But Angela had not conquered. On the contrary-she had not reached her climax. Her sweaty and lubricated face pleaded with us to finish her off. James was adamant. I was adamant. We grinned, my brother and I. “Masturbate,” we said in unison. “We will do you the pleasure of observing.” The redhead had no other recourse. She asked us to leave. We shook our heads. “Blackmail invites blackmail,” James said. Shivering-the fire had gone down in the grate-the girl parted her cleft and, her jaw gone slack, manipulated herself. James and I then were newly excited. “You take one,” I said, “and I'll take the other.” “Agreed,” James said. And we chewed at Angela's nipples as she fingered the node in the female that so resembles the male's prick. Finally she gave a great humping. Stupor was on her face. She uttered high piercing cries, and a series of tremors giddied and eddied all over her body. Unwilling, now, to let her go, I continued to savage her nipples while James mouthed her pubic region. Again Angela convulsed, flopping about like a fish on a hot plate. “Let me alone now,” she said in a low voice when her flop-about had subsided.
“I beg you, let me-” James slapped her face. She shut up.
Yes, I thought. This was our revenge for Angela having threatened to inform on us to our parents. This was bringing her to book. She would become our sexual slavey. So the revenge turned out to be very simple. And when she was satiated, she would leave and we would never see her again. But now we had her where we wanted her… James held his shriveled instrument out to her. “Harden it,” he said.
“We don't have very much time now,” Angela said. “The Marquis and Marchioness will be-” “Harden it,” James said pitilessly.
“Quickly, Angela.” Her head hanging, abased, our governess knelt before my brother and flicked her fingers across his rod and redeemer.
She grazed her fingertips along the base of his still modest column- still modest when erect-until it essayed little pumping motions. Then she brushed her nipples across it and then it positively gave a heave, its rocketlike shape quite startling but capable, of course, of fireworks. “James,” she said. “Yes?” “James,” she said again, piteously. “What is it, Miss Cleves?” “I quite realize I'm your senior by a number of years, but would you consider staying with me a few more hours-because on second thought I don't believe your mother and father will look in on us.” “Holy faggots of Christ,” James cursed, “I should hope not. Nevertheless, Cleves, there will be other occasions so that I think it best to break off for the moment.” Angela's face burned. “Just another hour,” she pleaded. “I am terribly tense and overactivated and need thoroughgoing satisfactions.” “I am not your man,” James said decisively. “I am grateful that, because of you, I am no longer a virgin. But I am not your paramour. I'm a very gifted and avant-garde boy, and therefore I will inform you as to our next rendezvous, my sister Clarissa to be included as well.” “Children are terribly cruel,” she said.
“Only as a result of their governesses,” I said. She shook her head. “I cannot stay here. I shall have to ask my contract to be nullified.” She spoke in very low tones, as if the words were simply for her ears alone. James and I had dressed and we were standing by the door. “Good night, Miss Cleves,” James said. She did not reply. Nor did she say a word when I wished her the same. We left her squatting naked in the middle of the four-poster bed, for all the world in the dim gaslight some burnished, holy statuette from some lost land, her red hair tumbling disheveled about her face and shoulders… I tarried a few minutes in James's suite. “Do you think we did right, James, in using her?” He leaned back in a leather armchair in his elegant way. “Of course we did. She had no right threatening to tell tales to Mother and Dad.” “Perhaps,” I said, “she did evil because she's our last governess. She's our introduction into the world.” “Yes,” he said, “what fragments we see of it.” I sighed. “What is it, Clarissa?” “It's hard to say, James. After sex, even though, technically, I'm still a virgin-I feel sad. As if I've given everything away. Don't you feel that way at all, James? After all, you're no longer a virgin.”
“Well, I rather feel as if we're going through the last of our childhood, Clarissa-and that we should make the most of Angela Cleves.” “You don't believe she'll try to break her contract?”
“I doubt if she'll make any such effort. I think she feels she's got the perfect picture here, you know-lewd lad and lass join their governess in secret sex rites.” “Well, she is a beauty. Those teats… ah… I can't wait till I get my 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.