Stephen’s mouth came down on hers. Lily tasted whisky and the stale taste of cigarette smoke. She stayed absolutely still, her face upraised. She let him kiss her cool lips and she let his arm go around her waist and press her closer to him. She felt a sense of enormous detachment, as if her real self had retreated to a corner of her mind, curled up, and was watching Stephen’s hand as it slid down over the curve of Lily’s buttock and clenched it tight.
Stephen’s tongue touched the corner of her mouth. Lily found she was holding her breath and breathed out with a sigh, relaxing her lips. At once his other arm came around her and his grip tightened. His tongue probed into her mouth. Lily froze, enduring the sense of invasion. She was afraid she would gag.
He pushed her gently back on the bed. Lily stiffened as if she were going to struggle and then suddenly the fight went out of her and she sat, and then, obedient to his hand on her shoulder, she lay back. She thought for a second, for nothing more than a second, of the night she had spent in Charlie Smith’s narrow single bed, and the warmth, and the popping light of the gas fire, and a man whose body she had longed to touch all over, who had lain silent and smiling, holding her close.
The green silk counterpane was cold, slick against the nape of her neck. Stephen was pressing down on top of her, his knee driving in between her legs, forcing her to open them, and then he was lying between her legs and his hand was fumbling down between them.
The clock on the mantelpiece gave a whirr, and then struck. The little silvery bells rang one—two—three—four—Lily gave a gasp. “Four o’clock!” she exclaimed. Her voice was high with panic. She snatched a breath and brought it under control. She could act her way out of this. She knew she could act her way through this horror. She thought of her ma saying, “You’re a born actress, Lily,” and the lessons where she had been taught to mimic a thousand emotions—fear, anger, shock, terror, grief. She had never been taught to sound like a lady, like an upper-class virgin on her way to tea. But Lily was gambling that she could do it.
Stephen’s hand was under her skirt, fumbling at her thighs, the cool bare stretch of thigh between stocking top and camiknickers. “Four o’clock,” Lily said calmly. “Tea time, Stephen.”
As he hesitated she slid up the bed away from him, pulling down the yellow linen skirt, and smiling at him. She felt her lower lip tremble with her fear, and she reassembled the smile at once. “Tea time,” she said.
Stephen got up at once from the bed, turned his back to her, adjusted his trousers and turned back. “You must forgive me,” he said with a throaty chuckle. “Broad daylight too. I can’t imagine what I was thinking of.”
Lily crossed to the mirror and combed her hair. Her face was absolutely serene. The room was reflected behind her and she was watching Stephen closely. He looked half-abashed and half-proud.
“You must forgive me. I have waited to be alone with you as my wife for a very long time. I feel very passionate. A man has feelings like this. Urgent feelings. They cannot be denied. It is bad for the health to deny these feelings for too long.”
Lily nodded and put down her comb. Unconsciously she was reproducing precisely the gestures and the well-born confidence of Stephen’s mother. “Of course,” she said smoothly. She had not listened to one word that he had said. But she had heard, attentively, the voice of a man bringing himself back under control. She would be safe from Stephen until tonight. She would be safe until the strict conventions of his class sanctioned the act of intercourse. Stephen thought it wrong to make love at tea time. The time for lovemaking between a respectable man and his wife was night-time and in the dark. Anything else, by daylight, or anywhere else but the marital bed, was the behaviour of a whore and a client.
Lily put on her hat and took up her gloves and they went downstairs to the residents’ lounge for tea.
It was gay downstairs. There was a little quartet playing music from light operas and Strauss waltzes and there were a number of well-dressed women and attractive men taking tea together. Lily looked around her with interest. She could see now that her yellow dress and coat were badly cut and ordinary compared with the London fashions. It had stood out in the Portsmouth department store, but here they were using lighter materials, double-lined even treble-lined for decency but which still floated out when the woman walked or moved, and fell in loose folds and pleats when she sat still. Lily could not see the secret of the cut of the fabric but she could see that the dresses flowed in a shimmer of material while hers stayed obstinately stiff. Her hat, she noted with relief, was entirely all right.
