Laura

CHAPTER TWO

The wine is gone. The tang of it upon my tongue. Should I have drunk all? Does it dishonour my breath? When tigers prowled I drank liqueurs, the sheet of my bed ruffled into rivers we had swum. Burnished by moonlight I lay in my quiescence, liquid in sin.

At the first footsteps on the stairs I breathe more quietly. I know them to be his. The doorhandle rattles gently and is turned. My thoughts turn, run, and hide like children in an orchard who have taken apples.

“The sea air, do you like it?” Striding across the room he asks. He has found the gap where the curtains stir.

“It is pleasant, yes. I was born in the country.”

“You do not speak of the past here. There is only the present.”

“Yes.”

My voice is as quiet as a fallen leaf. My legs tremor. He observes me not. I have spoken gently, quietly. I await retribution. Go down, go down, into the grass, the sand, the sea. Find the roots, the fronds, the waving tips. Delicate.

“There were miracles. Once there were miracles, Laura. Men had land, they strode across it, riding the Downs in their coming, tall in the mornings, their hopes unfettered. Upon coming to the sea they knew their journeys. We are the landlocked. All beyond is possessed, reserved and taken. And in the jungles prowl the tigers bright. You know of this.”

The question mark is dropped-dropped as of old. I catch it in its falling, secrete it in the valley between my breasts. It nestles there, coils and uncoils, then it sleeps.

Am I to reply? I know not my place, my stance, and yet I know to lie here in my waiting. The strap hangs from his grasp. It is wider even than the strap I knew-the snapping bites of my perdition.

“Answer, girl, answer! Were you not taught?”

His command comes to me so suddenly that I jump. In my lying-down I jump. He turns-observes the rondeur of my knees, the thighs, my gleaming calves, the tight-lacing of my boots. I must not leave heel marks.

Do not leave heel marks on the couch, Laura.

“I have been where the tigers stir-have seen the moonlight cold upon their flanks.”

“And upon your own? Were there mirrors? Answer, girl?”

“No.”

“No?”

“There was purity,” I reply.

My voice is sullen. I betray nothing. I will tell nothing. There was a mirror on a swivel stand, placed at an angle to my bed. We seemed as ghosts within it. No, I will not tell. There were secrets. In the small nights the small kisses. Hazed by clouds, they would appear and reappear on my lips, dewdrops of touch upon my breasts. My clock would tick. I placed it under my bed and mother asked me what had become of it. Take out the ticks, silvery, small. They would run like mercury across my palm. Shuffled into an envelope, they would be stilled, forbidden to touch, to coagulate, to merge. Remember this, remember.

There is no clock here in this room, no clock. The walls are grey with light. The pattern on the wallpaper speaks of flowers too tired to grow. I wait. Will he be harsh? Closer to me moving he has moved. His gaze falls upon me, the light from his mind brushes the skin of my thighs above my stocking tops. The strap stirs against his leg. Challenges.

“Were you not angry in your beginnings?” His voice is quizzical, kind. I do not wish to cry. The penis memory moves within me still.

“It was told to me that I must not be. I received. It was done.”

The strap moves, tickles, taunts. I roll over in my waiting, my chemise ascends. Gleam-glow of flesh, my hillocks proud. In my waiting.

The door opens and the woman enters. Her hands are busy at her apron, hiding, emerging, hiding. I cannot look. Hands should be stilled. Her eyes examine me-I cannot look. I close my own. The coverlet grows warm beneath my skin. Julian with his mother somewhere speaks. A maid is sent to search the streets for me. A high wind on the promenade may have blown me hither, thither. My dress shall be found upon railings-shoes skewed upon the pebbles of the beach, kicked by boys. I shall hide beneath the small waves waiting, the seaweed wreathed about my brow. Messages will reach me from the sailors lost.

The woman's gaze is one of approbation. I feel it through my eyelids.

