Victorian Taboo

by Bryn Colvin

  “Ah, I have the very thing. You shall be Isolde.”

  “Who?”

  “She was a beautiful Irish princess, who married the king of Cornwall.”

  Jenny smiled, pleased by this suggestion.

  “Now, perhaps if you stood here, leaning on the sideboard… that’s it, look into the distance as though you are lost in thought, dreaming of an absent lover, perhaps. Now, yes, perhaps you should strip off first and I’ll drape you in fabric, decent but not too decent, if you know what I mean.”

  Jenny removed the dressing gown she had been wearing and stood patiently while the young man selected pieces from his bundle of cloth and used them to cover her. He moved with detached professionalism and she carefully adopted the same approach: This was just another job to be done, a different sort of acting role to perform. She tried to ignore the occasional brushes of his fingers on her skin and to concentrate solely on playing her part.

  “So, what happened to Isolde, then?” she asked, needing to fill the silence

  “A young man, a bard called Tristan, came to court her on behalf of the King of Cornwall, and she fell in love with him. She married the old king, but took the bard as her lover. Needless to say it didn’t go well for them, but that’s Irish myths for you, all doom and gloom and tragedy.”

  Jenny wondered at his choice, but decided it would be far wiser to say nothing. She understood that Gabriel Waterburn was commissioned to come every afternoon for two hours and make his preliminary sketches for a week or so. When he was ready he would retreat to the seclusion of his studio and create the final image there.

  * * * *

  “Has he gone? Thank God for that.”

  Amelia settled delicately on the chaise-lounge and smiled wearily.

  “He is a nice enough man, Amelia, and his singing voice is charming.”

  “He is a bore and I must confess I do not much like him, he seems less than honest to me.”

  “He is a politician!” Caroline responded defensively.

  “Quite!”

  Amelia sighed deeply.

  “It is not for me to say who you should and should not associate with, but if you are in pursuit of a husband, or an intrigue for that matter, you could do far better than Sir Jasper Akenfield. There is more to a man than his titles and singing voice.”

  “He has been very kind to me,” Caroline said meekly.

  “Caroline, my love, ask yourself if you think he is being kind to you or to your inheritance.”

  “That is a dreadful thing to suggest!”

  “Perhaps, but the world is full of people who will be enticed by your wealth. Remember, as soon as you marry, you are no longer independent and no longer mistress of your own affairs. You will have to submit to being ruled by a man. Is that what you want? You are hardly lonely, you have friends, or did you want children, is that it?”

  “I think I might like to have a child.”

  “Think you might like? My poor, dear girl, one can die having children, it is not something to enter into lightly. Or is it something else entirely that you have been missing?”

  “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “Companionship in your bed, sexual satisfaction.”

  Caroline blushed deep scarlet and looked away from her friend.

  “You have not been married, you would not…” she trailed off helplessly.

  “There is more to pleasure than letting a man have his way with you, I am not as ignorant of these matters as you might think.”

  “Amelia!”

  “No need to be so shocked. Better you know and do not throw yourself away on some worthless man when you could ease your tensions in far better ways.”

  “We should not be talking in this manner, surely?”

  Amelia ignored the remark and carried on, “Your marriage–you have always lead me to believe it was a happy one. Did it satisfy you? Did Josiah satisfy you, as a lover?”

  Caroline buried her face in her hands.

  “If you mean…what men do with women…he did that to me, from time to time. I always found it rather unpleasant, distasteful, and sometimes painful. My main reason for not marrying again is that I have little desire to put myself through any more of that.”

  “You poor thing.” Amelia moved to sit beside Caroline, and took the distraught woman’s hands in hers. “The act of congress should not be painful, or miserable, or degrading. It should be a joyful thing, an expression of love, a source of pleasure and mutual delight.”

  “I knew nothing at all about it before I married. I cried on our wedding night, after… he never knew. He was always so kind to me in other ways, I do not think he meant to hurt me.”

