Lady Chatterley's Lover

child.’
    ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you want to, I can always use a length of bicycle inner tube.’
    There was a long pause of silence, a cold silence. They had to light the fire.
    ‘Would you like to go upstairs now?’ he said, lowering his trousers.
    ‘No! No! Not here, not now,’ she said heavily.
    He pulled his braces up. She stood close to him. ‘I’ve never really touched your body,’ she sighed.
    He looked at her. ‘Now then?’ he said, lowering his trousers again.
    ‘No, no, not here. At the chicken hut. Romance was ablaze.’
    She put on her hat. ‘Goodbye,’ she said.
    ‘You’ll be going in the woods,’ he said.
    ‘Only if I’m desperate,’ she said and was gone.
    He put his erection on the table and hit it with a mallet.
    She walked home downcast, her knickers aflame. She got back to Wragby Hall, but was no good, she could neither sit nor stand, she would have to do something about it, she crouched, and went around the house like Quasimodo. She would have to go back! Like the Indian love song, the chicken hut was calling her. She slipped out the side door, it was that same patch of oil. In the distance she could hear chickens clucking, how her heart raced. There he was stooping over the chickens knocking off eggs for his breakfast.
    ‘You see I’ve come,’ she said.
    ‘You don’t want me to start eating again, do you?’ he asked anxiously.
    She didn’t answer.
    ‘Why’, he said, ‘are you hunched up like Quasimodo?’
    ‘Oh, I’d forgotten,’ she laughed, straightening up. ‘I didn’t want Clifford to think it was me leaving the house.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Mellors. ‘You wanted him to think it was Quasimodo.’
    She nodded.
    He stood up, straightening his back. ‘Arrrrrghhhhhhh,’ he screamed, holding the base of his spine.
    ‘What is it?’ she said anxiously.
    ‘It’s Arrrrrghhhhhh,’ he said. He swallowed a bottle of aspirins, it’ll soon go,’ he said.
    Lady Chatterley was genuinely worried, about his back. Could he screw like that?
    ‘Shall us go i’ the ‘ut,’ he said.
    My God, thought Constance, he’s gone into the vernacular. They went inside, he brushed away the chicken shit and laid the blanket down.
    "Ave you left your underthings off?’ he asked her.
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They’re at the laundry.’
    ‘Aye, well then I’ll take my things off too.’ He took off his shoes, one sock and trousers. ‘Lie down,’ he said.
    He stood over her in his shirt, she looked up and saw what looked like a plucked chicken. He then sprang on her, he started fiercely fondling her breasts, it was more like an osteopathic massage.
    ‘For God’s sake, go easy,’ she said. ‘You’ll have them off!’
    ‘Ee but tha’rt wa’ nice.’
    Yet more of that terrible vernacular! She put her arms around him under his shirt, seeking for his skin. Alas! in the way was his Army vest. As he banged away, his contracting and uncontracting buttocks seemed ridiculous to her, he was gradually, she realized, thrusting her up the blanket to where all the chicken shit was. He noticed it and pulled her back again. Hadn’t this all happened before? Indeed it had. (See p. 405.) The whole thing seemed ridiculous to her. Her impulse was to heave her loins and throw him off into the chicken shit.
    Soon it was all over, he lay back, she could see steam rising from his massed genitalia. He gave her a slight laugh.
    ‘Someone asked me,’ he said, ‘did I smoke after sex, and I said I’d never looked.’
    How could he joke about something so sacred, but who was she to argue with a man who had the biggest prick in Derbyshire.
    ‘Th’art good cunt, though, aren’t ter.’
    ‘What is cunt?’ she said.
    ‘Cunt! It’s thee down theer,’ he said, rubbing up her pubic hairs.
    ‘So,’ she said. ‘Cunt! It’s like fuck.’
    ‘Nay, nay. Fuck’s only what you do. Animals fuck. But cunt’s a lot more than that.’
    ‘It’s time I was going,’ she said.

THIRTEEN
    ------------

    S UNDAY. Clifford wanted to go into the wood. Poor Clifford who had to be lifted from his bed into his wheelchair, into the bath, out of the bath, on to the j toilet, off the toilet, into his wheelchair. That wasn’t too bad, but they kept dropping him. Connie still suffered having to lift his inert legs into place, it got her in the small of her back. His motor wheelchair came puffing into view.
    ‘Sir Clifford on his throbbing steed.’ This was what upper classes thought of as a witty