by Chris Dolan
No man apart from Albert Coak had pondered her gentle slopes and tidy lines, or appreciated the autumn leaf of her sex, or noticed how her hair twined round her neck and streamed down the delta of her back. He may have given no sign of wishing to approach her, but at least he had appreciated the view she offered. With George she had lost any vestige of shyness. It seemed to her that in that moment, in the mysterious light of another continent she was her body. No more and no less, and she took pleasure in exhibiting herself boldly, joyfully, pushing herself away from her lover so he could exploit the spectacle better. Her body itself, as if by itself, demanded to be seen, and she curled herself rudely round him, hearing his lust, grasping at every part of him, and being grasped in return. Her mind was aware only of their limbs and their combined movements – apart from involuntary lines and strophes learned in the heaths of Scotland flitting through her carnal desires. Flickering hummingbirds in a thunderous sky.
“I have immortal longings in me.”
And, perhaps because his gaze was so intense and grateful she found that she too wanted to gaze. To wonder at the porcelain skin of a well-kept and kempt young man. The angles of him, the dark curls around his head and haloing his sex. “I’ve always loved a standing ovation.” They laughed in mutual gratitude and complicity; then became serious again, intent on the grave business between them. They locked eyes and saw reflected between them youthful devilry. Yet, annoyingly, her rational mind began to stir again. The room, the bed, the rain all impinged on her; her clothes, the sound of her own voice and accent, could not quite be silenced. As on stage, she would have to work harder, push the part she was playing to its limits, to inhabit it completely.
Thomas had used the worst kind of language towards her and though at the time she felt she ought to be offended, she now wanted to use those very words – and hear them in return. She hissed words in George’s ear she hardly knew the meaning of herself and which an English-educated colonial could only guess at. She voiced expressions she’d heard the gamblers at the View use as they played their killer cards to force the hand of an opponent. Her calls of coggie, prick, pap, drove George to include, amongst more amorous murmurs, obscenities of his own. His blurts of quim and fuck excited her, but also returned her to the reality of their situation: low-born Scot debauching a superior landowner’s son. As on the Alba when she considered which of all the possible Elspeths she must one day become, she was bewildered – happily so – at what kind of Elspeth she was now. Lusty lass of the soil? Bohemian free-thinker? The artful mistress or virgin bride? Her body seemed decided on lusty lass and the language she found them both using eliminated virginal maiden. She remembered poor Tom’s pleas, as if they were lines in a script by a forgotten master, and turned them into urgent commands, ordering her social superior where to look, when to touch, when not to, what to say. George pulled at her shift, bit her hair; they kneeled on the bed, his body pressing her up against the wall behind.
At last their urgency began to blot out the room, the night outside the window, her sense of herself. He seemed to move around her in disconnected flashes: his eyes staring, penis below her then behind her, his hands clutching her, then himself, as if they both might break up, spin away from the centre of themselves.
Instead of laying her down he pushed her upwards, his head working its way down her body and sucking, not kissing. She knew from colleagues at the theatre it was common practice for well-born men in this Colony to be introduced to intimacy in the brothels of Bridgetown. George’s display was clearly more than mere instinct. She felt envious of those scarlet women – of their knowledge and candour, and dearly wished to outperform them in her new lover’s eyes. She thrust her flank out for him and, as she did, some distant part of her wondered if this was how a high-born man would abuse a commoner like her, and remembered her father’s dire warning – she’d become nothing more than a weel-travelled hoor. Even if that was so, she didn’t care. She would use this slim young gent, his skin and hair soaked with lust, as much as he used her.
“Open yourself for me,” he said in a low tone, as if in the voice of some other; some being lost inside him. She did, and knew she had found another role to excel in – temptress, fallen woman. If this was the future her father had predicted – wantonness and immorality – then she felt no shame in the least. She returned George’s look with a brazen stare of her own, savouring every sharp angle, the tightening of his buttocks, his livid sex, the drops of sweet sweat on gold skin and black hair, the pain of desire in his eyes. Her body took over completely once again, her movements like thoughts. Each had captured the other utterly, and in that captivity Elspeth wondered at this new version of herself.
She waited for George to leave before sunrise, readying herself for the inevitability of many clandestine farewells to come. She anticipated lonely mornings, sudden desertions, the hollowness of absence. There was nothing to be done about it. George was her illicit lover for the time being only. She let him slumber for as long as she thought safe, then kissed him awake. They lay apart for a moment, as if astonished to find themselves alone in bed with last night’s words and actions buzzing around them, biting, like mosquitoes. George looked down at his own body, like a man looking at a stranger.
But he did not, as she expected, leap from her bed, pull on his clothes and run to the door, embracing her hastily before leaving – maybe forever. He lay on, hardly waking, nuzzling in to her.
“Shouldn’t you be home before breakfast?”
“I should.”
“Then better wake up. I don’t want you banished from here quite so soon.”
But when George refused to go home, she said, “If we’re discovered, there’ll be all manner of trouble.”
“If you’re worried for your own sake, then I’ll leave…”
“What sake would that be? I’m an actress. I’ve no one to scandalise.”
