John Thomas & Lady Jane

and it makes up for the skinny wages he give me.’
    ‘Do you think it’s safe for Constance to come here?’ she asked.
    ‘As safe as owt else, I s’d think!
It’s not as if the German guns ’ad got us located.’
    Hilda looked puzzled. What did he
mean, German guns? Surely the Versailles Treaty forbade them guns.
    ‘She’s my sister. It would be very
awful if she came to any harm.’
    ‘Ay!’ he said. ‘I know it! Er’s not
my sister, but ’er’s what ’er is. — ‘What d’yer want me ter say? Anythink — ’Er
comes as long as ’er’s a mind to come! When ’er doesna want to, ’er doesna
wanna. What else?’
    Hilda faltered. What in God’s name
was he saying?
    ‘It would be horrid if there were a
mess, a scandal.’
    He was silent. Then he said:
    ‘My name linked with Lady Chatterley?
It would ruin my career as a gamekeeper! Shall y’ave some more Champagne?’
    ‘No thank you! I must go.’
    ‘Would you like to go with Hilda to
the car, and leave me here?’ Constance said to him.
    ‘You’d better let me go alone,’ said
Hilda.
    ‘Nay!’ he said quickly: in both
directions.
    They walked in silence. This was all
eating up his screwing time. An owl hooted. ‘Ah, shut up!’ he said. He stopped,
and looked at the little stars.
    ‘There’s a few stars. When I look at
’em, it seems to me worth it.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Hilda. ‘But we live in
the world, not in the stars.’
    ‘We live under them,’ he said,
thinking he had said something brilliant. ‘But I know. It’s the same when I
look at the Daily Mirror. All them royalty and Lords and Ladies, an’
people who’ve got divorces or been had up for something, like feeling little
girls’ bicycle saddles. So I put the newspapers on th’ fire-back, an’ watch the
faces go up in smoke.’
    ‘But you can’t put the world on the
fire-back, my man,’ said Hilda.
    ‘Yes, I am a man. What am I a man
for! What’s a woman a woman for? What are you a woman for?’
    ‘Not merely for lovemaking,
certainly,’ said Hilda softly.
    ‘Nay! But for lovemakin’ if yer got a
chance an’ if I get a chance: what else am I a man for? Would y’ave me wear my
breeches arse forrards?’
    ‘Still,’ said Hilda, ‘we must
consider how it will end.’
    ‘What’s the good! How will anything
end? How did the war end? How will you end? Any of us!’
    ‘I think you will end being shot by
Lord Chatterley.’
    The car was there, Hilda got in, and
started her engine. Hilda leaned out of the car holding out her hand:
    ‘Good-night, Mr Soames!’ she said. He
strode up, and took her hand. It felt soft and sensuous. Oh if only she was
staying the night and Constance was not.
    Constance and he stood under a tree
in the night. She turned to him.
    ‘Kiss me!’ she murmured, lifting her
face to him. ‘Nay!’ he said impatiently. ‘Wait a bit! I don’t feel like it. I’m
put out.’
    When they got home, the door was
locked, and he had taken off his coat and was unfastening his boots, he said:
    ‘It strikes me the bolshevists was
about right, to smash ’em up.’
    ‘I think bolshevists are such dreary,
uninspired people, creating nothing and shooting the Czar and his whole
family.’
    ‘That’s because they w’er t’ungry.’
    ‘You don’t shoot people because
you’re hungry.’
    ‘Well they shot the Czar’s family and
ate them.’
    He pushed off his boot with the other
foot exposing his huge feet. They filled such an area you had to be careful
where you trod.
    It was a night of sensual passion.
‘No darling, don’t stop.’ But she let him have his way. His way was in and out.
And the reckless sensuality shook her to her foundations:
    ‘Oh my foundations are shaking,’ she
said.
    It was not love, in the emotional
sense, it was fucking, and it was not voluptuousness, it was fucking. It was
sensuality sharp as fire, burning the soul to tinder. Should they phone the
fire brigade before it took hold?
    She wondered what Abelard meant when
he said in a letter that he and Héloïse had gone through all the stages of
passion, and had known all the refinements of passion. ‘That was before he lost
his knackers.’ One thing for sure, Abelard had never stuck forget-me-nots in Héloïse’s
fanny. Nor had Héloïse run naked and screaming in the freezing rain chased by
Abelard with a giant erection.
    But what a reckless devil this man
was. Screwing her with Lord Chatterley and his shot-gun only a mile away. And
that was what had been at