John Thomas & Lady Jane

had
buried the cat. The dog had dug it up and was dragging it down the path down
the hill.
    It was very soothing to sit and hear
Clifford reading aloud, ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great
fall.’ His voice was cultured, he read well and was wearing a schoolboy cap.
Clifford wanted to send a message to the gamekeeper — logs for the winter.
    Constance needed a walk. Among the trees was depth within
depth of untouched silence, as in an old, yet virgin forest — the only virgin
in the area.
    When she came to the gamekeeper’s
cottage there was no one there. Rubbish, she was there. Constance knocked — no one came. She knocked again, she peeped through the window, she
knocked again but no one came, she knocked again, still nobody came. There were
no people, only one who was knocking at the door. She went tippy-toe around the
cottage, happily knocking as she went. She was sure that there was nobody.
    Then suddenly into a little gateway
she stopped as if she had been shot. There was Soames washing himself. She
knocked on him but he did not answer. He wasn’t in. He had stripped to the
waist, his awful velveteen breeches sagged low on his hips. And he was ducking
his head repeatedly into the warm soapy water, rubbing his hands over his brown
hair and over the reddened back of his neck.
    Constance knocked on him again but he did not answer. The
white torso of the man seemed so beautiful to her. Oh why oh why didn’t he
lower his trousers? The white, firm, divine body with its silky ripple and
white arch of life, as it bent over the water. She couldn’t help it. In all the
world of gods she had got the hots for him. The silky firm skin of the man’s
body glistened broad on the dull afternoon. Oh why didn’t he lower his
trousers? Never mind who he was, never mind what he was, she had seen beauty
and beauty alive. Oh fire in the fanny. That body smelling of Sunlight soap was
of the world of the gods, cleaving through the gloom like a revelation. She
felt again there was god on earth, but why, oh why, didn’t he lower his
trousers?
    A great soothing came over her heart
along with the feeling of worship. A sudden sense of pure Sunlight soap beauty,
beauty that was active and alive, and shooting cats had put worship in her
heart again. It was free-fall fanny! Not that she worshipped the man or his
body but worship had come to her because she had seen a pure loveliness that was
alive and that had touched the quick in her. Fanning the flame came the smell
of burning pubic hair. It was as if she had touched god and had been restored
to life. The broad, gleaming whiteness. Perhaps if she hurried back he would
have lowered his trousers.
    That he was a serial cat murderer did
not matter any more. She knew he was only a gamekeeper, that did not matter. He
did not own his own body. That was owned by the Bradford & Bingley.
Were all men like that? Had Clifford been like that? No, Clifford would never
stoop to wash in hot soapy water with Sunlight soap, with his trousers round
his waist. No, Clifford had been handsome and well made but there had been
something clayey or artificial in his body. No, not that silky quick shimmer
and power, the real god-beauty that has no clay, no dross! Clifford had never
been like that. There had always been some deadness in his flesh. A chiropodist
had seen to that.
    She stood on the threshold of the
cottage. She knocked and then she heard him coming down the stairs. When he
opened the door she was there on the threshold and he still had his trousers
up. He stood there in a clean shirt. He had on a Sunday necktie of shot silk.
He had shot it himself in the woods. Did he really have that white, curving
lovely body she had seen? No, she had imagined it. He was what his face was: an
ugly bastard.
    ‘Lord Chatterley wanted some logs for
the winter.’
    ‘All right, my lady! I’ll see to all
the things that Sir Clifford wants.’ Like legs he thought.
    She felt him looking after her, as
she departed. He would be thinking something stupid and mean she thought. He
wasn’t, he was thinking he would like to give her one. The hidden loveliness of
his body, even if it were there under the flannelette shirt, was not his. No,
it belonged to the Bradford & Bingley and the beautiful body of a man
who was going away from them. He had given her such pleasure, she got pleasure
out of Beethoven Symphonies and from some pictures of the site of Florence in the sunshine or Doris in the