The Hive Read online

‘Well, I’m not goin’ to say I’m any angel, Mary love, I’m no angel. Man o’ the world, that’s me—and I’m thinkin’ you’re a woman of the world. My type, you are. Pretty lass, lots of fun—and no silly ideas about—well, what the parsons are always on about——’

  ‘Parsons?’

  ‘Eh, you know. Stop you ’avin’ a bit o’ fun because they don’t know the good of it themselves, eh? That’s not your idea o’ livin’ I’ll be bound——’

  ‘You’re only young once——’ She sounded very tipsy, and he grinned triumphantly.

  ‘That’s what I say. Now, look, love. That bloody waiter—‘e’s lookin’ at us like ’e’d prefer our room to our company. What do you say we go up to my room, and ’ave another little drink, eh? We can talk there—get to know each other properly, like——’

  ‘I ought to be getting back to the hospital, really.’

  He looked anxious. ‘You ’ave to sign in or somethin’?’

  ‘Oh, no. As long as I’m on duty at eight tomorrow, no one will mind—but——’

  He looked triumphant.

  ‘Then there’s no ’urry, is there—and I’ll tell you what. I’d like to give you a little present——’

  ‘A present?’

  He looked foxy, and grinned.

  ‘There’s a little somethin’ I got in my bag—you’ll see—I left it wi’ the receptionist.’

  He made her wait by the lifts while he went across the lobby, and he came back towards her with his overnight bag in his hand.

  ‘You’ll like this, you will. Got it for—me sister, like. But I can get ’er some chocolates tomorrer, instead——’

  ‘What is it?’ she tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, and tried to take the bag from him.

  ‘Eh, patience, lass, patience. You’ll see—come on now——’

  When they reached his room, he sat down on the narrow white bed, and grinned at her.

  ‘Now, what do I get for this little thing, eh? What do I get?’

  ‘Shall I say a pretty please?’ she said, sitting down next to him and running a finger along the back of his hand.

  ‘I’d rather ’ave a pretty kiss——’ He grabbed for her awkwardly, and they struggled for a moment before he managed to reach her mouth.

  She pulled away, a little sickened by the reek of brandy and tobacco on his breath, but not showing it.

  ‘You’re awful Bill, really you are——’ she giggled again, still behaving as though she were tipsy. ‘But now you’ve got to give it to me——’

  He opened his case and took a blue and white striped paper bag from it.

  She grabbed it and opened it, to pull out a nightdress, made of very sheer pink and black lace, and she clapped her hands delightedly.

  ‘Ooh, Bill, it’s lovely! Is it really for me? I shouldn’t take it, really I shouldn’t—but it is lovely—your sister’s a lucky woman getting presents like this——’

  ‘Eh, she fancies ’erself she does. But it wouldn’t look so good on ’er as it would on you——’

  He grinned, and looked at her sideways.

  ‘You’d better try it on, ’adn’t you?’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Well, why not? Lass like you—a nurse and all that—you aren’t shy, are you? Pretend I’m your brother——’

  ‘Some brother——’ she giggled again.

  ‘I said pretend——’ he laughed again. ‘Go on—show your Bill how it looks—I can imagine ’ow, mind you——’ he threw his hand out so that it moved across her breasts. ‘But imagination’s not much cop, is it, eh? You put it on——’

  ‘With you watching? Ooh, I couldn’t——’

  ‘I’ll turn me back then——’

  ‘I’ll tell you what—I’ll go to the bathroom, shall I? I can put it on there, and I’ll come back. I won’t be so shy, then. And as soon as you’ve seen it fits, I’ll go back and get dressed again——’

  He grinned. ‘Aye, lass. As soon as I’ve seen it fits, you do that—and I’ll get something to sup up here while you’re doin’ it——’

  He sniggered and put an arm round her again. ‘And watch out for the waiter with the drinks, when you come out of the bathroom. Strictly a private view, this, eh?’

  She giggled too, and took the bag with the nightdress, and slipped out of the room to the bathroom along the corridor.

