her waist, clumsy, unsure of what he was doing, but when he bent to kiss her, her hand went from his forehead to the back of his neck and she pressed her lips to his, meeting his tongue with hers, kissing him deeply.
She drew him down and in a moment they were lying stretched on the blanket, side by side. He could feel his heart racing, the blood drumming in his ears.
Then she moved again, pulling him over her until she was on her back and he was above her. They continued to kiss. When he put his hand on her hip she caught it with hers and held it and then brought it to her stomach and pressed it there. He began to fumble with her dress, but she reached down herself and drew it up and then took his hand again and brought it to her bare stomach at the top of her pants and guided it down inside them. He felt the stiff curly hair and then the wetness.
She reached for him, and he broke their kiss to tear open his trousers. When she took him in her hand he groaned. She let go of him to push at her pants and he joined his hand with hers and together they stripped them off her. She spread her legs to receive him and cried out when he entered her.
He never knew how long they were together. To him, it seemed only moments, and then his body was shaken by spasms and he felt her bucking and reaching for him. She cried out again.
They lay together, unmoving. In the silence he heard a blackbird call in the woods across the stream.
Her breathing, hot in his ear, slowly abated. His weight lay on her, crushing her, he thought, but when he sought to shift it she held him imprisoned in her arms.
'Stay with me,' she pleaded, and they lay together.
Her thighs held him fast, both slippery with sweat.
Finally she relaxed, sinking under him, and he moved and lay alongside her. She turned her head so that her face was close to his and when he kissed her she responded, bringing her hand up to his cheek, stroking him. He looked down at her body. Her long legs, one bent over the other, were flushed in the sunlight. Moisture shone in her dark golden bush. He could smell his semen mixed with their sweat. He was close to tears.
'John…?' Her eyes were open, she was smiling at him. 'Your name is John, isn't it?' Her soft laughter in his ear gave him the release he needed and his laughter joined with hers. 'Oh, God! I wasn't sure I had the nerve… and you wouldn't speak.'
'Speak?' At first he didn't understand. And then, when he did, he couldn't tell her that he had never imagined such a scene. Had never pictured himself lying in her arms, lying between her legs. That he no longer thought of his life as holding such possibilities.
'I knew it that first night. It was awful, I suddenly found myself wondering what it would be like to… make love with you. And then I remembered poor Lucy lying there with her throat cut and Charles and the others and I couldn't believe I was thinking that.'
She was silent, looking away. Then she turned her head and smiled into his eyes. 'They talk about the demon rum, but I think it should be the demon sex.'
He put his arms around her. She rested her head on his chest. A light breeze stirred the bushes around them, bringing relief from the heat. 'After the war, after Guy was killed, I had an affair with a man. I needed someone. But I found it didn't work, I didn't really care for him, and I had to stop it…'
Madden thought of his own barren life. But he couldn't bring himself to speak of it. Instead, he asked, 'There's been no one since?'
She laughed softly against his chest. 'How did St Paul put it? Marry or burn?' Then her brow creased and she looked up at him. 'Oh dear, I never even asked, I just took it for granted — you're not married, are you?'
He shook his head. 'I was. But it was years ago.' He needed to tell her. 'We had a child, a little girl. They both died of influenza. It was before the war.'
She held him in her steady gaze. 'I saw that when you looked at Sophy. I didn't know what it meant. She knew… she felt something. The way she went with you…'
She kissed him and then released herself from his arms, sitting up and covering her legs as she did so.
She ran her fingers through her hair.
'I must pull myself together. My new locum will be here in an hour and I have to get him settled in.
Then Lord Stratton's giving me a lift to London. I'm spending the night with my aunt and catching the train to Yorkshire tomorrow morning.'
She smiled down at him.
'You were laughing earlier because the other one fell off his horse,' Madden said. 'Why?'
'If he hadn't, you and I wouldn't be here now.'
'But that was before…' He was amazed.
'Yes, but I knew this was going to happen.' Her eyes held his. 'Are you shocked?'
He drew her down to him.
She said, 'I never even gave you any lunch. There's still time.' He felt her breath on his lips. 'Or we could make love again. Though I don't know… can we?'
Smiling, she slipped her hand between his legs and took him gently, like a bird, in her folded palm.
'Oh, yes…'
They left the hamper with the blanket and cushions by the garden gate.
'I'll get Mary to collect them later. I haven't the strength now.'
She watched, smiling, as he put on his tie and jacket, and then they walked arm in arm through the dappled shade of the orchard until they came in sight of the house, when he started to pull away from her.
She kept his arm in hers and drew him into the shade of the weeping beech, near the side gate.
'I'll be away for a fortnight.' She kissed his cheek.
'When I get back I'll find some excuse and come up to London.'
He watched her turn and leave, the pain of loss already sharp in him. He was afraid she would soon start to regret what she had done. That the next time he saw her it would be only to hear excuses and embarrassed explanations.
As though she had read his mind, she turned and came back to him. 'Hold me for a moment.'
He wrapped his arms about her and they stood like that. Then she drew back and kissed him full on the mouth.
'In two weeks,' she said.
Madden awoke in terror, thinking he was under shellfire, and then lay sweating in the darkness as the rumble of approaching thunder grew louder.
His sleep had been tormented by a familiar nightmare, a racking image that dated from the first time he had been wounded when he had lain in a casualty clearing station and watched an Army surgeon, his white smock drenched with blood, saw off the leg of an anaesthetized soldier. Awake, Madden could recall the surgeon completing the operation and tossing the shattered limb into a corner of the tent with other amputated fragments. In his dream the bloodstained figure kept sawing and sawing while the soldier's mouth stretched wide in a soundless scream.
Peace returned to his mind with the memory of Helen Blackwell's kisses and the feel of her body pressed to his. Along with the throb of renewed desire came a yearning for the anchor of her calm, steady glance.
The room where he awoke was the same one he had used before in the Rose and Crown. He had returned to the village intending to catch a train to London.
Instead, either on a whim or because he could not tear himself away, he had spoken to the landlord, Mr Poole, and fixed to spend the night there.
During his hours of sleeplessness an idea had come to him — he'd been thinking of his childhood, and days spent in the woods with his friends — and after breakfast he walked up the road from the pub to the village shop, where Alf Birney, tonsured and aproned, greeted him from behind the counter.
'We thought you'd all gone back to London, sir.'
His voice held a hint of reproach.
'We'll be back and forth, I expect.'
'You haven't caught any of them yet, have you, sir?'
'Not yet, Mr Birney.'
Madden bought half a loaf of bread, a tin of sardines and a packet of biscuits. Coming out of the store he was hailed by Stackpole, who was walking by. 'I didn't know you'd stayed on, sir.'
