AN Outrageous Affair Read online

  Caroline, being an only child, absorbed more of the odd, erratic tension in the house than she would have done had she had brothers and sisters. She observed her mother’s swings of mood, heard her bright brittle voice on the telephone, watched her at breakfast on certain mornings, nervously shredding her toast into a mountain of crumbs, her face pale, her eyes heavy, looking blankly at The Times behind which her husband sat unusually silent, unwilling to meet anyone’s eyes, even those of Janey the housemaid as she brought in the coffee.

  Jacqueline kept Caroline at a distance; it was as if she was afraid to love her, to touch her, to hold her. Caroline could not ever remember her mother so much as coming to her room to kiss her goodnight except on the rare occasions in her childhood when she had been ill; she would get a graze of her mother’s lips on her cheek, a pat on her hand, as she left the room to go up to bed; and when she had been smaller and tried to hug her, she had been gently put away from her, with the words ‘Oh, darling, not now, Mama is tired.’

  Her father was more affectionate, had allowed her to sit on his knee while he read her stories when she was tiny, had given her great big bear hugs when she hurt herself, and still did when he was especially proud of her – like when she had been blooded at her first hunt, or not cried when she had broken her collar-bone after falling off her swing – but she had grown up regarding physical contact as a rare, hard-won prize. And physical contact’s grown-up sister, sex.

  Caroline had discovered sex when she had been not quite eleven years old. She hadn’t known it was sex of course, just a delicious explosion between her legs that had soared deep up into her body and slowly throbbed its way into nothingness. She had been in bed at the time, rather casually exploring her genitals with her hands, and wondering what the strange new hairiness she found there exactly signified, when she noticed that when she touched a certain place there was a fierce darting sensation. Not sure whether she liked it or not, she touched the place again . . . and then again . . .

  From that night on she was hooked, a junkie, permanently hungry for the pleasures she could give herself. She was a little alarmed at first: the explosions were so violent, left her feeling so odd, at once peaceful and startled, that she was afraid there might be something wrong with her, that there was some strange condition in her body that she ought perhaps to tell someone about. She even pondered who for a time: Mama? No, Mama did not invite intimate disclosures; she would simply look at her rather distantly and say, ‘Caroline, I really haven’t got time to talk to you now. Talk to Nanny about it.’ Nanny then? No, certainly not; Nanny’s answer to anything physical that was not absolutely one hundred per cent normal and understood was a dose of syrup of figs, and a stern commandment to come and tell her if the dose didn’t work. How could she tell Nanny about this odd thing that was half pleasure and half pain and only came when she herself brought it to being. Papa? Of course not, Papa was a man, and a very insensitive man at that; jolly and affectionate he might be, but not a person to listen quietly and attentively while you stumbled your way through something you didn’t understand at all. A friend? Well yes, perhaps a friend, but then Caroline didn’t really have any friends. Nobody liked her enough to be her friend, she was too bossy, too prickly, too selfish; she was an only child, hopeless at sharing, at playing even, and at ten was known as stuck-up, a loner, hostile to advances that she didn’t know how to meet.

  She was a pretty little girl, everyone agreed, with her shiny auburn hair and her big blue eyes, but she had, in those days, not an ounce of charm. An odd, difficult little girl, thought Caroline, who knew she was considered thus, with an odd, difficult little secret. She decided not to share it. It was after all one of the few nice things in her life.

  She was twelve when she discovered what the secret was. Home for the holidays from Wycombe Abbey, which she hated even more than the little dame school in Framlingham, bored even with riding one long hot day, she went upstairs to her mother’s room and began idly riffling through her drawers. She often did that, when her mother was out and she was bored; it was more interesting than reading or talking to Cook, exploring the endless piles of clothes, many of them never worn, or even taken out of their boxes. Jacqueline was a compulsive shopper, she found in it a comfort, an almost physical pleasure and she turned to it in her frustration rather as another woman would have turned to drink. At least three times a week, until the war and petrol rationing prevented her, she would take the car into Ipswich or the train to London and shop, and come back, easier, better tempered, great mounds of clothes emerging from the boot of the car.

