A Pretty Mouth (8 page)

A sudden movement made me scream—perhaps there really was a ghost that haunted this room! But then my cousin emerged from the shadows, grinning at me.

“Why Camilla! Venturing up here—and in the dark!”

“Oh, Laurent! You gave me such a fright!” I cried. My legs were trembling beneath my night-dress; perceiving this, he offered me his arm and led me to a dusty sofa.

“Will you allow me to make it up to you?” said he. “I know a treatment that is said to cure nervousness in women, it is called
fucking
.”

“Oh, I know all about fucking,” I laughed weakly. “I have never done it, but nearly everything but. The girls at school said I could lick a quim better than anybody, and a gentleman on the train said my cock-sucking was first rate!”

“Let us see about that,” he said, putting my hand on his stiffening prick. It was quite a large affair, larger than anything I had yet encountered. “If you are as good as you say, then I shall introduce you to the very best pleasure of all!”

5 April 1887, Morning. In my room.

Oh, what a good night’s sleep can do to improve one’s spirits! Or at the very least, a good night’s
something
. Susan was right, my visit home has yielded quite a lot of inspiration for my serial!

Not a quarter of an hour after I blew out my candle for the second time I heard a soft knock at my door. Somehow I knew who was outside—the new Lord Calipash—but unsure if I wanted to see him, I did not answer. He had been unpleasant, yes, but he was also rather attractive, at least in a squirrely sort of way, and I have enjoyed my share of casual romps with far more irksome men. Many and manifest are the advantages of having no inclination to marry and an excellent understanding of abortifacients.

A second knock, then the handle turned. Without lifting my head from my pillow I saw in the doorway the outline of Orlando, whom I think I may now safely call by his Christian name!

He stole into my chamber, closing the door softly behind him, and then shed his coat, throwing it upon the chair in which I had earlier sat scribbling on my latest story, which, if I do say so myself, is coming along nicely. After kicking off his shoes, to my surprise, he slid wordlessly into bed beside me.

“My God,” I whispered, for he stank of death from his trip into the family crypt. “What is it you want so badly that you could not bathe before coming to me, I wonder?”

He said nothing—merely groaned in the most fetching, desperate manner, and put his hand on where my right breast swelled beneath my nightgown. I turned over, and his lips found mine.

I drew back, appalled by his stench. It emanated from every pore in his body; his mouth was foul with the reek of the grave.

“Go and wash,” I said. I love an unexpected frolick, but the unclean human body is disgusting to me.

He groaned again, urgently, but due to his odor I was no longer inclined to engage in any amorous endeavors. I pushed him away, but he grabbed my wrist, and held up something in his other hand. It swung to and fro in the moonlight, for the fading storm had parted her clouds to reveal the last sliver of that waning sphere, and I could just see what he held out to me.

It was the jade tortoise I had earlier seen hanging ‘round my guardian’s neck!

“For me?” I asked him, surprised. He grunted his assent, and then fastened the clasp around my neck.

When I felt the weight of the cold stone on my skin (I am ashamed to write this, for I cannot account for it—not even to myself, here in my private diary) I was possessed of a passion stronger than any I have ever felt before. I was ever so desperate to be fucked, more than when I finally managed to sneak Lord Crim-Con away from his wife for a quick one in a servant’s bed at their tenth anniversary party, more even than the time on the occasion of my twenty-third birthday when Susan surprised me by taking me on holiday to Winsor, and snuck me into her brother’s dormitory so I could have some sport with five handsome youths of that year’s senior class.

“Why, Lord Calipash,” said I, snaking my hand down his chest and under the lip of his trousers. “You have inflamed—bewitched me! I simply must have you! Do let us make love!”

He kissed his answer upon my neck, and then lower, lower. I know I am in the habit of describing my encounters in detail here, for my personal enjoyment when I am in my dotage, but we sported for so long, and in so many ways, I fear I shall miss breakfast if I record everything. Suffice it to say, a more tender, compassionate lover I could never want, and he made full use of every place of pleasure I possess. It is sadly rare to find a man as able with bottom-hole as with cunt, but Orlando knew the unique needs, challenges, and delights to be had behind as well as in front. He also had no reservations allowing me to do what I would with him, even going so far as to allow me to work my favorite dildo (I always take it with me) up into his fundament to induce the truly copious spending which is nigh impossible for men to produce any other way.

Good Lord, but I am hungry! It’s only natural after taking so much exercise in the night, I suppose.

***

Later
—Orlando was not at breakfast. Lizzie says he will not come out of his room.

***

Later still—
Feeling rather lonely, for neither Lizzie nor Bill seem to want much to do with me (they are holed up in the kitchen, apparently “doing what must be done” regarding the Lord Calipash’s death, though I swear I saw Bill sweep away a trick of bezique when I came into the room … but I must have imagined it, for the sanctimonious old ferret never trucks with any games at all, and certainly not cards!) I went for a walk after my meal.

The grounds are still very lovely here, I think their being so overgrown actually adds to their savage charm. And yet … one would think such a wilderness would attract more wild creatures, but I saw no life within the twilit deeps except for a tiny, but bright red bird of a type I had never seen before. It landed on a tree and peered at me silently. I know it will sound strange, but I swear that once it was sure it held my attention, it fluttered to a close-by tree and did not move until I stepped toward it. Then it did the same thing again, and again, until it led me—by chance, surely—to the Calipash family crypt. There it landed on the pediment—and after a moment, flew inside the crypt itself. The door was ajar from Orlando’s midnight sojourn.

The charnel smell that had clung to Orlando’s flesh last night whilst we frolicked emanated from the black interior; I found it nauseating but strangely compelling, and reached out my hand to push open the door and further investigate what lay inside the sepulcher. In I went, and once again braved the stone steps down into the crypt proper.