  There was no one about, only the thick silence and heavy smell of scent and shoe polish that filled the brightly lit corridors showing that the huge building was occupied at all. At the bathroom door, she looked back to see him at the bedroom door, and with a coquettish wave of her hand she disappeared inside.

  After a moment she peered out. His door was shut now, and she moved quickly and silently towards the stairs, to run silently down the heavily carpeted treads to the lobby. As she reached the lifts at the bottom, she saw a waiter with a tray with a bottle of whisky and two glasses waiting, and grinned wickedly to herself as she went out of the revolving doors into the rain-wet street outside.

  She went back by underground, sitting in the swaying almost empty train, gazing at the pipes on the wall outside dipping and lifting, a smile on her face as she talked to herself inside her head.

  ‘He’s probably sitting there in his underwear, panting. Opening the bottle and having one while he waits. Silly fat sod—all of a flap, wondering where I am. And he’ll go along to the bathroom, and he’ll know he’s been sold—I wish I could watch it—it’s a nice nightie. Best evening for a long time. I’ll try the Strand next time. Or p’raps a restaurant—that Chinese one in Wardour Street—they have interesting people there—I’ll tell Swinton tomorrow—Christ, I will, sarky bitch. Much she knows—I’ll tell her—and if no one sees me come in, I’ll say I made a night of it, came back for breakfast——’

  She relaxed into a happy imagined conversation with Swinton, hearing herself regaling her with details, all sorts of lovely snippets, and as she thought of the details she would tell Swinton, her skin moved pleasurably under her clothes, and the muscles of her thighs tightened against the rough cloth of her skirt, and her eyes glazed.

  In her imagination, she was no longer telling Swinton the details. She was living them, and it was all very enjoyable.

  FIVE

  It was a pity, French thought, that he had to be so precipitate in the matter of the dinner party. To invite Elizabeth to meet Jennifer within her first week at the Royal might give Elizabeth cause for complacency; she might think he wanted her to meet his wife as soon as possible, to clear the way, as it were, for the resumption of their old friendship.

  On the other hand, to delay the dinner party for too long could well make the whole thing pointless. Elizabeth already knew something about the bed allocation to be discussed at Monday’s committee meeting. If he did not make his own position clear to her before that, she might, all unknowing, or even in a spirit of mischief, align herself on the wrong side of the fence.

  So, he telephoned her on Wednesday morning and asked her if she could dine on Saturday evening.

  ‘Nothing very formal,’ he said. ‘Just a small party. I hope you can come. I’ve told Jennifer about you, and she’s looking forward to meeting you.’

  I should have gone to her office instead of phoning, he thought. It would have helped to see her face; she has such a non-committal voice, I can’t tell what her reactions are. Stupid of me.

  ‘How very nice.’ Elizabeth’s voice sounded friendly without being too warm. ‘I would like to very much. About seven thirty for eight?—Yes, I can find my own way. You’re on the A. to Z. map? What? Oh, yes, I have my own car. I’ll look forward to it.’

  The dinner party was a great success. Jennifer produced a meal that was both elegant and satisfying, and Chesterton and his wife were suitably impressed both by Jennifer’s prettiness, and her cousin’s obvious wealth. As a side effect, James knew he had assured himself of yet another G.P. who would refer interesting patients to him at the Royal.

 
He watched Elizabeth covertly during the meal, glad of the chance to really assess her again. It had been a long time, after all, since he had known her well.

  She had changed little during the intervening years. Her reddish hair, always her best feature, was attractively arranged, and her green silk dress was fashionable without being overfussy, restrained without being dowdy. During dinner, she carried her share of the general conversation well, showing that she had interests outside her work, that she read widely, went to theatres and concerts, and had a genuine awareness of current events. Listening to her, James complimented himself again on his wisdom. This woman had all the energy, the social aplomb and intelligence he needed. All that was necessary now was to make her understand what he wanted of her.

  He caught her eye now and again across the table, and noticed—as she meant him to—her approval of his wife. This puzzled him slightly, as he watched her, and listened to her flattering comments about Jennifer’s cooking and prettily arranged table.

