Muriel

CHAPTER ONE

Phillip Mansfield's Day-Book

Where there is silence there is pain; where there is music there is often pain; where there is absence there is pain. And sometimes all these congregate, even in the presence of the once-beloved, becoming like a veil across the eyes, a tight band round the forehead, so that the pain obtains the greyness of an early-evening mist, obscuring the thoughts, the words, to which the mind would otherwise give birth.

In such moments, clamped within my own being, and feeling that the very spaces around me (those spaces between the furniture and the walls such as encroach on one in moments of douleur more than do the physical objects themselves) are areas of the alien, of foreignness, even though lived in, walked in, day by day-yes, in such moments I am drawn into a dullness, an unspeaking, a sense of being separated from myself and from all others.

It is because, I am told, I live too much in my mind, when in fact I would that I could live in others' minds- for I, the real Phillip (seemingly unknown to those I hold most dear) have sat and held his once-beloved's hand, discoursing with her in the manner of a flowing stream and pausing only at the stones and bridges of her words, absorbing and enfolding them to show my true identity with her. Ah, how often-how often-did I clamp my lips upon my wife's (aware that my own were too wet and too loose sometimes) and swear to her that in my love for her I would become her, dissolve and disappear in her, and know our souls to be united.

'They cannot be', she would say and turn her face. Downstairs a piano might be tinkling-its notes wounding with their brittle, careless sounds. Then would come a silence and my wife would stir. The bed must be smoothed, she would say, or the maid would see, and this despite my protestations that we had not made love, nor I as much as flirted a hand beneath her skirt.

'Even so, Phillip, even so', she always murmured and would pat her hair with that distracted air of a woman who is not appeased or, if she is, has her mind elsewhere, though she will not acknowledge it.

'I cannot be other than myself any more than you can be other than yourself, she often said.

'And thus there is a vacuum where love should be', said I.

'No vacuum, Phillip, but rather an enclave of desire that will renew itself. I cannot help myself if love between my legs enchants me more than is in my head'.

'Impure!', I cried, but said it only in my head.

The words we spoke grew rougher through the years, the intervals between our kisses longer. Hiding our deceptions as we might before the children, we could never quite dissemble them. Words of parting rose, and Amy cried, clung to her mother. Richard, whose nineteen years I then relied upon to make him manly, would not speak to either of us, yet I saw him in the last week of their abiding here kiss his mother thrice, and once in fullness on her lips, whereat she threw her head back, stroked his hair.

I could not shout at them to stop. Such is the guile of circumstance that I would have been accused by her of 'being miserable'. Pretending not to see, I turned away. The hour was late. Amy and Sylvia were both in bed. Passing straight-backed, straight-legged, out of the room, I heard a succulence of mouths, yet chided myself and not them for impure thoughts. 'Darling', she called him, though had never called me more than 'dear'.

A whole hour passed before she came to bed that night, her nipples stiff. I saw them as she dropped her camisole. I wished to ask why she had stayed so late downstairs, but could not bring myself to ask. The bows of her drawers were all untied already, and they fell down loose, at which she turned towards the bed wherein I lay and asked, 'Do you not like me thus-not like me thus?'

Her bottom cheeks were pink as though they had been clutched. There were fingermarks upon her bottom cheeks, I swear.

The lamp was on. One does not look between a woman's legs in light. I had not stirred nor answered her. She heeled the drawers off nimbly and I saw a damp stain there, down at the crotch.

'I am so moist there-put it in', she said. Her face was flushed from drinking too much wine-the red that brings a flush into her cheeks. Richard ascended from the drawing room where they had been. He passed our door on tiptoe and closed his own as though he feared the noise to sound.

'Do not speak so', I said. I would not look. She frequently had such a lewdness on her in her words.

There was a silence then-that silence of foreboding such as when a house stands dark and empty on a moor and the first snow falls upon the silent eaves.

'You do not want to-will not challenge your cock to my nest?', she asked, and laughed a scornful laugh that hurt my mind. 'If you believe your sinful thoughts of me, then sinful I may be, just to fulfill the image in your mind, Phillip. Come-challenge! — take me under you and I will tell you very naughty things. I only have my stockings on. You like to feel my stockings, do you not?'

