Ellie

  ‘Boring, naïve and docile!’ If he had used words like ‘too demanding’, ‘fiery’, or even ‘too ambitious’ she could have lived with it. But he’d made her sound like some humble little nursemaid! How dare he say such things?’

  That afternoon was still so fresh in her mind. Why did he agree to her staying these four days with him if he had another woman? How could he make love to her, say such tender things, if he was in love with someone else?

  She remembered then the new teeth and the smart new dinner-jacket! Ray had never cared about his appearance before; it had to be the influence of this Ruby!

  Ellie felt cheap and used, smarting with shame when she thought of some of the things they’d done together in the past. Ray had taught her everything about love-making, but she would never have been quite so abandoned with him if she hadn’t believed he really cared for her. He’d told her once she was the most fascinating woman he’d ever met. Now she was boring!

  Rage welled up inside her. She should have stormed into that dressing-room, slapped his face, maybe even smashed something. Why hadn’t she?

  ‘Because you are docile,’ she told herself. ‘You let everyone walk all over you. Go back there now and show them all it’s not true. I bet everyone in the theatre knows what’s going on, they’re probably laughing up their sleeves about you. Even Alf will tell Ray you came running out.’

  But she knew she couldn’t go back and make a scene. She was too hurt inside to face further humiliation. She dried her eyes and tried to think. It was almost ten now, she had nowhere to go and very little money. On top of that, all her clothes and the things she needed for Monday’s audition were at Ray’s flat.

  Blind panic consumed her. She was freezing, the dark, deserted heath looked threatening and the knowledge there was no one, anywhere to turn to robbed her of clear thought for a moment or two. But instinct made her get up and start walking back towards Hampstead village and as she walked she tried to think of somewhere to go.

  There was her old digs, but Mrs Blake would charge her and anyway Ruby might well be staying there. She could go to Annie King’s, but calling so late Annie would be bound to ask questions and besides, it was a bit of an imposition. She had just about enough money for the train to Bury St Edmunds, but nice as it would be to see Dora and Amos, there wasn’t a train until the morning and she’d have to come back on Sunday to be ready for Monday’s audition.

  Then suddenly she remembered Edward.

  She ran then, down the hill, back past the theatre just as everyone was coming out. She had already checked four pubs on the way up from Ray’s earlier, but there were plenty of others.

  ‘We’re closed,’ the barman shouted as the door of The Feathers opened and Ellie looked in.

  Edward was having a last drink with a barmaid. He felt the blast of cold air from the open door and heard Fred shout out, but he didn’t turn round.

  ‘I only wanted to ask if Edward Manning plays the piano here.’

  Edward spun round instantly at the familiar voice. ‘Ellie!’ He put down his glass and rushed over to where she stood hesitantly in the doorway. ‘What a super surprise!’

  She looked like a stranded extra from a film set in her fur hat and heavy military-style coat, but closer inspection showed there were tear stains on her cheeks and her eyes looked desperately forlorn.

  ‘Oh Edward,’ she whimpered, lips trembling. ‘Thank goodness I’ve found you.’

  An hour later Ellie was feeling a little better. Edward had bought her two large gins in the pub, even though it was past closing time, while he listened to her story, then he’d taken her back to his tiny room in Haverstock Hill. Creeping up the stairs in darkness, smelling that peculiar smell that all rooming houses seemed to have, was so reminiscent of other digs they’d shared, all the good times, that she felt a little less fraught.

  Edward jokingly said his room was like a coffin. It was narrow and long with a very high ceiling, but once he’d lit the paraffin stove and poured her another gin from the bottle he’d bought at the pub, it was almost cosy.

  ‘My landlady will throw a fit if she knows I’ve got a girl up here,’ he whispered. ‘Thank God she didn’t hear us come in.’

  Edward was so sympathetic. He admitted he’d seen Ray with Ruby Powers, the new leading lady, on several occasions, but then he’d seen him with other women too. He took the view that Ray was a male Bonny, a man who collected up women who might be of use to him. He promised he would get Ellie’s case in the morning, but insisted that for tonight she must stay with him.

  ‘You aren’t boring,’ he said tenderly. ‘Naïve perhaps, and you are sometimes a bit too docile for your own good. But never boring. Ruby Powers is one of those neurotic, hysterical women who I’d call truly boring. Let him stew with her, he deserves her.’

