hands on them again.”
“Her love amphora is marvellous too,” James said. “It's snug and slippery and steamy…” “Did you notice her armpits, James? Her red hair grows thick as furze there-she's terribly exciting. I shall dare to nestle my nose under her arms the next time…” He looked at me fondly. “You are a funny lass, Clarissa-I'd rather have you than any other sister in the world.” “Done!” I cried joyously, and I kissed him on the nose. “Don't you wish summer were here and we'd be in Cornwall again?” “If Cleves comes along, I daresay we'll have a good time of it. I'd like to frighten her with our maze and then take her then and there in the center of it, just while she's terror-stricken… I demurred. “We needn't be cruel, James.”
“Children are defined by cruelty, Clarissa. It is the only way we can get along with adults.” “Naughty, naughty, James-you're guilty of generalizing!” “Well, dammit, I feel as if I ought to be guilty of something.” I laughed thrillingly. James put on a quirky smile. “Well,” I said, “don't do any damage to yourself out of guilt -I'd be rather proud of that magic cone you have hanging there between your legs!”
5
The winter left, and there was spring. Spring left, and there was summer. Then the whole household began packing for its annual trek to Cornwall by numerous coaches-and-four. Even my father, the Marquis, would inevitably become involved, as he had been through the years, in the preparations for the move, for London was infamous during the summer. Later, toward the end of my adolescence, I would come to find London fabulous at any season-but I once more violate chronology, dear reader, so that I ask that you accept my apologies.
Suffice it to remark that, when the packing was finished, all of us clambered, sweating, into the coaches. Angela Cleves, James, Oliver Harwell and myself occupied one coach-and-four. The weather outside the coach was oppressive, what with lowering clouds and the noxious greasy smoke coiling upward from the increasing number of London factories. The atmosphere inside the coach, however, had its compensations. James and I had decided beforehand that, to eliminate the boredom inevitably attendant on such a trip, we should mildly bedevil both our tutor and governess, or that at least we should try to. We had no doubt that we should be able to torment Angela, but Harwell was another question. In the time that we had known Harwell-a big but gracefully moving man with chestnut-colored hair and beard and infinitely gentle brown eyes in an open, squarish face-he had been imperturbable. Of course, neither James nor I presented any disciplinary problems. We were exemplary students and far ahead of the curriculum for our age. So, in terms of bedevilment, we really had no idea if Oliver Harwell would respond. I do know that my own interest in Harwell had taken a sharp turn for the erotic, and for the first time I noticed that, like the other men of the day, he wore tight-fitting trousers. The rest of his attire was equally conventional-the shirt collar turned upwards, and the points showing above his cravat; the whole dress, except for the shirt, a sober black. But what interested me far more than those articles were his trousers and the “basket”-to use the vernacular-they contained. The basket seemed always to stay the same -it altered neither in favor of shrinkage nor in favor of expansion. Which observation contented me not-as I say, my interest in Harwell had taken a sharp turn for the erotic. Why this was so, is hard to explain. He certainly bore no resemblance either to my father or brother or, indeed, to any of my cousins or uncles. A reasonable explanation might simply be that my awareness of forms was amplifying. Harwell was a fresh male form-and I simply had not seen him until I was ready to do so. In any case, I was undoubtedly ready to bedevil him during our trip to Quistern House on the Cornwall coast. Harwell, ordinarily voluble while tutoring James and me, was today as stony as the Sphinx, He kept staring expressionlessly out the coach window as we jogged along the London cobblestones. I was speculating on what precisely to do to engage his attention. James had already begun to torment the voluptuous Angela. He made it seem as if it were accidental that from time to time he brushed his lingam and that in response, bulging down one side of his tight pants, was a slim but unmistakable form resembling the sheath for a miniature knife. The voluptuous redhead-at James's last encounter with his prize pet-had drawn a sharp breath and was presently focusing, as if with morbid fascination, on James's elongating badge of manhood, immature as it was. Harwell continued to stare out the window. Some time had passed and we were presently trotting through the countryside where at least the air was somewhat less foul than in the city. I lifted my skirts, with a show of being oppressed by the heat. The powerful but shapely curves of my legs were revealed. “Miss Clarissa,” Angela said sharply.
