“Yes,” she whispered, though in fact she was answering a very different question. One he didn’t need to ask. He simply scooped her up and carried her into his bedroom.
She wasn’t sure what her body was supposed to do. His body, however, was less alien than it might have been. She had bathed so many bodies in Brighton. And long before, before all the breaking, all the white beds, she’d walked alone through the Met in New York, unsettled and thrilled by the nakedness of men in the classical wing. No one ever sculpted a hero cut down. Hercules always succeeded in his labors. There was no shot, no gas, no bayonet, nothing to land him crushed and limp in a white bed, a body becoming infant-spongy under blue pajamas. But Simon’s body was solid, rangy, unblemished, unbroken, and it knew exactly how to warm and melt her own flesh. Somewhere, sometime, he’d had a different training from hers.
Imagine asking the sound effects men to re-create this.
“Why are you laughing?” He grinned at her, teeth flashing in the semidarkness. “I’m not comical, am I?”
“No. You’re wonderful.”
He was. It was. She was. This was the great wild wood, a primeval forest, and she was a creature unbound.
She blinked awake with a suddenness and completeness that startled her. It was still dark. She was sure that was moonlight peeking in through the drapes. It bathed them in a silvery sheen, keeping alive the woodland fantasy. Imagine making love outside, a midsummer night’s dream indeed, a bed of grass, a roof of trees.
Goodness, I lose my virginity and turn into a libertine.
She looked down at herself. She’d never slept naked before. Her body was still strange to her, no longer scrawny and pasty and scaly with the sheen of unhealthiness barely masked by youth. She had satiny flesh now, pink and plump, and actual curves. Unfashionable, perhaps, but really very nice. Simon seemed to like them, certainly.
A sudden bellow, like from a water buffalo, made her jump, and now she knew what had woken her. Simon snored. He was sunk in sleep, curled on his side, one foot resting on a knee, right hand folded under his face, the knuckles digging into his cheek, left arm underneath it, stretching out, the hand dangling helplessly over the bed.
Maisie squinted at her watch, the only thing she was wearing besides the ring. Four in the morning? There was no point in going home. She would just go to Savoy Hill from here.
She eased herself out of the bed, though the way Simon was snoring, she could probably tap-dance on his head and he wouldn’t budge. Her clothes were in a heap. She scooped them up and made her way to the bathroom.
As she used her fingers as a comb, the ring caught her hair. She patiently unwound it, thinking of all the things she would have to learn now as she adjusted to this new life, this life of wearing an engagement ring. She could see the park outside, bathed in fading moonlight. Wouldn’t that be something, to have this as one’s view every day? A wolf stepped into the light and she gasped. A wolf, in Regent’s Park? She was dreaming. She was in the wild wood.
A man joined the wolf and fixed a lead to its collar, and she realized it was an Alsatian and they were out for a predawn stroll.
The hour of the wolf, they call it somewhere. I remember that. Dreams and reality colliding, all very dangerous and tempting.
Her fingers were itching. She hurried back to the sitting room and dove upon Simon’s open desk. She snatched up a pencil but couldn’t find any paper and had to search the drawers. In the messiest, she found some plain, if slightly crumpled, sheets. She sat on the squashy brown leather sofa and scribbled notes for a Talk: the things you see in the night, so different from the daylight, the tricks our eyes play upon us. Was this how fairy tales had been developed? She quickly covered one side and flipped the page over. Her heart stopped. It was a letter.
It’s only a discarded draft, nothing to worry about, she told herself. But it was addressed from London, and the date was practically scratching at her eye. “15 August 1929.” When Simon was still meant to be in Germany.
“Dear Grigson . . .”
The fist inside blew up, forcing her breath into icy gasps.
No. No, no, no.
Words jumped out at her, screeching and biting like pixies. “Delighted to make the arrangement.” “Grateful for your investment and your faith in me.” “Will not disappoint you.”
Sun was breaking in around the drapes. Maisie forced herself not to think, to just go to her bag, where the camera was still nestled among a mound of chocolate and the latest Listener.
Don’t shake, Maisie ordered her fingers as she smoothed the letter, set it under the desk lamp, and took a photo, hoping it would be clear and legible.
Five thirty now. Her mind and body worked on auto, searching the desk with the clinical precision of a surgeon. Then she looked over at the closed desk.