Reckless (31 page)

‘But you do love her?’

‘Can you love someone,’ he replied, ‘who’s so close you can no longer see them?’

Then realising he’d become far too serious for this sunny afternoon, he threw up his hands in mock despair.

‘Listen to me! That’s what you get when you question a thousand-year-old man.’

‘I must say,’ said Pamela, ‘you don’t look your age.’

He laughed at that. For a moment, laughing, he was like a child after all.

Bobby and Charlotte joined them for drinks in the big room with its tall west-facing windows. They drank Martinis and watched the sun descend over Repton’s park. Charlotte was very pretty, in the English doll-like fashion, and seemed to be entirely disconnected from her husband. Whenever he spoke she looked at him with wide eyes, incredulous, as if she hadn’t known he was capable of speech.

‘When will you show Pamela your collection?’ Bobby said to André.

‘After dinner,’ said André.

‘I remember when he bought his first miniature,’ said Bobby. ‘He told me the price, I don’t remember what, and asked me if I thought it was worth it. I said, “Absolutely not, the chap saw you coming!” But he got it anyway.’

‘It’s worth ten times what I paid for it now.’

‘What’s the point of miniatures?’ said Charlotte. ‘Why not have proper-size paintings you can actually see?’

‘You carry them around with you,’ said Bobby. ‘Portraits of your beloved.’

‘Do you carry one round with you?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘And anyway,’ said Charlotte, ‘they’re not André’s beloveds. Or are they?’

‘They are indeed,’ said André. ‘I love them all.’

‘I suppose it’s like snapshots,’ said Pamela. ‘People carry snaps of their loved ones round with them.’

‘Bobby doesn’t,’ said Charlotte.

‘Your image,’ said André to Charlotte gallantly, ‘is graven on his heart.’

Charlotte stared at him for a moment, and then burst into laughter.

After drinks they retired to change for dinner. Back up in her pretty pink room Pamela undressed, took out the zipped bag in which she kept her diaphragm, and began the exhausting battle to insert it. She had only done this before in Teddy Sugden’s consulting room, and though she had memorised every step, she found it simply would not go where it was supposed to go. After several attempts she managed to get it far enough in, but then she realised she’d forgotten the spermicidal cream, and had to take it out and start again. A further protracted struggle followed. On the third go she decided she’d got it as well in as she was ever going to, and if she’d done it wrong it was too bad.

Dinner was formal, served by a woman who had not been in evidence before. Herriard had a resident staff of four, but Lady Tillemans liked to maintain the illusion that it was a simple family home. She was constantly thanking the staff, as if it were sheer kindness that motivated them.

‘You are an angel, Betty. Yes, you can clear away the plates now.’

The wine was excellent and flowed freely. André and Bobby looked magnificent in their dinner jackets. Pamela wore her best silk frock, midnight-blue with a low neckline, which had been a present from her stepfather. Charlotte wore a loose-knit silk jumper, through which it looked as if you could see her breasts, but in fact you couldn’t.

André turned his gaze again and again to Pamela, who was across the table from him. When she met his glance he smiled. She liked seeing him in these home surroundings. He seemed gentler, more serene. Bobby and Charlotte both drank too much. This made Bobby noisier, and Charlotte less inhibited.

‘So how well do you know André?’ said Charlotte to Pamela.

‘How can I answer that?’ said Pamela. ‘How well does anyone ever know anyone?’

‘Goodness gracious! What a question!’

‘I have a friend,’ said Pamela, thinking of Rupert, ‘who believes people are unknowable.’

‘Really?’ said Charlotte. ‘How about that? Bobby, I’m unknowable. So are you.’

‘Okay with me,’ said Bobby. ‘Makes life more fun. Meeting new people’s a great adventure.’

‘An adventure?’ said Charlotte. ‘Do you mean like a safari?’

‘Sure,’ said Bobby. ‘Why not?’

‘Bobby’s a hunter,’ said Charlotte. ‘Take care. He shoots things.’

Lady Tillemans’ gravelly voice interjected here.

‘I once shot a man in Scotland. We had to pick the pellets out of his legs.’

‘Perhaps I should reassure your guests, Mummy,’ said André. ‘It was an accident.’

‘Yes, that’s perfectly true,’ said Lady Tillemans. ‘Still, he deserved it.’

At the end of dinner Lady Tillemans rose and nodded to Pamela and Charlotte.

