circumstance. “The staff ought to be up and about by now. Will you-” he addressed my brother -“be good enough to advise Wittling of the fallen armor up here and have him get someone to repair it?” “Of course, Father.” “In that case you are both dismissed. Be off with you. He smiled lovingly but distantly at both of us and returned to the bedroom-to Louisa. I suppose it was she, our mother, to whom the Marquis felt the closest. I cannot blame him-he loved her very much. But he need not have been so distant from James and myself.
This may have played a decisive role in our eventual preoccupation with sex-my obsession, if not James's. My mother, too, was as guilty as my father. She would graciously look in on us-as we had instructions with our tutors, before we went on excursions with our governesses, and she would read to us on occasion before we fell asleep. If either James or I fell ill of influenza, or the like, my mother deemed it wise to spend a little more time with us, varying her reading inclinations with games at cards… The general effect was that James and I grew closer and closer in our mutual regard. How close we were yet to see-we became aware of the closeness, really aware, early in the tenure of Angela, Angela Cleves, our last governess, when I was ten years of age and James, of course, was twelve. At the time we were at our London residence, Hagen House, in Kensington.
3
It was a cold, damp, foggy winter's night when I awoke from a bad dream a little after midnight in my bedroom. I had been out of sorts all day. I had shouted at our tutor, Mr. Oliver Harwell, for the simple reason that, as a prospective masculine predator, he seemed hopeless. I had snapped at Wittling, our aging butler, because he had not sent out one of our servants soon enough to catch the girl on the street calling for someone to buy her sweet lavender. I had been terribly out of sorts. There was an ancient sensuality foaming in my depths, something spiraling from the darks of my groin. I had attempted to masturbate before falling asleep, but it had been to no avail-it had not satisfied me… At any rate, waking, I flung aside the quilts and slipped into a bathrobe. As I look back on it now, how strange it is that someone so young should be pursued by a force so old. And at that point there was no adult I knew who would be willing to help me understand what was involved. Nobody at Hagen House comprehended the emotional and intellectual precocity either of my brother or myself, except Harwell, our tutor, who reported our mastery of the curriculum in the highest possible terms, but who lacked the judgment to convey the hothouse of our emotions to the Marquis or the Marchioness who were, after all, pretty much to the exclusion of all else, preoccupied by the London social whirl-the well-nigh endless series of balls, plays at the theatre, concerts at Covent Garden and, de rigueur, as I recall, attendance at Old Bailey, if possible, of the shocking trial of the dramatist, Oscar Wilde, whose alleged homosexuality was not considered a fit subject for converse in the presence of children. If Wilde and his putative peccadilloes had been mentioned in our presence, we would have been indifferent, for what we were fascinated by was our own libidinous explorations which required no wit, Irish or any other, to give them goad. Frankly, as I crossed to the window, I knew I was in the mood for the explorative.
The question was, who was to be its agent since the self-manipulative had at last turned out to be a crashing bore? Of course, my brother James came to mind, but at the moment, surely, he was rapt in slumber in his own bedroom at several removes from mine, and separated, further, by the room of our new-and last- governess, Miss Cleves.
Depressed, stirred by marvellously bestial longings implanted in the race coeval, doubtless, with the primeval slime, I scowled and furrowed my virginal brow. I scowled at the linnet hidden in the cage, songless and invisible because of the white cloth covering. I scowled at the faithful clock ticking on the mantel. I shrugged and turned my gaze to the scene outside beyond the garden and its rail. There was not much further that one could gaze-it was impossible to make out the other side of the street because of the fog. I could hardly make out the occasional hansom cab that clop-clopped by, the driver, perched on top to the rear, bundled practically to his mouth to protect himself from the bitterly chilling clime. I shivered in sympathy. Actually, I was warm enough- under my bathrobe I was attired in a thick woolen nightgown. The material scratched roughly against the pretences of my breasts, hardly more than slight rises on the topography of my chest. But the nipples… ah, the nipples apparently were ahead of their time-they were large and strongly denned and extraordinarily sensitive. As in a trance I lifted my hand and slipped it in to fondle the erectile tissues. The blood began to churn in my veins. I made some sounds deep in my throat and barely heard, then, a faint tapping at the door. When I became aware, I abruptly stood up, trembling. I crossed to the great oaken piece. “Yes?” I whispered. “James here,” a voice said. “Do hurry and open, Clarissa, or I shall catch my death.” I unbolted the door as rapidly as I could. It swung open easily and my brother slipped in, flailing his arms about his chest. “That damned draughty hallway,” he muttered, looking all the world-except for the lack of silver-blond hair-like a miniature edition of the Marquis, and I felt a heat spiraling from my groin. I shuddered. “Why are you shivering?” James said. “It was I who was out in the hallway.”
