“As for stopping, I want to prolong my sense of power-” “Bitch,” he said, swinging his body from side to side, attempting to uncouple.
But I was having none. I seized his shoulders and hung on. It turned out that he had overestimated his own powers of control. As he struggled and as I continued to enclose him, the friction on his pier proved to be too much to tolerate-because, suddenly, he breathed very noisily and arched his body. I was flooded. I felt his nozzle recede. I said nothing-I was frustrated and depressed and I made no attempt to conceal my feelings. Harwell embraced me tenderly-he knew what the trouble was and he hastened to rectify matters. He turned and, on his knees, showed me his arse. I was puzzled-surely he did not intend to lave my detritus. But my impression was radically altered in the moments that followed. His head and tongue sank between my legs and he went beyond that step to nibble at my yoni's buried treasure, so to speak, that small mass of tissue that responds wildly to the touch. After Harwell nibbled, he sucked. And, since I'd already been on the high plateau, it took me a very short while to attain the mountaintop. I did attain it, shoving my yoni at Harwell and sinking my own fingernails into my nipples. I screamed from ecstasy and locked my legs around Harwell's neck. He continued to suck and I kept on having climaxes. I counted five and then my thighs fell away from Harwell's neck -I was exhausted… He rose from my depths and, wordlessly, I wiped his face with a towel. He smiled, but there was something strange to it, something terribly sad. I asked him what the matter was.
He denied anything was the matter. On the contrary, he added, never had he known such physical bliss as he had had with Clarissa. We would have another go at it, he said, as soon as he could get his animal working again. His animal, I noted, was fairly shriveled.
But that was not what was concerning me. It was the sad look he had given me as he had surveyed my body from head to toe-as though he had wanted to engrave one final image of my body on his consciousness.
But I stopped thinking of that as a validity when-it was mid-afternoon by then-Harwell began squeezing his “pipe and balls” again. I loved to watch the male of the species playing with itself, handling its organ. And I loved to watch dogs in heat, the way their scarlet cocks slid in and out of that hairy protective piece of theirs-slid in and out, scarlet and glistening. Often enough in fantasy, I would take a dog prick in my mouth and make it come, whining and whimpering. And what would it be like, I would think, to be screwed by a dog with its lightning-like thrusts? But Harwell, at the moment, was far more persuasive than fantasy-his organ was fully erect. I've forgotten, now, how many times Harwell and I had sex that day, but that time was filled with it as we intermittently heard the lapping of the cove's waters and, more distantly, the smashing of the Atlantic at Cornwall's boulders. Finally-it was getting toward dusk-we mutually agreed that we had had our fill and that we'd best be getting back to Quistern House, or we would be missed. Harwell held me in his arms. “A few more minutes,” he whispered.
“All right,” I said. In the dimming light there was something quite romantic to the fisherman's hut-the nets, the hurricane lamps, and even the porthole windows the builder, once a seaman himself, probably, had affected. “You like the place, Oliver?” “Very much,” he said. Impulsively I said, “It's yours if you want it. Take it.” “Thank you, Clarissa. You're much too generous-” “I'm rarely generous. You know that. But I'd like you to have this hut-to work in, live in, as long as you like. Nobody will disturb you.” But Harwell very graciously declined, pleading that it was too far from London. I agreed with him about that. Still, even so, I had misgivings at that point I had the feeling that something dreadful was about to happen. “Please hold me tight, Oliver.” “Of course.” “There's something awful that's going to happen to me,” I said. “Nonsense,” Harwell said. “Anyway, both good and bad things happen to everybody in their measure. And the happening is unpredictable.” I rubbed my cheek against Harwell's.
“If,” I said, “Darwin can sort of predict backward, and account for all species, even insects, why can't he predict frontward and describe what species will be, or won't be?” “Why can't he, indeed?”
