Anonymous - Laura

The maids were dismissed frequently for such and put upon the streets. Once in Haymarket I saw one in a faded dress, not a month departed from the house. She had clutched at the arms of gentlemen and superior clerks. I had heard her say to one, “Are you good natured, dear?” It was explained to me that this was the way such girls greeted and inveigled men to sordid purposes. It was an affected gentility of phrase so mixed with naivete' and coarseness that the elements thereof could not be dissembled. Words should be matched together as are pearls upon a string. Words defeat one in misplacement and speckle our intentions.

“Tell your thoughts, then-your desires as they were, Laura.”

“I was here, yes. In this room, yes. I had risen, spoken, displayed myself in mind and nether limbs. I walked to the table-a large one. Oh, it is not here!”

“There was one such. It does not matter. Its heaviness was buoyant to his purpose, the legs unmoving as our bottoms bounced. It is gone now-returned to the woods, perhaps, dissembled, stripped, returned unto the trees.”

“We ate supper then upon our laps like Romans or gypsies. Yes there was watching. I remember now the watching-I, skirts upspilled and drawers down, waiting. Over the table bent and waiting.”

“Without the waiting, Laura, there would be lust.”

“Yes. So we were told. Not lust, not lust, but a coming together of the parts, of explorations, declarations of love, obedience, warmth to warmth. It was silent ever. You remember that it was silent ever.”

“Even when he rendered himself to you, or you to him, or he to me. How could it be other?”

“Elizabeth, I had told my thoughts-all-everyone. When modesties veiled my speaking I was made to turn back along the path, pick up the fallen words. How strange it was to touch and speak them.”

“They were not coarse, my love. Only the impurities of thought make them coarse.”

“A maid entered.”

“You think I do not remember the occasion, Laura? Her name was-well, it does not matter. She was dismissed, of course.”

“Yes. And I upon the very brink of receiving as I was, she entered, moved among us, looked and saw. No one admonished, for it was not outwardly acknowledged that she was present. His pestle deep between my cheeks-oh, how it burned! Oh, I should not remember, no!”

“You may not spoil the game-you know you may not. The telling must be all of images and words. Ah, you have scarce begun. We were ever upon our honour to it, Laura. Laura! You may not leave, you must not! No!”

Her far-cry calling follows me, yet I am gone-gone to the door's gaping, down the broad hall fleeing. The cobwebs of the past are too thick upon me, choking at my lips.

“Laura! Laura, come back!”

“You may not follow her now, Miss. Not beyond the front door now you may not-you know you may not.” It is Sutcliffe's voice. The front door opens to my touch, my tug, my pulling.

“Let me this time, let me!” Her last wail.

I would turn and return were the sunlight not upon me, so plaintive is her cry. The front door slams. Enclosures are contained.

The mown grass stirs and, silent, grows again.

“Miss! It's Sutcliffe, Miss!”

I am pursued anew. Close upon Trafalgar Square a carriage draws up alongside my own. An arm waves, a face appears. I perceive it to be his.

In the alarm of my flight I had abandoned my things. His hand flourishes my bonnet. The hubs of our carriage wheels graunch together. High words and low words are exchanged between the cabbies. The face of Sutcliffe's driver bears the expression of a man to whom excitement has come late in life. Mine is put out because he has not been allowed to pursue his leisurely course nor indeed to fulfill a promising journey. With successive jolts I am brought to descend near Charing Cross. Sutcliffe bears forth my cloak, my bonnet, my reticule.

“I had luck upon it, Miss. You got into a cab so quickly I thought I was done for in finding you. We nearly lost you close upon the park. Might you pay my cabby, Miss, for I came without money.”

The carriages stand fore and aft in line then as do hearses. I bring myself to dispense a few shillings to both from my recovered purse. The interval, in a sense has pleased me for I was minded not to return yet to my hotel. Donning my cloak and bonnet, I-proceed along the Strand to a coffee house.

Sutcliffe follows at a nervous distance treading no doubt precisely in my footsteps. The door to the coffee house quivers and shakes upon my entrance. It is not too common a place. A potboy of sorts serves one and all. The evident proprietor in a suit greasy with sorrow regards me with appropriate awe. Sutcliffe hesitates, scrapes back a chair upon the sawdust floors and seats himself with an air of deference opposite me.

“Who are you?” My voice is distant.

“Sutcliffe, Miss. Bred out of a house in Hackney. Come into service at twelve as a scullery lad.”

“You know your name but you do not know who you are. Perhaps in that we are all at fault.” I observe his twitchings. He would act now upon a flick of my fingers. I remark his physique more closely now. Perhaps once he fell at Crecy, under the sword of a French knight.

“How did she know of me?”

“Your sister, Miss? She has ever talked of you. A maid cleaned your room-your boudoir, that is to say-regular.”

“And others? Others in the house?”

I order coffee for myself but not for him. He has taken upon himself the impertinence of sitting with me without permission. A cup and saucer is nevertheless placed for him. It shall remain empty.

“There is them at nights, but I never see them. I has my own room in the basement. I hear them moving about at nights, in their rooms upstairs. She takes things up herself. I hear them but I don't hear their words. When you ran off she went up crying to them and a door was slammed. She has asked me of occasion to whip her.

“Do you like doing it?” Indifference flecks my tones. “Do not prevaricate, Sutcliffe, or she may hear the telling of it.”

“You can't, Miss, if I dares say so. There is never any going back. There is the going in and the going out. They are different.”

I prevent myself from asking what I would ask. I would misphrase, display ineptitudes. Standing as a butler stands, he has regained of a sudden his feet as if appreciating his temerity. I bid him be reseated.

“I don't mind taking the strap to her, Miss. It's the crop she wants sometimes, asks for-but I wont. Fair cruel the crop is, fit for horses only. I told her that if she likes to wear breeches…”

“It does not matter.”

He has avoided my question-the question I have not put, though plain enough it moves within my eyes. Perhaps there is no answer, or the answer is the question. It comes upon me now that I am perhaps the question, though in this I see no deliverance. I would have father tell me all again, for his tellings were all couched differently and each wended a separate path whose meeting point I cannot find. The coffee is hot. I shake my head a little and put it down.

“You have to suffer the scorching, Miss.” His voice is fatherly.

“Is that what you say when you are strapping her?”

My lip curls but I feel no contempt nor displeasure. An excitement rather. I am gone beyond myself in so speaking. This Laura is one who has slipped a little from within me, is envelope to my letter, letter to my envelope. The coffee burns my throat as surely as leather to bottom. Subdued, I drink.

“She told me the first time what to do, Miss. When we came upon you. If ever we did. You was to go upstairs afterwards. She said that you would go if you were told-that you always did. I would not have had the seeing of you again.”