Wherein else resides its worth? (And perhaps David was not formulating it as such, but his eyes and restless mouth reflected it.) Lesser mortals must perforce lower their sights, settle for less, but the dynamic impresarios of our world reach and it is given, take and it is confirmed.
I questioned him and he told me the whole story. I won’t attempt to reproduce his hesitations, his pauses, his snatches at cheroots, his repetitions, and indeed his sudden burst of eloquence when a genuine emotion stirred within him at the very mention of her name, but I will take the liberty of a novelist in reducing his account to the more palatable proportions of a chapter, hoping that you will trust my perceptions, my regard for detail and my objectivity.
I merely end on a somewhat carping note: lunch did not seem to be forthcoming, and a good deal of his narrative was punctuated by the cistern-like rumblings of my aroused but frustrated digestive system.
Chapter 4
The story goes like this. Ajax Developments, a subsidiary of the parent company, Adler Enterprises, had turned its ever-eager eye in the direction of Trowbridge Spa to investigate first the possibility of an expansion of holdings and subsequently the development of the city centre. A certain sentimental nostalgia may well have been in the back of the mind of the dynamic thirty-four-year-old tycoon, but he seldom allowed such considerations to influence his shrewd judgements, and it can be safely assumed, though the exact details of the manoeuvre escape my unbusiness-like intelligence, that the investigation must have been founded on a sound commercial basis.
A junior executive of the company first proceeded to that small provincial town, haunted as it is for me by so many childhood memories, made certain discreet enquiries, and returned forthwith with a satisfactory report to his boss. The wheels slowly turning into motion, David himself then ventured forth and got himself invited by the local Rotarians to attend one of their many social functions.
Temperamentally he abhorred such gatherings, but there was the necessity of business dealings. Also the fact that he was returning to his old home town as something of a celebrity, a local boy who had indisputably made good, added an element of flattery to his vanity. For the occasion he had made by his tailor a suit of rich black velvet, which he wore with a cream silk shirt, set off at the neck by a plum red tie. Shoes of the same plum colour were stitched for his feet.
He wanted first to accentuate his distinction, his elegance, before this undoubtedly provincial crowd, but not to the extent of alarming them or making their small-town minds suspicious. He set off in his white Rolls, his chauffeur at the wheel, languidly watching a portable television from the back seat.
They greeted him warmly, laughed at his jokes, were solicitous to his demands. After dinner a speech was given in his honour. All eyes were turned to him. The applause was loud and prolonged.
It was only after dinner, when a five-piece group played from a stage bedecked with carnations, and the Rotarians and their wives or girlfriends danced across a floor slippery with chalk, that he first noticed Maureen. She was dancing with her husband. It was that unquestioned look of boredom in her eyes, as though she had withdrawn her whole personality, that singled her out for him, for that look implied a critical mind and he recognised an ally.
When the music stopped he introduced himself, first to her husband Ted, the owner of a provisions store in the centre of the town, and then to her. He shook her hand and found that it was warm and yielding. When he asked her to dance, Ted grinned with pride at his fellow tradesmen, as his wife took the floor with the distinguished and dashing Mr Adler.
She said, ‘I bet you usually don’t dance in places like this.’ He supposed she was about thirty. She had a certain ripeness, an autumnal quality, like a fruit ready to fall. Her skin was clear, but the flesh pliant. Her hips were heavy with a kind of mysterious sensuality. Next to him she was warm, generating heat, and she moved easily about the floor.
His leg slipped through her parted thighs.
He said with a twinkle, ‘It’s all in the line of business.’
He had an erection and she nuzzled her soft plump belly into it. When he looked at her face, her eyes flashed back boldly and knowingly. He wanted her immediately.
There was nothing trim, or model-like, or sophisticated about her. She was only too evidently provincial, and it was this perhaps that attracted him. He was now with the kind of woman that if circumstances had been different, if he hadn’t been by some accident clever, if he hadn’t been to Cambridge, if he hadn’t, well practically everything, this was the kind of woman he could have married. It was girls like Maureen that fifteen years before he had kissed on the Common, and, his breath panting with excitement, had moved his eager hand up the abrasive stocking leg, and found, after the initial resistance, clamped knees, wrestling hands, the delicious damp slippery prize. He remembered seducing his first girl on his parents’ bed, surrounded by their three-piece suite, the mirror of the dressing table with its cut-glass dishes and trays, purely ornamental, never used, reflecting his own satanic face in its reproachful oval surface; beneath him the disorderly stockinged legs of the girl, her damp knickers round her ankles, her shoulders heaving on the green sateen bedspread. Oh, that bedspread evoked in him such vibrant lust! For hours he had rubbed and rubbed with soap and water and cloth the large dark stain that his semen left, and for all his scrubbing it remained, desecrating the prim sanctity of his mother’s sleep. All this, with its hints of guilt and secrecy and desire, Maureen released in him, and he wanted her all the more.
All evening he danced with her and when the group thumped out the last waltz amid the wilting flowers, he said to her, ‘I must see you again. Do you ever come up to London?’ She said simply, ‘For you I would.’
So he escorted her back to her table and back to her husband, and thanked them all for a most enjoyable evening, and when he shook Ted’s hand, he offered him his card, saying, ‘Any time you’re in London,’ and left for his car.
For a week he waited, restless, aroused, laughing at himself for his absurdity, but when the telephone rang and she said, ‘I’m at Charing Cross station,’ all self-reproach vanished and he waited impatiently for her to arrive.
She wore a belted suede coat and underneath a short angora dress in ice blue. She had white knee-length boots. She smiled at him self-consciously but mischievously at the door, like someone in the wrong. He took her coat and her perfume caught his nostrils. It had been a long time since he smelled that heady cologne.
She sat down while he poured her a drink. He could see from her face the awe and excitement that his flat made her feel, for her eyes darted here and there, taking in that painting, that colour, that object, but always they returned to him with a kind of nervous expectancy.
He found himself curiously tongue-tied. Once in her presence he could think of nothing to say. He wanted to hold her, that was all. Already he was aroused in the same way as before. It was marvellous, so urgent a sensation.
She said, ‘Well, I came,’ and sipped her drink, looking at him over the rim.
He sat next to her. ‘I can’t think of anything to say,’ he said. ‘Except I want you.’
She gave a nervous laugh, then put her arms round his neck and kissed him. It was a rushing, breathless, eager, impulsive desire that he felt. He hugged her close to him and she wriggled and he held her even tighter.
He made love to her there on the sofa, her angora dress around her bum and her tights at her ankles.
Afterwards he lay on her belly and she stroked his hair. She said, ‘I knew it would be like that.’
He made her tea, it was what she wanted, and laughingly he thought how right it was. While he brewed in the kitchen she wandered about the room, looking at