by Iona Blair
"That's why I eyeballed you in such an ill-mannered way,” she added. “Here, I have his photograph with me. What do you think?"
Jay felt a decided disinterest in this woman's ancestor. It was the lovely Emma he was quiveringly anxious to hear about. But he politely accepted the photograph and saw a tall, dark man with a neat moustache and short beard flecked with grey. He was dressed in a naval uniform.
But yes, Bridget was right, and he understood why she had stared at him so overtly when he had first opened the door. The image captured by some long ago photographer did bear a resemblance to the face he saw in the mirror each day.
"His name was Deckland.” Bridget spoke the unfamiliar name with obvious pride. “Deckland Carr."
The fury of the summer storm had begun to abate, and a curious Morag emerged from her hiding place to evaluate Bridget and rub herself against her ankles.
"What a beautiful cat,” she exclaimed, stroking her.
Jay sipped his scalding coffee, while precariously tipping back his chair from the table. He was feeling agitated again and growing impatient for news of his loved one. As if sensing his mood, Bridget leaned towards him and asked what he knew about Emma Sloane?
Caught off guard by the sudden directness of the question, he wasn't at all sure how to answer it. He did not want to tell her about the diary and photographs. He felt sharing those with anyone would somehow dilute their contents and make them less personally, his.
"I ... well ... the gardener told me about her,” he finally blurted out.
"Ah and that would be old Isaac. He's quite a repository for local history and lore.” Then she added, “But the accuracy of his stories is not always very reliable, I'm afraid."
"He told me that Emma was a very attractive woman,” Jay replied, purposefully toning down Isaac's lewd remark about the brazen-eyed temptress.
"Oh she was that,” Bridge responded readily. “Quite a beauty of her day. In fact, I brought a photograph of her to show you."
Jay trembled with excitement as Bridget handed him a black and white photograph encased in protective plastic.
"But how did you get this?” he asked her, raising an eyebrow.
Bridget smiled and lifted Morag onto her lap.
"Emma Sloane was my great, great grandmother,” she replied.
Jay felt as if the earth had suddenly tilted from underneath him. This was more than he had dared to hope for even in his wildest imaginings. A living descendant of Emma's.
And there was, of course, a family resemblance. That was why he had mistaken her for the Victorian femme fatale when he had first glimpsed her at his door.
So Emma had had a family after all. He had, somehow, never entertained that possibility. He'd always imagined the sultry temptress as childless and unmarried. In fact, he experienced a sharp twinge of jealousy at this new revelation about his sweetheart, akin to the pain one feels on discovering a loved one is unfaithful.
It had been a much older Emma who had posed for the photograph Jay now held in his nervous hands. And it was a far cry from the lurid images locked in his desk drawer. His enchantress was seated on a rattan armchair and looked every inch the respectable matron. She had put on weight over the years and was dressed in a high-necked white blouse with a cameo brooch at the throat. Her hair was greying and pinned back from her rather heavy face. And her eyes, those fine bold eyes that had so captured Jay, although still direct and penetrating, had lost much of their former brazenness and fire.
The inexorable march of time, he thought sadly. But she was still a captivating woman, whose power to attract was not destroyed by the ravages of the years. He quietly handed the photograph back to Bridget.
"So who did she marry?” Jay questioned, wondering for a moment if it could have been the Reverend Filamore Day, even although that gentleman had not recorded a wife's name in the 1910 Census? But then perhaps they had tied the knot after that?
Bridget tilted her head slightly to one side, and the gesture made her look remarkably like the beguiling Emma. “Deckland Carr,” she responded with a smile. “He was my great, great grandfather."
It took a few minutes for the import of what she had just told him to sink in. When it did, he felt as if he were reeling crazily on some wild and unpredictable teeter-totter.
Emma, the woman whose tantalising image had so haunted his every waking moment for months, had been married to a man who bore a striking resemblance to himself.
In order to conceal his confusion, Jay busied himself pouring another cup of coffee for both of them and setting out a plate of biscuits.
"Do you believe in reincarnation?” he asked her finally.
