Prelude Read online

  Still wearing her boots, her bare skin is almost brown in the weak afternoon light. In stunning contrast to her skin is the almost luminous whiteness of her knickers, and through the lace a tantalising glimpse of what lies beneath.

  My eyes are soaking up everything, her breasts above me, her dreamy face that is awash with desire.

  I remember the texture of her skin, fever hot, yet flecked with splashes of cool rain from the leaves overhead. It was the first time that I had ever really touched, kneaded, clasped the skin of another. To those in a relationship, this matter might seem so mundane as to be barely worthy of mention. But how I marvelled at its softness, its downy curves, its rich scent of animal musk. Stroking her skin with the tips of my fingers, pressing more firmly with the heels of my hand, and then grasping her tight about the waist, her skin going white between my fingers. Delicately I tip my tongue to taste salty sweat.

  “Stop,” she says. “Stop. Please stop.”

  With a rueful kiss, I rock back on my heels, gaze up. Her eyes roll and her eyelids flutter as she comes back to earth.

  “God, I am so close.”

  She kneels beside me and we kiss, more leisurely, not quite the crazy passion of before, and with deft fingers she unties my boots, tugs at my socks, eases off my trousers. Hands on my shoulders, her eyes caress my naked body.

  “Beautiful,” she says, lying back, and in a moment I have unzipped her boots. My fingertips curl round the trim of her knickers, and India lifts up as I peel them down her legs and over her stockinged feet. Everything is happening slower and slower, for now that we are naked, both time and possibilities seem limitless.

  I’m kneeling between her legs, gazing with dumbstruck awe at India’s naked beauty, at this divine woman who appears to be offering herself to me.

  As I write this now, my hands still tremble at the very thought of it. Her hair in a brown halo, her skin aglow with desire, and the raindrops flickering through the trees, tart and cool against the heat.

  The most perfect blend of love and passion.

  She stretches out, takes my hand and pulls me on top of her. She kisses me. Is it a tear on her cheek or a drop of rain? I have never seen such a look in a woman’s eyes.

  But even then, even in the very heat of the moment, I am still able to take a step back.

  “What about protection?”

  She smiles up at me, grateful. “It’s all right.”

  That’s all she says. I stroke her cheek and feel her strain up against me, her back arching off the rug.

  Then the moment that I would never, ever, have dreamed possible, the moment when we start to make love, gazing all the while deep into each other’s eyes.

  That very instant, a rip-tide of ecstasy washes over me. I can do no more than hold her close to my chest. Well, what else would you expect of a seventeen-year-old virgin?

  We look and we smile, with pleasure, with relief, with gratitude.

  “Incredible,” I say. “Just incredible.”

  And so began the most intense, the most dramatic three weeks of my life. Tuesday, June 22, 1982, I can remember it to the very day, for it was the day after Prince William was born and the newspapers were awash with the good news.

  I TUG THE coats on top of us, wrap over the folds of the blanket and we lay there revelling in our love, smiling at the knowledge that I am still inside her.

  We are immune to any sensation other than that to be found under our chestnut tree. The Queen and all her cavalry could have marched past on the Long Walk and we would not have heard a thing.

  India licks my ear, her hands straying to my buttocks, and starts to rock against me. Seamlessly, without even being aware of it, we have moved from stroking and caressing to making love again, and I begin to pulse against her.

  “So good,” she says, arms rigid round my neck, and slowly she is turning me so that it’s her on top this time, arms straight, locked onto my shoulders. Her head arches backwards. I watch, I learn, I marvel.

  I am minded of that first time in her flat, when she’d tumbled me onto her bed, and how her hair had fallen round my face to cut out everything else in the world but her kisses. This time there are so many other sensations; I can feel the entire length of her naked body, from feet to lips, pressed directly on top of me.

  Locked into a welter of new sensations, tastes and smells, I want it to go on forever. But just as the symphony is about to reach its dizzying peak, India reads my mind, can feel my thoughts from every twitch and pulse of my body.

