Harriet

‘The man she marries. She thinks it's something one gives him like a pair of cuff-links on one’s wedding day.’

‘I’d rather have cuff-links,’ said Mark draining his glass.

‘Virgins must be boring to go to bed with,’ said Chloe, looking directly at Simon. ‘They don’t know first base from second.’

Harriet looked up. Simon was looking straight at her. He gave her his swift, wicked smile. He knows, she thought in panic, and felt herself going scarlet again. Oh why the hell had she worn red? She turned her burning face to cool it against the window pane.

‘When I was a child I liked popping balloons, and fuchsia buds,’ said Simon softly. ‘I always like putting my finger through the paper on the top of the Maxwell House jar. I like virgins. You can break them in how you like, before they have time to learn any bad habits.’

There was a long pause. Harriet got up and stumbled to the lavatory. Her heart was thumping, but her thoughts had taken on a strange, sensual, dreamlike quality. In the bathroom was a bidet, which seemed the height of sophistication. She toned down her face with some of Simon’s talcum powder.

As she came back into the room, the actor was leaving.

‘Must go, darling. I’ve got a matinee. If I drink any more I’ll fall off the stage. Come along Jeremy and Jeremy,’ he added to the boys, who were feeding each other grapes.

‘Do put in a good word for me to Boris,’ said Simon casually. ‘He was coming to see Cat, but he never made it. Tell him I’m doing Dorian Gray at the end of term.’

‘Sure will, baby,’ said the actor. ‘We’ll all have dinner one day next week.’

‘He doesn’t like the hours I keep. He suggests that you should marry me,’ sang Fats Waller.

‘Where shall we eat, Simon?’ said Chloe. ‘What about the Parisian.’

‘I’m not forking out a tenner for a lot of old bones cooked in cream,’ said Simon.

Chloe glared at him.

‘I must go,’ said Harriet hastily.

‘We’re just going to eat,’ said Simon.

She didn’t want to eat. She knew at last she had come face to face with someone so fascinating that, if she allowed him to do so, he would absorb her whole being. She felt on the verge of some terrible crisis. She wanted to be alone and think.

‘I promised to take Theo’s children tobogganing.’

‘Oh come on,’ said Simon. ‘They won’t mind.’

‘I promised.’

‘All right then, as long as you come back later.’

‘You’ll be fed up with people by then.’

‘Only of certain people. We haven’t begun yet.’

He put her coat on, and as he flipped her hair over the collar he let his hand slide caressingly down its newly washed length.

She jumped away nervously.

‘I’ll drive you back,’ he said.

‘No,’ she stammered. ‘I’d rather walk.’

But as she moved away down the path, he caught the two ends of her red scarf and pulled her back till they were only a few inches apart.

‘Promise you’ll come back?’

She nodded. She could see the scattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose. The bluey-green eyes were almost on a level with hers. He had hardly to bend his head to kiss her. He tasted of white wine and French cigarettes. She felt her stomach go liquid, her knees disappear, as all the books said they would and they never had with Geoffrey.

Breaking away from him, she ran down the street, not even feeling the icy winds now. As she rounded the corner, she surprised two undergraduates with placards by bursting out laughing.

Chapter Four

Her manic high spirits infected the children. They drove up to Hinksey Hill yelling Knick Knack Paddy Wack at the top of their voices, and screamed with delight as the red and silver toboggan hissed down the silent hillside, throwing them into the drifts and folds in the snow. Then they got up and, panting, pulled the toboggan to the top of the hill, hurling snowballs at one another, the Duttons’ cairn snapping at the snow with ivory teeth, until they were all soaked through but warm inside.

Simon Villiers kissed me, she wanted to shout to the white hilltops, and happiness kept bubbling up inside her as she hugged the children more tightly. They were reluctant to let her go.

‘Stay to tea,’ they pleaded. ‘There’ll be crumpets and chocolate cake and Doctor Who.’

‘Harriet obviously has other plans,’ said Theo Dutton, who opened the front door to them. ‘Be careful, my sweet. Read your sonnets. Try to shun the heaven, if it’s only going to lead to hell.’

Was it so obvious to everyone, wondered Harriet, as she galloped back to her digs through the snow. She passed the Robert Redford film without a twinge of regret. She’d got the real thing ahead of her.

Back in her room, she examined the picture of Geoffrey, smiling self-consciously and clutching a tennis racket. And that photograph makes him better looking than he really is, she thought. She glanced too, at the photograph of her elder sister Susie, looking ravishing on her wedding day and hanging on Peter Neave’s arm. That was one of Harriet’s problems, always being compared with a slim, beautiful sister who never got spots, and who had the kind of self control that never took too many potatoes, or betrayed too much interest in a man until she knew that he was hooked. Harriet knew how Susie had churned inside over the rich and glamorous Peter Neave, how she had waited all day biting her nails for him to ring, and when he finally did, had had the nerve to say, ‘No I can’t tonight, or tomorrow, or the next night, and I’m away this weekend,’ playing hard to get for the next few weeks until she’d literally brought Peter Neave to his knees with a proposal of marriage. How could one ever believe one was attractive when one ate too many cream buns and lived in Susie’s shadow, and frightened men off by getting too keen too quickly? She must try and be sensible about Simon.

What could she wear? Her grey shirt had a mark on the front; the maroon sweater had lost its elasticity in the wash so the polo neck looked like a surgical collar; she’d sweated lighter rings under the arms of her brown dress when she’d been nervous at a party. Her jeans were clean but they covered her legs, which were her best thing, and they were so tight they would leave marks all over her body when she took them off. But she was not going to take them off, she said to herself furiously. Soon there were clothes lying all over the floor. The water only ran to a tepid bath. She was in such a state she washed her face twice, cut herself three times shaving her legs, and then got back into the bath to wash between her toes in case Simon was the sort of man who kissed one all over. Then she rubbed her landlady’s handcream all over her body and smothered herself in French Fern talcum powder.

In the bedroom, she examined herself naked in the mirror. Were the goods good enough? Her bust was much too big. But men didn’t seem to mind that. Her legs were all right except for the bleeding, but everywhere else was a bit voluptuous. She took the mirror off the wall and, holding it above herself, lay down on the bed. Would she pass muster at this angle? Her stomach looked flatter anyway, and her hair fanned out nicely. Stop it, she said to herself furiously, you’re only going to have a drink with him.

There was a knock on the door. She jumped up guiltily, grabbing a towel.

‘Going out, dear?’ said the landlady, Mrs Glass. ‘There’s a nice piece of hot gammon if you fancy it.’

Mrs Glass often grumbled how much her lodgers cost her, but she preferred the ones that stayed in. Miss Poole was a nice, quiet girl, and sweet natured too, if she wasn’t so dreadfully untidy.

‘Your poor mother wouldn’t want you to starve yourself,’ said Mrs Glass, who thought everyone under eleven