Connie laughed, but not very happily.

  ‘Then you ought to be pleased that they are all bolshevists,’ she said. ‘You ought to be pleased that they hurry on towards the end.’

  ‘So I am. I don’t stop ‘em. Because I couldn’t if I would.’

  ‘Then why are you so bitter?’

  ‘I’m not! If my cock gives its last crow, I don’t mind.’

  ‘But if you have a child?’ she said.

  He dropped his head.

  ‘Why,’ he said at last. ‘It seems to me a wrong and bitter thing to do, to bring a child into this world.’

  ‘No! Don’t say it! Don’t say it!’ she pleaded. ‘I think I’m going to have one. Say you’ll he pleased.’ She laid her hand on his.

  ‘I’m pleased for you to be pleased,’ he said. ‘But for me it seems a ghastly treachery to the unborn creature.

  ‘Ah no!’ she said, shocked. ‘Then you can’t ever really want me! You can’t want me, if you feel that!’

  Again he was silent, his face sullen. Outside there was only the threshing of the rain.

  ‘It’s not quite true!’ she whispered. ‘It’s not quite true! There’s another truth.’ She felt he was bitter now partly because she was leaving him, deliberately going away to Venice. And this half pleased her.

  She pulled open his clothing and uncovered his belly, and kissed his navel. Then she laid her cheek on his belly and pressed her arm round his warm, silent loins. They were alone in the flood.

  ‘Tell me you want a child, in hope!’ she murmured, pressing her face against his belly. ‘Tell me you do!’

  ‘Why!’ he said at last: and she felt the curious quiver of changing consciousness and relaxation going through his body. ‘Why I’ve thought sometimes if one but tried, here among th’ colliers even! They’re workin’ bad now, an’ not earnin’ much. If a man could say to ‘em: Dunna think o’ nowt but th’ money. When it comes ter wants, we want but little. Let’s not live for money — ’

  She softly rubbed her cheek on his belly, and gathered his balls in her hand. The penis stirred softly, with strange life, but did not rise up. The rain beat bruisingly outside.

  ‘Let’s live for summat else. Let’s not live ter make money, neither for us-selves nor for anybody else. Now we’re forced to. We’re forced to make a bit for us-selves, an’ a fair lot for th’ bosses. Let’s stop it! Bit by bit, let’s stop it. We needn’t rant an’ rave. Bit by bit, let’s drop the whole industrial life an’ go back. The least little bit o’ money’ll do. For everybody, me an’ you, bosses an’ masters, even th’ king. The least little bit o’ money’ll really do. Just make up your mind to it, an’ you’ve got out o’ th’ mess.’ He paused, then went on:

  ‘An’ I’d tell ‘em: Look! Look at Joe! He moves lovely! Look how he moves, alive and aware. He’s beautiful! An’ look at Jonah! He’s clumsy, he’s ugly, because he’s niver willin’ to rouse himself I’d tell ‘em: Look! look at yourselves! one shoulder higher than t’other, legs twisted, feet all lumps! What have yer done ter yerselves, wi’ the blasted work? Spoilt yerselves. No need to work that much. Take yer clothes off an’ look at yourselves. Yer ought ter be alive an’ beautiful, an’ yer ugly an’ half dead. So I’d tell ‘em. An’ I’d get my men to wear different clothes: appen close red trousers, bright red, an’ little short white jackets. Why, if men had red, fine legs, that alone would change them in a month. They’d begin to be men again, to be men! An’ the women could dress as they liked. Because if once the men walked with legs close bright scarlet, and buttocks nice and showing scarlet under a little white jacket: then the women ‘ud begin to be women. It’s because th’ men aren’t men, that th’ women have to be. — An’ in time pull down Tevershall and build a few beautiful buildings, that would hold us all. An’ clean the country up again. An’ not have many children, because the world is overcrowded.

  ‘But I wouldn’t preach to the men: only strip ‘em an’ say: Look at yourselves! That’s workin’ for money! — Hark at yourselves! That’s working for money. You’ve been working for money! Look at Tevershall! It’s horrible. That’s because it was built while you was working for money. Look at your girls! They don’t care about you, you don’t care about them. It’s because you’ve spent your time working an’ caring for money. You can’t talk nor move nor live, you can’t properly be with a woman. You’re not alive. Look at yourselves!’

