Anonymous: Muriel

I do not think Mama and Papa had very much in common, and I hope that is not a horrid thing to say.

Papa says he will buy me a pony for my birthday. He must have thought of it of a sudden. Perhaps he saw a picture in a book, for I had not dared ask for one. I sometimes think of things that way, by looking in a book. I was undressing when he came up to my room. How awful- oh-my drawers were off and I had one leg raised upon my bed to peel my stockings down! Oh, I did blush!

Papa said 'Oh!' and shut the door again. I knew that he felt awful, just like me. He did not go away, and then I heard him call, 'It is about your birthday, Sylvia. Would you like a pony?'

'Yes!', I called and tumbled on my nightdress quickly lest he come within again. I waited, but he did not come. 'Thank you, Papa', I called.

'I will tell you in the morning', he replied, though he already had.

My thing has lots of curls around it now. I brush them with my fingers when I am in bed. Perhaps I should not. I wonder if it's wrong?

Mama said naughty things to Richard sometimes, he told me, but would not say what she had said. He was horrid and I think he made it up. He had his trousers open, but I would not look.

Phillip's Day-Book

I grow uneasy at the thought that I have perhaps proposed a pony where Sylvia would better have a true companion. I asked her so. 'Who, Papa?', she replied and looked a little puzzled at my seriousness. 'I am perfectly all right, Papa, I really am', she said, and played with Rose again upon the swing. The two are very close, it seems to me. The servant should be at her work, but again I feel powerless-selfish even-to intrude, and would be better at my work than thinking of such things.

My novel, however, is like unto a carriage wheel to which the brake has locked itself. My thoughts stir much like porridge when they should really be ethereal. Of men I write well, for they say the proper things that I myself would say. As to women, I find it difficult to describe such thoughts as they may have. Their conversations are thus stilted, and not what I would have them say at all. The image of my once-beloved floats ever in my head. Alas, I see her with her nipples stiff, her drawers already untied beneath her dress. I should scourge myself upon such thoughts as my old tutor used to tell me to.

It is notable, however-and I must somehow convey this with such clarity as I can muster-that the thoughts we least would have are those which fight with tooth and claw against suppression. Clearly, such is the devil's work. Temptation it is called, and is only with ardent will to be put down. Thus would I not listen to her when she used crude words, however warm her breath against my mouth, however luring were her fingertips. The act of love should be performed in silence and be quickly done. It is deemed for procreation, not for pleasure, so I often said to her.

'Why, there is naught but paper in your mind sometimes. Someone should light it with a match', said she, and fell to musing who might do it best, just to annoy me and to try and make my mind a whirlpool of unthought-of things.

'You are not so much interested in the content of your writing as in the act of working with your pen, Phillip. Yet contrariwise, you are not so much interested in the act of love as in the abstract content of it', once she chided me.

That is not true, of course-that is not true. The irritation in remembering such words robs me of concentration. Half an hour ago I chanced to look out on the garden scene and saw that Sylvia has white drawers on and summer-thin. I must move the swing to face the other way, or else tell Rose to push her not so high.

Jane Mansfield's Day-Book

It was hardly surprising to learn that Deirdre has at last left Phillip. It was an uneasy marriage from the very start. Fire and water, as is the saying, and Deirdre, bless her, having all the heat.

I am glad I did not marry, just as Muriel is. Sisters are best together, and what lovely times we have! It is indiscreet to write of them, perhaps, but when I say so Muriel laughs and tells me not to spare a word of it.

There was such a pretty girl at the Fortescues' last night. I will write of her another time, for have not time today. We are to keep an eye on Sylvia, Deirdre asks in her brief note that reads as breathlessly as she makes love (I do believe). In what wise she did not say. The bolder that her education be, the better it will be for Sylvia, I think. In any case, the two cannot live all alone. We are resolved to visit Phillip. After all, he is our brother, though I believe he thinks our ways are rather strange.

We should settle for a fortnight at the least, says Muriel, and are resolved to take the coach tomorrow to his home. It is a whole year since we visited. How glum he looked then, but how bright was Deirdre! Really I believe she would have slept between us if he had not been there.

Deirdre Mansfield's Day-Book

Richard is sweet. They both like the new house. How smoky all is-yet in winter it will be even cosier when the fog envelops all the windows and the fires are lit. I must write to Sylvia tomorrow. He does not deserve a word, nor any man who scorns the amourous comfort of his wife and will forever dribble of his love but scarcely ever put the poker in to stir my fire.

'You are becoming a bad girl', Mama said to me years and years ago, but hugged and kissed me as she spoke. There was at least complicity in her reproof, whereas with Phillip all was dullness and unknowing in his very soul. To speak of naughtiness to him was counted as a sin, and yet I cannot find in it anything but an affirmation of desire which, if it is cloaked, will only spread its roots down more.

There is love when a tongue between my lips sweeps round my own-love when my breasts are burnished and my nipples stiffened by a fondling hand.

Last night I sat with Richard on the couch. He kissed my lips; his hand roamed to my breasts and felt their weight and their protuberance. In a moment he had sleeked that self-same hand beneath my skirt and murmured at the plumpness of my thighs.

I am in sin. Is it better than to be frustrated? I have been lax with him before. That last night at the house before we left, I let him kiss me with abandon, permitted him to loose my drawers till I thrust him up and took myself up to my ever-hopeful marriage bed, there to be scorned-indeed, almost reviled. Have I in truth what Phillip called a 'coarse, lewd tongue' when a fever of desire is in my veins? Should I be as marble, quiet as a church crypt? Never was I chided in my youth for saying naughty things in bed, or in the hayloft, in the summerhouse. There were sparklings then of love and lust combined, and sweet they were and heady as an old champagne. My cousin, Edward, had my sister, Adelaide, upon the lawn, and dusk it was, and we were seen; I had no doubt that we were seen by eyes that peered out from the house. And then it was I who fell and had my drawers pulled down by one who had waited on a moment such as that. Adelaide's eyes enchanted mine as we both came, and drew the sperm into our willing quims.

You have been educated', Mama said that night, though she pretended not to know what had passed upon the summer grass.

Phillip has no mind for such. I never should have told him all my tales.

'There were lovings, Phillip', I explained. He would not listen, though, and turned away. His cock was stiff sometimes when thus I spoke, but was not always so, and that amazed me truly. Was he jealous of my fondlings, pumpings, in my early years? I think not, no. His marbled, cold ideas of purity came in long strides before that sweet emotion could take flower.

The night was broken on his 'shame' of me-I who would have sported with him as he wished and paid my wifely homage to his bed. I blundered out, left him to his dry dreams, and naked to my stockings made to sleep in an adjoining guest room where a bed is ever ready for a visitor. Alas for my would-be fealty, I blundered into Richard in the dark, he with his nightgown on-and he whose hands had so impulsively sought to caress my bottom cheeks downstairs.