s a beam under here,’ she said. ‘Fancy covering a genuine beam with this hideous wall-paper! You’re right, they deserved to fail.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ I murmured. ‘Look, there are beams in the ceiling, too. Quite untampered with.’
‘How can you say that! They’ve been whitewashed.’
‘What’s wrong about that?’
She gave me a look. ‘You’ve got no feeling for places,’ she said.
That annoyed me. It was patently untrue.
‘If there’s one thing I have got, it’s a feeling for places!’ I said hotly. ‘You didn’t see the L-shaped room before and after!’
‘I didn’t see it at all, you never invited me,’ she reminded me.
‘I’m very good with places,’ I persisted.
‘All right, prove it. What would you do with this?’
‘Do with it? Just what any sane person would do—leave it alone.’
But even as I said the words, I felt a pang. Poor little place! It shouldn’t be so dirty and ugly. The bay window was marvellous; it came almost to the ground and there was a semi-circular rostrum inside for arranging displays on. The floor was pine, and so, probably, was the fireplace, which had been painted dark green and filled in with cardboard. Stripped and waxed, they would be beautiful. The counter was an excrescence, but it could be taken out. It would be an anachronism to sell food in here anyway, it would need to be—oh, antiques or something. Lustrous copper, glowing rose-wood, fine mellow velvets and stripped oak and those silky green paperweights full of bubbly flowers …
‘You know what would really be interesting in here,’ Dottie said suddenly. ‘Scandinavian ware. You know—Design Centre stuff. Teak, whitewood, enamelled iron, ceramics, glass candle-sticks, snow-white yakskin rugs, maybe a few rolls of Swedish fabrics …’
I gazed at her aghast. ‘Are you quite barmy? In here?’
‘Of course! Think of the contrast. The tudor setting with the brand-new, stark simple goods—it’d be marvellous!’
She sounded so enthusiastic that I looked round dubiously, trying to visualise it. ‘Strip lighting? Show cases?’ I asked incredulously.
‘Possibly—possibly—’ She was pacing about with such an air of purpose that I grew suddenly worried for fear she was serious.
‘Dottie, come on out of it, will you? Are you crazy?’
‘No. We’ve got to do something, why not this?’
‘We?’
‘You’re looking for gainful employment, aren’t you? You should be. And so am I. And this might be just what we both need.’
‘But—but—but—you can’t open a shop, just like that! What about permits, stock, capital, experience …?’
‘I’ve got the capital—we won’t need much. I’ve got the experience, too—well, a bit of it. As for the rest, we can deal with everything as it comes.’
‘I wish you’d stop saying “we”! Include me right out of this, I’ve never heard of anything so insane.’
‘I have.’
‘What?’ I said, taken off balance.
‘Your New York scheme is a lot madder, it’s absolutely certifiable if you want to know, but did I throw cold water on it when you told me? No I didn’t, I even thought seriously of asking if I could come with you. I’m still thinking of it. And in the meantime, it strikes me we might try and do something together, to keep ourselves alive and sane and self-respecting until—’ She stopped. We stared at each other through the dust-motes. Suddenly she drooped.
‘You’re right,’ she said flatly. ‘What am I talking about? Let’s get out of here and go home.’
* * *
That afternoon, abruptly, she left for London. She was very subdued.
‘You can’t do anything without a man,’ she said dispiritedly. ‘You can’t even give yourself the illusion of enterprise.’
She kissed David tenderly and then kissed me. ‘Take care of him,’ she said, and walked swiftly to the car, leaving behind a bottle and a half of Scotch and a very unpleasant emptiness.
I was doing some gardening towards dusk, trying to dispel my depression, when I heard the gate creak and a stranger walked in. He was very London-looking, tweed jacket, whipcords, Clydella shirt and all. He was also extremely attractive. I hadn’t seen such a handsome man for ages, at least not one with such a gloss. I leaned on my spade and tried to look casual.
