Chapter 10
For Evelyn, it was as if they had broken through a storm and come out upon a wide, peaceful sea. The estate was beautiful, with over two hundred acres of deep country foliage and winding brooks, rolling hills and stately trees. The cultivated gardens soon "became fetchingly bush rubbed and blooming. George Ostrakhan laid out the initial plans and instructions, though Matt soon began to contribute his own ideas, just for kicks, and no one was more intrigued with them than Ostrakhan himself. As for the manual labor, shrub cutting, the mowing of the great expanses of lawn, a labor crew which Ostrakhan employed intermittently began to perform the same service for Matt.
He occupied himself with some of the lighter gardening chores, plant trimming and bloom cutting, which Evelyn, who adored the gardens, assisted with. She daily began to do the flower arrangements for the main house, and she and Mrs. Caldwell became quite friendly. Matt found himself with a great deal of time and began to bring over great armfuls of books from George Ostrakhan's library.
The cottage was spacious, bright, and comfortable, with more than ample room. Evelyn soon discovered that Matt had dispatched a letter to his mother and received word that she would soon be joining their domicile. The incongruity of the circumstance, as well as all the others in her life, had been set aside in Evelyn's mind. It was as if she were experiencing a life within a life, and the inner reality was all-enveloping. Physically, she looked well, clear-eyed, her skin gold from the sun, and in that other way she was almost entirely healed. Matt, too, looked well. The hard extra pounds seemed to add dimension and stature. He was still silent and thoughtful for long periods, but he laughed more. Sometimes when they walked across the fields doing their gardening chores, quite absently they found their hands together. She felt they were ascending the same plateau together, but there were also knifing, signs of distress. The afternoon they were in the cottage, Matt reading and Evelyn quietly dozing, was one.
Mrs. Caldwell opened the door and entered the room. She had come in on several occasions, under some pretext, to talk to Matt, usually leaving with him to go back to the main house. Evelyn knew what was taking place, and what troubled her the most was his easy familiarity with her, an uncharacteristic warmth. There were even signs of tenderness. She came over to Matt who was seated on a rocking chair, his feet propped up on the couch bed in the corner. He let his book drop in his lap. Evelyn, who was diagonally across from them, slightly dozing in the big easy chair, heard Mrs. Caldwell, but she remained unstirring and chose to give no sign of it. "I'd like you to come out with me to the left wing and discuss what we might do with the moat," she said.
Matt's tone was bantering. "Whose moat?"
"Matt-" she gasped, her tone surprised, followed by a ripple of subdued laughter. "Don't. She's-" Evelyn knew the allusion was to her presence, but whatever reticence was offered seemed to be dwindling as Mrs. Caldwell's voice became hushed and breathless.
"Just let me hold it like-that," Matt was saying, and Evelyn understood the significance of the woman's sigh. She ventured a veiled glance and saw her standing before Matt, who still remained seated and had drawn up the front of her dress, his hand buried deep in its folds. Her body swayed as she put her hands on his shoulders for support. "No, please," she continued, her writhing body unheeding her protestations. Then Evelyn saw Matt's other hand unzipping his trousers. She could make out nothing else from her vantage point.
Mrs. Caldwell was more frantic now. "What are you doing? We can't-not here."
"Just look at it," Matt said. "Here, touch it. You don't have to do anything else."
Evelyn felt the pressure throb in her forehead. She shifted uneasily and found herself craning until she could see Matt, there between his legs, bared as he was, already risen. There it was, as she saw it now repeatedly in her deep night dreams and often visualized it through his clothes when they walked through the garden together. Her eyes reached out to fondle it and she felt an insistent, pulsing warmth again between her thighs. Her hand, now long familiar with the recess of her most intimate part, moved in to stroke the flameless fire.
Mrs. Caldwell was bared to the waist now with Matt seizing her by the raised and bunched-up garment and urging her toward him. Swept up in passion's tide, the woman moved to meet him. She parted her legs to bring her body forward across his, and seizing his manhood with one hand descended upon him, twisting and turning as if he were an inverted corkscrew clearing the narrow vessel's passage. Bent forward now, her arms around his neck, her upper torso stationary, she moved against him as her entire body was seized by frantic, grinding force, racing to accelerate his oscillating probes. She cried out, all restraint broken, and lurched forward against him, her legs coming up to bind themselves around his sides. There she hung, shuddering and trembling, and raining his face and neck with ardent kisses.
