CAUGHT
UNAWARES
Gently, Jeffrey Collins
rubbed the sleep from his bleary eyes and calmly opened them upon the
intriguing spectacle of his wife getting dressed. She had pulled back the curtains of their
bedroom windows to let-in the early-morning light, and now that he was awake he
noticed how bright it was in the room and how clearly everything stood out and
captured his attention, especially the slender though shapely figure of Rachel,
at present clad in nothing more than a pair of pink nylon panties and a
matching brassiere, the slender strap of which was partly visible to either
side of her long black hair. At that
moment she had her back to him and was pulling a nylon stocking into place over
her right thigh with attentive care, no doubt from fear of laddering or poking
a hole in it, and with an air that suggested that she was putting the finishing
touches to a work of art. Which, in a
sense, she was. For dressing was a kind
of art in itself with Rachel Collins - applied rather than fine art, so to
speak. And she knew how to dress
herself, indeed she did!
As yet, however, she wasn't aware that Jeffrey was watching
her, and so there was something pleasingly natural and unselfconscious about
her movements, something agreeably unpretentious, one might almost say. Had she suddenly turned around and caught her
husband staring at her with that complacently-admiring expression on his face,
she would almost certainly have smiled in self-satisfaction at him or, rather,
to herself, as women often did when they thought they were being admired. And her subsequent actions would probably
have been correspondingly more self-conscious and artificial. However, she did not turn around, but
straightaway proceeded to the other leg, balancing precariously on one foot as
she gently pulled the stocking over her calf muscle and attended to its
heel. The self-conscious sex, as Jeffrey
Collins liked to think of women, was in this case objectively engaged in the
art of dressing, and thus otherwise preoccupied.
Oh, but what a rump she had!
He could hardly fail to appreciate, perhaps for the thousandth time, the
shapely outlines of her buttocks and the gentle curve of her hips, as she bent
forward to put the finishing touches to the garbing of her left leg. Right from the beginning, from the very first
days of their romance, he had been keenly appreciative of the quality of her
rump, which, though firm and ample, was not over-large. To him, it signified a golden mean of
feminine beauty, and was always a pleasure both to look at and to touch - that
is, to hold, stroke, pat, squeeze, press, prod, rub, smack, etc., as the
situation seemingly warranted. Of all
the weapons at her disposal for the conquest of the male it was subordinate
only to her face and legs, perhaps the third greatest physical asset she
possessed. Its enticing contours had
more than once overcome his carnal reserve, so to speak, and induced him to
launch a coital attack that could only result in a sexual victory for her. For she was by no means unaware of the power
it exerted over him or of the esteem in which he held it, deeming it a rump in
a million. Perhaps in reality it was a
rump in two or five or even ten millions, though he had never bothered to
wonder if it might be, preferring to settle into the cliché of a nice round
figure and leave the matter at that.
But he had little doubt that it was a rather special rump and
possibly compensated for her breasts, which were so small that one often
wondered why she bothered to wear a brassiere at all. Perhaps because she didn't have the courage
not to wear one, to come face-to-face, as it were, with their diminutive size
and the consequent realization that, by adult female standards, she was
something of a freak? Perhaps the
brassiere served to hide or, at any rate, minimize this physical defect by
creating appearances to the contrary?
Jeffrey didn't know for sure and, from fear of hurting her
feelings, he had never dared to inquire into the matter. But, being a rather perspicacious
psychologist in his own right, he couldn't dismiss the possibility as a mere
figment of the imagination. In all
probability, it was one of a number of motives she had for wearing a bra, if
not the chief one then almost certainly a significant and valid one. The fact that it also served to enhance her
femininity and appeal to the fetishist in him couldn't be ignored, either. And he would have been the last person to
pretend he didn't like it, or that it wasn't a viable weapon in her assault on
his sensibility.
Nevertheless the fact that she had extremely small breasts
couldn't be denied, and Jeffrey fancied it to some extent explained not only
why she had such a seductive rump, but also the reason he had gradually come to
attach so much sexual importance to it, ascribing to it a status which it might
not otherwise have warranted, had she been more generously endowed
elsewhere. No doubt, that was why he
spent more time caressing her rump than fondling her breasts. For it had largely taken over the role of the
latter, concentrating her sexuality about the middle of her body. There was, however, a chance that if she
subsequently bore offspring, the exigencies of motherhood would bring about a
transformation in the size of her breasts, thereby endowing her with a new
sexual dimension. If so, then so much
the better! thought Jeffrey. He reckoned
he could do with a change of sexual perspective!
