Lady Chatterley's Lover

length the twentieth of July.’
    ‘At length the twentieth of July,’ he repeated.
    What was wrong with him, why was he repeating everything.’
    ‘Donkeys tootletums stuffed with straw,’ she said.
    ‘Donkeys tootletums stuffed with straw,’ he repeated. He wasn’t well.
    As he talked he was tearing out paper dolls from the Derbyshire Times . She was quivering, watching her real opportunity for leaving him altogether, although as was he looked far from altogether.
    She talked to Mellors about going abroad. He had never heard of Venice, but then nobody in Venice had heard of him. When she came back, she was going to leave Clifford. ‘What will you say to him?’ asked Mellors.
    ‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘Then we can go away anywhere, Paris, Rome, where would you like?’
    ‘Well I’d like ter go to London. I’ve got an aunt living in Bargery Road, Catford. I’d like to see her.’
    He took a photo from the mantelpiece ‘showing twenty people of all ages’.
    ‘Oh, are they all still alive?’ she asked.
    ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘You have to be alive to have your photo taken.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Constance a mite disappointed. ‘Why shouldn’t we go to South Africa or Australia?’
    ‘Because my auntie isn’t there,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, wherever,’ she said. ‘We’ll be happy! We won’t be poor. I have six hundred pounds a year!’
    Ah, how easy it was to fuck your way to riches, he thought. Perhaps if he fucked her more the amount would go up!
    ‘You’ve been to the Colonies, haven’t you?’ she said attentively.
    ‘Yes,’ he smiled. ‘I bin to India, South Africa, and Egypt.’ In each of these places he’d caught a packet.
    ‘You were an officer and gentleman,’ she said gushingly. Yes he was, but even then he caught the crabs.
    ‘Aye, I liked my Colonel but then he was killed.’
    ‘And weren’t you happy as an officer and a gentleman when your Colonel was dead?’
    ‘It wouldn’t look very good being happy as an officer and a gentleman, with your Colonel lying dead. Mind you, men who were officers and gentlemen who owed him money were happy.’
    ‘Did you mind very much when he died?’ said Constance.
    ‘Yes, I was minding much of the Regimental silver.’ That’s not what Constance meant, however she asked him, ‘How did the Colonel die?’
    He shrugged his shoulders, surely he didn’t die by shrugging his shoulders?
    ‘They say,’ said Mellors, ‘it was a sniper’s bullet, others say it was a naafi tea urn.’
    He told her his Colonel hated the middle class. ‘My Colonel hated the middle class,’ he said.
    There was a sudden burst of thunder, when it had gone Mellors crawled out from under the table. Yes, the middle class were a ‘generation of ladylike prigs with halt a ball each’. He sat there in the hut, he was listening to the storm, he had one ear set backwards, it looked strange with the other ear facing the other way.
    ‘The world will come to an end with everybody going insane before they do,’ went on this newly found prophet. ‘They’ll make their auto da fé . You know what auto da fé means?’
    Constance had a guess. ‘It means automobile for sale?’
    Without warning she pulled open his clothing, she laid her cheek on his belly and could clearly hear his lunch of lamb chops, boiled potatoes and peas going down, she gathered his balls in her hand and rolled them together.
    ‘Ow,’ he yelled. ‘That bloody hurt.’ It killed a delicate moment of romance.
    ‘I’ll kiss them better,’ she said putting ruby lips to a wrinkled sack of skin with varicose veins and odd hairs.
    There fell a complete silence. Constance started to thread forget-me-nots through his pubic hair. With a grand gesture with her left hand, the other holding his willy she said, ‘Your love-hair is like a brush of bright red-gold mistletoe. It’s the loveliest of all!’ she said, feeling the ghost of Keats inspiring her.
    He looked down, embarrassed, he had never been praised for his pubic hairs before. This woman had an eye for beauty.
    She went and opened the door. She looked at the heavy rain, suddenly the rain god called her. He must have called her a nutcase for she ripped off her clothes and ran screaming into the deluge, she left behind her lover with forget-me-nots in his pubics. Alone in the rain she did her eurythmic Isadora Duncan dancing.
    He was not slow to react: here was a chance of a fuck in the rain. Ignoring the threat of pneumonia, he threw off his