Free Night Over Water by Ken Follett Page A

drawing room, Rebecca said irritably: “Where have you been?”
    “Talking to our hostess,” he replied. “Sorry. Shall we take our leave?”
    He walked out of the house with his host’s cuff links and twenty pounds in his pocket.
    They got a cab in Belgrave Square and rode to a restaurant in Piccadilly. Harry loved good restaurants: he got a deep sense of well-being from the crisp napkins, the polished glasses, the menus in French and the deferential waiters. His father had never seen the inside of such a place. His mother might have, if she had come in to clean it. He ordered a bottle of champagne, consulting the list carefully and choosing a vintage he knew to be good but not rare, so that the price was not too high.
    When he first started taking girls to restaurants, he had made a few mistakes; but he was a quick learner. One useful trick had been to leave the menu unopened, and say: “I’d like a sole. Have you got any?” The waiter would open the menu and show him where it said Sole meuniere, Les goujons de sole avec sauce tartare, and Sole grillée, and then, seeing him hesitate, would probably say: “The goujons are very nice, sir.” Harry soon learned the French for all the basic dishes. He also noticed that people who frequently ate in such places quite often asked the waiter what a particular dish was: wealthy English people did not necessarily understand French. Thereafter he made a point of asking for the translation of one dish every time he ate in a fancy restaurant; and now he could read a menu better than most rich boys of his age. Wine was no problem, either. Sommeliers were normally pleased to be asked for a recommendation, and they did not expect a young man to be familiar with all the chateaus and communes and the different vintages. The trick, in restaurants as in life, was to appear at ease, especially when you were not.
    The champagne he chose was good, but there was something wrong with his mood tonight, and he soon figured out that the problem was Rebecca. He kept thinking how delightful it would be to bring a pretty girl to a place like this. He always went out with unattractive girls: plain girls, fat girls, spotty girls, silly girls. They were easy to get acquainted with; and then, once they had fallen for him, they were eager to take him at face value, reluctant to question him in case they should lose him. As a strategy for getting inside wealthy homes it was matchless. The snag was that he spent all his time with girls he did not like. One day, perhaps ...
    Rebecca was sullen tonight. She was discontented about something. Perhaps after seeing Harry regularly for three weeks, she was wondering why he still had not attempted to “go too far,” by which she would mean touching her breasts. The truth was he could not pretend to lust after her. He could charm her, romance her, make her laugh, and make her love him; but he could not desire her. On one excruciating occasion, he had found himself in a hayloft with a skinny, depressed girl set on losing her virginity, and he had tried to force himself; but his body had refused to cooperate, and he still squirmed with embarrassment every time he thought of it.
    His sexual experience, such as it was, was mostly with girls of his own class, and none of those relationships had lasted. He had had just one deeply satisfying love affair. At the age of eighteen he had been shamelessly picked up in Bond Street by an older woman, the bored wife of a busy solicitor, and they had been lovers for two years. He had learned a lot from her—about making love, which she taught him enthusiastically; about upper-class manners, which he picked up surreptitiously; and about poetry, which they read and discussed in bed together. Harry had been deeply fond of her. She ended the affair instantly and brutally when her husband found out that she had a lover (he never knew who). Since then, Harry had seen them both several times: the woman always looked at him as if