John Thomas & Lady Jane

he stood anywhere he appeared
to be standing in two places at the same time. Then he went into the scullery,
fetched the coal-shovel and a piece of sacking, and taking his boots, began
carefully to free them of mud and clay, scraping the dirt into the coal-shovel.
    ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Tell me, what
made you marry your wife.’
    ‘Do you think you need bother
yourself about it?’ he said, looking up at her with the same unwilling eyes. He
lifted his head and said to Constance, ‘It doesn’t concern you, why I married
or didn’t marry. Ah well, she was the first girl I went with. When I was a lad
of eleven or twelve I went in their house one night, in winter-time, for my
pals Dan an’ Jim. An’ there was nobody in, only her — ’
    ‘Bertha?’ said Constance.
    ‘Bertha! An’ I dunno what she said.
On’y I know she lifted her clothes up an’ showed me — you know what. They wore
them split drawers then, girls did.’
    ‘And what did you do?’ said Constance.
    ‘I did nothing.’
    ‘What did she want you to do?’
    ‘She wanted me to come an’ feel. But
I never knowed afore then as women had hair there. Black hair! An’ I don’t know
why, it upset me an’ made me hate the thoughts of women from that day.’
    ‘And when you were married, didn’t
you mind any more about the black hair?’
    ‘Yes!’ he said at last. ‘I couldn’t
touch it. I couldn’t do nothing to her.’
    ‘And what did she say?’
    ‘She said, wait a bit. An’ we waited.
Then in the morning, she said, if I shaved her. An’ so I did, an’ she laid
there so still. An’ then it came up in me, an’ I wanted her — ’
    ‘And you loved her!’ said Constance, in a low voice.
    ‘Ay — for a time,’ he murmured,
‘until the hair grew back again.’
    ‘And did you think you’d never have
anything to do with women any more, when your wife was gone?’
    ‘I thought so,’ he said.
    ‘But you’re not sorry you have me?’
    ‘No!’ he said with a queer smile.
‘It’ll probably end in more trouble. — But it’s ’appened, so no use talkin’.
An’ if I’ve got me a woman — eh well! I’d rather have a woman an’ — what should
I say? — good fuckin’ — and get shot for it after, than not have a woman, an’
no fuckin’, and not get shot — ’
    ‘Well, you’ve not had many women!’
she said with a smile.
    ‘One!’ he said.
    ‘Two, with me,’ she said.
    God, she didn’t let up!
    He still hung with his hand on the
high mantelshelf, his face looking down at the blackened fire, his foot on the
fender, his sock steaming. Not till it caught fire did he realize the danger he
was in.
    ‘And are you sure you want me even
though I’ve got hair on my fanny?’
    God what a tease she was! He looked
down at her, running his burnt sock under the tap.
    ‘Are you sure you want me?’
    ‘Sometimes,’ she said softly. The
little cow.
    He rested his head on his arm, and
she saw the little quivers of restrained desire chasing over his body in light
shudders, stiffening the muscles oddly.
    She looked up at him pleadingly. The
little minx.
    ‘Would you love me?’ she said.
    He looked into her eyes with an odd
sort of smile.
    ‘I’d love you if you wanted to be
loved,’ he said quietly.
    And she dropped her head. It fell on
the floor.
    She heard him sigh and looked up. He
met her eyes.
    ‘Shall you go upstairs?’ he said.
    She rose, with a certain
unwillingness.
    ‘I don’t want to force you in any
way,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got a good hard-on.’
    She looked back at him from the
stairfoot door.
    ‘Come too!’ she said. When he came to
he was in the room.
    He blew out the lamp and closed the
stairfoot door after him, as he slowly mounted the stairs behind her. The
candle shone through the open door of the bedroom, on the tiny landing at the
top of the stairs. The other door was shut. They were set fair for a shag.
    The bedroom was small with a
whitewashed sloping ceiling, and stuffed with cheap furniture, pushed under the
slopes of the roof. The big iron bedstead stood in the corner by the door,
facing the gable window. Under the roof-slope by the window was a yellow-painted
dressing-table with swing mirror, but no cloth, nothing on its bareness. There
was a yellow-painted washstand, with basin and ewer decorated with
chrysanthemums, under another roof-slope, and across from the bed, a chest of
drawers with a clockwork tortoise with revolving eyes. So there was hardly a
yard of empty