London, 1959
WHAT FATE HAD in store for Eliza was not a job: it was something rather less predictable and came in the truculent form of Peter Thetford.
Peter Thetford was thirty-two years old, and trying rather too hard to reconcile a burning socialist ideology with a strong desire not only to achieve political power but to savour the good things of life, so far fairly sternly denied to him.
His father had been a Nottingham miner; Peter had been his fifth child, and had won a scholarship to the local grammar school, where, mixing with middle-class boys, he became totally obsessed with the essential injustice of British society and its caste system. He found the barrier thrown up between him and David Johnson, the local doctor’s son who sat at the next desk, not so much insurmountable as incomprehensible. He could play soccer with David, and score goals alongside him, could thrash him on the assault course in the cadet corps, get higher marks at mathematics, and alternate term by term with him, winning the form prize. Yet when he sought his friendship, tried to communicate with him, tell him filthy jokes, discuss the female anatomy, borrow the dog-eared centrefold spread of Playboy which went the rounds of the form every month, tried to join David in the group that went to the local youth club every Friday, he met a polite, slightly stilted rejection.
Then at Cambridge, where he won an outright maths scholarship, he comprehended it better and loathed it more. It enraged and embittered him that there was no equal ground between him and Anthony Smythe Andrews who had come up from Eton, and who was also reading economics; no way they could communicate except on the most self-conscious and false terms, and yet he was cleverer than Smythe Andrews, he worked harder, he had read more, they had passed the same exams, and indeed he knew he had done better, simply to get the scholarship from a position well back from most people’s starting line.
It was no use fighting it, he could see that, or at least not at Cambridge; no use trying to climb the fence, to become Smythe Andrews’ friend, because there was absolutely no basis for friendship. Smythe Andrews despised him, and he despised Smythe Andrews, not because either thought the other stupid, unpleasant or rude, but because each had roots in something the other could not begin to comprehend and indeed was deeply wary of.
Anthony Smythe Andrews knew he was Peter Thetford’s superior because he was born to a different class, spoke in a different voice, used different words and had different friends, who were all exactly like him; and when Peter Thetford won the Economics Exhibition at the end of the first year, and Smythe Andrews failed his first Tripos, it was Smythe Andrews who remained the superior.
The sense of isolation Thetford knew at Cambridge also had a profound effect on his sexual attitudes. There were very few working-class boys at the university in the late forties, despite Oxbridge, and certainly no working-class girls. The girls were an extraordinarily elite clique, all from intellectual, upper-class backgrounds, most of them witty and clever, eccentrically dressed, outrageously self-confident, with the power to pick and choose from quite literally hundreds of rich, amusing, charming young men. The social climate was heady, hectic, modestly promiscuous; the fact that you were sent down for being caught in bed, or even in the room of a member of the opposite sex after ten o’clock, was a considerable, but not total, deterrent.
It took a strong intellectual and sexual confidence to break into that set, if you were not born to it; Thetford had neither. The girls would in the early days politely dance with him, if they were asked, talk to him in the dining room, even invite him to an occasional tea party; but they were not, he recognized quite quickly, going to enter into any more intimate relationship than that.
Consequently he was lonely, isolated, and quite often angry; he would sit alone in his room studying at night, surrounded by the sounds of social and – more dreadfully isolating still – sexual pleasure down the corridors, and wonder not only how he could bear it, but why he should. His virginity accompanied him back and forwards to Cambridge each term, an increasingly embarrassing burden which he was finally able to lay down in the bed of an art student he met at a Christmas party in Nottingham; they wrote to each other for a brief time into the following term, both anxious to pretend that they felt more than they did and that it had not just been a one-night stand. Shortly after he came down from Cambridge he met Margaret Phipps, a student teacher, for whom he felt quite a lot and in whose arms he enjoyed considerable pleasure; and in due course he married her. But he continued to regard sex as something inextricably bound up with class; as privileged territory, with access automatically granted to the rich and successful, the expensively educated, the socially secure; and denied, unless with-an attendant load of responsibility, to those who were none of those things.
Then he met Eliza Morell.