She had pulled the second stocking into place and was now
bending over further than before, stretching a hand down to straighten-out and
smooth-over the nylon material in the region of her toes. Looking at her thus, it was impossible for
Jeffrey Collins not to become sexually aroused, and he felt his penis acquiring
a kind of autonomous life of its own under the quilt as it slowly expanded and
slid across part of his lower abdomen.
Now he could see the patch of firmer material sown into her panties
about the region of her crotch, as well as the outlines of her labia, with
their at times fairly-pronounced clitoral cynosure snugly nestled
in-between. It was, to say the least, an
alluring sight, and one that rarely failed to exert a spell on him, even at
this virgin time of day. To claim she
was seductive, viewed thus, would have been an understatement. She was positively ravishing! The mystique of her feminine charm was
undeniably potent, and had she remained in that position a moment longer he
might have felt obliged to jump out of bed and have his way with her, like a
behaviouristic rat responding to a programmed stimulus. But, fortunately or unfortunately, depending
on one's standpoint, she soon straightened up and walked towards the dresser.
From fear she should notice him staring at her in the
reflection of the dressing-table mirror, he closed his eyes and feigned
sleep. Of course, it wouldn't really matter
if she did notice him, considering that they were married and extremely
well-acquainted with each other by now.
Yet, all the same, he wanted to prolong this context, in which she was
unselfconsciously preoccupied and unaware of his attention, a little while
longer. It was pleasant, after all.
Yes, and as he lay there, listening to her movements in front
of the dresser, an image of her slenderness came into his mind's eye and he
half-smiled his satisfaction of her beauty, satisfied, as much as anything,
that he was actually married to this woman whose beauty left little - if one
discarded her diminutive breasts - to be desired. Was there another woman in the world to whom
he would rather be married? No, he
didn't think so, and this realization enhanced his satisfaction, emphasizing
his complacency in partnership. She was
just right for him and he, for his part, was just right for her. A pair of slender people together. She was undoubtedly one of the highest type
of women in the world, being so lean and yet shapely, such a paradoxical
combination of fleshiness and slenderness, seduction and primness. Her beautifully-round fleshy arms narrowing
down to a pair of angular wrists of seemingly extreme fragility. Her oval-shaped calf muscles, slender yet
well-formed, leading up to her amply seductive womanly thighs, on which reposed
that alluring rump in a million with its overarching buttocks which, in
tight-fitting jeans, were the envy of many a passing female. And of course her curvy hips and narrow
waist, the delicate nape and firm shoulder blades which, in addition to her
more private charms, contributed to the overall harmony of her person with a
subtlety worthy of great art.
Yes, coupled to her fine intelligence and spiritual
disposition, her slenderness virtually guaranteed that she was of the highest
type of women - the result of generations of careful breeding. Beneath her were all the medium-built women,
those average sensual females with fleshier thighs and rump, larger breasts,
more powerful arms, thicker necks, etc., who constituted a majority and
appealed, as a rule, to medium-built men.
They were closer to the ideal of Rubens or Boucher than to that of, say,
Rossetti or Bourne-Jones: closer, in a manner of speaking, to the Devil. And beneath them, as the lowest stratum of
women, were the corpulent, those who were obliged to carry an excess of fat
about with them wherever they went and who were more often than not fit prey
for similarly-constituted men. Their
sensuality was usually of an above-average nature, and so they stood closest of
all to the Devil. There were more than a
few such corpulent bodies falling heavily to Hell in Rubens' great painting The Fall of the Damned,
and, no doubt, he would have had more sympathy with them than certain other
artists.
But there it was, facts were facts and they couldn't be
denied. One had a body and whether that
body was fat or thin or somewhere in-between ... made a significant
contribution towards determining one's evolutionary status in the world. For as Jeffrey Collins liked to maintain,
evolution was a sort of journey from Hell to Heaven, from the sensual to the
spiritual, and consequently the more spiritual one was, the higher one stood in
the human hierarchy and the closer, in consequence, to the future culmination
of evolution in pure spirit. By not
having too much flesh to carry about, one was less prone to sensual
distractions and indulgences than those who were physically dominated by the
flesh. It was fundamentally as simple,
in Jeffrey's estimation, as that!