Estelle came lumbering drowsily from one of the other rooms, and Mrs. Caldwell backed off Matt and pulled her garment down. Estelle, by her passive reaction, either had not noticed or because of the commonness of the act in her experience did not consider it especially notable or untoward. Estelle was the only one who had not found their temporary new life-style exhilarating. The lack of exciting stress had somehow dulled her senses. She seemed heavier, more lethargic, almost cowlike in her slothfulness. She looked over at Matt. "When do we get something to eat?"
"The maid will be bringing your trays over in about half an hour," Mrs. Caldwell said, still red and flustered from the untimely interruption.
Evelyn took advantage of the distraction to remove herself surreptitiously from the room. She stepped through the door and entered the garden. She knew by her response to every gesture of Matt's that she was moving in the direction of a crisis in their relationship. But it was an impalpable thing. She did not know or recognize new self and avoided a direct and ultimate confrontation with this new image. Yet how could she hope to resolve these emotions with Matt? That this was a resolution she devoutly wished was the only certainty in her life.
In this state of distraction, Mrs. Caldwell, heading from the cottage to the main house, came upon her; stepping through the bordering brush, they almost collided. They began to exchange hasty apologies when Mrs. Caldwell put her hand on hers. "Forgive me," she said for what happened in there. I know you must have seen it all. I didn't want to be so blatant, but you know how compelling he is." They both remained silent for an awkward minute, then Mrs. Caldwell spoke again. "You-you're very fortunate. I envy you."
"You envy me!" Evelyn was astounded.
"Oh, yes," the older woman said. "He embraces me now and then to remind me that I am still a woman. But it's all in the way of service, out of compassion. I'm glad to say that at least it is that, that he doesn't regard me with lecherous laughter behind my back. But I believe that has to be the way with such truly passionate men. It's as if they were fashioned for that and nothing else." Then, hastening to clarify her remarks for fear she might be misunderstood, she said, "Not that I think that's anything to be demeaned. I'd be the last one in the world to say that after a lifetime of very bitter discovery. That's why I envy you. Because I can see that you don't come from his background and it's obvious you are caught up into something with both of them. But whatever you've been through, you've had enough courage to throw up everything, to allow that something which must have a central grip on every woman to dominate your life. It's not difficult to see that's why you are with him. I envy your courage and I envy you because he is in love with you."
Evelyn felt the hot rush of tears, and she whirled away from the woman, running down the footpath behind her. There, beside a tall hedge, she gave vent to her wracking sobs. How ironic it was. The woman had assumed that she and Matt were longtime lovers, that Evelyn lived and breathed for his embraces, found life in them to give her meaning and purpose. Yet she had never known him inside that woman's core of her being. Still, aggrieved as she was, those words muttered with such certainty by the woman remained hovering still in her deepest awareness. "... and I envy you because he is in love with you."
A hundred images of the weeks lately passed began to superimpose themselves. Matt's relaxed comfort when she was alongside him when he read. The easy way they walked along together in the gardens and out in the fields. Sometimes, when she turned unexpectedly, she did discover his eyes deeply intent on her and signs of an emotion he hastened to conceal. The warmth of his hands as they unconsciously found hers and held them as they walked. She felt the waning of despair. How could she not be aware of his sensitivity, the uncommon depth of his interests? The names and titles of the books that he ominvorously devoured attested to that. Evelyn brightened. Yes, there was much they had in common. Wherever they had strayed, they were somehow now moving in the same direction. Her step was firmer and she was almost gay as she re-entered the cottage.
It was then that she met Matt's mother. Estelle introduced her. Her bags were alongside, indicating that she had just arrived. Her appearance was a disturbing departure from the picture that Evelyn had conjured up of an elderly, illiterate woman, poorly attired and from some deprived circumstances where she had endured a great deal which would also explain much in Matt's character and behavior.
Instead, the woman was about sixty but fairly tall, about five feet seven, and although not attired according to the fashion, she was well-groomed and immaculate about her person. Her coloring, though graying, still retained identifying vestiges of Scandinavian heritage. Her features had something of Matt's aquilinity, though her mouth seemed less severe, more patiently forebearing. But the expression she turned on Evelyn was one of notable coolness.
"I'll help you unpack and put your things away," Evelyn volunteered. She made as if to raise one of the suitcases, but the woman reached down herself.
"Never mind. Estelle will take care of it."
The incident was disconcerting, nor did their close proximity over the passing weeks promise to thaw the unreceptive wall that Evelyn had encountered. On one hand, it came as some satisfaction to note that Matt himself was rather distant and unemotional with her. On the other, it served further to confuse the image she had previously constructed in her mind.
She saw Matt as a fiercely loyal and devoted son who was willing to risk considerable hazards to maintain his mother and attend to her welfare. True, there seemed to be a measure of that, at least in his action of having brought her to him to share the cottage. But he was often inattentive to the point of curtness as his mother went about arranging and managing the details of the household, though the presence of his mother had in no way diminished the signs of their own increasingly closer relationship.
