Acts of Love (21 page)

He smiled at her. ‘I’m my boss, I’m my work, I’m the only one I have to answer to, thank god. But I do admit it hasn’t always been this way. But,’ looking at his watch, ‘I did miss a luncheon date, and a dozen calls I should have made. They left my head completely, the moment you turned it.’ She laughed softly and squeezed his arm, leaning into him more, delight visible in her face.

Outside it was growing dark. Piccadilly traffic was sparse, mostly buses lumbering by. It was cold and raw and the pavements were slippery, the tarmac glistening like black satin. Christmas lights and decorations were looking decidedly weary, as if longing to be dispensed with. The shop windows beckoned with the warmth of electric light. After the sleet and wind, the atmosphere hung heavy with wet. There was a bitterness about the weather that made them huddle closer together.

They walked along Piccadilly with no destination in mind. Bad as the weather was, it proved a stimulus. Just to be out of the coffee shop and into the world … Nothing, no matter how bad, could detract from their sudden sense of well-being. They walked through the Burlington Arcade and window-shopped, cocooned in their awareness of each other. They passed Hermès at the corner of Bruton Street and Old Bond Street and stopped at Berkeley Square. It was dark now. Cars were spinning around the square, headlights aglow, almost mesmerising. They stopped at the corner. He might have said ‘My place or yours?’ But instead, he asked her, ‘Are you free to dine with me this evening?’

‘Only if you leave me here, and go catch up on your day.’

‘I’ll see you home?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Very sure.’

He pulled her to him and gave her a lingering kiss. She felt so good in his arms. His kiss was exciting, filled with promise. She sensed hunger for her in that kiss. After releasing her, he asked, ‘Are you still sure?’ She found it impossible to speak. He was already so much a part of her life that not to be with him was now unthinkable. Arianne felt alive and happy deep within herself. She nodded her assurance, and, squeezing on his leather-gloved hand, turned to cross Bruton Street and hurry round the square to Davies Street. She walked a few steps, ran a few steps, wanting to put distance between them lest she change her mind and run back to him. No more than two minutes after they had parted, Ben was grabbing her arm. They laughed at themselves. He took her by the elbow and told her, ‘Just to the top of the square, I promise.’

* * *

That evening he arrived at her door with flowers. Theatre and dinner followed. And after that they decided to have a nightcap at Annabel’s. He was greeted with enthusiasm by the manager of the exclusive watering-hole for the rich and famous, the upper classes and reigning stars. There English and European minor royalty mingled in the privacy the management guaranteed for the celebrated at play.

Arianne had not been there since Jason’s death. He had been a member – Ahmad still was – and they had liked to go there when in London. Everything about the place suited them: one of the most pleasantly chic clubs in the world, with its oil paintings and drawings and comfortable furnishings, its mirrored discothèque to dance in, and its very English clubby atmosphere, where even the food was excellent and the wine cellar a triumph.

Ben was welcomed by the maître d’, and then by several other people. He made introductions between them and Arianne but always with one foot poised to whisk her away to a table in the shadows of the far corner of the room. When they bumped into two men talking at the bar who turned to face Arianne and Ben, a pleasant smile of recognition confronted them. ‘It’s too long since we’ve seen you here, Arianne. What a tragedy – I still often think about Jason and the trips we made together. And Ahmad? Seen him lately?’

‘Yes, I was in Egypt at Christmas,’ she answered, feeling comfortable at meeting the man again and even at talking about Jason and Ahmad in front of Ben. That she could do it and acknowledge to herself that they were there in her life but firmly in the past, was a revelation that only added to her current happiness. Ben did not seem at all surprised that she should be known there. Discreet murmurs of welcome from the staff on entering had alerted him.

And it was welcome back for Arianne. The club seemed to open its arms to her. She felt happy standing in the midst of a night-life again. Three months before, she would have found it impossible to be there without Jason. She was so relieved that happiness had happened to her again with Ben that she felt the need to squeeze his arm, as if to prove that he was real. He looked down at her. ‘Ow,’ he exclaimed, pretending that she
was hurting him. ‘What was that for?’

‘Just checking that this is not some dream I conjured up.’

He could not have been more delighted. ‘You are a funny old thing. But shouldn’t you have pinched yourself?’

‘You’re right. I am a funny old thing, but not a masochist.’

Seated at last, with champagne ordered, they held hands. He asked her nothing. She volunteered, ‘Ahmad and my husband and I used to come here whenever we were in London. We were an inseparable trio. My husband’s death ended so many things for me.’

