Standing rigid before the cheval mirror in her bedroom, Esther Moth, having sent away Kitt’s nurserymaid who had been helping her to dress, watched her head being wreathed in stephanotis and orange blossom by Otis Hewetson who was already dressed for the wedding.
Otis groaned. ‘I shall never last the day in all this boning: it has been ages since my waist was so confined, I shall probably faint.’
Esther made a mock fierce face. ‘You just try stealing the limelight with a trick like that.’
Otis stood away to view the head-dress and its short lace veil. ‘I say, Esther, you are the very picture of a virgin fairy. So beautiful.’ From behind she put her arms about her friend, taking care to avoid crushing the white georgette and tulle bridal gown. ‘I don’t think that Bindon will have the courage to violate such an image of purity.’
‘Otis! You say the most outrageous things these days. I think that the women you mix with must be very saucy.’
Otis smiled. ‘But such bland sauce, you may be sure, Esther. We are ladylike in the extreme, for who would be likely to put their children in our care if we were not?’
‘Ladylike! When half of you go about uncorseted and the other half smoke tobacco.’
‘And the other half have love-affairs, and the other half envy them.’
Otis smoothed her temporarily nipped-in waist and thrust-out bosom. ‘Not uncorseted – merely unboned. You really should try, give your poor figure a little freedom.’
‘You will become saggy.’
‘On the contrary. Without stay-bones, one’s muscles hold one’s figure in the correct position.’
Esther lifted the veil to cover her face and picked up a posy of flowers with trailing ribbons and surveyed the finished picture. ‘Well, I should not like to go about like that.’
‘I dare say that Bindon would not mind, though. Have you never thought how devastating it must be for a lover to press his loved one to him, only to feel a parcel encased in whalebone. I think that it must be rather like taking a mouthful of Dover sole only to discover that it is not filleted.’
‘Heavens, Otis, if it is not for the men that we lace ourselves in, then why do it?’
‘Ah, ha! Why indeed? Think about that some time when you are not so preoccupied.’
Now they both looked in the mirror at the reflection of a bride.
Otis knelt at her friend’s feet and adjusted the folds of her skirt. ‘Jesting aside, Esther, I have never seen a more perfect bride. Are you ready?’
‘Yes, tell Father that I am ready, if you will, but I should like a few minutes to myself.’
Occasionally during the past month, since the preparations for Esther’s marriage had been nearing completion, Otis had encountered George Moth. He had behaved with such charm and respect that, had it not been for the fact that she had occasionally caught a particular look in his eyes, she might have wondered whether the episode in his office had been her imagination.
She had also encountered Jack, and on each occasion her heart had leapt as though a wonderful surprise had been sprung upon her. She could not get over the fact that in the three years since the Southsea holiday, they had gone from being boy and girl and had become man and woman. Jack’s attitude towards Otis was almost that of two equals. He behaved as though he greatly respected her, and in fact said as much.
She tried to understand herself and her interest in both Jack Moth and his father, but came to no conclusion except that she must simply have a penchant for tall, broad men – much in the way that she had a penchant for common oysters: my salivary glands respond to sight and thought of the shellfish, other of my glands respond to this particular type of man.
Today she was to spend many hours in the company of both men.
Jack Moth and the groom were to leave for the church from the army officers’ club at which they had stopped overnight in the company of several of Major Blood’s fellow officers, who were to form an arch of ceremonial swords for the man and wife.
George Moth waited alone in the morning room of Windsor Villa with a glass of whisky in one hand and cigar in the other. He was in formal dress which is best suited to men with long legs and broad shoulders. His tailed, cutaway coat was hanging on a chair. When Otis Hewetson came in he rose, hastily put on his coat, and bent briefly at the waist in a bow. ‘Charming, most charming.’
‘Charming’ was an acceptable compliment, but George Moth would have liked to have used a much stronger language such as communicated his true emotions. That time when he had incautiously kissed her he had let his moment of arousal get a little out of hand. What had stimulated him was that, although she had only been a girl, she had not been afraid of him. Until then, only Anne, of all the many women he had encountered in his life, had felt sufficiently unintimidated by him to stand up to him.
‘Esther is ready,’ said Otis. ‘She thinks I should leave now, she will be down in about fifteen minutes. She wished to be on her own and would like you to go up to her when it is time.’
‘You should not leave for another ten minutes. Will you sit down?’ With a questioning expression, he indicated a tantalus.
