The Art of Love

Cynthia had been helping Helen, her much older sister, with her voluntary work, making and serving tea to the troops. Cynthia had poured out a mug of hot strong tea, stirred in two spoonfuls of sugar and handed it down to the handsome young soldier who’d told her that he liked his tea strong and very sweet.

Cynthia looked into a pair of the most astonishingly blue eyes, and was transfixed. The whole of her being vibrated with entirely unfamiliar sensations, and then the spell was broken, Helen sharply telling her to stop daydreaming, and another soldier jostling the blue-eyed man aside and demandingly holding out his hand for his mug of tea.

The blue-eyed soldier was waiting for her when she had finished for the day. Helen had wanted her to wait, she was only going to be another half hour or so, seeing everything was put away, and then they could go home together. But Cynthia, who was usually the most obedient of girls, had demurred. ‘I want to get home,’ she said. ‘I’ve things to do. I can go on the Underground by myself, I’ll be perfectly all right.’

A woman came up with news of a malfunctioning tea urn, distracting Helen’s attention, and Cynthia had slipped away.

They walked to the Underground together, and he got on the train and sat beside her. They didn’t speak much, but laughed together as a child in the seat opposite, cuddling a shabby toy rabbit, pulled faces at them.

Cynthia knew the minute he opened his mouth that Ronnie came from quite another world to hers. His was a London accent. ‘Cockney, born and bred,’ he told her. Common, her mother would have said, with infinite, dismissive scorn, but Cynthia liked it. Just as she liked everything about Ronnie.

She sat back in the wicker chair and lit a cigarette. The smoke drifted into the air. His young body. When they first went to bed together, she had been amazed by his lithe beauty. He was pale and smooth, with long limbs; she loved the small of his back, just above his muscular buttocks, and those, too, once she had got over her initial astonishment at seeing a man naked, she loved, holding them tightly to her after they had made love, lying her hands on them, soft and drowsy with pleasure. The weight and hardness of his penis had filled her with a kind of awe, such an astonishing thing, a man’s penis, she had no idea, she said, brushing it with her lips. No idea at all.

She hadn’t been Ronnie’s first girl. He told her that, and she felt a stab of jealousy; who was this Ruby to roll under the hedge with Ronnie, the times he was staying on a Shropshire farm with his auntie’s family?

He felt nothing for Ruby, it had been lust and curiosity, he told her, raising himself on one elbow so that he could kiss her.

He had run away from home two years earlier, scraping a living for himself in a hostile city. He signed up because he wanted to do his bit, and because you got three meals a day, he told her. His mother sounded, to Cynthia’s innocent ears, a terrible woman, but Ronnie seemed to take the clouts and blows she and his less forceful father dealt out to him as just part of life.

‘When I come back from the war, I’m going to make something of myself,’ he had told her. ‘You’ll see. And we’re going to have four kids at least, and be the happiest married couple in England.’

The steward was back, all attention. ‘Are you warm enough, madam? Would you like me to bring you a rug?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Cynthia. ‘I shall be going in shortly.’

He went away on light, silent feet. Cynthia slid back the door that led on to the open deck, and the bitter cold of a winter’s night in the Atlantic hit her in the face. She tossed her cigarette over the side, the glowing tip almost immediately extinguished by the wind and rain. Then, shivering, she retreated back inside to the never-never land of soft lights and thick carpets and columns and gay chatter, shutting out the stormy weather.

She didn’t feel inclined to play cards or gamble or dance or drink. She was too wrapped in her own thoughts to want company. So she made her way down the wide stairs to B deck, her reflection gleaming back at her from the mirrors, and went to her stateroom. The stewardess was surprised to see her, was she feeling seasick, could she bring her anything?

‘No, thank you,’ Cynthia said. ‘I’ll have breakfast at half past eight. Orange juice and a poached egg on toast. Coffee, and Cooper’s marmalade, please, not jam.’ She had grown to like the American habit of having orange juice at breakfast.

‘You aren’t travelling with your maid?’

‘No.’

‘Then I’ll be back in a little while to collect your things.’

Cynthia’s maid, Rose, was glad to be left behind. Not that she wouldn’t have liked to see America, where the film stars came from, she told Cynthia, ‘But I couldn’t do with all those days at sea, madam, I really couldn’t. Crossing to France is bad enough. I’m afraid if you’d asked it of me, I’d have to give in my notice.’

So Cynthia had lent her to an American friend who was spending a couple of months in London, and found that she rather liked doing without a maid; it gave her a sense of independence and a kind of freedom.

There was nothing of the ship’s cabin about her stateroom, no narrow berth beneath a porthole and space-saving cupboards. It had a wide, comfortable bed with an ornate headboard, and elegant furniture of the velvet and boudoir kind. Ordinary, curtained sash windows looked out on to the deck, only used by the passengers in those staterooms. There was a marble basin, and a dressing table with three mirrors.

