Crimson (10 page)

“And where do you think you’re going?” he roared, then pulled off his leather belt, sat down, shoved Nell over his knee, and roughly pulled down her drawers..

“It wasn’t Nell’s fault! Don’t spoil our Thanksgiving!” her ma cried, but he took no notice. As always when he strapped her, Nell howled with pain. Her ma burst into tears and ran from the kitchen.

“There, see what you’ve done!” Marius shouted at Nell.

“Now you’ve spoiled our Thanksgiving!” From the kitchen table, he picked up the platter of turkey and hurled it at the dresser. Quivering with fear, Nell watched the grease and gravy drip down and form a puddle on the floor … Now, Elinor found herself quivering with the same fear as she watched the gravy dribbling down the wall. In silent apprehension, she heard Billy slam the front door. She refused to admit to herself that she had chained herself to another bully, but Billy’s behaviour made Elinor feel as hopeless and inadequate asher father’s had when she was a girl. Increasingly she dreaded Billy’s disapproval, his growing coldness and contempt, and his lacerating sarcasm. And her dread merely seemed to make him feel the more superior.

So Elinor remembered how to be stoical. When nervous and timid, she reapplied her childhood techniques of willing herself to be inconspicuous, fading into the background; anaesthetizing her mind to the brutality of her father; her anxious passivity made her an easy victim.

Gradually all Elinor’s frightened responses resurfaced, having lain dormant during the war, when courage and determination had overridden her other characteristics.

Just as Elinor’s father had dominated her childhood with his violent and unquestioned parental authority, so when Billy demanded obedience, she almost always did as he told her without resistance.

Billy especially enjoyed his ability to dominate Elinor sexually. He used sex to thrill, to control, and to comfort her although never to reassure her, because Billy knew that an uncertain woman is always obedient, whereas a selfconfident woman might want her own way. After their son was born, Billy expanded his powers of sexual mastery; he enjoyed seeing how quickly or how excruciatingly slowly he could produce her climax. His rampant masculinity was reinforced by the knowledge that whenever he pleased, he could, sometimes with careful cruelty or unexpected kindness, reduce Elinor to a trembling, acquiescent creature at the mercy of her own flesh.

Although she did not realize it, Elinor enjoyed this abnegation of all responsibility, sexual and otherwise, to her domineering, overpowering, excitingly threatening husband. For her, Billy held the dangerous, sensual excitement of a wild animal that had been domesticated yet

never tamed. There was a threat in everything he did, and she never sensed it more than when they made love. Even when their financial situation began to improve, his sexual hold on her did not change.

Eventually, in 1921, through the influence of a family friend, Billy was hired as a society gossip writer on the Daily Globe, a London newspaper. It was a job that suited him perfectly, for Billy’s Irish gift of the gab meant that he could talk to anyone about anything; his outward cheerful ebullience put everyone at ease, dnd his charm and sympathetic demeanour those journalist’s weapons lowered all social drawbridges. But, although Billy attended all the smart parties, he knew as did the other guests that between him and them lay a fine which could not be crossed, for Billy was -present as a paid servant, a hired hack.

Elinor, of course, never accompanied Billy to these functions, and in truth she did not want to: that was his world, not hers. To her, the only real drawback to Billy’s new job was that he was never at home in the evenings, except on Sunday. Also, one of the side effects of his employment seemed to be a permanent hangover, but nevertheless Elinor was certain this situation had to be a better one for Billy; she did not realize the sense of humiliation he felt at being an outsider in the world to which he had been born. She only sensed the relief that he was now working, and that it was no longer necessary to borrow money from his old friend, Joe Grant, now an articled clerk to a firm of London solicitors.

Elinor suspected that Bill y who never wrote anything longer than a frivolous paragraph if he could avoid it actually could write serious articles if he wanted to do so. One of his colleagues also told her that Billy had the makings of a good theatre critic, but he did not care to subject himself to the concentration necessary to write the review in his head as he watched a play. Billy, who did not like hard work, preferred to amuse himself at the theatre, and ,.”!kfterwards in restaurants, at fashionable dinner parties, or at the. daring new nightclubs.

