Follies

‘Mmm. The house is open to the public. Hordes of it. We’ve retreated to one of the wings, like survivors in a sinking ship.’

‘What is this place?’ Helen asked again.

‘It’s called Montcalm.’

Of course. Oliver’s father, then, was the Earl of Montcalm. And this blond boy who was laughing at her in the firelight came of a family whose history stretched back to the Plantagenets.

‘Didn’t you know?’ he asked her.

‘No,’ Helen said humbly. ‘Or, if I did know who you were, I’d forgotten.’

‘How lovely.’ Oliver was laughing delightedly, and her own laughter echoed his. ‘Come and sit here.’

Helen went. Her head found a comfortable hollow in the crook of his shoulder, and his chin rested in her hair. In front of them the fire crackled and spat. Helen let her eyes close, thinking of nothing but the sound of their breathing and the immediate sensations that lapped around her. Oliver’s sweater was rough against one cheek and the heat of the fire was reddening the other. She felt his mouth moving in her hair.

‘Comfortable?’

‘Mmm.’

Gently, Oliver began to stroke her cheek. Instinctively, Helen turned her face closer to his. Her body felt soft, warm after the day’s bright cold and relaxed with the ebbing of tension.

Very slowly, Oliver bent his head and kissed her mouth. Even as she felt herself respond to him, answering his kiss with a kind of hunger that surprised her, Helen heard a cold little voice inside her head.

You know that there will be no going back, after this?

You could still stop him.

You could still play safe.

No. I don’t want to be safe. I don’t want to lose him. I don’t care what happens. This is all that matters now. This room, the firelight, the roughness of the rugs beneath us. Oliver.

His hand was on her breast now and his mouth was more urgent over hers. Like a suicide pushing away the lifebelt that drifted within reach, Helen shut her ears and eyes and let herself be submerged in him.

‘You look so fragile,’ he whispered, ‘but your strength is all inside, isn’t it?’

He lifted her from the cushions and peeled her sweater off. Her eyes focused on his hands, portrait hands, insistent as they took off the rest of her clothes. Helen’s skin was creamy-pale, but the light and warmth made it rosy now. Intently Oliver’s fingers traced the line of her collarbone and the tilt of her small breasts, ran over the smooth flesh that stretched tight over her ribcage and then grasped her waist. She felt herself pulled towards him and her hands reached, in turn, at his clothes, wanting to touch him too.

At last, they faced each other, kneeling naked in the red glow.

‘Now,’ he said, and she echoed him on a long breath. Helen’s fingers slid over him as he waited for her.

The dreamy languor which had bathed them both was gone in that instant. A flash of longing for him swept through her, making her gasp aloud. Her fingers knotted in his hair as they came together and her head arched back, and further back, as his mouth slid from hers to her throat, and then to the hardness of her nipples. His hands explored her, relentless now, and she felt herself open to him like a flower.

‘Oliver,’ she murmured, ‘Oliver.’ It was the first time she had called him by his name, but she felt as though it had been in her head for her whole life. His eyes were closed and his breath was coming in quick gasps.

Still kneeling, Oliver lifted her effortlessly and then drew her down on top of him. He pierced her with a single thrust and at once she felt a wave of pleasure so intoxicating that she cried out loud. Her legs wound around him, jealously imprisoning him inside her. Poised, they moved together, at first slowly and then fiercely, unstoppably.

Helen felt the deep buried stirrings of her own climax with the first low moan in Oliver’s throat. Her back arched, taut, as he ground deeper into her. Then her fingers clenched, once, and fell open as the liquid currents shot through her veins, pulsed, extinguished everything except the man within her and then, slowly, exquisitely, receded.

By infinitesimal degrees, time started up again. Helen lifted her head from where it had sunk against Oliver’s shoulder. Looking down at him she saw that his face was soft, just as it had been when he bent over the tiny pups. Sweat had damped his fine blond hair so that it lay close against his head and his eyelashes were dark and spiky. For an instant, Oliver looked almost vulnerable. Helen stroked the hair back from his face and laid her cheek against his.

Beside them the fire sank deeper into its own red heart.

After a moment Oliver stirred and smiled lazily at her. ‘So that was the door.’

