Читать книгу A Family Affair - Nancy Carson - Страница 11

Next day, Sunday, Tom Doubleday called after dinner for Clover, as he did every Sunday. By this time they had been stepping out together for two months and love was blossoming. Sometimes, they went for a walk around the fields of Oakham, sometimes, a tram ride into Birmingham where they enjoyed window shopping in New Street and Corporation Street. Today, they intended to take a leisurely walk through the Castle Grounds. The weather was settled, although typically humid for August, and they decided they might find some cooling breeze in the shade of the trees that covered the elevated paths to the castle keep. On the way, it was necessary to pass Tom’s studio.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ Tom said, stopping outside it.

Still holding his hand, Clover turned to him in a swirl of sleeveless summer dress with a scalloped neck. ‘What?’

‘You look so beautiful – so fresh and breezy…I feel inspired to take a photograph of you. It’s time I did a really nice one.’

She smiled at his compliment. ‘I don’t mind. If you want to take my picture…’

‘Well, we’ve been courting for ages now, Clover, and it’s a sin that I haven’t got a studio photo of you. And the light is perfect, look. Bright and hazy. No hard shadows.’

‘All right,’ she agreed easily. ‘As long as I can take one of you as well.’

He laughed at that and said she could as he took the key from his pocket and opened the front door. They entered into a small foyer, with examples of his best work hanging in frames from a picture rail, and a small carved counter facing the door where transactions were concluded. Plush velvet curtains hung from a brass rail along the side wall and similar drapes, tied back, adorned the deep window. Tom led her through the door into his studio which was, by now, familiar in any case, since she’d called on him a few times while he was working. Tom had had the room extended in the fashion of a conservatory to make best use of the soft north light, with a glass roof and vertical windows that stretched to the floor. Roller blinds had been fitted to the roof windows to adjust the intensity of light, and rich floral curtains hung from floor to ceiling. Two of the solid walls of the studio were decorated to look like the drawing-room of some stately home, even with a false, but very ornate door and frame let into one wall. Odd pieces of furniture stood randomly; props that could be included in a photo as required. A mahogany whatnot stood with a shiningly healthy aspidistra sitting on top in a brass pot. There was a screen, several armchairs in various styles, all ornate, a variety of occasional tables that subjects might rest their backsides on for a jaunty pose, a music stool, a chaise-longue that looked soft and comfortable, and a soft bearskin rug on the floor.

‘How do you want me to pose?’

‘Oh, all ways.’

She thought she detected a sparkle of mischief in his eyes. ‘No, you must tell me, Tom. I’ve never had my picture taken in a studio before. You’ll have to suggest something.’

He was fiddling with his plate camera. ‘Well, we can have one of you reclining, one sitting, one standing, full length, three-quarter or just head and shoulders. Personally, I’d like one full length and a head and shoulders. You choose the pose, Clover. Just be yourself.’

She stood with her hands on the whatnot, partially hidden by the aspidistra.

‘No, stand to the side of it, my love. The damned plant’s hiding you…Yes, that’s better.’ He bent down to look through the class screen and pulled the dark cloth over his head. ‘Thrust your bosom out a bit, Clover…Ooh, lovely.’ He focused the image and emerged from under the black cloth. He smiled as he inserted a plate into the rear of the camera. ‘That looks good. Now…A nice smile…Smiling is a part of your nature, Clover, so I want to see a smile.’

She smiled.

‘Don’t forget to thrust your chest out a little…That’s good. Hold that.’ He pressed the shutter release bulb and Clover stood perfectly still.

The next was a head and shoulders portrait, three-quarter face, which captured her exquisite nose to perfection, although Tom deliberately did not say so for fear of protest.

‘I think I’d like one of you reclining like some Greek goddess now,’ he suggested. ‘Like those girls in paintings by Alma-Tadema in diaphanous dresses, lounging on animal skins draped over marble. Have you seen them?’

She laughed dismissively. ‘Not that I can recall.’

‘As lifelike as any photograph, except they’re in colour.’

‘But there’s no marble to drape myself over,’ Clover replied.

‘I know. Pity. We’ll have to make do with the chaise-longue.’

Clover swirled over to the chaise-longue and sat on it, half reclining. She looked up at him with all her love in her eyes and smiled. She was enjoying this experience, this attention. She only ever received loving, caring attention like this from Tom; only ever kindness and consideration. No wonder she loved him so much.