Once, Billy had been a man with high expectations and high ambition, known by everyone; now, although he knew everyone, he seemed to be nobody’s friend. It was clear to him that he was going nowhere. As a result, his smiles and his charm were reserved almost exclusively for the people he saw when he was on the town. At home, he wore his depression like a cloak and only rarely allowed any warmth or humour to show through.

In spite of all this, Elinor managed to be happy. She loved living in a big city with all of its conveniences. She cleaned and cooked, she cuddled her baby son, Edward, and she borrowed romantic novels from the local penny library: these books in which the heroines never wore second-hand clothes, and the heroes were as considerate as they were handsome had provided her with precious hours of escape from the anxieties. of life she had known when pregnant, with Billy out of work. Now Elinor read romantic fiction while waiting for Billy’to come home, because she could never get to sleep until he lay safe beside her.

On one occasion, when he slammed the door of their bedroom at four o’clock in the morning, Elinor whispered, “Don’t make a noise! You’ll wake the baby! Where have you been?” “Stop nagging,” Billy yawned as he removed the studs from his evening shirt.

“What do you mean, nagging?” Elinor whispered indignantly.

“I mean your constant criticism, your silent hurt looks of reproach, your unreasonable demands,” Billy said, pulling off his socks.

“This sock needs mending.” He peered at it somewhat drunkenly.

For once, Elinor decided to give full vent to her true feelings. She

hopped out of bed and stood angrily in front of Billy, her legs apart, her hands on her hips, her body hardly hidden by a flimsy peach-coloured nightgown and robe.

“How can you be so unfair?” she asked in a low voice.

“Wouldn’t you want to know where I had been if I went out and left you at home every night?” Billy turned slowly and looked intently at his wife. He stared at her shadowed breasts, glanced at his watch, grinned, and moved towards her.

As his right hand slid beneath the peach chiffon, Elinor felt her nipples harden; immediately her body betrayed her and her anger melted away, As his lips caressed her ear, her neck, her senses swirled; their argument was forgotten.

Billy murmured, “Have you got it in?” Shortly after Edward’s birth, he had sent Elinor to the shop in Holloway where Dr. Marie Stopes gave free advice and cheap contraception to women.

“Yes.” Now he’d know that she had been hoping.

With one hand, Billy pushed his discarded clothes from the bed and with the other, he pulled Elinor’s body to his. Her kimono fell from her shoulders to the floor, and she felt his warmth and strength against her.

As he lowered her to the bed, she pushed down the thin straps of her nightgown.

“No, don’t take it off,” he murmurdd, and touched her breasts with the tip of his tongue.

His right hand stroked her thighs, then felt beneath the taut peach gauze … Where was the damn thing? He located her tiny clitoris, felt it harden beneath his thumb.

“Lie on top of me,” he ordered.

“Now spread your legs, wide.” That way she climaxed so much quicker.

Elinor could not bear her husband’s displeasure. One Sunday evening, after Billy had complained that she didn’t iron his shirts well enough, she cooked his favourite dish for dinner. Afterwards, her finger traced his cheek, her usual delicate signal to him.

,7 Billy frowned slightly and jerked his head away. At first, instinctively, Elinor wondered what she had done wrong. Then she wondered why she should feel guilty. There were, of course, no answers. Whatever the cause, his rejection of her timid sexual advance made her feel ashamed of being so forward.

Billy grinned to himself. His disapproval always bewildered Elinor and always brought her quickly to heel.

Some days later, when Elinor had had time to reflect on the incident, she decided to try the same thing with him. When Billy touched her breast, she flinched slightly; she wanted to see if his reactions were the same as hers.

Billy laughed at her refusal. He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed. Silently and deliberately he undressed her, button by button.

Resolutely determined w resist him, Elinor would not be wooed. When he laid her on the sheet, she did not move, willing herself to be passively still.

Kneeling, Billy slowly pushed his knee between her legs and forced them apart. He felt her, quivering and moist, beneath him.

“You see, it’s no use,” he said.

“I know when you want me.” He took her especially harshly that time, and when she whimpered, the face above her smiled.

“You’ve got to learn who’s boss,” Billy said softly, pinching her nipples a little too hard.

Although their erotic life was still one of intense passion, some of Billy’s requirements puzzled Elinor. In bed, Billy preferred a half-dressed woman to a naked one, and he liked her to wear thick black stockings like those of a schoolgirl rather than her best silk pair.

