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« on: July 28, 2023, 11:41:48 am » |
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ALTHOUGH Orvil had liked Charles’s American friend Ted Wilkie at sight, he had hardly spoken to him after that first night, when he looked at the fine scars on Ted’s face and then asked anxiously about his flying accident.
Now that Ted was leaving the near-by aerodrome and going back to America, Orvil felt sorry that he had only known him as a person who leant against bars or talked soberly to Charles in corners. Often Orvil had seen them together, but he had only nodded, smiled, and looked away quickly. He thought of all the people he avoided in this way, and felt sorry that he would never know them.
Charles also was sorry that Ted was going. Ted had taught him so much about flying, had been so quiet and polite, such a good listener, that Charles had become really fond of him.
To fill the gap of loneliness Charles decided to ask some friends to the hotel. He chose two men he knew at Oxford, and a young girl called Aphra Burdett, who had lately married a soldier. But the soldier had gone abroad, so she was quite free again, except for her very young baby. Having received Charles’s invitation, she sent the baby to its grandmother’s and accepted gladly.
Orvil had never met any of them before, and so when Aphra jumped out of the car, he was surprised by her charm and beauty. She wore a delightful striped waistcoat, with crested silver buttons, that looked as if it should belong to some mid-Victorian footman. Her other clothes were ugly smart; but it was her face that really pleased Orvil. It was very compact, with firm, plain skin and richly painted, beautifully shaped lips. He noticed the quite perceptible green colour on her eyelids and themysterious line of blue behind ber back-curling lashes. Her breasts were still rather large, because, until lately, she had been feeding the baby herself.
That afternoon it rained, and for once Orvil found himself sitting in the court with the whole family party, except for Ben, who was playing squash with the Clifton boy. Mr. Pym was there, smoking, and drinking many cups of tea, watching while the others ate. Orvil contrived to sit next to Aphra. Charles and his two friends sat opposite.
Aphra was so charming to Orvil that he became quite devoted to her. She seemed to turn to him as a delightful respite from the veiled but rather heavy sexuality of the other three. Of course, there may also have been a desire to inflame the onlookers by her show of kindness to him. Whatever her motives, she exercised a fascination, and Orvil was content to sit next to her and take in every detail of her appearance and voice.
On her left hand she wore an old signet ring of bloodstone. Orvil bent his head, trying to see the crest. He wondered if the ring had belonged to her father or her husband. She was describing this husband to the party. “He’s very tall, with broad shoulders and reddish wavy hair,” she said. Charles and his two friends groaned extravagantly. Dennis Milton, who was good-looking in a dark, French-Jewish way, put his hands together, looked up to the ceiling with a maidenly simper and leant forward in a devotional attitude.
“After this I shall always believe in the efficacy of prayer,” he murmured in a wrapt voice.
Aphra turned away with ostentatious disgust. “My baby is sweet,” she said to Orvil privately. “The most wonderful heart-shaped face, and violet eyes as large as----” Here Aphra cast about in her mind for some simile, and Orvil, thinking that she was getting confused in her sentence, broke in with, “How wonderful! Have you a picture of her with you that you could show me?”
“Yes, I’ve got one in my room. Let’s go upstairs now and look at it.” Aphra jumped up impulsively and smoothed her clothes, flattening them against her body and spilling crumbs on to the floor. Managing in some subtle way not to include Mr. Pym in her rudeness; she said to the other three: “You stay here, Orvil and I want to be alone.”
Charles and his friends burst into derisive moans. “I want to be alone,” they cried in wildly exaggerated Scandinavian accents.
“It’s very good of you to bother with Orvil,” said Mr. Pym. “Don’t let him worry you too much.”
Orvil got up hastily and followed Aphra with mixed feelings of pride and humility. Some people near the door turned to look at Aphra. Orvil glowed.
Aphra’s bedroom was in the new wing, close to Mr. Pym’s. It had already become coloured with her personality. Tortoise-shell brushes and combs and many little boxes lay about, and there was a black glass bottle labelled ‘Narcisse Noir.’ On the dressing-table stood a diptych of gilt and mauve pressed-calf. A photograph of a baby and a photograph of a man had been slipped behind the slightly yellowish celluloid windows.
