All My Sins Remembered (72 page)

‘Would you like some tea? Or a cocktail?’ She found that she didn’t know what time it was. The day had slipped into a different perspective that did not seem to be governed by the usual rules and dimensions.

‘A drink, perhaps.’

She went to the tray and clinked about among the bottles and glasses. Her fingers were trembling, she noticed. When she handed the glass he touched the cushions beside him.

‘Sit down here, Alice.’

She sat, and it was as if her arm and the shoulder nearest to him lost a protective layer of skin. The flesh prickled and burnt with his proximity.

‘You’re a faithful girl, aren’t you, with your work at headquarters and attendance at all the rallies?’

‘Thank you,’ she said, not knowing what else to say.

He studied her for a moment. Alice held his eyes.

‘Wouldn’t you like your work to be acknowledged with some more … official position, with the Women’s Section?’

‘No,’ Alice said fiercely. ‘No, I’m quite happy just doing what I do.’

Alice had no desire to be promoted by relegation to the women’s ranks, to type envelopes away from the heady atmosphere and uniforms of the King’s Road. She drank her cocktail, without noticing the taste, and stood up to mix them both another.

The familiar room as well as the ordinary rules of time seemed to dissolve around her. The walls and the ceiling were a long way off, but the cream-on-cream figured patterning of the sofa cover was close, intensely vivid and important, as if it were an extension of her sensitized skin. She rubbed the tips of her fingers over it as they sat talking and sipping their drinks. Alice supposed that she had dreamed this scene so often that now it was really happening it seemed more dream than reality.

‘I’m sorry Grace isn’t here,’ she said at last. She was afraid that Cressida might come in, or that he would say he really must leave now, but the Leader showed no inclination to move.

‘Are you?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows.

‘Not really,’ she whispered. Her throat and the tight patches of skin over her cheekbones suddenly burnt with colour.

He took her hand, very lightly, and turned it over in his own. He examined her ringless fingers and the blue veins under the transparent skin at her wrist.

‘And so what are you going to do with yourself, little Alice?’

The question stung her. It sounded like a tolerant adult asking a small girl about her plans for a summer’s day.

‘I’m not a child,’ Alice said.

‘Of course you are not.’ He held on to her hand.

Looking at her, Mosley saw that she was right. She was a little goose, but not an innocent one. There was an intensity of concentration in her face now that made her look almost cross-eyed. Her mouth hung slightly open, and there were tiny beads of perspiration on her upper lip. She was not pretty exactly, but there was a coiled spring of energy in her that he found momentarily intriguing. He leant forward, still holding her hand, and touched his mouth to hers.

Her fingers flexed and hooked on to his. When he lifted his head he saw that she was panting slightly. He smiled at her, a famous crooked smile.

‘Well,’ he murmured, in apparent regret, with the intention of disentangling himself. He was still close enough to notice that there were amber flecks in her dark eyes.

Alice did not blush, or look modestly down into her own lap, or lean back against the cushions and begin knowingly to talk about something else. She held herself quite still for a second, fixing him with her wide-set stare that now seemed touched with craziness. Then, in a single fluid movement, she drew closer, and opened her mouth against his.

Her tongue was hot, darting in his mouth. The wild springiness of her hair around them seemed to give off sparks of electricity. There was a moment when they leant together, and when he might have pressed forward to taste more of her. Her short, ragged breaths sounded unnaturally loud to both of them. Her hands reached convulsively to hold on to him, twisting on the sleeves of his coat. There was a close, singed smell about her skin.

He drew back from her then. It did not take a great effort to remember that this was Lady Grace’s drawing room, and this girl was her puppyish cousin. He began to regret his moment of flirtatiousness.

‘Forgive me for that,’ Mosley whispered. He could make his eyes twinkle roguishly, and he did so now.

Alice did not relax her grip on his arms.

He slid forward, preparing to stand up, and her grasp tightened.

‘Alice, you must let me go.’