And so, by definition, higher-class women were slender,
lower-class women plump or fat, and middle-class women ... somewhere in
between. One might even argue that
corpulent people were effectively pagan, or sensuous; medium-built people
effectively Christian, or intellectual; and slender people effectively
transcendental, or spiritual. One's
physique and psyche were intimately connected, and this fact largely determined
how one saw the world and what one did in it.
A person with an excess of fat could hardly be expected to ascribe as
much importance to the spirit as a slim person, and, considered objectively, it
was evident that his/her physical constitution was inferior to the latter's,
since signifying a greater attachment, in its sensuality, to the natural
world. For nature was, after all, of
sensuous origin and couldn't possibly be equated with spirit - not, at any
rate, in this day and age. The more
natural one was, the lower one stood in relation to human evolution, which was
a progression, so Jeffrey liked to believe, from the natural to the
supernatural, and thus towards the eventual establishment of Heaven. Like it or not, the truth was manifest and
couldn't be denied. The spirit was
slowly triumphing over the flesh.
But there were, however, moments when it was right for the
flesh to triumph over the spirit, which it could do even where such an
intelligent, slender, and beautiful woman as Rachel Collins was concerned. For even if one approximated, in evolutionary
terms, to the top of the human hierarchy, one was still a man or a woman, not
yet a component of the transcendental Beyond, and consequently one was under
some obligation towards the flesh. As a
woman, one might go in for all the slimming and yoga one liked, but still one
was a woman and one's vagina more than mere decoration. There was a raison d'être to it
all right, which resided in ensuring the propagation of the species. At least, that was the essential function of
the sexual apparatus, though these days, what with the further development of
civilization away from nature, no person worthy of the name 'civilized' could
possibly content himself with regarding sex merely from a utilitarian or
naturalistic standpoint, as though something to be indulged in for no other
purpose than the propagation of the species!
On the contrary, while the essential function of the sexual apparatus
was still acknowledged and occasionally given its due, one increasingly
permitted oneself a less natural and, on the whole, more artificial attitude
towards sex, which reflected the degree of one's spiritual sophistication in
the face of purely naturalistic criteria.
Not to be capable of sex-for-sex's sake would indeed, to Jeffrey's way of
thinking, have constituted a failing in regard to the evolutionary progression
from Hell to Heaven. As a
contraceptionless propagator, one was simply closer to the natural-world-order,
and thus to Hell. But as a person who
could to some extent triumph over the natural-world-order and thereby
spiritualize sex, one was clearly of a generation or civilization on the path
to Heaven, to the eventual transformation of man into pure spirit at the
culmination of human evolution.
Yes, there were all sorts of ways of spiritualizing sex, not
least of all through the media of sex magazines and sex films and sex tapes and
even sex dolls. Our age was indeed
prolific in devising alternatives to natural sex, and in that, as in so many
other respects, it had brought civilization to its highest ever level - a
level, however, which the future would doubtless surpass as things became ever
more spiritually-inclined, and so drew closer to the establishment of ultimate
divinity. Of course, the degree of one's
sexual evolution wasn't only determined by the extent of civilization being
manifested at any given time, but was also a personal matter, relating to one's
temperament and physique, class and environment, as well as reflecting one's
attitude to life and even, in some measure, one's private circumstances.
As far as Jeffrey was concerned, sex-in-moderation was his
preferred mean, a mean also honoured by his wife, who was likewise both
physically and spiritually qualified to endorse it. A lesser woman would undoubtedly have been
more demanding of him, requiring sexual satisfaction on a more regular basis
than merely once a week. But, as already
noted, Rachel was effectively of the highest type of women, and thus given to
the spiritual to a much greater extent than to the sensual. They had come to terms with each other on a
mutually acceptable basis, and it was only very rarely that this basis was
infringed! They both knew what they
wanted from life and where it was tending - how it would end. Teilhard de Chardin's philosophy, with its
endorsement of a spiritual convergence towards an omega point, the transcendent
goal of evolution, had made a profound impression on them, clarifying their
obligations to each other. It was their
duty, they felt, to act the part of spiritual leaders in or near the vanguard
of evolutionary progress. Not too
exclusively of course, but certainly with a reasoned consistency which never
completely lost track of the correct path to follow. When they made love, for instance, they did
so on the understanding of paying their dues to the flesh, not simply enjoying
themselves. There was a higher love than
sensual love, and that was the love with which they were primarily concerned -
namely spiritual love. Perhaps Rachel,
being a woman, was slightly less concerned with it, overall, than Jeffrey. Nevertheless she was certainly concerned with
it to some extent - a fact which elevated her above the average sensual level
of femininity, giving her a specific orientation in life.