  ‘But why say he was keeping in with me in case I got to the top? I don’t understand that.’

  ‘Well, we all know that’s just a matter of time,’ Edward smiled. He found it amusing that Ellie never fully appreciated how talented she was. ‘But perhaps he’s heard a whisper about something, he’s very thick with Harry Bloomfield.’

  Ellie considered this for a moment. Perhaps Ray knew all along she was going for the audition? Could Sir Miles’s company be backing Oklahoma? It was a cheering idea. She’d barely given the man a thought while she was away, but this brought him sharply back into focus. She half wished she could confide in Edward about him, but something told her it was better to keep it to herself.

  The gin made them sentimental. Edward gave her a pair of his pyjamas to put on and they got into the single bed together and reminisced about the good times they’d shared. By the time they’d had a few more drinks they were both very emotional. Ellie started to admit all her failures with men.

  ‘I don’t know what I do wrong,’ she confided, slurring her words a little. ‘But it just never seems to work out. They either think I’ll be really “easy” because I’m on the stage and drop me when they discover that isn’t so. Or they put me on a pedestal and almost worship me. Why can’t I fall in love and have them fall for me too?’

  ‘Part of it’s because of the way you earn your living,’ Edward said soothingly. ‘You can’t really blame a chap for trying to get you into bed when he knows next week you’ll be moving on. As for the ones who put you on a pedestal! – Well, I can understand that too, Ellie. You’re so beautiful, they are bound to be bowled over at first and you aren’t around long enough to get to know properly.’

  ‘But I did stay in one place with Ray.’ She began to cry again, remembering what she’d overheard. ‘It was so lovely with him this afternoon, for a short while I actually thought I’d found what I was looking for. How could a man be that way when he feels nothing?’

  ‘It’s hard for me to be objective.’ Edward took her glass from her hand and cuddled her. ‘I can’t understand any man not adoring you, because I do. But I’ve done my share of dirty tricks with women too, so that puts me in the same camp as Ray.’

  ‘You wouldn’t just use someone!’ Ellie turned her tear-stained face up to his. ‘Would you?’

  Edward sighed deeply. ‘I do it all the time,’ he admitted. ‘In fact I’m probably far worse than Ray. I wish I could be different. I don’t like myself very much.’

  ‘But why, Edward?’ she asked. He had said on the way home that he’d finished with Marcia. He didn’t appear to have anyone else. ‘Don’t you want to be cosy with someone who cares for you?’

  Edward did; daily he wished he could meet a girl he felt that way about. He wanted to tell Ellie just how it was for him, to confess everything and be cleansed, but he didn’t dare. Ellie’s experience was limited to only Charley and Ray and he was absolutely certain that neither of these two had the kind of unnatural urges he did.

  ‘I suppose, like you, I’ve never met the right person,’ Edward said lamely. ‘Maybe when we stop looking they’ll just pop up.’

  ‘I’ll never trust anyone aga
in,’ Ellie sniffed.

  ‘We’re a pair of emotional cripples,’ Edward said, hoping it might make her laugh. He knew it was true of himself, but he couldn’t really see her in the same light. ‘Go to sleep. Tomorrow it will all look different. It’s only your pride that’s been hurt. That mends quicker than a broken heart.’

  Edward lay looking at Ellie for some time before he turned out the light. She was sound asleep now on his shoulder, one arm across his chest, her eyelashes like sooty brushes on her cheeks, her lower lip quivering as she breathed. He’d held no other woman like this. Even on rare occasions when he had stayed all night with a woman, he always put space between them, hating the enforced intimacy of a bed.

  He could feel the warmth and softness of her breasts against him, yet it didn’t arouse him. He sensed that the exquisite tenderness he felt now was the kind of emotion a man should feel for a woman after love-making. Yet he’d never felt it before, not with anyone.

  He turned out the light and buried his face against her hair, tears pricking at his eyelids. Why had he been singled out for torture? What cruel fate had decreed that he should love this woman, yet be unable to make love to her?

  As Ellie was dropping off to sleep with Edward, Bonny was dancing along a Durrants Hotel corridor, her high heels in her hand, John Norton a few paces behind her.

