Dark Angel (39 page)

The most outrageous example of this occurred in London, at the Cavendish house in Mayfair, in January of 1915. With his parents and Steenie, he and Constance had been visiting friends with an estate on the South Coast. From there, Freddie heard for the first time the famous and fearsome sound of the gun batteries across the Channel. Gwen heard them, too, and they sent her into one of her flurries of fear and protectiveness: They must stop off in London, she decreed. She could not return to Winterscombe without seeing Acland. Acland was duly telephoned at the Foreign Office, and agreed to meet his mother at home at five o’clock.

The Cavendish house in Park Street had a tall and spiraling main staircase, which led upward around a vertical shaft from the hall on the ground floor to the attics four stories above. There, it was possible to lean over the banisters and look down a vertiginous well to the marble floor of the hall below. Freddie—warned against the dangers of that staircase as a child—still retained an odd, almost atavistic fear of it.

Just before five, at Constance’s insistence, Freddie joined her on the shadowy, ill-lit third landing. By five, Constance was leaning forward against the banister, and Freddie was behind her, pressing against her sharp and agile little bottom. He was in a state of violent tumescence. (Indeed, just the thought of Constance these days provoked an erection.) He had one hand inside her dress (bright scarlet that day, and unfastened down the back). His other hand—weeks since he had been allowed to do this—his other hand was under Constance’s skirt. Constance was not wearing any knickers.

Freddie’s left hand squeezed and caressed Constance’s breasts; his right hand groped and explored a soft damp place. So excited was Freddie that he hardly heard the slam of the front door or the footsteps across the hall. He became aware of Acland only when Constance called out to him.

Acland came to a halt at the foot of the stairwell. He looked up and greeted Constance; Freddie he did not greet, for Freddie—whose hands stopped their explorations and became rigid—was invisible from below. Constance then proceeded to have a conversation with Acland. Indeed, she protracted the conversation most amusingly. At the same time she made it quite clear to Freddie (who had been about to withdraw his hands) that she did not want him to stop.

She wriggled and rubbed against him; she pressed down hard against his right hand, so hard that—for the first time—Freddie found the miraculous aperture he had long been seeking. Two of his fingers slipped inside her; Constance gave a small tremor. While continuing to converse cordially with Acland, she rotated her hips, as if screwing herself down on Freddie’s fingertips.

By then Freddie was too excited to stop. The fact that he was hidden from view, the fact that he was continuing to do this indelicate thing while Constance continued to speak, her voice quite as usual—all this combined to make Freddie both angry, aroused, and afraid. Fear, anger, and desire—oh, Constance understood the cocktail of sex. Freddie pinched and stroked at her nipples; from beneath Constance’s skirts he was aware of small sucking noises—she was very wet.

“We could hear the guns, Acland; the wind must have been in the right direction, for we could hear them quite clearly….”

Constance’s voice paused only a fraction; a hiatus before the ending of the adverb, and in that tiny space Constance had her orgasm. Freddie felt her body grow rigid for a second; then his dipping fingers felt the pulse from inside. Constance came; he had brought her to climax, something he had never done before, for usually Constance liked to do this herself, sometimes (she said this amused her) with Freddie timing her. Her record was thirty seconds.

Freddie knew she would reward him, and—when Acland, suspecting nothing, finally left the hall—Constance did; she was scrupulous about such things. She knelt, unbuttoned his trousers. She took his penis in her hand. With a fixed, set face, she said, “I want you to say something, Freddie. Just three words.”

“Anything,” Freddie muttered, frantic now and reaching for her.

“Say, ‘In your mouth.’ Just that. Nothing else. All right, Freddie?”

In your mouth: Freddie’s mind spun away into some vortex. This, Constance had never done, and the brutish simplicity of the words slipped the last of his controls. Heady; like diving into black water from a great height. Freddie said the words, and Constance obliged him.

That evening, Acland stayed for dinner. Throughout, Constance was unusually quiet—so much so that Gwen asked her if she felt ill, and Constance, replying that she was tired, retired early.