But poor Jeffrey Collins was almost ashamed, these days, that he
had actually been in love with Rachel at one time and, to some extent, was
still in love with her even now. For
this love wasn't a spiritual thing, but came from nature as a very sensual,
physical, passionate thing! In this day
and age love in that sense was indeed a blow to one's spiritual self-esteem, a
kind of romantic disease that was increasingly regarded, by the more
spiritually-sophisticated and progressive people, with a certain ironic
detachment coupled, at times, to a degree of pity or contempt for its
victims. Here we were, becoming ever
more godly, ever more given to the spirit, when suddenly an eruption of
romantic love threw us into confusion and reminded us that, for all our
evolutionary progress, we were still human and thus subject, in some degree, to
the laws of nature!
Yes, we were still human, though not, thank God, passionately
romantic! We were steadily outgrowing
our sensuous past and becoming more acutely aware of the difference between
Hell and Heaven. We didn't regard
sensual love with the complacency that our grandfathers or great-grandfathers
might have done. We knew that it acted
as a kind of hindrance to our spiritual progress, even though it was generally
less powerful these days than in times when men lived closer to nature. The chances of an intelligent big-city person
being struck down with a romantic passion akin to Dante's for Beatrice were, to
say the least, pretty remote. And even a
passion akin to that of Lord Byron's for Lady Hamilton would have had the cards
stacked against it. Only someone from a
predominantly rural background would be likely to succumb to the romantic bug
on a Dantesque or even a Byronic scale, and thus bring the past to light in the
present, though at the risk of public ostracism or even mockery.
Yet even if Jeffrey's love for Rachel had never attained to
anything like the passionate levels experienced by the aforementioned poets
(not to mention the great poets of the past in general), still it had been
sufficiently strong to cause him to gloat over her body with a frequency and
ardour which imposed a degree of humiliation upon his latter-day ego whenever
he reflected upon it. To think that, a
little over a year ago, the body of this woman should have had such a powerful
effect on him, causing him to forsake all higher matters! It was almost enough to make one blush with
shame! And when he wasn't actually
admiring her body or making love to it, he was dreaming or thinking about her,
and to such an alarming extent that his professional commitments often
suffered, and he found himself reprimanded, on a number of occasions, by both
the principal violinist and the conductor of the New City Orchestra, in which
he was a first violinist, for slack musicianship - playing out-of-tune or time
or whatever. Indeed, he had nearly lost
his post over her! But now, thank God,
all that was history and he could once more fiddle with a clear head.
Gone, too, were the days when he would drag her along to the
opera in the evening, to sit through a performance of Faust or Carmen
or Manon or some such romantic masterpiece in one of the leading
venues. If he took her anywhere on his
evening off, these days, it was usually to an instrumental concert, where he
could have the privilege of watching and listening to an orchestra for a
change, and where the programme would more than likely be dedicated to such
spiritually-uplifting masterpieces as, say, Poulenc's Organ Concerto or
Rubbra's Seventh Symphony or Schoenberg's Werklärte Nacht or
Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Then they could acknowledge the superiority
of the spirit over the senses, even though the spirit of such great music
patently issued from sensuous means! But
occasionally his humanity reasserted itself at the expense of his ideals and he
was accordingly obliged to take her to a concert featuring a less
spiritually-elevated programme - one in which, say, Tchaikovsky's Manfred
Symphony or Strauss' Don Juan or Liszt's Faust Symphony were
the principal attractions. It had even
happened, doubtless following a period of rather too intense and ambitious
spirituality, that they had relapsed into romantic opera together, one evening,
and accordingly sat through a performance of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande,
though not without noting in advance that it was the lesser of a number of
alternative evils. On the way back from
the Opera, Jeffrey had discreetly though sincerely confessed to having quite
enjoyed the performance, but added, as though to forestall criticism and boast
of his spiritual endeavour, that he had spent more time studying the lighting
and stage scenery than listening to either the words or the music. Rachel had returned him a sympathetic glance
and let the matter rest. But they had
purged themselves of a sensual temptation anyway, and soon became weekly
visitors to the concert hall again.
