Time and Time Again, page 19
Stanton didn’t even reply. He was too taken aback. He’d known that things might drift that way. A man and a woman getting a little tipsy together over lunch always might end up in bed together. It was the bluntness that took him aback. It would have been bold even in 2024.
‘To be frank,’ Bernadette went on quickly, ‘I’ve been thinking about it ever since you said that thing about women holding up half the sky. I have never in my whole life heard anyone say anything remotely so lovely or so true. Quite honestly, I think I’d want to sleep with any man who came up with it. Even if he wasn’t such a dish.’
Stanton had never before had cause to be grateful to the memory of Chairman Mao Tse Tung. But he was now.
26
TRUE TO HER word Bernadette sat apart from Stanton in the waiting room at Zagreb and found a different carriage to him on the Vienna train. Even when they both sat for supper in the dining car she merely raised a glass to him from across the carriage.
Stanton was impressed.
She was right really. It had been obvious from almost the first moment of their conversation that there was a strong mutual attraction and this had been reinforced over a very long lunch. There had been a palpable electricity between them, an excitement that might perhaps have been difficult to maintain over a further eleven hours of close proximity. It would probably have been all right, but then again it could easily not have been. By arranging things as she had, Bernadette had certainly ensured that there would be a new and highly charged frisson to their encounter when they met in Vienna. She was, as his old army mates would have put it, a classy chick.
Eventually, as night fell across Europe, he drifted off to sleep in his seat and didn’t wake up until the train was approaching Vienna.
When he got off the train he found that Bernadette, who had been in a more forward carriage, had already secured a porter and was waiting for him beyond the barrier.
‘Share a taxi?’ she said brightly. ‘You can shove your stuff on top of mine if you like. Although you’d probably better handle the emotional baggage yourself. Wouldn’t want anyone prying into that, would we?’
‘Thanks. I’ll hang on to my actual bags as well, in fact,’ Stanton replied. ‘Old habit.’
‘Suit yourself. Had you thought about where you’re staying?’
‘Well, I’d heard the Hotel Sacher was very good. It’s next to the Opera House, which sounds pretty grand, but when in Vienna, eh?’
‘How extraordinary! That’s where I’m staying myself.’
There wasn’t much of a queue for cabs and soon they were on their way through the deserted streets.
‘Not a soul about. Never is after dark,’ Bernadette remarked. ‘Lovely town in the day but dull as paint at night. The Viennese have to go to bed at ten, did you know? Or they get fined.’
‘Come on, really? Fined?’ Stanton replied. ‘Can’t quite believe that.’
‘Well, as good as. They all live in apartment blocks, you see, and they have to pay a fee to the doorman if they’re late so they all scurry home. Ridiculous, rushing their dinners for which they’ll have paid twenty krone in order to save a handful of heller on the night doorman. Stupid, isn’t it?’
‘You seem to know a bit about the place, Bernie.’
‘I spent a month here as companion to an aunt when I was eighteen. She loved her opera, which I don’t much, but I loved Vienna and I still do. I was also here three years ago for a conference on Women’s Health. It’s the most relaxed capital I’ve ever been in. They go to bed early and rise late, and when they do get up, most of them seem to just sit in coffee houses and talk about theatre. You’ve no idea how many different ways of making coffee they have, one for nearly every hour of the day. I think the fact that it’s such an old old capital and it used to be important but isn’t much any more has made it more relaxed. I mean, if you go to London or Berlin everybody’s so busy, what with us trying to stay ahead and the Germans trying to catch up. From what I’ve heard New York’s more frantic still. Even Paris tries to look important in a superior kind of way. But Vienna, well, it’s sort of given up, hasn’t it? They know they’ve got a motley sort of half-baked empire and an ancient emperor who’s more concerned with court etiquette than international politics. So they’ve stopped bothering, which gives the place a nice easy feel. Have you heard of Karl Kraus?’
