that belonged to the parents of her fellow debutantes. Once they had found a derelict tennis court at the back of a huge Kensington mansion, and that night, after a great deal of pink champagne, Julian had been allowed to run his hand along the smooth stretch of thigh that emerged from the cuff of Charlotte’s silk cami-knickers. It had been like plunging into a pool of melted chocolate.
Everyone agreed that Charlotte—or Lottie, as her friends called her—was frightfully pretty. But there was something missing in the conversations Julian had with her. He had tried to discuss with her this ever-recurring feeling of guilt as they ate cucumber sandwiches in the Palm Court of the Ritz. But the subject invariably reverted to the next social engagement and to the people who might be invited to attend. To tell the truth, he was bored by her. Lottie didn’t even like going to the movies, pronouncing cinemas to be a hotbed of germs and smelling of vinegar and chips. Chips were Julian’s favourite food. One day he would find someone to love who also shared his passion for chips. And if she didn’t, he would somehow make her.
He longed to actually go to bed with Lottie but the prospect was out of the question. Apart from the moment on the tennis court referred to half jokingly by Lottie as “Lottie’s Lapse,” she had once allowed Julian to bury his face in her neck although he had not enjoyed the experience very much. The bitter smell of her skin surprised him by reminding him of his mother. Lottie had anyhow made it clear that she drew a line at the point where her pretty emerald necklace settled in the hollow of her collarbone and Julian did not object. Once after another cocktail too many Lottie had slumped against Julian on a pink velvet sofa in a Belgrave Square drawing room and admitted that her mother had told her that not only did “it” hurt quite a lot but that the whole sticky rigmarole was frankly overrated.
If Julian had been older and married, the option of sleeping with another woman would never have arisen. Everyone did it. And even the older single man was able to pursue his options within the legions of bored, cooperative wives that glittered and littered the aristocratic drawing rooms of Britain. How had it come about that the older generation had it easy while Julian’s own younger frustrated age-group was compelled to wait?
Sometimes Julian wondered if he would ever acquire the expertise to become a good lover. The undergraduate women at Oxford, their never-quite-clean hair invariably pinned back to reveal proboscises developed for snouting out fact and never poetry, were universally unappealing. The idea of going to London and paying a tart for the experience did not attract him, although he did kick himself for not having answered the knock on his bedroom door at Cuckmere Park last weekend. Lady Bridgewater, the American wife of a senior member of the cabinet who at fifty-seven was still lovely in a faded sort of way, had squeezed his knee most enticingly under the table at dinner. But Rupert had succumbed to a similar squeeze only recently, and even though Rupert had assured him the experience was a bit of a letdown, Julian did not feel like comparing first-time notes, good or bad, with Rupert.
Reflecting on his misplaced behaviour with Evangeline during that awful evening at Bryanston Court, he was annoyed that he had half intentionally led her on. He could not think what had got into him. She was almost old enough to be his mother, although she seemed quite unbothered by the difference in their ages. Her gauche behaviour suggested she was quite innocent of any physical experience of love (or lust) although, God knows, by her age Evangeline must surely have had dozens of lovers. He kicked himself that on first sight of the overweight middle-aged woman in the unflattering and revealing dress he had tried to conceal his revulsion by making his usual mistake of going too far the other way and flirting with her. As soon as his fateful wink prompted that look of eager desperation Julian knew it would lead to trouble.
Rather to his relief, Lottie had been unable to come on the Easter expedition to the north of England. There was a stubbornness about her when she made up her mind. She had a dress fitting, she informed him, and two amusing-sounding tea parties already