HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour Read online

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Odd if I convoyed you … Well’ – he held out his hand – ‘thanks for the session; it’s been a lot of fun. Have a good – no, that’s a silly remark. God bless you both.’ He smiled again, and was gone.

  He left behind him one of those natural reflective silences wherein a leave-taker is privately summed up by the people he says goodbye to. It is not necessarily critical, but the space has to be filled. You broke the silence first, in a way I hadn’t been expecting.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ you said, ‘will you be like that, when you leave me?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Sad and nervous and jumpy. He was hardly drunk at all, you know: just immensely depressed at saying goodbye and having to go off to sea again. Will it be like that for you?’

  ‘No,’ I answered after a pause, ‘it won’t be like that for me. There’s probably something in sea going, some special kind of loneliness and separation, which he had met before and can foresee each time. We are going to be different.’ (I didn’t believe any of this, but it sounded plausible.) ‘In fact, we are different, already – we’re spending all of the time together, right up to the last, instead of my having to be by myself, and missing you. And in any case, have you forgotten that we are on our honeymoon, and that upstairs is a room not only much more expensive than any you have yet slept in, but with a supremely comfortable bed and a man to go with it.’

  You smiled. ‘No. I haven’t forgotten. But tell me some more about it.’

  I told you some more.

  ‘Darling,’ you said, ‘you have a nice way of putting things, though it might not suit everyone.’ You picked up your glass, your loving eyes holding mine in a warm glow. ‘Your arms, my defence, my arms your recompense,’ you murmured, and drank. Then you pushed back your chair. ‘Let’s go up,’ you said, happily. ‘I’m in good form.’

  8

  There should be asterisks here, I suppose, and if I wanted to cheapen the thing I should put a lot of them in, and start again with: ‘The waiter knocked on the bedroom door, and brought in the breakfast tray.’ That is called ‘leaving it to the imagination’ – of all things, the foremost current indecency. But somehow I don’t think our lovemaking was of the asterisk order, was it? Lovemaking is never unmentionable, though some versions of it may be brutal or foolish; and the lovemaking of two people who, adoring each other, are about to part and wish to say goodbye with their bodies as well as with all the rest, is not the kind that needs to be censored.

  Besides, I want you to remember it, all of it, as I do. This is what our goodbye was like. Please remember that, as long as you can.

  The room, with the curtains drawn and the bedside lamp glowing and falling softly on the turned-back sheet and on your insubstantial chiffon nightdress which lay waiting for you, was even more suited to our private delight than it had seemed during the early afternoon; now it had something more than comfort, it had a personal welcome for both of us, promising that whatever we did there would be aided by a dreamlike and sensuous luxury … While you were having your bath I sprawled in an armchair and finished my cigar (you called out to me: ‘How very masculine that is!’ To which I replied: ‘And it’s not the most masculine thing about me, either ...’) then I started to undress. The fur boots you had given me caught my eye, and I put them on: they looked exceptionally handsome and they gave to my naked body an oddly rakish air, a touch of Cavalier irresponsibility, which was exactly what I was feeling at the moment. They had something, those boots: they were good boots to go to bed in.

  Again you called out from the bathroom: ‘I’m getting lonely in here. You’re very quiet. What are you doing?’

  ‘Walking up and down in my fur boots,’ I said. ‘I look like Charles the First dictating a letter.’

  I could almost hear you putting your head on one side. ‘That’s rather hard to imagine,’ you answered at length.

  ‘Come in and show me.’

  You were like a jewel in that bathroom, a creamy, glowing focus of all the warmth and light in the world. The opaque, faintly scented water hid your legs, lapped round your middle, left sweetly outlined your breast and shoulders. Your hair was pinned up on top of your head, like a little girl’s. You were smiling up at me. I had forgotten you were so lovely.

  My own body, toughened, scarred in two places, knocked about, felt awkward and intrusive by comparison, and something seemed to have rendered it unfit to be close to yours: the dirt and stress and pain of the last few years had somehow disqualified it from sharing your tenderness. But: ‘You have a nice figure,’ you said.

  ‘I have very nice boots.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘You have a nice figure, too.’ I looked down at your nineteen-year-old body, with its clear skin and its fresh perfection of line; and then I looked at myself in the full-length mirror. Something I saw there crystallized that sense of unfitness, and I said suddenly: ‘Oh, God, I wish I’d met you about fifteen years ago. I’m too old for you.’

  You stared. ‘You’re not too old at all!’

  ‘But if I were twenty instead of thirty-five–’

  ‘What difference would that make?’

  ‘All the difference in the world. That’s the age to be in love, not–’ I gestured impatiently. ‘I’m not sure what it is I want to give you, but it has something to do with being young and graceful and sunburnt: more of a lover and less of a husband, perhaps. You deserve someone who can look as fresh and vital as you’re looking at this moment.’

  ‘Don’t you feel like a lover?’

