Flint and Roses (32 page)

I did not expect pleasure from this first encounter, knew, in fact, that this act, by which men set so great a store, was not designed to please women, simply to impregnate them and to make them submissive; but, turning to me with something like a groan, his hands were still gentle, his embrace retaining its wondering, almost apologetic quality as if it troubled him that, having been so moved by my body's innocence, he could no longer control his urge to despoil it. Yet I was not, in fact, so very innocent, had been virgin, perhaps, already somewhat too long, and his stroking, enquiring fingertips—ready to withdraw at my slightest movement of protest—released in me a strange, quite feline languor, a great stretching and purring in every limb which, very far from any proper ladylike disgust, was almost impatient with the carefully restrained quality of his desire.

And then it was over. No agony, a moment, merely, of discomfort and surprise. ‘Good heavens, so that's it, after all.' Just one brief instant when my body stiffened, drew back, and he, wishing to withdraw, feeling that he should withdraw, could not, taking final possession of me with a long shuddering cry, of despair, it seemed to me, rather than triumph. No agony. Disappointment, perhaps, not in my heart but in my puzzled limbs, which, having been stirred to warm anticipation by his caresses, had found this ultimate act quite inexplicable. After all, it
was
a purely male concern as they had told me, for I failed entirely to see how the piercing of my body by that strange, masculine appendage could give me any pleasure. Yet I had not whined and whimpered as Celia may well have done on her wedding night, nor asked him how he dared, as I could easily imagine Caroline demanding of her Matthew; and feeling I had proved quite adequate I smiled at him fondly through the dark, no thought in my mind of his own adequacy, his own satisfaction.

He got up suddenly and walked naked across the room, allowing me for the first time to see his fine-boned body, the odd fragility of shoulder-blades almost piercing the skin, a fleeting impression of weightlessness that was not angular and awkward, not displeasing, before he covered himself quickly with his dressing-robe and came back to me.

‘I am sorry,' he said brusquely.

‘Why? Is something amiss?'

‘No, no—except that you are only nineteen, with no knowledge of life, and I am past thirty, with enough experience to have done better than this. I should have allowed you at least a day or two of my company before submitting you to a desire you cannot share.'

‘Giles, darling,' I told him, feeling a smile begin somewhere inside me, understanding his troubled frown, his anxiety, with the basic female knowledge my mother had bred in me. Yet perhaps because he wished me to be frail, had imagined me frail, he was not consoled, his need for self-punishment surprising me even more than the anguished climax of his sensuality.

‘Well, it is done now,' he said. ‘It will not always be so difficult, you can believe me. You may bleed presently. It is quite natural. Don't be alarmed.'

‘No, doctor.'

‘Faith—please—' he said, and seeing that my flippancy had wounded him I leaned forward, feeling suddenly very strong and very sure of my ability to comfort him, although I did not altogether understand why he should be in need of comfort.

‘Giles, I have not lived in an ivory tower all my life, you know. I have been to France and Italy, where people are not so reticent as we are—and, in any case, my mother is much more outspoken than is usual in Cullingford. You have not hurt me, Giles—for as a matter of fact I am really very strong—and you have not shocked me.'

‘But I have given you no pleasure.'

‘How can you know that?'

‘Dear girl, of course I can know it. I do know it. You bore it all very stoically and very sweetly, but you had no pleasure and expected none. I imagine you will have been told that women do not, and should not, enjoy these things. And in many cases that is quite correct. It is easier, you see, at such moments, for a man to think only of himself, to do only what pleases him, in the convenient belief that a woman has no sensuality. And I can perfectly understand that a woman who is always pregnant, either recovering from one birth or preparing for the next, must view her husband's demands with utter loathing. I have seen it, Faith, many times in my capacity as a physician—women who would do anything to escape what to them is simply their nightly servitude, women who fall ill expressly to avoid it. And, having seen all that, I have no excuses. I knew I must be patient, knew that I must take you gradually and carefully, little by little. Yet I could not. I have been every bit as self-seeking as the men I have despised, and if you should turn away from me in disgust I could not really blame you.'