Ah, wheedling voice, and yet I did not speak. That was the voice of sin and not of love. I felt her kneel up on the bed and knew her legs to be apart. I strained away. Her hand touched at my shoulder and then fell. It was the breaking point perhaps. I knew it to be so but could not help myself.

Then I shall sleep elsewhere', I heard her say.

O utter loneliness of that wide bed when the door opened, closed, and she had gone! Her long, frilled nightgown lay still on the bed. I heard the slither of her stockinged feet. All night, it seemed, moans sounded in my ears. One cannot write of such, cannot. No words were spoken at the breakfast table. Amy and Sylvia were mute and hushed. Richard took coffee in his room. Within an hour the bags were all brought down. Solemnity fell upon us like a pall.

To Liverpool, she said-told Sylvia, not me. Dear Sylvia, she did not wish to leave. Or not as yet, she said, or not as yet. Her mother kissed her fondly, then was gone with Amy and Richard silent in her train.

Perhaps I should have spoken, said, asked, pleaded. No-I would not plead. I had trodden once too often on that stony ground, watching my words fly beyond her ears-not wholly disregarded, so I like to think, but such curt phrases as she often uttered blew my quieter words away. I have no mere words to utter to her-I have none. The bed in which she had slept that night was ruffled and I feared the maid would see, both pillows used where she perhaps had rolled. Too many purple and impassioned things she often said at nights that frayed my mind with their wild, wicked urges, things that should not be spoken of, and that I cannot bring myself to pen.

Thoughts of that night grow dark and dreary in my mind. I fear for what I think of that stained, twisted sheet, and must not think. I shall pray for her deliverance, and mine, though we may never meet again.

Sylvia played upon the garden swing today. Her sixteenth birthday is upon us soon. Our maid, Rose, should not push her quite so high. I saw above her stocking tops. Someone should speak to her of that, for I cannot. Such subjects are improper-thorn the tongue and prick the lips.

'You look sad, Papa', she laughed. I turned away. I am often told such when in truth I feel but serious. Such innocence becomes the young who feel no pain from silence, music, absence, but ever turn their minds towards some other thing.

Sylvia Mansfield's Day-Book

I did not wish to side with anyone, but neither did I wish to go to Liverpool. Mama, I'm sure, forgives me that. I shall visit them at Christmas, anyway. Perhaps she did not understand that Papa needs quietness to pursue his work. His desk is all about with pages of his novel. I am sure his writing was the cause of it, because he wished for quietness, but Mama was hardly ever that. Richard was always kissing her of late. I wonder why. Perhaps he has long wanted to go to Liverpool, for he prefers a city life, and so I expect him to be pleased. I asked Mama is it nice to kiss, and she laughed and said 'Of course it is', but would not tell me any more until my birthday, so she said.

I do not think Mama and Papa had very much in common, and I hope that is not a horrid thing to say.

Papa says he will buy me a pony for my birthday. He must have thought of it of a sudden. Perhaps he saw a picture in a book, for I had not dared ask for one. I sometimes think of things that way, by looking in a book. I was undressing when he came up to my room. How awful- oh-my drawers were off and I had one leg raised upon my bed to peel my stockings down! Oh, I did blush!

Papa said 'Oh!' and shut the door again. I knew that he felt awful, just like me. He did not go away, and then I heard him call, 'It is about your birthday, Sylvia. Would you like a pony?'

'Yes!', I called and tumbled on my nightdress quickly lest he come within again. I waited, but he did not come. 'Thank you, Papa', I called.

'I will tell you in the morning', he replied, though he already had.

My thing has lots of curls around it now. I brush them with my fingers when I am in bed. Perhaps I should not. I wonder if it's wrong?

Mama said naughty things to Richard sometimes, he told me, but would not say what she had said. He was horrid and I think he made it up. He had his trousers open, but I would not look.

Phillip's Day-Book

I grow uneasy at the thought that I have perhaps proposed a pony where Sylvia would better have a true companion. I asked her so. 'Who, Papa?', she replied and looked a little puzzled at my seriousness. 'I am perfectly all right, Papa, I really am', she said, and played with Rose again upon the swing. The two are very close, it seems to me. The servant should be at her work, but again I feel powerless-selfish even-to intrude, and would be better at my work than thinking of such things.