"I don't know,” Bridget answered thoughtfully. “Do you?"
Jay shrugged and wiped cookie crumbs off his shirt. “I've never really given it much thought,” he replied noncommittally.
He was beginning to feel a deep attraction for Bridget. Her resemblance to Emma, and the fact that she was her direct descendant, had added an erotically ethereal dimension that was irresistible.
The atmosphere in the cosy kitchen had become charged with sexual tension and an element of fatalistic sensuousness.
"Rain's stopped,” Bridget announced in a shaky voice. “I'd love to go for a walk along the beach."
"Consider it done,” Jay replied, pushing his chair back from the table and standing up too quickly on rather unsteady legs.
There was a fresh revived coolness in the air, and the smell of the ocean was especially sharp and tangy. It was as if all creation breathed deeply again, relieved that the terrifying rage of the storm was over. Herring gulls swooped and fished by the water's edge. A sandpiper perched on a piece of driftwood, and a long-billed curlew waded in the foamy surf.
Despite the evidence of vibrant life all around them, Jay had a persistent feeling of unreality. It was as if he was walking in a dreamscape, being pulled by a predetermined fate towards an unavoidable conclusion.
Trudging along the muddy rain-pocked sand with the great vaulted expanse of sky above them, Jay and Bridget talked to each other with the easy familiarity of a couple, who had known each other for a lifetime.
She told him Deckland Carr had been a riverboat captain, and he and Emma had met on the Fenner Island Ferry.
"He said it was love at first sight,” Bridget laughed. “And they married shortly afterwards."
"How many children did they have?” Jay asked, his grey eyes alight with curiosity.
"Oh, just the one,” Bridget answered, screwing up her nose and batting at a swarm of midges. “Emma was over forty by that time, and her biological clock was running down."
They were now approaching a pebbly part of the beach, and the walking became rougher. Jay offered Bridget his arm and she took it gratefully, looking up at him with a smile that ignited his senses.
She went on to tell him that her great, great grandmother had been housekeeping for a clergyman at the time, and that prior to that she had worked as a governess.
There was no mention, of course, about Emma's torrid career as a prostitute and then as a madam. Jay had not expected Bridget to know that part of her ancestor's life. It was not the sort of thing one told their children. In fact, it was highly unlikely that even her husband, the handsome Deckland had ever known.
He imagined how shocked Bridget would be if he showed her Emma's torrid journal and the brazenly erotic photographs, something that he had no intention of doing. What purpose could it possibly serve, but to cruelly shatter the girl's image of her great, great grandmother?
"Did Isaac tell you Emma still haunts the Manse?” Bridget suddenly asked, adjusting her sunglasses and flashing Jay a pearly smile.
"He did, as a matter of fact,” he responded slowly. “Said the sightings usually took place in the garden."
Bridget laughed mysteriously and walked on ahead of Jay for a while, before turning abruptly and facing him. “It was probably me they saw,” she told him with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “W
hen I'm over here on the Island, I often visit the Manse. I love the old place. It makes me feel close to my roots."
"So, it was you I saw a few weeks ago?” Jay felt a strange mixture of relief and regret.
Bridget nodded, and continued walking. “I saw you at the attic window,” she admitted wryly. “I got quite a start, too."
Jay looked at her quizzically and she responded with a degree of embarrassment. “I thought you were the ghost of my great, great grandfather,” she admitted sheepishly.
"Well, I have to admit that I thought you were a ghost, too,” Jay replied haltingly. “Emma's."
* * * *
They had dinner that evening in the Raven's Nest, an intimate old world inn, which stood foursquare against the weather, on a rocky wind-lashed promontory. A favourite haunt for smugglers in the old days, it now catered to tourists, who arrived in air-conditioned buses with tinted windows.
After several glasses each of the best Chardonnay, Bridget leaned towards Jay, her face flushed and boldly sensuous. “I'm so glad we met,” she whispered softly, and placed her hand suggestively on his knee. “I also have a confession."
The sweet scent from an alba rose that stood in a fluted glass between them mingled pleasantly with the melted wax from the candle.
