Victorian Taboo

by Bryn Colvin

  “Could be this understudy, Sir.”

  Sir Jasper wondered what the old fool, Linklater, was talking about.

  “Understudy?” The distinguished Member of Parliament repeated the word to query what the old man meant.

  “She’s standing in, Sir.”

  “Yes, yes, Linklater, I know what it means. Why is it her fault?”

  “Well, begging your pardon, sir, but I reckon the young blood in the cheaper seats don’t think how she shows enough bosom. Then, could be, sir, that Miss Brahms hasn’t got much up to show them fellows in the front rows.”

  Sir Jasper was not known for his patience. Linklater, in his opinion, should long since have been pensioned off. The old man annoyed the baronet with his circumspection.

  “Is there a point to this, Linklater?”

  “Knowing you are an admirer of the lady, sir…but naturally in a gentlemanly way, nothing untoward, as you might say. Well, seeing as how that is a fact, I venture to say that Miss Nightingale is a comely lady…especially, if you don’t mind me saying, Sir, in that part of Nell Gwynne, when her...may I call them breasts, Sir…are tied up in the dress so that they fair blossom into ripe apples.”

  Sir Jasper turned and walked away. Linklater was a rambling old fool. He heard the cloakroom attendant saying, “…but then I suppose even sweet ladies like Miss Nightingale must be ill sometimes, and on account of such disposition, disappoint the general public.”

  “Ill, Jenny…Miss Nightingale? Is that was you are saying, Linklater?”

  “This last three days, sir, and this Miss Brahms has been standing in for her. Perhaps that is why the audience have been staying away.”

  The rest of the blathering faded as Sir Jasper took back his cloak, cane and hat, left the theatre and called a cab.

  Ten minutes later he alighted at the terraced house in Southwark, South London, just over the River Thames, where Jenny Nightingale lodged. As he hammered on the door, some instinct informed him that all was not well. Consequently, his normally discrete attitude was cast aside.

  Eventually the door opened. The woman who answered reminded him of one of the sketches popularised in ‘Punch Magazine’ when a cartoon was drawn of old hags sitting around, stirring a pot and dispensing curses to Macbeth.

  “Is Miss Nightingale in?”

  His manner was abrupt.

  “Can’t rightly say, Sir. Who might be asking?”

  It was a game he had no intention of playing. Thrusting a silver coin into the crone’s hands, he repeated the question.

  “Miss Nightingale, where is she?”

  The old woman bit into the silver, satisfied herself it was genuine, then looked up and down the street as if surveying for clues. Sir Jasper had no idea why she acted in such a ridiculous fashion. His expression of irritation served to hurry her along.

  “Hasn’t been here for three days, sir.”

  “I was told she was ill?”

  “Looked right enough to me when the young gentleman called and they left with a bag, Sir. Black it was, with a silver clasp.”

  “The colour is of no importance, madam. Who was the man?”

  “Don’t rightly know, sir. I think he was what you toffs call a Bohemian. Long hair, more like a woman if you ask me. Not that you…”

  He left long before she finished.

  Urging and bribing the cabby to go faster, he arrived at the studio of Gabriel Waterburn. There was no longer any semblance of decorum in his behaviour. He knocked just three times. When no answer came, he stood back and kicked at the door with his boot. The lock broke. Sir Jasper marched along the corridor, up the narrow stairs and pushed open the door of the attic studio.

  Light from the nearby street was sufficient to reveal the scene to him. Everything seemed deserted, abandoned in full flood. He did not need to search the flat to know that the inhabitant had fled. In the centre of the room stood an easel, the picture covered by an old white cloth. He tore it away…then uttered a cry.

  The picture was of his Jenny. She had been captured by this apostle of the Brotherhood in a pose of innocence, a look of hidden delight, a moment of diffused love. Her long hair hung down over bare shoulders and this Jenny of Arthurian legend looked over the sea, waiting for some dream to return. A single word inscribed at the bottom told him all–‘Isolde’.

