He climbed at last into the narrow iron bed, and lay rigid until he had heard the light switch click next door; then he sighed and picked up the book from his bedside table; he had not yet read it through, but now the dull political text might divert his emotions enough to allow him to sleep.
The latch of his door snapped softly. He had not heard her in the passage, and she stepped into the room. She wore the gown of slippery peach-coloured satin and she had recombed her hair and retouched her cheeks and lips.
Carefully, she closed the door and crossed the room with slow swaying hips under the moving satin.
Neither of them spoke as she stopped by the side of his bed.
Have you read it, Mark? she asked softly.
Not all of it. He placed the book aside. Well, this isn't the time to finish it, she said, and deliberately opened the gown, slipped it from her shoulders and dropped it over the back of the chair.
She was naked, and Mark gasped. She was so smooth.
He had not expected that somehow, and he stared at her as she stood close beside him. Her skin had an olive creaminess, like old porcelain, a sheen that caught the light and glowed. Mark felt his whole body rocked by the exquisite tension of arousal, and he tried feebly to thrust it aside. He tried to think of Fergus, of the trust that had been placed in him. Look after Helena, lad, and yourself Her breasts were big for the slimness of her body, already they hung heavily, almost overripe, drooping smooth and round with startlingly large nipples, rosy brown and big as ripe grapes. They swung weightily as she moved closer to him, and he saw that there were sparse dark hairs curling from the puckered aureole around the nipples.
There was hair also curling out in little wisps from under her arms, dark glossy hair, and a huge wild bush of it below the smooth creamy slightly bulging belly.
The hair excited him, so dark and crisp against the pale skin, and he stared at it, transfixed. All thoughts of honour and trust faded, he felt the dam wall inside him creak and strain.
She reached out and touched his bare shoulder, and it convulsed his body like a whip-lash. Touch me, Mark, she whispered, and he reached out slowly, hesitantly, like a man in a trance, and touched with one finger the smooth ivory warmth of her hip, still staring fixedly at her. Yes, Mark. That's right. She took his wrist and slowly drew his hand upwards, so that the tips of his fingers traced featherlike over her flank and the outline of her ribs. Here, Mark, she said, and here. The big dark nipples contracted at the touch of his fingers, changing shape, thrusting out and hardening, swelling and darkening. Mark could not believe it was happening, that woman's flesh could react as swiftly and dramatically as a man's.
He felt the dam break, and the flood came pouring through the breach. Too long contained, too powerful and weighty to resist, it poured through his mind and body, sweeping all restraint before it.
With a choking cry, he seized her around the waist with both arms, and drew her fiercely to him, pressing his face into the smooth soft warmth of her naked belly. Oh, Mark! she cried, and her voice was hoarse and shaking with lust and triumph, as she twisted her fingers into the soft brown hair and stooped over his head.
The days blurred and telescoped together, and the universe shut down to a tiny cottage in a sordid street. Only their bodies marked the passage of time sleeping and waking to love until exhaustion overtook them and they slept again to wake hungry, ravenous for both food and loving.
At first he was like a bull, charging with a mindless energy and strength. It frightened her, for she had not expected such strength from that slim and graceful body.
She rode with his strength, little by little controlling and directing it, changing its course, and then she began gently to teach.
Long afterwards, Mark would think back on those five incredible days and realize his great good fortune. So many young men must find their own way into the uncharted realms of physical love-making, without guide, accompanied usually by a partner making her own hesitant first journey into the unknown. Did you know that there is a tribe in South America, Mark, that have a rule that every married woman must take one young warrior of the tribe and teach him to do what we are doing? she asked, as she knelt beside him in one of the intervals of quiet between the storms. What a shame, he smiled lazily. I thought we were the first two ever to think of it. He reached out for the pack of Needlepoint cigarettes on the bedside table and lit two of them.
Helena drew upon hers and her expression was fond and proud. He had changed so swiftly and radically in the last few days, and she was responsible for that. This new assurance, this budding strength of purpose. The shyness and reticence were fading. He spoke now in a way that he had never spoken before, calmly and with authority.
Swiftly he was becoming a full man, and she had had a hand in it.
Mark believed that each new delight was the ultimate one, but she proved him wrong a dozen times. There were things that, had he heard them spoken of might have appalled andrevolted him, but when they happened the way Helena made them happen, they left only wonder and a sense of awe. She taught him a vast new respect for his own body, as it came at last fully alive, and he became aware of new broad reaches and depths of his own mind.
For five days neither of them left the cottage; then on the sixth day there was a letter brought by a uniformed postman on a bicycle and Mark, who accepted it, recognized immediately Fergus MacDonald's cramped and laboured. hand. Guilt hit him like a fist in the stomach;
the dream shattered like fragile crystal.
Helena sat at the newspaper-covered table in the kitchen with the now soiled peach gown open to the waist and read the letter aloud, mocking the writer with the inflection of her voice as he reported a string of petty achievements, applause at party meetings where a dozen comrades had gathered in a back room, messages of loyalty and dedication to bring back to the Central Committee, commitment to the cause and promises of action when the time to strike was ripe.
Helena mocked him, rolling her eyes and chuckling when he asked after Mark, was he well and happy, was Helena looking after him properly.
She drew deeply on the stub of the cigarette and then dropped it into the dregs of the coffee cup at her elbow, where it was extinguished with a sharp hiss. This simple action caused in Mark an unnatural reaction of revulsion.
Suddenly he saw her clearly, the sallow skin wrinkled finely in the corners of her eyes as her youth cracked
