A Winter's Child (71 page)

‘Wedding nerves,' said Miriam cosily, wondering, in fact, if her daughter had rather anticipated the wedding and might already be pregnant. ‘Won't be long now, darling.' She would see to that.

No one else came near her. There was no one she wanted. The only woman she had ever trusted was Edith Timms and she could not confide in Roger's mother that the physical proximity of Roger made her ill. She had never relished it. She had simply believed she would get used to it, that it was not even particularly important for women. She understood now that it would be unendurable. She could not marry Roger. And since she could not withstand, alone, the combined family pressures of Swanfields and Timms and the condemnation Faxby had always accorded to a ‘jilt', she would have to rely on Roy Kington to take her away.

The fever with which he had infected her before struck her again, its delirium lasting through the last dull days of February to a suddenly crisp and daffodil-coloured March.

‘If I could believe you,' he told her. ‘After what you did to me last time, how can I believe you? How do I know you won't lead me on and let me down again? You hurt me, Polly. You really hurt me. I couldn't risk going through it again.'

If she loved him she would give herself. Why not? Even clumsy, amiable Roger had tried the same thing and there was no doubting his sincerity. And she was asking a great deal of Roy. He had no money and, if Miriam and Benedict so decided, neither had she. Surely it wasn't too much to ask – was it? – for a little proof of her affection, something to keep him warm while he was facing up to the chill of Benedict? He no longer tried to force her. ‘Please, Polly,' he said. And afterwards, when what had become such an enormous obstacle in her mind was finally got over, they could decide whether to run off and get married or whether to go straight away and brazen it out at High Meadows.

‘Please
– Polly.'

‘Please, Polly. Please, please –' muttered Roger Timms nightly, for ever, unless she did something to put a stop to know.

‘All right then – I'm leaving,' said Roy Kington. She threw her arms around him in panic and despair and would have given herself then, pressed against the alley wall, had they not been disturbed by a noisy inquisitive crowd spilling out of the hotel.

‘Come to my lodgings – it's only across the street.' He had invited her there before and she had always resisted. But now her body was so close to yielding, as desperate and unafraid as it would ever be.

‘Yes, Polly – do come. You're ready. You love me – I can almost believe it – I'm very near –'

She had left Roger waiting for her in the cocktail bar, drooping as always over his whisky sour, blinking owlishly at Adela Adair and Sally.

Roy Kington put his mouth against her ear. ‘What does that matter, Polly? Once you belong to me you won't be going back to him.'

The glow of that declaration carried her across the street, its radiance obscuring the dinginess of his room, the staleness of old cigarette ends and beer bottles which filled it, although she was uneasy at the way he immediately peeled off his clothes and attacked hers. Polly cared about her dresses. She didn't want to see this one crumpled and flung to the ground. She was also very cold.

‘I'll warm you.' But he did not. His experience of women was extensive, his experience of virginity limited to the losing of his own on a drunken spree ten years before, while still at school! And what he had learned in Cheltenham about a woman's need – for tenderness and romance he had understood to be a preliminary no longer required when fulfilment was so close at hand. He had waited a long time for Polly Swanfield, had endured frustration and loss of face on her account – having expressed too much confidence to too many friends in his ability to get her – and now his first concern was speed, before she changed her mind and then, having achieved the tight entry and ruptured the membrane that constituted her maidenhead, what mattered to him was stamina. Since he would certainly talk about it afterwards he assumed she would do likewise and wished to give her cause to speak of him as virile, accomplished, more than able to stay the course. He did not understand orgasm in women, assuming it came with his or, in the case of ‘ladies'like his mother and sisters, not at all. He had thought no more about it than that.

‘Isn't this great,' he said.

‘Yes.' It absolutely
had
to be. And gritting her teeth, lying beneath him on a thin scratchy blanket, she endured not the disgust she had expected to feel with Roger but a physical outrage just the same, a hard,
unloving
object penetrating her body, since nothing that loved her could give her such pain, an ugly intruder taking satisfaction from her in this ungainly, unseemly fashion.