That was the first time she had mentioned her husband, or that she was a widow. And earlier she had mentioned that she had been in Egypt with a man. Incredibly none of that mattered. Not even in the way she looked at him as she told him, ‘We were an inseparable trio.’ She was telling him much more. He understood immediately that she wanted him to know it all, but to fill in the blanks himself. He did. Why wasn’t he surprised? Perhaps because he had always sensed in Arianne a quiescent lust that had intrigued him, and that he now longed to reawaken in her.

At Annabel’s, they laughed together a great deal and found that they had a similar sense of humour. Artemis and Uncle Anson and their eccentricities were discussed and accepted with approval. Their attraction to Chessington Park and disaffection with its bickering residents had become, they each admitted to the other, a
bête noire
. Then other things – likes and dislikes that they had in common – all small-talk compared to the larger subject that they skirted: love, the rich, deep love that had come to life less than fourteen hours before. They didn’t remain long at Annabel’s; they were suddenly ready to be alone.

Ben entered Arianne’s house. He had never been inside before. The first time he had been there, when he had driven her down from Chessington Park, he had dropped her off and remained in the car. The second time, earlier that evening, he could only ring the door-bell and hand her several sprays of white moth orchids in a clear cellophane box. Traffic, a yard chock-a-block with cars, had demanded that he wait for Arianne in his 1953, black, 220 Cabriole Mercedes Benz. He had taken the black soft-top car out, one of his favourites, especially for Arianne’s comfort. He loved the touring car and would confess
to her that vintage cars were one of his vices.

He helped her off with the full-length, white cashmere coat with its narrow lapels, large, mother-of-pearl buttons, and slash pockets. He draped it over the balcony. The way she looked when she had stepped out from her house and into the waiting car earlier in the evening had nearly taken his breath away. She was so extremely glamorous, with the finely bobbed, chestnut-coloured hair that shone like silk, the fresh face combined with a subtle but seductive make-up that insinuated fire and ice. Angel and seductress. He had expected her to look beautiful, for she was very beautiful. But the glamour and chic, the now-obvious aura of sexuality – that
had
surprised him. When they had agreed to dress up for their evening together, she had told him, ‘Your best evening-dress suit – I will settle for nothing less.’

He had demanded of her, ‘A long and seductive gown.’

‘Are we being poseurs?’ she asked.

‘Why not? So long as it’s for us and no other reason.’

‘Quite right,’ she had told him.

The long dress she was wearing was of the same fabric as her coat, but of a lighter weight, with long sleeves that clung to her slender arms, and a neckline just low enough to show her collar-bone and accentuate her slender neck. Simplicity itself? Except for the tailoring, there was nothing simple about Saint Laurent. The dress clung to her body, accentuating her shoulders, and was backless nearly to the waist. It was cinched at the waist by a gold, kid-leather belt. She wore gold evening shoes, with no jewellery except the ruby ring Ahmad had given her.

‘No, don’t turn around,’ he told her and placed a kiss high up on her bare back, then slipped his arms around her waist and locked his fingers together to hold her there, right where he wanted her. Then Ben stepped up tight against her. He placed his cheek against hers, and she covered his hands with hers.

‘A nightcap?’ she asked.

‘No. I have to leave you. If I could have stayed, would you have allowed me to?’

‘But you can’t …’

‘No.’

‘Then the question is academic.’

He had wanted her to say yes. She was hedging, unsure about
them. He rationalised that it was because of the overwhelming attraction they had for each other, the swiftness with which it had occurred.

‘All evening I’ve dreaded the idea that I have to leave you.’ Then he spun her around to face him. ‘I must be on the other side of the Channel by eight in the morning. Calais, then Deauville. Appointments impossible to break. I’ll call you every day. Be back in three days’ time.’

He still had his black overcoat on. She touched the black velvet collar, and smiled at him. There was about her smile now a wanness that tugged at his heart-strings. He slipped his arm through hers and they walked together into the sitting room. She switched on the lamps as they passed them. Ben and Arianne stood by the fireplace facing each other. They were holding hands. How easy it would have been to whisk her up the stairs to bed. He wanted sex with her. He knew she would not reject that idea. But he wanted more than a one-night stand. He wanted her.

‘Will you go directly to sleep when I leave?’ he asked. ‘Shall I tuck you in?’

