All Passion Spent - Bergotte (great books to read TXT) 📗

/> “Do you like it, the tea?”
“Yes, it’s very good, very warming. And sitting by the fire is so peaceful as well.”
“I’ll put on some soothing music… you look as if you have been through it a bit.”
“I have,” returned Jill. Jack rose from his chair and selected a CD from one of shelves. When the music started Jill did not recognise it, but she liked it. Miles Davis in a mellow mood made an instant impression; not like that boring classical stuff that Michael insisted on playing, Mahler and Bruckner, that went on and on with no recognisable tune. Jack and Jill sat without saying a word for fifteen minutes, listening in rapt attention, but she could see that he could not take his eyes off her. She suddenly pulled off her top and held it in front of the fire. “This is still a bit wet,” she lied. “Do you know this music?” asked Jack. “I recognised Summertime, just then, but I’ve never heard it like that, on a trumpet.”

He got up and took off his dressing gown, draping it over the back of his armchair. He sat down again his elbows on his knees, cradling his chin in his hands. She removed her other clothes and sat once again mimicking his stance. They sat staring at each other. Now it turned into a game, trying to stare each other out. Jill won. Perhaps Jack let her win, she didn’t know. She felt relaxed. She was enjoying herself. She stood up and moved towards him. Putting her hands behind her head, bending one knee ever so slightly and pushing out her chest, she struck what she knew perfectly well was a thoroughly lascivious pose. “Do you like what you see?” she purred. “Yes I do.”

She sat on his knee and slowly unfastened his pyjama top. Jack began to wonder where all this was leading. Jill began to think of reasons that would justify her committing adultery. Firstly, I am lonely and in desperate need of physical comfort. Secondly, I am finding comfort in this physical embrace, as I wrap my arms around this man. I am not used to drinking spirits, I’m feeling all woozy, but I now have the courage to do this. I’m relaxed and free. It’s all over with Michael. This man Jack is not impetuous; already we like each other.

“What work do you do?” she suddenly asked him.
“I don’t. I’m retired.”
“What work did you do?”
“I was a teacher, an English teacher.”
“Here, in Bath?”
“No, in a grammar school near Canterbury.”
“You’re not that old,” she said in a matter of fact voice, stroking his hair, “so, why did you leave and retire?”
“I’m fifty-two. I was under a lot of stress. My parents had both died and I inherited a large sum of money. This is their house. I live here quite cheaply.”
“Where did you study?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m interested, that’s all.”
“Cambridge… and you, what work do you do?”
“I’m a nurse at the R.U.H.”
“So you’re used to seeing naked men, or rather you’re used to seeing men naked?”
“There’s a difference?”
“A subtle one, yes.”
“Well, I’m used to seeing naked men and men naked,” replied Jill, robustly.
“I can’t believe that one so young as you should have any interest in a senex amans like me.”
“What’s that?”
“An ancient lover. I feel like the man January in Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale.”
“I’ve never heard of it. Tell me about it.”
“The bachelor life is one of pain and woe.”
“Why?”
“Because casual sex leads to instability but the bachelor is constantly seeking security.”
“Do you believe that?”
“At this precise moment, with a young, beautiful, naked maiden on my knee… of course I don’t.” They both laughed. Jill slipped off his knee and lay on the rug in front of the fire.

As she lay there, still and naked, she was alone with her thoughts. The one abiding impression that she had was that this is a safe place. Here, there was now no pressure on her to perform, no targets to meet, no criteria to satisfy. For once she could relax, remove her mask and be herself. For the last few months she had survived as a relatively inexperienced nurse in a hostile hospital environment, enduring a punishing regime, having to care for the sick. As she gazed up at this man for a moment and then closed her eyes, lurid images flooded her mind. They were images of the infirm that she had ministered to over the preceding weeks. They included images of the weak, of patients suffering intolerable pain, images of many men and women, mature in years that she had tended on the wards, seeing to their needs, understanding their wants, acknowledging their dependency and frailty.

Jack’s talk of Chaucer had reawakened in her the desire for a different kind of life. She wanted Jack to treat her like a queen or a princess, pampering her, paying her compliments and homage like a knight of old, in shining armour. Jack was to her a Don Quixote, living a life of old fashioned values in new-fashioned world, return her to a bygone age of chivalry. She felt the warmth from the fire cover her nakedness. She felt the flames from the burning logs lick her flesh. This intoxication of feeling was hers alone, a feeling burned into her brain by the branding iron of her own imagination. Jack too, she knew would see the flames flickering and the shadows dancing and she wanted him to see. She was dreaming the impossible dream. She was dreaming all this without the man in the armchair making any physical contact with her whatsoever. She wanted physical contact. She wanted to submit herself in slavery for this brief time.

