Page 384 - lady-chatterlys-lover

all the women, speculating about them. The women were
absorbingly interested in the women. How does she look!
what man has she captured? what fun is she getting out of
it?—The men were like great dogs in white flannel trousers,
waiting to be patted, waiting to wallow, waiting to plaster
some woman’s stomach against their own, in jazz.
Hilda liked jazz, because she could plaster her stomach
against the stomach of some so-called man, and let him con-
trol her movement from the visceral centre, here and there
across the floor, and then she could break loose and ignore
‘the creature’. He had been merely made use of. Poor Connie
was rather unhappy. She wouldn’t jazz, because she simply
couldn’t plaster her stomach against some ‘creature’s’ stom-
ach. She hated the conglomerate mass of nearly nude flesh
on the Lido: there was hardly enough water to wet them all.
She disliked Sir Alexander and Lady Cooper. She did not
want Michaelis or anybody else trailing her.
The happiest times were when she got Hilda to go with
her away across the lagoon, far across to some lonely shin-
gle-bank, where they could bathe quite alone, the gondola
remaining on the inner side of the reef.
Then Giovanni got another gondolier to help him, be-
cause it was a long way and he sweated terrifically in the
sun. Giovanni was very nice: affectionate, as the Italians
are, and quite passionless. The Italians are not passionate:
passion has deep reserves. They are easily moved, and of-
ten affectionate, but they rarely have any abiding passion
of any sort.
So Giovanni was already devoted to his ladies, as he had