The stewardess had laid out a satin nightie and negligée, matching satin slippers tucked beside the bed. Cynthia undressed slowly, laying her dress over a chair and dropping her underwear into the linen basket. She put on the nightie and, sitting at the dressing table, began to cream her face, not looking at her reflection, but still thinking about her life. Her life then, when she had been no more than a girl and yet a wife, and her life now, an utterly adult woman, mother of a nearly grown-up daughter, divorced wife, fiancée — dreadful word — of a man who —

Who what? Compelled her admiration, suited her sexually, was more than her intellectual equal.

And of whom she was afraid.

The thought popped into her head unbidden, and so startled her that she dropped her hairbrush. How absurd, Walter could be overbearing, he was certainly a commanding man who expected to have his own way, but he was courteous and had never come near to threatening her — why should he?

So why had that unpleasant little idea popped into her mind? She shrugged and resumed brushing her hair with steady even strokes, a hundred a night, as her nanny had taught her.

The stewardess had unpacked for her, and had propped the one photograph in a leather frame that she had with her on the dressing table. Harriet’s eyes looked out at her. She had her father’s eyes. Then the words of the Gardner girl came back to her. It was hard on Harriet, having to leave her school.

‘I do understand, Mummy, but it’s a bit thick. I mean, you went there, you’d think they’d care about that kind of thing, instead of booting me out as though I’d been caught smoking in the lavs.’

‘Darling, I do hope you don’t…’

‘Just a figure of speech,’ said Harriet quickly. Then, seeing the look of distress on Cynthia’s face, she had said. ‘Actually, I don’t mind so much, it isn’t a very good school. It might have been once. It probably was when you were there, but it’s all manners and flowers and things which are rather boring. The modern woman has more to her life than arranging flowers and knowing how to address a duchess or a bishop. I’d like to go to a school where you can learn something, properly. Languages, for example, the French teacher is hopeless, and Frau Passauer, who teaches German can’t keep order, she gets dreadfully ragged, so we end up not learning to speak a word of German.’

‘Why do they employ her if she’s so hopeless?’

‘I’ll tell you why, it’s because she’s the impoverished cousin of some Princess whatsit und thingie, you know. That’s why half the teachers are there, because they’re fearfully well-bred or well-connected. Only most of them can’t teach for toffee.’

‘I had no idea. When I was there, the teachers were dull but competent.’

She had looked forward to the day when she would present Harriet at court, during her first season. Now she wouldn’t ever travel up the Mall with her, dressed in a white dress with feathers, sitting for hours to reach the palace and then, finally, to make her curtsy to the King and Queen.

Divorced women weren’t permitted to present anyone at court. Fuddy duddy, old-fashioned, but it was an absolute rule.

Her sister Helen would have to do it. It had been one of the facts Helen had thrown at her when she was trying to persuade Cynthia not to get a divorce. ‘It may not be the happiest marriage on earth, but there’s more to marriage than happiness.’

‘Like what?’

‘Duty and responsibility and shared interests. You have a daughter, you seem not to care about the effect all this will have on her. Divorce is a social stigma in our world, Cynthia. Humphrey’s not at all happy about it.’

Humphrey, Helen’s husband, was a distinguished lawyer.

‘It affects us all.’

‘Oh, come on, Helen, you aren’t trying to say that Humphrey won’t make the bench because I’m divorced? Good gracious, he was born to be a judge, I dare say he wore a little wig and a robe when he was in his cradle.’

‘People like us…’

‘Oh, bother people like us.’ And then, ‘I am sorry for Harriet, but she understands.’

‘How can she understand? A girl of sixteen, I hope she doesn’t understand. I suppose it’s all about sex, and it would be shocking if a girl of that age knew anything at all about sex. I certainly didn’t.’

No, thought Cynthia, and I bet your wedding night was a horrid shock, imagine knowing nothing about sex and having a naked Humphrey advancing on you.

She finished her strokes, and laid down the brush as the stewardess came back, to gather up her clothes. She smoothed down the wrinkleless sheet, and said that she hoped Cynthia would sleep well. ‘You do look tired, madam,’ she said. ‘Would you like me to bring you a tisane? A warm drink can help you get a proper restful night’s sleep.’

Cynthia accepted the tisane. She lay back on the pillows, sipping the hot drink, a book open on her knees, face down, unread. Harriet would be all right, she told herself. She was a sensible girl, resilient. Thank goodness the child had no idea. She moved restlessly, rustling the sheets. Should she tell Harriet the truth? No, she’d kept that secret all these years, and it would remain a secret.

Was Walter the best stepfather for a sixteen-year-old girl? Would he lay down the law, which would inevitably lead to dreadful rows, Harriet being a young lady with decided opinions of her own?

He had said Harriet should call him Uncle Walter, but she told Cynthia that it was silly. ‘He’s not an uncle. If you marry him, I suppose I’ll have to call him Father or something. Why can’t I just call him Walter?’