Lady Behind The Wall

Looking like a deer caught in the headlights, Mrs. Morality's mouth opened and closed, but no sounds emerged. Deirdre leaned against me and slipped her arm around my waist. The Pillsbury Dough-Girl turned away and trotted as fast as she could to the van, hams wobbling, screeching for her brood to get themselves into the car right now and backhanding one boy who wasn't moving fast enough to suit her current mood. Squashing herself behind the wheel, she took off with squealing tires and blatting exhaust.

As we watched her go I said, "You know, those pants of hers put me in mind of a blivet."

Deirdre nodded agreement. "There really ought to be an expiration date on spandex. Some things are just not meant to be seen in public." Thinking of how we'd gotten into the confrontation, we looked at each other and laughed.

*****

It was after dark when I finally turned into the driveway. The trip was over and we were home. My darling woke from her light doze and looked around as the garage door came rattling down.

"What is this, the Batcave?"

"No, but the garage is built into the side of a hill. The whole house is, actually. C'mon, give me a hand with the bags."

We took our suitcases into the game room adjoining the garage and Deirdre nodded appreciatively at the pool table in the center. Although I know how to shoot pool, the kind of shooting I prefer is pursued elsewhere. We walked into the connecting passage. I set one bag down and reached around the corner to flip the lights on.

"We may as well start the tour of the house here. This is the bar."

Deirdre looked past me and whistled. The place was an emulation of the smoking room of a gentleman's club or a ritzy bar. Everything was oak paneling, mahogany and leather furniture, a huge beveled glass mirror behind glass shelves loaded with every kind of potable you could imagine and a working fireplace at the far end of the room. French doors opened onto what appeared to be a stone patio, but that was an illusion. It was really a small concrete room painted in tromp l'oeil fashion, whose real purpose was to provide an emergency exit via the escape ladder on the far wall.

"Dad used to entertain friends or business associates here almost every weekend. When I was a kid I thought this room saw more boozing than the local bars. The only time it gets used these days is for company parties and such." Pointing down the corridor, I continued, "Down there are storerooms, the workshop, the HVAC and power rooms, and the steps up to the patio behind the house where I do my grilling. Shall we proceed into the house proper?"

She followed me up the interior stairs to the main floor. We set the suitcases down in the front hallway and I took her hand, leading her into the living room. It looks somewhat incongruous, with delicate feminine mouldings edged in gilt, a French Provincial desk and a white-painted brick fireplace clashing with decidedly masculine cordovan leather armchairs, ottomans and a couch. Mother favored the French Provincial style and Father had let her have her way with the living room and guest rooms provided she left the rest of the house alone. As I hate French Provincial with a passion one of the first things I'd done when I inherited the house was to offer the furniture to my sister. She'd happily taken it all off my hands and trucked it out to her estate in the Napa Valley; it suited the chateau she and her husband had built in their vineyard. She hadn't had room for the desk and I'd kept it out of inertia, using it as a phone and stationery stand. I'd just never gotten around to replacing it or changing out the mouldings.

We walked through the sliding doors into the formal dining room. Done more to Father's taste than to Mother's, the big mahogany table and its twelve comfortable chairs filled the room without dominating it. Matching sideboards, china cabinets and a butler's table ran along the walls. Although I seldom had occasion to use it, I felt an affinity for this room.

Mother had put her foot down and made Father take a vacation when I was ten years old. We "crossed in style" on theQE2and spent a month touring England and Scotland. The idea of redecorating our house as a model home for Golden Acres had just begun to percolate in Father's brain at that point. We'd stopped at an auction house in the country that was selling the contents of a manor house from the era when the sun allegedly never set on the British Empire strictly on the off-chance, because it was raining and there was nothing else to do.

I had been taken with this dining room set, looking at the turnings on the chairs and reverently running my hand along the table top with wide eyes. The auctioneer had been warily watching me – little kids are generally about as welcome at an auction as plague rats – and on seeing the respect with which I was regarding the furniture, had been kind enough to tell me its history.

