The winter left, and there was spring. Spring left, and there was summer. Then the whole household began packing for its annual trek to Cornwall by numerous coaches-and-four. Even my father, the Marquis, would inevitably become involved, as he had been through the years, in the preparations for the move, for London was infamous during the summer. Later, toward the end of my adolescence, I would come to find London fabulous at any season-but I once more violate chronology, dear reader, so that I ask that you accept my apologies.
Suffice it to remark that, when the packing was finished, all of us clambered, sweating, into the coaches. Angela Cleves, James, Oliver Harwell and myself occupied one coach-and-four. The weather outside the coach was oppressive, what with lowering clouds and the noxious greasy smoke coiling upward from the increasing number of London factories. The atmosphere inside the coach, however, had its compensations. James and I had decided beforehand that, to eliminate the boredom inevitably attendant on such a trip, we should mildly bedevil both our tutor and governess, or that at least we should try to. We had no doubt that we should be able to torment Angela, but Harwell was another question. In the time that we had known Harwell-a big but gracefully moving man with chestnut-colored hair and beard and infinitely gentle brown eyes in an open, squarish face-he had been imperturbable. Of course, neither James nor I presented any disciplinary problems. We were exemplary students and far ahead of the curriculum for our age. So, in terms of bedevilment, we really had no idea if Oliver Harwell would respond. I do know that my own interest in Harwell had taken a sharp turn for the erotic, and for the first time I noticed that, like the other men of the day, he wore tight-fitting trousers. The rest of his attire was equally conventional-the shirt collar turned upwards, and the points showing above his cravat; the whole dress, except for the shirt, a sober black. But what interested me far more than those articles were his trousers and the “basket”-to use the vernacular-they contained. The basket seemed always to stay the same -it altered neither in favor of shrinkage nor in favor of expansion. Which observation contented me not-as I say, my interest in Harwell had taken a sharp turn for the erotic. Why this was so, is hard to explain. He certainly bore no resemblance either to my father or brother or, indeed, to any of my cousins or uncles. A reasonable explanation might simply be that my awareness of forms was amplifying. Harwell was a fresh male form-and I simply had not seen him until I was ready to do so. In any case, I was undoubtedly ready to bedevil him during our trip to Quistern House on the Cornwall coast. Harwell, ordinarily voluble while tutoring James and me, was today as stony as the Sphinx, He kept staring expressionlessly out the coach window as we jogged along the London cobblestones. I was speculating on what precisely to do to engage his attention. James had already begun to torment the voluptuous Angela. He made it seem as if it were accidental that from time to time he brushed his lingam and that in response, bulging down one side of his tight pants, was a slim but unmistakable form resembling the sheath for a miniature knife. The voluptuous redhead-at James's last encounter with his prize pet-had drawn a sharp breath and was presently focusing, as if with morbid fascination, on James's elongating badge of manhood, immature as it was. Harwell continued to stare out the window. Some time had passed and we were presently trotting through the countryside where at least the air was somewhat less foul than in the city. I lifted my skirts, with a show of being oppressed by the heat. The powerful but shapely curves of my legs were revealed. “Miss Clarissa,” Angela said sharply.
I turned to her. “Yes, Miss Cleves?” I said indolently, arrogantly. Was she going to presume, I thought, to give me a lecture on the morality of a female showing her calves. Was she going to inform me that Englishwomen throughout the glory of the British Empire under the reign of Queen Victoria regarded it as unthinkable to display anything more than a well-turned ankle? Well, since Cleves was already shocked by my bestockinged calves, I might just as well risk a shriek from her by my next action. I bared part of my thighs.
Angela's jaw dropped. Indeed, if it had been attached to loose hinges, it might very well have separated from the rest of her skull.
But I wished her no ill any more-she was our sexual plaything, available whenever James and I wished her to be. As for tormenting her in the coach, it was simply a pastime to mark the highway to Cornwall.
What I actually wanted was to stir up some interest from our tutor. I stirred up interest, yes, but not the kind I wanted. He turned from the coach window and said, his full lips barely hinting at a smile, “Miss Clarissa-” “Yes, Mr. Harwell?” “Are you terribly warm?” James chuckled. Harwell ignored him. “Yes,”
I said, “I am.” “I judged so,” Mr. Harwell said. “What I suggest, then-and you can certainly do this without trepidation, since we have all been socially intimate here with one another for some time- what I suggest, Miss Clarissa, while your brother and I turn away our faces, of course, is that-if you will forgive the possible indelicacy and, indeed, the possible outrageousness of the suggestion, which I trust everyone here will keep in confidence -what I suggest for your relief from the heat is that you remove some of your undergarments-please forgive the vulgarity of the expression-and loosen your bodice.”
