Gabriel
As we entered Lady Flemming's large sunlit room, she rose from her chaise lounge to greet us. She was a tall woman, big boned in the English fashion, with a superb posture and great style. She seemed to be in her middle forties, but from what I could see of her body through the sheer negligee she was wearing, well proportioned and quite well preserved. Obviously a woman who loved life, exercised regularly and controlled her diet.
She took my hand in hers and asked, "Who have we here, Harry?" We smiled fully at each other as Harry made the introductions. I couldn't help glancing down at her breasts, which were clearly defined under the nylon. They were surprisingly erect for a woman her age. I was sure she shared a mind-reading talent with her husband, when she said, "If you're wondering, Gabriel, what an old bat like myself is doing with such a magnificent pair of tits, wonder no more… purely surgical. Had 'em done two years ago. A few other were done also, but I'll tell you about them another time. Come, my dear, the tea is already cold." She took my hand and led me to the small table by the window.
So far, I hadn't gotten a word in edgewise, but I instinctively liked her. There was an open friendliness about her, a brutally frank humor that turned me on to her. Hairy seated himself between us as she poured the tea.
"Where have you been keeping this lovely girl, Harry? Has he been having a naughty, secret affair with you Gabriel?"
"Just a short one, Lady Sarah," I answered. "We only just met this afternoon."
"I've been showing her the house," said Harry.
"Ahh yes, then you've probably met Betsy."
"Yes, when we first arrived, about a half hour ago."
"What was she?" Asked Lady Flemming.
"The maid," answered Harry.
"That's nice," said Lady Flemming.
"You mean," I asked, "She's not always the maid?"
"Oh, goodness no," said Lady Flemming. "That would bore the poor little thing to death."
"I'm afraid I don't understand."
"Betsy demonstrated some of her talents for Gabriel," said Harry.
"She's a wonderful little girl, isn't she Gabriel?" asked Lady Flemming.
"Fascinating," I answered. I was suddenly struck with the total impact of the bizarre situation I found myself in. Just a little over an hour ago I had met this man for the first time in a crowded elevator in Harrods, and after assorted sexual adventures with him, a cabbie and a strange, probably schizoid child, I found myself sharing a civilized tea, in a lovely sunlit room nutty woman whose husband, just fifteen minutes ago, had had his cock shoved up the ass of the "wonderful little girl" we were discussing so pleasantly! I just sat there, sipping tea out of the fine English bone china cup I'd been handed and gave myself up, like Alice in Wonderland, to the unreality of it all! If nothing else, I was enjoying myself. In fact, I suspected that the ensuing afternoon and evening was going to be the time of my life!
"Penny for your thoughts, my dear?" asked Lady Flemming.
"Well, I was just wondering about Betsy not always being the maid."
"Ah," said Lady Flemming, "A good question. You see, Sir Harry and myself are throwbacks. Real Victorians, actually. And you know, of course, that deep beneath the highly moralistic, crushing Victorian social and sexual culture was a sexual underground the likes of which the world had not seen since Roman times."
"Totally bloody amoral… delightfully so, I must add," said Harry.
"It was," continued Lady Flemming, "a time that produced an entire pornographic literature of considerable volume. Much of it was actually literature."
"Far superior to what's being done today," added Harry, "Despite the so-called permissiveness."
"Well you see, that's what made it so attractive. During the Queens reign nothing, absolutely nothing was permitted. There were even people who covered piano legs!" Lady Flemming smiled broadly and poured more tea. "It's true," she continued. "Women, so-called decent women, were completely locked out of sexual enjoyment. It was even considered indecent to expose their bodies to their husbands! This created the necessity for an entire subculture of women whose prime function and total occupation was to give pleasure to men. And I might add, give pleasure to themselves also. Their lives were dedicated to sex. And because society permitted nothing, at least officially, anything one did was gratifying beyond measure. The analogy is one of stolen sweets tasting better than sweets honestly come by."
"You mean, my dear, forbidden fruit is sweeter" said Harry.
