Desire

by Mariella Frostrup

  “Come on, children,” says the stringy woman, “sit on the floor. We’re in for a treat.”

  And then, on the television screen before the silent and curious group, appears Pike in his famous Amnesty concert in Rio. He is giving us his inimitable “Mincing on Venus” and the audience is going wild. And then the scene fades and on the screen appears a bed, and on the bed is Tracey, legs apart and face on fire. And she is giving birth and I am watching, entranced, as the head of a child appears, and then the scene fades and it’s back to Rio.

  “Now children,” says Tracey, “I am sure you will all recognize my husband Pike, but do you know what else is happening on the video? No? Well this is Hubert’s first venture into the world; a very special moment.”

  And so a lesson in childbirth begins and ends, cutting from stage to bed and back until the two themes finally merge and the infant Hubert is delivered and safe in the loving arms of his mother and Pike has reached the climax of his song. I can see that Hubert, mortified, is sitting apart from the class with his head bowed, closely studying the rug and biting his nails.

  “Well,” I think to myself, “that’s show business.” After twenty long minutes it is over and the children are in the kitchen drinking goat’s milk and eating biscuits.

  “The house once belonged to Lord Browning,” Tracey tells me as we stare at some Hockney cartoons hanging next to a series of platinum discs on the staircase. “Parts of it are Tudor and we bought it in 1996 from David Puttnam. Come and have a look at the bathroom. Pike designed it himself.” And so we stroll around the corridors, looking into bedrooms and staring down from the windows at the Heath, damp and mottled brown below.

  As I am trying to pluck up courage to raise the subject of a donation, Tracey hands me her wine glass, saying “Hold that a moment, honey,” as she opens a stripped pine door to reveal a fine example of an early Thomas Crapper, decorated in willow pattern motif and with the original wall cistern. “Keep talking,” she says, lifting her dressing gown and perching on the mahogany seat. I continue to look at her, trying to appear casual as she pees luxuriously, pulling a sheet of paper from the roll and slipping her hand between her legs. Seemingly unaware of the effect she is having on me, she continues her tour of the house. “You’ll like this,” she remarks, taking a pole from behind a pair of damask curtains and reaching up to the ceiling to pull down a trapdoor and a hidden ladder, which slides silently down to rest on the floor. “Won’t take a minute,” she says, climbing up towards the brightly lit space behind the hatch. I look up at her long brown legs, which part fleetingly as she stretches to step into the roof.

  The loft runs the length of the house and is planted from wall to wall with hundreds of tall green plants reaching hungrily to the light and heat of a dozen ceiling lamps. The air is heavy with moisture from a hidden network of perforated hoses.

  “Pike likes to grow his own,” she says, and passes me a small box in which two joints have been neatly wrapped. “I rolled these myself,” she says, “just for you. Let’s go down and look at the new bathroom.”

  “Erm,” I say, my pulse fluttering like a moth, but she opens another door and we are in a large carpeted room in the middle of which, raised six inches or so on a broad stage above the floor, two baths have been positioned a foot or so apart with a table in between and taps at opposite ends.

  Tracey walks across to the window and turns to look at me. A weak sun sinking in the wet sky outlines her legs through the gown, and a mile or so behind her a Jumbo slips past the top of the Post Office tower on its way down to Heathrow.

  “We had the taps stolen to order from Blenheim Palace,” she says in a matter-of-fact sort of way. And I walk across the room and stare at the dull silver faucets with their enamel buttons and engraved crests. With a sigh, she turns to reach for a bottle of Eau d’Orange Vert and I notice that she has loosened the sash of her gown and let it drop to the ground. As she pours the thick yellow liquid into the bath, the robe separates across her belly and reveals the gentle curve of her pubic bone and a thicket of wiry, black hair. She looks up, arching an eyebrow and staring solemnly at me through the scented, steam-filled room. Well, I suppose I have been waiting for this moment since I first became aware of what a glimpse of thigh could do to me. I have had no real experience of sex, although I was once reduced to a quivering jelly at Ampleforth by a beautiful boy called Ely. So I slip out of my blazer, drop my flannels, tear at the buttons of my shirt and kick off my brogues until I am naked, my heart hammering and my skin tingling as if it had been exposed to something toxic.

