Seven Dials (25 page)

There was an appreciable delay after she rang the bell, and
then she heard padding footsteps and the door opened a crack and an eye appeared in the space.

‘Who is it?’ Brin’s voice sounded irritable. ‘I’m in the bath, damn it -’

‘I’m sorry, Brin,’ she said, her confusion coming back in a great wave. ‘It’s me, Charlie. I wanted to tell you about the arrangements I’ve made for you -’

‘Charlie?’ he said and the eye seemed to brighten. ‘Oh, yes - great. Look, come on in - only let me get back to the bathroom first -’

The eye disappeared and after what seemed to her to be a reasonable pause she pushed open the door; but she had misjudged it because she just saw his bare back disappearing along the passageway towards the bathroom. It was only a fleeting movement, but it was long enough to etch his body’s shape into her mind; a long back and a narrow waist with a little damp curling hair between the hips over small tight buttocks which dimpled just above the swell of muscles outlined by the glint of water on the skin. Her mouth dried for a moment with embarrassment at the sight of him and she walked as quietly as she could into the living-room, not wanting him to know she had seen him.

Not, it appeared, that he would have cared anyway. By the time she had taken off her jacket and was sitting in as relaxed a pose as she could on the sofa with her bare sandalled feet stretched out under her rather crumpled cotton frock, he appeared in the doorway, rubbing his head with a towel. He was wearing only another towel tied round his waist and his skin shone damply golden in the lamplight. He smelled of good soap and bay rum and quite without volition her mouth spread in a smile of sheer pleasure as she looked at him.

‘Hello Charlie,’ he said rubbing away at his head so that his hair stood up in rather childlike damp spikes. ‘You didn’t say you were coming here when you phoned this afternoon.’

‘I didn’t know I was,’ she said, and looked away from him, suddenly feeling very shy. Absurdly shy. ‘I - I was at Nellie’s all morning and I meant to go back to East Grinstead after leaving a message here for you but -’ She swallowed, awkward again. ‘I thought I’d better stay and talk to you. After what happened here.’

‘After what happened where?’ he said lazily and came and
sat on the sofa beside her. He too stretched out his legs and the golden hairs on the sun-browned skin glinted and she thought ridiculously - he looks like hot buttered toast.

‘Your sister,’ she said and then stopped, not sure how to put it. The last thing she wanted to do was sound like a whining child, telling tales; but he had to be told, somehow, and she stopped, trying to put the right words together in her head.

‘Sophie?’ Brin said and laughed. ‘Did she try to stuff you with freshly baked cakes and jam and heaven knows what else? I found a great pile of buns and new bread when I got in. It’s good stuff, I’ll give her that -’

‘She was baking them when I was here,’ Charlie said and then took a slightly shaky breath. ‘Look, Brin, I don’t want to - sound like a meddler or a grizzler, but I did worry about what she said.’

He turned his body so that he had one elbow up on the back of the sofa and could look down on her and again she avoided his gaze, keeping her eyes fixed on his legs. He smelled even better now as his skin dried and the scent of soap - was it sandalwood? - was released into the warm air. It really was quite stupid to be so embarrassed, and she a doctor who had seen more naked men than she could remember! But this, whispered her secret voice, isn’t just any naked man. This is Brin.

‘Bloody Sophie,’ Brin said, but there was no real rancour in his voice. ‘Nothing you could tell me about her could ever seem like meddling. Not compared with the way she meddles with me.’

‘That’s just it, Brin.’ She turned to him gratefully, able to look at his face now. ‘I wanted to leave a message for you with her. To tell you that I think I can get a bed for you very soon at Nellie’s and do your operation and she said -’

His face lit up and he leaned forwards and took her shoulders in his hands. ‘What did you say?’

