Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [129]
‘Tired?’ he asked, when she paused to change hands for the third time. He opened his eyes to look at her.
She shook her head. ‘I’m as much bother as a sick child.’
‘No bother at all.’
But Burlap insisted on being sorry for her and apologetic for himself. ‘Poor Beatrice!’ he said. ‘All you have to do for me! I’m quite ashamed.’
Beatrice only smiled. Her first shudderings of unreasonable repulsion had passed off. She felt extraordinarily happy.
‘There!’ she said at last. ‘Now for the Thermogene.’ She opened the cardboard box and unfolded the orange wool. ‘The problem is how to stick it on to your chest. I’d thought of keeping it in place with a bandage. Two or three turns right round the body. What do you think?’
‘I don’t think anything,’ said Burlap who was still enjoying the luxury of infantility. ‘I’m utterly in your hands.’
‘Well, then, sit up,’ she commanded. He sat up. ‘Hold the wool on to your chest while I pass the bandage round.’ To bring the bandage round his body she had to lean very close to him, almost embracing him; her hands met for a moment behind his back, as she unwound the bandage. Burlap dropped his head forward and his forehead rested against her breast. The forehead of a tired child on the soft breast of its mother.
‘Hold the end a moment while I get a safety-pin.’
Burlap lifted his forehead and drew back. Rather flushed, but still very business-like and efficient, Beatrice was detaching one from a little card of assorted safety pins.
‘Now comes the really difficult moment,’ she said, laughing. ‘You won’t mind if I run the pin into your flesh.’
‘No, I won’t mind,’ said Burlap and it was true; he wouldn’t have minded. He’d have been rather pleased, if she had hurt him. But she didn’t. The bandage was pinned into position with quite professional neatness.
‘There!’
‘What do you want me to do now?’ asked Burlap, greedy to obey.
‘Lie down.’
He lay down. She did up the buttons of his pyjama jacket. ‘Now you must go to sleep as quickly as you can.’ She pulled the bedclothes up to his chin and tucked them in. Then she laughed. ‘You look like a little boy.’
‘Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight?’
The colour came into Beatrice’s cheeks. She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Goodnight,’ she said. And suddenly she wanted to take him in her arms, to press his head against her breast and stroke his hair. But she only laid her hand for a moment against his cheek, then hurried out of the room.
CHAPTER XIX
Little Phil was lying on his bed. The room was in an orange twilight. A thin needle of sunshine came probing in between the drawn curtains. Phil was more than usually restless.
‘What’s the time?’ he shouted at last, though he had shouted before and been told to keep quiet.
‘Not time for you to get up,’ Miss Fulkes called back from across the passage. Her voice came muffled, for she was half-way into her blue frock, her head involved in silken darkness, her arms struggling blindly to find the entrance to their respective sleeves. Phil’s parents were arriving to-day; they would be at Gattenden for lunch. Miss Fulkes’s blue best was imperatively called for.
‘But what’s the time?’ the child shouted back angrily. ‘On your watch, I mean.’
Miss Fulkes’s head came through into the light. ‘Twenty to one,’ she called back. ‘You must be quiet.’
‘Why isn’t it one?’
‘Because it isn’t. Now I shan’t answer you any more. And if you shout again I shall tell your mother how naughty you’ve been.’
‘Naughty!’ Phil retorted, putting a tearful fury into his voice—but so softly, that Miss Fulkes hardly heard him. ‘I hate you!’ He didn’t of course. But he had made his protest; honour was saved.
Miss Fulkes went on with her toilet. She felt agitated, afraid, painfully excited. What would they think of Phil— her Phil, the Phil she had made? ‘I hope he’ll be good,’ she thought. ‘I hope he’ll be good.’ He could be an angel, so enchanting when he chose. And when he wasn’t an angel, there was always a reason; but one had to know him, one had to understand him in order to see the reason. Probably they wouldn