He swung round sharply, blanching. “What are you driving at, Clarissa?” “I don't want to see you again, James,” I said. I thought I was maintaining my control but my twisting fingers gave me away. I had no idea I was entwining and disentwining them. And their tension certainly was not lost on my brother. “That's palpably untrue,” he said in amazement. “Look at your hands.” My face flushing, I could not meet his gaze. “It has got to be true,” I whispered. “Which is something else again. What sort of melodrama are you involving yourself in, Clarissa? Are you going into hiding?
Are your creditors overwhelming you? You ought to see mine -poor tradesmen, they are so outclassed when they've neither the lower or the upper to go to, but have only the middle to mull in…” “Not hiding.” “What, then?” He was imperious, as only my brother could be. He was arrayed in authority but it was neither overbearing nor oppressive. “It's not an accomplished fact so there's no point in discussing it.” “We had better-discuss it, Clarissa, before it becomes an accomplished fact.” “I will not discuss it, James.” I stood up, my brow working frantically into lines. “Clarissa…” he said mollifyingly. “Don't you understand?” I cried out. “I've got to see how far I can go-and I can only do that alone, and certainly not with you looking over my shoulder and occasionally making intense attempts to drag me up from the gutter. Don't you understand that your loving me can stop me? and that if I see you from time to time I will feel the impact of your loving and I won't then be able to take an action?” “I don't know what gutter you're so intent on wafting away in, but there's no good reason for any of us to be in any gutter-” “Oh, my God, James.” He smiled tightly.
“I do sound like a curate, don't I? And the odd thing is, Clarissa, is that I have decided to go into the church…” I stared at him. My belly keeled over and for a moment I thought I was going to vomit. The church? My brother a divine? The irony, I thought, was too juvenile-I laughed immoderately. James, after a moment in which he looked at me with pure hatred, began to laugh too. “You will go to the guillotine-and to God,” I said, “with your face up because your collar will have been turned backward. But why the church, James? I thought you were so keen on medicine.” “I was, Clarissa. I remain so, but I think I'm a little keener on God-the care and maintenance of the soul is quite as important as that of the body, which both you and I-” he grinned-“took excellent care of, and it is through the sensual, after all, that one comes to the soul. But I don't want to sermonize at you, Clarissa-you may indeed have to see how far you can go. I should have told you that right off. I'm sorry. I'm terribly preoccupied with making the shift to divinity school-I'm leaving the technologic world to find out where God ends and man begins. I think we have to discover just where that point is so that we can take care of the gap between. If we don't take care of the gap, Mary Wollstonecroft's monster out of Frankenstein, suitably intellectualized, will say that's where he begins.” His face lightened momentarily. “We don't want that, do we?” “No,” I said in a low voice. “Nor are you taking the next coach to the gutter,” he said. “No. Seeing how far I can go may be confined to the theatre -which I've no intention of leaving for several years, in any case.”
“And you don't want to see me.” “Yes. I will have lost a brother,” I could not resist adding, “while you will have gained a sister-Jesus Christ.” He smiled wryly. “The homosexuality of the Son of God is open to some doubt,” James said, “but we are working to reduce the incest content, although the Holy Ghost is hardly fleshy enough to be included.” He shook his head. “What really concerns me now is the idea of not seeing you.” “At least till I find out what my limitations are.” “Which takes most people a lifetime,”
James said. “Yes,” I said. A shadow passed over his face. To this day I do not know if it had been caused by a cloud swifting across the sun, or by his spirit momentarily winking out. “It seems,” he said, “as if we must go our very separate ways.”
“Yes.” “Clarissa, I do love you, you know. I shall miss you bitterly. Bitterly.” Anguish crossed his face. For a moment I thought he might lose control. But he did not. An infinitely weary grace held him up, I'm quite sure. He kissed me then, full on the mouth. I clasped him in a terrible desperation and put my loins to his-I wanted to feel the lift and the heft of him. But I felt nothing, nothing. We disengaged. James had won through. I had lost.
“Please tell Mother and Father,” I said, “that it's quite too late. They may disinherit me, which is perfectly all right-I'm earning my own way and shall continue to do so.” “All right, Clarissa,” he said, his hand on the door. “Victoria,” I said. “Victoria Collins.” I smiled wanly. “Yes, of course. Victoria. Goodbye, sister.” James had won again.