What a fuss, I thought, my word, what a fuss! Yet sitting up, strong and sure again, I tossed back my hair and, throwing aside the bedcovers with a steady hand, offered the whole of my body to his eyes, without sensuality but without embarrassment, not desiring him yet but wanting him to desire me, since that was what he wanted himself, and I required, most urgently, to fulfil his every need.

He spoke my name, a strangled sound, his lace swimming for an instant before my eyes with an emotion so intense that my immediate instinct was to turn away from it, fearing I could not meet its demands. But I received his light, hesitant body without restraint, knowing that in this, at least, I would not fail him, holding him, learning to caress him—not too boldly, since he did not wish me to be bold—until his honest, generous anxiety had faded away.

‘I love you, Faith.'

‘Yes. Please love me, Giles.'

And it no longer mattered that I didn't know why. Certainly he had not chosen me for anything I had ever said to him, for any similarities of intellect and outlook, for my wit or my ability to partner him in his labours. Perhaps, at the beginning, it had been no more than the colour of my hair, a trick of light and shade that had given my face the texture of some half-forgotten adolescent dream, so that I had assumed in his mind the identity of that dream. And what could it matter now? I had chosen to spend my life with him, and, as I watched our first morning come slowly, peeping through the window, lying easily, contentedly in his arms, I believed I had chosen right. I could make him happy, I was every moment more sure of it. I could be the woman he wanted, whoever she was, whatever she was, even if she was not really me at all. Having lost what I had believed to be my life's purpose, I had found another. Whatever else I might, or might not do, I would not fail Giles Ashburn.

My cousin, Blaize Barforth, took us to the theatre on the night of our return, some three weeks later, an evening which in my eyes seemed to mark my new status as a married woman; for, although I had attended performances of Shakespeare in London and of the opera and ballet in Paris, Cullingford's Theatre Royal had always been considered too raucous a place for a young lady. Yet, wishing to prove my sophistication to Blaize at any rate, I settled myself into the first of the dress boxes with no outward sign of curiosity, leaning forward to chat as nonchalantly as I could contrive to a young architect and his wife, to young Mr. Rawnsley of Rawnsley's Bank and a lady who was not his wife, who were occupying the box next door.

Taking advantage of my new freedom, I found it entirely delightful to drink cold punch after the performance in the private supper-room at the Old Swan, sitting between my husband and handsome, wicked Blaize, who made no secret now of his tender relationship with a curly-haired, black-eyed comedienne, and his interest—uncertain yet, but promising—in another. It was delightful, too, to learn from Blaize's witty tongue the peccadilloes of so many of our town's founding fathers—that Mr. Hobhouse, with his fourteen fine children at Nethercoats, had two or three more, every bit as fine, scattered here and there about the county, while even the worsted spinner, Mr. Oldroyd of Fieldhead, had kept an actress of his own, long before his wife died, in a respectable—Blaize thought tedious—area of Leeds.

‘But I thought Mr. Oldroyd wanted to marry my mother.'

‘So he does—which has nothing to do with actresses, Faith. And, while we are on the subject, I must give you a timely warning, for you should know that at least half your husband's female patients are madly in love with him.'

‘That does not surprise me, Blaize—not in the least. I merely wonder what is wrong with the other half? Are they blind?'

‘Just sensible, I imagine,' Giles said, taking my hand, his slightest touch causing me to sway towards him, lightheaded with offering, wanting him to take more than he already had, to be more demanding, so that I could be more generous.

My new house in Millergate, not new at all, but which had come to Giles with the practice, was not in the estimation of any of my relatives grand enough. It was, indeed, one of the last houses at the confused joining of the ways where steep, stony Millergate became Blenheim Lane, but by no stretch of the imagination could it be considered to stand in Blenheim Lane itself, and Aunt Hannah insisted from the start that it would not suit me to live so near the town.

‘Millergate is a shopping street,' she said. ‘It is not residential. You are not acquainted with any of your neighbours, nor can you wish for their acquaintance.'