Orvil gave the baby a quick glance, then looked at Aphra’s husband. Something on his shoulders had caught the light and flashed into a white blur. Orvil guessed that little pieces of glittering chain-mail had caused this effect. The dark, tight uniform made him look very tall. The strong photographer’s light had again caught the glistening ridges of his oiled hair, and his eyes had such sharp, bright points that they looked foxy and treacherous.
“He’s rather a pet, don’t you think,” said Aphra anxiously. Orvil nodded rather awkwardly. “That’s an awfully good uniform,” he said. “Is it only worn for levees and grand occasions like that?”
“They wear it in the evening in Mess,” Aphra replied.
She had taken another picture of her baby from a drawer and was fingering it. She held it out to Orvil. He saw the baby being bathed---by a frightening-looking nurse---in an old-fashioned, flower-painted hand-basin. The baby was like a marmoset, very tiny and skinny and terrified, with huge eyes.
“Is she fond of that nurse?” asked Orvil doubtfully.
“Julie loves her,” said Aphra with emphasis; “babies never mind extreme ugliness---I think it fascinates them.”
Aphra sat down on the bed and patted the place beside her. She opened a little case and showed Orvil some pretty things: a little diamonded badge of her husband’s regiment, very respectable and genteel and upper middle class; some soft gold Hindoo nose-rings that had been made into rosettes for the ears; a sapphire star, once part of a great-aunt’s parure. Orvil held the star in his hands.
“The whole set together was almost architectural,” said Aphra; “it made the wearer look something like the Eiffel Tower done in Meccano. This star hung with a lot of others all round the neck in a sort of dog-collar. One day my aunt, who was ninety-one and very queer, opened her jewel-box, yanked this star off brutally, and dropped it in my cup of tea instead of a lump of sugar. She said that it was a particular sort of blue sugar which would do me a great deal of good. She was furious when I tried to return it at the end of the afternoon, so I’ve kept it ever since.”
Orvil leant forward and fingered the stopper of Aphra’s scent. He had stretched out his hands unconsciously and did not care to take them away at once.
“Smell it and put some on your handkerchief,” Aphra suggested. Orvil was about to obey when he drew back.
Orvil felt overwhelmed. He could say nothing. He turned his head to the window, thinking that he was about to cry. He’d never had such generous words before.
Aphra quickly got out some interesting dresses, and turned them inside out to show him the fine cutting and sewing. She put on a bizarre hat which she hardly dared to wear out of doors. It had a long tail, finished with a bell, like a mediaeval jester’s cap.
“Don’t I look a caution!” said Aphra, contorting her face and posturing in front of the glass. “A fair caution,” she repeated abstractedly, as she stuck out her behind and her bosom in an irresistible burlesque.
Orvil began to laugh. There was something so strange and startling about Aphra’s beautiful face, the sinister black trailing hat, and the music-hall voice and vulgar movements.
“We’d better go down again to the others; they’ll wonder what’s happened to us,” said Aphra, pulling off the hat and throwing it back in its box.
She combed her hair, put on a little more lipstick, and scrubbed her face with the powder-puff. Orvil saw that the pearly, luminous quality of her skin was achieved in this way. She seemed almost to use the powder as a burnish.
Aphra and Orvil turned out of the long passage and started to go down the stairs. Almost at the foot, Aphra turned and stood still. “I knew I’d forgotten one of the things I went up for!” she said. “I wanted to go on with my letter to Everard---I write to him nearly every day. Would you be a lamb and go back and fetch my block? It’s on the top of my dressing-case by the window.”
Orvil ran back willingly, delighted to be able to do this for Aphra. He went to the window and found the block. She had evidently begun the letter to her husband very soon after her arrival at the hotel. One sheet was already full. Orvil began to read, with a rising sense of guilt and urgency.
