Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks Page A

sat down next to her on the stripped bed. "What do you mean?" She took his hand between both of hers. "When you wouldn't look at me last night I was afraid that you'd changed your mind."
    "About you?"
    "Yes."
    He felt invigorated by Isabelle's concern. It still seemed improbable to him that she could really want him so much.
    He took her hair and all its colours in his hands. He felt grateful to her also.
    "After all we said and all we did. How could you doubt?"
    "You wouldn't look at me. I was frightened."
    "What could I have said? I would have given us away."
    "You must smile or nod. Something. Promise me that." She had started to kiss his face. "We'll work out a signal. Promise me, won't you?"
    "Yes. I promise you."
    He let her undress him, passively standing by as she took off his clothes and folded them on the chair. He braved the exposure of his gross excitement and she affected not to notice.
    "My turn," he said, but there was only the silk robe to take off and then the beauty of Isabelle's skin. He laid his cheek against the whiteness of her chest and kissed her throat where he had seen the flush of exertion when she had been gardening. The skin was young and new and almost white, with its patterning of little marks and freckles that he tried to taste with the tip of his tongue. Then he laid her gently down on the bed and buried his face in the fragrance of her hair, covering his own head with it. Next, he made her stand up again while he worked slowly over her body with his hands and his tongue. He let his fingers trail only briefly between her legs and felt her stiffen. At last, when he had touched every part of her skin, he turned her round and bent her forward on to the bed, then moved her ankles a little further apart with the pressure from his foot. When they had finished making love they slept, Isabelle beneath a blanket with her arm draped over Stephen, he uncovered, on his front, at an angle across the mattress. She had not yet had time to wash and return When he awoke he at once rested his head on her splayed hair and breathed in the perfume of her skin where his face was against her neck and the soft underline of her jaw. She smiled as she felt his skin and opened her eyes.
    He said, "I was convinced when I came down the stairs that I wouldn't be able to find this room again. I thought it wouldn't be here."
    "It won't move. It's always here."
    "Isabelle. Tell me. Your husband. One night I heard sounds from your room as though he was... hurting you."
    Isabelle sat up, pulling a blanket over her. She nodded. "Sometimes he... becomes frustrated."
    "What do you mean?"
    Her eyes filled with tears. "We wanted to have children. Nothing seemed to happen. I used to dread each month... you know."
    He nodded.
    "The blood was like a rebuke. He said it was my fault. I tried for him, but I didn't know what to do. He was very brusque, he wasn't cruel to me but he just wanted to do it quickly so I would be pregnant. It was not like with you." Isabelle suddenly looked shy. To mention what they did seemed more shameful than to do it.
    She went on, "Eventually he began to doubt himself, I think. To start with he was so sure it was nothing to do with him because he had two children. Then he was not so sure. He seemed to grow jealous of me because I was young. 'You're so healthy, of course,' he would say. 'You're just a child.' And things like that. There was nothing I could do. I always made love to him, though I didn't enjoy it. I never criticized him. He seemed to build up this disgust with himself. It made him talk to me sarcastically. Perhaps you've noticed. He began to criticize me all the time when other people were here. I think that for some reason he felt guilty about marrying me."
    "Guilty?"
    "Perhaps toward his first wife, or perhaps because he felt he married me under false pretences."
    "Because he took you away from someone of your own age?"
    Isabelle nodded, but did not speak.
    "And then?"
    "Eventually it became