He doffed his brand-new driving cap and crinkled up his eyes.
‘Mrs. Graham?’
‘Miss,’ I said automatically.
‘Ah,’ he said whimsically. ‘Yes. Is—er—Dorothy still on the premises?’
‘No, she drove back to London at lunchtime.’
‘Ah,’ he said again, looking downcast.
A sudden intuition told me that this was the interior decorator. Dottie had told me, among other things to do with her called-off love-life, that he had been tentatively trying to renew acquaintance.
‘Just my luck,’ he said. ‘Must have missed her on the way down here. Damned awful road, missed my way twice.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, quite untruthfully.
We stared blankly at each other.
‘Well,’ he said, stirring himself. ‘I suppose I’d better be starting back.’
‘Perhaps you’d like something before you go,’ I offered without much enthusiasm.
He brightened. ‘Well, that’s very sweet of you—if you were making a pot of tea, that’d be just—’
I suppressed a sigh and led him into the cottage. David was asleep in his pram in the hall and we had to edge past.
‘Do you share the house?’
‘Only with him,’ I said shortly, praying he wouldn’t say ‘Ah!’ again, but of course he did, very sagely this time.
I offered him whisky, chiefly because I’d had tea and couldn’t be bothered to start making more. He seemed gratified to find some of London’s amenities in this rural wilderness. He took his glass and strolled to the window, where he sat on the window-seat and gazed out at the darkening garden. David began to whimper, so I went out and changed him and when I came back about ten minutes later, the young man looked round at me with an expression of some surprise.
‘It’s quite pleasant, just sitting here, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Do you mean, not boring?’
‘No, really pleasant. Pretty. Quiet. The birds and so on. And the air smells fresh.’ He smiled diffidently. ‘You can tell I don’t get into the country much. Not the real country.’
‘Well, the whisky’s probably helping.’
He laughed rather uncertainly. ‘Are you getting at me?’
‘Maybe a little. Quite unfairly. Sorry, I’m in a rather bad mood today.’
‘Why?’ he asked interestedly.
‘Well, I’ve had Dottie here for a week, and now she’s gone.’
He looked at me with a sudden sharpening of sympathy. His good looks became much more actively attractive when he wasn’t being blasé and mannered.
‘How I do know exactly what you mean!’ he said fervently. He drank the remains of his drink and then said, ‘By the way, my name’s Alan Innes. Without wanting to inveigle any confidence out of you, would you mind me asking if she’s ever mentioned me at all?’
I hesitated. ‘Not that I remember. But names without faces never stick in my mind. She might have done.’
‘Yes. I see,’ he said glumly. He looked through the window which was now a series of black diamonds, then back at me with his crinkled-up smile of rue. ‘We were very fond of each other once. But it all broke up, unfortunately.’
‘I couldn’t have been sorrier myself. It was all so absurd. You know how these things can happen, if one’s fool enough to let them—everything’s going along beautifully, and then some absolute nonsense happens—something so silly and trivial one’s ashamed to remember it later—and it’s like pulling out the supporting pillar which brings the whole thing down on one’s head.’
He looked at me. I said nothing.
‘Idiotic, isn’t it?’ he said with a wry smile.
‘Well. If the relationship is supported on such frail pillars, perhaps it wasn’t very strong anyway,’ I said, remembering the green and gold picture which had brought this particular temple of love tumbling down.
He sighed. ‘P’raps you’re right. Felt quite strong at the time.’
He stared into his empty glass in what might have been a gloomy reverie or a broad hint. It had begun to rain outside, rather heavily. I excused myself and went out to put away my gardening tools, returning after a while rather too wet for comfort. I put some more logs on the fire, realising as I did so that this might create just the sort of cosy atmosphere which, together with the rain and the whisky and Mr. Innes’ melancholy mood, might make it even more difficult to get rid of him.