‘Well, darling,’ it began, ‘here I am with the Pyms for a week. Dennis and Jackie are also staying in the hotel. But, darling, even surrounded by this male chorus, I think of no one but you . . .’
Orvil stopped reading, suddenly terrified that he would come across his name in some hurting sentence. ‘I don’t mind what she’s said, but I must never read it,’ he thought.
He ran back to Aphra and handed her the block and her fountain-pen.
“Oh, you angel,” she said. “I forgot the pen. You think of everything.”
Orvil glowed. He knew he had been right to pick the pen up from the dressing-table.
They went back together into the court, but a waiter came up and told them that the gentlemen had gone into the billiard-room and had left a message asking them to follow.
Aphra climbed on to the dais and perched herself in a corner of the bow-window. She settled into the ancient blood-gravy-coloured repp cushions and started to write. Charles and Dennis and Jackie fooled about, sending beautiful old red and white ivory balls all over the green cloth. The cues stuck out behind them, then shot forward like pistons. All three laughed and shouted at one another. Orvil waited quietly for them to rip the cloth. He always waited for this, even when watching expert people who played billiards seriously. It had been impressed on him in childhood that ripping the cloth on a billiard-table was one of the worst crimes---like blasphemy, or pointing a gun at another human being.
Aphra looked up from her letter and saw Dennis just about to play a stroke. His face was wonderfully intent and dignified.
“Darling, your nose is almost too beautiful,” she sighed; “someone ought to break it for you.”
This flattering personal remark so nonplussed and rattled Dennis that he became offensively rude in a very heavy way.
“My nose may be too beautiful,” he began ponderously; “I wish I could say the same about yours; but I can’t. It’s only a lump of dough with two holes in it. But even if you do think my nose is too beautiful, it’s bloody rude to try to make a fool of me by drawing attention to it.”
Dennis said a lot more, growing increasingly vicious with each new sentence. Orvil was so shocked and startled that he could not hear. He hated to admit it, but he saw that Aphra too was rather confused and out of countenance. She looked from side to side and laughed lightly.
“My dear, don’t lose your wool,” she said, mimicking old-fashioned schoolboy slang; “I only meant that I envied the organ like anything.”
“Well, don’t envy my organs!” shrieked Dennis, who had now in his crazy rage lost all sense of the incongruous.
Everyone else laughed, but Dennis went on muttering: “Bloody---damned rude---bitch---hag!”
At this point Mr. Pym quietly went across to the window-seat and sat down beside Aphra. Orvil heard them talking about Dennis in undertones. His father was saying, “Yes, to look at him you’d think he was a sissy boy, but he isn’t at all. I like him very much.” They continued to say nice things about Dennis; Aphra taking special care to be generous.
Orvil kept silent and thought of the expression ‘sissy boy’ on his father’s lips. It seemed very quaint and brutish to him, something dug up from his father’s early youth. He had never heard him use it before. He had heard other people say ‘sissy’ without the ‘boy’; it was the combination of the two which struck him. He thought too of ‘Jew boy’ and ‘nigger boy,’ and decided that ‘Jew’ without the ‘boy’ was less offensive, but that plain ‘nigger’ was more so. He fell to thinking of words in general, and remembered that for a long time ‘nostalgic’ had been interpreted by him as meaning ‘sweet-smelling.’ It had been associated in his mind with ‘nostril.’ Once when he was eight or nine years old, his nurse had said that a long train journey was ‘melancholy.’ He used the word for days afterwards; always seeing a pure white feathery cauliflower against a thunderously purple storm-sky as he uttered the mysterious syllables.
Orvil slipped out of the billiard-room and went upstairs. That night there was to be a dance. He wondered what Aphra would wear. He himself would not go to the dance. He could not ask grown women to dance with him. He wished that he was a girl, then there would be no difficulty. Men often danced with very young girls. They put their arms round them, hugged them tight, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. A pang of envy made Orvil fierce. He decided to watch the dance begin, even if he had to go to the musicians’ door and spy from the back of the stage.
