John Thomas & Lady Jane

wouldn’t want
me always in this cottage, always, always, always, till doomsday, would you?’
    Oh no, he couldn’t wait till
doomsday, the lease runs out before that.
    ‘It’d be nice if you could be my wife
sometimes, while we live.’ After that it would be very difficult.
    She was sitting on his knee, and
still stroking his moustache, and touching his lips, teasing him.
    ‘Yes!’ she said, clinging to him
suddenly. ‘Let us see! Let me be your wife off and on. When you’re on I will be
your wife and when you’re off, that’s it.’
    ‘Yes!’ he said in good English. ‘I
will! I will whenever we can. 1 would like to get on now.’
    So saying he tried to get on her.
    ‘We’ll call one another by no names,’
he said hastily.
    ‘Perhaps not. But give me your hand.
Hold my hand fast.’
    He clasped her hand as fast as he
could. He held her close, in silence, in the warm little room, with all the
wild sunshine of spring outside. And clinging close like a child she went to
sleep. And he, his head drooping above her, passed also into a doze, infinitely
soothing and still. Twice she slipped to the floor with a thud and he had to
pick her up. She lay heavy and still in his lap. God what excitement! He leaned
his face against her hair with a deafening snore that rattled the knives and
forks on the empty table.
    ‘Shall we be going then?’ he said
finally.
    ‘No,’ she said.
    ‘What will they be thinking back at
the home?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m not a
mind-reader.’
    He shut the door and locked it.
Flossie the dog ran round in silent joy, lifting the feather of her tail and
biting Lady Chatterley’s leg.
    ‘Heel, heel!’ he said, kicking the
dog’s arse. ‘Ay, but — ’ he said no more. He could only manage so many words a
day and he’d reached his limit.
    ‘Now if you come to th’ hut and I’m
not there, an’ you want to find me, what you want to do is find the hatchet an’
chop a bit o’ wood. I s’ll hear you — an’ Flossie will. Chop a bit o’ wood on
th’ block, you know. We s’ll hear that.’
    ‘All right!’ she said.
    So to get a shag she had to chop some
wood. Who said romance in England was dead?
    ‘An’ if I don’t see you afore Sunday,
I s’ll be waiting for you at ten o’clock. An’ if you don’t come, I s’ll walk up
to th’ house. That’s right, isn’t it? If there’s a light in the room, you can’t
come.’
    ‘That’s right!’ she assented. ‘Then
you bugger off.’
    ‘Goodbye!’ she said. She wished she
was saying it for good. Heaven only knows why. She didn’t know. She went
blindly towards the gate, and walked into it.
    Clifford had come in his wheelchair
to the top of the drive, he had come under a rookery and was covered in bird
shit.
    ‘It’s so lovely, Clifford!’ she said.
‘I went to sleep.’
    If you’re going to tell lies, tell a
big one!
    ‘Where did you sleep?’
    ‘In the keeper’s hut, sitting in the
sunshine. I went fast asleep.’
    He was astounded. His wife had
mastered the art of falling asleep upright on a stool.
    ‘Why didn’t you come and meet me?’
    ‘Oh I should imagine you’d want
something different from me than to come and meet you.’
    ‘Oh Clifford, don’t! It’s so lovely.’
    ‘Am I lovely?’ he said desperately.
‘The cuckoo only jeers at me, even the rooks shit on me. How dare I come and
meet you, in a bath-chair covered in bird shit! Why doesn’t somebody shoot me!’
    ‘I don’t know, Clifford. Why doesn’t
someone come and shoot you?’
    ‘I was asking you,’ he said.
    Constance took charge of the wheelchair. Without his
hands on it, he controlled it with great difficulty.
    ‘You missed your tea,’ he said.
‘Don’t you want to go in and have some with Mrs Bolton?’
    With her steering they hit a tree and
Clifford was catapulted from his wheelchair. With great difficulty they
restored him to the chair. She looked at him startled, wondering what he saw.
Basically he saw her.
    ‘Was it horrid of me not to be home to
tea?’
    ‘My dear child, the only thing that
is horrid is my existence, I ought to be shot, as a horse with broken legs is
shot.’
    ‘No, Clifford!’ she said. ‘I won’t
hear any of that! You haven’t broken legs. No, I won’t let them shoot you till
you have broken legs.’
    She left him there in the chair on
the drive, at the crest of the park slope, to get on with it.
    Mrs Bolton was in the hall.
    ‘How well you’re looking, my