“Quite so,” Mathew said. “The motion is tabled.” “You are not,” my mother said, “in the House of Lords.” “I am in the house,” my father said, “of women.” He said that sotto voce. It sounded as if my father were slipping a little in his regard for the female. It was obvious, too, that he had got a little weary of the games nature has us play. The odd thing about nature, my dear reader, is that if you don't play her obvious game-that of the male running about and dropping his seed indiscriminately-you play her subtle game, the male dropping his seed indiscriminately, the latter one of the most illusory of games because you drop your seed not so much selectively as habitually, in accordance with your status backdrop.
In any case, my mother said, “What did you say?” “I said, Karl Marx be damned.” “Oh,” my mother said. “I am always very suspicious of men afflicted by carbuncles-such men regard whirlwinds with great respect, since God is purported to speak from them. In any case, I detest stories in which the divinity breaks wind with a mortal-God comes off smelling like a rose while the mortal stinks to high heaven.” “Louisa,” my father said, “you are most eloquent this morning, but we seem to be straying from the major issue. We have a beautiful daughter-” “Cheers,” I said. “… who must be made more accessible than she is at present. She must have, too, a larger selection of men to choose from.” “Cheers,” I said.
“When we return to London,” my father said, “we shall have to start bringing her out and readying her for the jaws of marriage.”
I chortled. “Joys of marriage,” I said. “Damme,” said my father, snapping his fingers. “If there's anything I abhor making it's a pre-Freudian slip. I do hope that chap stays in Vienna. It's all a bit much, what with Darwin shaking us to our roots, and now this Austrian Jew has us all shaking our heads. Well, no matter.” He scratched himself under his armpits. He turned to me. “Clarissa, I'm not in the least interested in forcing you into the matrimonial state, but I do think the connubial couch would be a stabilizing factor.”
“I take that to mean,” I said, “that you think me unstable.”
“No, no,” the Marquis said. “Only that beauty can be quite unsettling. For instance, I stabilized your mother. Isn't that so, Louisa?” My mother stretched lazily, catlike, and smiled sensually. I was astonished. I had never seen her so mentally uncorseted, except for that time when, as a child, I had seen her in active coition. “I have never wanted or needed any other man,” said the Marchioness of Portferrans, “since I married your father, Clarissa.” “You gave up your manliness,” I said strangely.
“What does that mean, Clarissa?” she asked. “Well, I'm not sure myself. But I think it has to do with a female falling in love.
If she does fall in love, the rest of the world means absolutely nothing. The acropolis is in her living-room, and the primitive ceremonies of the savage natives take place in her bedroom. If the female doesn't fall in love, she can go out and explore the rest of the world without prejudice. A woman in love has reduced or completely eliminated any male elements within herself.” My mother smiled and turned to the Marquis. “We do have a most knowing daughter, do we not?” she said fondly. “Yes,” my father said. “I wish James were so deep.” “He is, Father,” I said. “But he never lets on. He thinks that depth is threatening to most people, and he has no wish to frighten anyone.” “All of which,” my father said, “deviates from the subject at hand-Clarissa. On our return to London, daughter, will you object to our bringing you out?” “I think not, Father. I'm not averse to falling in love…” Nor did I prove averse to the possibility. For the next two years my mother and father arranged entertainments for me at Hagen House in London, and I attended every ball to which I was invited. I danced all the dances-from the lancers and the polka to the Washington Post and the Sir Roger de Coverley. But though I met young men by the score, I was not smitten. None of them seemed to have the power, on the one hand, of an Oliver Harwell, or, on the other hand, the grace of my brother James, whom I saw now only at long intervals. As far as my simple lusts were concerned, they were assuaged on the most animal level by my mother's personal maid, Albertine Lassez. Albertine's hair was turning gray but she had lost none of her ferretlike vigor-and she was as blond as ever on that plump little deltoid mound formed by the juncture of the thighs. The sexual discharges Albertine afforded might never have occurred had I not been weeping copiously one winter mid-afternoon in my bedroom. The mood had been brought on by sexual frustration and by a vexatiousness of spirit from having found no young man in all of London's aristocracy to suit me. I had forgotten to shut the door completely and my sobs must have carried out to the hallway. In any event, the next thing I knew was that a warm, lightly perfumed body was lying next to mine, and that it was Albertine Lassez's vibrant contralto breathing into my ear, telling me it was pointless at my age-I was now seventeen and at the absolute youthful peak of my beauty-to be so distraught when, at the least, I should have some primitive satisfactions of a lonely winter midafternoon, that I deserved such satisfactions even if they were an homage to my loveliness from a member of the same sex. As she kept whispering these sweetnesses into my ear, she kneaded with the utmost delicacy the succulent hemispheres of my arse. My buttocks heated up and their glow descended to encompass the entire genitourinary complex… So that after a while, when Albertine petitioned me to turn over on my back and helped me do so, I was only too delighted to acquiesce even though all I could see now was the bunching-up of my many petticoats.
