Mrs Grainger's Gift 14

By Ritchie Moore

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This work is intended for ADULTS ONLY. It may contain depictions of sexual activity involving minors. If you are not of a legal age in your locality to view such material or if such material does not appeal to you, do not read further, and do not save this story.
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Mrs Grainger’s Gift

Part XIV

Diana in the loo, shy Odysseus, Celia’s humanity, patient Griselda, Lady Godiva, Cassandra gets Matthew up and down, he pleases Gregory, Damian and Tadeusz get acquainted; another kiss ====================================================================

Girvan drew on his cigarette and introduced a new topic. “I hear tell of experiments,” he said, “to unite sound to moving pictures. It’s an interesting idea, for some of these films deserve at least an orchestral accompaniment. A piano doesn’t do really, or an organ, either, and not every town has a symphony orchestra. Not every film has a touring ensemble, either. No, a film like D W Griffiths’ Intolerance, for instance. That’s a great moving picture, in my opinion, though it is a bit long. It should have a fine score.”

“Oh surely, there is one, isn’t there?”

“Yes, Lydia, by that Carl Breil, who did The Birth of a Nation, but it’s not that good, and really is something of a mélange or pastiche.”

“If I remember correctly,” said Barlow, “that score quotes unashamedly from other compositions, Beethoven, Bellini, and so forth, ending up with ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ when the noble Ku Klux Klan ride to the rescue. Which is effective enough, but really!”

“Exactly so, which is why the sequel deserves to have its own original accompaniment bound in, so to speak. Though I can’t think of an American composer to fit the bill. Or a British one, come to that. Elgar, maybe? I quite liked the stuff he wrote for the Empire Exhibition at Wembley last year.”

“He’s just been made Master of the King’s Musick,” said Isobel Shaw, “and rightly so, in my opinion. It’d be interesting to see what he made of that film. Different styles, and whatnot.”

“Anyway, technology is marching on,” Girvan continued, “though some of what it manages to accomplish is questionable to say the least. Look at weapons, for instance, the development of the tank and so forth – of course it takes a war to get it going. On the other hand, if those sound experiments are successful, I predict that some well-loved faces will disappear, because their voices won’t suit. You don’t always get beauty of face and beauty of voice, you know.”

“That’s true, James,” said Theodore Merton. “I’ve sometimes been disappointed at seeing the physical picture of a lovely voice. On the gramophone, everyone is beautiful.”

“—And in a picture, I mean of art, or a statue, no-one has an ugly voice,” added Gregory Mayne. “It makes you speculate about the famous actors and singers of former times, you know—if only we could hear a recording of one of the great castrati of the past, like Farinelli, or a speech from Garrick, say, or Mrs Siddons—”

“Or Chopin playing a mazurka—”

“Or a piece of oratory from Danton!”

“Or what about ‘the divine Sarah’?” asked Enid Waterson. “I know she made a few pictures, but I don’t think she liked the medium. Still, everyone says her voice was charming, and I for one would like to have heard it.”

“I don’t know about recently,” said Sir Graeme, “but I saw her when I was a boy, and was quite enchanted….” He looked gloomily into his glass and gave a ludicrous sigh.

“Oh yes, it’s all right to talk,” said the Reverend Drayton, “but equally one might be disappointed, you see, whatever fawning critics say. Our own standards may well be higher than those in the wretched past, who had little to compare their idols with. A reputation may well have been very easy to obtain.”

“Fair enough,” Miss Waterson replied. “But still, I think it’s nice to wonder about the quality of voice of Handel’s ladies, or for that matter to fantasise about the performing abilities of Nell Gwyn! Especially in her ‘breeches’ roles, I suppose. We know what else she was good at, or we have an idea—”

“Yes, Enid,” said Miss Fettes, with a grin, “it’s titillating to imagine her prowess in bed, or her favourite position, eh, Daniel? – and what Charles asked her to do. Did she lick his ballocks, for instance, or did he give tongue to her clitoris? Ah, the delightful details lost to us!”

Dorothy Cavendish, the historian, had to demur. “You do get them sometimes,” she said, “in so-called private memoirs, Clarissa, from ladies in waiting, diplomats, et cetera. Correspondence also, and official dispatches. I admit they’re a bit sparse, and one has to wait till they’re published, like Casanova’s reminiscences, or Pepys. But I’m sure there’s a lot still in manuscript, in family archives and musty attics, in a neglected library in an old Irish castle, not to mention hidden away discreetly in the vaults of the British Museum.”

“As for musty attics, Dot,” said Clarissa, “I’m sometimes bothered by the thought of some extraordinary manuscripts literally mouldering away because the degenerate scions of some great families have no interest in their forbears, or are just ignorant, I mean don’t know any better. I really think that there are some families who ought to be put down because they’re sick. Less than mindful of their heritage, and just unintelligent, as if their inbreeding has finally run its course. Some are just idiotic in the way they carry on, in the way they talk even.”

“My, Miss Fettes,” said Mr Girvan, “that’s quite subversive. Still, you’re quite right of course. There’s lots of stories about stupid aristocrats. Wodehouse does a good job of sending them up, but there’s true anecdotes too. Look at that fellow who got a bookbinder to refurbish his pile of old books he stumbled over in the library – he never went there of course, maybe couldn’t read too well – because someone had offered to buy them. And when the bookseller came by, or maybe it was a librarian from a university, he exclaimed that they looked very new and smart. ‘Well,’ said his lordship, ‘they’ve been cleaned, of course.’ ‘And what were they like?’ asked the bookseller. ‘Why,’ said his lordship, ‘nasty old covers, what looked like wolfskin and such.’ And the other fellow said ‘My lord, I’ll tell you, had you this Caxton in the original binding from fourteen hundred and something, I’d have given you whatever you asked. As it is, these books are near worthless, in comparison, because you’ve spoiled them entirely.’ That’s the sort of stupidity I mean. The reverse is true too, of course. Look at George Spencer, the second earl, who had the good sense to hire Thomas Dibdin as his bibliographer, and had the finest private library in Europe! But he was an exception I suppose. Along with Crawford and Balcarres, that is. One shouldn’t generalise too much. So anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised about all sorts of treasures lying neglected in our so-called noble houses. Look at the Percy Manuscript, for heaven’s sake, that Gregory mentioned a while back. D’you know about that? Bishop Percy came across the manuscript, in the house of Sir Humphrey Pitt of Shiffnal, in Shropshire, who didn’t care about its obvious antiquity. Pages were being torn out by his housemaids to start fires. Start fires! Who knows what else the old fool had allowed to be destroyed for ever? But then Percy had the manuscript bound, and he allowed the bookbinder to damage the priceless thing further by trimming the edges of the sheets, and so losing the first or last lines on many pages. Actually Percy himself didn’t treat his treasure very well, because he scribbled comments all over it and tore out more pages. Oh, it’s a wonder we have so much, it really is.”

“Just as I was saying before, Girvan,” said Sir Hubert Melville, “the way that manuscript was treated is typical, even for the scholars. Look, it was edited by a cabal of prurient prigs, and interesting songs withheld from the shockable eyes of the English public. Only Furnivall, God bless his integrity, was scholar enough to print them. In a separate volume, no less, like a ghetto or lazar house. And look at whatsisname, Ebsworth, the reverend, of course, who edited in a terribly scholarly way those seventeenth-eighteenth-century songbooks, and had the gall to bowdlerise them, while taking prurient pains to point out the embarrassing nature of the sources, and insisting on the necessity of being scholarly. A hypocrite of the first degree.”

“Actually, though, Sir Hubert,” put in Mr Whiston, “you must admit he at least pointed out, in whatever timid a fashion he could at the time, that these colourful songs existed, and left clues so that you could recover them. That’s a form of integrity, surely, and you have to give him credit for his fumbling attempts to edit for his time, remember, the careless bawdiness of a bygone age.”

“And it’s the careful recording of that bawdiness that we must praise the memoirists for,” said Dot Cavendish.

Jeremiah Cranston, the political journalist, broke in. “Yes, but again it’s only one person’s word. Personally, I doubt very much if Catherine the Great of Russia really died as a result of being fucked by a horse, but I do wish it was true.”

“What!” exclaimed Miss Fettes, “She was fucking a horse!”

“So they say. Actually she had quite a reputation, so it’s not just one man’s opinion.” He glanced at Mrs Barton, who smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “It’s true though that we should be wary of these revelations. Come to that, why should anyone believe anything that isn’t corroborated somehow? Let’s face it, we tend to believe what we want to believe. Now you, Mayne, would like to believe that Socrates was an active homosexual. Wouldn’t you?”

The young man looked at Cranston and made a wry face. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose I would.”

“But at this distance of time, we can’t be sure it ever went beyond a fond companionship, a philosophical sort of love.”

Isobel Shaw joined in, saying “I think that’s true, Gregory, particularly since we can’t interrogate Socrates, even through his writings, at second hand; and it probably goes for some other famous Uranians as well, like Leonardo da Vinci, for instance.”

“—Whereas we all know about Michelangelo,” said George Whiston. “Look at his sonnets. And his statue of David too, I suppose.”

Gregory Mayne scratched his nose. “I’ll grant you,” he said, “that I’d like to think of those marvellous men as fellow-travellers, shall we say? And I admit putting them all into a grand pantheon of ‘inversion’ (if we can call it that) does make it – I mean the condition – just a tiny bit more respectable than otherwise—”

“—If you’re going to look at the Cleveland Street Coterie!” interjected Valentine Sawyer.

“Or the Vere Street Coterie a hundred years ago!” said Sir Hubert with a grimace.

“The thing to remember about those latter unfortunates,” said Mr Whiston, “is that they were ordinary people. No great names among them, no artists or poets, no aristocrats or wealthy good-for-nothings. Ordinary folk, who happened to choose their own sex. And that was, at the time, the abomination of Leviticus.”

“No, surely not, Whiston,” said Sawyer. “I thought that was just the discovery of a bawdy-house for mollies. They may have been ordinary, I grant you—”

“That’s the point, surely,” said their hostess, “they were ordinary, plain, unspectacular people.”

“In other words, Mr Sawyer,” chimed in David Marshall, “they don’t get into the pantheon because of their plebeian lack of talent, I suppose.”

“There’s talent and talent, as any fool can see,” said the councillor impatiently. “And let’s not even talk about Wilde! I always considered him a clever poseur.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Thorpe, “as old Queensberry said, ‘posing as a sodomite’!” The others laughed, though Gregory Mayne looked upset and drank his wine silently. Matthew caught his eye and gave a small smile, to which the musician reacted with an unexpected blush and a nod.

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“After all,” said George Whiston, tamping down his pipe, “I haven’t met a society that didn’t have some sort of rule about nudity. Even the Greeks (I mean Athenians), who liked to see the naked form, had some qualms, which the Spartans evidently didn’t have. And the Romans –”

“The Romans were as inhibited as we are, I think,” said Mrs Thorpe. “They have these nude statues, but they were acutely conscious of the shame of being naked. I’m thinking of the conclusion of The Golden Ass, where Lucius is transformed back to a man (a naked man) in the midst of the crowd. He says he compresses his thighs and hides his organ with his hands, and this is expected, I mean he is mightily embarrassed.”

“That’s true, Anna,” said Dot Cavendish, “and if I remember correctly the satirists were conscious of it, poking fun at sex all over the place, the point being that proper behaviour, like that of the republic, was modest and within bounds.”

“Exactly,” said Quentin Small. “They spoke of ‘the custom of their forefathers’, didn’t they, the mos majorum? Which they seemed to assume was sternly upright. If you’ll pardon the insinuation.”

“But remember, Dot,” said Lydia, “that one can put down a lot on paper, a lot of moralistics I mean, and yet be as privately uninhibited as the next man. Or woman. It’s the sort of reverse of Martial’s claim about a bawdy page and a pure life, you know?”

“Ah”, said the Irreverend Drayton, “Lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba.”

“Precisely, Somerset,” said Lydia. “I’m thinking of Mark Twain, for instance.”

“Yes, what about him?”

“If you look at his writings,” said Lydia, “he brings in (every so often) some reference to nudity, or something equally risqué. For instance, his Connecticut Yankee is stripped ‘naked as a pair of tongs’ before all the court at Camelot. And Twain particularises the bawdy talk of the assembly. He’s taken out and tied to the stake and only gets clothes back when he causes the eclipse.”

“And in the meantime he’s naked and presumably erect before several thousand people in the vast courtyard, tied with his back to the stake so that his penis can jut forth,” said Mrs Thorpe with relish. “As I remember, though, Twain doesn’t make too big a thing of it. Probably leaving it to the lewd imagination of his readers, gentlemen and ladies alike.”

“All right,” said the Reverend Drayton, “and in those days – when was it? The Victorian Age in full flower, so it was titillating I suppose.”

“And don’t forget,” said Chester Baines with a rueful smile on his fleshy lips, “the American horror of undraped legs!”

“That reminds me,” said Enid Waterson, “he’s got a passage in one of his travel books about an unfinished story—”

“Exactly,” said Lydia. “There’s the modest young man facing these women, one of whom he’s sweet on, and we know he’s naked under his lap robe.”

“What?” said Michael, “I mean, what’s the situation?”

“Oh, sorry,” said Baines. “He’s in this little trap, and he managed to lose his trousers, he’s naked under the lap robe. So there’s talk about this and that, and things turn out so that they need the lap robe.”

“Ha! I see what’s coming,” chuckled Daniel.

“Yes, so when his girl Mary reaches out to take it –”

“Aha! I remember that, Lydia,” said Theodore Merton. “And the problem is, how to finish the story? Obviously Twain has his tongue in his cheek when he talks stoutly about there being no doubt about any embarrassing dénouement. We know better.”

“But I’m not sure, Doctor,” said Michael, “how that could end. In real life at least, I’m afraid she takes the lap robe and reveals his nudity; but then—”

“Then what?” joined in Daniel. “It’s interesting to speculate. I suppose she gives it back and they turn their backs while he gets decent, or something. I admit though that the thought of such is a bit stirring, shall we say?” He smirked and patted his crotch.

“I think I have an answer,” said Michael. “Suppose he (surreptitiously) twitches the rein to make the horse move, then gallop away for a bit. He stops round a corner, puts on his trousers, and comes back to apologise. How’s that?”