‘There’s no sleep in me just now. I’ll stay here and read a little.’

‘Then I’ll light the fire for you.’ He did, giving all his attention to the fire. When it flared, he turned back to look at her. As he did, his gaze fell on the silver-framed photograph of Jason, Arianne, and Ahmad on the beach by the Indian Ocean. What registered with Ben was how rapturously happy, so in love, the three of them were. One had to be blind to miss that.

Arianne followed his eyes. Then she turned Ben’s head towards her and gazed up at him. She took his face in her hands and kissed him. It was a long, sensuous kiss and their bodies relaxed into it. Then, taking him by the elbow, she ushered him through the sitting room to the front door, never detaching her gaze from his face. ‘We loved each other for a very long time. It was an extraordinarily happy marriage until he crashed his plane into the side of a mountain and vanished from my life. Ahmad is all that’s left of him, of what we had together. That’s part of my life, my history.’

They kissed once more, standing together in the open door. That kiss confirmed what he already knew: something wonderful
had happened to them, they were in love, their lives were beginning afresh. He felt the luckiest man in the world. ‘I’ll call you in the morning,’ he told her, and was gone.

Chapter 15

The bedroom door was ajar. Ben pushed it open. The bedside lamps were still on, casting light across the sleeping Simone. She looked beautiful and sexy lying there, her arms at strange angles to her body, the bed-covers flung aside to reveal a black-lace and flesh-coloured satin nightgown, one strap slipped off her shoulder, leaving one breast partially naked. He walked across the room quietly to stand over her. The black-lace top half of her nightgown had a mesmerising effect on him. It was his favourite nightgown. He had bought it for her in Rome. Even now he savoured her breasts, the narrow waist and the hint of hip seen through a veil of black. How it enticed, that margin where the lace met the smooth, flesh-coloured satin.

Her naked breast was irresistible. He lowered his head and kissed the side of it, licked it, then slipped the piece of lace covering her nipple down, covered the long nipple with his lips, and sucked it gently. She began to stir. He stopped immediately, draped her with the white sheet and soft cashmere blanket, then sat in the lounge chair close to the bed. Now he could watch her sleeping.

He did that for some minutes before he loosened his black-silk bow tie from his neck and placed it in his jacket pocket. He unbuttoned his collar and two more buttons, then removed his jacket and laid that over the arm of the chair. He crossed one leg over the other and was untying his shoe when Simone said, in a voice blurred with sleep, ‘How was your dinner?’

‘Fine.’

He was aware of her readjusting the bed linen, slipping her nightgown strap back on her shoulder, while he removed a shoe and placed it on the floor.

‘A good time at your sister’s?’ he asked.

‘She’s blissfully happy; the children are charming. The dinner
party was frightfully grand. Very interesting people. You were missed. Michèle and her diplomat husband have a really happy marriage – they lead a sublime life.’

‘Sorry I woke you.’ He reached out to turn off the bedside lamp closest to him. His hand seemed to freeze in mid-air when she said:

‘I’m beginning to think I’d like to be married. I’d make a good mother.’

She was still lying flat, her head resting on the pillow, still luxuriating in the comfort of a warm bed. She neither looked at him nor gave any hint in her voice that she was angry or aggressive towards him. She was merely making a statement of fact in that seductive French accent of hers. Simone was a woman who always got what she wanted. Soon she would be married, he was quite sure of that. He left the light on, slumped back into his chair and recrossed his legs to take off the other shoe.

‘I’ve got bad news for you,’ he heard himself say.

She said, ‘More bad news. You won’t be able to come to my birthday party at Régine’s tomorrow night. And the promised dinner
à deux
at Laparousse is off.’ She waited for him to say something. He remained silent. ‘We won’t be going to Paris together?’ she asked. He would have to answer that.

‘No.’

‘I should have guessed when you gave me that impressive bottle of Joy, and cancelled this evening on me. Not to worry,
chéri
. You know I never count on you.’ She was not trying to make him feel guilty, that wasn’t her way. Again, she was merely stating a fact.

It was his silence that made Simone turn to look at him. This time she could not blame his wretched vineyard, which he watched over like a mother though it was run perfectly without him, as it had been doing for two hundred years before he bought the château and its cherished vines. Nor was it his string of pampered polo-ponies he spent more than half a year travelling the world to play the game with. Never one to skirt around things she said, ‘You were at Tramps with a beautiful blonde a few nights ago. A girlfriend told me.’