My novel, however, is like unto a carriage wheel to which the brake has locked itself. My thoughts stir much like porridge when they should really be ethereal. Of men I write well, for they say the proper things that I myself would say. As to women, I find it difficult to describe such thoughts as they may have. Their conversations are thus stilted, and not what I would have them say at all. The image of my once-beloved floats ever in my head. Alas, I see her with her nipples stiff, her drawers already untied beneath her dress. I should scourge myself upon such thoughts as my old tutor used to tell me to.

It is notable, however-and I must somehow convey this with such clarity as I can muster-that the thoughts we least would have are those which fight with tooth and claw against suppression. Clearly, such is the devil's work. Temptation it is called, and is only with ardent will to be put down. Thus would I not listen to her when she used crude words, however warm her breath against my mouth, however luring were her fingertips. The act of love should be performed in silence and be quickly done. It is deemed for procreation, not for pleasure, so I often said to her.

'Why, there is naught but paper in your mind sometimes. Someone should light it with a match', said she, and fell to musing who might do it best, just to annoy me and to try and make my mind a whirlpool of unthought-of things.

'You are not so much interested in the content of your writing as in the act of working with your pen, Phillip. Yet contrariwise, you are not so much interested in the act of love as in the abstract content of it', once she chided me.

That is not true, of course-that is not true. The irritation in remembering such words robs me of concentration. Half an hour ago I chanced to look out on the garden scene and saw that Sylvia has white drawers on and summer-thin. I must move the swing to face the other way, or else tell Rose to push her not so high.

Jane Mansfield's Day-Book

It was hardly surprising to learn that Deirdre has at last left Phillip. It was an uneasy marriage from the very start. Fire and water, as is the saying, and Deirdre, bless her, having all the heat.

I am glad I did not marry, just as Muriel is. Sisters are best together, and what lovely times we have! It is indiscreet to write of them, perhaps, but when I say so Muriel laughs and tells me not to spare a word of it.

There was such a pretty girl at the Fortescues' last night. I will write of her another time, for have not time today. We are to keep an eye on Sylvia, Deirdre asks in her brief note that reads as breathlessly as she makes love (I do believe). In what wise she did not say. The bolder that her education be, the better it will be for Sylvia, I think. In any case, the two cannot live all alone. We are resolved to visit Phillip. After all, he is our brother, though I believe he thinks our ways are rather strange.

We should settle for a fortnight at the least, says Muriel, and are resolved to take the coach tomorrow to his home. It is a whole year since we visited. How glum he looked then, but how bright was Deirdre! Really I believe she would have slept between us if he had not been there.

Deirdre Mansfield's Day-Book

Richard is sweet. They both like the new house. How smoky all is-yet in winter it will be even cosier when the fog envelops all the windows and the fires are lit. I must write to Sylvia tomorrow. He does not deserve a word, nor any man who scorns the amourous comfort of his wife and will forever dribble of his love but scarcely ever put the poker in to stir my fire.

'You are becoming a bad girl', Mama said to me years and years ago, but hugged and kissed me as she spoke. There was at least complicity in her reproof, whereas with Phillip all was dullness and unknowing in his very soul. To speak of naughtiness to him was counted as a sin, and yet I cannot find in it anything but an affirmation of desire which, if it is cloaked, will only spread its roots down more.

There is love when a tongue between my lips sweeps round my own-love when my breasts are burnished and my nipples stiffened by a fondling hand.

Last night I sat with Richard on the couch. He kissed my lips; his hand roamed to my breasts and felt their weight and their protuberance. In a moment he had sleeked that self-same hand beneath my skirt and murmured at the plumpness of my thighs.

I am in sin. Is it better than to be frustrated? I have been lax with him before. That last night at the house before we left, I let him kiss me with abandon, permitted him to loose my drawers till I thrust him up and took myself up to my ever-hopeful marriage bed, there to be scorned-indeed, almost reviled. Have I in truth what Phillip called a 'coarse, lewd tongue' when a fever of desire is in my veins? Should I be as marble, quiet as a church crypt? Never was I chided in my youth for saying naughty things in bed, or in the hayloft, in the summerhouse. There were sparklings then of love and lust combined, and sweet they were and heady as an old champagne. My cousin, Edward, had my sister, Adelaide, upon the lawn, and dusk it was, and we were seen; I had no doubt that we were seen by eyes that peered out from the house. And then it was I who fell and had my drawers pulled down by one who had waited on a moment such as that. Adelaide's eyes enchanted mine as we both came, and drew the sperm into our willing quims.

