Beatrice uncorked the bottle and poured a little of the aromatic oil into the palm of her right hand. “Take the bottle,” she commanded, “and put it down.” He did as he was told. “Now,” she said, when he was stretched out again unmoving; and she began to rub.
Her hand slid back and forth over his chest, back and forth, vigorously, efficiently. And when the right was tired, she began again with the left, back and forth, back and forth.
“You’re like a little steam engine,” said Burlap with his playfully tender smile.
“I feel like one,” she answered. But it wasn’t true. She felt like almost anything but a steam engine. She had had to overcome a kind of horror before she could touch that white, full-fleshed chest of his. Not that it was ugly or repulsive. On the contrary, it was rather beautiful in its smooth whiteness and fleshy strength. Fine, like the torso of a statue. Yes, a statue. Only the statue had dark little curls along the breastbone and a little brown mole that fluttered up and down with the pulsing skin over the heart. The statue lived; that was the disquieting thing. The white naked breast was beautiful; but it was almost repulsively alive. To touch it … She shuddered inwardly with a little spasm of horror, and was angry with herself for having felt so stupidly. Quickly she had stretched out her hand and begun to rub. Her palm slid easily over the lubricated skin. The warmth of his body was against her hand. Through the skin she could feel the hardness of the bones. There was a bristle of roughness against her fingers as they touched the hairs along the breastbone, and the little paps were firm and elastic. She shuddered again, but there was something agreeable in the feeling of horror and the overcoming of it; there was a strange pleasure in the creeping alarm and repulsion that travelled through her body. She went on rubbing, a steam engine only in vigour and regularity of her movements, but within, how quiveringly and self-dividedly alive!
Burlap lay with his eyes shut, faintly smiling with the pleasure of abandonment and self-surrender. He was feeling, luxuriously, like a child, helpless; he was in her hands, like a child who is its mother’s property and plaything, no longer his own master. Her hands were cold on his chest; his flesh was passive and abandoned, like so much clay, under those strong cold hands.
“Tired?” he asked, when she paused to change hands for the third time. He opened his eyes to look at her. She shook her head. “I’m as much bother as a sick child.”
“No bother at all.”
But Burlap insisted on being sorry for her and apologetic for himself. “Poor Beatrice!” he said. “All you have to do for me! I’m quite ashamed.”
Beatrice only smiled. Her first shudderings of unreasonable repulsion had passed off. She felt extraordinarily happy.
“There!” she said at last. “Now for the Thermogen.” She opened the cardboard box and unfolded the orange wool. “The problem is how to stick it on to your chest. I’d thought of keeping it in place with a bandage. Two or three turns right round the body. What do you think?”
“I don’t think anything,” said Burlap who was still enjoying the luxury of infantility. “I’m utterly in your hands.”
“Well then, sit up,” she commanded. He sat up. “Hold the wool onto your chest while I pass the bandage round.” To bring the bandage round his body she had to lean very close to him, almost embracing him; her hands met for a moment behind his back, as she unwound the bandage. Burlap dropped his head forward and his forehead rested against her breast. The forehead of a tired child on the soft breast of its mother.
“Hold the end a moment while I get a safety pin.”
Burlap lifted his forehead and drew back. Rather flushed, but still very businesslike and efficient, Beatrice was detaching one from a little card of assorted safety pins.
“Now comes the really difficult moment,” she said laughing. “You won’t mind if I run the pin into your flesh.”
“No, I won’t mind,” said Burlap, and it was true; he wouldn’t have minded. He’d have been rather pleased if she had hurt him. But she didn’t. The bandage was pinned into position with quite professional neatness.
“There!”
“What do you want me to do now?” asked Burlap, greedy to obey.
“Lie down.”
He lay down. She did up the buttons of his pyjama jacket. “Now you must go to sleep as quickly as you can.” She pulled the bedclothes up to his chin and tucked them in. Then she laughed. “You look like a little boy.”
“Aren’t you going to kiss me good night?”
The colour came into Beatrice’s cheeks. She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. “Good night,” she said. And suddenly she wanted to take him in her arms, to press his head against her breast and stroke his hair. But she only laid her hand for a moment against his cheek, then hurried out of the room.
XIX
Little Phil was lying on his bed. The room was in an orange twilight. A thin needle of sunshine came probing in between the drawn curtains. Phil was more than usually restless.
“What’s the time?” he shouted at last, though he had shouted before and been told to keep quiet.
“Not time for you to get up,” Miss Fulkes called back from across the passage. Her voice came muffled, for she was halfway into her blue frock, her head involved in silken darkness, her arms struggling blindly to find the entrance to their respective sleeves. Phil’s parents were arriving today; they would be at Gattenden for
