He had felt the words like a kiss.
‘And the conchies here … I’m not so sure that they are any better. One shouldn’t say that of one’s friends, of course, but one can love a friend dearly and also understand that he is a frightful coward. Goodness,’ she put a small white hand – wink of gems – to her mouth. ‘I have become a little too honest. I think that vermouth must be cut with gin.’
She had put a hand on his forearm. It felt like another kiss. More.
A little while later she had stretched herself against a chair like a cat, arms above her head, and he could not help but notice the free movement of the uncorseted breasts beneath the silky stuff of her dress. Everything became very simple. He wanted to take her to bed very much – perhaps never had he felt so strong and uncomplicated a desire in his life. And she seemed to feel the same.
She had made it as plain as could be that she wanted him, too. She had an apartment in town, she told him: her father had bought it for her.
He had vaguely seen Rawlings raise his eyebrows as they left, but had felt no shame. He, too, had become a being driven by self-interest: specifically his desire.
The apartment was a reflection of her person: she had been unable to disguise the fabulous privilege that underpinned it with any trappings of bohemianism.
He could hardly hold himself back; he knew from the beginning that it would be a struggle of will. She tasted of cigarettes and vermouth and rouge. Her mouth became a smear of plum-purple. In the crook of her neck, perfume and sweat. She bit his shoulder, her sharp nails found the skin of his back.
Afterward, she laughed. His head hurt with the force of it: he felt as though he had smoked from an opium pipe. Within a couple of hours he had become obsessed with her. In the morning, as they lay in her great white bed, he had said: ‘I think we should get married.’
She had laughed at him, climbed out of his embrace, and gone to the washstand by the window where she cleansed herself with a sponge – nude, unselfconscious, quite possibly visible from the building opposite or from the street.
‘Darling,’ she said. ‘You cannot ask someone to marry you before breakfast. Besides that, it is ridiculous. I am far too good for you.’
‘I think I might be in love with her.’
Norton had laughed. ‘Not with that one, I hope, for your sake. She’s as mad as a March hare.’
‘I can’t stop thinking about her.’
‘It’s been three days, my friend. There are other sorts of fascination, you know.’
‘I asked her to marry me.’
Norton spat out a mouthful of beer. ‘She didn’t say yes?’
‘No.’
‘Well, thank goodness for that. Thank goodness one of you has some sense.’ He seemed genuinely frustrated, even angry. ‘Go and visit a whore, for God’s sake, like a normal man. I had you down as an intelligent sort, someone who knows what’s what. I hope for your sake that she does the decent thing and continues to refuse you.’
He looks across at Nur. How can he begin to explain any of it to her? Her face is turned from him; he is powerless in the face of her coolness, her performance of indifference. Because it must be a performance, mustn’t it? He knows that he has no right to want it, but he wants her to care.
He could kill Calvert – he really feels it – in this moment. His hatred for the man is enough that he could do it and not care, would feel only the satisfaction of the act.
It would change nothing. Whatever blame can be laid at the other man’s feet it is only the revelation of the fault, the greater guilt that is his. Now, looking at how he has behaved he is repelled, as he would be by the actions of another man, a stranger. He has always had an idea of himself as somehow inherently good. But if one is to judge the man by the deeds, he does not come out well in this. He wonders now quite how it all came about, almost as though he is not the one who has lived it, who has acted and chosen, and concealed. If he were inclined to pardon himself – which he is not – it might be seen as a series of accidents.
He had spent most of his next leave in Scotland and came to London for the final part, staying in a small hotel in Pimlico. A couple of days spent exploring his old haunts, amazed that both he and the world were so different while they had remained unchanged. There had been a card for him at the hotel when he returned. As soon as he picked up the envelope he had a premonition that it was from her; the flamboyance of the hand, perhaps.
Darling G. Something has come up. We must meet. Take me for supper?
When she arrived she looked better than ever. The new fullness suited her, he thought, especially as a contrast to these pinched times. It was as though she were immune to the war, as though it had been unable to touch her. Irritated though he was with her, her power over him seemed undiminished.
She had two glasses of champagne, and came to the point. ‘Do you know, I rather think we should get married, after all.’
He almost choked on his glass of beer. He assumed she was having her little joke with him – he smiled to show that he wasn’t a fool. But she did not return the smile.
‘After our affaire,’ she managed to pronounce it with the French inflection, which somehow made
