‘Jolly well done, Laura,’ Toby said in a hearty voice, obviously trying to encourage her. ‘Now your turn, come on, what do we know about you? A woman, fictional, not in a book, not played by a famous movie star, never seen on stage.’
‘We give up,’ Sybil said, and Laura felt a kind of rebuke that she had not chosen something more knowable.
‘Betty Boop,’ she said, and was not surprised to see a look of bemusement cross Mrs Last’s face. After that, Mrs Last said she didn’t feel like more games and the conversation became stilted, until Sybil stood up, yawning, and said she would go to bed. She was wearing a strangely cut dress in green and yellow, with long sleeves and a wide skirt; not quite an evening dress, but nothing Laura could imagine wearing during the day either. The other couple stood up too, saying something about seeing everyone at church tomorrow, and the good nights were all general. Laura felt the cue too, and stood, but she noticed that Toby and Edward were not leaving the room. Rooted, holding their drinks, it was as though they felt called to an audience with their mother, who was still sitting on one of the sofas, her knees and ankles pressed together, one finger moving up and down her pearl necklace as she said good night to everyone.
This time Laura gained her bedroom with a sense of achievement. She had got through the evening, and there was only one day to go. There was a chill in the bedroom as the fire had been allowed to go out. Laura felt keyed up and a little drunk as she sat there with her coat on over her nightgown, filing her nails, remembering how Edward had looked when he walked into the room, reliving one moment when Toby had laughed at something she had said, replaying the evening as if she was trying to make sure she would not forget anything, when there was a tap on the door.
She opened it. For a moment Edward said nothing, and then he whispered, ‘Should I go?’ There was an uncertainty in his expression that she could never have imagined. She stood to one side, and he walked in. For a few moments the space between them was unpassable, and then it was passed. He bent his face to hers and there was elation, so great it overpowered her, the ecstasy of knowing that the physical hunger that she thought would never be assuaged was matched by his, that they fitted, that they could make everything right. She could hear half-sobs in the room, but they were rising from his throat as well as hers as they fumbled their way not onto the bed, for some reason, but onto the carpet in front of the cold fireplace. By the time they had made one another come to orgasm – not through intercourse, but sweating and pushing against one another, humping and fumbling – both their faces were wet with tears of relief. It wasn’t the graceful embrace that Laura had imagined to herself at night, but under the fumbling was a confident, certain rhythm of joy, a music that sang through the clumsy movements.
Afterwards they lay for a while without speaking, Edward’s hand moved down over her back and thighs over and over again, until Laura felt she lost the sense of where she ended and his hand began. Then they undressed fully, and got into the high, narrow bed, and lay holding one another. For a few moments Laura felt she would never sleep, all her nerves seemed so alert, her pulse fast, but then suddenly sleep overtook her, and at some point in the night he got up and left her, so that she woke alone.
As she emerged from sleep, she was aware of every inch of her body and how it was lying in the heavy bed linen. She felt the edge of the pillow pressing into her cheek. She felt the sheets, warm under her legs, and cold where she stretched out her arms. She sat up, and then got out of bed, naked, and walked over to the window. She pulled back the heavy curtain, feeling the raised pattern of the damask under her fingers. Everything she touched touched her back. She felt the smoothness of the floorboards under her bare feet. She saw the slopes of the hills to the sky, running like live things into the morning light.
After dressing she walked with confidence down the oak staircase, aware of each step with its slight depression where generations had walked up and down, aware of the way the banister had been rubbed to its high sheen by innumerable hands. Edward was not there when she entered the breakfast room. It was a dark room, hung with uncleaned oil paintings and papered in grey-toned greens, but even this seemed just right, a kind of harmonic counterpoint to the lightness of the drawing room. She drank her coffee and ate her toast and bacon, feeling rinsed and new for the world. When Edward came in, perhaps no one else would have seen anything different about his uncommunicative demeanour as he poured himself a cup of coffee and started on a plate of toast and bacon, but Laura felt the pause in his breath as he looked at her and felt his gaze rest on her.