I turned to her. “Yes, Miss Cleves?” I said indolently, arrogantly. Was she going to presume, I thought, to give me a lecture on the morality of a female showing her calves. Was she going to inform me that Englishwomen throughout the glory of the British Empire under the reign of Queen Victoria regarded it as unthinkable to display anything more than a well-turned ankle? Well, since Cleves was already shocked by my bestockinged calves, I might just as well risk a shriek from her by my next action. I bared part of my thighs.
Angela's jaw dropped. Indeed, if it had been attached to loose hinges, it might very well have separated from the rest of her skull.
But I wished her no ill any more-she was our sexual plaything, available whenever James and I wished her to be. As for tormenting her in the coach, it was simply a pastime to mark the highway to Cornwall.
What I actually wanted was to stir up some interest from our tutor. I stirred up interest, yes, but not the kind I wanted. He turned from the coach window and said, his full lips barely hinting at a smile, “Miss Clarissa-” “Yes, Mr. Harwell?” “Are you terribly warm?” James chuckled. Harwell ignored him. “Yes,”
I said, “I am.” “I judged so,” Mr. Harwell said. “What I suggest, then-and you can certainly do this without trepidation, since we have all been socially intimate here with one another for some time- what I suggest, Miss Clarissa, while your brother and I turn away our faces, of course, is that-if you will forgive the possible indelicacy and, indeed, the possible outrageousness of the suggestion, which I trust everyone here will keep in confidence - what I suggest for your relief from the heat is that you remove some of your undergarments-please forgive the vulgarity of the expression-and loosen your bodice.”
He nodded amiably, stroked his beard a few times and turned away again to contemplate nature through the coach window. The consequence, of course, was that I didn't take his suggestion at all-James was snickering and Angela was white with shock-I let down my skirts, sat bolt upright, adopted a stern eye looking at nothing, and endured the rest of the journey without comment, which took quite a while since the Cornwall coast, at the point we were situated, is some four hundred miles from London, necessitating stopovers at inns along the way, not only to rest the horses but to provide a good night's sleep for the weary traveler. At any rate, I shall note here that I had no further personal interchange with Oliver Harwell until I was fifteen, which shall be described in due course. Some readers may well wonder what a tutor was doing with his charges during the summer months, ordinarily a vacation period. The explanation is quite simple: the Marquis did not believe in educational hiatuses. He believed that some mode of instruction of a token nature be sustained during the halcyon days, so that the discipline under study might not entirely go into limbo. Libidinously, then, I was forced to be content with practices involving my brother and Angela Cleves. One night stands vividly in mind even now, the curious telling of which by Cleves herself will most properly, although strangely, close this account of my prepubertal years, after which we can proceed directly to one of the high points of my adolescence. The night I propose to regale you with, dear reader, was an inordinately hot and humid one. It was amazing that anyone managed to sleep, but I was so overcome with discomfort that I cared not a whit as to who was slumbering or no. For a while I stood by the window, thinking that the humid westerly wind might be of some mysterious benefit. I could not have been more mistaken, and I shut the window. I tarried a few moments longer there, entranced by the play of heat lightning across the ocean sky and the revealed sight of thousands upon thousands of whitecaps bobbing on the stormy waters-and then I turned away. Oliver Harwell was on my mind.
His size was on my mind. I had not appreciated his size before. I had not given his size much thought. Now his size filled my brain. I did not realize that night that before anything would occur with Harwell I would be fifteen years of age. In any case I wished that I could seduce him. But to all of my exhibitionism Oliver Harwell remained impervious… I paced my bedroom.
There was only one person who understood me. My brother. I had to talk to him, I had to pour out my psyche to him… His bedroom door was unlocked, and I let myself in. He was asleep, but lightly.
James was never heavy about anything. He awoke instantly the moment I began to whisper to him. “You're consumed with Harwell,” he said. “Yes.” “I think I know how to relieve you, Clarissa.” “Oh?” “Suppose I demonstrate with Angela.”
