Sarah Rayne - House of the Lost

The river did not smell like a sewage farm today. As Charmery and Theo went along the rather uneven garden path towards the boathouse, and down the mossy steps there was only the scent of roses and of the lavender from the little herb garden lying on the warm afternoon like a drug.

‘All the perfumes of Arabia,’ said Theo, who had been studying the Elizabethans that term. ‘So perfumed that the winds were love-sick.’

‘If you’re going to start waxing poetical I warn you I shall counter it with “’Twas on the good ship Venus”.’

‘Dear me, what do they teach children at schools these days, I wonder?’

‘You needn’t play the po-faced older cousin, because you taught me that one,’ said Charmery, and grinned. Somehow their hands had linked, and the feel of her fingers against Theo’s palm was the strongest aphrodisiac in the world.

The boathouse was dim and secret. There was the faint lapping sound of water and soft green waterlight rippled on the walls.

‘It’s an enchanted cave,’ said Charmery, pausing in the doorway with delight.

‘It’s very old,’ said Theo. ‘That’s one of the things that always intrigues me about it. It was here long before Fenn House was built. My mamma once told me there’s a local legend that people used to see will o’ the wisps dancing across this part of the river like human fireflies. They’d beckon to you, but if you followed them they led you to a watery grave.’

‘We should have brought a bottle of cider or something,’ said Charmery. ‘We could have cooled the bottle in the river like they do on films. Except the river’s too muddy, isn’t it? We’d probably catch typhoid or dysentery. Let’s sit down – preferably not on the floor, those planks look disgusting.’

But Theo spread his cotton sweater on the planks and Charmery sat down, then pretended to shiver at the cool miasma from the river so that it was the most natural thing in the world for Theo to put his arm round her for warmth. She pulled off the straw sunhat and a swathe of her hair tumbled loose, brushing against his face. The sheer intimacy of this was like the igniting of a touch-paper, and Theo’s long pent-up desire exploded like a thousand sky rockets. Before he knew it, he had pulled her to him and was kissing her with such desperate urgency that she half flinched.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Theo, releasing her at once. ‘I didn’t mean to do that. I didn’t hurt you, did I?’

‘No, but I wouldn’t care if you did.’ The soft radiance of the boathouse reflected in her eyes. ‘Kiss me again, Theo. Do it so hard I faint.’

This time, when she freed her lips, she said, ‘Why did you never do this before?’

‘Did you want me to?’

‘God, yes. For about a year now.’

‘A whole year wasted,’ said Theo, and then somehow they were lying on the planks, and the dank wood of the boathouse floor no longer mattered. Her body was pressing against him and his mind was spinning with the ecstasy. But I can’t, he thought. I daren’t. She’s only seventeen, she’s my cousin… ‘Oh God, Charmery, we must stop.’

‘No! Don’t stop.’

She pushed aside the thin skirt she was wearing and he realized with a fresh surge of desire that she was naked beneath it. When his hand slid between her thighs she shivered with delight, and he felt her hand reach for him.

‘So this is how you feel and this is how you behave when you’re being passionate,’ she said suddenly. ‘Isn’t this weird? We know each other so well, but we don’t know any of this about each other. You’re a different person all of a sudden. You’re not the cousin I’ve known since I was small.’

‘You’re different as well,’ said Theo, but this was not true, because this was a Charmery he knew very well indeed from all the fantasies and dreams over the years. But five minutes later – five minutes of breathless and increasingly urgent passion – he sat up and said tersely, ‘Charmery, we really must stop. Apart from anything else, someone might come in.’

‘No one ever comes down here. Anyhow, I don’t care if the whole family stands in the boat and watches us. Put your hand back… Oh God, Theo, that’s such bliss…’

‘This is something I’ve dreamed about for so long – but I don’t want to do anything you’ll regret afterwards.’

‘I won’t regret anything. Not with you. Will you regret anything?’

‘God, no! I’ve wanted to make love to you since you were about fourteen,’ said Theo.

‘Perv.’

‘Lolita.’

They smiled at one another.

‘Our thoughts fit, don’t they?’ she said. ‘We understand each other without needing explanations.’

‘Yes.’ Theo stared down at her, wanting to print her face on his memory, wanting to fix the moment so that he could keep it for ever.

Her hand slid inside his jeans, at first tentatively as if she was not sure about what she was doing. Theo gasped, and Charmery took her hand away at once. ‘I’m sorry – isn’t that all right?’

‘It’s so incredibly all right that you’d better stop or I might lose control altogether.’

‘Please lose control,’ she said at once, her eyes glowing. ‘I’d love that.’

‘But you might hate me afterwards.’

‘Shouldn’t that be my line? But I’ll never hate you. And don’t you feel this is the right time for us?’

‘The inevitable step forward?’

‘Yes. Only – have you got something we can use?’

‘Not right this minute.’

‘I thought all university students went round with a permanent erection and a pocket stuffed with condoms,’ she said, and Theo blinked with surprise at how worldly and grown-up she suddenly sounded.

‘Not all the time we don’t.’ He hesitated, and she leaned forward and began to kiss him, and Theo, tumbling helplessly into the whirling, desperate ecstasy all over again, thought: It will be all right. I can’t break the mood to go back up to the house and ferret around for a condom – I’m not even sure if I’ve got any. Just this once, it will be all right. I think I’ll be able to stop in time.

She tasted like sunlight and summer, and her fingers were like velvet and her skin felt like silk… Several layers down he was thinking he would have to exercise iron control and be so gentle, because she would never have done this before.

But she had.

The way she was twining her legs round him, pulling him in deeper and moving with the smoothness of practice, were the unmistakable products of experience. He shouldn’t have been surprised: Charmery was beautiful and unusual and any man seeing her would instantly want to have her.

He was in no position to criticize; he had not been as wildly promiscuous as some of his friends and fellow students, but he had not lived the life of a monk either. He had been seventeen himself when he lost his virginity at the end of his final school term, and he had had several girlfriends at Cambridge. All of them had been intelligent and attractive and companionable, and with two of them things might easily have developed into something lasting and good. The fact that they had not was quite simply because they were not Charmery.

Afterwards he propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her. Her hair was tumbling over the timbers of the landing stage and she was smiling at him.

‘So,’ she said, ‘finally and at last, we’ve done it.’

‘Finally and at last and for ever,’ said Theo, managing to beat down the stabs of jealousy that someone else had been first with her.

‘You stopped in time, didn’t you?’ she said, suddenly. ‘I mean – you withdrew in time?’

‘It was a bit of a close thing,’ said Theo, aware it had been more than close. ‘What happens now? When my finals are over and I’ve got a job, we could—’