  Suddenly, as Caroline dug into a pile of silk chiffon slips she felt something hard. A box, she supposed, more goodies; but no, it wasn’t a box, it was a book. How peculiar, she thought, what a funny place to keep a book when there was a small bookcase right by her mother’s bed; maybe she didn’t know it was there, had put it in by mistake, with some of the boxes.

  Caroline pulled the book out, turned it over. It was obviously a novel, she thought, Bodily Love by Florence Graves. Bodily Love! What a hopelessly silly title. Probably her mother was ashamed to be reading such a thing, and that was why she kept it hidden. Then she opened it, started flicking through it, and discovered why her mother was ashamed – and also, in a huge rush of recognition, what her own strange, delicious sensations meant. She sat motionless, through the long afternoon, lost in a strange new territory, charted for her only by Florence Graves and her flowery prose, learning of ‘the ebb and flow of natural desire’, of the ‘crest of the wave of passion’, of the ‘trembling release of climax’. Only half understanding, her heart thudding, her cheeks burning, she learnt of the nature of a sexual relationship between men and women; of the ‘needs’ of men; of Florence Graves’s passionate affirmation that women felt such needs too. She had known, like all country children, the facts of birth, had seen calves and foals born, and had even once been an unseen witness to the mating of a bull and a cow, and had vaguely assumed that humans must follow roughly the same courses of action; what had seemed unthinkable, until that hot afternoon in her mother’s bedroom, was that there might be any suggestion of pleasure in it.

  Startled, she suddenly heard the car in the gravel drive, her mother’s voice telling the chauffeur to take it back to Framlingham and meet her father off the train; she thrust the book back where it had been, carefully rearranging the underwear over and round it, fled to her own room and shut the door. She felt herself invaded with an intense sense of physical excitement, a need for release; she lay down on the bed, and slowly, sensuously, as if actually in the presence of a lover, pulled up her skirt, and stroked her own stomach tenderly for a few moments before deliberately, confidently, almost proudly, inserting her fingers into her wet vagina, seeking out what she now knew to be her clitoris and, with a sudden frantic urgency, brought herself to swift, violent orgasm.

  Caroline’s encounter with Florence Graves and her philosophies had a profound effect on her. Already acutely aware of her body and the pleasure she was able to extract from it herself, she had never before considered that she might be able to share that pleasure with somebody else. From that day on, as she lay in her bed masturbating, she conjured up visions of being held, kissed, entered; the thought did not disturb her, as it did so many young girls; it excited her, made her happy.

  For a while, she was satisfied with fantasy; then, shortly after her fifteenth birthday, she began to long for reality. Her mother had made no attempt to educate her sexually; the whole of Caroline’s year at school had been given a highly inadequate and confusing talk on reproduction in so far as it was accomplished by the rabbit, and told that if they had any questions about human biology, they should ask their parents. Consequently, to Caroline’s straightforward mind, there were no moral issues, indeed no emotional ones to be confronted; simply the hurdle of finding someone willing to engage on what she now saw as a great adventure.

  Adventure came in th
e form of Giles Dudley-Leicester, sixteen-year-old Etonian son of one of her mother’s few friends. Giles was tall, skinny, and chinless; he had slightly watery blues eyes, a lisp and a serious lack of imagination. But he had two things in common with Caroline: he was a good horseman, and he was desperate for sex. After a Meet of the Harriers just after they both broke up for Christmas (for which Stanley had lent Giles a horse) they came back to the Moat House for tea and to wait for Sarah Dudley-Leicester to collect her son. Cook had laid out teacakes, buns, cucumber sandwiches, fruit and chocolate cake and a pile of gingerbread; they fell on it, ravenous, and ate the lot.

  ‘Funny how hunting makes you so hungry,’ said Giles, shovelling two sandwiches into his mouth at once. ‘Can’t understand it really, all you do is sit there.’

