purse is emptier, as is my inner need.
“We shall eat here or in the restaurant?” My uncle probes, is tentative.
“As I recall the food was less than hot when trundled up.”
“The restaurant will suffice. I confess to you that I had intended to have another companion.”
“That you may. She waits upon your coming?” I have no need to guess at the gender of his intended. My uncle nods and gazes at me with the anxiety of a dog awaiting a half-offered tidbit. “Bring her.” I bear an imperative in my tone. “Perhaps she may make a companion for us both. I cannot be abandoned.”
How intricate and yet how futile is speech-the exchanging of tokens. As much can be read in the eyes as what is said. He would have at my secrets, which I suspect in his mind are the condiments of his imagination. Nothing was ever known, seen, flourished, or conveyed. Perhaps my lips smile too often in rooms such as these, yet I knew them not to before. Rather have I taken on expressions as one changes hats. I appear at the moment to be wearing one rather more catching to the eye than I had intended, for my uncle's eyes light up. Arrangements are made as to how he might leave me for the nonce and then return.
Arrangements have ever been among my favourite occupations. Without them is no ceremony, though at times they may be understood rather than stated. Even so, fences must be erected at agreed distances, enclosures made, inspections overtly taken, the perimeters and parameters established, the exits known, though only to the immediate participants and not all. Such makes for comfort, directions, certitude. The dance may then proceed, weak though the pipes may be and soft the drums.
With my uncle's going, I recall the presence of the maid. He had forgotten her-not I. The bedroom door opens like a statement of intent, and there she stands and waits.
“I wanted to know if everything was hung all right and proper, Miss, and if you wished me to help you dress.”
“There is wine untouched in the other room. Bring it to me. You may have a glass.”
“I'm not allowed, Miss. Not with guests. Not in the rooms at all.”
“I have forbidden it? If I have not, then you may.”
I watch her in her walk, the easy-flowing. Some far-faint calling of voices from a garden comes to my ears. There is something I remember about her and yet not. I would ask. Her eyes have the clarity of polished glass. I perceive no ghosts in them. Patting the bed, I bring her to sit with me. The wine runs cool upon our tongues.
“Give me a little from your mouth. It is called French drinking-did you know?”
Her breath is peppermint, overlaid now with a finer tang of wine. “Yes, I believe that I do. Once I did. When was it? Oh, I saw you and remembered and grew afraid of the remembering. When was it? Perhaps we were not always here. Were we always?”
“Do it again. With the wine. Give me your tongue in the giving. Shall we remember? You were not called by a common name. What is your name?”
“Charlotte. I had a sense of it that there would be a coming tonight. I knew your name without the telling of it. You were always called Laura, though once I think you were called Laurette.”
“Tell me of that, Charlotte. I don't remember.” Our tongues lick-touch through pools of wine.
“I don't remember, I don't. Oh, if they should seek me now-come seek me now.” She starts up from my arms, falls back. Her legs dangle over the edge of the bed. I lean over her. She has not the coarseness of Jenny. There are finer strands within. I kiss her brow, the tip of her nose. She laughs: “You always did that.”
“You were ever called Charlotte. I recall that now. When butterflies were netted in the garden you cried and tried to touch their fluttering wings. When…no, I cant…it has gone again.”
“If you hide me I can stay. Will you hide me? I always did as you told me, I know that, I do. You were ever the mistress in our ways. I used to hide in a cupboard and watch. The door of the cupboard creaked. It was an old house. They said once it was to be pulled down.”
“Watch? What did you watch? Tell me what you watched.”
“Only the first time you did it with him, I think. I watched then. No-there was a second time. It comes and goes in the remembering.”
“Who? Who did I do it with?” Far calling of curlews and a sky by Turner, the dying summers hid by boys amid first fallings of the leaves. “You know the gentleman I am with now? Do you? Now-here now-here?”
“No. It was others then. Others. I knew your name in my remembrances again today. A man passed me in the corridor below. I saw his eyes and there were dead butterflies in them.”
