Her only source of growing consternation was the lack of news from home. Worlds apart from West Coombe though she was, part of her mind was always there, wondering what her family were doing. Edward was uppermost in her thoughts, but she could not help but think of her parents too, and of Michael and Annie. Were they thinking of her? Or was she so in disgrace, so beyond the pale, that she was not worth a thought? The notion made her feel cold. However much she craved this new life in London, it was painful to be disconnected from everything she had known, perhaps even rejected from that world now.
Of course, Edward would not be able to write to her. But she had expected that at least one of her letters would receive a reply, even if only an expression of anger and disappointment. Perhaps Michael expressing his heartbreak, her mother hoping she was safe but letting her know how angry her father was. At the very least she expected something from Annie. The total silence from home was all too easy to interpret as a lack of care or concern, and this gave her sadness a touch of resentment. Perhaps they barely noticed she was missing, or were even glad that she was gone.
In her quiet moments, Evelyn found these feelings were beginning to intrude more and more. In an effort to occupy her mind, she began to read the books Lilian had lent to her. To begin with, she picked The Rainbow, which, as a work of fiction, appealed to her the most. She was also fairly sure she’d heard of it, or at least of its author, Mr. Lawrence, at some point. Though the cover illustration suggested a light romance, she found the novel rather difficult to read. What seemed to be an account of several generations of the same family, their lives and loves, in the Nottinghamshire countryside, became far more intense and philosophical than the story warranted, and she grew rather frustrated. Perhaps she wasn’t intelligent enough, or modern enough, to read such a book. She had only made it through about a quarter of the novel when she laid it aside and looked to the other volume Lilian had given her.
She took up the slim volume of Ideal Marriage. Just contemplating the subject matter made her nervous. Her mother would have surely told her she was evil for even considering opening the pages. And yet, frightened though she found herself over what she would learn, she was intrigued too, determined to banish the stupid innocence that so set her apart from women like Lilian. So she took a deep breath and began to read.
Once she began to read, she did not stop until the fading light in her room brought her attention back to the passage of time. The text, expressed as creatively as a work of fiction, showed her an aspect to the world she had barely considered. She read every word, learned every lesson. The text told her the anatomy of the sex act, the physiology of the body’s response to arousal. The illustrated plates, rather artificially coloured in shades of orange, brown, and grey, revealed to her the secrets of her own body, showed her what a man’s body looked like. What surprised her was that nothing she read was frightening. The author described a process by which married couples grew closer, by which they found mutual pleasure in each other. How could it be wrong to understand such a primal function of her own body? She was angry at her mother, at the other women who could have educated her, for not sharing their understanding with her. Or perhaps they did not truly understand either. Ideal Marriage suggested there were many, many marriages which were far from this ideal and could, in fact, be torturous for both parties. Was that what Annie experienced? Her own parents? If she had married Michael?
Relief flooded through her veins as she contemplated this. Chained to Michael, she might never have known that there was a realm of pleasure entirely hidden from her. Might have made him equally unhappy.
As she dwelt on the idea, she found she began to understand Lilian’s point of view. If there was such pleasure to be attained, why did the ceremony of marriage actually matter? Of course, it was a sin to do something so indecent. And there was the fundamental fact that the act of sex was intended to produce a child for happily married parents. But Evelyn was not sure she would ever be married. And if that was the case, would she never experience the pleasure the book told her about? Or was it worth a risk? Lilian seemed to think so, Dorothy too. Neither seemed like bad women, or to be suffering any adverse consequences. The world was moving on, perhaps.
The author then implied that anything other than intercourse between opposite sexes was abnormal. Unavoidably, Evelyn’s mind was drawn to Clara and Courtney, to Jos. Lilian and James certainly spoke of them and their desire for those of their own sex as abnormal. And yet, to converse with them, to watch them, they did not seem at all strange or wrong. Their desires seemed just as normal as any a woman might feel for a man. And now she understood the sex act, she found herself wondering about those women who loved each other. Surely they found ways of experiencing these mutual pleasures too? The book made it clear that sex was not purely about intercourse. If men and woman could tease each other’s bodies for the purposes of fulfilling desire and arousal, women could certainly do the same for each other. A woman’s fingers could find the same places a man’s could, her lips would be just as tender.
The image of Jos Singleton came back into her mind, uncalled for. And Evelyn felt a hot, forbidden curiosity that might
