“Once I went ice-skating with my sisters,” she said. “I was very young, no more than six or seven, I think, and while we were there, a sudden storm came on, very like this one, actually, and I don’t remember exactly why now, but whoever had been sent to watch us was not there; perhaps it was thought that my sister Pippa could look after us. The storm came on so suddenly, we could not find our way back, and we were forced to take shelter in a kind of cave, and oh, the thrill of that, of being on our own! I remember that Pippa had brought a jug of cocoa wrapped in flannels in a sack. Miriam was too anxious and couldn’t drink much, but I did, all at once, and, my dear, I was so sick later! But it remains, it remains…It is a wonderful memory.”
She was rubbing her hands by the fire. She had large hands, nearly as large as mine.
“And how were you found?” I asked.
“There was a search party. It was feared we had slipped through the ice. I don’t know how long we were lost; it can’t have been more than an hour or two, which can be a lifetime in a child’s imagination, no? I suppose also in a mother’s. I remember that I was so disappointed to be found.”
She laughed. The hair at the top and the sides of her face was damp and curled against her forehead and cheeks. I glanced around the dining room, which was only partially full. There were no other women. Some men who had been watching Etna turned reluctantly away when I looked at them; others nodded and smiled knowingly.
“Oh, it is so wonderful to be warm,” she said. “One hardly appreciates these comforts when they are too easily come by.”
“We should sit down,” I said, “and have our meal. You must be hungry.”
“I am,” she said, looking around for the first time. “I’m starved, actually.” (That was another thing about Etna; she had a marvelous appetite for a woman.)
We spoke, we spoke of… what? I cannot remember now. How I wish I could recall every word of that afternoon, that afternoon of childlike conspiracy and warmth and good food and wine. Perhaps we talked of books, but I don’t think so. That day felt different from all of the others.
We lingered long after one might reasonably have left the table. I was light-headed with possibilities. I, who could invent a lifetime in an instant, had visions of Etna having to spend the night in college rooms, of an embrace she would allow me before she entered those rooms, perhaps even a kiss snatched in a dark corridor. I imagined sleeping in the same building as she and fetching her for breakfast, a meal we had never taken together. (Delicious intimacies, erotic in their content, and how strange, for we were to take nearly five thousand breakfasts together, none of which ever produced comparable sensations.)
As the meal drew to a close and the staff was compelled to remove the linens and silver from the other tables and I saw the lovely afternoon slipping away (and perhaps because of my bold fantasies, which I later had to remind myself Etna could not have known about and certainly did not share), I reached across the table and seized her hand. She stopped her sentence before she had finished it. I could see that she was holding her breath. I laced my fingers into hers.
“Etna,” I said. “You are so very beautiful.” It was a joy simply to say the words aloud. I had not done so yet.
“Professor,” she said.
“You have promised to call me Nicholas.”
“There are others in the room.”
“Who envy me,” I said.
Her fingers were frozen in my own. I don’t know if she tried to withdraw them; perhaps she saw that for the moment she could not. The stillness I had observed before in her crept over her body and her features like an incoming tide saturating the sand beneath it. She began to breathe slowly, and her face lost its flush. I had the distinct impression (God forgive me) of an animal in a woods standing absolutely still to make itself invisible. She would not look at me.
But on that day, I chose, in my besotted state, to take her demeanor to be only feminine modesty and physical shyness, both of which were, I thought then, endearing and charming qualities in a woman. I wondered as well if this fear in physical matters was testament that she had not had other lovers before me, a question that had vexed me no end since the day I had first visited her uncle’s house.
I released her hand, which she immediately tucked into her lap. “This has been the most wonderful afternoon of my life,” I said truthfully.
She raised her eyes to mine. “Thank you for the dinner.”
“It will be a dreadful walk back,” I said. “The storm does not appear to have abated much.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she said, looking out the massive windows of the college dining hall.