A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King [41]
“Well, yes, I suppose.” Although I shouldn’t have called it ‘sex appeal,’ exactly.
“But you sound surprised.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you—Why does he appeal to you?”
“Oh, he doesn’t, not really. I mean, I’m sure he’d turn out to be totally maddening, in reality. It’s because he’s so unavailable.” She thought for a few steps, and I waited, intrigued. “You know, when I was fifteen—this was just before the War—someone at school had the bright idea of sending the top members of our form to Italy for the spring term. One of the girls had an uncle there, with a huge, dusty villa in the countryside not far from Florence, and the idea was that we hire a charabanc to transport us in every day to view the treasures. Of course, the thing broke down continuously, or the driver was on a drunk, or we rebelled, so in the end I think we spent two days in the city and the rest in the small town three miles from the villa.
“There was a priest in the village—there were several, of course, but one in particular—I don’t know if it was the Mediterranean sun or our glands or just sheer deviltry, but all of us developed a Grand Passion for the priest. Poor man, it must have been so painful to have ten English misses on his heels, mooning about and bringing him fruit and sweets. He was good-looking, in a bony kind of way, very elegant in his black robe, but it was his air of unreachability that was so utterly electrifying. A challenge, I suppose, to break through that ascetic shell and set loose the passion beneath. Because one could feel the passion. My God, you couldn’t miss it, in his eyes and his mouth, but it was under iron control. He kept it directed no doubt to his prayer, but you couldn’t help but want to break his control and see what lay beneath.” She reviewed what she’d said, then laughed in self-deprecation. “At least it seemed that way. He was probably terrifically repressed and scared to death of us, and no doubt he had all sorts of boring habits, as I suppose your Sherlock Holmes would prove to have. Repressed and cerebral, a deadly combination. Still,” she said, blithely unaware of the shattering effect her words were having on me, “there must be plenty of unrepressed and agreeable older men around, the sort who mightn’t normally expect to marry again but would allow themselves to be convinced. Doing their part for England’s ‘surplus women’.”
“For heaven’s sake, Ronnie, listen to yourself. What would Margery Childe say?”
“I know, it’s terrible. But honestly, it’s not nice to be alone… not forever. Spinster is such an appalling word somehow. You know, some of the women—” Her garrulity abruptly dried up, and I smiled to myself in the dark.
“Some of the women what?”
“Oh, you know, they say that the only true and equal love is Sapphism… marriage between women.”
“Is Margery Childe a lesbian?” I wondered.
“No, I’m sure she isn’t.”
“How do you know? Is she married?”
“No. Although she may have been. Someone told me she’d lost her husband in the Somme.”
“Who?”
“Who told me, you mean? Let me think. One of the early members, it must have been, who knew her before the war. Ivy? No—I know. It was Delia Laird. She was with Margery from the early days, when they used to hire village halls to preach in. Yes, that’s right, Ivy’s the one who told me she’d seen Margery with a gorgeous man in France a year or two back, all dark and Mediterranean and gangster-like. No, Margery’s no lesbian.”
“I didn’t meet Delia Laird, did I? You said she was with Margery. Has she left the Temple?”
“She died, back in August. Drowned in her bath.”
I stopped. “Good heavens.”
“It was suicide. That is, the verdict at the inquest was accidental death, but we all knew she’d killed herself. Tablets and gin, in the bath; what else could it be?”
“But why?” I allowed her to pull me back into motion.
“Margery. Delia was one of those women who might have been a lesbian if she’d come from a less repressed background, or if she’d received any encouragement. As it was, she devoted her life to Margery. An unfortunate woman, from a good family but there was