The Lesser Portal Ch. 12

My parents being abroad in the service of Empire, I would have been at a loose end on Christmas Day had Doyle, that most good-hearted of fellows, not invited me to celebrate with his household.

Not that I was the only invitee. When I entered the Doyle's drawing-room -- green with the time-honoured ivy and berry-laden holly, and bright with many candles -- I found the widow Threlfall among the company, at the request of old Mr Courtenay, though his Christmas goodwill was perhaps rooted in an urge less respectable.

Even Cummings, the seasoned yet vigorous gardener, made an appearance, joining us in a glass of sherry before retreating to the bosom of his family for the seasonal meal itself; and judging by a look I caught passing between him and the elderly Mrs Courtenay, she too might have had -- let us say -- a fittingly earthy motive for her welcome.

My attention was drawn to what in that year was still a novelty: Mavis Doyle handed me for examination, a Christmas card. An especially fine specimen, with a proper emphasis on the religious aspect of the day in the form of a somewhat glutinous-looking angel holding up a banner emblazoned with, "Rejoice!" This was from the Reverend Handscombe, and included a fulsome apology for being unable to attend in person -- but only the vaguest of explanations.

Relieved of any duty of false civility towards my rival, I contemplated the female members of the company with a complacent satisfaction. Mrs Threlfall was discoursing to Mr Courtenay on the sad decline of morals in these profane times -- the splendidly-endowed Mrs Threlfall, who had swallowed my seed so greedily while I pleasured her eager and luxurious rump with a candle. By the fireplace stood pretty Florence, whose posterior I had riven very happily a dozen or more times, today talking chastely with her owlish student admirer. The graceful Lydia meanwhile sat alone, a trifle languid and pensive, looking very unlike the passionate, willing victim whose ardent rear entrance I had mock-ravished.

I was crossing the room to speak to Lydia when the double-doors opened and Morwena appeared, her jet eyes a-glitter above a freshly-starched maid's black-and-white, to declare the meal imminent. Mrs Cargill the cook could be seen through the doorway, standing by a tureen, ladle in hand, thereby almost completing the tally of the women whose persons I had enjoyed. And I confess that when Morwena looked meaningly at me with a wink as if to say, give us just five minutes alone together and I'll take every inch of you up where you've been before -- well, the front of my trousers was suddenly a good deal tighter than my tailor intended, and I was very grateful to Mrs Threlfall for lending her servants to the household for the day.

We all drained our small glasses of sherry and trouped in due order to where an absolute banquet awaited. I would have accompanied Lydia in the little procession, but she shook her head and said, "No, please Mr Jaspers -- Mrs Threlfall has seniority," and so I walked beside the widow, wondering whether I had displeased Lydia.

I am tempted at this point to describe the meal course by course. Mrs Cargill had led the culinary campaign, and a masterful general she proved indeed. The memory has my mouth watering. But I should not dam the flow of my tale.

That splendid Christmas banquet was already, in my mind, the stuff of culinary legend when, a few days later, I stood watching a succession of the worthiest, and therefore the dullest, of our Cambridge luminaries filing into the pews in the hall where the Evolution debate was to take place. No-one below the rank of senior Fellow of a college had been invited, with the addition of some notable divines. Men of weight in the world of intellect, in other words, present through Handscombe's influence. Present too were the heads of the new women's establishments of higher learning. Handscombe had agreed to their inclusion with a willingness that surprised me; but it transpired that he wished to invite Lydia -- to witness my downfall, no doubt -- and it would have caused remark if she had been the only invitee of the fair sex. She was one of a small handful of our friends invited.

On the stage behind trestle tables sat the chairman and a jury of half a dozen learned men who had declared themselves undecided between Creation and Evolution. Of Handscombe there was as yet no sign.

The first unexpected event of the evening was presaged by the wizened caretaker of the hall, tonight acting as doorkeeper, hobbling down the aisle between the pews. He stopped at the foot of the stage and beckoned me. "Young lady at the door to speak with you, sir."

Puzzled, I left the hall, and found Jenny standing on the steps, a vision in a pool of gaslight. The night was not cold, but a few large, lazy flakes of snow fell, stark white, caught by the light as they drifted. One, I recall, drifted onto her lips and she licked it away with a knowing smile. And withal, she looked peerlessly desirable.

"Freddy," she said in a low voice -- we were not supposed to know one another, let alone be on first-name terms, "Handscombe was at the shop less than an hour ago. I heard Mr Jones address him."

