Free Grand Days by Frank Moorhouse Page B

affinity between them, that it seemed ‘right’ for them to sleep together in the bed.
    â€˜It does feel quite correct, doesn’t it? For you too?’ she said, needing that assurance.
    â€˜Dear Edith, it feels very correct, very much the natural thing to do.’
    â€˜Good,’ she said, ‘but I have no nightgown. I could go back and get it.’
    He thought that a good idea. He would warm the bed.
    Back in her room, she changed into her nightgown and robe and slippers, hung and folded her clothing, quickly removed her make-up, but refreshed her lipstick, and again crept back to his room. He had removed his clothing and was ‘warming the bed’. She could see his pyjama top.
    She took off her robe and slid into bed beside him and they turned to each other, taking each other’s hands, looking at each other in the moon- and fire-lit room. He had on his pyjama trousers but she divined that the flies were rather gaping, and felt that anyhow, it suited that their night clothing held them a little apart at this first eternity, allowing them to come gradually to feel and be accustomed to each other’s body. Maybe the clothing allowed her to momentarily pretend nothing momentous was about to happen. She was aware that he had splashed cologne on his face while she had been in her room.
    The eternity of this clothed preliminary innocence then passed, and their bodies entwined, their hands went inside theclothing and they lost themselves in kissing. As their passion overtook them, he muttered to her that there was ‘no need to worry about anything’, but the champagne and the quivering of her body and the blood racing through her had already banished any qualms, social or biological, from her mind. With a slight happy nervousness they found their carnal way and although this was not her first time, it was very nearly her first time, and it felt unique in a physical way. He was not a man made trembling and strenuous by his nervousness, as she had experienced in younger men who embarked on carnal enterprise, but was made careful by his nervousness and sensitive to her hand’s tentative guidance. She attributed this to his being older and not, she surmised, to being, as far as she could tell in such matters, any more experienced. Their slow, unfrenzied copulation was more an introduction to each other’s body than anything like a passionate enraptured whole, but she was also aware of the physical fit of their bodies being hugely pleasant, and of her disappointment when she felt him withdraw from her.
    As they fell towards sleep, holding each other, she felt an immense, pleasurable comfort from being with him in the bed, and their bodies remained touching, one way or another, during the night. She didn’t mind their mingled wetness that came from her to the sheets during the night although she worried briefly what odours her body would give off in the morning but could not see that they should be offensive to either of them.
    They were awoken by the breakfast gong and looked at each other with some curiosity, seeing each other in this other private way, the way of the bed and the morning, smiling with a rather guilty smugness.
    Ambrose made the joke that it was the gong which the Swiss used to remind guests to return to their rooms.
    She was able to say that she’d heard that joke made ofguesthouses in the Blue Mountains behind Sydney, adding that she wasn’t an habitué of such guesthouses. She had gone there in weekend parties, usually chaperoned, at least conjecturally chaperoned.
    Warm in bed, she waited for a time to see if he would take her again, then when it seemed that he wouldn’t, she contemplated taking him, but decided that what had happened already constituted enough for both of them to handle, so she held back her desire for further carnality.
    As she crept from the bed into the chilly room, she was aware that he was watching her body as it was