A Woman Involved Read Online Free Page A

announced:
    ‘I wrote to Max this morning. I’ve told him.’
    It was the most important moment in his life, the happiest and the most solemn. He had taken her hand, and turned and led her silently down the steps to his old car. They drove in silence through the town. He parked the car, and opened the door for her. They walked hand in hand, by unspoken agreement, into the hotel. His hand was shaking as he signed the register. They rode up in the elevator wordlessly. Hand in hand, down the corridor. Room 201.
    He closed the door, and leant back against it. They looked at each other. They were both very nervous. Then he took her in his arms, and crushed her against him, and his hands were trembling as he undressed her. They toppled wordlessly onto the bed, and, oh, the bliss of each other’s bodies at last.
    He was awake before dawn. For a few moments, at his lowest ebb; Janet’s words flashed through his mind, and he tried to caution himself; then he was properly awake and he knew that she was awake too, lying in this same pre-dawn unreality. He got up and pulled on his swimming trunks. He went down onto the beach, and he started to run. To run, to run, to appease his yearning in the humid dawn, sweating out the booze and cigarettes of yesterday, with each rasp of his breath just thinking of her, thinking of her. When he had run two miles he turned into the sea, splashing and pounding, and he plunged. He swam and he swam underwater until his lungs were bursting, then he broke surface with a gushing gasp. And he flung his arms full wide to the horizon where she lived, and he bellowed to the early morning:
    ‘ Come today my love …  ’
    She came in the middle of the day.
    He was sitting at the bar, in the dappled shade, where he could see the lobby. He saw her suddenly appear in the front door, a splash of blonde hair, her willowy silhouette against the outside light, and his heart turned over and all his self-caution was forgotten. He stood up; she walked through the lobby, out onto the verandah, and she took his breath away. She stood for a moment at the top step, tall and blonde and elegant, frowning slightly in the sunlight, looking about the shadowed garden with half a smile of expectation on her mouth; then she saw him striding towards her out of the shadows, and her lovely face broke into her dazzling Anna smile, and she started down the steps.
    He strode towards her, his heart pounding, and there was nothing else in the world but her coming towards him, smiling. Then his hands took hers, and then her face was next to his, for a fleeting moment their bodies touching as he kissed her cheek, and he got the delicious scent of her, and in that instanthe felt all the passion of five long years. Then they were standing back from each other a laughy, shaky: ‘ Hullo ’ – she grinned, ‘– Hullo …’
    Afterwards, when he would try to remember the details, it was all confused, like a dream; he would remember just wanting to crush her in his arms, and her backing off, laughing, saying, ‘We better sit down, but I can only stay a moment …’ which was the most ridiculous statement in the world, because no way was this wonderful thing going to be stopped. He remembered taking her hand and leading her back up the steps into the hotel, laughy and shaky and saying God knows what, and she let him lead her through the lobby, up the staircase, and it did not occur to him that he was compromising her, they were just naturally hurrying away together to a private place to be alone with their excitement; then they were inside his room, and they just stood a moment, looking at each other, grinning, and it seemed the happiest thing in the world, he could hardly believe that this was happening at last, and she was more beautiful than he remembered her: she grinned: ‘I can hardly believe this …’
    ‘Nor can I …’
    And he took her in his arms, and she put her arms tight around his neck, and they kissed each other, mouths