by Edward Lee
“Perchance, then, sar will find some interest in this unique rarity,” and Brown held up a large, cloth-bound book. “The very famous History of Straffordshire by the world-renowned Dr. Plot.”
“Perchance not, Mr. Brown.” Who in blazes is Dr. Plot! “Please, sir, let’s be about this receipt,” said Lympton gruffly. “I’ve not a second more to tarry.” Brown seemed to droop in place. “Of carse, Sar.” The receipts were signed and dated, and Lympton’s copy expeditiously pocketed. He picked up the circular box of figures, said, “This I shall take with me. I’ll commission Britnell to have his men transport the doll-house to my home. And now, Mr. Brown, thank you and good day,” and made for the door.
Brown bowed and followed Lympton out.
The task of containing his glee until departure revealed itself as a weighty task indeed. Not once in twenty years—no, not once in his life—had he felt so unbridled in joy. But an errant glance aside while crossing the kitchen stopped him in his limp-ridden tracks. The back door was just opening, quite slowly, and Lympton—for whatever dark and cynical reason—saw all the dreams of his acquisition dashed in the possibility that this entire affair was but a ruse, and that his purlieu out of the house would now trigger a “set-up”: that the slowly opening back door would now discharge a band of ruffians hired in advance to rob and to make away with whatever well to do collector came in answer to the advertisement. A hitch caught in his chest, and it seemed as if the world had ceased turning during the moments of Lympton’s unbidden suspicion and quite surprising and uncommon fear. Such musings were clean contrary to the ingredients of his personality. However, even in these enlightened times, similar criminal encounters reported in the papers were more than rife and possessed of the most unwholesome details which a modern man could not bear to consider.
Lympton persisted in considering them, however, through the entirety of this uncharacteristic and wicked stasis.
A stiffening of the spine, then a sigh of relief, as the opening of the door revealed, lo, no ruffians but instead an enticingly curvaceous silhouette which rescued Lympton’s spirits from grimness and returned them to their proper footing of delighted greed, unchecked indulgence and selfishness, and, moreover, lust. Brown’s dialect-tainted exclamation announced what Lympton had deduced that very second: “Aye, and here she be at last, my blessing, good sar! My daughter, my princess, my sweet Emily… Angel, this is Mr. Lympton, who has just parchased the dolls’-house.”
Lympton stood rooted in place, his eyes unable to close against the human image before him.
“Oh, my word!” the silhouette replied in a hushed glee.
In walked a taller than average woman of thirtyodd, dressed in the rural apparel of the day (which I shall not endeavor to describe). “A pleasure, sir,” she said, and set down a wicker basket heaped with blackberries, gooseberries, and currants. Of a sudden, Lympton was intrigued. Clearly, this was the same woman whose magnificent breasts he’d espied earlier. In a fog, he gently shook her proffered hand, and found it not delicate as a pressed flower but a bit coarsened, as of by hard work. Curvaceous and well-bosomed she indeed was, but Brown’s pet names such as Angel, sweet, and princess did not quite answer to the visual cast of the this somewhat bedraggled, “farmy” woman before him. Thick lank Auburn hair touched her shoulders, and, with a nod to the proverbial cliché, several flecks of straw could be seen in that same hair. Less than perfect teeth showed through her ingratiating smile, while her cheeks, though sprayed by adorable freckles, were tanned and roughened by a lifetime of work in the sun. “She is the world to me, sar,” Brown said in a fatherly reverence, “so fair, so lovely, graceful as a butterfly.”
Lympton could beg to differ, but forbore any such objection.
“Oh, sir, we can’t begin to thank you enough for buying father’s doll house!” she exclaimed next, setting the basket down.
Don’t thank me much, young lady, Lympton thought. I shafted your very father worse than the Dutch shafted the Indians in the sale of Manhattan. And when Emily had made this comment, Brown himself seemed to wilt. “Arfer Mr. Lympton some refreshment, sweetheart, I must go and lay me old bones down for a nap.”
“Rest well, father,” the woman bid, “and when you’re up, I’ll make you some jam with my berries.”
