feels, the surging to our cunnies! Now, Hannah, come within- oh, do but try!”
“I cannot. How foolish of you. What kissings you make!”
“Our lips will be the more ruby for it and our breasts the harder. You shall not spoil today, my love, or I will have you whipped. Come, Jane, she is a spoilsome thing, and she the elder! Have your splash then, Hannah, and retire.
Hereafter your papa will take the water. Drawers and chemises will suffice until you find your rooms. Draw up your stockings well and keep them taut.”
“I would stay with you, Laura, until the lunchbell sounds.”
“You may not stay with me, Hannah. You know the way of it-the teachings are prescribed. Each must make ready for her future fate.”
“I shall lock my door then.”
“You will get no benefit from that. Have you forgotten there is still a waiting time? Did I not promise? Out with you, dry yourself and go. In your walking move your bottom well. Such things are looked for. Roll your hips a little but not overmuch.
“I will not, shall not!”
Face crimson, she departs. Jane, loathe to move, receives my fingers at her bottom's bulge.
“Powder it, my pet, that it may be scented, polished to the touch.”
“Yeth. I shall not lock my door, I promise not.”
“One kiss, my love, and I shall make your cunny tingle for it all the more. In crossing and uncrossing your legs when you sit today, take care to do so slowly that your stockings hiss of all that lies above.”
So am I mistress sudden of this realm? A clock chimes deep below, is resonant takes comfort from its sound.
Agnes is to some seclusion gone, changing her gown, errant in wardrobes. She will brush Charlotte's hair or Charlotte hers. Their breasts will be reflected in a mirror. Oiled is the surface of the water with our leavings. His balls will float in it, his stem stiffen. Hemispheres of bliss will in his dreams plump down upon his knob.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I know my room. Whence do I know my room? Ivy at the walls. The ivy that will listen. A rose garden below, its walls tawny with a splendour of old age. There below a gardener snuffles. I rode once on his back, his leather jerkin rubbing to my crotch. I was fourteen then. There were memories made of it.
Hannah said I should not do it for my knees showed. Her mama replying that all indecencies were not such, I drew my skirt higher but was then struck across my brow by a small branch and cried. Much fuss was made of me. Hannah's papa, carrying me within, laid me on the selfsame sofa where I was yet to be mounted, made careful play of my thighs with his fingers, and kissed my nose with such playful passion that his lips ofttimes brushed my own. I believe this was my first understanding of such matters, for I felt with my knee the upward stemming of his stalk and gave a little jump at that, he laughing and moving his coat to cover it.
Well in this known and unknown world do I remember the laying down of Jane upon a Christmas night, carried in laughter to her room and there the closing of her door. Through the keyhole I saw but a blur of legs. My forehead tapped the panels, moist at wood. Being heard, known, sensed-indeed, perhaps anticipated-I was drawn within. Wine was on our lips, there were sparklings of the night, the woods and fields beyond dark in their waiting for the humankind to come again.
Merry she was. Her mouth, a pussycat, slurred to my mouth. Gently between us were her drawers eased down despite her fretful kicks and wonderments. I cupped her breasts, felt for her nipples hard, gliding my hand within her loosened gown, hiding her face to his as low she moaned and-flustering-heard trousers quick descend.
“Must not, must not, Mama will come!”
“Shush, baby, shush-all shall be well. Have you not seen him stark before, stiff in his ridings?”
How warm the innerness of her sweet thighs, tops of her stockings rolled and ridged to fingers sleek!
While I caressed her there, he watched. Her anguished eyes saw then his balls and cock. She stared, mouth open, while I teased her quim, then-twitching, jerking as she was-brought her with soothing care full under him. Majestic did his brawny buttocks toil. Slow in, slow out, he eased his long, thick tool, probing her nest with liquid fire, both trembling in an agony of bliss.
Perfervid my imagination runs before, as children run in parks when summer glows and ancients frown and stir their withered limbs, dry under wrappings of despair. I shall become middle-aged and haunt the rooms of alchemists of gold, clockmakers, jewellers, turners of fine wood. I shall collect rings, lockets, baubles, mirrors cracked with Time, brown at the edges, potlids, watercolours of the rural scenes. I shall have paintings within which birds shall move, flitting from bough to bough, and then are still again. Only upon my comings will they fly. Others may remark their different dispositions. I, affecting not to notice, will say such things are known to happen.
Statues stir. Perdita once stirred in the rain. Father, whom I called to see, said it was but a trick of light and water, whereat I grew moody, said she had a soul. He laughed. We quarrelled upon that, though not so mindfully that he might not kiss my brow betwixt our arguments, snuffling his mouth within my darkling hair.
I asked him did a cat not have a soul?
“What is the soul that you may separate it from the mind? Does a cat then, Laura, have a mind? This mind of yours is all within and all without. It pervades all, yet moves not. In this grey mass within our craniums is but seen a brain. Such cats have, too, and yet no mind for they perceive not their own being.”
At that I became wilful, cross, and wished immediately to bathe, as I often did when moody. Being prevented, however, and pinioned as it were to the moment, I replied that this was one thing that no one could know, for cats came to my call and knew their names.
“When a twig snaps, a cat looks up, Laura, though it does not know the cause nor yet the meaning of the snapping but only hears the sound. Were a cat to be conscious of its being, have a mind, then it would be conscious of abstraction, abstract thought, and so perhaps write poetry or draw a pattern with its paw in dust.”
My aunt then asked, “Where is the cat now?” at which both laughed, though I comprehended not such foolishness and, going to Perdita, kissed her feet and begged forgiveness for my father's words.
There is a silence here-a paleness of no-sound. I break it as a twig-open a drawer. I have felt the smoothness of this pine chest here before. Within lie stockings that I have not worn, chemises not yet rumpled up in lust. I search for notes as one should always search. Such, I believe, lie all about the world, hither and thither, in their waiting. There are none from father, aunts, or grandmama. All are gone before or gone after. The wind cried for her. Perhaps her sari moves about the sky, is now a cloud.
He is not long at his bathing. I hear the slurpings of the water, guzzlings of the pipe. His own will be stiffened harder now than iron, laved by the waters of his wild desiring, knob emergent, veins at stand. I fumble, idly search, would scour the wood. Beneath chemises, chokers, ruffled garters, lies a ring. It fits my second finger warm, as if worn just before. Three emeralds surmount it in a trinity. The gold is close enlaced with fine raised lines.
The door opens and Charlotte enters. I perhaps expect her. She wears a simple dress of blue that might become a servant on a holiday.
“You have your ring then, Laura, you have found it. I knew you would. He will attend upon you in a moment.”
“This I know.”
I turn my back to her. My voice is still and yet my shoulders quiver. She laughs, embraces me, my bottom to her belly pressed.
“It will be nice again, the three of us, the four of us, the five of us, the six of-yes?”
“There was no bridge-no stone bridge as you said.” I wriggle round within her arms and feel her nipples peeking up to mine.
“That were near the mill house, and the vicarage beyond-not here, not here. If we come to that again-I do not know if we will come to that again. Too stuck up by half you were, kicking of your legs.”
“You said I was good, was dutiful.” I sulk.