“And nor do I care a jot what anyone says.”
“Not even your father?”
“Least of all.”
Young gentlemen were no doubt permitted a limited number of mistakes. The dawn was calm and warm and soft, and she wanted nothing more than to keep George’s body close to hers and gave up persuading him to go.
When morning proper came they woke to a sun shining heartily, the air crisp and clean and fresh, their bodies touching one another at ankle, thigh and shoulder. Still George did not rise from the bed, but lay there as if in a trance, beaming smiles at her, his fingers clasped around hers. The sun rose higher over the most perfect of days, with hardly a wisp of wind to blow the casuarinas and laburnum trees outside her window, or convince a bird to sing more than was necessary. The whole world seemed in a stupor, induced by the beauty and violence of their first night together. At last Elspeth mustered the willpower to stir, wrapped herself in her nightgown, and went to Daisy’s and Tuesday’s room in the basement.
“If anyone from the theatre calls, tell them I’m resting today.”
Tuesday and Dainty tried to hide them but she caught their smiles as they turned their heads away. Should she be angry – scold them for their prying and presumption? They were only doing what she would have done in similar circumstances. They must have heard George and her last night. Not in detail, she hoped, just activity in the room above them. Even that made her shuffle in front of the two, now over-serious, faces. But Tuesday and Dainty weren’t the Overtons, or even their English-educated handmaids. From what she had heard at the Ocean View, Africans were creatures of love and lust. They coupled continuously and according to Virginie so randomly it was almost inadvertent.
Elspeth had the idea – from where, she didn’t know – that these foreign couplings were torpid, spiritless affairs. An act darkies were driven to perform, the very acceptability of it amongst their own kind robbing it of any danger and passion. Whatever they had heard the night before was just more strange behaviour from white people. She instructed them that she was not be disturbed all day, and that only a tray of fru
it and a jug of water should be left outside her room later in the morning. The maids smiled more openly – as if she had made some confession to them, allowed them a degree of intimacy. And perhaps she had. Their stifled laughter reminded her of younger cousins back home, herself a short while ago, sniggering at the slightest suspicion of adult intimacy.
Back in her room, she dressed for the day. George rose and dressed, too. Both feigned composure, but dressed themselves quickly, backs half turned to each other.
“You’ve no regrets?”
The question took her by surprise, but she knew what he meant. That they should have made love was beyond question unregrettable. It was the manner in which they had done it that was causing them to worry. Now, literally in the light of day – a sharp all-disclosing tropical light – she panicked. She felt more naked than she had last night, shameful parts of her soul exposed that no hand could modestly cover. She felt her colour flame high and saw images of her previous self, only a few hours ago, flash before her eyes. How wanton! How crude she had been! Those fierce words she had spoken – no, shouted – like a wildcat! She had twisted and distorted herself so that he – a well-born gent, almost a stranger to her – could peer into her most personal corners. Now it appeared to her that their lovemaking was not only vulgar but that, instead of being elevated by a social superior, she had degraded his sensibility.
Then she became aware of the same vexation in his eyes. He had not asked the question in triumph, callously, but hesitantly, anxiously. “I was a little earthy with you last night.”
He saw the crime as his, not hers! Having had his fun with a gullible actress, he was now concerned for her. The shame she had momentarily felt began to lift from her. Yet still, those acts that had seemed natural at the height of their passion belonged to a new class of encounter, and to a new inexplicable Elspeth, that she could not bring herself to speak of directly, or even refer to them. With some effort, she replied, “Perhaps I was not so ladylike myself.”
George Lisle threw his head back and laughed. “You were not! By Christ you weren’t!” He took her hand and cradled it, kneading out of her the last drops of embarrassment. Strange, how some parts of life cannot be spoken of, even thought of, but are easily undertaken, acted out. We think of ourselves as children of words, of actions that can be considered, or at least reflected upon, but there were great furrows of her life that could not be talked about openly. Events so real to her but which, later, had to be tucked away, even from herself. The embarrassment began to grow again between the two of them, and the only way out of the predicament was through touching again. He kissed her and brought her tightly against him, until she was lost in his bulk, fumbled through waistcoat, linen and serge for the touch of him. Her body responded to the rustle of her own garments, the silks and satins and brocade that Lord Coak had gifted her.
Before their passions rose beyond control, they retired quickly to the window-seat and wondered at the change of hue daylight gave to their skin: her rose-pink and auburn of last night diluted in the sun to peach and amber; burgundy strands in his coal-black hair. The scents, sounds and movements of her tropical garden pervaded the room. His fingertips frisked for her through shift and drawers, birds delving and digging for flesh. Some feelings are to mortals given, with less of earth in them than heaven. She saw his shoulders and elbows and sex as palms and succulents that looked hard and unforgiving but which became pliant to the touch. She felt strong and straight, her skin renewed by the morning sun and fresh sea air. The steady, building heat of the day drew them towards the same ferocity and tenderness they had experienced the evening before.
