Salt of sea coral to my lips at the parting of her curls, her down, her bush. Her legs widen and she strains. She knows the Venus-couch again. One leg of it was loose and it would wobble. It stood where a carpet ended, I remember. His penis to my bottom put while yet I tongued her. A cart rattled somewhere passing and there were footsteps in rooms above. We cared not then for discoveries of sin.
A woman, large, morose, came once upon us, creeping down. “You dirty beast, I knew you would be at them,” she said.
Charlotte cried “Oh!” and hid her eyes, and the woman went and we were alone in our breathings. It was ever dusty, and the basins cracked. In winter we would huddle together, waiting for the sharp, clear frosts of morning, breakings of water through the ice and the birds forlorn upon the branches.
“Do me!” Her voice now shrill, her bottom squirming.
“Oh! I was remembering!” The scene is gone, the dust dissolved. I sit up, throw my hair back. Her eyes are sulky with desire and yet a water-coloured mischief lies behind the pupils' glinting. Her mouth moves, rosebud mouth, and then is stilled.
“I have to go, Miss.” Her changeling voice has changed again. I will not have it so and shake her.
“Is there dancing here, Charlotte? Oh, come back-remember!”
“They won't let me. Yes, there is, yes. I'm not sure where, though. Along the corridor somewhere, somewhere. If I came back. I could come back. Shall I come back?”
“After my uncle has gone, yes.”
“Oh, your uncle, is he?” Her voice is pert. Sitting up, she shakes her hair, thrusts down her skirt. “Shall we be three a-bed, as once we were? Not with him, but another. Shall I know what to do? There used to be flowers once and meadows. I don't know where it was-don't know. It frets at me. You'll remember it, I know you will. I can't remember unless you remember. Not always. There will be carriages after the dancing, will there not?”
“Of course, there are always carriages. They will summon them and hide them, if we go, waiting for our emergence. Go quickly, go, or the moment may be gone. Return-return, Charlotte!”
“Oh yes. It will be all right again then, I know it will. As it was before.”
A kiss and she is gone. I bathe and scent myself and know my wholeness. The suite becomes me. A certainty of being obtains within it. I would have mother know how pleasing are the raised blue patterns on the silk wallpaper, the gilded knobs that crown the bedposts, the tassels that will surely sway in their untinkling. As once they did.
My drawers shimmer, being of black silk. They encase me tightly as I ever wish them to. I have seen my aunts in drawers loose and despondent, lacking both memory and touch. I invest my calves, knees, thighs as befits them in a charcoal shade. My garters clip tightly. Attraction lies in such attentions, as I was taught. In the owl's cry, the wind's cry, the whispering of the ivy and the silence of the moss.
Smooth your stockings up. Laura — let your ankles show. Mould your bottom into your drawers as to my hands. Keep your back straight. Affect not shoes nor boots with flat heels. Walk unhesitant, nor shy, nor proud. Be ever easy in your goings. Receive, accept.
I persuade rouge into my cheeks, though little needing it. A lady who is perceived as best and fitting so joins together the attractions of the prim and the wanton that it is not known whether she is either or both together on Sundays or fine days and so she is sought.
I have finished with my ruminations, my preachings and my parables. My eyes are rimmed but delicately with kohl. I need no further endeavours. I have chosen a gown so close to white that it seems not to hesitate upon the colour, displaying its blue ribbons, its frilled corsage, its gatherings. I have worn it twice before and that three years beyond. The hem holds memories of sperm. In its wickedness.
My uncle arrives with his companion. She is in her later twenties, tallish and elegant. Having surveyed one another we exchange eyes and survey ourselves thus, mirror to mirror. I mark her memories who have not known them. She can scarcely know mine.
“You have not accommodated yourself in the hotel, uncle?”
“There is time, my dear. We might take liqueurs in your suite, perhaps.”
The meal is done. I know too well the liqueur he intends. It is of the singular and not plural variety. The cheeks of my bottom tighten, are guarded. Dangers of revelation attend me in his presence. My tongue shall not uncurl. The lift rumbles and trundles, taking us to my abode. With then the bringing of Chartreuse and Benedictine the lady sits upon his lap. A smile I take to be inviting suggests my involvement in equal measure. Her head turns, regards the intervening doors where Charlotte lately stood.
“It is a nice bed. Really it is too late to make arrangements other. Other than. Do you not think?” she asks.
His hand invests her thigh but is afraid to travel. I have but to smile and he will gather up her skirt. Perhaps I am to be ravaged and made prisoner of them both-the farewells made upon the steps at morn. The departures empty of promise.
“I must write to father.”
I rise, approach the escritoire. Its rims are rimmed with gold. Ornate. It attracts me. I have neither of them in my vision yet feel their sudden stillness. My letter writes itself in my uncle's mind ere I have taken up the pen.
“Of course, my accommodation-how stupid,” he exclaims, “It is late for you now to write.”
I turn. She glides from his knees like a leaf from a log. There is a limpness in her stature, an incomprehension. My uncle stands in turn.
“I shall write when you have said goodnight. Will that not be better?”
“Indeed, Laura, for you may say that I have just departed.”
“That you have just departed, yes.”
Our separations are formal. I close the doors. Does my mother knit and father fret? That my uncle is well furnished and appurtenanced with virility I do not doubt. His woman will feel the functioning tonight-the two-backed beast of Rabelais will thresh. Even so, in some small, dark and secret room I might have yielded, my hand to my mouth, biting my teeth into the slim fruits of my fingers. Unspeaking. Did he do it to you, say it yes! I would not say, I would not say. My bottom bulbs warm to the brown-carved door. In the dancing, if there be dancing. Yes.
“Would it please you to know that I have been taken?”
Thus did I ask my aunt, my paternal aunt-for she was in many ways the safer of the two-a week before my marriage. The words came from me as slowly as a plum splits, yet is sudden.
“Rumpled and ridden?” Her laugh was like the two last notes, the high notes played on the piano, one following quick upon the other. “Were you then taken to the summerhouse?” she asked. I shook my head, she seeing only the reflection of my head and shoulders in my mirror. I chewed upon a hairpin, its indifference. “It is best so, for the gardeners lurk there. They have had many sights to see in the past of which you have been innocent. Have you been ridden fore or aft?”
I moved my hips. Again her laugh. “Then you are virgin still-'tis good. Better to have known the thick shaft's burning there. Your bottom is the fuller for it, yet in its tightness it encloses secrets. Have no shame on it for the male fruit so inserted is ever fruitful though unproductive save of yearnings for its further approaches.”
“You will not tell?”
It was my last naivete', yet it threaded not my voice. I spoke as one who had received, discarded, and is yet ready to accommodate again.
“Had I done so, my pet, at the first falling of the strap, how cold the house would have become. Now with your going shall be winter.”
I turned and kissed her. I had said nothing of the strap and yet she knew. “I may return yet, dear aunt.”
“Of course you shall and must, yet think not of your comings and goings overmuch but of acceptances, receipts of pleasure. Raise your skirts and let me see you.”