The Benefits of Passion (17 page)

‘Well, kiss them, then.' He leant and placed a swift peck on her lips. ‘Oh, Barney. You great big innocent.' He bent down again. ‘Mm-mm –' Nothing innocent about this. His tongue searched her shocked mouth. The dead birds gave a helpless flutter. Her legs began to tremble.

‘Better?'

‘I – I –' He gave her another long punishing kiss. She whimpered, face raw from his stubble. The stench of the pigsty filled her nostrils. At last he raised his head. Isabella stared up into his eyes. Oh-my-
Go-o-od.
He's probably five times as experienced as I am. He's just been playing with me all these months.

‘Yes. Well. You seem to be getting the hang of it,' she said.

He grinned and set off back to the house, swinging the chickens casually by the legs. After a dazed moment Isabella stumbled after him in her silly shoes. She glimpsed Mrs Hardstaff in the distance, shooing a goose out of her way. Her voice floated down the yard. ‘Get a move on, Isabella, you daft bird!'

Annie jumped to hear the front door opening quietly. After a moment it shut again and she heard the sound of feet going up the lane and fading in the distance. Will. The footsteps were too soft to be Edward's. So he couldn't sleep either. She shivered and leant her cheek into his sweater again. Outside the first blackbird began to whistle. Annie crept back upstairs to bed and shuddered in her cold sheets. At last she fell into a shallow sleep. She was standing in her wedding dress waiting to go up the aisle. The organ was playing. Everyone turned to stare.

‘Go on!' hissed her mother.

‘But I'm sure I cancelled it,' Annie tried to say. ‘I don't want to!'

Somehow she was marrying Graham anyway.

CHAPTER 16

‘I'll run Annie to Morpeth station,' announced Edward that afternoon. William stood up and stretched.

‘Or I could drop her at Newcastle,' he said.

‘Um . . . thanks.' mumbled Annie. She bent over her holdall to hide a blush.

‘Is that OK, Annie?' asked Edward.

She nodded, glancing up in time to see his stricken look: I've hurt her so much she prefers to be driven by a man she dislikes.

‘William! You're not leaving too, are you?' demanded Hayley and Lisa, their awe of him having worn off a little.

‘Yeah. Work.'

Was he lying? Annie wondered, as he put her case in his car and they all said goodbye. She thanked the Watts family and kissed Edward – mwah!

‘Be good,' said Ted, as he closed the car door for her. She had heard him utter this casual admonition to his daughters a dozen times, and hoped there wasn't a new significance to the phrase on this occasion. Will drove off.

‘Thank you,' said Annie, after a while.

‘Any time, honey child.'

The next few miles passed in silence. Annie pressed her hands together between her clamped knees. Perhaps he would just drop her off at the station and that would be the end of it.

‘Sleep well?' he asked suddenly.

‘Um . . . Not terribly.'

‘Nor did I. Edward. The bugger snores like a foghorn.'

They fell silent again. She asked herself once more what he might have been going to say on the hilltop the previous day when he took her hand. If only she had the courage to raise the subject, to tackle him as Isabella, no doubt, would have done. Libby was wheedling and pawing at her.
Get down, girl!
Annie risked a sidelong glance. Will was frowning. He began drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as though in prelude to some announcement. She held her breath, but the miles continued to go by swiftly and silently.

‘Annie . . .' he began at last. Libby let out a crashing bark and bounded off for her lead. ‘Is there any particular reason you have to be home today?'

‘Oh! Um . . .'

‘Spend the night with me, Annie.'

Libby skidded back, lead in slavering jaws.

‘Oh! Goodness, um . . . I don't think I can. My mother's expecting me, and –'

‘Give her a ring.' He handed her a mobile phone.

‘It's just that . . . um . . . She doesn't like to be messed around.' The phone slipped a little in her sweating hand. Her words sounded like the lamest of excuses. ‘She . . . Perhaps another time . . .'

He grabbed the phone back. ‘Stop being so fucking nice,' he snarled. ‘Just say no, for Christ's sake.'

‘It's not that.' I'm thirty-one, she thought, and I'm scared of annoying my mother. ‘I'll ring her.'

He handed the phone back. Her hands were trembling so much she could hardly press the buttons. She was afraid he'd snatch the phone again and snap, ‘Jesus, don't force yourself!' The ringing tone sounded in her ear, then her mother's voice saying the number.

‘Hello, Mum, it's Anne. Um . . . there's been a change of plan and I won't be home till tomorrow. Sorry to mess you about.'

This provoked the tirade she'd anticipated. On and on went her mother's voice: ‘Oh, that's all very well . . . inconsiderate . . . could have phoned yesterday . . . your father . . . better things to do with my time . . .' Annie held the phone away from her ear to let Will hear. He glanced at her in disbelief. She knew from long experience that any attempt to placate would simply prolong the outburst. There was one way to cut her off, though.

