Chapter 2

Sharon was overwhelmed by the dinner. The fine silver, the white bone china plates with the gold rims, the candelabras at either end of the long oak table...

She had never seen such sumptuousness, nor such food, nor such service, and she felt ill at ease. While Mark and Lena carried on a witty conversation, and sparkling rejoinders back and forth all through the five courses, Sharon kept to herself, only speaking when spoken to, nodding and smiling other times, and worrying about the sleeves of her blue organdy dinner dress when she wasn't eating.

The blue organdy was a bad choice, a mistake she instantly realized when entering the dining room, after having descended the broad, banistered stairs from the second floor. She didn't have the proper clothes for such an affair to begin with; being American and the wife of a still rising businessman, she didn't attend affairs of this caliber. The blue organdy was formal, but didn't have the polish, the sophistication, that, say the black lace Empire dress Lena was wearing possessed. The quiet, dignified grace just wasn't there -- it made her seem young like a pubescent girl going to her junior-prom. She was in brief, embarrassed.

Wafto, impeccable in his black uniform, served and cleared with a subservience almost touching. It was obvious to Sharon that the little hunch-back doted on his master, lived and breathed to serve Mark Marlowe, to repay the debt of gratitude for being employed as a respectable man rather than a side-show freak. Wafto hobbled around at amazing speed, his miniature clubfoot with its built-up shoe thumping against the thick Oriental carpeting with the rapidity of a jack-hammer. He had to reach up to the table for the dishes and glasses, but in spite of his infirmities not a dish clattered, or a glass pinged.

Sharon watched Wafto, torn between her ambivalent feelings of repulsion and of pity. There was a sort of horror to the dwarf, a kind of wolfish glitter to his eyes and an evil smirk to his rubbery lips which, when he faced Sharon, made her cringe. It was -- well, it was almost as if he was undressing her with his eyes, leering at her as though envisioning her stripped completely naked in bed! A cold, clammy shiver would travel the length of her spine, then, and her stomach would grow queasy.

And yet that couldn't be, she told herself. It was her imagination; it had to be. Wafto had been nothing save the beautifully trained gentleman's gentleman that he was, acting as butler, servant, and chef aplomb. And always with proper manners. Not once had spoken out of turn or made any untoward gesture to her, and he had treated her with the respect and deference that she, as a house-guest of his Master, should be afforded. So Sharon felt guilty, concluding that her unwarranted fear of Wafto was nothing more than prejudice, and aversion to his unfortunate plight.

Wafto could not help what he was. It was an accident of birth, she kept reminding herself, a tragedy of sperm and ovum that was a curse to him, and one which he must surely know caused contempt and revulsion on the part of others, more normal humans. She was being unfair and as ugly in her mind as he was on the surface, she thought, and therefore she felt sorry for him as well. "The slings and arrows of outrageous misfortunes," she quoted in her mind. She watched Wafto, then; watched him with the fascination which humanity watches all great sorrows.

Poor girl. Had she but known what was burning through the hunch- backed dwarf's mind, she wouldn't have been so full of self-chastisement. Wafto went through the motions of servitude, starting from the first answering of the door, through the carrying of her bags upstairs to the guest bedroom and the serving of dinner with but one licentious flame lusting in the furnace of his sadistic brain. Soon... soon I will possess this proud beauty, this American bitch who looks at me with such coldness... yes, soon I will have her, and she'll like it. She'll love it, love me, me and my fine, huge cock worming around in her proud young belly. Soon...

The last course had been served, the dessert of Camembert cheese and ripe fruit. The last of the knives and forks which had lined each side of the place settings had been used to cut and eat, the china plates with the pits and seeds had been removed, and there was the long pause as the three of them sat back, touched their mouths with the linen napkins and slothfully contemplated the large amounts they'd just consumed.

"Shall we have coffee now?" Lena asked.

"Ah, yes," Mark replied, smiling. "Wafto!"

"Coming," Wafto said from the kitchen, and then he appeared. "You wish coffee?"

"In the living room, I think. And a little Grand Marnier, perhaps." Mark rose, placing his napkin on the table, and smiled at both Lena and Sharon. "I think we'll be more comfortable there, don't you agree?"

