Beatriz Williams - The Secret Life of Violet Grant

Violet drank obediently. She was surprised to find that the glass trembled slightly in her hand.

Dr. Grant walked to the phonograph and settled a disc on the turntable. “Do you like Stravinsky?” he asked. Before she could think of a reply, a violin zigzagged tinnily from the scalloped edges of the bell.

A knock, and the door opened. The housekeeper arranged the tea things on the side table. Dr. Grant offered Violet a chair and poured her a cup. She sat and drank her tea, trying to think of something clever to say, while Dr. Grant carried another chair from near the sofa and placed it beside hers. He settled himself into it, tea in hand.

“Here we are, quite comfortable,” he said.

Looking back, Violet is never able to pinpoint the moment in which the tenor of the conversation began to change. Perhaps the note had always been there, from the beginning, from the morning she first walked into his office. Perhaps it had only amplified slowly, decibel by decibel, week by week, tea by intimate tea, so that Violet was not quite alarmed when Dr. Grant’s hand found its way to her knee, half an hour after she had entered his house, and he asked her whether she had left any admirers languishing behind her in New York.

“No, none at all. I was far too busy for that.”

“Surely some young man awakened your interest?”

“No. Not one.” She met his gaze honestly. She could feel the pressure of his hand in every nerve of her body, heavy with significance. The music behind her built into an arrhythmic climax, and then fell away again.

His fingers stroked the inside of her knee in languid movements. His other hand reached for his cup, applied it to his lips, and set it back carefully in the saucer. “You were wise, child, not to succumb to your natural physical urges with such unworthy objects. Young men who don’t understand you, as I do.”

“I don’t remember feeling any such urges.”

The stroking continued, an inch farther up her leg. “Nonsense, dear child. It’s perfectly natural, the sexual instinct. You should never feel ashamed of your desires; you should never feel as if you must deny the existence of these inclinations. Of what you want with me.”

Another inch.

Violet was dizzy with disbelief. She had half expected this moment, had at some level determined to accept it, and now that it had arrived, now that the impossible invitation had quite clearly been made, she found that her heart, her presumably logical and scientific heart, was beating too frantically to allow words.

Dr. Grant picked up her hand and kissed it. His beard scratched her fingers. “Have I frightened you, child?”

Violet wanted to sound worldly. “No.”

“You are very beautiful. It’s natural that men should desire you.”

“I … I suppose so.”

He kissed her hand again, and then leaned his face to hers and kissed her very gently on the lips. His beard tickled her chin; his mouth was soft and tasted like tea. His other hand still lay on her thigh, palpating, gathering the fine wool of her skirt between his fingers. His thumb crawled upward, an astonishingly long thumb. “Let me show you, child. Let me give you what you’re longing for. Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid.”

Dr. Grant took her right hand and guided it to the apex of his trousers.

Violet’s memory, usually so clear and precise, turns blurry at this point. She remembers her surprise at the bony hardness of Dr. Grant’s flesh beneath her fingers; she knew the theoretical concept of the male erection, of course, but it was another thing to experience it by touch. But she can never afterward remember the true sequence of events after that: whether he kissed her again or led her to the sofa; whether he removed his own clothes first or hers. Hers, probably. He was so eager to uncover her, so explicit in his approval of her sleek newborn skin, her firm breasts, her bottom, the pretty triangle between her legs, which she attempted at first to keep closed in a vestigial show of virgin modesty.

But Dr. Grant ridiculed her clenched muscles. He drew away the fig leaf of her right hand with a murmured, Come, now, child. Don’t be silly. Let me see you. He climbed on top of her and gripped her round young bottom, and for all Violet’s fearful anticipation, the act itself was over quickly: a shove, a stab of pain, the intimate shock of penetration. He heaved once, twice, and went rigid, stretched upward in an arc of ecstasy while the violins shrieked across the room. A groan emerged from between his clenched teeth, and then Dr. Grant collapsed like a dead man atop her chest, vanquished, his tabby beard stabbing her cheek.

She lay beneath him, equally motionless, a little stunned, and observed the pattern of the ceiling plaster above her, the curtains still drawn wide against the darkness of the back garden. The music finished, and the phonograph bell released a steady cyclical scratch into the still air.

She wondered how the two of them might look to any intruder peeping through the glass: Dr. Grant’s white back covering her chest, his buttocks fixed in the cradle of her hips; her left knee raised against the cushions and her right leg slipping inexorably down the sofa’s narrow edge. The deed done, her shining virginity consigned to the past, like an unneeded relic, like the bric-a-brac on her parents’ mantel. A quarter hour ago she had been sipping tea.

Her parents. How horrified they would be, how prostrate with musty horror at her actions, her willing participation in her own seduction. Or perhaps they wouldn’t. Perhaps they would simply shake their heads and say, You see? We knew she would come to a bad end, we knew nothing good would come of all this scientific nonsense.

Dr. Grant lifted his head and looked at her with affection. His face was flushed, the tip of his nose the color of candied cherries. “Good girl.” He kissed her breast. “Brave girl. You did well. At last. God, that was splendid.”

What should she say to that? Thank you? She smiled instead and touched his damp temple.

Dr. Grant rose and drew on his trousers. He poured her another glass of brandy and returned, balancing himself on the strip of damask next to her naked hip. “Drink.”

She sat up and drank the brandy. It burned less this time, spreading instead a comfortable warmth through her middle.

“How do you feel, child?”

“Quite well.”

“Good girl.” He put his fingertip to the bottom of the brandy glass and nudged it to her lips. When she was finished, he rearranged the sofa cushions at her back, he added coals to the fire and brought her cake and sandwiches from the table, which he shared with her, sitting close, his body actually touching hers, and told her how well she had pleased him, how long he had been imagining this, how he had felt when he was inside her. He spoke with total candor, a complete freedom of vocabulary.

Violet tried to keep her gaze on his face, but she couldn’t help stealing glimpses of the delicate graying curls on his chest, the plaited tendons of his forearms as he ate his cake, which was frosted with buttercream and studded with tiny black poppy seeds. She saw the indent of his navel, just above the waist of his checked wool trousers, and his braces dangling down past his hips. An odd thrill ran through her limbs: excitement and a sort of bemused nausea. No turning back now.

After a while, he asked her again how she felt, and she had said again that she was quite well, and she realized that she meant it. The room was warm, and the brandy simmered happily in her veins. The shock had faded, leaving relief in its place. (Relief for what, she wasn’t quite sure.) Dr. Grant moved closer. He lifted her hair and kissed it. “This lovely hair. I’ve pictured it like this, spread out on my sofa cushion, from the first moment you walked into my office, months ago. You must grow it longer for me, child.”