"So he's surfaced. I dare say he'll be here at any minute," was my reply.

"I was in the darkroom and could hear very little. What I do know is that judging by his tone of voice, he left in a state of high satisfaction; but why, I can't say. If he'd wanted to have a photographic slide made from the tintype I would know. I do all the dark-room work now. Besides, such a slide wouldn't suit his purpose. Too much detail would be lost."

"Doyle is ready to wrest the tintype from any person's hands by main force, if needs be."

"He may have to. One other thing. Mr Jones and Mr Hind have had a lover's quarrel, and Mr Hind stormed out of the shop. You can expect Mr Jones to work the magic lantern in Mr Hind's place, and he'll probably be drunk."

With that we parted. I resumed my place on the stage, and could see that Doyle was watching the audience with the attention of an eagle gliding over a flock of lambs. Ladies had been allocated a pew of their own at the front; both Lydia and the devout Mrs Threlfall were there. I remember Doyle respectfully asking Mrs Threlfall to remove her hat, which was a tall and feathered construction bound to inconvenience an audience. At any other time, the incident might have amused me.

I could not catch Lydia's eye.

Not many minutes later Handscombe arrived; we shook hands courteously enough. Then Mr Jones entered, wheeling the lantern on its tall stand, all covered with a blanket as a protection against knocks. He was indeed "rather the worse for wear", as the saying is, and I hopped down from the low stage to help him set up his apparatus.

At the time I was too full of anticipation to attach much importance to the fact that, when the blanket was off, it was clear that the wrong lantern had been sent. I had requested the simplest; instead, the newest and most complex was revealed: a "Thompson's patent Epidiascope," whatever that might be, as declared in florid gilt letters on its mahogany side. But Mr Jones assured me it would project my slides perfectly.

I had won the toss and was to give the first address. The Chairman delivered a sententious platitude or two about open-mindedness, then introduced me. While he did so, Handscombe leaned his head towards me and said very softly, "You know, it is still not too late to repent your views."

At that moment the Chairman stopped speaking and looked expectantly at me. Before I rose from my seat I bent to put my mouth almost to Handscombe's ear to murmur vehemently, "I speak. Now do your damnedest, hypocrite."

The gas was turned down and my first lantern-slide appeared, as if by magic indeed, on the screen on the stage. Handscombe had fired me up, and I'm told that I spoke with great vigour and earnestness, sometimes striking the lectern with the flat of my hand for emphasis; but my recollection is that the presence of my viperous enemy behind my back at times seemed to hang over me like a blue-black thundercloud, and me sailing into its darkness. The fact that I could see Mr Jones taking frequent pulls from a hip-flask, so that his operating the blazing lantern became more and more a hazardous and approximate undertaking, certainly did nothing for my powers of concentration.

When I had finished with my slides, Mr Jones abruptly masked the lamp in the lantern, and we were plunged into near-darkness. But Doyle ordered that the gaslight be turned up, and I delivered my concluding words, sat down in my allotted place, and the chairman called upon Handscombe to deliver his address.

Handscombe said, "One moment, Mr Chairman," and walked to the very front of the stage, where to my great unease he handed a note to Mr Jones. Then he -- Handscombe -- took up his position by the lectern.

There ensued a pause in proceedings. All could see that Mr Jones was befuddled. Doyle ordered the gas turned down, but the hall was lit by the reflected light from the screen. Mr Jones fumbled with the apparatus, and for an instant his fingers appeared, vastly magnified, on the screen. I looked at Doyle, but he shook his head and shrugged; he knew no more of magic lanterns than I did. Meanwhile Handscombe stood with the unctuous smile of a vampire assured of its next meal.

An image came up on the screen, but it was very blurred, and upside-down into the bargain. Nevertheless, when I looked at it I felt as though the vampire had drained every drop of blood from my veins. For there was the tintype, blown up to immense proportions and ready to destroy my standing in society -- my hopes of Lydia -- my scientific aspirations -- as soon as it was projected aright.

And then must have come out of the gloom far from the light of the screen, the characteristic creak and thump of swinging double doors. Logically, the sound must have occurred, yet it made no impression on anyone. All were struggling to comprehend the abstruse image on the screen.

But none could ignore the resonant female voice that burst from the back of the hall.

"Where is my runaway slave wife?"

All heads turned as one, to see a black silhouette: Mrs Cavendish, her long widow's cape blacker than shadow, was standing in the gloom. Even but half-seen, her air of command was intense.