  Tracey has turned away and is kneeling on the carpet, leaning across the bath to turn off the water. The silk of her gown is stretched tight across her buttocks and she turns to look at me over her shoulder. “Come round behind me, Julian,” she says and shifts herself slightly so that her knees are further apart and her bottom is raised as if an offering, and I do as she asks and she pulls the green silk aside and waits for me. And so I kneel behind her and put an arm around her hips and hold my cock, which has regenerated from a flaccid scrap of gristle into something worthwhile, and slip it slowly up and down her pussy and push myself gently inside her.

  But it is not yet to be and, almost immediately and without a word, she twists away to gather an armful of bath towels from a cupboard and lay them on the floor beside the bath. She takes some green candles from a drawer, lights them and places them around the room, then closes the palms of her hands before her face, bows her head, looks at me and says, “The act of ritual lovemaking is a participation in cosmic and divine processes.”

  And then she comes to me across the soft carpet, drops her gown to the floor, winds her fingers into my hair and clamps her open mouth to mine, pressing her body hard against my chest and grabbing my balls in her hot hand. Some instinct, reinforced by the fierce grip which Tracey has instituted on my scrotum, forces me to ignore the cardiac fluttering in my chest and do as she wants and to lie on the towel and to open my legs and to look miserably at my prick which is now lying like a blood-sated, tropical leech across the top of my thigh. She sits cross-legged on the floor and faces me.

  “This is your Lingam,” says Tracey, encircling the old chap carefully with her thumb and forefinger and anointing it with oil from a small silver phial. “Lingam is Sanskrit for penis, the wand of light,” and she starts to move her encircling fingers up and down my prick with her left hand while fondling my balls with the right.

  Well, inexperienced as I am, I know that it is but a moment before my loins turn to jelly and I ejaculate prolifically into the hot, perfumed, steamy air. But Tracey, understanding well what I am feeling, slows the rhythm of her hand and lightly grips me at the top of my penis so that the imminent eruption subsides. And then she starts again.

  “Women are able to climax many times in the Tantra,” she says, “we call it riding the bliss wave.” And so we continue for what feels like hours until my “Lingam” and everything else below my waist is on the verge of volcanic detonation. But, as I reach the moment at which I feel that I can take no more, she turns away from me and leans once more across the bath.

  “I am offering you my Yoni,” she says, pulling her legs apart to reveal the inside of her glistening, pink, slippery pussy. And she gasps “Shiva” as I enter her and she turns her head and looks into my eyes as I slowly and luxuriously flood inside her and float away into oblivion. When I regain consciousness and look at my watch, it is four o’clock and I am covered in a thick towel and lying on my back on the bathroom floor. The water has turned cold and oily in the bath and the candles have guttered down to lumpy gobbets of blackened wax. Hubert has materialized and is standing over me with a cup of tea, which is clanking in its saucer. “Mummy’s had to go out,” he says, looking up at the ceiling as if trying to remember his lines. “She says can you come back again tomorrow?”

  THE ELEGANT DUCHESS

  Dean Francis

  Dean Francis was born in Belfast, of Anglo-Irish parentage, and
was sent to a seminary by his mother who was keen for him to join the Catholic clergy. Six months later he left in disgrace after seducing the under- matron of a local infirmary. He joined the Royal Engineers, and after a brief but distinguished career, he left the army to work in a well-known advertising agency. He currently resides in rural Sussex.

  Even though she knew virtually nothing about aeronautics, when the Duchess saw the size of Fred Day’s balloon, she realised that it would only carry the pair of them. It was quite the smallest of the dozen or so being inflated in Hurlingham Park that morning, an elegant, almost quilted, purple envelope, swelling gently upwards from its basket. It seemed dwarfed by the monsters grouped on the running track; some of those were fifty feet high; their baskets had canopies and even motor wheels for landing.

  Fred was almost too busy to notice the Duchess as she headed towards his balloon. She had to hop over long rubber pipes which snaked about in every direction. There was a fearful smell in the air, unsurprisingly, since a huge motor-pump, supervised by a very worried workman, was delivering gas to all the balloons, except, as it happened, Fred’s, which was almost drum tight and ready to fly.

