John Thomas & Lady Jane

Bell! Barking at Lady
Chatterley! Bell! Be quiet!’
    ‘He used to know me,’ said Constance.
    ‘Why of course he did. But it’s so
long since he’s seen you. I hope you are well. Shall you come in and have a
look at the baby. He’s grown now, you’d hardly know him.’
    As she went in to see the baby the
dog attacked her. ‘Bell, Bell, barking at Lady Chatterley. Bell, be quiet,’ the
woman commanded.
    Constance played with the baby. She had given it a shawl
when it was born, and a rattle for Christmas. Bell recommenced barking.
    ‘Why Bell, Bell, barking at Lady
Chatterley. Bell be quiet,’ the woman commanded.
    The two women enjoyed talking about
the baby. The dog recommenced barking.
    ‘Why Bell, Bell, barking at Lady
Chatterley. Bell be quiet,’ the woman commanded.
    ‘My husband won’t know what’s become
of me.’
    ‘What does he expect you to be then?’
Mrs Flint insisted. ‘A barn gate?’
    ‘Yes, he often wishes I was a barn
gate.’
    The last thing Lady Chatterley heard
was the dog barking at her as she departed.
    On the way back a man stopped in
front of her. It was Soames. He was not wearing trousers. She gave a cry of
fear and then he said, ‘Urgghh! Are you coming to the hut?’
    ‘No, I was going home.’
    He looked down at her in a flare of
anger because he wanted to. ‘You wasn’t sliving past and not meanin’ to see me,
was you?’ he said putting his arm round her, determined.
    ‘Not now!’ she said, trying to push
him away.
    ‘But you said,’ he replied rather
angrily and his arms tightened instinctively, against his will, around her and
his body pressed strangely upon her. She felt it sticking in her. Her instinct
was to fight him. Why fight? Why fight anybody? Her will seemed to live here
and she was limp. He held her in his arms, then he half carried her, the other
half had to get there on its own. He took her to where there was a heap of dead
boughs. He threw out one or two fir boughs and folded his coat. She stood by
mute and helpless. Then he took her and laid her down.
    ‘Oh no, oh no,’ she said.
    A strange thrilling sensation that
she had never known before woke up where he was within her. In wild thrills
like wild bells, ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling they went. And she clung to him
uttering in complete unconsciousness strange, wild, inarticulate little cries
like eeh, aah, ooh, oo oo, and it was too soon, it was only a quarter to ten.
    Till he came into her again, and the
thrills woke up once more, wilder and wilder, like bells ringing clang, clang,
clangety clang, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.
    And he was still too, he was shagged
out. It was a perfect stillness, he lay upon her and fell asleep and started to
snore.
    Oh, oh, romance was in the air. Good
God, he had woken up and started to do it again.
    ‘We came off together this time,’
said the oaf.
    ‘Jolly good,’ she replied. Like all
upper-class ladies, she had not noticed. Rising from the forest floor she
brushed off the ants, slugs and snails. He dusted the fir needles from her
dress and took them quietly from her hair. All the while he listened intently
for the motorized wheelchair of Lord Chatterley and his double-barrelled
shotgun. He knew him to be a dead shot and he did not want it to be him.
    She thought of the man in the wood
and she was grateful to him for his service which was better than her own
garage. She was like a volcano — at moments she surged with desire and passion
like a steady stream of white hot lava with puffs of sulphurous smoke issuing
from her knickers. Clifford thought she had stomach trouble. In some mysterious
way she felt his domination over her and against the very love inside her. She
revolted like one of the Bacchae, madly calling on Iacchos, the bright phallus
that had no independent personality behind it. He was but a temple servant, the
guardian and keeper of the bright phallus which was hers, her own. A mile away
in his cottage Soames did not know she was claiming ownership of his prick.
    She could feel her body, like the
dark interlacing of the boughs of the oak-wood, humming inaudibly with myriad,
unfolding buds. Meanwhile the birds of desire had their heads on their
shoulders, asleep with delight, in the vast interlaced intricacy of her body.
Go girl go!
    She thought of his beautiful silky
skin, his mouth, it was rather angry and smelled of tobacco and Brown Windsor.
And not his figure! He should be taller, more graceful. She avoided looking at
him naked — it