“Hannah was thus. He forced her and spoiled her. He has not the delicacy of it.”
Her laugh becomes a cackle as I fight, though sleek his charger moves in to the game until his balls are nestled to my orb.
“No!”
“I will hold her legs.” Her mood is changed. Swift to the bed she comes and mounts my face. Her naked bottom to my visage pressed. I, splutter-smother, have my knees drawn back. “Be quick about it, Thomas-thread her fast!”
Her pubic hairs assail my mouth. I would not have her thus, twist tendon-straining neck and writhe, her laughter broken rain upon my ears.
“Are we not tempestuous? She was rarely taken thus save by her husband, Thomas-shaft her well. Draw out the stem, plunge in, and in again. He will take her thus upon her return. There will be no help for it. Ah, she has such strength in her legs! Would that they might clasp your waist or mine. How well she was tutored that she still resists a fucking thus. Are you coming-coming soon?”
“Soon, my love. She is as a sponge in the warm depths of the ocean, yet has the tightness of a clam. Draw her knees back higher that you may see my pestle at her mortar. Her cunt is sweet yet as a baby's mouth.”
Her own, sploshed down upon my mouth, I yield. He has a good poker on him yet I would fain have my own warrior's there. My aunt will close my eyes, subdue my squeals. Let him come, Laura, let him come. Work your bottom gently to his thrusts. So would I have her say, speak, whisper, mouth to mine, perspiring softly in some distant night. Not now, not now, the time is not yet come. The salt of her hot cunt breathes on my face, my nose rubbed to her tingling clitoris.
Then it is done, is done, is done-is not the same. He pumping grunts and groans, his sperm expels. I, flooded, sticky, ridden, left inert. The pair rise. I am dispensed with, done. The couples on the seashore laugh.
“You may come down when you wish-when you wish, come down.”
They dress-refurbish bodies in their garments drab.
“Do you not think he has a good cock, Laura, has he not?”
Neutral as far winter snow I rise-upon their going, dress with care. The pulsing between my thighs is intimate, not unpleasant. Perhaps I enjoy the aftermath of such better than the act thereof. I do not turn my mind to such things. I am as the paper upon which I never wrote. Words scurried to the edge, waited on the rim, observed the blankness with unending care. The last of the summer salads will be eaten now. Mother will fret with softened lettuce leaves and smile her vagueness to the world.
“There are clouds now-a gathering of hosts. Did you wish clouds?”
So the woman speaks upon my exit, my descent. The drawings, ready wrapped, come to my hands. Thomas is absent, skulking in his dreams.
“I do not mind. Should there be minding? Do not mind at all.”
I am beyond, upon the threshold, gone. If she could remember my name, if she could remember, she would call perhaps.
I shall read Keats and Shelley and lie passive in my bed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The lounge of the hotel is pleasant in the light. The walls of pink and gold damask reflect the muted glow of lamps that gleam through patterned glass of matching colours. A Turkish cigarette fumes from between my fingers. This, too, is a pleasantry I have of late adopted. It fills my mouth perhaps with Eastern promise and complements my Turkish eyes. If such I have. Most certainly they are large, inherited not from Mama but from my paternal grandmother's side. She was a rare beauty who would clothe herself sometimes, so my father said, in a sari, the better to please the gentlemen who came to admire her. I shall wear such perhaps, in my futureness, my semblance of becoming.
The folds of a sari are long, I am told. My grandmother would stand naked save for a bewitchingly small guepiere, or waist corset, while her maid performed a wide circle around her on and on, swathing her form neither tightly nor loosely, but to such perfection that the gauzy material of lilac-pink or pale, kingfisher blue-would seem to have been poured and moulded to her mistress. My grandmother's hips, being of a certain lushness in her young and middle years, accommodated the material superbly, so much so that she was persuaded to discard the corset and move naked within her light cocoon.
Once, at a ball-and she being apprised in confidence of what was to occur-a gentlemen while dancing with her so loosed the secret enclosures of her sari that, moving from her of a sudden, he was enabled to draw out the silk-threaded cotton and spin my grandmother all about like a top so that she bumped here and there, there and here, within a surrounding circle of admirers, ever spinning faster until she was denuded utterly and fell upon a rug where she lay prey to hands and mouths until her legs were spread and wanton she submitted to the cocks. Eight it was said she took, each one delighting her the more with pulsing and with throbbing until she was so thoroughly creamed that it was as if she had been lathered with a shaving brush.
Her bottom, it was said, was one of ultimate perfection, for she had the violin curves of slender waist and broadening hips, which gave to her nether cheeks a bulge of promise. Being of sultry nature, she adored to have her naked bottom whipped, to which purpose many fine silken cords were bound together and a rosewood handle attached thereto. After some thirty strokes of this admonitory sweetness she was fair to be mounted even as I was taught to be, receiving the pistons-yearling or mature- to pump and froth within her warm divide.
Her outward behaviour hinted not at licentiousness, but were she to be come upon naked or nearly so in her boudoir, she would surrender to the first tongue that insinuated itself between her lips and to the first fingertip that titillated her rosette. Of occasion she might rebel out of mischievousness in order to be spanked, firm and fleshy as she was to the palm, before being put over.
I had never struggled yet, unless my frettings of this selfsame day are to be counted as such. Perhaps it would add a piquancy to the matter. Being of obedience, I had never dared, had yielded my hips, my chasm, my crevice. Yet on the night of which I have spoken my aunt frotted me deliciously and prepared me for the cock without the strap. Such had been my first occasion thus.
The next day, at my fete-since I was to be wed on the morrow-she told me that I had conducted myself well, had offered up, and must be prepared to do so without the admonition of the strap. Thrice indeed that day was I put up to him. Upon the second bout I panted and allowed my bottom to urge back and forth, sucking the sperm of him while yet he groaned. Upon my being done with and my drawers replaced and finding myself alone again, she entered my room, observed my tousled bed and passed her tongue into my mouth. “How deeply he goes up you,” she had murmured. Her eyes were the colour of an autumn sky. There was peppermint upon her breath. Mama knocked at my door but was not answered. She was not of that moment but of other moments when simplicity was more apparent. Mama perhaps did not offer herself so. Such was my intuition. The purity of love between us was not the less thereby, though enfolded, creased, disguised, and crenelated by the mundane, as though in tissue wrapped.
“Do you not prefer a holder for your cigarette?”
A voice assails me. The newcomer, modishly attired in blue relieved by murmurings of white, seats herself at my table. She has lived, as I judge, a decade more than myself. Her hair, bunched high, extols the virtues of an oval face, lips full, nose aquiline, wide eyes. Her voice is mediocre, not displeasing. I am not disturbed-indeed, return her smile.
“Sometimes I use one, sometimes I do not. Have you been dancing?”
“You note the turbulence?” She laughs, her breasts rise, fall, are heavy, somnolent. “There are ever parades, fantasies, illusions, when the music sounds. Have you experienced such? I danced with a girl. Her form was clinging. She had been caressed, I believe, was unappeased, sought more. Her belly blended beautifully to mine. Do I bore you? Do you like such chatter? Have I not seen you on the Downs at Ascot? The jockeys dressed like butterflies- how pretty they look.”