Dance While You Can (15 page)

‘Well, come along,’ Jessica urged, ‘give her a kiss.’

I don’t know if I imagined the brief press of her body against mine when I put my arms about Lizzie, but just her touch was enough to make me pull back as if an electric current had shot through me. She laughed, and her eyes swept over my face. ‘Well, Jess, he’s every bit as handsome as you said he was. I’m sorry I missed the wedding now, Alexander. I might have been able to persuade you to change the bride.’

Jessica laughed, and putting her arm around her sister, ushered her out of the room and upstairs, eager to show her the bedroom that had been prepared for her.

I turned to Henry. ‘Jesus Christ!’ I exploded, as soon as I gauged them safely out of earshot.

Henry burst out laughing. ‘Too much for you to handle, my friend. She’ll have you for breakfast. And if Jessica gets to find out about it, she’ll carve you up for dinner.’

I shuddered. ‘Well, you sure as hell didn’t waste any time,’ I remarked.

He held up his hands in defence. ‘Don’t look at me, old chap. It was her. From the minute I picked her up at the airport she was all over me like a rash.’

Laughing, I walked over to the bar and poured us both a brandy. Upstairs I could hear Lizzie shrieking with delight as Jessica showed her around. Henry sat in an armchair looking like the cat that got the cream, as he described, in minutest detail, the incomparable body he had been taking advantage of all night and fully intended to take advantage of again. One look at Lizzie was enough to tell anyone that she would have been the one taking advantage, but I refrained from saying so.

Eventually Jessica called out that it was getting late, and Henry got up to go. At the door he clapped his arm round my shoulders. ‘See you in the morning, old chap. Try not to overdo it tonight, more exams tomorrow don’t forget. Oh, and tell Jess I won’t be staying for dinner tomorrow night, I’m taking your ravishing sister-in-law out instead.’

‘Tell you what, give her one from me next time, eh?’ I grinned.

‘Oh but, Alexander, surely you can do that for yourself.’

Henry and I swung round together – to find Lizzie standing on the stairs. She was wearing a transparent pink lacy affair, and was starkers underneath. My eyes were transfixed as she sauntered down the last few stairs and came to stand between us. Her lips were wet and her nipples stood out firmly against the gossamer-thin fabric.

‘Good night, Henry,’ she purred, sliding her arms around his neck. And opening her mouth I saw their tongues meet. Her eyes never wavered from mine.

I was surprised, a couple of weeks later, when I arrived home one afternoon to find Caroline Truman, Henry’s ex, waiting outside the house for me. With an admirable effort at holding back the tears, she asked me what she had done wrong. Why didn’t Henry call her any more? Couldn’t I talk to him, please, get him to say he’d meet her, if only for an hour? Though I’d always liked Caroline, I was annoyed that she had managed to corner me. Even if I was partly responsible for the split between her and Henry, it wasn’t as though I’d forced him into Lizzie’s arms. Rejected women were all the same, crying and sniffling, and all but begging a man to go back to them, even when it was quite clear he didn’t want to. And what the hell could I do about it? I suggested a good shopping session and a few more cocktail parties, and if she still felt lonely after that, well there was always me. She walked off in disgust.

And as the invitations continued to stream through the letter-box – opening nights, concerts, exhibitions – I like Henry, soon forgot about her. Almost every night there were parties or clubs to be attended, places to be seen at, bottles of champagne to be drunk and new games to be played. Our own wild parties became the talk of the town as windows and doors were thrown open to the world, and the dignified quiet of Belgrave Square was rocked to its foundations. Somehow, during this orgy of frivolity, Henry and I managed to accomplish the dining of four more dinners, and having mysteriously achieved our finals, were called to the Bar.

I couldn’t help noticing during this time that it wasn’t only Caroline’s company Henry was denying himself; every female who threw herself his way – and plenty did – was rejected, so that he could concentrate his inimitable charms on Lizzie. And the more Henry saw of Lizzie, the more I saw of Rachel. I knew that all too often when I made love to Rachel I was fantasizing about Lizzie, but it was the safest way of trying to work my sister-in-law through my system. I had told Jessica time after time to speak to Lizzie about walking round the house naked, but Jessica was too busy with her own life to worry much about what Lizzie’s magnificent breasts were doing to mine. As far as Rachel was concerned, I eased my conscience by assuring myself that, attractive though she was, she was still rather lucky to have someone of my age interested in her. Besides, she was my companion in another kind of fun that I had been growing rather attached, to of late – gambling.

