Beverley

Beverley is a young actress whose emerging public fame and deliberate limits on intimacy make her affair with Francis Benton-Smith both pleasurable and precarious. She has begun to attract an audience through television, while Benton recognizes that his growing affection may not change her expectation that relationships end on schedule.

Identity and Background

At twenty-one, Beverley has just left drama school and secured a small part in a long-running television serial set in a Suffolk village. Though she is robustly English and comes from much the same professional background as Benton, she has shed the middle-class social nuances and accent associated with that background. She has also changed her unfashionable first name in pursuit of her career; the name by which she is known is Beverley.

Her meeting with Benton began in a local supermarket. After studying him covertly, she initiated their acquaintance by asking him to reach a tin of tomatoes placed beyond her reach. The encounter reflects her resourcefulness and willingness to make the first move, rather than leaving the approach to him.

Acting Career and Public Image

Beverley plays the wayward daughter of a village publican, a role that has caught the public imagination. There are rumors that the character may acquire more sensational storylines, including rape, an illegitimate child, an affair with the church organist, or even murder. These are possibilities discussed around the serial, not events established as having happened to the character. Beverley tells Benton that audiences do not like to see murdered babies.

Her growing visibility places her in the glittering but ephemeral world of popular culture. The narrative presents her as becoming a star even as the prospects for her fictional character remain a matter of rumor, distinguishing her real career momentum from the melodramatic possibilities being proposed for the serial.

Relationship with Francis Benton-Smith

Beverley and Benton have been together for five months. She enjoys sex that is inventive and prolonged, though she insists on inconvenient hygiene afterward; she then practices yoga, while Benton watches her contortions with fascinated, indulgent affection. Those moments bring him dangerously close to love, but he does not expect the affair to last.

Beverley is outspoken about the dangers of promiscuity and prefers serial monogamy, with a carefully defined time limit for each partner. She explains that boredom usually sets in after six months. The approaching end of that period gives the relationship a built-in uncertainty: although she has not yet said that their time is up, Benton doubts that either his lovemaking or his cooking will earn him an extension.

Narrative Role

Beverley is chiefly seen through the details Benton notices and anticipates: her appearance, her performance of yoga, her career, and the rules she sets for intimacy. That perspective establishes both his tenderness toward her and the gap between his attachment and her stated timetable. When Benton receives a call summoning him to an offshore island, he expects his two brief calls to his mother and Beverley to cause inconvenience but no pain. The episode leaves their relationship unresolved, but shows that he does not expect it to have become a lasting commitment.