He nodded amiably, stroked his beard a few times and turned away again to contemplate nature through the coach window. The consequence, of course, was that I didn't take his suggestion at all-James was snickering and Angela was white with shock-I let down my skirts, sat bolt upright, adopted a stern eye looking at nothing, and endured the rest of the journey without comment, which took quite a while since the Cornwall coast, at the point we were situated, is some four hundred miles from London, necessitating stopovers at inns along the way, not only to rest the horses but to provide a good night's sleep for the weary traveler. At any rate, I shall note here that I had no further personal interchange with Oliver Harwell until I was fifteen, which shall be described in due course. Some readers may well wonder what a tutor was doing with his charges during the summer months, ordinarily a vacation period. The explanation is quite simple: the Marquis did not believe in educational hiatuses. He believed that some mode of instruction of a token nature be sustained during the halcyon days, so that the discipline under study might not entirely go into limbo. Libidinously, then, I was forced to be content with practices involving my brother and Angela Cleves. One night stands vividly in mind even now, the curious telling of which by Cleves herself will most properly, although strangely, close this account of my prepubertal years, after which we can proceed directly to one of the high points of my adolescence. The night I propose to regale you with, dear reader, was an inordinately hot and humid one. It was amazing that anyone managed to sleep, but I was so overcome with discomfort that I cared not a whit as to who was slumbering or no. For a while I stood by the window, thinking that the humid westerly wind might be of some mysterious benefit. I could not have been more mistaken, and I shut the window. I tarried a few moments longer there, entranced by the play of heat lightning across the ocean sky and the revealed sight of thousands upon thousands of whitecaps bobbing on the stormy waters-and then I turned away. Oliver Harwell was on my mind.
His size was on my mind. I had not appreciated his size before. I had not given his size much thought. Now his size filled my brain. I did not realize that night that before anything would occur with Harwell I would be fifteen years of age. In any case I wished that I could seduce him. But to all of my exhibitionism Oliver Harwell remained impervious… I paced my bedroom.
There was only one person who understood me. My brother. I had to talk to him, I had to pour out my psyche to him… His bedroom door was unlocked, and I let myself in. He was asleep, but lightly.
James was never heavy about anything. He awoke instantly the moment I began to whisper to him. “You're consumed with Harwell,” he said. “Yes.” “I think I know how to relieve you, Clarissa.” “Oh?” “Suppose I demonstrate with Angela.”
“If you wish, James.” We found Angela Cleves quite solidly asleep, her thin cotton nightgown bunched up over her belly… Both James and I clambered into her bed and began to play with her…
If the reader will indulge me, I should like with his permission to insert at this point-before I go on to my adolescence -a most astonishing account of the episode above by Ange Cleves herself from her otherwise rather tedious journal, which I have in my possession to this day. James and I found the journal before the Cornwall constabulary ransacked her quarters at Quistern House, and secreted it in her own rooms. What had transpired was that, several days after the episode she recounts -which, as she writes it, has so poignant and pathetic a beginning-Angela Cleves vanished from Quistern House. To this day, too, her disappearance has never been satisfactorily explained. Cleves, wherever she had gone, had taken nothing with her. Her modest suite had been in perfect order. Her valises had been untouched. No valuables had been missing from Quistern House, and the precious gems in my father's collection had been undisturbed. It is possible, of course, that in her distracted state -a state none of us had been in the slightest aware of-she might have ended her life by her own hand. But no evidence was turned up to form the basis for such conjecture-unless this excerpt from her journal could be construed to indicate that Cleves had had suicide on her mind. A pall settled over Quistern House for the remainder of the summer, and for the first and only time the staff of Quistern House, the Marquis and Marchioness, and James and myself-were distinctly relieved when we made our summer-end move back to London. In any case, here follows the relevant excerpt from the journal of Angela Cleves. I'm helpless! helpless! helpless! I can't go on like this. I would never have dreamed it possible… really… that I should be the captive of my exquisite charges, my exquisite Clarissa and my elegant James. And I am their willing captive.