Brown hobbled off, disappearing down a dark hallway. Meanwhile, Lympton maintained his fascinated visual audit of this woman, this Emily. The simple cotton dress she wore, frayed in places, hugged her upper body corset-like, and offered a purview of the sun-tinted valley between her breasts. Why, the milk-wagons on this dusky tart are as awesome as my wife’s at the same age…
“Tea, sir?” she inquired, and seemed almost giddy at the opportunity to offer him something. “Or a longer drink? Blackberry wine? A cider cup?”
Lympton wanted to leave posthaste for Britnell’s and arrange the delivery of his masterpiece, however, he answered almost against his concrete volition, “A cider cup would be lovely. I’m much obliged.”
Off she rustled to the kitchen; Lympton’s eyes stalked her from behind, admiring Emily’s robust physique, and the thoughts which sifted through his head were of a nature that no true gentleman would relate. Yes, she is very much what the men at the shipyards would call a “gravy-boat,” and her bosom a true “apple-dumpling cart.” Soon Lympton’s thoughts began to relay a more tangible reaction below the belt. Idle talk occurred to him: “I’m impressed by your father’s minute knowledge of his ancestor Lancaster Patten. But I completely forgot to ask him the question I’ve never found an answer to, in spite of much assiduous research.”
“What might that question be, sir?” she said behind the counter. “If I may ask?”
“Patten’s death. All that seems to be known for certain is the date—”
“Yes, sir. ’Twas May Eve, 1690 when Patten ceased to be. And the cause of his decease has always been thought to be suicide.”
The comment was surprising enough to veer Lympton’s more direct attentions away from the woman’s body…or, well, almost surprising enough. For pity’s sake! This woman’s tits are killing me!
“You don’t say?”
“Yes, sir. He was made away with by his own hand and by more accounts is said to have hanged himself from one of the oaks on old Dead Man’s Hill. I imagine it’s true. All those sturdy oaks were used as hanging gallows by the High Sheriff back in those dark days, the days of the witch-panic. And it is a fact that he’d once felled one of those oaks to provide the wood for his doll houses.”
Now Lympton’s gaze was riveted to her cleavage as she stooped slightly to stir the beverage; hence, it took several moments for her elucidation to sink in.
“Did he, now? How absolutely macabre. In other words, the doll house I just purchased from your father was constructed from the wood of a tree that had been the implement of death for condemned rouges, and murderers, and—”
“And witches, warlocks, idolaters, sir. Many, yes—dozens upon dozens perhaps. He was an odd card, my ancestor, and deep into devilish dark arts. ’Twas why he did away with himself on May Eve. Folks in the country also call it Eve of The Beltane and Walpurgis Night, the unholiest of holidays, and ‘tis said too that when a servitor of evil do kill himself on this date, it is looked upon by Lucifer with overmuch favor.”
At once Lympton’s attentions veered back to the woman’s physical attributes once the dull exposition had begun. Any talk of superstition, occultism, witchcraft, and the like was immediately disregarded by Lympton. Ballyhoo, he thought. The food of fools, and next he was imagining what this Miss Emily’s nipples looked like up close in the raw. “Ah, and is this Dead Man’s Hill in the vicinity?”
“Oh, yes, sir, just over the grass ride in back.
There be a trail.”
“Well, according to your father, this was Patten’s property, so am I to presume that he was buried on the grounds?”
Emily had just lifted the serving tray to come forward, but a hesitation impelled her to rep
lace it, and squint in the way one does when one is trying to recollect something. “I’d be deceiving you, sir, if I were to lay claim to any accurate information in regards to your question. All I can offer, and it’s summed up in very few words, sir, is that I am fairly sure the resting place of his remains is not on the grounds, sir.”
“Perhaps the nearest churchyard,” Lympton hazarded, his eyes unable to move off her bosom, “not that I suspect such a chap attended church services. The north side, I believe is where they’d likely bury one like Patten, the unhallowed side. Isn’t that how it went?”