‘I think - I can’t be absolutely sure, mind you, because beds are at a premium, what with wards being closed - but I think that I can put your operation on the list in the next couple of weeks -’

‘Charlie Lucas, I love you!’ he cried jubilantly and leaned forwards and kissed her roundly, his lips warm on hers and she was so startled she could only sit there, her eyes wide open.
And then he was sitting upright again and gazing at her, his eyes looking as though someone had switched on a light behind them. ‘I knew you could arrange it if anyone could - oh, I just knew it! You really are the best thing that ever happened to me since that bloody bomb fell, do you know that? I can’t tell you how grateful I am -’

‘You don’t have to be grateful,’ she said a little huskily, still shaken by the way he had kissed her. ‘It’s what I’m for. A surgeon, remember? But you can’t be sure until I’ve done the op how it’ll turn out. Don’t be too excited yet, for God’s sake. You could be disappointed -’

‘I won’t be!’ he said jubilantly and threw himself back against the sofa, but now with one arm thrown casually across the back of it, just above her own shoulders. She could feel the warmth of him through the thin cotton of her frock as though he were radiating energy. And indeed his whole body seemed rigid with the excitement.

‘It’ll be a wonderful operation,’ he went on and with the forefinger of his other hand traced the line of his scar from tip to lip. ‘It’ll be just wonderful. A simple hairline that’ll disappear beneath a bit of Leichner’s -’

‘Leichner’s?’ she said and he laughed and dropped his arm so that it was across her shoulders and hugged her close.

‘Greasepaint, my dear old ass, greasepaint! I thought everyone knew about that stuff.’

‘I’m not an actress,’ she said in a small voice, trying to pretend that the warm pressure of his arm on her back and shoulders was not making her breathless. ‘I know about operations - I don’t know anything about shows -’

Suddenly his arm tightened and she looked up at him, aware of a sharp change in his mood. ‘Damn it all to hell and back!’ he said loudly, staring across her head at the window beyond, his eyes wide. ‘Oh, God damn it all!’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘The show. I just wasn’t thinking. It happens on Saturday fortnight - that’s why it’s all getting so busy now. We’re coming to the end of it all and we’ve been running around like lunatics getting it all together - and if I’m not there - when do you want me to come into Nellie’s?’

‘As soon as I get a bed,’ she said promptly. ‘I’m pulling every string I’ve got and then a few - like I said, there are so
few beds and every surgeon in the place is clamouring. I was hoping next Monday. I’ve booked the theatre, at least - that’s a step in the right direction.’

‘And if I can’t manage to be there on that day?’

She shook her head a little worriedly. ‘I’d just have to start the string pulling all over again.’ She looked at him, turning her head so that she could see him and at once her face flamed. He was really very close to her indeed. ‘But, look, don’t worry. If I can manage it once, I dare say I can again - and I can quite see you can’t let the show people down. It’d be a dreadful thing to do if they need you -’

‘I’m not worried about the
show,’
he said almost contemptuously. ‘It’s Letty. I’m looking to her to give me a decent part once this Benefit’s over - that’s the only reason I’m doing the job at all. And if I’m not there on the night it’s my guess she’ll get decidedly shirty. It’s not even as though I could ask her to let me go - unless maybe
you
did -’

Charlie felt chilled for a moment and then shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t help, I don’t suppose,’ she said. ‘She might agree with your sister, anyway, and then -’ She stopped. ‘And it’s not the end of the world, for heaven’s sake, if you can’t take a bed next week. I’ll just put my application in again and we’ll see how we get on. It might delay things just a while, but you’ve waited so long already that another few weeks shouldn’t make all that much difference -’

‘Every bloody day makes a difference,’ he said violently and then looked at her, frowning. ‘What was that you said about not talking to Letty for me? That she might agree with Sophie? What do you mean?’

‘That was what I came to tell you,’ she said, uncomfortable again. ‘I - it was this afternoon. Sophie said she couldn’t give you any message from me and told me I shouldn’t do the operation on you.’

‘She said what?’ he began wrathfully. ‘She had the damned bloody cheek to say
what?’

She drew a deep sigh of relief. ‘Oh, Brin, I was so worried. I thought perhaps - I don’t know. I thought perhaps I’d got it wrong after all. That maybe I was doing the wrong thing in agreeing to your operation. I mean, I don’t believe that your looks are all that spoiled by that scar. In some ways -’ Again she swallowed and then went on hurriedly, almost too
embarrassed to get the words out. ‘In some ways it adds to your attractiveness.’