‘And this evening I was at Annabel’s. The bad news is that
I met a girl in Fortnum’s coffee shop this morning. We parted half an hour ago.’

‘Why should you choose this girl to tell me about, not one of the others?’

‘Because it’s true, Simone. And she is more important than the others.’

‘Not another word, Ben. Just remember, it’s not over till it’s over.’ She reached up to switch off the bedside lamp and turned on her side with her back to him. He picked up his clothes and went to the wardrobe in the dressing room. This was her flat, the pied-à-terre he had bought for her. Now he changed into jeans and a polo sweater, boots and his battered leather jacket, took out a large, soft, leather travelling bag and tossed into it the clothes he was wearing that evening, plus the few things he kept in her flat.

He stood briefly at the foot of the bed. Simone never moved, said not a word. This was not the time or the place to talk to her. He knew her well. She would not suffer a broken heart, merely a broken affair that had worked very well for them. Affection, sexual passion had been there for them. But neither had ever pretended that it had been love. But then neither of them had been looking for love and commitment. They had left that behind them and that had been what had kept them together. They had been a comfortable, sexually exciting, handsome and socially acceptable unit. No more, no less. He knew his Simone well. She would take his falling in love as a betrayal, which acquiring other women for sex and fun had not been. He would call her from the château.

He walked to the opposite side of the bed to where she was pretending sleep, his side of the bed, and switched off the last of the lights. He made his way out by the dim light cast from the small sitting room off the bedroom. He had his hand on the doorknob, but before he opened the door to the hall, he hesitated, placed his bag on the floor. Should he leave her a note? He thought better of it. Hand on the knob again, he bent down to pick up his travel bag. The crystal bottle of Joy just missed his head and shattered against the door. The sweet, golden liquid Joy splashed everywhere and ran down the door. He turned the knob, pulled the door open and left without turning around.

* * *

He was exactly where he should be, at a shipping agent’s office in Calais at ten o’clock in the morning, when he called Arianne.

‘Did you sleep?’ he asked.

‘Fitfully. Where are you?’

‘In France. Got a pencil? Write these numbers down. I’d like you to be able to reach me if you want me.’ That done, they were suddenly lost for words.

‘Did you sleep?’ she asked.

‘Not a wink. When I wasn’t driving to catch the ferry, I was reliving our day together. I wish I hadn’t had to leave you.’

‘How long will you be away?’

‘Three, four days. I’m not sure. Why couldn’t you sleep?’ He so wanted her to tell him it was because she loved him, had missed him, wanted him.

‘I guess I simply didn’t want the day to end,’ she told him. There was a sweetness in the way she said it, but something seductive as well. Yet he sensed she had been almost afraid to tell him.

‘I’m going to be at the Biblos in St Tropez for a meeting with my polo team, the day after tomorrow. We go over business and itineraries once a year. Do you think …’ There was a severe disturbance on the line. He kept calling her name, ‘Arianne, Arianne.’ And then she was back again, her voice calm and cool.

‘I’m still here, Ben. Have a successful few days and come home as soon as you can. I’ll be here.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘You don’t have to, I’m fine.’

‘But what if I want to?’

‘Well, that makes all the difference in the world.’ She began to laugh, and he did too. It broke the awkwardness in their first telephone conversation. She sounded very happy.

‘Look, let’s leave it. I’ll call, and you can too. And if we keep missing each other, well, I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’ For some reason he thought better of asking her to join him, as he had been about to when the telephone line had cut out on them for a few seconds.

Several men entered the room and he was obliged to shake their hands. He turned his back to them and told her, ‘I have to
go. I’m no longer alone in the room, otherwise … there are so many things,’ he lowered his voice to a near-whisper, ‘I would like to tell you, about yesterday, and us, and how I feel. But not with an audience.’ He waited for her to say some of the things she was feeling, but she remained silent. He was not disturbed by her silence; he understood it. It was after all no easy thing to pour one’s heart out to someone, not least by telephone.

‘Ben …’ and suddenly she was at a loss for words yet again.

He came to her rescue. ‘Look, I have to hang up now. I’ll call soon, we’ll make contact, but don’t wait around for a call, or get concerned if we miss each other. I’m into some heavy business that really does need my undivided attention. Bye, my love.’

