by Dray Wray
‘Is there one?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said and kissed me, her tongue sweeter by far than that of the gentleman in the blue chamber, and her fingers more gentle. My whole body ignited on the point of bursting into flame. Her mouth by degrees – and such delicious degrees – found their way to my globes and stayed there while her hands progressed further down in between my legs, which she gently parted. Her finger then went into my wet purse and found the spot of all my ache, a hard pearl which she attended to with such care that I thought I might go wild if there wasn’t some release. My whole body started quaking and I felt I could endure it no more when, to my utter surprise, there was an explosion followed by the most exquisite sensation and the ache burst into a thousand fragments of joy. I let out a cry as a flood of warmth and glory filled me, and all was peaceful.
Without thinking or even considering the right and the wrong of what had taken place, I put my arms round Mercy and kissed her.
‘That,’ she said, stroking my hair, ‘is the remedy for your ache.’
I woke to find that I was curled up in Mercy’s arms and that she too was naked. She had a flat stomach and her Venus mound was covered in a lush bush of black foliage. Waking, she looked at me and kissed me and asked how my ache was.
I smiled. ‘Better. But still there.’
‘So is mine,’ said Mercy.
She opened her legs and, taking my hand, guided it down to the spot and kissed me with such longing that I felt my ache return with a vengeance. Afterwards, I told Mercy what Mr Smollett had said about the root of all evil. She said she had never heard anything quite so silly, and was a far better tutor in every way than dull Mr Smollett. Shortly after this, Mr Smollett and his root vegetable came to a pretty pass, which proved to be a good thing for I would have been obliged to use force to deter him if it had gone any further.
Like the boot boy, he suddenly declared his undying love for me.
‘Mistress Truegood,’ he said, ‘I am on fire.’ And he took hold of my hand and placed it firmly on his vegetable patch.
I said nothing but decided that come feathers and dust this would be the last lesson I had with Mr Smollet.
‘You want to see the root of all evil,’ he cried. ‘I know you do. You want to feel the passion that cannot be denied.’
And before I could say that due to Mercy I was now in a much better position to wait a while, he had quite undone himself to reveal a rather disappointing upright carrot.
‘Mistress Truegood, touch me,’ he pleaded.
‘No thank you,’ I said, ‘I would rather not.’
‘Please,’ he said, grabbing hold of his small root. ‘Put me out of my misery.’
The door to the chamber burst open.
‘Happily, sir,’ came the stern voice of Mrs Truegood.
I watched fascinated as the carrot shrivelled and became only good for compost.
‘You will leave this instant,’ said my stepmother.
And to my delight, Mr Smollet and the root of all his evils did just that.
But having seen my tutor’s shrivelled vegetable made me realise that there was something missing from Mercy’s lovemaking, something I longed to experience: not Mr Smollett’s root of all evil, more a man who possessed a true pole of pleasure.
Chapter Eight
Riddle for the Ladies
In what do good housewives take delight
Which though it has no legs will stand upright?
At the end it has a hole, it’s stiff and strong;
Thick as a maiden’s wrist and pretty long.
Yet women love to wriggle it to and fro
And take delight to watch it grow.
By giddy sluts it is sometimes abused
But by good housewives, rubbed before it’s used.
Now tell me, merry ladies, if you can,
What this must be that is a part of man?
You may think, sir, that I was corrupted by a wicked stepsister. But I was by far the keener player, by far the most inquisitive, the one who most desired to understand the joys to be found in our pleasure gardens. The new delights Mercy showed me made me look forward to bedtime, for I was still a prisoner of Milk Street. Mercy and the pleasure she brought were my only form of escape. In my body I began to find another land that held another treasure.
