Alexandra Guy - A Maiden's diary

Naturally I cannot forget Victoria. Naturally-I am Victoria. Victoria Collins in full-or false full. Not my bosoms-they are quite, quite real; even today, practically in my dotage, they can and do swell (never mind medical opinion to the contrary-I have a first-hand knowledge of physicians; one of them diagnosed my fairly unique condition, to which one of my eminent contemporaries, lamentably a number of years my junior-Mr. George Bernard Shaw-could never have been susceptible; Mr. Shaw, vegetarian that he is, could not possibly entertain the intrusion of meat; but I am anticipating myself). I was saying that my bosoms can and do amplify at the very remotest thought of the male lancet-but more of that in due course, eh? My name, I tell you, I took out of the whole cloth. Nevertheless, that is actually the name I used -Victoria Collins-for a fair part of my life when I thought it necessary, as you will see. At no point was I ever more than a jock's throw from bliss (the kind reader must forgive a certain coarseness of expression he will find from time to time in my narrative, but it is only by such rough grain that the meat and drink of my life, Victorian though I am, can be conveyed). At the start of my life I was of the moneyed and aristocratic. Later, I was Victoria Collins. At the last, now, I am once again with my so-called peers. I am an old lady at this point, a dowager, if you wish, and a marchioness, but I warrant you that my ancient years will not stay the telling of a jot of that blood which had Victoria Collins a living part of that most Sodom of all countries-England. Not to mention Clarissa! Let me tell you how it was. To begin with I was born at a very considerable distance from London-some four hundred miles away, on the rugged, boulder-strewn coast of Cornwall, that bold promontory in southwest England that thrusts directly into the Atlantic. I cannot regard it as anything but symbolic that I first saw the curious light of this world on a peninsula whose shape, together with its great rocks whose position one can establish to one's anatomically pictorial satisfaction, captivates me with its resemblance to the male's generative equipment-his scepter and swinging spheres, so to speak, or, in the parlance of the gaming houses, his pipe and balls. And the fact that this peninsula thrusts into the ocean completes the symbolism. The setting was ideal for what was going to happen to me, a child born and raised in the latter half of Queen Victoria's reign. To protect the living descendants I will not precisely designate where on the Cornish coast my parents' country house was located-I will simply call it Quistern House. As for our town abode, which I will name Hagen House, that was in London, in Kensington. And, for the same reason, I have invented names for myself-prior to becoming Victoria Collins-and for all the other people in this account, both great and humble, except for public figures. My father and mother, then, will be referred to as Mathew and Louisa Quist-Hagen, who were the Marquis and Marchioness of a mythical Portferrans, myself as Clarissa, and my brother, older than I by about two years, as James. All other names of real people in this account will be altered similarly. At an early age both my brother and I showed those characteristics which were to endear us to our opposite sexes. In many ways James and I were remarkably alike. We both had straight, stygianly black hair, extraordinarily milky skin that suggested the translucence of the pearl, and piercingly green eyes. As it turned out, we were both also destined to be tall-James came to be easily six feet, and I reached the height of some five feet eight inches. This could have been anticipated-the Quist-Hagens and their many branches were a tall people. But what was not predicted was our precociousness, mental and physical. I can remember, long before I was ten and we played our slippery games with Angela Cleves, how I would wait with bated breath to see our governess, Berenice Fawnsworthy, help my brother undress.

It was not that James did not know how to undress himself, but that in the summertime he tended to become peculiarly lazy and helpless.

Nor did Miss Berenice discourage this attitude. On the contrary, she seemed to welcome it with her intense blue eyes. James himself wore the slightest suggestion of a smirk when the governess pulled off one of his riding boots and fell awkwardly back toward the oriel from whose convex windows one had a sweeping view of the tempestuous Atlantic. This development transfixed James-he stared at the woman who must have then been in her early forties and at the peak of her swarthy, blue-eyed, chestnut-haired handsomeness. Her many petticoats had heaped up high and her legs had flown into the widest possible splay, so that for long moments-which Miss Berenice may have been party to and may have extended-both my brother and I gazed with racing pulses on the female phenomenon thus revealed, a veritable lustrous tangle of chestnut-colored undergrowth. Aside from James, I know that I experienced something of a vertigo at the sight, and that suddenly I would have liked to lose myself in that forestry, wakening only to find myself kissing pink-brown lips The fact is, however, that I did not, and that Miss Berenice, furiously flushing, heavily breathing, finally righted herself and continued to aid and abet my languid brother. The climax for me came-I cannot speak for Fawnsworthy, naturally-when our governess slipped off my brother's trousers. There it was, I shouted to myself-there it undoubtedly, wonderfully, magically was. Certainly modest in dimensions, it-the male's conquerable truncheon and yet, like the phoenix, capable of rebirth- throbbed directly at Miss Berenice in the arrogance of its pointedness. I paled. Miss Berenice's face grew lustrous, her blue eyes now sparkled with satanic fires. Nevertheless I doubt if anything would have occurred had my brother retained composure. As it was, James fell back on the bolster-we were in his bedroom- and, like a minuscule volcano, erupted. I cannot now properly describe the nature of the cry that the governess then gave vent to. It was a harsh and desiccate cry. It was the kind of cry that could only have originated in the depths of one's soul or psyche (whichever inexplicable function you are partial to). It was the sort of cry, too, that was both arid and bestial-a cry that, since the tenure of Fawnsworthy, I have heard many times, and often from my own lips in extremis of need. In any case it was at that point that Fawnsworthy burst into movement. She flew across the room to the bed and, with an unmistakably savage sound, fell upon my brother and-as I crumpled to the floor, my knees weak, my fingers searching my groin-milked my brother James until he was a twitching mass of protoplasm When she wearily arose, bedraggled and with a stunned expression, she looked neither at my brother or myself. Miss Berenice Fawnsworthy, further, said not a word to either of us. She simply quit the room and, the next day, without explanation either to the Marquis or the Marchioness, quit Quistern House and vanished. We never heard a word from her thereafter. My parents were quite puzzled and asked James and me if we could vouchsafe an explanation. Neither of us would, of course. We were not about to divulge intimacies to a mother and father who had from the start stayed rather aloof and distant from us. However, there did occur an incident that served to bring Mathew and Louisa Quist-Hagen, the Marquis and Marchioness of Portferrans, respectively, rather more down to the level of my brother and myself.

The incident-or, more accurately, the experience-took place, I should say, in the midafternoon of a hot summer's day. James and I had been playing strenuously in the maze that had been built at some small remove from the east wing of Quistern House-itself a twenty-room structure and an exquisite example of Queen Anne style-when suddenly we became aware that we were both terribly fatigued. I think we became aware of that because of the quietude-except for the sound of the sea-that pervaded the grounds and which seemed to have its source in Quistern House itself. Even our two gardeners, who ordinarily would have been trimming our baroque hedgerows, were nowhere to be seen when James and I left the maze. Taken by misgivings, I turned to my brother. You don't suppose there's anything wrong, do you? He laughed merrily. I daresay whenever James laughed it was merry and carefree, without spite or mockery. I adored my brother and from time to time I still miss him terribly. Terribly. No, Clarissa, he said finally. I really don't think there's a thing amiss. It was then that we stepped inside Quistern House. James and I really did not wish to play any more on that day. We were surfeited-we had spent tie morning at the bottom of the slate cliff on the tiny beach collecting driftwood and occasionally splashing about in the shallows.