  A moment to cool, then India, that most adoring of lovers, my houri and my fantasy girl, arcs back and lets out a stuttered cry that is both a howl of pleasure and a plea for mercy, as if she can’t cope with the glut of signals that are detonating from her every cell.

  This time there was no doubt about it, she is crying, the tears falling freely from her eyes and dropping onto my face, my chest, and, as she leans forward to kiss me, she is also chuckling with laughter. “Better and better,” she says.

  INDIA POURED US tea, strong and milky, and we fed each other chocolates, holding them between our lips and accepting a kiss in thanks.

  All I wanted to do was to kneel beside her and gaze at her glorious nakedness. She smiled—and that is how she is in all of my memories, forever smiling—and, artfully, took a sip of tea. Then, with her mouth still hot, peppered me with kisses until I was burning up with lust. Without a word she lay back, her hands on my hips, the better to guide me.

  That third time we made love was slower, softer, a steady rolling river that picks up speed, going faster and faster until it empties itself into the ocean. This time, as her legs locked round mine, she did not scream, did not yelp, but whispered, “I want you.” Over and over she said it, even as her fingernails sank into my back, even as her neck muscles turned to spun-steel and her breath was reduced to nothing but a hoarse pant. Without our even realising it the rain had stopped, and as we peeked through the wet branches we could see a rainbow starting to tip against the Copper Cow.

  PRELUDE 15,

  G Major

  I RAN AND ran back to the Timbralls but still missed Absence and, when I later checked in with Frankie, he put me on Tardy Book, which meant a week of early rises.

  He could have had me flogged in front of the entire school and I would not have minded. That night, the next day and the next, you could not have wiped the dazed smile off my face.

  Many times since, I have been in love. But at Eton I was in the throes of love’s first careless rapture. A time when I was ever-optimistic and also a time when I had yet to be burned.

  I had horded up every moment of our time in Windsor Park and guarded those memories like a rapacious miser. Over and over again, I replayed that most magical of moments when she’d first asked to make love. The sex, the lust, the passion, I dwelt on them too.

  But, now I may as well confess, there was one niggle. Just a momentary glitch, a small grey cloud on a perfect day.

  It was nothing much to worry about.

  All the same it vexed me and that vexation would grow and grow until it was a huge, blistered sore.

  It was the moment, just before we’d made love for the first time, when I had asked India about protection. She had replied that it was “all right”.

  I knew full well what she meant—she was either on the pill or using some other method—but what it chiefly meant was that, before she even knew my state of mind, India had already taken care of contraception.

  These days, I suppose, it is probably the norm for women to be on the pill when they’re not in a steady relationship. But back then, it was not something I’d even thought about.

  There were any number of possibilities. And the one that mocked me the most was that India had been on the pill for months, even years, just on the off-chance that she might want to have sex with any guy who took her fancy.

  I know this must come across as tacky, sleazy, downright demented, for page after page I have been setting up India as my Goddes
s. I’ve been raving about her looks, her compassion, how much I adored her. And yet, just at the very time that I felt I had fallen in love with her, I’d already started to think the worst of her. Already I had her pinned down as a slattern who would hop into bed with the first stripling that took her fancy. Why else had she come to Eton?

  It makes me sound as if I were completely deranged. I will endeavour to explain as best I can.

  India was my first great love. But it was as if within my heart there were a malignant sewer-rat forever chewing away at this perfect love, chewing and chewing until everything had started to rot and fester.

  And why, why did I allow this to happen? Why did I allow my jealousy to get so out of control? Why didn’t I ever talk it through with India? Why did I do nothing but feed the rat until it had cankered everything inside me?

  But, jealous souls will not be answered so; they are not ever jealous for the cause, but jealous for they are jealous.

