Destiny (28 page)

"You see?" He hfted his face from her breasts, his hands closing over them tight. His mouth was slack, wet with saliva from his sucking.

"You like it? It feels good? Tell me, honey. Tell me how good it feels. You know what it does to me? Can you feel that? Look—come closer. Sit across my lap. Straddle me. ..." His arms tightened around her, lifted her awkwardly, slid her up and across so her legs were on either side of his thighs. His glazed eyes looked up at her; he was panting, his voice so thick he could hardly speak. "You feel it now. There . . ." He gave a sharp thrust with his groin. "Feel how hard I am, how big? You did that. You made me like that. Because you're beautiful, so beautiful. You know I get hard just looking at you, not even touching? Just looking and I'm so hard I could burst my pants? Touch me. Give me your hand. Just on the outside now. There—see? There's nothing to be afraid of. It feels good. Doesn't it feel good?"

He pressed her hand down, onto his groin, onto the bulge of his penis

174 • SALLY BEAUMAN

under the white Hnen trousers. Helene's head swayed against his neck; everything was black now, black and hot, and . . .

"You all right, honey?" She felt his body stiffen suddenly, heard, dimly, that his voice had changed. He gripped her upper arms and shook her head. "You okay? You going to pass out or what? Jesus. Shit. Helene . . . look at me now. ..."

"I'm going to be sick." Her own voice seemed to come from a long way away. Her body felt terribly cold, and her neck had gone all weak, so her head wouldn't stay up.

"Here. Quick. Get off of me. . . ." He was pushing her, half-lifting her, thrusting her outside the little hut. She fell on her knees by the bushes. Then she vomited all the bourbon she'd drunk.

He didn't watch her, that was the only good thing. The minute it started happening, he turned and went back into the hut. When it was over, she just crouched there for a moment, shaking, her mind clear as crystal now, filled with words and images, and her body sick with shame. Eventually, a little unsteadily, she got back to her feet. He had come back now, and was standing in the door watching her, her bra and shirt in his hand. She couldn't look at him. She let him take charge.

"Better?" He sounded almost amused, his voice back to normal, and all the alarm she had heard in it gone. "Okay, now come back inside here and put these on. Then I'll drive you home." Inside the hut he helped her into the bra, did it up, fastened her shirt. Then he unscrewed the silver flask again. "Okay. Now, rinse your mouth out with this. Then spit. You'll feel a whole lot better."

Helene did as she was told. Then she looked up at him for the first time, and he grinned.

"You took a swallow too much, that's all. On an empty stomach maybe. It's easy enough done. You feel better now?" Helene nodded. "Now, sit down. I want you to listen. I'm not going to touch you, honey. It's all right. There. That's the way. . . ." Shakily, she sat down. He stood in the shadows, looking down at her. "I didn't know ... I didn't figure on the bourbon affecting you like that. I'd forgotten, I guess, how it can be with hard liquor the first time. ..."

Slowly Helene raised her head and looked at him. She knew he didn't want to talk about the liquor. He lifted his hand and wiped it across his forehead, and she saw he was sweating hard.

"I guess ... I guess I got a bit carried away back there. Frightened you, maybe. I'm sorry if I did that, honey. . . ." He moved then, as if encouraged by the fact that she said nothing. He sat down, near her but not too close, then after a while, he took her hand. "You angry with me, Helene? I don't ever want you to be angry—not with me." He paused.

DESTINY • 175

"You see—I guess it's hard for you to understand. But a girl like you—a woman like you. Well, a man finds himself alone with her, when he's admired her a long time, thought how beautiful she was and—and then it's not too easy for him to behave maybe the way he ought to behave. You understand that?"

"I—I suppose so."

"Well, I'm telling you, honey, that's the way it is." A note of irritation came into his voice. "You just hsten now, and you'll understand. I'm a man, Helene, just an ordinary man, and I have needs and wants, the same as all men do. Not all women feel the same way. Sometimes they don't want a man to be touching them, kissing them, and when that happens it's hard on the man, Helene, real hard. He kind of shuts himself up inside; he gets to feeling dead—half-alive at best. Now, no disrespect to Mrs. Calvert, but she and I have been married a long time now, and for years, honey, years . . . well, it's God's truth, I've been a very unhappy man."

"You? Unhappy?" Helene lifted her head.