Evelyn awakened one morning, suffused with the warm glow of the sun coming through the blinds. She sat up, stretching, feeling a glorious ripple of aliveness through her now totally restored body. The night before, she and Matt had gone out into the garden to see the blooms by moonlight, and there his arms had found her, his lips burning into her mouth. How avidly she clung to him, returning his kisses. While he pulled away suddenly, leaving her hanging there on the trembling note of promise, she was not dismayed. It was evident that he was as moved, as caught up in the emotional tug-of-war between them as she was.
She removed the covers and stepped out of the bed, which she shared with Estelle. She surveyed herself, nude, in the full-length mirror. Now she always slipped disrobed between the covers, her body tingling with aliveness. She was slimmer, more compact than before, but she noted with critically admiring eyes that her breasts were fuller and her hips as well. Her legs retained their long slimness, but there was no longer the concavity between her upper thighs. She wondered how much of this was a result of those warm flowing juices which came stirring inside her, which seemed to have come to the surface from a wellspring. She moved her hands over her breasts, allowed her fingers to linger on the nipples, and followed the curvaceous periphery which all led to that rich, dark mound poised over her source.
Her images were of Matt, confronting her in this same state and moving together to perfect bliss. It was with her hand entrapped between her thighs at that moment that Matt's mother walked in. Evelyn grabbed up her robe. The woman made no comment nor did she cast her eyes in her direction. She simply went about dusting and attending to her chores.
Evelyn tried not to dislike the woman and continued in the effort to be civil to her. But her presence was unfailingly disconcerting, even as the presence of one other on the estate. The other presence that was troubling to her was that of Mrs. Caldwell's daughter-Tina. Her brazen flirtatiousness with Matt was not all of it. She seemed endlessly inventive in ways of seeking out Matt in her attempt to be compromised. Evelyn was of the impression that it might have happened repeatedly between them until that early morning she decided to go down to the boathouse where she knew that Matt was planting flower beds. It was off season and she expected to find Matt alone, but as she came down the narrow footpath, she heard Matt talking to someone. "What are you doing out here in your bathing suit? This is no time to be swimming."
Evelyn heard a girlish, nasally affected voice, and as Evelyn broke into the clearing, she saw Tina advancing to Matt who was kneeling in the soil, literally pulling off the skimpy parts that comprised her bikini. She stood there about fifteen feet before him, hands on her hips, her legs widespread, boldly inviting his glance. Then she put her arms back and let herself fall with her naked haunches upon the moist soil. There she lay, her legs apart, head up and arms outraised, saying, "Take me, come on, take me." Evelyn stepped back into the concealing brush. She heard Tina's voice rising angrily, "Come on, for heaven's sakes! I can give you more in five minutes than that old bat can in a year." Evelyn heard footsteps coming in her direction, and she retreated farther into the brush. It was Matt, striding away from the lake.
Tina came running after him, naked, tearing at his clothes with her hands. "Don't you walk away from me, you son of a bitch. I'm not a kid, I've tumbled with more guys than you could count." Matt lifted her up, forcing her away from him, then shoved her so that she fell back on the ground. And there she remained, screaming at him at the top of her lungs, "You son of a bitch. By the time I'm through with you, you'll be kissing my pussy." Then she ran back, still muttering, to find her bathing suit.
It was the afternoon of the morning that Matt's mother had walked in on her while she was masturbating before the mirror that Matt announced that he was going horseback riding with Tina and some of her friends. He invited Evelyn to go along.
Tina had two girlfriends along, one a tall, slim brunette and the other of medium height, dark and striking and with an extraordinarily vulgar mouth. There were four young men, all several years and the girls' senior and all of a rather crude, rowdy sort that Evelyn identified with the motorcycle-gang type. She made this inevitable association because three of them were wearing leather jackets of the sort used by such groups. One of the young men, taller and with a swagger and perpetually cynical expression, was Tina's boyfriend, Pete.
He provided a large whiskey flask from which he took deep swallows and passed it along to his fellows at the beginning of the ride. He demonstrated an unconcealed rancor for Matt and seemed to resent Tina's invitation to him.
They rode for about an hour and a half, encircling the woodlands on the estate, and at one particular point Tina burst off into a gallop, disappearing in the brush. The darkly attractive girl with the foul mouth called to her and then snapped, "What the hell is little sniggle-ass up to now?"
"She's got a cuter ass than yours," Pete said, a retort that brought laughter from all but the dark-haired girl. "I can remember when you had the same opinion of mine."
