Birdsong (11 page)

She opened her eyes again and smiled at him. “I love you.” She covered his face with kisses, keeping his body captive by her weight. Then she put her feet on the ground again and gently pulled him out of her. His flesh was rigid and swollen with blood. She ran her hand up and down it until he began to pant and give way at the knees, then spurted on to the floor, then against her dress, before she could take the last three or four spasms in her mouth. She appeared to do this from instinct, almost from a sense of tidiness, not because it was something she had known about or done before.

“The red room,” she said. “In ten minutes.”

Her clothes had fallen back into place. She seemed unaware of any mark on the front of her dress. Stephen watched her as she moved from the room, her walk, as always, a modest sway beneath the skirt. He felt awkward, half-undressed; it was as though she had treated him like a boy and taunted him, though he did not dislike the feeling. He rearranged his trousers and shirt and took his handkerchief to the polished parquet.

He walked briefly in the garden, trying to cool his head, then, as instructed, went up to his room. He watched the minute hand crawl round on his pocket watch. If he added three minutes for the garden, that gave him only seven to endure. When it was time, he removed his shoes and went silently to the first floor. Down the main corridor to a narrow passage, down again and through a little arch … He remembered the way.

Isabelle was waiting inside. She wore a robe with some oriental pattern in green and red.

She said, “I was so afraid.”

He sat down next to her on the stripped bed. “What do you mean?”

She took his hand between both of hers. “When you wouldn’t look at me last night I was afraid that you’d changed your mind.”

“About you?”

“Yes.”

He felt invigorated by Isabelle’s concern. It still seemed improbable to him that she could really want him so much.

He took her hair and all its colours in his hands. He felt grateful to her also. “After all we said and all we did. How could you doubt?”

“You wouldn’t look at me. I was frightened.”

“What could I have said? I would have given us away.”

“You must smile or nod. Something. Promise me that.” She had started to kiss his face. “We’ll work out a signal. Promise me, won’t you?”

“Yes. I promise you.”

He let her undress him, passively standing by as she took off his clothes and folded them on the chair. He braved the exposure of his gross excitement and she affected not to notice.

“My turn,” he said, but there was only the silk robe to take off and then the beauty of Isabelle’s skin. He laid his cheek against the whiteness of her chest and kissed her throat where he had seen the flush of exertion when she had been gardening. The skin was young and new and almost white, with its patterning of little marks and freckles that he tried to taste with the tip of his tongue. Then he laid her gently down on the bed and buried his face in the fragrance of her hair, covering his own head with it. Next, he made her stand up again while he worked slowly over her body with his hands and his tongue. He let his fingers trail only briefly between her legs and felt her stiffen. At last, when he had touched every part of her skin, he turned her round and bent her forward on to the bed, then moved her ankles a little further apart with the pressure from his foot.

———

When they had finished making love they slept, Isabelle beneath a blanket with her arm draped over Stephen, he uncovered, on his front, at an angle across the mattress. She had not yet had time to wash and return the sheets.

When he awoke he at once rested his head on her splayed hair and breathed in the perfume of her skin where his face was against her neck and the soft underline of her jaw. She smiled as she felt his skin and opened her eyes.

He said, “I was convinced when I came down the stairs that I wouldn’t be able to find this room again. I thought it wouldn’t be here.”

“It won’t move. It’s always here.”

“Isabelle. Tell me. Your husband. One night I heard sounds from your room as though he was … hurting you.”

Isabelle sat up, pulling a blanket over her. She nodded. “Sometimes he … becomes frustrated.”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “We wanted to have children. Nothing seemed to happen. I used to dread each month … you know.”

He nodded.

“The blood was like a rebuke. He said it was my fault. I tried for him, but I didn’t know what to do. He was very brusque, he wasn’t cruel to me but he just wanted to do it quickly so I would be pregnant. It was not like with you.”

Isabelle suddenly looked shy. To mention what they did seemed more shameful than to do it.