“I should like to go to the shops,” she said with sudden decision. Stephen had lit another cigarette, but when the waiter came with the tea things and a tray of scones and another tray of little cakes he put it out.
“I am longing to buy some clothes,” Lily said. “D’you know where we should go, Stephen?”
“I should think Harrods would be the place to start,” he said. “Mother jotted down some names for me. I have them in my diary. But she hasn’t been up to town for clothes for years. If we go now, we should catch them before they close, and you can ask the girls there where they would recommend.”
Lily nodded. Her face over the teapot was bright. She looked like the old Lily that Stephen had desired as his saviour from his fear of war. She was experiencing a rush of elation at having got away from the bedroom so easily and so well. Lily set aside the thought of the coming night. She had been forced down by Stephen, and she had felt the panic of weakness; but then she had talked herself out of trouble. Lily beamed at him and drained her cup of tea.
Stephen smiled back. “Well, Mrs. Winters,” he said. “You look as if you were enjoying married life, I must say.”
“What a lark!” Lily said. Her voice shook slightly with fright, but then she got it under control. “What a huge lark!”
• • •
The shopping trip was a success. Stephen loved being waited on and treated with unctuous respect. They fetched him a little gilt chair in the women’s dress department and he sat at the glass showcase for gloves smoking a cigarette and watching while Lily changed from one fashionable frock to another. Now and then Stephen would wave a hand authoritatively at one of the three women who were serving them and say: “She must have that one! We’ll take it!”
Lily was feeling very bright and modern surrounded by beautiful dresses and watched by a handsome man, her new husband. She had never before had more than one new dress at a time, and since all her clothes were made by either her mother or her Aunt Mary she had seen them at every stage of their making—from the cloth, to the cut-pieces, to the final dress. By then the dress had lost its gloss of newness and Lily had lost her excitement over it. After it had been fitted half a dozen times and Lily had been co-opted to sew the seams and the hem it felt like an old dress, certainly a familiar one.
But these beauties came from some mysterious store room at the back of the shop. The shop assistant eyed Lily with a flattering gaze as if she could hardly believe how young and pretty she was. Then she turned to Stephen and shrugged her shoulders. “Everything we have would look ravishing on Madam,” she said simply. Then she raised one finger. “But I do have something which I think is extra-special.”
She snapped her finger and one of the sales girls rushed to fetch another dress which was a full-length evening gown of the sheerest blue silk. It draped Lily like water pouring over a naked statue. One small brooch held it at one shoulder, a scarf of the material was tossed over the other. It was too long but they offered to take up the hem at once, that very evening.
“Madam is too beautiful in it,” the senior sales woman said. “I knew it would be so. She can wear anything, but the pure classical line is hers to perfection.”
Stephen stroked his moustache and winked over the top of his gloved hand at Lily. “I say, you do look rather the thing, Lily,” he said with careful casualness. “You really do look the very thing indeed.”
And Lily, looking a
t herself in the long pier glass, with a view of her slim back encased in shimmery blue silk provided by another mirror held by yet another sales girl, thought how much she wished that Charlie could see her, looking so lovely. Then she turned to Stephen with a bright smile on her face and said: “I am so happy I could just die!”
And they all laughed, indulgently, at the pretty bride’s extravagance.
Two dresses had to be altered, but one cocktail dress, a lovely peach bead-encrusted gown ending daringly short on the knee but with a train at one side all the way down to ankle length, they took back to the hotel with them in the smart Harrods box.
“You are to wait downstairs while I change!” Lily announced gaily as Stephen emerged from the bathroom tying his bow tie. “I want to sweep down those stairs in my new gown while you watch!”
Stephen had been thinking that he would sit in the chair and watch Lily get dressed in her new clothes, watch a parade of cream silk stockings and silken underwear. He had taken the sales lady at Harrods to one side and given her to understand that they were shopping for a honeymoon trousseau. He thought that the size of the bill indicated that Lily’s underwear was no longer plain cotton knit.