“Handle her well. Be certain that the heels of her boots do not scour the bedcovers. You will wear your proper bonnet tomorrow, Laura.”

She is gone, the door closes, echoing the movement of her lips.

He speaks. “Your posture pleases me not. Are you ever so slovenly?”

Am I spurned that I am not first caressed, my nether cheeks moulded by suave and certain hands, lifted and positioned? I was ever mute in my obedience, permitting disclosure, mindful of the stone nymph in the garden who knew no more modesty than to clasp her hands before her. Her buttocks were less well cleft than my own. Perhaps it was thought to be a rudeness. The marble was Italian. In secret I would frequently pass my hand about it. Mother said that I should not, for it brought strange thoughts, withered the eyelids, and destroyed one's dreams. I would have taken the nymph to my room and brought her to Perdition if I could. She was too heavy. Upon her coming two dray horses were needed to pull the cart and six men to carry it in sad sack-covering behind the house where stood the waiting lawns. There was much ado, I remember, about getting it precisely upright. At nights I wished to cover her with a cloak. Mother would not have a name for her and wished her gone, saying that she did not like Italianate things. Father said she was to be called Perdita. At this I fretted a little, yet she stood too elegant to be lost, unloved. At mornings I would gaze down from my bedroom window at the small, tight marble moon of her bottom where the rain had streaked its tears. Once on a summer eve I leaned over the sill, the window open, spurred on by the strap to Perdition while I sought in vain her averted gaze.

I would have wished then the gazing of her blind eyes in my mewing, the small hot churning of my hips, her cold lips to my own.

“Be still-be still.” The words re-echo as I kneel now in this otherness, my palms flat on the bed.

Do all men speak thus-say the same?

There are times for stillness and times for movement. My hips jerk at the first impact of the leather as they ever did. The arrows of the pain that is no pain that stings. I wilt, I suffer, yet my back remains dipped. My bulb is bulbous. Heat invades, my head hangs, my shoulders quiver. Such whimpers as escape me sound no louder than the far crying of the gulls.

“Be quiet always, child,” my grandmother would say. Her shawls had smells of mustiness that I wished not to press my face into, though she saw to it occasionally that I did. Mama's clothes were ever redolent of lavender as were my own. From her I learned freshness of body, the changing of underclothes twice a day. “If your drawers are ever to be seen, they must be clean,” she averred often. By the time I was seventeen she took my laundry-caring habits for granted and thus was comforted that I combined a softness of tone with the virtue of spotlessness. Upon attaining the age of eighteen, I was presented with prettily coloured phials of various perfumes that Papa brought from Paris. I learned to anoint myself-to encircle my nipples with a haze of flowery scents, to touch delicately all about with a thin glass perfume rod the subtle creasing of flesh that curves in quarter circles where the bottom cheeks poise upon the columns of the thighs. Then with fingers that quivered not a little sometimes in anticipation, I would follow the triangular bluff of my pubic thatch about its perimeter.

Today I had not done so, for today was not in my anticipations. Julian knows nothing of my journeys to Perdition. I perfume my lower parts but occasionally in his house, and then for my own pleasure only. The flower of petulance between my thighs exuded its own scent- that odor di femina which frequently brings the male nostrils to flare.

“It is enough,” I heard, “is it enough?”

I would not answer. I had been taught quietness. The frail, invisible gags of mustiness, of lavender, of darkling ink, of dust between the curtain gap, had muffled my first sobs that had sounded as but a memory of childhood. With the closing of the cupboard doors, the silent wondering of my dolls within, I had entered into womanhood and known the springy, muscled thrust of maleness-that force that through embedment of the penis drives the sperm. I had buried my head in deeds of surrender, my drawers spotless at my ankles, my heat-sheened bottom working to the thrusts. Never had rebellion cast its cloak around me.

The leather sears again, for I have not spoken. I should cry out perhaps, for he is more unlearned than I thought. Or here perhaps it does not matter. Do they listen at the door? The splatting of the leather spoils my hearing. I whimper, I grit my teeth. I need.