  “Hello, Carrie,” he shouted, heaving a stepladder over the basket and handing her in. “We’re in luck. I’ve persuaded Sam to follow us in the Napier.” He pointed to where Sam Grant, another of the Duchess’s acquaintances, was sitting in his motor car with the engine warming noisily.

  It was a gorgeous July morning. Not a trace of breeze, at least down there near Putney Bridge. However, just after Fred had cast off and they were rising over the trees near the river, the Duchess noticed that they were beginning to drift westwards quite briskly. No other balloon followed them; evidently Fred had been first in the queue for gas and Sam Grant had the Napier out of Hurlingham Park and on to the Bridge Approach in a trice. The Duchess watched him wait on the north bank for a full minute before it was clear that Fred’s track was across Barnes Common, and then he whisked the big motor over the bridge and set off smartly down the Richmond Road.

  “Shall we lose him?” asked the Duchess

  “Not with the wind this light,” Fred said. “But we have to put her up to at least six hundred feet so that he can keep us in view above the houses.”

  “How many miles of houses?”

  “About twelve.”

  Fred consulted the barometer then poured a gallon can of water over the side of the basket.

  “Shower of rain for Barnes High Street,” he said, and smiled.

  They were moving steadily across Barnes Common now. Looking down the Duchess could see a small boy, racing along, peering up, trying to keep pace with them, but failing. Evidently they were travelling at the speed of a carriage rather than a motorcar’s, but unlike motors, balloons did not need to stay on the roads. Now she could see no sign of Sam Grant’s Napier. She presumed it was still behind the houses that fringed the Common and would be trying to follow them on the road that ringed it. She could hear dogs barking. Clearly, balloons were unacceptable in the canine world and needed to be urged on their way. A woman hanging out washing gave them a wave and the Duchess waved back.

  They were approaching the steeple of the largest church in Barnes. Since its weathercock seemed to be on a level with their basket, it was fortunate that the balloon was on a path to avoid it.

  “We’re still too low,” said Fred, and emptied a second water can over the side. “It’s the heat.”

  This second shower far below seemed more effective. The Duchess saw the passing weathercock dip slightly as they rose. She realised that the balloon’s balance was very delicately poised. No doubt, they were gaining height. Richmond Bridge on the great Kew bend of the Thames was in sight now. That meant the balloon was high enough to clear the famous Hill.

  “Sweet lass of Richmond Hill,” sang Fred.

  “Sweet lass of Richmond Hill,” sang she.

  “I’d crowns resign to call thee mine,” he continued.

  “Sweet lass of Richmond Hill,” she ended.

  The balloon had just reached Kew Gardens and the Duchess could clearly pick out the Water Lily Pond and the Queen’s Cottage, when Fred made the move she had half-expected, perhaps even half-encouraged. He leant across the basket and lifted her skirt with a firm, almost polite, hoist, holding it up. The cool air wafted around her buttocks with a sudden, delicious, caress.

  “Sweet Jesus,” he said. “What a glorious pair.”

  The Duchess, who had been leaning over the edge of the basket on tiptoe for a better view of the sights beneath, just let out a little “Ohhh!” She did not move her hands from the basket’s coaming. Nor did she attempt to snatch her skirt down. In a pleasurable blend of guilt and pride, she understood that to fly with a man of Fred’s reputation, to bend over in front of him and thus present him with such a delectable and easily gained fleshly temptation, somehow made any plausible protest impossible. Besides, she knew she possessed one of the most superbly modelled bottoms in the country. Two wondrously smooth and supple alabaster cheeks rose in majesty from pale thighs and now trembled from their sudden revelation.

  “Ohhh!” she said again. “You are a very naughty man, Fred Day.”

  “It’s the finest bum in London,” said Fred, with a slight husk in his voice.

  “Only London?”

  “Finest in the land,” said Fred.

  “That’s better.” The Duchess rose as high as tiptoe would allow, so her bottom would tighten and dimple in one and the same action. Responsive to her effort, Fred gathered her skirt firmly in his fist, and began to stroke her with purpose.