She went on, “Eventually he began to doubt himself, I think. To start with he was so sure it was nothing to do with him because he had two children. Then he was not so sure. He seemed to grow jealous of me because I was young. ‘You’re so healthy, of course,’ he would say. ‘You’re just a child.’ And things like that. There was nothing I could do. I always made love to him, though I didn’t enjoy it. I never criticized him. He seemed to build up this disgust with himself. It made him talk to me sarcastically. Perhaps you’ve noticed. He began to criticize me all the time when other
people were here. I think that for some reason he felt guilty about marrying me.”

“Guilty?”

“Perhaps toward his first wife, or perhaps because he felt he married me under false pretences.”

“Because he took you away from someone of your own age?”

Isabelle nodded, but did not speak.

“And then?”

“Eventually it became so bad that he could no longer make love to me. He said I castrated him. Naturally this made him feel worse and worse. So he would try to make himself excited by doing … strange things.”

“What?”

“Not, not like the things you and I …” Isabelle stopped in confusion.

“Did he hit you?”

“Yes. To begin with it was to try to make himself excited. I don’t know why this was supposed to help. Then I think it was out of frustration and shame. But when I protested he said it was part of making love and I must submit to it if I wanted to be a good wife and to have children.”

“Does he hit you very hard?”

“No, not very hard. He slaps me on the face and on the back. He takes a slipper sometimes and pretends I am a child. Once he wanted to hit me with a stick, but I stopped him.”

“And he has hurt you badly?”

“No. I have occasionally had a bruise, or a red mark. It isn’t the damage I mind. It’s the humiliation. He makes me feel like an animal. And I feel sorry for him because he humiliates himself. He is so angry and so ashamed.”

“How long has it been since you made love?” Stephen felt the first twinge of jealous self-interest cloud his sympathy.

“Almost a year. It is absurd that he still pretends that’s why he comes to my room. We both know he comes only to hit me now, or to hurt me. But we pretend.”

Stephen was not surprised by what Isabelle had told him, though he was incensed at the thought of Azaire hurting her.

“You must stop him. You must end this. You must tell him not to come to your room.”

“But I am frightened of what he would do, or what he would say. He would tell everyone that I was a bad wife, that I wouldn’t sleep with him. I think he already tells stories to his friends about me.”

Stephen thought of Bérard’s secret glances. He took Isabelle’s hand and kissed it, then held it against his face. “I will look after you,” he said.

“Dear boy,” she said. “You are so strange.”

“Strange?”

“So serious, so … removed. And the things you make me do.”

“Do I make you do things?”

“No, not like that. I mean, I do things of my own accord but it is only because of you. I don’t know if these things are right, if they are … allowed.”

“Like downstairs?”

“Yes. I know, of course I know, I am unfaithful, but the actual things. I’ve never done them before. I don’t know if they are normal, if other people do them. Tell me.”

“I don’t know,” said Stephen.

“You must know. You’re a man, you’ve known other women. My sister Jeanne told me about the act of love but that’s all I knew. You must understand more.”

Stephen was uneasy. “I’ve known only two or three other women. It was quite different with them. I think what we do is its own explanation.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nor do I. But I know you mustn’t feel ashamed.”

Isabelle nodded, though her face showed dissatisfaction with Stephen’s answer.

“And do you?” he said. “Do you feel guilty?”

Isabelle shook her head. “I think perhaps I should feel guilty. But I don’t.”

“And do you worry about that? Do you worry that you have lost something, lost the power to feel ashamed, lost touch with the values or the upbringing that you would have expected to make you feel a sense of guilt?”

Isabelle said, “No. I feel that what I have done, that what we are doing, is right in some way, though it is surely not the way of the Catholic church.”

“You believe there are other ways of being right or wrong?”

Isabelle looked puzzled, but she was clear in her mind. “I think there must be. I don’t know what they are. I don’t know if they can ever be explained. Certainly they are not written down in books. But I have already gone too far now. I can’t turn back.”

