Her Lover (59 page)

First nights of their loving, oh their noble, wild conjoinings, their furious loving, oh beneath his weight Ariane suddenly transmogrified, possessed, transported, Ariane frenzied, frightening, groaning in terrified anticipation, in cautious expectation, watchfully awaiting the coming of imminent ecstasy, Ariane closing her eyes to hasten its coming, her piteously whimpered signal that ecstasy was near, her pleas to her lover: 'Together, my love, wait, wait for me, my love, now, now, O my love,' she would crazily say, and he plummeting through black skies, alone oh so alone, with death quivering in his bones, and life at last in spurting spasm and groan of triumph, his wondrously spent life escaping, his life in her at last, in her fulfilled, in receipt of such abundance, happy in her, beating the rhythm to feel it more intensely, he surrendering above her, she lying like a great blood-red flower which had bloomed beneath him. 'Oh stay, stay,' she implored, gentle and beguiling, 'do not leave me', and she held him closer, breathed his sweetness, held him close so that he would not go, to keep him by her, gentle and beguiling.

CHAPTER 43

One night, when he said it was time for them to part, she clung to him, said it wasn't late, begged him to stay, told him in French and then in Russian that she was his woman. 'Don't go, don't leave me,' she said in golden entreaty. He longed to stay, but it was important that she be kept thirsting for him, crucial that she never associate his nearness with lassitude or surfeit. He felt ashamed for stooping so soon to shabby stratagems, but it had to be so, he had to be the one who was pined for, the one who went away. In this wise did he sacrifice his happiness to the overriding requirements of their love. He stood up and switched on the light.

Through lips still swollen with loving, she said he mustn't look at her, and went to the mirror which hung above the mantelpiece. When she had straightened her dress and repaired her ravaged hair, she said he could look now, and gave him a pleasant, urbane, courteous smile, as though her brazen shamelessness had never been. He kissed her hand in a gesture of deference, which was gratefully received, for they love to be respected when the moans and the sweet, damp name-calling are over. After another ruling-class smile, she reminded him of the old Russian custom of sitting down a moment before one took one's leave. He sat, and she sat on his knee, closed her eyes, and opened her lips.

In the hall, she asked him to stay one minute more. 'No,' he said with a smile. Impressed by the calmness of his refusal, she looked up at him and her eyes worshipped until they hurt. She walked him chastely to the waiting taxi and opened the door for him. Ignoring the driver, she leaned forward and kissed his hand. 'Until tomorrow, at nine,' she reminded him in a whisper, then closed the door, and the taxi began to move. An instant later she was running after it, shouting to the driver to stop. Through the lowered window, she apologized breathlessly. 'I'm sorry, I got it wrong, I said tomorrow but it's four in the morning, so it's tomorrow already, anyway what I mean is that I'll be waiting for you tonight, so I'll see you tonight at nine, all right?' Standing there in the blue moon-washed road, shivering in her creased dress, she watched her destiny disappear into the night. 'God keep you safe,' she whispered.

When she got back to her sitting-room, she made straight for the mirror so that she would not be alone. Yes, she could say tonight already, and there'd be a tonight every day, and every tonight would have its tomorrow. She curtsied to the beloved of her lord whom she beheld in the mirror, then tried out various faces to see how she had looked to him at the end of their night, imagined once more that she was him looking at her, beseeched, offered her lips, and liked the effect. Not bad, not bad at all. But if she added words she would get an even better idea. 'Your woman, I am your woman,' she told her mirror, ecstatic and genuinely moved. Oh yes, that's a look and a half, definitely a touch of the St Teresa du Bernins. He must have been bowled over by it. And when they were kissing and snorkelling nineteen to the dozen, what did she look like then, with her eyes shut? She opened her mouth, closed her left eye, and stared at herself with the right. Difficult to tell. This merely made her look one-eyed, which rather spoilt the enchantment. Pity, now I'll never know what I look like during the performance. How awful me saying performance, because with him just now it was all so serious. Anyhow, if I want to know what I look like when it's all happening, all I have to do is to not quite close my eyes tight and peep through the slits. But on second thoughts there's no point, because when it's all happening he's got his head so close to mine that he wouldn't see anything anyway, so it's a waste of time.

