Amnesia

The young guy who had been flirting with her took umbrage. "And what am I, lass? Chopped liver? Have I been wasting my time and money on you now?"

"There's time for all with money, Charlie, and maybe for some without, if they're good looking and have been off giving their all for country. Is that where you've been, Laddie?" she asked, giving me a smile and a wink and setting my pint in front of me. "You've got your head bandaged, Sweetie. Did you get that in protecting me from the Huns? Are you out rambling from the hospital over at the manor and are in need of some appreciation?"

"Yes, I'm back from France and recuperating up at Caversham Park," I answered, saluting her with the pint and taking a swig. "I was told to start trying to walk at distance."

"And you made it this far," she said. "Shows you're getting your strength back. Maybe we can help you get back into the saddle on other important parts of life."

The other barman, in his forties and burly, interjected, "The first pint back from France is on the house, soldier. And anything else that might fancy you as well." He gave me a wink and wafted off to serve another customer.

"We were about to take the air," Charlie said, his hand on Gertie's arm.

"So we were, Luv," she said. "You want to come out in the back in about ten, good looking?" Gertie said. "As Fergis said, the first one is on the house for you boys being brought back from the front." She gave me a wink and went out the back of the pub, Charlie following her, his hand on her bum.

I thought about what I wanted. She was a bit skinny, but she was a good-looking young woman. She was a little hard looking, but what was it I wanted? I searched my mind, my brain still pretty scrambled and floating in and out on memory. What had I been interested in before whatever happened in France? She came on to me like she liked me and I could have what I wanted. Was I attractive to women? Were women--and pub girls like Gertie--attractive to me? Did I fuck them when I had a chance? Was I up for a casual lay--of a woman? All I conjured up in my mind were men, and encounters with them were hazy in my memory. What is it I wanted? Did I perhaps want both?

There was one way right here for me to find out--or to begin exploring again and perhaps jog my memory back to wellness. I was getting fed up with this fog that drifted in and out in my mind, spending more time there than not. It was getting better, but it wasn't getting better fast enough.

I pushed off from the bar, my pint finished, and walked to the back of the pub and into the service yard. This was where the necessaries were, and I could always retreat to having come out to use that before pressing on with my walk.

Charlie was fucking Gertie up against the wall of a garden shed. She was facing the shed, her cheek and the palms of her hands pressed against the wooden wall. Her buttocks jutted out from the wall, her breasts were released from her bodice and bobbing free, and her legs were set wide. The back of her skirt was bunched up around her waist. If she had been wearing undergarments, she wasn't wearing them now. Charlie was in a crouch behind her, his hands cupping and squeezing her ample breasts, and his cock fucking her cunt. She was egging him on with a vocabulary she'd no doubt learned in the pub on busy, raucous nights.

I stood and watched for several minutes. The scene, albeit the two of them were having a good time, did nothing for me. After a while I moved on to the necessary, relieved myself, and walked around the side of the pub and onto Kidmore End Road, moving away from Caversham.

What Gertie had to offer had no appeal to me. I don't know if that comforted or disturbed me. I tried not to think about it, and not being able to focus long on any one topic helped that.

Doctor Baker's house was a neat Tudor cottage in a small, well-kept garden just off Kidmore End Road. He opened the door to me and smiled broadly.

"So, you have found me, have you? And you managed to walk all the way from the manor?"

"I had to break my walk at the pub--the Black Horse. I was surprised I had gotten so weak. Although, who knows, maybe I never had much strength. There's still so much I don't know about myself."

"Come in, come in," he said, leading me through an entry hall and into a parlor that was smartly appointed. A lot of care had gone into the furnishing and decoration of the room. I was surprised that a doctor as busy as he was up at Caversham Park with the patient load he surely had was this particular with the decoration of his house. Of course, the garden had been groomed as well. "Sit and I'll get us a brew. You had one at the pub, I assume. But not more than two, I hope."

"Just the one," I said as I settled myself on a settee facing the fireplace. A fire was laid, and it was quite cozy in the wood-paneled room.

"And was the barmaid, Gertie, there?" he said when he came back with mugs. "I assume the pint was on the house, it being your first visit to the Black Horse--and that Gertie was on the house as well. How long a rest did you take at the Black Horse?"

I blushed, and he could see that I had. He added, "She's very patriotic--and very loose, that one. The barkeep is free with her time as well. You are quite the looker, so I assume she would have come on to you."

"Yes, yes, she did," I answered.

"And you fucked her?"

I paused, shocked that he was that direct.

"I'm your doctor, and you can't remember much--not even your name. If we have to shock you into remembering who you are, what you do in life, what you prefer and want, we'll have to do so."

"What I prefer?"

"You'll want to know all that you are in life. You deserve that. Those who care for you--and there must be such--deserve to know that as well."

"No, she invited me to be with her, but I didn't stay around."

"You didn't stay around because she revolted you? Gertie doesn't have trouble finding men interested in her--and interested in her again and again."

