There was a tap at the door and Beatrice entered carrying the camphorated oil and the Thermogene.
‘Here’s the executioner,’ said Burlap laughing. ‘Let me die like a man.’ He undid his pyjama jacket. His chest was white and well-covered; the contour of the ribs only faintly showed through the flesh. Between the paps a streak of dark curly hair followed the line of the breastbone.’do your worst,’ he bantered on. ‘I’m ready.’ His smile was playfully tender.
Beatrice uncorked the bottle and poured a little of the aromatic oil into the palm of her right hand. ‘Take the bottle,’ she commanded,’ and put it down.’ He did as he was told. ‘Now,’ she said, when he was stretched out again unmoving; and she began to rub.
Her hand slid back and forth over his chest, back and forth, vigorously, efficiently. And when the right was tired, she began again with the left, back and forth, back and forth.
‘You’re like a little steam engine,’ said Burlap with his playfully tender smile.
‘I feel like one,’ she answered. But it wasn’t true. She felt like almost anything but a steam engine, She had had to overcome a kind of horror before she could touch that white, full-fleshed chest of his. Not that it was ugly or repulsive. On the contrary, it was rather beautiful in its smooth whiteness and fleshy strength. Fine, like the torso of a statue. Yes, a statue. Only the statue had dark little curls along the breastbone and a little brown mole that fluttered up and down with the pulsing skin over the heart. The statue lived; that was the disquieting thing. The white naked breast was beautiful; but it was almost repulsively alive. To touch it…She shuddered inwardly with a little spasm of horror, and was angry with herself for having felt so stupidly. Quickly she had stretched out her hand and begun to rub. Her palm slid easily over the lubricated skin.
The warmth of his body was against her hand. Through the skin she could feel the hardness of the bones. There was a bristle of roughness against her fingers as they touched the hairs along the breastbone, and the little paps were firm and elastic. She shuddered again, but there was something agreeable in the feeling of horror and the overcoming of it; there was a strange pleasure in the creeping of alarm and repulsion that travelled through her body. She went on rubbing, a steam engine only in the vigour and regularity of her movements, but, within, how quiveringly and self-dividedly alive!
Burlap lay with his eyes shut, faintly smiling with the pleasure of abandonment and self-surrender. He was feeling, luxuriously, like a child, helpless; he was in her hands, like a child who is its mother’s property and plaything, no longer his own master. Her hands were cold on his chest; his flesh was passive and abandoned, like so much clay, under those strong cold hands.
‘Tired?’ he asked, when she paused to change hands for the third time. He opened his eyes to look at her.
She shook her head. ‘I’m as much bother as a sick child.’
‘No bother at all.’
But Burlap insisted on being sorry for her and apologetic for himself. ‘Poor Beatrice!’ he said. ‘All you have to do for me! I’m quite ashamed.’
Beatrice only smiled. Her first shudderings of unreasonable repulsion had passed off. She felt extraordinarily happy.
‘There!’ she said at last. ‘Now for the Thermogene.’ She opened the cardboard box and unfolded the orange wool. ‘The problem is how to stick it on to your chest. I’d thought of keeping it in place with a bandage. Two or three turns right round the body. What do you think?’
‘I don’t think anything,’ said Burlap who was still enjoying the luxury of infantility. ‘I’m utterly in your hands.’
‘Well, then, sit up,’ she commanded. He sat up. ‘Hold the wool on to your chest while I pass the bandage round.’ To bring the bandage round his body she had to lean very close to him, almost embracing him; her hands met for a moment behind his back, as she unwound the bandage. Burlap dropped his head forward and his forehead rested against her breast. The forehead of a tired child on the soft breast of its mother.
‘Hold the end a moment while I get a safety-pin.’
Burlap lifted his forehead and drew back. Rather flushed, but still very business-like and efficient, Beatrice was detaching one from a little card of assorted safety pins.