Eliza had been invited by Hugh Gaitskell to a party at the House of Commons ten days after she got back to London, and had been strongly disinclined to go, when Julian called from New York to say he would be away for a week longer than he had thought and that he was coming home via Paris in order to look at sites for a second Circe with Paul Baud.
‘Is that all right, darling? I can go later, if you’d rather.’
He sounded anxious, conciliatory. Guilty conscience, thought Eliza, good.
‘Of course it’s all right. Well, Julian, I’ll see you – when? Three weeks?’
‘Four. But Scott and Madeleine will be over before that, so they’ll be company for you.’
‘Julian,’ said Eliza, her voice trembling with outrage, ‘I am not so bereft of company in London that I have to wait for it to arrive from the United States. I’ll see you when you get back. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye Eliza. Give my love to Roz.’
‘I would, if I thought she would know who it was sending it.’
‘Eliza, don’t.’
‘Goodbye Julian.’
She put down the phone, looked at herself in the mirror, and sighed heavily. Then she picked it up again, arranged to have her hair done, and dialled through to Nanny Henry on the house telephone and told her she’d be out that evening.
‘This,’ she said to her reflection, ‘is the first day of the rest of my life. As they say in America.’
She went out feeling more positive than she could remember for months.
It was a good party. Eliza, her hair dressed by M. René of South Audley Street, piled high in the new fashion, and with a huge fake pearl pinned into the tumble of curls at the front, and dressed in a navy pleated silk on-the-knee dress from St Laurent with a wide cape collar, and extremely high-heeled, yellow satin shoes with pointed toes, was surprised to find she was enjoying herself greatly. The room was full of friends, all longing to hear about her trip, all blissfully unaware of what a fiasco it had been; she talked and laughed and told them how she and Julian had entertained most of New York at the opening of Circe and how she had met Cary Grant and almost curtsied to him in her excitement, and what a wonderful city it was, and how they must all come and visit them now that they had an apartment there, and how she would have stayed much longer if she hadn’t been missing Roz, when she suddenly became aware of a pair of dark blue eyes boring into her from across the room. The eyes were set in a face that was pale and rather thin with dark hair that was just a little too long flopping over the forehead; a face that wore an expression that was an extraordinary mixture of disdain and admiration; a face that was clearly not going to smile, or indeed soften unless she gave it considerable cause to do so.
‘John, who is that man over there, the one staring at me; the one with the ghastly blue suit.’
John Wetheringham, a senior civil servant, who was very fond of Eliza but feared sometimes for her worst social excesses in the presence of some of the more fervent socialists in the land, put a warning hand on her arm. ‘You mustn’t talk disparagingly about the Labour Party’s suits, Eliza. Not at a party given by their leader, anyway. That’s Peter Thetford. New MP for Midbury in West Yorkshire. Gave a very good speech on education the other day. Promising young chap. Want to meet him?’
‘Oh, in a while,’ said Eliza. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll introduce myself. I just want to have a quick word with Mary Lipscombe first. Nice to see you, John. Come and have a drink one night, you and Jenny. I’ll give her a ring. I have some friends coming to stay in a few weeks from the States, you’d like them.’
‘That would be lovely,’ said Wetheringham. ‘Julian not back yet, then?’
‘Heavens no. He’s becoming more American than the Americans. Can’t keep away.’
Wetheringham looked at her sharply. She looked wonderful, he thought, but very thin. ‘Come and have a meal with us one night, then,’ he said. ‘Jenny would like it. I’ll get her to ring you.’
‘Wonderful. Bye, John.’
She wandered across the room in search of Mary Lipscombe, failed to find her and saw Peter Thetford’s narrow back, encased in its too-blue suit, directly in front of her. She tapped it.
‘Mr Thetford. At last. I’ve been longing to meet you. I’m Eliza Morell, a friend of Hugh Gaitskell. How do you do?’
Thetford turned to look at her, excused himself from his companion and said abruptly, ‘Do you always interrupt conversations whenever it suits you, Mrs Morell?’ His voice was extraordinary, it was deep and scratched, and sounded somehow injured, as if it had been dragged across hot gravel; his accent was strong, and northern, but strangely musical. It was a sexy voice, it was bigger than he was.
‘If I want to talk to someone enough, yes. Sorry. Rude of me. Bad habit. But you didn’t look frightfully engrossed.’