‘Look, Mum, I'm sorry – this is someone else's phone bill, so –'

‘Well, I hope you offer to pay them, that's all, Anne.' There was a click. She had gone. Annie handed the phone back to Will.

‘Is she always like that?' he asked.

‘Yes.'

‘God, I'm sorry. I thought you were just fobbing me off.' His hand took hers. What on earth have I done? she thought wildly. I've agreed to spend the night with him! She'd been so intent on proving to herself she wasn't afraid of her mother that she'd lost sight of the real reason for the phone call. She slid her hand away so that he wouldn't feel her trembling. He pulled over and stopped the car. Libby had bolted.

‘Are you sure about this, Annie? Don't let me bully you.'

‘It's just . . .'

‘Look, I know I said some unforgivable things. I'll be a perfect gentleman this time. Promise.' She managed a brave smile. ‘Perfect, except in the crucial department,' he added bitterly.

‘It doesn't matter.'

‘Of course it fucking matters. If you're selling your immortal soul for sex you need a lover who can at least get it up.'

‘But you can,' she pointed out. It's a matter of keeping it there.

‘Don't you laugh at me!' His eyes were wild in his pale face.

‘Well, maybe if you laughed at yourself sometimes,' she pleaded.

‘Hah!' He sat scowling and biting his lips. Annie gazed out at a neat square of pine forest on a distant hill. It's
not funny
. How was she to encourage him without being patronizing?

‘It's just so fucking humiliating,' he muttered at last.

‘For me, too,' she protested. ‘Not being arousing enough to . . . um . . .'

‘Are you kidding? That was half the problem. I felt totally outclassed. Shit, I hardly have to look at you and you come.'

‘It must be your penetrating stare. I mean,' she hurried on, remembering it wasn't funny, ‘it's you, not me. I'm not like it with anyone else. I'm just the instrument, remember?'

She saw an awakening flicker of lust in his eyes. He reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear, his hand lingering on her cheek, thumb brushing her mouth. She gasped his name and he slid his thumb suddenly between her parted lips. Libby shot clean out of her basket as though electrocuted.

‘God, you're wanton,' he said. ‘Let's get back.' He started the car.

Before long they were approaching Bishopside. Annie caught herself in the act of praying that it would be all right and felt a jolt of guilty fear.

Candlelight gleamed on the taps in the dim bathroom. Annie lay back against Will's chest, the water lapping at her chin. She took another sip of champagne and held it in her mouth. The bubbles burst against her palate like a tiny round of applause. I've gone to the dogs, she thought drunkenly. The libby-dibby dogs. Her body was still throbbing from his lovemaking. He had begun tentatively enough – a swift scale, a few arpeggios – until he mastered his stage fright. He'd worked up at last to a ruthless virtuosic cadenza, sobbing and laughing with relief in her arms as the last strains died away. And now those musician's fingers were at work again, intent on wringing one more agonized crescendo from her.

‘Don't,' she pleaded. ‘Will, I can't stand it. You're insatiable.'

He chuckled. ‘Just born again.'

Ah, the benefits of a little gynaecological know-how. A man who wouldn't joggle her around as though she had a loose connection, or jiggle her like a bathroom door, implying, Are you going to be much longer in there? I'm getting desperate! The champagne was roaring in her head. Here it comes, she thought. Rumbling drums, mounting strings, tearing brass . . . Then the blinding white
crash!
of cymbals.
Fffffortissimo!

The water subsided into calm. Libby lay poleaxed.

‘I'm tingling,' murmured Annie.

‘You were hyperventilating.'

She saw that medical expertise had its down side. ‘You lied,' she accused him. ‘You told Hayley and Lisa you had to work tonight.'

‘Excuse me – I've worked bloody hard.'

‘True.' She giggled. ‘It's nice to be played by such a maestro.'

‘Why, thank you, honey. Nice to get my hands on a Stradivarius.'

He raised his glass. ‘A toast to my newly recovered manhood. God, it's been years, I can't tell you.' Their glasses clinked, they drank, then he turned her lips to his and drooled a cold trickle of champagne into her mouth. His fingers were at her breasts plucking idle chords. Libby quivered afresh. Not
more
!

‘What nice shiny taps you have,' she remarked in desperation.

‘That's Ethel for you.'

‘You employ a cleaning lady? Is she a treasure?'

‘Yes. Dusts the skirting-board under the radiator. Cleans the light switches. Even irons my underpants.'

‘Ethel's a sick woman.'

He laughed. ‘
I'm
Ethel. I have a multiple personality disorder.'

‘Who else have you got in there?'

