Yet last night, perhaps as a result of my husband’s chiding, I dreamed of something most wicked. Something most wicked indeed, about Mr Quake himself.
As I sit here and divulge these thoughts and memories in this journal of my nocturnal fantasy, a hot rash burns my cheeks! I am an unfaithful wife, and at length I have come to accept this fault in my character; yet now, in light of this most indecent dream, I fear I am becoming something more than unfaithful. I fear I am becoming depraved.
I do not think women should be so preoccupied with matters of the flesh as I am. Women should not wish for immoral acts as I do. Very possibly there is something terribly wrong with me.
Goodness, what would my pious husband think?
Such things I dreamed last night; things a decent woman should never dream, or even perhaps have knowledge of. Perhaps I truly am a wanton wretch, destined for the fires of Hell.
In my dream, I was welcomed into Mr Quake’s office, as I regularly am on my monthly visits, by his secretary Mr Smythes. My hands were filled with ledgers and accountings stuffs.
‘Good morning, Mrs Reeves. My, you are looking very well today.’ Mr Quake said, standing behind his desk and offering me a very chivalric bow.
I smiled, and untied the blue ribbons underneath my chin to remove my bonnet. In many dreams I do not remember overmuch. Yet of this dream, this wicked, thrilling dream, I recall everything – even wearing my blue damask.
‘Why, thank you, Mr Quake.’ I replied.
‘Take a seat, Madam, and let us look at these books.’
I nodded and pushed the ledgers over his desk. He reached to receive them, and his hands brushed past mine. I still cannot fathom how such a sensation can be revealed in a dream, but it felt like a lightning strike in my breast. My breath hitched.
One must understand, I have never actually looked upon Mr Quake with the eyes of passion, but in this dream, he had taken on an entirely different manner. My pulse quickened and Mr Quake’s pupils darkened for just a moment, before his long-fingered hands opened up the books. He looked down at the entries for a time, his dark hair streaked silver.
He sighed heavily before looking up. ‘Oh dear,’ he murmured, standing up.
‘What is it?’ I asked, my breath catching again in my throat.
‘I can see several mistakes already.’
‘Can you?’ I exclaimed. ‘What shall you do?’
‘What can I do?’ he chided. ‘How many years have I been working on these ledgers with you Madam?’ he asked as he stalked over to his office door and slid the bolt to lock it.
‘Five,’ I replied.
‘If you were a child in a class, I should take you to my lap and smack your rump raw for this effort.’ He gestured back to the ledger.
‘Mr Quake!’ I protested. Yet in that moment I knew this was exactly what I wanted!
‘Mrs Reeves, how can I possibly make you understand that incoming amounts go in this column and outgoings in this one?’ His long finger pointed to the columns on the ledger.
My throat grew tight. I did feel like a naughty schoolchild before him. ‘I do not know.’ Though my dream-self certainly had an idea.
‘Then I shall have to come up with a suitable punishment,’ he grumbled. ‘If you would be so kind as to stand, Madam.’
I wrung my hands together, trying to still my hammering heart, and stood.
‘Lean forth, over the desk. Be certain that you can see the ledger.’
Confusion and longing warred through my body. I knew not what his intention was, but I knew it was wicked. I did as I was bade, eagerly even, my breathing rapid.
I can scarce write what I dreamed of next. I felt his hands on the hem of my skirts, bunching them and pulling them high above my waist to reveal my naked derriere. Again, I feel my scribbling cannot possibly imbue the vivid sensations this dream provoked. I could verily smell the ink and paper before me. I felt his hands on my rear. Mr Quake squeezed and tested each buttock as one may a fruit or some such.
‘Mr Quake!’ I cried in my dream. ‘Whatever are you doing?’ I gasped as he pulled my rear globes apart and his finger dipped into my seeping quim. It seemed the Mr Quake of my dreams was testing my waters and as he did, he drew a line from the opening of my sex to the tight, forbidden one at my rear.
I gasped, and understood his intent.
Let it be known that I know of those immoral acts that have been forbidden by the Bible. I have read in Romans that men commit shameless acts with one another in this fashion but I have never, not even with Mr Goddard, dared attempt or even considered doing thus. Yet it is with great confusion that in this dream, I wished it so.
