Sexing the Cherry Read Online Free Page A

dogs. But my mother, who lived only a while and was so light that she dared not go out in a wind, could swing me on her back and carry me for miles. There was talk of witchcraft but what is stronger than love?
    When Jordan was new I sat him on the palm of my hand the way I would a puppy, and I held him to my face and let him pick the fleas out of my scars.
    He was always happy. We were happy together, and if he noticed that I am bigger than most he never mentioned it. He was proud of me because no other child had a mother who could hold a dozen oranges in her mouth at once.
    How hideous am I?
    One morning, soon after the start of the Civil War that should have been over in a month and lasted eight years, Tradescant came to our house looking for Jordan. I was shouting at a neighbour of mine, a sunken block of a fellow with slant eyes and a nose to hang a hat on. This cranesbill was telling me that the King was wrong to make war on his own people, and I was telling him that if the foul-mouthed Scots hadn't started their jiggery-pokery again, always wanting a fight with someone, we'd have had no war. We'd lived with a King and without a Parliament for eleven years, and now we'd got a Parliament and precious little of a King.
    As far as I know it, and I have only a little learning, the King had been forced to call a Parliament to grant him money for his war against the kilted beasts and their savage ways. Savage to the core, and the poor King trying only to make them use a proper prayer book. They wouldn't have his prayer book and in a most unchristian manner threatened his throne. The King, turning to his own people, found himself with a Parliament full of Puritans who wouldn't grant him money until he had granted them reform. Not content with the Church of England that good King Henry had bequeathed to us all, they wanted what they called 'A Church of God'.
    They said that the King was a wanton spendthrift, that the bishops were corrupt, that our Book of Common Prayer was full of Popish ways,that the Queen herself, being French, was bound to be full of Popish ways. Oh they hated everything that was grand and fine and full of life, and they went about in their flat grey suits with their flat grey faces poking out the top. The only thing fancy about them was their handkerchiefs, which they liked to be trimmed with lace and kept as white as they reckoned their souls to be. I've seen Puritans going past a theatre where all was merriment and pleasure and holding their starched linen to their noses for fear they might smell pleasure and be infected by it.
    It didn't take them long to close down every theatre in London once they got a bit of power.
    But didn't our Saviour turn the water into wine?
    Our own minister of God soon turned Puritan and started denouncing the King from his pulpit.
    'Preacher Scroggs,' I said, one morning after he had delivered his sermon on the text 'And the memory of the wicked shall rot', 'do you not know that our King is so by Divine Right?'
    He fixed me with the better of his two squint eyes and clasped his hands together.
    'Look to the Heavenly King, lady,' he said. 'There is no earthly power but Satan.'
    I heard from his wife that he makes love to her through a hole in the sheet.
    'Does he not kiss you?' I said.
    'He has never kissed me,' she answered, 'for fear of lust.'
    Then lust must be a powerful thing, if to kiss her that most resembles a hare, with great ears and staring eyes, brings it on.
    It is a true saying, that what you fear you find.
    My neighbour, who has a fondness for Preacher Scroggs, largely since like finds like, was addressing me in the most pompous terms about the Will of God, as though he knew God as well as I do my dogs. Thus was I forced to shout him down, reason being wasted on a block, and thus did Tradescant find me.
    'Madam, madam, calm yourself,' he said in his gentle way.
    I turned, and though I hadn't seen him for two years I recognized him at once.
    'Mr Tradescant,' I