Lady Chatterley's Lover

shag. ‘Don’t cry,’ she said to the child, giving her the sixpence. ‘What made you cry?’
    ‘That,’ said the child pointing at a black cat.
    ‘A black cat,’ said Constance. ‘That’s supposed to be lucky.’
    ‘Not this one,’ said the gamekeeper. ‘I’ve just shot him.’ He looked at her contemptuously, laconic, the word laconic derived from the Greek legend of the Laocoon. Hearing this word based upon Greek legend Constance flushed, it went everywhere.
    ‘What’s your name?’ she said playfully to the child. Playfully the child said, ‘Connie Mellors.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Constance. ‘That’s a nice name for a child called “Connie Mellors”.’ She turned to the gamekeeper and said, ‘Is this your little girl, isn’t it?’
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not my little girl isn’t it. It’s my little girl Connie.’
    The little girl said, ‘Can I go to my Gran’s cottage?’ Constance looked at the gamekeeper, a man very much alone, and on his own... with a dead cat.
    ‘Can I take her to her Gran’s cottage?’
    He nodded and his hat fell off and you could see he had been using Anzora haircream, the hair tonic that ‘Masters the hair and costs one shilling and sixpence, and smells of lavender.’
    ‘I see you use Anzora,’ she said.
    ‘Yes, it masters the hair,’ he said.
    ‘Can I take Connie to her Gran?’ said Constance.
    The gamekeeper gave a nod and saluted and smartly clicked his heels, sending shooting pains up his varicose veins. They left him to do what he had to do — kill trespassers, poachers and cats.
    Constance knocked at the door, the Gran answered, she had been blackleading the stove.
    ‘Oh,’ said Constance. ‘Have you been practising the black art?’
    As Constance plodded home she could hear the gamekeeper banging away in the woods. If Paddy were here she too would be banging away. Clifford, dear Clifford, he still had many childish fetishes. He thought the colour green was unlucky, so to look at the lawn he wore dark glasses; he thought Jews ate babies, and bananas gave you leprosy, and you had to put on your right sock first to avoid the plague, and he ate a lot to avoid starvation. All that and a dead willy! Poor Constance. Sex, she thought. Sex and a cocktail, they both had the same effect and lasted as long, but on reflection, sex with Paddy, the cocktail would have to be in a gallon glass. A child, who’s child should she have? ‘Go ye into the streets of Jerusalem and see if ye find a man.’ Oh no. She wouldn’t go all that way for a fuck, there must be someone nearer, Lewisham? Catford?
    One day Clifford wanted to send a message to the gamekeeper, but the messenger boy was laid up 19 with influenza. Someone always had influenza at Wragby, it was a tradition, it was believed that if nobody had influenza at Wragby, Gibraltar would fall. Clifford was worried, as that morning by mistake he had put his left sock on first and was expecting the plague; Constance set off before she caught it. In the woods, she saw nobody there, because there was nobody there. She loved the silence of the trees, she put her ear against a trunk and listened intently, there wasn’t a sound, how do they do it? she wondered. She found the gamekeeper at the back of his cottage, stripped to the waist, ducking his head into a bowl of soapy water. He was trying to wash out the Anzora haircream that masters the hair, it had mastered his so well he couldn’t get it off. Constance saw his clumsy breeches slipping down over his delicate white loins, the bones showing a little. Perfect, white, solitary nudity.
    From him drifted the scent of Anzora and Sunlight soap. Turning, he saw Constance and asked her to wait inside where he joined her. The mixture of Anzora and Sunlight soap made his hair stand up like a porcupine.
    ‘Would you care to sit down,’ he said.
    ‘No, thank you,’ she said.
    ‘Then would you care to stand,’ he said, tying a pudding basin on his head to hold his hair down.
    ‘I hope I didn’t disturb you,’ she said.
    ‘I was only washing my hair,’ he smiled. ‘How do you like my clumsy breeches slipping down over my delicate white loins?’
    ‘Do you live alone?’ she said.
    ‘No. I have a dog.’
    ‘Where is he?’
    ‘He’s at the vet’s having his arse repaired.’
    He asked her what Lord Chatterley’s menage was. She told him, ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.’
    ‘Very good, your ladyship, I’ll see to that at