I did so and stood-turned slowly. She patted my bottom, my thighs, all about. A murmur of admiration escaped her.
“How smooth and creamy your skin has become through it. I would have seen you squeal and squall, threshing your hips in love's surrender, yet it was not to be. One lives in part on memories of things unknown, unseen. So must it be, for the unseen is often the better envisaged thereby, is enlivened, made articulate, perpetually alive. Take not a yearling now, for you have known the lion's breath at your ears.”
My eyes were questions marks, as she perceived.
“Ask not. The answers lie within you, not outside. Questions are as moths. Their wings get burned.”
A knock disturbs my memories. I upon the door upon Charlotte.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I am not as others are nor yet as others would become. The light that falls upon most others leaves them but opaque. People should have a certain translucency, a yielding to the light. Had it not been for the presence of Charlotte, whom I both knew and knew not, I might have fled home and donned again my old attires, sucked the brown ribbons on a brown, brown dress, and awaited the benedictions of the strap. I would sponge Perdita down- the marble of her cold yet knowing to my hands. Father would take his longbow into the paddock, as oftimes he did, and the arrows would sing again, fleeting towards some distant target, or the hesitant hare.
He would never shoot to kill a living creature. His pride was in missing them by a hair's breadth. “How that hare's feet scampered!” he would chuckle, and then sharpen his small broadheads anew while I stood and watched, fearful of and yet fascinated by their tiny leaf-shape, the glittering of their sharp edges and their points. The nocking-point on his bowstring sometimes frayed and I would bind it for him with two rings of red thread so that the nock of the arrow could be placed exactly between them. Often enough he would shoot at a round straw target that a manservant would bring out and place upon a sort of easel. Father would then stand very straight as he drew the string, his three fingers around it ever quivering back and forth until it seemed that the strength of the bow must overcome him. But then at last, when I often thought almost all at breaking point, the arrow would be loosed, rising in a long loping curve and so swiftly until it met and buried its head in the centre of the target. Thus did Mr. Ford, the Champion Archer of England shoot, averred my father, and thus would he also shoot, though at a rather lesser distance, but I have noticed that men often try to copy one another in such matters.
What happens to the past-each moment like a photographic likeness-has often given me much to think on.
“It enters into the enclosures of the present,” father would say, and in my understanding of his words was yet no understanding. My thoughts would tumble all about like small monkeys who can find no other mischief to perform. I would run between the past and the present- sometimes would turn about and with the future flirt.
“That is as well,” he said when I told him of this, “for all doors and frameworks and lattices are forever open, so you may go back and forth, hither and yonder at will like the darting swallows that never descend but ever seek the insects in the air.”
Then it came to me that the poor insects which were soon to be swallowed were at once in the past, the present, and the future, for the birds-so quickly do they wheel and twist and turn-and all in the same space which each occupied with no interval between except for those in my mind. This I also told father, who smiled and kissed me and said, “When you know of it, do not speak of it or it is gone.”
So was my mind wrapt in mystery as now, as now, as now, though I wished my mind to be still as a pond is still when the boys with their stones and their fishing nets have gone and all that was disturbed in the pond sinks back to the bottom and leaves but a calm understanding with no ripple upon the water. It reflects the moon but is not disturbed by the moon. So would I have had my mind be, as a mirror that passes judgement not nor frets about reflections after they have gone.
In time there were moments-are moments ever on-when my mind is such and I have not two eyes but one and that one eye becomes the entirety of my face so that I have only seeing, and I have hearing, but I respond not.
I am become a mirror.
“There is neither coming nor going there-where the dancing is.”
Charlotte's words have the sadness of things which are left alone too long in darkened rooms.
“Yet there is dancing. Is there dancing? Come, you must change, take off your clothes. You are ill suited to them.”
“Do you remember once that he said I would become a servant if I did not bend to his will?”
“He?” I seek for shadows which are gone.
“It does not matter, Laura. Sometimes we remember and sometimes we do not.” The hurried words, the scurried words perform their dance of dried leaves.
She seated on the bed, I bend to strip her stockings, shoes, and suck her toes. They taste of cherries. “I wanted to do this on the train, but you are not the same. Not the same one-no, not the same.” She does not answer, languid in her pose.
“It is nice, I like it,” she says at last and wiggles her small toe in my mouth.
“No, you are spoiled. Get up and put on this chemise, this gown. There will be gentlemen there who will flirt with you. I was always happy when they did.”
Her bottom has a pertness that enchants, the cheeks tight with their secrecy that yet I sensed and knew had yielded oft. I hold her chin, she standing upright, and feel the groove between the bulbous half-moons.
“Do not bunk, Charlotte. Keep your eyes to the front, your legs straight and apart. Do it-you must!”
Obeying, she obeys. Her eyes are pebbles under water. I have seen myself so in mirrors in the past when first my fondlings front and back occurred. I stand to her, my belly to her hip, my left hand cups her pulsing nest, the right explores her netherness.
“Is it nice?” I ask as one whose interest is faint. She nods, her lips compressed. “Both together front and back, is nice?” She nods again, does well to speak not One must have obedience and immure oneself in silence save for the hissing of the nostrils' breath. A small puff escapes her mouth as my digits make their entrance, work and twirl. Now tighten both her lips as on the pleasure comes-but I desist. She should have the strap now for both her naughtiness and her obedience. Such is the paradox that one accepts.
Bend forward now, Laura, hands on your knees. Be otherwise still. Legs splayed!
I knew, expected, and received. A dozen first of swirling tawse and then the deep, warm entry of his tool-I yielded, rocking, whimpering, dust of the summer's present golden on my brow. Sometimes as he worked I would be urged forward inch by inch until my hands could rise and rest upon the burred edge of my cabinet Then to the peak-point would his crest enter, my quim full nesting on his comforter, his palm, and my eyes would dwell upon all unseeing. I would see into yesterday and the morrow, the swallows in their high flight soaring. To my eyes would come the veins of leaves, translucent green, myriad, and magnified.
I turn Charlotte's face to mine. She remains otherwise still My fingers return to tickle her a little.
“There were words. Do you remember the words, Charlotte? Speak-you may speak.”
“Words-there were blatherings of words, tongue to tongue, words, lips to words, lips to lips.”
“In the liquid spurtings, yes.” My eyes dance. “Are you going to come?” Again her nodding nods. Her knees quiver and bend a little, neck bends, face back. She is spring and summer to my whims.
“Laura, oh, Laura, let me, yes.”
“Yes, my dove, my wanton, come-come spurt a little as you ever did, sparkling of splashing rain upon his cock. Give me your tongue now, the way we were taught-in, out in out flick fast flick fast!”