Laura

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I shall have ecstasies and know fulfilments. Burnished by desire in the dark, he will come upon me. I shall be lewd in my expressions, make play with my thighs about his own. There shall be laughter in the house-the doors shall be left open. Kate-a housemaid I remember-will set her cap straight, her white cap that was never white, and ask, “Oh lawks, what are you about, Miss?”

Perhaps she will say it even at the streaming of his sperm, white pulsing-on. I shall push him from me fretfully and have her brought to lick me, leaving him forlorn, his penis dripping. There may be such days; there may be not. Shall I seek fulfilment now in words or deeds? My tongue is well turned for the former, were it to be loosed, let loose, allowed to run about the house. In The Lives of Gallant Ladies they did frot, bush to bush, and avid were their tongues. I twist in my bed now in recalling such. They are all gone down, gone down, and gone to dust. O the sad people in their going. Do they go?

“They are emergent ever,” father said when once I asked him, “from death to life we come, and life to death. The coin spins endlessly. Who shall say which then is this side, that-who then shall say?”

“Death is done with,” I heard a man once declare. He ruffled his sleeves as he spoke. I read it as a nervous gesture, expression of being, proof of existence. Mama, being within his hearing, was shocked, spoke of him as irreverent. He had a reputation as a cynic and one who moved among artists. It was not to be thought therefore that he could think otherwise, my mother said, having interpreted his remark as I thought wrongly, for I thought he intended to convey that death itself did not exist. Upon my asking him this, he frowned as though I were too young to have such questions garlanded on my brow.

“There is an end to all things-such is death,” he replied and moved on to approach my cousin, Celia, who was known to have a fondness for bohemians. I would have known what he said to her, for there was laughter, but no scorning arrows of it coursed across my cheeks. Her laughter was for the moment, the entertaining of his desire. There is death in such moments, yet the substance remains. Death is perhaps the tapestry and we the threads.

I become too solemn upon such matters. Come, fuck me, one and all, come fuck. No, I must not speak thus. Ever being demure I lowered my drawers always slowly. “Come, darling, come.” He said that but once, fingering my fur, his entry full made deep between my cheeks, my O that waited to receive. Upon that moment with the quickening of his words, the utterance of voice, all was a-pace, smacked bottom to his belly thrust. There was also-as if-yes-underwater slowness sometimes, yes. Slow, quick-quick, slow, as in a foxtrot.

“Come, love, come.” That was the best of it, the breaking of the silence quick. I sprinkled, came, knew soundless my desires, damp in my drawers as then I drew them up, was done with, done, yet ever ready to renew. Open and yet closed, I trod, wanton, at evenings in dark corridors-but no, I was not so, was not. That was Charlotte perhaps. She ever tried to vie with me, I know, was the sly one-I the petulant, the betrayed.

Comings are ever a rebirth or a continuation of that which was before, or both. Upon the serving of breakfast in my boudoir, my Uncle Paul attends upon me, his expression willing to convey both humility and hope. His glance ventures frequently into the vent of my nightgown. Intimations of boredom bring me to converse with him in a manner brighter and less brittle than heretofore.

He is to Epsom, it appears, and has a carriage waiting upon the journey. We are to Epsom if I bend to his request, most humbly put, decorated as is an inlaid casket.

“Is your companion to come? You give me little enough time to prepare for such an outing.”

“No, my dear, I thought you not too taken with her. I am fortunate to find you risen so early. Should we leave within the hour then all will be well.”

“We shall venture alone then to the racing? I prefer that.”

My reasons are not as he thinks. No mood for small talk with unknowns is upon me. He may wait downstairs. Such shall be his penance. Urgent to agree, he rises from a chair by my bed, kisses my hand, and fain would suck my nipples were I to offer them even more freely than their present peeping-up allows. I ring for a maid. Her manner of bathing me pleases. Frequently she passes the warm sponge beneath my bottom and holds it there, squirting warm water as one waters indoor plants.

“Do you like attending upon ladies?”

“The young ones like you, Miss, more of my own age-not so much the older ones. They are more fussy- they stand less still.”

“Do I stand still enough? Replenish the sponge. Squeeze it more.”

“You stand nice, Miss, legs apart, knees bent a little. It makes it easier, you see.”

A hint of breathlessness is in her tone. She can be scarce more than twenty. Her bubbles promise richness and her thighs delight. I would reverse our roles and bathe her if I could. If we kissed, pressing shells to one another's ears, we would hear the sea. The water trickles down my legs, becoming lukewarm at my ankles.-

“What is your name?” I turn carefully in the bath to face her, then recompose my posture. My bush sparkles with the diamonds of her laving.