“I will only be a few minutes,” Lily commanded. “But it cost you so much I want you to have the full effect.”
Stephen hesitated. “I wanted to watch it go on! It cost me so much I want to have the full effect of the underwear too!”
Lily hesitated and for a moment he was afraid he had offended her. At once he felt a sudden rush of excitement. She was such a young thing, such a little girl and yet, like it or not, she was his wife and there were certain things which would have to be done. He felt two contradictory emotions at once: a fearful respect for her which he had learned from his mother and from the code of his class who held women to be angels, far above carnal desires; and a demanding lust which he had learned in Belgium from girls no older than Lily who had serviced the British troops. Stephen feared and longed to know whether under Lily’s cool exterior there was a whore like the Belgian whores. If she were wanton he would desire her and despise her. If she were frigid he would respect her and rape her.
Lily pushed him imperiously towards the door. “We’ll be late for the theatre if you wait here, silly! You must go!”
Stephen went. He strolled down the arching staircase, meeting the eyes of fashionable women who watched him as he crossed the lobby. He felt a bit of a dog. He had a beautiful new wife upstairs making herself pretty to come out to the theatre with him, and a long night ahead of him when he would be giving the orders and Lily would see that the dresses and the silk underwear and even the handsome large stone on her finger carried a price after all.
15
LILY SANG AS THEY DROVE BACK to the hotel in the cab. They had been to a musical and the tunes were haunting. Lily hummed over the words she did not know and sang the tune to Stephen in her sweet silvery voice.
“What about a nightcap?” Stephen suggested as the doorman held open the door.
“Lovely,” Lily said. “I’ll have a lemonade.”
Stephen chuckled fondly. “No you won’t! I’ll get us a little bottle of bubbly,” he said. “It’s our honeymoon night, Lily. You should have something to drink to our good health.”
Lily smiled. She could feel her throat drying a little from nerves. It was not as bad as waiting in the wings, she told herself. She knew that she had felt fear worse than this. It was apprehension, nothing more. After all, even though she knew little about it, nothing could be too bad. If there were any marital secrets that were too bad to bear someone would have told her. People would not stay married if it were too awful. Women would not remarry when they had free choice.
Whatever Muriel might have said in that horrid cloakroom, Lily knew at least one girl who had found herself in trouble with a baby and she was not a prostitute. Lily’s tough common sense asserted itself. She could not be frightened into frigidity as upper-class girls usually were. Lily had seen prostitutes—a couple worked near the Palais music hall and they were pleasant girls who would call good evening to Lily and wish her luck. And Trixie, who was married in a dress the size of a billowing tent over her swelling belly, said privately that she had been nothing worse than unlucky, and that hundreds of women had got married from the same state as her and never regretted it. Lily thought briefly of Charlie on the beach in Dorset and how his kisses had felt. If married life were anything like that then it was nothing to fear at all. Lily resolutely put Muriel’s whispered warnings from her mind.
“Here we are,” Stephen said cheerfully. A waiter wound through the tables towards them, bringing an ice bucket with a bobbing bottle and two chilled glasses.
“And some sugar,” Stephen said. He met the waiter’s surprised look with a cold stare. “Some lump sugar,” he ordered again. “Don’t you have such a thing in the kitchen?”
“Yes, Sir, of course, Sir,” the waiter said disdainfully.
Lily giggled as he went away. “Is it a bad thing to do? To put sugar in champagne?”
“It’s only allowed if you are very, very beautiful,” Stephen said tenderly. “And very young and quite adorable, and on the first night of your honeymoon.”
Lily laughed and her voice shook only a little. “I qualify!” she said brightly. “I shall have sugar in my champagne!”
The waiter brought a silver sugar bowl with tongs. “Sugar, Sir,” he said, his tone perfectly neutral. “Shall I open the champagne now?”