Not being worldly-wise, I had no inkling of the intrigues that lay behind my father’s new marriage. I couldn’t for the life of me see why my stepsister Hope would want to marry Mr Sitton, for she was exceedingly pretty and Mr Sitton could not be called handsome, being beetle-browed with a chin that had lost the will to stand away from his neck. In my humble opinion there was little to recommend him apart from what he stood to inherit upon his marriage: a newly-built house in Grosvenor Square and another in Chelsea, forty-one servants and three carriages. I thought that if I was Mr Sitton I wouldn’t have dallied a moment in making Hope my wife. But Mr Sitton belonged to a banking family that was extremely careful in all matters financial. There was no end of to-ing and fro-ing, made many times worse by his irksome widowed mother who held more than the purse strings of her only son.
As we lay in bed one lazy morning, I asked Mercy if Hope couldn’t find an altogether more agreeable husband with a more agreeable mother. Mercy burst out laughing.
‘No,’ she said, and kissed me before she climbed out of bed. She stood naked, silhouetted against the window, the spring light illuminating her ivory skin. She had a very fine figure and I somewhat wished mine was not so full of curves, for I liked the lack of them in her and the way it all was so pleasingly joined together. Her downy, dark bush, unlike mine which was hardly there at all, marked well the point of all desire.
‘Mrs Sitton,’ said Mercy, pulling the bedclothes off me and tickling me until I could bear it no more, ‘Mrs Sitton wants her only son to marry into another wealthy family. And Hope is not wealthy.’
Catching my breath, I persisted. ‘Then why doesn’t Hope find someone else?’
‘Ninny. She doesn’t want anyone else and you are far too young to know the half of it or truly understand the value of a vintage wine.’
Genuinely, there was so much that I didn’t understand. So great were the vacant spaces in my knowledge that sometimes I despaired that I would ever amount to anything and would remain a fluff-head of a girl.
‘I want to learn about love,’ I said.
She kissed me again. ‘It will be my pleasure to teach you.’
Her lessons riveted me as Mr Smollett’s and Mrs Coker’s had not, and by degrees I became less modest in both thought and deed.
Mrs Truegood employed a dancing master for me – a Monsieur Le Choufleur. He came with a fine reputation. To begin with I thought Monsieur Le Choufleur quite splendid, for he wore tight satin breeches that showed off his assets to such enchanting effect that I may well have forgotten myself if it hadn’t been that my stepmother supervised the lessons, fearful, no doubt, of more unwanted instruction on horticulture.
‘The thing that baffles me,’ I told Mercy, ‘is what part a root vegetable plays in this game of love.’
‘My sweet virgin,’ said Mercy, laughing, ‘that isn’t my speciality, but when the occasion arises it will be plain for you to see.’
The occasion arose sooner than expected.
It was his eyes that in the end put me off Monsieur Le Choufleur. He had the appearance of a dog in need of a meal and, over the weeks, he came to look starved and struck dumb by a tragic melancholy for which there was no remedy.
After my lesson had finished one afternoon, I returned to my bedchamber and was seated at the dressing table, trying on the pretty pearl earrings that Hope had kindly lent me, when one of them fell to the floor and disappeared behind a fabric screen. I was on my hands and knees, looking for it, and so was hidden from view when the door opened and my maid came in with Monsieur Le Choufleur. I thought I should stand and ask them what was the meaning of this when the meaning became all too clear, for my maid was
kissing Monsieur Le Choufleur. This I could see for I had a perfect view of the proceedings due to a fortuitous rip in the fabric of the screen. The maid was not young and had a full figure, and I wouldn’t have imagined for a moment that the dancing master would have been interested in that abundance of flesh.
She locked the chamber door and asked if sir would be needing any assistance with his breeches. I had left it a kiss too late to announce my presence and decided instead to satisfy my curiosity.
My maid had undressed Monsieur Le Choufleur to reveal a most glorious pinkish parsnip that rose and leaned towards her. Such a noble sight – nobler by far than its puny owner. A blue vein ran to its tip and she gently stroked it. Monsieur Le Choufleur undid her stays and her breasts were so large they would have filled a market basket. The sight of them was too much for the dancing master. He went at them as if he was a babe in arms and the effect was to make that noble parsnip grow to a prize vegetable. The maid wasted not a moment in pushing him onto the bed, climbing on top of him and settling herself upon the root.
