The Great Lover Page 9

  He loves his honey. Spoonful after spoonful into the milk. He balances the pot on the saucer of the cup, dripping sticky strands all over his mattress. And so today, this morning, I’m not completely surprised when he makes his request. Mightn’t I take him out with me, show him the hives?

  ‘Well, see, I don’t know if I ought.’

  ‘You are going out to inspect them?’

  ‘Yes. Mr Neeve says there will be showers tomorrow so today is best—’

  ‘Splendid!’ He springs from the bed with alarming speed.

  ‘If you come with me you must wear the veil and gloves, sir, as the bees are not–they don’t rightly know you. They are more likely to sting a stranger.’

  He finds the thought funny. He wonders why he should wear a veil when the maid ‘goes naked’. I ignore this and tell him that the bees know me well and wouldn’t dream of stinging me. ‘Bluster!’ he says, laughing, reaching for his razor and the bowl of hot water I’ve brought…‘And do drop this “sir” business, Nell, there’s a girl. Call me Rupert, or Chawner, if you prefer–now, there’s a name to conjure with. What was Mother thinking, eh?’

  And so, later in the morning, he joins me and that’s when it happens. We’re in the ramshackle gardens of the Old Vicarage next door, him dressed in the white veil that belonged to Father, over a hat he has borrowed from Mr Neeve: Rupert, it seems, doesn’t possess one. He is also wearing shoes for once, but no socks. I tie the gloves for him at the wrists so the bees can’t creep inside them. I have to lift his hands in mine to do this, and he doesn’t raise his eyes so that I see his eyelashes resting on his cheeks and notice that they are as long as the legs on a raft spider.

  His student friend comes to laugh at him: the dark, beaky Frenchman staying at the Old Vicarage, Jacques. This friend stands close to Rupert and murmurs something odd, something like ‘Is this your lady under ze lamp-post?’ with his strange accent and plum-coloured voice, but as I can’t understand, and since they speak as if I’m invisible, I continue with the pretence that I’m deaf too.

  The garden stretches down to the mill stream, where the big chestnuts trail their branches in the water, and Mr Neeve has a full number of modern hives, the square-box sort with frames, placed to face the morning sun and encourage the bees to begin their work early. It makes me sorry to see these modern hives–they have so little beauty compared to the straw skeps that Father always used and that the eel man Sam makes for us, with their pointed tops and fat bellies, the shape of giant acorn cups.

  And not just the hives but the garden, too, is the sort that Father would have despaired of: wild, with such an unkempt, dense thicket of trees and bushes at the bottom. There is a strange Gothic ruin there that Rupert laughs at and says is not Gothic at all, but a sham. I love the sunny part of the garden where the bees live, the part of the Old Vicarage that borders on to the apple and quince trees of the orchard, but at the bottom end near the river the air is damp and suffocating, and the huge trees smothered in ivy make me think of Sleeping Beauty, and shudder.

  Mr Raverat doesn’t want to stay, he says he is ‘very much afraid’ of being stung, and I haven’t another veil and gloves so he says he has a breakfast meeting at King’s, and will see Rupert later, at the railway station in Cambridge, for aren’t they catching the same train? The eleven-thirty? He strides back towards the house, wishing us luck.

  ‘He was awfully impressed, wasn’t he?’ Rupert says childishly, when he’s gone.

  I shrug.

  ‘I mean, about the not-wearing-a-veil part. He likes a spirited girl, does Raverat. Got a soft spot for Ka Cox, as a matter of fact.’

  And so we are left alone, in the sticky morning heat, while I stuff the smoker with wood shavings and Rupert watches me light it. And then leans forward and whispers, sucking the fabric of his veil into his mouth as he does, ‘I think you’re a rotten girl, Nellie Golightly. Perhaps you actually want to be stung.’

  This remark is so surprising that I drop the smoker and blush furiously.

  We both dive to pick it up. Now there is a sense around us of something very troubling indeed. The bees are so sensitive, they will pick it up at once. How can I tell him? Bees know our feelings before we know them ourselves. They know the heat, the cool, every flavour of human emotion. Father taught me that. ‘Stand your ground, girl. You keep calm, keep a steady hand,’ he taught me. None could handle them like me. Father! Where are you now when I need you? The bees hum round us like a gathering storm. And Rupert is in danger of sending them wild with his flirtation–yes, there’s no other word for it. At last I see that this is what he has been doing, that this is what his teasing amounts to.