‘I was, actually.’
‘Then you must continue. I expect I can find someone else to interrupt.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘don’t go. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude either.’
‘Well,’ she said lightly, ‘we’re quits. Now then, why haven’t I seen you at one of these lovely parties before?’
‘I don’t go to many parties,’ he said, ‘I’m a very busy man.’
‘Oh, people always say that when they want an excuse, but I can tell you most of the busiest men I know spend a lot of time at parties. It’s how they meet other people, you see. Contacts. That sort of thing.’
‘I don’t really set a lot of store by contacts.’
‘Well, that’s extremely silly of you. Contacts make the world go round.’
‘Not mine.’
‘That’s what you think. But they do.’ She smiled at him radiantly. ‘Haven’t you got a drink? Let me find you one. Champagne?’
Sipping the champagne, studying her further, his sexual hackles as always rising when confronted by the smell of real money, Thetford wondered a trifle contemptuously why she was bothering. She must know he wasn’t important, he wasn’t rich, he certainly wasn’t known for his wit and charm; nothing that had taken place in his life thus far had suggested he carried an aura of sexual irresistibility about with him; and yet, here she was, a beautiful and patently rich and socially important woman, making a most visible and strenuous effort to amuse and interest him.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Eliza briskly, looking very directly into his dark blue eyes.
‘I don’t think you do.’
‘Oh, yes I do. You’re wondering why a rich bitch like me should be taking so much interest in a yet-to-make-it person like you. Aren’t I right?’
‘Yes,’ he said, slightly disconcerted. ‘Yes, you’re right.’
‘Well, I’m not sure either,’ she said, and laughed. ‘But I was looking at you across the room, and I thought you looked interesting. And I see I was right.’
‘In what way am I interesting?’
‘Well, you don’t try very hard to be charming.’
‘That’s true. I find deliberately charming people very tiresome.’
‘So I see.’
‘How does that make me interesting?’
‘Well, you see, I spend most of my time with very deliberately charming people.’
‘So I am a novelty?’
‘Yes.’
‘In other ways too, no doubt.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, despite your fraternization with the Labour Party, I don’t suppose you spend much of your time socializing with the working classes.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I should be a nice bit of social experimentation for you then.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ she said, ‘don’t be so touchy.’
‘I’m afraid I find it very difficult not to be. I’ve spent my life working my way out of the disadvantages of being working class, of being a social experiment if you like, and it hasn’t been very easy. Or pleasant even.’
‘Well,’ she said, draining her glass, ‘I daresay not. But that really isn’t my fault. Don’t get cross with me about it. I just thought we could have a nice conversation. I was obviously wrong. Good evening, Mr Thetford.’
She turned away; he put his hand out and gently touched her arm.
‘Don’t go. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I get a bit carried away sometimes. It’s being in politics. It’s bad for the manners.’
Eliza looked at him. ‘Obviously. Let’s start again, then. Tell me about your politics.’
Beguiled by her beauty as much as her patently genuine desire to be with him, charmed and flattered out of his suspicion, he told her. He told her what he cared about and why; he told her of his dream of an equal beginning for everyone; he described a school to which every child would go, rich and poor, clever and stupid, each learning and gaining from the other; he told her of his own childhood, of his father, dying from lung disease at only fifty-six, of his mother’s tireless battle to see her children educated out of the mines. He told her of his passionate commitment to the National Health Service, of his fears that it would not continue to function, of his rage at the way consultants were still spending so much of their time with their private patients. He told her his dream was to be Minister of Education, to change the face of English schools; he talked and he talked and she listened in silence and they suddenly realized the room was emptying, and they were almost alone.
‘Oh, goodness,’ said Eliza, ‘it’s nearly eight o’clock. What are you doing now?’
‘Going back to my bedsit in Victoria, I suppose.’
‘Don’t you have a wife?’
‘I do. But she’s in Manchester.’
‘Why?’
‘We live there,’ he said sounding impatient. ‘She teaches at a school there.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘how would you like me to take you out to dinner?’
Thetford was so startled he dropped the remains of a smoked salmon sandwich he was holding.
‘Oh, what a ridiculous waste. Probably all you were going to get for supper anyway. Now look, you’ll just have to take me or leave me, but I’d much rather you took me. My husband’s in New York and I’ve got no one else to eat with tonight.’
