In the leavings of love's desirings, lost and sticky, a paleness to the cheeks and yet a warmth.
“We must go now. Come, finish your dressing.” I am abrupt with her. It is in her wanting. Her hair brushed and crested, we depart. The corridor lies empty to our view.
“This way-I am sure it is this.” She takes my hand, here where the electric lights in their unhissing gleam. At the far end-the doors we pass gazing stolid upon us-we turn right and come upon a dead end. The wallpaper here is stained. One corner at the top is loose. It waits with the patient sadness of things to be replaced, put back, made whole again. If it could speak it would speak to me of this.
“There is music. Can you hear?” Her eyes have a momentary wildness of lilies.
There is no door, Charlotte.” A mewing of violins, the temperate tinkling of a piano, and a faint brouhaha of voices come to me. Reaching to the blank end of the wall, I trace a ridging where a door hides beneath.
“We cannot get in. I knew we would not, Laura.”
“Wait! If we tear the wallpaper-we may tear the wallpaper, may we not?”
“I can assist you, Madam?”
We turn as marionettes might turn. A gentleman of voice, he is yet dressed as a pageboy, though immaculate.
“There is the dancing.” My voice quavers though I wish it not to.
“Yes? It is not permitted for you though. I regret this, of course, deeply. Perhaps I may accompany you back to your room? Your uncle has returned, I believe.”
“My uncle? Charlotte, you must come, must come!”
“She should not be dressed so, Miss.” He has seen now the bareness of my wedding finger, for I have removed my ring. “There are insistencies and there are insistencies.” His hand dares take my elbow, leads me on.
“Charlotte!” I call back to her as one calls in one's mind to the writer of a letter of sadness but he has turned me at the corner. “She does not follow! Why does she not follow?”
“It is not permitted. Wait You understand that you must wait, ever wait?”
I would speak, but he has turned back. A murmuration of voices-a cry from Charlotte.
“No, not on my own! Not there-I cannot go in there alone! Laura!”
The opening of a door-the music louder. The door slammed. And gone, she is gone. I run back and the wall is blank, the wallpaper untouched. There is music still within, within.
One should know if one is lost, should one not?
“Come, I shall return you, Miss. To your suite, Miss.”
“Should one know if one is lost?” I ask, “Should one know?”
“Yours is the cry in the night that echoes often. What is your suite number, Miss?”
“You said my uncle waited there.”
“Some wait, some do not.”
“Charlotte!” My voice echoes and I turn my head to the infinity of the corridor behind me. With each step that we walk a light goes out behind us, extinguished in series until all behind is darkness.
“She is best where she is. She will soon enough get caught up in the music, Miss. You may want her back, of course. That is appreciated. If it is right and proper, she will come back. If you have the knowing of it then she will.”
“The knowing? This is my suite. Are you going to attend on me?”
“That it should be your wish, then I will. Time quivers and is gone so quickly. I wanted to see the form of you as soon as you appeared here. You have been trained to obedience, I believe, and that is the best for any young lady. I have no whims other than you have known. They jump a little at first, the young ladies, but soon enough they know where to land. They have their point of reference, so to speak-it is a guidance and an understanding. Such have I learned. I approach you with the homage due from a gentleman to a lady.”
“Of course.”
We are within. The lights appear to glitter more brightly than when I left but minutes ago. Or hours before. There is no sign of my uncle, no upturned hat, no gloves, no polished stick.
“He may come yet, after me.” The man appears to read my thoughts. He is tallish and a little saturnine. I judge him to be twice my age. He picks up from a table where I had placed them the small likenesses of Mama and Papa, then replaces them and unbuttons his tunic, the small brass buttons disappearing one by one through the holes.
“Sir James,” he says. It is a statement.
“You know my father?”
We are all known to one another in this world. It is the coming-upon which is sometimes a surprise. Prepare yourself as it was given to you to be prepared, in your middle way and not in the first days of your undoing.”
“Charlotte may be singing now. With the music. I wonder if she will be singing?”
I am not answered, but it does not matter. I put the question to myself, stroke it for a moment and then it is gone. Perhaps it evaporates or passes through the glass panes of the windows out over the dark city, floating, gone, dazzled by lights, bemused by dark.
The bedroom to which I move enhances me with space. I unfasten and discard my gown slowly, for there is the waiting. I lower my drawers and feel the sleekness of my thighs, the weavings of wonder of the threads that clothe my nether limbs. In a tilted standing mirror whose feet claw at the carpet, dumb, I survey myself with shyness yet with approbation. The girl on the train-I forget her name-said that my stockings glistened. It is so. My garters are rosetted, tight, the thigh-flesh swells above a little. A shade of plumpness in these regions, it is said, is beneficial. I would not have too much of it, not too little. The curves should be pleasing, complimentary, subtle in their outspringing where the indentations of the thighs yield to the bottom's bulbing. Hesitant as a doe, I gaze towards the doors, then use the perfume stick, between my cheeks, betwixt my thighs. I am ready unto his readiness. Am I to bend, hands flat upon my knees-or kneel?
“If your uncle were to come-were he to come-have there ever been two?”
The man asks in entering. His shirt is loose. I am minded to immaculacy but do not comment on it. I sift the question, examine the pieces. Being not of wanton mind, I know not its meaning at first.
“Two. Were there ever two?” he repeats.
I understand now. I believe I understand. I shall not answer him directly.
“There is neither knowing of it nor not knowing of it.”
My answer produces a chuckle from him. He appears pleased. “What a princess you are-how small and yet not. How angelic your eyes! How innocent you must have looked. I wish to see your eyes when I am putting you to it.”
You may not. It was never done. Only in the dark was it done and I was comforted.”
A finger in my bottom, tongue to tongue.
There should not be words, not here, not in this realm where quietness should obtain. I may reject him yet. I step back. His eyes become harsh.
“Show me!” he utters.
“No!” I am stubborn, yet beneath the will of his gazing I raise at last the lace-frilled hem of my white chemise. My bush shows, dark and springy upon my springlike flesh.
“Two would suit you. You are of an age for it now.”
I stand as Charlotte stood, my legs apart. “What?” My tone is the tone of an aristocrat.
He grins. I do not like grins. Smiles should be subtle, seeking a response. “You don't know of it, do you? Never thought of it, have you? One here”-he dips a forefinger beneath my slit-“and one here. Together.” His free hand fingers my bottom.
Murmurings of streams and flickerings of lightning. No. I would be then as grass buried in the mud by a careless heel, a heel that hunts the fox and courses hares.
“How indecent!”
I move back from him sharply. I resent. Let the wind carry him and be gone with him. His manner of vocabulary belies his accent. People should be of one piece and entire.
“All right, then. Let met put you to the strap. As was. As you liked it, ever did.”
“You may not, no.”