"No, she didn't revolt me," I answered. "She invited me out back where another man was mounted on her, and I watched for a few minutes. It didn't disgust me, but it didn't arouse me, I'm afraid. Maybe that part of my mind just hasn't engaged yet."

"Or perhaps you prefer men. If you believe you might, don't fight it--or be shy of talking to me about it. I'm your doctor, not your confessor or father."

And we know what you like to do with me, I thought. And then I was shocked that the thought had surfaced in my mind. Images of an examination table, my feet in stirrups, and the doctor--this doctor--crouched over me, inside me, fucking me, flooded into my mind. A memory recaptured. I was surprised that that didn't revolt me. But it didn't. The doctor had fucked me, and realizing that hadn't revolted me. He was watching me carefully, as if he could read my mind.

And it appeared he could read my mind. Giving me a piercing look, he said, "We are just trying to help you recover what is real--what and who you really are. I'm not making any judgments here. And I haven't done anything that you didn't show you wanted. I'm just trying to help you find who you are and what you want. It just happened to fall into my preferences as well. You are a beautiful young man."

So, he didn't rape me; I had somehow begged him for it. Had I done the same with the orderly, Stanley? I certainly hadn't tried to fight Stanley off.

I took a long draw on the mug of beer, wanting to discuss something less intimate. The man was getting a rise out of me--not as a doctor but as a man. "This is a very nice house and very well decorated," I said, fishing now, trying to grasp what the situation was. For the first time, I felt self-conscious about being in the room alone with Doctor Baker. Were we alone in the house? "Your wife must be a very talented decorator."

"Pat was very artistic. But Pat has left me. Pat was beautiful. I have a photograph." He hadn't sat down yet, although he'd put his mug of beer on a small table between a wing chair and the fireplace, next to the settee I was sitting on. He went to a door on the opposite wall from the fireplace, opened it, and went into the room beyond. I could see a four-poster bed in there with rich draperies hanging from its canopy. When he came back and turned the photo for me to see, I almost hyperventilated--and it wasn't just because he brought a framed photograph back. He was naked, his body magnificent for a man his age. And he was in erection.

"I don't think I'll be presuming," he said. "You have taken me before without reluctance. And we are just trying to help you discover who you really are--what you really want."

"Before? More than once?"

"Oh, my, yes, certainly more than once. And you weren't a virgin. A doctor knows these things. You had been with men before me. You wanted to be with me; you encourage me to cover you. You have been here for a couple of months. And now you have come to me at my house. I'm sure you know why you came here."

The photograph was a surprise as well. Pat was a young man, not a woman--not a wife. He didn't appear to be any older than I was, with much the same features, and was small, slender build as I had.

"Pat went to the front--to France--and didn't come back. He isn't coming back," Doctor Baker said. "In many ways I like to think of you as the one who came back to me in Pat's stead--from the first day I lowered you onto the examination table and you opened your legs to me. You wanted it. You gave yourself to me willingly. You responded naturally. You had been with men before. I could tell that you had been. You moaned for me. You let me in deep and clutched me to you as we coupled. You sighed when you took my seed. I admit I lost myself. I was thinking of Pat, and there, for a few minutes, as we rocked our bodies against each other and you sheathed me, I believed you were Pat come back to me."

"Coupled" was an avoiding, trivializing way of saying it, although as he stood there before me, naked, and spoke so intensely, I didn't feel he was trivializing this. My doctor had fucked me on his examination table when I didn't have full control of my mind. He said I begged for it, but I only have his word for that. But what could I say? How could I deny him? He obviously wanted me, and I found, memory loss or no memory loss, that I wanted him too.

He fucked me the first time that day on the settee, me on my belly, my arms and head dangling over the arm and the doctor, on top of me, on my back, inside me once I had watched him split the condom packet and crown himself, his arms stretched over mine, gripping my wrists with his fists, his face buried in the hollow of my throat, and his pelvis moving, up, down, up, down, fucking me deep.

After capturing me under him on the sofa and fucking me, he wanted assurances I accepted it. "You. If you are accepting of this, show me. Give yourself to me," he had said.

"How can I show my surrender more than I have?" I asked.

"You must do it yourself. You must ride my shaft; you must make the effort and commitment yourself." He rose from me and went into the bedroom and lay down on his back on the four-poster canopy bed. His shaft was in full erection again. He opened his arms to me, coaxing me to saddle myself on his hips and do the riding--which I did, giving it all to him, accepting full responsibility and control for what we were doing. I rode his cock, saddled on his pelvis, facing him, initially, with the palms of my hands pressed to his pectorals and him grasping and stroking my cock. But when I had ejaculated the first time--actually the second time, having come on the settee as well--I turned on him, grasping his knees with my hands, and rising and falling. We came almost together then.

I couldn't claim that this was him doing something to me. He was under me. I was astride him, riding his cock.