It did. He sat on and on, until another small drink became a necessity of good manners. I made it as small as I could, and then left him again, this time to feed David and put him to bed. I was gone some time, and when I came back I found my visitor stretched on the settee reading a book with his shoes off, looking mightily at home. The glass, which looked slightly fuller than when I had seen it last, was on the floor beside him. He gave me a most appealing grin as I came into the room.
‘I say, I’ve taken a diabolical liberty,’ he said, holding up the glass.
‘So I see.’
‘I do hope you’ll forgive me. I feel incredibly at home here somehow. Funny, that. Not my milieu at all.’
‘Well, it’s Dottie’s whisky, as it happens. I’m just a bit concerned about you finding your way home in the dark.’
He got up reluctantly and padded to the window in his socks. ‘It’s coming down in buckets,’ he said, sounding more cheerful than he had any right to. ‘What’s worrying me is not finding the way, but the fact that I shall be doing it in an open car.’
‘What do you mean, open? Can’t you put the roof up?’
‘No. It’s broken.’
I felt so annoyed I could scarcely hide it. Did he expect me to put him up for the night? If so, he was in for a rude disappointment.
‘You’ve got a car full of water by now, then,’ I said.
‘Oh, no, that’s all right—I’ve got a bit of canvas over it. But it’d be pretty wet trying to drive through this lot.’ He looked at me. The winning grin still played about his lips. His whole manner was that of a man accustomed to getting things his own way. Something in it made me stubborn.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I said. ‘I’d offer to put you up here, if you were a female. But as you’re most decidedly not, I’m afraid I can’t.’
The smile slipped briefly, and was restored. ‘Oh, Jane, don’t be like that!’ he said, throwing in my name so casually I wasn’t sure I’d heard it. ‘Are you worried about your reputation, or your virtue? I assure you, neither will suffer from me spending the night in your spare bedroom! Or even down here on that most comfortable settee.’
‘I’m sure my virtue, what’s left of it, is quite safe in your hands, Mr. Innes,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t flatter myself so far as to think it might not be. As to my reputation, you’re quite worldly-wise enough to realise I’ve nothing much to lose there. However, nothing much is better than nothing at all. This is a village, and I have to live in it. They naturally expect the worst of me because of my situation; I take a rather perverse pride in not fulfilling their expectations.’
His face had changed and now he came towards me and put his glass down on the table. ‘How long have you lived here?’ he asked curiously.
‘Six months.’
‘And in all that time—you’ve never let a man stay the night?’
I stared at him, as if winded. From feeling utterly in control of the situation two minutes before, I now felt as out of countenance as I had felt in the face of the plumber’s sly wink. My thoughts flew to Toby and latched to him like a burr. But how can the man you love protect you if he is not there?
‘You poor little thing,’ said Alan Innes, and took me in his arms with practised tenderness.
Some dim instinct told me not to struggle, that if I stood there coldly and let him kiss a dead mouth he would be insulted and lose interest. But it didn’t work, for two reasons. One, he was very strongly inclined to spend the night in my warm bed and not driving through the rain in his open car, and he was not really sensitive enough to notice or care whether I reacted to his first kisses or not. But the other reason was the one which was shaming to me. I despised him; but I was not, it seemed, physically indifferent to any man so good-looking and sexually able. His mouth, hands and body compelled me to a response, a response so treacherous and despicable that nausea damped down the sudden blaze in my body as soon as he let me go.
He looked into my eyes with simple triumph for a second, then with admirable adroitness took me off balance with a turn of his foot and the next moment I found myself in a highly connubial position with him on the hearthrug.
I don’t really know what would have happened if he had managed to down me on the settee instead of the floor. But the floor before the fire was where I had lain with Toby.
Galvanised by this sudden recollection, I began to struggle fiercely, as if I’d just woken up to find an irresponsible erotic dream to be quite terrifyingly real and imminent. He had me at a severe disadvantage, moral as well as postural, having just distinctly felt me return his kiss, and being thus certain of victory he held me down and laughed in my face—a not entirely lover-like laugh. It alarmed and infuriated me. I got one hand free and pushed him sharply in the mouth with it. This hurt him enough to make him want to hurt me, which he did by kissing me with most unpleasant violence, biting me painfully at the same time.