He locked himself into his bedroom and thought of Aphra’s lips---the painted redness of them, glossy like melting sealing-wax or a pillar-box in the rain. He went to the chamber-cupboard, searched under the paper and pulled out the lipstick he had stolen from the shop in Salisbury. He looked at it carefully and saw that it had ‘Sang de Rose’ written on it in very peculiar lettering, which reminded him of nothing so much as white worms wriggling in and out of angular lattice-work. He put the stick to his nose and smelt it. He thought of crystallized violets coated with bright mauve sugar, and of European-made Turkish Delight dyed pink. ‘It’s very cheap lipstick,’ he thought.
Orvil went over to the glass, wound up the stick, and then began to cover his lips with a thick layer of colour. Soon they were gloriously cerise and sticky-looking. Orvil pouted them until they were fat as nigger lips. He put two large circles of red on his cheeks and made himself into a Dutch doll. He frizzed his hair until he looked rather pretty and depraved. Still itching to use the paint, Orvil applied a large boozy crimson blob to the end of his nose. He grinned, and then began to make the flesh round his eyes terrifyingly inflamed.
He stuck out his tongue and made devil faces in the glass; then he turned away and started to change for dinner. When he had undressed, he absent-mindedly rouged his nipples until they were like two squashed strawberries. He looked down at them vaguely and then began to rouge all the extremities of his body—the finger-tips, the toes, the earlobes. Next, he made gashes and spots all over his body until he seemed entirely dressed in the crimson marks.
He put down the lipstick, lifted his arms above his head and started to sway and twist. He shut his eyes. It was the beginning of a dance. Slowly he floated over the floor, turning his wrists, and sometimes opening his eyes, and rolling them up to the ceiling. He kicked out his legs fiercely, crouched down, and then sprang into the air. He did this several times, till the floor trembled. Such an excitement possessed him that he shouted and sang and tried to leap on to the mantelpiece. He clung there for one second and then fell back on to Ben’s bed. He bounced up and down on the springs, pretending that he was riding the wildest of horses.
Suddenly there was an impatient knocking on the door, and Ben’s voice called out, “For God’s sake open it! Why is it locked? I’m in a hurry.”
“Wait a minute, I’m all covered with water,” said Orvil, rushing to the basin and turning the tap on violently. He jabbed at his face with the flannel, getting off as much red as he could, then he threw on his dressing-gown and unlocked the door.
“What on earth are you up to now?” asked Ben.
“Oh, I just didn’t want to be disturbed,” said Orvil grandly. He left the basin to Ben and quickly darted out to the bathroom, where he scrubbed at the red marks with soap and nail-brush. ‘Rose Blood’ was very lasting; almost staining, like an indelible pencil.
After he had finished with his face, it looked even redder than it had done at the beginning.
He put his evening clothes on and went down to dinner with Ben. There was grouse for the first time in the year. Orvil delighted in it, for he was able to study Aphra while he ate. She wore the sapphire star in the front of her hair, almost on her forehead, like an Indian prince. Her dress was midnight-blue coarse velvet with very tight, long sleeves and no shoulders or neck. The narrow tube of a skirt was split to the knee in front to allow for walking, and behind was a very short, stumpy fish-tail train. When the front panels flared open, one caught for a second an astonishing glimpse of scarlet satin lining.
Aphra took no more notice of the sulky Dennis. She looked across at Orvil and smiled knowingly. This flattery was intoxicating. Orvil just gazed blankly back, thinking that her beautiful appearance was a thing which must be eaten up with the eyes while it lasted. His ivory opium-box and his agate chicken did not change, but every moment was helping to turn Aphra into something else. He dwelt on this thought; it horrified and fascinated him.
At the end of the meal, Orvil followed the others into the court. Already, squeaks and tunings could be heard coming from the distant ballroom. Orvil had the whimsy fancy that the instruments were whining and complaining to the musicians, trying to escape their duty, like boys who think that a master has set them too much ‘preparation.’
No one spoke very much over coffee. Aphra poured out, and put too much sugar in Orvil’s cup, in an effort to please him. There was a general feeling of impatience and expectancy. Dennis tapped his feet. Jackie looked at Aphra with his mouth open.
