To a tuneless hum, Rachel entered the room, brushing her hair, swaying and dipping her head to let it all hang down. I found that in my enthusiasm I had twisted off the ear of a minor golliwog. I put it in my pocket as I stood up. Rachel screamed briefly, quite without alarm, and ran over.
It was more than a week since The Pull, and, for the second Thursday running, I had come on to Rachel’s after my class with Bellamy. (Bellamy now tended to be in a stupor of pink gin and sexual excitement by the time I arrived; the class consisted of his pleas that I should not do any work, because I was so brilliant and marvellous, so fucking handsome, etc.) I didn’t mind coming here, and Rachel said it solaced her mother. Mrs Seth-Smith was ‘very fond’ of DeForest and had been ‘very upset’ when I made Rachel cool him (but, in fairness, not half as upset as DeForest had been).
I took Rachel powerfully in my arms and we kissed, wriggling and shrugging, in the teenage style. On account of the fact that she was wearing a short dress I put my hand under it and applied pressure to her buttocks. Rachel went heavy and breathless, as she always went these days when I did anything like that. We keeled on to the bed, getting many outraged squeaks from the golliwogs.
‘Oh, Charles, Charles,’ she said, kissing me non-stop. ‘Guess what?’
‘What?’
‘Mummy and Harry are going away. For two weeks.’
‘Where?’
‘Paris.’
‘When?’
‘Next Wednesday. My birthday. They want me to come.’ I sat up. ‘What’s going to happen then ?’
Excluding the two afternoons at the dentist (‘fencing lessons’, as far as Rachel was concerned), we had spent every afternoon in bed. Bunk off school at three, meet at the top of Holland Park, and stroll back, sometimes round the park itself, but not often. Then, at home, downstairs, I would come in and draw the curtains, to give the room a warm half-darkness, daylight ready and waiting on the outside. Rachel followed from the bathroom. Between embraces I would carefully undress her, next myself. We pulled off all the bedclothes and would wind ourselves on a deck of smudged sheet. Then she’d stretch out, and 1 would bring her to her orgasm. Next myself. Then I would bring her to another orgasm with my hand while Rachel told me how nice and safe and good and right that made her feel. Half an hour later: the bathroom, to slip into a fresh contraceptive, cutting the throat of the used one with a razor-blade to ease its passage down the lavatory. Then again.
When Rachel’s domestic circumstances permitted it – about every other night – she’d stay on. Come five o’clock we would get dressed and go upstairs. Jenny was more in evidence then, and she and Rachel got on famously. Sometimes, for my part (and later explaining it away to Rachel) I would placate Norman with a few rounds of brag while the girls made tea. At six fifteen or so, as Norman brought out the booze, Rachel and I would calmly and more or less unself-consciously excuse ourselves, go downstairs, and lie in bed, talking. About her life. About my childhood. About our fathers. We’d make love again once or twice, and perhaps I would bring her to another orgasm with my hand (which looked as if it had done two hours of washing-up at Joe’s). About midnight, usually, we would dress, have some coffee, and stand like ghosts on the Bayswater Road until a taxi went by.
My one unfallen week.
‘I could get my father to ring.’
‘Would he?’
‘Of course. He’d dive over backwards to do anything like that. He may not worship me but he worships youth. Make him feel sexy and young.’
‘Mm. But still.’
‘Mm, I suppose your mother would reason that he wouldn’t be there to prise us apart. And Norman’s hardly … I suppose they think you want to go because of your father.’
‘Eh?’
‘Paris. Your father.’
‘Yes, I suppose they do.’
‘I’ve got it. Say you don’t want to go for just that reason. Painful memories, such a shit, only upset you. All that.’