‘What your friend wants,’ he was whispering, ‘I can see that … But what you want – what do you want?’
She hardly heard his words, she was so focused on his touch. He threw his cigarette away over the side, and put his right hand up to Laura’s face, stroking his thumb over her cheek and then putting it against her mouth. To Laura’s own surprise, she did not move away from him, and her lips opened against his thumb, and tentatively her tongue touched it. ‘So you do know what you want,’ he whispered urgently into her ear. The hand that had been on her back was now between her thighs, and as it moved up to the skin above her stocking top her mouth opened suddenly wider, and a groan escaped her.
‘Come on then,’ he said, pushing his hand up to her underwear, which had become so wet that his fingers slid on the silk. Lost in the molten pleasure that his touch was giving her, Laura was unaware of anything but the pressure of his fingers, but then he stepped away and took her hand. ‘Come on,’ he said again. ‘No need to provide the entertainment,’ and to her shame she saw a steward walking past them and realised that Joe was smiling at her, as though she was amusing him. ‘Let’s get some privacy – my cabin mate is drinking in the restaurant, we can be alone for a bit. Long enough, anyway.’ He raised his eyebrows at her, and suddenly his obvious amusement at what was happening made her feel ashamed.
‘I must go and find Florence,’ she said. Her words were clipped.
‘Come on,’ his hand held her wrist now, and it was too tight. Laura tried to pull away, but his grip tightened even more.
‘Stop it,’ she said, horribly aware that she could still feel the wetness between her thighs, that she wanted his hand back there, and that her voice sounded half-hearted.
‘Don’t go back to the lectures.’
‘She doesn’t—’
‘What, does she give you any of this?’ His left hand pushed up again, under her dress. ‘Does she? Or is she just teaching you about how to be a good little worker, how to forget what you want for the good of the masses?’ The hand still gripping her wrist was hurting her, and the other one was pushing her legs apart again, and though the sparks of pleasure were intense, so too was the anger, coming hard on the heels of the pleasure. He was smiling at her, and his teeth, which looked yellowy with nicotine stains in the daylight, were white.
Making a huge effort, she pulled away from him and smoothed down her dress. ‘You have no idea—’
‘No, Laura, you have no idea. You have no idea what she’s talking about, all that claptrap that the Reds are trying to feed people while they knock down everything that’s good in the world.’
‘You’re telling me about being good?’ It was a quicker comeback than Laura knew she was capable of, and Joe laughed.
He went on talking, but he had lost her. She shook her head and told him she was going inside. As they walked to the stairs, Maisie and Lily came up laughing with another man, and Joe joined them. The four of them started dancing drunkenly on the deck, and Laura felt heavy and disappointed as she turned away from them to go down the metal staircase and back through the corridor to her cabin. She walked slowly, dragging one hand against the felted walls. There was something that had shocked her not just about the embrace and her overwhelming reaction to it, but in the lightness with which Joe had treated the sudden surge of desire. She felt confused, wrong-footed. How could he experience that energy, which had come across her with such an all-consuming force, as if it would fuse them together if they gave into it, as something so light and impersonal?
She opened the door to the cabin. Florence was sitting in her bed, her knees drawn up, reading. ‘I’ve got your scarf,’ Laura said.
‘I thought you were still dancing.’
‘No, I – I stopped.’
Florence said nothing, turning a page. Laura walked over to her and put the scarf down on her bed. ‘Do you think—’
‘What?’ Florence’s voice was not unfriendly, but it was rather clipped, as though whatever she was reading was more interesting to her than what Laura was thinking, and so Laura said nothing. She took off her clothes, facing the wall and pulling her nightdress over her body before taking off her underclothes. As she took off her garter belt, she remembered Joe’s fingers, and she looked over her shoulder at Florence, but all her attention was on whatever she was reading, and Laura got into bed.
‘Tell me if you want me to turn out the light,’ Florence said in the same tight, reasonable voice. Laura told her not to worry and lay in the light with her eyes closed for a while.
But the rustling of Florence’s pages and the shivery sense of her own body’s warmth made sleep elusive, and she pulled herself up on an elbow and opened her eyes. ‘Tell me about what you’re reading,’ she said to Florence sleepily, and as the girls’ conversation began again and footsteps and laughter came and went in the corridors, the steamer pressed forward through the night ocean, and England came nearer in the dark.
When they went out on deck the next day, the coast of England was visible on the horizon. Clouds had come up in the night, and a drizzle obscured Laura’s view as she stood watching the grey streak of land come into focus. About half of the passengers were disembarking, and in the crush to get down to the landing boats and the muddle of finding porters and a place in the queue for customs, Laura and Florence lost one another. After they had all gone through customs, she found Florence again, and Joe and Maisie and Lily, standing beside her, on the station platform. She saw that Joe looked terrible, as though he had been drinking all night. His face was dull and oily, and when he spoke a little line of spittle from his top lip to the bottom gleamed in the station lights. And yet there was a clench of desire in her stomach as she looked at him.
Suddenly the train came in with its great roar and shadow, and at the same time there was a press of urgent movement on the platform. It was the woman whose self-assurance had impressed Laura at the pool, walking swiftly, a maid and a porter behind her with stacks of luggage, a small red hat pulled down over her forehead. A pop of flashbulbs was going off in front of her. ‘Amy!’ ‘Lady Reynolds!’ came the shouts.
As the ripple of interest spread along the platform, the woman was being pressed on to the train with a man holding her arm, trying to push back the photographers. ‘Do you remember her?’ Maisie said to Laura. ‘That Hughie told me all about her. She went away without her husband. The reporters will want to know if she’s getting a divorce. They think she won’t be Lady Reynolds much longer – but Hughie, he said her husband will forgive her anything. He said, she can do whatever she likes, and she does. Hey Joe,’ she persisted as they found their seats together in one carriage. ‘Call yourself a journalist? You missed the only story on board – these reporters have been waiting and waiting for Amy Parker.’
‘I’m not here to do society gossip,’ Joe said. ‘I’m here because of the war.’
Maisie was scornful, sitting down and taking out her compact to check her face, as though the sight of Amy Parker had made her self-conscious. ‘You’d think some people actually wanted a war.’
Joe started to tell Maisie that she couldn’t bury her head in the sand forever, but there was a desultory feel to their talk. Laura was remembering Amy by the pool, and just now. ‘She is lovely,’ she said.
‘She’s got charisma, all right,’ Joe allowed.
‘Charisma – phooey!’ Florence said, thumping her old carpet bag onto the rack above them. ‘She’s got money. Money, money, money – and they all come running to sniff it.’
‘It’s not just money,’ Maisie said. ‘There were rich girls used to come to our show, lots of them nobody would look twice at, for all their minks and diamonds. Someone like Amy Parker, you’d look at her even if she was wearing your dress