"I'm not sure I can move," Sharon said. "I'm so full..." There had been soup, a fine clear broth sprinkled with chives and parsley. Then the fish course. Sharon had never been one for fish, but the little fried surf-fish were in a mixture of lemon juice and butter and melted in her mouth. Fresh, Mark had assured her, caught just that morning. And then the filets, the eye of the beef broiled with garlic and the hearts of artichokes, and the side course of snow peas, and the baked potato still in its jacket, bursting with sour cream. And, of course, the final course of fruit. Never had she eaten so much or so well, and her dress was tight around her expanded stomach.

Somehow she made it to the library and was nearly in a stupor, almost uncomfortable, and she couldn't understand how her host could keep such a trim, muscular figure if he ate like that every day. Or, for that matter, how Mark and Lena could still carry on their spirited discussion, have so much energy for other things besides digestion.

Mark was expounding, "... I cannot agree that the change in our government is for the better."

"But you yourself said, my dear Mark, that you weren't for the Liberals or for Labor," Lena replied. "I would think that you'd be all for the Conservatives to be back in power."

"That's just it," Mark replied. "They aren't in power. Oh, they were voted in, Edward Heath to the prime minister's chair and all, but it doesn't mean one whit of difference. Not one whit."

"Why?" Sharon asked simply. She had never delved in politics much; as an American she didn't feel that she should form opinions about English politics, and she had left most of the domestic politics to her husband. Still, what Mark was saying puzzled her.

"Because the government doesn't hold the reins of power, Mrs. Court. May I call you Sharon?"

"Of course; please do, Mr. Marlowe," she blushed. "I mean Mark."

He smiled at her slip and continued. "Now in answer to your question, you must understand that in any important nation -- yours, mine, Russia, France, whatever -- you have a bureaucracy, a gray, anonymous world of officialdom, a growing army of civil servants, council officials, tax inspectors, and big business administrators. It is, as Balzac said, 'a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.'"

"Naturally, there's the staff. But --" Lena was interrupted by Wafto, bearing a shiny silver tray of coffee and cups and liqueur and glasses. Wafto set the tray down and proceeded to pour and serve. Lena continued. "But they are controlled by the government."

"On the contrary. Ah, thank you, Wafto." Mark stirred his coffee. "It's the other way around. Consider: the incoming party have been denied information on which to base political decisions because they were formally the opposition. Without such information, all their big talk about changing ways is irrelevant."

"But they have the information when they are in power," Sharon protested. She sipped her Grand Marnier tentatively, enjoying its combination sweet stickiness and bitter fruit flavor.

"That's it, Sharon, Grand Marnier is an excellent digestive aid. I always follow my evening meal with it." Mark turned to Wafto, who had finished serving. "My Partagas, Wafto, if you please. And the ah, special cigarettes." Then he turned back to the beautiful young wife. "I'm sorry for the interruption, Sharon," he sighed. "No, I'm afraid they don't have the information. The only way a minister could effectively challenge an already existing policy would be by going into the whole thing again from scratch, reading all the papers, tracing all the details of planning and contracting from the moment the project was conceived to the stage at which it arrived on his desk claiming an urgent decision. And that is exactly just what he can't do. He has neither the time nor the specialist knowledge. He is forced to take most of what has gone before as read."

Again the conversation was interrupted by the hunch-backed servant, who this time appeared with a large wooden box and a smaller silver one. He opened the silver box and offered its contents to Lena; Sharon could see slightly that the interior was of scarlet velvet and the contents a brownish type of cigarette. Lena took one and Wafto bent forward and lit the oddly colored cigarette with a large butane gas lighter of the same design as the silver box.

"The minister," Mark went on to say, "as well as the whole new government are limited by ignorance, in other words."

"Then how can decisions be made?" Sharon asked. The box was passed to her. "Oh, no thank you, Wafto. I prefer my own brand."

"No, do take one my dear," Mark urged. "They're something special, a grade of foreign tobacco much better than our English Virginia which yours are no doubt made of. I insist; it's as much an after dinner ritual at Marlowe Manor as Grand Marnier, or my Cuban cigars."

