第85章

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.