The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (44 page)

"It's my little gel, sir.
She won't make no noise. She's good as gold." Sensing his disapproval,
she hurried on. "There's a chophouse just a step away, sir, if you're 'ungry."

Charles was not; but nor
did he now feel sexually hungry, either. He found it hard to look at her.
"Pray order for yourself what you want. I don't ... that is ... some wine,
perhaps, if it can be got." "French or German, sir?"

"A glass of hock--you like
that?"

"Thank you, sir. I'll send
the lad out."

And again she disappeared.
He heard her call sharply, much less genteel, down the hall. "'Arry!"

The murmur of voices, the
front door slammed. When she came back he asked if he should not have given
her some money. But it seemed this service was included. "Won't you take
the chair, sir?"

And she held out her hands
for his hat and stick, which he still held. He handed them over, then parted
the tails of his frock coat and sat by the fire. The coal she had put on
seemed slow to burn. She knelt before it, and before him, and busied herself
again with the poker.

"They're best quality, they
didn't ought to be so slow catchin'. It's the cellar. Damp as old 'ouses."

He watched her profile in
the red light from the fire. It was not a pretty face, but sturdy, placid,
unthinking. Her bust was well developed; her wrists and hands surprisingly
delicate, almost fragile. They, and her abundant hair, momentarily sparked
off his desire. He almost put out his hand to touch her, but changed his
mind. He would feel better when he had more wine. They remained so for
a minute or more. At last she looked at him, and he smiled. For the first
time that day he had a fleeting sense of peace. She turned her eyes back
to the fire then and murmured, "'E won't be more'n a minute. It's only
two steps."

And so they stayed in silence
again. But such moments as these were very strange to a Victorian man;
even between husband and wife the intimacy was largely governed by the
iron laws of convention. Yet here Charles was, sitting at the fire of this
woman he had not known existed an hour before, like ... "The father of
your little girl... ?"

"'E's a sojjer, sir."

"A soldier?"

She stared at the fire: memories.

"'E's out in Hindia now."

"Would he not marry you?"

She smiled at his innocence,
then shook her head. "'E gave me money for when I was brought to bed."
By which she seemed to suggest that he had done all one could decently
expect.

"And could you not find any
other means of livelihood?"

"There's work. But it's all
day work. And then when I paid to look after little Mary . . ." she shrugged.
"Once you been done wrong to, you been done wrong to. Can't be mended,
so you 'ave to make out as best you can."

"And you believe this the
best way?"

"I don't know no other no
more, sir."

But she spoke without much
sign of shame or regret. Her fate was determined, and she lacked the imagination
to see it.

There were feet on the stairs.
She rose and went to the door and opened it before the knock. Charles glimpsed
a boy of thirteen or so outside, who had evidently been trained not to
stare, since his eyes remained down while she herself carried the tray
to a table by the window and then returned to the door with her purse.
There was the chink of small coins, and the door softly closed. She poured
him a glass of wine and brought it to him, setting the half-bottle on a
trivet in the hearth beside him, as if all wine should be warmed. Then
she sat and removed the cloth from the plate on the tray. Out of the corner
of his eye Charles saw a small pie, potatoes, a tumbler of what was evidently
gin and water, for she would hardly have had water alone brought up. His
hock tasted acid, but he drank it in the hope that his senses would be
dulled.

The small crackle from the
now burning fire, the quiet hiss of the gas jets, the chink of cutlery:
he could not see how they should ever pass to the real purpose of his presence.
He drank another glass of the vinegary wine.

But she soon finished her
repast. The tray was taken outside. Then she went back into the darkened
bedroom where the little girl slept. A minute passed. She reappeared. Now
she wore a white peignoir, which she held closed. Her hair was loosened
and fell down her back; and her hand held the edges of the robe together
sufficiently tightly to show she was naked beneath it. Charles rose.

"No 'aste, sir. Finish your
wine."

He stared down at the bottle
beside him, as if he had not noticed it before; then nodded and sat down
again, and poured himself another glass. She moved in front of him and
reached, her other hand still holding the peignoir together, to turn down
the gas to two small green points. Firelight bathed her, softened her young
features; and then again she knelt at his feet facing the fire. After a
moment she reached out both hands to it and the robe fell a little open.
He saw a white breast, shadowed, and not fully bared.

She spoke into the fire.
"Would you like me to sit on your knees, sir?"

"Yes ... please do."

He tossed off his wine. Clutching
her robe together again she stood, then sat easily back across his braced
legs, her right arm round his shoulders. His left arm he put round her
waist, while his right lay, with an absurd unnaturalness, along the low
arm of the chair. For a moment her left hand clasped the fabric of her
gown, but then she reached it out and caressed his cheek. A moment; she
kissed his other cheek. Their eyes met. She glanced down at his mouth,
as if shyly, but she went about her business without shyness.

"You're a very 'andsome gentleman."

"You're a pretty girl."

"You like us wicked girls?"

He noted she had dropped
the "sir." He tightened his left arm a little.

