Dark Places by Kate Grenville Page B

melon-globes bursting out of bodices. There was more bare female flesh on show that I had ever seen before, and yet, whereas a mere glimpse of ankle or the soft inner flesh of an arm of those sisters and cousins seemed horribly intimate, the bold flesh of these females seemed no more personal than someone else’s shoe.
    Ogilvie was the first to disappear into the small room with one of the females; he was not there long, and emerged with a swagger and a wink. I watched the woman with curiosity: she followed him out of the room with a hand down the front of her dress, making an adjustment of some sort, then sat down and drank off her glass of port calmly, only complaining of a broken fingernail and asking for a top-up , dearie.
    When Ogilvie had first returned with the females, I had been deeply fearful, and had kept up an animated conversation with Quince in order to be able to appear not to notice that a female with a great deal of chest on display was sitting next to me on the couch. But now Quince had let me down by sliding forward slowly onto the floor, and was now lying there smiling, too far gone to know that Simmonds was using his hip as a footrest; so, with Ogilvie’s knowing eyes on me, I was forced to turn to the woman next to me.
    This one had a tolerance for drink equal to my own: she had asked me to fill her glass several times while I was deep in conversation with Quince, and apart from an added brilliance of eye, she seemed unchanged. Her cheeks had been no less red earlier, and she had lounged against a cushion with her legs apart under her dress in just the same way.
    Unlike all those genteel sisters and cousins, this female did not stand on ceremony. ‘Anyways, I’m Valmai,’ she said as if we had been enjoying a long and trusting conversation. ‘I’m Valmai, love, and what do they call you?’ What did they call me? They called me Singer, if they wore pants, or Albion if they wore skirts, but I found myself telling those rouged lips, ‘George, call me George.’ Valmai gestured with her glass, and when I had refilled it, she drank deeply and then put her face rather close to mine and said, ‘Well, George, tell me somethink fascinating, eh?’
    I did not know what she would find fascinating, so I tried her with one of my more grotesque facts. ‘The human body contains twelve pints of blood, and the liver of a well-grown man weighs three and a half pounds,’ I told her, and she squealed with horror and delight. ‘Ah, garn! What’s me big toe weigh then, tell me that, George?’ We both gazed down at her feet, and it was I who boldly said, ‘First the shoe must be removed, Valmai, then I will be able to estimate.’ Valmai gave me a gusty laugh smelling of wine. ‘Oh, I’m with you, George, better get me shoe off then, hadn’t you?’
    So it was that I found myself, purely in a spirit of scientific endeavour, kneeling at Valmai’s feet and removing the shoe from the foot. I had trouble with the unaccustomed buckle at first: what was wrong with laces, such as an honest manly boot used? With the shoe off, there was still a barrier in the form of a stocking. From my position below Valmai, I looked up, uncertain what was to be done about the stocking, and found her grinning and nodding with approval. ‘That’s right, love,’ she cried. ‘Have to get that off too, won’t you, love?’
    I pulled at the toe end of the thing, then at where it stretched over the ankle, then at where it swelled over Valmai’s substantial calf and hesitated at the barrier of skirt. ‘You’re a sly one, love, and no mistake!’ Valmai shrieked and then to the room at large, in which everyone was now watching us. ‘He’s weighing me big toe, ever heard that trick?’ Then she thrust her leg out and cried, ‘Go on then, love, better get the stocking off, eh!’ Gingerly I folded back the edge of