Blue Tango

Chapter Two

Breakfast with Claire. The two of us are alone this morning. White lace curtains, the bright morning sun. The maids flit about in silence.

Claire smiles. “You look unhappy, darling.”

“I'm not unhappy.”

“Well, I don't like to see you sad. I shouldn't like that, should I?”

She flutters her agile fingers. I want to flee. I want to fly away through the open window. I shall be a bird in a tree, a silly bird singing a silly song.

There is nothing here, not a sound except the tinkling of cup and saucer. Outside a soft rustling in the trees and an occasional chirp. Claire smiles and flutters her fingers in the silence. I fumble with my toast. The memories of last night. The groaning.

I am more curvaceous than Claire, more breast and buttock. Claire is unfashionably thin. She has an ethereal quality that I have always envied. She was always thin. She remains thin. She disdains plumpness.

Now again these disastrous images. Again and again I construct the tableau. Her legs surrounding his, her toes in the air. But of course one never knows the hidden things. Her eyes. The way she smiles at him. The showing of her small, perfect teeth. John always said Claire hardly smiled enough. He said she was too grim. But I don't see the grim-ness. She's riot at all grim. She certainly wasn't grim last night. In the dark? Well, of course, if they do it in the dark then Edward can hardly see her smile at him. If she does smile. If she does hold him with her legs. Edward surrounded by her legs in the dark. The bed creaking, creaking. I do hate it when the bed creaks. Does he kiss her while the bed creaks? Does he mutter? I imagine Edward mutters.

“Oh dear, there's a fly in the room.”

The maid scurries. Perkin, the dark one. Claire frowns, her eyes following the trails of the maid. The fly has fortitude. Perkin is sweating. Then at last the fly is smashed and Perkin flushes in her victory.

Claire is amused. She calls Perkin, turns her chair to the side. “Kiss my shoe.”

The maid is obedient. The girl kneels, bends, her lips touching the tip of Claire's shoe. Claire smiles and sends the girl away.

“She's clumsy at times. I don't like to have them clumsy. Tell me your plan.”

“Plan?”

“For the day, silly. How will you spend your day?”

“I hadn't thought of it.”

“Then come with me. We must have the air this afternoon.”

“I don't know why.”

“It's a question of health, Julie. Darling, you look so pale. We shall drive in the park.”

“Which park?”

“St. James's, of course. The others are a bore.”

“I thought I would look at some shops.”

“Well, you might do that afterward.”

She insists. I must drive with her in the park. After all, I am here and I must do something. At the moment I have no interest in the park. My interest is a stupid obsession concerning the entanglement of Claire and Edward on that bed in her room. How awful of me. You're a silly bird, darling. You ought to be out there with the other birds. You ought to be out there chirping among the leaves. Were the birds watching when John fell into the Channel?

All the parks are boring and St. James's Park is truly the worst. A competition of hats. The sun flickering through the trees. The blank faces. Empty glances from carriage to carriage. Claire prattling about a dressmaker. “I've always had a passion for ribbons.” Her hand covers mine. “We shall make you happy.”

Do I want to be happy? Yes, I suppose I do. I would like to be out of this park. She pats my hand. The sunlight hurts my eyes. I ought to repin my hat. Claire comments about each carriage we pass. She talks of nothing but hats and ribbons. She pats my hand and talks of ribbons. “We shall make you happy, darling. We shall make you quite happy.”

I think of the days that are no more. Claire and I as children. Old Mathilde in her kitchen. The smell of burnt wood in the morning. Mother and her needlework. The absent-minded kisses. The twisted staircase. The red plush draperies. The gold Italian madonna brought by Father from Venice. Claire liked to tease me in the evening when we prayed alone in our room. Mother would look at the fireplace before she left us, though the painted pottery on the shelf over the small table. Pottery bowls and pottery angels. Claire and I giggling in the darkening room. I think of John again, that time in Folkestone when he had me giggling on the beach. I could see his cods in his bathing suit. He swore I could not but I really could. The bulge of his ballocks. In the evening I held them in my hand as I sucked his plum.

After the drive, Claire and I have tea and cakes in a shop in Regent Street. A throng of hats in a room of crowded tables. The ladies gawking at each other like surprised pheasants. Claire is always amused. “That one looks awful.”

“Which?”

“That pink hat. Pink and green. All that nonsense on the brim. It's quite ugly, don't you think?”

“She's an old woman.”

“They're all old. I won't come back here any more.”

