The Lost Bookshop(17)

‘It is the traditional way,’ he replied simply, before handing me the glass.

I blew on the surface of the golden-hued tea and let the exotic flavours fill my nose.

Some musicians had begun playing in the square, gitane music, with a rhythmic guitar and virtuosic violin. It filled the spaces where our words could not. I had spent the entire time searching the room for somewhere to hide my gaze: the silk rug on the floor, the strange leather slippers by the door that came to a point at the toe, a small wooden table with a gold inlay of Moorish design. Finally, I looked back to him and realised he had been staring at me the entire time. Without breaking his gaze, he stood up, took the glass from my hand and placed it on the tray beside his. Taking my hand in his, he raised me up and I stood so close to him that I could breathe his breath. He bent his head and my lips parted of their own volition. I felt his warm tongue inside my mouth and my only thought was of wanting more. We held each other tighter and I had the sensation that I wouldn’t be close enough unless …

‘Opaline,’ he said huskily, breaking my chain of thought.

‘Yes?’

‘Tell me if you wish to stay or leave,’ he said, his breath heavy. ‘For I fear I will not have the chivalry to ask you again.’

All mental activity had ceased. For the first time in my life, my sensuality took the lead.

‘Stay.’

The room was narrow, just large enough for the brass bed. A voile curtain fluttered in the breeze from the open window. It was almost dark, save for a low candle guttering in the corner on a table.

All of those years in my adolescence, how I worried that I wouldn’t know what to do! If only I had understood that there is no ‘knowing’. Only instinct. His body glowed golden in the candlelight, the sweat on his skin like an aphrodisiac to me.

‘Did it hurt?’ he asked.

‘Only a little,’ I replied. Pain is the price of pleasure, I had read somewhere once. I was no longer a virgin. The thought startled me momentarily, replaced by a deep sense of having crossed a threshold. We lay there together for hours talking. It was late when he walked me home and I hoped to sneak past my landlady unnoticed.

There was no light, save for the moonbeams softly coming through the tall windows. Every creak on the stairs was like a cannon blast and I bit my lip, praying that no one would hear. When I reached my room, I locked the door behind me and flopped down on the bed. I could see my reflection in the mirror of the dressing table opposite, half ghostly in the moonlight. I grabbed my pillow and hugged it tightly to me. That’s when I saw it. My brother’s walking cane beside the door.





Chapter Eleven





MARTHA





I began the afternoon by scrubbing the toilet. Madame Bowden had invited some of her old theatre friends around for dinner, or supper as she called it, and she wanted the house to ‘sparkle’. There was an edge about her that I hadn’t seen before. She was always a bit of a fusspot, but now nothing seemed right for her. She came back from the hairdressers in a black mood, insisting that they had deliberately set her curls too tight to make her look older than she was, and I left her at her dressing table, brushing them furiously into fluffy balls of frizz.

‘MARTHA!’ She screeched my name and I dropped the toilet brush, expecting to find her collapsed on the bedroom floor.

‘What is it?’ I said, breathless.

She was sitting at her dressing table wearing a nude colour slip and a silk dressing gown. My eyes were drawn to her neck and chest where the skin was puckered and mottled like a dead turkey at Christmas. I recalled an old nun at school saying that you couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and I finally knew what she meant.

‘I’m missing my pearl earring!’ Her eyes openly accused me.

I looked on her dressing table at the jumble of jewels emptied out of their box and back at her. She had one pearl earring in her ear and the other was in her hand.

‘It’s in your hand, Madame,’ I said flatly.

‘I know it’s in my hand, you halfwit, I’m looking for the other one!’

I took a deep breath. If I didn’t need the money so badly, I’d tell her where to shove the other one.

‘It’s in your ear.’

She reached up, feeling nothing but soft flesh.

‘Your other ear.’

I leaned against the door frame. I had all the time in the world.

She felt the cool pearl and gave what could almost be described as a look of shame, if you didn’t know her better. Madame Bowden had too much pride for that.

‘Well, now that you’re here, you can help me get dressed. Don’t forget, the caterers are coming at four, so be sure to give them a hand. And you did put the silverware out and give it an extra going over?’

No apology for basically calling me a thief; not that I had expected one. I took the dress off the hanger (a silver sequin gown that looked like it belonged to Liberace) and ended up bending my body for her to lean on, like a climbing horse, as she stepped into it. I could feel the shakiness in her arms vibrating through my frame. She had a sharp tongue and a quick mind, but her body was letting her down. I felt some sympathy for her then. It was strange to see her like this. She always gave the impression of being too fabulous to care. Perhaps she was a talented actress after all. Eileen Bowden was just like everyone else. Afraid.