Anonymous - Laura

“You watched? Did you watch? I do not remember. Only the apples and the falling of them I remember; One bumped my shoulder. I thought it a bird, a poor bird falling-that was my startlement. The foreman was shouting out afar among the hayricks, but he could not see.”

“At the first upping of your skirts and the lowering of your drawers, frilled drawers, they carried you in. The wood was rotting and the stones uneasy.”

“Did you not beat at his back? Why did you not beat at his back?”

“Oh lawks, you took to it, though. After he had his piston pummelled in. I saw your face all right, saw your expressions. Wanted to cry, you did, but couldn't bring the tears. She pushed his breeches down, got your bottom to his belly. Fair corked you were and I were jealous of it. Your eyes rolled, there was a flush on your face. When you stopped squeaking and moving, then he used his cock fair fit to pleasure you. She said she didn't have to hold you then and you were good. I called your name out loud. You would not look. 'Now, move your bottom, move,' he said. I did not think you would. You were proud in your look for a moment. I ever knew you proud in your looks when you were taking it. Are you still?”

“Yes. Should I not be? I was exercised no more frequently than you. Oh, I do not remember.”

“What falsities you declare! You are still at it, I know of it. I have heard it in the ballroom, in the dark, whisperings of wind along the gutter's edge.” Her voice cracks as ice cracks upon the coming of the warmer tides. “I must go, Miss, they will be after me.”

“You may leave. We have perhaps no other life than this. The rest is mirage, mystery, echoes that we did not make, along corridors we have not trodden.”

“That is the truth of it, perhaps, Miss-yes, I swear it is.”

“Go, then.” Her look is humbled now, our eyes exchange apologies. I shall finish the wine.

“Do not ever wonder where the past is, where the future is. They are ever present,” my father said.

“That is tautology,” my aunt replied. She showed her ankles. Mother tutted at her. I had shown my thighs ere that, girded with kisses, my garters caressed as though they were a part of me. I had threshed my hips to his threshing, cried my soft cries, known the ardent moments of the dark, tasting the bitter edges of the plants along my windowsill. Demonic, I sat as angel and Mama appraised me for my goodness, praised and appraised, her eyes unknowing at the glow within my cheeks.

“Sit upon your sins. It is proper so to conceal them.” Thus my paternal aunt in joking once.

Father departed, stern of eyes. The barrel of his gun drooped to the ground.

My thoughts were vandals, rogues, and vagabonds.

I shall have ecstasies and know fulfilments. Burnished by desire in the dark, he will come upon me. I shall be lewd in my expressions, make play with my thighs about his own. There shall be laughter in the house-the doors shall be left open. Kate-a housemaid I remember-will set her cap straight, her white cap that was never white, and ask, “Oh lawks, what are you about, Miss?”

Perhaps she will say it even at the streaming of his sperm, white pulsing-on. I shall push him from me fretfully and have her brought to lick me, leaving him forlorn, his penis dripping. There may be such days; there may be not. Shall I seek fulfilment now in words or deeds? My tongue is well turned for the former, were it to be loosed, let loose, allowed to run about the house. In The Lives of Gallant Ladies they did frot, bush to bush, and avid were their tongues. I twist in my bed now in recalling such. They are all gone down, gone down, and gone to dust. O the sad people in their going. Do they go?

“They are emergent ever,” father said when once I asked him, “from death to life we come, and life to death. The coin spins endlessly. Who shall say which then is this side, that-who then shall say?”

“Death is done with,” I heard a man once declare. He ruffled his sleeves as he spoke. I read it as a nervous gesture, expression of being, proof of existence. Mama, being within his hearing, was shocked, spoke of him as irreverent. He had a reputation as a cynic and one who moved among artists. It was not to be thought therefore that he could think otherwise, my mother said, having interpreted his remark as I thought wrongly, for I thought he intended to convey that death itself did not exist. Upon my asking him this, he frowned as though I were too young to have such questions garlanded on my brow.

“There is an end to all things-such is death,” he replied and moved on to approach my cousin, Celia, who was known to have a fondness for bohemians. I would have known what he said to her, for there was laughter, but no scorning arrows of it coursed across my cheeks. Her laughter was for the moment, the entertaining of his desire. There is death in such moments, yet the substance remains. Death is perhaps the tapestry and we the threads.

I become too solemn upon such matters. Come, fuck me, one and all, come fuck. No, I must not speak thus. Ever being demure I lowered my drawers always slowly. “Come, darling, come.” He said that but once, fingering my fur, his entry full made deep between my cheeks, my O that waited to receive. Upon that moment with the quickening of his words, the utterance of voice, all was a-pace, smacked bottom to his belly thrust. There was also-as if-yes-underwater slowness sometimes, yes. Slow, quick-quick, slow, as in a foxtrot.

“Come, love, come.” That was the best of it, the breaking of the silence quick. I sprinkled, came, knew soundless my desires, damp in my drawers as then I drew them up, was done with, done, yet ever ready to renew. Open and yet closed, I trod, wanton, at evenings in dark corridors-but no, I was not so, was not. That was Charlotte perhaps. She ever tried to vie with me, I know, was the sly one-I the petulant, the betrayed.

Comings are ever a rebirth or a continuation of that which was before, or both. Upon the serving of breakfast in my boudoir, my Uncle Paul attends upon me, his expression willing to convey both humility and hope. His glance ventures frequently into the vent of my nightgown. Intimations of boredom bring me to converse with him in a manner brighter and less brittle than heretofore.

He is to Epsom, it appears, and has a carriage waiting upon the journey. We are to Epsom if I bend to his request, most humbly put, decorated as is an inlaid casket.

“Is your companion to come? You give me little enough time to prepare for such an outing.”

“No, my dear, I thought you not too taken with her. I am fortunate to find you risen so early. Should we leave within the hour then all will be well.”

“We shall venture alone then to the racing? I prefer that.”

My reasons are not as he thinks. No mood for small talk with unknowns is upon me. He may wait downstairs. Such shall be his penance. Urgent to agree, he rises from a chair by my bed, kisses my hand, and fain would suck my nipples were I to offer them even more freely than their present peeping-up allows. I ring for a maid. Her manner of bathing me pleases. Frequently she passes the warm sponge beneath my bottom and holds it there, squirting warm water as one waters indoor plants.

“Do you like attending upon ladies?”

“The young ones like you, Miss, more of my own age-not so much the older ones. They are more fussy- they stand less still.”

“Do I stand still enough? Replenish the sponge. Squeeze it more.”

“You stand nice, Miss, legs apart, knees bent a little. It makes it easier, you see.”

A hint of breathlessness is in her tone. She can be scarce more than twenty. Her bubbles promise richness and her thighs delight. I would reverse our roles and bathe her if I could. If we kissed, pressing shells to one another's ears, we would hear the sea. The water trickles down my legs, becoming lukewarm at my ankles.-