Jessica I saw little of. Since Lizzie’s arrival she had redoubled her efforts on behalf of the Women’s Movement, showing off to her sister and trying her damndest to enlist her in their war against men. Lizzie was as bored by it all as I was, though she managed to hide it a little better. But dedicated as Jessica was to her cause, she wasn’t one to let it get in the way of her own personal glory. When she wasn’t holding meetings in the parlour at Belgrave Square, which she had commandeered for the use of the lesbian brigade, she was either in her studio at the top of the house or at George Mannering’s gallery in Knightsbridge.

And things were coming along ‘frightfully well’ with her art, she assured me whenever I remembered to ask. George thought it showed ‘unusual potential,’ and was sure she would be ready for an exhibition of her own within the year. I couldn’t stop my eyes from flicking to the paintings that adorned the walls in Belgrave Square when she told me that, and wondered what my mother would say. There had been an uneasy truce between my mother and Jessica ever since my mother had descended upon the house, having heard that Jessica was hanging her paintings alongside the masterpieces my mother, and my grandmother before her, had worked so hard to acquire. Secretly I thought my mother very restrained when she merely remarked that she felt Jessica’s
chefs d’oeuvre
looked somewhat incongruous beside the buhl, the ormolu and the passementerie. Jessica sulked for three days after my mother’s visit, and claimed I’d given her no support whatever in what was a matter of fundamental importance to her. Rather flummoxed, I objected that I was being thoroughly supportive, in that I was prepared to suffer the paintings without complaint. Not a wise choice of words, and the price I paid was a new dinner service.

But there was no getting away from it, Jessica’s paintings were, to put it mildly, extreme. The only thing I had ever recognised in any one of them – and they were coming off the easel by the dozen – was a rabbit, which had been tucked away – ‘rather cleverly,’ I remarked – in the corner of a painting she called ‘The Warren.’ Of course the title had given it away, but I had been rather pleased with myself all the same – until Jessica’s wrath descended upon me with all the subtlety of the erupting volcano the painting was supposed to depict . . . . I never did manage to find out the reason for the rabbit. Nor did I venture to guess her subjects again after that, but meekly accepted my role as one of the uninitiated and waited until she was ready to explain precisely the feeling she had tried to capture in the painting, and then assured her that indeed she was getting it across. She never believed me, of course, but it was a little charade that satisfied us both.

In fact, it was through her art that I first began to notice a change in Jessica. We’d been talking on and off for some time about starting a family. Jessica’s first reaction, when she realised I was serious, was one of horror.

‘
You
want a baby! Don’t make me laugh, Alexander. What would your friends say? I mean, it’s hardly the macho image you try so hard to cultivate, is it? With your ridiculous male pride, I’m astonished you even have the guts to say it.’

‘Jess, I said it because you’re my wife. If I can’t tell you, then who the hell can I tell? And as for the macho image,
you
, astonish
me!
I’d have thought you’d be more likely to accuse me of vanity in wanting to reproduce myself.’

She laughed. ‘Yes, there is that, too. Anyway, it’s out of the question. I’m sorry if you’re feeling broody, darling, but I’m not.’

I wasn’t going to give up that easily, and she knew it. Nevertheless I was surprised when she listened, without ridicule, to my case. Afterwards I listened to her explanations of why it was a bad idea. They started with the fact that she was too young and ended with the totally predictable statement that she was
not
my brood mare.

But eventually, and without a detailed feminist analysis of what this might do to her as a person – which I had expected and indeed prepared myself for – she agreed to stop taking the pill. I should have been warned then, for Jessica never gave in easily on anything, particularly where the ‘exploitation of her womanhood’ was concerned. But my reaction was so positive that it surprised even me; I hadn’t realised until then how very much I really did want a child. I was even slightly embarrassed by it. Jessica couldn’t resist teasing me, but it was an affectionate teasing, and for a while we were closer than we had been for a long time.