‘Well, I really don’t think –’ said Thetford, fingering nervously at his tie.
‘Don’t think what? Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m not going to march you off to the Ritz or seduce you in a private room at the Café Royal. We’ll go to a pub. And it won’t take long.’
‘Oh . . .’ The scratchy voice elongated the word. Then he looked at her and smiled, a sudden, heartbreakingly open smile. ‘Why not?’
‘My goodness,’ said Eliza, walking through the door ahead of him. ‘Don’t do that too often or I shall take you off to a private room.’
‘Do what?’
‘Smile.’
‘Ah.’
Margaret had often told him he had a very seductive smile. He had never really believed her.
It wasn’t quite a pub she took him to, it was Moony’s in the Strand, and they drank Guinness and ate oyster and steak pie and it took a very long time indeed. Peter, having exhausted his political platform for a while, told her about his own family: about Margaret, and her own educational ideologies and how she tried very hard to put them into practice against some opposition from her headmistress, who was very traditionalist, and tried to run her little primary school as if it was Eton or Winchester; about his two little boys, David and Hugh, who were both already showing signs of being very clever indeed; about the new semi-detached house they had just bought and which his mother regarded as a palace; about his mother and what an anxiety she was, living on her own now, with arthritis and diabetes, but refusing to give in and be a burden on her children.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said suddenly, ‘I haven’t stopped talking for hours. I don’t often get such an opportunity to be listened to.’
‘I thought that was the whole point of politics,’ said Eliza, ‘having people listen to you all the time.’
‘No, no, not at all. The other politicians all talk at the same time, and never stop for a moment, and the public are always talking back at you, contradicting you. It’s permanent bedlam.’
‘But you like it?’
‘Yes,’ he said simply, ‘I love it.’
There was a pause. ‘What about you, then?’
‘Oh, dear,’ she said, ‘I was afraid you’d ask. Less said the better, I’m afraid.’
‘Come on. I can take it.’
‘Oh, well, you know, public school. Rich husband. No job. Vote Tory. Big house. Expensive clothes. Dreadful. Sorry.’
‘You’re intelligent, though,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you like to have a job, for instance?’
‘Yes,’ she said shortly.
‘Sore subject?’
‘Very.’
‘Why do you vote Tory, for heaven’s sake?’ he said, partly because he wanted to know, because he simply could never understand anyone doing such a thing, and partly to get back on to safer ground.
‘Oh, it’s all that early conditioning. Some kind of divine force guides my hand to the right name on the ballot paper. I honestly would expect to be struck down in the polling booth if I voted Labour. Don’t tell Hugh, though. And I certainly don’t think much of the Conservatives. Although Macmillan’s a sweetie.’
‘Mmm,’ said Thetford, who did not think of Macmillan in quite that way himself, ‘how on earth did you get mixed up with people like Gaitskell?’
‘Oh, met the Foots at a party, and it went on from there. I’m very intrigued by people like them, and by Wedgwood Benn. I think they’re wonderful, but they do seem to me to be slightly hypocritical, living in those big houses, and Tony’s got a huge estate in Suffolk, you know, I mean you have a right to be socialist, but I’m honestly not sure they do.’
‘What does your husband do?’ asked Thetford, anxious not to get drawn into that particular high-Tory by-way.
‘Oh, God, everything. Has a company that makes medicines. And cosmetics. And he’s just opened a store in New York. That’s why he’s there.’ She was silent.
‘Is he nice?’ asked Thetford. ‘Do you like him?’
He was as surprised by this inquiry as she was; Margaret often said his idea of a really personal question was whether someone would rather walk or drive to the polling booth; but Eliza’s candour was curiously relaxing, and besides, some curiously potent force was impelling him to explore her and her situation.
‘Well, he isn’t exactly nice,’ said Eliza. ‘But he is very interesting. And I do like him. I think. But I don’t see much of him. And I don’t think he likes me as much as he did. And I think he’s probably got someone else in New York anyway.’
‘Why?’
‘Don’t know. Nothing tangible. I just feel he’s not with me half the time.’
‘Well, he isn’t,’ he said, deliberately misunderstanding. ‘And what do you feel about that?’