In an instant, Handscombe took on the look of a corpse in the grip of rigor mortis. Even his smile seemed fixed in position by the dreadful power of Death.

To be perfectly accurate, one person was not looking at Mrs Cavendish. The sodden Mr Jones had a drunkard's concentration. Amidst a cloud of muttered curses he had turned the tintype right way up. In a few moments he would have the image sharp, and anyone who chanced to look at the screen would recognise me -- me, with (let us not mince words) the glans of my sexual organ plunging into the accommodating rearward opening of young Morwena.

In a second I had vaulted the trestle table -- leapt from the stage -- elbowed Mr Jones violently aside -- and reached into his accursed contraption to abstract the proof of my so-called wickedness. The interior was hot, and I singed my fingers, but no matter. As I put the tintype in my pocket I was certainly the most relieved man on the planet.

Meanwhile the gaslight had been turned up. All saw Mrs Cavendish clearly, veiled, yet somehow one sensed beneath the veil a glare that Medusa would have envied. The Reverend was now cowering into himself, trembling and looking around feverishly for an escape -- but Mrs Cavendish barred the only exit.

"Wife!" she called. "Have you forgotten your marriage-vow to serve me with your body?" And at that she threw open her cape to reveal that over her black skirts, harnessed to her groin she wore a stallion's sexual organ fashioned from black leather. It swung heavily before her as she took a few strides forward. "Come! Come to your owner, slave. Tonight we re-enact our wedding night."

Handscombe whimpered piteously, but the sight of the huge leather engine of penetration seemed irresistible to him. He dropped to all fours, got to the edge of the stage, clambered down, and crawled his way with his head lowered between his shoulders to Mrs Cavendish, with no care at all that the dusty floor of the hall sullied the knees of his irreproachably Christian trousers.

When he reached Mrs Cavendish she produced a collar and leash from inside her cape and fastened them to Handscombe's neck, and led him from the hall like a dog. I confess I would have been gratified if she had completed his humiliation by re-consummating their marriage there and then, but one should not be vindictive.

As the double doors swung behind them I caught a glimpse of Effuah restraining the caretaker by the efficient means of sitting on his chest.

In the hall there ensued a long silence. It was impossible for any respectable person to acknowledge aloud such a scene of the grossest indelicacy, or even to meet another's gaze, but it was plain that none who had seen it could cease to think about it. At length Doyle with typical presence of mind, declared in Stentorian tones, "This meeting is now closed." The dull worthies were roused into something like life, and all began to file out from between the pews.

Doyle, Mrs Threlfall, Lydia and myself formed a small party, united by a silent assumption that we would share a cab back to the village. Doyle was typically grave. The widow, until now a devout if hypocritical admirer of Handscombe, was pale and almost piteously shocked. But Lydia's bearing puzzled me. At first she also was shocked, but gradually there was something effervescent. She had a muff, but let it hang from her neck, unconsciously rubbing her gloved hands together out of -- what? Could it be glee? And her cheeks were pink.

We were en route to the market square. A quicker route would involve an alley, a nameless short cut popularly known as Sweetheart Lane. A respectable person would shun it, for to be seen entering or leaving it suggested familiarity with its denizens, to wit, "ladies of the night" -- for even Cambridge has its portion of sinners. Our party passed the end of Sweetheart Lane, and then Lydia stopped.

"I think that I will take this short cut. Those who prefer may of course go the longer way."

I could see that Doyle was trying to frame a delicate way of explaining the difficulty to her, but as it happened I knew -- Florence had mentioned it once -- that all three Courtenay sisters were aware of the reputation of the alley. At once it flashed in on me that the dramatic scene we had witnessed in the hall must have roused Lydia's animal instincts. This was the girl, after all, who had sent Florence to purchase illicit photographs of persons engaged in what the law terms "buggery".

"I'm really not sure that's wise. Ah -- footpads...," was all that Doyle could manage. But Lydia had already darted away.

"Not to worry, Doyle," I assured him, and hurried after the willowy figure at that moment disappearing into the narrow opening.

The alley is not straight, and the municipality has not thought it worthwhile to erect more than the one street lamp in it. I passed through a dog-leg and made out in the Stygian gloom beyond, a murky female figure. I asked, "Lydia?"

A common-sounding voice responded, "Lookin' for y'r lady-friend, sir? I'm j'st as good, I swear it."

I tried to pass the woman but she grabbed my sleeve. "Be a mama to yer, darlin'?" I could see now that she presented her bosom as a horizontal shelf of white flesh, creased where it met her chest.