They luxuriated in the yards of time they now had at their disposal – George, clearly, had no intention of going anywhere. Last night had seemed to her urgent; now they felt no hurry and she found more in him to look at, found new textures, new sounds, gentler words than before. They each whispered how beautiful the other was. They broke off from their urges to enjoy a simple caress of the face, a kiss on closed eyelids and lashes. Their initiation over, they could ease each other, lose their fear of what was permissible and what was not. Nothing was improper between them now. There was not a touch, a kiss, a posture, a word in this or any other language denied to them. No part of their combined bodies was out of bounds, or something one feared the other might shield or withhold.
As their second night approached, they sat again by the open window, though the air outside felt hotter than the room. The sun – a glow of such perfect crimson that even George admitted to never having seen such a beautiful sundown in all his days in the Tropics – began setting over the ocean. The only movement was the swiftly scudding clouds high in the darkening sky. From behind them came the odd flash of lightning; then thunder in its wake, low and distant. But whenever they relaxed, left off from touching and returned to the realm of words, Elspeth would worry again about the consequences of his staying with her so long.
“Don’t ye have a hame t’ gang to, my jo?”
The rustic talk was meant to cover her anxiety – after all, their love-vocabulary included the bawdiest of vulgar Scots. Words which young George Lisle was quick to learn. But immediately she had done so, she feared that, rather than impress him with her talented mimicry, she had shown her true, low-born self. George did not appear to notice. He simply shrugged and said, “They’re used to me being out all night.”
The look on her face was enough to betray an additional anxiety – but George assured her, between caresses, that his absences had not been with other women, but those nights carousing and gambling at the Ocean View. They ate the last of the fruit the maids had left for them, feeding one another papaya, mango and orange, sharing the escaping juices.
Then, quite literally out of the blue – there was not a rain cloud in the sky that they could see, only wisps of scarlet trailing high in the sky – it began to rain. After the intense, oppressive heat of the long day, the shower was like a blessing, as if the heavens were reassuring them that their sin – if sin it was – was being washed away. They leaned out of the window and let the water fall on their hair and cool their skin. The coconut and banana trees swayed and bowed outside in the grounds, and as the shower became heavier, the drops began to fall fast, straight as a die, a curtain of sparkling steel, dense as mail, severing them from the rest of the world. Elspeth prayed that the weather would imprison them, if not forever, then at least up to the last moment before her heralded entrée at the Lyric theatre. The wind rose, and fell, then built again. The sun had all but dropped into the ocean, blood-red and surrounded by a halo of black. George had never witnessed this particular pattern of natural events before.
“You have the profoundest effect upon the world, Ellie. To change me was a good trick – but to change the aspect of the sun itself!”
“Perhaps there’s a real storm brewing.”
“Then let it last for a century!”
It was unwise for George to take to the road, and they were fated to spend a second night together. The constant low grumbling of thunder grew steadily more ferocious. George strained to peer out the window, looking south along the coast.
“Perhaps the storm’s on the other side of the island.”
They dressed – enough for modesty – and Elspeth called out for one of the servants. Dainty told them that a storm was indeed raging, and not so very far from them. Housemaids of the Overtons had just returned from town, having seen the wildness of the sea playing havoc with ships at Carlisle Bay.
By nightfall, the rain had abated but the winds were worse. They went back to bed and he cradled her in his arms, looked deeply and long into her eyes, and told her he loved her. He said it with such sadness, as if he knew the loss implicit in his words. And she believed him; began to feel that perhaps, she too, was capable of real love for this man. She lay awake hours into the night listening to the trees being blown about, and her gentleman’s soft, regular, breaths. She rehearsed in her head the Lady of the Lake for tomorrow’s fi
rst performance, while stroking her lover’s brow.
“Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire.
But not a setting beam could glow
Within the dark ravines below…”
This storm was no accident. Like the sailor sacrificed at her departure, here was a further sign of things to come. The sea whipped itself into a frenzy and Elspeth shivered with delight at the sweeping away of the past, and the advent of further pleasures and accolades to come.
V
She awoke to the shaking of the stone around her; opened her eyes to see a turret of the great mansion drop outside her window, crumbling like a sugar column. It exploded somewhere unseen below a moment later, a grey dense cloud rising in its wake. George jumped up with a shout, stared in amazement first at the night outside – the gale howling, timbers groaning – and then at her. The floor beneath them rose up, as if a beast below were breaking the surface of the sea, tossing a boat a fraction of its size out of its way.
He cried, “Jesus!” and Elspeth flinched at the blasphemy. Cursed herself for their many sins that had brought hell’s hand from out of the depths.
George took hold of her and marched her – the two of them near naked – through the bedroom door, down the shuddering stairs, out into the fury of the night. He drove her on through the gardens. Where to, she couldn’t imagine. Rain like she had never seen before spewed from the sky. Long freezing spears hurled by some demented spirit. The noise of the wind: stone cracking, wood buckling. Figures darting here and there, silhouettes from other broken wings of the house flying past, all in such confusion that Elspeth could make no sense of anything. By the time they had put a little distance between themselves and the house, half of it had been torn away, brick and plaster dissolving in floodwaters. They waded through slough and mud where the garden had been only hours before.