Harwell said. “A perfectly sensible question, Clarissa.” He regarded me glowingly, possessively. I liked the look of possessiveness, which made me feel infinitely better. He added, “Why don't you do a paper on it, Clarissa? You're quite capable, you know. It's too bad you can't go on to Oxford or Cambridge.” “Father wouldn't hear of it, even if it were possible.” “He believes in the superiority of the male, I suppose,” Harwell said. “Not so much the superiority,” I said, “as the gulf between the sexes, bridged only by coition and that only transitorily. What do you believe, Oliver?” He took his arms away from me to light his pipe. He smoked for a moment or so and then said, frowning, “I will tell this to you, Clarissa, that I've told to no other living soul. Please keep it entrenous.” “You have my word, Oliver.” “You asked me what I believe in, Clarissa. I'm afraid the answer is-in nothing.” I looked at him in astonishment. “Nothing?” I echoed. “Nothing,” he said dourly, puffing slowly at his pipe, his brown eyes hooded. Again I felt an awful dread. I asked myself what, indeed, I was to believe in if this quite superior man-who was a master of the English tongue, of the Greek, Latin, German and French tongues, who was equally at home with the Principia of Newton as he was with the religious sonnets of Donne-believed in nothing? Although the air was warm, I felt chilled and depressed. “We ought to be getting back,” I said.
“Have I offended you in some way?” “No, no, Oliver. It's just that I'm fifteen-very advanced, I know, beyond my years-and yet shaky.” “All of adolescence is shaky,” he said. “I remember my own.” “Yes,” I said abstractedly as we dressed. I looked around the little hut as if for the last time. I even glanced out of one of the porthole windows at the cove. In a sense I contented myself with the thought that the waters of Gunnels Cove would remain calm long after Oliver Harwell, long after my mother and father, and long after my brother and myself. It would take me, now, at least half an hour to traverse the path to the cove from Quistern House to see if the waters were indeed still calm. Well, that is too much of a journey for an old lady who is temporarily out of lovers. I'll defer the trip until I have myself a man. Which shan't be too much of a wait for the Marchioness of Portferrans… eh? Incidentally, no storm had broken, either above Quistern House or Gunnels Cove.
Part Two
7
The following morning when I was due in the conservatory, my father intercepted me at the door to his booklined study. “But I'll be late for my lesson, Father, and Mr. Harwell will not approve.”
I was absolutely amazed that the Marquis was up at this hour. But he blinked not an eye. “I daresay, Clarissa, that he will neither approve nor disapprove. Now do you come into my study, daughter-your mother awaits you there as well.” Oh my God, I thought, a council of war. And what of Oliver Harwell? Why hadn't he been included? “Good morning, Mother,” I said dutifully. I felt somewhat faint, especially with respect to Harwell. I told my noble parents that I felt faint, but not on account of Harwell. At any rate, my father gave me brandy and I swallowed enough of it to cause my mother to raise both eyebrows. “Do you have a morning sickness?” she asked as I wove an unsteady course to one of the leather armchairs. “Are you suggesting that I'm pregnant, Mother?” “Clarissa!” my father said, “must you be so blunt?” “In some of our father-to-daughter conversations,” I said, “you have stressed the idea of candor.”
“Really, Mathew,” my mother said. “You know how children take things literally. How could you in this vale of tears stress the practice of candor?” “This is very much apart from the issue, Louisa,” my father said. “Oblige me by treating first things first.”
“Yes, Mathew,” she said meekly. Meekly for the moment-I knew my mother. The Marquis of Portferrans turned directly to me. “I'm afraid I'll have to be brutally candid about Oliver Harwell.” I walked over to the small table where the brandy and other alcoholic beverages were, and I poured myself another brandy. At which my mother's jaw seemed positively to loosen and become unhinged from the rest of her face. The Marquis, on the other hand, retained his aplomb as I drank a half tumbler of brandy. “Are you ready, Clarissa?” he asked kindly. “Oh, quite.” “Mr. Harwell has precipitately left.” “Precipitately, eh?” I said. “Oh.” “He had a major reason for doing so,” Mathew Quist-Hagen said, Louisa Quist-Hagen gazing narrowly at me. She had a marvelous penchant for gazing narrowly. She should have been trained to ride racing horses.
“Did he?” I said casually, my pulse sprinting like a favored filly. “He said, Mr. Harwell did, that he could not go on to tutor so beautiful a girl without becoming personally involved.”
“Oh, la,” said I. “Is that how he put it?” “Yes,” my father said. “I should think that quite flattering. But it does raise certain problems, Clarissa-such as marriage.” “Mathew,” Louisa said.
“Yes, beloved?” “Marriage is not a problem,” Louisa said.
