The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

head.
    'Someone might come, Reg.'
    'There's nobody about,' he said, 'for miles!'
    She looked at his hand, still tugging at the buttons. 'Don't. You'll crease it.'
    'Undo it for me, then.'
    'All right. Wait.'
    She looked around, conscious that anyone could be watching, hidden in the shadows of the trees. The sun was bright as a spotlight, the piece of ground they were lying on flat and quite unobscured. But the only sounds, still, were those of the stream, the birds, the restless leaves. She unfastened two of the buttons on her dress; then, after a moment, two more. Reggie drew the bodice back, exposing her bra; he put his mouth to the silk of it, feeling for her nipple, drawing at her breast. She moved about under his touch… But the queer thing was, she'd wanted him more, before, in the car in the middle of Stepney; she'd wanted him more while they were standing on that bridge. He kept his mouth fixed hard to her breast, and moved his hand back down her body to her thigh. When he caught hold of her skirt and began to push it up, she stopped his fingers again, and again said, 'Someone might see.'
    He moved away, wiped his mouth. He tugged at the rug. 'I'll put this over us.'
    'They could still see.'
    'Jesus, Viv, I'm at that point where a troupe of girl-guides could go past and it wouldn't put me off! I swear, I'm bursting. I've been bursting for you all day.'
    She didn't think he had been. For all his talk, for all his nonsense-here, and in the car-she didn't think he had been; and she wanted it less than ever now. He pulled up the rug and tucked it around her, then put his arm beneath it and tried to reach between her legs again. But she kept her thighs closed; and when he looked at her she shook her head-let him think what he liked. She said, 'Let me-' and moved her own hand to the buttons of his trousers, easing them open one by one, then sliding inside.
    He groaned, at the feel of her bare fingers. He twitched against her palm. He said, 'Oh, Viv. Christ, Viv.'
    The seams of his underpants were taut against her wrist and made her clumsy; after a moment he reached and brought himself right out, then put his hand loosely
    around hers. He kept the hand there as she was doing it, and had his eyes shut tight the whole time; in the end she felt he might as well be doing it himself. The tartan rug went up and down over their fists. Two or three times she lifted her head and looked around, still anxious.
    And she remembered, as she did it, other times, from years before, when he'd been in the army. They'd had to meet in hotel rooms-grubby rooms, but the grubbiness hadn't mattered. Being together was what had mattered. Pushing against each other's bodies, each other's skin and muscle and breath. That was what bursting for somebody meant. It wasn't this. It wasn't jokes about feather beds and Lovers' Lanes…
    At the very last second he closed her hand, to make a sort of trap for the spunk. Then he lay back, flushed and sweating and laughing. She held on to him a little longer before she drew her fingers away. He raised his head, the flesh of his throat bunching up. He was worried for his trousers.
    'Got it all?'
    'I think so.'
    'Careful.'
    'I am being careful.'
    'Good girl.'
    He tucked himself away, then fastened up his buttons. She looked around for a handkerchief, something like that; and finally wiped her hand on the grass.
    He watched her do it, approvingly. 'That's good for the ground,' he said. He was full of life now. 'That'll make a tree grow. That'll make a tree, and a knickerless girl will one day come and climb it; and she'll get in the club, by me.' He held out his arms. 'Come here and give me a kiss, you beautiful creature!'
    The simplicity of him, she thought, was quite amazing. But it had always been his faults and frailties that she'd loved most. She'd wasted her life on his weaknesses-his apologies, his promises… She moved back into his embrace. He lit another cigarette and they lay and smoked it together,