‘No,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘Alice …’ He was still gentle. He was uncomfortable now, but there was also something fascinating and definitely flattering in this urgency of hers. For a brief instant he toyed with the idea. She would have strong white hips and a broad bottom, and her sparky hair would fall over his face when she leant above him. But he dismissed the thought almost as soon as it came to him.

‘You mustn’t be so wicked,’ he told her, with an attempt at playfulness.

‘It isn’t
wicked
.’

‘What is it, then?’ If he teased her a little, a properly light atmosphere might still be regained.

She was solemn, almost rapt. Her mouth was shiny and he could see the glint of wetness inside it. He realized that there was something dislocated about Alice Hirsh. Her eyes were opaque, and the minutely unfocused glare of them alarmed him.

She whispered, ‘It is good and natural. And wonderful, as well. And I
have
been waiting, waiting for such a long time.’

She was going to seize him again, he realized. She was breathing in the same short, audible gasps. He glanced at the door, firmly closed, and at the cushions and covers and knickknacks of Grace’s drawing room.

‘You don’t mean any of this,’ he told her. Very firmly he put her hands back to rest in her lap.

She smiled, drawing back her lips to show her teeth and a crescent of pink gum above them. The smile made her look unhappier than she had done since their tête-à-tête began.

‘How can you know what I think or feel? I know about you, yes, I do, but you know nothing of me. Look.’

She reached up and undid the top button of her black shirt. He saw the white skin below her flushed neck, and then when more buttons were undone a strip of wholesome plain underclothing, and the tops of her breasts above it.

It was time to leave, and if Alice was determined not to allow it he would go without smoothing out this awkward wrinkle.

‘You are very fresh and lovely, Alice, and you flatter a man who is far too old and tired for you. But I’m afraid I’m not what you think, or really want, you know.’

He was being very patient and gentle with her, more so than she deserved, but she seemed not to recognize it. She went on sitting, with her clothes half undone, watching him as if she was preparing to pounce.

‘Thank you for the cocktail, Alice, dear. Will you give my regards to Grace?’

He stood up, and as he straightened his coat he saw that this lopsided girl was not interested in gestures, or the polite formulae that existed between men and women, or in saving her own face. At the same instant he remembered back to when he had first met her, at some party of Grace’s. Had it been in this very room? She had always stared at him, following him with her eyes wherever he moved. She was not unique in that; women were often affected by him. But there was this difference in Alice Hirsh. It came to him that it was desperation.

He said goodbye, politely but without offering any opportunity for contradiction.

Alice jumped to her feet. It was now, she thought,
now
with everything she had to give, or never again. Her heart was pounding arhythmically, knocking at her ribs so hard that she was afraid that she might choke. All the breath seemed squeezed out of her, to be replaced by suffocating clouds of heat that burnt her lungs.

‘No,’ she whispered, somehow finding the oxygen to form the word.

But he was going, just the same. He was very tall and upright; she could see the groove at the nape of his neck, and the dark and surprisingly soft fur of his moustache as he half turned.

‘
Please
.’

Alice half fell and half knelt in front of him. Her fists clenched on the hem of his coat and she looked imploringly up at him. It didn’t matter, she thought with a split-second’s flare of exultation. It didn’t matter; it was now or not at all, something was happening to her at last. She smiled again, showing her teeth and pink gums.

Mosley hesitated, with the girl’s hands locked on him. He was afraid that she would make him drag her. Her disordered clothes seemed to spill flesh over him.

‘Get up,’ he ordered coldly.

Alice’s face had suddenly turned puffy and vacant. Her eyes didn’t fix on him longer. She whispered, ‘But I love you. You and the party are the only things I care about in the world.’

As she spoke, and with huge relief, he recognized that he would not have to prise her off him.

She was shrinking, away from him and down into a small huddle on the white rug. Her hands fell loosely, palms open, in a gesture of defeat.

Alice had given up, almost as soon as she had recklessly offered herself to him, as if she had no high opinion of her own value, and therefore no real expectation that he would appreciate her either. She had tried, and was not surprised to fail. The pathos of that brushed him lightly, but his relief was far stronger. He glanced down at her bowed head, noticing the whiteness of her scalp along the line of her parting.