  She turned as she got to her door, swaying a little unsteadily. She’d had a lot to drink this evening.

  ‘I love hotels,’ she said, clamping her hand over her mouth as she realised how loud her voice sounded.

  It was one in the morning and all the other guests at Durrants seemed to have gone to bed. This was the best hotel she’d ever been in: it had a quiet sort of luxury, with pale blue carpets, soft wall lights and ivory, silky wallpaper. It was in a road running parallel to Oxford Street, just behind Selfridges. Once an old coaching inn, it still had that old-world charm, with a wood-panelled dining-room and bar, but the bedrooms were comfortably elegant, and hers had its own bathroom, with thick, fluffly towels warmed on a radiator. Magnus had taken her to some nice hotels, but never one as special as this. She was flattered too that John had his own room; she fully intended him to share hers, but it felt good not to be taken for granted.

  She giggled as John reached her. ‘Anything could happen in a hotel,’ she whispered, her eyes sparkling. ‘You don’t know who anyone is, where they’ve come from, or where they’re going. It’s kind of magical.’

  John smiled. He didn’t see hotels that way; to him they were impersonal, lonely places, though Durrants was far nicer than most. Like Bonny, he was a little drunk. Perhaps he shouldn’t have ordered that bottle of champagne in the night-club, not after two bottles of wine with dinner.

  He had never seen Bonny looking quite so adorable, her fur coat draped over one shoulder, the other bare and vulnerable, hair coming loose from its pins, and her blue satin evening dress clinging seductively to her hips. ‘Go to bed before you wake everyone,’ he said as he opened her door for her.

  She paused, leaning back on the doorpost. ‘Aren’t you coming in to say good-night properly?’

  John felt himself weakening as he looked at her, suddenly hot all over. Earlier he had felt certain he had enough willpower to kiss her good-night and go back to his own room. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  ‘We’ve got a great many things to see and do tomorrow,’ he said weakly. But all he could focus on was the slight curve of her belly beneath her dress. ‘I’ll just say good-night here.’

  John hadn’t a great deal of experience with women: a few girlfriends at university, a fling with a laboratory assistant in his first job and casual, short-loved relationships during the war. At heart he was a romantic, believing that for each man there was one true love which should only be consummated in marriage. He had fallen by the wayside in this ideal, especially during his spell in the Guards, but when he met and fell in love with Bonny he became determined to hold out until he was absolutely certain of her. She turned him inside out and upside down. One moment he saw her as a little innocent who needed protecting, at other times he felt it was he who needed protection. He sensed that once he’d made love to her he might lose all control of his emotions. He had a demanding job, and he couldn’t work properly if his mind was elsewhere. He wanted her desperately, but at the same time he wanted to retain his mental freedom.

  ‘Okay then.’ She reached forward and kissed his cheek. ‘But come in for a moment and unfasten my necklace. I can’t do it myself.’

  The chambermaid had turned down her bed and drawn the curtains while they were out. One small light had been left on by the bed, and Bonny’s nightdress was virgin white against the dark-plum counterpane.

  Bonny tossed her coat on to a small chair and kicked off her shoes, then lifting her hair she turned her back to John.

  He could barely see the clasp of the necklace in the dim light, but the lovely line of her slender neck, her shoulder-blades above the satin of her dress, were all too visible. His hands trembled as he tried to undo the clasp. Her perfume wafted up to his nostrils and he wanted to bite into that smooth, pink-white flesh.

  ‘Now a proper kiss,’ she said, turning as the necklace came away in his hands. ‘I’m not going to bed without one.’

  Until tonight, all their kisses had been in public places or in his car, but now, with alcohol heightening passion, the soft light and a bed so close to hand, it was quite different. Her lips responded to his hungrily, her tongue insinuating its way into his mouth. He could feel the heat of her body through the delicate dress and he knew there was no turning back.

  ‘I love you, John,’ she said, breaking away from his lips for a moment. ‘Don’t push me away.’

  John’s resolutions crumbled as she kissed him again. His fingers reached the zipper of her strapless dress involuntarily as she clung to him. As his hands caressed her soft, warm back, so her dress slid down to the floor, leaving her only in stockings, a garter belt and pale-blue, lace-trimmed knickers.