‘You've met the mad wolf-man.' He let out a bloodcurdling howl. ‘Tamed but not domesticated by the love of a good woman. And there seems to be an Italian Calvinist with a death-wish. Very confusing. What about you?'

‘Oh, Miss Brown the schoolmarm. She's the snotty one.'

‘And someone who gave me a look of stark naked slavering lust the first evening I met you.'

‘Oh!' She blushed. ‘Libby.'

When she explained he threw his head back and laughed. ‘Here, girl!' he called, clicking his fingers and whistling. ‘Walkies!'

‘No. Honestly, Will, I'm exhausted.'

‘Hang on to those taps, Miss Brown. It's the mad wolf-man.'

He was asleep. She could hear his soft breathing beside her. The bedroom was dark apart from the faint orange glare of city lights, which shone through the crack in the curtains and fanned out across the ceiling. She listened to the night noises. The last drunken voices had gone. A helicopter hovered overhead. Wind scoured the streets. A gate banged once, twice. She could hear a siren tearing along a distant road, and far off, almost swallowed up in the night, an alarm bell was ringing on and on. She stretched out a leg cautiously in his cool sheets, hoping her restlessness wouldn't wake him. Her body was still aching and pulsing. She thought of the princess who could feel the pea through twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. ‘I don't know what it was in the bed,' the poor princess cried, ‘but I'm black and blue all over!' How could he just roll away and sleep like a baby? After all that. She clenched in a sudden shudder. Her feelings bordered on disgust. Had he run through his entire repertoire? What if he'd merely dished up the hors d'oeuvres, and some vast unimaginable
plat du jour
still lay waiting for her, quivering in aspic in the sexual pantry?

She was feeling thirsty and thought of creeping to the bathroom and slurping from the tap. The taps! She saw herself on her knees clinging to them, wailing, as frantic tidal waves swamped the candles. No, she couldn't face the bathroom. Besides, she knew he was above the vulgar practice of drinking tap water.

In the end she decided to creep down to the fridge. She tiptoed naked along the dark hall and opened the kitchen door. Instantly the night was shattered by a howling siren. She shut the door in panic, but the howling continued. Will came pounding down the stairs.

‘Sorry!' she cried, over the noise. He pressed some buttons and the alarm cut off in mid-howl. ‘I was just getting a drink,' she bleated in the silence.

‘You should've asked.'

‘I didn't realize it was on. I didn't want to wake you.'

He chuckled in the dark. ‘Silly cunt. Get back to bed.'

She felt a stinging slap and fled back upstairs, her pride and backside smarting. He followed her a couple of minutes later with a bottle of mineral water.

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘Forgot to warn you.'

He poured her some water and explained briefly how the system worked. The glass clattered against her teeth. They lay down again and he turned the light off. She listened for his quiet breathing. Would he fall straight back to sleep? Perhaps doctors could do that after those grim houseman months. She was still jittery from shock. The helicopter throbbed in the distance. I feel so lonely, she thought. All kinds of terrifying intimacy, yet I daren't reach out and hold his hand. A tear crept down her cheek. He hit me. He called me a cunt. She lay rigid in case a sniff betrayed her, not wanting to become a demanding accusing woman. Her throat ached from holding back her sobs.

De-dum de-dum. De-dum de-dum. The express sped south. Annie watched the countryside slip past. Fields of winter wheat, hawthorn hedges hazed over with green, chestnut and beech speckled with unfurling leaves, pale clumps of primroses. The landscape was charged with spring. No more holding back, it seemed to say. Buds will burst, shoots will spear up from the earth, song must and will pour out of every throat. She quivered with the force of it, barely able to keep in her seat. All this is God, a voice was murmuring. If you glory in the creation what are you doing but praising the Creator? The voice of the serpent: Eat, eat. You will not die.

Why didn't she feel guilty? Was it because she hadn't grasped the enormity of what she had done? Or because guilt must lead to repentance and amendment of life and she wasn't ready for that yet? She'd woken sick with shame that morning, as though suffering from a sexual hangover. The hair of the dog – or wolf, possibly – had worked wonders. She'd been expecting to sober up on the train, but after two hours here she was as tipsy as ever. Libby had never looked sleeker. Annie shivered at the memory of Will's face between her thighs, his warm mouth, the shock of tasting herself on his lips . . .
How-oo-owl!
She felt as though someone were feeding her insides slowly through an old-fashioned mangle. Hadn't one of the saints been martyred like that – intestines wound out on a windlass? Her stomach plunged again. It struck her that lust was barely distinguishable from dread. And only a hair's breadth away from disgust. Could she really have done those things and enjoyed them? The train flashed through a wood thick with celandines. She gasped. The sun might almost have fallen and spilled out along the ground, the flowers were so bright.