Stephen nodded, frowning slightly, waiting for the man to make a mistake so that he could complain. The waiter poured two glasses; nothing was spilled. He placed them down on the table and stepped back. Stephen, seething inwardly, was left with nothing to say. It was Lily who scored the point for them. She leaned forward and picked up the sugar bowl and smiled at Stephen. “One lump or two, Vicar?” she asked in a chirpy Pompey accent.
The waiter bowed and retreated, Stephen and Lily dissolved into laughter. Lily dropped a cube of sugar into her champagne and they clinked glasses, still laughing. They drank the whole bottle in perfect accord.
It was midnight before the bottle was empty. Stephen rose and extended a hand to Lily. “Come on, Mrs. Winters, we’ve a big day sightseeing tomorrow!”
Lily let him pull her to her feet but then she staggered slightly.
“My God, you’re tight!” Stephen chuckled. “Tight as a tick. My word, Lily, you’ll have a headache tomorrow.”
Lily beamed at him. “I don’t care,” she announced. “I don’t care two hoots. Two hoots. What are two hoots?”
Stephen steered her towards the stairs. “Upsadaisy,” he said. They walked carefully upstairs, taking one step at a time. Lily held the long heel-length train of her gown carefully out to the side. Stephen, looking down to watch her feet, could see the seductive movement of Lily’s knees under the short skirt.
“My God, Lily, you’re a lovely piece,” he said.
They reached their bedroom door and Stephen opened it. A chambermaid had been in and turned down the bed, drawn the green curtains against the darkness outside and lit the lamps. The room looked luxurious and welcoming.
“Pretty,” Lily said with deep approval. She turned and went into the bathroom.
Stephen undressed quickly and got into his pyjamas. After a moment’s thought he took the jacket off; then he put it on again but left it undone. On the side of the bed away from the window was Lily’s new silk nightdress, folded carefully by the chambermaid. Stephen put out a finger and touched it. It was smooth and seductive.
“Come on, Lily,” he called. “Are you all right?”
Lily had her back against the locked bathroom door. Her earlier elation had gone. She had exaggerated the effect of the wine, thinking perhaps she could pretend to be sick, or pretend to fall instantly asleep. She did not want to leave the bathroom and face Stephen.
“Lily?” he asked. He got up from the bed. Lily heard him coming towards the bathroom door. He knocked. “Are y
ou all right?”
Lily looked around her. If there had been a window in the bathroom she might have climbed out even wearing her new evening dress and high heels. But there was no way out except through the bedroom. There was no way out without facing Stephen.
“Lily!” Stephen sounded irritated.
Lily looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her face was pale, there were shadows under her eyes. She shrugged at her reflection and then she took a deep breath and unlocked the bathroom door.
Stephen took her in his arms as the door opened and carried her over to the bed. Lily lay back with her eyes shut. Stephen had no idea whether she was sick from the wine, or weary, or too afraid to look at him. He was beyond caring. He laid her down on the bed and he unfastened the gown. It had a row of fiddly hooks under the arm. He remembered how much the garment cost and he undid each one patiently, then he pulled the dress carefully over Lily’s head. She held up her arms to help him, and she sat up a little to slide the dress off, but she did not open her eyes.
She was hopelessly beautiful. She was wearing peach silk camiknickers with tiny pearl buttons and trimmed with peach lace. She had a tiny lace suspender belt under the camiknickers and the elasticated straps of the suspender belt peeped out, fore and aft, to hold up peach silk stockings. Stephen slipped her peach slippers off her little feet and stared at her motionless body.
Lily lay as if she were dead, her eyes tight shut. She guessed Stephen was looking at her, she had heard him sigh when her dress had come off. She was not thinking about him, about herself, about anything. She lay with her eyes tight shut and her mind held to a determined blank. Silently she heard the silly song “If you knew Suzie, like I know Suzie, oh! oh! oh what a girl” playing in her mind. She concentrated on it, trying to remember all the words. Trying to remember precisely the tune. Trying to remember the harmonies and the key and the tempo.