Jay felt desire prick him like a wicked bodkin, and his cock bulged uncomfortably in his snugly fitting trousers.
"And what do you have to confess?” he asked her sensuously.
"I've always been ... enamoured ... of Deckland, ever since I first saw his photograph, a couple of years ago. And since I glimpsed you at the attic window, I've been unable to think of anything else."
Jay took her hand and circled the palm suggestively with his finger. “Being in love with the picture of ones great, great grandfather is ... original, I would think."
Bridget laughed and moved her hand further up his inner thigh, making his already hard cock ache with longing.
"God, do I have something for you,” he murmured seductively. “How do you want it?"
Bridget ran her tongue slowly around her lips while she held his eyes hypnotically with hers. “Any way at all,” she finally whispered, her voice thick with desire. “So long as it's hot and hard and vigorous."
It had turned into a fine mild night, with a diamond-encrusted heaven sparkling over a calm sea.
Jay and Bridget were locked in a passionate embrace, deftly exploring each other with their tongues and hands. The water that licked against their ankles was pleasantly cool, but in no way decreased their ardour or the feverish frenzy of their lovemaking.
Jay grasped Bridget's buttocks and pulled her tight against his raging erection. She moaned and began to grind her groin against his, while the tempo of her fast moving tongue and hands never flagged.
"Emma ... oh Emma ... Emma,” he groaned, as he hoisted her up and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He penetrated her with his rigid cock, and she moved up and down on it like one possessed.
Jay gasped as her taut cunt muscles gripped his cock like a steely claw and milked it mercilessly. Her mouth devoured his lips, his ears and his throat. It took every ounce of strength he possessed to hold her like that in a standing position with no wall for support.
But finally, the violence of her movements became too powerful and unbalanced them both, sending them sprawling into the sea.
They tore at each other like raging beasts, grabbing and biting and clawing in an inferno of desire that temporarily robbed them of sanity.
"I'm going to fuck you in the ass,” Jay muttered, pinning Bridget down on her back and mounting her roughly.
"Ah ... ah ... ah,” she cried out in blissful dementia, as he drove into her with rapid and powerful thrusts. “Deckland ... oh Deckland ... please don't stop."
"Emma ... Emma,” Jay responded, and when their crisis came they felt as if an exploding atom bomb had been detonated beneath them.
Afterwards, as they struggled to regain composure, Jay and Bridget wondered if their subliminal mating had been more than just the frenzied coupling of two people who had met only a few hours before?
Or, was it a symbolic act of intercourse, an immaculate consummation that had somehow rejoined the disembodied spirits of Emma and Deckland?
* * * *
It was a golden October day, with a nip of frost in the air, and a riot of copper and crimson leaves that crunched underfoot. A flock of snow geese, in perfect formation, streaked noisily across the cloudless sky on their migration south to warmer climes. And from the marsh, a trumpeter swan boomed out its horn-like greeting, as it too prepared to leave before winter.
A blazing display of sumac, wearing its flaming autumn best graced the gardens of the Manse, alongside the flax lily, Russian sage, and vivid Christmas berry.
Morag sharpened her claws on the bark of the elegant linden tree, and then stopped abruptly as she spotted Jay coming back from his walk. “Hello sweetheart, have you been behaving yourself?” he asked her.
Gladys hung out the wash on the back line. She noticed with satisfaction how crisp and clean the sheets looked as they billowed out freely in the sun-dazzled breeze.
"Lunch will be ready soon,” she called, pegging the last tea towel to the line. Jay waved in acknowledgement before going indoors to work on a new program he was designing. In the past couple of months, contracts had been coming in so rapidly, he found it difficult to keep up with the workload.
"I may have to hire someone else,” he told Gladys, while they sat together on the sundeck after lunch.
She nodded in agreement. It was difficult to believe that only a few short months ago, Jay had been slumped in an obsessive depression that was threatening not only his livelihood, but his health as well. Gladys drew her sweater closer around her to keep out the seasonal chill and reflected on that difficult period and its aftermath.
