‘What makes you think marriage and procreation don’t require some sort of hardening of spirit?’ Venetia had said once, in reply to this argument. ‘In fact, I think I’d rather a year in the trenches over twelve hours of childbirth.’ Jonathan had dropped his spoon into his pudding bowl with a clatter and glared at his mother, before standing up and storming out of the room. ‘I don’t know what makes him think he has a monopoly on suffering,’ said Venetia. ‘After all, women die in childbirth all the time. You don’t see us having tantrums about it at the dinner table.’ Monty grinned at Bettina: ‘There’s that famous hardening of spirit!’
Bettina and Margo had the room to themselves; Daphne, Dionysus, Boring Nameless Girl and the rest of the upper school were playing hockey outside. Margo was excused from any physical activity on account of her chronic asthma and Bettina had complained of severe menstrual pains to get out of playing. Margo was lying on the bed, one cheek bulging with a large cube of Turkish delight – her customary way of consuming them was first to nibble off the pistachio slivers and then store the chunk, hamster-like, between teeth and cheek, letting it slowly dissolve. Bettina lay next to her, her head resting on Margo’s shoulder. She could hear the yells and collisions of the hockey players outside.
‘Do you think you’ll marry Jasper?’ she said. Jasper was Margo’s sometime beau at home. He was twenty-one and stupid to the point of idiocy, apparently; but, being the son of a baron and set to inherit a humongous estate in Surrey, he was a tasty prospect. Also he was good-looking, which helped – said Margo – to distract from his puny intellect.
‘I think I’d be foolish not to at least consider it,’ she said. ‘But I’m not counting on it. He might not want to wait for me. He might set his sights on someone else in the meantime.’
‘Do you think he’ll be a virgin on your hypothetical wedding night?’
Margo snorted. ‘Don’t be silly. Men are never virgins on their wedding night.’
‘That’s not at all fair.’
Bettina felt Margo shrug.
‘I mean,’ continued Bettina, ‘the man gets to have all this experience so that when it comes to it, he can proceed with confidence. Whereas the woman hasn’t a clue what she’s doing and simply lies there like a… well, like a paralysed swan.’
‘Speak for yourself.’
Bettina looked up. She could see Margo’s jaw clenching as she sucked on the shrinking sweet. ‘You mean you’ve done it?’
Margo angled her head to look down at her, frowning and two-chinned. ‘Of course not. But I know some things.’
‘What things?’
‘Well. My father has a copy of the Kama Sutra that he thinks is well hidden. But is not. Ho hoho.’
‘What’s the Kama Sutra?’
‘It’s an ancient Indian sex book full of illustrations. Brown people twisting themselves into knots really. It’s quite graphic. They’re doing all sorts of outrageous things.’
‘Like what?’
Margo sighed. ‘I recall “the licking of the rose petals” and the “sucking of the mango fruit”. Regarding the oral tradition.’ She giggled, causing Bettina’s head to wobble. ‘I don’t suppose my rose petals shall get any attention from a stuffy old bore like Jasper. He has no imagination. And from what I’ve been led to believe, a man gets that kind of pleasure from a tart and saves the most austere fundamentals for his wife.’
‘But what about the wife?’
‘The wife, if she has chosen a stupid enough husband, will take a lover and hopefully get away with it.’
Bettina laughed into the hollow of Margo’s collarbone. ‘You wouldn’t!’
‘I don’t know. Who’s to say how I’ll feel about things in the future?’
A meaty splash from outside – the cook’s assistant, tossing yesterday’s vegetable water into the potted geraniums.
Margo ran her tongue along her gums to dislodge the last of the sweet, swallowing loudly. ‘Can I tell you a secret?’ she said. ‘Only you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone.’
‘I can keep a secret.’
‘You’d better.’
‘I will. Go on, tell me.’
‘My great-aunt on my father’s side, if rumours are to be believed, was a gigantic sapphic.’
Bettina hesitated. She didn’t want to have to admit to yet another ignorance, after the Kama Sutra and the stuff about the rose petals and mangoes.
As if reading her mind, Margo said, ‘It’s quite all right, I didn’t know what a sapphic was either, until someone told me. It’s a woman who goes with other women. Comes from the poet Sappho, who was apparently inclined that way, though you’ll notice that Miss Roundpenny missed that bit out in lesson.’
‘Gosh. How awful.’
‘Isn’t it? Makes me feel quite sick to think about. My great-aunt supposedly refused to marry and she was obscenely beautiful and rich so there were millions of suitors drooling over her, a positive parade of stiff-ons, honestly. But she wouldn’t have it. Drove her parents quite mad. She ended up a spinster, living in a large Tudor cottage with no servants. Can you imagine? And it’s not as if she couldn’t afford servants.’
‘What a lonely existence,’ said Bettina, brushing a few ticklish strands of Margo’s hair away from her face.
‘Oh, she wasn’t lonely. She lived with another woman, a “friend”. Her lover, of course. And get this: this “other woman” dressed as a man. Honestly. She wore breeches and kept her hair short. Hunted pheasants supposedly. Quite outrageous – I don’t know how she escaped lynching, to be honest with you. They lived as man and wife in that cottage. One can only assume they shared a bed.’
‘Not with any certainty.’
‘Well, I haven’t told you the whole of it yet.’
‘Then do, tell me the whole of it, before I die of boredom.’
Margo gave Bettina a playful smack on the head. Bettina flinched, her nose prodding Margo’s pillowy breast. She was nowhere near bored.
‘My great-uncle – the sapphic’s brother – went to visit her one day, and since she had no butler or parlour-maid, he let himself in.’
‘Oh dear, I don’t like where this is going.’
Margo shook her head as if to say, ‘Me neither,’ and continued: ‘So he lets himself in and looks around the house but finds no one. They must be out, he thinks, naturally enough. So he goes upstairs to the master bedroom, because the reason he’d called by was to collect his mother’s wedding ring, which’d been left to the sister on her death, but since the sister had no need of it, being a gigantic pervert, it seemed reasonable that he should have it.’
‘I’m almost too afraid to hear this.’
‘Oh, grow up, Bettina. If you can hear about men dying in the trenches with their intestines coming out, then you can hear about a couple of women fucking each other.’
‘Margueritte!’
Margo laughed with wicked delight, her whole body shuddering. She clearly took great enjoyment in shocking Bettina, just as Bart did. Bettina didn’t mind the shock so much as the feeling of being made to feel like an innocent country child, a naive doe-eyed ingenue. It ran contrary to the image she was trying to cultivate.