BED OF CRIMSON JOY
JASPER BARK
Published as a standalone novella by KnightWatch Press
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I
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” said Stanley, scratching at his grey hair and inspecting the bits of scalp under his fingernails.
His spectacles were perched on the end of his nose, giving him an expression halfway between a squint and a sneer. He was wearing his baggy fawn cardigan and tartan slippers.
For a second, Rose wondered if it was a good idea. Stanley wasn’t cutting a dashing figure. “Stop being such a fusspot and come on,” she said, turning the key in the back door.
“You’re only watering the plants and feeding the cat,” said Stanley. “I really don’t see why you need me here.”
“Just get inside will you.” She gave him a push and he stumbled through the door into the utility room. Their neighbours had moved in seven months ago, and had already made extensive renovations.
“That’s solid Corian,” Stanley said, running his fingers along a worktop. “Nice work too.” Rose walked through to the kitchen shaking her head. She’d forgotten that Stanley hadn’t been inside since Samantha and Darren moved out.
Naturally he’d want to do all those male things, like inspecting the carpentry and admiring the quality of the materials. She’d have to finish her chores quickly or she’d lose him altogether to his inspection of the new kitchen suite.
That wasn’t the reason she’d brought him next door. Even if he hadn’t realised yet. Rose sighed; she’d always been the one to take the lead in these matters. A momentary pang of regret welled up inside her. Regret for all the things she’d never had from her relationship.
She wanted to be needed, physically. She wanted a man who would chase her, wherever she led him. A man who would just take her, without Rose having to orchestrate the whole thing and lead him through it step by step.
But she was old now. Available men were thin on the ground and she did still have Stanley. He wasn’t a passionate husband, but she didn’t have much to complain about. Mainly the minor quirks and irritations any long-term marriage has to accommodate. Heaven knows, he put up with enough of hers.
“Are you finished yet?” said Stanley, hovering in the kitchen door. The cat eyed the food she’d put out with suspicion. Rose could never work out if the cat hated the food or just the fact that Rose put it out for her.
“I just have to do the orchids,” Rose said. Stanley glanced around the kitchen at the new range cooker and the expensive oak cabinets. “Nice what they’ve done in here,” he said. “They obviously have a bit of money.”
“Hmm,” said Rose, spritzing the orchids with water. She didn’t want to encourage too much interest in the new kitchen.
“Right, well I’ll be getting back while you finish that off,” said Stanley.
“But you’ve only just got here.”
“I’ve seen all I need to.”
“What on earth do you want to go back home for?”
“The snooker’s on in a minute, I don’t want to miss it.”
“But you haven’t followed the snooker in ages.”
“I caught a few matches on the iPlayer and got back into it.”
“Well you can watch the next one on the iPlayer then.”
“It’s not the same as watching it live.”
Rose let out a short, exasperated breath. She started to question the whole thing. It was just like Stanley to spoil everything before he even realised what was on offer. “There’s something I want to show you upstairs,” she said.
“We can’t go up there.”
“Why ever not?”
“Because it’s not our house. They gave you the keys. I don’t even know if they want me in the kitchen, let alone upstairs. It’s not right.”
“It can’t do any harm. They’ll never know.”
Rose put her head to one side, tilted her hips and shot Stanley a knowing look. It was a look she’d first given him on Boscastle Beach, back in 1970. A look he recognised straight away.
“Oh,” he said, and swallowed audibly, making his adam’s apple bob. The look was enough to silence him. Rose took him by the hand and led him up the stairs. He wore the same shocked, yet acquiescent, expression he’d worn forty years ago.
Up until that moment, on Boscastle Beach, Rose had thought Stanley was being a gentleman, out of some antiquated notion of chivalry and respect. She learned, when she seduced him, that fear and inexperience had held him back.
She wished later that she hadn’t chosen such a perfect spot for their first tryst. The act itself had been clumsy and embarrassing, and altered Rose’s feelings about the secluded cove. She could never recall the location without a sense of awkwardness and regret.
At nineteen she’d been in awe of Stanley’s intellect and his talent as a poet. He was only twenty-three when Rose met him and already his poems had been published in several small journals. One of the journals was even stocked by her university’s library. She hadn’t entirely liked the poems, but she’d admired his achievement. He was the first person in her social circle to be published.
Sadly, as a poet, Stanley had not made good on his early promise. He had improved as a lover, but he’d never quite gotten over the shift in power that sex brought to their relationship. He was threatened by Rose’s sexual experience.
Stanley tried to compensate for his inferiority by subtly belittling Rose with his intellect. He wouldn’t stoop to an outright insult. He did it all through inference and allusion. Because she recognised the source of his hostility, and because she loved him, Rose had learned to ignore the barbed comments and the subtle taunts.
Rose led Stanley across the landing to the spare room. Stanley was still taking in the reclaimed floorboards and the Farrow and Ball paint that had replaced the flock wallpaper, as Rose opened the door.
“So,” she said, making a grand gesture. “What do you think?”
“What do I think of what?”
“Oh come on,” she patted the mattress of the king-sized, four-poster bed that dominated the room. “What do you think I’m talking about?”