She lies as a wounded soldier on the battlefield. She has no fight left in her. She passively waves the white flag of surrender to this stranger at her feet. She hopes that he will come to her aid, wipe away her tears and raise her to her feet. In doing so she will be ready to fight another day in her battle of life. She will not know defeat. He could take her on a journey of discovery, where she will find herself as a driver takes his train along the railway tracks, speeding through tunnels and cuttings, across distant plains. She is an aeroplane that responds to his pilot’s joystick as she flies across the sky, leaving a vapour trail of experience.

As Jack looked at her he saw her as the archetypal woman of a thousand songs and broadside ballads, who had brought fun and delight to a million people over centuries of time. Jack saw Jill stretched out before him as a man who surveys a landscape, cultivates a furze (gorse) field or mows a meadow. The girl that lay there, beguiling him with her beauty, her innocence, her charm, was a personified literary metaphor for the most basic of human needs. She was ready for ploughing, a fruit ripe for plucking, calling to him to sow the seeds of love. To him she was virgin territory to be explored and tamed in his frontier philosophy of amorous conquest. He was an angler in her fishpond a sportsman who had brought his gun to shoot bullets fair. He was a coachman and a horseman who would skilfully ride his mare.

He leads her upstairs into his bachelor bedroom that never sees a woman’s influence or touch. They slide beneath the duvet cover where he holds her in his arms and knows once more what it is like to be close to another human being. Her skin is soft beneath his fingers. He strokes her neck and caresses her breasts. She wants him and pushes towards him and the rhythm of horse riding becomes the rhythm of lovemaking as they lie in each other’s arms. Before she sleeps she has one final conscious image in her mind’s eye. She has become a well-oiled lock and he is her key turning gently in that lock. As the key turns so she dreams and as she dreams she sleeps and so does he and dreams…


CHAPTER TWENTYONE

Monday, Oct 30: morning

At 9.30 Chief Inspector Peter Gerrard was sitting at the large desk in his office contemplating the progress he and his sergeant had made in the Fellingham case. He had in front of him all the notes, reports and general information. It made quite a pile of material, but nothing in his view that he could use to bring charges against anyone. He sat back in his chair, put his hands behind his head and sighed deeply. Anna Rossi knocked and entered.

“Did you have a good weekend?” asked Gerrard, trying to be positive and avoiding the temptation to wink at her.
“Yes, thank you,” replied Anna
“Did you do anything interesting?”
“Not really, did you?”
“Well, yes in a way,” replied Gerrard, “I went to Laura Place and stood on the pavement to see if the traffic ever stopped flowing on that road on a Saturday evening. And it does. I had to wait about twenty minutes. I arrived at 7.40 p.m. and there was a constant stream of traffic, but shortly after 8.00 p.m. it died away and there was nothing. Not only that, there were no pedestrians either, the road was completely deserted for three or four minutes. I timed it on my watch. I calculated that it was clear for three minutes fifty seconds. So, it does happen on that road. Therefore, apart from Mrs Phelps, it could well be that no one witnessed Mrs Fellingham’s accident…”
“…Or Tommy moving her into the gardens,” rejoined Anna.
“So it would seem,” replied Gerrard.

“We must focus our attention on the Fellingham family because neither Philip nor Tommy have motives for murder. I’m becoming more and more convinced that this is a family affair. I came in to the office on Saturday, after you left my house. I looked through the text messages on Laura Fellingham’s mobile. I wrote down the interesting ones. Have a look at them.” He handed over a sheet of paper. While she was reading he said, “Let’s visit Laura Fellingham’s relatives again, today, starting with Isabella and Paul.” “It’s the funeral today,” said Anna. “Is it? I think you should go, Anna, and as unobtrusively as possible, observe the family. See how grief stricken they are.” “Right, sir. The service is at the parish church in Claverton… I forget the name, this morning at 11.45, if I remember correctly. I’ll go home and change into some appropriate clothes and go up to Claverton.”

At 10.00 in their house on Wellsway, Isabella and Paul were getting ready to attend the funeral. “Let’s forget our differences, at least for today and call a truce,” suggested Isabella. “That’s fine,” replied Paul, who had tired of continuous squabbling, “and may I say that you’ve handled all the arrangements brilliantly, so thank you.” “I’m glad you appreciate my efforts,” replied Bella, without any trace of rancour.

A funeral car drew up outside Laura Fellingham’s house and parked in front of the hearse. Rita and Bella got into the back seat of the funeral car whilst Michael sat beside Paul in his brother’s car which set off for the church in Claverton. Slowly the funeral cortège started the long journey. When it arrived at about a hundred yards from the church, one of the funeral directors got out of the hearse, donned a black hat and walked in front of the car. Anna Rossi watched as the family assembled in front of the church.