  I smiled. ‘Surely. And that, at my age, is almost improper. And I think I could have been a more attractive and virile one at twenty. Now I’m almost past it – the wild, to-hell-with-it part anyway.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you’re past it all right.’ You held out a hand. ‘Help me up,’ you said, and as I pulled you, you rose suddenly upright, a warm, dripping figure, naked and flawlessly lovely. Then you put a wet hand on my chest, surrounded by a little haze of perfumed steam. ‘If you are past it now, sweet,’ you said, ‘it’s just as well I didn’t meet you when you were at the top of your form. And don’t shake your head like that, because you know quite well what I’m talking about … Now hurry up, and have your bath, and let’s have no more nonsense. Past it, indeed! ...’ You wrapped the towel close around you, and trailed away into the bedroom, grumbling charmingly and leaving tiny wet footmarks, while I winked to my reflection in the mirror. The idea I had brought up had seemed important for a moment, when I compared our two bodies: now it didn’t matter a damn. I felt as much past it as Casanova at fifteen.

  I had only been in the bath a moment or two when you called out: ‘Darling.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How long will you be gone?’

  I knew what she meant, but I said: ‘About ten minutes. Have patience.’

  ‘How long really, sweet?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What would be the most?’

  ‘About – two years.’ That was likely to be the least, as far as I could gather, but it was secret anyway, even if I had been able to bring myself to tell you the whole truth. ‘Why do you ask, darling?’

  ‘I was thinking.’ A pause. Then: ‘Children.’

  ‘Oh … I’d been thinking about that, too.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  I splashed about with my hands in the water, wondering exactly how to put it. ‘It’s so much your affair, darling. You know I’d love one, but that’s only my point of view; I don’t have any of the worry or the hell – it’s your responsibility, it’s your body that has to be used.’

  ‘It is yours.’

  ‘Is it, darling? Well … I thought we’d probably have one later on, after a year or so, but now that I’ll be gone for so long, and you’ll be alone, it seems rather a good idea. In fact it’s far more than just that. But only if you’re absolutely certain about it yourself.’

  Through the open doorway your voice came low
and gentle, confirming our accord: ‘That’s what I thought too. Ordinarily I’d want you to enjoy me for quite a long time, and I’d want you, too, for myself – that’s part of what we got married for, isn’t it, and it’s never seemed to me a selfish point of view – but if you’re going to be away anyway ...’

  ‘Yes, darling.’

  ‘So we’ll just–’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was an odd conversation to conduct between two rooms, out of sight of one another, but perhaps this was the best way of settling it – not because of shyness, but because the subject had so much emotional content, such potential sadness at this moment, that a detached approach was the only way through it. Face to face with me, watching my eyes, you would have been reminded that this might be the last chance you would ever have of conceiving a child by me: that mutilation might prevent another, that you could be widowed months before it was born … Of course I wanted one, as close to your image as possible; but your inclination in the matter was paramount. It was such a very easy wish for me to have: the bill for it was all yours, and you would be alone all the time you were paying for it.

  I got out of the bath and started to dry myself. Your low voice called again: ‘That’s settled, then. Of course, we’re only guessing: it may not work.’

  I felt I was being insulted, none too subtly. ‘Work? Of course it will work. Who do you think I am?’

  ‘Just a man, sweet, just a man.’

  ‘If you know a better method–’

  ‘Oh, I think it’s come to stay … Why do you feel so sure? If you say anything like “Years of practice”, I shall lock that door.’

  ‘Wait till I’m on the right side of it … When we agree that I am to give you a child, precious, I think we will make a success of it.’

  You laughed softly, almost to yourself. ‘We’ll see about that when the time comes.’

  ‘The time is here,’ I said and walked through into the bedroom. You had been brushing your hair before the mirror: when I came in you rose suddenly, and we looked at each other. Then the few paces between us melted away. Your eyes were indescribably gentle and loving as I took you in my arms: your body felt as softly compliant as the nightdress which graced it. Presently, with my free hand, I pressed downwards on your breast and shoulder, as if drawing myself up to you: then I kissed your soft mouth and held you against me, until an adorably familiar movement told me that simply holding you was no longer enough for either of us.

  Asterisks now? I still don’t think so. Do you remember what a strange night, confused and lovely, we made of it? It seemed to contain everything, that night – everything in the physical realm, everything in the emotional: dissolving all the earlier shyness and hesitation, we seemed to traverse the limits of every sort of feeling, from the spurring of a candid sensuality to the secrets of a floating dreamworld where we travelled together, clinging to each other in a sort of light-headed, astonished ecstasy. It was our last night together, and it became memorable, by a natural process. We did not set out to make it so: it happened. We were lucky of course; but it was really astonishing what two heads on a pillow can concoct.

  If that is not too strong a word. These things are not planned or worked for – they simply take place, without effort or forethought, between two people in love: they express, subtly, a simple and endearing fact. I don’t mean the dreary ‘variations’, the mechanical jiggery-pokery which seeks to turn love into a gymnasium exercise. Those things are for the bored or the perverted. But there are, genuinely, so very many different sorts of lovemaking – friendly, emotional, purely sensual, laughing: it is the change of mood which makes for the variety, and which can carry you urgently or swiftly or unexpectedly through a lovely countryside, some parts of which are as familiar as instinct can make them, and others unsuspected until by chance you lead each other to them.

