John Thomas & Lady Jane

letter, the day I was
bad, Dan Coutts knocked the shit out of me when I knocked my head. I have got
over it all right. I am going to Sheffield to work.’
    Constance put the letter in her bag. Her hero had been
thrashed. She went down to the car. She found the physical effort of smiling
her last goodbyes almost did something to her face: the smile froze on it,
Hilda had to massage it back into place.

Chapter XIV
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    C ONSTANCE AND HILDA drove away alone.
She was alone and Hilda was alone. Sometimes when Constance and ^ Hilda
ate in some inn where the peasants and workmen sat drinking their wine, Constance would be overcome with the nostalgia of the old life.
    ‘It’s so different,’ said Constance to Hilda, ‘knowing life, and being it.’
    Hilda didn’t answer as she didn’t
understand what she meant.
    ‘Look,’ said Constance. ‘Look at
those sailors in jerseys: they are alive, and they don’t know it.’
    ‘Then,’ said Hilda, ‘someone ought to
tell them. You would never marry one of these sailors, no matter how alive he
was.’
    ‘Why not?’ said Constance.
    ‘Look,’ said Hilda. ‘You take your
clothes off and go in a room with a sailor and he will be up you in a flash.’
    ‘And yet,’ said Constance, ‘the real
phallic man doesn’t care. It doesn’t enter there — into the love-activity.’
    ‘But’, Constance continued, ‘Soames
is a good man, as good a man as father, for example.’
    ‘He would have to take father’s
orders,’ said Hilda.
    ‘But that’s easy. He only orders
whisky and that’s two inches,’ said Constance.
    ‘It’s all very well for a short
time,’ said Hilda. ‘He’s got a nice body but you can’t go down among those who
have to be servants, or wage-earners. How could he be your husband? Supposing
you heard Mrs Bolton giving him orders — “Pick up that dog shit’, he would have
to obey.’
    ‘I know but he is so wonderful!
There’s something a bit starry about him,’ said Constance.
    ‘What?’ said Hilda. ‘What is starry
about picking up shit?’
    ‘His body! Even his penis, it gets so
big, like a little god.’
    ‘It may to you, at the moment. But
even you’d get over it, and realize that Soames’s penis doesn’t rule the world,
whereas Clifford’s baronetcy and Sir Andrew’s money does.’
    ‘But Hilda, I don’t care. Soames’s
penis rules my world.’
    ‘If your Soames, or your phallic man
as you call him, asserted himself and made himself a ruler, practically any
woman would want him. But it’s the ruling spirit, or the authority, a woman
yields to, in a man. If your Soames was master of anything except his dog and
his penis, he might stand a chance. You must stay in the class that gives
orders rather than takes them. You couldn’t take orders from anybody — ’
    ‘Oh yes I can,’ said Constance. ‘He says take your clothes off and I obey.’
    ‘But Soames has to take them from
Clifford and from you and he used to take them from the bosses at the pit. If
his penis is a little god, I’m afraid it’s a fallen idol.’
    This made Constance very angry. She
hated people condemning Soames’s penis.
    ‘I don’t care!’ she said stubbornly
to Hilda at bedtime. ‘I know the penis is the most godly part of a man.’
    ‘I tell you Constance, the penis is
not the most sacred part of the man. It’s his bank balance.’
    ‘Then it should be,’ said Constance. ‘I know it is the penis which connects with the sea and everything.’ (Soames’s
penis was not connected to the sea). ‘When he’s in me in my mind, I go to the
sea with a half-day cheap return to Herne Bay.’
    With this final shot, the sisters
parted. Constance took the early morning boat over to Newhaven, and Hilda had
to wait till the night boat, because of the car.
    It landed at last and Constance wired to Clifford before getting into the train at Uthwaite. She looked out to
see if Field were on the platform. The first thing she saw made her heart jump
almost out of her breast. Clifford was standing on crutches, leaning back
against the iron barrier.
    ‘Why Clifford,’ she said, in a
breathless voice.
    ‘Why not?’ he responded.
    ‘Can you really walk.’
    ‘I can’t exactly walk,’ he said, ‘but
I can go after a fashion.’
    ‘How did you learn?’ she asked.
    ‘Mrs Bolton put me up to it. She
showed she could do it and then me. She had lots of bad falls doing it. You
should see the bruises on her face and stitches in