How impatient she is. Her fingers turning the cup. Her think body. Does Edward enjoy his women lean? I imagine them naked beside each other on her bed. The white flesh of their bodies. Flesh against flesh. Edward's affair like a pink stalk in her hand. Does she perfume her copse?

Do I love Claire? We have the bond of common flesh, the years of awakening. The years of competition for the pretty dress. The jealousies during the walks on Sundays. Is Claire in my image? No, we are not alike. We have our separate satisfactions. And Edward can be so dreary. I abhor the vacancy of a smug life in Kensington. I would like to tease Edward. I want to rub my hand along his skin. I want to hold his penis in my hand. He will mutter at me, smile and mutter, his face always empty of emotion. One can feel the tremor in his cock, the hot blood of a man's attention. Does he press his lips against Claire's neck when he spends? Does he whisper against her cheek? Sometimes Edward's eyes show his puzzlement. He watches Claire without understanding. He looks at me for guidance. Are we not sisters?

I do not think much of Edward's idleness. In the evening he turns the pages of a dull weekly. He says nothing. Claire talks and talks, but Edward says nothing. When spoken to directly, he turns another page as he mumbles his reply. How awful it is. I want to throw something. John was the same. His cigar in the evening and his pompous silence. Was he silent when his balloon was blown away by the wind? I don't want to look at these ladies. Some day I shall arrive in Paris and find the place cluttered with English tea shops. I would like to stroll in Oxford Street but of course Claire will refuse. I like to linger. I like to watch people at work. The men. The smells of the horses as they pass in the road. Sometimes a man will ask me to come with him. A silly man with pink cheeks.

My father had pink cheeks and whiskers. A smell of tobacco in his hair. His waistcoat bulging under the chain of his gold watch. We laughed in the garden. He whispered secrets to us and we laughed. Mother chided him. She said his shoes were dusty. Father would laugh and press against her, coaxing her with his hands. Claire liked to flutter at his coat-tails. Father would stroke Claire, then he would look at me and smile.

Outside the teashop, Claire leaves me. “Don't be late, darling. I shall send the carriage for you in an hour.”

The horse looks tired. Claire waves at me as they drive off. In a moment she's gone and I walk to Oxford Street. I enjoy the bustle, the people crowding the walk. I enjoy my isolation. I am alone. I am content. I wear grey kid boots and my dress is in fashion. In Oxford Circus, a man wearing a brown derby smiles at me from his carriage. He wishes me to join him. I turn my eyes away. I imagine his breath upon my neck. John liked me to expose my breasts in his presence. He would have me stand in my chemise, and then I would drop my chemise to my waist to bare my breasts. I want to bare my breasts now to the gentleman in the brown derby. I want to show my swollen nipples, the white skin of my breasts. I want to see the passion in his eyes. He reaches for me but I push his hands away. He is not to touch me. Not yet. I have my own amusements. He smiles with understanding as he unbuttons his flies. His penis appears. His pink cock. He pulls at his foreskin to uncover his bulb. Then a great shudder courses through him as he spouts his essence into the dust of the road. The carriage is behind me now. When I turn, I see nothing but the brown derby hat above the folded awning.

I walk in Oxford Street. I look at the shop windows. The crowd hums around me. A hawker selling ribbons calls out to me with a red band of silk. Ladies walk in pairs. How amusing it is when they look at me and wonder who I am. These tedious people. Now in a carriage a man in a Chesterfield and a woman in blue. The windows of the shops are too ordinary. I avoid the eyes of the carriages now. I turn away when someone looks at me. I think John ought to have done more with his life than sail in his balloon. He ought to have done something. Now I have nothing but fading images and the sounds of my sister in her bedroom.

After a while I walk to Regent Street again and there I turn in to a print shop. It's a musty old place with Italian engravings and photographs of cathedrals in bins against the walls. The people in the shop whisper at each other. Someone chuckles as I finger my way through a stack of prints. The dust is thick. In another bin I find an ugly photograph of a church in Devonshire. I can't imagine who would want such a thing. Do they look at me? I think of that week with John in Cambridge. How we whispered in the gray light. That room at the inn. The window. He had me at the window, my shirts raised, my body bent, his penis full up my bottom as the dons walked by in the yard below.

