‘Make love to me, Ben - please.’ She knew instinctively that I must be led. She took me to the couch.
‘The lights,’ I whispered harshly, ‘please switch off the lights.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘Please, Sally.’
‘I will,’ she said. ‘I know, my darling.’ And she switched off the lights.
Twice in the darkness she cried out: ‘Oh, please Ben -you’re so strong. You are killing me. Your arms are - your arms.’
Then not long after, she screamed, an incoherent cry without form or meaning, and my own hoarse cry blended with it. Then there was only the ragged sound of our breathing in the darkness.
I felt as though my mind had broken free from my body and floated in warmth and darkness. For the first time in my life I was completely at rest, contented and secure. There seemed to be so many first times with this woman. When at last Sally spoke, her voice came as a small shock.
‘Will you sing for me, Ben?’ And she switched on the lights on the table beside the couch. We blinked at each other, owl-eyed in the muted glow. Her face was flushed rosily, and her hair a dark unruly tumble.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I want to sing.’ I went through into my dressing-room and took the guitar from the cupboard, and as I closed the door there was my reflection in the full-length mirror.
I looked with full attention, for a stranger stood before me. The coarse black hair framed a square face, with dark eyes and girlishly long lashes, a heavy simian jaw and a long pale forehead. The stranger was smiling at me, half shy - half proud.
I glanced down the strange, telescoped body over which I had agonized since childhood. The legs and arms were overdeveloped, thick and knotted with slabs of muscle, the limbs of a giant. Instinctively I glanced at the body-builder’s weights in the corner of the room - and then back to the mirror. I was perfect around the edges - but in the centre was this squat, humped, toad-like torso, covered in a shaggy pelt of curly black hair. I looked at that remarkable body, and again for the first time in my life, I did not hate it.
I went back to where Sally still lay on the soft monkey-skin kaross that covered the couch. I hopped up, and squatted cross-legged beside her with the guitar in my lap.
‘Sing sad - please, Ben,’ she whispered.
‘But I’m happy, Sal.’
‘Sing a sad song - one of your own sad ones,’ she insisted, and as I picked out the first notes she closed her eyes. I was grateful, for I had never had a woman’s body to gloat over. I leaned forward and as I touched the singing strings, I caressed the long smooth length of her with my eyes, the pale planes and rounds and secret shadows. Flesh that had cradled mine - how I loved it! I sang:
‘In the lonely desert of my soul,
The nights are long.
And no other traveller journeys there
O’er the lonely oceans of my mind
The winds blow strong—‘
And in a short while a tear squeezed out between her closed lids for there is a magic in my voice which can call up tears or laughter, I sang until my throat was rough and my picking finger tender. Then I lay the guitar aside and went on looking at her. Without opening her eyes she turned her head slightly towards me.
‘Tell me about you and Louren Sturvesant,’ she said. ‘I would like to understand about that.’
The question took me by surprise, and I was silent for a moment. She opened her eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Ben. You don’t have to—’
‘No,’ I answered quickly. ‘I’d like to talk about it. You see, I think you were wrong about him. I don’t think you can apply ordinary standards to them - the Sturvesants. Louren and his father, when he was alive, that is. My own father worked for them. He died of a broken heart a year after my mother. Mr Sturvesant had heard of my academic record, and of course my father had been a loyal employee. There are a few of us, the Sturvesant orphans. We have nothing but the best. I went to Michaelhouse, the same school as Louren. A Jew at a church school, and a cripple at that - you can imagine how it was. Small boys are such utterly merciless little monsters, Louren dragged me out of the urinal where four of them were trying to drown me. He beat the daylights out of them, and after, that I was his charge. I have been ever since. He finances this Institute, every penny of it. At first it was something just for me, but little by little he has become more and more involved It’s his hobby and my life - you will be surprised how knowledgeable he is. He loves this land, just as you and I do. He is caught up in its history and future more than you or I will ever be-’ I broke off, for she was staring at me in a way that seemed to pierce my soul.
‘You love him, Ben, don’t you?’
I blushed then, and dropped my eyes, ‘How do you mean that—’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Ben,’ she interrupted impatiently.
‘He has been father, protector, benefactor and friend to me. The only friend I’ve ever had. Yes, you could say I love him.’
She reached up and touched my cheek.
‘I’ll try to like him. For your sake.’
It was still dark when we drove in through the gates of Grand Central Airport. Sal was huddled into her coat, silent and withdrawn. I was light-headed and brittle-feeling from a night of love and talk without sleep. There were floodlights picking out the private Sturvesant hangar at the east end of the runway, and as we approached I saw Louren’s Ferrari parked in his reserved bay, and beside it another half-dozen late model saloons gleaming in the