The brass rails gleam. They merge, divide. As do my cheeks.

Turnabout, Laura. Lie upon the swing so, your bottom uppermost.

The grass mown by my eyes, I knew the sting, the swing-sting of the stinging, and the breeze. The wind. My dress blown up. I cried. I knew not then the call. My nipples did not harden as they should. My legs hung close, unopened. The bee-stings of a supple switch brought forth my cries. I had not blossomed to the follies of desire. I was not finished, not done, undone.

My grandmother would not comfort me.

“Laura, you are too old to cry,” she said.

I ran in fine alarm and hid myself and listened to the ticking of the clocks as if from other houses, other worlds. Oh did it then begin, the urgent shimmering of fine thin flames that licked my netherness?

“Let there be no alarms-this is a quiet house,” my aunt said. She drew me from the cupboard where I had slunk. Her hands dusted the undustiness of my dress, the pitter-patter of her fingers at my globe. “There is no harm done,” she tutted. Mama said nothing, her needles dazzling with their clicking. I was kissed and petted, given cakes for tea. My dresses, it was said, should become me better. Catalogues were searched, comparisons made.

Months passed. I attained to my seventeenth. The rims of my stocking grew tighter. My rounded breasts knew no encumbrances, globular. Led by my paternal aunt to a new emporium, I learned the twittering of shopgirls at my charms. In veiled rooms small corsets were adjusted to my waist. Drawn in, they left me breathless. The out-thrust of my bottom perter grew.

It heightens your breasts, Laura — do not adjust the lace. Your nipples will be the more appeased by its tickling.

My aunt was ever thus as to details. The measuring of distance between the ornaments on her shelves and dressing-table was always precise. When combing my hair she would adjust each strand.

Mother was not so. Untidiness became her. I suspected an art in it, so well adjusted was it that it seemed a virtue-a signal for attraction. At tea parties and receptions I was introduced as the principal maiden of the house. The voices of my uncles would boom in concert with the popping of champagne corks as if to commemorate my elevation. Upon my first strapping, when I had known the penis-thrust-though not spoken of but sensed-they would occasionally pause to fondle my netherness. It was forbidden. My aunts were furious. My uncles were sent back to their books, their accounts, their offices of work. Only females were henceforth invited to tea, save for father who stood over all, turning the pages of our minds by his presence. One of my uncles, it was said, took a birch to one of his factory girls. He was apprehended for it, admonished, and fined five shillings. Such things were frowned upon. I learned each indiscretion and avoided them. The sleekness of my form beneath my gowns was hallowed.

My mother it was who urged marriage upon me three years later. She apprehended, perhaps, disasters where I knew only joy. My once urgent cries had long ceased to float their small balloons of sound. I absorbed the pulsing rod, the spurting juice. In such moments of brief deprivation as occurred, my knickers would moisten with their anticipations. I had become too acquiescent in my acquiescence-the swing long stilled, ropes rotting in the rain.

“You converse too often upstairs,” she admonished me. Her needles clicked the faster or she would stare more closely through her spectacles at her embroidery, her majestic bottom stirring vaguely on a brocaded chair.

The brass rails rattle now. I would speak of all-ah, surely now! Ah yes, he comes-a sudden leaping on the bed. One should be slow and use decorum. Save for the quiet keynotes of my sobbing I keep my silence. The waters of fulfilment wail for me, to lave my plenitude, my all-receiving. His vibrant entrance plunges, thrills. I know the snowfall of desire upon the tiger's hot and summered flanks. Push, thrust-do not cry out. The spear engages, sundering my cheeks. Unto his maleness, deep within.