“Lucy, Miss. Shall you return this evening and I shall bathe you again?”

“Would you like that? Your finger escapes the sponge at moments. Do you mean it to?”

“I mean no impertinence by it, Miss, but you feel so nice. I am put out of home, you see, live in rooms, so would be glad to attend upon you after my other duties.”

“I shall rest my hands on your shoulders. Do you mind the wet? Bring a young man with you. Do you have a young man?”

“Yes, Miss, but he is not so lettered or well mannered. I has another gentleman, a toff, who comes occasionally. I met him at the Alhambra; he is a fair dancer, too.”

“A toff? You mean he is of another social class than yourself? Be not demeaning of yourself in your ways, Lucy, for men are men and women are women. If you can finger well, as well you finger, are soft of eyes and pretty with words, there need be no accounting of difference. Does he pay you for your compliances? Is he well furnished? Come, dry me. I am in a mood for the rub of the towel. Use a warm, dry one between my legs.”

“You are a fair devil, Miss, if I dare say so. There comes several up from the country whom I have furnished with gentlemen friends in their boudoirs. The gentlemen come into the front of the hotel, you see, and I from the back, and so I come up quietly and make the introductions.”

“For which you are paid by both, no doubt, you witch. Such services should be arranged. I have no doubt of it. We shall, however, reverse our roles. I will put you to the gentleman and watch your bout. Thereafter you will both leave and you must apprise him of such before his entrance. I wish him not to be unclothed. He will lower his trousers, you your drawers, if such you wear. He will approach you from the rear. All shall be silent. Let no more be said on it until you are put up. Nine-thirty tonight will suffice.”

“As you wish Miss. I never had anyone watch me before.”

“You may keep your eyes closed. The bedroom will be in darkness. The light from the drawing room shall illumine all that needs be seen. You may dress me now-the small corset, a chemise, drawers, and gown will suffice. Be sure that my stockings are drawn up taut.”

I have concluded with the mundane. It may be that I shall have no taste for the matter when the time comes. Perhaps they have done it before me already and I am at the end rather than the beginning. Father returned once from horse racing, to which he had been inveigled by a friend, looking, as I thought, most profound. Sitting deep in thought as he did and I asking him upon what his mind was fixed for I feared that he had gambled overmuch and lost, he said, “As I watched one race succeeding the other, I became aware that only one horse could succeed in each contest. The thought crossed my mind as a truism, but when I placed it, as it were, a little to one side and looked beneath I realised that since no horse could win save the horse that won, then in every sense the horse had already won before the race had started.”

Gazing at me quizzically he smiled and asked, “Is there a meaning to life therein? Have we already won, or lost?”

My paternal aunt entered at that moment, having heard what was said upon her approach.

“If the horse has already won, then we have already died,” she said.

The room seemed not to chill at her words, though I thought it might. I looked to my father for an answer, for I thought his words might solve all the mysteries of the universe.

“As to that, we are perhaps too much at words,” he said.

“Indeed so,” my aunt replied, “for did Mama not tell us that words and the thoughts that are consequent upon them become as intertwined and ravelled as spaghetti upon a plate, and that the more we try to separate the strands-if we so try-then the more anxious our minds become.”

“Mama had much wisdom,” Papa said and gazed at me as though I too should possess such, but I do not think that was the intent of his look upon me. “You have misquoted, though, my dear,” he went on, “for what she actually said, and I recall that she wore a blue sari threaded with silver upon that occasion, was that in netting words with the thoughts that they occasion we incur thereafter great frustration in trying to unravel all and finally are left with such a mess of potage as were best left alone. She did, however, mention spaghetti,” he conceded with a grin.

“Then we should learn nothing. Surely did your Mama not add something else?” I asked, for I then forever felt he was keeping something from me like a tease who proffers a wrapped parcel but will not let one take hold of it and dances all about holding it above one's head.

“Words are the furnishings of the caves where devils dwell,” my aunt said. So I felt as much frustration as I ever had and was put out and showed it by my sulky look. Excusing myself, I went up to my room, where Papa in due course followed. I sat upon my bed and looked forlorn, for such was ever my posture when I wanted him to talk and comfort me.

“What was intended was that one learns in silence, Laura.”

“What then is there to learn?”

“When you know that then you will have no further need of words.”

“Even so, you could tell me,” I replied, then laughed for I realised that I had fallen into my own trap, and my laughter being echoed by his own, I again felt contentment and listened to the twittering of the baby swallows in their nest beneath the eaves, for such sounds are condiments to the feast of life, as is the tinkling of a spoon to a cup, the far calling of children at play and the water-rustlings of the small waves on a beach where the beach would try to grip the sea yet fails.