Amazingly, he had. He’d studied the Austro-Hungarian Empire at university, under McCluskey in fact, and was aware of Vienna’s famous satirist.
‘Publishes a magazine, doesn’t he? The Torch?’
‘Well done. You really are the best informed soldier I’ve ever met. Anyway, he said, “In Berlin things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna they’re hopeless but not serious” – good one, don’t you think?’
Bernadette continued to chat slightly frantically, pointing out buildings and parks as the Daimler taxi cab roared through the beautiful town, until quite suddenly they arrived at the Hotel Sacher.
‘I suppose you think I’ve prattled on a bit,’ she said, as Stanton settled the fare.
‘Well, yes,’ he conceded, ‘but it’s been interesting.’
‘To tell you the truth, I’m a bit nervous. I expect you think I’m pretty fast but I don’t normally do this sort of thing at all.’
‘No, nor me.’
‘It was the wine that started it. And that Manhattan. Still. We’re in it now, eh?’
They went into the foyer of the hotel and approached reception.
‘Can you do it?’ Bernadette said. ‘I know I’ll go bright red.’
‘Of course … you’re sure you want to do this? I mean, just book one room?’
‘Yes. I’ve crept along the occasional corridor in my time and I don’t like it. You feel like a thief.’
‘OK.’
‘O-K?’
‘American expression. I meant, fine.’
‘Right. Well, off you go then.’
Stanton was surprised to discover as he approached reception that he felt quite nervous too, even a little embarrassed. It was a strange sensation. He was after all a mature man, a soldier. He had carried out clandestine operations in numerous countries and, even more impressively, in two separate dimensions of space and time. He was heavily armed, extremely wealthy and an impressive and commanding figure by any standards. James Bond himself would have been hard put to notch up any more cool points. So why was it that walking towards that reception desk he felt seventeen years old again?
Perhaps it was the man behind it. Tall, thin, grey-haired with a neat goatee beard. Like one of those old cartoons of Uncle Sam but without the benign twinkle. He looked like a schoolmaster who was about to tell Stanton off for having dirty pictures in his bag.
And it was a slightly sensitive situation, after all. Stanton knew enough about the period to be aware that no respectable hotel would allow an unmarried couple to share a room, and also that for foreign guests they would probably require some form of official identification on check-in. On the other hand, people must have had affairs in those days, as they have always done, and they must have had them somewhere.
‘Good evening,’ Stanton said loudly. ‘Do you speak English? If not, perhaps you’d be kind enough to find me someone who does.’
He’d decided not to admit that he spoke German. If they wanted to try and argue with him, he’d make it as difficult for them as possible.
‘I speak English, sir, of course,’ Uncle Sam replied. ‘Do you wish to secure a room?’
‘Yes, my wife and I are just off the Zagreb train. Would have wired ahead but nobody at the Zagreb station telegraph office spoke English, if you can credit it. We want your best room, a bottle of hock, make sure it’s good and chilled and something to eat. Cheese and cold cuts will be fine.’
‘Of course, sir. If I might just see your papers.’
‘Here’s mine but my wife’s are right at the bottom of her bag. I’m sure one will be sufficient …’ He laid his Foreign Office letter down on the reception desk with its GR lion and unicorn stamp uppermost, placing underneath it a ten-krone note for good measure. ‘Look here, somebody has left this money. You take it. Perhaps it won’t be claimed.’
The receptionist took the money and Stanton took the key.
As he and Bernadette were escorted to the lift by the bellboy she whispered, ‘I feel like I’m seventeen.’
‘I was just thinking the same thing,’ Stanton replied.
‘Did you really bribe him?’
‘Yes, and if that hadn’t worked I was going to shoot him.’
Their room had a balcony and while the porter set out their bags they went and stood on it and looked out over the city, just as Stanton had done in Istanbul. Except that this time he was no longer alone. There was a near full moon and the whole of the venerable town was washed with silver.