“Yes, sir, you’re very knowledgeable, sir, for those who were not Christians would indeed be buried north,” but here Emily paused more resolutely than before, and took on a pose that might make one guess she was about to embark upon a disquisition. “But now I recall someone once telling me—perhaps it was my poor old granny, bless her soul—that back in those days anyone who met his end by means of the hanging noose, be it through the authority of the Court or by their own hand, those poor folk were never buried at all, for ‘tis the worst luck for any but the hangman to trod upon a gallow’s hill. Instead, such sad persons merely fell to bits in no long time, helped by the crows, of course. And it’s unlikely that even Patten’s most loyal servants would dare climb Dead Man’s Hill during such time as the Walpurgis week.” At last, she came round the counter with Lympton’s cider. “Please, sir. Have yourself a seat.”
Lympton turned to do just that, espying a cushioned settee, but then grimaced at a start—
“Damn!” he fairly yelled.
“Sir! What’s the matter?”
Lympton ground his teeth, gasping at the vicious pain. The “matter” was this: while preparing to sit, he’d scuffed his arm against an attractive yet unseemly potted plant known as the Flowering Quince. It sported a large lambent-white blossom on a quite thorny stem. (In days of old, they were also known as the Witch’s Moon; however, that is a digression.)
“What’s the matter?” gruffed Lympton. “Why, your villainous Borgia flowers have pricked me!” and he sat down and clamped his palm over the minute wounds.
The cider, it seemed, would never make its way to Lympton. Instead, Emily set it down, conferred a counter drawer, and rustled back to where her guest now sat in obvious displeasure.
“A thousand pardons, sir! You’ve rubbed against the Quince. Father told me to move it outside once it grew large enough but I never did. ’Tis all my fault, sir, and I so sorry!” She knelt at once before the settee, and had the injured arm in her grasp at once, and then—
“’Tis a mild venom in the thorns, sir, which cause a lingering start and discoloration if not—”
Then she brought the trifling wound to her lips and sucked.
To say that Lympton was taken aback was nothing more than the bald truth; and it was nothing more than colossal astonishment when Lympton realized that her act of first aid triggered a spontaneous erection. This bewildered him. What could be arousing about a hill woman sucking him arm? He couldn’t fathom this; nevertheless, it was so. Perhaps some fantasy element he was not consciously aware of: How wonderful it would be if she would suck something OTHER than my arm… When she adjusted her pose, he received a “Bird’s Eye View” of her cleavage, the best thus far, and the nipples printing against the cotton fabric of her top. This vision hammered a few more p.s.i.’s of blood into his already straining erection. He could see it beating against his trousers (“pitching the tent,” as the men in the shipyards would say), and he thought it scarcely possible for her not to notice.
When her oral extraction of the venom was finished, she patted his arm with a towel she’d brought from the drawer, and then daintily expelled the crimson tinted saliva into the same towel. Next—
“Blast!” Lympton yelled.
—she applied some antiseptic tincture to the tiny wounds and covered it with an adhesive bandage. “Can’t risk infection, sir, and I’m sure a big strong man such as yourself can suffer a twinge or two, yes?”
Did her eyes switch momentarily to the “tent?”
“And I can’t tell you, sir, just how thrilling it is to have a visitor like you come to the house.”
“A visitor like me?” Lympton questioned, rubbing the bandaged arm.
She remained on her knees, smiling up at him. “Well, my meaning, sir, is that these parts aren’t known for distinguished types such as yourself. The only folks about are all stragglers and hillfolk and the like. Where you, sir, are obviously are colleged—”
“Why, indeed I am,” Lympton said with enthusiasm. “I am, in fact, a Cambridge man,” though he forewent the remainder of the “fact”: he’d attended Cambridge but for a single semester. His marks had been anything but high, and he’d quit upon the reception of his inheritance.
“And, if I may, you seem also to be a titled man.”
Lympton chuckled. “Well, my dear, were the days of feudalism still at hand, I would in fact be the Eighteenth Baron Lympton.”
“Goodness!” she said in a hush. She remained on her knees, at his knee, and next, in what seemed a perfectly natural movement, she placed her hand on his knee. “And just the same, sir, your visit is a special treat. Big, strong, handsome men are seldom seen at our door, if ever.”