12
“I preferred coming to see you, Miss Collins, here at your rooms in Quarkney's Course, rather than troubling you in your dressing room in the theatre.” She smiled vividly, the mass of her chestnut curls enhancing the serene loveliness of her gray eyes. She had introduced herself as Daphne Oblov, and seemed to be in her early thirties. “Your beauty, I must say,” she continued, “is even more fantastic at close range.” “Thank you, Miss Oblov. You said you wished to see me on a business matter.” “Quite. It's rather a delicate business matter, Miss Collins-I do so much not wish you to be encumbered with embarrassment.” “Would you like a drink?” I asked. “Yes, that would help, darling,” she said with a tiny sigh. “Scotch is what I have at the moment.” “That will go nicely,” Daphne Oblov said. I poured her a generous amount and, to my astonishment, she leaned back on the sofa and put it away, the whole damned glassful. I had no recourse but to offer her another; this one she sipped at, her tongue occasionally, with a very swift movement, circling the rim of the glass. Watching the woman doing this caused a bit of a flutter in my lower regions. I was altogether intrigued by the woman-she was a petite beauty with obviously very small breasts for which the nipples might have compensated-I didn't know. But her ankles were neatly turned and I suspected the rest of her was something of a delicacy. It made one want to nibble-but, she was here on business, or so she said. “You know,” Daphne said, “I so much enjoyed watching you onstage. You have a solid talent, darling, if not a flashy one. It makes one respect you more. Which is why it is so terribly difficult for me to talk about my business here.” “Oh?” I crossed the room to sit at her side on the sofa. I casually patted her thigh; the dimensions were modest but exceptionally springy-perhaps I exaggerated, but I hadn't had a woman in some time. “Perhaps,” I said, “this will put you at your ease.” I stroked the length of her thigh through her dress. Daphne Oblov had been keeping her legs primly together; now she relaxed somewhat, and her legs were no longer intent on being contiguous. “Yes,” Daphne said. “Yes.” She took a fair swallow of the scotch. Her gray eyes seemed to rest on the distance. “Yes, Miss Collins.”
“Victoria…” “Ah, yes, Victoria, darling.” The mass of her chestnut curls was beginning to heat me up considerably-I pictured them elsewhere. And her tongue, circling the rim of the glass…
“Yes, Daphne?” “I will go brutally-brutally to the point.”
She had repeated the “brutally” and I knew instantly that that was how she wanted me to be with her after she finished talking about her business. “I am the independent madam and owner,” she said, “of a prosperous bordello here in London-we are located in St. John's Wood, perhaps ten minutes from the Tarton. The facilities at my pleasure-house are at once antiseptic and luxurious. Two physicians are yearly on retainer to inspect my girls frequently, and none of them have as yet caught any disease whatever, and I've been situated there some three years-I hope I haven't alarmed you, Victoria.”
My expression had become stony. For more than a moment, I thought, I could suspend interest in the Oblov woman's thighs and possible teats. It was obvious she was about to make a proposition, and our fates seemed to have crossed-I had been making contacts so that I myself could approach a house of prostitution. Daphne Oblov was, of course, far more convenient and in the position, I warranted, of being a petitioner. “Not in the least, Daphne. Please go on.”
She took another swallow, lit one of those long Russian cigarettes, and resumed. “To be candid, Victoria, after I saw you in the Wilde comedy, darling, I could not resist thinking of you as a star-if not in the theatre, then at my brothel, where, incidentally, your income would be three times that of what George Maytemper may give you… I do realize the idea you may have of numberless men-possible disease-loss of status in the so-called respectable community-giving up the theatre-all these, I realize, militate against-” “Please, Daphne-I am mulling the whole thing over. Of course, I can't give you my decision now…” “Suppose I come see you again in a fortnight- is that sufficient time?” “Quite, and you needn't leave for the moment-do have another scotch.” She had another scotch, which she sipped at very slowly indeed, as she watched me in my brown study. I was thinking about my brother, of course, and my becoming a whore in the hope that that might finally satisfy my carnal itch-that after I had enough men in sequence, say a dozen of them in one night, I might not want sex at all for another forty-eight hours, possibly not for a week, possibly longer. It was worth the try, I had come to the conclusion before, so that I