Stephen folded his arms around her and squeezed her. He lay back on the bed with her head resting on his chest. He felt her body go limp as the muscles decontracted into sleep. There was the sound of doves in the garden. He felt his heart beat against her shoulder. The smell of roses came faintly from her scented neck. He settled his hand in the curve of her ribs. His nerves were stilled in the sensuous repletion of the moment that precluded thought. He closed his eyes. He slept, at peace.

R
ené Azaire had no suspicions of what was happening in his house. He had allowed his feelings toward Isabelle to become dominated by anger and frustration at his physical impotence and by what he subsequently experienced as a kind of emotional powerlessness toward her. He did not love her, but he wanted her to be more responsive toward him. He sensed that she felt sorry for him and this infuriated him further; if she could not love him then at least she should be frightened of him. At the root of his feeling, as Isabelle had guessed, was a sense of guilt. He remembered the pleasure he had taken in being the first man to invade that body, much younger than his, and the thrill he could not deny himself when she had cried out in pain. He remembered the puzzled look in her eyes when she gazed up at him. He could feel that she, more than his first wife, had the capacity to respond to the physical act, but when he saw the bewildered expression in her face he was determined to subdue it rather than to win her to him by patience. At that time Isabelle, though too wilful for her father’s taste, was still docile and innocent enough to have been won over by a man who showed consideration and love, but with Azaire these things were not forthcoming. Her emotional and physical appetites were awakened but then left suspended as her husband turned his energy toward a long, unnecessary battle with his own shortcomings.

He meanwhile had no reason to mistrust Stephen. The Englishman clearly knew a good deal about the business for a man of his age, and he handled himself well with Meyraux and the men. He did not exactly like Stephen; if he had asked himself why, he would have said there was something cold or withdrawn in him. Although in Stephen they expressed themselves in different ways, these were in fact the qualities Azaire disliked in himself. Stephen seemed too private and too self-contained to be the sort of man who would chase women, in any event. In Azaire’s imagination such men would always declare themselves with flirtatious
talk; they would be handsome and much wittier than he was and would charm women in an obvious and seductive manner. Bérard, for instance, would no doubt have been a ladies’ man when younger, he thought. Stephen’s quiet politeness was not threatening, and although he did seem old for his age he was, nevertheless, still a boy. His English suit sat well on him and he had a full head of hair, but he was not what Azaire would have called handsome. He was a lodger, a paying guest who was a notch above Marguérite in his claims on Azaire’s attention, but not quite a full member of his household.

Azaire was in any case preoccupied by his factory. In the clatter of machinery and the irritation of paperwork and decisions, he seldom thought of home or of his children, or of Isabelle.

A week after the disturbance he told Stephen it would be all right for him to return to work, though he should not attend any meetings Meyraux might call. The danger of a strike seemed to have lessened; little Lucien, Azaire was pleased to see, was unable to arouse the passions of his workers. Azaire was surprised when Stephen said he would wait another day or so; he thought he must be bored staying in the house with only Isabelle and Lisette for company, but he agreed to postpone the return until the beginning of the following week.

Stephen’s telegram to London had been answered in detail by a letter from his employer. He was to stay until the end of the month, but would then be expected to deliver written reports to Leadenhall Street. Stephen felt he had done well to be granted even three extra weeks and sent a reassuring telegram back. He didn’t mention the date of his departure to Isabelle; it seemed sufficiently distant for him not to have to worry, and the days were so full that his life seemed to change from one to the next.

At the weekend came the fishing expedition to the Ancre. The Bérards were unable to accompany them because Aunt Elise had been taken ill, so it was only the Azaires, with Marguérite and Stephen in attendance, who set out to take the train to Albert.

The station had a vast cobbled forecourt and central glass arch crowned by a pointed clock tower. It was said to have prefigured the work of Haussmann in Paris. While the rest of Amiens consciously imitated the capital, the people were proud that their station
had shown the way. Horse-drawn cabs waited in a line to the right of the huge glass-topped entrance and a row of small horseless carts were parked beneath two gas lamps set into the cobbles. To the left of the entrance was a formal garden with three oval patches of grass at various angles which unhinged the balanced vista that should have greeted passengers approaching from the street.