  ‘It makes the bees out of humour when you do that,’ I suddenly say, and watch his face behind the white material, watch his big blue eyes widen naughtily and then his slow smile, starting first with the downward turn of his mouth, then lifting upwards slightly, his breath drawing in the veil. That handsome mouth with its pouty bottom lip. I’m done for. I’ve only made matters a million times worse.

  I call upon all my strength, all my good, sensible nature, and load the smoker afresh, then light it with a trembling hand. Rupert is standing very close to me. I move ever so slightly away, to where I can no longer smell the shaving cream and Wrights Coal Tar Soap smell of him, and concentrate on pointing the smoker towards the hives, and at once the bees start to gather their store of honey together and make ready to leave, with one or two doing their bee dance, signalling to the others. When the smell of burning wood fills our nostrils and the soft brown cloud of bees has drifted off, their noise rolling and peaking as they pass us, like a wave cresting, I pull out some of the frames, and show Rupert with trembling hands how to scrape off the remaining bees, the ones clinging to the frames, gently, using a wand of feathers.

  ‘Not so hard–Rupert. We only mean to scatter them, not kill them.’

  It is the first time I’ve said his name. I know without looking up that the word has drawn him like a hook and that he is staring straight at me. I can tell from the way the bees huddle in the corner of their frames like gathering moss, deep and brown and heaving, that some power from him is transmitting itself to me, to the very air around us. Even the sweetest creature on this earth can be dangerous, Father used to say, if you make it buzz too hard. Father, Father–you were never here to teach me. What do I do now?

  The bees always know best, Father would say.

  I put out a shaking hand to the frames and point up a fat bulge in the honeycomb.

  I try to steady my voice: ‘Look, here is one threatening to become a queen. We must nip that in the bud right away…There can only ever be one queen.’ I show him how to do it, and he is shocked, he says, to see me so heartless.

  He wants to know if there is ‘a royal line’, and I explain there is no such thing, that the egg used to create a queen is the same as the one used to create an ordinary worker. ‘Fascinating…’ he says softly.

  ‘The queen controls the temper of the hive. A gentle queen means a gentle hive. These are good bees, but more…a little more unsettled…than my own hives at home.’

  He has become silent at last, still and concentrated. The danger, the noise of the humming, the sense of being surrounded and threatened, has calmed him. He is listening to them at last, I think. He likes the work, to see the honey in its fresh form, so brown and treacly, sealed with the waxy capping, and the threads of yellow liquid shining through like sunlight.

  He stands, arms folded and watching, while I load the wheelbarrow with the wooden frames, bulging with the weight of honey. But still he will not drop his look, his eyes so bold, lying softly on my skin, on my bare arms and hands, like something with a tickling, stealthy creep. Perhaps it’s this: perhaps it’s that when I work with Mr Neeve, he’s full of commands and has never allowed this drowsy bee-humming silence to take hold of us like this; whatever it is, my eyes are suddenly glazed with tears and the ghost of Father appears in front of me, while I step quietly to
one side, to watch.

  A young man in Father’s clothes, wearing Father’s borrowed veil and gloves, is standing in an old, rambling garden, and staring hotly at me. Father steps to one side and disappears. Bees purr between us. The young man steps forward and lifts his white veil, moving his face towards mine. He pulls me towards him. The movement is forceful, not gentle. He angles his head, like a bird. Using his hand, he tilts my chin up to his mouth and moves towards me. The bees sizzle around us, like a pan of fat on the stove. I close my eyes at once. I feel the hardness of Rupert’s teeth with my tongue. I open my mouth a little, not knowing what else to do. Flakes of sunlight flutter like confetti on my eyelids.

  And that is it. He kisses me in the Old Vicarage garden and I disappear for a moment. Then I return, alert to the anger all around me. The bees. A bee heading straight for Rupert. Bees are quick to smell opportunity. ‘You should never lift your veil!’ I say nervously. ‘Be still now. No, don’t move–don’t run! They will chase you in a bee-line, straight as an arrow!’