‘Good girl,’ he said more kindly. ‘There must be plenty of things for you to care about, you know, if you did but look out for them. Now, listen to me. After I’ve gone, go and wash your face and brush your hair, and no one will be any the wiser.’

He stopped at the door, holding the knob in his hand, and looked back at her. Alice was still crouching in the middle of the rug, her face hidden under her tumbled hair.

‘That’s a good girl,’ he repeated, before he went out. He thought that he had struck the right note of friendliness and detachment.

The Leader went down the stairs and retrieved his hat from the hallstand. A pile of letters neatly stacked on a silver tray waited for Grace. The house was still quiet. He opened the front door and closed it behind him firmly.

Alice stayed where he had left her for what seemed quite a long time. Her muscles grew stiff in the unnatural posture, but she didn’t raise her head or unclench her fingers. No one came. It became obvious as the long minutes passed that no one was going to come. He must be back in the King’s Road by now. Did they laugh at her there, she wondered, all the young men?

At last she looked up. Her neck and her head were stabbed with needles of pain. She saw their two empty cocktail glasses on the table beside the sofa arm, and the mussed cushions.

This was not, then, some trick of her imagination. She had done what she remembered doing.

She pushed her hair back from her face. Very slowly, reaching out one hand to steady herself in case she fell, she stood upright. The dimensions of the room were still all wrong. The walls were too far away, and the floor rose up against the soles of her feet, ready to tilt and unbalance her.

Alice felt a pressure inside her. She didn’t know if it was caused by the swelling up of tears or screams, but she was afraid that some membrane would rupture and let whatever it was spill out of her. She concentrated very hard on containing the pressure in some deep recess. Her jaw and her fists tightened with the effort of it.

No one must know anything else. Not after this afternoon. Was it still afternoon, or was it evening now?

She bent down and plumped up the cushions, one by one. Then she placed the cocktail glasses neatly on the tray. The familiar actions seemed utterly bizarre counterposed with the images in her head. She kept seeing herself as if she were watching someone else, someone she ought to feel very sorry for. This person was leaning forward to kiss a handsome man who did not want to be kissed. She was kneeling down clinging on to the man’s coat. She was unbuttoning her clothes.

Alice looked down and saw that her black shirt was undone.

Her hand came up to her mouth and she bit hard into the soft heel of it.

Upstairs. She must go upstairs and hide herself.

She reached her bedroom, somehow, and bolted the door behind her. The photographs in pride of place on the shelf above her bed stared down.

Alice sat down on her bed. The immediate world seemed to be under her control again. This room did not bulge threateningly out of shape, and she could see from the little travelling clock in its case on her bedside table that it was twenty minutes past six in the evening. But she had begun to shiver now, and her teeth chattered. The return to normality only threw the enormity of what had happened into sharper relief. The swamp of humiliation and shame rose up around her.

She could never see the Leader again. She looked up at his picture, and then saw herself in the drawing room downstairs. Alice’s knuckles knocked against her teeth with her shudders.

She could never have any more to do with the party, and it had been the centre of her grown-up life. She could hear the snickering laughter, and see the smothered grins and the gleeful nudges. They would know, somehow, all of them.

She put her head in her hands. The pressure was growing stronger inside her. Alice realized that she was afraid of what might happen. She was afraid of being alone, and afraid of being pitied, and most of all afraid of herself.

The idea of oblivion came to her like a gift.

As soon as she had assimilated the idea Alice stood up, without allowing herself time to think.

She unbolted her door and slipped along the corridor to Grace’s bedroom. There was a faint aura of her perfume in here, and the tiny sounds of the house were muffled by thick carpets and heavy curtains. The white quilted satin of the bedcover shimmered in the dim light.

Alice crossed to the bathroom door. She clicked the string that hung beside it and blinked in the sudden glare of the yellow electric light. This was a place of receding reflections and ranks of glittering glass bottles. There was a mirror with a curved top over the marble washstand, and Alice knew that there was a cupboard let into the wall behind this mirror.