Laura

CHAPTER FOUR

The day is calmer now with my departure. The evening waits to uncoil upon the sky. Pleasure shall be upon me. I shall send a message by telegraph to father. Murmurings of migrations. I brush my plumage and remove my bonnet. We are alone in the carriage. The plush purple of the seats pleases. We face each other like accusers who have long lost their arguments.

“You always have nicer dresses than me-you do, Laura.”

I smile, rise, draw up her legs along the seat so that she lies upon it. Her face has a scared look of excitement. “Don't. You are going to tickle me. You always do.”

“Yes. Where shall I? As we did it in the garden once?”

“No, we were never in the garden doing it, Laura. What strange memories you have. Besides, they would have seen us. You are rude. How rude you are!”

I raise her dress, pursue the hem above her rounded knees. Her garters come to my view, her thighs upswelling. Her leg nearest the edge of the seat flops and slides, unguarded. She swings her toe upon the dusty floor. The crotch of her drawers is plump with her plumpness.

“What will you do?” Her voice is thick like the cream that nestled in the glass beside my bed. I would drink but an inch of it and then tilt the rim so that it ran down and formed a stickiness upon the glass. Sometimes I would dip my finger within and move it then around my bottom, my rosette, in waiting. Before the opening of the door-a fluttering of wings upon the roof.

“Be still. You know what you like. Lift your hips. Let me draw them down.”

She sighs as I have sighed in my sighings. Unveiled, her lovelips have a pouting look, a peeping-out through curls, dark brown as mine. I have so rarely lain thus, upon by back, except with Julian. I apprehend the cushions to be loose, reach far behind me to my seat and draw one upon the floor that I may kneel. Her legs are heavy, curved, but have not the sensuousness of my own. Her breathing flutters. I would prefer to whip her, but no strap lies to hand. Mumbling and murmuring she wriggles as I raise her fallen leg askew and hook it to my shoulder dangling. She covers her eyes. I would fain smack her hands away, for it is disallowed, but prefer to attend to my immediate task-so often have I wondered about this. My tongue protrudes, licks delicately about, among the curls, the shell-like folds. A muskiness, an acridness, a creaminess, a wonder. Haaaar! The inrushing of her breath as inward dips my tongue, then upwards licks! I know her spot, the little budding point, a nub upon the tender, wicked flesh. She grits her teeth, her hands flay at the air.

“Ah! Laura, no!”

“Be quiet! Were you not ever taught? What of the night amid the crumpled sheets?”

Tell mother not! Oh yes, a little more!”

Upon my hands her bumptious bottom moves, full fleshed and firm. I draw the cheeks apart and hold them cruelly so as dips my tongue and flashes fast within, without, ever to tease and please and draw her on. “I cant!”-“You can! You must, you shall! Oh spill-spill now upon my tongue. Jog with the wheels upon the rails, my love, and come. Ah yes! Now onward spurt! Writhe, wriggle, writhe!”

Her panting's done. My lips are smeared-some saltiness of flavour that I know. Fast falling on her then I lick her lips, intrude my tongue, and force her thus to suck while gurgling hard she presses fast against me then falls faint.

I leave her thus in her abandonment. Her eyes have a glazed look. The train ripples, rocks, I rise and stare beyond the window where the heavy cows attend the pastures. I have done with her, turn and command her smartly to pull up her drawers. She must know me as mistress, perhaps, or as saviour. I do not know. Her bonnet is fallen and awry. I espy the name of the maker within: an emporium in Regent Street. Failing in their crispness, the feathers lie too pressed.

“You must take more care of yourself,” I observe, “Where are we going?”

“Oh, what a question!” She is upright, composed, all at one with herself, her skirts pushed down. Her eyes regard my ankles with a certain jealousy. “What is about I do not know, for you never tell me. There will be much ado about it tonight. It is Friday. Have you forgotten? He always expects you to be there on a Friday.”