“Ingenious, maybe, and actually pretty workable,” said Daniel, “but it’s awfully tame….”

“My point,” said Lydia, “is that Twain was very ready to bring out such things – for which he can be congratulated, a rebel, a true iconoclast! But! I can’t reconcile that attitude with his refusal to endorse the visit of Gorky and his woman to New York. Because they weren’t respectably married. You could expect William Dean Howells, and Teddy Roosevelt of course, to be priggish about it, but Twain was a man of the world who valued liberty, and indeed said some very nice things at the start about the cause that brought Gorky to the States. He withdrew his support, and I can’t forgive him that. Hypocrisy again, you see, and I’ve never understood it.”

“I remember that,” said George Whiston, “and I deplored it myself. Mind you, we can be proud of our H G Wells, who stood up for him.”

“But surely,” said Norma Parkinson, “he was merely being pragmatic. I thought he wrote something about the inevitable result of going against prevailing custom. American morality – however hypocritical – was outraged, and so wouldn’t want to donate cash to such a person. Yes, Twain was a realist, and understood America well.”

“Yes,” replied her hostess, “but my point is he could have stood up for Gorky, and he didn’t.”

Whiston looked at Mrs Barton, who seemed to be forming a comment, and said “Gorky, as I remember, made some charitable comment about Mark Twain being too old. He was near the end of his life, after all….”

“Wait a bit,” said Cecily Stevens. “What about his surreptitious stuff? He wrote that thing about Queen Elizabeth.”

“Yes, Cecily,” said Jeremiah Cranston, “it’s called … um, ‘Fireside Conversation in 1601’ or something similar. I expect you have it in your library next door, Lydia.”

“I believe so, Jeremiah, and I think it’s an autographed copy, too.”

“What’s it about?” asked Michael, and they proceeded to inform his boyish ignorance.

“Well,” said Cranston, “it’s a report, by a servant, of talk among Elizabeth and a few courtiers. Someone farts loudly with a foul smell and they wonder who did it. It turns out it was Raleigh, who obliges them with a second performance. They fall to discussing bawdy things, using very plain language. ‘Shit’, I remember. ‘Cunt’ also.”

“And yet as I remember,” said Cecily Stevens, “he doesn’t use ‘fuck’. I’ve always wondered why.”

“He tried to use as many obscenities as he could, I think” said Peg Ainsworth, “but maybe he forgot. Still, you know, that word is very elusive. Way back then, anyway. You’d expect it in old Dan Geoffrey, wouldn’t you, but it’s not there. It’s as if it had been invented about 1500.”

“Curious, that,” said the historian. “Yet other words occur, synonyms, like ‘swyve’, for instance. I’ve always liked the sound of that.”

“Does Twain use it?”

“I confess I can’t remember,” said Cranston. “As for that story, though, you can say perhaps that it’s a satire poking fun (or scorn) at the high and mighty. Rather as he does in fact with King Arthur, and The Prince and the Pauper, which is full of historical social criticism. Elizabeth and her bawdy courtiers, he brings them down to our level. See, they swear, are as dirty-minded as the rest of us mere mortals.”

“I’ve just remembered,” said Dr Merton, “that he has another piece, it was a lecture he gave to the Stomach Club in Paris in the spring of ’79. It hasn’t ever been published, to my knowledge. I have a typewritten copy I got from a friend, a member of that jolly crowd. It’s all about masturbation.”

“Oh!” said David, “about techniques, perhaps? Or maybe a recommendation to use it to calm the spirits?”

“No, David,” said Merton, laughing, “he finally says one shouldn’t do it too often.”

“Well, that’s only sensible,” said Mr Drayton, cracking a walnut. “Too much of a good thing tends to enervate, on the one hand, and demean, on the other.”

“ So,” said Daniel mischievously, “you recommend using two hands?!”

The other laughed. “I mean if you get too used to it (or anything else) it lessens the meaning of it, becomes commonplace.”

“Something like Aristotle, then, in the Nicomachaean Ethics, moderation in all things,” injected Dorothy Cavendish.

“Or as Plautus has it,” the clergyman continued, capping her quotation, “Modus omnibus in rebus. Anyhow, I know it’s a pipe dream, but every emission, every orgasm, should be special, if not unique.”

“A pipe dream indeed, Somerset,” said Lydia. “But worth striving for, perhaps. Anyhow, what about another song?”

As the other half of the table bawled out an intoxicated version of The Anacreontic Song, Diana announced that she needed to go to the bathroom, and Michael, who was sitting next to her, offered to take her, she being a bit unsteady. On the way she began to take off her clothes, and she was nearly naked by the time they were at the baize door. Thomas and David joined in the fun and begin picking up her clothes, bringing Matthew in as a clothes horse to carry them in their wake.

By the time he entered the other room and put the clothes on a chair, the others were in the bathroom, and encouraging the intoxicated naked girl to urinate. His eyes grew wide and he stifled an exclamation as he watched Diana sit gingerly on the lavatory, then sway and nearly fall off.

“Help her, you lot!” cried Marshall, and Matthew took hold of her arm to haul her back. She giggled and looked up at him and said “Oh, I like you! What’s … what’s your … name?”

He blushed as he looked at her and held her naked body on the lavatory seat, his arm round her shoulders. “M-Matthew, miss,” he said.

“That’s nice. I’m Diana.” The others were looking at the pair with amusement. Then the girl said in a blurry sort of voice “Ooh, now I want to pee. Will you help me pee, Matthew?”

He didn’t know what to do and finally said “Yes, Diana, I will,” at which the other three laughed hugely. He held her on the seat and she looked up at him with a daft sort of smile and let go a noisy stream of urine into the pan.

When she’d finished she said “Oh, I have to wipe myself dry, don’t I? Matthew, help me.” With a deepening of his blush he took some tissue paper and gently dabbed at her vulva. The others were enjoying this immensely, and broke into more laughter when Diana threw her arms round Matthew’s neck and said “I like you, you’re naked. I like your cock. Do you like my cunt?”

He swallowed and stammered, but she didn’t give him time to answer, standing up and trying to walk to the door. He supported her still and was getting another erection from the contact of their two naked bodies, for he walked close behind her with his arms round her, and his penis was pressing against her backside. They managed to get into the middle of the other room, when she stopped and slipped out of his arms onto the carpet. The other boys surrounded her and squatted down, David putting out his hand to tickle her feet. The others joined in and soon she was writhing on the floor, shrieking with laughter. David took her arms and laid them out, then nodded to Thomas, who seized her feet and spread-eagled her. She looked up at Matthew’s erection and cried “Ooh! Matthew! Your cock! It’s ... huge!” He looked at her in amazement. Marshall looked at him and said snidely “Of course it isn’t, you’re pretty small. But she sees it differently with a skinful of cannabis sativa.”

Michael by now was at her side, smoothing his hands over her sweating body. Then with a mutter of “ Fuck! Why not?!” he threw off his own clothes and put his arms round her. Matthew made a movement to stop him, seeing that he was about to rape a girl who didn’t know what she was doing, but Marshall gave him a warning glance, and instead egged on the young boy to his conquest. Michael stroked her body up and down and tickled her tits till the nipples were pleasingly erect, and then applied himself to her vulva. He soon had her shivering close to orgasm, and with a little yell of pride threw himself on her and thrust his erect member into her ready cunt. She had to be a virgin, for she squealed in discomfort when he entered her, and Matthew was expecting to see her bleed like Chloe would have, but there was no evidence of that. She quieted down and began to move herself in response to the boy’s thrusts. The joust (as he thought of it) seemed to last a long time, the two of them grunting and sweating, and the others encouraging them with bawdy comments, till Michael came with another cry of triumph and collapsed on her breast with closed eyes. Diana still moved her pelvis underneath him for a minute, then seemed to come herself, with a long protracted sigh. The other boys applauded with shouts of “Well done!” and “Bravo!”, while Matthew, with his own erection, wanted to hit them.

They hauled up Michael and dressed him and escorted him away, leaving Matthew to deal with the girl. He put his arms round her to haul her up and she opened her eyes to stare at him with an eager smile. “Ooh, Matthew! You fucked me!”

He stared at her in horror. “No, no,” he babbled, “it was –”

She hugged him to her and seized his erection. “Yes! This is it!” He didn’t know what to do, and stood helplessly in her arms as she fondled his penis. He couldn’t help himself from getting to an orgasm, and in a way wanted to have her bring him there. She was only sixteen, a shapely girl with short brown hair and hazel eyes, nipples still erect, and exciting him in a way the other girls had never managed. A thought of Catherine came into his head, but he thrust it aside and accepted Diana’s hands on his penis, moving in his own rhythm and finally coming in a great rush. She looked at her handiwork proudly, and then allowed him to dress her and lead her back to the fray, where the rest of the company didn’t seem to have noticed a thing. Marshall and King were filling Michael’s glass and toasting him, as if he’d passed a test, and maybe he had, and was fit to join the ranks of the young bloods. Mrs Grainger, of course, eyed all this with a sardonic gaze and looked piercingly at Matthew’s flushed face and sweating brow as if suspicious of his involvement. She did however seem to have forgotten about his faux pas, which he put down to the cannabis she had smoked.

The company got back to the idea of nudity. “Quentin spoke of The Boy and the Mantle, in the Child ballads,” said Margaret Ainsworth, “and that features nudity too. The woman tries the magic cloak, or dress, on, and suddenly she’s bare-arsed, before all the company. Am I right?”

“That’s true, Peg,” said Lady Burrows, “and the lords and ladies roar with laughter, she blushes mightily and retires in confusion. That’s the same sort of thing as we see in Mark Twain, as Lydia was saying, and evidently the shame of nakedness is a given in most societies. At least in our west, and I suspect in Asia too, Africa – well they don’t wear much at any time. What does Kipling say about Gunga Din? That’s India, of course, but the same applies.”

“Ah yes,” said George Whiston.

“The uniform ’e wore

Was nothin’ much before,

An’ rather less than ’arf o’ that be’ind,

For a twisty piece o’ rag

An’ a goatskin water-bag

Was all the field-equipment ’e could find.”

“So,” said Chester Baines, “we’re actually in tune with the rest of humanity? We hide our naked parts, the bits that Swift told the intelligent horse that ‘Nature bids us hide’, or words to that effect. And the Houynhhm couldn’t understand him at all. Swift of course is pointing to the foolishness of such modesty. But it is practically universal.”

“So there’s nothing strange or nationally peculiar, shall we say, about bathing naked?” asked Margaret Ainsworth. “And being secretive about it? Insisting, that is, on doing it alone. Swimming is something else, I know men usually swim naked, don’t they?”

“Yes, Peg,” said her cousin with a grin, “you should see us at school, two dozen fine naked boys in the pool at the same time!”

“All right, Daniel,” she laughed, “but taking a bath is different. It’s a solitary pleasure, surely!”

“Ah yes,” said George Whiston, “it’s something we prefer to do alone. But then one may think of the Odyssey. There are several occasions there where men are bathed by women. Actually men are always bathed by women. I’ve sometimes wondered about that. It’ll be servants of course, mostly, and perhaps that removes it from an embarrassing level, since they are of course a breed apart.” He looked round, catching the eye of Matthew. “I’m speaking as a modern here, of course, a Tory!” He glanced down the table. “You all know how servants are invisible; well, their hands are too maybe. Or should I say intangible, immaterial. Back then though, it was probably somewhat different. Anyhow, there’s his old nurse Eurycleia, bathing the disguised Odysseus, who sees above his knee the old scar, and she gets excited and spills water when she recognises her old master.”

“Yes,” said Thomas King, “and again he’s given a bath by Alcinous, isn’t he? It’s part of the ritual welcome of a guest in ancient times. So then Telemachus is bathed by Polycaste, Nestor’s youngest daughter, and rubbed with oil. I must say I’ve always found these scenes somewhat stimulating. Is it just my modern sensibility? I say to myself, surely the man is aroused by such treatment, I know I would be!”

The others laughed. “Consider Nausicaa,” said Clarissa Fettes, “she’s playing with her maidens, naked, evidently, when this fellow appears. Notice he’s shielding his own nakedness with a branch. Modesty, in other words, demands it. The girl faces him bravely and hears his story and invites him, in the presumably customary fashion, to bathe, helped by her girls, Yet he—”

“Aha!” said Whiston. “I recall this – he refuses the kind invitation. Book Six, if I remember rightly. How does it go?”

Matthew found himself listening to the conversation with interest, for he was daily in the position of Telemachus and those other Greeks. He was impressed with the classical knowledge displayed by the company, especially when Dr Merton began quoting something in Greek, which most seemed to follow. Whiston saw him listening, and gave him a précis of the passage. “Young man,” he said, “this is in the sixth book of the Odyssey; Homer is describing a scene where the shipwrecked old warrior (he’s quite long in the tooth by this time) is invited to bathe in the river, helped by the princess’s maids. He’s given a cloak and tunic, and olive oil, but he rejects any help, says he’ll wash off the salt by himself, and rub on the oil by himself. He says, ‘I won’t bathe in front of you, for I’m ashamed to stand naked before these lovely-haired maidens.’ The point, lad, is that this is (as far as I remember) the only place in Homer where the bather is shy. All the others accept the bath and the oil as being quite natural, and they don’t seem to object at all to being bathed by girls and rubbed all over with oil, which Thomas here can’t quite understand.” He looked closely at Matthew. “You seem personally interested….”

“Aha, George, that’s because he is,” said Lydia. “Matthew here has been having a bath every night helped by two of my girls – the servants here, the Academy girls.”

Matthew was blushing by now, and looked at the floor. The guests broke into laughter, and Gilbert Hunt cried “Oho! Then you can tell us what it’s like! I take it you show your modern sensibility, and react as any naked boy would, hmm? Tell us!” Matthew swallowed and looked round, and didn’t know what to say or do. Mrs G rescued him, smiling cruelly as she told the assembly about his recently abandoned nightly ritual, and how the girls had reacted.

“Especially the girls at the Academy,” she said. “We even made giving the bath a prize for good marks, and believe me, performance improved mightily.”

Mrs Thorpe laughed and said “And how old are these privileged maidens?”

“Oh,” said Lydia, “They vary – thirteen, sixteen, it varies.”

