The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [86]
I didn’t know what to say. Times was hard for a lot of families on the land, I knew that. But they always had been. How was a war going to sort that out? But Mr Cromley was looking at me intense, like. ‘Haven’t seen you since the picnic,’ he said. ‘Alec is right, she is a first-class bitch.’
‘He’s going to marry her, isn’t he?’ I said.
‘Fraid so.’ He tapped me lightly on the chin. ‘Thing is, Heartbreaker, you’re younger and prettier, but her father’s a major-general. Your father keeps a guesthouse, and soon he won’t have even that questionable status. I hear he’ll be a tobacconist.’ Mr Cromley said it like you’d say ‘toilet attendant’.
Tears pricked behind my eyes. Dad, in his cheap off-the-peg suit, Mam ironing the hand-stitched table mats. All they’d worked for, the guesthouse with its clean sheets and towels changed every day, meant nothing. Clean sheets could never take me where I wanted to be. I swung my legs up onto the tomb, and wrapped my arms round my knees, looking away towards the dipping sun at the end of the graveyard, willing the tears back where they came from. The row of white headstones confronted me like a row of sinister, even teeth.
‘You really have fallen for him, haven’t you?’ Mr Cromley sounded amazed. ‘You poor little thing.’
Best not to say anything. I wasn’t so green I didn’t see Mr Cromley as a dangerous fellow to confide in.
‘How old are you, Heartbreaker?’
‘Sixteen,’ I lied.
‘A mature woman in the Neolithic. You’d probably have at least a couple of babies by now. In fact, you could be considered middle-aged, given that life expectancy wasn’t much over thirty.’ He threw away his cigarette. ‘Are you still a virgin at sweet sixteen?’
I went hot. ‘No gentleman would ask that.’
He reached out a hand and lifted my skirt back from my knee. I went completely still. The evening breeze played over the bare skin above my stocking top.
‘Do you know how I made Alec’s acquaintance, Miss Robinson?’ Every time he repeated my name it was like an incantation. ‘We were both members of–how shall I put it? A small group of gentlemen with certain interests in common. My uncle recommended me. We would meet for drinks at someone’s club, then repair to a flat in South London where a young woman would assist us in our experiments in ritual. And I’m not talking about what goes on in there…’ He nodded towards the church. ‘Religion’s a crutch. I’m talking about a tool. There are ways of harnessing the cosmos to help someone determined. What you will shall be.’ His finger began stroking my thigh, circling above the top of my stocking. ‘We’d take turns, Miss Robinson. One after another with the same woman. Do you know what I’m talking about?’
‘Enough to know I don’t want to hear it.’ But my breathing gave me away. I was remembering what had happened at the picnic, Mr Cromley holding my arms, Mr Keiller towering over me…The two of them becoming confused in my mind, changing places, turning in mazy circles like Mr Cromley’s insistent finger.
‘Alec is a highly sexualized man. He’s curious, likes to try different experiences. Sometimes our experiments would be about withholding.’ The finger abruptly stops stroking. ‘Withholding can create very powerful magic. And sometimes–’ the finger lightly brushes my skin again, this time on the inner thigh ‘–sometimes it would be about giving.’
Our breath hung in the air between us, his finger a light pressure on my leg. My skin ached. I wanted that finger to move again, but it didn’t.
‘Are you a giving person, Miss Robinson?’
‘I don’t think you should be talking like this.’
‘I could make a gift of you to Alec. Or vice versa.’
I lifted his hand off my thigh, swung my legs off the tomb and jumped to the ground, dusting fragments of stone off the back of my skirt. ‘I’m not a parcel, Mr Cromley.’
I didn’t turn round as I stalked away into the glimmering evening, but I knew he was watching me all the way down the yew-shaded path.