Chapter 7
Valerie's mortal remains having been reduced to ashes, her brother Alan and his adoring wife Sylvia accepted Lew's invitation to lunch only after the little-moved widower had assured them that he in-tended offering them neither fish and chips with beer nor "hot dogs" and Coca-Cola.
"This is Brenda. She'll look after us, won't you, Brenda?"
"So you're Brenda! I'm pleased to meet you at last. May I present my wife-Sylvia. Sylvia-Brenda. You know, I feel I know you quite well. Valerie never stopped talking about you. Years ago, when you and she were at school together, it was Brenda said this and Brenda did that. Brenda, Brenda, Brenda! Then you both left school and you went back to France. She talked of little else but visiting you and your parents over there-or of your coming to us for a holiday. But one thing after another intervened until finally you come to London. Mother and Father died in the meantime and Sylvia and I saw less and less of Valerie, but when we did meet it was always the same subject-Brenda from start to finish."
Alan waxing enthusiasticly over Brenda did not please Sylvia in the least.
"It got so bad" Sylvia whined, "that we were quite surprised when she came and told us she had a BOY friend too."
Silence held sway during the drive to the apartment where Valerie had spent her last love-filled months with Lew and crossing the threshold, Alan lived up to his claim to be a man who did not believe in "beating about the bush."
"We appreciate your hospitality, but we didn't come here primarily for lunch." the big, handsome lawyer announced before Brenda had time to start setting the table for the lunch of cold meats and salad. "There are important matters to be discussed, Mr. Grace, as soon as Brenda leaves us."
Brenda halted in her tracks and Lew bristled.
"Such as?" he asked.
Alan and Sylvia both glanced in Brenda's direction as if to say "But she's still here!"
Lew's curled lips and his hands, resting lightly on his sturdy hips seemed to reply "And?"
For her part, Brenda whispered a rude word under her sweet breath.
Temporarily defeated, the otherwise ever-victorious Alan, whose wife was jealousy proud of his moral rectitude and his success in all things, accepted Brenda's presence.
"I spoke of matters," he said, addressing the judge, the juries, the press and the public, "but I meant, in point of fact, one particular matter-one overwhelmingly important matter-the baby, the child. The little boy," he added, tapping his fingers impatiently on the table.
Expecting this, Brenda inflated herself to one-and-a-half times her normal self. "The little boy?" she repeated innocently.
Instinctively, Alan felt that Brenda was his adversary and Lew his ally by default; so he addressed himself to the line of least resistance.
"Mr. Grace," he thundered, ludicrously refusing to admit that his brother-in-law had a Christian name. "I've always been straightforward with you. From the outset I've disapproved of you. To pre-vent my sister throwing herself away on you, Mrs. Cordell and I offered to adopt her baby but Valerie refused. She insisted she wanted both her child and you. Between you, you'd've killed her. The fact that she seemed to be happy with you doesn't pre-vent our feeling that you're not the sort of person to be entrusted with the care of the child."
"My husband is trying to suggest that you allow us to adopt the baby." Sylvia said, trying to be cunning. "We want children, and we can afford them, but it seems we can't have any. The obvious thing to do is adopt one and we'd rather have one whose parents we know than run the risk of trying to bring up a child whose lineage we know nothing about. If you let us have your little boy you'll be doing us a favor and you'll solve your problem at the same time."
Brenda's presence prevented Lew giving immediate vent to his own true feelings: he wanted to throw his fardel, his burdensome baby boy into his brother-in-law's hands without further ado, but he feared that to do so would antogonize Brenda, whom he entertained hopes of winning back. He tried to ride two horses simultaneously. Winking conspiratorially at Brenda, he thanked Alan and Sylvia for their generous offer and promised to think about it.
"I'll give you a definite answer before the end of the week," he promised.
"Why not give them the answer now?" Brenda snapped. "You promised Valerie you'd let nobody adopt the child. She wanted you to keep him, to bring him up yourself. You promised." She was almost crying.
"Even if Mr. Grace did give such a promise," Sylvia asked calmly, in viperishly honeyed tones, "how do you expect him to keep it? Although this is only our third meeting with him, it's obvious to my husband and to me that Mr. Grace has no profession or trade, no fixed source of income. No one knows how he earns his living and it's none of our business. But he doesn't seem to know from one day to another whether he'll be out days, nights, or not at all. Who's going to look after the baby while he's gallivanting about from one end of the-underworld-to the other?"
If Lew had had the least bit of pride, Alan and Sylvia between them would have ruined their chances of appropriating the baby, but Lew was not proud. To him, Valerie's baby meant one thing, it was the bait with which he hoped to lure Brenda into his trap.
"When I gave that promise I meant to keep it," Lew said, "and keeping all doors open, I would keep it if I could, but as you say, Mrs. Cordell, I'm not the sort of guy as can bring up a brat on his own; so I'm very grateful to you and Alan er-Mr. Cordell, for your kind offer. I don't see how I can refuse it, although it's not easy when you lose your wife to have to give up the only thing what she left you except, of course, happy memories."