It is a horrid place, the crypt, a burial-place worthy of the strange legends concocted by the locals. Grinning carven demons watch over the bodies of former Calipash lords, and from their mouths emanate awful orange and purple light, very like sunlight through filtered glass, but they shine even at night! My steps echoed on the granite floor as I peered about, revisiting that dead place where the dead dwell, thinking of the strange ghost I had thought I had seen as a child—but then I am ashamed to say my courage failed me. I fancied I heard the ghost groaning at me; looking up, I saw a shadow of a man, tall and thin—and screamed!

“It is surely the Ghast!” I cried, and fled, nearly falling back down the moisture-slick stairs several times in my haste, but by the time the handle of the garden-door of Calipash Manor was in my hand I was laughing at myself for being such a noodle. The wind often moans when it passes over stone, does it not, and I had left the door ajar—and why, I wondered, had it not occurred to me that Orlando could have walked in front of the crypt-door? That would have cast a shadow very like the “ghost” I saw.

If there is any
real
danger here at Calipash Manor, it is too much sunshine. I must be more careful of my skin—my complexion will be ruined if I continue taking morning walks. My skin is browner already, I am sure of it.

***

Afternoon—
Orlando did not come down to dinner. I fear I must have done him a mischief. Perhaps attempting to induce a fourth occasion took more out of him than I anticipated?

I had a solitary, silent meal in the dining room; again, Lizzie and Bill would not allow me to dine with them. They were really rather stern with me about it.

“We would have notions of rank preserved in this house, Chelone,” said Lizzie. “Anarchy results elseways.”

“Yes indeed, a woman of your breeding mustn’t break bread with those such as us,” said Bill—which in anyone else I would think to be a crack about my lack of proper parentage, but not from Bill!

Ah well. I have eaten lonelier meals.

I wonder, though, if I didn’t work myself into rather an agitated state, too—I could stomach only the vegetable courses.

***

Late Afternoon—
Something strange is going on, I am sure of it. Orlando
must
be ill. Before going down to tea I knocked on the door of his room, and heard nothing. I raised my voice and told him it was tea-time, and I heard a faint moan from within. Who declines tea? Even invalids must have their refreshing cuppa and hot buttered toast, surely.

***

After Tea—
I went to consult with Lizzie about Orlando, though I hated to disturb her again after her earlier sternness with me. It is funny, as I approached the kitchen-door, I am sure I misheard her, but before I knocked, I heard her conversing with Bill. He said, “that he will not stir is a good sign,” and I thought I overheard her say “Soon will come the hour of the tortoise,” which made Bill laugh, a harsh sound. Then I knocked; they fell silent as I entered.

“I fear the Lord Calipash may be ill,” said I.

“As I said, he was up late last night,” said Lizzie. “When I retired he had called Bill to bring him another bottle of wine. Have you never had a hangover?”

“Even if he was up late—”

“Likely he’s a cold upon him,” said Bill. He had obviously been doing something that required his high boots (come to think of it, he could have been the source of the shadow, as he is tall and thin, too). Mud plastered his feet and calves nearly to the knee, but he had not shed his footwear before coming to sit at the table. Lizzie, I was surprised to note, did not chide him for this; indeed, she seemed hardly to notice his mess. This was quite a change from the attitude she used to take when I came in from outside without a care!

“A cold!” I exclaimed.

“He went outside last night, in the storm,” said Bill, and shrugged at me as he put his boots up on one of the kitchen chairs, fouling it horribly. “I tried to speak reason to him, but he would not listen. Said he wished to keep vigil by the side of his dead father. Heathen notion—perhaps it is as you say, and the Lord has punished him with an ailment.”

“Then he must be in need of at least a cup of tea,” I said, exasperated. “Let me bring it to him, you needn’t trouble yourselves.”

“Oh, go on then,” said Lizzie, pouring some liquid the color of wash-water into a chipped cup. “Take him this, if you must be meddlesome.”

It was in low spirits indeed that I went up to Orlando’s room, tea in hand. I have rarely felt so depressed. This slapdash housekeeping and surly language would be understandable, of course, if Bill and Lizzie seemed distraught over my guardian’s death, but neither seem to care tuppence about it—they have not even mentioned it to me! And come to think of it, the house was topsy-turvy when I arrived. From what I saw, taking care of the former Lord Calipash would not have occupied the whole of their waking hours, so how can they account for how decrepit Calipash Manor has become? It pains me to write this, but I feel as though the two of them have no emotion whatsoever as regards their former master; I get the strange feeling if no one would notice the irregularity of it, they would not even attend to the funereal arrangements. When I was a girl neither one of them seemed the sort of servant who would take a “when the cat’s away” attitude toward their duties, but perhaps I was not a perceptive child?

Well, regardless, I went up to Orlando’s room and entered without knocking, only to find him prostrate on the bed, sheets wound around him like a shroud. The curtains were drawn and I could barely see my way over to him.

“Lord Calipash?” I whispered. “It is I—Chelone, your cousin, come to see if you need anything?”

He groaned and stirred, and I took this as a good sign. Setting the cup of tea down beside him, I took the liberty of seating myself on his bed and patting his shoulder.

“It is after tea-time, please—won’t you take a bite or sip of anything?”

“My head,” he groaned. “Oh, Chelone—I was beastly to you last night, was I not?”

“Never mind that,” I said. “I believe you have already apologized enough.”

“Did I?” He flopped over onto his side and looked at me. “I must have had more wine than I thought.”

“Not all apologies must be spoken,” I said, and touched where my new lovely necklace hung below my blouse. Stroking the pendant, even through the fabric, gave me the most visceral shock! Plenty of times I have received trinkets from lovers, but this—it comforted me to have it about my neck, as if it were a warm extension of my very flesh.