I felt something else, however. It was the gentlest kind of roughness at the cleft to the pass that led to the subterranean cave of caves. I muttered something unintelligible and unbuttoned my shirtwaist so that my breasts reared free. They were tumid, and my nipples turgid. I wanted to tell Albertine to wait, that we could both undress and that our respective sensations would be thereby greatly intensified. I wanted to tell her that, but the power of words seemed to have been taken away from me, that all my energy had flowed down into my yoni where it was concentrated to give the most appropriate response. I did find that I was able to move my legs-and Albertine gave a cry when I scissored them. But it was a cry of passion. Her tongue, darting ever more frantically, alternated between clitoris and vagina, and I felt their responses coalesce into a single sensation. It was all quite mechanical but nonetheless satisfying. I knew that all was expected of me was to do similarly to Albertine after she had rocketed me to the acme of the pleasure dome… My mechanical affair with Albertine might have lasted longer than it did had it not been for a ball given by the Duke and Duchess of Postings, my parents' great good friends. I recall dressing for the ball with the utmost indifference. One more wasted evening, I thought, and dutifully complied with protocol. After assisting my mother to step down from the carriage, my father handed me down and in a few moments we were being announced from the brilliantly candlelit foyer.
“The Marquis and Marchioness of Portferrans, and the Lady Clarissa Quist-Hagen.” The Duke and Duchess of Postings, both stout and jovial, greeted us warmly. Finally we proceeded through the press of the guests, many of whom familiarly addressed my mother and father and proved themselves fatuous by being taken aback by my green-eyed, black-haired beauty. But all was not lost, I thought, as long as my father with surpassing dexterity floated champagne-filled glasses from passing trays to our nimble hands and even nimbler throats-and thus we survived the time until the dancing began. I had dispensed with my dancing card, of course. I was being terribly difficult-impossible, really. I declined the prospect of dancing with this titled fop or that one, but I also denied perfectly personable young men-whose tilt of eyebrows I did not approve, whose curl of lip was too pronounced, whose face was altogether too ingenuous, or whose speech was affected far beyond necessity. My father was highly amused by my high-handedness. My mother was outraged-I had expressed this role of mine once too often. She was about to let fly when I waved my hand airily at her-my eye suddenly had become riveted-and excused myself. Standing at one of those floor-to-ceiling windows that led to a balcony overlooking the Postings' garden was a tall blond youth whose merry eye had caught mine. I resolved to reconnoitre him.
But I soon dispensed with reconnaissance. It seemed, suddenly, such a waste of time. If necessary, I would ask my brother about this lad's background, whose contemporary he was. In the meantime it was imperative that I at least learn his name. But he anticipated me.
He moved from the balcony window and intercepted me. Never have I enjoyed interception so much. I could swear it was the youth's merry eye-I had not seen such except for the last time I was with James.
James had always had a merry eye. This youth, this blond, had as much a light-struck elegance as my brother had a dark one. I had the odd sensation that I was being attracted by the light. “Hugh Kinsteares,” he murmured offhandedly, drawing abreast of me. His eyes were the color of the blue sky at twilight. “I suppose you've been told you're ravishing,” he said. I shrugged. I was abruptly bored. I was about to wander off to log another glass of champagne when he added, “But you're not ravishing at all. One profile, at any rate, is a perfect model for a hag, Lady Clarissa-has nobody given you intelligence to that effect?” I stared at Hugh Kinsteares. “Nobody,” I said. “I am the first?” I nodded gloomily. I had known my profiles the first day I could observe myself in a full-length three-panel mirror. I knew one profile was, to put it mildly, mouldy. “Beauty,” my father had said, “will always have one element or phase that is positively repellant.” Yes, I said to myself, and this Kinsteares had observed it. The bastard had already earned my respect. “Does the fact that I'm the first to observe this frighten