"Correct, love. I stand corrected. Well, to continue, on the one hand were the decent women who considered their bodies objects of shame. Women who were oriented by "civilized" society to consider sex a necessary evil, whose only function was procreation. On the other hand, there were their husbands who found themselves caught in this very same Victorian trap. Many of them actually went through life without ever having seen the nude female body. Now, on the other hand… "
"That's three hands, Sarah," interrupted Harry.
"Well, you'll have to bloody well live with them," she stated, taking my hand in hers and looking sternly at her husband. "I'm certain that Miss Du Champe is not quite the stickler for detail that you are, are you my dear?"
"Certainly not," I agreed and in the process, became her ally.
"Now, where was I?"
"On the third hand… " I said.
"Ah yes! On the third hand were the women who supplied the missing ingredient. The whores, the ladies of the night, the Grand Horizontals, the mistresses, the courtesans, the filles de joie; all of them, the amateurs, the professionals… all of them contributed, were part of a vast sexual underground where anything was permitted. Hard to believe now, but it was we British who perfected sex."
"We're a very talented race, you know," broke in Sir Harry. "We also invented radar and the jet engine."
"Well, we didn't actually invent sex," continued Lady Flemming, "But we certainly improved on the existing model. It's obvious, really, but take such delights as bondage, sadomasochism, fetishism, pornographic photography and literature, child deflowerization; all of these things existed long before the British came on the scene but it was we who perfected them, we British who… "
"We English, my dear," Harry Hemming interrupted.
"Yes, he's right, we English," continued Lady Sarah. "Or even more precisely, we Londoners. It was the London sexual underground that created an art form out of what used to be considered tacky sexual perversions. It was the London sexual underground, during the last half of our late lamented Queen's reign, who created the real sexual revolution, almost a hundred years ago."
"A sexual revolution, I might add," said Sir Harry, "which makes the current one appear like child's play. What you have today is not a real sexual revolution at all, but a gigantic, international commercial venture."
"There are no real taboos today," said Lady Flemming. "How can you have a sexual revolution unless you have taboos to revolt against?"
"It was the Victorian sexual ethic and the sexual taboos it created that fashioned most of the sexual symbolism existing today," said Harry.
"Which symbols, for instance?" I asked.
"Certain types of clothing, for example. Corsets, boots, high heels."
"That would make the Playboy Bunny a Victorian sexual symbol, right?" I asked.
"Certainly," said Harry. "The tight corset, the breasts squeezed upwards like toothpaste out of a tube, the six inch heels. The entire Playboy image is one of Victorian sexual taboos. The basic idea of displaying the nude female body as a sexual artifact is practically an invention of the Victorian underground.
"Forbidden fruit, once again," said Lady Sarah.
"Precisely! Hugh Hefner himself is a product of the Victorian mores of the American Middle West. His centerfold Playmates are directly out of that milieu; innocent, virtuous, the girl next door, degraded, her body naked for all to see. There are innumerable works of Victorian pornography wherein the innocent, lovely lady is trapped and denuded by the hero-villain. The untouchable violated, virtue and purity outraged and profaned! Of course, the victim eventually joins her violator in the fun and games and sometimes even helps him find fresh victims."
"It's still rape, pure and simple, isn't it?" I asked.
"Not quite so pure and simple," said Lady Sarah. "Sex to the traditional, decent Victorian woman, any sex other then with her husband, in the dark, for the sole purpose of procreation, was a fate worse than death! A phrase, which incidentally was invented by the Victorians. She would lay there, in the dark, her heavy wool night dress pulled up just far enough to allow her husband access to what was probably a painfully dry quim. The only position she was aware of was missionary. It would seem to me that that was a fate worse than death! You see, the rape fantasy, as expressed in the pornography of the time, was an educational device. Really! The villain's purpose was not only to gratify himself, or to master his virtuous victim, it was also to educate her in the joys of sex. To initiate her, so to speak. Since even the display of her naked body was a degradation to the upper or middle class decent female-married or single, mind you-her initiation was not an easy thing. It was incumbent upon her to fight to the death! The gentleman… well really, he wasn't considered a gentleman… had to persist until she finally gave in, a concept still with us to this day. Of course sometimes she would be tied down while she was being violated and some times she would even feign unconsciousness. Both methods, of course, relieved her of all responsibility to fight to the death, and in many cases, she was just forced to lay there and enjoy what was being done to her. Of course, we're talking mainly about fantasy, as expressed in Victorian pornography, but as in most times and cultures, the fantasies reflected realities to a large extent."
