balked again. I loathed all that. I wanted a woman who wanted me, and wanted it .
“Then came Bertha Coutts. They’d lived next door to us when I was a little lad, so I knew ’em all right. And they were common. Well, Bertha went away to some place or other in Birmingham; she said, as a lady’s companion; everybody else said, as a waitress or something in an hotel. Anyhow, just when I was more than fed up with that other girl, when I was twenty-one, back comes Bertha, with airs and graces and smart clothes and a sort of bloom on her: a sort of sensual bloom that you’d see sometimes on a woman, or on a trolly. Well, I was in a state of murder. I chucked up my job at Butterley because I thought I was a weed, clerking there: and I got on as overhead blacksmith at Tevershall: shoeing horses mostly. It had been my dad’s job, and I’d always been with him. It was a job I liked: handling horses: and it came natural to me. So I stopped talking ‘fine,’ as they call it, talking proper English, and went back to talking broad. I still read books, at home: but I blacksmithed and had a pony-trap of my own, and was My Lord Duckfoot. My dad left me three hundred pounds when he died. So I took on with Bertha, and I was glad she was common. I wanted her to be common. I wanted to be common myself. Well, I married her, and she wasn’t bad. Those other ‘pure’ women had nearly taken all the balls out of me, but she was alright that way. She wanted me, and made no bones about it. And I was as pleased as punch. That was what I wanted: a woman who wanted me to fuck her. So I fucked her like a good un. And I think she despised me a bit, for being so pleased about it, and bringin’ her her breakfast in bed sometimes. She sort of let things go, didn’t get me a proper dinner when I came home from work, and if I said anything, flew out at me. And I flew back, hammer and tongs. She flung a cup at me and I took her by the scruff of the neck and squeezed the life out of her. That sort of thing! But she treated me with insolence. And she got so’s she’d never have me when I wanted her: never. Always put me off, brutal as you like. And then when she’d put me right off, and I didn’t want her, she’d come all