Олдос Хаксли - Eyeless in Gaza

He began by shaking his head; but felt impelled, on second thoughts, to try to explain a little. ‘Not cross,’ he distinguished, ‘just … just a bit unsociable.’

The light behind her face seemed to leap up in a quivering rush of intenser flame. Unsociable! That was really too exquisitely funny! The dancing had made her perfect, had transformed earth into heaven. At the idea that one could be (preposterous word!) unsociable, that one could feel anything but an overflowing love for everyone and everything, she could only laugh.

‘You are funny, Hugh!’

‘I’m glad you think so.’ His tone was offended. He had turned away his head.

The silk of her dress rustled sharply; a little gust of perfume was cool on his cheek—and she was standing only one step above him, very close. ‘You’re not hurt because I said you were funny?’ she asked.

He lifted his eyes again and found her face on a level with his own. Mollified by that expression of genuine solicitude he shook his head.

‘I didn’t mean funny in the horrid way,’ she explained. ‘I meant … well, you know: nicely funny. Funny, but a darling.’

In threateningly personal circumstances, a well–timed foolery is a sure defence. Smiling, Hugh raised his right hand to his heart. ‘ Je suis pénétré de reconnaissance ’, was what he was going to say by way of acknowledgement for that ‘darling’. The courtly jape, the mock–heroic gesture were his immediate and automatic reaction to her words. ‘ Je suis pénétré … ’

But Helen gave him no time to take cover behind his dix–huitième waggery. For she followed up her words by laying her two hands on his shoulders and kissing him on the mouth.

For a moment he was almost annihilated with surprise and confusion and a kind of suffocating, chaotic joy.

Helen drew back a little and looked at him. He had gone very pale—looked as though he had seen a ghost. She smiled—for he was funnier than ever—then bent forward and kissed him again.

The first time she had kissed him, it had been out of the fullness of the life that was in her, because she was made perfect in a perfect world. But his scared face was so absurdly comic that the sight of it somehow transformed this fullness of perfect life into a kind of mischievous wantonness. The second time she kissed him, it was for fun; for fun and, at the same time, out of curiosity. It was an experiment, made in the spirit of hilarious scientific inquiry. She was a vivisector—licensed by perfection, justified by happiness. Besides, Hugh had an extraordinarily nice mouth. She had never kissed such full soft lips before; the experience had been startlingly pleasurable. It was not only that she wanted to see, scientifically, what the absurd creature would do next; she also wanted to feel once more that cool resilience against her mouth, to experience that strange creeping of pleasure that tingled out from her lips and ran, quick and almost unbearable, like moths, along the surface of her body.

‘You were so sweet to take all that trouble,’ she said by way of justification for the second kiss. The moths had crept again, deliciously, had settled with an electric tremor of vibrating wings on her breasts. ‘All that trouble about my education.’

But ‘Helen!’ was all that he could whisper; and, before he had time to think, he had put his arms about her and kissed her.

His mouth, for the third time; and those hurrying moths along the skin …But, oh, how quickly he drew away!

‘Helen!’ he repeated.

They looked at one another; and now that he had had the time to think, Hugh found himself all of a sudden horribly embarrassed. His hands dropped furtively from her body. He didn’t know what to say to her—or, rather, knew, but couldn’t bring himself to say it. His heart was beating with a painful violence. ‘I love you, I want you,’ he was crying, he was positively shouting, from behind his embarrassed silence. But no word was uttered. He smiled at her rather foolishly, and dropped his eyes—the eyes, he now reflected, that must look so hideous, like a fish’s eyes, through the thick lenses of his spectacles.

‘How funny he is,’ Helen thought. But her scientific laughter had died down. His shyness was infectious. To put an end to the uncomfortable situation, ‘I shall read all those books,’ she said. ‘And that reminds me, you must give me the list.’

Grateful to her for supplying him with a subject about which it was possible to talk, he looked up at her again—for a moment only, because of those fish–eyes, goggling. ‘I’ll fill in the gaps and send it you,’ he said. Then, after a second or two, he realized that in his improvidence he had exhausted the preciously impersonal topic of the books in a single sentence. The silence persisted, distressingly; and at last, in despair, because there was nothing else to say, he decided to say good night. Trying to charge his voice with an infinity of loving significance, ‘Good night, Helen,’ he said. The words were intended to be as eloquent as a whole speech. But would she hear the eloquence, would she understand the depths of his implied meaning? He bent forward and kissed her again, quickly, very lightly, a kiss of tenderly respectful devotion.

But he had not reckoned with Helen. The embarrassment that had momentarily clouded her wanton perfection had evaporated at the touch of his lips; she was once more the laughing vivisector.

‘Kiss me again, Hugh,’ she said. And when he obeyed, she would not let him go; but kept his mouth pressed to hers, second after second …

The noise of voices and music became suddenly louder; somebody had opened the drawing–room door.

‘Good night, Hugh,’ she whispered against his lips; then loosed her hold and ran up the stairs two at a time.

*

Looking after her, as she ran out of the room to say good night to old Ledwidge, Gerry had smiled to himself complacently. Pink in the face; with shining eyes. As though she’d drunk a bottle of champagne. Absolutely buffy with the dancing. It was fun when they lost their heads like that; lost them so enthusiastically, so ungrudgingly, so completely. Not keeping anything back, but chucking it all out of the window, so to speak. Most girls were so damned avaricious and calculating. They’d only lose half their heads and carefully keep the other half to play the outraged virgin with. Mean little bitches! But with Helen you felt that the engine was all out. She stepped on the gas and didn’t care what was in the way. He liked that sort of thing, and liked it not only because he hoped to profit by the lost head, but also disinterestedly, because he couldn’t help admiring people who let themselves go and didn’t care two hoots about the consequences. There was something fine and generous and spirited about such people. He was like that himself, when he could afford it. Guts: that was what she’d got. And the makings of a temperament, he was thinking with an inward satisfaction, when a touch on his arm from behind made him suddenly start. His surprise turned almost instantaneously to anger. There was nothing he hated more than to be taken unawares, off his guard. He turned sharply round and, seeing that the person who had touched him was Mary Amberley, tried to readjust his face. Vainly; the hard resentful eyes belied his smile.

But Mary was herself too angry to notice the signs of his annoyance. ‘I want to talk to you, Gerry,’ she said in a low voice that she tried to keep level and unemotional, but that trembled in spite of all her efforts.

‘Christ!’ he thought; ‘a scene’, and felt angrier than ever with the tiresome woman. ‘Talk away,’ he said aloud; and, with an offensive air of detachment, he took out his cigarette–case, opened and proffered it.