John Thomas & Lady Jane

cottage but he made her admit it.
    ‘Yes! Shall I! Do you think I dare?’
she said.
    ‘Yes, we can be at it longer,’ he
said. And back he went the thousand years again, but warmer, more assured. When
he returned from his thousand years, it was raining.
    ‘When sholl ter come?’ he said.
    ‘Sunday?’ she said faintly.
    He quickly opened the door of the
hut.
    ‘Should I dust thee?’ he said.
    And he gently dusted her down, his
hand passing softly over the curves of her body, up her skirt and down her
knickers.
    ‘Tha’rt good cunt, aren’t ta?’ he
said softly.
    ‘What’s that?’ she said. ‘What is
cunt?’
    ‘It’s what a man gets when ’e’s
inside thee! — Yo’ wouldn’t know what cunt is, though,’ he added, a
little mocking, taking a great stride suddenly and landing back in the
twentieth century where he was currently living.
    He was cold again. She didn’t know it
but people thought he was a cunt. Only when he was leaving her he said:
    ‘Sunday then! What time?’
    ‘Why — sometime after ten.’
    ‘All right! An’ I s’ll wait for yer
here, at this gate. — If anything stops you though — ?’
    ‘If I don’t come,’ she said, ‘you
walk towards the house, and see if there’s a light in my bedroom. If there’s a
light in my bedroom, after ten o’clock, it means I can’t come. — So you walk
home again.’
    ‘All right. I know which is your
bedroom. It’ll be the one with the light on.’
    God he was dim.
    The world seemed like a dream. The
trees seemed to be bulging and surging at anchor on the tide. What in God’s
name trees were doing surging at anchor on the tide is anybody’s guess. She
herself was a different creature, sensitive and alert, quietly slipping among
the living presence of having trees at anchor on the tide.
    It was new and wonderful, but she was
still uneasy. She knew she had got it from him. It was nothing that penicillin
couldn’t cure. She had really touched him at last. He looked touched. The stars
opened like eyes, with a consciousness in them, and the sky was filled with a
soft, yearning stress of consolation, mostly over Manchester. Everything had
its own anima. Elephants had their own anima.
    The quick of the universe is in our
bodies, deep in us, somewhere around the ankles. As we see the universe, so it
is, but also it is much more than we ever see or can see (Eh?). And the soul
changes in us, it turns over. That is face down with a new creative move, the
whole aspect of all things change and we see the universe as it is with trees
at anchor with the tide.
    Connie felt this change happen to
herself. The man had caused her soul to turn so it was facing the other way.
She felt frightened and shrinking. She was down to five foot three inches. She
had got a new nakedness.
    She now believed she would have a
child. For some reason she felt drawn to Mrs Bolton, as if they had something
in common — Clifford’s legs.
    The two women were working together
in the garden.
    ‘Is it many years since you lost your
husband,’ she said softly to Mrs Bolton.
    ‘Twenty-three,’ said Mrs Bolton.
    ‘Have you tried looking for him?’ she
said.
    ‘It’s funny. One day he booked a
cheap day-return to Herne Bay and never came back. He just disappeared
somewhere in Herne Bay.’
    Mrs Bolton’s eyes suddenly filled
with tears. Constance put a bucket under her.
    In the afternoon, she felt she must
speak to Soames. So for Clifford she did one last nude Charleston.
    She walked on slowly, hoping to find
him and his smooth white body in the cottage where he rarely was. The double
daffodils stood in tubs near the door and the red double tulips were all out.
The door was open and there he was sitting at the table in his shirtsleeves
eating.
    ‘May I come in?’ she said, as he rose
and came to the door.
    ‘Come in,’ he said.
    The sun shone into the room which
smelled of lamb chops and salmon steak on the grid-iron. The black
potato-saucepan was on a piece of paper by the white hearth, the fire was red,
rather low, the bar dropped, the kettle singing.
    He had his plate with potatoes and
the remains of the chop 4 on the table that was covered with a dark chocolate oil-cloth. Why he should
want to cover the remains of the chop with a dark chocolate oil-cloth is a
mystery.
    ‘Champagne?’ he said, setting a glass
in front of her.
    ‘You are very late,’ she said. ‘Do
finish eating.’
    ‘I’m trying to finish eating,’ he
said.
    He began to finish