Arianne put the telephone down and castigated herself: Why wasn’t I more forthcoming? How stupid to feel about him as I do and not be able to tell him. She despised her reticence in not declaring herself to Ben. She felt especially wimpish about it because she could not stop thinking of him. She had liked him since first seeing him at Chessington Park, but that was nothing to what she was feeling for him now. Being with him was so easy and exciting. Every time he touched her she belonged to him that little bit more. All night she had lain in her bed hungry for him, imagining what it would be like to lie naked in his arms, to feel the warmth of his body, to be made love to by him, to create together a new erotic world, exclusive to them, where they could wallow in sexual bliss, die a thousand little deaths in every orgasm, only to be born again in his arms, with his kisses. He made her feel alive: here was a man to strike out into the world with, a partner to hit the highs with in life. That happiness was there again. The brass ring was within her reach once more.

In the days that followed she was continually happy. She went to work, and to the corner coffee shop at Fortnum’s and sat there smiling to herself because she sensed his presence; she knew he would never leave her. Theirs was a lifetime commitment. They made contact one more time, at eleven one evening: ‘I’m calling on the run to catch a plane. I’ll be home, knocking at your door, in three days’ time. Put on your glad-rags – I’ll pick you up at about ten.’

Arianne seemed unable to concentrate on her work and she
was restless working at home. She had some reading to do, an eighteenth-century book on travel in the Levant. The English edition was a rare find made at a sale in Wales that none of the other dealers considered to be of importance. She decided to take the train to Chessington Park and stay there until the day of his return. She left a note for Ida revealing where she was in case of any calls, and headed for Paddington Station.

It was cold and wet and grey when she arrived at the house. No need this time for the drill she had had to perform before with Clive to get into Artemis’s flat. Cook had returned and was in residence. Arianne was made welcome and pampered as Cook would never have dared do if Artemis had been around. After hot tea, buttered toast and jam, and talk of what Cook should prepare for dinner, Arianne went out for a long walk with the dogs who were back and now in Cook’s care. She was grateful that she did not come across any of the residents. She was too busy thinking about Ben, remembering how kind he was with people, and thinking too, for the first time, about that hint of pain that she had seen several times, in his eyes.

He had not said much about his marriage or his wife’s suicide, but clearly he had been through a kind of hell. She had no need to know about it, only felt the hope that they would be so happy together that the pathos she had seen in his eyes would vanish from them and from his heart for ever. She had a compelling desire to care for him. To love him, to be
in love
. That was how she had felt about her father, then about Jason, and now Ben. He was in her thoughts all the time. She loved him and she wanted him to know it. He was at the Biblos, or would be sometime today. She was at the far side of the stables when she began to run back towards the house, the dogs bounding after her.

She was dashing across the marble-floored hall, the dogs slipping and sliding after her, with barks of joy for their game, when a voice from the balcony called down, ‘Muddy paws, muddy paws, and too much noise. See that you mop up after yourself. When I’m chairman of the House Committee, we’ll have silence here.’ It was spoken in a strange foreign accent – could it be South African? It was ugly enough. Arianne ignored the voice. Artemis is always right, thought Arianne, any sign of life or joy and some fool-resident, miserable with his own life,
will be there to put a damper on it. ‘Not this time,’ she wanted to shout.

Once in the flat, she went directly to the telephone, not even waiting to remove her hat and coat. She sent a cable to Ben.
Ben, I love you. Arianne
.

Then she sat quietly in the chair for a very long time. Never in these last few years had she dreamed that she could ever feel as happy as she did now. She had felt the beginning of happiness when Ben had snatched her from Artemis’s kitchen through the window for that pub lunch. She had felt truly alive again on her erotic race up the Nile with Ahmad. But this – this was something else: an inexplicable joy fired by love and a rage to live, the same sort of happiness she had known in her married life with Jason, a merriment born of sharing your soul with another human being.

Ida heard the knocking at the door; the sound of the bell was incessant. She opened the door and told Ben, ‘I’m not deaf, you know. And you nearly scared me half to death, besieging the house at this time of the morning.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Who comes to call at seven in the morning? Bad news, that’s who! You aren’t, are you …?’

‘Aren’t what?’ asked Ben. He hadn’t expected to eyeball Ida.

‘Bringing bad news, that’s what.’

‘No, no. I’m bringing happy news, the best news: I’m bringing love,’ he told her, a smile breaking across his face. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Ida, the woman that does. Who are you? Besides a fool in love.’

‘I’m Ben Johnson, looking for Mrs Honey. Is she still asleep?’

‘She wouldn’t be, after all that racket you were making, if she was here.’