  There fell a complete silence. Connie was half listening, and threading in the hair at the root of his belly a few forget-me-nots that she had gathered on the way to the hut. Outside, the world had gone still, and a little icy.

  ‘You’ve got four kinds of hair,’ she said to him. ‘On your chest it’s nearly black, and your hair isn’t dark on your head: but your moustache is hard and dark red, and your hair here, your love-hair, is like a little brush of bright red-gold mistletoe. It’s the loveliest of all!’

  He looked down and saw the milky bits of forget-me-nots in the hair on his groin.

  ‘Ay! That’s where to put forget-me-nots, in the man-hair, or the maiden-hair. But don’t you care about the future?’

  She looked up at him.

  ‘Oh, I do, terribly!’ she said.

  ‘Because when I feel the human world is doomed, has doomed itself by its own mingy beastliness, then I feel the Colonies aren’t far enough. The moon wouldn’t be far enough, because even there you could look back and see the earth, dirty, beastly, unsavoury among all the stars: made foul by men. Then I feel I’ve swallowed gall, and it’s eating my inside out, and nowhere’s far enough away to get away. But when I get a turn, I forget it all again. Though it’s a shame, what’s been done to people these last hundred years: men turned into nothing but labour-insects, and all their manhood taken away, and all their real life. I’d wipe the machines off the face of the earth again, and end the industrial epoch absolutely, like a black mistake. But since I can’t, an’ nobody can, I’d better hold my peace, an’ try an’ live my own life: if I’ve got one to live, which I rather doubt.’

  The thunder had ceased outside, but the rain which had abated, suddenly came striking down, with a last blench of lightning and mutter of departing storm. Connie was uneasy. He had talked so long now, and he was really talking to himself not to her. Despair seemed to come down on him completely, and she was feeling happy, she hated despair. She knew her leaving him, which he had only just realized inside himself had plunged him back into this mood. And she triumphed a little.

  She opened the door and looked at the straight heavy rain, like a steel curtain, and had a sudden desire to rush out into it, to rush away. She got up, and began swiftly pulling off her stockings, then her dress and underclothing, and he held his breath. Her pointed keen animal breasts tipped and stirred as she moved. She was ivory-coloured in the greenish light. She slipped on her rubber shoes again and ran out with a wild little laugh, holding up her breasts to the heavy rain and spreading her arms, and running blurred in the rain with the eurhythmic dance movements she had learned so long ago in Dresden. It was a strange pallid figure lifting and falling, bending so the rain beat and glistened on the full haunches, swaying up again and coming belly-forward through the rain, then stooping again so that only the full loins and buttocks were offered in a kind of homage towards him, repeating a wild obeisance.

  He laughed wryly, and threw off his clothes. It was too much. He jumped out, naked and white, with a little shiver, into the hard slanting rain. Flossie sprang before him with a frantic little bark. Connie, her hair all wet and sticking to her head, turned her hot face and saw him. Her blue eyes blazed with excitement as she turned and ran fast, with a strange charging movement, out of the clearing and down the path, the wet boughs whipping her. She ran, and he saw nothing but the round wet head, the wet back leaning forward in flight, the rounded buttocks twinkling: a wonderful cowering female nakedness in flight.

  She was nearly at the wide riding when he came up and flung his naked arm round her soft, naked-wet middle. She gave a shriek and straightened herself and the heap of her soft, chill flesh came up against his body. He pressed it all up against him, madly, the heap of soft, chilled female flesh that became quickly warm as flame, in contact. The rain streamed on them till they smoked. He gathered her lovely, heavy posteriors one in each hand and pressed them in towards him in a frenzy, quivering motionless in the rain. Then suddenly he tipped her up and fell with her on the path, in the roaring silence of the rain, and short and sharp, he took her, short and sharp and finished, like an animal.

  He got up in an instant, wiping the rain from his eyes.