When my paternal grandmother was receiving her benedictions, as she called them-as in turn I learned to do-there was frequently the sound of small bells, which, it was said, came from Tibet. Not always wishing to know whose penis she might receive, for then her meditations could continue the more contained and unblemished, her maid would hang strings of these bells around my grandmother's bed so that whoever brushed through them would cause them to tinkle. She, being upon all fours and well presented with her ample bottom offered, would keep her eyes closed and her face cupped in her palms, which she had scented beforehand. Oil was applied delicately around and within the rim of her rose, her orifice, with such a thin glass rod as later I had been supplied and which I used to the same end when I knew that I was to be exercised. Experiencing no more than I the first shock of entry of the swollen knob, she would receive it with but a sigh as if the outgoing of her breath were brought about by the invasion.

Indeed, I recall vividly the hush-rushing of my own breath upon the moments of my first trials when I fell into Perdition. This sensation, however, dwindled with further exercising, I knowing naught save pleasure in my pumpings. The male was the giver, the female the receiver, as my grandmother in her own time then ordained. Hands placed but lightly on her hips, her stallion was constrained to work himself therein, thereout, ever with grace, not grunting nor uttering lewd sounds but conducting himself majestically until sperm cascaded deep within, was there received and held. Were the male (perhaps being young and lacking caution) to utter utterances of lust-were he to do so-then upon withdrawing, his penis would be strapped to his belly by means of a leather “scold,” or sheath, being thus contained and constrained for a week or more so that on his desiring to urinate it needed to be released temporarily by an older female servant, this shaming and yet training the offender.

So my aunt told me, and my astonishment at such intelligence was great, for I had until then held males to the arbiters of all.

“Why should that be so?” my aunt replied, “for the female-although of necessity strapped and put to pleasure in her younger years-will in time show herself fit and willing and is thereafter no less than the male in stature. Master or mistress-what does it matter?”

It occurs to me now that I had at least proven mistress of the occasion when, severing from my husband, I had commanded the moment, made brazen my intent, and so packeted and parcelled up the very air within the house that each was contained within its several compartments. Such thoughts are random, however, and bring me not to the point that I may wish to reach, which is bereft of designation, label, or description, flows not like water nor holds still as wood or stone, yet contains all, as the air contains the birds and space the stars. When I am still, there is movement; when I am moving, stillness is apprehended, understood, made present in my being.

My uncle, upon my appearance below, gives every visual sign of one who has despaired of waiting, would proffer fretfulness like washing breeze-blown on a line did I not sweep past him, making clear my presence on the hotel steps.

A conveyance of some grandeur awaits-a family type of carriage with ample room for six. There is, he opines, more comfort in such than one of shorter underbelly upon a journey of such measure. There are motives therein, I suspect, but I am not of a mood to question them. The maid's gentle, questing touch has stirred my loins. I signal my approval by wriggling my bottom as I enter and face forward to the horses. Clerks, tardy upon their business, halt and stare. My bonnet of blue velvet is approved, the angles of my nose, lips, chin are seen, may yet be dreamed upon by those who scribble later at their toil. They will thrust at their wives tonight, remembering my face. Their mouths will be open and wild dreams will rage. I shall have none of it, may yet see my performance with the maid, who came as a pleasant comma to the morn. Yet there will be a dryness about it, I believe. Rather would I sit in my white dress that I wore for my Confirmation, my ankles seen and approved, a cushion at my back against the bole of a tree, a book unread upon my knees, my garters tight, the gusset of my drawers moulding my sensuality unseen, purring its silent pleasure of desire.

When it was tickled first, a cock at my bottom…

“Shall there be company at the races, uncle?”

“There will be friends, no doubt-distant friends and new. None close. Would you have some close?”

“I have no feeling for matter. Is there not a dullness in racing? Have the horses not already won?”

“Were that to be so, my pet, and I knowing of their names, I would be a millionaire.”

He is obtuse upon such matters. I am among foreigners, must learn new tongues, parse my sentences as they and conjugate the ordinary.

“My drawers are too tight. Pray turn your back that I may remove them.”

“My dear, yes. They must not incommode you. May I see your knees first?”

“Are we within the house or without the house? Is there to be lewdness? Is this your manner of conducting things? My calves are slender, my thighs swell. Turn your back. Mama would have none of it; Papa would forbid you his Clubs and put your name about. The card tables would no longer receive you. Are you not a member of the Athenaeum? You should act ever as a gentlemen. Turn your back.”

