Jackdaws

When she had lain down on the bed beside Paul, another personality had seemed to come out of her, just as a transformation had come over Mark when he walked into the Criss-Cross Club. She suddenly felt she could say anything she liked, do anything that took her fancy, be herself without worrying what would be thought of her.

It had never been like that with Michel. Beginning as his student, wanting to impress him, she had never really got on an even footing with him. She had continued to seek his approval, something he had never done with her. In bed, she tried to please him, not herself

After a while, Paul said, “What are you thinking?”

“About my marriage,” she said.

“What about it?”

She wondered how much to confess. He had said, earlier in the evening, that he wanted to marry her, but that was before she came to his bedroom. Men never married girls who slept with them first, according to female folklore. It was not always true, Flick knew from her own experience with Michel. But all the same she decided to tell Paul half the truth. “That it’s over.”

“A drastic decision.”

She raised herself on her elbow and looked at him. “Does that bother you?”

“On the contrary. I hope it means we might see each other again.”

“Do you mean that?”

He put his arms around her. “I’m scared to tell you how much I mean it.”

“Scared?”

“Of frightening you off I said a foolish thing earlier.”

“About marrying me and having children?”

“I meant it, but I said it in an arrogant way.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “When people are perfectly polite, it usually means they don’t really care. A little awkwardness is more sincere.”

“I guess you’re right. I never thought of that.”

She stroked his face. She could see the bristles of his beard, and she realized the dawn light was strengthening. She forced herself not to look at her watch: she did not want to keep checking how much time they had left.

She ran her hand over his face, mapping his features with her fingertips: the bushy eyebrows, the deep eye sockets, the big nose, the shot-off ear, the sensual lips, the lantern jaw. “Do you have hot water?” she said suddenly.

“Yes, it’s a swanky room. There’s a basin in the corner.”

She got up.

He said, “What are you doing?”

“Stay there.” She padded across the floor in her bare feet, feeling his eyes on her naked body, wishing she were not quite so broad across the hips. On a shelf over the sink was a mug containing toothpaste and a wooden toothbrush that she recognized as French. Next to the glass were a safety razor, a brush, and a bowl of shaving soap. She ran the hot tap, dipped the shaving brush in it, and worked up a lather in his soap bowl.

“Come on,” he said. “What is this?”

“I’m going to shave you.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see.”

She covered his face with lather, then got his safety razor and filled the tooth mug with hot water. She straddled him the way she had when they made love and shaved his face with careful, tender strokes.

“How did you learn to do this?” he asked.

“Don’t speak,” she said. “I watched my mother do it for my father, many times. Dad was a drunk, and toward the end he couldn’t hold the razor steady, so Ma had to shave him every day. Lift your chin.”

He did so obediently, and she shaved the sensitive skin of his throat. When she had finished she soaked a flannel in hot water and wiped his face with it, then patted him dry with a clean towel. “I should put on some face cream, but I bet you’re too masculine to use it.”

“It never occurred to me that I should.”

“Never mind.”

“What next?”

“Do you remember what you were doing to me just before I reached for your wallet?”

“Yes.”

“Did you wonder why I didn’t let you go on longer?”

“I thought you were impatient for… intercourse.”

“No, your bristles were scratching my thighs, right where the skin is most tender.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Well, you can make it up to me.”

He frowned. “How?”

She groaned with mock frustration. “Come on, Einstein. Now that your bristles have gone..

“Oh— I see! Is that why you shaved me? Yes, of course it is. You want me to..

She lay on her back, smiling, and parted her legs. “Is this enough of a hint?”

He laughed. “I guess it is,” he said, and he bent over her.

She closed her eyes.

CHAPTER 28

THE OLD BALLROOM was in the bombed west wing of the château at Sainte-Cecile. The room was only partly damaged: one end was a pile of debris, square stones and carved pediments and chunks of painted wall in a dusty heap, but the other remained intact. The effect was picturesque, Dieter thought, with the morning sun shining through a great hole in the ceiling onto a row of broken pillars, like a Victorian painting of classical ruins.