Dara

the thought of marriage. The Princess of Modena was still weeping and protesting a week later when she was dragged from the convent and carried off to England.'

'How awful,' Dara exclaimed. 'Poor girl. How she must have suffered, journeying all that way to a man she had never seen. How old was he?'

'He was forty, old enough to be her father. He was so eager to get his hands on her that he got his feet wet on Dover Sands when he ran into the sea to meet her. Within an hour of landing she was brought before a bishop and married to the King who, with a lascivious smile on his lips, wasted no time in getting his innocent bride into the royal bedchamber.'

Dara had obviously given some thought to my account of the Princess of Modena's marriage to James II for, when we were getting into bed that night, she said, 'That fourteen-year-old princess. Was it all true-just as you said?'

'Every word,' I said sharply. 'Have no doubts about it. I spent most of my time at Oxford reading history and became most interested in the lives of the Stuart kings.'

'But it is so different from these days,' she protested. 'Our royal family are so respectable. There is never a word of scandal about them.'

'Oh, yes; very moral and upright. But did you know that Queen Victoria's father, the Duke of Kent, lived on this side of the Atlantic for many years? He had a house near Halifax Harbour in Nova Scotia where he kept a mistress, a Madame de St Laurent, who bore him five illegitimate children. On receiving a royal command he reluctantly returned to England to marry a German princess who bore him only one child before he died. That child is now Queen Victoria.

'Mind you,' I added as an afterthought, 'I have nothing but admiration for our Queen. I'm sure that if her husband, Albert, were to start behaving like James II he would get the royal boot right up his backside.'

Dara, looking at me with her hand to her mouth, began to giggle. The giggling gave way to peals of laughter as she rolled around the bed. She laughed so much that she had to get out of bed to squat on the china vase. I understood her need as I get the same trouble with my bladder when I shake with laughter.

Getting into bed, she sidled up close, gave me a kiss and murmured in my ear, 'You can love me if you want to. My period is over.'

The truth of the matter was that, although I had been looking forward to getting between Dara's legs, now that the moment had presented itself a dark cloud of doubt passed over my mind. I was far from confident that I could repeat the success of the coupling we had had before we were wed. It had been like a dream on that occasion, when one mindlessly drifts along in a gentle breeze of warm affection.

In an effort to recapture that feeling again I kissed her warmly on the lips and felt the tip of her tongue caress mine. Putting my arms around her, I drew her slender warm body close to me and felt the soft curves pressing into my flesh. It was a tender, loving embrace but there was no lust in my loins and no desire to thrust my flesh into hers.

Pulling away from me, she threw the bedclothes back and kneeling between my legs teased my dicky with playful fingers until he began to swell a little. I felt him throb and harden as she gently caressed with the tips of her fingers.

Abandoning my stiffened dicky, she lay back and looked at me expectantly with an inviting smile on her lips. Getting between her legs I had the feeling of being trapped in a pouch of clinging, suffocating, feminine flesh and drew back. My limbs lost their strength and my dicky became a floppy, useless piece of meat. Sitting back on my heels, feeling dejected and confused, I bit into my lower lip until it bled, like someone whose guilty secret had been exposed.

Dara sat up, full of tenderness and concern. Seeing the feeble thing that hung between my legs, she delicately caressed it with soft fingers. But it was all to no avail; it remained puny and weak, so she tugged at it and then rolled it between her hands.

Seeing that nothing she could do would alter the situation, she put her arms around my neck, kissed me and said, 'Never mind, darling. You have probably overtired yourself today with all that walking.'

She put her arms around me for heart's comfort, like a mother trying to reassure a frightened child. 'Don't let it bother you, James. Everything will be alright after you have had a good night's sleep.'

But to me, in a pit of abject despondency, the future looked bleak and sterile.

My futile attempts at sexual intercourse in the morning were but a repeat performance of the night before. Dara, cheerful and patient, tried to arouse my passions with loving kisses and clasping embraces. It was tantalizing but I couldn't rise to the occasion.

During the weeks that followed we endeavoured often to achieve the conjugal intimacy that is one of the blessings of married life. It always ended in embarrassed frustration with Dara worried and perplexed because I was a miserable failure as a husband.

There came a night when Dara, who had been a sympathetic angel of patience throughout my impotence, threw herself back and cried in a low, dispirited voice, 'If a woman can't be a woman to her husband, what can she be?'

We had little to do until Thursday when we were to meet with Jonathan Ede again. This idleness didn't suit me and I became listless and prone to frivolous disputes with Dara over matters of no importance. Her forbearance and concern for my temper only made me more irritable.

After what seemed an age of waiting, Thursday morning came at last and my spirits lifted when we set off in good humour for the National Theatre. We got a hearty and cordial welcome from Jonathan and the other members of the company assembled on the stage.

With a smile ever ready and genuine, Dara introduced us to everyone with a warm handshake and a 'Pleased to meet you. My name is Dara Kennet and this is my husband, James.' Her ingenuous, vibrant femininity brought forth some warm appreciative glances from the male members of the company.

Their good humour soon put us at our ease and, after some jesting and banter, we fell into their way of addressing each other in exaggerated tones of affection with words like darling, ducky and angel. This lively theatrical life was just what I needed.

Under Jonathan's supervision, we began our first rehearsal of a comedy entitledRaising the Wind, reading our parts from copies of a script that had been hastily prepared for us. As none of us knew the stage directions we stumbled about, constantly getting in each other's way. To the amusement of everyone, the play rapidly became a comedy of errors. Our laughter quickly subsided when Jonathan sternly brought us to order and, in a fit of impatience, sent us home with strict instructions to learn our lines and be word perfect by the morning of the next day.

I made my debut as a professional play-actor at the National in the first week of May, playing the part of a typical English gentleman. Everything had been put together only hours before our first performance. As an impudent miss, Dara's costume was an extravaganza of mixed colours in the worst possible taste. Her dress was a fly-a-way, starched-out Balzorina gown of bright ultramarine, picked out with a multitude of various coloured flowers and a blond lace cap with cherry-coloured rosettes and red ribbon streamers a yard long flying out from it in all directions. In a play which did little to amuse the audience, her costume certainly got a laugh each time she made an appearance on the stage.

The comic scenes were not funny, raising only occasionally a polite chuckle rather than a good hearty laugh. It was sentimental slush that aroused no genuine sentiment and would have been booed off the stage before the second act if it had been performed in London. The drama critic of the rowdy 'New York Herald' gave it the hammering it justly deserved. Nevertheless it laboured on for two whole weeks at the National before we set off on a tour that would take us to most of the towns in the Eastern States during the next three months.

The tour brought home to me the amazing size of America. What emphasized the dramatic scale of this extraordinary country was the view from the windows of the train as it speedily carried us along the railroads. I became very conscious of a wide open sky and the awesome, endless space spreading across the grassy plains from one horizon to another. The white-painted clapboarding of the houses, stores and taverns of the small towns we passed through was a refreshing change after the dull brown architecture of New York.

I was highly delighted with the generous hospitality and warm appreciation for our performances in Pennsylvania and Ohio during the first few weeks of the tour. On our way to Boston we stopped off at New York for a day to pick up more costumes for the players. I took the opportunity to call at the Chemical Bank on Broadway to