  Amelia contemplated the situation carefully. She had been attracted to Caroline since their first meeting, and it would be easy to seduce her now that she was so vulnerable. The thought of educating her thoroughly on the subject of physical pleasure was an enticing one, but it was evident that Caroline was not emotionally ready for that and Amelia was too fond of her to want to distress her further. Then there was also the matter of Freddy, and Amelia wanted no awkward complications in her love life.

  “There are books, you know, that teach you how it should be done. I shall procure some for you.”

  Caroline said nothing.

  “In the meantime, you and I have had a very interesting invitation to dine. I do not believe you have met the Cadwells, have you? Charles and Frederica, brother and sister. Neither of them are married, they have a fortune of their own, so there is no need to fret over motives, and he is a handsome devil who will be a Count when his father dies. Frederica and I met through a mutual friend and she has kindly invited us both to visit her.”

  “I would be delighted.”

  “Excellent.”

  * * * *

  The light was fading so Louis Thompson decided to put her embroidery away. Carefully she put the materials back in the wooden box. There were Shetland and Andalusian wools, Organzine, or hard silks as everyone called them, and finally expensive Arransene silks. It took a lot of saving on a cook’s wages to afford them. Mrs. Thompson had entirely forgotten why she was embroidering an elaborate pattern of flowers. Perhaps, she thought, it was a substitute for any other purpose in her life.

  Poor Archie, her late husband, would have said it was a senseless waste of money; but then most of his money had been donated to breweries. It was her private joke, but a sense of humour was not one of her more prominent attributes. Most people saw her as an austere woman. She had tried to show the lighter side of her nature, especially to the butler, Myles Cornwallis, but it was difficult to resurrect that long-buried part of herself.

  She closed the wooden box and went to the window of her little room in the attic of the great house belonging to Mrs. Caroline Terrington. Praise was heaped on Louis’s head when it came to cooking. She contemplated her thirty-two years and wondered how she had got to this point.

  Somewhere in her thoughts she saw a valley of grey, bleak with rain. Imagination transformed her into the innocent infant she had once been. Her childhood home was in the Welsh slate mining district and the colour of the earth came from the discarded material, which gave the area its employment--slate mining. She was the youngest child of Ella and Nathaniel Rees. There were eight older brothers, five of whom worked in the mines at the time of Louis’s imagining. Little Louis, seven years old, buttered toast and watched the flickering lights in the distance.

  As the men came up from the mines they would scamper across the slagheaps to make their way home. The lights were the oil lamps they carried. Her teacher, Mr. Roberts, had told them at school on Monday about his visit to London to attend the Methodist Meeting. He spoke of streets where a gas from under the roads was piped up to light the way. Light The Way, it sounded like one of the Chapel songs, to Louis.

  Then a distant clock chimed and she was thrust back into the present and the house of Mrs. Terrington. Now, she as tidied her room, her thoughts moved forward to her own
journeys to great cities. At twelve she left the Chapel school and worked in the Harris’ Shop in town. They sold clothes, linens and all types of buttons and materials. It was the only haberdashery for twenty miles. The work did not suit Louis.

  At fourteen she tried going into service as an under-maid at Brabourne House, occupied by the same family who owned the slate works. She stayed there for almost two years. It was better than the shop and she owed another type of education to them. Her mother had died when Louis was just turned fifteen. Nobody had told her about anything to do with men. Her Sunday School classes certainly did not. If the Reverend Hughes had got his way, the human race would have died out in her district, as he claimed he saw total segregation of the sexes as the way to redemption.

  Brabourne House had dark secrets. Louis shivered as she drew the drapes in her little attic room. She remembered the advances made to her at the house back home: A stable boy, one of the footmen and even the young master, home from his Grand Tour of Europe. When the Reverend Hughes tried to interfere with her one afternoon, Louis decided to move on.