When a depressed Jay, drinking heavily and no longer in control of his senses, had told her that he no longer required her services at the Manse, Gladys had sunk into something of a depression of her own.
She could not understand his obsession with a brazen-eyed trollop, who had lived over a century ago. Unless, and she felt uncomfortable even thinking this, there was something deeper, and more sinister at play. The idea of possession had always seemed preposterous to the pragmatic Gladys, but now she began to entertain the possibility that it might exist, after all.
Could the spirit of this ruthless, lustful woman still linger in the Manse? And was it quietly, but inexorably taking control of the handsome Jay?
Gladys had kept her eye on the old house and its unhappy occupant from a safe distance. She'd settled herself down on a bank of purple heather with a small pair of binoculars and a picnic hamper of refreshments at her side.
On the day of that terrible storm she had hastily taken cover in her car, parked discreetly in a small clearing. When the worst of it was over, she had emerged from the old Volkswagen, to find Jay entertaining a visitor, an attractive woman who even from the distance was clearly an Emma lookalike. However, she was definitely not the cheap little tart from the stables.
Later, when Jay and Emma had walked on the beach together, Gladys had followed at a cautious distance. She'd picked her way carefully over the wet rutted sand, seething with anger and envy.
Later, at the Raven's Nest, she had parked in a far corner and solaced herself with donuts. When the couple had finally emerged, she'd tailed them to the beach. She'd watched them make love on the sand, and in the ocean, with a frenzied abandon that soared to a frightening degree of uninhibited intensity.
Jay had telephoned a couple of weeks later and asked her if she would resume her housekeeping duties at the Manse.
She had hesitated slightly, surprised by this unexpected call.
"This is a cry for help,” Jay told her jokingly. “The place looks as if a cyclone has hit.” Then he had paused for a moment before adding, “I've missed you ... and so has Morag."
Gladys had been amazed
at the change in him. It was the old Jay once again, energetic and positive, with a smile and a charming sense of humour. The ghost of the sinister Emma had been finally laid to rest.
They'd made love frequently during those blissful days of early autumn. The vibrant wholesomeness of their couplings reverberated round the old house, where the seductive Emma had once lived, eaten and slept. And where, she had consigned to a pigskin bound journal a lurid account of her shocking life. Then, upon fearing discovery, had concealed it in a hole in the attic roof.
* * * *
Jay stretched his legs contentedly on the sun-drenched porch and watched an osprey soar by with a fish in its mouth. On a saint-blessed day like this, with vibrant life bursting all around him, it was almost as if the dark abyss of his obsession had been a nightmare that had befallen someone else.
He remembered when he had found the first brazenly erotic photograph of the seductive Emma and how it had inflamed his senses then taken control of his reason. And later, how the discovery of two more equally raunchy photographs and the steamy diary had sent him spinning into a dark void of unreality and burning desire.
The fiery encounter with Bridget had seared him to the very soul and brought him a curious and blessed peace that had healed his tortured spirit and made him once more whole.
"Shall we meet again?” she had asked him, shortly before boarding the ferry for her trip back to the city.
"Perhaps,” Jay replied, noncommittally. For the frenzied urgency to possess this woman as a re-embodiment of Emma had vanished, along with his ungodly obsession with the nineteenth century temptress.
Upon returning to the Manse, Jay had wrapped Emma's photographs and diary in plastic and placed them in a steel box. Then he'd climbed the narrow stairs to the attic and returned them to the same spot where he had found them, high up in the rafters, on the north wall.
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About the Author
Often described by reviewers as “shocking,” Iona Blair's erotic novels have been published by Pink Flamingo, C.F. Publications, Amatory Ink, Phaze Books, Amira Press, Carnal Desires, Total-E-Bound and Sensorotica. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of publications including the Australian Women's Forum Magazine, Oysters and Chocolate, Good Vibes Magazine, Erotic Dreams, Whispers, Star Books Press, and the Velvet Mafia. She lives in an old converted lighthouse on the Pacific Coast, where her thoughts run as wild as the weather.