  Caroline watched him with distaste. ‘I’d have thought there was a bit more to it than that,’ she said. ‘You do have to concentrate rather. And we have been out for nearly five hours. I ache all over. I might have a bath. D’you want one?’

  ‘Might be an idea,’ said Giles. ‘Can’t think of anything I’d like better, as a matter of fact. Would that really be all right?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Caroline. ‘Mama’s out, I’ll use her bathroom, and you can use the nursery one. You know where it is, don’t you?’

  ‘What? Oh, yes, of course. I remember your nanny bathing me once when we were small and we all fell in the silage one afternoon. My ma will be relieved, she always complains about the filth in the car when I’ve been out.’

  ‘But you’re not going home naked, are you?’ asked Caroline.

  ‘What? No, of course not.’ Giles was scarlet.

  ‘Well then, I don’t see how you having a bath can save her car.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, no. Of course. You’re right. Yes.’

  ‘Follow me,’ said Caroline wearily.

  She was already getting into the bath when she remembered there were no towels in the nursery bathroom. She reluctantly put on her mother’s bathrobe, collected a couple of towels from the linen cupboard and went up the stairs to the nursery floor. Giles was still lounging in the bathroom chair, reading Horse and Hound.

  ‘Here. I brought you some towels.’

  ‘What’s that? Oh, right, fine, jolly good. Thanks, Caroline.’

  She walked over to him and handed him the towels. As she bent towards him, the robe swung open just enough to show the top of her breasts; Giles looked up and found them confronting him. He went scarlet. Caroline smiled slightly contemptuously. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you in peace.’

  She was just turning away when she glanced down at him; beneath his muddied white breeches, the unmistakable line of his erection stood out. Caroline didn’t hesitate. It was the situation, and the opportunity, she had been waiting for, in perfect and totally unexpected harmony. She bent down again, and laid her hand on the bulge.

  ‘That looks nice,’ she said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Giles. He looked earnestly terrified. But the bulge remained steadfast.

  Caroline walked over to the door and locked it. ‘Come on,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, Caroline, no,’ said Giles.

  ‘Why not? Don’t you want to?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course I do. But we shouldn’t. And somebody might come.’

  ‘I hope,’ said Caroline giggling at her own wit, ‘that we both will.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Giles again.

  ‘Never mind about Him. And Mama is out. Now then, Giles, have you ever done this before?’

  ‘Er – well not exactly.’

  ‘That makes two of us. But we should manage it. Now take your trousers off, and your shirt too. I believe nakedness is a help.’

  Had Giles been more experienced, and less desperate for sex himself (his only experiences thus far having been homosexual activity at Eton), he might have refused. As it was, he felt he had no option. Half afraid, he removed his clothes; Caroline was lying on the floor, the discarded bathrobe serving as bedding; she patted it invitingly, smiling, while eyeing Giles’s large erect penis with some trepidation. She had not expected it to be so large, and couldn’t quite imagine how the small orifice which seemed to fit quite snugly round her own finger could possibly accommodate it. But she was nothing if not brave; and besides there was no going back now.

  ‘Come on. I can see you want to,’ she said conversationally. ‘I think we’re going to have a great time.’

  Thinking about it in later life, she was always amazed it hadn’t been worse. Giles was well endowed, totally without skill, and frantic; he plunged into her almost without warning, and it hurt dreadfully.

  ‘Is that all right?’ he whispered in her ear, in between tearing at her mouth with his.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Caroline, trying to sound matter-of-fact, anxious not to moan, and equally anxious not to move, lest the pain should get worse. ‘Yes, that’s fine.’

  ‘Thank Christ.’ He began to move up and down; she thought she might scream.

  ‘Giles, could you –’

  ‘Yes, what?’