When I had asked intelligent questions, he'd taken me around the auction hall, my parents following at a discreet distance, and shown me all sorts of treasures the Empire-building family had accumulated from all over the world, treating me with the same respect he did the adults. In my turn, I had insisted to Father and Mother that we had a golden opportunity here and would be fools not to take advantage of it. The auctioneer had smiled and clapped me approvingly on the shoulder when I, with the artless truth of a child, had informed Mother that compared to the quality of the antique furniture here the new French Provincial pieces she'd been buying back in the States were utter crap. Father had like to busted a gut laughing and even Mother, embarrassed though she had been, had seen the humor of it.

They had purchased a bidding card and catalog and, trusting the instinct that let me see quality, had allowed me to bid on a number of items including the dining room set, the grandfather's clock that ticked in the front hall and, as I led my lady into the kitchen, the heavy duty copper pots and pans, kitchen knives and cooking implements that hung on the walls and on the rack over the Vulcan stove. I'd redone the kitchen to suit myself a few years ago and had replaced Mother's early 1980s enamel appliances and ceramic tile with granite countertops and floors, tempered glass-fronted cabinets and stainless steel appliances, retaining only the antique wrought iron racks and the oak country kitchen table and chairs by the doors that opened onto the stone terrace out back. Deirdre smiled when she noticed the built in pizza oven and rotisserie next to the black and silver stove.

"I see why you don't eat out much. Who needs a restaurant when you can make almost anything you'd want to eat right here in this kitchen?"

We turned left into the hall, peeking in to see the guest suite where Cleo had tended me after my night of fear and the library that backed onto the stairs. At the end of the hall were two rooms. I showed her the one on the right first. It was empty.

"This was Mother's sewing room. At least, that's what she called it, even though I never saw her sew anything here. It was her hobby room, where she pursued whatever hobby she happened to be on at the moment. It's yours, now. You can do whatever you like with it, decorate it however you choose, and I won't say a word. Everyone needs their very own personal space no matter how big a house is. That's part of what makes a house a home."

Across the hall from the sewing room was my study. Although it was a home office, it was also an extension of the library and living room, with masculine bookcases, a fireplace on the outer wall flanked by comfortable old leather chairs and footstools, and paintings on the walls over the books. I noted her smile as she spotted the original art that had become the Fire Fox patch back at Camp Jackson.

"Now for the second floor," I said, going up the curving main staircase to the second floor, flipping on the lights as I passed. Deirdre held me back as I started to turn right.

"What's down there?" she asked, pointing to the dark left hallway.

"That's the mausoleum."

"I beg your pardon?"

"That's just what I call it. My brother and sister's rooms, my old bedroom and the housekeeper's suite are all down there, as is the playroom. That wing of the house hasn't been used in years. After Mother and Father augured in on an inter-island flight in the Caribbean twelve years ago Beatrice, our housekeeper, wanted to retire. So I pensioned her off with an annuity for all her years of service to the family and moved into this end of the house after I remodeled it. You'll see what I mean."

We walked past the gun room with its racks of firearms, fishing rods, hunting trophies and framed photos of successful conquests in the field. She commented on the apparent lack of security.

"Don't you worry about burglars grabbing the guns?"

"Not really. The gun cases are wood over steel and armor glass of the same sort used in banks. The weapons themselves are secured by a locking system whose design derives from 19th Century tantalus liquor cabinets. Harry Houdini might be able to get them open in a hurry without the key, but no ordinary burglar will. And if one were to try and fail, he'd find himself trapped in the room. They are tied into the alarm system, you see. The door and the window both have automatic locking mechanisms that also activate the house alarm and the emergency links to the alarm company, the police and my cellphone. That's why I can display them when other people need a gun safe. The room itself is a gun safe. A very well appointed one, but a gun safe nonetheless."

Across the hall was a second guest suite like the one on the first floor. "If you agree, darling, we'll get rid of this stuff and install your bedroom set in here. It's so much nicer."

I finally turned to the door next to the gun room. "And this is the master bedroom suite. Come and see it." She walked slowly through the door.