“I'd like something of London Bridge,” a woman says. She hangs on the arm of a man in plaid. She squints at the clerk. She wears a large yellow hat with white flowers clustered on the crown and around the rim. Undoubtedly the man in plaid is her husband. She has the appearance of a wide bottom and on occasion he takes her there. His corker churning deep in her fundament. As she bends. A quiver in her throat as she feels the spending. Essentially feminine. The important act is the act of penetration. One wants the pego thick and hard. The fullness of the entry produces a tense emotional state. Perhaps not in every woman. One never knows about every woman. But in this woman who asks for a drawing of London Bridge. She has a lover she visits at his offices in the City. She enjoys a particular state of mind, the quiverings of a woman in the midst of surrender. John said I enjoyed my moments of surrender. My turmoil. Those delicate explosions in my marrow. My body trembling in his arms. I was often hungry for it, hungry for the sweetness of it, hungry for his kisses: Frenzied claspings upon a velvet chaise. His hands upon my breasts. The questing. My nipples stroked by his fingers. His fingers in my nest. His fingers upon my clitoris. That perfect caress. I moan. I arch my body to his fingers. I beg him not to stop. The fingers insistent. Oh, you silly girl, you mustn't think of it. How stupid to tremble here in a musty old print shop in Oxford Street. John would be amused. He once bought an engraving of Chartres for me. In this shop? How amusing that John bought the print of Chartres in this very shop.

Quite, darling. How very amusing. And on the day John went down in that lovely red and white balloon, it was Arthur Stockton who held you in his arms. On the velvet chaise, wasn't it? Yes, of course, you do remember. Arthur's whiskers against my throat as John descended in his balloon like a plumb-line to the deeps of the Channel. Reggie Cooper calculated the time of descent as something more than two minutes. I don't think Arthur's poke lasted that long, but one ought to assume it did and that the events were contemporaneous. John descending to the deeps of the Channel and Arthur Stockton spouting in the deeps of John's wife. One remembers the trivial things. I remember the disarray, my dress thrown back, my legs pushed wide apart on each side of the chaise. And Arthur's tweed. Or was it something striped? No, I think it was tweed. The only man apart from John to have me on that chaise.

They are all gone, no one but the clerk and myself in the print shop now. I buy a framed photograph of Ellen Terry. The clerk assures me Miss Terry is one of the finest actresses of our time. Her chin is raised in the photograph. Is she looking at the heavens? Darling, why Ellen Terry? I don't know. I really don't know. I don't like statues any more. Photographs like this one seem more to the point. One yields to the ministrations of memory. I take the parcel. I shudder as the clerk's hand accidentally touches mine. I am like a child. I have no thought beyond the pleasure of that moment. John often said it. He would say it to me when he made love to me on the velvet chaise. Arthur Stockton never said anything of the sort. Poor Arthur was really much too quick. Something more than two minutes is really much too quick.

I walk now in Oxford Street with Ellen Terry. I shall take down those insipid roses in my room and replace them with one of the finest actresses of our time. She does look so stupid staring at the heavens like that. Thankfully her eyes are not turned outward. I don't like to be stared at by people in photographs. I don't like the accusing eyes. One can imagine them thinking anything. I shall think of Arthur Stockton whenever I look at Ellen Terry. Yes, of course, how fit that is. I shall think of Arthur Stockton, and whenever I think of Arthur Stockton I shall think of John descending in his balloon to the Channel.

Claire's driver finds me in front of the teashop in Regent Street. I carry Ellen Terry with me as I return home. I feel drenched in the aftermath of a wicked afternoon. All those people. The eyes looking at me. The imaginings. Ellen Terry's dreamy face. I did see her once at the Criterion. Now I shall see her constantly.

Claire greets me at the door. “Lovely time?”

“Yes, it was pleasant.”

“Tell Dobbin when you want to bathe.”

“Yes, I will.”

She continues talking as I climb the stairs.! don't want to talk any more. All these years of talking. There's no point to it, is there? Inside my bedroom, I close the door and immediately attack the insipid roses, the painting on the wall between my room and Claire's room. A chair. A step upon the chair. I reach for the roses, unhook the frame. I bring the roses down. When I raise my eyes again, I see the grate.

The moment stands isolated, frozen, my throat constricted. I am not at all certain I want to see it. A grate in the wall. A grate high up in the wall between my room and Claire's, hidden all this time by those horrible roses. I don't want to think about it. I have a fierce passion not to think about it. I turn and stare at the photograph of Ellen Terry already unwrapped upon the bed. My face is warm. Oh darling. Yes, you will. You know you will. I stand upon the chair. My eyes at the grate. Claire's room uncovered in the soft light of dusk. And the bed. Nearly all the room so easily seen. I step down. I take the photograph of Ellen Terry and step up again. I cover the grate and step down again. Down and up and down again like a mindless automation. I refused to think of it. I bury the roses beneath my bed. I ring for Dobbin to draw my bath.