It took a moment to extricate myself. One does not like to be brutal: a female is of the weaker sex whatever her calling. Unfortunately I then found myself waylaid by another, and then another, each one deliberately obstructing me while she indicated a speciality: one informed me she had a wooden leg, another called me "papa", a third merely smacked her lips and made lewd sucking noises. Indeed, soon after I saw a man in a top hat tilted back against the wall with a woman kneeling between his legs.

At last I saw a lonely street-light and, standing under it, a shapely but very face-painted woman. Lydia was speaking to this woman. I hurried nearer, and saw Lydia give her a coin. The woman yielded her place to Lydia. I heard the woman say, "R'memb'r, bummin's the word," before she retired into the shadows. Lydia shaded her eyes from the gaslight and peered down the alley.

As soon as I stepped into the light, with a little 'oh' of recognition she hastily turned her face to the wall, projected her rump, and said in as near a Cambridgeshire accent as she could manage, "Care to give a g'rl a good bummin', sir?" At the same time she drew her skirts up to her waist at the back, showing, not only her legs but her drawers, and the curves beneath her drawers too.

I stopped behind her, put my hands on her graceful buttocks and said, "How much?"

She hesitated. Evidently she had given no thought to a fee. "Half-crown for a pork sausage, five shillin's for a gherkin."

"I'll give you seven and sixpence."

"Why thank you sir!"

Already I was pulling down her drawers. They reached the paving slabs of the alley and she stepped one foot clear of them, the better to spread her legs.

So many unexpected amorous encounters had come my way of late, that I had taken to carrying a tube of the useful slippery unguent as a habit. It took no time, therefore, to get out my already straining member and coat it.

In her role as woman of easy virtue she had no reservations about encouraging me. She put her hands on her pearly-white buttocks and pulled them apart. I held the base of my member, and placed its dark acorn near the top of the open furrow she had created, then ran it down the furrow until I felt the dimple I sought.

"Ohh, s'rr," she breathed.

I pushed. I felt a yielding, a softening. I pushed again, and the dimple became a hole. A third push, and my glans was in. Lydia let out a long, impassioned breath. And then I was driving in with steady, implacable force, her muscular ring tight-gripping my weapon until the hilt was hard against her scabbard.

From the feel of her portal, she had kept up her solitary practice with great application since our last such encounter, for she quickly felt less acutely tight on my shaft, though she still gripped superbly. This slight slackening allowed me to up my pace very soon. I took to pulling well back so that the head of my organ was in the muscle. "Squeeze, young lady," I commanded, and squeeze she did. Then I plunged in again.

Meanwhile she passionately exclaimed such words as, "Oh, I am such an whore, sir," and "All for the money, sir." It seemed playing the role of a common street-walker licenced her enjoyment.

Perhaps it was my hand squeezing her breast that made her plead, "Harder, oh! Bum me harder." More likely it was my other hand under her skirts, thrumming on her little nub of pleasure. Or it might have been a delicious sense of sin that being in that alley roused in her. I only know that despite the wonderful sensations her grip on my male organ gave me, she rushed to the peak before me, and her cries of climax split the night air.

I of course wished -- needed -- to continue, and for a very little while she was limp and complaisant, jerking on my thrusting organ like a rag doll, her hands up against the brick wall, my hands holding her round her slender waist and pretty well pumping her body up and down on my rigidity. But before I was satisfied she levered my hands away from her, murmuring, "No more, no!" with sincere urgency. I chivalrously withdrew, though not without a considerable effort of will. My organ brushed the tops of her inner thighs for an instant, and then was free in the night air. She was right; the others would arrive at the other end of the alley very soon, and a delayed emergence from it would be suggestive. The reader may guess whether I dealt manually with my need when I was alone in my bed that night.

It turned out that we had been watched with expert interest by some of the inhabitants of the alley, who actually gave us a little round of applause. It seemed they considered Lydia a new recruit to their ranks. The face-painted one congratulated Lydia on her skill in comfortably receiving a "bumming" from a gentleman equipped with "a prop'r splitter" -- which compliment drew a gravely polite, "Why, thank you," from Lydia as we hurried away.

Her lust having been quenched, Lydia's demeanour changed. She was silent, pensive and downcast. I did not dare speak.

Doyle had perhaps dawdled tactfully on his way to the square, for he and Mrs Threlfall appeared a minute or so after we emerged into it, and our cab was soon on its way to the village -- a silent journey so far as we four were concerned, despite the rumbling of the cab's wheels.