"That's right."

"You mean you don't love Mrs. Calvert anymore?"

"Well, not exactly, honey. My wife is a fine woman, and I admire her, and I wouldn't ever want to hurt her. But—put it Uke this—I don't feel about her the way I do about you."

"About me?" Helene's eyes widened, and he moved quickly, crouching before her and clasping her hands in his, so she looked down into his face.

"Well, you must know that . . ."He smiled at her. "You think I would bring you here, and kiss you—do all those things—if I didn't admire you? If you hadn't just driven me so wild that I hardly knew what I was doing anymore? Maybe . . ." He frowned. "Maybe, if I hadn't heard about your seeing Billy Tanner, I might have managed to hold it in. But when I heard that, I swear to you, Helene, I felt so angry, so jealous, I could hardly think anymore. ..."

"You were jealous? Of Billy Tanner?" She stared at him in disbelief, and he shook his head.

"I most certainly was. What man wouldn't be, thinking of a girl with another boy—a girl he knows he wants to love."

Helene stood up slowly.

"That can't be true. It can't be."

Quickly, he was by her side, pressing her against him. Then he released her, and looked down into her eyes.

"Would I lie to you? Honey, would I?" His hand snaked about her waist, and he gave her a little half-playful squeeze. "Helene, I'm not a man lies about things like that. Don't you think that now, or you'll make me mad. Now, Usten to me ... I know I did wrong. I know I let things get

176 • SALLY BEAUMAN

out of hand. But I want you to say you'll see me again. Just sometimes. Just so's I can look at you, and we can walk and talk and go for a drive maybe, the way we did today. Nothing more. There's no harm in that, is there?"

"I—I suppose not. If we just did that." Helene hesitated. Whispery doubts crowded in at the back of her mind, but he was looking her straight in the eye now, and he was almost pleading.

"Thursday," he said. "I could pick you up right after school, on the Orangeburg road. We could go for a httle drive, then I'd drop you off home. No one needs to know—just us. It could be our little secret." He hesitated. "You wouldn't want to tell anyone. Your mother—you wouldn't want to tell her." Helene sighed and plucked at her skirt.

"No. I don't talk to her so much these days. Not the way I used to."

He sighed. What she said seemed to ease his mind. "Thursday then. Promise me. Make me happy."

"All right. Maybe." She swallowed. "But you promise—what you said? Just a drive?"

"I promise. I swear it to you, Helene." He pressed his mouth quickly and lightly against her hair.

"You're the most beautiful thing I ever saw—you know that? Now, come on—I'll drive you home. I'll drop you off just before the trailer park. That okay with you?"

EDOUARD

OXFORD—ALGERIA—FRANCE, 1949-1958

^ ^ I ell him I shall be there at once." I "At once, milady?"

J. "Almost at once. I'm in London at the moment. In the bath, actually. But in a minute I shall just jump in the car, and then I'll be in Oxford before you can blink."

"Yes, milady."

"He is there, I suppose?"

"Yes, milady. He has finals next week."

This was said meaningfully; there was a sigh at the other end of the line.

"How perfectly horrible. In that case I shall certainly hurry."

The receiver was replaced. Mr. BuUins, porter at Magdalen CoUege for forty years, and senior porter for the last ten, put on his bowler hat and the bland expression he always assumed on such occasions and walked to staircase 111 in New Buildings, overlooking the Deer Park, where E.A.J. de Chavigny had some of the most desirable rooms in college. Below him was H.J.E. Dudley, Lord Sayle; above him were the rooms of his closest friend, the Honorable C.V.T. Glendinning. The gentlemen's titles did not appear on the hand-painted signs at the foot of the staircase; in certain other Oxford colleges such practices were countenanced: not, Mr. Bulhns thought proudly, in Magdalen, which, in his opinion, was not only the most beautiful college in Oxford, but also the only one of any consequence.

He puffed his way up to the first floor, and finding the outer door open, knocked on the inner one.

He entered to find Edouard de Chavigny stretched out in an armchair, wearing cricket flannels, with a copy of John Maynard Keynes's Treatise on Money open on his lap. He did not appear to be reading it.