At last they all got up and walked down the passage to the vestibule. The dance had just begun, and through the glass doors Orvil saw the couples shaking and hesitating and sweeping on.
“I will dance first dance with Orvil,” Aphra said.
Orvil became very red and confused. He smiled a lot, but did not know how he was going to put his arm round her waist. Aphra settled the matter by clasping him and very discreetly guiding and directing him over the floor.
“Orvil, you would dance awfully well with a little more practice,” she said.
Orvil thought she was right. He loved to jig and swing, to tremble and slink and sway and march sedately.
He saw how different the ballroom looked, now that it was full of people and the lights were on. The heavy curtains on the walls had an appliquéd Greek key pattern in jade green, and large polka dots in black. The whole effect was astonishingly ugly. There were many little lights with pinkish-orange pleated silk shades. The sprung floor shivered underneath the dancers.
Aphra contrived that they should be near one of the glass doors as the music stopped.
“There, Orvil dear, thank you for the lovely dance,” she said. “Don’t you think you ought to go up to bed now? You’re looking rather tired.”
Aphra’s face wore a solicitous expression. Charles and Dennis and Jackie came and stood round her and managed to look bored and impatient at one and the same time. Orvil saw that they all wanted to get rid of him.
“Yes, perhaps I will go up to bed now,” he said to Aphra seriously.
“I should, I think.” She patted his arm and then turned away, after giving a little wave. The others called out “Good night,” and Orvil was left alone.
In the vestibule his father sat talking charmingly with a middle-aged lady.
“Going up to bed?” they asked, smiling and nodding.
Orvil climbed up the stairs and stood on the landing outside his room. The music floated up---the insistent ache and throb. He could even hear curiously filtered snatches of talk and laughter.
Orvil jabbed holes in the milk-tin with the point of his nail-scissors and poured the milk into the little aluminium pan. He added a little water and then lighted the solid fuel. He smelt the spirit smell again and saw the blue flame eddying. He remembered the white Swiss mountains and the pine trees and the taste of snow on his tongue.
When the milk was nearly boiling, Orvil sprinkled Ovaltine on it from a sample packet that a girl in a shop had given him. The white milk turned to a pale chocolate pink. A froth of tiny bubbles began to form at the edge of the pan. Orvil blew out the flame and waited for his drink to cool a little. He blew on it and a thick skin formed. At last he drank it in large grateful gulps. There was a chocolate taste and a malt taste which left a bitterness in his mouth. When it was finished, he cleaned his teeth, pulled off his clothes and got into bed; but he could not sleep. Something in him would not rest. The feeling weighed him down. It became a physical discomfort, a lump in his stomach.
He looked at the pale square of light, and became so restless that he jumped out of bed and ran across to the window. He leant far out. Warm air played on his throat. The night was dark and soft, with no stars or moon. A bird shrieked. Orvil's fingers on the window-sill touched the lipstick which he had left so carelessly there after playing with it. Ben had said nothing; he had either ignored it or not seen it. Orvil quickly picked it up now and threw it with all his might. He heard it tinkle on one of the outhouse roofs against the far wall of the courtyard.
When Orvil heard this distant tinkle on the slates, lost in the blackness of the night, a new and even stronger surge of restlessness rose in him. He suddenly had the idea of going to explore the cottage orné in the dingle. He pulled on some trousers and a jersey over his pyjamas, took up his torch, and swiftly went down to the dining-room. A few people saw him but seemed to take no notice either of his clothing or his haste.
On a buffet stood several plate baskets. Orvil rummaged till he found a strong table-knife. The great room seemed even vaster now that it was deserted. Orvil could hear the waiters banging about and laughing behind the green baize doors.
He turned into the little writing-room and let himself out of one of the french windows. Outside, on the glossy Victorian lavatory-tile terrace, he was just able to make out the stone urns and their glimmering plumes of frothy geranium. He ran across the dew-soaked lawns and found the path which led to the pets’ cemetery. He flashed his torch and caught a glimpse of the dimunitive tombstones, like a giant’s dominoes, half buried in the ground. For an instant a spray of slime-green ivy was illuminated. A gaping, skull-like flint stone lay on the path, kicked from its neat place in the border. The holes in it were like eye-sockets and nose-cavity.