  There were any number of possible explanations. You can take your pick. That I never felt worthy of India’s love; that I wanted to destroy her before I got hurt. In fact—let’s get it out there right now—that I was a sick jerk who wilfully destroyed the best thing ever to come into my life.

  I can only hang my head in shame. I accept it all, deserve it all, for none of these accusations can be any worse than what I believe to be the truth. And that, as Oscar Wilde so tragically summed up, is that each man kills the thing he loves.

  And I did that; I killed it. Killed it stone dead, with a cold eye and a cruel heart.

  And the shame of it still makes me weep.

  I COULDN’T SEE India on Wednesday, but on Thursday afternoon I was with her, with love in my heart and freshly-picked dandelions in my hand. We met on the Thames towpath and, after we had hidden ourselves, made sweet love to the accompaniment of the shrill coxes on the river and the bawling coaches on the bank. What I remember of that blazing afternoon is not so much the sex as lying there afterwards gazing at India as she slept, perfect in her nakedness. I felt not like a lover, but like a truant schoolboy that had come across her unawares. I still could not credit that I could look, stare—even touch. I did just that, trailing a blade of grass across her stomach and up to her breasts. Up and across her shoulders, along her arms, her fingers, and back down her stomach.

  She still had her eyes closed. “I like that,” she said.

  “And that?” I dabbed at her midriff with my tongue.

  “Very much.”

  Her hand came up, stroked my hair. Her legs twitched imperceptibly and, even before I’d heard her moan, I knew that India was again looking for love. We made love three times.

  Three times? Hah! I can only laugh at the supreme ignorance of that seventeen-year-old Etonian. For then, I honestly thought that three times was the norm—that it was the standard two-hour sex session.

  I didn’t know I was born.

  India draped her arm round my hips and pressed herself close. “Tell me about yourself,” she said.

  “Me?” I said. “Where do you want me to start?”

  “Your family?”

  “My family?” I never thought about my family much. Family was just family like school was just school.

  “My family?” I said again.

  I tried to visit a place where I had not been for many years.

  I took a deep breath. “Nothing much to tell. My mother died when I was six.” I stared at the sky, imagined myself scudding through the clouds. “I have the pictures, but I don’t have the memories.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “Not much. Not much at all.”

  “You must remember something.”

  I toyed with India’s nipple, stroking it taut. My mind was a blank. I could remember nothing.

  Then, just a glimpse of a memory, a thin beam of light waving in the distance on a dark night.

  “I’d forgotten all about it,” I said. “But we used to bake bread together in the morning. I remember kneading dough on the kitchen table. The smell of bread filling the house and the blast of hot air as we opened the oven door. It’s strange. I hadn’t really thought about it in over a decade.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “No need to be. It was cancer. Just something that happens, and it happened to us.

  “She was a fantastic cook too. I remember that whenever I came home, the house always smelled of food.”

  I shrugged, impervious to the memory, impervious to any sort of mental pain.

  “Within two years, father had married again. They had a couple of boys.”

  “And how’s that for you?”

  Up until then, I’d never thought about it. It was just the set of circumstances that was my life—neither good, nor bad, perfectly endurable though not necessarily enjoyable.

  “We all just do our own thing,” I said. “My father goes to his club, Tom and Ali go to prep school. My stepmother keeps the house immaculate.”

  India kissed me.

  “You get on with things as best you can.” I closed one eye, squinted at the sky. It was easier if I didn’t look at India. “One thing I remember clearly was the day my father came to my pre-prep. I’d just started boarding.”

  “At six?”

  “That was the way of it,” I said. “I’d spotted him drive up. He was by himself. I sensed immediately that something was wrong. I saw him walk into the private entrance and I had to wait thirty minutes before I was called in to see the headmaster.

  “I knocked on the study door and the headmaster let me in. He told me that my father had some news, and he left us to it. My father was sitting in an armchair in the corner. I’d never seen anyone look so grey—ash grey, with black whorls under his eyes.

