Peach (39 page)

“I thought you were starving,” he complained, leaning forward to touch her thick braid. “It’s the colour of conkers on the autumn chestnut trees at Launceton,” he commented.

Harry continued to stare at her, sipping the wine. “You’re a beauty, Peach de Courmont, and I should warn you I’m susceptible to beauty.”

“I know,” she said. “You write about it in your books. Beautiful women. And making love.”

They gazed at each other in the flickering candlelight. He thought her eyes were the most luminous blue he had ever seen. “You shouldn’t believe everything you read,” he said lightly, “writers never write about themselves.” She just smiled at him. “Time to go,” he said, signalling the waitress.

“Thank you,” said Peach, “for the pizza and the wine.”

She was lovely, he thought, as they drove back across the Charles Bridge, and she was very tempting. Her smile as he said goodbye was wistful, and he almost succumbed and kissed her. But he didn’t. Peach de Courmont was a very dangerous young woman.

It seemed suddenly that she was everywhere. He saw her at a lecture, sitting on the aisle near the back of the hall wearing a scarlet sweater. And when he was walking through Harvard Yard with old Professor Gunniston he spotted her all bundled up in a tweed jacket and wound around with enormous scarves. She looked cold, as though she’d been waiting for ages for someone, and he waved to her. Then she was at the symphony looking very French in a blue suit with her wonderful hair piled in gleaming waves on top of her pretty head sitting next to a nice-looking young man and another couple. He spoke to her briefly at a reception for some other visiting literary luminaries but had no time for more than a mere “How are you?” And then she was at Sebastião do Santos’s dinner.

“I’m your hostess,” she told him smiling. “Sebastião is my uncle.” She looked delicious in a black silk dress, long-sleeved and tight-skirted, that should rightly have been worn by a woman twice her age. On Peach it looked both demure and sexy at the same time. He could feel Augusta prickling with irritation at his side. Poor Augusta never looked like that in black—or any other colour. Augusta was at her best in tweeds and sweaters, rain upon her cheek, walking a brood of golden labradors at Launceton.

Harry sat next to Peach at dinner, with Augusta at the bottom of the table on Sebastião’s right. “I keep seeing you,” he said. “Every time I turn my head you’re there.”

“That’s because I’m chasing you,” said Peach demurely. She’d decided that honesty was the best policy with Harry,
since subtlety was getting her nowhere. It had taken her weeks of persuasion for Uncle Sebastião to give this party and it was her only chance.

Harry wondered if she could be serious? God, she had the bluest eyes, and that wonderful skin, touched with gold. She was very, very tempting …

“Well,” he said lightly, “you may just have captured me.”

Flicking a careful glance at their dinner companions to make sure they were engrossed in their own conversations, Peach said to him, “Will you meet me later—after this? I need to talk to you.”

Harry sipped his wine—a good Haut-Brion. Sebastião do Santos’s taste in wine was as excellent as in everything else. Could she possibly know what she was saying? And how old was she anyway—no more than seventeen, eighteen maybe?

“Please,” said Peach, resting her hand lightly on his knee.

“Where?” he asked.

“I’ll write down the address and give it to you after dinner.”

He couldn’t concentrate after that. She wasn’t the first girl to run after him, in fact, without being conceited he was used to it. It got a bit boring sometimes, when he’d really rather be concentrating on his work, but he’d always been susceptible to a pretty face. But Peach de Courmont was more than that. She had a luminous quality—a sort of shining innocence—even though she was playing dangerous grown-up games.

“I feel I’ve been a poor guest tonight,” he told Sebastião as he was leaving.

“No doubt another great novel brewing in your mind,” said Sebastião shaking his hand, “but you were more amusing than my usual company.”

On the way home Harry told Augusta he was going to his office to finish up some work and she dropped him off there.
Taking the piece of paper Peach had slipped into his jacket pocket he called a cab and was there within ten minutes.

“It’s a friend’s apartment,” Peach said, taking his coat. A fire burned in the grate and she’d put a Vivaldi concerto on the record player. One lamp was lit by the armchair and she chose to sit under it. In its pinkish light her hair, which she wore loose tonight, looked the colour of tawny port decanted against a flame. Harry felt he could paint her in words. Golden flesh. But not sapphires for eyes—maybe those old-fashioned Victorian paste brooches that had so much more brilliance were more apt. Eyes like blue paste brooches didn’t sound too good for a writer-in-residence and literary genius. He’d have to do better than that. What was he thinking of! He’d come here because she’d asked him and he assumed she wanted him. And he certainly wanted her.

She handed him a glass of the wine she’d taken from Uncle Sebastião. “The Haut-Brion,” he said, recognising it.

Peach sank to the floor at his feet. Wrapping her arms around her knees she said, “I wanted you to come here because I have something to tell you.” Taking a deep breath, she hugged her knees even tighter. “I’m in love with you, Harry Launceton. I’ve loved you since I first saw you at the cricket match at Launceton Magna. I know it sounds foolish and you’ll think I’m just a silly schoolgirl, but there it is. I had to tell you. It’s no accident that you see me everywhere you go. It’s because I follow you.”

Harry was stunned into silence and Peach stared nervously at the rug. “I want you to marry me,” she said. The Vivaldi quivered in the background, its gentle seventeenth-century melodies gilding the silence.

“Come here,” said Harry holding out his hand, “sit next to me on the sofa.” The way she uncoiled herself in a single movement and rose to her feet was the most graceful action he had ever seen.

“I’m a married man, Peach,” he said gently. “And I’m also a man married to his work.”

“I know that,” she said, her eyes fixed unwaveringly on his.