He is crestfallen, though his crest rises-I observe- with the rustling of my gown. I am come upon a newness to myself. The high windows of the carriage permit no observation from beyond save if we pass a horse bus. I shall be covered by then, my legs pristine and shielded from all gaze. I descend my drawers slowly, raising my bottom from the seat. There is pleasure in doing so. The act of furtiveness becomes the moment. In this moment they are puddled in my hands, drawn off my ankles, and my gown restored. His eyes, drawn back to mine by soft command, gaze in humility.

“Of what fine cotton they are made!”

“There is not a stain upon them. Hold them if you wish.”

“I would kiss them, Laura.”

“That, too, is permitted.”

His nostrils quiver. He inhales. His face bears an unease of puffiness.

“A delicate scent, my dear. How delicate!”

“It is beyond description. Place them over your crotch. I do not wish to see your uprising. Mama would admonish me severely for such.”

“Your Papa would bring his strap to you?” His look has fervency. My drawers are tentpoled by his rampant stand.

“I know naught of a strap. Why think you of a strap? There is perversity in such thoughts that ill becomes you. Girls are birched, I believe, for I have heard of their wailings. Their hips weave, their bottoms beg for succour, there are cries for assistance, are there not?”

I have matched his lewdness with remonstrance. He knows of what and whom I speak-the factory wench who, not so poor of spirit, brought him to the Justice of the Peace. I pray for her spirit that it shall never weaken, yet hypocrite now in my own wild intent do bid him loose his trousers.

“Let me not see it for I do not wish to see it again. How you heaved upon her at the hotel! I have sealed letters on the matter at my bank, held in trust, in secret vaults, that you might not betray me. Keep it covered with my drawers and rub yourself within them.”

“What a torture you put me to!”

“Is it not divine? Look into my eyes while you do it. Speak-you may speak. There is no record kept upon the matter. We are over the Thames, shall soon enough be upon the pastures, among the meadows, the quietudes of poverty and want, rising of smoke from simple chimney stacks. Let your own belch, for I would see the cotton bubble.”

“I would speak of your thighs, your breasts adorable, your bottom. Have you not been approached-by stealth, perhaps? Has It not been put to you? Were there no corkings, uncorkings there-magic of bulbing to the manly stem?”

He has not the albums of my thoughts, no leaves to turn, no likenesses of shadowed minds to gaze upon. Only the mirrors of my eyes reflect his dreams, the tattered banners of his purposes. His jaw sags. He having thus spoken, his jaw sags. There is about his face a desperation of purpose, ugliness. Better that I had in my past, in my beginnings, been turned about, put over, than having done it face to face.

“Go on. You may think of it. Some chance encounter in the summerhouse, perhaps? Go faster in your thinkings. Well might you then have seen me clear unveiled, flower-. dust of morning on my riven cheeks. Do you come much-expel powerfully? Would you be upon me, if you could, back arched, receiving your wickedness? A maid might watch while polishing the silver, performing mundane duties as her plight demands. Mama might enter and say prayers. Kneeling behind us, would she not see all? My aunt would draw the curtains against the sun.”

“Hah! What thoughts you have! How unbearable that I cannot see your garters.”

“In the dusk, in the middling ways of Time, when I was sprinkled…Ah, you are coming, I perceive. What a fine strong bubbling there is of it!”

“Kiss me, pray!”

“I will not! How dare you entertain such thoughts!”

His face softens. The veins pulse less, the pale of cock-flesh sheathed within my drawers. How much more easily women flow in their unceasings! Their limbs are more lithe, expressions more angelic. Their eyes do not snag my eyes like thorns as men's eyes snag. I have uncovered my aunt's breasts-known her plentitude, rasping of nipples rubbery to mine, the entertaining warmth of thighs to thighs, bush brushed to bush and moisture found.

His shoulders sag. He is confounded, done. The sperm that smears my cotton slowly dries. It will turn to dust and become fireflies. The wheels of other carriages have all but brushed our own. Out towards Epsom now all London flows. The drivers curse and yell as drivers must. We are drawn by four horses, are majestic in our passage. A mile or two beyond, the dwellings thin. The rough-clad country folk, smocked yokels, stand and note with awe the passing of the toffs.

Are we then such? Furtive beneath my gaze, he hides his penis. The worm has died or gone to sleep, now hibernates beneath his sticky shirt. My drawers are fondled, folded, put away. He has nothing to say, nothing to say at all. I, changeling as Charlotte, have mocked his dreams. The yokels copulate no better or no worse. Who, then, are toffs beneath the heaving sheets?

“You speak? You do not speak?” I speak and spy a pretty girl. Pail held in hand, she turns and stares. The passing of our carriage moves her skirt. I would know her mind, her heart, her bottom's bounce. There is no time for it, alas. He grunts, feigns sleep, into a corner sags. Pale pictures tease the corners of his mind. Resentment clouds his mouth like soured wine.