  She made her way to Bristol, more than a hundred miles to the south and just over the border into England. It was a wondrous place, made rich as a trading port, mainly from eighteenth-century slavery, then importing rums and spices from plantations in the Caribbean. Louis found employment in a public house, and her younger self had revelled in that seedy world.

  That was where her hidden life was buried. If the mistress had known, Louis suspected the reputable woman would not have wanted such a cook in her household. Back in Bristol life had been tough, if exciting. Louis could not live on the pittance she earned. The need for shoes and a winter coat made her careless of other things. One evening, one of the sailors kept buying her drinks. She remembered his beard kissing her face. Most of the other groping was a blur. It was the night she lost her virginity. To her it was passion, albeit a minor one. When the sailor left her squalid room at the pub he had thrown her a coin and said he would recommend her to his mates.

  Louis cried for hours, then wondered why she was crying and realized there was good money in it. There were worse ways to earn a crust. She had become a prostitute. When her gentleman friends came calling the money was good, so she learned to perform tricks and treats for them.

  Three years, she sobbed thinking of her lost innocence, and her fall from grace. Looking back, much of it had been vile and degraded. Then a client came along who was gentle. He would visit her and talk before he shagged her, then talk afterwards as well. He was a great one for talking, but it made her feel like a person. Then she fell pregnant and told him it was his, even though she did not think he believed her.

  Archie was a kind man, and rather than leave her destitute, he married her. They both knew it was a grim life being a whore with a baby and no one to help you. Archie had provided her escape route. They moved to London–he continued his nautical work and she became an under-cook, and finally a cook in her own right.

  She heard a noise and gave a start, wondering what on earth it could be. She supposed her imagination was playing tricks on her, inspired by recollections of her depraved youth. Louis Thompson settled back down in her one easy chair and sipped her tea. She still had an hour of her free time before she was due back down in the kitchens. There was that noise again. She shrugged and closed her eyes.

  * * * *

  The room below belonged to the butler, Myles Cornwallis. He sat in the slightly torn leather chair that the late Mr. Josiah Terrington had given to the butler when he purchased a new one for his study. In front of Myles stood Sophie Hunt, a naked maid, and at this moment, an apparently repentant young woman. She had come to the butler again and told him everything about the sexual acts Lady Amelia had embroiled her in. This was the third time she had confessed to him and accepted her punishment. It had become a game and they both knew it.

  Twice before Myles had begun by spanking the bare buttocks of the maid then, in the heat of lust, and whilst keeping her bending over, slipped his shaft into her weeping flower. This time he wanted to savour her body and the promise of willing participation. He had watched every movement as she stripped off under his orders. Now Sophie stood, hands clasped in front of her, modestly trying to cover the fair curly down at her loins and eyes cast down.

  “Why did you let Lady Amelia do these things to you, Sophie?”

  Even as the maid struggled for an answer, Myles let his hand reach out and work fingers between her legs. He noted that she was wet already.

  “Did she push her fingers right into you?”

  Still there was no definite answer.

  “Like this?” Myles parted her legs and massaged her deeply.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He pulled her closer so his mouth could consume her upturned nipples. Rubbing his palm over her rear cheeks he explored for her sex, his searching coming together with his other hand fingering Sophie from the frontal direction.

  “Lady Amelia wants me to visit her next week,” Sophie panted through her growing excitement.

  “What did she say, Sophie? Now, mind, tell me everything.”

  “She has promised to teach me how to use my tongue on her body.”

  “Yes, Sophie? Use your tongue where?” Myles gulped, sexually anxious to hear her words.

  “Between her thighs. She did it to me–I told you all of that–now she wants me to learn.”

  Myles came away from his own gratification. He took hold of Sophie’s hand and marched her across his room. He drew the drape back and she saw his bed. The word ‘bed’ sounded so decadent to the maid. It was the symbol of her most erotic dreams.

  “Lay down, Sophie.”

  She did so. Myles quickly undressed and he knew the woman was watching in the same intense manner in which he had looked at her. The butler knelt beside her, and taking Sophie’s legs, pushed them wide apart, at the same time raising her knees. The sight of her displayed sex made his lips go dry.