Her deep smooth lids with their long curve of lashes closed as his mouth fastened on hers and Harry felt her sigh. Her mouth was silken soft, pliable and tender. The kind of mouth that would bruise with passion.

She clung to him, her arms locked around his neck as his hand slid across the smooth upward curve of her breast.

Unlocking her hands, he stood up and took off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. He took a drink of the wine and offered her a sip. “No,” she said, “I want to remember all this. I want to know that it wasn’t just the wine …” She sat curled up on the sofa watching him as he undressed, her eyes catching the glow of the flames. And when he was naked she made no move to touch him. “Let me help you,” he said gently, unbuttoning the sophisticated black dress. Underneath she wore girlish white cotton pants and bra and she looked suddenly vulnerable. But as he slid the straps from her shoulders she reached up and kissed him. When she was naked they lay on the rug in front of the fire. Its flames had sunk into a red glow and in its reflection with her golden skin she looked like a child of the sun. She didn’t touch him, just lay there, staring at him with those huge luminous eyes, searching beyond the moment. He stroked her gently, trembling with his own passion, caressing her soft mound with its drift of soft hair. “Are you sure Peach,” he whispered, his mouth on her breast, “are you sure this is what you want?”

“Yes,” she breathed. “Oh yes, Harry. This is
truly
what I want.”

Peach woke up with her arms around Harry, his head resting on her shoulder. Cautiously, so as not to wake him, she wriggled her left arm free, wincing as the blood circulated through its numbness shooting prickles of pins and needles through her fingers. Remembrance rushed through her body in a wave of happiness as she gazed at Harry’s hands, remembering how they had caressed her, and then, daringly, her eyelids travelled the length of his slim muscular body. How strange love was, she thought, that it could transform a man’s body into an instrument of pleasure. She longed to touch him but was afraid of waking him. Somehow watching Harry’s sleeping face was more intimate than looking at his nakedness. He slept with the slightly open-mouthed contentment of a child, breathing evenly, his smooth hair falling over his forehead. A faint stubble of darker beard had appeared on his chin and he looked more vulnerable than his confident daytime self. Peach wanted to kiss him.

Last night Harry’s face had looked so different. She remembered how it had contorted in the final moments of his passion as though in agony. She had kept her eyes wide open, wanting to remember their very first time for ever. And if her passion had seemed less than his, she put it down to the fact that she was a virgin.

Harry had been shocked. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he groaned afterwards.

“But I thought you’d know,” Peach said, angry that he
might have thought otherwise. “I don’t do this with everybody, you know.”

“Of course you don’t,” he said contritely, “I didn’t mean that. I meant—well, I should have taken more care with you.”

“You mean I’ll have a baby?” asked Peach.

Harry laughed. “No,” he told her, “you won’t. And a bloody good thing too.”

“I don’t want a baby,” said Peach, nuzzling his neck, “I only want you.”

He kissed her. “Well, you’ve got me.”

“Not just this. I want to marry you.”

Harry laughed. “This is better than marriage—we’d only get bored with each other.”

“Like you and Augusta?”

“Let’s not talk about Augusta. Let’s talk about us.” And he kissed her again and again. Peach was more daring this time and she ran her hand down his body. “It’s so different,” she’d said wonderingly, curling her hand around him and feeling him stir again with new life.

“You’re no good for me, you know that,” Harry had said, pulling her across him so that her length covered his. Then he’d run his hands down the clean golden line of her back and across the curve of her hips. “You’re too beautiful, Peach de Courmont, and you’re too young and far, far too distracting.”

Now, watching him sleep, Peach thought she would remember him just like this, for ever.

“You’re staring at me,” said Harry accusingly.

Laughing, Peach kissed his closed lids. “I’m
so glad
you’re awake,” she murmured, her kisses travelling to his mouth and down his neck to the base of his throat. Her fingers tugged at the light brown hair on his chest as her
mouth continued down across his belly, coming to rest in the crisp darker hair. Lazily her tongue travelled the length of his erection and instinctively she took him in her mouth.

“God,” murmured Harry, “oh my God, who taught you to do that? Wonderful, wonderful … Peach.”

“I have to run,” he said, climbing out of the shower and towelling dry. Picking up his watch he glanced at it. “Seven thirty. I’ll go straight to my office. I’ll tell Augusta I worked all night—I often do.”

Peach watched him jealously. “Shall I see you tonight?”

“Can’t make it tonight, sweetness, there’s a dinner or something.” Thrusting his feet into polished brown moccasins he tied his tie expertly without looking in the mirror. “Look,” he said gently, “I’ll call you sometime this evening.” Putting his finger beneath her chin he tilted her face to his. “All right, Peach?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. Harry turned and waved as he closed the door. “Love you,” called Peach. But she didn’t think he heard.

Lais stared at the stack of Ferdi’s letters in the drawer of her desk. They were all carefully re-folded in their white envelopes and tied with red ribbon. There were eight letters for every month—two each week. Even at first when she didn’t reply, Ferdi had continued to write about his life. Not about
them
, just day-to-day things. Ferdi told her about how he’d ridden in the forest and seen a badgers’ set, about re-planting the ancient myrtle whose great sprawl of roots was undermining the south wall. He described the castle with its turrets and towers and the commanding view of the river Rhine, and the house in Cologne that was still dark and stuffy the way it had been when he was a boy, filled with heavy old furniture and dark velvet hangings he’d always hated. He wrote about the long tedious business meetings at Essen and Bonn and the complex decisions to be made, and he described the Merker steel mills, like caves in hell, where slabs of white-hot metal licked with fiery orange flame hissed angrily as they were plunged into vats of cool water, boiling it instantly with their heat and sending up clouds of scalding steam. Ferdi told her everything about his life. But he didn’t write about the past and he never mentioned the future.