My Darling Gabey,
How I miss you! Our little cottage seems so quiet and empty. I want my big strong boy back beside me, and to take me in his arms. You will be careful, won’t you, darling? I want my Gabey back in one piece so don’t go trying to be a hero…
Gabriel found it impossible to read on: he could hear Charis’s voice echoing through each word. He put the letter down and thought back to their last nights together and the pattern of arousal that each one seemed instinctively to follow.
Each time as he had changed into his pyjamas he felt almost sick with mounting apprehension. He would go through the door into the tiny upstairs bedroom which was almost entirely filled by their soft double bed. And there Charis lay. Her long wavy dark hair down, her white nightdress crisp and fresh. Then she would scold him, gently, for some misdemeanour. One night it was for not brushing his hair, another night for a mismatched pyjama top and bottom. “You naughty boy!” Charis would say and sternly resist his imploring pleas for forgiveness and understanding. “No! You may not give me a kiss and I’m very cross with you.” The tone of voice, the situation, worked like a magic charm on him, Gabriel realized. All the fumbling apprehension, the shaming absence of arousal, the fear — even of slipping into bed — disappeared.
They played out their parts with the instinct and assurance of professional actors. Charis strict but ultimately forgiving, Gabriel alternately fawning and sulky. The teasing, coyly bullying Charis of those nights had his erection pressing against his pyjama trousers within seconds. He would lay his head on her small breasts, kissing her throat, plucking at the cords that held her bodice together. “Stop it!” she would cry with fake horror. “You dreadful, dreadful boy! What are you doing?” But somehow the cords always came undone and he would uncover her small white breasts, smearing his face over them, dabbing at the tight nipples, hunching himself into position between her parting thighs. Then clumsy thrusting, a feeling of heat, moistness, a glove-like grip.
Such transient sensations, Gabriel thought. No more than a few seconds, that was all. Then she would cradle his head in her arms, stroking his hair, cooing endearments, calling him their private names, “Gabey, my big boy…Gabbins, my naughty boy…my terrible lovely Gabbey,” and Gabriel would drift off to sleep.
On their last night Gabriel woke up and found her gone. Half awake, he stumbled out of the bed and along the little passage to the bathroom. He pushed open the door and she was standing there naked, a face-flannel in her hand, in front of the basin. “Oh sorry,” Gabriel said, and backed out of the room. That was the only time he’d ever seen her naked. Her slim pale body like a boy’s, her breasts very small, almost flat, her little dark bush. Her body, he had to be frank, was not what he had expected. Before that night on the honeymoon, he had imagined women to be very soft and yielding, with large soft breasts like pillows. She didn’t come back to bed for a while and he fell asleep. They didn’t refer to their midnight encounter again.
All these memories returned as Gabriel read her letter. But to hear these endearments and phrases, to have the roles conjured up for him when she wasn’t there, made him feel confused. He felt a heavier sweat break out on his upper lip. He felt his face grow hot. He realized he was experiencing shame. He was embarrassed. Ashamed and embarrassed at his own intimacy with his wife! He felt suddenly appalled at himself. And this realization brought guilt and self-contempt in its train. What kind of person was he, he asked himself? What kind of a person was he to feel so ill-at-ease, so uncomfortable with the truth?
♦
Gabriel never re-read her letter. Now, some ten days into the voyage, it still lay deep in his small case in his cabin. He didn’t want to think about it, or about their married life. He found he was becoming almost prudish, as a kind of reaction. Some of the other officers on the Homayun were dubious types, coarse and much given to risqué conversations. Gabriel never joined in their discussions.
One day someone had passed him an old copy of Nash’s magazine, folded open to a page covered with photographs of a French dancer — one Mademoiselle Sadrine Storri. She was very pretty, Gabriel saw, in a plump coquettish way. Her dark hair was tousled. She wore her dancing costume, a scant toga strewn with garlands. She had heavy thighs, and in one photo leant forward to exposé the swells of nicely rounded bosom. Because she danced with bare legs, the caption said, the censor had determined that on stage she should be lit only by a blue light.
“Nice little filly,” the man had said on passing the magazine over. Gabriel had given a taut smile and glanced at the photographs for form’s sake. “My Grecian dance is absolutely artistic,” Gabriel read. He turned the page. There were more photographs of her posing in velvet shorts and a skimpy top that showed her midriff.
“I say, look at Cobb,” the officer called. “We’ve certainly got the newly-wed interested.”
Gabriel had blushed deeply. He had been interested. But almost simultaneously he hated himself for being so. What kind of husband was he, poring over photos of a French tart?
He looked out now at the convoy. He had been on the ship for twenty-six days, and it was beginning to affect him. The crushing, annihilating boredom. The constant noise from the bickering coolies. The braying mules and the bleating sheep. His fifth-rate resentful men. His uncouth, unfamiliar fellow-officers. Thank God, he thought, for the two men he shared his cabin with. He never really saw the doctor, who was the busiest man on board, constantly tending the coolies and other ranks who were coming down with all manner of ailments — but mainly dysentery and malaria — at the rate of seventy a day. But at least Bilderbeck was a decent sort, if a little strange.
Bilderbeck spent a lot of time drawing up information sheets and maps of German East Africa, compiling official intelligence notes on the climate, population and terrain based on journals and records he’d kept while serving in British East some seven or eight years previously. He was a lean, ascetic-looking man in his mid-thirties with a slightly weak chin. He spoke very quickly with a low voice, delivering his words in short bursts, as if from a Maxim gun. He would sometimes laugh or smile at stages in conversation which didn’t seem to warrant any such response at all, as if he saw jokes and ironies invisible to others all the time. Talking to him was extremely disconcerting, as his wry smiles and cynical looks seemed to imply that these observations were shared. Rather than seek for an explanation Gabriel had decided that the best thing to do was simply to copy Bilderbeck’s expression as it changed: smile when he smiled, roll eyes and sneer when he sneered. The other officers were not so accommodating and clearly thought Bilderbeck a little mad. Consequently, as time moved on, he and Gabriel spent more time in each other’s company.
They talked about the war. Bilderbeck asked Gabriel if he’d ever been in action. Gabriel admitted he hadn’t. Bilderbeck said he’d personally killed upward of thirty people during his service in Africa. “But they were all natives,” he added, as if this somehow wasn’t so remarkable.
Gabriel looked curiously at him. “What…? I mean, what was it like?”
“Just shot ‘em,” Bilderbeck said. “I shot three of my own men once. Native soldiers. A fine lot of men in fact, but these ones had killed a woman and outraged a girl. I shot them there and then. I had to set an example, you see. To the others.” He smiled broadly. Gabriel smiled automatically in return.