Sharon selected one, feeling its course paper in her fingers as she put its cork-wrap tip in her mouth. Wafto applied the fire; she inhaled. It was strange, an entirely different kind of taste than her brand -- an odd sour-sweet flavor which seemed to go deeper in her lungs, imbibing an entirely new sensation than she had ever experienced while smoking since... since she first began! She inhaled again, smelling the pungency of the tobacco. It wasn't rough, like a coarse American cigarette might be, just edifying, giving her that same euphoria as had happened when she had snuck a Camel from her father's package and smoked it secretly behind the garage many years ago. A simple matter of getting used to, she supposed...

"Certainly strong," she commented, blinking.

Mark had clipped the end of the Partagas cigar, which he had selected from the large wooden humidor Wafto had brought to him. "Yes, aren't they? Very tasty, I'd say. A mixture of Latakia, Turkish, Burley, and Cannabis," he winked knowingly at Lena, who seemed to have a silly smirk on her face as though she was sharing some kind of secret with him. "Mostly the latter," he added.

"Can -- cana --?" she tried to pronounce the last named tobacco. Somehow she was having a hard time focusing her mind on the word; things were getting a little woozy, in fact.

"Cannabis," Mark repeated. "Sometimes referred to as grifti, when it comes from Morocco as this particular batch did."

"Oh." It really didn't seem to matter. She continued to smoke, letting the lethargy she felt after the meal, the liqueur, and, peculiarly, the cigarette, take over her body.

"To get back to what I was saying," Mark continued, "the information the Minister receives has been filtered many times by who? By the same bureaucracy, by the same civil servants who have been there before him, before his predecessor no doubt. The Minister has no way of knowing what was discarded, what was emphasized. He may think he has a choice of three or four courses of action, but each of those courses has been plotted by his top civil servants, and they leave him little doubt about which course they think to be the best. Theoretically the Minister is in power, is free to reject that advice, but the fact is that he must always be dependent."

"That's a very cynical approach, Mark," Lena was saying.

To Sharon, her hearing was fading, for Lena seemed to be further away, as if speaking from the end of some long, narrow, echoing hall. She frowned and shook her head, trying to clear her mind, but it didn't seem to do any good. Moreover, she didn't really care. Everything was too pleasant, too relaxing to get excited over. She sunk still further in the feather-like softness of the couch and kicked off her shoes. Yes; it was too much trouble to keep up the pretense of correctness -- she hiked her stockinged feet up and tucked them under her buttocks. Her dress bunched around her waist... she should pull it down, stay modest, if informal... but again, it was too much trouble. So much nicer just to stay as she was and drink her Grand Marnier and smoke the odd cigarette with the Moroccan grifti.

"Not cynical, Lena," Mark replied. "Just practical."

"Practical," Sharon repeated soporifically. She thought the word was fun and tripped it lightly over her tongue a few times, even humming a little tune along with it. There was a small, faint warning in the back of her head, saying: what's wrong? Why are you acting like this? But she didn't pay any heed to it. The room was so beautiful, more beautiful than she had realized, so full of colors and that tapestry hanging over the credenza seemed almost alive with hues and shades. She stared at the tapestry, soaking in every detail and thread of its woven Hunter-and-Stag design.

"Practical," Lena was saying from far, far away. "Practical like smoking marijuana, Mark?"

Marijuana... that was bad... very naughty to smoke marijuana... did things to people. Sharon smiled at Lena vaguely, not once relating the reference to the drug to her own condition.

"I'm always practical, my love," Mark said. "That way I get what I want."

"You always get what you want, don't you?" Lena stood up and crossed to the wide leather chair in which Mark was seated. She seemed to take a century to walk to him, or so Sharon thought; such a slow walker... and now what was she doing? Leaning over, also in slow motion, I can see her lips puckered as though she was going to kiss him... how nice... kissing is a sign of love... I kiss Neal all the time... I'd like to have Neal with me right now, to kiss me hard as Mark is kissing Lena, to fondle my breasts as he is...

"And you want her, don't you?" Lena asked nibbling his ear. "You want to fuck her as you have fucked me and all the other girls, don't you?"