Evan Hunter - Lizzie

“Are you not familiar with Oscar Wilde? He’s one of our more celebrated authors, and purportedly as ‘so’ as a turnip.”

“As ‘so’?”

“As queer, Lizzie.”

“Odd, do you mean?”

“Odd, yes. But also queer.”

“I still don’t know what you mean.”

“Why, homosexual, Lizzie.”

“Are you saying Geoffrey is homosexual?”

“Oh, quite.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Can you believe that I am? That you yourself are?”

“But I’m not!”

“Lesbian to the core,” Alison said, and laughed softly, and suddenly put her hand upon her. Lizzie leaped in surprise. “Have I startled Miss Puss?” Alison said, “There, there,” she said, stroking her, “be calm, sweet lady, stai calma, I shall smooth your ruffled feathers.”

“I’m... not at all what you think,” Lizzie said. “What you... say I am.”

“Then you’re simply not, of course, and we have no argument,” Alison said.

“I should never want another woman but you,” Lizzie said. “I should never dream of allowing anyone else to do to me...”

“Never say never,” Alison said.

“Though I’m certain that the moment I’m gone, you shall tumble into bed with the nearest...”

“More than likely,” Alison said. “But we have time yet.”

“Little more than a month.”

“An eternity,” Alison murmured.

“Alison... if we’re to talk...”

“Yes?”

“You must stop doing that. Really.”

“Is Miss Puss becoming agitated? Then stop I shall, for talk I would. There’s nothing I enjoy better, in fact, than recalling the days of my wanton youth.”

“And now you’ll try to make me jealous again, won’t you?”

“No, no.”

“Oh, yes, yes, I know you too well, Alison.”

“As well you should. I’m a reflection of yourself, Lizzie.”

“Hardly.”

“Your very soul.”

“Damned to Hell forever.”

“For loving?”

“For sinning.”

“I’ve known greater sinners who are doubtlessly strumming harps and floating on clouds this very moment.”

“Have you glimpsed Heaven then, to know...?”

“You’re my Heaven, Lizzie.”

“As was Geoffrey.”

“Indeed. When first we...”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Very well then.”

The rain beat upon the windowpanes. There was a harsh wind now, rattling the leaves in the trees outside. From very far away, Lizzie could hear the angry motion of the sea.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Have you changed your mind then? A moment ago...”

“Tell me,” Lizzie said.

“Your servant, of course,” Alison said, and smiled. “But, oh dear, where shall I begin? We were innocents, you understand, and had not yet been exposed to the witless sexual theories expounded by all those lofty cocks of the walk represented in my father’s medical volumes — have I told you he was a physician, my father? The irony of his death, in fact, was that he was unable to diagnose his own disease. But high on a shelf in his library were the dusty tomes containing the sexual secrets of the universe, known by us to be there, of course — there is little that can be kept from bright, inquisitive children — some of which I would rather not have learned, believe me. Can you imagine medical practitioners advocating the removal of a woman’s ovaries rather than admitting that the natural stirrings she feels in her vagina are prompted by passion and not ‘female’ malfunction? Ah, yes, Lizzie, you have no idea how many women in our day — but that’s another story, as our Mr. Kipling might say.

“One rainy afternoon — it’s always raining when children make their most important discoveries, isn’t it? — one rainy afternoon, my brother Geoffrey mounted a ladder and took down from my father’s topmost shelf a book we perused with considerable interest. And there, all at once, in full color, and occupying a full page of the volume, were drawings side by side of the male sex organ and its female counterpart. Well! I might add that the drawing of the female organ was rendered in more excruciating detail than that of the male, but perhaps this was due more to the fascination of the artist than to any sense of dedication on the parts of the physicians who’d compiled the volume. But who can say? Physicians today certainly seem steadfast in their dedication to scooping out our insides as if we were melons. I digress.

“Naturally curious, alone in the house — was my mother off to a British equivalent of the quatre à cinq ? I shouldn’t be surprised, for her upbringing was European, and she was surely familiar with the ways of the world, and less bound to propriety than the proper London ladies of her time — nonetheless, alone and curious, the servants God only knew where, the library door locked, we decided to compare against the drawings in my father’s text the — how shall I put it? — the real life articles. So my brother unfastened his trousers and we examined his penis at great length, no pun intended, and then to correct the gap — again no pun intended — in my own education, I lifted my skirts, and lowered my knickers and opened my legs to him.

“I scarcely had pubic hair then, I don’t really recall. A gentle down, I believe, hardly similar to the savage bush I now possess — the ‘golden bramble’, Geoffrey used to call it, but that was when we were a bit older. Using a looking glass we took down from the mantel, and much as I showed you to yourself not very long ago, I sat with limbs akimbo while we both stared in wonder at the bewildering labyrinth of fold upon fold of tissue, Geoffrey reciting aloud the anatomical words for what until then I scarcely knew I had between my legs — well, let me reconstruct the scene for you, Lizzie,” she said, and suddenly threw back the covers.

“No, don’t!” Lizzie cried, and hurled herself upon her. “I don’t want to hear another word, I shan’t be able to stand it!” Kissing her fiercely, she murmured, “I love you so much, oh God, I love you to death,” crushing herself hungrily against her, and knowing in that instant that Alison was as much her own twin as she was Geoffrey’s. And suddenly, confronted with this darker knowledge, she wondered which of them — she or Alison — truly controlled their tumultuous joinings, and realized all at once that it was beyond the control of either; they were only what they were; she was all that Alison said she was. She allowed the raging sea to wash over her then, accepting wave after wave, no longer caring what she was or might become, no longer trying even to guess who this woman drowning in the arms of another woman might be.

On the twenty-third of October, they returned to London, where Lizzie was reunited with her friends at the Hotel Albemarle. Her letters to them had been full of lies about her continuing frailty, and they were surprised to see her looking in such good health, though, in fact, the color she had picked up in Cannes had faded with the September rains, and the unusually cold winds of October had kept her and Alison indoors much of the time.

Felicity confessed that a gondolier in Venice had pinched her bottom.

Rebecca said that her German had served them beautifully in Munich and Berlin, but that it had not been understood as well in the smaller towns.

Anna complained that the food had been virtually inedible everywhere — “especially in Italy”.

She saw Alison for the last time on a blustery cold Saturday, two days before she and her friends were to sail home from Liverpool. In the Burlington Arcade that morning, she bought Alison a small pillbox with the sentiment Thine Forever enameled in black script lettering on its bright pink top. She gave it to her over lunch at Gatti’s in the Strand. Alison’s farewell gift was a brilliant red orchid. To the crowds passing by outside the restaurant later that afternoon, the two women in tearful embrace on the sidewalk must have seemed indeed a commonplace. They kissed once more, lingeringly, and then walked off in separate directions, their heads bent against the wind blowing fiercely all about them.