Even Lizzie got caught up in the spirit of it all, and was already treating her sister as though she were pregnant. Jessica lapped up the attention, and our love-making took on a tenderness that had been alien to us until then. Oddly enough, though, contented as I felt at the way things were going, I was still finding it impossible to stay faithful. If I didn’t see Rachel, or someone else, for three or four days, then I became jumpy and irritable. I never stopped to question why, I guess I just assumed that this was a natural state of affairs for someone like me. The only thing that mattered was that Jessica should not find out, so I took her on trips to Paris, bombarded her with flowers and did everything I could to make her happy. That lasted for about three months, and then things began to change.

Up to this time, Jessica’s paintings had always been bright and over-filled with colour; garish even, some might say – not me, of course. But now a kind of morbidity was creeping into them. There were only two or three of them at first, that had found their way on to the walls of our bedroom. As this was an essentially feminine room, full of chintz and lace, the paintings created an almost ghoulish contrast, and their greys and blacks, smudged over with violent streaks of reddish brown, made me uncomfortable. But when I ventured to suggest to Jessica that perhaps they might be a little more at home in the garden shed, instead of flying at me in a rage she merely looked at me with what I can only describe as sightless eyes, and smiled into the distance.

I mentioned it to Lizzie one evening, but she only shrugged. ‘Oh, you know what artists are,’ she said, ‘they’re all a little insane, couldn’t do it if they weren’t. And Jess is a genius, you know.’ I thought that was taking sisterly devotion a little too far, and decided to drop the subject.

‘Where’s Henry tonight?’ I asked. We were having dinner, just the two of us; Jessica had gone off to an exhibition in Fulham with George Mannering. That was another thing. Before she always used to invite me to go with her to art exhibitions, but now, despite the fact we were getting along so well, she was almost secretive about where she was going.

‘Henry? Henry’s sulking because I told him we were seeing far too much of each other.’

‘I thought you were becoming rather attached to him,’ I said.

She shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

Sensing she didn’t want to talk about it, I sat back to finish my wine. I noticed that another of Jessica’s morbid paintings had appeared on the dining-room wall, this one directly opposite the chair I always occupied. I stared at it for some time, not liking it any more than I had any of the others. Then I realised that she must have hung it there on purpose, and for no accountable reason I felt the hair prickle at the back of my neck.

‘Something the matter?’ Lizzie asked. Her voice startled me, and it must have showed. ‘You seem very edgy tonight,’ she said.

I laughed. ‘Deep in thought. Devilling for a particularly unpleasant murder trial at the moment, it’s probably getting to me a bit.’

Mrs Dixon had stayed on that night to fix the meal, so when we had finished I helped her clear the table before going to find Lizzie in the drawing-room. She was sitting on the floor, reading a magazine, and barely looked up as I walked in.

I sat down on the sofa and stretched my legs out in front of me. It was a warm night and the windows were open. There were no sounds coming from outside and I lay back to enjoy the peace, for once free of the restlessness that normally plagued me. I watched Lizzie’s hair as it fluttered in the breeze, and her small hands as she flicked over the pages of the magazine. My mind wandered back to the hour or so I had spent with Rachel that afternoon, when I knew that once again, in my mind, I had been making love to Lizzie. But I would make it up to Rachel when I saw her later at the Clermont. . . . My eyes snapped shut, and I was immediately aware of feeling restive again: I’d lost a lot of money last time I was there, more than my quarterly allowance, and I was only going again tonight in an attempt to win it back. I glanced over at the clock. I’d have to be leaving in half an hour.

‘It’s so hot in here, don’t you think?’ Lizzie stretched, and I noticed that the top two buttons of her blouse were undone. She leaned forward and at the same time threw her hair back over her shoulder. Her right breast was almost completely exposed. Then tossing her magazine to one side, she uncurled her legs and lay down on the floor. Her short skirt wriggled up around her hips and I caught a glimpse of white panties as she lifted one knee.

Slowly her eyes came round to meet mine, and I watched as she dampened her lips with her tongue. She was smiling and I didn’t dare to move, the suddenness of sexual tension was shooting through the air like currents of electricity. She’s your wife’s sister, I kept telling myself. Anyone, you can have anyone, but leave her alone. My eyes were still on hers. She’s Henry’s, you can’t do it, it’s not worth losing a friend for. I clenched my teeth, and my fingers were biting into the arms of the sofa, but I was all too aware of the ache in my groin that was making a mockery of my resistance.