Yet, as she well knew, Millergate, which at its lower end directly entered Market Square by the Piece Hall and the Old Swan, was not so far distant from Simon Street that a frightened man could not reach us in the middle of the night, to beg Giles's attendance on a sick child or a confinement that, having lasted a day or two, was thought even by Simon Street standards to be going wrong. Nor was the doorway too imposing, the maid who answered the bell too dignified, the chair in the hall too daintily upholstered for an exhausted woman who had trudged from the canal bank with an infant strapped to her back, another straddling her hip, to take her rest.

We had a large parlour I could not really glorify by the name of drawing-room, a red-covered sofa and two deep armchairs around the hearth, a cheerful rug, a profusion of flowering plants in pottery bowls my father would have considered undignified. There was a stray cat, brought home one night by Giles; a litter of kittens I had helped him to deliver the night after; my collection of wedding china and silver, displayed, for the time being, in cabinets which were too small and did not exactly match each other. There was a dining-room that also served Giles as a study; a front bedroom with a large, half-tester bed; three smaller rooms; a sinister room at the back of the house, full of glass tubes and bottles, with a small room off, where Giles received patients; attics; and a kitchen which, since plain cooking had not formed part of my education, I could not feel to be my concern.

‘I believe your Aunt Hannah is right,' Giles told me at once. ‘It is indeed a poky place. I can't think why I never realized it before. Look around, darling, and when you find the house you want let me know. I really can't expect you to settle here.'

But, like the kittens, I was warm in my deep red armchair, unwilling, perhaps, to take on the management of a larger household so soon, since routine domestic matters, I found, did not interest me greatly, my tastes inclining to the decorative rather than the useful. And although, prompted by Celia, I glanced at a smart new villa in Albert Place, talked idly of buying an acre or two of land, even consulted a builder and an architect, I knew that Giles, who cared nothing for houses, wished to move only for my sake, and so I chose to remain in Millergate for his.

Nor did I feel the need to make any sweeping domestic changes. The old woman who had looked after Giles was more than willing to look after me, her chocolate cake being the lightest I had ever tasted, her good humour inexhaustible.

‘Just sit you down, Mrs. Ashburn, and leave it to me. I know what the doctor likes for his dinner, and what you can do for him is make sure he sits down to eat it. Tell him to let them wait, when they come knocking on the door at dinnertime, because one thing you can be sure of, Mrs. Ashburn, is that they won't go away. He'll not lose his customers to Dr. Overdale and Dr. Blackstone, if that's what he's thinking, because Dr. Overdale takes his money in advance, and Dr. Blackstone sees none but the quality. Just you sit down and have a big smile ready for him when he comes home.'

And so I obeyed, hurrying into the hall at the sound of his gig, rushing downstairs to open the door for him myself, as obsessive in my care for him as Celia in her constant pursuit of domestic perfection.

It was naturally expected that Celia and I would see a great deal of each other now, for not only were we married ladies, empowered to share our knowledge of life's mysteries, but our husbands were both professional men, a doctor and a lawyer, who should have had much in common. Yet, although they were always very civil, very correct, there was little
rapport
between them, Jonas being too conscious that Giles, with his private income, had not been obliged to struggle for his education nor to marry somewhat against his inclination in order to purchase his practice. Giles mistrusting Jonas's growing habit—prompted, one could not deny it, by Aunt Hannah—of offering his friendship only to those who had something to give him. There was no shrewder lawyer in Cullingford these days than Jonas Agbrigg, to which many others besides Aunt Hannah were ready to testify: a keen, cunning man who could be relied on to spot a loophole in any contract, the contracts he drew up himself being quite watertight, or, when that was impossible, offering a variety of escape routes, skilful, obscurely worded clauses and fine points of law which everyone but himself appeared to have forgotten.

Giles liked people; Jonas, very obviously, liked useful people, cultivating only the rich and influential who could be persuaded to help him, the rich and simple who would be likely to trust him, the rich and slightly sinister who had need of a clever man like himself, his social commitments throwing my sister into such panic that I would often go over to Albert Place and do the table decorations for the parties to which I was not important enough to be invited; or, if she was to dine out herself, would arrange her hair, choose her clothes, attempt to convince her that it was not unbecoming in a matron of eighteen to be just a little vain.