Seeing through Lew's acting and despising him for his hyprocrisy, Brenda still had to react as he expected her to.
"But, Lew, surely you know I promised Valerie that as long as you agreed to keep her child I would stand by you, help you to care for him."
Lew's pale little eyes glistened and he could not restrain his tongue from briefly licking his lips.
"I know," he said, "but I thought you'd made your promise just to keep her quiet. I didn't know whether I could count on you."
"Well, you can. Keep your promise! I'll keep mine. And together we'll bring up your baby as Valerie wanted us to."
Sylvia asked sharply, "How-together?" screwing her face into a revolting grimace of disapproval.
Brenda smiled and pretended not to understand.
"If Val had lived," she replied, sweetly calm, "she'd have cared for the baby and kept house for Lew, who, by hook or by crook, would have earned enough money to foot the bills. I can't breast feed our wee laddie, but in all else I'll simply replace Valerie to the best of my ability."
"Brenda-Miss er.. . .? "
"Crosland!"
"Miss Crosland, how long has this been going on?" Alan boomed in his artificially deep voice, like that of a talentless student who has just graduated from drama school.
"This what?"
"This irregular liaison?"
Brenda laughed, and determined to shock the puritan and his neurotically devoted wife.
"But, Alan, my darling, it stopped going on even before Valerie dropped her drawers at Lew's behest. You've got a filthy mind."
"How dare you speak to Alan like that!" Sylvia cried, furious. "Less than a week after this child has killed Valerie, Lew's planning to.. .Oh and you're in league with him, and you dare say Alan has an evil mind."
"Sylvia, what is Lew planning to do? You daren't say it, but you make it sound disgusting. What he's planning to do is his duty. He's going to try to bring up his own child with the help of its mother's best friend. You and Alan can insist until you're both blue in the face that Lew and I are going to sleep together and have dirty doings, and I say you're a couple of muckmongers. It's none of your business, but Lew and I will be sleeping apart. I shall look after the baby and Lew. And that's all....
Alan did not believe a word of what Brenda said, but he had no desire to antagonize her, since he realized that she was a greater obstacle than Lew to his and Sylvia's realization of their immediate ambition, which was to rescue Valerie's son from the moral squalor which Lew and (to a lesser degree) Brenda represented in their eyes.
Had he been honest, he would have admitted that he was somewhat less concerned about his little nephew than about his own marriage, which was in danger of foundering on the rocks of either his or Sylvia's sterility. He wanted children, but to say his wife "shared his desire" was an euphemism. She craved children, and she was insanely jealous of her friends and neighbors who had proved their reproductive capacity. If she could not bear children, she would adopt them and lavish her maternal and possessive instincts on the fruits of other women's wombs.. .Alan feared that his wife would lose her mental balance unless she were allowed to adopt children but he was reluctant to accept responsibility for babies of whose origins he was utterly ignorant as long as there was a chance of getting possession of his own sister's son. Gently, diplomatically, he assured Brenda, and Lew that neither he nor his wife believed what Sylvia had said in an unguarded moment.
"Our one desire is that the boy should be given every attention and the chance of a good education and a bright future. We have no children, but we're-how shall I express myself?-comfortably placed financially. And we think that the laddie would be happier with us-not because you are, individually or together, less capable of bringing him up than we are, but rather because he'd be more secure with a married couple than with a widower and an attractive young woman who admits quite frankly to having been his mistress..."
"But I've already said that was all over between us-before Valerie and Lew thought of getting married. It's finished and there's not the slightest chance of it beginning again. Lew has his bedroom and I shall bring over a bed-sofa from my flat an I shall curtain off a part of this room for me."
Her tone was tinged with anger. Alan therefore, hastened to apologize if he had implied that he suspected her and Lew of having immoral motives for planning to live together.
"I'm thinking more," he went on, "of what people will think and say. Not that I personally attach much importance to gossip, nor that I imagine you do; but there comes a time when 'a child is embarrassed and when his progress in society is hampered by the bad reputation of the household of which he's a member, even if the reputation in question is false. I'm sure neither of you wants the child to be pointed out in later life as the son of a man who's carrying on an irregular affair with his housekeeper. And with all respect to both of you I doubt whether it's possible for a young man and a lovely girl to live together for long, especially in such a confined space as this, without their falling victim to the normal human temptations."
Sylvia's shrewish insinuations would have been more than counterbalanced by Alan's suave reasonableness, had Brenda not decided. that, if allowed to do so, she would remain steadfast to the promise she had made to Valerie, and if Lew had not realized that keeping the child offered him the chance of reintroducing his loins to those of the idealist who insisted on keeping house for him and nursing the baby, he was deaf, dumb, and blind.
Brenda insisted that Lew must unequivocally reject Alan and Sylvia's proposal, but Lew was too cunning for that. Sooner or later he would probably need to avail himself of their offer so he wanted to leave the door open. He also realized that his hand would be strengthened, and Brenda's weakened, by the ever-present possibility that he, Sylvia and Alan would reach agreement concerning the boy's adoption.