  “I cannot let you experience this perversion without knowing what real passion is.”

  Myles clambered over on top of Sophie and, holding his cock, he pushed it down into her folds, let its rounded, bulbous end go into her vagina. Then he sunk his shaft as far as she could take it. Her legs wrapped around the butler’s body with the soles of her feet sliding up and down on his posterior.

  * * * *

  Working at her embroidery upstairs, Mrs. Louis Thompson heard another disturbing noise. The sound of it was familiar and she frowned as she remembered. The noises from above sounded, for all the world, like a whore being pumped and fucked. She smiled and dismissed the idea, mocking herself for imagining some tart being shagged in the servant’s quarters and squealing with wanton and lewd excitement as some man rutted in her. The mere idea was quite ridiculous. She had long since escaped from that sordid world. More likely there were mice under the floorboards again. She determined to purchase another cat.

  Chapter Eleven

  The thick, greasy paint smeared across her skin and gradually thinned out until it vanished completely, leaving Jenny’s usually pale skin flushed from rubbing. She pulled the long pins from her hair and watched as the ornate style dissolved and her long auburn tresses tumbled down around her bare shoulders. She sighed, shrugging off the character she had played and becoming simply Jenny Nightingale again.

  The play was an old one, the language clunky, the writer obscure, but it was bawdy and full of the kind of jokes that kept the crowd happy. She wanted to be in one of the new plays, to act at Covent Garden, to be given the chance to shine in something that was truly good and not merely pleasing. A knock at the door of her tiny dressing room awakened her from her daydreaming.

  “Jenny, there’s a young man here to see you, want me to show him in, love?”

  “Who is he?” Jenny called out.

  “He didn’t say. Youngish though, funny-looking clothes, scruffy, long hair.”

  “Gabriel!” she exclaimed. “Oh, do send him in, Peter.�
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  She hastily wrapped a dressing gown around her shoulders and drew it modestly closed, covering her simple undergarments, even though he had spent numerous afternoons gazing casually at her exposed flesh. He knocked and entered almost at once.

  “Jenny, my muse, that was perfect. The play was pitiful rubbish, but you shone out like a goddess.”

  Jenny blushed demurely.

  “I had not expected to see you here, Gabriel.”

  “Ah, I am in torment. I spend hours staring blankly at the canvas and further hours looking hopelessly at the many sketches I made and I paint nothing. Your patron wants his picture and my landlord is hankering after his rent but I cannot do a thing.”

  “I am truly sorry to hear it.”

  “Would you take pity on a poor artist?”

  “I would pity anyone who suffered.”

  “Ah, my beauty, I suffer like no other. I am racked with torment and I cannot even find solace in my paints.”

  “Poor Gabriel, but I do not see how I can help you.”

  “I must have you before me. I must be able to gaze upon your exquisite face. Memory cannot capture your perfection. I cannot paint unless you sit for me, there is no helping it.”

  “Then I should be very happy to sit for you.”

  “You are an angel indeed.”

  “When?”

  “Come back to my studio now, flushed from your triumph, and let us burn candles into the early hours.”

  She smiled. He was charming, poetic, and it was easy to be swept up by his enthusiasm. Furthermore, he was dashing, sensual and he appealed to her in every way.

  “I must dress--I can hardly go out into the streets like this.”

  “Then dress.”

  It was evident that he had no intention of leaving and so she cast off the dressing gown and began to attire herself, conscious of the artist’s continual scrutiny.

  Gabriel hired them a cab and they journeyed through the quiet streets to the rooms where he lived and worked. He was alight with enthusiasm and Jenny stripped off rapidly while he lit candles, arranged furniture and brought props to litter about her. She was tired from her evening’s performance and light-headed from lack of food but she said nothing, standing in patient stillness, listening to the sound of brushes on canvas. She could smell the paints.