Lady Chatterley's Lover

thought, while spooning in vanilla ice cream.
    ‘The natives eat them,’ she said finally.
    ‘It must take a long time to eat one,’ he said.
    She informed him that in an erudite article in the Royal Geological Society magazine it states, it takes a tribe four weeks to eat an elephant, they actually sleep by their dinner.’ She gave a huge yawn. Clifford looking in could see her vocal cords, the uvula, her tonsils and great harp strings of saliva.
    She went up to her bedroom, she minced up, one step at a time, she didn’t want to stretch it. She thought of Mellors again and his smooth white loins. What was her beloved doing?
    He had just finished washing his socks and was now cutting his toenails, he was using secateurs, great shards of toenail flew in the air like showers of arrows, some burying themselves up to a quarter of an inch in the floor, three hit the dog, pliers had to be used to extract them. That’s what her beloved was doing.
    Meantime she, naked in front of a mirror and using a bolster as a partner, tangoed to a record of ‘Blau Himmel’, by the Berlin Novelty Trio. How her body blossomed with regular fucking and Horlicks, no longer had she a grey sapless body with flat thighs, but her fanny still looked like a crow’s nest. It was an unfortunate moment for Lord Chatterley to be wheeled in by Mrs Bolton.
    ‘My God, Constance!’ he said in a stunned voice. ‘What are you doing with that bolster?’
    ‘The tango,’ she said.
    In a choked voice he said, ‘Well, will you stop doing it while I’m talking to you.’
    She turned off the gramophone, for her it was a real turn off. Hastily she slipped on a back silk kimono but not before Clifford saw what he thought was a crow’s nest.
    ‘I don’t understand you,’ said Clifford in a baffled voice. ‘One minute you’re talking about dead elephants, next I find you dancing naked with a bolster.’
    ‘Darling,’ she said, lying back on the bed, another flash of the crow’s nest. ‘Darling, what I’m doing are Doctor Fritz Steam-Schitz’s music and remedial exercises for lower-back problems.’
    ‘You haven’t got any back problems,’ Clifford said.
    ‘I know,’ she replied. ‘But it’s silly to wait till the last moment.’
    Mrs Bolton wheeled a stultified Lord Chatterley from the room. What was a crow’s nest doing in his wife’s bedroom?

FOURTEEN
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    W ITH HIM GONE she quickly changed into a tennis dress, tennis shoes, a Helen Wills Moody headband, a tennis racket and a bag of tennis balls. She slipped out the side of the house, she was soon up again. If she met anybody she’d say she was Helen Wills Moody on her way to victory at Wimbledon. The only danger was that someone should go into her bedroom during the night and ask her to play tennis.
    When she got to his cottage he was hiding in the cupboard.
    ‘Is everything all right?’ he said, fear in his voice.
    ‘Everything’s fine,’ she said.
    ‘He didn’t follow you?’
    ‘No.’
    As she walked there were scrunching noises under her shoes.
    ‘It’s all right, he said, it’s only toenails.’
    ‘You been playing tennis?’ he said.
    ‘No,’ she smiled.
    ‘I see,’ he said.
    It was a free country. If people wanted to dress up as tennis players who weren’t going to play, that was their business. It’s what made Great Britain great. His great aunt Doris Mellors used to dress as Queen Victoria to have a bath. Yes, Britain was a great country and his great aunt was still inside.
    Constance was talking to him.
    ‘Are you sure you didn’t hurt yourself this morning pushing that chair?’
    ‘Am I sure I didn’t?’ he said. ‘Sure I did!’
    He explained the prolapses, now prolapses take some explaining, it took him half an hour. Constance was a good audience, she only stopped him once to explain the word ‘Jaxie’.
    She asked him, ‘When you had that pneumonia, what did it do to you?’
    ‘It knocked me sideways,’ he said.
    ‘Did it take you long to straighten up?’
    ‘Yes, they used block and tackle,’ he explained.
    ‘You ought not to make violent physical efforts,’ she said.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, if I fuck I must only do it in two-minute bursts.’
    She smiled and patted him. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll keep a stop-watch by the bed.’
    She plodded on in an angry silence.
    ‘Did you hate Clifford?’ she said at last.
    ‘I did, I do and will.’
    ‘Who’s will?’ she said. ‘And why do you hate him?’ Mellors unravelled