“And they? What do they think?”

“You’d better ask Matthew,” she replied, “he’ll know better than I. I know the girls are appreciative though, and have said grateful things, as well as comments on his endowments. You’ve all seen him erect, you’ve seen him spend – well, imagine seeing this for the first time maybe, running your soapy hands over his backside, his testicles – it’s been exciting for them.”

“Wait a minute, Lydia,” said the Reverend Drayton. “The girls bath him, but they take it as far as creating an erection, an ejaculation? Well, that’s not in Homer! Though it should be maybe,” he added with a smirk. “Wait though, surely some of these girls here have had the pleasure? Can we ask them their opinions?”

The idea of asking a servant’s opinion on anything seemed to stupefy the other guests, and the suggestion was rapidly ignored and forgotten. “However,” said Robert Tarrant, “getting back to Odysseus and company, I think we’re only told half the story. I’m not suggesting that young Telemachus lets himself be oiled all over till he gets his own erection and Polycaste actually frigs him off. But in real life (as opposed, that is, to elegant epic songs in respectable hexameters) that must surely have happened many a time. It’s interesting (and piquant) to think about.”

“And arousing,” added Daniel. “Hmm. I wonder if Homer’s ever been used as a stimulus to masturbation?”

James Girvan laughed and said “Why not? You can use everything else. Imagine then, reciting those verses as you disrobe, and put on your own oil, perhaps, then—! Oh yes, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

Matthew drew back into obscurity and lurked in a corner till he was summoned to provide a brandy for Thomas King, who looked at him humorously, then down at his crotch, and murmured “Well, Matthew, maybe that’ll inspire you next time, eh?” He laughed rudely and turned away. Matthew went back to his corner and sighed, then looked over at Catherine, who was gazing at him sympathetically. He gave her a small smile, and shrugged. Would the dreadful evening ever be over?

Enid Waterson rescued the conversation by asking about the Nausicaa chapter in the novel Ulysses. “It’s rather germane to what you’re saying, Clarissa, for the girl who represents Nausicaa, Gertie MacDowell, shows herself to Leopold Bloom, albeit just her underclothes, isn’t it, her legs?”

“Yes, I think so,” said Lydia. “I can’t rightly remember.”

“You’ve got that book?” asked Michael excitedly, Here?”

“Somewhere,” said Lydia. “I got it in Paris from Sylvia Beach a couple of years ago. D’you want to read it? It’s a remarkable thing. Quite adventurous. I think I inserted a schema, you can call it, of the layout of the novel, that derives from Joyce himself, that he gave to Carlo Linati, the Italian writer, for some of the parallels aren’t too obvious. Miss Waterson is referring to the bit in the second half of the book named (secretly!) ‘Nausikaa’. Mind you, you’ve got to know more than Homer to get the whole thing. Irish history, for one thing. The Catholic element. While Bloom is eyeing Gertie on the shore, at Sandymount Strand, there’s a mass being said nearby. Someone suggested Gertie was a stand-in for the Virgin Mary. A bit far-fetched, no? But then Joyce is far-fetched.”

“No, Lydia, I must disagree,” said George Whiston, waving his pipe. “Ulysses is quite reasonable, quite understandable, if one has the patience. I enjoyed it myself when it was serialised, and the more I look at it the more I see in it. Some critic or other found all of Ireland in it, and that’s true to a great extent, but you don’t need to fathom Brian Boru and company to enjoy it. Be swept away by the sheer impudence of the thing – the satire and the portrayal of the everyday, if not the banal, in such terms as to remind you of one of the greatest epics ever written, parodying the entire range of English literature and applicable to the human story too – I mean in the universal sense. Ulysses is caviar to the general, but it’s still a remarkable achievement, and I’m hanged if I can see how Joyce can top it.”

“I don’t know about caviar,” said Tarrant, “I do know that the insufferable egoist doesn’t want people to understand his allusions, he wants the professors to argue and keep his name alive. He told Jacques Benoist-Méchin that, and he told me.”

“Actually,” said Isobel Shaw diffidently, “I read something in Ford Madox Ford’s Transatlantic Review last year, extracts from what he calls ‘Work in Progress’, which is alarmingly different, or should I say more different, than Ulysses.”

“For God’s sake,” groaned Sir Hubert, “why doesn’t he stick to writing limpid poetry like other Irishmen?”

“Don’t let’s get on to Wilde again, if you don’t mind!” snapped Valentine Sawyer. “Have you seen his Sphinx? Pretension personified.”

“Can we focus on Gertie, people?” asked Enid plaintively. “Look here, George, Lydia, that episode is nothing like – or should I say a mere shadow of the Homer bit. Odysseus is naked hiding behind a branch. Nausicaa and her girls have thrown off their clothes, or some of them, and the pair are looking at each other. Gertie deliberately shows off her legs – bare, maybe? But she still has underwear, I’m sure! Unless, when I think of it, her drawers are those naughty ones with no crotch to them! Bloom on the other hand is so stimulated by the sight – remember this is in 1904! Oh, the thrill of it! – so stimulated that he masturbates in his trousers. So the name of the section is rather misleading, surely. Is it really what Joyce had in mind?”

“Not so!” said Cranston loudly. “It’s a criticism of Homer. It sends you back to Homer, where you can look at Nausicaa with new eyes. And from our point of view, we can look at Odysseus and think of Bloom masturbating, and it gives … a new perspective on Homer.”

“We were speaking of bathing,” said Mrs Thorpe. “Not everyone bothers about bathing or even washing! But those things are universals in all societies I think, in other words we think nothing of them. But there are after all parts of life that everyone takes for granted, which are mostly ignored – forgotten? – when describing life in books. For instance, urination and defecation. The only authors I can think of who deal honestly with that side of life – the dirty side so to speak – are Rabelais and Dean Swift.”

David Marshall looked up, saying “I believe you’re thinking of the part where Gargantua pisses a whole flood, isn’t it, and maybe the bit where he’s telling his father how he cleans his arse….”

“And maybe,” added William Barlow, “when Gulliver has to shit a mountainous pile in Lilliput.”

“Yes, that’s the sort of thing. I know that speaking of such things is held (has always been held) to be indelicate, but all the same! When a man and a woman are not separated for hours, surely one of them needs a pee? This renders the scene unreal at a stroke. The willing suspension of disbelief is ruined. For me, anyway. I know what you’ll say, one can’t expect it in proper novels like Austen and Eliot, but still….”

“Actually, Anna,” said Girvan, “Coleridge was on about the use of everyday normality as a support for the acceptance of romantic or supernatural events. That’s not quite the same. And besides, Rabelais and Swift are both satirists, you’ve got to look a bit further into what they’re doing. Swift in particular; look at those poems about Celia.”

“What about Celia?” asked Millicent Carstairs the flautist. “Isn’t that ‘Drink to me only with thine eyes’?”

“Oh heavens, no,” said Girvan, chuckling. “That’s rare Ben Jonson. No, this is a poem, two poems actually, about a fictitious girl called Celia, and Strephon goes to her room for a look around. He’s soon disgusted by the soiled linen and all, and ultimately opens her close-stool to find her excrement. He exclaims ‘Celia, Celia, Celia shits!’ and is put off from all womankind. Then this other poem where a friend shows himself in dreadful disarray and on being asked the reason, swears his friend to secrecy and tells him what sent him distracted: he’s found that ‘Celia shits.’”

“What!” exclaimed David Marshall, “Talk about your suspension of disbelief! He didn’t know his girl shat? Now, that is incredible.”

“Hold your peace, silly,” said Thomas, “it’s a joke! It’s satire! Swift is poking fun at the men who put their women on impossible pedestals.”

“And besides,” added Girvan, “he has a comment in that first poem about looking realistically at things and actually being pleased to think of beauty arising from dung.”

“Hmm. Perhaps,” said Barlow. “Still, it is true that natural needs, natural actions, like pissing and shitting, are by convention omitted from consideration, let alone description, in novels on what is meant to be, what purports to be, ordinary life, ‘real’ life. But since we all do it, it’s taken for granted. And it’s also assumed that we’ll do it, and prefer to do it, on our own. Adults do, anyway. It’s rather different with youngsters. I suppose it’s only when we reach the age of reason, about ten, maybe? that we succumb to the expectations of society and withdraw, like respectable people in an age of refinement.”

“Yes,” said Whiston, “one generally goes apart to relieve oneself. Leopold Bloom, the Irish Everyman, goes to his outhouse for an extended shit. (He joins the ranks of Rabelais and Swift, Mrs Thorpe, more power to him!) Not only we refined creatures, either. Let me see, there’s a tribe, or people, in Siberia, the Yakuts, who have a belief about this. Quite a while ago, when I was in St Petersburg—”

“Before the Revolution then?”

“Oh yes, about twenty years ago. Speaking to some scientists in the Geographical-cum-Ethnological Society. Anyway, the Yakuts (and a few other tribes over there) have the idea that a girl whose urine forms a foam on the ground, instead of just being wet and soaking in, is fruitful, and so a good childbearing mate. So there’s a few stories about the man spying on the girls pissing, to see which one will bear lots of children.”

“I don’t understand why that should be,” said Dr Merton. “There’s not much connection between the bladder and the womb, after all. They share the same channel, shall we say, they’ve got the same delightful orifice, but….”

“Suffice it to show that the sexual segregation is widespread and that embarrassment at being naked and urinating is pretty fundamental.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Sir Graeme, “Yes, by God, it’s at the bottom of humanity!” The company laughed and drank. Catherine heaved a sigh as she was summoned by the boys to pour their wine, and to suffer a hand or two sensually stroking her thigh and buttocks. Her cheeks bore a permanent flush, but she wasn’t flinching so much now. Getting used to being handled! She bit her lip and prayed for an end to this ordeal….

Mrs Barton contributed, “I’ve heard that the American Indians over on the Pacific Coast have a custom – I read it in Hill-Tout’s book I think, it’s the Salish tribe – they spy on the girls bathing naked, and confront one, and pick a bride that way, if they can’t get her another. I mean they have to get married to allay the shame.”

“That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about,” said Whiston. “Notice that the naked girls bathe separately, the difference between the sexes is marked, acknowledged, and evidently shared nudity is very unusual. Hang it all, look at Genesis!”

“Ah,” said Chester Baines, “but there’s that curious bit in the Noah story where the old fellow is drunk in his tent and the sons see his nakedness, and Ham, I think, doesn’t respect it and is therefore cursed? How does it go? Somerset, can you correct me here?”

“Ah,” said the reverend, “It’s in Genesis 9, verses … let me think … ah, 20 and following. Something like this – ‘Noah planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine, and was drunken, and was uncovered within his tent. And … Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father—’” “Oho!” exclaimed Baines. The clergyman continued, “‘And he told his two brethren without. Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, so they saw not their father's nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done unto him, and he said: Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be their servant. God enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be their servant.’ That’s pretty much how that goes. Verses 20 to 27.”

“Well done, Somerset. Now then,” said Baines, “how do we interpret this? There’s something mysterious going on there. Apart from the question of Noah knowing what’s going on when he’s in a drunken stupor, Ham wasn’t the youngest son. Why does Noah curse the son, Canaan, and not the father? And what the hell was going on in that tent?”

“The point in this discussion is that nakedness was shameful,” said Whiston. “But you’re right, Mr Baines, there has to be something else there, unsaid, perhaps understood by the original writer, now too distant for retrieval. So speculate away. I believe the Midrash commentators explained it as an explanation of why the Canaanites were enslaved and driven out by the Israelites, an excuse for their treatment. Still, some I think have suggested some hanky-panky, some gross immorality, though what it could be I know not. Noah’s vindictive curse sounds very defensive to me – someone caught being naughty, and lashing out. Hmm?”

“Well,” said Drayton, “you could be right, George. The writers of Genesis could be quite cryptic, reticent, and you have to read within the lines so to speak. That’s the thinking behind the Kabbalah. Look at the mysterious crime of Reuben, in Genesis 35 or so. He lies with Bilha, his father Israel's concubine, and Israel hears about it. This was adultery, evidently, and for doing this, defiling his father’s bed, he loses his rights as the firstborn. But it’s a bit vague. Anyway, if you want nudity, look at the Book of Esther. There we have another glossed over situation. The first wife of Ahasuerus was Vashti, and she was summoned by her lord and master to come before his guests, to show off her beauty – and hence of course to glorify the king himself. She refused, and the irate king, on the advice of his ministers, divorced her and took a new queen – Esther. Well, the rabbinical commentaries suggest that there was more to it than that, that in fact she was commanded to show herself naked to the assembly (all men of course), and somehow that seems to me to be a reasonable reason for disobedience; the point is that she would be shamed to be seen by the male multitude naked.”

“Listen,” said Tarrant, “can we instance that curious bit in the Gospels where a certain young man, with a linen cloth cast about his naked body, is seized by the soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he leaves the cloth and flees from them naked. I’ve been told it’s Mark, but why is he there naked?”

“Yes, Mr T, that’s Mark Fourteen, verses 50 to 52. That story is unique to Mark, so it’s easy to imagine it’s the author himself. I’m not sure there’s a consensus on why he’s there. Suffice to say that the passage again stresses the unwanted nakedness of the poor boy. And actually it reminds me of that passage in Genesis 39 where Joseph is propositioned, as they say, by Potiphar’s wife – it’s very close: ‘And she caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with me: and he left his garment in her hand, and fled, and got him out.’ It strikes me that the sexual element of the early story might be carried over, as a reminiscence I mean, into the new.”

“Hmmph,” muttered Merton, “and are you going to go back to Eden then, where the eyes of the first pair are opened by the serpent, the bearer of knowledge, to the fact of their nakedness? They find out they’re naked, and therefore ‘they’re ashamed.’ From the very start, we’re told, the bare body is shameful, the parts that Nature teaches us to hide should be hidden. And curiously it’s only after this that we hear about children. So the hullabaloo about nudity ushers in the first sexuality, thus linking the two inextricably. Since sexual activity is bonded to nudity, each is decried, each is hidden away. That’s how it works.”

“Well argued, Theo,” said Girvan, “and speciously plausible. And so the legacy of shame is passed on through the ages. Wherever you look, and certainly in the west. Look at – oh, Boccaccio, for instance, with the tale of patient Griselda.”