‘About the someone else? Oh, I don’t know, really. I’m not devastated, if that’s what you mean. But it hurts. Of course it does. A lot of the other things he does hurt too.’
‘Like?’
‘Oh, too complex to explain. He’s a very complex man. Would you have an affair with someone who wasn’t your wife?’
He looked at her very intently. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been tempted yet.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘I’m surprised. Well, anyway,’ she added, breaking an oddly forceful silence, ‘I think I can live with it. Now what about some treacle pudding?’
They ate some treacle pudding and then they went out into the Strand and she hailed a taxi. ‘It’s been lovely,’ she said, ‘thank you for coming. Ring me.’
‘I don’t have your number.’
‘It’s in the book. Morell. Hanover Terrace, Regent’s Park. Not a very equal sort of an address, I’m afraid.’
When she got home, the phone was already ringing. It was Thetford.
‘I was just testing your phone.’
‘I see.’
‘You did say I should ring.’
‘I know. Where do you live, did you say?’
‘Oh, in Victoria. In a very dreary MP flatlet. I only go home weekends.’
‘Lots of lonely evenings?’
‘Lots.’
‘Come to dinner here next week. No, it won’t be a dinner party. Or a seduction. We’ll have a chaperone. Name of Rosamund.’
Thetford felt suddenly and sharply and with a sense of piercing anticipation that he was in entirely uncharted territory. He knew what it was. Not the house in Regent’s Park, nor even the tacky relaxed indulgence of Moony’s. The vision that was beckoning so deliciously and irresistibly at him was of the land of entirely pleasurable and irresponsible sexual opportunity.
Rosamund turned out to be not much of a chaperone. By the time they had finished the first course (smoked salmon ‘to make up for the bit I made you drop’) she was squirming about and throwing knives on to the floor. Eliza sighed, scooped her up and buzzed on the house intercom.
‘Nanny? I think really that Roz had better go to bed after all, she seems awfully tired. Call me when she’s ready and I’ll tuck her up.’ She disappeared briefly with the child, and came back smiling briskly.
‘That’s better. Goodness, they’re tiring, aren’t they? Don’t look so nervous. Nanny’s still here, and so are the Bristows, down in the garden flat. We’re not alone.’
‘Who are the Bristows?’
‘Oh.’ She looked at him slightly awkwardly and then laughed. ‘Oh, hell, better get it over with. Staff. Mrs B. sees to the house and most of the cooking; Mr B. looks after Julian mostly.’
‘In what way?’ asked Thetford, genuinely intrigued.
‘Oh, you know, his clothes, that sort of thing. And he sees to running repairs on the house. And the cars. We don’t actually have a chauffeur as such, because Julian loves driving so much, but of course he can’t always.’
‘Of course not.’
‘So he sees to them all.’
‘How many have you got?’
‘Oh, gosh, I don’t know, three really, mine, and Julian’s latest toy, which is some rare American thing, and the Rolls for just going out, you know, and then Julian has about half a dozen antique ones down in the country. He collects them.’
‘What’s the country?’
‘House in Sussex we’ve got. Sorry.’
‘That’s all right. So he has a sort of nanny of his own, this husband of yours?’
‘Yes. You could call him that. What a lovely idea.’
There was a silence.
‘Oh, goodness,’ she said, ‘I haven’t given us our food. How silly. Boeuf bourguignon. Do you like it?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, deadpan, ‘it makes a change from tripe. Just now and again.’
‘Shut up. What’s tripe like, anyway?’
‘Putrid.’
‘I thought it would be. Tell me,’ she added, pouring wine into his glass, ‘who looks after your children while your wife is teaching? Do you have a nanny?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘we don’t have a nanny. They go to a child minder. You won’t have heard of child minders, perhaps. They cost a little less than nannies.’
‘Oh, goodness, don’t start all that again,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think, I can’t help being tactless.’
‘I can see that,’ he said, and smiled. ‘It’s all right. I’m getting the hang of it. I’ll be eating my peas with a fork in no time now.’
Nanny Henry came into the kitchen. ‘She’s ready, Mrs Morell, if you’d like to come up. Or shall I . . .?’
She looked doubtfully at Peter.
