I incline my head to his bowing. His eyes in following tilt up my skirt.
“You have visited here recently?” My uncle intends no rudeness, but curiosity.
“By no means. Over two years past. Papa brought me. It was a business occasion-an occasion for business. There was busyness.”
My uncle's hand once brushed my bottom. A donation of affection rather than one of lechery, as I then thought. It was seen, though my aunts issued no public admonishment. One does not do such things. There are rooms where those who err may be drawn aside, where even a humming of voices may not be heard.
We approach the desk. I arrange the despatch of a telegraph message to my father. My uncle listens gravely, escorts me up. I have worded my message in signalese, but his understanding is immediate. The need for explanations, were there to have been any, is deleted. We come upon a suite. The bed is a double one. Ornate mirrors guilded with cupids-a flourishing of plaster flowers on the ceiling-a redolence of thick and soundless carpets. All that surrounds comforts.
“Shall you stay also here, uncle?”
A maid enters and, upon permission, betakes herself behind the closed doors to the bedroom where he unpacks my trunks. Indolent in his ways, my uncle has the bearing of a captain rather than a major.
“It were perhaps best, Laura. Some wine before you change?”
His eyes work all about me, remarking with silent curiosity the rather pedestrian nature of my dress. I have walked the Brighton seafront. I am known. I take to a chair rather than a chaise longue, though his eyes would guide my feet hither. My fingers shape the rolling of the arms, voluptuous. A gold, bunched semblance of a fist is at the termination of each arm. I perceive no menace in this. Light falls upon them. We are not alone.
“I am also upon business, Laura.”
“Very well. If you are.”
Meanings are exchanged, gathered inwards, dissected, examined. We speak in parables since parables become us here. Private languages have been learned, the whisperings in the long grass and the murmurations in the conservatory, the fingering of flowers while the lips are seen to move through glass-wild runnings of streams and the walks through the orchards. I do not propose, however, to convey to him the inner core of my knowings, my Chinese box of secrets. The past withers not in the warm palm of my hand, yet as to this day, this night I know my unfulfilments. Ejaculate, ejaculate, ejaculate-the word so repeated comes to my inner ears as the wheels of the train while my tongue assuaged the whimperings of Jenny. I shall go no more among the habitations of the poor. My purse is emptier, as is my inner need.
“We shall eat here or in the restaurant?” My uncle probes, is tentative.
“As I recall the food was less than hot when trundled up.”
“The restaurant will suffice. I confess to you that I had intended to have another companion.”
“That you may. She waits upon your coming?” I have no need to guess at the gender of his intended. My uncle nods and gazes at me with the anxiety of a dog awaiting a half-offered tidbit. “Bring her.” I bear an imperative in my tone. “Perhaps she may make a companion for us both. I cannot be abandoned.”
How intricate and yet how futile is speech-the exchanging of tokens. As much can be read in the eyes as what is said. He would have at my secrets, which I suspect in his mind are the condiments of his imagination. Nothing was ever known, seen, flourished, or conveyed. Perhaps my lips smile too often in rooms such as these, yet I knew them not to before. Rather have I taken on expressions as one changes hats. I appear at the moment to be wearing one rather more catching to the eye than I had intended, for my uncle's eyes light up. Arrangements are made as to how he might leave me for the nonce and then return.
Arrangements have ever been among my favourite occupations. Without them is no ceremony, though at times they may be understood rather than stated. Even so, fences must be erected at agreed distances, enclosures made, inspections overtly taken, the perimeters and parameters established, the exits known, though only to the immediate participants and not all. Such makes for comfort, directions, certitude. The dance may then proceed, weak though the pipes may be and soft the drums.
With my uncle's going, I recall the presence of the maid. He had forgotten her-not I. The bedroom door opens like a statement of intent, and there she stands and waits.
“I wanted to know if everything was hung all right and proper, Miss, and if you wished me to help you dress.”
“There is wine untouched in the other room. Bring it to me. You may have a glass.”
“I'm not allowed, Miss. Not with guests. Not in the rooms at all.”
“I have forbidden it? If I have not, then you may.”
I watch her in her walk, the easy-flowing. Some far-faint calling of voices from a garden comes to my ears. There is something I remember about her and yet not. I would ask. Her eyes have the clarity of polished glass. I perceive no ghosts in them. Patting the bed, I bring her to sit with me. The wine runs cool upon our tongues.
“Give me a little from your mouth. It is called French drinking-did you know?”
Her breath is peppermint, overlaid now with a finer tang of wine. “Yes, I believe that I do. Once I did. When was it? Oh, I saw you and remembered and grew afraid of the remembering. When was it? Perhaps we were not always here. Were we always?”
“Do it again. With the wine. Give me your tongue in the giving. Shall we remember? You were not called by a common name. What is your name?”
“Charlotte. I had a sense of it that there would be a coming tonight. I knew your name without the telling of it. You were always called Laura, though once I think you were called Laurette.”
“Tell me of that, Charlotte. I don't remember.” Our tongues lick-touch through pools of wine.
“I don't remember, I don't. Oh, if they should seek me now-come seek me now.” She starts up from my arms, falls back. Her legs dangle over the edge of the bed. I lean over her. She has not the coarseness of Jenny. There are finer strands within. I kiss her brow, the tip of her nose. She laughs: “You always did that.”
“You were ever called Charlotte. I recall that now. When butterflies were netted in the garden you cried and tried to touch their fluttering wings. When…no, I cant…it has gone again.”
“If you hide me I can stay. Will you hide me? I always did as you told me, I know that, I do. You were ever the mistress in our ways. I used to hide in a cupboard and watch. The door of the cupboard creaked. It was an old house. They said once it was to be pulled down.”
“Watch? What did you watch? Tell me what you watched.”
“Only the first time you did it with him, I think. I watched then. No-there was a second time. It comes and goes in the remembering.”
“Who? Who did I do it with?” Far calling of curlews and a sky by Turner, the dying summers hid by boys amid first fallings of the leaves. “You know the gentleman I am with now? Do you? Now-here now-here?”
“No. It was others then. Others. I knew your name in my remembrances again today. A man passed me in the corridor below. I saw his eyes and there were dead butterflies in them.”
She begins to cry. I kiss the pearling of her tears. A quiver-shudder, breasts to breasts upon the high bed lying. The glasses, unregarded, roll about. Wet lips to lips. Our salivas mingle.
“Yes, it was like this, like this sometimes, Charlotte. Show me your legs. How lovely they used to look, drawn back and open.”
“You made me-you always made me.”
She pouts, draws high her skirt as I roll from her. Garters pink enclasp her thighs. They have a sad and tawdry look, but are clean. I bend upon her and kiss the inner milkiness where her thigh flesh curves. More scents of yesterdays invade my nostrils. Image and faces melt together. A man unseen, unknown, invisible, pushes down his blue plush breeches in waiting-in waiting for the parting of our thighs. His penis quivers in the waiting. Charlotte clutches me. Her voice now: “Do it to me later, Laura, if you hide me.”