“Oho!” exclaimed Enid Waterson, “I think I know what you’re on about. It’s when the lord, or marquis, takes her to be his wife.”

“Yes,” said Girvan. “You remember, don’t you,” he said, looking up and down the table, “how he takes her from her home without a dowry, absolutely naked, and in so doing displays her to the entire multitude waiting in the courtyard. And when he sends her away, she accepts she’ll go naked as she came, but asks humbly that the womb that bore his children might be covered by a smock. Now then; this shameful episode points up the way people regarded nudity in the Middle Ages. Boccaccio gets his story from somewhere, Petrarch follows him, and Chaucer follows Petrarch. They all contain that episode, or pair of episodes. I can’t remember how much is made of it, but certainly her piteous request to have some cover when she leaves the palace brings out the fact that being seen naked was shameful.”

“What did Skeat do with it when he was editing Chaucer?” asked Sir Hubert querulously. “I’ll wager he tried to soften it somehow. Does anyone remember?”

Cecily Stevens said a little dubiously, “As I recall, he missed out references to maidenheads and wombs, as you might expect. But he did keep in the change of clothing, and her wish for a smock. Anyway, Mr Girvan, the fact is there, that circa 1350 or so it was a bit racy to hear of a young girl – how old would she be, anyway? I don’t think we’re told.”

“Juliet was thirteen, wasn’t she?” asked Daniel. “So Griselda wouldn’t be much older.”

“Remember her children,” said Mrs. Thorpe. “The elder girl has to be at least twelve or so when she’s sent for to be the new bride.”

“That’s it then,” said Daniel. “A nice nubile thirteen, fourteen at most, or even fifteen, like Perdita in The Winter’s Tale, something like our friend Catherine there.” All eyes turned to the girl, who started to cover herself and then dropped her hands to her sides in hopelessness. “Yes,” continued Daniel, “it’s a bit titillating – just think of the lord bringing his girl out of her cottage, and having her stripped absolutely nude like that, and displaying her to the assembly. Which would include the folks from the village, wouldn’t they, men, women, girls and boys, and the entourage, the servants and men-at-arms, the knights and pages, all,” he said licking his lips and staring lustfully at the bare girl, “all looking at that nakedness, admiring the young breasts, the slim form, the trim waist, and the junction of her thighs, that maiden slit, certainly the focus of all their eyes.”

Catherine was blushing deeply again, and Mrs Grainger laughed aloud. “Yes, Daniel, we can all imagine the scene. And like Catherine here, Griselda probably was blushing like the reddest rose to know that all those men and boys were feasting their eyes on her cunny. And,” she turned towards Matthew, eyeing his penis which had erected again, “most of them had hard-ons like that.” It was his turn to blush, but he didn’t dare turn away.

“You may ask, though,” said Cicely Stevens, “why that scene is in there. I know it makes for good psychology, one more cruel turn, to send her home in a shift. But it isn’t really necessary. I mean, we don’t have to have her stripped first, and even if we do, why in public? She’s brought out of the house, and ‘in the presence of all his company’ as the story says, doesn’t it, she is stripped and then dressed. In the meantime she’s absolutely naked, before all the company. She’s asked if she’ll have him, and obey him, and she says yes – we’re told she’s blushing the while. Perhaps because she’s overwhelmed by the honour he does her, but also, surely, for shame at her nudity put on public display. Why do we have that? I’ll tell you, one reason only, for titillation’s sake.”

“That’s probably true, Cecily,” said Enid Waterson, “and it points up the normal shame at nakedness around 1350. And before too, for I don’t think Boccaccio invented the story.”

“Mind you, Enid,” said Alexander Horton, “he may have embellished it. So we can’t be sure. Anyway, there it is, the thought of a modest fourteen-year-old being publicly exhibited totally nude remains to stimulate the imagination.”

“And the brain, that sends the message to the bloodvessels in the penis, to engorge the corpora cavernosa,” sniggered Theodore Merton. “And there she is!” He pointed to Catherine, who looked down at the ground and twitched her hands as if wanting to use them to screen her nudity from the bawdy guests. “See how she’s just itching to cover herself from the lustful looks of the crowd! But she can’t. At least our Catherine can’t. But surely Griselda tried.”

“Oh yes, Theo,” said Lydia, “you see paintings of the scene, it was quite a popular one, and I’m sure she tries to hide, à la Venus de Medici, or the Capitoline Venus. But our poor Catherine here, who I guarantee is a modest virgin, has no recourse. She can’t hide from the salacious stares of the company. At least Griselda’s exposure only lasted a few minutes.”

“But in those minutes,” said George Whiston, “which must surely have seemed an eternity to that other modest virgin, what went through her mind?”

“And what went through the minds of the men and the young pages, eh? Easy to guess,” laughed Sir Hubert.

“And for what it meant to Boccaccio’s generation,” said Whiston thoughtfully, “I’d remind you that Griselda is in an ancient and significant tradition. Think of the sufferings of Job, tested by God for the evident specious reason to win an argument with Satan! Then there’s Abraham, tested by his suspicious Yaweh, ordered to sacrifice his son!”

Valentine Sawyer gestured with his cigarette. “Job is told by his rational wife, ‘Curse God, and die!’ He doesn’t listen to her, of course, and defends the actions of God. – But Abraham, now, has no adviser, he blindly follows the divine command, and is of course praised by God for his loyalty. We on the other hand find it hard to understand such obedience, and hard to forgive God for his inhumanity.”

“But you’ve got it right there, Sawyer,” said Barlow. “God is not human, he has his own programme, shall we say, inscrutable to mere mortals, who must perforce accept his acts and commands faithfully, trusting to his reasons.”

“While poor Griselda,” said Lady Burrows, “must accept her obnoxious husband’s treatment because he is her husband, her lord and master. Good heavens, it’s taken a long time to get to this magnificent twentieth century when we can conceive of a woman having the brains to vote! I suppose it won’t be over long before we have the next step, universal suffrage. I say, Sir Graeme,” she called across the table, “how are the parliamentarians looking at that? And the lords in their ermine, who I’m sure have fought tooth and nail against allowing the gentle gender to have any power at all!” The M.P. winced and said nothing, but twirled his glass round and looked at her rather sourly.

The discussion moved back to theological metaphysics, and Catherine took the opportunity to retire into a corner. She was joined by Matthew, who murmured some words of consolation. She looked sadly at him and said in a low trembling voice, “How long is it going to go on? I can’t take much more of this. Where did Mrs G find all these awful people? They’re all clever and educated and so forth, but they’re arrogant and pretentious, and they have no shame at all. They’re cruel, they’re sadistic, they all take pleasure in humiliating us. They’re catering to the lowest desires of those young folk, they’re turning the house into a … brothel, for God’s sake! Oh Matthew, I’d ask you to hold me to comfort me, but they wouldn’t let you, and … oh, I think you’d probably get another … erection.” She blushed again. “How can I look at you tomorrow? How can you look at me?” She turned away and gave a sob.

“Catherine, please,” said Matthew. “I know it’s hard, but we have to bear it, for just a little longer. It must be … what? Ten o’clock, perhaps, though it seems later. The party can’t last all night, can it? Oh God, no! The other girls can tell us.” He caught the elbow of Norah passing by and asked quietly “How long does this go on for?”

She looked at him without expression and said “Maybe midnight. No more, I’m sure. Another hour or two yet.” With a look that might have been sympathy, she passed on to supply the boys with brandy and replace the cigarettes in a box in the middle of the table. Then Catherine was summoned by Mrs G to attend the other end of the table, where Sir Hubert Melville and William Barlow were deep in a political discussion. As they argued they absent-mindedly rubbed a hand up and down her thighs, and she shivered, but apart from that they paid her no attention, putting their glasses down to be filled and not glancing in her direction. She edged away and was waylaid by Enid Waterson, who seized her and pulled her onto her knee. Catherine was in a panic but there was no-one around to help her against that attack, for attack it was. The young charity woman gripped her with her left hand and with her right began to touch ever so lightly the young breasts, flicking fingers on the nipples and caressing the rounds, all the while muttering sounds of satisfaction. Then she lowered her head and took a nipple in her mouth. Catherine was alarmed at these attentions, and squirmed, but couldn’t escape as Miss Waterson sucked her breasts, and after a minute began to enjoy the strange sensation. Then she felt the hand at her crotch and tried to make some protest, but didn’t want to draw attention to the embarrassing scene. She placed her bottle on the table and shivered in anticipation.

Still holding her captive, Miss Waterson slid off her seat and sank to the floor, pulling Catherine rather awkwardly under the table, then roaming her hands all over the girl’s naked body. She culminated of course at the vulva, and lowered her head again, this time to apply her tongue to the startled girl’s sex. Her tongue fluttered up and down, licking the sensitive clitoris, and Catherine was soon panting and shuddering, taking the older woman’s hair in her hands and caressing her head in a sort of dream. She finally came, shaking from head to foot, and lay there breathing deeply, while the woman stroked her cheek and muttered endearments. After a space Miss Waterson rose and got back to her seat, leaving the seduced girl to shift for herself. She groggily got out from under the table and looked around guiltily, but no-one seemed to have noticed a thing – unless it was Mrs G, who caught her eye and smiled slily.

=====================================================================

Lydia brought the conversation back to the much put-upon Griselda. “Can we agree,” she asked, “that one reason for the wide popularity of the story is that little bit, admittedly only a small piece of the picture, yet vital to the story? The image of a naked young girl,” she eyed Catherine, “displayed to the greedy eyes of a host of men, blushing in her embarrassment. And when I think about it, it’s interesting that that tale, with its capacity for stimulation, is put in the mouth of the Clerk of Oxenford by Chaucer, who describes him, doesn’t he, as being quite maidenly? Am I right?”

“No, Lydia,” corrected Margaret Ainsworth, “I think you’re confusing him with someone else. Oh, wait a bit, I think it’ll be in his prologue, where the host speaks to him, saying … something to the effect of ‘You’re riding along as quiet and coy as a newly married maiden.’ You’re right. Chaucer makes him a withdrawn unworldly young man – he is an Oxford student still – who’s into philosophy. Why he should be given that story is explained maybe by that very emphasis on philosophy. Meaning we should certainly look at it a bit deeper. But I’m wondering about the presumed original, in Boccaccio. Who tells that story?”

Cicely Stevens answered immediately. “It’s Dioneo,” she said, “the fellow who takes on the role of finishing off with a tale of his own, I mean nil to do with the theme of the day. It’s interesting that he picks that tale to finish the entire cycle with. Actually though he takes a rather cynical or derisive view of it, doesn’t he? But notice, Dioneo is the naughty fellow who tells the tale of the nightingale, and also that obscene story about putting the Devil in Hell. So he’s interested in the titillating points (shall we say) about these stories, including this one. And he’s the one who emphasises her nudity, telling us quite deliberately that it’s ‘in the presence of all his company and every other person that was there’ that she’s stripped naked. And while the entire story is an exemplum of fortitude in the face of misfortune, or maybe a lesson in faith, I mean faithfully following the dictates of God, I do admit that what stands out is the bare body of the young bride-to-be.”

“So in that story the focus is the nude girl,” said Chester Baines. “The emphasis is on her nudity. The main interest, indeed, is her nude body. Involving an element, which you cannot hide or rationalise away, of the erotic. In art too.”

“Of course,” said Lady Burrows. “You’ll get this in contemporary art, I mean depiction of latter-day scenes, all right. Even if there’s not much of a contemporary ambience. Look at September Morn, for instance.”

“What’s that?” asked Clarissa Fettes.

“Oh,” said Margaret Ainsworth, “it’s a rather notorious nude piece that got especially famous in the States. Mr Baines, you must know.”

The American grinned widely and said “Yes indeed! I’m not sure how well-known it is here, but back home it made the newspapers and caused a great to-do, with a court case and all, on account of its alleged obscenity. Actually I’m told it was all an advertising ploy, engineered for publicity. It’s a painting by the French artist Paul Chabas, done a dozen years ago or so, maybe fifteen, and didn’t cause any great furore at the time. But when it got to the States! Anyway, what it represents is a young girl on a beach, actually Lake Annecy in Upper Savoy, I’m told, by the water, nude, in profile, with one arm roughly across her chest – but not hiding her breasts – and the other between her legs – but not on her pussy – looking off to the left as if in contemplation of the misty morning, and maybe feeling a little chilly. I like it, myself, and I have a large copy back home. Once it made the papers, and the obscenity case was lost, hundreds of copies were circulated, and you got the image used for other things, like the handle of a corkscrew.”

“My God,” muttered David Marshall, “imagine – putting your hand on the naked nymph whenever you opened a bottle!”

Baines laughed. “A friend of mine gave it a good German epithet, kitsch, meaning cheap, vulgar, popular art, the sort of thing you find in any cheap store. That’s as may be, but I like it. Cheap stuff or not, it gives me a pleasant frisson, you might say. Critics be damned. She’s a bonny young naked lass, and I like her looks!”

“Chabas,” murmured Lady Ethel Burrows, “yes, that’s the name. He has another painting very like it, called ‘La Baigneuse’, ‘The Bather’, only it’s on the left, looking to the viewer’s right. I’m not sure which I prefer. But what I’m saying is, they are out of time and place, they could be anywhere, any century. The main thing about them is their nudity. Actually the same goes for his ‘Seaweed’ picture, ‘L’Algue’, where the female is holding some seaweed fronds and looking back into the right distance. It’s not as appealing, but it’s still solely interesting because of all that skin. Like another of his, called ‘Morning Mist’, which is the same sort of stance as the first one, except her hands are clasped in front of her bosom. I don’t like that one nearly as much. His other nudes, I think, are all fairly datable to the nineteenth century, or the turn maybe. He has a nice one called ‘Blonde Nymph’, I recall, who is plainly very young, an adolescent I’d say. And then the girl in September Morn has rather small, adolescent, breasts.” She looked over at Catherine, who returned her gaze rather hopelessly. “But with those ones I was speaking of, the main thing, the only thing, really, is the nudity.”

