A Dangerous Fortune - Ken Follett [58]
He looked anxiously at the other men walking along the winding paths between the flower beds, fearful of recognizing someone. There was a sprinkling of upper-class men, some with girls on their arms; but they all carefully avoided Hugh’s eye, and he realized they too were apprehensive about being seen there. He decided that if he saw people he knew they would probably be as keen as he to keep it quiet; and he felt reassured.
He was proud of Maisie. She was wearing a blue-green gown with a low neckline and a bustle behind, and a sailor hat poised jauntily on her piled-up hair. She attracted a lot of admiring glances.
They passed a ballet theatre, an oriental circus, an American bowling green and several shooting galleries, then went into a restaurant to dine. This was a new experience for Hugh. Although restaurants were becoming more common, they were mostly used by the middle classes: upper-class people still did not like the idea of eating in public. Young men such as Edward and Micky ate out quite often, but they thought of themselves as slumming, and they only did it when they were either looking for or had already found dollymops to keep them company.
All through dinner Hugh tried not to think about Maisie’s breasts. The tops of them showed lusciously above the neckline of her gown, and they were very pale, with freckles. He had seen bare breasts, just once—at Nellie’s brothel a few weeks ago. But he had never touched one. Were they firm, like muscles, or limp? When a woman took off her corset, did her breasts move as she walked, or remain rigid? If you touched them, would they yield to pressure, or were they hard, like kneecaps? Would she let him touch them? He sometimes even thought about kissing them, the way the man in the brothel had kissed the whore’s breasts, but this was a secret desire that he felt ashamed of. In fact he was vaguely ashamed of all these feelings. It seemed brutish to sit with a woman and think all the time of her naked body, as if he cared nothing for her, but just wanted to use her. However, he could not help it, especially with Maisie, who was so alluring.
While they were eating there was a fireworks display in another part of the gardens. The bangs and flashes upset the lions and tigers in the menagerie, and they roared their disapproval. Hugh recalled that Maisie had worked in a circus, and he asked her what it was like.
“You get to know people very well when you live so close together,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s good in some ways, bad in others. People help each other all the time. There are love affairs, lots of quarrels, sometimes fights—there were two murders in the four years I was with the circus.”
“Good heavens.”
“And the money is unreliable.”
“Why?”
“When people need to economize, entertainment is the first thing they cut out.”
“I’d never thought of that. I must remember not to invest the bank’s money in any form of entertainment business.”
She smiled. “Do you think about finance all the time?”
No, Hugh thought, I think about your breasts all the time. He said: “You have to understand that I’m the son of the black sheep of the family. I know more about banking than the other young Pilasters, but I have to work doubly hard to prove my worth.”
“Why is it so important to prove yourself?”
Good question, Hugh thought. He considered. After a minute he said: “I’ve always been that way, I suppose. At school I just had to be top of the class. And my father’s failure made it worse: everyone thinks I’m going to go the same way, and I have to show them they’re wrong.”
“In a way I feel the same, you know. I’m never going to live the way my mam did, always on the edge of destitution. I’m going to have money, I don’t care what I have to do.”
As gently as he could, Hugh said: “Is that why you go around with Solly?”
She frowned, and for a moment he thought she was going to be angry,