Jacky S - Suburban Souls, Book I

“A lady, of course! Customers often give presents. Lolotte had one given to her.”

“I know such things are often done in the rue de la Paix, but then the girls who get the presents are forced to suck the ladies who are so generous, or let themselves be licked and played with.”

“You are a most awful, dirty man, and very impudent to talk to me like this!”

“What does it matter? You have nothing in common with me any more.”

“Of course I have not! But I have got a new sweetheart!”

She paused for a reply. None came. I laughed.

“He is an officer-a lieutenant. And through him I shall get favors for my brother. My sweet officer has given me a silver châtelaine. “

I congratulated her warmly, and with genuine pleasure. I really did not care for anything she might say to me, true or untrue. Did she think she could arouse the jealousy of the man who had himself handed her naked body over to his friend? Yes, I suppose so. I knew there were men who did not mind infidelities as long as they were committed in their presence. Otherwise, they were jealous. I use the word advisedly, as I can find no other under my pen. I, luckily, had no such mixed feelings. Before abandoning her to Fontarcy, I had put a severe question to myself: “Will you be jealous later? If so, beware, Jacky, of the green-eyed monster.”

I answered the small voice of my conscience, as follows:

“Lilian is ambitious and mercenary. She had been perverted before you knew her. Nothing can save her. So amuse yourself with her as long as she lets you, without fear or remorse. She is a perfect toy, for a debauchee like yourself. All you can ask is that she should act honestly with you.”

Finding I was not to be drawn out and that nothing she said had the slightest effect on me, she got a little more calm and a trifle kinder, and before going downstairs to the dining-room to lay the cloth with the linen she had got out, I asked her to kiss me. She refused, and then, grave for the first time, I told her I should never ask her again. So she gave me her mouth.

We had some more skirmishing talk in the dining-room, and I told her that it was no use to be so nasty-tempered, as I knew she could not live without me.

Here she pretended to turn up the lamp, and hid her face from me, not answering. I now noticed that whenever she was in a quandary as to what to reply to me, she said nothing. I always interpreted her silence as a hit for me.

“Somebody has been putting me away with you? Perhaps Charlotte has been speaking against me?”

“Oh, no, the poor girl!” she replied.

I found that she was redolent with a very powerful, pungent scent, in which musk predominated. In answer to whether it was any of my making, she refused to give me satisfaction, but I at last elicited that it was a mixture of “Le Jardin de Mon Curé” and “ambre.” The first-named coming from an expensive house in Paris, I guessed that her new lover or lovers had given it to her.

And as I watched her in the strong light of the two large petroleum lamps lit for dinner, she seemed greatly altered. She was a trifle stouter; her glance was more audacious; she was more manly. I had not seen her for six weeks, and I could have sworn a great change had taken place.

I went to the cellar with her father, as he was in some difficulty with a padlock below, and wanted me to help him. As I was going down, she called out in French:

“Mr. S., do you like going down to the cellar?”

Now this was a bawdy slang term for the lingual caress, as applied to a woman's private parts. “Going down to her”: under her petticoats, or beneath the bedclothes. A similar phrase is: “doing the little photographer,” in allusion to the disappearance of an operator's head under the black cloth of the camera. Recently the young men of Paris call it, “going down to the cream shop.”

I was so astonished at hearing her say this quite loudly before her stepfather, that I could only turn round and stand stock-still on the steps, looking up at her, as I gasped out: “No!”

When I returned, I asked if she knew the meaning of what she had said.

“Of course I do!”

“Who taught you that? You never learnt it from me?”

“Never mind who it was!”

“Does he do it nicely?”

“Beautifully!”

“Then you are no longer a virgin?”

She fired up at this. The blue-black cloud overspread her features, and she looked ghastly through her powder.

“You are an insolent fellow. I certainly am, just the same as ever!”

Poor Lilian, I am afraid, betrayed herself by the expression of temper that always showed in her face when I was right. I felt certain that she was no longer a maid.

“Does your Papa know the meaning of what you said?” I continued.

“If he does, he will never dream I do. That is why I said it.” And to change the conversation: “Do you know I am not going to Nice this year but shall remain here alone with Granny? Pa and Ma leave on the tenth of January.”

I now began to use the same tactics as she did. When embarrassed, I found it easy not to speak, and so I let the statement of her being alone at home go by, without the observations that she doubtless thought it would bring forth.

After some more desultory chaff, she asked me:

“Do you want to sit next to me at dinner?”

“No!” I replied coolly.

But she placed me next to her all the same, and I told her during the soup to put her foot on mine and keep it there. She did so, and seemed pleased, merry, and happy to be with me.

The table was a square one, and we sat at the end, where there was just room for two. She was on my right. On her right was Papa. Whenever she could, she caught hold of my hand and made motions imitating the act of masturbation on my fingers, and I tried to follow her example by copying the same caress on her palm or between her digits. I was perfectly certain that Mr. Arvel saw part of our play. She was very excited and knocked my glass over,

She could not finish all her plum-pudding, and for fear of her mother, who had made it, asked her father to change plates with her. He refused, and finally I took her plate and finished her slice, under her father's eyes. In fact, we behaved like lovers, quite openly.

During the meal, Papa got into a towering rage with the servants, and bawled out his remonstrances in a strident voice, as he half rose from his chair, as if he would leave his place to go to them.

Lilian rose too, and placing her hand on his portly paunch, said to him in English:

“Don't be silly, darling!”

I thought this rather strange, as she had never addressed him in this way before me, especially as Mamma, so jealous, I was led to believe, knew what “darling” meant. I kept this to myself for many months.

Lilian distributed little bits of holly, fixing one in my buttonhole herself, to bring luck during the next year. The withered remains of my sprig are stuck in an ornament on my mantelpiece.

As I write, I look up and see it, just upon a year afterwards. I have had no luck these twelve months. So I rise and throw the darkened prickly leaves and discolored stalk and berries in the fire. They curl up and turn black, even as Lily's lips, when I aroused her anger; and then they disappear, even as Lily's lips.

After everyone has their holly, I produce a branch of mistletoe, and whisper to Lilian that I am going to kiss every woman at the table. I knew this coarse, commercial traveler's joke would be properly appreciated at Sonis.

Lily flies into a towering rage again, and under her breath tells me that if I kiss her mother, she will never speak to me again in her life. Strange jealousy! I do not insist. I did not wish to kiss her old grandmother, nor her Mamma, nor the lady guest.