Valentine Sawyer waved his cigarette. “Then there’s the subject of nudity in mythological art,” he said. “I mean where the girl (typically it’s a girl of course) is described in the legend as naked, or at least presumed so, in a certain situation, and come upon by a male of some sort, often a young man, sometimes a naked one. In art, such an episode invariably, I believe, features her nudity. I’m thinking here of such tales as that of Andromeda. She’s chained to a rock by the sea, so that the monster can get her. She’s naked of course. Artists seize this opportunity for painting the female form, and there’s umpteen illustrations of the scene. Half of the interest in the story lies in the fact of her nakedness. I think Burne-Jones is the only artist (as I can remember) to paint her twice, in a front view, where Perseus finds her, and a back view, where he’s slaying the monster. And I’m just recalling that Andromeda looks rather like his Galatea, who again is portrayed several times.”

“Where are you going with this?” asked Robert Tarrant a little peevishly.

“Oh,” said Sawyer, “I’m trying to recall the representations of the scene, and it’s always her nude form that’s emphasised. It’s two of his Perseus cycle. The Rock of Doom shows us the girl from the front, nice breasts, nice mons, and The Doom Fulfilled shows her back, a nice little arse on her. Then Gustave Doré has a very attractive Andromeda shrinking from the seabeast –”

“What about Poynter?” asked Lady Ethel. “I do like his nudes, and he’s got a very attractive Andromeda, besides nymphs and sirens. Ooh, they’re tasty!”

“My God,” commented Barlow, “what would Sir Edward say? I remind you, he joined in that controversy in The Times about nude art, and he was complaining about the prurient ignorance of the matrons of England.”

“Well, anyway,” said Sawyer, “he’s another who has a liking for the mythological nude. It’s just that Andromeda is peculiarly apt as an illustration.”

“I think, Sawyer,” interjected Tarrant, “that you’re looking at the thing from the standpoint of your own predilections. I don’t think you like Rubens’s version, it’s too fleshy. Am I right? Your preference is for a slim build, not too well-covered, and of course as naked as possible, no useless wisps of cloth as one gets in, say, in Titian’s version.”

“Hang it all, both of you, stop blethering on like that. Can we agree that we like looking at nude Andromeda, just as we like contemplating nude Griselda? Or the same sort of scene out of Ariosto, where Rogero frees the nude Angelica from the Orc? All right?” Merton looked at them in turn, and they subsided.

“Just as we like looking at nude Catherine!” sniggered Thomas King. “And I’ll bet we all do, man and boy especially, but girl and woman too. After all, I really believe that we’re all interested in the naked body, as long that is as it’s attractive enough, obviously. Anybody’s naked body, male or female. Young or old, even, though I admit it’s the young who attract both young and old. God, think of old Odysseus, think of young Nausicaa! And it’s perfectly possible for a man to admire another man’s body, and a woman to admire another woman. Why not? It doesn’t have to lead to physical passion. Though again it can be argued that each of us carries a sliver of the other gender in our souls, which must (however minimally) affect our appreciation of our own biological sex. Isn’t that in Plato somewhere?”

Tarrant frowned and said “I think you’re thinking of the speech in the Symposium where Aristophanes, probably in jest, talks about humanity being double at the start and separated by Zeus, but keep on yearning for their other half. There’s some other legend as well, though I can’t remember what it is. But I see what you’re saying, and it may be psychologically true, that each has an element of the other sex, varying from a minuscule amount, nearly zero, to an enormous amount, which is where a desire for the same sex, biologically, is born, and while a man is male, anatomically speaking, he may be female, psychologically speaking.”

“Yes!” said Gregory. “That is a pretty good rationale of the whole thing.”

“Exactly,” said Thomas, “and so one may have no embarrassment at admiring the lines of a member of our own sex. Women may admire nude Catherine, or young Diana here, with no shame. And men may admire nude Matthew, or our friend Damian here, purely on an aesthetic basis. We don’t have to want to fuck them, do we, in order to admire them?”

“Steady on there, Mr King,” said Bator, “speak for yourself. I’m firmly convinced that there is always an element of the erotic in contemplation, in admiration, of the nude. It may be unnoticeable, hard to get hold of or identify, but it’s there, oh yes. Subliminal, below the surface. It’s there, right enough. Aristophanes says that ‘human nature was originally one, and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love.’ So we are ever striving to unite with our other, and this influences our attitude to the naked charms of all.” He drew on his cigarette and gazed at Damian, who gazed back at him with a serene yet challenging expression. Matthew looked from one to the other and hoped that the poet didn’t have designs on the boy. Then he told himself that it was none of his business if the interest was mutual. After all, he thought, Eithne and Elizabeth are fine together, and maybe these two could be happy. They look nice and they’re close enough in age maybe to be … compatible.

Sawyer looked at Damian and pursed his lips. “What about you, young man? You haven’t said a word all evening.”

“Oh,” said the boy, “that’s because I’ve been enjoying listening to the conversation.”

“Yes, but don’t you have your own opinions to offer on the topic?”

“Maybe, sir,” said Damian politely, “but that depends on the topic. You’ve ranged quite widely.”

Sawyer grunted in exasperation. “Well, what about … nudity, for example.”

“What about it?” asked the boy with a pert grin.

“Damn it, boy, do you want to see it, or what?”

“Oh yes, please,” he said accommodatingly. “I think that the nude form can be the most gloriously beautiful sight. Of course it can also be so foully hideous it’ll put you off your dinner. The younger the body the better of course.” He looked around to see Tarrant and Sir Hubert nodding their heads and grinned more widely at having captured his audience. “A naked child tends to be delightful, and the artists have scattered putti all over the place. A bit later you have the free innocence of eight up to eleven, maybe, and that’s very easy on the eyes. At twelve, I’d say, your child can be awfully knowing, and mischievous. There’s a joke setting it out, if I may tell one.” The company called out approval, and seemed to be enjoying the boy’s late eloquence.

“It’s about three young boys, aged eight and ten and twelve. They’re going along a street in Paris – somehow we always expect things to happen in Paris, but that’s another topic for you. They pass this window, whose curtains are drawn back, so they can see in. ‘Oh look,’ says the eight year old, ‘there’s a man and woman fighting!’ The sophisticated ten year old says ‘No, no, they’re making love!’ ‘Yes,’ says the twelve year old, ‘and very badly!’”

The others broke into laughter, and even Matthew found himself grinning. Sir Hubert Melville wheezed for a while, slapping the table, and Damian looked at him askance and said “Oh sir, it’s not that funny surely! Anyhow, somehow the naked twelves and teens are suddenly more attractive, aren’t they? And some of that attractiveness arises from the fact that by that time they are sexually equipped, capable of erection and ejaculation, on the boy’s part, and probably menstruating on the girl’s. I know you’ll say,” he added looking at Tarrant, “that one can have intimate relations with another at any age, really, and again it’s probably a personal taste matter. It’s true that a boy’s (or girl’s) bum will serve you at six or sixty; and a girl’s cunt likewise is open, shall we say, at all hours and all ages, which is why there’s a good few whores one sees who are still flogging their wares long past the time they should have retired. Yet it’s at twelve that a child can really reciprocate one’s attention, I’d say, and as one goes on, till fifteen and sixteen, we’re getting to the age of consent in several jurisdictions. Actually in America it’s lower I think. Mr Baines, you’ll know.”

The American tycoon thought a minute and replied “Er, Damian, I think by now they’ve raised it, the marriageable age really, to sixteen or eighteen. That started around the eighties, I think. Before then, you’re right, it was twelve in most places I believe, though in Delaware, I remember, it was only seven!”

“And I think,” said Damian, thanking him with a nod, “that the legislators would only take account of heterosexual relationships. Homosexual ones were certainly punished, or sometimes just ignored. But what I’m saying is that the nude body from this time on carries with it a sexual element because of a potential for sexual activity, so that we do indeed want to fuck them, Mr King. Wouldn’t you admit to a stirring in your loins when you contemplate Burne-Jones’ Andromeda? And will anyone here deny,” he looked around, “that Michelangelo’s David is an attractive boy? So these tales about nudity, and pictures of nudes whether mythological or contemporary, interest us mightily, and always will, I’d say. Oh,” he laughed and looked at the company, “that probably is true, or will be true, of us personally, till we reach old age and can’t be bothered any more. Yet still, I bet you that little sliver will still rear its head sometimes, though we may no longer raise our pegos. There, does that answer you, Mr Sawyer?” The councillor looked a little stupefied and sat back in his chair, not answering. The other guests applauded what they seemed to accept as a good exposition of the whole thing, and turned to other matters.

===================================================================

Dorothy Cavendish was asked about Lady Godiva, and gave them a long lecture on the ins and outs of local history in the eleventh century. “So what we have is a legend, no more, about an act of shame circa 1025 or so. We know that a Lady Godiva died at some advanced age a bit after the Conquest. Roger of Wendover tells the tale in the thirteenth century – he died around 1236. So after this the story is taken up by many people – for the probable reason that it was a titillating anecdote, and if it wasn’t true, it ought to have been. There’s a lot of representations of it of course. I think my favourite is that by John Collier, about thirty years ago. She sits with bowed head, in shame I suppose, astride the horse, and her hair covers nothing.”

“Oh,” said Michael, “she wasn’t covered by long hair?”

“It’s unlikely, Michael,” she replied. “In fact her hair would probably be tied up in a bun, sort of. As for riding astride, the side-saddle didn’t really come in until the fourteenth century. I think it was Anne of Bohemia that did that. She died just before 1400. Oh, it was around, I mean. But if you wanted to control a horse you had to be astride. Anyway, it wasn’t till the sixteenth century that that style became de rigeur for ladies.”

“So,” said Thomas King with something of a leer, “she’s up there astride the horse, her cunny presumably open, in that position! She uses her hands for the reins, and can’t conceal herself—”

“Actually, Thomas,” said Isobel Shaw laughing, “she was surely forbidden to cover up. The whole point of the thing is her exhibition to the people.”

“But didn’t she ask for the townsfolk to stay indoors, and not look?” asked Millicent Carstairs. “And that’s where Peeping Tom comes in—”

Dorothy Cavendish made haste to correct her. “No, that part of the legend is a lot later. It’s been tidied up, in fact. The original story in Roger of Wendover has her riding from end to end of the market, accompanied by two knights. With the people all round, I mean.”

“Before all the people!” exclaimed Michael, his eyes big.

“Exactly,” said the historian, “that’s the very words of Leofric’s order. But Roger is at pains to tell us her long hair was let down, and it covered her like a veil, so all you saw was her pretty legs.”

“Still,” said Gilbert Hunt, “whatever the rights and wrongs of that, the point is that at that time to be seen naked was shameful. And that’s long before Boccaccio. I think we’ll find that’s the case no matter how far back we trace such stories.”

“I say,” said Robert Tarrant, gesturing with his glass, “has anyone read that delicious ‘Imaginary Conversation’ by Landor, between Leofric and Godiva? Where her modesty is stressed, and Leofric mentions the way she’s liable to blush so easily – somewhat like our delightful Catherine there!”

“Yes, Tarrant,” said William Barlow, chuckling. “Landor puts that in quite deliberately, to heighten the reader’s realisation of the horrendous experience her exposure would be. And after all, if she were brazenly unaffected, it’s hardly a torment for her! And at the very end, the brave young lady says to herself how she hopes the market crowd won’t press about her too hard.”

“Young lady, I suppose she would be. Are we to think of her as being in her teens, like these other nubile females we’ve been discussing?”

“She’s old enough to know how to ride a horse, at least,” said Gregory Mayne. “But doesn’t Landor make her Leofric’s young bride?”

“The representations I’ve seen make her young, twenty, perhaps,” said James Girvan, “as in Collier’s fine picture.”

“Ah,” breathed Jeremiah Cranston, “young and naked. Her hair tied up, as you said, Dot, in the custom; no hiding. Or else, if you like, Roger’s right in defending her modesty, with her long hair unbound, but think of her tresses flowing down her bare back and to the sides, perhaps, intermittently showing her bum and her limbs – and in front, her breasts and her cunny most likely uncovered. The crowds in the market-place would surely be able to feast their astonishment on her nakedness. A fine sight! A sight to remember!”

“Yet, Mr Cranston, not recorded,” said Mrs Thorpe, “in any history, till – when was it? 1200 and something? Would that be because the story would embarrass her memory? After all, it is recorded that she (and her husband) gave many gifts to the church.”

“But then the Conquest interrupted a lot, obviously,” said Chester Baines. “The story would be kept alive, however, in folk memory, like much else, to be passed on by tittle-tattle, a delicious erectile story told man to boy for two hundred years. And no doubt embellished in the process, as we all know happens. Then it’s picked up from somewhere by Roger of Wendover and immediately spawns other accounts, till our own day. Why is it remembered? Because of the titillation of course. As to whether it’s true, I won’t argue with you, Miss Cavendish. I like to think so, that’s all. Because,” he leered, “I like to think of that shame-making occasion.”

Lady Burrows, the artist, contributed details about the artistic renderings of the scene. “There’s an interesting one by John Thomas, the sculptor –”

David Marshall hooted with laughter. “John Thomas! You’re joking!”

She frowned and said loudly above the laughter of the rest “That’s his name! It’s in the Maidstone museum! And it’s a good rendition of the horse and rider, she turned side-saddle, her hair and her arms quite inadequate to screen her body. There’s a painting by Maxwell Claxton showing a rather scared-looking young woman with a slight gauzy robe preparing to mount a horse. Another, by Landseer, has a totally nude girl up on the horse, hair cascading down her back just as far as her bum, holding out a hand as if in prayer that all will be well. There’s one by William Holmes Sullivan about fifty years ago, with another total nude, hair down to the bum. The Dutch painter Adam van Noort in the fifteen hundreds has her side-saddle again, all her attributes on show. It’s quite a favourite subject. Of course the reason for its popularity is the basic one of lingering over the nude girl, while the female reaction may well be pride in the resolution of the fair ‘weaker’ sex in the face of masculine domination.” She looked round the table and received applause and smiles even from the men.

Sawyer shrugged and lit another cigarette. “So where does this get us?”: he asked. “We haven’t solved the question of why the human race are touchy (so to speak) about their genitals. I think though that an argument could be made to the effect that since our sexual organs are so important for one primary reason – that is, for copulation and parturition, the continuation of the species – that Nature herself has imparted a sense of delicacy into our minds, to be careful of them, to protect them, to shield them from any possible harm. It’s probably a trait that has been selected from others to aid in our perpetuation.” He looked round at the company. “I think Darwin might agree with me there.”

