The Prize (130 page)

Lindblom’s face was contorted, and the words choked before they came out. ‘I worship you,’ he cried. ‘I worship you above all women!’

Denise felt victory near. ‘If you could, Oscar, if it were possible—would you love me?’

‘I cannot allow myself to think of such a—’

‘Then you would!’ she said triumphantly. She turned, half faced him on the sofa, her manner at once businesslike. ‘Now, we will be sensible about this, while we can be. We are both, the two of us, adult persons of science. At the same time, we admit, we are both human beings. We are people with emotional needs, which require gratification, and that is often as important to us as our work, is it not? Do you grant that to be true?’

‘Oh, yes, yes—’

‘I have tried desperately to tell you—do not be misled by my public reputation, for I have a private life. I am as much a female woman as any. I have passionate needs, and one of them, the most enslaving, is love, physical love of a man who attracts me. I can no longer endure austerity, pretence. I must humble myself before you.’ Impulsively, as she had planned, she reached for his hands and gripped them tightly. ‘Oscar, I need you. Can you understand that? It is a terrifying hunger for a woman, because she must passively wait for fulfilment. For a man, it is so simple. When he has a need, he goes into the street, anywhere, finds someone, and is sated. For a woman, it is unendurable, especially for one in my public position. But today, I can contain myself no longer—because of you. Through these hands of yours, I feel the surge of passion. I am putty. Mould me as you wish.’

She closed her eyes, and wondered if she was going on too theatrically, like someone in
Poetry of the English—Blake to Byron
. Perhaps she was talking too much. But then, she decided that she must, for she was playing both roles, both woman and man.

She heard Lindblom’s small distant voice. ‘I would like to—but are you sure—I mean—your husband—’

Denise opened her eyes, about to speak rudely of Claude and to chastise Lindblom for his reticence, but she instinctively knew that either derogation might reduce her partner to impotence. The last word in her thought—impotence—gave her the clue to her reply. She must dissolve Lindblom’s fear and guilt potential, by explaining away Claude and her own behaviour.

She dropped her gaze and turned her head and furrowed her features in secret suffering. ‘My husband—my husband’—she was finding it an affliction that curbed speech—‘he is impotent. I must not speak of this—’

At once, Lindblom sought to comfort her. ‘Do not then, please do not torture yourself.’

She went on, nevertheless. ‘Five years ago—after many excesses—ill-using himself—abandoning me—he was stricken by a grave disease. In recovery, he lost his powers of manhood. I had planned to leave him, but now there was his pitiful need for companionship, and I could not. I knew my fate. I must forego all normal womanhood, become his cloistered nun. I did, and have done, my duty. I sublimated my natural wants in our work—
pas facile
, believe me—but his bestiality made obedience a cross too heavy—oh, dear Oscar—my life has been cruel, my body starved and withering for love, for love—’

Carried away by her improvised scene, Denise managed to squeeze tears to her eyes.

She saw that Lindblom’s face was all tenderness and empathy, and that his eyes, too, were wet. He stroked her arm. ‘Poor, poor dearest—’ he was saying.

Denise had enough of verbal foreplay. She sniffled and tried to compose herself. ‘Oscar, are we alone here?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Does anyone come here?’

‘Only Hammarlund, and he is gone for the day.’

She bent forward and brushed his pale cheek with her lips. ‘Lock the door, my darling,’ she whispered, ‘and draw the blinds. I must go into the bathroom. Be here—wait for me.’

She rose with her handbag and quickly went into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

A few minutes later, she emerged, eyes bright. The room was considerably darkened, more intimate, and she saw that the blinds were drawn. Lindblom stood unsteadily beside the sofa, worriedly clasping and unclasping his hands.

She went directly to him, putting her hand on his chest, hearing his wild heart beat, and slid her arms around his waist. ‘Take me, Oscar,’ she whispered. ‘I am in your hands.’

He embraced her hard, almost suffocating her, and kissed the top of her head.

She groaned, and whimpered, ‘Oscar, be kind to me,’ and pulled him down on the sofa. She kissed his eyes, and then his mouth, all the while unbuttoning his shirt, and then she had her hand on his jumping chest, on his ribs, on his bony back.

Her mouth was at his ear, kissing it, filling it with endearments. ‘I am ready, Oscar. I have removed my girdle, and taken precautions. There is nothing beneath my slip but love—’

She felt him shiver.

‘Poor darling,’ she whispered, ‘do you want me to help you off with your clothes—?’

‘No—no—’

He tore himself away, almost falling, and then stood upright. Hastily, he shed his trousers and shorts, and stood overwrought before her in shirt and shoes and nothing else.

‘Ah, how magnificent you are,’ she said in a voice muffled and pride-giving. ‘I am so fortunate. I will cherish this love forever.’

She closed her eyes, and wished Claude could see, and awaited the coupling. Seconds passed, and when he had not come to her, she opened her eyes once more and realized that he was not above her, but kneeling beside the sofa, staring at her.