The dancing master, displaying his skill in manoeuvring his partner, rolled her over so her carriage – and a very fine one it was – was open to him. Placing his hands on her backside, he thrust in his root up to the hilt. They set to and both let out a cry of joy. I was somewhat startled to hear my dancing master shout, ‘Oh, Miss Tully, my love!’, which must have been disappointing for my maid, whose name was Prue.
Seeing such a sight and the pleasure it gave both parties, I had happily acquired the knowledge of how a male and female root join and there seemed nothing evil in the union whatsoever.
The next day, Monsieur Le Choufleur wrote to say he was indisposed and didn’t feel able to continue the dancing lessons. All that was left of him was a small stain on the bedcover.
‘It seems, Tully,’ said Mrs Truegood, ‘that you have had quite an adverse effect on poor Monsieur Le Choufleur.’
‘Was it my dancing?’ I asked.
‘I think that it might have accelerated his condition. Did you not realise that he had become besotted with you?’
‘No,’ I said, which wasn’t the full truth.
‘Well, then. If ever a man again tries to tell you what he feels about you through dance, I can rest assured that he is wasting his time.’
A week after Monsieur Le Choufleur left, a parcel arrived. Inside, wrapped in far too much paper, was a book with a note written by my dancing master. ‘You are made for love,’ it said.
Intrigued, I sat down in the drawing room to read it. I was pleasantly surprised by the novelty of its illustrations: women all undone, no hoops or stays to hinder entrance to their pretty little gardens while the men possessed wonderful upright roots. Both male and female embraced each other in the most joyous of ways. My senses were inflamed by such glorious visions.
I was left wondering if there were men in this world who really boasted such male roots as were engraved there. Not the dancing master nor the boot boy and most decidedly not Mr Smollet possessed anything as fine. These vegetables, I thought, were much exaggerated by the artist whose imagination had perfected what nature had failed to enhance.
I think it was this book more than what I had witnessed between my maid and the dancing master that made me long for adventure. At night my dreams had to do with the stranger in the blue chamber and none of them was at all decent. I dreamed too of being a great actress, well versed in the art of lovemaking. I felt I had spent too long waiting in the wings for my cue to enter upon life’s stage.
The spring weather was no help. It made the frustration of being indoors harder to bear for we were confined to the house in Milk Street, forbidden to go out in society until the matter of Hope’s marriage had been settled.
The dancing master’s book afforded me many hours of pleasure, more than the learning of his steps had done, and I kept it well hidden, certain that if Mrs Truegood should see it, it would be forbidden. I did show it to Mercy and Mercy showed it to Hope, who thought it hilarious and insisted on taking it to show Mr Sitton. Very sensibly, he came every morning to our house, I assumed to avoid his disagreeable mother. He would take his hot chocolate with Hope in her bedchamber and be there until the morning was all but gone. Weddings, I was told, take much organising. I was convinced that my delightful book would never be returned and I was wishing I could remember all the images when Hope came to my bedchamber.
She handed me the book with a smile and said, ‘Thank you. Mr Sitton was most amused.’
Sensing that this might be an opportune moment, I asked if the illustrations weren’t a little overstated for surely no man owned a root as enormous as that given to the gentleman on Plate Nine. The illustration showed a man with his breeches undone and his male root hard as a cucumber and he about to thrust it into the female root of a large, naked lady. She was bending over, her bottom as big as a full moon.
‘What is all this nonsense with vegetables?’ asked Hope.
I told her about Mr Smollet and what a small carrot he had. I wanted to tell her about the dancing master and the maid, but I thought it might be too shocking.
‘You have seen a very poor specimen,’ she said. ‘I can assure you Mr Sitton is very well endowed in that department.’
‘You mean you have done this?’ I said, finding the illustration on Plate Twenty that showed to perfection the ecstatic effect the male root had upon the female.
‘And more besides,’ she whispered. ‘You did not suppose that Mr Sitton and me merely enfiler des perles?’ I did not speak French and could only guess at what she meant. She smiled. ‘There now. Do you think me quite without morals?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Though it wouldn’t matter to me if a man had fifteen houses if his asset was as small as Mr Smollet’s. I would never wed him.’