  “I hope you are concentrating on your ballooning,” said the Duchess.

  “It’ll manage,” said Fred. “That’s Syon House on the far side of the river. We should go right over the top of it.”

  The Duchess glanced forward and saw that they were about to cross the river for the third time. Again, she looked back for the Napier. At first there was no sight of Sam Grant’s automobile but then, yes, there he was, a speeding dot on the Richmond Road.

  “I can see him,” she said, “he’s miles behind.”

  “He’ll be a lot further behind soon,” said Fred. “On account that he’ll need to cross Hammersmith Bridge to follow us north of the river.”

  He let go of the Duchess’s skirt, grabbed another container of water and poured it over the side. Then, as if merely interrupted by his work, he raised her skirt once more.

  “There’s something very rum indeed about all this,” she thought. “Here I am, bare-bottomed, gazing down on London from a balloon, with nobody below wiser as to what’s going on. All very rum, but strangely exciting, and new.”

  Now Fred had begun to stroke her bottom again with consummate skill. He felt her cheeks delicately, almost reverentially, with a sports-hardened hand. He let it race across dimple and cleft and then, with studied casualness, allowed it to stray into the more secret places. The Duchess wondered what else Fred’s hand could offer. Perhaps, in far more intimate circumstances, his hand, wielding birch or cane, or merely spanking her, would yield yet more intriguing sensations. Fred was a sportsman, with a sportsman’s love of thrills. “I am a thrill for him,” she thought, “just as this is thrilling for me. For what could be more exciting than to fly silently over this murmuring city in this venturesome machine while having one’s posterior caressed by such a safe and skilled pilot, and one obviously such a connoisseur of female flesh?”

  She told him of her appreciation.

  Fred grunted, either from pleasure or self-deprecation. She must have provoked him in some mysterious way, for she sensed him bend. Then instead of fondling, he was kissing, her buttocks.

  “He needs encouragement,” she thought. Keeping one hand on the hide coaming, she reached behind her and pressed her admirer’s head to her bottom, using his face as a massage-roller, kneading it into the cleft, retrieving it, bringing it over the arch of each buttock in turn, her fingers entwined in his hair to get a better gr
asp.

  She began to understand her bottom’s significance for Fred. He had entirely sacralised her buttocks. To him they offered an altar for his adoration, a firm, supple chantry where he might perform all the rites that were due to the goddess he so revered.

  He freed his head from her grasp and stood up close behind her. Close enough to imprison her skirt high on her thighs, leaving no barrier for his impending penetration. He set his hands alongside hers, gripping the leather coaming of the basket as she was. The Duchess knew immediately that this was a signal that his penetration of her would follow soon. Next to hers, his hands pressed inwards and, as if this was some sort of signal, she moved her feet apart to widen the cleft of her bottom for him.

  He was big, frighteningly big. At first his heroic striving was enough for them both. It seemed that, for Fred at least, the effort would be the reward. He wondered if the task was beyond him, even with all the Duchess’s help. Her involuntary resistance spurred him on, causing him to thrust more desperately and delightfully.

  For her, his struggle to penetrate her, the pressure of his hands upon hers, the turbulence at her buttocks, all combined to give her great pleasure. Try as she might (and she tried, womanfully, with every artifice of her body), Fred could not gain admittance. When eventually Fred’s struggles were in danger of becoming more tragic-comic than heroic, the Duchess took pity on her valiant aeronaut. With commendable practicality, she suggested that he reach into the little picnic hamper and avail himself of the butter therein. This achieved, Fred finally entered the Duchess, who gave another little “Ohhh!” and they continued with a greater sense of purpose, both revelling in the strange circumstances of their aerial coupling.

  “I’ve never been had like this before,” said the Duchess. This was not entirely true, because lovers of both sexes and several nationalities had breached the fine bastions that Fred had now overcome. She meant, of course, that the circumstances of Fred’s onslaught, the setting of his siege, were unique. Her denial could be justified, she thought. “The chances of any other woman being buggered in a balloon over London are so infinitesimally small as to be non-existent, so I’m entitled to a little poetic licence.”