They continued for a while, the comments getting more risque, until they broke into a large clearing, and there, directly in their path awaiting them, was Tina, completely nude on horseback, her tawny hair spread about her shoulders. "How's this for Lady Godiva?" she said. Her stunt was met with an appreciative response by all of her friends except for Pete.
He whirled angrily at Matt. "Turn your head around, damn you! I don't want you looking at her when she's like that." Matt remained seated in the saddle, unmoving. Pete leaped from his mount with a fury. "I told you to turn around," and with that, he reached up and grabbed hold of Matt, pulling him down from the saddle. Matt got up on his feet slowly.
"You're out of line, buddy," he said very quietly, and was met with Pete's fist directly on his mouth. Matt went back a step, arching his body to the side to avoid another blow, and hooked his fist with hard force into Pete's mid riff, folding him over. Then, with his opposite hand, he caught him on the side of the jaw and stretched him out backward, rendering him instantly unconscious.
The dark-haired girl said with a rippling laugh: "Do you do everything that hard?"
"He sure does," Estelle chimed in.
"And you have the scars to show for it," said the dark-haired girl snidely.
Estelle laughed, suddenly brightened and more animated by the excitement than she had been since her arrival at the estate. "If you had my scars, then he"-she indicated Pete, just coming to-"wouldn't be admiring her ass instead of yours."
Having been assaulted on sensitive ground, the dark-haired girl flew into an immediate fury. "I'll strip alongside you any day of the week, you banged-out tub."
Estelle continued laughing good-naturedly. "If you did, I'd just about gulp you up right between my legs."
With that, the dark-haired girl slipped the stirrups and leaped to the ground. She began undressing at once, the boys clapping their hands and encouraging her, until she displayed a nicely proportioned, rather diminutive body, not without charms. Estelle, still smiling, stepped down beside her. Happily in her element, she turned her back to all those who looked on and began the disrobing ritual which was to her by now a practiced perfection.
All the while, as she removed another article of clothing, she maintained the swaying, undulating motion of her hips, and skinning out of her panties to expose her great, unblemished mounds, she brought an audible gasp from Tina's friends. And then, completely naked, Estelle turned around to face them. There was no laughter, no hooting, howls, or any comments whatever. Estelle's appearance had an overwhelming sensual impact.
Evelyn realized, upon seeing her then, that all the woman possessed, all of her thoughts, actions, responses had been distilled into an essence of sexuality. With the rays of the setting sun cast upon her in the clearing, she seemed like some fructifying goddess descended to absorb in her vitals every earthly protuberance, man, mountain, skyscraper. Evelyn recalled that Estelle had referred to Matt as a "stud." She realized that Estelle was his opposite image. Sex incarnate.
Matt's interest in all of this was Evelyn, and so sensitive was he to all of this that he said to the others, "Okay, since some of you are undressed for it and the rest of you sound like you're in the mood, I'll show you a little Tartar trick on horseback."
With that, he began to unbuckle his belt and remove his pants. He pulled off his jockey shorts at the same time, and naked from the waist down he approached Estelle. He guided himself to her thighs and began drawing back and forth with a squirming assist from Estelle. Then, still manipulating her gently with his hand, he looked up at Tina, who was nude on the bareback mount, having removed the saddle to achieve the Godiva look.
"Move up forward," he said, "I'm coming up behind you." Tina made an effort at a gay laugh and a casual remark, but she was too excited to conclude it. Her mouth was taut and her nostrils wide with desire as she held her eyes fixed to Matt's rigid, encrimsoned organ. He put both hands upon the horse's shanks and leaped up, clearing the animal's hind quarters and landing behind Tina.
Pete, sitting up, was dazed and helpless. Tina began to bend her body backward to close the space between Matt and herself, but Matt told her, "Just stay where you are-me and the horse will do the rest." Constrained laughter broke from those around them. Now Matt took the reins and brought them over Tina's head, giving him control of the mount. He started the animal moving, first slowly and then in easy loping strides in a circle around the rest. The undulant fore-and-aft movements of the animal soon closed the gap between them. Now Matt encircled her waist with his arms with each loping stride of the animal. Fixing her rigidly against him, he burst into a gallop. Steady, hard, impactful, the cadence moved them in perfect rhythm-harder, faster, the circles widening, until at last he headed the mount into a swift run and a breakway gallop.
Tina's pealing outcries stirred the others to such a frenzy of erotic desire that they moved to each other, touching, grasping, embracing. Pete grabbed for Evelyn, wrestling her to the ground. She struggled with him, in between an unappeasable desire and an irrepressible rage at Matt. She pulled away from Pete, got to her feet and began to run across the field. She could see Matt, now toppling from the mount with Tina, rolling over the ground with her, straining against her aroused body with the rapidity of a pneumatic drill.