I cannot go on in this fashion. I am obsessed with them- with Clarissa and James. Is it possible for one of my years-I am twenty-seven-to be so enraptured with a mere boy and girl? Is it all bestial of me? I wonder… I wonder… I have been reading of late of a man named Charles Darwin, and about his book called Origin of Species. I haven't read the book, it is terribly difficult to obtain. Perhaps when we return to London-if ever I do return-I shall make it my business to purchase a copy. But the point is, the book has occasioned a deal of controversy, much of it distorted, I'm sure. What seems to have alarmed our curates and bishops is Mr. Darwin's theory that man descends from the apes. I talked with Oliver Harwell about this and he was most amused. He told me many of the newspaper and magazine accounts have got it all wrong.
It is not, he said, that Darwin contends we have descended from the apes but that the apes and man are collateral descendants from some common but as yet missing link. I write the above in this journal because it seems relevant to a dream I had and what I awakened to-I awakened again to my helplessness: I awakened to be entwined in the arms of James and Clarissa Quist-Hagen, who were having their will of me, and I was most sensually cooperative-but it is shameful, it is horrible-I cannot go on like this. The boy and the girl are so young-I must be a beast, some monstrous and corrupting influence-but I have never been so obscenely disturbed… This was the dream… I am wandering through a boulder-strewn forest, much like the Cornwall coast, except that the network of trees is so thick that the sunlight is obscured… There is a sort of twilight… My brow is furrowed. I look along the ground and occasionally pick up furze and heather, again typical of the Cornish countryside… Strangely, I feel very powerful and very sensual. I feel myself. I am horrified. I rush through the boulder-strewn forest to a pool of water where I bend and stare at myself. I am hideous. The reflection that stares back at me is that of a giantess of a gorilla with matted red hair and dugs the size of small boulders. A strange female gorilla with red hair all over her except for the small smooth part of the face… I am miserable. I weep. But as I weep a terrible longing overcomes me.
There is a fire under the matted red hair in the groin… I tumble over backwards-away from the pool of water. I rub my hair-matted fist into my hair-matted groin. I make all kinds of grunts and animal cries. I jump up and down in my burning arousal…
Then, at the foot of a tree, I see something very striking- very young-phenomenal. It is a kind of boy-girl, with skin the color of a muted moon-with the barely formed breasts of a girl and the nipples of a mature female human being. And this creature is holding something between its thighs. I growl. The creature looks up at me. It seems human but what sort of human has the breasts of a girl and-and? Yes, between its thighs is the human male organ, but it is not very large-it seems immature. I jump up and down in impatience-is it possible, I ask myself, to make any kind of conjoining with this creature at the foot of the tree? Is it possible to satisfy this red-hairy itch between my own lower limbs? Because this itch in my “fucking-hole,” as I call it, is driving me out of my sanity. The boy-girl does not seem to be afraid of me… On the contrary, it beckons to me… Wagging my head, I go toward the creature.
Suddenly, the boy-girl produces a silver chain and collar and, still lying there at the foot of the tree, casts the collar over my head and about my neck and loosely holds on to the chain. I shake my head. I growl. I try to remove the chain, but the collar, or noose, has tightened, and it will not come off over my head…
I ask myself, what shall I do? I could easily wrest away the chain from the boy-girl creature, but the silver of the chain delights me. It glitters in the twilight. It is steel, of course, but it feels infinitely soft, and the collar about my neck feels like velvet, but infinitely powerful-I am a captive forever, but an unprotesting one…
I play with the chain now. The boy-girl smiles softly.
I cannot smile. Gorillas cannot smile. God will not let them, and God made certain creatures as gorillas so they could neither smile nor weep… The burning itch between my thighs is still there. In my own strange gorilla way, I look askance at the boy-girl and I put four fingers into my fucking-hole. The boy-girl nods and starts to pull me by the silver chain to it at the foot of the tree. Oh, I pray to God, do not let the boy-girl torment me. That creature is such a slip of a thing, I could molest it so easily… hurt it so easily… kill it so easily… I am there, then, at the foot of the tree.