‘Oh, Charlie, you are a dear girl, you know!’ He was laughing now, and again his arm was holding her closely. ‘You thought I’d do as my sister Sophie told me? Honestly, what do you take me for? She’s a silly fusspot, and always has been. Oh, she means kindly enough, I dare say, but all my life she’s gone on at me about what I ought to do and what I ought not to do. I pay her no attention at all and I’m just damned grateful you didn’t either. You didn’t, did you?’ He reached round with his other hand and took hold of her chin, pulling gently so that she had to look at him. ‘You
didn’t
pay any attention to her waffling on, did you? You’ll do my operation, no matter what she thinks?’

‘Of course I will,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s your decision and mine, not hers.’ And she smiled warmly, putting all the reassurance she could into her voice and her expression.

There was a little silence and then he said suddenly, ‘For a doctor, you’re a good-looking girl, aren’t you, Charlie?’

‘”Thank you kindly, sir, she said”,’ Charlie said a little shakily and made no attempt to pull her head away from his restraining fingers. They were warm and agreeable on her skin and feeling the whisper of his breath on her face as he spoke, and smelling the hint of peppermint toothpaste in it was even more agreeable.

‘You’re a good pal to me, you know that?’ he said. ‘I’ve thought of you all this time as a really good pal. Never thought you were a bit like the other girls. But you are, aren’t you?’

‘In what way?’ She was still shaky of voice, but it didn’t matter.

‘You like to be kissed,’ he said and bent his head and kissed her very thoroughly and with a good deal of expertise, not that she, with her lack of it, realized that fact. His lips were soft and gentle at first and then became rather more urgent and she found her mouth opening under his in a way she could never have thought possible. She had been kissed before, on occasion, but no woman who has to do all the work necessary to get a medical training has much time for lovemaking, and Charlie, for all her twenty-eight years, was in many ways a very inexperienced person. Certainly she was no match for Brin, who had lost count of the girls who had shared caresses
with him.

Perhaps it was the heat of the evening, perhaps it was the emotion that had built up in her all that afternoon, perhaps it was merely as basic as the fact that he was wearing nothing but a towel and a skimpy one at that; whatever the cause, Charlie found herself responding to Brin in a way that amazed her. He too seemed startled at first by the eagerness with which she reacted to him and by the way her hands ran over his bare chest and back, but he made it very clear that he was glad of it.

His kisses became even more urgent and his hands as widely ranging as hers and then suddenly they were no longer on the sofa, but on the floor and her dress was crumpled round her waist as her legs curled up along his back. She had no memory of kicking off her shoes, no recollection of shedding her underclothes, but for all that she had and was as free and comfortable in her movements as he was, now that his towel lay in a discarded heap beside them.

If she had thought about it all, she would have expected that this, her first experience of sex, would be a frightening one, painful even, but in spite of the fact that she had had so little experience of men, had never even enjoyed much of the sort of petting that so many of the girls she had known had talked about on long cocoa-drinking evenings at school and later at university, she found herself so eager and responsive that there was no pain at all, and no doubts. She wanted him, wanted to swallow him whole, almost, and there was nothing he could do to her and with her that she didn’t welcome, and want even more than he did.

And when after what seemed to be only a few moments she found the new and marvellously sweet sensations that filled her whole body rising to an almost unbelievable level she shouted her excitement aloud and clung to his back so tightly, her head thrown back and her mouth pulled wide with tension, that the result was incredible. It was as though she were both floating and yet swooping, as though she were being buffeted by waves of softness that made her face flame with heat, and sent sweat running between her breasts, and even then it wasn’t over. He went on thrusting at her as strongly as he had from the start, his own eyes tightly closed, seeming oblivious of her, and then it all seemed to start again inside her own body; the waves of feeling, the lifting
excitement and at last the swooping satisfaction, which seemed this time to go on and on and on.

But at last it ended and she was lying there as breathless as he was, his weight slumped on top of her and her eyes staring up at the ceiling in amazement. Was this really happening? Or was it some embarrassingly explicit erotic dream from which she would emerge to discover herself in her narrow bed in the medical staff quarters at East Grinstead?

She closed her eyes, tightening them till sparks of red and orange light shot through the blackness behind her lids and hurt her, and then opened them again; and there it all was; the ceiling with its faint cracks made into maplike shapes by the shadows thrown by the lamplight, the outlined black of the window, and the floor hard beneath her. She, Charlotte Lucas, had behaved in a way that was totally out of character, totally appalling, totally dreadful, and she had never felt more contented in all her life.