My nose wrinkles. I do not care overmuch for fish, except of the most delicate, white variety with a sauce well composed by a knowing cook. Wine and herbs. Tall summer days and squat winter ones, a sparkling of Moselle, a caressing of my thighs beneath the table, the twittering of my aunts.

“Come, let me do it to you, too, Laura.” Her voice uncertain as a bird that spies a cat.

“Certainly not-how dirty you are. I have not washed yet. Tell me about your life. What have been your wanderings?”

“Really, Laura, you are not of us-I have always said so. Mother has bought you a fine brown dress that you will have to wear tonight. Your black stockings will not go with it at all. What a shine they have-did you pay much for them? He will want you to wear brown ones, I know he will.”

“All this is known, is it not?”

I wave my hand airily. The names of small stations flash past. One has never known them and yet has forgotten them, savoured for the merits of their spellings and pronunciations in books unread. Such books lay often about my father's house. I knew no one to read them, but felt not sad for them for they were at peace in their closedness. They would be obedient and would open to the touch, even as I. When dust lay upon the leather bindings it were best conserved there for it gave a pleasant odour to them, the scents of yesterdays that are known and not foreign to one's mind. When the feathers of tree sparrows lay stray upon the grass, I knew that they had gone forever. Milk curdled and strawberries uneaten grew darker and mushy, but the veined stem rose ever in its seeking, quivering upon the moment of entry to loose the sap between my yielded cheeks.

“We are getting out at London Bridge and shall take the bus,” I heard. “Oh, but there is too much luggage, Laura, is there not?”

She would placate me with the softness of her look. I affect not to notice it.

“We shall take a cab, you stupid. Have you no money? Does he not attend to you in this respect? You cannot always use mine.”

“I have a sovereign still. It will suffice. You've never been mean before. Why are you mean? You know he never gives me nothing-it's always you he treats. Mother gets real jealous of it sometimes.”

“I am aware,” I say coldly. My words are a tiny whip across her mouth. Her expression crumples. There is an oddness of uncertainty about her, yet her figure is lithe and well formed, her breasts fulsome and her breath sweet.

We proceed in such silences and brief flutterings of words as befall us. One curiosity alone seizes me.

“Was I always called Laura?” I ask.

“Of course. What a question! How you do question your questions, Laura. You were baptised at St. Anthony's, the same as me except that you were first by near on twenty months. Mother has it written down in her Bible as well you know. I don't know what she's going to say that you've been away all this time. I hope you didn't get larky with anyone. She'll soon find out. You'll be put upstairs, you will, and your trunks put in the attic.”

“Yes, upstairs,” I murmur vaguely for a vagueness comes upon me. I lean my head back at the approach of the city. “I must have a telegraph message conveyed to father.” I know she has heard for a smile seeps into her mouth succeeded by a trilling of laughter.

“You will have your little joke, Laura. What will he do with a telegram? Have your little joke all right for it won't last too long and well you know it. I hope you won't be improper at table, though. It has to wait for afterwards. Digest your food first properly, mother always says, and don't rush around the rooms.”

“No, of course.”

I resent the reprimand and yet absorb it. Evidently it is a strange house. I envisage it tall and thin, with the rooms perhaps smaller than the people. Need I levity or sombre-ness? It will be decided for me, no doubt. I prefer decisions to be unfolded swiftly and neatly like napkins. “I will be elegantly treated I trust?” The words spill from my tongue without my having pre-arranged them in my mind.

“No doubt you will, Laura, since you are the only one who gets anything out of him. Shall we get up now? We are coming into London Bridge.”

“Of course.” How strange that she should ask me whether we might get up. Perhaps it is because I am in my majority and she has not yet quite attained hers. Such requests become her well. I am more pleased with her. How vast the station and the clawing of the platforms. The smokiness affects me a little. I shall lower my veil. I have Turkish eyes, father said. A man passing observes them, as it seems, takes a step towards me and is gone. They are always after me with their heavy, expectant penises.