‘Thank you, no, but I should like a little white wine with mineral water.’
He smiled and jammed his cigar between his teeth. He quizzed the bottles. ‘Malvern, Perrier or Nocera Umbra?’
‘The Malvern, please.’
He handed her the prettily cut crystal glass. ‘Nice, safe little drink.’
She glanced at him, indicating that she knew he was making an allusion to the last drink she had accepted from him. She accepted the glass and took a drink from it. ‘Thank you, that is beautifully chilled.’
‘I dare say you think that I should apologize for my behaviour at the time of the white port?’
‘After almost three years? I believe that I should have insisted before now had I expected that. I was full of myself and college and was probably very pert at the time.’
Yes… full of herself, and so much like Anne at twenty.
‘That’s as well, for an apology suggests regret, and I have no regrets.’ He looked her up and down. Nothing else about her was at all like Anne. The mature Otis was tall, full-figured and brilliantly coloured in cheeks, lips, and eyes. The bridal attendant’s dress was of a deep rose shade, and feminine in silhouette, the gathered skirt being hitched at the sides so that glimpsed inches of her calves were revealed as she moved. He thought: She must certainly outshine her mother these days. Again he felt desire rise in him. God forgive me, she’s twenty-five years younger than I am. She is Esther’s age.
‘The shade of that dress suits you very well. You have flair. Few women with your hair colour would have chosen to wear dark pink. You really are an extraordinarily disturbing young woman.’
He watched her response carefully. An experienced interrogator and decipherer of clues, he read no signs that she was troubled, rather, she was intrigued and not displeased.
She said, ‘“Young Woman” used in that tone smacks very much of my mother when she intends “Young Hussy”.’
‘I think that your mother does not know you very well if she refers to you in such terms. I never intended “hussy” – it is a word that indicates a want of intelligence, an attribute I know that you do not lack.’
Raising her eyebrows in acknowledgement, she looked pointedly at the clock.
George Moth knew that almost everybody would be assembled at the church by now, but he wanted to indulge himself for just a few more minutes. Where’s the harm? Esther will not be the first bride to arrive late.
‘It is still too early. You should not leave until eleven fifteen. The church is not far.’ Lifting the lids of two boxes of cigarettes he offered them, saying, ‘“Hibiscus” and Virginia. Do you use them?’
‘No.’
‘I am glad to hear it.’
She gave him a purse-lipped, wry smile. ‘I prefer a cigar…’
Is she trying to crack the whip at me, put me in my place?
‘…but on my allowance I can afford only Vevey Sans.’
George Moth wrinkled his nose.
‘We are not all detective-inspectors who can smoke Mil Maravillas.’
If she was trying to pull him down a peg, George Moth knew that she had the ability to do so with style, for there were few women who would know that the ‘Aguila de Oro’ band he had removed from his cigar indicated that – at £25 a hundred – it was one of the most expensive cigars money could buy. There were even fewer women who could detect it only from its fragrance.
‘High days and holidays – my only indulgence.’ He indicated a brass-bound wooden humidor. ‘You are welcome…’
She laughed and waved her refusal of his offer. ‘I thought that you did not approve of a woman who uses tobacco.’
‘I may approve of the woman and not her use of tobacco.’
‘I should have liked to try one of your Mil Maravillas but I really must leave now; my mama taught me that it is not polite to keep people waiting.’
He bowed to the inevitable. ‘The fault is mine.’
‘Would you mind?’ She nodded at the cigar he was smoking and, without waiting for his permission, took it from his fingers. As he would have himself, she rolled it between her fingers, feeling the condition of the leaf, smelt it gently, then placed her lips around it and, with her head tilted back and half-closed eyes, drew in a mouthful of the aromatic smoke, holding it in her open mouth before expelling it gently.
George Moth had been enjoying cigars for twenty years, yet in all that time he had never known that there could be such sensuality associated with the intake of a mouthful of smoke. He could not take his eyes off the moist, red circle of her lips as it contracted about the cigar and relaxed as she blew a ring. Before it dispersed, he reached for it and caught it between a finger and thumb, not taking his eyes from hers as he did so.
When Anne Moth had carpeted Windsor Villa, she had chosen expensive, close-tufted Wilton which entirely deadened any footfall.
Esther, framed in the doorway, said steadily, ‘Is it not time that you were at the church, Otis?’