Unexploded Read Online Free PDF

sleepily, instinctively. Nothing, no memory of yesterday, intruded. He turned, briefly, groping for the bedside drawer – the ringing jingle of the old brass handle, the sweet, sudden scent of mahogany, his fingers grappling, then the brown paper bag and the square of waxed paper and cellophane. He concentrated on the wrapper, making a small tear with his teeth and lifting the thing free. He blew into it twice, to check it was sound, cautious as always.
    ‘What time is it?’ Her voice was thin, anxious. She ’d remembered.
    He moved to her, hauling her gently on to his chest. She was still light-boned, small, almost breastless, and the heat of her thighs on his made him strain towards her.
    ‘No rubber,’ she said through the murky darkness.
    ‘Yes, it’s there. I’ve got it on already.’
    ‘Not today.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Leave it off.’
    He reached out an arm and found the switch, but as his hand came away, he knocked the small white marble base; light flooded their bed, their faces, their eyes, and the heavy gold fringe of the shade trembled.
    ‘No more,’ she said.
    He rolled her on to her side, then leaned towards her on one elbow. ‘No more what?’
    ‘Rubbers.’
    ‘I don’t under –’
    ‘Just no more.’
    He could feel the latex wrinkling around him. He heaved himself over her, supporting his weight on his splayed hands. He closed his eyes, and rocked against her, trying to revive himself, to move past the moment. He bent low and kissed the line of her collarbone, then her shoulder, already brown with the heat of spring. He was still conscious of his infected mouth; he must keep it away from her lips. When he opened his eyes, she was staring at him, coldly, her eyes straining.
    ‘Evvie?’
    ‘I won’t have it.’
    ‘What won’t you have?’
    She looked at him, embarrassed, angry. ‘ Precautions .’
    Yesterday. It was still yesterday. The shock of his news. She squeezed her thumb and index finger to the corner of her eyes to stem the tears. The dirt under her nails distracted him briefly. How had she got dirt under her nails? She’d bathed before bed.
    He didn’t expect her to reach down and slide the rubber off him. He didn’t expect her to guide him into her. He felt both strangely relieved – she wanted him, she wanted him after all – and disturbed, by her insistence, by the anger still sharp in her face, by the tears standing in her startled eyes. He tried not to think. He’d withdraw on time.
    Through the shutters and the window open behind, he could hear the sounds of the new day on the Crescent and beyond: the treble of a blackbird; the heavy hoof of the pig-man’s horse in Union Road; his clamorous tipping-out of the swill-bin; Mrs Dalrymple meowing to her tortoise on her front step. The waves of pleasure and tension rose and dipped. He raised her hip in his hand and pressed her to him. A moment more, he thought, he’d allow himself just a moment more – when he withered inside her.

4
    Evelyn Lawrence met Geoffrey Beaumont at the Royal Pavilion Midsummer Ball of 1926. She had turned eighteen that year and had spotted her gown in the arcade of glass display cases at Plummer’s Department Store: a simple sleeveless design in white chiffon with a drop-waist sash and an organza flower at the hip. Her mother had studied the gown through the glass display as if she were viewing a breed of monkey at the London Zoo. The handkerchief hemline was questionable; the fabric flimsy. Did Evelyn want to be showy?
    Her cousin James was on his hols from Cambridge where he was reading Medicine, and had gladly agreed to escort her. But after his third glass of Veuve Clicquot, as they strolled between dances in the Pavilion Gardens, he’d confessed to her that he’d persuaded a beautiful girl to join him for a cigarette and a discussion of whether art was possible after a world war, or – he grinned at Evelyn – was everything doomed to idle expressionism?
    Evelyn glanced back.