A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [45]
“Never mind. It’s a common complaint. Come on, darling, let’s go in.”
As we enter the front room, he laughs.
“Seems funny, doesn’t it? Waiting until the family is out. Like reverting to adolescence.”
The room has an almost untouched look, the neatness of a livingroom in a house where people congregate always in the kitchen. The furniture is old and ornate, pieces gathered with loving frugality, perhaps, throughout a quarter-century of auction sales. A walnut sideboard with a high bevelled mirror, a china cabinet plumed and scrolled woodenly and filled with objects hardly discernible behind the ruby glass. A plum-coloured chesterfield made for some giant race, curved hugely into the bow of the bay window. Then, in the midst of these known shapes, a gilt-bordered ikon, and an embroidered tablecloth with some mythical tree nestled in by a fantasy of birds, and on the wall a framed photograph of long-dead relatives in the old country, the heavily moustached men sitting with hands on knees, wearing their serge suits and rigid smiles, the women aproned elaborately and wearing on their heads black-fringed babushkas patterned with poppies or roses.
“Like a drink, Rachel?”
“Yes, all right.”
Now, in his own house, he seems for the first time reticent, or at a loss for words. Or else he thinks – words afterwards. How can I tell?
But when we are in his room, I can’t tell him what has been on my mind, what’s worrying me. It’s his concern, too. I know that. But will he know it? I have to speak of it. I promised myself I would. It’s essential. But I can’t bring up the subject at all. It crosses my mind that I don’t know him well enough. That’s ridiculous, of course.
“What’s the matter, Rachel?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s the matter. I feel better, actually, here in this place.”
“How – better?”
“Safer.”
He laughs. “Because of its four walls and a roof?”
“You think that’s foolish, don’t you?”
“Yeh, maybe. But women don’t.”
Women. I’m not the only one, then, who feels that way. Nick goes to the windows and opens the curtains.
“My mother always closes them,” he says, “to keep out the sun. It gives me claustrophobia, having a place shut up like this.”
Then he puts his arms around me.
“Come on, darling, come and lie down beside me.”
There seems to be a kind of tenderness in his voice. After a while I won’t feel apprehensive any more. I can even take off my clothes without feeling very unfamiliar about it. See – I have changed.
His hands are careful and gentle and slow at first.
“You have nice small breasts, darling. You’re very slender all over, aren’t you?”
“I’m too thin.” Then I’m sorry I said that.
“No. I like it.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I like you here, and here. Very delicate shoulders, too, you have. And beautiful thighs, and the skin there is – feel how soft your own skin is, Rachel, when I stroke you there?”
Am I like that? I never knew.
“You touch me, too,” he says. “There. Put your hands there. That’s good. More.”
Then I want my hands to know everything about him, the way the hair grows in his armpits, the curve of his bones at the hips, the tight muscles of his belly, the arching of his sex.
“Now, Rachel?”
“Yes. Now.” If only I can relax. Relax, Rachel.
“Relax, Rachel.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No – it’s all right. Just relax, darling.”
“I’m sorry – Nick –”
“It’s all right.”
But it isn’t. Without wanting to, I’m holding myself away. But it hasn’t hurt after all. Now there is only the swiftness of him, the heaviness of him on me, and at the final moment he does not cry out like before, but his face is so intense I can hardly look upon it, for the open tenderness I feel, seeing him so. Then it is over, and after a while he lifts his head and looks at me. With my fingers I go over the sharp outlines of his face, and touch his eyes and the unruly blackness of his hair.
“Nick –”
“Hello. Was that – I mean, did you, Rachel?”
“Yes.” This is not true, but it is true in every way that is important to me now.
Thought has to return, but it hasn’t the power to threaten me, not yet. What if? I should be concerned.