Free Night Street by Kristel Thornell Page B

‘You’re lovely. Truly heavenly skin. It gives off its own light.’ In a voice lowered further still: ‘You could make a man very happy.’ Did this hold any particular reference? ‘Stay as long as you like.’
    A short sleep carried away much of the pain or made it into something thicker but airier. Clarice noted this when she was startled awake. She listened. Raised voices, childlike in their pleasure, the fiddle. She wriggled up so that she was leaning against the end of the bed.
    In the dresser mirror, she considered what Mrs Hamlin thought of as good looks. A very pale complexion, not undignified features, perhaps—but ravenous eyes, somehow exaggerated, and what was that mark at the corner of her mouth? She leaned forward to inspect a stain, blackish, maroon, as she massaged the nape of her neck with one hand. She was boiling.
    And there he was, finally.
    When he had closed the door, he entered the mirror in profile; he was facing her. Arthur exhaled raggedly.
    â€˜I didn’t mean to scare you. Sorry.’ He appeared winded. ‘I couldn’t find you. Mrs Hamlin said you weren’t feeling well.’
    â€˜It’s just,’ she said. ‘It was just. A little . . .’
    He gave a slight nod, and it was his turn, now, to notice the picture they made in the mirror and hers to look at him.
    Becoming aware, perhaps, of her disordered state and his standing over it, he sat down on the side of the bed, with his back to her.
    â€˜Are you any better?’ He was different to when they were in company together. ‘Do you need anything? Can I get you anything?’
    â€˜I’m alright,’ she said, grappling with the dissonance of waking; it sounded like a lie.
    He twisted to look at her. It was a difficult position to sustain. He looked away, and back. He put a finger to his lips and brought it to the colouration at the corner of her mouth.
    â€˜I don’t know where that came from,’ she said. ‘I was just wondering what it was.’
    â€˜The wine,’ he replied, looking perturbed. ‘We don’t see enough of you.’
    His hand did not withdraw and so she turned her head to kiss it. This was not audacity. She had no choice in the matter. Taking his hand, as if it were a surprising new invention, she drew his mouth to the place his finger had encountered. It happened fast.
    The surprise of the kiss. An assertive flavour of tobacco. After that, the taste of his own exotic mouth and of his desire for her. It was her first real kiss and she would not forget it. The unveiling. Smooth heat. Blind tunnelling from one interior world to another.
    They were very quiet. Arthur held her hands, her shoulders, her waist; her head drumming gently, she too wanted to hold him fast. Her clothing turned oppressive, mysteriously intricate, as they tried to free her from it. At the same time, she was trying to free herself from a memory. The memory of something unreally disturbing, such as a detail from a bad dream that pesters you after waking.
    It had happened a few hours earlier, before the party got going: Arthur had not yet lifted a dark cloth and, momentarily beheaded, peered through a camera’s objective at artists standing to be photographed; a migraine had not yet led her to this room where he had found her. She had arrived too punctually and been invited to sit in the drawing room, awaiting the arrival of the more appropriately tardy guests, while Mrs Hamlin directed some task in the kitchen. Self-consciously alone, Clarice gazed through a window at the brightness exploding outside.
    She had thought herself alone. Bella sat down opposite her, holding a precariously full glass of punch.
    â€˜Ooh,’ breathed Bella, with amusement and perhaps a little nervousness. ‘I almost spilled it!’
    They had been briefly introduced on the occasion when Bella had worn her spotted dress. Now her dress was moss green and well cut, her purse