You have been educated', Mama said that night, though she pretended not to know what had passed upon the summer grass.

Phillip has no mind for such. I never should have told him all my tales.

'There were lovings, Phillip', I explained. He would not listen, though, and turned away. His cock was stiff sometimes when thus I spoke, but was not always so, and that amazed me truly. Was he jealous of my fondlings, pumpings, in my early years? I think not, no. His marbled, cold ideas of purity came in long strides before that sweet emotion could take flower.

The night was broken on his 'shame' of me-I who would have sported with him as he wished and paid my wifely homage to his bed. I blundered out, left him to his dry dreams, and naked to my stockings made to sleep in an adjoining guest room where a bed is ever ready for a visitor. Alas for my would-be fealty, I blundered into Richard in the dark, he with his nightgown on-and he whose hands had so impulsively sought to caress my bottom cheeks downstairs.

It was an accident, perhaps, that his out-reaching hand should brush my bush. Upon such small things are new destinies contrived. I choked an exclamation back, went past him quivering horn that faint touch and entered the dark room. He followed me. I dared not squeal or raise my voice-or so I told myself who sought to argue with the hypocrite in me. Or nay, I say the hypocrites in all of us. I jerked, I strained at Richard who had raised his nightgown as we fell in silent struggle on the bed, he fearing me to cry out, and I him to groan out too loud in the pleasures of forbidden fruit. Long did I struggle. Did I struggle long? I felt like the rebellious schoolgirl that I once had been who had to take the birch across her bottom first before she offered up her bottom sobbingly and took the mastering prick within her nest.

A score of times I must have whispered, 'Richard- no!', but oh, far-faint, mouth kissed, I then succumbed. I hear our nostrils hissing still as there we threshed, his legs between my own-an unreality at first, and yet spellbinding were the jets of come that then extolled my own fine spurts of love till we lay lax, tongues circling, coiling, twirling in the weak, soft aftermath that sweeps aside all barriers of guilt and makes the loins to work in sweet reprise.

How strangely silent were we that first time, save for our gentle, hungry moans, and how my toes curled as he came!

'Go from me, Richard, go', I breathed. I wanted to run into that small room that bears the name Remorse, and yet I knew it would not welcome me, for it had never done before. Upon my second threading in the summer-house when I was seventeen, my aunt held me, rained kisses on my lips while the big penis worked its will and flooded me with warm, thick, gruelly sperm.

'You raised your legs up at the last and curled your toes when he was coming in your quim', she smiled. He rose, I saw that long, thick penis drooling, soapy at the head.

'Now kiss me once again. I'll make you come anew', she said. She smacked my thighs to keep them open while he looked, but then he went lest Mama came. There is no sin of it, my pet, provided that you like it', so she said.

I wonder now, but cannot help myself no more than I could then.

You are much loved', she said. 'Now you have taken his big cock a second time, you will again'.

I spoke of it with Adelaide. We rubbed our nipples as we spoke. How sweet the boldness that was on us then! Should I return to it? Last night with Richard on the couch, I heard my aunt's words once again that she had uttered in the hayloft the first time, when I had needed to be held.

'Please, don't! You can't! It's naughty-oh!', I squealed while the swollen crest sheathed itself into my squeezing slit. I kicked. My legs were raised, beat ever feebly on his back. Remorselessly the pulsing peg sank in until his balls hung down beneath my orb. 'I'll tell Mama!', I moaned, though it was to be my last cry of any comprehensibility. Thereafter for a moment I was dulled, was slowly lulled though by the motions of his prick, and finally grew passionate for more.

But in that cry I heard my aunt say as my bottom squirmed, 'Shush, darling, sin is half the salt of it'.

Sin is… love is… I do no longer know. The sofa creaked last night. Did Amy hear? I closed my eyes, dreamed Richard other then he was, or made myself to think so, but he cannot be. O fervency of Youth's desire that he could sperm my cunny twice without withdrawing, as he did. I mewed. My naked bottom slurred on the brocade, cupped on his firmly gripping hands.

'Again!', I moaned and heard my voice as if from far away and long ago.