‘Door?’ Helen was bewildered.

‘The door to let the other Helen out.’ He chuckled. ‘You surprised me. So much heat under that cold skin.’

Helen felt herself blushing, and uncertainty took the place of the peaceful satisfaction of the moment before. Had she done something wrong? Her knowledge of sexual matters was so slight that she might well have. She had simply trusted in the force of her own instincts to guide her and she had believed that Oliver was doing the same. Now, she saw, that could have been a mistake. It was all so confusing, not least her disconcerting longing to please him.

What was the right thing? She felt that he had been surprised by her refusal of him the other evening, and now after her passionate surrender of herself, he was no less surprised.

‘Did I do something wrong?’ she asked simply.

‘Wrong?’ His blue eyes were very bright. ‘No, of course not. You were charming. Just not very like other girls. Or like what I expected.’

I’m not like Flora or Fiona, Helen thought. Or like Vick. I know that. But what did he expect? She wanted to ask him, wanted to make him talk, but the words eluded her. Instead, she became uncomfortably conscious of her nakedness, and she reached out for the tangle of clothes beside her. Quickly, acutely aware of the clumsy awkwardness of putting on clothes, she pulled on her crumpled shirt. Then she saw that Oliver was looking away from her, into the depths of the fire. He seemed utterly unconscious of his body, and at once Helen regretted her prudish scramble to get dressed.

Uncomfortable, unexplained hot tears pricked behind her eyes. What’s the matter with me, she asked herself bitterly.

Oliver lay calm and unmoving. His body was evenly and deeply tanned, every inch of it. Helen knew that meant remote, exotic beaches, or very fashionable ones where everyone was free of stupid inhibitions. He looked fit, too, with the flat belly and developed muscles of the all-round athlete. Alongside him Helen felt herself bony and uncoordinated, as well as pallid from lack of sunlight. There had been too many weeks of not caring what she ate, too many nights with very little sleep.

With his eyes fixed on the fire, Oliver put out a hand and caught her wrist.

‘Stop jumping about,’ he ordered her. ‘Lie still, here.’ He made space on the rug beside him and obediently Helen lay back with her head against the cushions. His fingers encircled her wrist, and, as if to underline her own image of her body, he murmured, ‘So thin and brittle. One false move and it might snap. Poor Helen. You need feeding up.’ And he laughed again, pleased with the idea.

In the quiet that followed, Helen collected herself. What else did you expect? Or want? You shared those moments of love-making with him, and in those moments he was yours. Nothing can take that away. And now, what point is there in wishing it had happened some other way? Or hadn’t happened at all? You wanted to give yourself to him, because what else could you have offered? And he’s still here beside you. With his fingers around your wrist. Take what you’ve got, and believe in your own convictions.

The threatened tears were gone now, and the determination was back in Helen’s face again.

Oliver sat up and reached for a log from the basket. When he threw it on the fire, the embers glowed hotly and sent out a last fierce blush of heat before settling again.

He let go of her wrist and leaned away from her to fumble in one of his pockets. When he settled himself, Helen saw that he was holding a key ring, with a small, silver propelling pencil dangling among the keys. Quickly, Oliver unscrewed it and Helen saw that it was not a pencil at all, but a hollow tube. Oliver patted his pockets again and then produced a tiny silver-backed mirror. Finally from his wallet he extracted a single, crisp pound-note.

‘I can’t stand the ostentation of people who use fifties,’ he told her. Helen watched, bewildered.

Frowning with concentration now, Oliver shook a tiny drift of white powder from the tube on to the mirror. Then he held it out to her.

‘Snort?’ he asked, casually.

‘What is it?’

‘Cocaine,’ he answered, enunciating the word very carefully. ‘What did you think?’

‘No,’ Helen cried out before she could bite back the word behind her teeth. Suddenly, and with startling vividness, she remembered Frances Page being driven away in an unmarked car by a young and pretty policewoman and a creased middle-aged man who bore no resemblance to the drug-squad officers of television serials.

Oliver shook his head. ‘It’s harmless, you know, unless you’re very stupid. And it is instant sunshine.’ He offered the mirror again, as if it were chocolates.