cupping palm. Her eyes would be half closed, lashes fluttering. The cock would jerk faster and she would choke. A warning hand would seize her head. Her cheeks would bulge as the penis urged deeper. Strong loins would work against her unwillingness.
And the spouting. He would have needed to cup her face completely-hold it in. Ripe throbbing of the flesh.
'Suck, Caroline.' His voice would be deep and urgent, her head squeezed, ripplings of blonde hair through his forgers. Beneath her dress her breasts would lilt.
There was sin here, among the rubber plants, the rooms overcrowded with furniture, photographs of sepia in silver frames upon the piano. From the conservatory whence I fled I gazed upon the waving fronds of ferns. Father's train would have reached the terminal. His bags would be carried. The boat train at Liverpool Street would await him. Women would per through carriage windows at his coming. Blinds would be drawn, expressions adjusted. The women would wear fine kid gloves, velvet-smooth to the touch on sensitive skin. Balls pendant. Veins.
'Suck, Caroline, suck.'
Sperm is thick, salty. Once I tasted it on my palm. My sprinklings are salty when I sprinkle. Over the cock that is more powerful and thick than my husband's was. That is now. It was not then.
In my then I was alone in my aloneness. I returned to Caroline. She had not moved save to button her dress. The servant would enter soon with the oil lamps. Caroline stared down at the carpet and would not raise her eyes. I knew her moods. I sank to my knees and pressed my lips upon her thigh.
'Do not!' she said. Her voice was as distant as the far. whistling of a train.
Kid gloves. The blinds drawn. Penis rampant. The knob of my whip. 'There is no sin. Is there sin?' I asked Caroline. Sin once had been giggling in Sunday School. Now there was desire between our thighs.
'I do not know,' Caroline said. Her voice fell like a small flake of metal. She was angry with me.
My desire became muted. I wanted to protect her. Soon, after we had bathed and changed for dinner, it would be almost eight o'clock. I looked up and she was staring at me. Perhaps she knew her fate as well as I.
FOUR
Aunt Maude awaited us. She wore a black velvet choker. It suited her, I thought. Her dress swept back in a long train that was very modish. Her hair was piled high. Diamond earrings glittered.
My aunt was of a stature an inch taller than myself and full of form. Her breasts and bottom jutted aggressively. I took her for forty-younger than my uncle. Her eyes were kind but imperious. Though both were close to my father, neither Caroline nor I had spoken much with them through the years. Those of under age were always considered best unheard.
I spoke of Jenny. I was eager to see her. For a year we had shared a boarding school together.
'Later,' my aunt said. The dining room table was candlelit. My aunt preferred it to the smell of oil. Electricity had not then reached out from London and it was said that we were too far from the county town for gas pipes to be laid. Three years later magic would be wrought and they could come. My initiations-though 1 knew it not that evening-were to be by oil lamps in the old tradition. Frisky young ladies of Society were weaned on a bed with their drawers down, it was crudely said. Of cottage life and that in other dowdy dwellings, we knew nothing except, as we understood, that the males rutted freely.
Although married, and now separated,. I still obtained innocence in many degrees, as shall be seen. At dinner my aunt and uncle spoke to us as if the past were still upon us. My aunt tutted severely when Caroline spilled a drop of wine. The servant was called of a purpose to mop it up.
'You will stay the night,' my aunt said after coffee had been taken. We sipped liqueurs and said nothing. Jenny had still not appeared. I wondered anxiously if she ate in her room. Had she been whipped? She had come to them in childhood-or rather, to my uncle first. An orphan, it was said. One did not know. I sought for strength to object, to rise, to leave, but their eyes were heavy upon me.
At ten-thirty my aunt looked at the clock. 'Tom, you will take her up,' she said. My palms moistened. I knew of whom she spoke, though she had not the delicacy to use my name. Caroline said nothing. Would she not save me?
The house was as ours except that the interior pattern was reversed. Perhaps that was symbolic. The stairs were on the left, as one entered the hall, instead of on the right. Entering as 1 had first done I had placed the whip somewhat furtively behind the large mahogany stand in the hall which carried occasional cloaks and walking sticks.
'Go to your room and I will follow,' my uncle said. I had been shown it briefly already. It lay as my own lay on the first floor. Left to right it was a mirror image. The curtains were brown, the drapes edged with ivory tassels. The air tremored. The furniture looked at me. I wanted the room to go away, the walls to dissolve, the air to take me high, free, upfloating in the blue dark of night. The carpet rolled beneath me like the sea. I moved, and moved towards the bed. Two pillows were piled high upon a bolster. Was my whip there?
I would not seek it. I refused. This was not my room. As by habit I opened a small wall cabinet and found to my surprise that which I kept in my own-a bottle of liqueur and two small glasses. Pleasure traced itself across my lips anti then was gone. I turned, closing the cabinet. My uncle had entered. In his hand he held the whip. Moving he moved, towards me moved. He took my hand, the palm of mine, sheened with moisture.
'Beatrice, bend over-hands flat on the quilt.'
'Uncle-please!'
My mouth quivered. I did not want it to be my mouth. His hand reached out caressing my neck and I gave a start. His fingers moved, soothing.
'You will obey, Beatrice.'
The world was not mine. Whose was the world? Would Caroline and my aunt discuss me?
'No one will come,' my uncle said. The door stood solid. We were on an island. In the attic Father and 1 had stood on the top of the world. The whip moved. He passed the handle around and beneath the globe of my bottom, shaping, carving. His lips nuzzled my neck. I could not run.
'Uncle-please, no!'
I broke from him and stood trembling. The thongs swayed down to his knee like a fall of rain in slow motion. His eyes were kind. His arm reached out. He took my chin and raised it.
'There are things you need,. There are locked moms above. There are keys.'
I did not weal to blink in the meeting of our eyes. Go into the world clear-eyed and so return from it.
'Yes?' I asked. There was imperiousness in my voice. Dare I rebel? The whip slipped from his grasp and fell upon the patterned carpet. He would not whip me. He could not. I knew it. I felt happy. He waited further upon my speech, my quest, my questions.
'What is in the rooms?' I asked.
He took my hand. We walked. The stairs received us. Caroline had wandered perhaps into the dark garden-into the long grass which the gardener chased by day. The grass would receive her. Her eyes would be loam, her nipples small blossoms. Her pubic hair would be moss. There was silence below in the house. Along the passageway of the second floor as we went my uncle rattled keys. A door opened.
The attic! They had made a replica of it! Except for the dormer window-but it did not matter. The door closed-a heavy click-we were alone. My uncle's arm encircled my shoulder. I could not speak. Let me speak.
'The horse is the same. Only the horse, Beatrice.'
It was true. Trunks, boxes, broken pieces of furniture, old vases-all lay as they might have lain in our house.
His hand stroked my back, warm through my gown.
'Go to the horse, Beatrice.'
I moved, walked, threading my way among the tumbled thingsthe love things, the loved things. The horse was large, bright, new. The stirrups gleamed, the saddle and the reins shone. The mottled, dappled grey was the same. I stroked the mane. On my own horse the mane was worn and thin where I had too often grasped it, but here it was new and thick. The leather smelled of new leather. Heady.
For a last moment I turned and looked towards the closed door. Caroline into the long grass gone. At breakfast she would return. Out of the caves of my dreams she would return, pure in her purity, the loam fallen from her eyes,