When Orvil reached the cottage orné, he trembled. Standing in the little dingle with the knife in his hand, he felt delightfully like a criminal. He decided to try the window to the left of the door; it seemed the most rickety. From outside, the stained glass looked like slivers of dull coal, framed in leading. Orvil inserted the knife in the crack and pushed up. There was a rusty grinding, and then, suddenly, the latch flew back. The windows puffed open as though blown from within by a supernatural wind.
Orvil stared into the blackness nervously, then made himself climb on to the sill. He jumped down and felt soft crumbling plaster and creaking boards beneath his feet. He hated the unexpectedly soft touch of the plaster and quickly switched his torch on. Everything was in terrible decay. The elaborate Gothic paper hung down from the walls in weeping strips. Orvil saw that it was made to imitate stone arcades filled with cinquefoil tracery. On the ceiling, patches of naked laths showed through the broken plaster. Ivy had crept in at a crack in one of the windows. Orvil could not see the colours of the stained glass, but he saw the outline of the saint in lead, and the ivy pushing between the fork of his legs in long green shoots. There was a terrible smell of death and decay. Orvil could not understand it until he went up to the grotesque little fireplace, shaped like a hooded shrine with pinnacles. There on the hearthstone lay a large dead bird with crooked wings.
Orvil quickly flashed his torch away, then mounted the tiny, ladderlike stairs. The room above was in an even worse state. Almost the whole ceiling had fallen down; the fragments, looking like huge broken biscuits, lay all over the floor.
Orvil held the torch close to his chin and pointed it up at the conical roof, where the beams showed. He had always longed for a little house. He thought of the delight of having two rooms and a minute staircase between them, no other house within miles, and the dingle for a sort of wild rocky garden.
Quickly, in his mind, he saw everything as he would make it: the beams receiled, the floors scrubbed and polished, the leaded windows mended, the ivy torn away, and the fantastic Gothic paper repaired and patched as carefully as possible. He thought of the furniture, the extraordinary pieces he would find for each room.
A noise broke through Orvil’s reverie; he thought he heard people walking in the dingle. Switching the torch off quickly, he felt his way down the stairs and crossed to the open window. He could just make out the pointed shapes of the lancets. The smell of the dead bird hovered like an evil threat.
As he climbed out of the window, he wanted to shine his torch through the glass in order to see the brilliant colours, but he dared not, remembering the noise.
He stood perfectly still in the dingle and listened. No sound came to him now; nothing moved. Orvil made his way to the studded door which was let into the side of the cliff. He had not been near it since his first evening at the hotel, when he had opened the door and had felt the slimy pointed object in the complete blackness.
Now that he had his torch, he was impatient to see what lay inside. He turned the heavy ring, and, as before, the door opened easily. The same smell of slime and bats’ dung and earth met him. He flashed the light upwards immediately, afraid of the bats.
What he saw amazed him. All the walls of the cave were lined with giant shells, feldspars, quartzes, stalactites and fossils. In one place, a thin trickle of water dripped from pink lip to pink lip of beautiful and enormous scallop-shells. In the centre of the cave stood a monumental stone table and stools carved like dolphins with their tails in the air. King George IV had once been entertained to dinner here by the son of the duke who made the grotto, but Orvil knew nothing of this. He loved the grotto for itself alone as something beautiful and strange.
At the far end of the cave a low passage seemed to lead still deeper into the heart of the rock. Orvil went up and stood staring into the narrow tunnel. Tremors passed through him. He gulped, and gave a small involuntary skip of excitement. He began to walk down the tunnel as delicately as if great danger waited for him at the other end. Gently he turned the handle of another, much smaller door, then blazed his torch into the darkness beyond.
