Night Over Water - Ken Follett [41]
She burst into tears again.
It was no use sitting here thinking about it, she decided after a while. She had to go in and get it over with. She repaired her makeup again and got out of the car.
She walked through the lobby of the hotel and went up the staircase without stopping at the desk. She knew Mark’s room number. It was, of course, quite scandalous for a woman alone to go to a single man’s hotel room; but she decided to brazen it out. The alternative would have been to see Mark in the lounge or the bar, and it was unthinkable to give him this kind of news in a public place. She did not look around her, so she did not know whether she had been seen by anyone she knew.
She tapped on his door. She prayed that he would be here. What if he had decided to go out to a restaurant, or to see a film? There was no reply, and she knocked again, harder. How could he go to the cinema at a time like this?
Then she heard his voice: “Hello?”
She knocked again and said: “It’s me!”
She heard rapid footsteps. The door was flung open and Mark stood there, looking startled. He smiled happily, drew her inside, closed the door and embraced her.
Now she felt as disloyal to him as she had to Mervyn earlier. She kissed him guiltily, and the familiar warmth of desire glowed in her veins; but she pulled away and said: “I can’t go with you.”
He blanched. “Don’t say that.”
She looked around the suite. He was packing. The wardrobe and drawers were open, his cases were on the floor and everywhere there were folded shirts, tidy piles of underwear and shoes in bags. He was so neat. “I can’t go,” she repeated.
He took her hand and drew her into the bedroom. They sat on the bed. He looked distraught. “You don’t mean this,” he said.
“Mervyn loves me, and we’ve been together for five years. I can’t do this to him.”
“What about me?”
She looked at him. He was wearing a dusty pink sweater and a bow tie, blue-gray flannel trousers and cordovan shoes. He looked good enough to eat. “You both love me,” she said. “But he’s my husband.”
“We both love you, but I like you,” Mark said.
“Don’t you think he likes me?”
“I don’t think he even knows you. Listen. I’m thirty-five years old. I’ve been in love before. I once had an affair that lasted six years. I’ve never been married but I’ve been around. I know this is right. Nothing has ever felt so right to me. You’re beautiful, you’re funny, you’re unorthodox, you’re bright and you love to make love. I’m cute, I’m funny, I’m unorthodox, I’m bright and I want to make love to you right now—”
“No,” she said, but she did not mean it.
He drew her to him gently and they kissed.
“We’re so right for each other,” he murmured. “Remember writing notes to one another underneath the silence sign? You understood the game, right away, without explanations. Other women think I’m nuts, but you like me this way.”
It was true, she thought; and when she did oddball things, like smoking a pipe, or going out with no panties on, or attending Fascist meetings and sounding the fire alarm, Mervyn became annoyed, whereas Mark laughed delightedly.
He stroked her hair, then her cheek. Slowly her panic subsided, and she began to feel soothed. She laid her head on his shoulder and let her lips brush the soft skin of his neck. She felt his fingertips on her leg, beneath her dress, stroking the inside of her thigh where her stockings ended. This was not what was supposed to happen, she thought weakly.
He pushed her gently backward on the bed, and her hat fell off. “This isn’t right,” she said feebly. He kissed her mouth, nibbling her lips gently with his own. She felt his fingers through the fine silk of her panties, and she shuddered with pleasure. After a moment his hand slid inside.
He knew just what to do.
One day early in the summer, as they lay naked in a hotel bedroom with the sound of the waves coming through the open window, he had said: “Show me what you do when you touch yourself.”
She had been embarrassed, and pretended not to understand. “What do you mean?”
“You