“Ah! Laura, no!”
“Be quiet! Were you not ever taught? What of the night amid the crumpled sheets?”
Tell mother not! Oh yes, a little more!”
Upon my hands her bumptious bottom moves, full fleshed and firm. I draw the cheeks apart and hold them cruelly so as dips my tongue and flashes fast within, without, ever to tease and please and draw her on. “I cant!”-“You can! You must, you shall! Oh spill-spill now upon my tongue. Jog with the wheels upon the rails, my love, and come. Ah yes! Now onward spurt! Writhe, wriggle, writhe!”
Her panting's done. My lips are smeared-some saltiness of flavour that I know. Fast falling on her then I lick her lips, intrude my tongue, and force her thus to suck while gurgling hard she presses fast against me then falls faint.
I leave her thus in her abandonment. Her eyes have a glazed look. The train ripples, rocks, I rise and stare beyond the window where the heavy cows attend the pastures. I have done with her, turn and command her smartly to pull up her drawers. She must know me as mistress, perhaps, or as saviour. I do not know. Her bonnet is fallen and awry. I espy the name of the maker within: an emporium in Regent Street. Failing in their crispness, the feathers lie too pressed.
“You must take more care of yourself,” I observe, “Where are we going?”
“Oh, what a question!” She is upright, composed, all at one with herself, her skirts pushed down. Her eyes regard my ankles with a certain jealousy. “What is about I do not know, for you never tell me. There will be much ado about it tonight. It is Friday. Have you forgotten? He always expects you to be there on a Friday.”
My nose wrinkles. I do not care overmuch for fish, except of the most delicate, white variety with a sauce well composed by a knowing cook. Wine and herbs. Tall summer days and squat winter ones, a sparkling of Moselle, a caressing of my thighs beneath the table, the twittering of my aunts.
“Come, let me do it to you, too, Laura.” Her voice uncertain as a bird that spies a cat.
“Certainly not-how dirty you are. I have not washed yet. Tell me about your life. What have been your wanderings?”
“Really, Laura, you are not of us-I have always said so. Mother has bought you a fine brown dress that you will have to wear tonight. Your black stockings will not go with it at all. What a shine they have-did you pay much for them? He will want you to wear brown ones, I know he will.”
“All this is known, is it not?”
I wave my hand airily. The names of small stations flash past. One has never known them and yet has forgotten them, savoured for the merits of their spellings and pronunciations in books unread. Such books lay often about my father's house. I knew no one to read them, but felt not sad for them for they were at peace in their closedness. They would be obedient and would open to the touch, even as I. When dust lay upon the leather bindings it were best conserved there for it gave a pleasant odour to them, the scents of yesterdays that are known and not foreign to one's mind. When the feathers of tree sparrows lay stray upon the grass, I knew that they had gone forever. Milk curdled and strawberries uneaten grew darker and mushy, but the veined stem rose ever in its seeking, quivering upon the moment of entry to loose the sap between my yielded cheeks.
“We are getting out at London Bridge and shall take the bus,” I heard. “Oh, but there is too much luggage, Laura, is there not?”
She would placate me with the softness of her look. I affect not to notice it.
“We shall take a cab, you stupid. Have you no money? Does he not attend to you in this respect? You cannot always use mine.”
“I have a sovereign still. It will suffice. You've never been mean before. Why are you mean? You know he never gives me nothing-it's always you he treats. Mother gets real jealous of it sometimes.”
“I am aware,” I say coldly. My words are a tiny whip across her mouth. Her expression crumples. There is an oddness of uncertainty about her, yet her figure is lithe and well formed, her breasts fulsome and her breath sweet.
We proceed in such silences and brief flutterings of words as befall us. One curiosity alone seizes me.
“Was I always called Laura?” I ask.
“Of course. What a question! How you do question your questions, Laura. You were baptised at St. Anthony's, the same as me except that you were first by near on twenty months. Mother has it written down in her Bible as well you know. I don't know what she's going to say that you've been away all this time. I hope you didn't get larky with anyone. She'll soon find out. You'll be put upstairs, you will, and your trunks put in the attic.”
“Yes, upstairs,” I murmur vaguely for a vagueness comes upon me. I lean my head back at the approach of the city. “I must have a telegraph message conveyed to father.” I know she has heard for a smile seeps into her mouth succeeded by a trilling of laughter.
“You will have your little joke, Laura. What will he do with a telegram? Have your little joke all right for it won't last too long and well you know it. I hope you won't be improper at table, though. It has to wait for afterwards. Digest your food first properly, mother always says, and don't rush around the rooms.”
“No, of course.”
I resent the reprimand and yet absorb it. Evidently it is a strange house. I envisage it tall and thin, with the rooms perhaps smaller than the people. Need I levity or sombre-ness? It will be decided for me, no doubt. I prefer decisions to be unfolded swiftly and neatly like napkins. “I will be elegantly treated I trust?” The words spill from my tongue without my having pre-arranged them in my mind.
“No doubt you will, Laura, since you are the only one who gets anything out of him. Shall we get up now? We are coming into London Bridge.”
“Of course.” How strange that she should ask me whether we might get up. Perhaps it is because I am in my majority and she has not yet quite attained hers. Such requests become her well. I am more pleased with her. How vast the station and the clawing of the platforms. The smokiness affects me a little. I shall lower my veil. I have Turkish eyes, father said. A man passing observes them, as it seems, takes a step towards me and is gone. They are always after me with their heavy, expectant penises.
Do your balls tingle when you put it in? Oh do it to me again-can you?
Did I speak thus? No, there was ever a quiet panting- escaping of my breath through my nostrils, my breasts at pillage, lifted from my chemise, the nipples electric. Speech was almost always forbidden. When I descended again to the company of my aunts I had to learn to uncoil my tongue again. At Leadenhall Street where the traffic coagulates and the cabs and carts press among the horse buses, the trunks rattling and thumping on the roof, I glance in my glances and to my surprise-faint though still surprise-see the face of my Uncle Paul peering at me from the dust-streaked window of a neighbouring carriage. His aspect is one of greater astonishment than my own. We move on. He gesticulates to his cabbie. Am I to be followed?
I endeavour to twist in my seat but can see nothing- am chided for ruffling my dress. The first droopings of dusk spin their encroaching cobwebs about us. I remark this to her, being pleased with the thought.
“Oh, you were always the poetic one, Laura.”
It is a little sneer in all effect. My aunts would not have sneered. Perhaps my mother might have understood or not. Father told me ever to write such thoughts down in my diaries, which had a little clasp and a lock to them for which I was ever grateful. If my mother had found them she would not have dared open them but would have gazed in wonderment at them for a moment and then put them back, counting them as books.
The streets grow narrower, laying distances behind us, the surfaces of the roads unrolling. As a child I always believed that roads and lanes were laid so, being put away at night, though I knew not where. It is best not to think of “where” sometimes. There is an otherness, surely, into which all things go when they are quiet and utterly alone.