These past few weeks, however, Jeffrey Collins had been too
busy rehearsing and performing with his orchestra to be in any way disposed to
attending a concert, so had contented himself with taking his wife to the
theatre once or twice and spending the rest of his free time with a book - a
habit which Rachel didn't seem to mind, since she was pretty bookish herself
and quite able to relax indoors of an evening.
As a rule, her reading mostly paralleled his and, consequently, they
were in a position to exchange views about whichever author happened to be of
mutual interest to them both at any given time.
Lately he had conceived a passion - if that's the right word - for
Lawrence Durrell, and had accordingly read Monsieur and Livia in quick
succession, passing the former on to her when he had finished it and continuing
with the latter. These two novels had
made such a strong impression on him that he immediately set about reading
No, he was quite convinced that everything was gradually working
out for the better and that good, in the guise of the godly or spiritual in
man, was slowly gaining the ascendancy over evil. Accordingly, the Templar heresy remained for
him genuinely heretical, despite his acknowledgement of Durrell's genius, which
struck him as second-to-none. Indeed, he
was immensely relieved to have found a successor, at last, to Aldous Huxley in
his literary admirations. For ever since
reading through the last of Huxley's eleven or so novels, some months ago, he
had been searching for another novelist in whom to take a special interest and
had almost lost hope, at one point, that he would ever succeed. Now, however, he believed he had at length
found what he was looking for, and it quite delighted him, filling a literary
void which no other novelist in-between times had managed to do, not even
Christopher Isherwood, whom he quite admired as a prosodist. But Lawrence Durrell - well, it seemed not
improbable that he was an even greater artist than Aldous Huxley, since a more
genuine novelist with a no-less intelligent mind. Perhaps a shade less spiritual on the whole,
but certainly no less interesting and distinguished! Admittedly, his thematic approach to the
novel was totally different from Huxley's.
Yet it was an approach which all genuine lovers of the serious novel
could only admire. And his technique
betrayed a painstaking professionalism worthy of great literature. Yes, Jeffrey was indeed pleased with his
latest discovery. Now he was not just a
Huxley enthusiast but a Huxley-Durrell enthusiast. Yes, why not?
He smiled to himself at the thought of it and opened his eyes again.
Meanwhile his wife had abandoned the dresser and was now
rummaging around in the wardrobe, presumably hunting for a skirt to wear. She still had her back to him in this
capacity and he could see that she had put on a pink slip, which came
two-thirds of the way down her thighs.
It, too, was nylon, and he could easily distinguish the outline of her
panties through it and the thicker material of a suspender belt which she had
also put on while his eyes were closed, and, evidently, by threading the
suspenders through the legs of her briefs!
A tiny strip of this belt was now directly visible above the waist of
her slip. She was in the habit of
wearing such belts whenever she put on stockings these days, which was more
often than used to be the case. Indeed,
Jeffrey could remember, from when they first met, that she used to wear long
dresses most of the time without stockings underneath, occasionally wearing
knee-length denim skirts and showing off bare calf-muscles. As a teenager, she had grown up on the hippy
wavelength and accordingly established her dressing roughly along hippy lines,
her penchant for long dresses naively betraying a bias, in Jeffrey's
estimation, for autocratic criteria which would have entitled any knowledgeable
and unscrupulously predatory male who happened to relate to such immoral attire
to descend upon her, like a beast of prey, and take her from behind. She had even been to India for a number of
months and, on returning to England, adopted Indian-style dress, going to her
temporary office job garbed in a bright nylon sari that, taken in conjunction
with her lightweight leather sandals, brought more than a dash of Oriental
exoticism to an otherwise prosaic and all-too-Occidental environment! Not the least of her eccentricities, as
Jeffrey liked to think of them, had been the addition of a small caste mark to
her brow. Understandably, there must
have been quite a few people, Asians as well as Europeans, who were perplexed
or surprised by her appearance!
