LITMIR.BIZ

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of September and, though till then we had ignored the fact, a new chapter had to be opened. Susan was coming back to the flat on Monday, I had the chance of a job, and Derek was going up to Oxford. We pretended it would all be the same. I would explain to Susan and there would be weekends when I could go to Oxford or Derek come up to London. We didn’t discuss our affair. It was obvious that it would go on. Derek had talked vaguely of my meeting his parents, but he had never pressed it and on our Saturdays together there were always so many better things to do. Perhaps I thought it rather odd that Derek seemed to have no time for me during the week, but he played a lot of cricket and tennis and had hosts of friends all of whom he said were a bore. I didn’t want to get mixed up in this side of his life, at any rate not for the present. I was happy to have him absolutely to myself for our one day a week. I didn’t want to share him with a crowd of other people who would anyway make me shy. So things were left very much in the air, and I just didn’t look beyond the next Saturday.

      That day Derek was particularly affectionate and in the evening he took me to the Bridge Hotel and we had three rounds of gins and tonics, though usually we hardly drank at all. And then he insisted on champagne for dinner and by the time we got to our little cinema we were both rather tight. I was glad, because it would make me forget that tomorrow would mean the turning of a new page and the breaking up of all our darling routines. But when we got into our little box, Derek was morose. He didn’t take me in his arms as usual but sat a little away from me and smoked and watched the film. I came close to him and took his hand, but he just sat and looked straight in front of him. I asked him what was the matter. After a moment he said obstinately, ‘I want to sleep with you. Properly, I mean.’

      I was shocked. It was his rough tone of voice. We had talked about it of course, but it was always agreed, more or less, that this would come ‘later’. Now I used the same old arguments, but I was nervous and upset. Why did he have to spoil our last evening? He argued back, fiercely. I was being a hard-boiled virgin. It was bad for him. Anyway, we were lovers, so why not behave like lovers? I said I was frightened of getting a baby. He said that was easy. There were things he could wear. But why now? I argued. We couldn’t do it here. Oh yes we could. There was plenty of room. And he wanted to do it before he went up to Oxford. It would sort of, sort of marry us.

      Tremulously I considered this. Perhaps there was something in it. It would be a kind of seal on our love. But I was frightened. Hesitantly I said had he got one of these ‘things’? He said no, but there was an all-night chemist and he would go and buy one. And he kissed me and got up eagerly and walked out of the box.

      I sat and stared dully at the screen. Now I couldn’t refuse him! He would come back and it would be messy and horrible in this filthy little box in this filthy little back-street cinema and it was going to hurt and he would despise me afterwards for giving in. I had an instinct to get up and run out and down to the station and take the next train back to London. But that would make him furious. It would hurt his vanity. I wouldn’t be being ‘a sport’, and the rhythm of our friendship, so much based on us both ‘having fun’, would be wrecked. And, after all, was it fair on him to hold this back from him? Perhaps it really was bad for him not to be able to do it properly. And, after all, it had to happen sometime. One couldn’t choose the perfect moment for that particular thing. No girl ever seemed to enjoy the first time. Perhaps it would be better to get it over with. Anything not to make him angry! Anything better than the danger of wrecking our love!

      The door opened and there was a brief shaft of light from the lobby. Then he was beside me, breathless and excited. ‘I’ve got it,’ he whispered. ‘It was terribly embarrassing. There was a girl behind the counter. I didn’t know what to call it. I finally said, “One of those things for not having babies. You know.” She was cool as a cucumber. She asked me what quality. I said the best of course. I almost thought she was going to ask “What size?” ’ He laughed and held me tight. I giggled feebly back. Better to ‘be a sport’! Better not to make a drama out of it! Nowadays nobody did. It would make it all so embarrassing, particularly for him.

      His preliminary love-making was so perfunctory it almost made me cry. Then he pushed his chair to the back of the box and took off his coat and laid it down on the wooden floor. When he told me to, I lay down on it and he knelt beside me. He said to put my feet up against the front of the box and I did, and I was so cramped and uncomfortable that I said, ‘No, Derek! Please! Not here!’ But then he was somehow on top of me in a dreadful clumsy embrace and all my instinct was somehow to help him so that at least he would have pleasure from it and not be angry with me afterwards.

      And then the world fell in!

      There was suddenly a great gush of yellow light and a furious voice said from above and behind me, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing in my cinema? Get up, you filthy little swine.’

      I don’t know why I didn’t faint. Derek was standing, his face white as a sheet. I scrambled to my feet, banging against the wall of the box. I stood there, waiting to be killed, waiting to be shot dead.

      The black silhouette in the doorway pointed at my bag on the floor with the white scrap of my pants beside it. ‘Pick those up.’ I bent down quickly as if I had been hit and clutched the pants into a ball in my hand to try and hide them. ‘Now get out!’ He stood there half blocking the entrance, while we shambled past him, broken people.

      The manager banged the door of the box shut and got in front of us, thinking, I suppose, that we might make a run for it. Two or three people had seeped out of the back seats into the foyer. (The whole audience must have heard the manager’s voice. Had the seats below us heard the whole thing, the argument, the pause, then Derek’s instructions what to do? I shuddered.) The ticket woman had come out of her box and one or two passersby, who had been examining the programme, gazed in from under the cheap coloured lights over the entrance.

      The manager was a plump, dark man with a tight suit and a flower in his buttonhole. His face was red with rage as he looked us up and down. ‘Filthy little brats!’ He turned on me. ‘And I’ve seen you here before. You’re nothing better than a common prostitute. I’ve a damned good mind to call the police. Indecent exposure. Disturbing the peace.’ He ran the heavy words easily off his tongue. He must have used them often before in his sleazy little house of private darkness. ‘Names, please.’ He took a notebook out of his pocket and licked a stub of pencil. He was looking at Derek. Derek stammered, ‘Er, James Grant’ (the film had starred Cary Grant). ‘Er, 24 Acacia Road, Nettlebed.’ The manager looked up, ‘There aren’t any roads in Nettlebed. Only the Henley-Oxford road.’ Derek said obstinately, ‘Yes, there are. At the back,’ he added weakly. ‘Sort of lanes.’ ‘And you?’ he turned towards me, suspiciously. My mouth was dry. I swallowed. ‘Miss Thompson, Audrey Thompson. 24’ (I realized it was the same number that Derek had chosen, but I couldn’t think of another) ‘Thomas’ (I almost said Thompson again!) ‘Road. London.’ ‘District?’ I didn’t know what he meant. I gaped hopelessly at him. ‘Postal district,’ he said impatiently. I remembered Chelsea. ‘SW6,’ I said weakly. The manager snapped his book shut. ‘All right. Get out of here both of you.’ He pointed out into the street. We edged nervously past him and he followed us, still pointing. ‘And don’t ever come back to my establishment again! I know you both! You ever show up again, I’ll have the police on you!’

      The small host of sneering, accusing eyes followed us. I took Derek’s arm (why didn’t he take mine?) and we went out under the hideous bright lights and turned by instinct to the right and down the hill so that we could walk faster. We didn’t stop until we got to a side street and we went in there and slowly started to work our way back to where the MG was parked up the hill from the cinema.

      Derek didn’t say a word until we were getting close to the car. Then he said, matter-of-factly, ‘Mustn’t let them get the number. I’ll go and get her, and pick you up opposite Fullers on Windsor Hill. ‘Bout ten minutes.’ Then he freed himself from my arm and went off up the street.

      I stood and watched him go, the tall, elegant figure that was once more proud and upright, and then I turned and went back to where a lane led up parallel with Farquhar Street towards the Castle.

      I found that I still had my pants

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