Pete caught Evelyn and flung her to the ground. He struggled to pry her knees apart. She screamed, tore at his face with her nails. "Leave me alone," she cried. "There's something wrong with me. Don't you understand?" Pete, frustrated by her resistance, on top of Tina's rejection, began to beat her about the face and head with his closed fists. She screamed, and within a matter of instants the body of her molester toppled to his side. Then she saw Matt dragging him off and striking him with a flurry of blows that drove him down to his knees.
Matt helped her up. "Are you all right?" he asked anxiously. "I mean, did he hurt you there again?"
Evelyn shook her head as she sobbed. He helped her up on her horse and, leaving the others behind, started back with her in the direction of the cottage.
They moved slowly and silently for some time until Evelyn regained her composure. She pulled up her reins and began to verbally assault him, all of the repressed anger, all of the unspoken thoughts choking her till they had to be ejected. "Why do you allow yourself to become involved in sick performances like that, turning yourself into some kind of a warped and hideous caricature of a person? Why do you have to live that way-stealing, running up back alleys, living with your hand gripped on a gun? It's a subhuman existence."
A sob burst from her throat. Evelyn held the choked sobs and tears, and her voice dropped as she fought for control. "You're not like that, Matt-you're not. There are other things inside you that you're denying. Feelings for beauty, the gardens, the country-the regard, the love you have for those magnificent books. I was raised to appreciate such things. We would have so much in common if you would come to realize this."
With every word of Evelyn's, recalled fury seemed to be building up in Matt. The tendons in his neck drew taut. His fists clenched and unclenched spasmodically with a pressure that made his knuckles show white. The voice that came out of him was as flat as a blade, its edge just as cutting. "The only thing we have in common is the air we breathe. Like you? Boy, are you ever wrong. There is nothing you see, nothing you are, nothing you represent that means a damn thing to me. What you were raised to appreciate, I hate. Do you understand that? I hate it. And most of all, those books. I read them to tear them to pieces, those grandiose ideas built on stupidity and self-deception, out of fear to grasp and hold on to something. Sentiments sick and sycophantic. The morals, the traditions, the ethics, words that should be flushed like feces down to a cesspool for all they mean in this real world that we live in, eat in, screw in, die in."
Evelyn recoiled, his words searing as a whiplash, and Matt slashed at her further with an obsessional need to cut her down, demolish her. "I'm supposed to be like you? That's a laugh.
We represent opposite sides, sides that never meet but to rape, to ravage and to kill. The violators and the violated. As if I need to tell you which one you are. How many times have I rescued you from getting your pants banged? The guys that blasted you at the carney? The big ape that you repulsed and innocently led to slaughter? This kid back here whose guts I pounded? Poor, pure immaculate Mother Superior with that fire burning deep. I saw it when I walked in the door of your house, that need to be grabbed, pummeled, pounded-but only as the violated. When I wanted to take that kid with me, you thought you wanted to go with me to save her. She doesn't need anyone saving her. You wanted to go, so what happened to you, without your so-called will or conscious desire? So I would force you. And that's why you stuck with me. That's why you went with me, no matter how many times you could have broken away, walked off. You were waiting-waiting until you were violated. You're what they call the eternal hostage.
"But I wasn't going to give you what you wanted most. Maybe just a little, maybe close to it so you could see what kind of a damned fraud you are. I could see the fever in your eyes everytime I pistoned my rod into some other piece instead of you. And I wanted to see you look on, eat your guts out, with a need. That's why I took you out riding today. That's why I had that kid. If you wanted me, you would have to come and get me. The violated would have to become the violator."
Matt looked down at her with cruel mockery on his face. He stepped down from the horse. "If you want me, get off the horse, but first, you're going to have to get down on your knees and kiss me." Matt, his eyes never wavering from her face, smiled his cruel smile. With a sob, Evelyn whirled her mount, heeled him into a gallop, headed for the cottage.
The trees, the foliage, the sky appeared a misty blur through her eyes. She swallowed, gulping back the salt of her tears. He had struck at the wound that had never healed, the wound he had opened the day he had walked into the house and taken her out with him into the night. His brutality had been punishing, but so was her own self-flagellation. Even after all he had said and he stood there before her and began to expose himself, Evelyn knew that she wanted to come down off that horse. She wanted to go to him, kneel on the floor if necessary ... How she hated herself for that. "Never," she muttered through still trembling lips, "never as long as I live will he ever drag me down to get me to go to him."