One summer evening, Billy returned home with a gift box for Elinor. Inside, she found a white smock and a plain pinafore.

“Oh, Billyl” she cried in confused disappointment.

“Surely you don’t expect me to wear this! It’s the sort of thing I wore when I was a little girl and wore my hair in braids.”

“Then braid your hair,” Billy said evenly.

“But”

“That’s enough! If you want to please me braid your hair.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Then I shall go to someone who will.” Billy left the room, whistling.

He returned at six o’clock the next mo ming his step unsteady, his speech slurred, his clothes reeking of the sour, sharp smell of whisky and stale tobacco. On his skin, Elinor detected the strong scent of perfume. Her eyes registered a look of hurt and bewilderment.

Billy laughed.

“Well, you didn’t want me.” All day, Elinor hugged her baby to her and wept with shame and grief.

Billy did not touch her for a month. During that month, Elinor’s nipples ached to feel him; her belly longed to feel his fingernails scrape lightly across it, before. his hand slipped knowingly between her thighs. Alone, restless, and unable to sleep, she tossed in their big brass marital bed; she banged pillows into shape, tortured by mental pictures of Billy doing all those private things to someone else.

On the fourth Sunday evening of her enforced celibacy, Elinor timidly entered the living room and stood before Billy. She was dressed in the white smock, the pinafore, and the thick black stockings; her hair was in braids.

“Do you like iff she asked him shyly.

Later, she remembered her surprise at the passion unleashed by that pinafore as, on their bed, his hand groped beneath the tangle of her childish clothes.

This seduction of innocence or the pretence of it 8o to be Ithe core of Billy’s sexual pleasure, providing energy that fired his loins with greatest power. Gradu- ‘ally their relationship grew from that of a man and a woman to that of a calculating seducer with a trusting child, for Elinor. was now also expected to behave like a submissive child bride outside the bedroom. In public, Billy now liked her to appear submissive and deferential; dutifully passive, with head bowed, she looked meek and acquiescent, but both she and Billy knew the secret passion that lay behind her lowered eyes.

Only once more did Elinor protest at being dressed as a child. Standing ready for bed, wearing only a white frilled pinafore and long black stockings, she said hesitantly, “Billy, I don’t mind dressing like this sometimes, but must I do it always? We never seem to do anything else!”

“And why not?” Billy lay on his back, both arms behind his head. Elinor looked at the blond hair glinting in his pale armpits and on his upper chest; below the nipples, his body was hidden by rumpled sheets.

“Because … because … I feel you’re behaving like a strict father with his little daughter … and that would be wrong, wouldn’t it, Billy?”

“It would certainly be incestuous.” Billy stretched his arms in a yawn.

“But what does a little more corruption matter?” “Corruption?”

Elinor stared.

“Certainly,” Billy said.

“The delights of the flesh to which you are so addicted are viewed by the world as corrupt behaviour. Ask any decent woman.”

“What do you mean? Surely what we do is normal between a man and his wife?” “Normal? You know perfectly well, Elinor, that ladies, find the sexual act distasteful. The things that you and I get up to are considered unspeakably degrading, and would shock any decent women.” He laughed.

“No respectable woman enjoys the sexual act only whores.”

“But … but … you showed me all those things.” Because you clearly enjoyed them, my dear. You always wanted what I offered. I did nothing against your will. You clearly have the heart of a whore. You enjoyed every perversion that I.offered you. You positively shook every time I touched you. You love it all.”

“But … what are these perversion sT Slowly and deliberately Billy listed the acts of eroticism in which he had encouraged his wife to participate, clearly enjoying her confusion.

He smiled again.

“Don’t worry, Elinor. I enjoy your depravity. But we’d better keep it a secret, hadn’t weT “Depravity?” Elinor stammered.

He laughed.

“I think you’re more depraved than I am, darling. But if you don’t agree, then why don’t we ask other people for their opinions.” Her frightened expression aroused him so much that he carefully repeated his accusation. Observing Elinor’s guilty, crimson face, Billy suspected that in the future he would be able to manipulate his wife in any way he wished, and get her to agree to do anything he requested, simply by hurling this suggestion at her.