Freddie sat on for another hour, while his father slumbered before the fire; he tried to read a detective story but found himself unable to concentrate on the plot. Fragments of conversation between his mother and Acland drifted toward him.

“Ego has joined up—Ego Farrell,” Acland remarked once, in a casual voice. “Gloucestershire Rifles. I saw him today, before he left.”

“He might have had more sense,” Gwen said in a high strained voice. “I cannot imagine Ego’s fighting—and it cannot be necessary. He’s such a
quiet
man. Surely they have men enough out there?”

Acland changed the subject. Later, Gwen took out her most recent letter from Boy, and read sections to Acland. Freddie, who had already heard the substance of this letter at least four times, used the moment to say goodnight. All he could think of was seeing Constance. He crept up the stairs and along the landing to Constance’s room. The London house was smaller than Winterscombe; here they had to be very careful. Constance was waiting for him.

She was sitting at a table, a pile of black notebooks in front of her. As Freddie entered and closed the door, he saw that Constance was sitting in a stiff position; on her face was that dark, closed expression she had always had as a child. Without acknowledging him, she opened one of the black notebooks, flicked a page or two.

“My father’s journals.” She picked up the book and held it out to him.

Freddie looked down at the book; he glimpsed a date, lines of neat copperplate handwriting. These journals, which Freddie had never seen before, had not known existed, did not interest him in the least: Freddie, just then, had a mind that blazed with other matters.

However, Constance mentioned her father rarely; if she chose to do so now, he could not brush it aside—perhaps, after all, in her own secretive way, Constance still mourned for him.

“You shouldn’t look at them, Constance,” Freddie began. “It’s bound to bring things back. Much better to try and forget. Here.” He put his arm around her. Constance pushed it aside.

“They are about his women,” she announced in a flat voice. “For the most part. Sometimes other things, but usually women.”

This provoked Freddie’s curiosity; he at once felt more inclined to look at the journals. He glanced down at the page before him again, and there made out a word—several words—that startled him. Good God! And he had always thought Shawcross such a cold fish!

“Have you read them, Connie?”

“Of course. I read them constantly. Read and reread them. It is like a penance with me. I don’t know why I do it, quite. Perhaps I would like to … understand.”

This statement seemed to agitate Constance a little, for the dead note in her voice changed.

“Let’s look at them later, Connie.”

Freddie had just managed to insinuate his hand beneath Constance’s skirt. He could feel the top of a stocking, a strip of silk garter, a taut thigh. His priorities at once adjusted themselves: No words, however shocking, could compare with the suppleness of Constance’s skin, with the agility and aggression of her body, with the way in which, teasingly, she would sometimes part her legs wide and then scissor them shut.

“Later, Connie, please.”

“Not later.
Now.
”

Freddie at once withdrew his hand.

“I want you to read this, Freddie. It concerns you too. Look, here, on this page. This is where it all begins.”

“Where what begins?” Freddie drew back a few steps. Although he still did not understand, there was something in Constance’s expression that alarmed him. She had looked like this, he remembered, in Boy’s room, the night she showed him the photographs. He could feel the doubts begin; he felt uneasiness seep and creep into his mind.

Constance sighed. She said in a weary voice, “Just
read,
Freddie.”

Freddie hesitated once more; then curiosity had the better of him. He bent his head and began to read from the top of the page:

… had not done it since her husband died—or so she said; I went on with my own calculations. Twenty minutes at the most, preferably fifteen: I liked her mouth—a liverish colour, with slack lips—but I had that train to catch.

I had her up against the bedroom wall before the door closed, but her cunt was not to my taste: too vast, too loose, and I prefer them small. So I shoved her down on her knees, and went for the mouth after all. What should I discover then? Why, that the husband must have been a man of liberal tastes, for she was an old hand at this. She went at me like a sow for ripe potatoes, snuffling and guzzling; it put another inch on me at least. She pleasured my balls, gave a grunt and a heave, and there I was inside, the whole length of me, with those rubbery lips clamped round the stem of my cock, and her tongue lathering me.