This wash of flattery proved the ultimate admixture to this unlikely situation: her mouth previously on his forearm, her hand now on his knee, his indisputable erection, and her coarse, lust-drenched image all right there before him. She continued to speak of inconsequential oddments, yet there was no doubt that her hand was creeping diligently groinward. Through a hot drone, he heard something like, “I can only ask you to forgive me, sir—I’m not usually so…so…” and “…just-just something about you!” and “I’m simply unable to control myself,” and so on. It was then that her sapphirine gaze penetrated his own, with a cast strangely helpless and simultaneously dominant. Her hand closed over the “tent.”
Lympton could stand no more of this. He transformed the situation into terms he could better reckon: a fifty-pound note was produced, he unfastened his belt and trousers, and bared his manhood fully to her view. My word! he thought to himself. I’ve never seen it look bigger!
Emily caught on a breath, staring at the throbbing organic architecture.
“It would be absolutely fab,” Lympton suggested, and slipped the note into her bosom, “if you could see your way to making a job of this.”
No further words were uttered by her, which was reasonable given her present inability to speak. Forsooth, Emily made a “job” of it, all right, and astute readers will have no need for explanation. As for non-astute readers, I have no patience nor desire to accommodate them.
««—»»
In the interests of length, the circumstances which led to the redeposition of the Patten Doll House from Mr. Brown’s centuried hovel to Lympton’s second storey collection parlor need not be recounted here, nor do I have any intention of burdening the reader with details of his journey home. It will suffice to say, then, that Lympton did indeed arrive home without consequence (and with a pleasant tingling about his loins) and the Doll House was now firmly entrenched into the range of his possessions.
And here he stood, round about seven p.m., in said parlor and gazing reverently at said Doll House. It was a feeling of all-embracing satisfaction that now rested firmly in the psyche of our protagonist (if we may dignify Lympton with that title) and the vision that looked back at him from a circa 1815 Swedish trestle table was likely the most enthralling of his life. “It’s mine now, all mine—the fourth and final masterpiece of Lancaster Patten. I’d fancy knowing what it’s really worth. Certainly there are collectors in France and America who’d like pay tens of thousands for it, if not more. But it’s all mine now, for a pittance, from that broken down codger Brown.” I apologize for waiting till now to inform you that Lympton had the inveterate habit of talking to himself aloud. “I’ll write quite the article for the Critical Collector next month, and I
must hire a photographer as well. I shall be the envy of the doll-house-collectors’ world!” He limped to the brass-and-crystal liquor bar and considered his empty brandy glass. “Half a snifter more? I think perhaps you are right!” He poured, sniffed, smiled, and sipped the bright, intense fluid. Errantly, then, he gave his crotch a squeeze. “And what about that woman, that Emily? Quite a peach, that one, and tits that would make a monsignor kick out a stained-glass window. I hate to pay so much for a tart’s time but it only seemed fair, considering the monetary sodomizing I gave her poor crusty father. And skilled too.” First she’d treated Lympton to a quite delectable oratory, if you receive my meaning, after which she’d spat the wares of Lympton’s loins into the wastebasket, only to exclaim delightedly, “Oh, sir, a man among man you are!” This referred to the obvious fact that his erection had abated not one bit after its “Giving up the goods,” as the men in the shipyards would say or, “Pouring the cream.” If anything, his “John Thursday” had stiffened even further, and it was the work of only a moment before Emily’s dress was hoisted and her “stew-pot” had swallowed Lympton’s manhood whole. “I gave her quite a thumping, if I may say so, hmm? Today was quite the day for jism!” he chuckled. “First that wanking in the morning, then two more rashers for Miss Emily: one in the mouth and one in the honeybucket. Not bad for fifty-odd!”
Lympton had left the parlor door “on the jar,” and hence could hear his dutiful wife mounting the steps. Even before she’d had time to enter, Lympton’s brain had unconsciously engaged other regions of his anatomy. For some mysterious reason, he envisioned his wife naked and—rather horrid to think—headless. What might goad such a macabre vision? What ever it might be, Lympton cared not, and once again he was propping up the “tent.”
“Very sorry to disturb you, darling,” she said, “but—”
Lympton’s cumbersome advance prevented her finishing the sentence. He embraced her, whispered, “My love, you’re as beautiful as they day we met,” squeezed her curvaceous frame against his, and pulled her to the floor with something of a thud.