The English Girl by Margaret Leroy

bitter, my mother told me. There are uncurtained skylights in the ceiling, and through the slanting glass, you can see the night sky – a moon, nearly full, an extravagant scatter of stars.
    It charms me, this steep-roofed retreat from the world, with the stars above and moonlight and starlight spilling into the room.
    ‘I’m afraid there isn’t really space for a proper bed in here,’ he tells me. ‘But I like it. I like to be so high up. And to see the night sky.’
    ‘Yes. Yes, so do I. It could be a room for an artist.’
    He goes to switch on the light.
    ‘No, leave it,’ I say hastily. ‘I prefer the moonlight…’
    I’m frightened of being naked with him. Of him seeing me.
    The mattress bed isn’t made, all the sheets and blankets tossed back. You can see the imprint of his body where he lay last night. This seems astonishingly intimate to me.
    He sees me staring at the bed. He gives a small rueful smile.
    ‘I’d have tidied up if I’d known you were coming. I’d have got out the white satin sheets. If I – you know – had any…’
    I stand there in the chilly light, unsure. His face as he turns towards me is made of shadow and dark.
    ‘Stella.’ He kisses my forehead lightly. ‘So you’ve never done this before?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘It’s going to hurt,’ he tells me.
    How does he know this? In the way that everyone knows? Or does he know from experience, because he has done this before – made love here before to a virgin like me?
    ‘Yes, of course, I know that,’ I say bravely.
    I don’t know what should happen now. My heart is pounding. I don’t know if I should take off my clothes, or if he will do it.
    There’s a towel hanging on a rail. He spreads the towel on the mattress.
    I remember what Anneliese said, about the French letter.
    ‘Harri – do you have, you know – something to use?’
    My face is hot; I don’t know how to speak about these things.
    ‘I do. Don’t worry, darling.’
    He takes off his glasses and puts them down on the table. Then he turns me round, undoes my buttons. My dress falls to the floor with a sigh and whisper of crêpe. He starts to peel off my underwear – the petticoat, bra, stockings. I’m glad I left off the Chilprufe vest that my mother likes me to wear. All the time he does this, he talks; he tells me how he loves me, how he loves my body. But when he looks at me, I feel that my face is on fire.
    He pulls off his own clothes. I have never seen a man naked before. His skin has a beautiful pallor in the moonlight, but his body looks so foreign and complicated. I can’t imagine how he could ever fit inside of me. He feels like a stranger to me: I feel a stranger to myself. I’m young and scared and ignorant. I should have kept to the rules.
    He pulls me down onto the mattress. He starts to move his hands on me, over my breasts, between my thighs. He has always seemed quicksilver to me – his words, his gestures, his thought. But now everything slows in him: he makes love to me so slowly, moves his hands, his mouth, on me so slowly. A fine red thread of delight runs through me. All thought is stopped – my body is fluid, weightless. I want this to go on for ever – him moving his mouth and his tongue and his slow, clever hands on my skin.
    Then he takes out the French letter. The sharp smell of rubber unnerves me. He moves on top of me, penetrates me. The pleasure is utterly gone now; pain yanks me back from that sweet, lost place. I feel how I bleed; he will surely tear me in two. I grit my teeth and will it to be over.
    It shocks me a little, how abandoned he seems when he comes. How in a moment of such intimacy, he seems so very far away from me.
    I lie with my head on his chest. He kisses my hair. We stay like that for a long time. I feel his heart beating against me, as though it is in my own body.
    He moves up onto one elbow. He looks into my face, traces me out with one finger; his hand smells of me. He kisses my mouth lightly. I can