The basic layout had not been changed since Mother and Father built the place. The foyer (as I thought of it) contained a sofa, a couple of easy chairs and a coffee table. The bed faced the fireplace, which was flanked by floor to ceiling stained glass windows that threw colors into the room, with a soft rug and low tables for drinks in front of it. There were doors in the wall on either side of the bed. I led Deirdre through the one on the right.

It was a walk-through closet, with my suits, sport coats and other masculine apparel (much of it newly acquired from Bella) hanging in glass-doored closets, with a built in highboy for things like socks, underwear and jewelry on the outside wall next to a chair and laundry hamper. Beyond was a bathroom floored and walled in marble, with a multi-head shower, a sink and toilet, plus a cabinet for bathrobes and towels. There was a door on the left wall, and we passed through.

It let into a cedar walled and floored bath whose main feature was a massaging hot tub, also made of cedar. The tub design was Japanese and the room was comfortably warm, lit both by recessed lights and a skylight over the presently covered tub. The water constantly recirculated and was kept at 110 degrees. I much preferred this setup, which I had installed myself with the aid of Johann, to the plastic Jacuzzi and tile it had started with. One of my secret pleasures was marinating in theofforowith a cold drink and a good book. There are other ways to relieve the stresses of a long workday, but to my mind that one beats standing in a bar and getting tight three ways to Sunday.

We went on into a bathroom that was the mirror image of mine on the other side, the main difference being that the skylight was the sole source of outside light while my bath also had a window with translucent glass in the outside wall.

"This bathroom is yours, honey. If you don't like the pictures we'll find something you do and replace them. I had to guess at the soaps and shampoos. If I guessed wrong, we'll buy something better." I was afraid of how she would react, but when I looked at her Deirdre seemed slightly amused, as if I were worrying about trivialities.

It was as we went into the dressing room that I became truly apprehensive. Twice the size of mine (neither Father nor I were serious clotheshorses), Mother had ordered it to her specifications. Although I had replaced the louvered doors on the small closets and shelf cupboards with glass, I had kept the mirror doors on the deep closets Mother had had built to hold her dresses, formals, semi-formals and the special locker for her furs. The sets of closets ran around the perimeter of the space. In the center was a vanity for makeup and a long built-in dresser with drawers on both sides. One side was of conventional size drawers for underthings, scarves and handkerchiefs. The other was of many shallow drawers, all lined in velvet and with appropriate fittings for rings, necklaces, bracelets, watches, earrings and suites.

Mother had been a jewelry aficionado, whereas my sister Cynthia was not. Although she had been left some special pieces by Mother and had at my invitation taken a few more of sentimental value after the will was probated, most of Mother's jewelry had come down to me. I had carefully gone through it after my last meeting with Deirdre, storing anything I sensed she would not like and replacing it with things I hoped she would enjoy.

The girls like Debbie who had briefly shared the house with me had never seen Mother's jewelry collection. Before the first of them had moved in, for reasons I could not have explained at the time I had locked it all in the vault Father had built into the foundation in the basement. I had never told them the safe existed, and it seemed my instinct had been sound. With Deirdre, I had no such qualms and again could not have explained why. My only concern was whether she would like them or if she might have reservations about wearing gold, silver and gems that could be construed as family treasures.

I watched anxiously as Deirdre slowly walked around the room, looking though the glass at the clothing I'd selected for her under Bella's and Tasha's guidance. Occasionally she would open a door and run a hand along the fabric. The rods, shelves and shoe racks looked bare, with lots of additional space. She looked into the big closets and took out a couple of the dresses, holding them up against her and looking at them in the mirror. She pulled open a couple of the jewelry drawers and saw the contents gleaming up at her. Suddenly, she ran from the room.

I caught up with her by the fireplace. She was leaning on the mantel, sobbing.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Did you – did you do all that? Just for me?"

"The retrofitting, you are referring to? The work performed was to update the basic design to the current fashion and upgrade the ventilation system to preserve garments under optimum conditions of temperature and humidity as a couturier would."

"The clothes? The jewelry? You picked those?"

