“Indeed it is, my pets. Loosen your corsages, remove your dresses and your drawers. Let us be free from these unwanted coverings at last.”
Their hands would move like hands that never moved before, the buttons slipping from the buttonholes, the silky, milky gourds revealed, the nipples firm and rubbery, expectant, tingling to his touch, weighed, fondled, while they raised their skirts…
“What are you thinking-thinking now?” And this, across my thoughts, from Caroline.
“That Thomas will not stray again, nor will the girls have cause to-fret for their inheritance.”
“Those are the words. What of the music, dear?” she laughed, and whispered, “He will plough their furrows in the night. Will you, too, be my ploughman in the night, lie on my belly, plight your troth to me-again, again?”
“Again and ever on,” said I.
The cartwheels rattled. In the dark, a bird twittered somewhere from a dusky hedge as we drove by, and then- amazed by its own indiscretion-it fell quiet. The house had long diminished from our sight-had grown smaller, as immediate memories do, waiting to burgeon later when one dwells on them and draws them out from cloudy nothingness.
“Autumn will be upon us soon,” said Caroline.
“Coal fires and kindling wood, the evenings chill,” said I.
The lanes narrowed and closed-in behind us as we rode, waiting for dawn that they might open up again and let the world unroll upon us once again with all its mysteries, its seeking joys-the pleasures that await to be distilled.