She sat down, took off her shoes, which were too tight, wiggled her toes, gave a sigh of relief, and yawned. 'Phew! peace at last and good riddance,' she said. 'Don't have to be charming any more now that Sir has gone, his nibs, his boobiness, Simple Simon, oh yes, dear, we mean you. Sorry, darling, just said it for a joke, though perhaps a teeny-weeny bit also because I'm too much under your thumb when you're here, it's to get my own back, you see, to show you there are limits, to keep my self-respect, though all the same it's very nice to be all alone and by myself.'

She stood up, made faces to relax, and walked round the room. How wonderful to be able to pad about without shoes, in bare feet, without heels, even though it wasn't a very elegant thing to do, marvellous to be able to move her toes and not to have to be sublime and Cleopatra and awesomely beautiful all the time. And now for a bite to eat, lovely. 'Because, darling, I don't like saying this, but I am starving. I do have a body too, you realize. Though I expect you know that,' she smiled, and she walked airily out of the room.

She went to the kitchen and opened the fridge. Rhubarb pie? Absolutely not, it might be all right for women with bad skin in vegetarian restaurants but not for her. She needed protein, by God's guts, as Corisande d'Auble, mistress to Henry IV, probably used to say. Well, how about some of this sausage, just bite lumps off it, don't bother cutting slices? No, really, not after a night like tonight. Thin bread and butter and jam would be more suitable, more poetical, more appropriate after recent events. No, not enough bite. So she decided to have a large ham sandwich. It was an agreeable compromise.

When she'd made the sandwich, she ran out into the garden to eat it in the cool of daybreak, now festooned with the gabble of waking birds, and she swanked as she walked up and down, saucily hipped and gloriously legged. Chewing hard, brandishing her ham sandwich and proclaiming to the risen sun that she was fair and beloved of her lord, she took long strides barefoot through the dew-wet grass and smiled broad smiles, and the sandwich held aloft was a pennant of happiness, a flag of love.

Back in her sitting-room, she sneezed. Who cared, since he wasn't there? When her nose tickled again, she sneezed very loud on purpose, saying 'Atishoo!' very distinctly and dramatically. She even went as far as to allow herself the pleasure of peering into the mirror and observing the sorry, snivelling expression of a face which has sneezed. And now, upstairs with you and wipe that nose, and quick about it! In her bedroom, she stood in front of her swing-mirror to blow her nose so that she could watch herself make a noise like trumpets. A pleasant enough sight, but hardly mouth-watering. Never blow your nose when he's there.

She tore down the stairs whistling, ran into her sitting-room, and immediately made a wonderful discovery. On the carpet under the sofa was a cigarette-case, the gold case which belonged to the archangel! She smiled knowingly. Obviously they had gone at it hammer and tongs on the sofa. Lovely hammer and tongs! She picked it up, promised it that they would sleep together, rilled it with cigarettes, only too happy to be doing something for him, and besides it was a start to the preparations for tonight. In the ashtray were the butts of the three cigarettes he had smoked. She picked out one and put it between her lips. 'Ariane Cassandre Corisande d'Auble, opener of car doors and picker-up of fag-ends!' she declared.

With the sacred fag-end between her lips, she examined the armchair he had sat in, gazed fondly at the impression he had left behind him. The sight of it made her tingle, but it could not be preserved indefinitely, since the ninny would be here in a couple of hours to tidy the sitting-room. Never mind, there'd be others. 'We have a whole lifetime of impressions in front of us!' she proclaimed. But there was the sofa too, and everything that had happened on it. No identifiable imprints of him on the sofa, which was too mussed up for her to detect anything particular in the mixed his-and-her spoors they had left in their amorous wake, in the bumps and hollows and petrified waves of their sea. Oh, how wonderful it would be to be cast away on a desert island with him for the rest of their lives! She genuflected briefly to the sofa, the altar of their love. And now, let's smoke a proper cigarette, and we'll hold it between our third and fourth fingers, just like he does!

When she'd smoked the cigarette, she looked at herself one last time in the mirror. Her darling body, which had lately acquired an importance it never had before. 'O my precious,' she said to her body, 'I'm going to take fantastic care of you, you'll see!' She whirled round abruptly and shouted that she was a scarlet woman! This gave her the idea of dialling old Madame Ventradour's number. Disguising her voice, she informed the old lady that she had a lover then hung up. And now, a quick bath and then quick to bed!

