“Sit upon your sins. It is proper so to conceal them.” Thus my paternal aunt in joking once.
Father departed, stern of eyes. The barrel of his gun drooped to the ground.
My thoughts were vandals, rogues, and vagabonds.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I shall have ecstasies and know fulfilments. Burnished by desire in the dark, he will come upon me. I shall be lewd in my expressions, make play with my thighs about his own. There shall be laughter in the house-the doors shall be left open. Kate-a housemaid I remember-will set her cap straight, her white cap that was never white, and ask, “Oh lawks, what are you about, Miss?”
Perhaps she will say it even at the streaming of his sperm, white pulsing-on. I shall push him from me fretfully and have her brought to lick me, leaving him forlorn, his penis dripping. There may be such days; there may be not. Shall I seek fulfilment now in words or deeds? My tongue is well turned for the former, were it to be loosed, let loose, allowed to run about the house. In The Lives of Gallant Ladies they did frot, bush to bush, and avid were their tongues. I twist in my bed now in recalling such. They are all gone down, gone down, and gone to dust. O the sad people in their going. Do they go?
“They are emergent ever,” father said when once I asked him, “from death to life we come, and life to death. The coin spins endlessly. Who shall say which then is this side, that-who then shall say?”
“Death is done with,” I heard a man once declare. He ruffled his sleeves as he spoke. I read it as a nervous gesture, expression of being, proof of existence. Mama, being within his hearing, was shocked, spoke of him as irreverent. He had a reputation as a cynic and one who moved among artists. It was not to be thought therefore that he could think otherwise, my mother said, having interpreted his remark as I thought wrongly, for I thought he intended to convey that death itself did not exist. Upon my asking him this, he frowned as though I were too young to have such questions garlanded on my brow.
“There is an end to all things-such is death,” he replied and moved on to approach my cousin, Celia, who was known to have a fondness for bohemians. I would have known what he said to her, for there was laughter, but no scorning arrows of it coursed across my cheeks. Her laughter was for the moment, the entertaining of his desire. There is death in such moments, yet the substance remains. Death is perhaps the tapestry and we the threads.
I become too solemn upon such matters. Come, fuck me, one and all, come fuck. No, I must not speak thus. Ever being demure I lowered my drawers always slowly. “Come, darling, come.” He said that but once, fingering my fur, his entry full made deep between my cheeks, my O that waited to receive. Upon that moment with the quickening of his words, the utterance of voice, all was a-pace, smacked bottom to his belly thrust. There was also-as if-yes-underwater slowness sometimes, yes. Slow, quick-quick, slow, as in a foxtrot.
“Come, love, come.” That was the best of it, the breaking of the silence quick. I sprinkled, came, knew soundless my desires, damp in my drawers as then I drew them up, was done with, done, yet ever ready to renew. Open and yet closed, I trod, wanton, at evenings in dark corridors-but no, I was not so, was not. That was Charlotte perhaps. She ever tried to vie with me, I know, was the sly one-I the petulant, the betrayed.
Comings are ever a rebirth or a continuation of that which was before, or both. Upon the serving of breakfast in my boudoir, my Uncle Paul attends upon me, his expression willing to convey both humility and hope. His glance ventures frequently into the vent of my nightgown. Intimations of boredom bring me to converse with him in a manner brighter and less brittle than heretofore.
He is to Epsom, it appears, and has a carriage waiting upon the journey. We are to Epsom if I bend to his request, most humbly put, decorated as is an inlaid casket.
“Is your companion to come? You give me little enough time to prepare for such an outing.”
“No, my dear, I thought you not too taken with her. I am fortunate to find you risen so early. Should we leave within the hour then all will be well.”
“We shall venture alone then to the racing? I prefer that.”
My reasons are not as he thinks. No mood for small talk with unknowns is upon me. He may wait downstairs. Such shall be his penance. Urgent to agree, he rises from a chair by my bed, kisses my hand, and fain would suck my nipples were I to offer them even more freely than their present peeping-up allows. I ring for a maid. Her manner of bathing me pleases. Frequently she passes the warm sponge beneath my bottom and holds it there, squirting warm water as one waters indoor plants.
“Do you like attending upon ladies?”
“The young ones like you, Miss, more of my own age-not so much the older ones. They are more fussy- they stand less still.”
“Do I stand still enough? Replenish the sponge. Squeeze it more.”
“You stand nice, Miss, legs apart, knees bent a little. It makes it easier, you see.”
A hint of breathlessness is in her tone. She can be scarce more than twenty. Her bubbles promise richness and her thighs delight. I would reverse our roles and bathe her if I could. If we kissed, pressing shells to one another's ears, we would hear the sea. The water trickles down my legs, becoming lukewarm at my ankles.-
“What is your name?” I turn carefully in the bath to face her, then recompose my posture. My bush sparkles with the diamonds of her laving.
“Lucy, Miss. Shall you return this evening and I shall bathe you again?”
“Would you like that? Your finger escapes the sponge at moments. Do you mean it to?”
“I mean no impertinence by it, Miss, but you feel so nice. I am put out of home, you see, live in rooms, so would be glad to attend upon you after my other duties.”
“I shall rest my hands on your shoulders. Do you mind the wet? Bring a young man with you. Do you have a young man?”
“Yes, Miss, but he is not so lettered or well mannered. I has another gentleman, a toff, who comes occasionally. I met him at the Alhambra; he is a fair dancer, too.”
“A toff? You mean he is of another social class than yourself? Be not demeaning of yourself in your ways, Lucy, for men are men and women are women. If you can finger well, as well you finger, are soft of eyes and pretty with words, there need be no accounting of difference. Does he pay you for your compliances? Is he well furnished? Come, dry me. I am in a mood for the rub of the towel. Use a warm, dry one between my legs.”
“You are a fair devil, Miss, if I dare say so. There comes several up from the country whom I have furnished with gentlemen friends in their boudoirs. The gentlemen come into the front of the hotel, you see, and I from the back, and so I come up quietly and make the introductions.”
“For which you are paid by both, no doubt, you witch. Such services should be arranged. I have no doubt of it. We shall, however, reverse our roles. I will put you to the gentleman and watch your bout. Thereafter you will both leave and you must apprise him of such before his entrance. I wish him not to be unclothed. He will lower his trousers, you your drawers, if such you wear. He will approach you from the rear. All shall be silent. Let no more be said on it until you are put up. Nine-thirty tonight will suffice.”
“As you wish Miss. I never had anyone watch me before.”
“You may keep your eyes closed. The bedroom will be in darkness. The light from the drawing room shall illumine all that needs be seen. You may dress me now-the small corset, a chemise, drawers, and gown will suffice. Be sure that my stockings are drawn up taut.”
I have concluded with the mundane. It may be that I shall have no taste for the matter when the time comes. Perhaps they have done it before me already and I am at the end rather than the beginning. Father returned once from horse racing, to which he had been inveigled by a friend, looking, as I thought, most profound. Sitting deep in thought as he did and I asking him upon what his mind was fixed for I feared that he had gambled overmuch and lost, he said, “As I watched one race succeeding the other, I became aware that only one horse could succeed in each contest. The thought crossed my mind as a truism, but when I placed it, as it were, a little to one side and looked beneath I realised that since no horse could win save the horse that won, then in every sense the horse had already won before the race had started.”