‘No, Nanny, absolutely not. We’ll both come up. This is Mr Thetford, Nanny, an old friend.’
‘Pleased to meet you, sir,’ said Nanny Henry, looking at Peter with extremely ill-disguised distaste. Peter smiled at her and followed her upstairs.
‘She thinks I’m rough trade,’ he hissed, turning to Eliza who was behind him.
‘She’s right,’ whispered Eliza, ‘and she’s not used to it, I can tell you.’
The nursery was at the very top of the house. Roz lay in her bed, virtually submerged with teddies, sucking her thumb. She was not as pretty as Peter had expected; she was dark and her eyes were green and solemn in her pale little face.
‘Good night, my dearest darling,’ said Eliza, bending over the little bed, ‘sleep very very tight.’
‘Story,’ came the imperious voice.
‘Oh, darling, Mummy is very busy.’
‘No you’re not. I want a story.’
And so they stayed and Eliza told her a story, a charmingly dizzy tale about a bear that ran away, and Peter leant against the wall and listened and thought at one and the same moment how easy it was to make up charming stories when you hadn’t had to bath a child and put it to bed in between cooking the supper and tidying up the house and how totally enchanting Eliza looked as she told the story, and how he could have stood there for many hours just listening to her and watching her.
At the extremely happy end of the story, Eliza kissed Roz and then turned to him.
‘Would you kiss her too? She’s a bit starved of affection at the moment.’
And Peter moved over and kissed Roz’s cheek, and she turned over immediately and buried her face contentedly in her teddies, her thumb in her mouth; Eliza turned the light out and beckoned to Peter to follow her out of the door.
It was a strangely intimate moment; as they left the nursery, she took his hand and led him to the top of the stairs; he paused, half tempted, half terrified by her closeness, her readiness, her beauty, and he said to her, ‘How often have you done this sort of thing?’
‘Oh,’ she said, understanding completely what he meant, ‘never. Never before. I’ve never wanted to. It’s never seemed right.’
‘And what,’ he asked, brusque, impatient with himself and his insecurities, ‘is so different about this, about me?’
‘You, I suppose,’ she said simply. ‘You’re different. I trust you. You talk to me. Now let’s go down and finish our dinner, and that perfectly gorgeous burgundy that Julian would begrudge us so much.’
Nanny Henry heard them go downstairs with some relief. She didn’t like the idea of hanky-panky on her nursery floor.
After that they spent a lot of time together. Innocent, unadulterous time. No hanky-panky at all. A private detective set to follow them would have found their behaviour rather puzzling, and his work extremely dull. Peter Thetford had most of his mornings free before going to the House; they went for walks in the park, for drives in Eliza’s car; took picnics to Hampstead Heath, and accompanied Roz to the zoo. They lunched together early, often at Hanover Terrace, sometimes with Nanny and Roz, occasionally alone; (but never, Eliza was careful to ensure, mindful of Peter’s insecurities, anywhere smart or expensive). Peter talked a great deal and Eliza listened.
It was on this that the success of their relationship was founded; they liked each other very much, and they were both intrigued and excited by the utter unfamiliarity of one another, but the novelty of being talked to at length, of being trusted with important conversation, overwhelmed Eliza.
‘You cannot imagine,’ she said to him one day after he had given her an exhaustive account of a debate on the crisis in housing in the House the night before, ‘how wonderful I find all this. Being told things. Not being fobbed off. Promise me not to stop.’
‘I promise,’ said Peter. It seemed fairly wonderful to him too; Margaret rarely had time to listen to him, and when she did, it was with half an ear on the children, most of the other half on what she was about to be saying back to him.
‘Have you told your wife about me?’ asked Eliza idly one morning as they wandered round the boating lake with Roz between them.
‘Yes and no.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’ve told her I met you.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes.’
‘She wouldn’t understand.’
‘Julian wouldn’t either,’ said Eliza. ‘I hardly understand it myself,’ she added with a sigh. ‘But at least we have nothing to hide.’