  Now he is mine to rescue. I tell him to stay calm. He wants to put the veil back, but it is too late (much too late, I think). One bee is on his chin, edging up towards his mouth. The terror in his eyes is quite real. I see by the wildness in his look that he wants to flap and scream and run about but puts his trust in me, like a small boy, like one of my brothers. It is this, finally, that is my undoing. I could have held off, I reckon, if it weren’t for this. His teasing, his naughtiness, his insults, his demands, his flirting. Even the sight of him naked as the day he was born. I could resist them all, but not that one small thing. A glimpse of the boy.

  ‘I say!’ Rupert shouts, and slaps at his mouth. The bee strikes.

  With this one gesture, thousands of bees await instruction, trembling around us like an electric storm. I talk softly to them. The bees are hot and not persuaded. Haven’t I been a good girl? Haven’t I treated them well? What’s one little accident between friends? I listen intently, and sniff at the air, which smells of smoke, and hear Rupert holding his breath.

  Then the note in the air drops, just one notch, and that is our sign. Quickly I fasten Rupert’s veil at his neck, and he, gasping and laughing quietly, allows himself to be led back to the house.

  ‘My word!’ he crows, the moment we are in the safety of the scullery at the Orchard, with his veil off. ‘My word! What a thing! Who would have thought it? The bees–do your bidding.’

  I pick the sting out of the spot at the corner of his mouth with my nails, dab honey on the sore place and bid him under my breath to be quiet. He should thank his lucky stars that it was just the one bee, I say, that took it into its head to misbehave. His lip is a little swollen, but that’s to be expected.

  This tickles him, making him hoot a little. ‘Just the one! Yes, indeed, thank the Lord, eh, Nell, that it was just one outrageously naughty bee that–transgressed!’

  I don’t know what he finds so funny. My fondness for him of a minute ago melts. Why does he never take things seriously? Well, I’m not one of his Cambridge girls who only knows her books and bicycles; he needn’t think he can take liberties with me! The bees showed him that. Nell Golightly might be just a maid from Prickwillow, but she can face facts and she won’t be anybody’s fool.

  I thought that would put an end to it, cap it tight, the feelings, I really did. But that night, just as I am undressing for bed, Kittie already snoring in her place by the wall, the oddest memory strikes me and my heart cracks open again like a walnut shell. Father, at the front step, in the morning, polishing my boots before school. He has one hand inside the little boot and the ground is all frost and ice, and he is rubbing with the cloth and the tiny speck of polish, shining the leather until he can see his face, his old, tired face reflected in it. He did this every morning. He never wanted me to go to school. He didn’t think I’d amount to anything. But this was his one austere service, year on year. Offered to me wordlessly, and accepted without thanks.

  I remember it now, as the yeasty heat of Kittie in the bed rises up to me. I remember Father’s tongue peeping at the corner of his mouth, the flecks of black polish on his hand, his concentration. ‘Father–where are you?’ I want to ask. I picture him from the dream I had of him, the night he died, the dream of him leaving me, getting up from his chair. Looking straight at me.

  Father–I want to tell you something. I remember what you did and I want to say thank you. Maybe it wasn’t much, by some people’s standards, but I want to tell you something, something I never thought I would. It was enough. I know how to do it. How to love.

  I have been thinking this morning of Denham. He has gone now. The sheets are a frightful mess, and I have no idea how to get them clean. I hear a cock crowing, over and over, but Nellie isn’t up yet and I’ve no more clean water. So I sit on the bed with my knees drawn up to my chest, and think of him, and smile to myself.

  He was lustful, immoral, affectionate and delightful…But I was never in the slightest degree in love with him. I was glad to get him to come and stay with me at the Orchard. I came back late that Saturday night. Nothing was formulated in my mind. I found him asleep in front of the fire, at one forty-five. I took him up to his bed–he was very like a child when he was sleepy–and lay down on it. We hugged, and my fingers wandered a little. His skin was always very smooth. I had, I remember, a vast erection. He dropped off to sleep in my arms. I stole away to my own room and lay in bed thinking–my head full of tiredness and my mouth of the taste of tea and whales, as usual.