‘You don’t look comfortable, Clover,’ he said and left his camera to walk over to her. He knelt down and adjusted the folds of her dress as it draped over her legs. ‘Rest your head on the headrest and raise one arm languidly above your head…No, that doesn’t seem right…I know, pretend you have a new ring on your finger – an engagement ring for instance – and your lover has had to go away. Now you’re wistful and pining for him…Oh, yes, that’s beautiful. Can you hold that while I—’

‘Tom…Can I not do that? Please? I think it would be a bad omen.’

‘A bad omen?’

‘Yes, you photographing me looking all heartbroken because my sweetheart has gone away.’

‘Oh, Clover,’ he said, full of tenderness. He leaned forward and took her in his arms. ‘Have no fear, I’ll never leave you. I’m yours for as long as you want me, my sweetheart.’

‘Oh, Tom.’ She squeezed him and felt his cheek reassuringly against hers. ‘I love you so much. I couldn’t bear to think of losing you…even for a short time.’

‘You’re not going to lose me,’ he said. ‘Ever.’ He turned his face towards her and kissed her full on the lips, a hungry, searching kiss.

She responded as she always responded, with warmth and enthusiasm. She took his head lovingly in her hands and drank his kisses as if they were some potent wine. She closed her eyes and when his tongue passed between her lips she thrilled to the taste of him. After some minutes they broke off and he whispered how much he loved her. They kissed again, long, luxuriously, sensuously. He was still kneeling beside her and she felt his hand on her breast, gently, lovingly kneading. She made no attempt to stall him. His mouth left hers and traced a cool, moist trail down her throat as he kissed her neck. She was tingling in the most surprising places and, as she wriggled with pleasure, she slid herself down on the chaise-longue.

‘I wish there was room for me on there,’ he breathed. ‘Why don’t we lie on the bearskin?’

‘Is the door locked?’ she whispered.

He nodded and kissed her again. ‘Come on. It’ll be more comfortable. I’ll get a couple of cushions to put under our heads.’

As he gathered up two cushions from the other side of the studio, it was a delight to see her lying down on the bearskin waiting for him. The fall of her dress outlined her figure tormentingly. Never before had they been in this position and he’d never thought to engineer such an opportunity. But here she was now, lying on his rug of her own volition; this, the most beautiful girl he’d ever had the privilege of meeting, the only woman he’d ever truly, honestly loved with all his heart. And how he wanted her. By God, he wanted her so much. He could have waited but, maybe now it was time.

He lay down alongside her while she turned her head and smiled with her entire fund of affection. He raised himself up on one elbow and leaned over her, whereupon he traced a line lovingly from her hairline, over her nose and lips, to her chin. As her arms went around his neck and their lips met again in another lingering kiss, she realised she was smiling contentedly.

‘Do you love me enough, Clover…and trust me enough…to let me make love to you all the way?’ he whispered.

‘Yes,’ she breathed, unhesitating.

He sighed profoundly. ‘Are you sure you understand what I’m asking?’

‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘’Course I do. I love you, Tom. With all my heart. And I know you love me equally.’

He sighed again, uncertain how he should proceed. Perhaps he should solicit her help. ‘Do you think we should get undressed? I mean, you don’t want to get your dress all creased.’

‘Nor you your suit.’ She uttered a little laugh, belying her nervousness.

He took off his jacket and unfastened his necktie. The collar of his shirt sprung open like a metal spring bent back and suddenly released, which made her laugh. He slipped his braces from his shoulders and undid the buttons on his trousers.

‘Let me help you,’ he said, and gently, carefully unfastened the tiny buttons that started between her shoulders and ended past the small of her back. She slipped the straps down her arms and stood up while she passed the dress over her slender hips and off. She placed it with care over a chair and knelt down gracefully. To her surprise, she felt no embarrassment as she took off the rest of her clothes and lay down again. It seemed the most natural thing in the world.

Meanwhile, he took off his shirt and his underpants and looked into her eyes self-consciously. ‘Oh, Clover,’ he said, sighing inadequately. ‘My love.’

She still had her stockings on. With a pounding heart he kneeled before her and gently slid them down her smooth unblemished legs, garters and all. He thought he would burst with desire at the touch of the warm, inviting flesh of her thighs and the sight of her naked body and skin that looked like cream.

He tossed the stockings aside and lay with her. With heart pounding scandalously, she offered her mouth once more and, as he leaned over her, she felt his leg part her own and she trembled with nervousness.

‘I want to kiss you all over,’ he said.

‘Yes, I want you to.’ Her throat was dry, her voice barely audible.