  Isolde was Jenny and Jenny was Isolde. The eyes of a lover; inviting breast, demurring, covered yet exposed; figure of a true woman, all shape and soft curves. What he saw was the woman who dreamed of a young lover while the old man who possesses her is absent. He saw the cruel mockery in it and knew himself to be betrayed.

  Sir Jasper raised his cane and wanted to strike. Then he fell to his knees, head resting against the cold canvas and the paint strokes thick from the artist’s hand. He knelt like one in prayer before this vision he, only now, realized how much he loved. Yet there was hate rising in his heart. He wanted vengeance. This snake in the grass, Waterburn, had taken his money and now stolen his Jenny.

  Sir Jasper walked out of the studio, and in a daze, made his way up the High Street. All along the narrow street costermongers heaved and stacked their wares. It was evening, but even so the place bustled. Although only a mile from the centre of the largest metropolitan area in the world, Southwark had the open countryside of farms on its doorstep. The lavender, rosemary, fresh vegetables and milk churns daily came up from Surrey and other arable southern counties to delight and feed the hungry mouths of London. Here also were the seedy public houses where the dockers from the Port of London drank their weekly wage away and prostitutes plied their trade.

  Not knowing what he was doing, Sir Jasper wandered into The Fishmonger’s Arms, a public house on the very edge of the Thames. From the dingy bar you could look across the filthy river–the capital’s sewer–and see the Houses of Parliament where he spent his working time.

  “Can I get you anything, Sir?”

  Jasper looked up from the corner seat he had occupied.

  “A glass of Jamaican rum, landlord,” he muttered.

  The grimy barkeeper went back to the bar. He talked in a low whisper to other men and they looked hungrily around at the well-dressed gentleman in their midst. The landlord came back and put the rum on the table.

  “Anything else you might be looking for, Sir?”

  “No.”

  “We can oblige all tastes here.”

  Sir Jasper stared at him.

  “Have you a particular fancy?” the landlord persisted. “Perhaps you might be looking for what is illegal in the better parts, where, no doubt, a gentleman like you lives.”

  “What?”

  “Is it female…or perhaps male…no, Sir, I can see by your face that you are a man who appreciates the finer detail of a woman.”

  Sir Jasper saw the landlord was holding the bottle of rum. He leaned over and took it.

  “What about something special, Sir, seeing as you are partial to the Jamaican rum?”

  The landlord waved at someone in the far shadows. A young woman sauntered innocently over to the table. Her black skin glistened in the light of the oil lamps and brown eyes stared challengingly at Sir Jasper.

  “Came in on the boat from our colonies, Sir. Just imagine all that sun and what it has done to the passions of this woman. We’ve got a nice clean room upstairs, Sir. It’s included in the price.”

  “Leave the bottle on the table,” Akenfield shrugged.

  “And the girl? You’d like to be nice to the gentleman, wouldn’t you, Jenny?”

  Sir Jasper looked up, startled into thought. “Leave her as well,” he said, and waved the landlord away.

  “Sit down…is Jenny your real name?”

  “If you like.”

  She exuded sexual truculence. The dark side of his mind took over. A girl called Jenny, who thought she was strong and feisty. He could tame her and teach her respect. He gulped down the rum in the glass, picked up the half-filled bottle.

  “Lead on, Jenny.”


  They walked to a flight of stairs, watched furtively by every pair of eyes in the tavern. Jenny flounced up the wooden treads. As Sir Jasper followed, the landlord politely held his arm.

  “Before you go, Sir, you pay me for the room and services.”

  Sir Jasper handed him two silver coins.

  “That’ll be fine, Sir. It’ll buy you the girl for an hour. Just one more thing… If she pleases you or you want anything special…” he tapped the side of his nose and winked… “give her a few coins as an extra.”

