“He couldn’t be more wrong,” Howard said.
Evelyn said, “Of course he’s wrong. Wait till that interview with George is shown Friday night, and they all see just how contemporary you are, just how much you’re still an active important influence in the world. Won’t that review look snotty and silly when it comes out two days later!”
Why did Howard look so odd when she said that? But she didn’t have the inclination to concern herself with his reactions, it was Bradford she was thinking about now. And Bradford merely shook his head and said, “No one will listen. And why should they? I don’t matter any more.” He smiled without humor, turning to Howard and saying, “You know, he even closed off the Congress to me. I could still have changed my mind again and made the race, it’s still a year till the election, but how could I do it now, and give Rutherford his self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“A month from now,” Howard said, “that review will be forgotten. You know that, Brad, you’re just being pessimistic. You can do whatever you want.”
“Perhaps.”
Howard said, looking at his watch, “I’ve got to get back. But don’t let this thing worry you, Brad. It won’t make a bit of difference in the sales or in the final estimation of the book.”
“I know,” Bradford said, but bitterly.
“It’s so stupid,” Evelyn said angrily.
“True,” Howard said. “See me out, Evelyn. I’ll call you later in the week, Brad.”
Evelyn was surprised that Howard took her arm and walked with her down the hall. She looked back at Bradford, who was also looking somewhat surprised, and who belatedly started forward, calling, “I’ll see you to the door, too, Howard. I may not be able to run, but I can still walk.”
“Oh, of course,” Howard said, stopping at once to wait for him, sounding completely surprised. He smiled at Bradford, coming toward them, and turned to say quickly under his breath to Evelyn, “Lay off the interview.”
“Why?”
He gave her a warning look, and then Bradford was up to them and it was impossible to ask again. The three of them walked on toward the front door, Howard continuing to give Bradford reassurances about the meaninglessness of the review, and Evelyn with some distraction echoing his sentiments.
They were outside, waving goodbye to Howard, when the familiar yellow Jaguar pulled in. Howard and Robert honked to one another in passing, and then the Jaguar had stopped where Howard’s Chrysler had just been and Robert was coming toward them, smiling, saying, “Hi, Evelyn. Evening, sir.”
Evelyn smiled back. It was a sufficient reason for loving him that he couldn’t get used to calling her grandfather by his first name. Bradford had given up suggesting it by now, and merely accepted sir as a form of familiar address.
“I’ll get Dinah,” Evelyn said, and turned away. As she went inside she heard Bradford say, “You do a lot of driving, Robert,” and Robert answer, “Yes, sir. I love to drive.”
iv
Evelyn said, “Is this the same bed—?”
“No. I got rid of that one after the divorce. That was stupid, wasn’t it?”
They were standing side by side, just within the bedroom doorway. She looked up at him and said, “Not at all. I understand why you did it. And I’m glad you did.”
He returned her look, and seemed about to say something humorous, and then something serious, and then something inconsequential, but finally he didn’t say anything at all, and when his arms came around her she thought, This time, there won’t be any stopping.
She’d never been to his house before, and how odd that seemed now. Tonight, they’d returned Dinah to the house, full of spaghetti, well before eight, and there had been a moment of indecision about how to spend the rest of the evening, until he’d said, his manner a little too impromptu to be believed, “Come see my house! We can do it in an hour and a half. It’s a beautiful night, why not?”
There were thousands of reasons why not. Should he drive two round trips the same day? That would be four hundred miles, most of it at night. But she found herself agreeing at once, raising none of the objections that quite naturally crowded her mind, so here it was nine-thirty and she was in the town of Lancashire, and Robert was giving her the tour of his house. It was neater and more settled than she would have expected a home of his to be, but of course he’d been married when the house was bought.
But he’d made some changes of his own, and this bed toward which he was now moving her had never known the body of his ex-wife. She was glad of that; she wanted no ghosts in bed with her, the first time with Robert.
Ghosts. But Fred was no longer even that real, was he, there wasn’t even enough left of him to put together a good ghost. Two months from now he would have been dead three years, having last physically departed from her a full year before that. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve loved a man, and she had never doubted her love for Fred, after four years of permanent separation love will have withered to no more than a memorial echo. Robert was the one now who kept love alive, so the bed was free of ghosts from everywhere.
The Frenchman never even crossed her mind.
They were still completely dressed when they stretched out side by side on the bed, the little puffs on the bedspread tickling her neck. She kicked off her shoes, kicking them over the edge so they bumped on the carpet, lighter sounds than the thumps made by his shoes. Then his mouth found her mouth again, and his fingers found her zippers, and for a while they made slow progress together, concentrating their attention on kisses, until a mounting sense of urgency in her made her roll hard against him, both to help him reach the closures of her clothing and to encourage him to move faster. He needed no more spur. He lifted his head and grinned down at her and said, “Evelyn, in five seconds I’m going to rip this stuff right off you.”
“I’ll help, you don’t have to rip it.”
There was something funny about them sitting up side by side on the bedspread, two grown people, pulling their clothing off, and the funniness struck them both at the same time, and then there they were laughing at one another, laughing at themselves, laughing simply because it felt so good to laugh. “God, I love you!” Robert shouted through his laughter, and Evelyn cried delightedly, “God, I love you back!”
They seemed to tend to extremes of attitude, and their next swing was to deep solemnity. Both naked now, the bed also naked, stripped down to the pale sheet — only the hall light gave illumination — they looked at one another in something like awe, and neither moved, as though a spell had been cast on them by a passing wizard and they would have to sit that way in semi-darkness forever.
He’s hairy, she thought. I’ve never seen such a hairy man. And something deeper than thought told her, against all reason, that that meant he would be cruel. It was against all reason, but she was afraid.
And so, in a different way, must he have been. He broke the immobile silence between them at last, reaching out one cautious hand toward her and saying, “Evelyn...”
He was going to give her a chance to change her mind, to back out, even now. “Don’t,” she said, not wanting the opportunity, not knowing what she might do with it. “Don’t say anything, please.”
“Evelyn.” But the name meant something different this time, and she leaned toward him as he moved to meet her.
It was like being a virgin all over again, her body having gone so long unused. (No memory of the Frenchman, none at all, not till long afterward, when she laughed to think she hadn’t thought of him.) But he was not cruel — she had known, really, that he wouldn’t be — and the most beautiful thing in the world was to move her left arm up, her left hand up, rest the palms and fingerpads against the side of his head, stroke downward to his strong neck, feel the intricate curvature of his head and his throat and his shoulders, and all the time feel the strong protective weight of him stretched atop her, the firm resilience of the new bed beneath her, the strong stroke of him within her. His breathing fanned slow and warm beside her ear, her gathered hair, her slender throat, and then quickened its pace, and she thought how sweet and beautiful that she was giving him a climax, and she hoped he would understand that it was all right that she wouldn’t reach one, that this was all perfect anyway, that orgasm wasn’t as important to a woman if everything else was right, that it was only to be expected that she wouldn’t have one, after such a long abstinence, in a strange place, with a new man.