Mrs Thorpe nodded judiciously and said “Very likely. I think that’s the best explanation we’re going to get. The question is probably unsolvable, though, like so many others to do with homo sapiens. Women, perhaps, more than men! After all, why are many women troubled with their menstruation? Why does the onset, the menarche, occur at different times? Modern women are all different, but I think savages and indigenous tribes have periods at the same time, at least so I’ve heard. And why do they arrive at their menopause two-thirds of their way through life?”

Merton grimaced and said “You’ve put your finger on a few puzzles, but there’s more. And because we’ve so recently come to a state of rational enquiry about sex – Havelock Ellis and so on – we’ve only just got to the point of sober investigation. Before, prudery meant little discussion and debate, leaving the field to vague assertion and ignorant dogma. Such as the question of a female orgasm. Is there such a thing? Surely our pure members of the gentle sex, who probably don’t lower themselves to defecate, don’t enjoy copulation! Of course they do. And easy experimentation (pleasurable, too),” he said with a smirk, “could have solved that long ago. Similarly, there’s these silly theories about masturbation.”

Daniel looked up at the mention of his favourite subject. “What theories, doctor?”

“Theories about the deleterious effects of the practice. Of how it leads to debility, leaves one prone to disease, weakens the immune system, causes some changes in the nervous system, affects the brain—“

“Oh dear,” he said cheekily, “then I’d better stop, should I?”

The physician laughed greatly, and the rest of the table joined in. “In actual fact, Daniel, it has been recommended by some expert or other that it is healthy to produce a little semen regularly, every day. Just a few cubic centimetres. So I’d keep going if I were you. As to why people have said it sends you insane, they point to the poor folk in asylums, who are often observed to masturbate. And the very name they give it, ‘self-abuse’! I really think one should lobby for a happier name.”

“But wait, Merton,” said Jeremiah Cranston, “I thought that your Havelock Ellis had invented one, ‘autoerotism’ or something.”

“Yes, Cranston,” the doctor replied, “meaning a sexual feeling, or arousal, without external stimulus. But somehow that doesn’t go all the way. And it’s too clinical, surely.”

“What about ‘pleasuring oneself’? Isn’t that the usual term? Or is that too long?” Isobel Shaw enquired.

Enid Waterson giggled. “It seems to cover it, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes!” came from Diana, who seemed to have recovered slightly. They all looked at her, and laughed as they noticed her hand below the table, busily working at something.

“By God,” said Barlow, “she’s frigging herself as she sits there! Pleasuring herself indeed!”

“Carry on, child,” encouraged Mrs Grainger, “everything goes when you’re among friends.”

Diana looked around at the rest and grinned hugely as she worked herself into orgasm. She finally panted “Oh! Oh! Oooh!” and leaned back in her chair, to the applause of the other young guests. Catherine squirmed as she watched the whole scene, and caught Matthew’s eye. He shrugged as if to say What can we do? and gave a deep tired sigh.

“I want to hear about that nightingale,” said Michael, “and what about the Devil in Hell?”

“Oh goodness,” said Sawyer, “are we back at that? They’re stories in Boccaccio, quite daring I suppose, metaphors, and they’re quite amusing. I say, Whiston, you can probably tell ’em a bit better than I. Or who?”

“No,” said the raconteur flourishing his briar, “I’ll tell them, if you like.” The company gave murmurs of agreement, and Matthew, who had been curious too, listened with interest. “The nightingale. It’s not a story from Dioneo, I’m afraid,” he said, “it’s Filostrato.”

“Oh dear,” said Cicely Stevens, “I could have sworn—”

“No, it doesn’t matter much, except that it’s Dioneo who tells about Griselda. Anyway, to our tale.” He cleared his throat and saw that he had the attention of all, including Matthew and Catherine, then smiled, drank his wine, and started.

“Messer Lizio da Valbona and his wife, Madonna Giacomina, have a cherished only daughter, the fairest and most debonair of all the girls of those parts. She’s guarded with jealous care, the parents thinking to arrange some great match for her. Now there’s a lusty young man, Ricciardo, frequently about the house, well trusted by the parents, and he notices that the girl is very fair and graceful, and all that, and he falls vehemently in love with her. The parents don’t notice but she does, and she falls in love with him. To cut it short, they devise a stratagem to be together. She’s closely watched, so it requires some subterfuge. Ricciardo tells her to fix it so that she sleeps on the terrace, or close to it, and he’ll contrive to meet her. So she tells her folks that because of the heat she hadn’t been able to get any sleep during the night, and persuades them to set up a cot on the terrace, by her father’s room, where she’ll hear the nightingales sing, and it’ll be a much cooler place, so she’ll sleep better. She nags at them till they do this, and she gets a bed made there with a little curtain; and makes signs to Ricciardo when she sees him that all is ready. When all is quiet, Ricciardo climbs up to the terrace, where they kiss and get to bed, where, Filostrato tells us, ‘well-nigh all night long they had solace and joyance of one another, and made the nightingale sing not a few times.’” The other guests tittered and smiled at the metaphor. “But they finally fall asleep, her arm round his neck, and the other hand holding that part of him that ladies don’t like to mention (in the company of men at least).”

Michael laughed, and the rest nodded and grinned. “Well,” Whiston continued, “they sleep on till day breaks and the father gets up and peeks through the curtain to see how peacefully she’d slept, and he sees them naked together, as I’ve said, she holding his prick; goes to his wife and says ‘Get up, wife, come and see; for thy daughter has fancied the nightingale to such purpose that she has caught him, and holds him in her hand.’”

“Oh of course!” crowed Michael.

Whiston went on, “They get to the terrace and see the scene, how their daughter has caught, and still holds the nightingale, whose song she had so longed to hear. They decide that an alliance with Ricciardo, a wealthy gentleman, will be a good thing, so they retire. The lovers wake up, and Ricciardo sees they’re found out, and fears for his life, but Messer Lizio says it’s all right, just marry the girl. They agree to this, and the pair are wed there and then with a ring of the mother’s, and left alone, to enjoy their state again – ‘not having travelled more than six miles during the night, went two miles further before they rose, and so concluded their first day.’ Then they’re married again with due ceremony, and for long after Ricciardo lived happily with his girl ‘and snared the nightingales day and night to his heart's content.’”

“Well told, George!” said Lydia. “I bet that’s practically word for word from my Navarre Society edition of the Rigg translation, with those wonderful illustrations by Louis Chalon. But what about the other one?”

“Oh, the Devil in Hell, yes.” He frowned in reminiscence, then looked up at the chandelier. “Yes, Michael, it’s another dreadfully obscene story. This one is told by Dioneo, right enough. How does it go?” He finished off his wine and smacked his lips. “Here goes.

“A rich man dwelt in the city of Capsa in Barbary, who had a fair and dainty little daughter called Alibech, who heard Christians talk about serving God, and asked how it was done. She was told that they served God best who most completely renounced the world and its affairs; like those who had fixed their abode in the wilds of the Thebaid desert. So she went off and walked to the desert, where she found a cabin with a holy man who was afraid that her presence would ensnare him, she being a nice-looking fourteen year old –”

“Aha,” said Marshall, “that magic age!”

“So he sent her to another holy man a great way off, where she was similarly told to go further, till she finally came to the cell of a young hermit, a worthy man and very devout, called Rustico, who thought he should make severe trial of his constancy, and didn’t send her away, but kept her with him in his cell, and when night came, made her a little bed of palm-leaves. Hardly had she gone to bed when he fell to thinking about her and finally set about seeing how he could get what he wanted. By questioning her he found she was quite ignorant of men (and sex, that is), so he devised a way of having her pleasure him under the colour of serving God. He gave her a long lecture on the great enmity that subsists between God and the Devil; and since God had condemned the Devil to hell, to put him there was of all services the most acceptable to God. She asked how it might be done, and he told her to do what he did.

“So he threw off his simple robe and knelt stark naked, as if he would pray; and she followed his example, to face him in the same posture. Rustico, seeing her so fair and so naked, felt an accession of desire, and therewith came an insurgence of the flesh.” The company smiled and tittered. Whiston nodded and continued.

“Alibech saw his erection with surprise, and asked what it was, that protruded from his body, and she didn’t have? ‘Oh,! my daughter,’ said Rustico, ‘it’s the Devil I told you about, and you see how he’s tormenting me.’ She praised God that she didn’t have a Devil like that. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but you’ve got something I have not.’ ‘What’s that?’ she said, naïve to the last. ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘and I tell you God has sent you here to save my soul, and if you have compassion on me and let me put the Devil in Hell, you’ll help me and serve God.’ She agreed to this worthy cause, and he took her to bed, where she experienced a pain at first, and she understood that the Devil was a nasty fellow because there was sorrow in Hell, and other places, when he went in. Rustico assured her it wouldn’t always be so, and for better assurance thereof they put him there six times before they quitted the bed, and so thoroughly abased his pride that he was made to be quiet. The proud fit returned from time to time, and the girl kept on helping him deal with the Devil; she began to find it very agreeable, and told him that she couldn’t remember anything she ever did that gave her so much pleasure, so much solace, as in putting the Devil in Hell. And so it went on, and on, she being so enthusiastic in the service of God, that finally the poor young monk was quite relieved when circumstances took her back to Capsa, where she chanced to inherit a fortune and marry a young fellow who had sought her out. Before he took her to the bridal chamber the ladies asked her what she did in the desert; she told them about putting the Devil in Hell, and that her husband had committed a great sin to take her away from that service, at which they all laughed and said it was done there too, and her husband would well know how to serve God with her in that way. And so the story passing from mouth to mouth throughout the city, it came at last to be a common proverb still current, that the most acceptable service that can be rendered to God is to put the Devil in Hell. ‘Wherefore,’ said Dioneo, ‘young ladies, you that have need of the grace of God, see to it that you learn how to put the Devil in Hell, because it’s mightily pleasing to God, and to both the parties.’ So, Michael, there it is, a fine uplifting story.”

“Uplifting, yes,” cackled Sir Graeme, “lifting up the boy’s member, I’ll wager! Heh!” he sniggered into his brandy and settled back in what seemed like a stupor.

“Thank you, sir,” said Michael, “now I see what you were on about, Dioneo telling that story and winding up with Patient Griselda. Don’t worry, Sir Graeme, my member was taking notice, all right. Listen, Mrs Grainger, you’ve got that book here, the Decameron?”

“Yes, Michael,” she replied, “of course, it’s one of the foundation stones of erotica, besides European literature per se. D’you want to borrow it? I think there’s two translations, one by Payne and one by Rigg. As I said though Rigg has excellent hand-coloured illustrations, by Louis Chalon. There’s also a privately printed copy with other illustrations by a friend of the family, including a magnificent rendering of the scene where the marquis brings the naked Griselda forth before all his assembly. A very striking and forceful picture. Remind me to let you have it before you leave.” But when, thought Matthew, is the little bastard going to leave, along with all these other ghastly people? Please, God, bring this travesty of a polite dinner party to an end!

“So we’re back to nudity, are we?” asked Tarrant.

“Why not? It’s one topic that is always interesting, I think,” said the Irreverend, “but I must say, it’s always the female who’s nude. Oh, I know you see unclothed male statues et cetera, and we have Michelangelo and so on, but somehow the vast majority are women, whether buxom types like those Rubenses you don’t seem to like, Sawyer, or slim girlish ones like your preferred Andromeda –”

“I’m not sure what you’re saying Somerset,” said Gilbert Hunt. “If you’re talking statistics, you’re right, I’m sure. But really that’s probably explained by the historical fact that painters and sculptors have all been men, with male interest in the opposite sex.”

“Notice, though,” said Dorothy Cavendish, “that the one thing that visibly distinguishes men from women, and I mean the penis, is not always displayed – and when it is, it’s invariably discreet, unremarkable, flaccid!”

“Yes, Dot,” said Mrs Thorpe, “and with good reason. I imagine that the only statues and representations we get with an erection are those things, what d’you call ’em, dedicated to Priapus.”

“Yes, with an absurdly long penis,” said Chester Baines. “Otherwise, of course, as with written erotica, it’s only in deliberate objects of arousal, shall we say, I mean designed to titillate, that you get in Aretino—”

“Ah yes!” breathed Quentin Small. “I must say I was carried away by them when I saw them first. Lydia! You surely have them in your library!”

“Oh yes,” she replied idly. “You should ask Matthew here. He’s looking after it.”

Small giggled and said “I don’t know that it’s really proper for a – what, fifteen year old? – to be let loose in an erotic paradise like that.” He turned to Matthew, who was trying to hide, and asked “You, boy! Do you know what we’re referring to?”

Matthew flushed and mumbled “Yes, sir, I’ve … seen them, I think I know ….”

“Ha! And did they arouse you, get you stiff, eh? And did you give in and allow yourself to get excited, did you frig yourself after that, did you spend?”

He blushed and protested, “Please, I …”

“Of course you did, you young rascal! That’s what they’re for! I bet you go over those precious volumes day after day, getting a hard-on, tossing yourself off, stimulated by Aretino and all those other delightful pictures. Don’t you?”

Matthew swallowed and couldn’t answer. Lydia laughed and said “Maybe, Quentin, but he certainly has been able to relieve his sexual tension every night, as I told you, bathed like Telemachus and frigged till he came. Ah, you’re blushing again, Matthew! Doesn’t he blush quite adorably?”

There were murmurs of approval, and the boy blushed even more. “Yes, Lydia,” said Small, licking his lips, “he’s quite a catch. Look at him, you aesthetes, critics of the male form! His hair is raven-black, quite long enough to be stroked by a lover’s hand. His eyes are dark, his nose straight, his lips red and luscious, kissable! Those cheeks of his are blazing with his blushes, they’ve scarcely any down, he’s only in his mid-teens, and he’s hardly acquired any pubic hair. A slender waist, a smooth flat belly, firm hips, a lovely arse, as Sir Hubert said.” The company chortled, and Matthew flinched. “And his genitals, now – nice and neat. How big was he erect? I didn’t notice.”

“Ask him!” laughed Mrs Thorpe. They all looked at the boy, who remembered Braithwaite’s measuring, and young Charlotte, and stammered, “I – I think I’m s-six and a half inches or so.”