"It is true, however," said Harry, "That the greatest of all the Victorian taboos related to women actually enjoying the sexual act. The catch is, that this only applied in real life to the upper and middle classes. The lower classes were already living a fate worth than death. The Industrial Revolution saw to that. Practically all of the whores and other horizontals came out of the lower classes."
"And they had nothing to lose but their chains," interjected Lady Sarah.
"Quite," agreed Sir Harry. "Their condition, economically, socially and otherwise, was so bad that whoring represented in most cases an improvement in their life styles. They had nowhere to go but up. Certainly, a life on one's back was better than a life of sweat and tears in a miserable hovel, working for starvation wages. The working class were almost slaves in this country. It wasn't till after the first World War that things began to improve. So a young lower-class girl could do far worse than becoming a whore. Of course there were others, other horizontals, as Sarah calls them. Many gentlemen kept mistresses, usually girls from the middle class, daughters of merchants and the like who wanted to improve their station or gain influence or property. There were actresses and music hall performers who were quite liberated sexually, and much sought after by what used to be called Stage Door Johnnies… thus the term "John" in the American whore idiom, by the way. There were also upper class women who broke away from the restrictive sexual code. They were the true erotics… they had to be, the social sacrifice was just too great for them to be motivated by a lesser need or desire. And of course, the domestics, usually naive girls from the country, who had a much greater knowledge of sex then their mistresses since they'd seen barnyard creatures copulating. There were many downstairs maids who presented a wet quim and a plump arse to the master of the household! They were constantly being pinched and patted and fucked on the kitchen table after the lights were extinguished for the night."
"Aha!" I exclaimed, "I'm beginning to understand."
"Yes, Betsy" said Lady Sarah. "You see, my dear, she's Harry's niece. Her parents were killed in an aircraft, accident a year after she was born and we accepted the responsibility to raise her. It Was Harry's idea to raise her as the most sexually gifted women who ever lived. We're both doing our utmost to achieve the goal."
"Incredible!" I was certain by now that they were both totally off their rockers. I was completely fascinated, however, and if you had to be nuts, what a great way to go!
"Lady Sarah and I have devoted our lives to sex. We're in a way throwbacks to what someone once called the Victorian underbelly. We've even managed to initiate a few others into our little fraternity of lust. Anything goes here, nothing sexual is taboo in this house."
"But getting back to Betsy," said Lady Hemming, "She's an extremely bright child. She has an IQ of 180 and already speaks nine languages, including Yiddish and Urdu. Speaks them like a native…"
"How would a native speak Yiddish, my dear?"
Lady Sarah disregarded the question and continued, "Betsy has entered into the spirit of things marvelously. From time to time she assumes various Victorian sexual roles; it's a sort of game to her and we all play games here. If you get to know us, you'll be exposed to quite a few of her fantasy roles."
"I'll be damned!" I exclaimed.
"No doubt you were given a demonstration of her sexual talents?" asked Lady Sarah.
"Oh yes, I was very impressed. She has the most sexually sensitive body I've ever imagined… or she's the greatest actress."
"No, it's true, in fact we face a problem because of her sensitivity," said Lady Sarah. "It can become quite a trial to find oneself having orgasms on the slightest pretext. Just yesterday she came on the number five bus and rode three streets past her stop! Terrible! We are now in the process of teaching her how to control her sensitivity. Did you see her clitoris?"
I breathed deeply before answering. "Magnificent!" I exclaimed.
"Gabriel has expressed an interest in developing hers," stated Harry.
"Well I'm thinking about it… "
"We'd love to have you," smiled Lady Flemming. I was certain they would.