Lady Chatterley's Lover

elastic marks from her bloomers. Lying her on the bed he took a running jump, but he bent it on the end of the bed; however, she kissed it better. He aroused in her a craving, she kept him inside her when his crisis was over — it was a worse crisis than the miners’ strike at Carmarthen. And he was generous: he always left a pound note under her pillow; how she treasured it. For a long time he stayed firm inside, a firm nearly as big as Harrods.
    When he finished she said, ‘Oh darling, I feel lost.’ So he showed her a map of the district and her exact location on it.
    He stayed at Wragby three days, a sexual wreck. Clifford, blissfully ignorant; in the top ten cuckolded husbands he must have been number one. Paddy left Wragby when the Vaseline ran out. As a goodbye present he shook hands with Clifford. Earlier he had said goodbye to Constance by squeezing her tits, she fainted with ecstasy so he sat smoking till she came round with ecstasy.
    ‘Oh,’ she murmured. ‘Where am I?’
    Again he showed her the map and their location. When he left Wragby his foreskin was almost worn away.
    Constance never really understood him; in her way she loved him, that is, lying down. By the time he left she’d almost forgotten how to stand. In anticipation of his return she bought a hundredweight of condoms. Before he left he had said to her Une immense espérance à traversé la terre . 11 To prepare for his return she practised undressing, getting it down to thirty seconds. She still wanted the sexual thrill she got with him by her own activity, like hockey, netball, croquet and bending over. And still he wanted to give it to her, which was enough to keep them connected. 12 She wrote to him saying how much she missed his pound notes under her pillow. Could he send one as a token of his love? She put it into her Barclay’s high interest account.
    After all her fornication she was terrifically cheerful. She used all her sexually aroused cheerfulness to stimulate poor crippled Clifford so that he would write at his best, she played Debussy’s ‘En Bateau’ on the piano, she did Isadora Duncan dances. She made him happy in his own blind way, he really reaped the fruits of the sensual satisfaction she got out of Paddy’s male passivity erect inside her, and there was Clifford who knew, despite Debussy’s ‘En Bateau’ and Isadora Duncan’s dances, he could never do it. But those days of cheerfulness came to an end as the glow of her fucking faded; Paddy had gone and the money had stopped coming.

FOUR
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    A FTER HER AFFAIR with Paddy, other men meant nothing to her, Tom Loon meant nothing to her nor did Dick Squats, Len Lighthower, nor Lord Louis Mountbatten nor Eric Grins, not even Houdini! No, she was married to Clifford, she would stand by him, something he couldn’t do for her. She wanted a good deal from life but this poor cuckolded cripple couldn’t give it to her, he had tried but it gave him a nose-bleed. She had insured his legs in the event of him walking again. She thought of Paddy and knew that their affair was at an end, she knew he couldn’t keep anything up (Eh?). The world was full of possibilities. There was lots of fish in the sea but no chips. The vast masses of fish were mackerel or herring, so reasoned Constance, if you’re not mackerel or herring, you’re not likely to find good fish in the sea. Mackerel was an excellent fish and a fine swimmer, it was splendid eating, people eating it looked splendid, they were best grilled with basil, it was best to catch them already cooked, if you caught chips with them even better. So reasoned Constance.
    Clifford was making strides 13 into fame, even money. He had his wheelchair resprayed, centrally heated and fitted with a periscope. People came to see him: Dick Squats, Len Lighthower, Lord Louis Mountbatten and Eric Grins. He saw them all through his periscope.
    Constance always had somebody at Wragby. There were a few regular men, Brigadier Tommy Dukes who was a regular man, there was Charles May who had constantly been a regular man, there was Hammond who was ever so regular a man, all intellectuals and philosophers, they believed it was ‘all in the mind,’ no one asks how long someone was going to be in the WC, it wasn’t interesting to anyone but the person in the WC. ‘The sex problem,’ said Hammond, tall and thin, with a wife and two children, and who reeked of Horlicks: ‘There’s no point to it. We don’t want to follow a