  You and I were lucky, sweet – lucky and yet deserving. We earned that night and the delight it gave us by being completely in love, in the most unselfish way possible – that is, with the idea of doing the least for ourselves, and the most for each other, that lay in our power. On those terms love is glorified beyond any physical expression of it. It becomes an ecstatic mutual service, a competition in tenderness and exhilaration in which neither can be the loser.

  Thus were we lucky … There was the first time – inevitably wild, since we had not seen or touched each other for over two months – when we each took such frank delight in our power to excite and to give release to the other: when, drunk with your magic, I was laughing and shaking you gently and making you glow and move with me, and sigh and lose all control for the last few moments, and then cry and whisper, ‘How can I let you go?’ and then smile again and say, ‘How lovely that was!’ After it we were close and loving and contented, with all the wildness and the jitters gone, the way it was after we had given each other everything we could of love and shared sensual excitement and fun. And even as we lay a little apart in our relief, we were both thinking: this is love, we have all this, and in a short while we can, if we want to, have it again … That was something else we could do to each other – leave the recollection, even at such a moment, that the future could match the past.

  There was, a little later, that odd half-world of which I have spoken, visited by us as we lay dipped together in entrancement: a secret world, swinging between heaven and earth, wherein we seemed to float on an ecstatic timeless sea, where only at the very end did our bodies give bodily evidence of their desire: where you wept bitterly, half for the nervous relief, half with the sadness of parting, and I matched your tears with my own. You did not mind, did you? Or think less of me for those tears? They were not masculine, by any standard, but then men should not always be masculine: men should sometimes cry, for only thus can they honour the women who give them everything in a moment of lavish tenderness.

  When we entered and shared that world together we had the same bodies and were the same people who, a little while before, had been lost in another and wholly different ecstasy. We were the same people, but the things we did together, and to each other, were as different as any two human activities could be. I do not know what that proves, unless it be the scope of humanity: but we were lucky to be able to embrace together the twin worlds of the senses and the spirit, and to carry each other so easily and inevitably from the first to the second and, as we soon showed each other, back again.

  For a little later we were physically enraptured once more … I remember that, suddenly aware of a fresh urgency in me, you lay back looking distractingly lovely and available, and yet somehow afraid of what I was about to do to you: afraid that some movement I might make, or fervour I might reach, would be so overwhelming to your senses that you could not guarantee a sane response: that you might die upon a moment of communicated lust … I leant away from you, enjoying your loveliness and your confusion in equal, unrelenting measure; and then as I bent forward and down again the picture diminished, and the changing focus, on the verge of blurring to nothing, took in only your loving, startled eyes and your delighted breasts.

  Sweet, you were so lovely … You don’t mind my occasional frankness, do you? It’s part of us, isn’t it? – to be articulate about our lovemaking, to mention the fact that a certain movement, a certain kind of caress, gives us pleasure or exhilaration. Remember how you suddenly remarked, out of nowhere: ‘Very glad to have you aboard, sir!’ and I said: ‘Dear me, what do they teach you in the Wrens?’ and you answered – no, it’s unprintable after all, but you probably do remember … That is how we should talk, to match what our bodies did: our lovemaking was never furtive or embarrassed, a pair of groping hands in the darkness and an awkward silence in the morning: if we liked something we told each other, with laughter or tenderness or further desire. That is how it should be, surely – a fully shared blessing, the communion of two people who, discovering love, are jointly gripped by its intricacy and its power to move.

  YOU: ‘That was love.’

  M
E: ‘It was everything.’

  ‘We’re lucky.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are other people as good?’

  ‘I’ve an idea that they are, yes.’

  ‘Everyone?’

  ‘No. People with imagination and some kind of close tie, and, I suppose, good bodies. But that’s probably more common than you’d think.’

  ‘It’s disappointing, in a way, I want us to be special. I don’t want any other woman in the world to feel just what I’m feeling now, or any other man to have the same pleasure in a woman as you had then.’

  ‘I’m contented enough not to feel jealous … If other people can approach that standard, or even catch a glimpse of it, good luck to them.’

  ‘Good luck to them … Darling, it won’t always be like that, will it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What will happen to it?’

  ‘It will fade.’

  ‘Ah …’

  ‘It must. Very slowly, perhaps, but it must. Time will – will take the edge off it. We’ll probably never want each other quite so sharply as we do now, or have the same kind of overwhelming desire, or the same shattering relief. It can’t do anything but grow less.’

  ‘That’s sad.’

  ‘Ah, no. We’ll have something else to put in its place, some other brand of exhilaration. In fact, probably we won’t even miss it. Somehow it will deepen as it grows quieter: we’ll still want each other and enjoy each other, but it’ll be more with the heart than with the body.’

  ‘But you’ll want me less?’

  ‘Physically? Yes.’

  ‘Because you’ll have had me a lot of times?’