“Did you know that Louise Abbema wrote a song some years ago, in French to be sure, and that it has become very popular now? I shall sing it for you, if you will forgive my flat English voice rendering her liquid French lyrics:
“I shall loosely translate the lyrics for you, Lizzie, and in prose that does them no justice, I fear. ‘Toward them, toward them, love, take us on your beating wings. Toward them, toward them, the blonde, the fair, the beautiful. Toward them, so distant, there, away, yet farther still. Toward them, toward them — the golden-haired maidens’.
“She tails it ‘Hymn to Love’, my dearest love.”
Lost in love: a love she had never experienced before, a love beyond filial affection, beyond sisterly concern, beyond (God forgive her!) the love imbued in her for the flesh and the spirit of the savior Jesus Christ, a new and precious love that was in turn giddy and solemn and sacred and nourishing and sad and glowing and present every waking or sleeping moment of her days and nights at the villa. The mere sight of Alison was enough to set her heart tripping, her golden hair in the golden sunlight (though now, in mid-September, there was rain more often than not), her radiant smile, the maidenly perfection of her face and form (“Maiden indeed! I’ve been mistress of the house for years now, your Mistress Puss, Lizzie”), her long-legged stride, her pealing laughter, the scent of her, the coconut oil forsaken now that she was brown as an African, the fragrance of mimosa (or was it only from the hills?). The need she felt for her was incessant, an aching to be held by her, to feel her hands upon her where before now not even her own hands had dared, to seek approval in her marvelous green eyes, to abandon herself utterly to the extravagance of her passion.
Lost in anxiety: the concern that Albert would return to the villa sooner than anticipated, the certainty that whenever he returned, his presence would effectively end the ecstasy she shared with Alison.
“But why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” Alison asked. “It can be settled with a telegram; I shall send one off tomorrow morning.”
“A telegram? But how?”
“My darling girl,” Alison said, “let me explain the rather dismal arrangement Albert and I have evolved over the years. You must have noticed, though you claimed not to have, that Albert has an eye for the ladies, as revealed through his constant exploration of Felicity-Twit’s bottom, and his obvious enthrallment with the prostitute who solicited une bière Anglaise from him — or weren’t you aware of her occupation?”
“I suspected,” Lizzie said, smiling.
“Ah, she suspected, my virgin queen. Accept her sordid trade, then, and accept the fact that had Albert been alone, he would have immediately struck up a bargain with her and followed her to some hotel de passe redolent of disinfectant, where there he would have ravaged her on sheets stinking of sailors’ sweat and sperm.” She rolled her eyes. “But eet ees zee way of zee men, n’est-ce pas?” she said, falling into her broad French accent, “to ex-air-size zee doigt de seigneur, pun intentional,” she said in her normal voice, “and to plunge that raging tumescent beast into whichever rotting hole opens itself before them, however disease ridden, however slippery it might be from the juices of previous conquerors — amour, amour, toujours l’amour! I could understand his longings to strip Felicity-Twit to the skin — he confessed this to me one night — but when it comes to his penchant for the bony ladies who...”
“What do you mean you can understand...?”
“I was tempted to do so myself,” Alison said. “Such a figure, my God, I would have wallowed in it like a pig in mud.”
“But you didn’t once really consider...”
“Oh, I did, I did. More often than once. In fact, had I not been so hopelessly in love with you...”
“How can I believe that now?” Lizzie said.
“See how prettily she pouts,” Alison said.
“Felicity! The idea!”
“A marvelous idea, when one considers it,” Alison said, and burst into laughter. “I never so much as touched her even grazingly,” she said. “I’d have met Albert’s hand halfway there, I imagine. My point, dear Lizzie...”
“Would you have?”
“Done what? Licked her clean as a platter, had the opportunity been golden? Perhaps. I was so mad with desire for you that I might have leapt upon a broomstick had it chanced across my path.”
“I shall never believe you again,” Lizzie said. “Never.”
“To disbelieve truth is to invite deception,” Alison said. “My point, dear Lizzie, is that given Albert’s lascivious bent, and given my own... preferences, shall we say?... he is only too eager to seek his pleasure wherever he might find it, and to grant to me a privacy of my own. A civilized arrangement, you will admit, and one that allows for inventive accommodation. I can easily forestall him, if indeed he’s the cause of that puckered frown on your...”
“My frown has nothing to...”
“Most unattractive, I might add. I shall telegraph him in the morning to report that the weather here has turned beastly — as indeed it should within the next week or so — and that he would do well to linger in Germany, or perhaps go on to Italy where there will be sunshine for a good while yet. He will understand completely. You certainly didn’t believe that mere financial matters would have kept him in Berlin even this long? Die kleinen Puppen perhaps, but not die Börse.”
“So he’s had other women,” Lizzie said.
“Yes.”
“And you knew of them — know of them.”
“Yes.”
“And you?”
“Ah.”
“Have there been... other women for you as well?”
“The eternal question,” Alison said, and sighed.
“Have there been?”
“But honesty so offends you.”
“Tell me.”
“Yes.”
“Many?”
“Enough.”
“And other men as well?”
“One before Albert... and he not quite a man. None since.”
“Who?”
“The man? The boy, actually. The women? The lot of them?”
“You make them sound like an army!”
“Not quite. A brigade, perhaps.”
“Who?”
“See how jealous she becomes!”
“Who, Alison?”
“The women were a varied lot. A marquise here, a matchgirl there, you know how ferocious my appetite can be, Lizzie.”
“And the man? The boy, as you call him.”