The four-poster bed took up most of the available space in the room. Rose had no idea how Peter and Bethany had gotten it in there. It was too big to go up the stairs or through the door, or even for them to have winched it through the window.
It was a Tudor style canopy bed, with intricately carved oak posts. A nymph and a satyr chased each other round the dark antique wood of the posts. The carved panels of the headboard depicted an obscene bacchanal, in which few of the sexual positions seemed physically possible. The bedspread and curtains were made of a deep red material with gold brocade stitching, decorated with an intricate crest made up entirely from genitalia.
“Oh it’s the bed,” said Stanley. “That’s what you wanted to show me.” He looked relieved, like a schoolboy who’s been let off a scolding. “I thought … well, I mean, when you … anyway, I’ve seen it now. Come on, we’d better be going.”
“Hold on, I’m not finished yet.” Rose pulled herself up onto the bed and patted the mattress next to her. “Come join me.”
Stanley looked more than a little hesitant. “Look Rose, this isn’t right. We don’t even know Peter and Bethany. We should be getting along now.”
Rose sighed with exasperation. The bed was already starting to affect her. All she needed to do was to get Stanley to touch it.
She remembered the first time she saw the bed, when she popped over yesterday. She’d fed the cat and watered the plants and decided to have a nosey about. She got a delicious, clandestine thrill being in someone’s house when they were away. It was like sharing an intimate slice of their everyday life, without them knowing.
After checking the cupboards, the bookshelves and the broom cupboard, and finding nothing of any note, Rose decided to head upstairs. The idea of checking the bedrooms gave her a little frisson, especially when she considered the things tha
t might occur there, but they were disappointingly tasteful and bland.
Then Rose walked into the spare room and saw the bed. This was just the sort of secret she’d been hoping to unearth. The bed looked as though it had been waiting for her. She was appalled and fascinated by the carvings and the motif on the spread. Peter and Bethany seemed so prim and self-contained. She knew there had to be something lurking beneath their respectable facade, but she hadn’t expected anything so exciting as this.
In the back of her mind she told herself it was time to go back downstairs and leave, she’d pried enough, and she still had to make Stanley’s supper. She didn’t listen though. Instead she went over to the bed and ran a hand over the spread. A static charge seemed to crackle up her arm. She didn’t feel it in her body so much as her emotions, which gave it more force. Her breathing became quick and shallow and her heart beat faster.
The mattress was high and Rose had to pull herself up on to it. She felt a twinge from her bad hip as she swung her leg up. Rose cursed, and shifted her buttocks to ease the pain. She lay on her back and stared up at the tapestry on the underside of the canopy. It showed a naked woman, with large breasts, easing herself onto a large, erect phallus. The anatomical detail of the woman’s labia, as they parted to accommodate the huge shaft of the phallus, was very graphic.
Rose was filled with a sudden yearning to be penetrated by such a huge phallus. To feel it, hard and swollen, pumping furiously inside her.
She slipped her hand down the front of her trousers and lifted the frayed elastic of her knickers. Her fingers searched out her clitoris. Rose could not remember the last time she’d done this. She felt out of practice, lacking both the dexterity and the rhythm she needed to please herself.
Then she looked up at the tapestry again and projected herself into the woman’s position, imagined lowering herself onto such a magnificent cock and her fingers began to work their old magic.
The orgasm seemed to come from somewhere deep inside the bed. It seeped into her, moving down her thighs and up her spine, lighting up each of her nerve endings. She arched her back, knowing she’d pay for that in the morning but caring not a bit, and let out a moan that became a sob as her whole physique surrendered to the pleasure of coming.
When she was done, Rose lay panting on the bed. She brought her fingers up to her lips and tasted herself. Something she hadn’t done since she was a teen, experimenting with personal pleasures. She was pleasantly surprised to find that, despite being long past her menopause, she still loved the taste of her own juices.
She wanted to feel those juices now. She’d gotten Stanley this far, he just needed one last little push.
“Do you think these posts were carved by hand?” she said. “Or one of those carving machines?”
“A router you mean?”
“Yes one of those, what do you think?”
“How on earth should I know?”
“Well, you’re the expert. You have such a good eye for these matters. You know so much more than me.”
Stanley went to examine one of the posts. Stroking his ego always worked. “I doubt you could get this detail with a router. Plus it’s most likely an antique, they wouldn’t have had the technology back then.”
“Are you sure?”
“Just look at this finish, and the grain of the wood. This has to be done by hand. See how smooth it is.”
Stanley ran his hand along the post and Rose smiled. He looked down at the front of his trousers with surprise. A huge bulge had appeared. He looked over at Rose, and she nodded, reaching out a hand to him as she threw back the covers.
For the first time in their marriage, Stanley didn’t need to be led to the bed, didn’t need to be guided and gently encouraged. He leaped on Rose.
She tore off his checked flannel shirt and tugged at his thermal vest while he fumbled with his belt.
“Just let me get my glasses off,” Stanley said, as Rose tried to wrestle the vest over his head. Rose slipped off her blouse and skirt then pulled off her knickers. She was so excited she didn’t even mind that Stanley hadn’t noticed they were new.
