John Thomas & Lady Jane

were.
    In the war he forgot all that. His
father, Sir Geoffrey, spent recklessly for his country. He would post small
packets of bullets to the poor soldiers at the front. Take no thought for the
morrow, for the morrow will take thought of itself. Well, this was the morrow
of that day! Oh fuck, thought Clifford.
    Clifford, first lieutenant in a smart
regiment, knew most of the people in HQ and he was full of beans (he ate a tin
every day). He liked Constance at once: first, because of her modest-maiden
appearance, and of course her big tits. He managed to get the modern German
books and he read them aloud to her. It’s a pity she didn’t understand a word.
He had relatives ‘in the know’, and he himself therefore was in quite a lot of
the same ‘know’. It didn’t amount to a great deal: about £10.
    By the time the Untergang des
Abendlands appeared, Clifford was a smashed man, trying to translate it
took it out of him. It was the day after, the grey morrow for which no thought
had been taken. He checked his calendar and sure enough it was the day after
the grey morrow for which no thought had been taken.
    Wragby was a low, long old house in
brown stone, standing on an elevation and overlooking the bills and the
reminders, on a long lease. There was a fine park beyond, one could see the
tall smoking chimney and the spinning wheels of the colliery. But Constance did not mind this, she looked the other way. On some times when the wind blew
west, which it did often, Wragby Hall was full of the sulphurous smell of
burning pit-bank. For a while they thought it was the staff farting in concert.
    She had never been used to an
industrial district, only the Sussex downs, and Scotch hills, and Royal
Ken-sing-ton, and other sufficiently aesthetic surrounds. Here at Wragby she
was within the curious sphere of influence of Sheffield, the Valhalla of EPNS.
If your cutlery wasn’t stamped with it you were nobody. The skies were often
very dark, there seemed to be no daylight, that’s because it was night-time.
There was always a faint or strong smell of some uncanny something: it was
marmite. Wherever it was, on the breath one breathed in, and, yes, one breathed
in marmite all day.
    She had Clifford who would need her
while he lived. After that he would have to fend for himself. She had certain
duties to the parish. She made mince-pies for the Christmas sales, many of
which were returned to her uneaten with dentures in them. Constance tried to
get in touch a little with the miners’ wives. She wanted to know what the world
was like — it was round they told her.
    Clifford would never go outside the
park, in his chair. He could not bear to have the miners stare at him as an
object of curiosity so Constance pushed him under a blanket, which he looked
out through little holes in it. He could stand the Wragby servants. Them he
paid. But outsiders he could not bear. He became irritable and queer and
started having young boys to tea. Poor Sir Clifford! Wounded in the war! Poor
Sir Clifford DSO — dick shot off.
    The Duchess of Oaklands came and the
Duke. They tried to bolt the doors against them but they got in through the
scullery window and stayed for tea. It was terrible.
    ‘Thank God they’ve gone,’ gasped Sir
Clifford.
    ‘Thank you, God,’ said Constance. But she said they were rather nice, a bit pathetic.
    ‘A bit,’ said Clifford. ‘They were
pathetic all over. They drank eight pots of tea and ate every pastry in the
house. By Jove, Connie, your neck must be more rubbery than mine if you could
stand it.’
    Constance couldn’t stand it, she had to sit down. The
Duke and Duchess would hardly come again, they were due to die next year. Of
course there was no real danger in Clifford. The marrow of him was just as
conservative as the Duke’s own, whose marrow had taken first prize in the
country fair.
    Clifford sometimes had his relatives
on a short visit. He would give them two hours to get out. He had some
extremely ‘titled’ relations on his mother’s side and a lot on his father’s
back. Clifford thought he was so democratic: he used ‘bloody’, ‘bugger’ and
‘shit’ in his poems. He still liked the fact that his aunt was a Marchioness,
his cousin an Earl and his uncle, well he didn’t know what he was, the failure
of the family, a dustman. There were Chatterleys occupying prominent jobs in the
government, the Ministries of Grit and Filth and exportable heads, good wires
to pull, though