‘Of course,’ said Cecil. ‘Anyway, you didn’t see us.’
Daphne felt again she was missing something, but was carried along by the excitement of making conversation, and squeezed his arm reassuringly. ‘I would have said hello if I had.’
‘I thought you would.’
‘To be honest, it’s George. He doesn’t want me tagging along.’
Cecil made a low disparaging murmur, and they turned round. ‘You can see a bit better now,’ he said. ‘There’s the famous rockery!’
‘I know…’ She felt he was still rather mocking the rockery, and it emboldened her. ‘Cecil,’ she said, ‘when may I come to Corley?’
‘Mm…? To Corley?’ – it was as though he’d never heard of such a place, and certainly had no memory of his earlier invitation. Then he laughed. ‘My dear girl, whenever you like.’
‘Oh… thank you.’
‘Whenever you like…’ he said again, expanding into his decision in a tone which seemed oddly to undermine it. ‘I suppose it won’t be till the Christmas vac now, will it, probably.’
This seemed as good as never to Daphne. ‘No, I suppose.’
‘Get Georgie to bring you over.’
They moved on, towards the dark outline of the rockery, which at night might truly have been taken for a greater and more distant outcrop. Daphne said, huskily casual, ‘I imagine I could come by myself.’
‘Would your mother allow that?’
‘I am quite grown up, you know,’ said Daphne.
Cecil said nothing. He pressed forward with his usual confidence; she thought she should say, ‘There’s a step there’ – she half-yelled it as he stumbled and lurched down hard on his right leg, caught himself but pulled her with him, and then lurched again to save her and grip her.
‘Oh Christ, are you all right?’
‘I’m fine…!’ – wincing where he’d trodden heavily on the edge of her foot.
‘Whenever we go out, we seem to end up taking a tumble, don’t we!’
‘I know!’
‘And now I’ve lost my dratted cigar.’
They were face to face, her heart still lively from the shock, and he put his arms round her waist and pulled her against him, so that she had to turn her cheek to his cold lapel. He moved a hand up and down on her back, over the warm tweed of George’s jacket. ‘Blasted steps…’ he said.
‘I’m all right,’ said Daphne. She rather dreaded looking at her shoe, when they got in, but Cecil was at a disadvantage, and she knew at once that he could never be blamed for anything. She said quietly, ‘I can’t think how those steps got there;’ then went one better, ‘Those bloody steps!’
Cecil gave a sigh of a laugh across her hair. ‘Oh child, child…’ he said, with a softness and a sadness she had never heard before, even from her mother. ‘What are we going to do?’
Daphne eased herself a fraction freer. She wanted to play her part, felt the privilege of Cecil’s attention, it was awfully nice being held so tightly by him, but there was something in his tone that worried her. ‘Well, I suppose you’re going to have to pack.’
‘Hah…’ said Cecil, again with a strange despairing note, like his poetry voice.
‘I think… shall we go back in?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘Can you keep a secret, Daph?’
‘As a rule,’ said Daphne.
‘Let’s keep this a secret.’
‘All right.’ She wasn’t sure if she understood. Falling over a step wasn’t much of a secret, but Cecil was clearly embarrassed by it.
His hands relaxed slightly, and travelled down almost to her bottom as he smiled and murmured, ‘You know, it’s been splendid getting to know you.’
‘Oh… well…’ she said, somehow paralysed by his hands. ‘That’s what we’re all saying about you. There’s never been anything like it!’
He bent his head and kissed her on the forehead, like sending her to bed, but then the tip of his nose moved down her cheek and he kissed her beside her mouth, in his cigar breath, and then, completely without expression, on her lips. ‘There,’ he said.
‘Cecil, don’t be silly,’ she said, ‘you’ve been drinking,’ and he tilted his face sideways and pushed his open mouth over hers, and worked his tongue against her teeth in a quite idiotic and unpleasant way. She pushed herself half-free of him; she was alarmed but kept her composure, even laughed rather sarcastically.
‘You don’t mind if I kiss you?’ said Cecil dreamily.
‘I don’t call that kissing, Cecil!’ she said.
‘Mm…?’ said Cecil. ‘What would you call kissing, then, Daphne?’ his tone dopy and mocking, slightly annoyed, tugging her back into his grasp like a dancer with a mere flourish of his suddenly inescapable strength. ‘More something like this?’ – and he started again, just darting his lips all over her face, like a tormenting game, allowing her to dodge and turn her head a little but holding her so tightly about the waist that she was quite hurt by the hard shape of the cigar case in his trouser pocket thrusting against her stomach. She found she was giggling, in quick shallow breaths, and before she could help it they’d turned into hot little sobs, and then a hushed wail of childlike surrender and failure.
‘Hello…?’ It was George, back from the Cosgroves’, coming to look for them, surely? Childish timid relief mixed almost at once with pride. But no, it was Huey, in a funny voice, apologetic but actually rather cross. ‘I say…’
Cecil loosened his grip, sighed acceptingly, though the little snigger he gave her seemed to say he hadn’t given up. He looked round, over the top of the bushes, to see who it was, perhaps he too thought it was George, and again she felt the special subject of her own secret with Cecil. They both had to be careful, she’d been frightened by him, but she still had a sense that he would know what to do. ‘We’re over here,’ she said, her voice clotted with crying.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I fell down the blasted step,’ said Cecil in a drawl. ‘I seem to have trodden on your sister.’
Hubert stood there, in silhouette, conveying an indignant but undecided impression. ‘Can you walk?’ he said, very distinctly, as though speaking over the telephone.
‘Of course I can walk, we’re just coming in.’
‘It’s really a bit dark for rambling round,’ Hubert said.
‘That was the point,’ said Cecil. ‘We were studying the stars.’
Hubert peered upwards doubtfully. ‘It’s a bit cloudy for that,’ he said, and turned back to the house.
Daphne lay first on one side, then on the other side, tired out by her thoughts and kept alert by them too. Her right foot throbbed impressively in evidence, and was already bruising.
Sometimes she drifted sideways into near-unconsciousness, but woke at once with a sprint of the heart at the thought of Cecil’s closeness, his strength and his breath. His body was exceptionally hard, his breath warm, moist and bitter.
Cecil was drunk, of course, she’d seen two bottles of wine emptied at dinner, the hock it was, with the black German lettering. Daphne knew what drink did to people, and after Friday night, and her own tipsy episode with the ginger brandy, she knew something more about the strange freedoms of drinkers. They were intriguing, but unnecessary, and the truth was they were generally somewhat revolting. Afterwards one didn’t talk about them, out of the vague sense of shame that attached to them. One sobered up. Cecil would surely have a headache in the morning, but he would get over it. Her mother was often absurd at bedtime, but perfectly sensible again by breakfast. It would probably be a mistake to make too much of it.
And yet the whole thing showed Cecil in a very poor light, or half-light… so much of their dealings had happened in the dark, and if she saw him at all it was by the glow of a cigar end or the faint glimmer of the suburban night. When he’d come he’d put them all on their mettle by his sheer distinction, his cutting voice, his cleverness and money. And now, as she rolled on to her other side in excited despair of ever sleeping, she wondered just what George would say if he were told the extraordinary unwholesome thing his friend had tried to do. And she went through it all in her mind again, in the order it had happened, to savour the shock of it properly.