Bernadette leant her shoulder against his.
‘Is this the first time you’ve been alone with a woman,’ she said, ‘I mean, since …’ She didn’t finish her sentence.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact it is,’ Stanton admitted. ‘If you mean, as in alone alone. I did spend a lot of this year as the guest of my old professor at Cambridge but she was very large and old and we only talked about history.’
‘You had a female professor? At Cambridge? How did you manage that?’
‘His wife, I mean. An old professor’s wife. Took pity on me because … well, because I was on my own.’
Bernadette moved a little closer still.
‘Well, it’s very nice. For me, I mean – flattering. In a way. Or does that sound wrong?’
‘No, it sounds fine.’
There was a knock at the door and their supper arrived. The waiter wanted to make a fuss of laying out the table with crisp cloth and silver service, but Stanton stuck a tip in his pocket and ushered him out of the room.
‘Shall we have it on the balcony?’ he said picking up the tray. ‘It’s a warm night.’
They settled themselves in the chairs and Bernadette smoked a cheroot.
‘I took them up because my father said he couldn’t bear to see a woman smoke. Now I can’t do without them. Care for one?’
‘No. I gave them up.’
‘Goodness gracious. Why ever did you do that? I love it!’
‘You should give up too,’ he said. ‘They’re carcinogenic.’
‘What?’
‘They cause cancer, of the lungs.’
‘Oh, that’s all rot. My doctor says smoking actually wards off some infections. As does a nice glass of wine by the way.’
Stanton realized that he’d neglected to pour the wine and now found that in his eagerness to get rid of the waiter he hadn’t allowed him to draw the cork.
‘Be prepared’s my motto,’ he said, getting a multi-tool knife from his bag. ‘Once a boy scout always a boy scout, eh?’
‘Boy scout? What? Did you join when you were thirty? They only started six or seven years ago. My youngest brother was one of the first.’
‘I just meant … oh, I don’t know what I meant.’
‘Useful bit of kit,’ Bernadette remarked, eyeing his multi-tool.
‘Yes … Australian. Cheers.’
He handed her a glass and they drank their wine in silence for a moment.
‘Good hock,’ Stanton said.
‘Yes. I love German wine. Always sweeter than French.’
Stanton breathed in her smoke. It smelt delicious.
‘And you?’ he enquired. ‘Any adventures since Budapest? I rather got the impression that you had a … thing in Budapest.’
‘Yes, I did. I had a … a thing. And no. I haven’t had a “thing” since. But then it has only been three months.’
‘Did he break your heart?’
She looked thoughtful for a moment.
‘Well, shall we say I got my heart broken …’
‘Thought so.’
‘But …’
‘But?’
‘All right,’ she said, looking him in the eye. ‘How about this? She wasn’t a he.’
‘Oh … right. So it was a woman who broke your heart.’
‘Are you terribly shocked and disgusted?’
‘Christ no! I mean, no. Why would I be?’
‘Why would you be?’ Bernadette was very surprised. ‘Because that sort of thing is generally thought to be pretty shocking and disgusting, I should say.’
‘Do you want me to be shocked and disgusted?’
‘No. Certainly not.’
‘Well, good. Because I’m not.’
‘Really?’
Stanton wondered where to begin.
‘Look, I know that society currently entertains a lot of prejudice when it comes to gay sex but—’
‘Gay? What’s the fact that it was gay got to do with it, and anyway it wasn’t gay. It was desperate and strange and intense and … well, it certainly wasn’t gay. In fact, it was really quite miserable, but I suppose that’s what you get for developing a crush on an extremely serious Hungarian feminist.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean “gay” obviously. Wrong word entirely. Can’t think why I said it. I was just saying that obviously I understand that same-sex love is frowned on at the moment …’
‘Frowned on! At the moment!’
‘Well, you know. I’m sure attitudes will change.’
