Whip Hand Part 52

'Too gentle?'

'No. I liked it.'

We lay in the dark, drowsily. She herself had been warmly receptive and generous, and had made it for me an intense sunburst of pleasure. It was a shame, I thought hazily, that the act of s.e.x had got so cluttered up with taboos and techniques and therapists and sin and voyeurs and the whole commercial ballyhoo. Two people fitting together in the old design should be a private matter, and if you didn't expect too much, you'd get on better. One was as one was. Even if a girl wanted it, I could never have put on a pretence of being a rough, aggressive bull of a lover, because, I thought sardonically, I would have laughed at myself in the middle. And it had been all right, I thought, as it was.

'Louise,' I said.

No reply.

I s.h.i.+fted a little for deeper comfort, and drifted, like her, to sleep. A while later, awake early as usual, I watched the daylight strengthen on her sleeping face. The fair hair lay tangled round her head in the way I had seen it first, and her skin looked soft and fresh. When she woke, even before she opened her eyes, she was smiling.

'Good morning,' I said.

'Morning.'

She moved towards me in the big bed, the white muslin frills on the canopy overhead surrounding us like a frame.

'Like sleeping in clouds,' she said.

She came up against the hard sh.e.l.l of my left arm, and blinked from the awareness of it.

'You don't sleep in this when you're alone, do you?' she said.

'No.'

'Take it off, then.'

I said with a smile, 'No.' 196

She gave me a long considering inspection. 'Jenny's right about you being like flint,' she said.

'Well, I'm not.'

'She told me that at the exact moment some chap was smas.h.i.+ng up your arm you were calmly working out how to defeat him.'

I made a face.

'Is it true?' she said.

'In a way.'

'Jenny said...' 'To be honest,' I said, 'I'd rather talk about you.'

'I'm not interesting.'

'That's a right come-on, that is,' I said.

'What are you waiting for, then?'

'I do so like your retreating maidenly blushes.'

I touched her lightly on her breast and it seemed to do for her what it did for me. Instant arousal, mutually pleasing.

'Clouds,' she said contentedly. 'What do you think of when you're doing it?'

's.e.x?'

She nodded.

'I feel. It isn't thought.'

'Sometimes I see roses... on trellises... scarlet and pink and gold. Sometimes spiky stars. This time it will be white frilly muslin clouds.'

I asked her, after.

'No. All bright sunlight. Quite blinding.'

The sunlight, in truth, had flooded into the room, making the whole white canopy translucent and s.h.i.+mmering.

'Why didn't you want the curtains drawn, last night?' she said.

'Don't you like the dark?'

'I don't like sleeping when my enemies are up and about.'

I said it without thinking. The actual truth of it followed after, like a freezing shower.

'Like an animal,' she said, and then, 'What's the matter?'

Remember me, I thought, as I am. And I said, 'Like some breakfast?'

We went back to Oxford. I took the film to be developed, and we had lunch at Les Quat' Saisons, where the delectable pat de turbot and the superb quenelle de brochet soufflee kept the shadows at bay a while longer. With the coffee, though, came the unavoidable minute.

'I have to be in London at four o'clock,' I said.

Louise said, 'When are you going to the police about Nicky?'

'I'll come back here on Thursday, day after tomorrow, to pick up the photos. I'll do it then.' I reflected. 'Give that lady in Bristol two more happy days.'

'Poor thing.'

'Will I see you, Thursday?' I said.

'Unless you're blind.'

Chico was propping up the Portman Square building with a look of resignation, as if he'd been there for hours. He s.h.i.+fted his shoulder off the stonework at my on-foot approach and said 'Took your time, didn't you?'

'The car park was full.' From one hand he dangled the black ca.s.sette recorder we used occasionally, and he was otherwise wearing jeans and a sports s.h.i.+rt and no jacket. The hot weather, far from vanis.h.i.+ng, had settled in on an almost stationary high pressure system, and I was also in s.h.i.+rtsleeves, though with a tie on, and a jacket over my arm. On the third floor all the windows were open, the street noises coming up sharply, and Sir Thomas Ullaston, sitting behind his big desk, had dealt with the day in pale blue s.h.i.+rting with white stripes.