As I arched my back and both released my load and took his, I cried out. Paul! Paul Parker! My name is Paul Parker! I'm from Timberlay, in Yorkshire!

* * * *

Three weeks later, Lord Ramsay arrived in Caversham Park in his chauffeur-driven 1916 Packard Fleetwood Cabriolet to take me back to Timberlay Hall in Yorkshire. I had remembered more bits and pieces of my past, but other than finding I had come from Timberlay, was connected with the country estate of a Lord Ramsay, and had gone to war with the lord's son, Howard Temple, who had not come back from France, I couldn't remember anything about my early life. The lord seemed to expect that I would and was very solicitous with me. I soon suspected that I hadn't just been one of the estate's servants. I wondered if he knew what I had been to his son, Howard.

They had done all they could for me at Caversham Park, and they needed the bed for newly arriving wounded soldiers. With me beginning to remember my recent past, at least, Doctor Baker pretty much lost interest in bedding me, evidently for the same reason that the orderly Stanley had left. It was too risky what I would remember and possibly say, and there were other good-looking amnesia patients who were susceptible to his attention as long as their memories were impaired.

As we drove back to the York area, Lord Ramsay queried me about the last moments of his son, Howard. I remembered now more than I told the father, though, out of kindness to the old man. The man wasn't all that old, really. He was probably in his fifties, fit, and robust. He was a muscular man, a hands-on manager of his estates. He rarely went into London. He was a widower and preferred the rough-and-tumble male world of the countryside. There was little opportunity for talk as we drove. Although there was a chauffeur, Lord Ramsay preferred to do his own driving in the countryside and drove at high speed, concentrating on the road. I spent much of the time in the backseat, as Lord Ramsay wanted the chauffeur up front with him, doing what ever adjustments needed to be done on the instrument panel as we moved along at a brisk pace. The driving was given over to the chauffeur in the villages and towns.

In the conversations we did have, I learned more about my past in Timberlay than the lord learned of his son's demise. Howard, of course, had received honors posthumously. He was the son of a lord, and despite serving on the line, he had been permitted to take his own manservant and bed companion with him. The Army had given him a hero's demise. They had lost me altogether, though. If I had died with him, I doubt that I would have received a medal.

I learned from the father that before becoming Howard's valet, I had worked in the stables at the estate. I came from humble stock. I had been taken in as an orphan as a child, but I had become a favorite of the master and his son. That I was an orphan made sense. There had been no parents to prevent Howard from fucking me in the loft of the stables before taking me into the house and into his bed. I increasingly remembered how demanding Howard was in bed, and, slowly, I was remembering that he wasn't the only one on the estate who covered me.

When we stopped at an inn in Leicester overnight, I found just how much of a favorite I had been of the master and was able to remember who else had covered me on the estate other than Howard.

"I'm sorry Milord, we have only the one room of the quality you would want," the innkeeper at reception had said. "The young man may be satisfied with one of our shared rooms, with a bath at the end of the hall perhaps. Your chauffeur, of course, can be accommodated in the rooms above the stable."

"Does the room you have for me have more than one bed?" Lord Ramsay asked in a booming, authoritative voice.

"It has a divan in addition to a bed, yes sir."

"Then the young man and I will take that room."

We didn't need the divan, although Lord Ramsay made sure of making it look like it had been used for the maids to find the next morning. I found that I had been a bedded favorite of not only Howard, but also of his father. The lord sat at the foot of the bed, with me kneeling between his thighs, and slapped his long, thick, engorging cock on my cheeks before demanding that I give him suck. After I had brought him to full erection, I was made to kneel on the bed, cheek and chest to the sheets, arms stretched out straight in a cruciform sacrificial position, listening to the snap of the condom being applied, denoting the difference in classes and generations. The Stanleys of the world and the thinking-they-are-invincible young, like Howard, breeded; doctors and lords took care with condoms. Both fucked, and the lord did so now, mounting, penetrating, and fucking me expertly. It was made quite clear that we had done this before.

When, hovering over me close from behind and above and gripping my wrists with his strong hands and beginning to grunt and snort in my ear, as he penetrated, not long but as thick as a beer bottle, and started to move inside me, more memories came flooding back and I remembered all of how I'd gotten here and what I had willingly done to do so. I writhed under him, one of his hands went to cover my mouth to keep our business from entertaining the entire inn, and he once again, as he'd done for years before, showed me why he was the master and why I willingly opened my legs for men.

Lord Ramsay assured me I wouldn't be sent back to the stables when we reached Timberlay Hall.

"I have need for another, younger valet in my bed chamber," he said. "You will do nicely."

As had been the case with the doctor, while Lord Ramsay fucked me, more and more of my earlier life floated back into my memory. I certainly remembered that this was one of the lord's favorite taking positions--but not the only one--and that, virile and robust, he'd be changing positions with me and fucking me through the night.

I wouldn't be going back to France as a soldier. Lord Ramsay would make sure of that. He had made enough sacrifices to the war.