I gather up my gown, am cold of eyes. The pattern is gone, dissembled, broken. Where there are lattices they should let in but fine clear bars of light. Where there are curtains the dust should dance. There is no ceremony here, but a coarseness. He is between being one man and another, and uncomfortable with both. He is neither of the past, present, nor future. Such quiet as there should be may be broken only by the creaking of old floorboards, the turning of a key in an oiled lock, the muted protests of the bed, the slapsmack of the leather to my yielding, the rustling of my gown removed. Such silences are autonomous. They contain all within themselves and have their own authority as do the silent roots of trees.
“You may leave.”
I have found myself, fingered the threads of my beginnings. Into my gown head-swooping of a sudden I am covered. His eyes yield disappointments for which I have no pity. Pity is for the poor, the desolate, the unknown, the boys in rags who sleep in barrels or under a tarpaulin freezing.
“Have champagne sent up to me.” I sweep into the drawing room.
“Yes, Miss.” His voice has returned to the London undergrowth again, made coarse. I seat myself upon a chaise longue and upon his opening of the door see my uncle and the woman standing there. The man bows to them, goes out. They enter.
“I have ordered champagne.” My look is neither bleak nor warm. The woman wears an uncertain smile of the shape of a discarded glove.
“Well, then.” My uncle looks all about as if assuring himself of his location. They seat themselves in chairs facing me-I the accuser or the accused. “Did you write? Write to your papa?”
“Of course.” I shade the words with grey. It is an appropriate colour for words, though not for women in their wear unless they be nondescript. Charcoal shades are pleasing. Mingled with black. My stockings have the sheen of rooks' wings. “Let us be silent now while I think what is to be done.”
“Of course.” His fingers twine as a man's never should unless he is a preacher or a mendicant. There is a weakness therein. Hands should be free and strong in their taking.
Lower the silence like a white sheet and listen. My eyes so instruct them. They obey. I wait for the knock, the champagne, the bubbling. It is my only concern at the moment. An interruption sought, discovered-an interlude such as when someone coughs in church or a girl is tumbled at a picnic while the others watch and the earth moves to the sudden bumping of her bottom. Thrust, withdraw, and thrust again. There are females who should wear drawers for ever and some who should never, though all should wash twice a day their linen or whatever lies beneath. So my mother taught and I believe.
The champagne arrives, is served. It is of indifferent quality, but it matters not. It is a pink shade, as the woman shyly observes, for she wishes to say something that will not offend. My uncle clears his throat. I apprehend speech and interrupt him while yet the words tumble down from mind to throat.
“You may have her. Take her into the bedroom. Leave the doors open. I shall watch. Then you may leave.”
“It was not expected. You cannot see the bed from here.”
“I shall come and go, uncle. You have no need to observe me. Leave the bed tidy and all about clean. Or you may have her on the floor. Here. Put the cushions down.”
The woman licks her lips. “He will be too quick. If you are watching all the time he will be too quick.”
“Yes?” I ask, look at them both, then drink.
He places down his glass and rises. “Well, get up then, get up, Maude, get up.”
“All right, yes.”
She rises as though her clothes are already discarded and her underwear dirty to my eyes.
“She might do it with you, too, afterwards, she might.”
They are all but her last words, words coherent, in her muttering. A haplessness is upon her. In the moment of their limp embracing his hands draw up her gown, pull at her drawers.
“Don't be too quick, don't be too,” she breathes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I had watched without watching as one watches the figures and faces of people in whom one has no interest, or as one watches water that runs along a gully by a pathway. Upon entering her his penis was as strong and rigid as the stub of a broom handle. Upon emerging it was oiled and flaccid. That was all. Unable to open her corsage he had wettened the indifferent cloth with his lips, seeking nipples that had not perhaps arisen or were too covered to be felt and known.
In his last seepings I had moved to the bedroom and closed the doors upon them. I heard not their going but lay twixt sleep and unsleeping. At two A.M. I awoke to fullness and thought I heard a faint crying as if from Charlotte. A bird fluttered its wings against the window and was gone. Perhaps she and the bird were one now. Perhaps. There is ever a becoming. We who rise from sleep are not those who softly went to sleep.
At breakfast a waiter twitters around me. I know my attractions, the deft turnings of my profiles, the light and shade upon my cheeks.
“Is Charlotte not here?” I throw the question-an unwanted penny.
“Beg pardon, Miss?” I repeat the name. He shakes his head, stills it, then shakes again. “No one of that name I've ever known here, Miss. It is French. Is she French?”
“Perhaps you do not know all who work here.”
“Was she upstairs? Upstairs was she?”
“Upstairs and gone-where the dancing…”
He is moving away before I finish. “I will get your bill Miss.”
I have ventured a world into a world again where light meets grey and enters into dark. My question has burned its wings even as my aunt said my questions would. The air of the breakfasting room enters my mouth and is hollow. Here where no kestrels hover and no doves descend. I rise and take my exit before he can bring the bill to my table. It is of no moment-the scratching of a pen to signify an act of eating, drinking, done, yet one must ever be aware of the mundane, its prickles waiting to emerge as claws. The hedgerows might have seized me often had I let them. Aware of their dark waiting, I would draw the hem of my skirt close in passing or hold a basket in my hand nearest to the branched enfoldings, ready to run, to run.
I expect my uncle to wait upon the steps outside, forlorn and solemn, but there is no one. The unwholesomeness of a waiting cab receives me as do the long, late streets of morning, a furtiveness of shops that hide their wares. A clerk in Drummond's Bank close by Trafalgar Square needs no more than my name. I intend to give him no more; it suffices. Father's early telegraphed reply has been received. He has been as bountiful in his spendings as ever. I draw three hundred pounds, all counted as slowly as though the clerk has saved them for me through long years of waiting and now in part regretted their departure. I shall walk in a park and feel the bark of trees-the rough greeting of their brown dust on my gloves. I am a mirror still-the eye of seeing.
I cross Pall Mall and to St. James's go. Father showed me all this. I remember. We sat beneath a tree and viewed the duckling pond, remarked the splashings and the sounds of water. In passing over the bridge I had dropped a posy upon the surface beneath that it might float into eternity, dying and renewed, reborn and gone.
There are people huddled here and scattered all about-a slow dying of the lost and the abandoned. The crumpled bonnets of the women with their faded bands, the dark and filthy skirts, the ragged boots.
“Here, you now, on with you-git on!”
A park keeper, a person of assumed importance, moves among them prodding with a stick. “Women and men together ain't allowed. I told you many times of it. Git along!”
They stir, swear, stir and slowly rise, as if animated bundles of clothing for the first time come alive.
“Bleedin' old sod, you are-always at us!”
“I got my regulations. Women is always separate from the men. There's plenty of grass here all abouts for you to lie separate. Separate is what you have to be, that's what it says.