"I had assistance. Friends with connections in the fields of high fashion, jewelry design and estate jewelry, and ancestors with exquisite and superior taste combined to render the exercise enjoyable once I acclimated myself to the parameters established for it. Was I mistaken? Are my selections egregiously not to your liking?"

I was afraid for her to turn around. I had the horrid feeling that I'd find my fate written in her face. She spun about and threw herself into my arms, laughing through her tears.

"Oh, John! No one in my life has ever done anything as sweet as that for me! Not even Maman and Papa! You must have spent a fortune in that room!"

"That is not important. If the design and layout does not please you, I can rectify it. If the clothing purchased for you by me is not to your taste, we can discard it and commence building your wardrobe anew..."

She shut me off by kissing me, long, slowly and with great tenderness, salt from her tears on her lips. She nestled against me, her head on my shoulder, her lips against my ear

"John, my darling, you don't need to change a single thing. The clothes are beautiful. They're exactly the sort of thing I love, only better than anything I've ever bought for myself. And it was you who picked them out for me, even if you had help from women friends to guide you. Your taste in jewelry is superb. Was it your mother's?"

"Much of it is. Some of the very old pieces were Grandmother's. I did buy some estate pieces and contemporary things for you myself. I will do better as I become better acquainted with your preferences –"

"Shhh." She kissed me again. "I love all of it. Not only because it's beautiful, but because you chose it for me, because you thought I would look good in it, because your only concern was that I'd like it.

"I have some clue how frightening you must have found picking out things for me. But I'm not like those other girls you tried to please, the ones who abused your feelings, took you for a ride and then dumped you like throwing you out of a moving car, as if you were worthless except for your money. You don't know all the things I've gone through any more than I know all the things those bitches did to you. But I know enough to know that I have a good man who will always be there for me, who only wants me to be happy, just as I hope you know you have a woman who only wants to make you happy and please you, to make you proud of her and know she is proud to be yours. And I will keep telling you that until you finally believe me."

She kissed me again, hotter this time, rubbing against me as she undid buttons and unbuckled my belt. She took a step back and started in on her buttons as I took over undoing my own.

"Let me prove it to you, my darling. Strip me naked and take me. On this tigerskin rug, on the bed, in the tub, I don't care. I just need you inside me, filling me up, letting me love you as we please each other. Fuck me, darling, fuck me, please."

I skinned out of my own clothes and took over the task of easing the blouse off her shoulders and unhooking her bra, letting her glorious breasts stand free, the nipples already erect with anticipation. Taking my time, I unfastened her skirt and let it fall to the floor. She stepped out of it and toward me, my hands instinctively seeking her boobs. She closed her eyes and moaned softly as I caressed them, watching her nipples harden even more as I drew her into my embrace. Our mouths locked and my tongue invaded her as she strained against me, her moans louder as our hands ran down each other's bodies, caressing, teasing, urging each other on. I could feel her wetness against me as I cupped her buttocks and she pressed her sex against my prick.

Shifting my hold on her, I picked Deirdre up in my arms and turned to the bed, somehow managing to sweep back the covers without dropping her. Her arms around my neck, she arched her back as I laid her down, offering me her tits. I eased down beside her, feet still on the floor, and nibbled her earlobe. I kissed her cheek, trailing onto her waiting mouth. Our tongues dueled, her breath hot and sweet. She broke the kiss and whispered.

"Oh, darling, I'm so hot! I'm ready for you. Do anything you want, my love. I want you to. I want you to ..."

I kissed my way down her neck to her marvelous hooters, taking the nipples into my mouth in turn and nibbling on them. She gasped and pressed my head against them.

"Ohmigod, you're good! So good! Don't stop, John! I'm almost there! I'm ready to– ready to– oh yes,now!"

She shook as her climax overtook her and her hard, lustful nips softened with the release. She sighed contentedly as I continued my way down her body, moving from her boobies to her abdomen, down the curve of her stomach, past her belly button and down to her mound of Venus. I could smell her readiness now as well as see it glistening on her legs and labia.