Do your balls tingle when you put it in? Oh do it to me again-can you?

Did I speak thus? No, there was ever a quiet panting- escaping of my breath through my nostrils, my breasts at pillage, lifted from my chemise, the nipples electric. Speech was almost always forbidden. When I descended again to the company of my aunts I had to learn to uncoil my tongue again. At Leadenhall Street where the traffic coagulates and the cabs and carts press among the horse buses, the trunks rattling and thumping on the roof, I glance in my glances and to my surprise-faint though still surprise-see the face of my Uncle Paul peering at me from the dust-streaked window of a neighbouring carriage. His aspect is one of greater astonishment than my own. We move on. He gesticulates to his cabbie. Am I to be followed?

I endeavour to twist in my seat but can see nothing- am chided for ruffling my dress. The first droopings of dusk spin their encroaching cobwebs about us. I remark this to her, being pleased with the thought.

“Oh, you were always the poetic one, Laura.”

It is a little sneer in all effect. My aunts would not have sneered. Perhaps my mother might have understood or not. Father told me ever to write such thoughts down in my diaries, which had a little clasp and a lock to them for which I was ever grateful. If my mother had found them she would not have dared open them but would have gazed in wonderment at them for a moment and then put them back, counting them as books.

The streets grow narrower, laying distances behind us, the surfaces of the roads unrolling. As a child I always believed that roads and lanes were laid so, being put away at night, though I knew not where. It is best not to think of “where” sometimes. There is an otherness, surely, into which all things go when they are quiet and utterly alone.

“They cannot be entirely alone for light falls upon them and there are neighbouring objects,” father said, and I knew that he was trying to drive me into some further furtherness of thinking.

“Perhaps they become invisible to each other,” I said.

He smiled and replied, “You do not become invisible to me,” to which I objected that I must if we were absent from one another. “No-for then I carry your likeness and your image within me,” he said. I wanted to say that this was cheating, but it seemed too bold of me. Were images as much the reality as the reality? Seeing the knotting of my thoughts, he stroked my hair. “Be not led astray by the words, Laura. Though we call a glass a glass, is it to be known as such by someone who has never seen a glass before? The more you think upon words the more you will find yourself in a cave of devils.”

“Oh, I do not want to go there!” I shuddered and clung to him.

“You will not, for those too are words. You may come in and out of the words as you wish.”

I was seventeen then, but I ever remembered. Even so, I polish my words like pebbles. An eagerness comes over me to convey my thoughts to her who knows my future for a moment and a past that my mind has eluded, but she would not comprehend. She is known to me and yet I do not recall her. She is an otherness. No trace of her now exists upon my tongue.

The cab stops with a great rattling. The gas lamps are being lit. A man attends them with a pole and a lighter. The laburnums here have long tired of their wasted tree-ness and gone back into their roots. The cruel flagstones enfold them too tightly. Their treeness is beneath. Descending, I view a narrower front door than I have known before. Fragments of blue and yellow glass curve above it where a yellow light shows through. The pattern is distasteful, aping the ecclesiastic. I wonder at the offices and places of work where the drawings lie hidden still, crouched in shame in darkness.

“Leave the trunks!”

The decision comes upon me so suddenly that I almost fear I have wailed, yet my voice must appear steady for she regards me and says wonderingly, “They will be angry. You know you're not allowed to go away.” I weaken-I, in my unknowing. “Very well. They may be placed in the hall.”

“That's about it, Miss.” The cabman has looked apprehensive. Clearly he cannot keep them or he might be taken up for theft. The door is opened with a key. The hall is narrow and runs past the stairs to a brown door which I apprehend might be the kitchen. The cabman unloads, is paid. At the last minute of entering I turn my head and see again the face of my uncle, his hansom slowing down. He appears to be peering at the number of the house. The door closes. Doors closing upon me do not frighten me. I am complete in my completeness. My bottom bulbs into my drawers in waiting.