‘Shall we leave the gentlemen to their port?’

Pamela followed Lady Tillemans into the drawing room, where coffee was laid out waiting for them. Charlotte went off to powder her nose. Lady Tillemans poured coffee, and indicated with a slight gesture of one hand the inlaid wooden box containing cigarettes.

‘You smoke, I believe.’

Gratefully, Pamela lit up a cigarette.

‘That silly girl asked you how well you know my son.’ She spoke abruptly in her deep voice, startling Pamela. ‘But of course you don’t know him at all.’

This was certainly direct enough. Alerted by her earlier conversation with André, Pamela understood that this was in the nature of a warning shot. The mother was laying claim to the son. Pamela was a guest in the house, and more or less out of her depth, but she had a fighting spirit of her own.

‘At least I can presume he enjoys my company,’ she said.

‘Of course. You’re pretty.’ This in a dismissive tone. ‘I was pretty in my day.’

‘André tells me you and he are very close.’

Lady Tillemans smiled coldly.

‘He’s my son,’ she said. And then, turning away, taking out and lighting a cigarette, ‘He cares nothing for you.’

Pamela flushed with anger.

‘And yet here I am,’ she said.

‘Yes. Here you are. I wonder if you know why.’

This was becoming unbearable. Before Pamela could respond, Charlotte rejoined them, greeting them with an enormous yawn.

‘God, the countryside always makes me so sleepy.’

‘How fortunate, then,’ said Lady Tillemans, ‘that the countryside comes furnished with bedrooms.’

‘I don’t want to see this collection of André’s,’ said Charlotte plaintively. ‘I want to go to bed.’

‘Oh, you must admire André’s collection,’ said his mother. ‘He’s so proud of it.’

Shortly after this she announced that she was retiring for the night.

Left alone with Charlotte, Pamela said, ‘Have you met Lady Tillemans before?’

‘No,’ said Charlotte. ‘Never.’

‘She’s quite unusual.’

‘I expect she’s off her rocker,’ said Charlotte. ‘A lot of these rich old women are.’

André and Bobby now entered. André was twirling a key on a chain.

‘Mummy gone to bed?’

‘Just gone up,’ said Pamela.

‘Right, then. Time for the tour.’

The miniatures were kept in a locked room to which only André had the key. Here they were displayed on sloping shelves in glass cases. Concealed lights in the frames of the cases came on at the touch of a switch.

‘You have to view them in the right order,’ said André. ‘Start with the case on your right and work your way round the room.’

The miniatures were mostly painted enamel on bronze medallions. They showed ladies, some head only, most from the waist up. The subjects were all young, they were all pretty, and many of them were décolleté.

André indicated some of the best specimens.

‘This is Boucher, of course. This is Charlier. This is Greuze.’

The pretty little portraits soon blurred into one, as the eye slipped from shelf to shelf. All wore the same simpering expression on their soft little faces, as if they were saying to their
lovers, ‘Aren’t I just adorable?’ Still tense from her encounter with André’s mother, Pamela was in no mood for such pink-and-white vanities. She wanted to smack them. But she kept this to herself.

‘Have you been to the Wallace Collection?’ said André. ‘They have a fine display of miniatures there. But I think you’ll find mine is finer.’

‘All these pretty girls,’ said Bobby. ‘What do you think became of them all?’

‘They’re dead,’ said Charlotte.

‘But here they live on,’ said André.

‘You do rather get the feeling they’re all the same,’ said Pamela, feeling mutinous.

‘Not quite,’ said André. ‘Keep going.’

She moved on to the next case. Here she began to notice a change in the young ladies. They were exposing more of their bodies. By the time she got to the fourth case, they were naked from the waist up, and in many cases, their hands were playing with their bare breasts.

‘Heavens, André,’ she said. ‘This is getting almost indecent.’

‘Doesn’t she just look like a Playmate of the Month?’ said Bobby.

‘Well, you’re right,’ said André. ‘This is the erotica of the early nineteenth century.’

Pamela stopped being bored. She began to realise that the images on the painted medallions were becoming more openly erotic as she progressed round the room. There were six illuminated cases in all. By the fifth case the naked ladies had been joined by naked men. It was all very decorous, the men did no more than pinch the ladies’ nipples between reaching fingers; but coming after the simpering portraits it was almost arousing. A further secret thought added to her excitement: André could not possibly have assembled such a collection without himself
having a healthy sexual appetite. And in showing her his collection he was clearly advertising his intentions.

