She was blushing and her face had become suddenly more tentative. She had very full round breasts with huge brown mandalas. The unclothed body wears a very different head from the clothed body. The blush extended down her neck and faded into the deep V of mottled sunburn which stained the flesh between her breasts. Her body had an air of unexhibited chasteness. I knew that this was a most unwonted gesture. And indeed it was a long time since I had seen a woman's breasts. I looked but did not move.
«Rachel,» I said, «I am very touched and moved, but I really think this is most unwise.»
«Oh stop it.» She suddenly clasped my neck and rolled me back on the bed. There was a pushing and a scrambling and in a moment she was entirely naked beside me. Her body was hot. She was panting and her lips were against my cheek. She said, «Oh God.»
«Bradley, undress.»
«Rachel,» I said, «I am, as I say, moved. I am very grateful. But I cannot make love to you. I don't mean I don't want to, I cannot. The machinery will not work.»
«Do you always-have-difficulties?»
» 'Always' has no force here. I haven't been with a woman for many years. This privilege is unwonted and unexpected. And I cannot rise to it.»
«Undress. I just want to hold you.»
I felt appallingly cool, still seeing myself. I took off my shoes and socks, my trousers, pants and tie. Some sort of self-protective instinct made me retain my shirt, but I let Rachel with hot trembling fingers undo the buttons. As I lay in her arms quite still and physically chilled, and her hands moved timidly about me, I saw above the haze of her hair through a gap in the curtains the leaves of a tree moving about in the breeze, and I felt that I was in hell.
«You're icy cold, Bradley. You look as if you're going to cry. Don't worry, my darling, it doesn't matter.»
«It does matter.»
«It'll be better next time.»
There won't be a next time, I thought. And then I felt so overpoweringly sorry for Rachel that I really put my arms around her and drew her up against me. She gave an excited little sigh.
Then. «Rachel! Hey, where are you?» Arnold's voice below.
Like spirits of the damned pricked by the devil's fork we bounded up. I began scrabbling for my clothes which had got into a tangle on the floor. They appeared to be plaited into each other. Rachel had pulled on her blouse and skirt with no underclothes. She leaned on me as my hands still plucked vainly at inside-out trousers and her breath tickled my ear. «I'll take him down the garden.» Then she was gone, closing the door behind her. I heard voices below.
I glided out and down the stairs and opened the front door. I pulled it to very softly after me but it would not close. I pulled it harder and it banged. I ran down the path and slipped upon some moss and came down with a crash. I staggered up and began to run away down the road.
At the end of the next road I was slowing down to a quick walk when, just as I rounded the corner, I cannoned straight into somebody. It was a girl dressed in a very short striped garment, she had bare legs and bare feet, she was Julian.
«So sorry. Oh Bradley, how super. You've been visiting the parents. What a shame I missed you. Are you going to the station? May I walk along with you?» She turned and we walked on together.
«I thought you were at a pop festival,» I said, breathless, frantic with emotion, but concealing it.
«I couldn't get on the train. At least I could have done if I didn't mind being squashed, but I do, I'm a bit of a claustrophobe.»
«So am I. Pop festivals are no places for us claustrophobes.» I was speaking calmly, but now I was thinking: She will tell Arnold that she met me.
«I suppose not. I've never been to one. Now you're going to lecture me about drugs, aren't you?»
«No. Do you want a lecture?»
«I wouldn't mind one from you. But I'd rather it was on Hamlet. Bradley, do you think Gertrude was in league with Claudius to kill the king?»
«No.»
«Do you think she was having an affair with Claudius before her husband died?»
«No.»
«Why not?»
«Too conventional,» I said. «Not enough courage. It would have needed tremendous courage.»
«Claudius could have persuaded her, he was very powerful.»
«So was her husband.»
«We only see him through Hamlet's eyes.»
«No. The ghost was a real ghost.»
«How do you know?»
«I just know.»
«Then the king must have been an awful bore.»
«That's another point.»
«I think some women have a nervous urge to commit adultery, especially when they reach a certain age.»
«Possibly.»
«Do you think the king and Claudius ever liked each other?»
«There's a theory that they were in love. Gertrude killed her husband because he was having a love affair with Claudius. Hamlet knew of course. No wonder he was neurotic. There are lots of veiled references to buggery. 'A mildewed ear blasting his wholesome brother.' Ear is phallic and wholesome is a pun-«I say! Where can I read about it?»
«I'm teasing you. They haven't thought of that yet, even in Oxford.»
I was walking fast and Julian had to give a little run every now and then to keep up. She kept turning towards me as she did so, performing a sort of dance beside me. I looked down at her bare brown very dirty feet executing these hops, skips and jumps.
We had nearly reached the place where I had seen her in the twilight tearing up the love letters, when I had at first taken her for a boy. I said, «How is Mr. Belling?»
«Please, Bradley-«Sorry.»
«No, you know you can say anything you like to me. All that's over and done, thank God.»
«Your balloon didn't come sailing back to you? You didn't wake up one morning and find it tied to your window?»
«No!»
At that moment Julian stopped outside the same shoe shop where I had parted from her on the previous occasion. «Oh I do adore those boots, the purple ones, I do wish they weren't so expensive!»