She begins to cry. I kiss the pearling of her tears. A quiver-shudder, breasts to breasts upon the high bed lying. The glasses, unregarded, roll about. Wet lips to lips. Our salivas mingle.
“Yes, it was like this, like this sometimes, Charlotte. Show me your legs. How lovely they used to look, drawn back and open.”
“You made me-you always made me.”
She pouts, draws high her skirt as I roll from her. Garters pink enclasp her thighs. They have a sad and tawdry look, but are clean. I bend upon her and kiss the inner milkiness where her thigh flesh curves. More scents of yesterdays invade my nostrils. Image and faces melt together. A man unseen, unknown, invisible, pushes down his blue plush breeches in waiting-in waiting for the parting of our thighs. His penis quivers in the waiting. Charlotte clutches me. Her voice now: “Do it to me later, Laura, if you hide me.”
Salt of sea coral to my lips at the parting of her curls, her down, her bush. Her legs widen and she strains. She knows the Venus-couch again. One leg of it was loose and it would wobble. It stood where a carpet ended, I remember. His penis to my bottom put while yet I tongued her. A cart rattled somewhere passing and there were footsteps in rooms above. We cared not then for discoveries of sin.
A woman, large, morose, came once upon us, creeping down. “You dirty beast, I knew you would be at them,” she said.
Charlotte cried “Oh!” and hid her eyes, and the woman went and we were alone in our breathings. It was ever dusty, and the basins cracked. In winter we would huddle together, waiting for the sharp, clear frosts of morning, breakings of water through the ice and the birds forlorn upon the branches.
“Do me!” Her voice now shrill, her bottom squirming.
“Oh! I was remembering!” The scene is gone, the dust dissolved. I sit up, throw my hair back. Her eyes are sulky with desire and yet a water-coloured mischief lies behind the pupils' glinting. Her mouth moves, rosebud mouth, and then is stilled.
“I have to go, Miss.” Her changeling voice has changed again. I will not have it so and shake her.
“Is there dancing here, Charlotte? Oh, come back-remember!”
“They won't let me. Yes, there is, yes. I'm not sure where, though. Along the corridor somewhere, somewhere. If I came back. I could come back. Shall I come back?”
“After my uncle has gone, yes.”
“Oh, your uncle, is he?” Her voice is pert. Sitting up, she shakes her hair, thrusts down her skirt. “Shall we be three a-bed, as once we were? Not with him, but another. Shall I know what to do? There used to be flowers once and meadows. I don't know where it was-don't know. It frets at me. You'll remember it, I know you will. I can't remember unless you remember. Not always. There will be carriages after the dancing, will there not?”
“Of course, there are always carriages. They will summon them and hide them, if we go, waiting for our emergence. Go quickly, go, or the moment may be gone. Return-return, Charlotte!”
“Oh yes. It will be all right again then, I know it will. As it was before.”
A kiss and she is gone. I bathe and scent myself and know my wholeness. The suite becomes me. A certainty of being obtains within it. I would have mother know how pleasing are the raised blue patterns on the silk wallpaper, the gilded knobs that crown the bedposts, the tassels that will surely sway in their untinkling. As once they did.
My drawers shimmer, being of black silk. They encase me tightly as I ever wish them to. I have seen my aunts in drawers loose and despondent, lacking both memory and touch. I invest my calves, knees, thighs as befits them in a charcoal shade. My garters clip tightly. Attraction lies in such attentions, as I was taught. In the owl's cry, the wind's cry, the whispering of the ivy and the silence of the moss.
Smooth your stockings up. Laura — let your ankles show. Mould your bottom into your drawers as to my hands. Keep your back straight. Affect not shoes nor boots with flat heels. Walk unhesitant, nor shy, nor proud. Be ever easy in your goings. Receive, accept.
I persuade rouge into my cheeks, though little needing it. A lady who is perceived as best and fitting so joins