‘Didn’t you say you’d seen all this before, Bobby?’ she said.

‘Many times,’ said Bobby.

‘It’s all new to me,’ said Charlotte. ‘My word! They are having fun.’

By the sixth case the little scenes had become fully pornographic. Some were medallions, but there were also snuff-boxes with images painted on the inside of the lid, and lockets, and hand-painted cards the size of playing cards. The men were now naked, and fully aroused. In some scenes the lady’s hand caressed the man’s erection, in others the lady was obligingly drawing back her voluminous skirts so that the man could penetrate her.

Pamela took in the meticulously painted details in silence. She had never seen such images in her life. Gazing upon them she understood what until now had been imprecise in her mind, which was exactly what happened in the act of intercourse. She found it astonishing: ungainly, comical, hypnotically fascinating, all at the same time. Her cheeks were tingling. She was breathing rapidly. It was those male parts – so tacked on, so out of keeping with the rest of the male body – and yet the focus of the ladies’ attention, and the magnet to which her own eyes were irresistibly drawn.

‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’ said Bobby. ‘They were at it even in the olden days.’

‘Mankind never changes,’ said André.

‘Nor womankind,’ said Charlotte.

‘They do look as if they’re enjoying it,’ said Pamela. ‘The ladies, I mean.’

‘To be fair,’ said André, ‘these are all images produced for the pleasure of male patrons. They reflect the male desire for women to be wanton. That doesn’t mean women in that time actually were wanton.’

‘I don’t see why they shouldn’t have been,’ said Charlotte.

No one seemed the slightest bit shocked by the pictures, so Pamela took good care to conceal her own astonishment. In one scene, painted on a playing card, the woman was crouching, her dress pulled over her head, while the man, naked from the waist down, stood above and behind her. It took Pamela a few moments to work out that this must be what Mandy had called ‘taking it up the bum’.

As the first shock subsided, Pamela realised that the images had produced a strong physical reaction in her. This was quite independent of any opinion she might have. She had become sensitive to her body in a way that she had never been before. Even the heady moment of entering André’s party and feeling the impact of so many men’s eyes had not delivered this deep hot flush of physical awakening. Seeing these funny, beautiful, yearning embodiments of male desire flooded her with sensations she had never known before.

The male desire for women to be wanton
.

Is it because I want to be desired? Or is it even more primitive than that? Do I want to be
fucked
?

She formed the word in her mind as a deliberate obscenity, but it no longer seemed obscene. They like to talk, Christine said.
Fuck, cock, cunt
. The words carried an entirely new meaning now, faced with these playful images. Not swear words at all, but terms of desire.

She realised André was watching her. She turned to him, smiling, making her voice sound as casual as she could.

‘You like to surprise your guests.’

‘I find the tour is more fun if you don’t know what’s coming.’

‘How about you?’ she said. ‘Is the fun all used up?’

‘The fun for me,’ he said, ‘is seeing others view my collection for the first time.’

‘Aren’t you afraid someone might take offence?’

‘I choose my guests with care.’

‘Then he sends us all off to bed,’ said Bobby. ‘I told you he was the perfect host.’

Nothing could be clearer. The erotic pictures were a prelude to the real thing.

The party broke up for the night. André gave Pamela another of his chaste little kisses on the cheek and murmured to her, ‘I shall see you later.’

Pamela washed and cleaned her teeth and put on her nightdress and climbed into bed, all in a daze of anticipation. She turned out the light, and lay in the darkness, and waited. The house was full of noises. Footsteps came and went, padding up stairs and along corridors. Doors opened and closed. Then little by little the house fell silent.

Time passed. There was no question of sleep. Even so, a half-sleep crept over her, and she found herself slipping in and out of dreams. Then there were sounds again, soft footsteps passing her door. She waited for a tap-tap, but none came. She heard the creaks and groans of old timbers, and silence once more.

Then far away, a door opened. Again, the approach of a soft tread. The sounds stopped outside her door. She was fully awake now, tingling, ready. No tap-tap. Instead, the sound of the door being opened, very carefully. In the absolute darkness she felt him come into the room, but saw nothing. The door closed behind him. She heard his breathing as he stood still, listening for her. She expected him to speak but he said nothing, so she too stayed silent.