But she had abandoned all that Oriental excess some time ago,
and now her saris stayed folded over their hangers for months on-end, only
occasionally being dragged out of hibernation, so to speak, as the result of a
nostalgic whim on her part or a special request from her husband. He thought them sexy, and not only on account
of the degree of their transparency, which conveniently allowed one to glimpse
the outlines of legs and rump, but also as regards the expanse of naked belly
and back they permitted one to see in consequence of the winding technique of
dressing imposed by the elongated material.
It made a pleasant change to the usual Occidental habits of dressing,
anyway. Still, he wouldn't have been led
to reflect on her previous clothing at all, had it not been for what she was
currently wearing, the semi-transparency of her slip having connoted with the
like-quality of her saris and thereupon caused him to extend his thoughts
beyond the confines of stockings and suspender belts. Now, however, she was very definitely a
different woman from what she used to be - altogether more discreet and
conservative. She would no more have
considered going out in nothing more than a flimsy sari than coming home in
nothing more than a flimsy slip! She had
lost much of that youthful daring, not to mention naiveté, no longer desiring
to impose her beauty on the world in such brutally seductive and forthright
terms, but preferring the way of restraint and subtle enticement. She had got what she wanted from the world
anyway, and consequently had no further need to advertise herself in block
capitals, so to speak. As a
happily-married woman she had already been bought - almost literally so! For Jeffrey Collins increasingly tended to
look upon her as his property, to be fondled or manipulated at will.
At the present moment in time, however, he was still looking
upon her as a woman, watching her drag first a white vest from the wardrobe and
then a short light-grey skirt, which she proceeded to step into on-the-spot,
not bothering to turn around. Yes, he
might have known she would choose that one, since it went so well with her dark
stockings and granted her an endearingly academic look. It was warm too, and this time of year, what
with snow on the ground, one needed something secure about one. And not just to keep the cold out! He half-smiled to himself again as he
remembered that young woman he had noticed in the street, the day before, who
was dressed in a flimsy cotton skirt with which the wind played havoc. Whether or not she specifically wanted to
draw attention to herself, attention was certainly what she drew whenever the
wind lifted her tiny flounced skirt beyond the bounds of least modesty, as it
so often did. Standing at a nearby bus
stop, he could see, as she entered a shop - perhaps as much to escape the
weather as anything else - that she was wearing beige knickers and wasn't at
all badly built! Maybe, after all, there
was something about the wind for which one had to be grateful?
He almost chuckled at the thought and once more closed his
eyes. For Rachel, having secured the
tight-fitting skirt about her waist, suddenly abandoned the wardrobe and came
over towards him, carrying a pair of pink shoes which she intended to step into
and fasten while sitting on the edge of their bed. The image of that young woman in the street
was duly eclipsed by an image of himself at rehearsal with the New City
Orchestra, surrounded by his familiar colleagues in the first violin
section. Another couple of hours and he
would be back among them, fiddling away for dear life. And in company with a number of other
violinists, he would doubtless be feeling some of the frustration and
disapproval of the previous day's rehearsals.
For this new work by Timothy Graves was not only damnably difficult to
perform, particularly as far as the first violins were concerned, it was
maddeningly anarchic moreover, and not at all what Jeffrey Collins would
normally have understood by the term 'fine music'.
No, it was certainly not his musical cup of tea, this new
Graves composition, and he was hardly looking forward to rehearsing it
again. But the première was on Saturday,
so there was no way that either he or any of his more disapproving colleagues
could wiggle out of it. Willy-nilly, the
work had to be perfected in the meantime or, at any rate, played at something
approaching concert standard if its composer was to be satisfied. All those diabolical glissandos, atonal
scales, violent sforzandos, and criminal interval leaps would have to be borne
with fortitude worthy of a bona fide stoic.
Verily, one had one's cross to bear in this life and, so far as Jeffrey
Collins was concerned, Grave's new symphony was certainly a significant
contribution to its overall weight!