He tried to speak, and strangled, and his Adam’s apple was everywhere. ‘Madame Marceau, are you sure—?’

Her patience was gone and in its place came indignation. ‘Oscar—it is not fair—you have me hanging here, excited beyond belief. Now—are you or are you not going to—?’

With that, she lifted her slip, and bunched it about her waist, half twisting towards him, showing him her white belly and thighs.

Her voice—she was certain not even the Divine Sarah could have improved upon it—was weak with passion. ‘Oscar, do not deprive me—I will die without you—’

‘Ah,
ن
lskling
—my darling—my darling—’

At once, he was beside her, suffocating her with kisses, caressing her throat and chest. She squirmed sensuously—the last months had been so barren—and made believe that this was the Claude of long ago, and she held her lover tightly.

‘I am ready,’ she murmured. And then, ‘Are you?’

‘I—I think so—’

His uncertainty alarmed her, and she forgot fantasy and brought herself back to the living task at hand. She understood that, like it or not, she must participate, or there would be no consummation, and the long seduction would be wasted. What to do? She quickened her breath, mouth at his ear and against his face. She gasped and gasped and brought her fingers fluttering, like broken wings across his lank thighs. His arousal was almost instantaneous, and at once—and during this she recollected the Bible euphemism for sexual intercourse—he had ‘gone in unto’ her.

She had thought that consummation would end her role, and that she could wait out the rest with no part in it, but after several seconds she saw, with objective detachment, that still more was demanded of her. If he would have value in her plan, he must have pride of conquest. Anything less would make him ashamed, and consequently useless to her.

The bloating, mis-shapen ecstasy on his face—dangling above her like a grotesque mask on the Eve of Allhallows—was the signal that momentarily it would all be over. As yet, she had hardly been moved by, or in any fashion answered, his erratic rhythm. It would be a feat to pretend what was not there—she needed the stimulation of the damp flesh smell of sex, and what there was, and nothing more, was the soap odours of a scrubbed male body and the reek of camphor from the laboratory—but then she remembered, when there was no natural food, there must be a synthetic. Her arousal would have to be a chemical substitute, produced by the mind and not by nature. Desperation spurred her to action.

Any moment, she knew, and so, hastily, she implored her lethargic body to anticipate him. Once more, she closed her eyes tightly, and made her bound bosom heave, and she moaned and begged him not to torture her and begged him to be done with it or else she would die—wondering all through this if her performance was too theatrical, if he could sort the synthetic from the real—and at once, she knew that she was succeeding. Seeing that the climax of the play was upon them, she froze to his frame, then subsided into tiny helpless cries of pleasure, and clutched his elusive transported being as best she could, and when she was positive—for the expected thunder was merely a squeak—she acted a final heaving spasm of release, timed to match his own, but towering above his own to make her pride small and his pride large, and,
mon Dieu
, it was done.

He fell beside her, balancing precariously on the sofa to keep from dropping to the floor, and she placed an arm over her eyes—she had seen the pose once in a French film and had always thought it to mean the woman had been satisfied—and they both rested in silence.

At last, she removed her arm from her eyes. Her neck was stiff, and hurt from reclining without a pillow. She realized that he was looking at her, and that his features reflected growing shame—similar to those of a rough farm boy who has just learned that the female he had taken by force was none other than the Queen—and the enormity of his desecration was beginning to overwhelm him.

Denise moved at once to prevent this reaction. She did not want his protestations of guilt, his apologies, his humbleness, and, in the end, his frightened avoidance of her. He must know that he had not pillaged a holy temple.

‘
Merci
, Oscar,’ she said softly. ‘
C’est beau
. I have never been loved better.’

He blushed—that he could blush even now!—and sighed.

‘It is true,’ she went on. ‘You satisfied me.’

The Adam’s apple skittered up and down, like a simian in a banana tree. ‘I am so glad,’ he was saying. ‘I was not sure.’

‘I am fulfilled, Oscar, and I thank you with all my heart.’ She glanced at her watch and sat up with dismay. ‘So late. It is difficult to leave you, Oscar—I do not know what I shall do—but I must hurry back to the hotel, before my husband returns.’ Her slip was still bunched at her waist, and quickly and chastely she drew it across her knees.

He had watched her. ‘You are beautiful, Denise.’

‘Do not be naughty—or you will tempt me again.’

He pushed himself to a sitting position. ‘If only it were possible—’

She brushed his cheek with her lips. ‘It will be possible,’ she said, and then added, ‘You may as well know, I must see you every day I am here.’

‘I pray for that. When may I see you again?’

‘Tomorrow—tomorrow night in my suite.’

‘But your husband—?’

‘He is spending the evening in Uppsala, addressing the faculty. He will not return until long after midnight. You must come to me early—
à huit heures du soir
—I want to enjoy you in leisure. It will be heaven, I promise you.’ It will also, she thought, be the decisive turning-point of my marriage.

When she had finished in the bathroom, had dressed, combed, made up her face, she returned to find that the blinds had been opened and that Lindblom, clothed, was regarding her possessively.