I dreamed of a sharp crack on my left buttock and I bit back a cry. The sharp sting sent lines of pleasure straight to my sex.
‘Are you reading the ledger, Mrs Reeves?’ Mr Quake said.
‘Of course,’ I gasped. I heard him bring his hand to his mouth and collect moisture from it. Then the wetness was gently rubbed into the cleft of my rear.
Oh Lord, forgive me this wicked dream!
I did as I was bade and stared down at the ledger, the words meaningless in my heightened state.
‘Read the ledger, Mrs Reeves,’ he said again, and I felt him place more moisture on my tight rear opening.
‘May 1st 1813. Outgoings …’ I began, but my words broke into a sob as I felt the head of his phallus pushed betwixt my buttocks, prodding at my wetted back passage.
Oh! I can scarce write what occurred next!
‘Read on!’ the dream man growled, and I felt this time a moistened finger part my buttocks and push forward. I cannot credit how real it felt, nor how such a thing is even possible.
His large finger breached the taut ring of my private place. I gasped – the sensation was sharp – and he moved it experimentally in and out. My sex, ignored below it ,began to contract and seep anew.
‘Tallow, two pounds …’ I whispered, and pushed back to feel his finger deeper. As my dream continued, there was another sharp crack, and I bit my lip. His finger had left me, and now I could feel the hot, broad width of his phallus nudge my rear once more.
‘What else?’ he growled.
I stared down at the ledger, trying to decipher the words as the head of his staff lunged forth and broke through my bottom’s defences completely. After he had passed that first barrier he slipped the rest of his length into me. I felt full and stretched, but the violation of my rear made my sex pulse and pangs of pleasure radiated through me.
How can a dream feel so real, and such a wicked act feel so pleasant? Does it in real life, or is this all just obscene fantasy created by my lonely mind? I cannot possibly know. ‘Oats, four pounds!’ I gasped, as he began to move back and forth. He did it gently first, and the discomfort dissipated into nothing but fluid pleasure. As he slipped forth and slipped back I relaxed beneath him. His hands were on the globes of my buttocks, pulling them apart, mayhap so he had a view of his forbidden plunder.
‘Rice, five pounds,’ I stuttered as his strokes increased in tempo. Is it vulgar and shocking that in this dream, I wished for something more than this forbidden pleasure?
I was about to beg for some further attention, but before I had time, I felt one of his hands leave my buttock and slip around my side to find my sex. His fingers entwined themselves in my nether hair, before they found my hardened, throbbing nub of pleasure.
‘Read on,’ he ordered and rubbed gently but firmly at that place. He did not do it hard, or with malicious intent I know, because at his touch my pleasure tightened in my abdomen. As his own pleasure grew, Mr Quake thrust in time to the caresses on my quim.
Once again, I must ask myself, how is it possible that I have experienced these sensations in my mind but not in my flesh?
As my dream continued, Mr Quake thrust into my bottom harder and faster, sending me rocking over the desk. His hand patting my sex increased in tempo too. Soon there was only pleasure between my legs and the strange fluid motions h
appening in my rear.
My belly tightened, and I clenched low. My back passage tightened around Mr Quakes impaling staff as I found my end, convulsing on the desk.
I awoke, astonishingly, as in the last contortions of crisis.
If it had not occurred so, I would not have believed such a thing possible. How had I met with pleasurable crisis in a dream? And in such a terribly debauched one at that? There is no one I can ask, for I cannot fathom even broaching such an embarrassing conversation.
I left my bed early this morning and sat in the cool light reading my Bible, trying to extinguish those forbidden and terribly arousing images that still lingered in the darker recesses of my mind, and forgive me, my desires!
Perhaps I am what Mr Reeves calls an ypocrite; an individual who claims morals and fortitude yet behaves in an utterly contrary manner. For I confess, I have suffered but a little guilt over my liaison with Mr Goddard; for such pleasures are of a natural sort, are they not? A young wife neglected as I, could be understood to fall into the arms of a lusty milkman, I should say. Yet this dream, this debauched and wicked dream, does not make me feel so certain.