“Yes,” I said in low tones, “but mine is a different kind of shivering.” “Really, Clarissa?” He made as if to embrace me and I stepped aside, shaking my head. I reminded him of my sufferance of him here, and that there would not be anything drastically undertaken in my bedroom. “You are not supposed to be here, James,” I told him, “If it were found out, it would go hard on you. It would go hard on me as well…” I was fending off my brother not because I wished to or because I was fearful of discovery but because-while I wanted to explore the vibrant world of those energies seeming to have their core between my legs-I was somehow afraid that something monstrous might occur, that somehow I might be hurt.
“Nobody will find us out,” my green-eyed brother said petulantly.
Then he looked at me fondly and smiled, as if he quite understood my shyness. “Really, Clarissa, you need have no misgivings. I'm here only because something happened to me earlier today that interfered with my sleep, and I felt I simply had to tell it to the person closest me-my sister.” Here he smiled guilelessly and I was altogether taken in. At ten, sophisticated though I was, I was nevertheless ingenuous with respect to James, and my next words completely revealed my illusions.
“Well,” I said, “since we are brother and sister, there should be no harm in our snuggling under the covers. It's a terribly raw night and we would be very foolish to tempt fate by braving the draughts outside of bed.” Which was pure folderol, of course. I had already tempted fate. Actually, I had decided I wanted to be close to him, and that I would take the gamble of the possibility of being hurt. I need not have worried-at the last moment I disarmed him…
“That's very wise of you, Clarissa,” James said gravely. And, our mein terribly serious, we crept into bed, quite large enough for the two of us. After all, we were boy and girl! “What happened to you earlier today, James?” “What happened to me was Albertine,” he said after a pregnant pause, his voice weighty with significance. He put a light hand on my wrist. My pulse was a sheer runaway. “Oh?” I said. “In what way?” “Well, to begin with, Clarissa, I had to see Mother on some matter or another.” “Did you see her?” “No. Albertine was busy hanging some of Mother's things and told me Mother had gone to tea at the Duchess of Postings'. I told Albertine I was terribly disappointed-I didn't think the matter could wait.” “But it really wasn't that important, was it, James?” “No. I then simply wanted the opportunity of being with Albertine.” “Suddenly?”
“Yes. At twelve, Clarissa, one begins to see quite clearly how attractive some members of the opposite sex can be.” “But, James-” “Yes?” “Albertine's such a sweet little blonde.”
“Precisely. Very fitting, don't you think?” “Oh,” I said.
My brother's fingertips lightly played with my wrist. There was a wavering bubble in my throat, a certain sly tickle between my thighs.
I felt my nipples positively fluttering. “Well,” I finally added, “what did you tell her?” “I told her nothing, of course. I didn't have to. Albertine recognized that I was merely seizing on a pretext to be with her-” “And not with Mother.” “Exactly,” James said. I swallowed. There was something hard in my throat now.
Hard and tight. James brought my hand down to my thigh. “And then?” I asked. “Well, Albertine was at the closet, you know. I circled round to her until I could see the fine beads of moisture on her upper lip. You could tell she had begun to expect me.” “Oh, really, James-that sounds out of the whole cloth. Albertine must be all of thirty-five, and you're all of twelve. How could she have expected you?” He had drawn up my thick woolen nightgown. My own hand rested on my bare thigh, and his hand on mine. “I must explain, Clarissa.” “Do.” “There may be certain desperations the female experiences at thirty-five. Do you understand? Especially if the female has
