Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [61]
Even though Clem was astonished and thrilled to see the two rudest words in the English language printed in a proper book, he found the story heavy going. A lot of it was posh people conversing about life and the “spirit”: the kind of talk his mum would dismiss as “squit.” He couldn’t relate in any way to the characters. (Although Mellors reminded him slightly of his dad, which was disturbing.) The sex didn’t really get going until about halfway through. After that, Clem skipped the narrative and read the dog-eared juicy sequences, avidly and with mounting bafflement. Mellors didn’t have a penis; he had a “phallos,” which he called John Thomas. It seemed to have mesmeric and magical powers that, as far as he knew, Clem’s own unruly member sadly lacked. Lady Chatterley didn’t like sex very much at first, as far as he could tell, but then she liked it a lot. As far as he could tell. Clem was keenly interested, suddenly, in why. In what girls felt, doing it. What, exactly, they liked about it. If, as he had been led to believe, sex was the hostile pronging of female flesh, why would they encourage it? How could they possibly enjoy it? But D. H. Lawrence’s excited, turgid prose failed to enlighten him. Rather, it confused him. All sorts of things went on in Lady Chatterley’s insides when she and the gamekeeper were at it. Bells rang, soft flames were ignited, feathers melted (there was a great deal of melting, generally), whirlpools swirled, waves swelled and billowed onto a distant shore, sea anemones clamored with their tendrils.
Clem couldn’t quite believe it. He was fairly certain that he wouldn’t like to be the cause of such a hubbub. What’s more, it seemed to go on not only in Lady C’s womb, which was fair enough, Clem supposed, but also in her bowels. This was surprising and deeply worrying. He hadn’t imagined that they were involved.
He handed the book on to Clive Lines, who’d been pestering him for a week, and eventually succeeded in forgetting about it. But he would recall its troubling imagery — and the questions it left unanswered — when he rustled and wrestled with Frankie beneath the beech trees.
Clem’s yearning curiosity was more encoiled by fear than it was for most other boys. This was because he belonged to a family that lived in dread of the very mention of sex, or anything remotely associated with it.
Win, of course, was long past thinking about you-know-what in personal terms. But it was out there. Everywhere. The young women in the laundry canteen, smoking cigarettes, sniggering about it. The young strumpets on the estate giving boys the come-on. That rock ’n’ roll music all about what they called love. Now that Win was a member of the Brethren, the Saved, it was vital that she not be tainted by any of it. That its filthiness not come near her, lest she be infected and denied her place by the throne; that it cost her the cleansing bath in the blood of the Lamb. It was essential that the house she lived in was not sinful. And it wasn’t. It was solace to her that the only nocturnal sound that came from the bedroom her daughter shared with George Ackroyd was snoring. Clem was a danger, being a young male and good-looking with it. He reminded Win of Percy. But he was a good boy. Hardworking. With any luck, he’d escape the snares of carnal sin until the Apocalypse. Nightly she prayed for him on the floor beside her bed, the rim of the chamber pot cold against her knees.
Ruth and George knew that the sexlessness of their marriage was unnatural. They were quietly ashamed of it, as other couples might be ashamed of a perversion. It was their closely guarded secret, and shared secrets are,