She reached then and took
his recalcitrant right hand and led it under her robe to her bare breast.
He felt the stiff point of flesh in the center of his palm. Her hand drew
his head to hers, and they kissed, as his hand, now recalling forbidden
female flesh, silken and swollen contours, a poem forgotten, sized and
approved the breast then slid deeper and lower inside her robe to the incurve
of her waist. She was naked, and her mouth tasted faintly of onions.

Perhaps it was that which
gave him his first wave of nausea. He concealed it, becoming two people:
one who had drunk too much and one who was now sexually excited. The robe
fell shamelessly open over the girl's slight belly, the dark well of pubic
hair, the white thighs that seduced him both by sight and pressure. His
hand did not wander lower than her waist; but it wandered above, touching
those open breasts, the neck, the shoulders. She made no advances after
that first leading of his hand; she was his passive victim, her head resting
on his shoulder, marble made warmth, an Etty nude, the Pygmalion myth brought
to a happy end. Another wave of nausea came over him. She sensed it, but
misinterpreted.

"I'm too 'eavy for you?"

"No ... that is ..."

"It's a nice bed. Soft."

She stood away from him,
went to it and folded back the bedclothes carefully, then turned to look
at him. She let the robe slip from her shoulders. She was well-formed,
with shapely buttocks. A moment, then she sat and swung her legs under
the bedclothes and lay back with her eyes closed, in what she transparently
thought was a position both discreet and abandoned. A coal began to flicker
brightly, casting intense but quavering shadows; a cage, the end-rails
of the bed, danced on the wall behind her. Charles stood, fighting the
battle in his stomach. It was the hock--he had been insane to drink it.
He saw her eyes open and look at him. She hesitated, then reached out those
delicate white arms. He made a gesture towards his frock coat.

After a few moments he felt
a little better and began seriously to undress; he laid his clothes neatly,
much more neatly than he ever did in his own room, over the back of the
chair. He had to sit to unbutton his boots. He stared into the fire as
he took off his trousers and the undergarment, which reached, in the fashion
of those days, somewhat below his knees. But his shirt he could not bring
himself to remove. The nausea returned. He gripped the lace-fringed mantelpiece,
his eyes closed, fighting for control. This time she took his delay for
shyness and threw back the bedclothes as if to come and lead him to bed.
He forced himself to walk towards her. She sank back again, but without
covering her body. He stood by the bed and stared down at her. She reached
out her arms. He still stared, conscious only of the swimming sensation
in his head, the now totally rebellious fumes of the milk punch, champagne,
claret, port, that
damnable hock...

"I don't know your name."

She smiled up at him, then
reached for his hands and pulled him down towards her.

"Sarah, sir."

He was racked by an intolerable
spasm. Twisting sideways he began to vomit into the pillow beside her
shocked, flungback head.
 
 

. . . Arise and
fly The reeling faun, the sensual feast;
Move upward, working out
the beast,
And let the ape and tiger
die.
--Te
nnyson, In Memoriam
(1850)

"'E's not 'imself," said
the dowager, also for the twenty-ninth time. If she felt irritated, however,
it was with Sam, not the young lord upstairs. Ever since their return from
Lyme two days before, the valet had managed to hint at dark goings-on.
It is true he had graciously communicated the news about Winsyatt; but
he had regularly added "And that ain't 'alf of what's a-foot." He refused
to be drawn. "There's sartin confidences" (a word he pronounced with a
long i) "as can't be yet spoken of, Mrs. R. But things 'as 'appened my
heyes couldn't 'ardly believe they was seein'."

Sam had certainly one immediate
subject for bitterness. Charles had omitted to dismiss him for the evening
when he went out to see Mr. Freeman. Thus Sam had waited in and up until
after midnight, only to be greeted, when he heard the front door open,
by a black look from a white face.

"Why the devil aren't you
in bed?"

"'Cos you didn't say you
was dinin' out, Mr. Charles."

"I've been at my club."

"Yes, sir."

"And take that insolent look
off your damned face."

"Yes, sir."

Sam held out his hands and
took--or caught--the various objects, beginning with sundry bits of outdoor
apparel and terminating in a sulphurous glare, that Charles threw at him.
Then the master marched majestically upstairs. His mind was now very sober,
but his body was still a little drunk, a fact Sam's bitter but unseen smirk
had only too plainly reflected.

"You're right, Mrs. R. 'E's
not 'imself. 'E was blind drunk last night."

"I wouldn't 'ave believed
it possible."

"There's lots o' things yours
truly wouldn't 'ave believed possible, Mrs. R. As 'as 'appened hall the
same."

"'E never wants to cry off!"

"Wild 'osses wouldn't part
my lips, Mrs. R." The cook took a deep-bosomed breath. Her clock ticked
beside her range. Sam smiled at her. "But you're sharp, Mrs. R. Very sharp."

Clearly Sam's own feeling
of resentment would very soon have accomplished what the wild horses were
powerless to effect. But he was saved, and the buxom Mrs. Rogers thwarted,
by the bell. Sam went and lifted the two-gallon can of hot water that had
been patiently waiting all morning at the back of the range, winked at
his colleague, and disappeared.

There are two kinds of hangover:
in one you feel ill and incapable, in the other you feel ill and lucid.
Charles had in fact been awake, indeed out of bed, some time before he
rang. He had the second sort of hangover. He remembered only too clearly
the events of the previous night.