Treasure of the sea |Lesbian story|

From the diary of Delise Shelley

Life in London turned out to be exactly as Laurence had described it. He took me to the theatre, parks, restaurants, cafes and horse races. It was a life of comfort and ease. The neighbourhoods we frequented were clean and orderly, yet through the carriage windows I could see the other side of London, its decay. Muddy streets full of excrement, as they had no sewage system, wooden houses, rats, barefoot children dressed in rags who followed the carriages and begged, their hands constantly stretched forward, their eyes pleading.

"Don't look," Laurence suggested, but I ignored him and frowned at everything I could make out the window.

"If I hadn't left with my father, I'd probably be one of them now."

Laurence said nothing at my words. He knew I was right.

Sir Henry Evans was a man in his forties, a man born into a rich and powerful family that had been meddling in political affairs for generations. A corrupt man, a man interested only in his own well-being. I instantly pegged him at our first meeting; he was so much like Laurence.

He invited us to his house. He and Laurence would lock themselves in an office to talk business, while I stayed with his wife, Gwen Evans, a girl not much younger than me. She was shy and didn't talk much, but she was a good pianist and knew how to entertain me during those hours spent waiting. I watched her fingers slide elegantly across the keyboard.

"Can you play?" she asked, courteously.

"Oh, no. I don't know anything about music, I'm sorry. But this piece you're playing is very nice. Whose is it?"

She smiled. "Mine."

"Really? You're a composer, then!"

"Not at all. It's just a pastime."

I became friends with her. She was the only person I was ever close to in London. We frequented drawing rooms and cafes, theatres and cabarets together, which I couldn't do with Jahzara.

Jahzara hated London. She claimed there was something unhealthy about the people there, more than could be perceived in people in South Carolina. There was contempt for everyone and everything, there was indifference and falsehood, there was apathy and distress. She had stopped doing her work as a healer, because no white person, not even the poorest, was willing to come to her to have an ailment cured. She missed the New World, she missed her community, and I thought I had made a mistake in having her come with me to London. There was no one she could talk to but me.

We went out of our way not to be seen by the other servants and my husband. We loved each other silently and secretly, as we always had. Her body was an oasis in the midst of a barren desert, in the midst of that sense of oppression that gripped my insides every day. It was a moment of serenity, a moment of life. Her whispers caressed my ear and managed to convince me, at least a little, that I was important, that I was worth something to someone in that vast world.

As expected, Laurence had me examined by a slew of doctors, prescribing medications and strange methods to get pregnant. Jahzara wasn't convinced by the drugs I was taking every night. She advised me to stop taking them, but Laurence never failed to check on me. After each intercourse, he would force me to lie down with my legs elevated for at least ten minutes. I had to take a hot bath every night and eat only certain foods. I was tired of those visits, of those doctors who looked at me as if I were not quite a woman and tried to console me with empty words, convinced that my infertility was causing me unspeakable psychological suffering.

Still, it worked. Days passed and I hoped to see the usual red stain on my underwear, but my period didn't come and I immediately understood what that meant. My heart clenched and in a second I saw my future flash before my eyes. I collapsed to the ground and cried, cried like never before. All I wanted at that moment was to go back to the sea, to feel the fresh air on my face, to be free as I had once been. With a child I could no longer do that. Jahzara found me lying on the ground in a pitiful state. She held me close and wiped away my tears.