Grahame, Lucia (42 page)

At last we turned and retraced our way back, slowly, as if unwilling
to end the adventure. When we were close to an old apple orchard, my husband
brought Perseus to a halt. I pulled up next to him. My spirits were still high.
In fact, I felt as giddy as a schoolgirl on the verge of her first taste of
longed for and forbidden pleasures. But underneath the excitement lay the
strange sense of peace that had stolen like a drug through my veins during the
long ride.

We let the horses drink a little from the river.

"We must go back," said my husband at last.

"Oh, not yet," I said. "Let's walk in the
orchard."

"It's late. You ought to be in bed."

"But it's so mild, and the moon so bright," I pleaded.
"Please, Anthony. Let's just climb to the top of the rise and see what the
view is from there tonight."

My husband sighed, as if he did not altogether approve of my whim,
but he followed me across the road and into the orchard. There he dismounted
and reached toward me to help me from the saddle. I slid into his arms and
knew, instantly, that he wanted me. In the same instant he released me and
stepped back. We tethered our horses to a tree and began to climb the gentle
slope.

It was not until I caught the toe of my boot under a fallen branch
that my husband took my arm. At his touch, my strumpet soul rudely pushed the
fainthearted Lady Camwell aside, brought my feet to a halt, and turned my face
eagerly toward his as if to steal a kiss. It was all she had time for: Before
my husband could do more than draw away slightly, I had the troublesome wench
in irons once again. He moved decisively apart from me. To cover my
embarrassment, I wandered off in the opposite direction and let myself
surrender to an equally unseemly but more innocent form of playfulness. I found
an open patch of grass and began to turn cartwheels; it was a trick I had
learned from a schoolmate in Montreux. I hadn't practiced it for years.

My husband started to laugh.

"What has come over you?" he asked.

I cartwheeled back to the tree under which he stood and pulled
myself up onto a low-hanging branch, from which I then hung by my knees.

"Sheer lunacy, I suppose. Brought on by the moon, no doubt,
to whom I will now pay homage." I smiled blithely up at her through the
mesh of branches. Then I reached behind me to tug at my husband's sleeve.
"Would you care to join me, Sir Anthony, in showing your devotion?"

By now I was laughing a little, too, because I knew very well that
my husband would never dream of dangling from a tree by his knees. My jacket
was pulling at me; I slipped it off and let it fall to the ground.

"You
are
a pagan," said my husband.

"I suppose so," I admitted, pulling myself upright.
"Well, one must have faith in something. And my heathen goddess is in a
generous mood tonight. She has already answered one prayer."

"What did you ask for?"

"No more than this," I said, smiling down at him in the
moonlight. "Catch me."

I dropped into his arms, so suddenly that he was obliged to catch
me whether he would or no, and then, still moonstruck and reckless, I put my
arms around him and kissed him.

For a moment he froze.

"Why are you doing this?" he whispered, sounding
agonized.

But then he was returning my kisses, more fiercely and cruelly
than I had ever known him to, and I could not have answered his question even
if my lips
had
been free.

What self-control he still displayed lasted only long enough for
him to remove his jacket and to lay it next to my own, spreading them both out
over the rough earth like a blanket. Then he pulled me to the ground with him.
He ripped off my shirt, scattering two or three buttons, and cursed my clinging
boots and breeches roundly before he got me out of them.

Gone was all that elegant self-possession; gone was the cool and
ironic restraint with which he had so confidently directed the pace of our
other conflagrations; gone, the air of amused detachment and the cache of
sophisticated erotic refinements. He was still half dressed when he fell upon
me like an avenging demon.

Never before had I suspected how much unbridled anger he might be
capable of turning on me. When I lifted my hands involuntarily to ward off that
flood of rage, he yanked the red ribbon rudely from my hair and knotted it
around my wrists.

"Oh no, you witch," he said dangerously, "you can't
have it both ways."

But I didn't want it both ways any longer. I was no longer afraid
of him: I hadn't failed to notice that even in the midst of his fury he had
slipped his fingers under that strip of velvet to make sure he had not bound me
too tightly. I felt gloriously pacified. As he tore into me, all my own very
weakly curbed desires sprang forward to envelop him.

What I thought was the height of my passion came swiftly. I heard
myself cry his name. But nothing would appease him.

"Damn you," he sobbed as he hammered into me
mercilessly. "Damn you, Fleur." And still I felt safe.

Somehow he got up and pulled me upright. My arms were around his
neck. He lifted me slightly, leaned me against the tree, and pulled my legs
around his waist. I had thought that I could not climb any further, but already
I was soaring again.

"Say it," I heard dimly through my ecstasy. "Why
can't you say it, you bitch!"

He must have been slamming me against the tree, but I was as supremely
indifferent to discomfort as if I were being plundered in a goosedown bed.

I shuddered, went limp, and beamed up at him like a happy idiot.

"Goddamn you, Fleur, I hate you," he said with a gasp,
as he came.

He broke away from me instantly and lay down prostrate in the
grass, panting. His face was turned away from me, his cheek to the ground.

I slumped and sank slowly to my knees. Under the moon's cruel
glare, I saw the marks which bark and twigs had left on his shirtsleeves, and
on his wrists, and on the backs of his hands; in some places they were all but
raw. He had wrapped those arms around me, and that was why I had felt no pain
as this man, who hated me, had ravished me against the tree.

I felt a tear slide down my cheek and a sharp biting cramp deep
inside, as all that would never be a child mingled and began to seep out of my
exhausted body into the cold, dark earth.

After a while, my husband stood up.