  By the time Akenfield had reached the landing, the black girl was leaning on the frame of an open door. She made sure Sir Jasper had seen what room it was, then she went in. He followed, letting his sadistic imagination have full play. She stood by a bed. The look on her face was bored, yet suggestive. He turned, saw the bolt on the door, and shut it firmly. By the time he had looked back at her she was pulling her dress off over her head.

  “Do you like me?” she asked.

  She stood completely naked. He salivated over the ebony skin and wondered if she was much above eighteen years old.

  “What my likes are, you are about to find out, Jenny.”

  “Do you want me on my back, or lots of you gentleman seem to like your women to get down on hands and knees?”

  He went over to her, kissed her violently and pushed his hands almost roughly between her legs, so that his fingers went straight into her cunt.

  “Understand, Jenny. You will be well paid. I’m prepared to pay you silver coins. But there are two things you must agree.”

  She wriggled as his massage of her sex became quicker and more intensive.

  “When I ask you to do something, you will not question or hesitate. Secondly, whatever it is, you will thank me and ask me to do it again. Is that understood, Jenny?”

  “Yes.”

  “And another matter. You will call me Sir.”

  “Yes…Sir.”

  He released her from his exploration. The more he saw and the more he examined her beautiful body, the greater became his crazed jealousy for his own absent Jenny. He could feel a blind rage begin to grip him, fuelled by pain and loss. He needed revenge, and he needed relief.

  “Bend over that chair, Jenny.” He took her by the scruff of her neck and forced her down, head pushed low over the edge of the easy chair and ass in the air. With a sharp slap he whacked her rear.

  “That was for not saying ‘yes, Sir’.”

  He smacked her rump again. Jenny’s body trembled.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Legs apart.”

  She shifted them and said, “Yes, Sir.”

  “Wider,” he demanded.

  He started to remove his coat, then shirt, waistcoat and finally boots. All the time he watched her, studying the folds of skin around her clitoris and slit.

  “How long have you been in England, Jenny?”

  “One month…Sir.”

  “And how many men have entered your vagina?”

  She looked back at him and he saw her swallow hard as he was unthreaded the ornamental studded belt from his trousers.

  “Well, Jenny. I have asked you a question.”

  “Many, Sir.”

  “What a slut you are, Jenny. Well first I am going to make you suffer for betraying me. Then I will fuck you so vigorously that you will forget all those other men.”

  As his arm came up with the belt, he muttered to himself, “Including that bastard, Waterburn.”

  As he entered her it was not the exotic foreigner he saw before him but the girl who had so captured his fancy. He pumped his body into an illusion, a phantasm of his own distraught imagination, a vision of a different Jenny, one he thought he might never enjoy again, all the while muttering that he would win her back, that she would forget all other lovers and return to him.

  Downstairs in the public bar, the landlord walked over to the wizened old man who was playing the piano and spoke loudly into his one good ear.

  “Better play a tune we all know, Billy, so the crowd can join in and sing. It’ll drown the wailing from that black woman up in room number three.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The weather had turned warm and oppressive. After ten days of sweltering heat, Caroline decided to accept a long-standing offer from her friend, Mrs. Hannah Grace. The two women had been acquaintances since early childhood, but when Hannah married a provincial doctor, their relationship was largely limited to a constant exchange of letters, albeit very friendly.

  Doctor William Grace came into a comfortable inheritance when his uncle died and moved to one of the newly built villas which were being constructed on the south eastern boundaries of London and Kent, placing his wife in something more akin to the sorts of circles that Mrs. Josiah Terrington moved in. The railway had opened up this district and it was made even more popular since the famous Crystal Palace, constructed for the Great Exhibition in 1851, had been moved from Hyde Park and re-built at Penge Place, twelve miles from London.

  Doctor Grace was somewhat older than Hannah, and although adequately provided for in monetary terms from the legacy, he still played at being a medical doctor. His practice consisted of the well to do in the Sydenham Hill and Beckenham areas. He had tried to show benevolence at first toward the workers in their terraced cottages, but discovered firstly that collecting fees from such persons could be a chore, and secondly that his temperament did not incline overly to natural altruism.

