The Millstone. Margaret Drabble

not precisely, that I should go and sit by him on the settee. So I did, and he took my hand and held it, and then started to kiss my fingers, one by one. After a while I remembered what was at the back of my mind, and I said, ‘My mother, you know, was a great feminist. She brought me up to be equal. She made there be no questions, no difference. I was equal. I am equal. You know what her creed was? That thing that Queen Elizabeth said about thanking God that she had such qualities that if she were turned out in her petticoat in any part of Christendom, she would whatever it was that she would do. She used to quote that to us, when we were frightened about exams or going to dances. I have to live up to her, you know.’

      And I in my turn raised his hand to my lips: it was so beautiful and cool and thin a hand, and I kissed it with some sadness. At the touch of my mouth, he took me in his arms and kissed me all over the face, and eventually we subsided gently together and lay there quietly. Knowing that he was queer, I was not frightened of him at all, because I thought that he would expect no more from me, and I was so moved and touched and pleased by the thought that he might like me, by the thought that he found me of interest. I was so happy for that hour that we lay there because truly I seemed to see him through the eyes of love, so irrationally valuable did he seem. I look back now with some anguish to each touch and glance, to every changing conjunction of limbs and heads and hands. I have lived it over every day for so long now that I am in danger of forgetting the true shape of how it was, because each time I go over it I wish that I had given a little more here or there, or at the very least said what was in my heart, so that he could have known how much it meant to me. But I was incapable, even when happy, of exposing myself thus far.

      After a while the radio closed down on us, and we were left there in silence, except for the hum of the machine. I started to pull myself upright and said, ‘I must go and switch that thing off, I can’t stand that noise,’ but he held on to me and said, ‘No, don’t go.’ I pulled away and said that I must, and before I knew where I was I found myself thinking that I couldn’t stop him if he really wanted to, because I liked him so much, and if I stopped him he would believe that I didn’t: also that if ever, now: also that it would be good for me. So I shut my eyes, very tight, and waited. It was quite simple, as it was summer and I was wearing very few clothes, and he seemed to know quite well what he was doing: but then of course so did I seem to know, and I didn’t. However, I managed to smile bravely, in order not to give offence, despite considerable pain, and I hoped that the true state of affairs would not become obvious. I remember that he stroked my hair, just before, and said in his oh so wonderfully polite and chivalrous way,

      ‘Is this all right? Are you all right, will this be all right?’

      I knew what he meant and, eyes shut, I smiled and nodded, and then that was it and it was over. Which proves that deception is indeed a tangled web. And I had no one but myself to blame. But it was something that when I opened my eyes again, there was only George: I clutched his head to my bosom and I cried,

      ‘Oh George, tell me about you, tell me about you,’ but now it was his turn to shut his eyes and, moaning softly, he buried his face against me while I stroked his hair and the thin brown hollow of his cheek. After a while he did say something which, though hardly distinguishable, I took to be ‘Oh God, how pointless this is’. I was a little perturbed by this statement, though not so much then as later, and after a couple more minutes I got up, switched off the radio, and went off to the bathroom, leaving him enough time to straighten himself up or even, if he so wished, to disappear. I returned, some time later, in my dressing-gown, and found him still there, sitting where I had left him, but now upright and with his eyes open.

      ‘Hello,’ I said, stopping in the doorway and smiling brightly, willing to show anything rather than the perplexing mass of uncertainties which possessed me.

      ‘Hello, George, what about a drink?’

      ‘I wouldn’t mind a drink,’ said George, so off I went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of whisky, or what was left of it, and we both had a large drink. I sat on the floor with my back against his knees, which gave me a sense of touch without contact that I found extremely comforting. He rested one hand heavily on my head, which was comforting too. I drank the drink quickly, and felt a little better. After all, I said to myself, people don’t do that to other people just because they think they ought to. Just through sheer politeness because they think they’ve been invited in to do it. People don’t work like that, I said to myself. He must have wanted it a bit, I told myself, or he wouldn’t have bothered. However kind he appears to be, he can’t be as kind as all that. He must be one of these bisexual people, I thought, or perhaps even he’s no more queer than I am promiscuous, or whatever the word is for what I pretend to be. Perhaps we appeal to each other because we’re rivals in hypocrisy.

      After some time, George said,

      ‘Rosamund, I ought to be going.’

      ‘Ought you?’ I said.

      ‘I think so.’

      Thinking that he probably wanted to go, I did not quite know whether I ought to suggest that he might stay, for once I had suggested it, kindness and chivalry might have kept him against his will. So I said nothing, but sat there for a moment more, feeling the weight of his hand upon my head, hot and warm and enclosing, like being all of me held in it, and feeling that there was no way to stay there in this momentary illusory safety. Then I stood up and said that it was late, I hoped it was not too late, and that I hoped he would get back where he was going. And even then, even at that moment, I did not have the courage to ask him where he lived, or to ask him what his phone number was, for it would have seemed an intrusion, an assumption that I had a right to know, that a future existed where it would be of use to know. I see, oh yes I see that my diffidence, my desire not to offend looks like enough to coldness, looks like enough to indifference, and perhaps I mean it to, but this is not what it feels like in my head. But I cannot get out and say, Where do you live, give me your number, ring me, can I ring you? In case I am not wanted. In case I am tedious. So I let him go, without a word about any other meeting, though he was the one thing I wanted to keep: I wanted him in my bed all night, asleep on my pillow, and I might have had him, but I said nothing. And he said nothing. He could have done. He could have said, when can I see you again? But he didn’t. It may be that I manifested enough strangeness and indifference to prevent him. It may be that he did not wish to, which, being the most unpleasant conclusion, was the one that I most readily believed. Or it may have been that, like me, he did not wish to make assumptions.

      When he had gone, I went to bed and lay there for some time thinking over what we had said and done. I could not get to sleep. For the first hour I was more happy than not, but as the night wore on and I came no nearer to sleep my mind became wracked by suspicion and by doubt. It was not that I felt guilt or regret for the one irreversible thing that had happened: about that I continued to feel nothing but relief. But such things do not happen in the abstract, and the circumstances worried me. I went back over every word George had said, and the more I looked back, the clearer it seemed that he had expressed no liking or affection for me at all. He had said I interested him, but he had said that only as a ploy, as a gambit. And anyway, what ground was interest on which to enact the event that had taken place? As I tossed and turned and tried to find a cool place for my cheek on the pillow, it became increasingly clear to me that he had made no overture at all: that I myself had made the decisive move, in going to sit next to him on the settee after switching on the radio, and that what I had taken to be a look inviting me to do just that had probably been nothing of the sort. I had offered myself, and thinking what he did of me he had accepted, through kindliness or curiosity or embarrassment; not in any case through anything like the tender emotions that had prompted me. The more I thought of it, the more hopeless it seemed: had he liked me, he would surely have made some suggestion that he might see me again?

      I ended up by convincing myself, almost, that the worst must be true: yet at the same time I knew it was not true, I knew that he would ring me, and that he had liked me, and that he would be happy to go on liking me. But I had to prepare for the worst. I did not wish to be deceived, I did not wish to be taken by surprise.

      George did not ring. After a week I knew that he was not going to, and I abandoned the idea. I could have seen him, easily enough,