An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [58]
It was unusual, that was for sure. She felt a certain sad excitement, a little discomfort and much embarrassment, the latter concerned with the removal of clothing. I am dying, Egypt, dying, her mind gabbled when Dotty Blundell’s brassière fell to the dusty floor. She hadn’t been prepared for the way poetry came into this fitting together of parts, Shall I believe that unsubstantial Death is amorous, and that the lean abhorrèd monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour, she recited in her head, as O’Hara climbed on top and humped her beneath the rude unshaded bulb. Not that O’Hara was either lean or a monster. ‘Stella Maris,’ he muttered against her hair, and jumped away like a fish leaping on a bank.
When it appeared to be over – he’d stopped breathing so heavily and lay with his eyes closed – she asked him who Stella Maris was.
‘Did I say that?’ he said, and sat up and combed his hair. ‘I knew someone of that name a long time ago. It means Star of the Sea.’
‘Stella Maris,’ she repeated. ‘It’s nice.’
‘It wasn’t her real name,’ he said. ‘Just something she made up.’
She was staring somewhat scornfully at his plump shoulders. He put on his shirt and suggested she should wash herself at the sink. She refused; she’d had a bath the night before.
‘You mustn’t worry,’ he said. ‘I was very careful. I’m not an irresponsible man.’
She supposed he was thinking about babies. She wasn’t bothered. If what she had done was a sin then it was only right she should be punished. ‘No use crying over spilt milk,’ she said. If she had weakened for a moment, to the extent of uttering one soft word of forgiveness, of friendship, she might have burst into tears. Already in the expression of her eyes, the beginnings of her small, triumphant smile, there was more than a touch of the martyr.
‘Did you enjoy it?’ he asked, not looking at her.
‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘I expect there’s a knack to it. It’s very intimate, isn’t it?’
He insisted on walking her home but she ran off at the corner. He wasn’t pleased with himself. Whatever momentary spasm of pleasure he had experienced was now forgotten. He was also more than a little scandalised at the girl’s matter-of-fact acceptance of what had happened. She hadn’t wept or clung to him, demanded to know what he felt about her, uttered those naive and sweetly foolish declarations of undying love expected of a young girl whose virginity had just been taken. He was fairly certain she had no idea of how gentle he had been, how thoughtful. One way and another he felt let down.
Stella didn’t go home, not right away. Instead she walked as fast as she could towards the river, past the mean little houses below the cathedral. She almost choked on the stench of damp grain blowing up the hill.
There was a man in the telephone box outside the Mission Hall. She crouched in the shadows of the porch and watched the blurred lights of a Christmas tree winking in the first-floor room of a house opposite. A little girl carrying either a doll or a child walked back and forth behind the windows.
It was cold in the street. The chemical clouds curdled above the black top-hats of the chimney stacks. From the dock road came a steady rumble of traffic and the heartbeat of machinery as the sugar-refinery pumped in the fiery darkness. At last the man staggered out, a string of sausages slung about his neck.
She pressed button A and heard Mother’s voice; she felt shy. She had meant to confide that she, too, was a seduced woman; yet when it came to it she couldn’t find the correct words. All the poetry had dribbled out of her. She wished Mother a Happy Christmas, her eyes fixed on the child across the road and that silhouette of Mr Punch who now appeared with raised and menacing fist.
Mother responded in the usual way.
11
At the matinee on Boxing Day O’Hara, dragging a reluctant Nana by the collar, made his exit as Mr Darling and raced upstairs to transform himself into Captain Hook. On his return Geoffrey should have been waiting in the wings to assist