‘Now comes the really difficult moment,’ she said, laughing. ‘You won’t mind if I run the pin into your flesh.’
‘No, I won’t mind,’ said Burlap and it was true; he wouldn’t have minded. He’d have been rather pleased, if she had hurt him. But she didn’t. The bandage was pinned into position with quite professional neatness.
‘There!’
‘What do you want me to do now?’ asked Burlap, greedy to obey.
‘Lie down.’
He lay down. She did up the buttons of his pyjama jacket. ‘Now you must go to sleep as quickly as you can.’ She pulled the bedclothes up to his chin and tucked them in. Then she laughed. ‘You look like a little boy.’
‘Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight?’
The colour came into Beatrice’s cheeks. She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Goodnight,’ she said. And suddenly she wanted to take him in her arms, to press his head against her breast and stroke his hair. But she only laid her hand for a moment against his cheek, then hurried out of the room.
CHAPTER XIX
Little Phil was lying on his bed. The room was in an orange twilight. A thin needle of sunshine came probing in between the drawn curtains. Phil was more than usually restless.
‘What’s the time?’ he shouted at last, though he had shouted before and been told to keep quiet.
‘Not time for you to get up,’ Miss Fulkes called back from across the passage. Her voice came muffled, for she was half-way into her blue frock, her head involved in silken darkness, her arms struggling blindly to find the entrance to their respective sleeves. Phil’s parents were arriving to-day; they would be at Gattenden for lunch. Miss Fulkes’s blue best was imperatively called for.
‘But what’s the time?’ the child shouted back angrily. ‘On your watch, I mean.’
Miss Fulkes’s head came through into the light. ‘Twenty to one,’ she called back. ‘You must be quiet.’
‘Why isn’t it one?’
‘Because it isn’t. Now I shan’t answer you any more. And if you shout again I shall tell your mother how naughty you’ve been.’
‘Naughty!’ Phil retorted, putting a tearful fury into his voice—but so softly, that Miss Fulkes hardly heard him. ‘I hate you!’ He didn’t of course. But he had made his protest; honour was saved.
Miss Fulkes went on with her toilet. She felt agitated, afraid, painfully excited. What would they think of Phil— her Phil, the Phil she had made? ‘I hope he’ll be good,’ she thought. ‘I hope he’ll be good.’ He could be an angel, so enchanting when he chose. And when he wasn’t an angel, there was always a reason; but one had to know him, one had to understand him in order to see the reason. Probably they wouldn’t be able to see the reason. They had been away so long; they might have forgotten what he was like. And in any case they couldn’t know what he was like now, what he had grown into during these last months. She alone knew that Phil. Knew him and loved him—so much, so much. She alone. And one day she would have to leave him. She had no rights over him, no claim to him; she only loved him. They could take him away from her whenever they wanted. The image of herself in the glass wavered and was lost in a rainbow fog and suddenly the tears overflowed on to her cheeks.
The train was punctual, the car in attendance. Philip and Elinor climbed in.
‘Isn’t it wonderful to be here?’ Elinor took her husband’s hand. Her eyes shone. ‘But, good Lord,’ she added, in a tone of horror and without waiting for his answer,’ they’ re building a lot of new houses on the hill there. How dare they?’
Philip looked. ‘Rather garden city, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s a pity the English love the country so much,’ he added. ‘They’re killing it with kindness.’
‘But how lovely it still is, all the same. Aren’t you tremendously excited?’
‘Excited?’ he questioned, cautiously. ‘Well…
‘Aren’t you even pleased that you’re going to see your son again?’
‘Of course.’
‘Of course!’ Elinor repeated the words derisively. ‘And in that tone of voice. I never thought there was any “of course” about it; but now the time has come, I’ve never been so excited in my life.’
There was a silence; the car drove on windingly, down the lanes. The road mounted; they climbed through beechwoods to a wooded plateau. At the end of a long green vista the most colossal monument of Tantamount grandeur, the palace of the Marquess of
