John Thomas & Lady Jane

eating again
rather hurriedly and unwillingly. She had never seen a man so unwilling to eat.
    ‘Shall I take your plate away?’ she
said.
    ‘Yes. Don’t take it too far, I need
it for breakfast.’
    And she tramped across the uneven
brick floor to the dark scullery at the back.
    ‘There’s no light in here,’ she said.
    ‘No, it’s in here.’
    ‘Will you have a cup of tea too?’ she
asked him. ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he said, putting pate de foie gras on a Bath
Oliver and washing it down with Moët & Chandon.
    A quick laugh went over his face,
round his ears, over his eyebrows, across his forehead and down again.
    ‘I thought,’ he added, ‘what if
anybody did happen to come and see you, supposing it was Sir Clifford with his
gun?’
    ‘It wouldn’t matter, he would just
shoot you. He wouldn’t think anything,’ she said.
    ‘Everyone’s got to think of
something. You’re thinking of being my wife, I was thinking of Julius Caesar.’
    ‘Oh good. He’s quite harmless now,
he’s dead.’
    ‘Ay, I was thinking of him when he
was dead, just to be on the safe side. An’ you like it, you say, to be my wife sometimes?’
    ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘When we’re doing
it, that’s when.’
    ‘It suits me down to the ground (he
couldn’t go lower) — as long as it lasts,’ he added.
    She reproached him. Last time it had
lasted eighteen minutes, she had checked it with her watch.
    He drank his tea with his hands in
his pockets which made it very difficult to lift up the cup. Suddenly he lifted
his head, and pressed back his shoulders, stretching his body in the quiver of
desire, he lowered his trousers.
    ‘Shall we go upstairs?’ he asked softly.
    ‘No! Not today, not today!’ she cried
and hid under the table.
    Looking underneath he looked
searchingly upside-down in her eyes, looking for the latent desire in her. He
pulled up his trousers but did not button them in case she changed her mind.
    She emerged from under the table.
    ‘Will you have some more tea?’ she
asked him.
    At last he drank, the tea wetting his
brown moustache and wiping it automatically on his fingers. What a boon to have
automatic fingers!
    ‘Do you like having a moustache?’ she
asked him, trying to detract him from sexual activity. ‘It hides your mouth —
one can’t see what sort of mouth you’ve got.’
    With a queer face he took his
moustache in both hands and lifted it aside, sticking his mouth out a little
till it looked like a chicken’s bum, as he did so showing a mouthful of awful
dentistry. They appeared to be like tombstones in a deserted cemetery.
    ‘Kiss me!’ she whispered. ‘Kiss me
because you like me, not because you want me.’
    It took a while for the oaf to work
that out.
    He lowered his moustache and
trousers, pushed back his chair and opened his arms, with a little gesture half
of command.
    ‘Come then!’ he said.
    She went over to his arms, and he
bent his head over her, kissing her tenderly, and with a sort of grief, and
holding her fast to his breast.
    ‘But you love me?’ she asked.
    ‘It looks like it,’ he said. And he
looked like it.
    ‘And don’t you care whether I love
you or not?’ she said.
    ‘Nay!’ he said with a faint smile.
‘What’s the good o’ earin’?’
    She did not understand him.
    It was perfectly clear he had just
said ‘what’s the good of caring’ in a North Country accent.
    ‘You an’ me!’ he said. ‘It’s not as
if we could think o’ marryin’.’
    ‘Couldn’t you think of it?’ she
asked, searching his face and finding his nose in the middle of it.
    Back came his eyes to her. She now
had two pairs.
    ‘Why, could ya’?’ he said.
    Ya? Wasn’t that German?
    She thought about it in a wavering
fashion. She wavered out the door into the garden, round the house, then
wavered back again.
    ‘I feel married to you,’ she said.
    ‘Well,’ he said, ‘wavering once
around the house doesn’t mean we’re married.’
    ‘But why shouldn’t I be your wife
sometimes, as long as we live? Why must it be a regular marriage?’
    He pondered her words.
    ‘And you think it could be like
that?’ he pondered. He went on pondering. ‘Off and on while we live?’
    ‘Why not?’ she said, pushing back his
moustache with her fingers, and kissing him on those hidden chicken bum lips
and quivering at her own temerity.
    ‘Why are you quivering at your own
temerity?’ he said.
    ‘It’s my own temerity,’ she said.
    ‘Why couldn’t it? You