Her bra was relatively new too. She was about to unclip it when she thought better of it. Better to keep an air of mystery, or at least let Stanley remember her breasts as they used to be. Not as the saggy things they were now.
Stanley was down to his Y-fronts and his socks. One was tartan and one was navy blue. Rose chose to ignore them. She pushed him onto his back, knelt next to him and removed the slightly stained brown and beige Y-fronts.
Stanley sprang free, his erect penis jutting expectantly from a little nest of grey pubic hair. Rose bent and took him in her mouth. He hadn’t washed that morning, and he had an old man’s musty scent, but he throbbed with appreciation beneath her lips and tongue. A drop of pre-cum trickled over her tongue and Rose felt herself moisten in anticipation.
Stanley groaned and Rose took him out of her mouth. She sat astride him and guided him into her. Rose closed her eyes and pictured the tapestry above her head. As Stanley filled her, she imagined herself as the woman, being taken by the giant phallus.
Rose began to grind her hips. She opened her eyes and caught Stanley’s gaze. They smiled furtively at each other, reveling in the forbidden pleasure of fucking in a neighbour’s bed.
Peter and Bethany would never expect such a thing. To them, Rose and Stanley were quaint and sexless. An older couple who lived next door. Someone with whom they exchanged Xmas cards and polite greetings in the driveway. People whom they pitied and patronised for their lower income and aging bones.
They certainly weren’t the sort of people Peter and Bethany would imagine rutting like animals on their freshly laundered linen the minute they went off on holiday.
When they were done, Rose lay next to Stanley toying with the hairs on his chest. They were so perfectly white Rose imagined them the ghosts of hairs that once lived on Stanley’s chest.
“What are you thinking about?” Rose asked him. Stanley chuckled, his mouth set in a supercilious smile.
“I was thinking of Betjeman, and his poem— ‘Late-Flowering Lust.’”
“Do I want to hear this?”
Stanley ignored her and began to intone:
“I cling to you inflamed with fear
As now you cling to me,
I feel how frail you are my dear
And wonder what will be—
“A week? or twenty years remain?
And then—what kind of death?
A losing fight with frightful pain
Or a gasping fight for breath?
“Too long we let our bodies cling,
We cannot hide disgust
At all the thoughts that in us spring
From this late-flowering lust.”
Rose rolled over on her side, with her back to Stanley. She blinked away the tears she didn’t want him to see. For all his learning, Stanley suddenly seemed very old, yet very childish in his spite.
II
Three days later, Peter and Bethany came home and Rose returned their keys, posting them through the letterbox in an old brown envelope. She’d put the incident with Stanley from her mind, trying her best to forget it.
Rose was frying pork sausages for dinner when there was a loud rap at the front door. It was Peter; despite his tan, and his expensive pink polo shirt, he seemed deeply rattled. His long, thin face was ashen and he looked genuinely appalled about something.
“Peter,” Rose said, tucking some loose hairs behind her ear. “How was your holiday?”
“What … ? Oh, my holiday, yes my holiday … it was fine thank you.”
Peter breathed out heavily through his nose and looked at the floor. He put his hand on the back of his neck and shook his head.
“Look, there’s no … erm, easy way to say this. But … well … just what do you think you were you doing in our spare room?” A cold wave of panic washed over Rose. How could he possibly know. There was no conceivable way. She had la
undered all the sheets, put everything back as it was. There was no trace of their passion left in the room.
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” she said, trying to hide how dry her throat suddenly felt.
“Oh come on, it’s not something you’d miss, is it?”
“I’m afraid you’ve got me at a loss Peter … I don’t, I mean … I simply watered the plants and fed the cat like you asked. I didn’t go anywhere near the spare room.”
“What I want to know is how you got it up in the first place.”
Rose almost gasped. Her shoulders went back and her brow furrowed with indignation. “I don’t think I care for your tone Peter. Now, if you’ll excuse me I have something on the stove.”
Rose started to close the door but Peter blocked it with his hand. “Look, I’m just trying to make sense of it all. I’m not even really that cross, just perplexed. I don’t understand how you got it through the door or even up the stairs. Did you get some men in? Was it delivered while we were away? Did you have to sign for it or something?”
“Peter, I’m sorry, you really aren’t making any sense. Did we have to sign for what?”
“The bed of course, the ruddy great bed in the spare room.”
“Wasn’t that already there?”
“So you’ve seen it. You do know what I’m talking about.”
“I might have glimpsed it.”
“But I thought you said you didn’t go anywhere near the spare room?”
“I had to get the cat down from upstairs at one point.”
“The cat’s not allowed upstairs.”
“Exactly, so I … must have … chased her up there and caught a glimpse of it through the doorway. It’s quite noticeable.”
“I’ll say it’s bloody noticeable.” Peter stared at her intently. Rose could tell he suspected she wasn’t being entirely frank, but that wasn’t the biggest of his worries. “So you really have nothing to do with it being there? Because it wasn’t there when we left and you’re the only person who’s been in the house.”
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