At length I found a passage in Romans 1:26:
For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.
Perhaps it is my darkest desire that someone plunder me so? Forgive my traitorous loins for wetting at the thought when my heart was near-silenced in horror. Am I one of these women of whom the Bible speaks?
No, of course I am not.
Indeed, if I am to be of a more practical mind, I could question if there is any meaning to be found from dreams entirely. For I know one simple truth. I could never fathom such an act with Mr Quake. In a dream, certainly, but never in truth.
Of course, at length I can understand his presence in the dream. It is mere coincidence; we meet today with for our monthly accountancy meeting. Which indeed must be why I dreamed of him, rather than of another. Yet it is awkward that I shall be expected to sit and speak with a man who but a few hours ago I dreamed was rutting my rear!
* * *
As it came to pass, my concern over my unusual dream was unwarranted. The meeting with Mr Quake was as they always have been. I was summoned to his office as I usually am, and then we progressed into an articulate and precise conversation about ledgers.
There was nary a mention of rutting the rear.
There was no suggestion of corporal punishment when he found fault in my writings.
There was nothing, utterly nothing untoward or remotely thrilling in our meeting. I believe I can truthfully say it was dull.
As a measure of the fall in my character, I cannot rightly say whether I was relieved or disappointed. For certainly that act of which I dreamed is a wicked one, but there no can be no denying I have a potent curiosity about it.
As I left Mr Quake to return to the vicarage, my spirits were damp, though I confess to an unladylike hunger for my husband, or in lieu of him, Mr Goddard. The day was also a pleasant one; the rain and wind of the previous days had abated and the sun shone.
It was as I was halfway down the road to the vicarage that I heard a voice call to me.
‘Mrs Reeves? Praise be! I were going to call on the vicarage to find you!’
I started with the unexpected call, and turned guiltily to face the caller, a Mrs Hatfield, the young bride of the village sweetshop owner.
‘Good day,’ I said, and inclined my head. Mrs Hatfield was a plain woman, anyone would see that. However, what she lost in plainness she made up for kindness and she was fairly doted on by all the women in the village. She reared runt piglets, she saved kittens from drowning in streams – that sort of thing.
I frowned. Her homely face was creased with distress, ‘Whatever is the matter, Mrs Hatfield?’
The young woman wrung her hands together. ‘Oh Mrs Reeves, my sister has cut her hand, badly. My husband can’t find the physician, and Mrs Trent told me you’re good with healing. Would you … please come see her?’
I thought of the Hatfield family and knew from my observations in the parish that Mrs Hatfield’s mother was consumptive and had passed during the winter. Subsequently, Mrs Hatfield’s youngest sister – Louisa if I was not mistaken – had been taken in by Mr Hatfield and his wife.
‘Of course,’ I said without delay and followed the distraught Mrs Hatfield as she disappeared into the cottage.
I pulled off my bonnet as I entered, taking no care with the ribbons. All thoughts of my improper dreams of Mr Quake forgotten, I approached Louisa, who sat sobbing and clutching a kitchen rag to her left hand.
‘Louisa?’ I called. The child, for she could have been no more than eight, looked up at me with wide, wet eyes.
‘It’s Mrs Reeves, I’ve come to help you.’ I smiled and tried to appear reassuring.
‘Let Mrs Reeves take a look, Louisa,’ I heard Mrs Hatfield say from behind.
The sobbing child released the cloth and displayed her unfortunate hand. I felt my stomach lurch as I bent forth to look at the alarming injury. It was on her palm, the mound of the thumb to be exact, and about an inch in length. I am no physician, but do I have a talent for nursing, and as a child often assisted in nursing my siblings back to health from injury or sickness. It was my uncle who first noticed my ability one winter, when my younger brother had been fevering for many days. My mother had lost hope, but I spent all my hours nursing him, cooling his forehead with a damp cloth and dripping cold tea onto his lips. At length he had recovered and my uncle, a barber and occasional physician, took to teaching me.
I remembered his words then. ‘Vinegar, to cleanse the wound.’
I turned to Mrs Hatfield, whose face had paled. ‘Do you have vinegar?’ I asked.
She nodded and hurried to a cupboard and extracted a jar of liquid.
