“Don’t spoil it.”
Yet if she maintained silence, there was in her wide bright greedy eyes, which she kept fixed unremittingly upon his, something communicative, not an inquiry now, a message rather, impossible to misunderstand, both possessive and intense. Only once did she speak again when, with an impatient glance towards her parents, she murmured restively:
“I wish they’d go.”
They did not, in fact, stay late. At half past ten Mrs Holbrook touched her husband, who was half asleep, on the shoulder.
“Time we old folks were in bed.” Then, with a restraining smile: “You two can stay just a little while. But don’t wait up too long.”
“We won’t,” Doris said briefly.
For the next number the lights were lowered, and as they swung round behind the band she said, a trifle unsteadily:
“Let’s take a turn outside.”
It was warm and still in the garden and dark under the high screen of greenery. She leaned back against the smooth bole of a great catalpa tree, still looking up at him. Trembling all over, he placed his arm behind her neck and kissed her. In response she pushed her pointed tongue between his lips. Then, as he pressed closer, the button on his cuff caught the string of seed pearls round her throat. The clasp gave way and pearls dropped into the low front of her dress.
“Now you’ve done it,” she said, with a queer strained laugh, passing her hand across her throat. “You’ll have to find them for me.”
His head was whirling, his heart pounding like mad. He began to search for the necklace, first in the yoke of her dress, then moving between her firmly nippled breasts, further down over the smooth flatness beyond.
“I’ll tear your dress.”
“Never mind the dress,” she said, in that same choked voice.
Then he discovered that she was wearing nothing beneath her frock and, since all the time she had the broken necklace in her hand, what he found was not the pearls. He forgot everything; all the suppressed desire of the past weeks went through him in a blinding rush.
“Not here, you fool.” She broke away quickly. “In your room . . . in five minutes.”
He went straight upstairs, tore off his clothes, switched off the light and flung himself into the bed. A shaft of moonlight pierced the darkness as she came in, dosing the door behind her. She took off her dressing gown, stood stark naked, then parted the mosquito curtains. Her body had an almost sultry warmth as she wound her arms tightly round his neck and drew him towards her, fastening her mouth on his so that her teeth edged into his lower lip. She was breathing quickly and under her crushed breast he could hear the hot pulsing of her heart.
“Quick,” she breathed. “Can’t you see I’m dying for you?”
If he had not at once realised that she was not a virgin, now he would have known it by the nature of her response. When at last she lay back, though not releasing him, she gave a long-drawn-out sigh, then pulled his head down beside her on the pillow again.
“You were good, darling. Was I?”
“Yes,” he said in a low voice, and meant it.
“What a lot of time we’ve wasted. Couldn’t you see I wanted you, wanted you like mad, right from the start? But it’s going to be perfect from now on. We’ll tell them in the morning. Then we’ll both be off with Bert to New York. Oh, God, couldn’t you have seen how gone I am on you? I’ll never have enough of you—you’ll see.” With her tongue she touched, played with his lips, stroked his body with her finger tips. A sudden rigor passed over her. “Again,” she whispered, “only longer this time . . . and the next. It’s so lovely, make it last.”
She remained with him till the first grey light of dawn.
That morning, after hilarious congratulations at breakfast, he took a walk to clear his head. He felt a trifle listless, but she was really the goods, he could scarcely wait until tonight, and of course there was the job, the money, and the future all secure. Damn it all, a fellow had to look after himself. In the dulled state of his mind, it was less difficult to shut out the past and think only of the future. Passing across the Howrah Bridge he leaned suddenly over the parapet and without looking, taking his hand from his inside pocket, dropped the two letters, still unopened, into the filthy, corpse-polluted waters of the sacred Ganges.
Part Three
Chapter One
Dawn comes early in the Swiss Oberland. Its hurtful brightness and the clanging of the cowbells awoke him. As he had feared, the pheno-barbitone had failed to act, and in those hours of wakefulness he had relived every moment of those fatal, youthful months until, tortured, at three in the morning he had fumbled for a capsule of sodium anytal, which had given him a brief respite of total blackout. Now, with throbbing temples, deadened by the drug, he faced the situation dully yet with almost desperate resolution, aware that, at long last, he must take the decisive step.
Wilenski had told him so, at that last consultation in New York, smiling down encouragingly, as he always did, with one arm across the headrest of the couch and lapsing into that caressing Southern accent which he used to untie the inner tangles of his patients.
“You may have to go back one day, just to break that little old guilt-complex for keeps. Actually, you want to go back, partly because you’ve got a suppressed nostalgia for home, but of course mainly to see your—your friend and straighten things out with her. Well, why not? Better late than never. If things haven’t gone too well for her, you’re in a position to help. Why,” his smile took on a genial slyness, “now you’re a gay widower, if you find her still attractive, you could clear the whole thing up by marrying her—provided, of course, she’s free.”
“She will never have married.” He had no doubts whatsoever on that score, though he hoped she might have found happiness.
“Keep what I’m telling you in mind, then. And if you feel you’re getting into trouble again, take my advice and go back.”
Yes, he would do it, and at once. Relief came to him with the reaffirmation of his decision. He pressed the bell and, after consulting the Swissair schedule, told Arturo to ring Zurich and reserve a seat on the two o’clock plane for Prestwick. He got up, shaved, dressed, breakfasted downstairs. Afterwards, while Arturo packed his valise, he smoked a pensive cigarette. He was taking only a few things, returning quietly, humbly, without the slightest fuss or ostentation, no Rolls, no signs of wealth, nothing. The thought, arousing sombre anticipation, injected his melancholy with a transitory gleam. As for the villa, in his absence, with a household so well organised, staffed by such trustworthy servants—he had hinted to them of an urgent business appointment—it was simplicity itself to leave, even at a moment’s notice.
The phone rang: he rose and went to the instrument. As he had expected, it was Frida von Altishofer.
“Good morning. Am I disturbing you?”
“Not at all.”
“Then tell me quickly. Are you well . . . better?”
His frightful night made him long for a word of sympathy, but he knew this to be unwise.
“Definitely better.”
“I am so glad—and relieved, my friend. Shall we go walking this morning?”
“I wish we could. However . . .” he cleared his throat and delivered the polite fiction he had prepared: yesterday there had been a telegram, purely a matter of business, but upsetting, as she had observed, which he ought to put right by a visit to his British lawyer. He must leave this morning.