She did not like it. She could not shut out of her ears the sounds of the lodging-house going on all around her, other people – strangers – talking, listening, through that thin wall. If she could hear their voices, their footsteps, that spate of coughing, those bursts of laughter, then surely they could hear the agonized creaking of Roy's bed springs, the awful puffing and panting he was making. She had never realized that lovemaking was so noisy, although it had struck her, from the start, that in a place like this, it was probably against the law. Hadn't she heard that? Yes, of course she had – of hoteliers refusing accommodation to couples who couldn't produce a marriage certificate. It must be illegal then. And what if someone knocked on the door, or suddenly burst in and accused them of immorality? What if someone threatened to fetch the landlord, or the police, or Benedict?

She did not like it at all. It hurt her, and scared her, and puzzled her too since in what had been done to her so far she could see not even the possibility of pleasure. Yet if he wanted it, as he all too evidently did, then she would bear it gladly. And she would find her enjoyment in his. She loved him. She had given him the precious, unrepeatable gift of her virginity to prove it. No woman could ever give him more than that. And in a few moments – could it last much longer? – she could get dressed and plan their life together. Perhaps he would want to go and see Benedict tonight and get it over with, throw his cards on the table and be damned? Or perhaps he would want her to elope straight away, creep home and get her things and run away with him? But either way she didn't despair that Benedict, when he realized they had already done this thing which so absolutely bound them together, would see reason, make the best of it, and let her have her big wedding. The house on Lawnswood Hill had been built, after all, with her money. Why shouldn't she live there, after a discreet interval, with Roy? Would he like that?

He shuddered suddenly, groaned, clutched her more wildly, hurt her for a moment quite badly, and then rolled aside.

‘Wasn't that bloody marvellous?'

‘Yes it was. Wonderful.'

And now, having won his bet with himself and with his mates, it was time to extricate himself from the consequences.

‘You don't really think so, Polly. You're lying to me.'

‘No I'm not.' Having undergone the ordeal, paid the price, she had been looking forward to affection, tender little speeches, all those happy exciting plans; and she was horrified.

‘Yes you are. I can tell. You think I'm a lousy lover – well, if that's it, then I don't care. I won't plead with you.'

For ten minutes she pleaded with him, wept, wrung her hands, vowed – no longer caring who heard her through those thin walls – that he was magnificent, thrilling, beautiful, that she adored him.

‘I don't believe you.'

What else could she do to convince him? She had given him everything. And now he was everything to her. She had no one else. A shaft of raw fear entered her heart, a terrible thing, so that she began to weep again, cry out to him again how much he meant to her.

‘Do shut up,' he said. ‘For God's sake, Polly – these walls are thin you know. No point in providing entertainment for all and sundry.'

‘You didn't care who heard you a while ago.'

‘Well, that was then and this is now, Pol. Makes a difference. I'd get dressed if I were you old girl. The chap I share with should be back any minute now.'

She got dressed, her hands shaking, her skin crawling, sobs catching in her chest, her head teeming with snatches of thought which must be –
had
to be impossible. She had to be wrong. Nothing so terrible as this could possibly happen.

‘Sorry it didn't work out,' he said.

What did he mean? Staring at him, her mouth opened soundlessly, stupidly, her eyes glazing over.

‘Well it didn't, Polly. You must admit –. That's why one has to do it, don't you see? I'm sure I made it clear enough. Dreadful business if one went ahead and got married – like our parents' generation used to do – and
then
discovered that one didn't suit in the things that matter.'

He had mortally wounded her, that much was clear, and quickly – since the friend he was expecting any minute might have other friends with him – he gave her the
coup degrace.

‘Pity really. We could try again if you like when I get back from Ireland – if I ever do. No – I know I didn't tell you that I'd joined the Black and Tans, but all's fair in love and war, don't they say? And since I'm off to war again –! Need I say more? That's why I came back, of course, to make things right with my mother and put my affairs in order, Ireland being a pretty dangerous place. Yes, I've joined up again, Pol. I'm off to enforce British rule on our nearest colony.'

