Chapter 14

Halfway through the following week, Margaret phoned me in London, which was unique in itself. Until then her calls had only ever been to the University Arms Hotel, checking up on me. I didn't even remember giving her my number, though she knew roughly where I lived, and there weren't that many J. Gaskells in the London Phone directory, especially in Gloucester Terrace NW1.

"I've been thinking, how would you like spend Christmas here, with me at Keepers? Just for a few days." She qualified, her voice uncharacteristically soft, but this was the Margaret who had rescued me twice now, thrice if you included my first visit.

I agreed at once and felt a happiness that swept away the doubts ruminations and agonizing that had obsessed me since I came back to town on Sunday night. I'd had to at long last admit that by slow degrees, and even with some reluctance, I was falling in love with Margaret. But, my dilemma was that by loving her I would be betraying Sarah, and my memory of her as the one true and pure love of my life. I had to think this through properly, so I put the two women side-by-side in my head, and I found that I was glancing back to Sarah, but reaching out more and more avidly for her rival. Sarah brought on my rose-tinted spectacles, where Margaret was present reality. I could still foresee a future with either of them, so I was far from sure on many levels, and I didn't feel the champagne dizziness of undiluted romance that I'd had with my cousin, but when I thought of Margaret now, love was very much there and I couldn't deny it. I just had to assume that she felt something similar for me, because it was only in bed that she allowed her emotions to show, and then briefly.

After I put the phone down I tempered my joy by telling myself that I had only been invited out of pity after my show of weakness last weekend, and because she was now at least a friend, and one who was helping out at a time of trouble. Now I would have a welcome distraction from my own head and the dust-dry book on the law of tort I was ploughing through at Margaret's behest. What would I give her for Christmas? What do you buy for your self-sufficient self-contained sexually deviant Mistress, who is also a real life aristocrat? I only had three days left to decide!

I happened to have a copy of Time Out lying around, as I'd been thinking of burying myself in cinemas over the holiday period, my usual panacea. A bit of lateral thinking took me from The Last Tango In Paris, showing at a private club as the licensing authorities were scared of the populace becoming anal sex addicts or some such, to a bookshop I knew in Bloomsbury, where editions of classic erotic literature were available, sometimes in original editions. By now I had a much better understanding of S&M relationships than when I first visited Margaret. I had read whatever I could lay my hands on, which wasn't much in truth, but I had recently encountered a book called L'Histoire d'O, ' which even though it was about a heterosexual S&M relationship, held a fascination for me in some of the descriptions of the pleasures of submission. I found an original copy from the Olympia Press in Paris, and paid an appropriately large sum to secure it for Margaret.

I also bought her two beautiful white Egyptian cotton shirts from Jermyn Street that were tailored for the slimmer man, and I knew would fit perfectly under the tailored jackets she favoured and was steering me towards.

I was looking forwards to Christmas properly for the first time in the 1970's. The car radio played Christmas pop and I sang along with the likes of Slade and ELP all the way to Cambridge and beyond, turning down the volume only as I approached Elvestone. I drove down the track to Keepers on that crisp late December afternoon as dusk fell, to see a Christmas tree twinkling with fairylights. Laughing and clapping my hands I leapt out of the car just as Margaret opened the front door, over which, I noticed, hung a sprig of mistletoe. 'Wow' I thought, just 'wow.'

When I found myself directly under the mistletoe, suitcase in hand, Margaret stopped me, lifted my face towards hers and kissed me on the lips. Her kisses were such rare, muted but heartfelt events that this display of affection especially before sex, was unprecedented. My heart lurched, and I shuddered at the sweetness, and the deeper possibilities. I began to kiss her back, forgetting myself for a moment. She pushed a finger between our lips, and gently retreated, without the rebuke for my forwardness that I quite expected.

"We have to go out," She said when my bag was safely installed in the spare room and I had freshened up from the journey.

"Out?" I was shocked, out would mean meeting people, being seen together!

"Kings College carol service ... I always take Mummy. Don't worry, we'll be lost in the crowd."

Margaret's pale brown eyes were amused by my confusion.

"It's not exactly a date now, is it Jill?"

"No ... I suppose not."

"Would you like it to be?" Her voice softened perceptibly. Hesitantly, I nodded. Her mouth remained shut, but curled slightly at the corners.

There were so many surprises. Margaret steered me, still slightly stunned, to the Landrover. We didn't take the road as I expected, but the gated track behind the house down which we sometimes walked for a breath of fresh air after hours in the overheated library. It was muddy, deeply rutted from regular use, and when the headlights stopped dancing over the tree-trunks and last season's old man's beard, they came to rest on another five bar gate that led in turn onto a potholed gravel drive, narrowed almost to a tunnel in places by vast overgrown yew hedges.

Margaret drove the Landrover steadily forwards, until around a bend a house appeared. Not just any house, but a full-blown Gothic monstrosity of a Victorian mansion that stretched beyond the beams of the headlights for what looked like miles on either side of the massive entrance. Even under this limited illumination I could see many signs of dilapidation and decay.

"Welcome to the family seat, this is Elvestone Hall, ' said Margaret with annoying calmness. "Mummy'll probably be drunk already, she usually is, but she's a pretty congenial piss-artist, most of the time, though she does let her tongue run away with her. Speak only when you're spoken to, and leave the rest to me." I had received my instructions. " 'Lady Hunter' is how you'll address her." Margaret added, tersely as she opened the huge front door with a rather prosaic Yale key.

"And who is this pretty creature? What's your name dear?" Were the first words Margaret's mother spoke to me.

She'd obviously been hovering in the hall, waiting for us to arrive.

"Jill Gaskell, I'm a friend of Margaret's," I responded, hoping I was within Margaret's guidelines, and holding out my hand.

Lady Hunter took it briefly and for a second her eyes searched mine with the shrewd inquisitorial power of her daughter. I understood at once that whether anything was ever said or not, Lady Hunter knew a lesbian when she met one. I surmised that other young woman had been introduced over the years. 'How many, and how often?' I conjectured immediately.