"It's cold, why aren't you dressed?" he said sharply,
when he had arranged his own clothing. His glance fell upon my hands,
"Oh."

Rather than struggling with the knot, he merely drew his
pocketknife and cut the ribbon with a quick, savage gesture. I supposed he must
be wishing that all the ties that bind might be so easily severed.

The cramping torments of my complaint did not ease until late the
following morning. By the time I arose, my husband was already gone from
Charingworth. I would have been really inconsolable had I not received a letter
from Marguerite. She would soon be at loose ends, for
L'Embuscade
would
close at the end of the month. For the remainder of the summer, all the
theaters of Paris, except for the opera and the Comédie-Française, would be
dark.

Marguerite, who loved her work, could barely tolerate the enforced
idleness that was to be her lot until she began rehearsals for a September
opening.

But, from my point of view, it could scarcely have been more
fortuitous.

I immediately invited her to Charingworth.

Marguerite created something of a sensation at our village
station. She arrived with fourteen trunks and a dozen hat- boxes, although she
intended to stop with me for only a week. And she knew how to make an entrance.
She paused, so charmingly, before stepping down from the carriage that all eyes
were drawn to her. She smiled at everyone as if from behind the footlights. Her
frank enjoyment of the admiration she had drawn resulted in a general hoisting
of feminine eyebrows. While seasoned gentlemen surveyed her from the platform
with broad smiles, dazzled youths abandoned their tottering, bombazined
grandmothers to assist the fairy princess in her descent to earth. But there
was nothing helpless about Marguerite, and with mingled sweetness, gratitude,
and faint reproach she speedily dispatched each of them back to where their
less bewitching duties lay.

Upon her arrival at Charingworth, my effervescent friend showed no
signs of having just completed a long and arduous journey. She admired all that
met her eyes profusely— at Charingworth every keyhole was a work of art—and
rebuked me for my past indifference to my surroundings. She could not be
persuaded to sit down to tea in the drawing room but insisted upon being given
a tour of the house at once.

She must inspect the library, and exclaim over the venerable
manuscripts and some previous baronet's priceless collection of ancient coins;
she must glide slowly through the music room and put her lovely hands to every
instrument; she must glory in the view offered by each window; she must inspect
every painting in the picture gallery—the Rubens, the Canaletto, the Vermeer,
ad infinitum. She must rapturously examine each of the gilt mermaids who
supported the arms of the Linnell sofas and be ravished by the picture
gallery's piece de résistance: a huge Pietà, which had originally graced the
altar of a Florentine church but now occupied a thoroughly secular position
above the chimney piece.

"The English, such pirates!" declared my friend,
studying it lovingly. At last she spun around to demand, "What! Are there
no Gainsboroughs? No Sir Joshuas?"

"They are upstairs in the portrait gallery," I murmured
rather faintly.

"Oh, the portrait gallery! Is it next? I am very eager to see
that!"

"Then you might move a little faster," said I, ungraciously.

Eventually, after innumerable delays, we reached the portrait
gallery. Marguerite lingered annoyingly before the first Sir Anthony, a mere
knight, but unswervingly loyal to his doomed sovereign, with whom he had died
at Bosworth Field, leaving a young widow and an infant son to fare as well as
they might under the buccaneering Tudors.

"I see
your
Anthony has something of his namesake in
him," Marguerite remarked thoughtfully.

"I think not," I said. "He is pure Cercy, I am
afraid."

But I recognized my error instantly. The resemblance
was
there,
in the calm set of the beautifully formed mouth, and in the unwavering eyes,
softened only by those long, dark lashes. I wondered, shockingly, how this
other Anthony had behaved in the bedroom, and how those lips had tasted.

I felt a pang of longing.
He hates me,
I reminded myself.
My
husband does not lie.
My eyes stung. I moved back from the painting
to brace myself against the balustrade.

Marguerite proceeded cheerfully along the gallery.

"Well, you'll look very lovely up here," she declared at
last, having sated herself.

"No doubt," I said bitterly. "All five of me."

She whirled upon me then.

"Oh, Fleur, will the two of you never put that behind you and
make your peace!"

"What are you saying? Why, it was
you
who—"

"Arranged to expose
his
sins to
you.
Yes, I
know. Let me see your bedroom."

Greatly relieved that she had changed the subject, I led her to my
private quarters and endured her effusions in praise of the chintz hangings,
the carved oak overmantel, the vista from every aperture, ad nauseam.

"And where," she inquired archly, when she had exhausted
her store of both French and English accolades, "does the baronet
sleep?"

"His bedroom is in the other wing," I said, and added
rather defiantly, "naturally."

"Naturally," said Marguerite satirically.

"Naturally," I repeated. "I believe Théo has his
own bedroom, has he not?"

"He has," conceded Marguerite. "I insisted upon
it—separate bedrooms are essential to a happy marriage. One must always have
the freedom to sleep alone. However, if Théo actually
used
his freedom
more than two or three times a month, I think I would be exceedingly
disgruntled. Well," pressed Marguerite, "is that next?"

"Is
what
next?"

"The baronet's bedroom."

"Certainly not! I would not dream of going in there!"

"Oh, what is it? A Bluebeard's closet?" demanded my
naughty guest.

"Indeed it is not!" I retorted. Poor Marguerite could
not say anything on the subject of my husband that did not needle me. If she
seemed to favor him, I felt betrayed; if she mocked him, ever so lightly, I was
outraged.

"I would not think of setting foot in there without his
knowledge," I continued rather stiffly, and immediately felt foolish,
remembering how I had stolen into his bedroom in the hope of destroying that
nonexistent photographic plate.