‘Is that what you wanted?’ he asked me, with what I can only call a leer, and without further ado wrenched at my shirt, tearing the first two buttons off it.
God, I thought, he’s going to rape me.
It was too ridiculous—too bizarre. How could this have happened? The polite, ultra-correct young man who had climbed, so immaculately dressed, out of his car two hours ago was now swarming all over me and pawing me like a savage, literally panting with lust, his neatly-barbered fair hair falling over a suddenly sweating brow. I felt panic rising in me and pulled his head back by the hair as hard as I could. He let go of me just long enough to slap my face. I could feel his knee working its way between my legs, and I suddenly thought: well, thank God I’ve got slacks on, anyway, he won’t find those so damned easy to navigate.
This thought returned me to some faint sense of proportion. No woman, surely, can be assaulted by one man against her will, and the whole enterprise by this time was thoroughly against mine. But since I didn’t fancy a lengthy continuation of this undignified struggle, I decided to try a ruse. I suddenly went limp, rolled my eyes, stuck my tongue out, arched my back, let out a gargling sound, and went limp again.
It worked. He dropped me like a hot brick and clambered hastily off my apparently unconscious form.
‘Jane—’ he began uncertainly.
I was on my feet in a second and making for the door. Before he could gather his wits to follow me I was locked in the hall lavatory. I sat down there and put my head between my knees. I felt sick and rotten.
He knocked on the door. With his fist.
‘Come out, you bitch,’ he said harshly.
‘Not bloody likely,’ I replied in kind.
‘You can’t stay in there all night,’ he said after a moment, in a slightly less vicious tone. I made no reply, but stood up shakily and gave myself a drink of water. ‘Come on out. I won’t make love to you if you really don’t want to,’ he said, merely sullen now.
‘You call that making love?’ I said. ‘You poor ignorant bastard. Go home.’ I always was inclined to stoop to abusive language when upset, as I was now, exceedingly. I always regret it later and wish I had been dignified and ladylike, but by then it’s too late.
Unfortunately, he had this in common with me, and there followed a perfectly unprintable string of filth from which I inferred that he thought a woman in my position (only he put it more graphically) who invites men into her house and fills them with whisky is asking for anything she gets, and should be grateful to get it from somebody like him and not from some passing yokel who’d probably murder her afterwards. From his description of the poor mythical yokel’s crime, I came to the firm conclusion that Mr. Alan Innes was a none-too-well-sublimated sadist.
I sat on the John with my plastic tooth-mug of water, feeling more and more ill and appalled as I listened helplessly, wondering how long it would go on and whether I’d really brought it on myself. I suspected I might have done. It was easy to see now what had set Dottie off on the downward path to disillusion and cynicism. Strange she hadn’t mentioned any of this. Perhaps as she was not ‘a woman in my position’ he had treated her with more restraint. I sincerely hoped so.
At last he withdrew, snarlingly. I heard the front door slam, but I wasn’t falling for that. About ten minutes later I heard it close again, more convincingly this time, and shortly afterwards came the angry roaring of a car engine being revved up with merciless violence. It drove away, and a beautiful silence fell, broken only by the patter of rain on the roof and my own somewhat unsteady breathing.
I emerged from my haven, and stood in the hall, fighting the desire to bolt and bar every entrance to the cottage. Never had the spectre of the demented chalk-pit worker loomed larger. Eventually I settled for the chain. Then I went to see David. On the threshold of his room a sudden most ghastly fear came over me—what if Alan should have …? But of course he hadn’t. David was peacefully asleep. I woke him up, quite needlessly, and fed him, quite selfishly. I remember holding him tightly and rocking him with tears of wretchedness and reaction running down my face and saying Toby’s name over and over again, like an incantation to hold off the fear.