A few days later there was rather more both to understand and to hide. Eliza had been both relieved and puzzled by Peter’s lack of sexual assertiveness. She was so accustomed to infidelity in the marriages of most of her friends, she took it so for granted, it was so much part of a natural progression, an inevitable process, as love turned to indifference and indifference to boredom, boredom to diversion, that she found it extremely difficult to understand how a man who had been married for seven years, who was so undoubtedly sexually motivated, and who was equally undoubtedly sexually attracted to her, could spend considerable amounts of time with her and not so much as try to kiss her. She would have liked him to kiss her, and indeed to suggest doing rather more; it would have soothed her hurt feelings, stroked her ego, reassured her about her own desirability. She was also, she had to admit, feeling randy. It was several weeks now since she had had sex with Julian, and although she had learnt to take her pleasure in a rather irregular rhythm these days, her unhappiness and insecurity had made her uncomfortable and hungry. She found the thought of being in bed with Peter extremely arousing; there was a certain quality about him, an aggression, an awkwardness, which was sexually intriguing. She had been absolutely faithful to Julian, largely because she was frightened not to be. She had had the odd flirtation, the occasional passionate lunch, been kissed quite thoroughly from time to time; but that was all, and she surprised herself as well as her friends. But she did now want quite badly to be unfaithful. She wanted to know another man; it was as simple as that, and she wanted it not because she was bored or even unhappy, but because she felt so desperately inexperienced and so hopelessly vulnerable.
What she could not know, because he concealed it so carefully beneath his facade of aggression, was that Peter Thetford was terrified of making love to her. He was extremely inexperienced himself; he had only slept with two women in his life, Margaret and the art student, and the nearest he had ever come to unfaithfulness had been a prolonged and drunken necking session with a journalist at one of the Labour Party conferences. Margaret was a conventional but undemanding wife in bed; confronted by any attempt on his part to explore, to innovate, she became irritable and uneasy. Consequently, Peter’s sexual performance was practised but proscribed; he was, however, quite highly sexed and he thought about it a lot and fantasized considerably; (he had developed a slightly unfortunate tendency to do this in the middle of his constituency surgeries when boredom was running particularly high; and would find himself sharply distracted from some tale of unjust landlord, or pillaging allotment holder, by a sexual image of such vividness that he had to pull several files on to his lap to cover his erection). But fantasies were one thing, reality another; he felt sick with terror as well as desire every time he contemplated Eliza’s sensuous mouth, her slender graceful body, and the undoubted hunger in her large green eyes. There was also her social status. Knowing her better, liking her more and more, he was still both overawed and angered by it. She had been born to class, confidence and money, and had acquired far more; his hostility to that, and his fear of it, held him back day after day. She was on the other side of all those closed doors and he still could not imagine himself walking through them.
And so he did nothing; and Eliza became increasingly frustrated and baffled – without being quite desperate or confident enough to initiate matters herself.
Besides, while Peter Thetford asked no more of her than her company, and her untiring ear, she was at least not threatened: she was safe. Safe from gossip, safe from rejection, safe from fear. There was the odd remark, the occasional rumour in those talkative weeks, but as they did nothing but wander about London, in the most public possible way, not even holding hands, for all the world to see, it was hard for anyone to work up much interest in their story. Even Letitia, arch gossip that she was, and deeply suspicious, could make nothing of the relationship; Eliza brought Peter Thetford to tea with her at First Street; for two hours he lectured them both on the subject of comprehensive schooling, produced pictures of Margaret, David and Hugh for Letitia to see, invited her to a debate on the possibility of decimal currency the following week and then left alone to write a speech on teachers’ salaries.
‘I find it hard to believe,’ said Letitia to Susan (who was passionately intrigued by Eliza’s latest foray into socialist politics) later that week, ‘but I honestly don’t think he’s laid a finger on her. Most extraordinary. He’s very nice really,’ she added, forgetting who she was with, ‘in spite of his background. And I’m told he’s very clever. Dreadful suit though.’
‘I know you can never quite believe it, Letitia,’ said Susan mildly, ‘but quite a lot of people are nice in spite of their backgrounds. I’ve met several perfectly decent people in my time, you know, who had to wipe their own bottoms without a nanny to help them, from a very early age, never went away to school, never buggered the new boys . . .’
‘Oh, my darling, do forgive me,’ said Letitia. ‘I am so tactless. Oh, dear, what can I say? You know I don’t mean it.’