  I decided, almost quite consciously, I would put the thing through next night. You see, I didn’t at all know how he would take it. But I wanted to have some fun and still more to see what it was like, and to do away with the shame (as I was taught it was) of being a virgin. At length, I thought, I shall know something of all that James and Norton and Maynard and Lytton know and hold over me.

  Of course, I said nothing. Next evening, we talked long in front of the sitting-room fire. My head was on his knees, after a bit. We discussed Sodomy. He said he, finally, thought it was wrong…We got undressed there, as it was warm. Flesh is exciting, in firelight. You must remember that openly we were nothing to each other–less, even, than in 1906. About what one is with Bunny (who so resembles Denham). Oh, quite distant!

  Again we went up to his room. He got into bed. I sat on it and talked. Then I lay on it. Then we put the light out and talked in the dark. I complained of the cold, and so got under the eiderdown. My brain was, I remember, almost all through, absolutely calm and indifferent, observing progress and mapping out the next step. Of course, I had planned the general scheme beforehand.

  I was still cold. He wasn’t. ‘Of course not, you’re in bed!’

  ‘Well, then, you get right in, too.’

  I made him ask me–oh! without difficulty! I got right in. Our arms went round each other. An adventure! I kept thinking: And was horribly detached.

  We stirred and pressed. The tides seemed to wax…At the right moment I, as planned, said, ‘Come into my room, it’s better there…’ I suppose he knew what I meant. Anyhow he followed me. In that larger bed it was cold; we clung together. Intentions became plain; but still nothing was said. I broke away a second, as the dance began, to slip my pyjamas. His was the woman’s part throughout. I had to make him take his off–do it for him. Then it was purely body to body–my first, you know!

  I was still a little frightened of his, at any too-sudden step, bolting; and he, I suppose, was shy. We kissed very little, as far as I can remember, face to face. And I only rarely handled his penis. Mine he touched once with his fingers, and that made me shiver so much I think he was frightened. But, with alternate stirrings, and still pressures, we mounted. My right hand got hold of the left half of his bottom, clutched it, and pressed his body into me. The smell of sweat began to be noticeable. At length we took to rolling to and fro over each other, in the excitement. Quite calm things, I remember, were passing through my brain: ‘The Elizabethan joke �
��The Dance of the Sheets” has, then, something in it.’ ‘I hope his erection is all right’…and so on. I thought of him entirely in the third person. At length the waves grew more terrific: my control of the situation was over; I treated him with the utmost violence, to which he more quietly, but incessantly, responded. Half under him and half over, I came off. I think he came off at the same time, but of that I have never been sure. A silent moment, and then he slipped away to his room, carrying his pyjamas. We wished each other ‘Good night’. It was between four and five in the morning.

  I lit a candle after he had gone. There was a dreadful mess on the bed. I wiped it as clean as I could and left the place exposed to the air, to dry. I sat on the lowest part of the bed, a blanket round me, and stared at the wall, and thought. I thought of innumerable things, that this was all; that the boasted jump from virginity to Knowledge seemed a very tiny affair, after all; that I hoped Denham, for whom I felt great tenderness, was sleeping. My thoughts went backward and forward, I unexcitedly reviewed my whole life, and indeed the whole universe. I was tired, and rather pleased with myself, and a little bleak…We had said scarcely anything to each other. I felt sad at the thought he was perhaps hurt and angry, and wouldn’t ever want to see me again.

  And so I have Begun, and at last have ‘copulated’ with someone, and how surprising that it should be Denham Russell-Smith (but how much easier to find a willing boy than a willing girl and to feel a curious private tie with Denham himself). Here I am now–it is greyly daylight and I’m left with the chief worry of the sheets. Oh, the horrors of life with servants: how much they know about the life of the body that we’d rather keep from everyone, even ourselves. The contents of the chamber pot, the state of the sheets and our underwear, and a dozen other indignities I dread to consider. Well, I’ve done my best and scrubbed and scrubbed, but let us hope that for once the dear dark Nellie slept peacefully throughout, and comes to an entirely innocent conclusion…if such a thing is at all possible.