She hurled herself at him then howling, not caring what he did to her so long as she could fasten her nails or her teeth on some part of him and claw it to death, squeeze it to death, destroy it; not caring if he murdered her, so long as she could damage him first.

‘Oh what fun,' he said, holding her away, but she was strong and he had to hit her hard to stop her, and even then, when he knocked her down, she kept on getting up again and throwing herself back into the attack.

‘My word, Polly – what a girl you are.'

He had never found her so attractive.

‘Bastard,' she shrieked, going for his throat, his eyes, his groin, the shrapnel they hadn't been able to get out of his chest, so that he was rather more relieved than he would afterwards admit when his friends arrived.

They were hard men, like himself, all bound for Ireland and the Black and Tans.

‘I say – is this just between the two of you or can anybody join in?'

‘Help yourselves,' said Roy Kington, laughing to disguise a serious shortness of breath.

There were three of them. Polly stood for a moment, horribly at bay, and then, leaving behind her coat, her bag, every penny she possessed, every cherished illusion, ran down the creaking stairs and out into the street.

The cocktail bar was not crowded that night, Arnold Crozier in his usual corner stroking rather absent-mindedly the arm of his blonde, Toby leaning against a bar stool making up his mind to go home, two or three young couples, and Claire tidying up, glancing at her watch, wishing them all away, since she was going up to Westmorland the next morning with Kit Hardie to see a house he thought suitable for conversion to an hotel. And with Kit on her mind – the day and night she had agreed to spend with him – she had noticed nothing amiss. Polly had been here, she remembered that, mainly due to the familiar sight of Roger Timms patiently waiting, treating Sally Templeton to gin and vermouth and Adela Adair to neat
Calvados
in exchange for their conversation. Since Roger was no longer here, she supposed Polly had come back to be taken home. And so closely were they bound together in her mind as a couple, that she even looked for him behind Polly's back as she suddenly appeared in the doorway, badly dishevelled, and walked unsteadily across the floor.

Was she drunk? It certainly looked like it. Had she fallen down somewhere and hit her head? Having seen the beginnings of a black eye before, Claire thought it likely. And it would also account for the state of her dress.

‘Are you all right, Polly?'

But Polly brushed her aside and marching directly to the table where Roger usually sat, as if drawn to it by magnetism, said in an odd, disjointed fashion, ‘Roger'. And when there was no answer, when he failed suddenly to materialize from thin air at her call, ‘Where's Roger? Where is he?'

‘I don't know, Polly.'

Who did? The circle of her intimates, Arnold Crozier, Toby, Kit Hardie himself, were converging upon her, each one of them drawing his own conclusions about the bruises and the streaks of tears and mascara on her cheeks, the terrible shuddering which had started very deep inside her and was now spreading all over her body, jerking her like a demented marionette.

‘Where's Roger?'

‘He left,' said MacAllister.

‘He wouldn't leave me.' And even in her hysteria her tone said, ‘The poor fool.'

MacAllister, no stranger to hysteria in women and not particularly impressed by it, raised scornful shoulders.

‘Have it your own way, pretty Polly, but I heard him with my own ears offering a lift home to Adela Adair, and saw them go through that door with my own two eyes.'

Nothing had prepared her for this.

‘Good,' she said. ‘I'm glad. I'm glad. Good riddance – to me I mean, not him. Good riddance to me. I'm not worth a damn –'

And dragging the diamond ring from her finger, realizing now with bitterness that it
was
too tight as Miriam had always told her, she flung it wildly to the floor, somewhere underfoot.

‘Good riddance. Good riddance –'

Several hands reached out as she swayed forward but it was slightly-built, easily-set-aside Toby who caught her first, holding her firm and fast as she collapsed against him sobbing; muttering, accusing herself of every heresy and disgrace, every hideousness, which his soft, generally unreliable voice covered with a lullaby of It's all right now, Polly. You're safe now, Polly.