“Yes,” said Lady Ethel, “that was about it. His prick is handsome in repose, and fine and notable in erection. What a pity we can’t see it now.”

She gazed at Lydia, who gave a snorting laugh. “It is a pity, isn’t it?” she said. “Well, perhaps we can do something about that.”

Matthew looked at her wildly. “Madam, please—”

She raised her voice. “Matthew! No back talk. The paddles are still here. I think my guests would be amused by another little presentation. Get up on the table.”

He climbed up, assisted by the hands of Jessica and Pat on his bare buttocks, and stood there with hanging head, not looking at the guests, who looked up at him in anticipation. Mrs G pursed her lips. “Now, we want someone to bring him up, don’t we?” She looked over at Diana, who was smoking yet another perfumed cigarette with closed eyes, and shrugged.

Lady Burrows looked at her protégée. “What about Cassandra here? Lydia, what d’you think?”

Mrs Grainger laughed and said “Oh yes! Cassandra, my dear, do you think you could help us?”

The girl blushed and stammered “Y-yes, I think so. What should I do?

“Get up there beside him, for a start.”

She was helped to clamber up by Sir Graeme and Tarrant, and looked at the naked boy, who was concealing his genitals again, though he knew it was a fruitless exercise. Lydia clapped her hands and said “Now then, Cassandra, start by tickling his nipples, then go over his body, his bum, his tummy and lastly his testicles!”

The girl began to stroke Matthew’s chest, and he felt his penis twitch in answer. She got behind him to smooth her hands over his shoulders, his back, down his spine to his buttocks, where she lingered a while, cupping his arse cheeks and putting a finger down the cleft to find his anus. He quivered and made faint moans as she petted the sphincter, then gently poked a curious finger in.

“I bet you she’s never done that before!” laughed Mrs Thorpe, and the blushing girl nodded, as she moved her finger in and out, and managed to touch the prostate through the bowel wall. As she stroked it he felt his member swell behind his hands, and the girl took them impatiently and thrust them aside, baring his incipient erection. The crowd applauded and cried encouragement, and Cassandra continued to massage the gland while her other hand delicately stroked the lengthening penis till it poked up and stood proudly out from his cringing body. Cassandra now put her hand to the scrotum and fingered the balls gently. Matthew by this time was sweating and making little sounds of protest, but of course he was ignored.

“Now, Cassandra!” cried Lady Ethel, “can you measure the length? Try your thumb breadth!” The girl smiled and put her thumb to the root of the organ and went along it, finally saying “My thumb has to be one inch broad I think, so that’s six times and a little bit.”

“There you are, he’s right, it’s six and a half inches. Not a great instrument, but it’ll do the trick!” said Chester Baines. “D’you think we should let the girl bring him down again?”

“Ha!” said Lydia, “of course! Cassandra! Keep going, you’re doing very well. Bring him off.”

She brought her hands back to his scrotum, and he moaned softly. She was being very gentle, passing her hands lightly over his hot skin and looking with concentration at his genitals. Then she tenderly took hold of his erection and began to tease it with all of her fingers, roaming up and down the shaft, circling the purple glans and brushing the pubic hair. Matthew was near frantic and wished she would just frig him and be done, but she took her leisurely time and after a minute reached back to find his sphincter. Her finger poked into his anus again and he uttered a groan as the rest of the compamy laughed and banged the table. Catherine couldn’t look – but no, she had to look. Somehow this erotic scene with her dear boy being masturbated by a blushing stranger fascinated her, and she felt a glow in her own genitals. Why should that be?

She had the answer of course. She wished it were she who had her hand on his cock, smoothing her fingers along the brave shaft of his noble tool, putting a questing touch to his lovely bumhole – God! How could she think like this? Yes, his lovely bumhole, and his prick, somehow seeming to increase in size and colour to match the desperate blush on his dear face.

All eyes were on the pair up on the table, and Catherine’s hand found its way unconsciously to her vulva. Almost absentmindedly she started to stroke herself as she gazed hungrily at Matthew’s humiliation. It took only a minute to reach the crest of her own orgasm, and then she looked at the scene and her heart went out to the poor victim. He was writhing under Cassandra’s hands, and moving his pelvis in answer to her fondling, as she smiled at her task and the company egged her on. Suddenly he cried out “God! Cassandra! God!” and came with what looked like an inordinate amount of sperm. His throbbing penis pulsed and pulsed, the arc of his ejaculation shooting up in a great fountain, as it seemed to the rapt Catherine, and indeed the others were fascinated by the show. When he finished the crowd applauded, and the girl was helped down and congratulated on her success. She was still blushing, and seemed to want to forget all about it. Matthew – he stood there sweating in his shame, and it was up to Bator and Whiston to help him down and pat him comfortingly on the back. He shuffled over to a corner and leaned against the wall. He could feel tears on his cheek, and had a great weariness. The other servants avoided him, letting him recover as best he could, even Catherine, who merely looked over at him and conveyed with her eyes her compassion and … love.

“Well!” said Tarrant, “there it is, one looks at Aretino, one admires the naked engravings, but the ideas that go through one’s head … we are I suppose dressed, no? And relishing the nakedness of the subjects, let alone what they’re doing. In a way perhaps it’s a … it’s a vicarious shiver of shame at their nudity.”

“You mean if it were us, right? If we were in that naked state, we’d feel ashamed too?” Miss Shaw asked.

“I don’t know why you say ‘too’, Isobel,” said Cecily Stevens. “The people in Aretino are not ashamed of anything….”

“But what about those Spartans you were mentioning, Mr Whiston?” asked Margaret Ainsworth, “they had no qualms about being seen naked.”

“Yes,” he said, “it’s well documented, and acknowledged in modern times. You’ve seen that picture perhaps, by Dégas, Young Spartans Exercising? It shows a group of girls, bare-breasted, with kirtles or loincloths on, seemingly teasing this group of boys, who are absolutely naked. In the background stand the parents and Lycurgus himself, the lawgiver who instituted those draconian laws that rendered the Spartan state an absolute militocracy, where the girls exercised nude as well as boys, to be healthy mothers of strong children. Of course the Spartan state was something of an anomaly….”

“An anomaly!” hooted Marshall, “I’ll say! The rest of Greece, the rest of the world, are busy hiding their genitals, and poking fun at Sparta—”

“Yes,” interjected Drayton, with something of a leer. “They called the girls who wore that peplos open at the side phainomerídes, the ‘thigh-showers.’”

“Exactly! While they –”|

“Yes, yes, David,” said Tarrant, “and it was quite legitimate, all planned, the tradition of the agoge, to overcome the natural shyness of nakedness and turn it into a strength. They did want to be strong, God knows, stronger at least that those namby-pamby Athenians. And what good did it do them? They did win the Peloponnesian war, yes, but what did they leave behind? I know in their time they were the envy of Greece, they exported art and so forth, but compare the legacy of Athens. They may have been done in by their own mistakes, but all the same they did give us the idea of democracy, as well as the glory (of art) that Poe talks about. Including statues of naked girls. Which reminds me that mythology tells the legend of the punishment of Actaeon, remember him? Who had the misfortune to see Diana bathing. Look, it’s the prohibition again – to be seen naked is shameful, insulting, and the poor boy is torn to pieces by his hounds for embarrassing the goddess. Even the gods are ashamed of their nudity, it seems!”

Margaret Ainsworth frowned. “There must be more to it than that,” she muttered. “Hmm, let me think about that….”

George Whiston ordered up a brandy and changed the subject again. “What d’you think about this fellow Mussolini, the one they call Il Duce, the Leader? Is he any good, say, for Italy?”

“God knows if anything’s good for Italy,” said Sir Graeme. “This whatsisname may be the very thing, and I suppose any kind of a leader is better than none. It’s a shame what has happened there since Garibaldi.”

“There’s shames all over the place,” said Cicely Stevens. “What about the Russia that produced Pushkin and Tolstoy, Glinka and Tchaikovsky – look at it now!”

“Now hold on,” said Mildred Barton, the Slavophile secretary, “don’t judge too soon. You never know what vibrant music and letters might come out of this new crucible! The talent is still there, the soul of the people hasn’t changed. Look at that novel published just last year, called We, by a writer called Zamiatin. It’s an extraordinary piece of work, and let me tell you, it isn’t just a Bolshevik whitewash or anything, it can be seen as an indictment of an oppressive police state, which you seem to fear will come to Russia now the brake of tsardom has gone. No, the talent is still there. Poems by Esenin, Alexander Blok! Have you seen ‘The Twelve’? Another extraordinary piece of work, about a party of Communist soldiers marching in Petrograd, shooting and so forth, encountering a whore, a mangy dog, and then, who is leading the twelve through the snow? Jesus Christ—”

“Good God!” exclaimed Mr Drayton.

“Yes indeed, it’s a great piece and a … signal flag, if you like, of what this new society can produce. Just you wait and see.”

“Like Asquith, I suppose,” muttered Sawyer. “But that’s a lot of bloody nonsense. Bloody is the word, actually. A blood-bath, culminating in the Imperial family being slaughtered at Yekaterinburg, only seven years ago! And I hear they’ve renamed the town Sverdlovsk, after the scoundrel who ordered the massacre! Wait and see! Yes,” he said with sneering relish, “we won’t have long to wait. Now that that rabble-rouser Lenin has died, what deus is going to come ex machina to lead the peasants? I’ll tell you—another of the same stripe, Trotsky, who knows? – who’ll destroy that great country. I probably won’t live to see it, but it’ll fall into ruin. And then this pretentious Bolshevism likewise will fall apart, just like all those other empires we spoke of.” He drained his glass and laughed bitterly.

“I wonder,” said Lady Burrows thoughtfully, “if I should remind you that there was talk at the time—for some time before 1918—of a rescue of Nicholas and his brood, and getting them to safety in England? D’you remember that? Sir Graeme, I think you would be privy to some of that.”

He glowered at her and said reluctantly, “There was much discussion, yes, and several plans were put forward. But eventually, I’m reliably informed, it was decided at the very highest level”— he looked meaningfully at the company – “that no attempt was to be made, presumably because our democratic British public wouldn’t countenance the rescue of an autocratic monster and his pampered crew. And remember the anti-German feeling of the time; the Tsarina was German. And they’d renamed their capital to make it sound less German! After all, we’d distanced ourselves – the Royal Family had distanced itself – from its relatives, changing Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor. And I can tell you,” he looked confidentially at his audience, “that Her Majesty is said to have emphatically told King George that nothing should be done, mostly because she had an animus against Alexandra, the Empress. Now with hindsight, of course—”

“With hindsight, we’re all masters of the occasion, and see clearly what had to be done. Or should have been done. It wasn’t clear then, I suppose. So now,” she threw up her hands, “what happens? Do we recognise this upstart revolution? Do we ignore the blood? Carry on diplomatically and hope for a new Tolstoy? Let me tell you, Mrs Barton, this Gorky is nowhere near as good, memorable, or whatever. No Tolstoy!”

“Actually, Lady Ethel,” said Daniel, waving a cigarette, “somebody said somewhere that even Tolstoy wasn’t as good as Tolstoy! Latterly I mean, obviously. I thought it a clever paradox.”

“Hmm,” murmured Sawyer, “well, I can only hope I’m spared to be a hundred or so, and get my telegram from the king, to see the downfall of these so-called Socialists and perhaps—who knows? – the restoration of the Romanovs.”

Jeremiah Cranston sneered, “Which might well usher in another disastrous series of events, misrule and corruption, as we got in 1660! Goddamn it, Sawyer, remember Rasputin, as Small was saying! The Romanovs were ruining Russia well before this, just as those Stuarts did for this country. It hasn’t been the same—”

“Since 1603, you mean?” the councillor’s tone was withering. “You know, Cranston, I do believe you don’t think much of the Scotch, and would gladly go for that great mediaeval law that says, have I got it right, that it’s legal to shoot a Scotsman in York or wherever, as long as you use a crossbow!”

“That’s perfectly correct!” roared the other, “except you can’t do it on Sundays!”

The company laughed and drank, and called for another song. Gregory Mayne strummed till Isabel Shaw, the sculptor, rose and, with a shy blush on her hitherto pallid cheeks, offered “a little ditty from olden times, called The Bee-hive.” Again the pianist caught on to the melody quickly and managed to produce an accompaniment that fitted the age and artfulness of the words.

            “My mistress is a hive of bees, in yonder flow’ry garden;

            To her they come with laden thighs, to ease them of their burden.

            As under the bee-hive lieth the wax, and under the wax is honey,

            So under her waist her belly is placed, and under that her cunny.”

“Oh,” said Clarissa Fettes, “I like this!”

            “My mistress is a mine of gold, would that it were her pleasure,

            To let me dig within her mould, and roll among her treasure;

            As under the moss the mould doth lie, and under the mould is money,

            So under her waist her belly is placed, and under that her cunny.”

By this time the company had got the pattern, and joined in the burden. As the song continued Matthew sighed and desperately wished for this exercise in decadence to finish. He was appallingly tired, and his backside ached, and he feared his naked body would be seized upon and mishandled by one or other of this raffish crowd. Gregory Mayne, at least, had been fairly gentle in his attentions, but some of the others, like Mr Drayton, had been looking at him in almost a feral way, and he tried to be as unobtrusive as he could. He looked across the room and saw Norah going behind a screen with Enid Waterson, the thirtyish secretary of a charity organisation, as someone had informed him, and being curious he wandered over there a moment later, ostensibly to take another bottle of wine from one of the racks that lined the room, and peeked round the side of the screen. He saw Norah down on her knees in front of the half-undressed secretary, applying her tongue to Miss Waterson’s vagina. He stared in fascination, and Norah raised her eyes to see him. She blushed but continued her task, while her subject closed her eyes and moaned in ecstasy. Matthew withdrew and sighed. He wondered what the staff would be able to say to each other, or to him, after displaying themselves like this.

He was brought back to earth by Gregory Mayne, who had seized his hand and was drawing him to the baize door. He didn’t know what to do, and struggled, but rapidly gave in when he saw Mrs Grainger looking at him without expression. His captor pushed open the door and once in snibbed it shut, then turned to his prize and held up his hands. “I’m not going to hurt you, Matthew. I promise not to rape you, or anything. I know that’s what you expect, but please don’t be afraid. I just want to enjoy looking at your body, maybe run my hands all over you, maybe … kiss you. Can I do that?”