  ‘Could you just lie still for a bit. Just for a bit.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  He lay, remarkably still; Caroline lay beneath him, trying to distract herself from her pain, looking up at the peeling paint on the ceiling, and wondering idly whether her mother had ever even considered having it painted, and gradually began to experience a totally different sensation: a softening, a yielding, a desire to move somehow forwards, to go on and on into a new place, she knew not quite where. Tentatively she moved; at first very gently, then a little more strongly. It was a mistake; Giles felt it as a signal, and unable to control himself any longer, began to plunge in and out of her like a frightened horse, groaning and clutching at her hair. Caroline opened her eyes again, seeking the reassurance of the ceiling and saw his face, contorted, red, his eyes clenched shut. She thought she had never seen anything so hideous.

  It was over in seconds after that; a huge, final plunge, a last groan that was almost a bellow, and Giles came shuddering into her. It hurt so much that Caroline had to bury her teeth in his shoulder to muffle her scream; and then, almost at once, just as she started to feel the softening again, his penis began to subside, and as she moved hopefully against him, slithered out of her altogether.

  ‘I say,’ said Giles, rolling off her, still panting. ‘I say, that was all right, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Caroline, carefully, ‘yes, it was all right. Um – Giles, I think I’ll go and have my bath now.’

  ‘Rightho,’ said Giles.

  Right through the Christmas holidays, on every possible occasion, they had sex. Once her body had recovered from its initial ordeal, Caroline began to enjoy it; she stopped shrinking from Giles’s penis, stopped feeling any pain, and went forward to him, joyfully, hungrily. Giles, in his turn and at her request, moved a little more slowly and gently; and from a book he had found in his father’s dressing room – ‘What would we do without our parents’ guilty secrets?’ asked Caroline cheerfully when he told her about it – he learnt a little technique, and began to stroke Caroline’s breasts (a little heavily to be sure, and rather as if he was petting the family labrador, but never mind, she said, it was still nice) and to kiss her rather more slowly and gently as he made love to her. They found themselves remarkably free to pursue their newfound pleasure: the hunting season was in full swing, and both sets of parents agreed it was a splendid way for them to spend their time, and how delighted they were that their two odd, rather difficult children had formed such a splendid friendship; after each day out, after they had had tea or lunch, and providing Jacqueline was out and Nanny well and truly asleep, they made their way up to the nursery bathroom, where Caroline had installed a pile of old linen from the cupboard, as being more comfortable than the bath
mat, and tore off their clothes.

  What neither of them gave a moment’s thought to was contraception.

  ‘She’s what?’ said Jacqueline, staring at Caroline’s headmistress across her office. ‘Caroline is what? What did you say?’

  ‘Caroline is pregnant, Mrs Miller.’

  ‘I assure you there must be some mistake. Moreover I shall consult my solicitor immediately, about what I can only term as slander. How dare you say such things about my daughter?’

  ‘Mrs Miller, there is no mistake. Caroline is pregnant. Roughly three months. I have had her examined by the school doctor, and he has done a pregnancy test, just to make quite sure. I was naturally of precisely your opinion. That it could not be possible. But the fact remains that she is.’

  ‘But – what does she say? Surely she denies it?’

  ‘No, Mrs Miller, she doesn’t.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’ Jacqueline rested her head on her hands for a moment. Then she looked at the headmistress. ‘You’d better tell me about it.’

  ‘I will. And I’ll ask Matron to come in. She can tell you more than I can.’

  Matron related the story in full. Soon after the start of term, Caroline had fainted in morning chapel. ‘I assumed it was her period. I put her to bed for the morning, and asked if she was experiencing severe pain. She said she wasn’t. I didn’t think a great deal about it. Then two days later it happened again. She said she often fainted, and I shouldn’t take any notice. I decided to keep an eye on her, and found her vomiting several times, usually in the morning. She said she’d eaten something and that she was sure it was nothing. About a week after that started she fainted again; it still never occurred to me of course that she might be pregnant. But I was worried and called the school doctor. She examined Caroline carefully, and then said she would like to talk to her in private. An hour later she came in and said she was very much afraid that Caroline was pregnant, but that of course she might be wrong, and before upsetting everybody, she would like to do a pregnancy test. That takes a few days, as you probably know. Anyway, I’m afraid it is positive. There is absolutely no doubt. Caroline is pregnant.’