John Thomas & Lady Jane

progress of the soul, nor the Truth, nor the knowledge, nor the
Philosophers’ heaven. She was perfectly satisfied with Bexhill-on-Sea. All she
wanted was a good shag. He asked her to undress and do an encore of the Charleston.
    ‘Oh Clifford! Look at you. How dead
you are.’
    Clifford looked at himself and saw
how dead he was.
    ‘Can I put my clothes on? I’m getting
cold.’
    ‘Oh yes,’ he said. We know what a
woman is after. The thing is he couldn’t give it to her.
    She went to her room before Mrs
Bolton came. Why drag out the evening with him? At last she was in rebellion.
She stamped her foot on the floor, displacing the light fitting on the ceiling
below.
    A late day in March Mrs Bolton said,
‘Why don’t you take a walk through the woods, my lady, and look at the
daffodils?’
    ‘I give up, why don’t I take a walk
through the woods and look at the daffodils?’
    For a long time she thought of the
cottage. It was the vision of his cottage, the dark cottage on a dark, lonely
winter afternoon. That gave her the queer burn on her heart. Yes, she had
heart-burn, but she took Gaviscon for it.
    And she felt stronger. She could walk
better though she was still weak. The world was alive! ‘Thou hast conquered, O
pale Galilean!’ — But there was to be a resurrection. Clifford was waiting to
ride into heaven on his wheelchair. But there was to be a resurrection, the
earth, the animals and men. One day we would see elephants, horses and men
ascending into heaven. She wanted live things, animals, birds, stoats and
rabbits, hawks and linnets, deer, wolves, lambs, foxes. That was enough for the
time being.
    She went slowly across the park. Her
speed was about three miles per hour. It was a blowy day and she felt weak.
Several times she was blown over. But the sunshine blew in sometimes and the
wind blew up her dress and up her knickers, causing her acute agitation. She was
glad to flee into the woods, like a stricken thing, and hid in a bush to avoid
an attack from a centaur.
    Wild daffodils fluttering as the wind
pounded. Poor little things. Perhaps they liked it! Perhaps they remember the
war when the Zeppelins bombed England. Yes, perhaps they were bombed. Poor
little things. It was too much, she started to cry, poor little thing. She was
tired and for a while she only walked on one leg.
    The hut was in the hidden place among
the trees. It was here the pheasants were resting and when the time came,
Clifford would blast them from the sky. The brown dog came running towards her.
She held out her hand and the bastard bit it. She saw the keeper in his
shirt-sleeves bent over one of the chicken coops. She approached slowly, her limbs
melting as she did and they lay in pools on the ground. She felt so weak and
breathless. He looked at her and seeing her so thin and so lost-seeming,
something stirred in his bowels — it was the porridge he’d had for breakfast.
    ‘Shall yer sit i’ th’ hut a while?’
he asked.
    ‘I think I will.’
    He sat her on the stool facing the
door. ‘Would you like the door shut?’
    ‘No, I want an avenue of escape if
I’m attacked by a centaur.’
    He looked at her sideways because
that’s where she was. He went back to the coop he was repairing and strangled a
chicken for dinner.
    She sat with her back and her head to
the wall and closed her eyes — she was so tired. She went into a deep sleep and
fell off the stool. The man guarded the wood like a wild-cat against any threat
of a centaur. He lifted her back on the stool. She closed her eyes and all her
life went still within her, in a true quietness. If only the chickens would
stop crapping and clucking.
    He had never in all his life felt at
one with other people. The war had made it worse, people had tried to shoot
him. His nature was passionate and inflammable, sometimes his balls caught
fire. He was born solitary, but then everybody is born solitary. The sex desire
was strong in him. Every morning he had a hard-on and had to wait half an hour
until it went down before he could start work. He wanted to be left alone, only
that, but you couldn’t do it on your own. And now comes this woman seeking him.
Already he could feel the stirring in his bowels. The porridge was on the move
again. And the fusing of his knees. There was a searing sound and his knees
fused together, his legs could only walk from the knees down. He glanced at
her, poor thing, there was a touch of death in her face. Should he bury her?
Was she