having touched her shoulder.
He stepped outside again. It was dark, but he saw her almost immediately. She was walking away from Greg Peshkov, looking a little flushed, as if she had been arguing with him. ‘You might be the only person here who isn’t a goddamned conservative,’ she said to Woody. She sounded a little drunk.
Woody smiled. ‘Thanks for the compliment – I think.’
‘Do you know about the march tomorrow?’ she asked abruptly.
He did. Strikers from the Buffalo Metal Works planned a demonstration to protest against the beating up of union men from New York. Woody guessed that was the subject of her argument with Greg: his father owned the factory. ‘I was planning to go,’ he said. ‘I might take some photographs.’
‘Bless you,’ she said, and she kissed him.
He was so surprised that he almost failed to respond. For a second he stood there passively as she crushed her mouth to his, and he tasted whisky on her lips.
Then he recovered his composure. He put his arms around her and pressed her body to his, feeling her breasts and her thighs press delightfully against him. Part of him feared she would be offended, push him away, and angrily accuse him of treating her disrespectfully; but a deeper instinct told him he was on safe ground.
He had little experience of kissing girls – and none of kissing mature women of eighteen – but he liked the feel of her soft mouth so much that he moved his lips against hers in little nibbling motions that gave him exquisite pleasure, and he was rewarded by hearing her moan quietly.
He was vaguely aware that if one of the older generation should walk by, there might be an embarrassing scene, but he was too aroused to care.
Joanne’s mouth opened and he felt her tongue. This was new to him: the few girls he had kissed had not done that. But he figured she must know what she was doing, and anyway he really liked it. He imitated the motions of her tongue with his own. It was shockingly intimate and highly exciting. It must have been the right thing to do, because she moaned again.
Summoning his nerve, he put his right hand on her left breast. It was wonderfully soft and heavy under the silk of her dress. As he caressed it he felt a small protuberance and thought, with a thrill of discovery, that it must be her nipple. He rubbed it with his thumb.
She pulled away from him abruptly. ‘Good God,’ she said. ‘What am I doing?’
‘You’re kissing me,’ Woody said happily. He rested his hands on her round hips. He could feel the heat of her skin through the silk dress. ‘Let’s do it some more.’
She pushed his hands away. ‘I must be out of my mind. This is the Racquet Club, for Christ’s sake.’
Woody could see that the spell had been broken, and sadly there would be no more kissing tonight. He looked around. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘No one saw.’ He felt enjoyably conspiratorial.
‘I’d better go home, before I do something even more stupid.’
He tried not to be offended. ‘May I escort you to your car?’
‘Are you crazy? If we walk in there together everyone will guess what we’ve been doing – especially with that dumb grin all over your face.’
Woody tried to stop grinning. ‘Then why don’t you go inside and I’ll wait out here for a minute?’
‘Good idea.’ She walked away.
‘See you tomorrow,’ he called after her.
She did not look back.
Ursula Dewar had her own small suite of rooms in the old Victorian mansion on Delaware Avenue. There was a bedroom, a bathroom and a dressing room; and after her husband died she had converted his dressing room into a little parlour. Most of the time she had the whole house to herself: Gus and Rosa spent a lot of time in Washington, and Woody and Chuck went to a boarding school. But when they came home she spent a good deal of the day in her own quarters.
Woody went to talk to her on Sunday morning. He was still walking on air after Joanne’s kiss, though he had spent half the night trying to figure out what it had meant. It could signify anything from true love to true drunkenness. All he knew was that he could hardly wait to see Joanne again.
He walked into his grandmother’s room behind the maid, Betty, as she took in the breakfast tray. He liked it that Joanne got angry about the way Betty’s Southern relations were treated. In politics, dispassionate argument was overrated, he felt. People
Grandmama was already sitting up in bed, wearing a lace shawl over a mushroom-coloured silk nightgown. ‘Good morning, Woodrow!’ she said, surprised.
‘I’d like to have a cup of coffee with you, Grandmama, if I may.’ He had already asked Betty to bring two cups.
‘This is an honour,’ Ursula said.
Betty was a grey-haired woman of about fifty with the kind of figure that was sometimes called comfortable. She set the tray in front of Ursula, and Woody poured coffee into Meissen cups.
He had given some thought to what he would say, and had marshalled his arguments. Prohibition was over, and Lev Peshkov was now a legitimate businessman, he would contend. Furthermore, it was not fair to punish Daisy because her father had been a criminal – especially since most of the respectable families in Buffalo had bought his illegal booze.