Mr. BuUins regarded him with approval. It was well known in college that, barring some accident, Mr. de Chavigny would take a First in his pohtics, philosophy, and economics finals. This was good; what was even better—and the more remarkable, given that the gentleman was French—

180 • SALLY BEAUMAN

was that he would do so in the proper manner: with httle apparent effort on his part, with a neghgent modesty, as befitted an Enghsh gentleman.

In Mr. Bullins's opinion, the war had had a regrettable effect upon Oxford, and even upon Magdalen. A number of undergraduates were men in their mid-twenties who had served in the war and whose university education had therefore been deferred. These young men, taciturn, hardworking, serious, did not conduct themselves in what Mr. Bullins considered the correct manner. Edouard de Chavigny did: he was a fine athlete, with a blue for cricket, and had taken so well to rowing that even though a late starter, he had narrowly missed selection for the Oxford eight. He spoke successfully at Union debates; he had acted with the Oxford University Dramatic Society; he knew how to enjoy himself He gave parties at which a great deal of champagne was consumed; he attended other parties; he entertained young women to luncheon parties in his rooms—women whose fashionable faces Mr. Bullins recognized from society magazines such as the Tatler, which formed his own favorite bedtime reading. He dressed superbly while looking as if clothes were unimportant to him. He was extemely good-looking, and extremely charming, generous to his scout, and to Mr. Bullins on numerous occasions. In short, Mr. Bullins admired him, and—this was rarer still—liked him. He would go far, this young man, Mr. Bullins considered, and he looked forward to reading of his progress once he left Oxford.

He cleared his throat as the young man looked up.

"Lady Isobel Herbert, Mr. de Chavigny," he announced. "She has just telephoned. She says that she is in the bath now, sir, but that she will be with you shortly."

He conveyed the message at ten-thirty in the morning. Lady Isobel's idea of time was exceedingly flexible. She arrived at Magdalen in her Derby Bentley at three-fifteen. Edouard, who had had plenty of time to speculate, was still surprised by her arrival. He could think of no reason to account for it. Over the past few years, since she had broken off her engagement to Jean-Paul, he had seen her on various occasions—at balls in London, or at country-house weekends, once at Christian Glendinning's parents' house, but they had spoken only briefly. That was all. She had never visited him in Oxford before; he had not been alone with her for years—not since the war, not since London. He assumed the visit must be one of Isobel's whims, and there had been many of those. A brief flirtation with the Communist Party, done mainly to shock, he supposed. A narrowly avoided divorce scandal involving a prominent Member of Parliament. At least two further broken engagements that he could remember: one to a Battle of Britain flying ace, the other to an Italian count interna-

DESTINY • 181

tionally celebrated as a racing driver. Isobel seemed to like danger at second hand, he thought, and wondered again why she was coming.

She walked into his rooms without knocking, wearing an emerald-green silk dress, no hat, and the Conway pearls. The sun caught her dazzUng hair, and as Edouard sprang to his feet, she smiled at him.

"Tell me, darling Edouard," she said, "have you learned to make cocktails yet?"

And then he knew why she had come.

She drank two dry martinis, and said she wasn't hungry and didn't want to eat. Then she lit a cigarette and curled up on the window seat. Edouard waited.

"Shall you get your first? I hear you're going to."

"Perhaps."

"Hugo said you would. I ran into him the other day."

"How is he?"

"All right." She paused. "No—probably not very all right. Unhappy, I think. A bit lost. Feeling he hasn't done things he ought to have done— hasn't fulfilled his promise. I don't know. Jagged. The way lots of people are. I saw his cousin Christian in the quad as I came in. Wearing a pink silk shirt and a yellow tie. He hasn't changed." She smiled. "Is he still your best friend?"

"My closest friend, yes."

"I'm glad. I Uke him." She hesitated. "He's madly queer, of course."

"Even so."

Isobel flicked ash out of the window carelessly and frowned.

"How's Jean-Paul? Still fighting?"

"He's still in the army. A desk job, mainly. He might be posted to Indochina, I suppose. It's in the cards. He spends most of his leaves in Algeria—at our vineyards, you know. He likes it there."

"Who minds the shop when he's away?"

Eduoard shrugged. "I shall. When I go down from Oxford."

"Do you want to do that?"

"I do, yes. Jean hasn't much time—and I think I might do it quite well." He hesitated. "Everything's stood still, you see, since my father died. There's a lot of room for development. Expansion."