  ‘Come in,’ he said, and they started running back to the hut. He ran straight and swift: he didn’t like the rain. But she came slower, gathering forget-me-nots and campion and bluebells, running a few steps and watching him fleeing away from her.

  When she came with her flowers, panting to the hut, he had already started a fire, and the twigs were crackling. Her sharp breasts rose and fell, her hair was plastered down with rain, her face was flushed ruddy and her body glistened and trickled. Wide-eyed and breathless, with a small wet head and full, trickling, naive haunches, she looked another creature.

  He took the old sheet and rubbed her down, she standing like a child. Then he rubbed himself having shut the door of the hut. The fire was blazing up. She ducked her head in the other end of the sheet, and rubbed her wet hair.

  ‘We’re drying ourselves together on the same towel, we shall quarrel!’ he said.

  She looked up for a moment, her hair all odds and ends.

  ‘No!’ she said, her eyes wide. ‘It’s not a towel, it’s a sheet.’ And she went on busily rubbing her head, while he busily rubbed his.

  Still panting with their exertions, each wrapped in an army blanket, but the front of the body open to the fire, they sat on a log side by side before the blaze, to get quiet. Connie hated the feel of the blanket against her skin. But now the sheet was all wet.

  She dropped her blanket and kneeled on the clay hearth, holding her head to the fire, and shaking her hair to dry it. He watched the beautiful curving drop of her haunches. That fascinated him today. How it sloped with a rich down-slope to the heavy roundness of her buttocks! And in between, folded in the secret warmth, the secret entrances!

  He stroked her tail with his hand, long and subtly taking in the curves and the globe-fullness.

  ‘Tha’s got such a nice tail on thee,’ he said, in the throaty caressive dialect. ‘Tha’s got the nicest arse of anybody. It’s the nicest, nicest woman’s arse as is! An’ ivery bit of it is woman, woman sure as nuts. Tha’rt not one o’ them button-arsed lasses as should be lads, are ter! Tha’s got a real soft sloping bottom on thee, as a man loves in ‘is guts. It’s a bottom as could hold the world up, it is!’

  All the while he spoke he exquisitely stroked the rounded tail, till it seemed as if a slippery sort of fire came from it into his hands. And his finger-tips touched the two secret openings to her body, time after time, with a soft little brush of fire.

  ‘An’ if tha shits an’ if tha pisses, I’m glad. I don’t want a woman as couldna shit nor piss.’

  Connie could not help a sudden snort of astonished laughter, but he went on unmoved.

  ‘Tha’rt real, tha art! Tha’art real, even a bit of a bitch. Here tha shits an’ here tha pisses: an’ I lay my hand on ‘em both an’ like thee for it. I like thee for it. Tha’s got a proper, woman’s arse, proud of itself. It’s none ashamed of itself this isna.’

  He laid his hand close and firm over her secret places, in a kind of close greeting.

  ‘I like it,’ he said. ‘I like it! An’ if I only lived ten minutes, an’ stroked thy arse an’ got to know it, I should reckon I’d lived one life, see ter! Industrial system or not! Here’s one o’ my lifetimes.’

  She turned round and climbed into his lap, clinging to him. ‘Kiss me!’ she whispered.

  And she knew the thought of their separation was latent in both their minds, and at last she was sad.

  She sat on his thighs, her head against his breast, and her ivory-gleaming legs loosely apart, the fire glowing unequally upon them. Sitting with his head dropped, he looked at the folds of her body in the fire-glow, and at the fleece of soft brown hair that hung down to a point between her open thighs. He reached to the table behind, and took up her bunch of flowers, still so wet that drops of rain fell on to her.

  ‘Flowers stops out of doors all weathers,’ he said. ‘They have no houses.’

  ‘Not even a hut!’ she murmured.

  With quiet fingers he threaded a few forget-me-not flowers in the fine brown fleece of the mound of Venus.

  ‘There!’ he said. ‘There’s forget-me-nots in the right place!’

  She looked down at the milky odd little flowers among the brown maiden-hair at the lower tip of her body.

  ‘Doesn’t it look pretty!’ she said.