  “I didn’t know what to do. He beckoned me over and hugged me. It was probably the last time he ever held onto me like that. He was holding me tighter than I’d ever been held before.”

  India blew her nose, wiped a tear from her cheek.

  “Eventually he spoke to me. ‘You’re all I’ve got left now,’ is what he said, before telling me that mother had died. But I didn’t cry. Even then I knew that big boys don’t cry.

  “I had ten days off. Stiff upper lip at the funeral and the wake, and when I returned to school everyone was on best behaviour. For a while, everyone treated me with kid gloves. I was quite special. The kid with the dead mother.”

  I played with India’s hair, twirling a tress between my fingers, studying each individual hair.

  “And life continued. My father continued in the Army, found a nanny for me for the holidays and soon had found a step-mum to look after me for free.” I was hoarse and sipped some lemonade. “She did the best she could. But it must be hard to love your step-son as much as you love your own sons.”

  I kissed India on the lips, dabbing with my tongue. “So that’s my story. Not the best of childhoods, but there must have been many worse.”

  India smiled as she cuffed away another tear. “Thank you for that,” she said. “Sometimes you need to be reminded of what you’ve got.”

  “And what have you got?”

  “Both my parents are still alive, still together.” She tapped a finger on her cheek, as if in thought. “Oh yes, and a very affectionate boyfriend.”

  “I’ve heard about him. What’s he like?”

  “You’d like him,” she said, nails raking over my chest. “He’s a bit younger than me, tall, ever so handsome.”

  “Sounds like quite a catch.”

  “An expert in the art of love,” she continued.

  “Daresay he had a good teacher.”

  “A useful pianist.” She ticked the points off on her fingers. “Polished manners, considerate, obedient, witty, and, best of all, he appears to have no baggage.”

  “No baggage?”

  “Yes.” She kissed me. “One of the many reasons why I love him.”

  “Oh, you love him now, do you?”

  “Without doubt.”

&nb
sp; “And is it mutual?”

  “It would be such a terrible tragedy if it weren’t.” She was giggling. “What do you think?”

  “As tragedies go, it would have to be up there with Hamlet.” I replied. “But I think he probably loves you too.”

  “Even with all my baggage?”

  “It makes you what you are,” I said. “Besides, how much baggage can a piano teacher have?”

  “How long have you got?” she nibbled at my lip. “There was my short-lived spell at Bristol University. Should have read music. In a moment of madness I opted for medicine.”

  “Doesn’t sound like excess baggage to me.”

  “And the overly-attentive uncle who blighted three years of my childhood?”

  “Unpleasant, but still portable.”

  “And the broken heart that I thought would never be healed?”

  “I’m sure your boyfriend is doing his best.”

  She kissed me, pressing the length of her body against mine. “I love you so much.”

  “Me?” I kissed her back. “What about that boyfriend of yours?”

  “What do you think he’d say?” Her hands fumbled and teased.

  I broke off from those magical lips. “I think he’d say that he loves you too.”

  “He would?”

  “Very much.”

  Our final bout of love-making reached new peaks of intimacy. A crew rowed past not ten yards away from our makeshift bed. She was on the verge of crying out when suddenly she pinned me back and drilled her tongue into my mouth. I could feel her silent scream of ecstasy thrilling through my bones.

  It was wonderful. It was always wonderful.

  And I could rake over our love-making for page after page, could fill the entire book with it. But that would be self-indulgence.

  Because my story is not just about love and sex, but also how I sowed the seeds of my own self-destruction and how I created such a fertile breeding ground for my incipient jealousy.

  THAT FRIDAY I couldn’t see India because she was tied up with lessons. As a poor second-best, Jeremy and I went to Tap, the school pub. Tap was a revered Eton institution, where boys aged sixteen and up could learn to handle their drink. We were only allowed a couple of pints, but that was more than enough to set most of us well on our way.