‘Really? I admire your optimism but I can’t imagine why you’d think that. For me it was a bit of a dalliance, a surprise really, like a holiday romance. But I know quite a few people who choose to live that life exclusively and I can assure you that society makes things very hard for them indeed.’
‘I’m sure it does,’ Stanton replied. ‘But personally I don’t believe a person chooses their sexual preferences at all. To me, it’s self-evident that they were born with them. And I feel very strongly that nobody should be discriminated against on the grounds of their sexuality.’
Bernadette leant across the table and took his hand.
‘Hugh, that’s … that’s a wonderful thing to say. An amazing thing to say. Where do you come up with this stuff? Nobody should be discriminated against on the grounds of their sexuality. Hang on while I write it down.’
She went back into the room.
It seemed to take her rather a long time to write down a single sentence and when she returned she was in her underwear.
‘Am I being awful?’ she asked. ‘It’s just that you’re so interesting I thought if we weren’t careful we might end up sitting out here talking all night and never … well, never go inside.’
Even in the moonlight he could see that once more she was blushing deeply but the funny thing was Stanton couldn’t actually see any more of her now than he had done before. Her underwear covered pretty much the same parts of her as had her ankle-length hobble skirt, apart from a slightly lower neckline and her bare arms. She was wearing a long white slip, gathered slightly at the waist and tapering in again towards the ankle. Curiously, despite the modesty of the garment Stanton found it incredibly erotic. Perhaps it was the moonlight on her bare white arms. When it came to the sensual power of glimpses of flesh, less could certainly be more. Something the lingerie designers of his century had long since forgotten.
He got up, took her hand and they went back inside the room together and turned out the lamps. Then with the moonlight streaming through the open balcony doors, he stepped towards her and lifted off her slip. The intensity of the moment was quite overpowering. Not only was it the first time he had been with anyone but Cassie in almost ten years but this woman was from another time.
1914. In the Vienna moonlight.
He stepped back from her while removing the stud from his starched collar.
She was completely naked save for her silk stockings which were secured above the knee not with suspenders but with garters.
That, however, was not what caught his attention. Nor was it her delightful bosom, larger than he expected but firm. Or the curve of her waist. Or the slight bulge of her belly. Deeply stirring though all those things were.
It was the pubic hair. There was just more of it than he’d expected. Sandy pale, full and curly. Even spreading a little beyond what would one day be known as the bikini line. He should have been expecting it. He knew about female pubic hair but he had never encountered it in its natural state. Cassie had waxed. All the girls he’d ever been with had either waxed or shaved, not necessarily the full Brazilian but certainly a major trim. He recalled the famous story of the poet Ruskin who it was said could not consummate his marriage because he was so shocked and disgusted by his wife’s pubic hair.
Stanton wasn’t shocked, he just wasn’t used to it, that was all.
In fact, he thought it looked lovely.
‘Well, are you going to take your shirt off or not?’ Bernadette enquired. ‘I’m beginning to feel a bit silly standing here.’
‘Sorry … yes,’ he said, beginning quickly to undress.
They collapsed together on the bed and began to make love.
For a few moments Stanton was consumed with a hungry passion as he gnawed and pawed at Bernadette’s squirming body. It had been well over a year since he’d had sex and this sudden cessation of the drought had brought every nerve in his being to a state of urgent arousal. She too had abandoned herself to primal instinct and wriggled and writhed against him in his embrace, plunging a hand down to grasp away at him.
‘Goodness,’ she gasped. ‘I have missed these.’
She was very different to Cassie, who had been more passive, happier to go with the flow. Like any couple who shared a bed exclusively with each other they’d fallen into habits together. Happily enough, but nonetheless he found the thrill of a new and unexplored body and a proactively different approach fiercely erotic.
And that nearly ruined the whole thing.
Thinking about Cassie.
Comparing Bernadette to her.
His wife. The undisputed love of his life and mother of his children. A surge of guilt swept over him. Almost as if Cassie were in the room and had caught him at it.
