“Put out your tongue now, Hannah, put it out. Into my mouth. O sweet your darling mouth, suck on my tongue.”
She burbles, twists, rebellions are put down. Legs jerk, a mist of perspiration here and there as, cupped, her quim soft pulses on my palm and Jane her urgent, eager digit works. So we are come now to the matter of the moment-moment of the matter.
“Hannah-relax, relax, relax.”
“I did not want to, do not want! Ah-ooh, her finger! Take it out!”
“You will take bigger by far again and soon-maybe on the morrow. If you are good I will unfold the time, delay the action, twist the hands of clocks, scatter rose leaves as we ofttimes did and seek Mama as chaperone. Shall it then be so?”
“Ah yes, if you but will, but will! Delay the moment and belay desire. Turn his desire about-ah! oooh!”
“She is coming, Jane. Her cunny pulses eager on my palm as ever then it did, his pestle moving slow between her cheeks as once it did 'twixt yours.”
“Mmmm! Yes! I was not, though, as she, not she. He laid himself between my thighs and came upon my belly white. I did not kick my legs as she, not when I felt his knob between my lips. Pushed gently in, I felt my titties swell. His pumpkin-pounder threshed me all the night- gurgles and moans of lust he came and came.”
“The moments are ever too brief, yet all moments are eternal moments and so are linked in chains.”
I philosophise so even as Hannah spurts. A trickle-tingle on my moving hand. My palm is smeared, oiled with her muchness, hapless as it is. Coagulation of desires, coagulation of tongues. Reaching my face over Hannah's shoulder, I bring Jane's mouth to mine. Small is her mouth and quickly sleeks her tongue. My breasts to Hannah's squashed, our nipples rub. I will have them put to perfect lathers in their time, soaped shall be their quims with sperm and oiled their cheeks. Workings of mystery are here, yet all when shredded of enclosing thoughts are but simplicity.
“You will obey now, Hannah!”
“Oh, God, Ma-Ma, dear heavens, save me!”
“What a mischief she made of it and what a tittle-tattle would have been!”
So Jane laughs while Hannah sighs, rolls, falls inert. Her belly quivers. In her comings. I stroke it gently and would have it still. He came not between her thighs, so I believe. Her bottom-poking was her punishment for coyness all too often shown. Mine was my benediction.
“Change the time, change the time.”
Her voice is but a sigh of scuttling leaves, the summer flashing of the lightning, seen, not felt.
“Shush, Hannah, let me stroke you there. There-is that not soft and gentle-nice? Who was the maid?” A shadow quick has crossed my mind. “I have forgotten who, would seek her name.”
“Would seek her name? Charlotte! You know of her, have spoken of her dancing here. Does she not dance here still? She-oh she-tongue in my mouth while once he held my wrists, laughing, and stood behind me.”
“You were to learn to kiss, silly-ever pouting of cunny-lips in summer to receive.”
“He would not put it there.” She mumbles to my mouth. “Ever he said he would not put it there. Charlotte then put my hand to him. I cried out and escaped.”
“Not far, not far. You fell upon the grass. Up with your skirt and you were held. What a fluster they were upon you-and Mama to market gone! Turned over, you were birched with seized-up twigs and cried for it.”
“Did not, did not! Charlotte knelt up and held me round the waist. He, pressing on my calves, belaboured me until my poor cheeks burned as fire. All were in league against me-all!”
The scene comes clear-as water when it stills reveals reflections to the seeing eyes.
“Then you were brought within and while the ladies watched were put to him.”
“On the chaise-longue and, yes, you held me-oh! Turn back the time, undo then his desiring!”
“Pouf! What a fuss you made of it! Were your cheeks not fuller, richer, plumper from his sperm? Admired, you moved your hips by day, by dusk, made fingers quiver, put the pricks a-tingle. Mama-remarking that your bustle seemed fuller-you but smiled.”
“Ho! That was after-this is now before. I do not have to do it all again, do not!”
“Sleep, my love, and let your dreams revise your errant thoughts. Jane, come upon me, bring your belly warm to mine. Hold well your legs apart.”
Hannah snuffles, sighs, and rolls apart. Not part of us, she lies apart.
“It is all true. Is it not all true? I shall be younger now, perhaps shall giggle.”
So Jane, warm to my warmth, her soundings breaths. We are come upon a mystery, yet must still our minds. In this Papa was right, for now within my mind no Time does move.
“Perhaps you did. Such sounds could be enchanting. Devils of enchantment come disguised as angels.”
“And angels come disguised as devils of enchantment.”
Our cunnies rub. My eyes become her eyes, my hands her hands. We are lost now under the snow of it, white-heat delirium.
Be lost with me, be lost with me, be lost.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Father said once that one should be as wood or stone, regarded and yet not, unregarding and yet not.
“You sermonise but do not know the lesson,” my aunt said to him, though there were threads of laughter in her voice for sometimes she chided him upon his speakings and then Papa would confess such failures of communication as he felt accountable for, adding-perhaps with a touch of awkwardness in his voice-that one should communicate without words. That it is easy to do so by smiles or frowns or noddings of the head, I understood, but could no further immerse myself in what he intended and so, as often, let it slide from my mind, though like the morning journey of a snail it left a glittering upon my thoughts, a small ground radiance of belief in his deep understandings.
At the coming of morning, the groom stands motionless outside. I view him in my passing through the foyer where the swing doors stand and London growls its wakening to the world.
Breakfast is taken amid a twittering of thoughts, a whiteness of linen, sparklings of china and gleamings of silver. One has an attachment to such things. Hannah and Jane fidget, are come upon apprehensions.
“We have no baggage. Mama might think it strange that we have no baggage,” Jane avers.
She is younger now than in the night, the effervescence of her belly-heat diminished.
“It is of no matter, Jane. One's possessions are one's possessions. They may not be taken without receipts, notes, documentations. There are laws upon such matters, surely.”
“You were ever exact, seeking attitudes upon such matters, Laura.”
“Does it not become one so to be, Hannah? Let us not dally overlong. Once over the Thames, the world will come clearer to us. The sky is higher there.”
The groom touches his hat upon our appearance-a gesture mechanical and born of servitude. His clothes are old yet new yet ageless, like his face. I have forgotten his name. Hannah reminds me that it is Jervis. The name sounds as his attire looks. In our passage we take the same route that I took with my uncle to Epsom. The girl who stood with a pail beyond a cottage door regards me yet again. Her simple dress is unchanged. She seeks neither retreat nor advancement nor adventure but ever waits. I wave to her. She turns her back on me. We have quarrelled once perhaps and I am left still unforgiven. I must come upon her again on my return, seek explanations, explications, simplicities of understanding.
We are too hot-or with the windows down-become dusty. Travel by carriage is ever so. I do not ask about trains. In all truth I have forgotten the route. It may come clear to me upon seeing the bridge that was spoken of with Charlotte, yet I think the bridge was before, before this time and in another time.
In a low-ceilinged tavern at mid-morning Hannah laughs a difficult laugh and rubs her boots upon the sawdust floor.