The best suck in years. The old bitch swallowed the lot when I spent, and licked her lips, and unbuttoned her blouse and thrust her great drooping breasts at me. Her turn now, she had the gall to imply, so I let her beg for a while, and made her say the words
—
all of them. If her friends could have seen her then, all those friends who would not give her the time of day were it not for her money!

I left her then, unsatisfied, with some speed, not pausing even to wash, and caught my train with only minutes to spare. I felt soiled, had the notion I could smell her mouth and cunt on me, but on the train I became calmer. Variation! The very fact that I was unwashed …

Freddie had come to the end of the page; he looked up at Constance. Constance said, in a flat voice: “Turn over.”

Freddie did so; he began on the next page.

… began to suggest some interesting possibilities. Circumstances were with me; my conveyance was on time, and my other albatross was waiting, alone, in her boudoir.

I waited until the maid was out of the room; then I went for her. I had her down on all fours, with her great arse up in the air—she was slavering for it, as she always is, and came almost at once, in her usual fashion, noisily. I rammed on, like a madman, for a good five minutes, keeping the image of the other bitch in my mind all the while. My cock was burning like a poker thrust into coals, but I had a fear I might not be able to bring matters to their natural conclusion. I managed it however, and came. Just a few squirts, then I made her smell me.

An attempt at the appropriate rapture—though I knew in truth she was embarrassed—and her embarrassment gave me one last happy notion. I washed as usual—that excellent carnation soap
—
but I would not let her wash. I wanted her there, downstairs, sitting in her blue chair, with that lout of a husband of hers spread out, the way he always is, on the red sofa. There, with her other guests, with her tea table at her side, and her fine china cups and her silver teakettle, her cunt oozing my sperm and her juices.

Which she did: I begin to have her well trained, I think. Could the husband smell sex? I wondered—and almost hoped he did, which was certainly imprudent.

I was charming, even loquacious
—
always guaranteed to put him in the foulest of tempers. At six I retired, to bathe and change for dinner.

Twice within a matter of hours was a reasonable performance, I thought, although when younger I could have exceeded that tally easily. A well-banked fire in my room; a whisky in my hand; some proofs to correct before dinner; a good cigar to be savoured. Ah, Shawcross, I say to myself as I write this, the rewards of adultery are sweet—as sweet as those of retribution.

Freddie had come to the end of the entry, and the end of the page. He stared at it, the words shifting before his eyes: a blue chair, a red sofa. He would never look at this foul thing again, he told himself (although in the coming weeks he would in fact read this notebook, and several of the others, again and again).

“A blue chair?”

“A blue chair.”

“‘My other albatross’? What does it mean?”

“You know what it means. Just as I do.”

“I don’t. I don’t.” Freddie grasped Constance by the wrist and shook her. “You tell me. He’s your father.”

Constance jerked her wrist free. Saying nothing, her face tight and pale, she picked up the notebook again, turned back a page or two, indicated the heading.

Winterscombe,
Freddie read.
October 3, 1906.

“Nineteen-six?”

“It began that year. In the summer. It went on a long time. Four years. It’s all in there. He often calls your mother that—‘the other albatross.’ You can see if you want to.”

“Four
years
?”

“Oh, yes. Four years. Until the day he died, actually.”

Quite suddenly, Constance’s face altered: Her features seemed to crumple. She closed her eyes; she shivered; she clasped her arms tight around her chest; she began to rock back and forth, as if in some terrible ecstasy of grief.

Freddie, who had been about to burst forth in denunciations of Shawcross, was frightened by this. He stared at Constance, whose mouth moved in wordless cries. Then, in a hesitant way, reluctant to touch her, he stepped forward.

“Connie, don’t—don’t. Please don’t. You scare me. Wait. Think. Perhaps it’s all lies—it could be. Perhaps he made this up, like one of his novels. It can’t be true. My mother … It cannot be. Connie, please, be quieter. Look at me—”

“No!”
Constance cried out. She jerked away and hit out at him. “It’s true. All of it. I know—I’ve worked it out. I’ve looked at the dates. And anyway, I know. I saw them together—”

“You saw them? You can’t have.”