Took lively, you stupid idiot,' she scolded herself once she was submerged in the warm water, 'get a move on. It's almost six in the morning and you must get some sleep, otherwise you'll look like some wrung-out old fright of thirty, with a corrugated face, like a fortune-teller, and he'll run away in horror, but let's see now, go through the list of last things, note left for ninny so that she doesn't wake me up, front door locked, also shutters of lovely sitting-room fastened, don't want to get strangled by burglars, must stay alive, my life has become very precious, I have a body which now serves some useful purpose, with S it didn't mean a thing, it was on account of being miserable with the awful lawful, but no one before you, no one after you, I do so love my lovely young breasts, I do think I'm rather good-looking, the others have beardy legs, mossy sometimes, poor things, I feel really sorry for them, but that's their problem, listen sweetie, time for a couple of minutes chatterage? no, out of the question, it'll be much nicer when you're tucked up in bed all snug and comfy, but just check the current state of play, I've brought up everything I need from downstairs, the archangel's cigarette-case, hand-mirror in case I need it urgently in bed, and then I'll run through what it'll be like tomorrow night, correction tonight, run through everything down to the smallest detail, what I'll wear, what I'll say to him, what he'll do to me, amazing really the erotic potential of a well-brought up young lady like me, not to mention my complete amorality, because when you come to think of it I gave him the solid-gold case that Didi gave me as a present, poor Didi of course, but there you are, it isn't my fault you know, anyway he won't be back for weeks and weeks, there's heaps of time.

She stood up and plied the soap vigorously. Anyway, she'd only married him because he'd asked her so insistently and because she was unhappy, besides, she hadn't known what she was doing with the poison from the overdose still in her system, and that surely meant that her consent was invalid. He really shouldn't have pressurized her the way he did. What he'd done was to take advantage of her in her weakened state, well more or less. So roll on tonight at nine!

Wearing only her pyjama top, which left her backside naked, and a pair of red slippers, she hopped one-footed into her bedroom and knelt at the old prayer-stool which had belonged to her aunt. Suddenly catching sight of herself in the swing-mirror she felt uncomfortable. This jacket's a bit short, but there hadn't been time to put the trousers on. No matter, God wasn't bothered by little things like that, and anyway He knew what she looked like with no clothes on. After the concluding amen, she jumped into bed, where Jean-Jacques was waiting: he was the bald teddy she'd had since she was a Uttle girl, the chubby, one-eyed companion of her nights. When she was settled in, she nipped her lips with the archangel's cigarette-case and embarked on chatterage.

'Come on, Jean-Jacques, don't look at me like that, do you mind, you know that nothing's happened to change the way I feel about you, so please let's not have a scene, I ought to have made myself a hot-water bottle, not that it's cold but it would have been snuggly, the chatterage would have been cosier if I had one, but never mind, for his cigarette ends I won't say fag-ends any more, it's vulgar, I'll say stubs, it's a much more dignified word to use for any cigarette of his, even though it's been smoked right down, I must tell him the real name of my teddy, I've only ever said it to teddy himself, you know, I always tell everybody else his name is Patrice, but with you, my darling, I can't have any secrets, he'll like that, though obviously there is one secret I'll never tell him, incidentally on that first evening when I played that Bach thing he must have been staring at my profile, I wonder what I looked like from the side, come on, sweetie, let's have a dekko.'

She switched the light back on, got out of bed, dragged a low table which she pretended was the piano-stool in front of the long mirror, sat her bare backside on it, and thought. Now let's see, he had been on her right, so he had seen her right profile. Adopting a rather uncomfortable posture, with one hand running over an imaginary keyboard and her little looking-glass in the other, she peered at her profile reflected in the swing-mirror. Not bad at all. But then her right side was her best. Seen from the right, her nose was perfect, couldn't want for better. Then, swinging round so that she had her back to the mirror, she peered into her looking-glass and inspected the reflection of her hips in the mirror behind her. Not bad, except that her behind moved too much as she played. 'Yes, too much wobble in the rear end, I'll have to do something about that.' But perhaps he'd liked it. Yes, he might well have. Now time for beddy-byes. On her way back to bed, she gave the Mexican bear, Solal's present to her, a snooty pat on the back. 'How're tricks, Pedro?'