‘Of course I do,’ said Susan, and laughed. ‘But you’d better not make those sort of remarks in front of Mr Thetford. He wouldn’t know anything of the sort. Red rag to a bull, I’d say that would be.’
Ironically it was precisely that sort of remark that finally got Peter Thetford into bed with Eliza Morell.
They were in the garden of Hanover Terrace with Roz, one afternoon, about three weeks after they had met. Eliza was trying to make a daisy chain with a marked lack of success. ‘Here,’ she said, turning to Peter and laughing, ‘see if you can do it. Nothing brings back childhood like daisy chains, don’t you think? Daisy chains and tea on the lawn.’
It was an innocent remark and she meant it quite simply; but Peter was tired, he had had a worrying conversation with his agent about a forthcoming by-election and a rather too promising Tory candidate; he had to go up next day on the milk train to Manchester and take his surgery without so much as time for a cup of tea when he got there; his head ached, his speech was still not right, and he felt he was making absolutely no headway with Gaitskell in his long-term plan to move into the Department of Education. Eliza’s remark seemed frivolous and fatuous.
‘Your childhood maybe. Mine was rather different, you may remember. Tea was a big meal at six o’clock, round the table, with Father often still not washed after coming home from the mine, coughing his lungs up and spitting into his handkerchief. Not a daisy chain in sight.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ said Eliza, ‘I am so tired of that bloody background of yours. I’ll tell you one of the most important differences between your class and mine; we don’t keep on and on about it. It’s so boring. Don’t you think it’s time you learnt to behave properly?’
Peter looked at her and all the memories swam into his head: hot angry memories, of rejection, of loneliness, of a realization he was different, odd, not up to standard. Of other people laughing, talking, closing doors, leaving him behind. Of beautiful girls, self-assured, sexually arrogant, gently but cruelly turning him away.
He felt a shudder go through him, a savage angry shot of desire; he looked at Eliza, and he knew he had to have her, master her, bring her down; he stood up suddenly, his face livid, picked up little Roz and carried her inside.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ said Eliza, scrambling up after him, following him up the stairs, frightened, calling for Nanny.
Thetford took Roz to the nursery and ran back downstairs; Eliza was standing in the hall. He took her hand, dragging her towards him; she looked at him half frightened, half excited. ‘Leave me alone,’ she said, but he knew she didn’t mean it, she stopped almost at once even pretending, simply turned, and led him quickly, silently, across the hall and into her parlour and closed the door.
He stood back and looked at her; then reached out and unbuttoned her shirt; slipped it off her shoulders and bent and started kissing her bare breasts. He kissed them slowly, tenderly, licking the nipples, sucking them, working them with his tongue; on and on it went, insistent, hungry, patient; Eliza standing there, her head bent over him, her fists clenched with hunger and pleasure, felt soft, fluid with desire. He wrenched off her skirt, her pants; he was kneeling now, kissing, fondling her stomach, her thighs, his tongue suddenly, cunningly darting into her; she moaned, cried out, trembling violently with excitement, fear, desire.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘please, please, now.’ But he stayed there, kneeling, still dressed, just tonguing her, stroking her buttocks, exploring her with his hands, until she spasmed, suddenly, and was still.
Then he took her, again and still again; he was rough with her, almost brutal, tearing into her as if he wished to break her; and she became in the end exhausted, tearful, she lay back away from him, silent, her face turned into the floor. He came then, finally; allowed himself to let go; and he lay on her, heavy, sweating, panting, in a sweet, savage triumph, feeling that at last he had avenged himself and the injustices of all those long, enraging years.
‘You bitch,’ he said, ‘you rich bitch,’ but he was smiling now, gently, tenderly easing himself away from her, stroking her hair, kissing her tear-wet cheeks.
‘You bastard,’ she said, and smiled in reply. ‘You poor, working-class bastard.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, restored to himself. ‘I was rough. Did I hurt you? Shall I go away?’
She resettled herself beneath him, around him, in a gesture of most joyful pleasure.
‘No,’ she said, her hand moving firmly, questingly around his buttocks, ‘I want some more, please.’
They spent much time in the parlour after that; and it was there that Julian found them together early one morning, after he had flown in a day earlier than anyone had expected.