John Thomas & Lady Jane

said.
    Then he turned to her and said, ‘No I
don’t. I don’t know everybody.’
    His face shut again. It would open
again at eight-thirty on Monday.
    ‘Do you hate going to work in Sheffield?’
    He didn’t answer for a time, three
minutes and thirty seconds exactly. She waited.
    ‘Would you have liked to stay here?’
    ‘I’ll miss rearing pheasant chicks
for Lord Chatterley to kill. I’ll miss the pheasant shoots.’
    ‘Clifford never misses them. He hits
them first shot. But listen! Why don’t you let me get a little farm, and you
can work it for us?’
    ‘Well, first I don’t fancy pulling a
plough. It doesn’t seem to me right for a man to be pulling a plough that’s
been paid for by a woman.’
    ‘There’s my money. Let’s use it.
You’re not afraid to pull a plough, are you?’
    ‘No,’ he said stiffly. I’m not
afraid. Only let me try what I can do by mysen. An’ if I canna ma’e no headway
— why, I maun come to thee.’
    ‘How much will you earn in Sheffield?’
    ‘Seven an’ six a day.’
    ‘Is that an amount?’ said Constance.
    ‘If you’ve got bugger all it’s a lot.
If you’ve got a lot it’s bugger all.’
    ‘Why should you be like other men?’
she cried.
    ‘I give up,’ he said. ‘Why should I
be like other men? I have tried to force myself to be someone else, Lloyd
George, but I didn’t make it. I tried to force myself to be General Haig but I
only managed to be half of him. So I have tried.’
    He spoke with intense bitterness. The
idea that he was too womanly was terribly humiliating to him: and especially
with a willy his size.
    ‘Why do you mind?’ she said, tears
coming to her eyes — a good place for them to come. ‘You only mean you are more
sensitive than stupid people like Dan Coutts.’
    ‘I hate your stupid hard-headed
clowns who think they are so very manly, like Brigadier General Dukes, who put
eighteen months on the war.’
    ‘This job suited me, so I knowed I
should get sack. — But if I’m handicapped by you, Sir Clifford’s handicapped
another road. I sh’d ’ave liked to go to Canada.’
    ‘No!’ she said. ‘Don’t go to Canada yet! Trust me first, won’t you? I’ve been to Canada and America, you wouldn’t like
it. Red Indians periodically raid the population and scalp them. You would look
silly without your scalp. It would kill something in you.’
    He didn’t fancy having something in
him killed. She already suspected him of having a dead cat inside him.
    He hung his head in silence for a
long time until he got a crick in it. Then he said quietly:
    ‘Ay! I’ve got nowt but my life,
that’s all.
    ‘But then that’s all that anybody’s
got,’ said Constance. ‘But the thought of working at a job is like death.’
    So by not working at Jephson’s he
would prevent his own death.
    Suddenly he broke into broad dialect:
‘Ah’ l’ove — Ah luv’ee! A’ ee! Ah lav t’ ee!’ He took her hand and pressed it
against his belly.
    She was puzzled by this. How long did
he want her hand to stay there? Eventually, with sheer fatigue it fell away.
    ‘I had better work i’ Sheffield doing EPNS while I get my divorce,’ he said.
    ‘Christ he’s going to Sheffield and EPNS after all,’ she thought. There must be easier ways to get a divorce.
    ‘Yes, I must get clear of Bertha. I
must be clear of her if ever I’m to breathe.’
    Constance had no idea that Bertha affected his breathing.
    She put her arms around his waist and
clung to his body. That was what she chiefly wanted, his body.
    ‘Take me if you want me,’ she
murmured.
    Well, he didn’t have anywhere to take
her so they stayed where they were.
    Her face fell a little — about six
inches. She buried her face against him and clung to him fast — about twenty
miles per hour.
    He drew her a little closer, warmer,
and softly kissed her hair as she clung to his breast, removing several shirt
buttons.
    ‘But you love me?’ she said
anxiously, but he just held on waiting to do it. While he waited she clung to
him and wept.
    ‘Don’t cry,’ he said. ‘There’s a
hosepipe ban. Ay, it’s all going down my shirt front. Could you cry a little
further away.
    And so she seemed to sleep, and he
too, in the silence of the wood, buried among the bracken, while the afternoon
passed away. How was he to know that in distant Italy the Pope too had just
passed away.
    ‘I’ve got a sudden feeling,’ he said,
‘that the Pope has passed away.’
    He was psychic. For