“Shush, Hannah, let me stroke you there. There-is that not soft and gentle-nice? Who was the maid?” A shadow quick has crossed my mind. “I have forgotten who, would seek her name.”
“Would seek her name? Charlotte! You know of her, have spoken of her dancing here. Does she not dance here still? She-oh she-tongue in my mouth while once he held my wrists, laughing, and stood behind me.”
“You were to learn to kiss, silly-ever pouting of cunny-lips in summer to receive.”
“He would not put it there.” She mumbles to my mouth. “Ever he said he would not put it there. Charlotte then put my hand to him. I cried out and escaped.”
“Not far, not far. You fell upon the grass. Up with your skirt and you were held. What a fluster they were upon you-and Mama to market gone! Turned over, you were birched with seized-up twigs and cried for it.”
“Did not, did not! Charlotte knelt up and held me round the waist. He, pressing on my calves, belaboured me until my poor cheeks burned as fire. All were in league against me-all!”
The scene comes clear-as water when it stills reveals reflections to the seeing eyes.
“Then you were brought within and while the ladies watched were put to him.”
“On the chaise-longue and, yes, you held me-oh! Turn back the time, undo then his desiring!”
“Pouf! What a fuss you made of it! Were your cheeks not fuller, richer, plumper from his sperm? Admired, you moved your hips by day, by dusk, made fingers quiver, put the pricks a-tingle. Mama-remarking that your bustle seemed fuller-you but smiled.”
“Ho! That was after-this is now before. I do not have to do it all again, do not!”
“Sleep, my love, and let your dreams revise your errant thoughts. Jane, come upon me, bring your belly warm to mine. Hold well your legs apart.”
Hannah snuffles, sighs, and rolls apart. Not part of us, she lies apart.
“It is all true. Is it not all true? I shall be younger now, perhaps shall giggle.”
So Jane, warm to my warmth, her soundings breaths. We are come upon a mystery, yet must still our minds. In this Papa was right, for now within my mind no Time does move.
“Perhaps you did. Such sounds could be enchanting. Devils of enchantment come disguised as angels.”
“And angels come disguised as devils of enchantment.”
Our cunnies rub. My eyes become her eyes, my hands her hands. We are lost now under the snow of it, white-heat delirium.
Be lost with me, be lost with me, be lost.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Father said once that one should be as wood or stone, regarded and yet not, unregarding and yet not.
“You sermonise but do not know the lesson,” my aunt said to him, though there were threads of laughter in her voice for sometimes she chided him upon his speakings and then Papa would confess such failures of communication as he felt accountable for, adding-perhaps with a touch of awkwardness in his voice-that one should communicate without words. That it is easy to do so by smiles or frowns or noddings of the head, I understood, but could no further immerse myself in what he intended and so, as often, let it slide from my mind, though like the morning journey of a snail it left a glittering upon my thoughts, a small ground radiance of belief in his deep understandings.
At the coming of morning, the groom stands motionless outside. I view him in my passing through the foyer where the swing doors stand and London growls its wakening to the world.
Breakfast is taken amid a twittering of thoughts, a whiteness of linen, sparklings of china and gleamings of silver. One has an attachment to such things. Hannah and Jane fidget, are come upon apprehensions.
“We have no baggage. Mama might think it strange that we have no baggage,” Jane avers.
She is younger now than in the night, the effervescence of her belly-heat diminished.
“It is of no matter, Jane. One's possessions are one's possessions. They may not be taken without receipts, notes, documentations. There are laws upon such matters, surely.”
“You were ever exact, seeking attitudes upon such matters, Laura.”
“Does it not become one so to be, Hannah? Let us not dally overlong. Once over the Thames, the world will come clearer to us. The sky is higher there.”
The groom touches his hat upon our appearance-a gesture mechanical and born of servitude. His clothes are old yet new yet ageless, like his face. I have forgotten his name. Hannah reminds me that it is Jervis. The name sounds as his attire looks. In our passage we take the same route that I took with my uncle to Epsom. The girl who stood with a pail beyond a cottage door regards me yet again. Her simple dress is unchanged. She seeks neither retreat nor advancement nor adventure but ever waits. I wave to her. She turns her back on me. We have quarrelled once perhaps and I am left still unforgiven. I must come upon her again on my return, seek explanations, explications, simplicities of understanding.
We are too hot-or with the windows down-become dusty. Travel by carriage is ever so. I do not ask about trains. In all truth I have forgotten the route. It may come clear to me upon seeing the bridge that was spoken of with Charlotte, yet I think the bridge was before, before this time and in another time.
In a low-ceilinged tavern at mid-morning Hannah laughs a difficult laugh and rubs her boots upon the sawdust floor.
“We have nothing to say!”
“What is to say? Upon arrival we shall take lemonade and small cakes on the lawn. Our linen will be changed. There will be comfortings. Let us bathe together in the same water, one upon another.”
“I shall be first! Let me be first.”
“Yes, Jane, you shall be first. Wear a white dress with pink ribbons. I would have you look angelic. Hannah, we shall be as sisters again, wear blue or brown. He ever liked our legs in brown.”
“I wish not to know of it, Laura. Are we not too young?”
“We shall see. It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Thus my father taught me from the Chinese wisdoms.”
“I do not know the meaning of that.”
Hannah so replies, looks pettish, but understands fully. I know her little tricks, her deviations. She has not forgotten Jervis, who, forbidden though to look, held her legs apart and stared ahead, hands strong at ankles that were mutinous.
Within a further hour we are come upon our destiny. And now I remember. I remember now the leaning of a Cyprus tree, the yawning of a hedge, carved stags upon the columns to the gates black in their ironness.
“We have no need to go through the house.”
Hannah in descent stares all around. Two gardeners lazy move and pluck at weeds.
“If you do not wish, Hannah, if you do not wish. Let us go by the side gate, for they will have heard our coming. In this quiet.”
Once in the hall was Hannah seized, as I recall. There were times when this was not thought untoward, dependent on the hour, the mood, the sun, swillings of wine, and carelessness of thoughts. We had returned, all of us returning, coming from some country ride, neither solemn nor mirthful, the rooms waiting as rooms wait. It was known perhaps that Hannah would be taken that morning, for she had been wilful at breakfast and had sat sloppily in her saddle, her bottom rumptious, and rebellions in her eyes. In the hall, in the very passings and passagings of our arrival, had she been seized, mouth clamped, into a cupboard hustled. The others, unregarding, swept within the drawing room, dispensing hats and cloaks, calling for sherry. From the hall had come bustlings and thumpings so that Hannah's mama with a frown had closed the door.
We ate wine fingers, I recall-slim biscuits flat or round and flavoured in their making with milk and Nuits St. Georges. Charlotte and I–I do not recall that she was ever a servant but was sometimes other-passed them in and out of our lips and smiled, for cupboardings were frequent and at mid-morning when the blood was up were particularly lusty, a man's genitals being excited by friction on the saddle. The cupboard was adjacent to the drawing room though being separated not only by the wall but by a partition within the cupboard itself so that there was a hollow place between. This acted however as a form of echo-chamber, for there was a split in the partition itself and so ghost noises were emitted to us.