At first he did not take in fully what he saw. There, just opposite him, lying on a carved stone couch against the wall, were Charles and Aphra. Aphra’s dress had slipped down and one of her full breasts lay outside, cushioned on the folds of midnight velvet. Charles had his lips to the large coral nipple. He lay utterly relaxed against Aphra, his arms stretched out above his head to encircle her neck. Their eyes were shut; they seemed wonderfully peaceful and oblivious.
But it was only for a moment that Orvil saw them like this. The next instant Aphra sat up and blinked her eyes in fear and surprise. Her hand darted to her dress. Charles turned savagely and shook back his hair. He was about to spring to his feet.
This brought Orvil to his senses. He flicked off the torch at once, then turned and ran. In the darkness, he barked his shins badly on one of the stone stools. He stopped for a moment, dizzy with the pain, cursing and swearing,muttering the same words over and over again in an effort to soothe himself; then he stumbled on till he reached the heavy outer door.
He clanged it behind him as noisily as possible to reassure Charles and Aphra, and to prove to them that the unwelcome visitor had left. He wondered if they had seen his face. He kept telling himself that the beam of the torch had blinded them. This fear that he had been recognized by Aphra and Charles was very strong; for some minutes it even obscured his deep interest in what he had seen.
He tore across the dingle and darted down the steps into the pets’ cemetery. Here he felt safer. He slowed down to a gentle pace and reconstructed the extraordinary scene in the inner grotto. Again he saw Charles and Aphra lying together on the stone couch. He blamed Aphra severely for not finding someone better to lie with---some very fine man. This picture filled him with much lust.
Suddenly the extraordinary idea came to him that Aphra had been feeding Charles, pretending that he was her baby. Once having imagined this, Orvil could not rid his mind of the grotesque picture. It hung before his eyes, growing and fading, and growing again. He saw Charles’s lips and Aphra’s breasts swelling and diminishing, like rubber objects first filled with air and then deflated. He saw jets of milk, and fountains pouring down.
As usual, when any thought gnawed at him, he shook his head violently; but nothing changed. The frightening vignette, like something seen through a keyhole, still hung in the air.
Orvil began to run again, along the serpentine path. He crossed the terrace. The writing-room window was still open. He let himself in and lay back in the folds of the curtain, listening to the rhythm from the far-away ballroom. The notes of the music were lost, only a sort of vibration, like the chugging of an engine, remained.
Outside in the passage stood three trolleys stacked with little silver plates bearing pink and white and green striped Neapolitan ice-cream. They were about to be wheeled to the buffet in the ballroom.
As Orvil passed, he snapped one up and ran with it to his bedroom. He threw the crisp wafer, which he hated, out of the window; then he sat down on the bed and started to dig into the hard slice with his spoon.
. . .
In the morning, he did not like to meet the eyes of Aphra. He smiled and looked from side to side when he saw her approaching. But she showed no confusion at all, and came up to him openly and gaily.
‘Oh, good, she doesn’t know,’ Orvil told himself with relief.
“Come on, Orvil,” Aphra said; “we’re all going on the lake. We’ve found a punt in the old boat-house and we’re just about to launch it.”
Orvil followed her willingly. They climbed down the stone terraces and then pushed through the tangle of brambles on the banks of the lake. The blackberries were enormous. No one came to pick them, and so they hung, delicious balls of purple juice, until they rotted.
“I’ve never seen such big ones!” said Aphra, stopping to put one after another into her mouth. Orvil found some very fine ones and handed them to her ceremoniously on a dock-leaf tray. Aphra ate them all greedily, then she thrust out her face to Orvil and said, “Tell me, darling, have I got juice all over my mouth?”
“I think it would be all right, if you just licked your lips a little.”
“Lick my lips!” exclaimed Aphra in horror. “You don’t want your friend to come out in a beautiful set of bright pink teeth, do you? Because that’s what would happen if I licked my lips.” She dabbed at her mouth with her handkerchief, not daring to wipe it.