I pant, I blubber softly as was taught. The subtlety is gone. I yield not to authority but to sin. Where streams the starlight on my brow, bulb bouncing on my rivered sheets? I have gone into the jungles of the dark where cry the voices of the wild-have heard my own beseeching against sin and yet have sought it. For this I was admonished, strapped anew. At breakfast my aunts would remark upon my pallor and rouge my cheeks. Once returned to my room, I would rub it off. I preferred my paleness. The emissions of desire are pale, the flesh is pale. By mid-morning my colour would return. I had come victorious through the long, slow loop of night.

Do not ask, Laura. Submit, receive. Work your bottom.

“Work your bottom!” The man repeats the phrase. I obey, I breathe my gaspings. He seems to need my sounds. Be quick, be quick.

“Ah God, ah God!” He now blasphemes. In lust is my undoing. I receive. The pulsing jets as from a hose, fine-spurting-then is quiet.

Are you happy? You must understand more. Read good books, attend to wisdom. Thus my aunts spoke, and Mama. I, virginal between my thighs, would acquiesce and smile. I hid my conscience in the small jars of my mind, upon the shelves where none could ever look.

He falls back, he is spent. The cork uncorks, the penis withers. The door opens and I fall forward, hide. The woman appears.

“She was ever rebellious. You must deal with her later.”

“Yes,” he replies. His voice is heavy with discontentment. Here is perhaps a place of disaffection. I have not been seen before in my quietude. The secrecy is broken, the locks undone. Spyglasses perhaps survey me. Men in heavy boots will come and whisper and make notes.

“Go! All of You!” I shriek.

“Do not speak in that manner, Madam,” she replies, “who are you to speak? Come-she is undeserving.”

“My clothes!”

I call too late. The door is closed, he shuffling like a dog torn from the bitch.

“Millie!”

I call once more. My voice finds a thin ring of authority. I stir, I feel the trickling wet. Will Julian's mother scent my sin? There is no coming of angels. The silence hangs. I need Mama-the admonitions of her dogma.

I rise, wash at the bowl. The thin towel scours my servitude. The door is my shepherd, it will lead me into the beyondness, the benediction of descent. I shall blossom into the world. At night I shall listen to the music of the little band, rub hips with passers-by along the moonlit promenade. I shall eat cockles and sing my songs. The women will regard me with envy.

I adjust my stockings. Be ever neat, Laura. Be watchful of your carriage. Do not speak to men.

I seek my drawers, my dress. Perhaps I shall keep the chemise the woman gave me. It is a pretty one. The lace at the hem taps at my bottom in gentle reminders. My clothes lie in the bathroom as Millie placed them. No voices sound to challenge. The drooping silence leaves no gap to speak. I descend with no caution whatever for I am become myself again. The front door stands wide-there Millie stands. She wears her bonnet in a ragged tilt. Her shawl is frayed. I espy now her poverty, the meanness of her dress. Her pose is one of the desolation I would feel were it not for her own.

“They've all gone, Miss. There's all such comings and goings here.”

“What will you do, Millie?”

Have I seen her before? The faces of servants merge in my memory-betray their anonymity. Their faces are the faces of winter Sunday mornings, hoarfrost invisible upon their fingers, the tips of their noses.

“Find a place, Miss, where they might have me.”

She curtseys, smiles, a wan, small, broken smile. I observe her in her going. Born to activities, domestic bustlings, she subsides as does a wobbling top when the boys have dropped the whip and it dies in its revolving dance.

The evening air comes easy to my brow. A man leans against the railings opposite-a blown leaf of summer. He regards me with the sombre mien of one who has already stripped and mounted me, married me and divorced. The road is too wide for his coming.

“Julian!”

I make to call out, though I know not where. My hand falters on the iron railing that descends with the steps. Those few passers-by who glance at me no doubt think me waiting for a carriage.

Who is Julian? I close my eyes, retracing memories like stepping stones across a river, sought in moonlight.

“Can I help you, Miss? You looks uncertain.”

I have gazed too long into the sky. In its pale blue is neither plentitude nor vacuum. I look down. A constable regards me quizzically.

The sky is in his eyes-a coloured mirror that reflects me not.