A Quiet Life(15)

‘So, your comrade’s preparing another lecture for you?’

‘She doesn’t lecture me.’

‘I’ve heard her.’ Joe flicked a match into the water. It spun, a tiny bead of light, in the darkness. Laura caught anger under his words, but before she could ask him about it, he turned back to her and smiled. ‘Your eyes are shining in the moonlight. Has anyone ever told you what pretty eyes you have?’

Nobody ever had, but Laura laughed in what she hoped was a sophisticated way. She didn’t know what to say, and felt shaken by the desire that rose up suddenly in her, a desire for his compliment to be not just an easy line but something that he had found hard to say, something that bore testament to his view of her. And then he did what she realised she was waiting for him to do, and put a hand behind her back and slid it down, over her dress, over her buttocks. Laura was unable to move as pleasure, so forceful it seemed to deny her a sense of consciousness, flooded through her, loosening her joints and heating her skin.

‘What your friend wants,’ he was whispering, ‘I can see that … But what you want – what do you want?’

She hardly heard his words, she was so focused on his touch. He threw his cigarette away over the side, and put his right hand up to Laura’s face, stroking his thumb over her cheek and then putting it against her mouth. To Laura’s own surprise, she did not move away from him, and her lips opened against his thumb, and tentatively her tongue touched it. ‘So you do know what you want,’ he whispered urgently into her ear. The hand that had been on her back was now between her thighs, and as it moved up to the skin above her stocking top her mouth opened suddenly wider, and a groan escaped her.

‘Come on then,’ he said, pushing his hand up to her underwear, which had become so wet that his fingers slid on the silk. Lost in the molten pleasure that his touch was giving her, Laura was unaware of anything but the pressure of his fingers, but then he stepped away and took her hand. ‘Come on,’ he said again. ‘No need to provide the entertainment,’ and to her shame she saw a steward walking past them and realised that Joe was smiling at her, as though she was amusing him. ‘Let’s get some privacy – my cabin mate is drinking in the restaurant, we can be alone for a bit. Long enough, anyway.’ He raised his eyebrows at her, and suddenly his obvious amusement at what was happening made her feel ashamed.

‘I must go and find Florence,’ she said. Her words were clipped.

‘Come on,’ his hand held her wrist now, and it was too tight. Laura tried to pull away, but his grip tightened even more.

‘Stop it,’ she said, horribly aware that she could still feel the wetness between her thighs, that she wanted his hand back there, and that her voice sounded half-hearted.

‘Don’t go back to the lectures.’

‘She doesn’t—’

‘What, does she give you any of this?’ His left hand pushed up again, under her dress. ‘Does she? Or is she just teaching you about how to be a good little worker, how to forget what you want for the good of the masses?’ The hand still gripping her wrist was hurting her, and the other one was pushing her legs apart again, and though the sparks of pleasure were intense, so too was the anger, coming hard on the heels of the pleasure. He was smiling at her, and his teeth, which looked yellowy with nicotine stains in the daylight, were white.

Making a huge effort, she pulled away from him and smoothed down her dress. ‘You have no idea—’

‘No, Laura, you have no idea. You have no idea what she’s talking about, all that claptrap that the Reds are trying to feed people while they knock down everything that’s good in the world.’

‘You’re telling me about being good?’ It was a quicker comeback than Laura knew she was capable of, and Joe laughed.

He went on talking, but he had lost her. She shook her head and told him she was going inside. As they walked to the stairs, Maisie and Lily came up laughing with another man, and Joe joined them. The four of them started dancing drunkenly on the deck, and Laura felt heavy and disappointed as she turned away from them to go down the metal staircase and back through the corridor to her cabin. She walked slowly, dragging one hand against the felted walls. There was something that had shocked her not just about the embrace and her overwhelming reaction to it, but in the lightness with which Joe had treated the sudden surge of desire. She felt confused, wrong-footed. How could he experience that energy, which had come across her with such an all-consuming force, as if it would fuse them together if they gave into it, as something so light and impersonal?

She opened the door to the cabin. Florence was sitting in her bed, her knees drawn up, reading. ‘I’ve got your scarf,’ Laura said.

‘I thought you were still dancing.’

‘No, I – I stopped.’

Florence said nothing, turning a page. Laura walked over to her and put the scarf down on her bed. ‘Do you think—’

‘What?’ Florence’s voice was not unfriendly, but it was rather clipped, as though whatever she was reading was more interesting to her than what Laura was thinking, and so Laura said nothing. She took off her clothes, facing the wall and pulling her nightdress over her body before taking off her underclothes. As she took off her garter belt, she remembered Joe’s fingers, and she looked over her shoulder at Florence, but all her attention was on whatever she was reading, and Laura got into bed.