‘A cleaner cloth than this?’ I added, and pushed the other cloth aside. Louisa’s hand was still bleeding, albeit slowly. One could deduce from the red staining the cloth that the bleeding had been profuse initially.
I poured vinegar onto the new cloth Mrs Hatfield offered me. The scent was sharp and cleared my head. ‘How did you do it?’ I asked, and dabbed at the flush of fresh blood.
‘I was cuttin’ potatoes,’ the girl said with strangled sob. I could see them by a bowl, discarded beside a knife and a puddle of blood.
‘This will sting, Louise. Shall you be very brave?’
The child nodded, and I lowered the cloth to the wound.
Louisa was not brave; she howled like some creature from Hell. The sound was painful to my ears. ‘Hush now, Louisa.’ Mrs Hatfield chided, placing her hands over the child’s mouth.
I poured more vinegar onto the cloth and renewed the cleansing. Soon, the child’s cries abated and for the first time I took time to consider the wound again. It was deep, deeper than what I was comfortable even looking at, and the size on the small hand was concerning. As the child moved the afflicted limb, I saw the wound gape open, red and garish. I realised at that moment it would require sutures. Such a wound could never heal without being sealed.
‘Mrs Hatfield, do you have a needle and thread? I am afraid the cut will require some stitching.’
Louisa’s large blue eyes widened in undeniable alarm. ‘No!’ she cried.
‘I’m sorry, but the cut will not close if we do not stitch it.’
Mrs Hatfield’s lips tightened. ‘Yes, Mrs Reeves. I think you’re right.’ Her voice grew stern. ‘Louisa, you’ll do what you’re told.’
‘Get her a glass of brandy, for her nerves, and a leather belt or strap so that she may bite upon it. I have no laudanum to make her insensible, I’m afraid.’
Mrs Hatfield nodded grimly and retrieved the requested items. As my uncle had shown me many years since, I washed the needle in a little vinegar and threaded it.
We offered Louisa a tipple of brandy, which she bravely downed and very nearly upped. We then pu
t the leather strap betwixt her teeth and asked her to bite down.
I have never felt quite so cruel as I did when I started to stitch the poor child’s hand. Tears streamed down her face at the first insertion and low moans emanated from her chest. It was to our great relief that by the third stitch, her eyes rolled in her head and she fainted clear away. I then rushed to complete the stitching.
When it was done, Louise began to stir and I bandaged her hand with white cotton cloth.
‘There, you were terribly brave,’ I said. ‘Perhaps Mr Hatfield will allow you your choice of sweet from his shop this evening for all your bravery.’
Louisa’s eyes glistened and I watched Mrs Hatfield wrap the child in her arms and offer comfort.
‘Thank you, Mrs Reeves. I never knew you was as good at healing as this.’
I smiled, feeling touched. It was nice to be truly useful. I’d not cared for wounds for well over a year. The village physician, Mr Cole, was usually able to do such work, so it was a rare occasion indeed that I was ever called upon to assist in matters of medicine – but I did like it when I was.
‘Don’t thank me yet, Mrs Hatfield. We must wait to see that the wound does not fester. You ought to get Mr Cole to visit and check it tomorrow.’
She nodded, and I stood.
‘Here,’ she said, and searched in the pocket of her apron. ‘Take this.’ She offered me some shillings. The coins shone in the light dull light of the cottage.
‘No, no, Mrs Hatfield.’ I waved her hand away. ‘I do not require any recompense. If I may just have some water to wash my hands, I must be on my way. My husband may return for lunch, you see.’ I had no notion if he would do such a thing, having scarce spoken to him in what seemed an age, but she agreed and with exaggerated reluctance, Mrs Hatfield placed the shillings back in her apron and hurried to get me a washbasin.
A little later, I left Hatfield Cottage and resumed my stroll to the vicarage. Now the excitement was largely past, doubts about my morality and fortitude as a vicar’s wife cloaked me. After coming so eagerly to the Christian assistance of the Hatfields, I felt my fleshly sins with Mr Goddard and my nocturnal fantasy of Mr Quake quite appalling.
The Journal of a Vicar's Wife Page 4