  The proposed visit offered Caroline a much-needed change of scenery and she had long been anxious to visit the Crystal Palace. As the great spectacle was closed on Sunday however, the Lord’s Day Observance Society having insisted that it was on the Monday that she and Hannah took the short carriage ride from Juniper House to the park entrance. Doctor Grace made his apologies and said he had too many matters and patients needing his presence, but they all knew he preferred bridge and brandy to outings.

  Brendan O’Shea had accompanied Caroline Terrington on the visit, along with Sophie the maid, and they both sat on the outside of the carriage as it pulled into the area set aside for the refined visitors. Caroline could not do without the girl to help her dress and rather liked the idea of broadening her young employee’s mind somewhat.

  “What a delightful view,” Caroline enthused as she and Hannah walked across to a refreshment marquee. The natural high ground at Sydenham Hill looked both back toward the metropolis and, to the south, the myriad fields and cottage gardens in this part of Kent.

  “Well, Hannah, what shall we see? It seems surprisingly quiet here. Does it never get crowded?”

  “Most of the common people come here by train on the new line opened by the Chatham and Dover Company. But that is after the working day has ended or on Saturday. At this time, it is pleasingly tranquil and one is not overwhelmed by the vulgar masses.”

  “I am in your hands,” Caroline sweetly smiled. “You must tell me what I should see.”

  “Once we have taken tea, it would give me great pleasure to show you the flower and animal exhibition sections. If we are fortunate there may even be a band playing along by the meeting halls. William and I saw such a wonderful show two weeks ago. Did you know the concert hall has a four-and-a-half-thousand pipe Great Organ?”

  “Will we see that?” Caroline asked, full of radiance.

  “Probably not on a Monday. But do not fret, my dear, we are going to have such a wonderful day. Caroline, I have so looked forward to your visit. You are going to be such good company. Did you know The Khedive of Egypt and the Sultan of Zanzibar have been honoured guests here? So you are following in the wake of quite exalted visitors.”

  “Oh, Hannah, I do not think that I am that grand,” Caroline giggled and for the first time in many a year she felt young at heart again.

  Standing twenty yards from them, Brendan O’Shea watched his mistress. It should have been as a respectful footman awaiting instruction, and really speaking, he should have been on his way, but he loitered and observe
d. Duty and servitude were not shackles he wore well, but it was not loyalty to his mistress that kept him close at hand, rather a different cause entirely.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The sporting hall lay to the far eastern end of the Crystal Palace. Caroline had allowed Sophie to amuse herself for a few hours with a cautionary warning to avoid any discussions with young men. The maid remained silent and smiled at Mrs. Terrington, thinking all the while how little her prim employer knew what happened beneath her own roof, much less in public places.

  As Sophie strolled around the hall, her imagination was filled entirely with thoughts of men. She had arrived in service an innocent, not knowing anything about sensual pleasures, or believing they were anything to do with her. These last few months had awoken a sleeping passion within her. Her initiation into this world had begun with Lady Amelia. Then Myles had taken her to a new delight in bliss. At first she had been scared, then curious, and now Sophie found her feelings becoming more open and increasingly inquisitive.

  She stood and watched two ill-dressed and youthful men playing billiards on one of the large baize tables available for hire. There was a time when she would have demurely pretended to ignore them whilst sneaking glances at their bottoms and legs. She guessed from occasional looks in her direction that the two of them were talking about her. Hopefully, they would be admiring the shape of her body and the prettiness of her face. Sophie had discovered that she liked to be admired. Myles had told her she was beautiful. His reactions to exploring her previously secret female parts had made her aware of the power of her sexuality, and of male desires.

  “Fancy a game?”

  The remark from one of the men was deliberately suggestive, and the voice sounded a lot like O’Shea’s she realized. Sophie tried to keep a straight face but she was sure her twinkling eyes gave her away.