She tingled as his lips floated over her breasts, barely touching, but she felt her nipples harden nonetheless. She began to ache in the pit of her stomach, an ache of profound longing for him. His hand glided over the smooth skin of her belly and his fingers drew a line from her navel to her crop of soft, dark hair. There, he lingered at the hidden flesh beneath, silky and soft with its powerful, tormenting wetness that told him she wanted him as much as he wanted her. But he resisted the urge to hurry. These moments were worth savouring. He kissed her on the mouth again while his fingers teased her, eliciting little sighs of pleasure that fired him up the more.

As he eased himself onto her she parted her legs.

‘I think you’ll have to guide me in,’ he whispered, half apologetically.

She reached for him between his legs. As he raised himself slightly she held him and was delighted and surprised at what she felt; so lovely and soft and smooth on the outside yet with an inner firmness that was also reassuring. Gently, she pulled him towards her and, as she felt him penetrate at last there was a sharp, incisive pain. She gasped as he pushed deeper into her and he stopped, concerned. Again she drew him into her, just a little at a time till she felt his groin hard against her. Then she held him tight as the pain diminished and the pleasure increased.

The photographs turned out well. Tom brought them to the Jolly Collier on the Monday evening after work. Clover was not due to see him that evening but, after their first lovemaking the previous afternoon, she was glad to see him, just to be sure the magic that had bloomed between them then was still there. Clover didn’t mind him seeing her in her working clothes any more. He’d seen her stark naked so he knew now how God had intended her to look. Whether she wore her shabby working gear or her new best dresses was no longer relevant.

‘They’re lovely photos,’ Clover admitted. ‘Thank you. Have you printed some for yourself?’

‘One of each for my bedroom, one of each to go on top of our piano at home, one of each to go in the studio and one of each to go in the foyer. All framed.’

She laughed happily. ‘I never got round to taking one of you, Tom.’

‘Next time, eh?’ He winked saucily.

‘Do you want to stay for tea?’

‘I’d love to, Clover, but Mother will be expecting me. I’ll finish my pint and go. So I’ll see you tomorrow night.’

She smiled and nodded. ‘Usual time?’

‘Usual time…Hey, I nearly forgot. One of the women from Cook’s drapery store came in today with her daughter. She reckons they’re after an assistant to work in the fabrics department. I said you might be interested.’

‘Cook’s?’ she repeated, her eyes lighting up. ‘That’d be a lovely clean job. I wonder what they pay?’

‘Probably not as much as you get now, and you’d have to work Saturdays, but it would be cleaner. Why don’t you go and find out about it? Ask for a Mr Butters. You never know.’

‘I’ll mention it to Mother later.’

Zillah Bache had made some liver faggots for tea that evening and they smelt divine. They had them with grey peas and boiled potatoes with hot, thick onion gravy, a doorstep of bread-and-butter and a huge jug of beer between them. Talk was about brewing and the inroads Beckitt’s Beers were making into the local hostelries.

‘Elijah’s got another forge signed up today and the Earl’s ironworks have agreed to take a couple of barrels to try, to see if the blokes take to it,’ Jake announced proudly as Clover placed dinners in front of them all. ‘Everything’s on song, Mary Ann. Already we’m selling fifty barrels a week on top of what the Collier takes. Already the money’s rolling in.’

‘And no good squandering it,’ Mary Ann advised seriously. ‘But I don’t reckon much to that new drayman you’ve started, Jacob. I wunt trust him as far as I could throw him. And idle? He’s too idle to scratch hisself.’

‘I know, I’ve been watching him,’ Jake replied defensively. ‘I’ve got somebody else lined up.’

‘Mother…’ Clover muttered tentatively. ‘If the business is doing better now, can I leave the foundry?’

‘And work here in the business with us, you mean?’

‘Not in the business. You always said you didn’t want me working in the licensed trade. Tom says they’re after somebody to work in the fabric department at Cook’s in High Street in the town. I fancy applying for it. It would be clean work.’

‘I see no reason why she shouldn’t, Mary Ann,’ Jake proclaimed before her mother had chance to swallow her bit of faggot and shape her lips. ‘Like I said, we’m on target and making money. What bit Clover’s been contributing is chicken feed now. Let the wench find herself a nice clean job. I certainly wunt like to work in e’er a foundry.’

Clover smiled her best smile and thanked Jake for his consideration. ‘I know it’ll mean working Saturdays but I don’t mind that. At least I’ll be able to buy material and things cheap for dresses…for all of us.’

‘I should get the job fust, afore you start planning what you’m gunna get cheap, our Clover,’ Mary Ann counselled.

‘I think I’ll call in tomorrow. There’s no sense in letting the grass grow under my feet. I’ll have the day off.’

