Anonymous - Laura

“Charlotte!” I find the door-unguarded, not obscured. My voice shakes a trifle in my excitement. The handle, rusty, rattles to my touch, squeaks, moves, and draws its iron tongue from the latch. I open. I am come upon it, the room so immense that it would seem to reach out into space. Upon the floor garters, cornets de bal, a withered flower or two. Far from me at the further distance is a dais, empty to its empty metal stands that now no music hold save for one sheet that lies forlorn.

Everywhere tall mirrors, dust blown, gird the walls. I am a thousand of myself, veiled in the dust and at all angles seen. My footsteps sound loud on the fretting floor that none perhaps should tread upon again. An arched and plastered ceiling, white and gold, takes all the echoes high, there comforts them and draws them into silence. Yet the silence beneath, around my feet, is deeper than above. I feel it as a slow breeze to my ankles turn, insinuating up my calves. I should become a rock beneath the sea and listen to the world above.

“Charlotte!”

I am at the centre of the room. The space disturbs. But one door stands before me far, left of the dais, brown and quiet. I venture there and feel my tremblings rise. The paint is cracked upon the panels. A brass knob lies limp. I shall turn it, shall I turn it, turn?

“Open it, Miss, for I cannot.”

Her voice! I burst within, she sits forlorn, as one abandoned at a table there. The room itself is small, clothes lie about, a sea unmoving of cast vestments, trousers, laced chemises, drawers. Shoes, boots lie skewered amid unheaving weaves. The table, rough and small, is deal, as is her simple hardbacked chair.

“How long have you sat there? Long? How long?”

She stands up, casts herself into my arms and sobs. “They confounded me, Miss, said I was not of them and thrust me here within. When the music stopped I knew them gone, heard ever onwards the quick pattering of feet. The door would not open to my touch. I slept and dreamed and woke and dreamed. They were all naked in their lewdness.”

“Come, you are no longer bereft. No one shall stay our passage. There is wine in my rooms, sandwiches, nurturings.”

“If I remembered who I were! But I remember now the house, the house, the house. You will remember, I know you will, upon seeing it you will remember. If it is dark there, they will light lamps. It was always promised. Upon our returning.”

“There will be such, I am sure there will be such. I remember you. Do you not think that I remember you?”

Our hands touch, clasp, I lead her out. The fellow confronts us anew and frowns.

“Are you about your duties?” he enquires of her.

“She is about mine. You may go in there, there are clothes to be had.”

“I would not, Miss, for all the tea in China.”

“Leave us then, depart, or I shall make complaint upon it. You will end up in an infirmary, a poorhouse, if you do not mend your ways. Remember the poetry you have forgotten and meditate.”

“There is a coming here, Miss, an arrival. She is out of Time.”

“Are we not all? What do you know of Time, what know? Your beseechings shall be to the pavement and the gutter. Beware that my father does not come and horsewhip you for impertinence. Go!”

Upon my command he is gone. The lights this time do not go out, one by one do not. Surely here is a benediction. Our palms moisten together. There are prayers in our togetherness.

“Take off your dress, it is dusty. Remove all. Let me see you naked, Charlotte.”

“Will you not, too? We shall remember better then. It was always nice being naked together.”

“Keep your stockings on. Were we not so taught, burring of silk to silk and the soft sighing? He was at my bottom first, then yours, while we enlaced took purchase on each other's lips.”

“It was a deep bed. Do you remember the deep bed? His sister would whip us for disobedience. At my sobbings she put a dildo to me. How rude she was!”

“Do you remember where our house was, where? Murmurs of running streams, the dark elms in the night?”

“I said you would remember, Laura, I ever said. Ah, rub upon me, yes! I remember. It were far from here, ceilings of lanes and winter's coming. The sun rose to our eyes, fell at our backs. You stood naked in the grass once while he tickled you.”

“I was young then. Oh, you are coming! Are you coming? Her name was Anthea-his sister, yes. Rub faster, it is coming back! Tiverton-by Tiverton it lay. I shall remember upon the seeing of a bridge, grey stoned, well humped, a mill that stood beside. Ooooh-ah! You sprinkle faster now than I!”

When the pleasure is done, when the pleasure is done. “Let us to the wine again, Charlotte. How merry I feel, how eased between my thighs. What a silkiness of skin you have! Were you not his favourite, or was I?”

“He would have none of that, of favouritism, nor she. Perhaps that were the beauty of it, I don't know. Was it not cold in winter, though? His cock was fire between the sheets. She would get him steady up, then put him to us. Sometimes she would nurture him herself and make us watch. Anthea, yes. How clever you are, more skilled than I, remembering her name. Soft as a cloud her name were, like her lips. She taught us fair to kiss then, and to tongue, holding him back, she said, till we were ready for it.”

“There were wonders to be seen, as we thought then. They may become as dust, Charlotte. Ever be wary of the ways of man. Did you know I was in Brighton?”

Her head shakes, her eyes bemused.

“I was married. What a dull, bleak, and neutral time that was-ever the bedsheets wrinkled and the toast cold. Once when drunk he brought a housemaid to our bed. I would have watched-the foolish girl escaped. Thin and pale she was as a poet's thoughts.”

“You wanted her yourself perhaps. You were ever so, Laura.”

Am I reprimanded? Her eyes, however, hold mischief. There is a dying here, though we are little aware of it. I touch her, but she shrinks, will not be enfolded, taken up, caressed.

“Are we not to go, Charlotte?”

“There was badness there. I remember badness there. If I don't get about my business, Miss, they will be after me. The house is gone, the shutters ruined, I swear of it.”

Her voice becomes a whine, her look-that changeling look-distraught.

“Very well, if you will, Charlotte. If you will go, go now. You may never return.”

“I shall be hereabouts, Miss-thereabouts. The people of the town crowds thick as leaves. I gets lost among them, can go here and there and hide myself in alleys. Where shall I go now but they are haunting me?”

“Anthea? And her brother? His name was Victor, I remember now.”

“They will be gone now, Miss, and starlings on their gravestones, his penis withered, eaten by the worms. They were older than us. I heard said once they were taken by the cholera.”

“Even so the house will be there. We can wander up the stairways, discover old notes, a mouldering of clothes, know who we are.” My voice is too steady. I perceive angels.

“Let me to the doorway, Miss-Laura-I beg of you. The housekeeper has at me terrible if I am late.”

She giggles in her going, casts flirtatious eyes at me. Through the doorway to the drawing room we tread as burglars in our own domain.

“He had a big one, though, didn't he?” She leans against the door, regards me as one dismissing me might. “I remember when she opened your cheeks to it and put him in. You wriggled awful, kicked a churn. The chickens ran a-crying all around. Then I saw a burst of feathers and he had it in you. It was sudden that first time. There was chasing in the orchard, apples falling. She said as you would squeal the first time and warned him not. I see your hands say no, pushing at the straw, pushing up, but quick she moved and held your shoulders down.”