infinitesimal degrees, time started up again. Helen lifted her head from where it had sunk against Oliver’s shoulder. Looking down at him she saw that his face was soft, just as it had been when he bent over the tiny pups. Sweat had damped his fine blond hair so that it lay close against his head and his eyelashes were dark and spiky. For an instant, Oliver looked almost vulnerable. Helen stroked the hair back from his face and laid her cheek against his.
Beside them the fire sank deeper into its own red heart.
After a moment Oliver stirred and smiled lazily at her. ‘So that was the door.’
‘Door?’ Helen was bewildered.
‘The door to let the other Helen out.’ He chuckled. ‘You surprised me. So much heat under that cold skin.’
Helen felt herself blushing, and uncertainty took the place of the peaceful satisfaction of the moment before. Had she done something wrong? Her knowledge of sexual matters was so slight that she might well have. She had simply trusted in the force of her own instincts to guide her and she had believed that Oliver was doing the same. Now, she saw, that could have been a mistake. It was all so confusing, not least her disconcerting longing to please him.
What was the right thing? She felt that he had been surprised by her refusal of him the other evening, and now after her passionate surrender of herself, he was no less surprised.
‘Did I do something wrong?’ she asked simply.
‘Wrong?’ His blue eyes were very bright. ‘No, of course not. You were charming. Just not very like other girls. Or like what I expected.’
I’m not like Flora or Fiona, Helen thought. Or like Vick. I know that. But what did he expect? She wanted to ask him, wanted to make him talk, but the words eluded her. Instead, she became uncomfortably conscious of her nakedness, and she reached out for the tangle of clothes beside her. Quickly, acutely aware of the clumsy awkwardness of putting on clothes, she pulled on her crumpled shirt. Then she saw that Oliver was looking away from her, into the depths of the fire. He seemed utterly unconscious of his body, and at once Helen regretted her prudish scramble to get dressed.
Uncomfortable, unexplained hot tears pricked behind her eyes. What’s the matter with me, she asked herself bitterly.
Oliver lay calm and unmoving. His body was evenly and deeply tanned, every inch of it. Helen knew that meant remote, exotic beaches, or very fashionable ones where everyone was free of stupid inhibitions. He looked fit, too, with the flat belly and developed muscles of the all-round athlete. Alongside him Helen felt herself bony and uncoordinated, as well as pallid from lack of sunlight. There had been too many weeks of not caring what she ate, too many nights with very little sleep.
With his eyes fixed on the fire, Oliver put out a hand and caught her wrist.
‘Stop jumping about,’ he ordered her. ‘Lie still, here.’ He made space on the rug beside him and obediently Helen lay back with her head against the cushions. His fingers encircled her wrist, and, as if to underline her own image of her body, he murmured, ‘So thin and brittle. One false move and it might snap. Poor Helen. You need feeding up.’ And he laughed again, pleased with the idea.
In the quiet that followed, Helen collected herself. What else did you expect? Or want? You shared those moments of love-making with him, and in those moments he was yours. Nothing can take that away. And now, what point is there in wishing it had happened some other way? Or hadn’t happened at all? You wanted to give yourself to him, because what else could you have offered? And he’s still here beside you. With his fingers around your wrist. Take what you’ve got, and believe in your own convictions.
The threatened tears were gone now, and the determination was back in Helen’s face again.
Oliver sat up and reached for a log from the basket. When he threw it on the fire, the embers glowed hotly and sent out a last fierce blush of heat before settling again.
He let go of her wrist and leaned away from her to fumble in one of his pockets. When he settled himself, Helen saw that he was holding a key ring, with a small, silver propelling pencil dangling among the keys. Quickly, Oliver unscrewed it and Helen saw that it was not a pencil at all, but a hollow tube. Oliver patted his pockets again and then produced a tiny silver-backed mirror. Finally from his wallet he extracted a single, crisp pound-note.
‘I can’t stand the ostentation of people who use fifties,’ he told her. Helen watched, bewildered.
Frowning with concentration now, Oliver shook a tiny drift of white powder from the tube on to the mirror. Then he held it out to her.
‘Snort?’ he asked, casually.
‘What is it?’
‘Cocaine,’ he answered, enunciating the word very carefully. ‘What did you think?’
‘No,’ Helen cried out before she could bite back the word behind her teeth. Suddenly, and with startling vividness, she remembered Frances Page being driven away in an unmarked car by a young and pretty policewoman and a creased middle-aged man who bore no resemblance to the drug-squad officers of television serials.
Oliver shook his head. ‘It’s harmless, you know, unless you’re very stupid. And it is instant sunshine.’ He offered the mirror again, as if it were chocolates.
‘No. Thank you.’
Oliver shook his head again, as if to say please yourself, then rolled the crackling note up into a narrow tube. With a sharp sniff at each nostril the white powder vanished from the mirror.
This time the tempo of their love-making was languid and dreamy. To Helen each movement seemed slower, as if replayed before her eyes by an unseen camera, but yet more piercingly sweet than she could have believed possible. The world beyond the little circle of firelight, beyond this coupling of tanned skin with her own pale translucent flesh, meant nothing.
This was Helen’s first experience of living for the moment, of being absorbed in the sensations of the instant, and she was transfixed by it. At last Oliver drifted into sleep with his head heavy against her breast. For a while Helen stared over the crest of blond hair into the greyness of the dead fire. Then she, too, closed her eyes, as if surrendering herself once again, and then slept with him.
It was very late when the black Jaguar slid alongside the steps leading down to Follies House.
Oliver switched off the engine and glanced sideways at Helen. Her chin was sunk against the collar of his coat which he had wrapped around her, and she seemed to be lost within her own thoughts.
‘Follies,’ he said, to nudge her back into awareness. ‘I told you I’d deliver you back, safe and sound.’
Helen stared at him, her face drained of colour by the orange street lights. Something in her expression made Oliver uneasy.
‘You’re not sorry are you? About today?’ He had meant it lightly, half referring to her missed day’s work, but Helen interpreted it differently.
‘No, not sorry. Stunned, perhaps. And bewildered. But happy too.’ She smiled at him, and her small, cold hand reached out for his as it rested on the gearstick. ‘Are you sorry?’
Her question disconcerted Oliver but he kept the lightness in his voice as he answered. ‘No, why should I be? One only feels sorry if things turn