  He gasped in wonder as she took a step back from him. Her breasts, which until now he’d stroked only tentatively through clothes, were firm globes with nipples like small raspberries. He was transfixed by her beauty – the cascade of silky hair over her shoulders, the turquoise of her eyes and the plump moistness of her lips – and he grabbed her back into his arms, showering her face and neck with kisses, knowing that he’d passed the point of no return.

  ‘Make love to me, John,’ she whispered, holding his face between her two hands and kissing him again. ‘All I want is you.’ She slowly unbuttoned his shirt and rubbed her breasts against his bare chest, her erect nipples sending shudders of delight down his spine.

  John’s head told him to take things slowly, but his body reacted violently, with a mind of its own. He pushed her back on to the bed, beyond thinking of anything but his own needs and the passion he’d suppressed for so long. He plunged into her like a dog presented with a bitch in heat, taking his pleasure selfishly, drowning in the scent of her. ‘I love you,’ he moaned, biting her shoulder fiercely as he came all too quickly. ‘Oh, Bonny!’

  Bonny smiled to herself as she held John in her arms. He had surprised her. She hadn’t expected he would lose control like that. It had been far too quick for her to get any satisfaction, in fact it had hurt, but then she was supposed to be a virgin in this little game.

  ‘I hurt you, didn’t I? Oh Bonny, I’m so sorry,’ he said, his voice croaking with emotion. He turned her face to his, supporting himself on his elbow. To her further surprise, his brown eyes were swimming with tears.

  ‘Just a bit,’ she whispered, taking his hand and kissing his fingertips. ‘But it’s okay. I think it always hurts the first time.’

  Other men had used her just as roughly and she usually despised them for their callousness. But she didn’t despise John; in fact she was moved by his distress. He would make an excellent lover with a bit of practice.

  ‘I was like an animal. How will you ever forgive
me?’ he said, burying his face in her breasts.

  She looked down at his back. It was sun-tanned, and his skin was silky smooth. She decided he had a nice body – wide shoulders, firm buttocks, perfectly proportioned and remarkably muscular for a man who didn’t do manual work. ‘I’ll forgive you, if you try again. Gently this time,’ she said.

  ‘Only one more night together before I go to the Persian Gulf,’ John said sadly as Bonny lay snuggled into his arms on Sunday night. ‘I don’t know when I’m going to be able to see you again either.’

  ‘I’ll be counting the days till you get back,’ she said, turning her face up to his and running one finger along his moustache. She could see now why Ellie had said John was handsome, a bit like Ronald Coleman, though it had taken her a long time to acknowledge it. He tended to be so serious and correct, and his unnerving habit of frowning gave the impression he lacked a sense of humour. This weekend she hadn’t seen that frown once; his mouth seemed to be curved into a permanent grin, and when he gave one of his rare, deep belly laughs his dark eyes danced and sparkled.

  She wished she could make him laugh more often. The boy in him revealed by his laughter was so very appealing. Although she wasn’t one to think much about what made people serious or sad, she had found herself pondering on what made him so grave sometimes. Was it his work? Or losing his two older brothers? Or just that he was something of a loner?

  She cuddled closer to him, caught by an unexpected pang of tenderness for this man she couldn’t quite fathom. ‘Oh John,’ she murmured. ‘It’s been such a wonderful weekend. I wish I could be with you all the time.’

  John felt his eyes prickle and a lump came up in his throat. She had said just what he was thinking.

  He had been mortified by the way he fell on her on Friday night, but Bonny had just laughed it off. By Saturday morning, John felt he’d mended the fences. They’d made love again for half the night and this time he’d made sure he thought only of pleasing her.

  The time had just flown by. On Saturday they had toured the shops in Regent Street and Bond Street, and though John had never liked shopping before, Bonny’s girlish excitement had won him over. He wanted to shower her with presents, and he was quite happy to sit back in a chair and watch her try on every dress in the shop. He enjoyed watching her facial expressions, the way she wrinkled her nose when she wasn’t sure about something, to see the tip of her tongue emerge from her lips as she scanned through the rails, and her look of triumph when she came out of the changing-room in a dress that was simply stunning. He had fully expected her to be greedy, but she would accept nothing but that one plain black dress.