  After one of these comments, which Jennifer greeted with a girlish giggle, and protestations about her own inefficiency—‘I’m not a bit clever, Miss Manton, truly I’m not——’ Elizabeth looked at James with a hint of provocation in her glance, and as clearly as if she had said it, he understood.

  ‘Clever James. A nice ornamental, silly wife. No complications, no matter what you—or I—do——’ and he allowed his own lips to quirk in appreciation.

  Jennifer set up the bridge table in the dining room, as soon as the woman she had hired for the evening had cleared it, and almost without help from James, the party arranged itself as he wanted; Chesterton and his wife, having exhausted their conversational resources, were grateful for the suggestion of cards, and Peter Tisdale, bored because he always was, much preferred bridge to chatter. Elizabeth smilingly told Jennifer that she did not play bridge, and had not the least objection to being left out, and James too smiled at his wife, and said with a nice blend of husbandly regret and the solicitude due to a guest that he and Elizabeth would sit and talk in the drawing room, so that the players need not be disturbed.

  ‘You still like good brandy, Elizabeth?’ he asked, as he warmed two glasses in front of the fire.

  ‘You remember that?’

  ‘I remember a good deal.’ He fussed a little with the drinks, enjoying his own expertise, and then lit a cigarette for her. ‘I remember you liked brandy, that you always finished a meal with cheese, and that you would rather talk than dance. And a good many other things besides.’ He looked at her under his lashes in a way that created a fiction that their relationship had been far more complex than it had been. She produced her small provocative smile again, endorsing the fiction, but with a glint of humour in her eyes.

  ‘Your wife is charming.’ She turned the brandy glass in her hands reflectively. ‘Charming.’

  ‘She likes cherry brandy and advocaat,’ he said. ‘And dancing.’

  ‘Yes——’ she murmured. ‘Charming,’ and the word now carried an overtone of dismissal, as though it were a rather depressing thing to say about any woman.

  ‘Well, Elizabeth,’ he said-after a moment, and sat down opposite her. ‘Time seems to have little relevance, don’t you think?’

  ‘On the surface, perhaps. It does seem as though—we are still as we used to be. We look much the same, I suppose. Improved perhaps. You certainly are.’

  ‘Oh?’ The reference to his appearance chilled him.

  ‘You are less—beautiful than you were. You needed these five years.’

  He laughed, almost relieved. ‘If that’s true, I’m glad to hear it. You look much as you always did. I think—more assured, perhaps——’

  ‘Oh I am. That’s what I meant when I said the irrelevance of time was just a surface thing. I may look the same, but I’ve changed a good deal. If I look more assured, it’s because I am.’

  He laughed again. ‘I don’t remember you lacking any self confidence five years ago.’

  ‘Self confidence and assurance aren’t the same thing. Then I thought I could carry things through if I tried. Now I know I can. That’s the difference.’

  ‘It must be pleasant to be so sure.’

  ‘You know quite well it is. You have the same attitude.’

  ‘Have I? I’m not sure I’ve thought about it——’

  ‘Perhaps you haven’t needed to think about it. I have.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why have I had to think about it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because I’m a woman.’

  ‘I don’t see gender has much to do with it.’

  ‘It has everything to do with it. A man can get what he wants merely by wanting it. A woman has to understand why she wants what she wants, and decide precisely how to set about getting it. It isn’t a fiction, you know—the idea that women are more complex than men.’

  He leaned back, enjoying the way they were launching on the same sort of talk he had enjoyed so much in the past.

  ‘And why isn’t it a fiction? Can’t a woman have as good a logical brain as a man? Does she have to be illogical and work by emotion rather than reason just because she is a woman? I always thought you were something of a feminist, Elizabeth—that you thought a woman could do as good a job as any man, given average intelligence.’

  ‘Complexity has nothing to do with ability,’ she said, almost impatiently. ‘I just mean that a woman’s emotional life is far more intimately connected with her professional and intellectual life than is the case with a man. A woman’s approach to her emotional needs colours her attitude to her work. That’s simple biology, and you know it. So, if a woman is to succeed intellectually and professionally she must think about her emotional needs. A man doesn’t need to in the same way. He can operate on two different levels, and operate quite successfully. ‘There need be no conflict.’