With the boy-girl of the childlike teats and the big nipples- and that recumbent slim cylinder between its thighs, like a small snake… to pet… to fondle… to kiss… And I feel as if all my flesh under its red matted hair is alive with fireflies, darting here and there… The boy-girl lets go the leash. But I do not run away. I stay… I stare down at the quivering, twitching slim thing between the boy-girl's thighs… Ah, I tell myself, there is the fountain of youth-if I put it in me, or drink it, or bathe in it, I will live forever-and, perhaps, I shall turn beautiful-I will no longer be a gorilla with matted red hair all over me… monstrous…
I will be beautiful, forever… And I fall in love with the boy-girl creature, because it will give me eternal beauty and youth…
Smiling, the boy-girl slides down into a completely supine position… I crouch. I reach down. The backs of my hands are matted with red hair. But not my palms. My palms are smooth, and now they have something between them, a small cylinder, the live flesh shaped like a cylinder between the boy-girl's thighs…
The fireflies are darting in and around and through my matted flesh. My head is burning… The boy-girl's eyes close, an expression of bliss on its face. I fondle this packet of warmth between its thighs. It humps a little. It grows. Longer. But not too long. It is a young thing. Will I kill it if I engulf it with my enormous yoni? I don't know. Instead of crouching now, I squat. Directly over the boy-girl's-dare I say it?-over the boy-girl's cock. Ah. Ah. Cock. That's good for a gorilla, for a beast, for a dirty animal. I am a dirty animal. Always. And now crackling and booming with a fucking-hole lust. I take the boy-girl's cock in one of my palm-smooth hands and guide it into my yoni… I cry from the bliss of it. But there are no tears on my face. I can Only cry in my gorilla-soul because God made our faces so that we could neither cry nor laugh… And the cock is not killed. On the contrary, it is harder than before. And the muscles of my yoni can toss the cock about like something with feathers on it-ah, my fucking-hole has a shuttlecock in it-and the muscles of the yoni strike it first this way, then that-the feathers tickling the walls of my yoni-and it was then that I awoke- I was entwined in my bed with James and Clarissa-and James had four fingers of his hand contracting and expanding within me-and Clarissa's mouth was fastened to one of the nipples of my succulent breasts and sucking… sucking… sucking… I writhed in their arms. I was their plaything… James rolled me over in the bed and, as he glided his fingers into me once again he bent down and nibbled at my buttocks… while Clarissa positioned herself so that my head rested between her thighs and she opened herself up to me… and my tongue slid out to flicker at the folds behind her aperture which she widened for me…
I went mad. I bucked and thrashed. I was all cream and lava and ready once again to erupt… I begged James to he on his back. He consented. Then I squatted above him and introduced his slim prick into me. Clarissa looked glazed and then reached out to revolve my teats, round and round, round and round, so that my torso was dizzy and my hips were in a vertigo… James suddenly arched, and the liquids of his prick spurted within me… I quickly disengaged and took his lingam into my mouth for the rest of his hot steaming flow while Clarissa lapped at me from behind… In a few minutes I was exhausted and once again lying on my back. I wanted to sleep, but neither James nor Clarissa was willing. They were not finished with sex, and I was their instrument. They knelt over me, kissed me all over my body, lapped at me, sucked at me, palpitated their fingers within me so that it wasn't long before I was ready for them again, all three of us sweating, stinking by now from the body secretions, but not caring about the stink, no, wanting it, burying our noses in it, wallowing-these two children have me wallowing in beastliness- God, look at that girl Clarissa, two years younger than her brother, but the hair on her, the black hair between her thighs drives me mad, I curl my fingers in it, I lave it with my mouth, my spittle, her cunt swollen, as big as mine… and there's a moment when the two of them, James and Clarissa, are between my legs, James with his cock in me and Clarissa with her fingers beside her brother's prick… That was the climax. It was not long after that they slipped out of my chambers… I cannot go on in this fashion. My inherent lust now has me a sexual slavey to two children. I have gone through this so many times with my contemporaries, with men and women older than I; with men and women of my years. But now, to have descended to the ultimate depravity of carnal knowledge with children-I've gone too far. I must be punished. If James and Clarissa were not corrupted before I came on the scene, I certainly must have provided the completing strokes. There is no other conclusion to be drawn: I am an animal, I am a beast of the field-and I do not belong with the human species. It is possible I do not belong with any species… The above was the last entry in Angela Cleves' journal. I trust her soul, or whatever substance it is in us that may make us unique, is somewhere at rest, and that it is convinced it once belonged to the “human species.” As for the validity of Cleves' other conclusions, in all fairness I believe that should be left to the reader.