  ‘Pretty as life,’ he replied.

  And he stuck a pink campion-bud among the hair.

  ‘There! That’s me where you won’t forget me! That’s Moses in the bull-rushes.’

  ‘You don’t mind, do you, that I’m going away?’ she asked wistfully, looking up into his face.

  But his face was inscrutable, under the heavy brows. He kept it quite blank.

  ‘You do as you wish,’ he said.

  And he spoke in good English.

  ‘But I won’t go if you don’t wish it,’ she said, clinging to him.

  There was silence. He leaned and put another piece of wood on the fire. The flame glowed on his silent, abstracted face. She waited, but he said nothing.

  ‘Only I thought it would be a good way to begin a break with Clifford. I do want a child. And it would give me a chance to, to — ,’ she resumed.

  ‘To let them think a few lies,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, that among other things. Do you want them to think the truth?’

  ‘I don’t care what they think.’

  ‘I do! I don’t want them handling me with their unpleasant cold minds, not while I’m still at Wragby. They can think what they like when I’m finally gone.’

  He was silent.

  ‘But Sir Clifford expects you to come back to him?’

  ‘Oh, I must come back,’ she said: and there was silence.

  ‘And would you have a child in Wragby?’ he asked.

  She closed her arm round his neck.

  ‘If you wouldn’t take me away, I should have to,’ she said.

  ‘Take you where to?’

  ‘Anywhere! away! But right away from Wragby.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Why, when I come back.’

  ‘But what’s the good of coming back, doing the thing twice, if you’re once gone?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I must come back. I’ve promised! I’ve promised so faithfully. Besides, I come back to you, really.’

  ‘To your husband’s game-keeper?’

  ‘I don’t see that that matters,’ she said.

  ‘No?’ He mused a while. ‘And when would you think of going away again, then; finally? When exactly?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’d come back from Venice. And then we’d prepare everything.’

  ‘How prepare?’

  ‘Oh, I’d tell Clifford. I’d have to tell him.’

  ‘Would you!’

  He remained silent. She put her arms round his neck.

  ‘Don’t make it difficult for me,’ she pleaded.

  ‘Make what difficult?’

  ‘For me to go to Venice and arrange things.’

  A little smile, half a grin, flickered on his face.

  ‘I don’t make it difficult,’ he said. ‘I only want to find out just what you are after. But you don’t really know yourself. You want to take time: get away and look at it. I don’t blame you. I think you’re wise. You may prefer to stay mistress of Wragby. I don’t blame you. I’ve no Wragbys to offer. In fact, you know what you’ll get out of me. No, no, I think you’re right! I really do! And I’m not keen on coming to live on you, being kept by you. There’s that too.’

  She felt somehow as if he were giving her tit for tat.

  ‘But you want me, don’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Do you want me?’

  ‘You know I do. That’s evident.’

  ‘Quite! And when do you want me?’

  ‘You know we can arrange it all when I come back. Now I’m out of breath with you. I must get calm and clear.’

  ‘Quite! Get calm and clear!’

  She was a little offended.

  ‘But you trust me, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, absolutely!’

  She heard the mockery in his tone.

  ‘Tell me then,’ she said flatly; ‘do you think it would be better if I don’t go to Venice?’

  ‘I’m sure it’s better if you do go to Venice,’ he replied in the cool, slightly mocking voice.

  ‘You know it’s next Thursday?’ she said.

  ‘Yes!’

  She now began to muse. At last she said:

  ‘And we shall know better where we are when I come back, shan’t we?’

  ‘Oh surely!’

  The curious gulf of silence between them!

  ‘I’ve been to the lawyer about my divorce,’ he said, a little constrainedly.

  She gave a slight shudder.

  ‘Have you!’ she said. ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said I ought to have done it before; that may be a difficulty. But since I was in the army, he thinks it will go through all right. If only it doesn’t bring her down on my head!’

  ‘Will she have to know?’

  ‘Yes! she is served with a notice: so is the man she lives with, the co-respondent.’

  ‘Isn’t it hateful, all the performances! I suppose I’d have to go through it with Clifford.’