William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

Gilda stood there, a cigarette in a jet holder, poised. A little tipsy, he thought. He took out his lighter and clicked the flame into life and offered it to the end of her cigarette. She inhaled, checked the fit of the cigarette in the holder and blew smoke from the side of her mouth. She lowered her voice to an intimate near whisper, moving her mouth close to his ear. He felt her warm breath on his neck. Goosebumps.

“Don’t you think, Lysander dear, purely in the interests of dramatic authenticity, we should practise our ‘Miss Julie’ fornication? Perhaps?”

“As long as it’s purely in the interests of the drama. What could be wrong with that?”

“Nothing. Even Rutherford would approve.”

“Then I think it’s an excellent idea. My place isn’t far. I’m alone tonight. We can practise there undisturbed.” Greville was in Manchester, touring in Nance Oldfield with Virginia Farringford.

The tempter or the tempted, who sins most? he thought to himself, feeling very tempted. He looked her in the eye — she didn’t flinch

“Why don’t you go down,” Gilda said, smiling, “find a cab and I’ll be there in five minutes?”

She blew him a kiss, making a moue with her lips, and glided away from him. Lysander felt that breathless pressure in his chest and blood-heat around the neck and ears that signalled his excitement. It was probably a very, very bad idea and no doubt he would curse himself for the rest of the run but for the first time since Vienna and Hettie he felt like being with a woman — felt like being with Gilda Butterfield, to be precise.

He said his goodbyes and went downstairs. The maître d’ sent a boy out to hail him a cab and he stood there waiting, humming a song to himself — ‘My Melancholy Baby’ — full of eager anticipation and pushing the thought to the back of his mind that this evening would also be the acid test of his Bensimon cure. There had never been a problem with Hettie but then there had never been anyone since Hettie…He saw a man he vaguely knew collecting his hat and coat from the cloakroom. Their eyes met and recognition was immediate. Alwyn Munro sauntered over towards him.

“Lysander Rief, the great escapologist, as I live and breathe.”

They shook hands. For some reason, Lysander noted, he was pleased to see Munro.

“Celebrating?” Munro said, indicating his dinner jacket and buttonhole.

“First night. Measure for Measure .”

“Congratulations. Funnily enough we were just talking about you today,” Munro said, looking at him shrewdly. “Where’re you living now? I’ve something to send you.”

Lysander gave him his address in Chandos Place.

“Still in Vienna?” Lysander asked.

“No, no. We’ve almost all got out now. Now the war seems inevitable.”

“War? I thought it was just general sabre-rattling. Austria and Serbia, you know.”

“And the Russians and the Germans and the French rattling their sabres too. It’ll be us in a few days. You wait and see.”

Lysander felt something of a fool. “I’ve been very caught up in rehearsals,” he said, feebly.

“Everything is moving incredibly fast,” Munro said. “Even I can’t keep up.”

“Cab’s here, sir,” the boy said and Lysander searched his pocket for some pennies to tip him. He was aware, out of the corner of his eye, that Gilda was coming slowly down the stairs. He’d better jump into the cab quickly — it wouldn’t do for them to be seen leaving together.

“Must dash,” he said to Munro, touching him apologetically on the elbow. “Good luck with your war.”

♦

Gilda’s body was quite extraordinary, Lysander thought. Like nothing he’d seen or experienced before — not that he was any kind of expert on women’s naked bodies, having only studied half a dozen or so, in his time. But Gilda seemed to him almost as if she were another species of woman, so incredibly pale was she with a rash of freckles over her chest and between her small, uptilted breasts, the nipples the palest rose, almost invisible. Freckles dusted her back and shoulders and here and there — on her ribs, on her upper arms, on her thighs — were small flat moles, pinheads, constellations of them, like flicked brown paint. Just the body’s pigmentation gone a bit awry, he supposed, the freckles like tiny faded tattoos. He had wondered, when she began to undress, how he would react to her translucent pallor but he found her whiteness and her stippling of pale brown very alluring.

He had insisted on wearing a preservative so she had insisted on rolling it on. This set the tone of genial amusement for the rest of the night — “Fits you like a one-fingered glove, sir,” she said in her Cockney accent — and they continued to talk banteringly throughout.

“I love your markings,” Lysander said as she eased her legs wide to receive him. “You’re like a banana that’s been too long in the fruitbowl, you know — sort of sea-creature.”

“Thanks a lot. I don’t.”

“I feel I should be able to read you like tea-leaves.”

“Ha-ha. I’m thinking of getting them removed.”

“Don’t you dare. You’re unique. Like a quail’s egg.”

“What lovely compliments. Sea-creature, quail’s egg. Quite the charmer, Mr Rief, oh yes…”

His orgasm duly came — to his intense pleasure — but they didn’t try for a second time. It was late and they were both tired, they admitted, what with the first night and the party. Maybe in the morning.

And now she was sleeping in his bed as he dressed, one long white haunch revealed, the rumpled sheet just failing to cover the clean edge of her golden triangle of hair. Miss Julie…Well, well, well. He knotted a cravat at his throat and pulled on a jacket. He had no milk or tea, no coffee, sugar or bread and butter in the flat — just a pot of marmalade. He thought he would run out for some provisions. They could have breakfast in bed and see what led on from there. Rutherford didn’t want them back at the theatre until the afternoon.

He stepped over the tangled pile of her clothes — skirt, blouse, shift, corset, camisole, knickers, hosiery, shoes — and let himself quietly out of the room. He trotted down the stairs in a fine mood. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a disaster, after all, to start a brief affair with Gilda, he thought. Might make Blanche jealous if people gossiped and whispered about it.

He stepped out on to Chandos Place. He’d run up to Covent Garden, that would be quickest — buy her a bunch of flowers.

Jack Fyfe-Miller, in naval uniform, was crossing the street towards him.

“Rief! Good morning! I was just going to slip this through your letter-box. Munro wanted you to have it as soon as possible.” He handed him a stiff brown envelope.

“What’s this?”

“A surprise…You’re looking very well. Your play had an extremely bad review in the Mail this morning. ‘Shocking,’ it said. A grotesque insult to the Bard.”

“We were rather hoping for that.”

Fyfe-Miller seemed to be looking at him intently.

“Is everything all right?” Lysander asked.

“I was just thinking — I last saw you on the quayside at Trieste. Somehow I knew we’d meet again.”

“And now we have. You and Munro, both, in under twelve hours. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t it?”

“You taking up a life on the ocean wave again?”

“No, no. All British fleets have been ordered back to war bases. I’m off down to Portsmouth.”

“War bases? Really? Does that mean —”

“Yes. It’s looking rather serious.” He smiled and gave him a salute. “See you again soon, no doubt,” he said, and headed back towards Trafalgar Square.

Lysander put the envelope in his pocket and hurried up to Covent Garden to do his shopping. He didn’t want Gilda to wake before he came back.