Charles and Dennis and Jackie were outside the boathouse, waiting impatiently to push out on to the lake. The punt was large. They all got in safely, and Charles began to stick the pole deep into the soft mud at the bottom of the stagnant lake. When he brought it up, it was festooned with long tangled strings of weed. Meagre little yellow water-lilies, and their brown and green, diseased-looking leaves, floated and looked beautiful on the water.
Jackie, who so far during his stay at the hotel had been extremely quiet, now began to sing in a loud voice, “Bats in the belfry, straws in the hair.” Gradually the others joined in; so that the punt soon had the appearance of being full of lunatics. Aphra threw her arms about; Charles gibbered; Dennis rolled his eyes and blew bubbles on his lips; while Jackie roared and rocked the boat. Even Orvil, in spite of feeling so cut off from his brother’s friends, became infected with their madness.
Part of the lake was cut off by a curious dam or shallow wall of red brick. When the punt reached this, Orvil sprang out and danced up and down the wall, like a monkey on a string.
The others laughed, and clapped in rhythm. And then Charles, with one long stroke, pushed the boat far away from the wall and left Orvil stranded. He could not reach the shore, for both ends of the wall had broken down and crumbled into the lake long before they touched the banks. Leading to one of the banks was an unexplained line of posts, connected by a thick wire; but Orvil could not imagine himself clinging to this single wire and pulling himself to the shore.
“Come back, come back!” he shouted. They all roared derisively, even Aphra.
Orvil was glad that he was amusing them; but when it became clear that Charles had no intention of coming back for him he became perturbed.
He called out again.
“Go back at once, Charles,” said Aphra, but Charles took no notice.
“Swing along the wire. You’re fond of pretending you’re a monkey,” shouted Jackie.
“I can’t, I’d fall in. The wire’s probably almost rusted through in parts.” Orvil went to the end where the posts joined the wall. He made as if to hang on to the wire and then drew back.
“Don’t be such a funk,” yelled Jackie brutally, breaking through all the gaiety and nonsense.
Orvil was so hurt and outraged that he half shut his eyes, took hold of the wire again desperately, and started to swing himself towards the bank. The wire creaked and groaned and cut his hands, but it held.
“Bravo!” Dennis and Jackie shouted in mock admiration.
“Splendid, Orvil, but do be careful, don’t fall in,” said Aphra.
These words made Orvil falter. He looked down at the water beneath him and realized what he was doing. A sharp little piece of the rusty wire jabbed into his soft palm. Convulsively he opened his hand. Even then he could have saved himself, if he had made a desperate effort; but he realized, as he held his breath and dropped into the oozy brown, that a part of him wanted to cause this sensation.
He hated the touch of the weeds against his legs. The sudden coldness of the smelling water was paralysing. His clothes clung to him dangerously, hampering his movements.
When he came up and opened his eyes, he saw the punt being rapidly poled towards him. Even Charles looked anxious. Orvil smelt the mud and the curious water-weed smell.
“Are you all right?” Aphra asked urgently. Jackie leaned over the side to pull him up, but as the punt drew alongside, Orvil threw himself on his back and started to swim away, beating up the water with his arms and legs. He swam about in the lake, taking no more notice of the others.
At last he dragged himself out and lay down on the bank in the sun. He took off his coat and looked with interest at the Greek sculpture effect which had been caused by his thin wet shirt clinging to his ribs and pectoral muscles. He admired himself. His body looked stronger and bigger, half revealed through the folds of clammy cotton. His nipples showed like little icicle points, or tiny mountains on a wide rolling plain.
Aphra jumped out of the punt and hurried towards him. “Go and change at once, Orvil; you’re shivering all over,” she said.
He trembled violently after she had spoken.
Without saying anything, he ran away from her and went up to his room. He bathed and then rubbed himself hard all over with a scratchy towel.
There was a knock on the door, and before Orvil could say anything, Aphra had come in with a glass of hot milk and some Petit Beurre biscuits.
Orvil looked down at his bare legs. He had nothing on but his clean poplin shirt. He wondered if Aphra would think his legs very hairy; then she laughed and he laughed back. They sat down together on the bed and he began to drink the hot milk while she ate all his biscuits.
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