Phillip watched his eyes and said, 'You look really lovely tonight, Carol. I like the piece with that dress. Sets if off nicely.'
'I thought you never wore jewels,' Harry said, trying to be calm as well. He was going to be calm until he invaded the marble statue.
Carol sat quietly. What were they doing to her now? What was this round-robin of hate? Suddenly, for the first time, she thought they shouldn't have pricks. They shouldn't have anything but smooth round hairless flesh, like I have. They don't want their pricks. They interfere with the cruelty. With the way he'd like to hate me without ever touching me.
Her mind became a jumble of heat and fear, until it suddenly crystallized and Harry's meaningless words got through to her. She was ready to be meaningless too.
'Do you like it?' She fingered the heavy pendant around her neck.
'I know you have a feeling for such things. It belonged to my mother.'
She finished, and got up from the table to lead them to the library.
Sitting in the deep chair in the study, Carol looked casually around her and said, 'Daddy has one of these rooms everywhere he goes.'
'Well not quite everywhere,' Phillip answered her gently. He was talking like an old man, the illustrious head of a distinguished, but modest family. 'But I've asked you once, and I repeat, let's not talk about Daddy. Especially after such a delightful dinner. I'm tired. You both make me feel like a bent old patriarch. I'd better go to bed early tonight. Anyway, I have a frightening amount of back-cataloguing to get done tomorrow. I hope you don't mind too much, Harry.' He was being the perfect father, polite to the stumbling suitor. 'Perhaps you and Carol will take a drive. It's stopped raining, I believe. Carol can show you a little of the country here.'
He looked at Carol promptingly. Remember your manners; be nice to our guest. She was relaxed now, self- assured and polite. She replied, 'I would like some air. How about it, Harry?'
They were winning. He would get the cunt and they would win.
The fair-haired beauty could be had without the Golden Fleece.
Shaken out of his jungle, Harry looked at her a moment before speaking, and then said, 'All right, Princess, show me the kingdom.'
They sped along the road in a white Jaguar, the top down and the wind fresh on Carol's hair. 'How romantic,' he thought sarcastically, as he watched her hands, slim and competent on the wheel. She had thrown a cloak over the gown, looking regal and untouchable.
'You're strange,' he said finally.
Carol smiled and said lightly, driving gaily away from the darkened estate, 'That's the nicest thing you've said to me since we met.'
'What do you mean?'
'Well, I mean for once you've noticed me, instead of looking at me like so much equipment.'
Harry laughed. All right, for a change he'd play it her way. 'Oh, come on, you know there are those who 'also serve.''
'Do I?' she asked softly.
'Are you serious? Phillip would be paralyzed without you.'
'And you?' She looked straight ahead, driving fast and expertly.
'I work with Phillip.'
'You mean you were working with Phillip. It's all over, you know.'
'Because of you?' he asked bluntly. 'We'll get over that.'
She glared at the road, more insulted by his calm than his ugliness at dinner. 'Phillip isn't a pig, that's why. Phillip wants to live, for life, for pleasure. He isn't some stupid little boy playing Indian and creeping into other people's windows.' She added abstractly, 'It's all over.'
'You could be wrong,' he warned. 'It's not so easy to drop off, just like that. You get hooked. It's like some kind of drug habit.' He stopped, unwilling to reveal himself to her, making the obvious effort Anonymous The Pleasure Thieves Page 92
not to unburden himself. 'And what would you do for excitement, daughter of Phillip?'
'Don't be funny,' she said mildly, her face stiffening, contradicting the tone. 'He's not like that. Things don't use him, he uses things.'
'Like you.'
'Don't misunderstand,' she said sharply. 'Don't draw some convenient portrait about how Phillip's plundered and ruined me. It's not that way. It's never really been that way.'
She started suddenly, surprisingly, to cry. Harry felt furious desire for her. Then the feeling changed to sympathy and curiosity.
'I want Phillip. I've always wanted Phillip, since I was a little girl.
To be near him, to listen to him, to love him…'
'Well, you have him,' Harry said coldly.
'He's not enough now.' She was revealing herself now, telling him what he knew, but had never admitted.
'How did you get into this?'
She tried to respond on his terms. Yes, he wanted form, contours, as much as Phillip. She spoke quietly and sincerely. 'Like father, like daughter, you know, that sort of thing. We just naturally like the same things.'
'Phillip?'
'Phillip loves me.'
'Then why has he let you get involved in everything. Pushing that jewelry can be dangerous, little girl.'
'I made him let me. I fought for it. Years ago, when other little girls were discovering the birds and bees, I discovered that my daddy was a jewel thief. Do you know what? I loved the idea … I loved it.'
Harry watched her intently as she added, 'I overheard a conversation.'
'That must have been an interesting scene, when he found out,'
Harry said, looking away from her intent face.
'I didn't tell him until years later, as a matter of fact,' she explained pensively.
'But weren't you at school when all this was going on?'
'Yes, I had to go to school,' she said softly. 'Schools I hated, filled with people who bored me unforgivably.' She paused a second, and continued, 'When I didn't see Phillip, nothing seemed right.'
'Were you with him much?'
'No, not very much then. During vacations I would be left here with the servants. Sometimes he would be here, and those were wonderful times. He would read to me, or explain paintings, talk to me about traveling together when I grew up. Then he would be gone, as quickly as he'd arrived, and I was alone again.
'I started to work myself, on the magazine, that career girl's nightmare, instead of running away or going to schools forever … to be near Phillip I guess. Anyway, he couldn't shake me, so he decided to use me.'
Harry watched the side of her face as she spoke. He waited, waited for the rest that she would have to tell him tonight. Waited for the secret he could sense was burning inside her.
'It's really worked out rather well, wouldn't you say … as smooth as a perfect…' Her face became suddenly tense, but somehow beautiful.
She wanted him to take her in his arms, to comfort the rest of the terrible story out of her. He waited still beside her, and Carol realized that it was more important for her to tell the story than for Harry to hear it. Also she knew that his objectivity, his distance enabled her to go on.
She had revealed her secret to no one but Phillip, who was a part of her, and the dirty little man in the tenement shop. Harry was outside all this, she knew.
'You see,' her voice was tight as taut rubber again, 'it's not that Phillip has perverted me, has made me into some kind of slave. He's made my life possible. Without him, I wouldn't have wanted to live.'
Then her voice lost its emotion and became flat, like a bored instructor giving a familiar lecture.
'When I was thirteen, I had diphtheria. The doctors, as usual, didn't know if I could live. But Phillip knew, because Phillip cared. Mother was dead then, and he sat vigil at my bed. He didn't,' her words cracked and parted, 'he didn't touch me then.'
Harry watched the marble shoulders. The pain on her face was reaching him, deeply, from some place far
