They had dinner on the terrace facing west, where there was a view over the hills. The last rays of sun shone through the grass and the glasses of white wine on the table. It sparkled on the cutlery and the barrister’s unframed spectacles resting on the tip of his sunburned hawk nose. The talk was of weather and wine. It was South African, a bit of an experiment but there was not much choice at the local grocer’s, and it was really quite drinkable. Monica yawned discreetly and Lea rocked her chair, ignoring frequent commands to stop. Sonia showed her how to turn her napkin into a white dove and a white rabbit by turns. They all had their own silver-plated napkin rings, including Robert. The napkins were not changed for several days, this was life in the country, of course.
After the others had gone to bed Robert remained sitting outside in the dusk with his host, chiefly out of politeness. They smoked small Italian cheroots, something they had in common. How about a whisky, then? He had a quite excellent single malt, a present from a client. He went inside. A purple glow lingered in the heather and the tall grass between the silhouetted pine trees and juniper bushes. He came back with the bottle and two glasses, stooping and tanned like old leather in the blue half-light. He really liked the Sibelius symphony Robert had given him for his birthday, the sixth, wasn’t it? He sat on for a while with the cheroot between his fingers. Usually music was something that somehow passed one by with its themes and variations and whatever you call them. Robert would have to stop him if he got too muddled. But with Sibelius it was quite the opposite. Like moving around in a vast landscape. It wasn’t that anything definite happened in the music, it just happened. He shook his head. That was probably a load of drivel. Robert smiled. Not at all. But he really liked it, indeed he did.
He replenished their glasses. Good stuff, eh? Not the usual meths rubbish. They sat for a while listening to the grasshoppers and the cuckoo. A silhouette detached itself from the shadows and came closer. The lights shining out from the living room fell on Sonia’s round cheeks and pointed chin framed by her flowing hair. She had been for a walk. A little one to sleep on? She smiled indulgently. No, thanks. She turned on the threshold as she said goodnight. Robert could hear the floorboards creak and the dry sound of her bare feet on the stairs and far away a door being closed. His host sparked his lighter and sucked in his cheeks as he lit his cheroot again. Suddenly he looked very old.
Being a dancer didn’t seem a very secure occupation. He held the cheroot vertically between two fingers watching the thin whirls of smoke. But still, he was glad she had at long last found out what she wanted to do. He paused for a moment. Sonia hadn’t been easy. Robert could feel the other man looking at him in the dimness, but couldn’t see his eyes. Well, they knew each other by now, he was sure he could rely on Robert not to let it go any further. He had never told anyone about it. He threw away the cheroot stub, a little red dot among the grass blades. Sonia was not his daughter. He had discovered it when she was small and their doctor, an old friend, had done a blood test on her for some reason. He had asked his friend to make the necessary analyses, confidentially. Neither of the girls nor their mother knew anything. But the tests had confirmed an old suspicion. And he could count on his fingers.
Robert undressed without putting on the light. Lea slept on a divan placed against the opposite wall. Monica was awake when he lay down beside her. She pressed against him and kissed his neck, while her hand slid under the elastic on his underpants. They lay quite still when they heard her father’s heavy step on the stairs, like teenagers at a holiday camp, thought Robert. He felt burdened by the knowledge he had been laden with, and by having to lie here, constrained to keep it to himself. She pushed her tongue into his ear and took hold of his testicles. He really felt too tired but he knew what she was thinking. It was a week since they’d made love, and tomorrow night he would have left again. The longer their times apart were, the more important it became, as if they had something to prove. They didn’t speak of it as such, it just lay in the air, the oftener the better, and if too long a time went by he could feel her getting worried.
There was so much he understood without her needing to spell it out. A glance was enough or a pause before she started tidying the living room or putting dirty washing in the machine, too energetically. But it could also be an ironic smile in the midst of the conversation and the partying faces if they were out amongst others. He knew immediately what she was thinking. They often laughed about their almost telepathic talents when one of them said something the other had been thinking the moment before, whether it was a reaction to what was going on around them or something they had talked about several days earlier.
If their mutual wordless understanding was what bound them together, in a way they had been destined for each other long before they themselves came to see it like that, under the blanket in the Alps. The irony that for so long had prevented them from being demonstrative and restrained their potential desire from erupting was simultaneously a secret code, a portent of later intimacy. But in all their trustful security they left just as much unsaid as they had when they were slowly edging towards each other without realising it.
They knew each other so well. He knew her excitability behind the cool façade and her reluctance to be the first one to stretch out a hand in reconciliation. She knew his awkward distraction and restraint, misinterpreted by those around him as arrogance. They made allowances for each other’s foibles, outwardly they came close to being invincible, and reciprocally they made use of their knowledge to both please and punish each other. A few words about Lea needing shoes, or where you could find the best tomatoes, could cover an ocean of tenderness, and a remark that the oven needed cleaning could cause quivers of indignation over something quite different. And it was understood, the purchase of small white shoes or firm dark-red tomatoes was transformed into a loving act, and when the oven was cleansed of congealed fat, every affront was expiated.
It wasn’t necessary to say everything, he had thought, happy at understanding and being understood, but as time went on he wondered if there were certain things that just couldn’t be said. That was what he was thinking, with Monica lying at his side working away at him until he finally obeyed, almost by reflex, and began to grow hard in her practised hand. Now it was time, after a week of enforced abstinence. She sat on top of him, the bed creaked rhythmically as she started to glide up and down. Lea mumbled and turned over in her sleep, Monica stopped, giggling softly. She went on, more slowly, and the creaking sound gradually became a dry groaning each time he thrust against her cervix.
He tried to summon passion and cupped his hands under her breasts. They had started to droop a little, not much, just a little, she still had a nice body. But it seemed that she noticed his hands’ hesitancy, the restraint in their light touch, for she took hold of his wrists and forced them down on the mattress on each side of the pillow moaning and pushing harder against him. That worked, he felt the blood vessels tensing to breaking point, and a tingling and trickling from below as she whispered to him encouragingly on its stiffness and hardness. For a fraction of a second he visualised Sonia, the drops of salt water on her pimpled, erect nipples as he passed her the towel. He jerked the image away as you brutally jerk a curtain, and finally they found release, soon after each other, she whimpered as she flopped down over him and buried her face between his neck and shoulder.
She moved close to him again with her face against his chest. He kissed her forehead and his fingers ran through her hair. She whispered how good it had been. He repeated her words. She couldn’t know what he was thinking, yet he was worried she might notice. It was hot in the cramped room, he put one leg outside the duvet. Monica breathed in his face. Her breath was sweetish, a bit like hot milk. He kissed her again and turned over with his back to her. She put an arm around