Chapter 13

Christmas approached, and with it, despite my new situation with Margaret, came a sense of foreboding I had not encountered before. All my life Christmas had been our favourite family time, but '69 had put an end to all that. Since then Christmas had meant hard partying with Ed, taking lots of drugs, having sex with all sorts of people and groaning through the inevitable hangovers. This year would be different. No David and Tori, and especially no Ed - who for all his faults had been fun at times like this. Now there were no more druggie nights, just the forlorn hope that I would see Margaret at some time over the holidays, but suspecting that she would be doing something else, mysteriously, with family or friends.

The weekend before Christmas, I was at Margaret's all day on Saturday. We'd had great sex through a long afternoon in front of the fire in the library, and Margaret had withdrawn to her bedroom. She often did this, temporary solitude seemed to revitalise her, and sometimes, when we were, so to speak run in, the evenings developed a special intensity. Normally I enjoyed these times of quiet reflection, but today my mood darkened when I was left alone, and instead of looking forwards, my thoughts travelled back.

I wandered the edges of the library, the tiles nearly dry from a necessary mopping an hour ago. Soon I could unroll the rugs again. Damp logs spat and hissed peevishly behind the fireguard, seeming to goad me with recriminations for my past selfishness and weakness. My circuit took me past Margaret's desk, anally neat and tidy as always, yet today somehow different. I looked again and realised that the change was a gaudy Christmas card poking out of its envelope, carelessly tossed on the blotter. I couldn't help reading the name and address and for a moment thought there must have been some mistake, another Margaret with the same surname, because in a spidery hand was the legend 'Lady Margaret Hunter.'

The biggest shock was to realise how little I knew about her. That she was an aristocrat was surprise enough, but why did I feel a definite pang of jealousy when I thought that other people knew her well enough to send her cards, colleagues, friends, other lovers, other women for whom she might provide her very special service. Suddenly I badly needed to know who had sent Margaret this card. Awareness that such nosiness was way beyond the rules made the temptation worse. I laughed furtively as I interpreted my feeling as one of desire to be caught and punished. And yet ... I knew my desire this time was not for Margaret, but for knowledge of her, the woman who had been an increasingly vital part of my life for several years, but about whom I knew little more than I did from Sarah's description and my first impressions.

She never ever spoke of personal matters, and even though, since September we had talked often and long, it was mostly discussion, debate, the imparting and analysis of knowledge - or exquisite sexual teasing - that dominated the topics. Despite Margaret's potential wrath I tweaked the card from the envelope.

'Happy Christmas darling Em, lots of love from Mummy.'

Shocks number two and three, how could Margaret with all her formality submit to a pet name, and why had I never in all the time I'd know her, ever considered that she must have a family? And finally, the words, 'lots of love from Mummy.' That was all it took to break me. I began to shake uncontrollably. Emotions that I had buried under selfish fun and sexual depravity erupted as explosively as an orgasm, but with no pleasure and peace to follow, just a towering wall of long-concealed grief for parents who had loved and cared for me, as I did for them, and yet they'd gone to their graves believing the very worst of me. Grief that I had pushed back and back with sex, drugs, visits to the House in the Woods, grief that could no longer be contained, because there was nowhere else for it to go.

Margaret found me bawling my eyes out on the sofa, hugging the card to my chest, not letting her have it back even when she snapped at me. I had resisted her before, but with full knowledge of the consequences. This time I wasn't conscious of what I was doing. Pain filled my heart with such depth and concentration I could hardly breathe.

Margaret quickly realised that I was in a similar dark place to where I had been after my morphine binge. Never one to be ready with easy sympathy or affection, she touched my shoulder and I looked up at her, half blinded with tears, but recognising compassion in her eyes.

"I haven't got a mummy any more!" I wailed like an infant as another paroxysm seized my lungs.

The truth was that Margaret knew as little about me as I knew about her. At first our relationship had been entirely based on my needs and willingness to pay. The recent deepening had been carefully conducted in such a way as to retain the privacy we both seemed to crave. Margaret jumped to the right conclusion.

"When did it happen?" She asked with typical brevity.

"Three months after ... Sarah..." I sobbed. "I never saw them again ... I mean ... the last time I saw them was so awful, and then I went to France, and Ed found me to tell me they were dead!"

Margaret sat beside me, put a hesitant arm around my shoulders. I fought with myself not to cling helplessly, but she drew me close anyway, my head to her breast, and stroked my hair as I cried. The quiet, almost reluctant sympathy calmed me, and gradually my heart rate slowed until it matched the steady thumping in my ear.

"Come upstairs," said Margaret.

Her tone told me that this wasn't a sexual invitation, or an order. I let her help me up, and she kept hold of my hand as we climbed the steep staircase. On the landing there was a second door on the same wall as the bathroom, a door I had never seen open and knew better than to look in uninvited. Margaret led me to the threshold and opened it wide.

I saw a plain white room with a plain single bed with white linen; the only extraneous colour came from a faded Persian rug on the polished wooden floor. Despite the simplicity, each piece of functional furniture had the appearance of quality and antiquity.

"You can sleep here tonight," said Margaret tersely, as if it was ever so slightly tiresome.