“Mr Mayne,” he replied hesitantly, “I think you’re honest and sincere. I’m not a homo myself, and I don’t think I could bear being … fucked like that. But … there’s no harm in letting you kiss me.”

The young man smiled thankfully and put out his hands to touch the boy, who flinched but didn’t draw away. Emboldened, Mayne took his naked body in his arms and hugged him, planting an eager kiss on his lips. Matthew couldn’t resist giving an answering embrace, and then the other was tearing off his clothes. Soon they were seated on a divan nearby, and Mayne’s hands were roving all over, tenderly smoothing the young skin of the chest, the belly, the still pink backside, the thighs, the hips, the groin, the hardening penis. His face had a delighted grin, and he was muttering endearments of some sort, while Matthew lay back and let the older man enjoy worshipping him like that, with a smile of his own. He found the treatment sensually rousing, and was conscious of his gradual erection, but found no shame in the state, and wondered about that. Mayne turned him over and spent some time addressing his back and buttocks, and Matthew tried to accommodate his preferences by parting his legs and raising his bum slightly, then getting up on his knees. Gregory Mayne gasped “Oh yes, Matthew, please stay like that! Thank you!” as he fondled the nether cheeks, stroked the hollows of the buttocks and tenderly parted them to reveal the anus, which he fingered delicately before bending down to kiss it. Matthew froze, but tried to relax, which was hard because the man was now giving tongue to his arse. Tongue to his arse! He couldn’t believe it, but let it continue as long as Mayne wanted. He himself couldn’t help but be aroused further by this, and by now his erection was complete. He was turned over again and Gregory Mayne took a light grasp of the hard-on as he looked him in the eye and said “Matthew, you are one of the most beautiful boys I’ve ever seen. Please, do something for me.” Matthew looked anxious. “It’s only that I want you to toss me off, with your hands, looking into my eyes the whole time. Will you? Please?” Matthew looked at him and smiled. “Yes, Gregory,” he said. “I’ll be glad to do it.”

Mayne lay down beside him and put his hands over his head. Matthew looked at the older man’s body and was able to admire it. Narrow hips, straight legs, a dark brown bush; delicate hands, with a pianist’s long fingers, full lips, long eyelashes, hazel eyes and a clear brow, longish hair and beautiful teeth. On a sudden impulse he leant over and kissed him. Mayne reacted with a groaning sigh, and as Matthew put his hand to the already erect penis, the groan intensified. A thought struck him, and he looked around, spotting a jar of the ubiquitous Vaseline nearby. Getting some on his fingers he began to work at the other’s cock, drawing back the foreskin, pushing it forward, running his hand up the underside, tickling the scrotum, and then with deliberation rubbing the shaft up and down as he’d already experienced at the hands of those girls. Masturbating another cock was not by any means the same as wanking by oneself, and he wasn’t too sure if he was having the proper effect, but Mayne was panting by now and moving his pelvis in tune with the hands, and eventually he gave a loud cry and poured out his semen in a great arc, gasping Matthew’s name, shutting his eyes in delight.

After a minute he rose and wiped the drops of come from his belly. “That,” he said haltingly, “was – the most glorious spend – I’ve ever had. Thank you, Matthew. I’ll remember you, and that. … We should go back.” He dressed himself and looked again at the boy. “Don’t think badly of me,” he said somewhat diffidently. “I’m really not as bad as you think, Matthew. I—”

“Mr Mayne,” said Matthew, “Gregory – may I call you that? – believe me, I didn’t put you in the same category as the rest of them. You’re not cruel, and I think your intervention stopped me being lashed with the whip or worse. Thank you for that. I’m glad to have been able to … give you pleasure. I wish I had the courage to do more.”

“Oh, God, no, dear lad! That was sufficient. I thank you again. Come along, let’s see what the rest of the mob are up to. God, Lydia Grainger does throw a party! This has been one of the best. Oh, sorry, my dear, but apart from the beating it really has been good, I’m sure they’ve all enjoyed it. I say,” looking into the boy’s eyes, “may I ask if … you and the girl have an attachment? The way you stood up for her, and bore that beating for her, was really something. I admire that. Do you care for her, then?”

Matthew weighed his words, and replied, “Yes, Gregory, I do, I think I’m in love with her.”

The older man looked at him gravely as he opened the door. “Then God help you both in this house,” he said simply, and led the way back to the rout.

Shortly after this Matthew felt the need for a pee, and quietly made his way to the bathroom through that odd room behind the green baize door, it being closer than the other doorless water closet on that floor. He was nearly coming out when he heard the door open and footsteps enter, and was about to speak to warn the couple (it was two people) when one spoke – he recognised the calm voice of that Polish poet, Mr Bator. For some reason he delayed, and by then it was too late. He couldn’t interrupt them, and a memory of discovering Elizabeth and Eithne suddenly flashed into his mind.

“So, Damian, you want a private conversation?”

The other laughed and replied “Yes, we can call it that. I thought we could talk about what you were saying earlier, about admiring the looks of another, even the same biological sex.”

Bator seemed to be sitting down and getting out his cigarettes, offering one to the boy, and lighting up. “Well,” he said, “we can take up where that conversation left off perhaps. But going much farther. I was saying that a man, or boy, can admire a man, or boy, and when he does there is, has to be, an element of the erotic about it. King was implying that one can do it without wanting to fuck them, and I declared that there was always that erotic, libidinous aspect. Now I admire your looks. You are really an extraordinarily handsome creature. Cudownie piękne, niezwykle atrakcyjne. Myślę, że cię kocham, wiem, że pragnę cię. Przyznam, że chcę cię pieprzyć. Ah, Damian, it’s possible to say a lot to you in the romantic language of Poland that one might hesitate to utter in bald English…. What are you doing?”

“Making myself comfortable, Tadeusz,” said young Collins, “no more.” There was a faint noise of things being set down on the bench, and an intake of breath. “Why don’t you get comfy as well? And maybe you’ll tell me if you have a nickname, a familiar name, a name for intimacies.”

The poet seemed to agree, and there were more indeterminate sounds, as if he were taking off some of his clothes. Oh God, thought Matthew, they’re not going to … have sex, are they? I can’t … I have to let them know … oh God I can’t. Sit tight. Don’t make a sound. “Well,” said Bator finally, “you can call me Tadzio, if you like. It’s the same as—”

“The same as the boy in Death in Venice. Yes. I’ve read the book. I thought it quite good as describing a man’s increasing infatuation with a young boy. He’s fourteen, isn’t he? And he doesn’t even seem to reciprocate von Aschenbach’s fixation. But then Mann couldn’t very well take the story to that sort of ending, he’d have been arrested. Whereas in real life….”

Bator laughed. “Yes, Damian, in this real life we can take it all the way.” There were more rustling sounds, and the hidden auditor knew more clothes were being discarded.

Damian exclaimed, “Can I then tell you, Tadzio mio, that I like what I see, that I admire your shape, your proportions, your nude perfection. No, don’t disagree, don’t be silly and modest; you may not be entirely perfect but you’re bloody close to it. I want to worship that body in any way I can, and, oh God, I’d like you to feel you can treat mine with something of the same admiration.”

“But Damian, I’ve already said it, in my own tongue. Which cries out for union with your tongue, and your body. Come here.”

There followed an amount of mutterings and sighs and exclamations, then a laugh from the boy and a giggling comment from the poet, as they evidently found the Vaseline and began to apply it to their bodies. Then they were grappling, telling each other what to do to increase their closeness, and Damian, evidently about to be entered dog fashion from behind, cried out “No! Tadzio, Tadzio, face to face!” Matthew blinked and tried to imagine how it was done, but evidently the manoeuvre succeeded, for incoherent cries of delight came from the game room and went on for quite a time. Matthew sat down quietly and waited till the sounds of pleasure faded, then wondered about stealing out past the couple, who probably were near asleep in each other’s arms.

He was startled when the door came open and the poet, stark naked, walked in. He stopped in surprise at seeing Matthew, then shrugged and went over to the lavatory. Matthew watched him uncomfortably as he urinated, then washed his hands, drying them as he looked at the boy and smiled. He laid his finger to his lips and beckoned Matthew over, then led him into the other room where a nude Damian lay seemingly asleep, with a smile on his face. Bator quietly opened the door and gestured Matthew out, smiling at his confusion, then shut the door behind him. Matthew went back to the table and picked up a decanter of brandy, thinking that he might just take a swig himself to get into the party spirit, but (and it was just as well) was summoned by Barlow to fill his glass. As he went round the table he couldn’t get what he’d overheard out of his mind, and wondered what might happen to the pair. They had been strangers, but could become lovers. Was that a bad thing? Certainly they had both wanted to have sex. Not like that brat Michael Brent who had raped a drunken Diana. But that was one aspect of this damnable dinner, surely – the guests were expected to enjoy sex of some sort along with their drink and drugs, fucking a fellow guest or one of the servants, it didn’t matter. And it shouldn’t really matter to him either, as long as nobody hurt Catherine any more. He looked over at her as she tiredly poured wine for Lady Ethel, who was looking at her intently for some reason, and hoped she wasn’t too miserable. God, he thought, how easy it would be to make her happy! That’s what I want to do, nothing else. Make Catherine happy. Make up for this nightmare, for one thing. Dear God, let that be!

The party wound down an hour later, the guests departed in one state or another and the servants cleaned up the mess – spilt wine, smashed glasses and crockery, semen stains on the floor; they didn’t speak to each other much. As they prepared to go off to bed Mrs Grainger looked in to say “An excellent affair! A great success. You all may rise late tomorrow.” Matthew was bewildered by her mood – she seemed to have forgotten his outburst and Catherine’s mistake. Still, he was thankful that all seemed both forgiven and forgotten. They went their separate ways, and shortly a naked Matthew slid cautiously between the cool sheets of his bed, hardly believing that the dreadful evening was over.

Then he heard a timid tap at the door, and Catherine’s shy voice saying “Matthew, can I come in?” He called out “Of course,” wondering how embarrassing their conversation would be. She entered, coming to the bedside, looked at him gravely and deliberately slipped her robe off. He looked at her wonderful body, her breasts betraying her again, and started as she lifted back the sheet. His weary penis was starting to react again, but this time he made no attempt to cover it.

She looked down at it and said quietly, “Matthew, I want – I want you to hold me, and….”

He took a deep breath and said throatily, “Catherine. I’ll maybe—”

“I don’t care what happens. Tonight you did something very brave for me. Let me kiss you, and maybe you’ll kiss me, and make it all better….”

He knelt up, his erection regained, and she put her arms round him; he did the same, and she leaned into him to kiss in naked delight. This time his hands found her buttocks and she felt his erect member between their bodies.

Their second kiss was longer than their first, and both finally broke to take breath, falling down on the bed, still holding each other, looking into each other’s eyes, with pleased smiles. They fell to running their hands over each other’s bodies, she trying to avoid his tender buttocks, but he murmured to her, “No, it’s all right, Catherine, your hands on my bum are soft and soothing, as I hope mine are on yours….”

“Oh yes!” she breathed, ‘you’re so gentle, so … loving….”

“Catherine, Catherine, I want to tell you—“

She stopped him by kissing him again, and moving her hands over his shoulders, his chest, putting her hand to his cheek, smoothing his hair. Then she slid her hand down his body to his hip and stroked his thigh, he trembling with desire, his penis up and beginning to throb in reaction to her close nudity. Her face was blushing red again, as she deliberately put her nervous fingers to his testicles—he jerked and gave a little moan—she boldly carried on, running her finger along the underside of his erection. He gasped and said “Catherine, are you sure—“ Again she stopped him with a kiss, her tongue now entering his mouth to meet his tongue, and her small fist closing gently over the shaft of his penis. His hands meanwhile moved from her back to her buttocks and then as she lay back and opened her legs, round to her belly, which he stroked delicately at first and then more urgently, moving down to her bare mount and lying on her moist vulva. It was her turn to jerk and gasp, and then they grinned simultaneously and, looking into the other’s eyes, began to stroke each other’s most private part, slowly and tentatively at first, then increasing the tempo, their breaths panting, their bodies in a sweat, striving for release. She came slightly before he did, and moaned in ecstasy as a bright blush covered her upper body, she still handling him, he moving his pelvis up and down, his foreskin being slid back and forth over the dark purple head of his penis. Then with a groan he came, spurting his semen up on his belly and covering her hand. They lay thus entwined, his hand on her vulva, his fingers deep inside her, and her hand holding his penis, now wilting and spent, their chests heaving, their eyes closed in wondering exhaustion.

The glow of sexual easement lasted a long silent time. Then he roused and sat up, leaning on his elbow to look fondly at the girl. She smiled shyly as they simultaneously withdrew their hands, and sighed contentedly. “I’ve been wanting to do that for ages,” she murmured, “maybe even from that first day, when you saw me naked and I saw you, standing up naked too, with that hard-on….”

He smiled and nodded. “Me too. But I was in heaven when Mrs G got me to soothe the ointment on your—“

“My what?” she asked with a mischievous smile.

“Can I call it your … cunt?”

A faint blush returned to her cheeks. “That’s what it is, Matthew. Just as you have a cock. A grand upstanding cock, with a red topknot just like a cockerel has….”

He leaned over to kiss her lips, and said with some humour, “We’d better wash away the evidence.”

“Oh yes! Bathroom!” The ablutions were soon finished, and they returned to his room.

“Where’s your nightshirt?” she asked with a smile.

“Oh,” he said, “it’s in the wash. Saves time actually, don’t have to take it off. Mind you, I can – maybe next time – I can just shove it up round my neck. That’ll be easier.”

“Next time,” she said, her smile growing. “All right.”

He held her tightly and kissed her again. “We’d better get to bed—not here though! I don’t know that Mrs G would like it.” She nodded wearily as she donned her robe.

“I do hope, though, that we can see each other somehow,” she said. “I mean—“

“I know,” Matthew said with a grin. “We’ll manage somehow. Now goodnight.” She smiled and left for her room. Matthew crawled into his bed and had hardly any time to think about the incredible evening before sleep claimed him.

(End of File)