They are all gone, no one but the clerk and myself in the print shop now. I buy a framed photograph of Ellen Terry. The clerk assures me Miss Terry is one of the finest actresses of our time. Her chin is raised in the photograph. Is she looking at the heavens? Darling, why Ellen Terry? I don't know. I really don't know. I don't like statues any more. Photographs like this one seem more to the point. One yields to the ministrations of memory. I take the parcel. I shudder as the clerk's hand accidentally touches mine. I am like a child. I have no thought beyond the pleasure of that moment. John often said it. He would say it to me when he made love to me on the velvet chaise. Arthur Stockton never said anything of the sort. Poor Arthur was really much too quick. Something more than two minutes is really much too quick.
I walk now in Oxford Street with Ellen Terry. I shall take down those insipid roses in my room and replace them with one of the finest actresses of our time. She does look so stupid staring at the heavens like that. Thankfully her eyes are not turned outward. I don't like to be stared at by people in photographs. I don't like the accusing eyes. One can imagine them thinking anything. I shall think of Arthur Stockton whenever I look at Ellen Terry. Yes, of course, how fit that is. I shall think of Arthur Stockton, and whenever I think of Arthur Stockton I shall think of John descending in his balloon to the Channel.
Claire's driver finds me in front of the teashop in Regent Street. I carry Ellen Terry with me as I return home. I feel drenched in the aftermath of a wicked afternoon. All those people. The eyes looking at me. The imaginings. Ellen Terry's dreamy face. I did see her once at the Criterion. Now I shall see her constantly.
Claire greets me at the door. “Lovely time?”
“Yes, it was pleasant.”
“Tell Dobbin when you want to bathe.”
“Yes, I will.”
She continues talking as I climb the stairs.! don't want to talk any more. All these years of talking. There's no point to it, is there? Inside my bedroom, I close the door and immediately attack the insipid roses, the painting on the wall between my room and Claire's room. A chair. A step upon the chair. I reach for the roses, unhook the frame. I bring the roses down. When I raise my eyes again, I see the grate.
The moment stands isolated, frozen, my throat constricted. I am not at all certain I want to see it. A grate in the wall. A grate high up in the wall between my room and Claire's, hidden all this time by those horrible roses. I don't want to think about it. I have a fierce passion not to think about it. I turn and stare at the photograph of Ellen Terry already unwrapped upon the bed. My face is warm. Oh darling. Yes, you will. You know you will. I stand upon the chair. My eyes at the grate. Claire's room uncovered in the soft light of dusk. And the bed. Nearly all the room so easily seen. I step down. I take the photograph of Ellen Terry and step up again. I cover the grate and step down again. Down and up and down again like a mindless automation. I refused to think of it. I bury the roses beneath my bed. I ring for Dobbin to draw my bath.
Chapter Three
Claire and I have our little secret. I was fourteen during a summer in Normandy at the farm of our grandparents. We spent idle hours in the heat, idle hours listening to the buzzing of the flies, idle hours amusing each other with school gossip and fantasies of foreign places. One day in mid-afternoon, Claire found me reading beneath a large tree. “You must come with me.”
I looked at her flushed face. “But why? Come where?”
She led me to the barn, cautioned me not to make a sound. We carefully climbed the rear ladder to the loft. Each time a board creaked, Claire froze, waited, then moved on again. I followed. The mystery of it held me now. Nothing so entertaining had happened since the day of our arrival. I was thoroughly amused and certain to be amused further. Claire finally led me to an opening in the floor of the loft. She peered over the edge at the barn below. Then she rolled her eyes and beckoned to me. I slid forward. I looked down. There upon a bed of hay some fifteen feet below us lay our mother and father.
I quiver at the memory. I sense the moment again, the smell of the barn, the heavy heat, the silence of the afternoon with every one in the house asleep. Mother and Father were not asleep. They lay upon the hay caught in each other's arms, kissing, whispering and kissing again, while above them Claire and I were afraid to breathe lest we giggle and reveal our presence.
The portent, of course, was of something more than mere kissing. Claire looked at me and smiled. She had knowledge of things. The look said: Now you shall see and thank me for it. I turned my eyes to the ground again, to the rustling and whispering. They were fondling each other now. Was Mother protesting? When they turned a bit, I could see Father's hand beneath her skirts. Then Mother's hand moved to the front of his trousers. She found what she wanted. She kissed him again. I was mesmerized by her hand, the play of her fingers, the squeezing. I could not see Father's hand. Mother's hip moved, squirmed. Father's hand had obviously found its goal.
Then Father mumbled, pulled away. He made Mother turn. At first she protested, pleaded, warned him of the danger. But Father insisted and in a moment she yielded. She turned and knelt upon the bed of hay. He raised her skirts to uncover the wide expanse of her bottom.
Broad and white. I remember the milk-white flesh of Mother's bottom, the two moons split by the crack. Father worked at his trousers to get them down to his knees, and for a moment Mother's hairy purse was completely visible at the joining of her thighs.
Then my eyes were drawn to the greater revelation. Father's magnificence had appeared. His rampant penis. His cock and balls surrounded by a dark forest of hair, the shaft pointing straight out and weaving as though in search of a target. He was quickly upon her, covering her bottom, mounting her from the rear, Mother groaning at the invasion of his organ. Father's hips moved, churned, pumped, and Mother brayed in happy response. Quite happy. I was old enough to know the meaning of that wailing sound.
The doing of it was brief. They were hurried by circumstance, by a fear of discovery. Father made a grunting noise as he emptied his ballocks. In which entrance? The question remains unanswered. At the end of it, they pulled apart from each other, quickly arranged their clothes and left the barn. Claire and I waited a few moments, and then we stole out of the place the way we had come. We hurried to the woods to fill our skirts with berries, to confirm our innocence if our absence had been noted.
The berries were picked, the skirts filled, the family united again at dinner. Grandfather and Grandmother, Father and Mother in complete decorum. Mother, as usual, cautioning her girls to avoid the sun.
And now again. This grate. This barred window into my sister's room. Am I now a prisoner? Edward stands near one of the chairs. He does not look at Claire. He holds a thin unlit cigar in his hand and he seems pensive. Claire is seated at her dressing table. She unpins her hair. She pouts. She shakes her head. “Do you want to, or shall I call Dobbin?”