“I just slipped out for some air. Where’s the crime in that?”
“We’re in town. How does it look if I’m twiddling my thumbs waiting for you and you’re nowhere to be found?” He reached for my arm, his grip not at all subtle.
“I haven’t done anything wrong. This was my day, after all.” I twisted out of his grip, noticing that several people around us were glancing our way curiously. It made me feel braver. Surely the attention would make him back down.
“Lower your voice,” he warned, but I’d had enough. As he reached for my arm again, I wrenched myself free and nearly flattened Boy Long in the process. I hadn’t even seen him.
Glancing between Jock and me quickly, gauging the situation, Boy said, “Is everything all right here?”
“We’re fine, aren’t we, Beryl?” Jock said.
I had never loved him, it was true, but now I couldn’t remember even liking Jock. I was only exhausted, all the way through me. “Go to bed.”
He stared me down. I think he was surprised I was standing up to him.
“You heard her,” Boy said. “Time to call it a night.”
“This isn’t any of your business.” A knot along Jock’s square jaw twitched. His mouth had hardened into a line.
“Your wife happens to work for me, so I’d say it is.”
I was sure Jock was going to lunge for Boy. He was much the taller and broader man and could have wrecked Boy without trying—but some tide inside him turned, like a switch going off, and he thought better of it for the moment. “You should be careful, Beryl,” he said icily, without taking his eyes from Boy’s face. Then he stormed away.
“Charming,” Boy said when Jock had gone, but I could hear that his voice wasn’t entirely steady.
“Thanks for sticking your neck out for me. Can I buy you a drink? I could do with one.”
We went to the bar for a bottle and some glasses, and then took them out onto one of the low verandas. Over the textured pink wall, I could make out the ghost of the croquet lawn where brightly painted wickets curved into the grass at intervals, and the post sat waiting for someone’s shiny mallet. People passed in and out of the main door, porters and bellmen in white gloves, but we were almost entirely in shadow.
“I never thought I’d get married,” I told Boy as he poured for us. Scotch spilled into the squat glasses with reassuring lapping noises. “I should have left well enough alone.”
“You don’t need to explain.”
“I’m not sure I could anyway.”
As we sat in silence for several minutes, I watched his face and hands. Both were mottled grey and soft-looking in the dimness. His earring was the only thing glinting, as if it caught the light from some other time or place.
“I’ve stopped trying to understand people,” he said. “Horses and sheep make a damned sight more sense.”
I nodded. It had always been the same for me. “Do you think I’m silly to want this? Life as a trainer, I mean?”
He shook his head. “I see you trying to be tough skinned, but that makes sense. As a woman you’ll have to work twice as hard for everything. I’m not sure I could do it.” He lit a cigarette and drew on it, the end flaring red in the dark. When he released the held smoke, he looked at me. “I think you’re rather brave, actually.”
Was I brave? I hoped so. I gazed back at him, his thick ivory bracelets, the native-looking piece of bone on a leather thong around his neck, his shirt the colour of the sea when everyone wore khaki. He was such a character, really, but he was here. And I knew he wanted me. I had a split second to consider what I was doing before I reached for his cigarette and put it out against the pale-pink wall. He leaned into me, opening my mouth with his, his tongue smooth and hot. I didn’t think of resisting him or about anything else. One of his hands grazed the front of my blouse. The other slipped between my knees with a warm pressure I couldn’t help responding to. A hunger for touch, for this, seemed to be coming up from the bottom of me. Maybe it had always been there, sleeping like an animal. I had no idea. I ran my hand along his thigh, twisting into him, and pressed my lips and teeth against his neck.
“You’re dangerous.” He whispered it.
“You mean Jock?”
“And you’re awfully young.”
“Do you want to stop?”
“No.”
We didn’t talk any more that night. Somehow, the feel of his skin and his mouth on mine didn’t have anything to do with the rest of my life. They had no cost and no consequences—or so it seemed to me. Night sounds climbed the cool air beyond the veranda wall, and all thought of caution slipped away.