As soon as Alan and Sylvia left the apartment Lew tried to consolidate his position vis-a-vis Brenda. They agreed that no time should be lost in her giving up her own flat, transferring some of her property to her . new home and selling the remainder.
Brenda was impatient to collect "Her" baby from the maternity hospital, but Lew preferred that she move into his apartment at once and leave the child in the hospital for a few weeks. He would have felt more free to enjoy Brenda's body in the boy's absence than in his crying, urinating, excreting, milk-demanding presence.
"The child is yours, Lew," she said, smiling in her appreciation of what he was after, "and it's up to you to decide when he comes home. But there are two things I'd like to say; I see no point in my moving in here until the baby comes-you're quite capable of looking after yourself as you did before you seduced me and later between my leaving you and Valerie's letting you slide it to her; and the other thing is that I shall be keeping house for you and looking after baby-I don't expect any salary, just that you provide the rent, food, and my clothes-I don't expect to be treated quite like a servant. What I really mean is that I don't want you interfering in my care of the child. In fact, I expect to be treated as your wife, except for the sex..."
He rose, and moved toward her. Standing over her, he buried his right hand in her dark hair while the other moved to her breasts. She pushed his hands gently away.
"Alan and Sylvia have gone," he said, gripping her shoulders. "No need to go on making it all sound so complicated! You look after the brat any way you like, just as if it was yours! You'll not be short of money, and it'll be just as if I'd married you instead of Valerie-just a married couple with one child and we shall take bloody good care there are no more."
"We certainly shall," she replied vehemently.
He took her words to mean that they would co-habit in the full, immoral sense, but that they would take precautions against their coition having a tangible result. Pulling her roughly against him and to her feet, he took labial possession of her mouth. She struggled, as much against her own blood as against him. Astonished and disappointed, he released her.
"Never do that again!" she cried.
"What? A little kiss! There's no harm in a bit of fun between friends."
Knowing his idea of a bit of fun was to strip her and flush her intestines with the milk of his man-hood, she pretended to think he referred to the innocent game of kissing.
"I don't mind an old friend kissing me," she said, "but that was no kiss. It was a challenge. If I hadn't resisted, I'd have engaged myself in a duel of fornication which would have gone on for years. As Alan said we're going to be living too close together. It's going to be difficult and you've got to help me to steer clear of the traps. Even the most innocent kiss or cuddle could lead us back to where we started-a pair of animals with no other thought than copulation; and I won't have that. Under-stand?"
"Why not?" he screamed. He was furious, unhappy, puzzled. "In the name of God! You used to like it. You volunteer to come live with me, just like old times; and now, thanks to those hypocritical, high-class bastards who've just gone out, you don't want it any more. You make me look a fool. I tell them I'm keeping the child and now I've got to go on my knees and beg 'em to take him."
"Keep your hair on! I never said I'd come back to you like old times. I'm coming here to nurse the baby, and to help you as much as I can; but I'm not coming here to be had and humiliated when-ever your other dories tell you to go to the devil. If you want me so much, why did you throw me over for Valerie? I couldn't even have an innocent friendship, but you could try every trick in the book to get into Valerie's bed. I didn't mind your running after her with your great big, flaming penis in your hand and I was glad when you married her. She wanted it and that was enough for me; but now that my dearest friend is dead, you forget her and you think you can have me back just like that-no courting, no compliments, no little presents, no politeness. You think all you have to do is give me a job without pay in exchange for the good job I already have and then you can rip my panties off without the least bit of ceremony and cram everything you've got into me? No! Lew, you taught me to like it, and how I liked it the way you did it to me! I'd have gone on taking it from you until the grave and wouldn't have minded you having other girls or your trying unsuccessfully to get them. But you thought, and you still do, that you were God Almighty. I could spend every evening at home, alone, waiting for you to bring home your frustrated phallus. If you were able to lay some other tart I had to go to sleep unsatisfied. Otherwise I had to be ready to do everything you wanted me to do, to let you do whatever thrilled you. I loved it. I loved being a filthy, cocksucking, slavish, unpaid whore, beaten and humiliated; but you went too far when you objected to my spending a virtuous evening out with Peter Buxton. That evening sex ended between us, and it stays ended, even now that I agree to live with you."
He rushed at her, threw her to the floor, his hands clawing at her thighs and silk-sheathed belly under her skirts. Kicking, thumping, scratching and biting, she managed to convince him that she really did intend to withhold her sexual favors from him. Panting and cursing, he got up. He was on the verge of telling her to get out and stay out but thought no! Let her sell her furniture, give up her job and get used to nursing the baby! She's tasted a man, but she's funning with him. Cooped in here day and night, without friends or other distractions, she'll come to me on her hands and knees, seriously and then I'll make her pay for what she's done today.
Ashamed, angry and bruised, Brenda returned to her own apartment to make arrangements for her taking up residence with the brute who was the only lover she had ever had, other than Valerie.