‘Oh, Tully!’ exclaimed Hope. Then, laughing, she said, ‘I am so glad I have a perfect ninny of a stepsister.’
Chapter Nine
I believed Mrs Truegood would be mortified if she knew the truth of what was going on under her roof. I thought she might not recover from the shock of knowing that Hope was having more than hot chocolate with Mr Sitton and that I was having much more than a bedtime kiss from Mercy.
Mr Crease, the gentleman with the painted eyes who owned the little white dog, was an advisor to Mrs Truegood. She had made a formidable enemy in Mrs Sitton, who had no intention of letting her son marry Hope. ‘Not while there is flesh on my bones,’ she stated in one letter. She had a very strange way of writing and the image left me wondering if anyone, even a dog, would be interested in the flesh on her bones for she looked as if all the marrow of enjoyment had been well and truly sucked out of her.
Mr Crease and his little dog arrived every morning after which footmen and letters went to and fro between Milk Street and Grosvenor Square. Perhaps only Mr Crease’s dog knew that Mrs Sitton was holding the winning card in that mean hand of hers.
One morning, Mr Sitton didn’t call on Hope but instead a letter was delivered by one of Mrs Sitton’s forty-one servants. It said that Mr Sitton had been called away on business. There was no doubt as to the author of the letter: it had been written by the bag of bones that was Mrs Sitton. Hope was heartbroken and said she knew she would never see Mr Sitton again.
On hearing the news, Mr Crease closeted himself with Mrs Truegood, leaving his little dog pining outside the door to her chamber. I couldn’t understand why Mr Crease didn’t let the dog in as his cries were quite heartbreaking. I asked Mercy the name of Mr Crease’s dog.
She looked at me strangely and said, ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I just wondered.’
‘And I wonder where Mr Sitton has gone.’
The significance of Mr Sitton’s sudden absence meant nothing. My question, I thought, did. ‘But what is Mr Crease’s dog called?’ I asked again.
‘His dog was called Shadow because he would whine if he was ever parted from Mr Crease.’
What did Mercy mean by speaking of the
dog in the past? Surely she should say his dog is called Shadow? Had he died in the night?
‘Do you think it is odd that Mr Sitton didn’t call before he left town?’
To tell the truth I had not being paying much attention to the daily ups and downs of Hope’s marriage plans.
‘Tell me about Shadow,’ I persisted.
‘He was the most famous little mongrel that ever lived.’ Still that uncomfortable past tense. ‘Mr Crease and Shadow performed all over Europe for emperors, kings and queens. Mr Crease would lay down a pack of cards in a circle round Shadow, each one a letter of the alphabet, then invite someone from the audience to ask a question. The little dog would cock its head as if he was listening and then solemnly put a paw on each card and spell out a word. What he had to say had more wisdom than many men speak in a lifetime. After Shadow’s death, Mr Crease became too despondent for anything but gambling and whoring. Then one night he fell off his horse on Hampstead Heath. By the time he was found the following morning there was nothing the surgeon could do for his crushed leg but saw it off.’
‘But he still has Shadow,’ I said.
‘Don’t be a ninny,’ said Mercy firmly. ‘The dog died ten years ago.’
‘But I see Shadow every day.’
‘Enough of this nonsense,’ said Mercy, more sharply than she had ever spoken to me before. ‘I think you must be seeing ghosts.’
I went to ask Cook if she had seen Mr Crease’s dog.
‘Dog? The only dog I know about is that one up there,’ said Cook, nodding at the spit-roast dog going round and round in his wheel. ‘And it has a foul nature.’
She wasn’t a woman to go over her words and she had no intention of putting any more meat on her answer.
I tried to speak to Hope.
‘Tully,’ she said, ‘what nonsense is this? Mr Crease doesn’t have a dog.’
She was looking so sad that I said, ‘Perhaps it’s best just to get married as I did, without any fuss.’