  ‘Love is to man a thing apart, ’tis a woman’s whole existence?’ he said, mocking her a little.

  ‘The trouble with cliches is their truth. That’s why they’re cliches, I suppose. But their dreary familiarity doesn’t alter the validity of the truth they express.’

  ‘You sound as though you were addressing a meeting of earnest ladies in hats.’

  She laughed. ‘Do I? I’m sorry. I don’t mean to. But to come back to that particular cliché—it wasn’t love I had in mind.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘May I have some more brandy?’ She watched him refill her glass and his own, and went on quickly, seeming to prefer to talk to his back.

  ‘Unless you mean love as a euphemism for sex. If you mean romantic love, I disagree with the cliché—certainly for some women.’

  ‘Then women don’t need romantic love?’

  ‘Oh, some certainly do. I think—Jennifer does?’ She sounded tentative.

  ‘Jennifer?’ He stood looking consideringly into his glass. ‘Well, yes, I suppose she does. Her idea of romantic love, that is.’

  ‘But that’s what romantic love is, James.’ She laughed softly. ‘It is an individual’s fantasy of what it should be. I suspect that a great many women who think they have romance in their lives don’t have anything of the sort. They’ve just found someone on to whom they can project their own image of what it should be. As long as their partner is willing to go along with that image, they’re blissfully happy. And if that partner doesn’t really share it, they don’t want to know. It isn’t truth the romance brigade want. It’s a fantasy of it. Clever men are the ones who recognise that, and—use it.’

  He grinned at her with an almost childish mischief.

  ‘Are you trying to suggest that that is how it is with Jennifer and me? She projects her image, and I cheerfully reflect it back at her?’

  She had the grace to blush. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to be—well, personal, in any way. I was simply propounding an idea——’

  ‘At the risk of sounding unnecessarily coarse, Elizabeth, my dear, that’s a lot of cock. You were being personal—
admit it.’

  She laughed. ‘Well, perhaps. I’m—interested in people’s relationships. You and Jennifer seem so happy, yet you’re so— dissimilar. The basis of your marriage—well, it intrigues me, I can’t deny that. And as an old friend, I hope you will forgive me for prying.’

  ‘Elizabeth, you’re outrageous! One moment you tell me that women are complex, but can have brains as good as any man’s and the next you turn on feminine wiles! For shame, wench, for shame!’

  She chuckled appreciatively. ‘One of the useful things about being complex and having to think about what you do is the way you learn to use the gifts your complexity gives you.’

  ‘All right, then. I’ll succumb to your gifts. Jennifer and I—yes, we’re dissimilar. She wouldn’t for a moment have any pretensions to intellectual ability, for a start. She thinks it is a male prerogative to think, and a woman’s to admire. Perhaps you could say we’re complementary?’

  ‘In one direction, perhaps. You provide the mind, for Jennifer, I can see that. But for a relationship to be really complementary, something has to come back from the other side.’

  ‘You mean—Jennifer must give me something I lack. Romance perhaps?’

  ‘Romance? My dear James, since when did you need romance?’

  ‘Maybe I’ve learned to need it.’

  ‘Not you, James, not you. If you did, you wouldn’t be talking like this now, to an outsider. Your relationship would be too—precious—to be tarnished by idle chat about it.’

  ‘This isn’t idle chat, Elizabeth!’ he said chidingly. ‘It’s an intelligent discussion of some fundamental realities!’

  ‘If you’re going to laugh at me, then I’m going to change the subject,’ she retorted swiftly.

  ‘Laugh at you? Never. With you perhaps, but never at you. One of the things I enjoyed about knowing you was that I never did feel I had to laugh at you. You were always neck and neck with me—saw the joke as soon as I did. You’re seeing it now.’

  ‘All right, then I’m seeing it now. But I still haven’t seen what it is you get from your marriage.’

  ‘There are some practical aspects, aren’t there? You said that yourself, last Monday. A man in my position needs a wife.’