Still, there had been one or two light-hearted moments during
yesterday's trying rehearsal for which to be grateful. Like the occasion, for instance, when Tony
King, who was suffering from a violent cold, had sneezed while playing his
tuba, and thereupon added a couple of unofficial notes to the score which
almost gave the markedly atonal passage upon which they were all painstakingly
engaged at the time a hint of melodic vitality. And then old John Crawford had snapped a
string on his viola during one of the more intensively discordant passages and
exclaimed: 'Oh, damn it all!', to the visible amusement of those who thought he
was referring to the passage in question.
And of course Margaret Boyle had contrived to knock over a music stand
or two in quiet passages, as she usually did when obliged to shift the position
of her 'cello to any appreciable extent.
Well, whether there would be more of that kind of thing today ...
remained to be seen or, rather, heard.
At least it sufficed to add a little humour to an otherwise austere
experience! Though, of course, not
everyone was amused by it, least of all the composer, who, even in the midst of
the most cacophonous passages, retained an acute ear for any little deviation
from the printed score, and would almost certainly cast a critical, not to say
stony, eye on the offender(s)!
However, one of these days Jeffrey Collins would present the
world with an avant-garde composition of his own, which would be far superior
to anything Graves had ever done! A
paean to the spirit and the triumph of mind over matter, a testimony to human
progress towards consummate goodness, or some such petty-bourgeois delusion
which turned a blind-eye or, in his case, deaf-ear to the more blatantly evil
examples of proletarian barbarism. There
would be nothing Lisztian about it, nothing overtly or even covertly
dualistic. Still less anything overtly
or covertly diabolical, and hence savagely discordant! On the contrary, only the godly would be
countenanced, and hence only that which appertained to the brightest, most
harmonious and spiritually-edifying tone.
A truly transcendent work, if not exclusively then certainly predominantly
good. One dedicated to the furtherance
of the Holy Spirit. Superior even to the
religious music of Bach and Handel in its tonal brilliance, its refined
spirituality, post-egocentric simplicity, and chaste beauty. Purged, as it were, of gross sensuality and
vulgar exhibitionism. Elevated beyond
the Christian. Yes, and in due course
people would come to appreciate just how superior it was to such compositions
as those in which Timothy Graves ordinarily specialized, what with their
diabolical savagery in extended cacophony!
They would have no trouble distinguishing the devils from the gods, and
would be able to denounce the former as pernicious degenerates, while regarding
the latter with a new admiration born of spiritual enlightenment. But in the meantime - ah, it was obligatory
for Jeffrey to toe-the-decadent-line and heroically endure the manifest
ignominy of once again rehearsing and subsequently performing Graves' latest
'Satanic' symphony. Perhaps one of these
days he would be in a position to be choosier, maybe even to the extent of
abandoning classical for jazz. But at
present ...
He heard a slight rustle of nylon stockings somewhere to his
left and slyly opened his eyes in the hope of catching Rachel unawares
again. To his shocked surprise, however,
he discovered her standing beside the bed with hands on hips and staring down
at him with an ironic grin on her face.
He almost blushed with shame. How
long had she been standing there, he wondered?
"Ah, so the sleeper finally wakes!" she exclaimed,
bending down closer in order to peer into his relatively sleepless eyes. "I wondered when he would damn-well get
around to it!"
He blankly stared back at her, a victim of his own
deception. "What time is it?"
he at length asked, endeavouring to act the part of one who has just woken up.
"High time you were out of bed," Rachel replied
without bothering to consult her watch.
He grunted reluctant acknowledgement of this all-too-evident
fact, and inquired how long she had been staring down at him like that?
"Oh, no more than a couple of minutes," she
confessed, grinning anew. "You had
such a curious expression on your smug little face that I became quite
intrigued by it, wondering what-the-hell you could be dreaming about!"
"Oh, really?" he feebly responded, suddenly becoming
a twinge embarrassed. "As a matter
of fact, I've completely forgotten."
Which lie obliged him to lower his eyes from fear she might see through
him. "Nothing very erotic at any
rate," he added, as an afterthought.
Rachel bent down further and kissed him on the brow. "Never mind, darling, you've always got
your loving wife where that's concerned," she averred.
"Yes," he admitted, nodding gratefully in spite of
the pillow on which his head was still resting.
And, as though to confirm the basic truth of her statement, he gently
ran his hand up the back of her dark-stockinged legs. Touch, he reflected, was always better than
sight where women like her were concerned!
