The Marriage Bed Read Free

there was no other way. My assets were only two: my brains, which I knew without vanity to be first-class, and my looks, which since puberty had attracted a wide variety of unwelcome attentions, specially from Older Men. For some reason, boys of my own age appeared totally uninterested in me, which was on all counts just as well for my plans.
    Public libraries, where I spent most of my leisure time, had provided me with detailed technical information about the sex act, without revealing to me why on earth any woman would permit such a silly thing to be done to her. Men, however, seemed very keen on it for some reason. And Max was a handsome man with his thick, nearly white hair and magnificent dark eyes. One could imagine he was the sort of person who would at least be polite about it. The whole nasty business might be endurable with someone like that, as long as it didn’t last too long. To be sure, a chambermaid’s overheard complaint about her husband (“’E’s never
orff
of me”) was not encouraging. Better not to think about the bed part of it.
    The young waitress Vera (as distinct from the old one with the varicose veins) came in to clear away the cups. Her hair was newly back-combed up into a great beehive that made her profilelook vaguely African. Max reached over his cup to save her trouble, but she neither smiled nor thanked him, only flounced out with the tray as if offended. I knew, as only one teenager can know another, that she was annoyed because it was clear the beehive amused him.
    After a few minutes, Max dropped his folded newspaper on the table and stood up. The Captain’s daughters eyed him furtively. He looked irresolutely across at the bar, then strolled out to the entrance hall, where glass doors framed a moody view of grey water tumbling under a grey sky. He opened the door and stepped out into the soft English air.
    “Oh, please, sir, you forgot your watch,” I said, bursting out abruptly after him. It was not, perhaps, a very subtle approach, but the best I could think of at the time.
    “Ah. So I did. Thank you very much.”
    I handed over the watch, hoping it was not embarrassingly hot from my moist hand.
    “You’re from America, aren’t you?” I asked breathlessly.
    “No, Canada.”
    “Really? Are you on holiday? I’m afraid the weather hasn’t been very nice here this summer.”
    His dark eyes looked at me quizzically. “Think it’s going to rain again? Can I risk a walk?”
    “Oh, I’m sure you could. There’s a nice sea-front promenade just along here. I don’t suppose – I mean, would you like me to come along to – to point things out? It’s quite an interesting town, actually. Charles Dickens lived here off and on.”
    Once again he looked at me and the faint smile spread from his eyes to his lips. “I’d be delighted,” he said. “But you’ll have to get permission first from your parents. That was your mother with you at dinner, wasn’t it?”
    “Back in two seconds,” I promised, and shot upstairs. With frantic speed I tore off my ugly school shirt and tie and put on a too-small blue satin blouse I’d recently bought at a sale. I flung on my mac but left it unbuttoned, and hurried past the bar without troubling Billie with news of my immediate plans. Billie never worried anyhow where I went, or with whom, as long as I got home before dark. She was touchingly sure that nothing illegal or immoral could happen to a girl until after the pubs closed.
    He was lighting a cigar when I hurried out, the open coat flying around the blue blouse at which he glanced with those casual dark eyes that looked so sleepy, yet seemed to miss nothing.
    “Still at school, are you?” he asked.
    “Yes. I’m in the Fifth at Broadstairs Grammar.”
    “That’s about like our last year of high school, right? What are you going to do when you graduate?”
    This was marvellous, I thought. He was interested. It could turn into one of those whirlwind courtships. So I let it all