John Thomas & Lady Jane

space in the little room. They took it in turns to get into bed.
In the whole of Wragby it was voted the worst furnished residence.
    Constance stood on the strip of matting by the bed, and
looked round. On the wall were two cheap pictures. The candle flickered on the
chest of drawers. The big white bed stood untouched. He stood in the doorway.
Then he entered and closed the door.
    ‘Shall you sleep inside?’ he said.
    ‘I’m certainly not going to sleep
outside,’ she said.
    She sat on the bed, while he stood at
a loss near the door; his loss stood at £5 10s. Then pulling off her stockings,
she hung them over the bed rail. Then she slipped out of her silk washing
dress, and stood barearmed in her almost transparent nightdress. As she hung
her dress over the bed rail, she looked at him in the swivel mirror. He was
watching her with bright eyes as he stood waiting near the door. She saw his
face in the mirror, it appeared to be falling off.
    ‘Aren’t you coming too?’ she said
glancing at the bed.
    He nodded. And as she was getting
into the bed, suddenly his hands were clasping her body, closing on her hanging
breasts, and he was putting back her nightdress to kiss her body, disgusting
man.
    She turned and took his head between
her arms, holding it fast to her breast. She daren’t let him look at her, at
that angle she couldn’t.
    ‘You’re sure you’ll love me?’ she
quavered.
    ‘Ay, I’ll love you,’ he said from her
breast, working his way down her body.
    ‘I want you too! I want you too!’ she
whispered wildly.
    ‘All right you want me too, no need
to go mad,’ he said.
    He quickly pushed off his stockings
and breeches, and dropped his waistcoat, and turned to her, in his flannelette
day-shirt. If ever a man looks a fool, it’s when he’s standing in his shirt.
    ‘Take your shirt off too!’ she said.
‘You look ridiculous like that.’
    ‘Then you take off that nightie!’ he
replied, his voice aflame with gamekeeper passion.
    Obediently she began to pull the
frail thing over her head, and he watched, he watched her long breasts shaking
as they emerged.
    ‘Little beauties,’ he said.
    Then he turned his back to her, to
take off his shirt. He didn’t want her to see his willy. She reached out from
the bed and laid her hand on his warm, white-skinned body, at the waist. She
felt his body wince.
    ‘Turn round to me! Turn round before
you blow the candle out,’ she said quickly. ‘I want to see it by candlelight.’
    He turned slowly, in the
unwillingness of his roused, exposed nakedness. He saw her looking at his
phallus by candlelight, then up into his eyes, a distance of two foot nine
inches.
    ‘Tell me it isn’t only fucking,’ she
said pleading.
    He was breathless for a moment. But
the tense phallus did not change. It was like another being.
    ‘I don’t know what you mean by only!’
he said, baffled.
    Only the erect phallus seemed sure,
cocksure, a strange, wildly alert proud presence between the two beings.
    ‘How strange it is!’ she said.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, giving it a waggle.
    She put her arms round his waist, and
her swinging breasts touched the summit of the erect phallus in a sort of
homage. And for the moment she submitted and was gone.
    Afterwards he slept with her left
breast cupped in his right hand. If she moved he moved his hand underneath her
to the underside and by the morning the arm was dead with pins and needles. Now
he slept motionless keeping her within the circle of his arms, her breast like
a fruit on the tree, a Granny Smith’s.
    She slipped round in his arms, and
clung to his body, pressing her body to his, in the nakedness. And she felt the
mysterious change in his flesh and her own flesh quivered and seemed to melt.
It dripped through the mattress. She was going to get it again!, while her
voice uttered sharp strange cries, arghaa, ahowee, oo-ee, till she reached the
climax and was gone, in the pure bath of forgetting and of re-birth. In other
words it was fucking, she had better get used to the term!
    She remained within the inner circle
of phallic angels, beyond all fear and pain, his arm under her, dead with pins
and needles. She slept, and his soul slept with her. On the edge of his
consciousness pressed the day, with its fear, its evil problems. But he
remained within the inner circle of the phallic angels, with the woman. Hark
the phallic angels sing!
    ‘Let me kiss you!’ she said, suddenly
kneeling in the bed and bending over his