It was on the Tuesday that Clover informed Ned Brisco she would not be working at the foundry for much longer. The tramlines of Birmingham Road glinted like polished silver in the low sunshine as they seemed to disappear into the depths of Dudley Castle, which stood sentinel over this thoroughfare into the town. Trams rumbled past with workers packed tight, while others, preferring to take in the summer evening, walked home. Ned climbed over the stile into Brewery Fields before Clover and courteously handed her down when she clambered over it.

‘When are you finishing then?’

Clover shook out her long cotton skirt and continued walking. ‘Friday. I told old Ratface Mason today.’

‘What did he say?’

‘What could he say? Oh, he said he didn’t want me to go, but he could tell I’d made my mind up.’

‘Did he offer you more money?’

‘It wouldn’t make any difference if he did. I’d be mad not to take this offer of shop work. It’s less money, but shop work is what I’ve always wanted. I hate working in filth.’

‘But I shan’t see you, Clover,’ Ned complained. ‘We’ll lose touch, specially now you’re courting him.’

‘Don’t be daft. You know where I live. You can always come and have a drink. I’ll always be glad to see you.’

‘If you could find time on the nights you don’t see him you could still come and help me with the Gull, if you wanted.’

Clover disliked the resentment Ned always manifested for Tom in the scornful tone he used when he said ‘him’. It was unjustified, but she let it pass. ‘If you still want me to, I will. Tom won’t mind, you know. He’s not an ogre.’

‘Would you tell him?’

‘’Course I’d tell him. He knows I helped you before. He admires what you’re doing. He says he’d like to take some more photographs when you go flying again.’

‘I don’t want him taking any more photos, Clover. The last ones he took he sold for five guineas. Julian Oakley, the reporter from the Herald told me. It’s as if he’s pinched all my work and he’s the only one to get paid for it. If anybody should be making money from photos of me and my Gull, it should be me. The money could go towards an engine.’

Clover was taken aback. ‘Is that why you resent Tom? Is that why you’re always so scornful when you mention him?’

‘Partly. I resent him most because he’s got you, though. You know how I feel about you – how I’ve always felt about you…But he suddenly pops up from nowhere and sweeps you off your feet.’

Clover sighed, feelings of guilt over Ned returning. ‘I can no more help how I feel than you can, Ned,’ she said gently. ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.’

Further conversation seemed superfluous after that. So they climbed St John’s Road in silence, past the vicarage and its vast garden, almost as big as the churchyard. The forge opposite the church was still working and the great thud of forging hammers shook the earth beneath their feet. Workmen with dirty faces and dirtier hands drifted into the Freebodies after their shifts for a drink before they went home, as they would be doing at the Jolly Collier.

‘Aren’t you going up Price Street?’ Clover asked, at last punctuating their wordless silence, for at this point they normally went their separate ways.

‘No, not today,’ Ned answered defiantly. ‘I’ll come and have a drink at the Jolly Collier. I can say hello to Ramona.’

Clover cast a concerned glance at him. ‘Won’t your mother wonder what’s happened to you if you’re late?’

‘I’m not a little boy, Clover.’

She glanced at him. No, he was not a little boy. He was a man, full-grown. Yet he was perilously immature in so many ways. He lacked the experience of requited love, had never known the joy, the pleasure, the richness it could bring…or the agonising heartache. He had not experienced the intense, uncontrollable emotions that prompted rational people to behave in totally irrational ways. Maybe he had not known desire either; he had never said.

Ned obviously knew jealousy. But jealousy was not the same as being in love; it was an unwelcome bed partner of love. Clover had experienced jealousy over Ramona when she believed she had taken Tom from under her very nose. It was a cruel state of mind, an injured lover’s hell. She wanted no more of it, so she sympathised the more with Ned.

But desire…?

Clover at last was beginning to understood how a timely kiss, exquisitely delivered, could stoke up enough desire to allow you to throw caution to the wind. Desire could turn your world upside down, could make you wanton. She desired Tom now. Ever since those delectable moments on Sunday afternoon when she had lain naked with him on his bearskin, she had been unable to concentrate on anything else. Ever since she’d felt that profound tenderness and exhilaration, which had fuelled the need to give herself utterly in the name of love, the reliving of it in her mind had consumed her. Yet it had been over all too soon. She longed for that absolute and total intimacy and gentleness to last and last. Although spiritually, she had been content, physically she was left still tingling, instinctively wanting more, requiring more. There must be more to it than what she had experienced that first time. But what she’d had was enough to whet her appetite for the next time they lay together on his bearskin – and that would have to be tonight. Whether it was his intention or not, it was hers. The thought made her pulse race.