John Thomas & Lady Jane

body
touching her breasts that hung inside her dress — dirty little devil.
    ‘Shall yer come?’ he asked.
    She clung to his warm, relaxed,
uncertain hand, the last uncertain hand he’d had was a ‘Pontoon’ in the war.
    He drew her to him and she hid her
face against him, which was what she wanted because he was an ugly bugger. It
was too late now — it’s started.
    ‘Come to th’ hut,’ he said in a low
voice.
    ‘Oh no,’ she said.
    ‘Oh yes,’ he replied.
    She turned submissively, he stooped
and shut the coop, swept up the chicken shit, and followed her. Romance was in
the air. In the hut she sat down weakly on the stool. Again she could see right
up his nose. He followed her and closed the door so that it was almost dark.
Then he turned to her, feeling for her body.
    ‘Oh no,’ she said.
    He felt with blind, overwhelming
instinct the slope of her loins which were on the back and she submitted in a
kind of sleep. He had to wake her up to keep her going. The groping softly,
helplessly desirous caress of his hand on her body made her pass into a second
consciousness, like sleep.
    ‘Here, wake up,’ he said. ‘Otherwise
you won’t know it’s t’appened.’
    He held her with one hand and with
the other threw down an old army blanket from the shelf.
    ‘You can lie your head on the
blanket,’ he said.
    One of the chickens had laid an egg
and was clucking. Romance was in the air.
    Obediently she lay with her head on
the old army blanket. She felt him slowly, softly, gently but with queer blind
clumsiness fumbling at her clothes.
    ‘Oh no,’ she said, the quiver of
rapture like a flame as he touched the soft naked in-slope of her thighs. ‘Oh
no, no, no,’ she said.
    The dog had started to circle them,
barking at them. Again he touched the soft slope of her thighs. It was so long
since she had done it, her fanny was dead. The dog went on barking. She was not
aware of the infinite peace of the entry of his body into hers; that was for
the man. Little did she know it was also for her. She was still in a kind of
sleep.
    ‘Oh no,’ she moaned while he backed
away, the sweat pouring off him, the activity and the orgasm was his. That’s
it, blame the poor bugger for doing it.
    It was quite dark when he stopped.
‘Oh,’ she moaned and he started banging away again.
    Finally, when it was dark, he stopped
and tried to help her adjust her clothing. And when he opened the door of the
hut they saw through the oak-trees the thin moon shining with extraordinary
brilliance through the holes in his underpants.
    ‘Ah well!’ he said to himself. ‘It
had to come.’
    And he turned sharply, looking at her
in surprise. Then he touched her face with his fingers accidentally poking her
in the eye.
    ‘I shall have to hurry home,’ she
said, half-blinded, groping inside the hut. She was looking at him and wanting
him to kiss her as she stumbled half-blind around the hut.
    ‘Say something to me,’ she said.
    ‘I think we’re going to get some rain
tonight,’ he said.
    ‘You aren’t sorry, are you?’
    ‘Me! No! It were a good t’fuck.’
    There was a queer fluctuation in him.
He said, ‘Goodness me.’
    ‘You are having a queer fluctuation,’
she said. ‘I’m glad.’
    But even her saying it seemed to put
her apart from him. She walked home quietly, and glad. He was right, it had
been a good fuck. He was not sure of her. What did she really want? She wanted
a fuck. What was it that his own heart wanted of her? He, too, wanted a fuck.
He tried to shake off the spell of her. He shook himself vigorously but the
spell did not come off.
    When she was gone and it was night he
went round the woods. All was still. The moon had set. He rubbed himself to get
an erection and hoped she would be back before it went dawn. It was a still,
lovely spring night. Yet also, full of dread: that queer, ever-shifting dread
of the Midlands. The terrible Sheffield making endless knives, forks and spoons
hallmarked EPNS. Unless you had that on them you were nobody.
    A curious dread possessed him, a
sense of defencelessness, so he got out his rifle and went into the woods
shouting ‘Hands up!’ to the trees. He turned home, to the darkness of the wood,
shouting ‘Hands up!’ He was not safe and by taking the woman and going forth
naked to her he had exposed himself. She had seen his willy on the full and
crossed herself. ‘Hands up!’ he shouted.
    Slowly, carefully, with a hermit’s
scrupulousness he got his