The Lesser Portal Ch. 06

The premises of Jones, Chemist, of Cambridge were not familiar to me, but I found them -- in a somnolent down-at-heel back-street -- by the simple stratagem of referring to the trade directory.

Most in the chemist and pharmacy line of business, I suppose, see an air of hygiene as essential. Evidently, Mr Jones held another opinion. The cardboard sign propped in the window declaring "Photographic Studio and Supplies" was yellowing as if with jaundice, and the conventional display of gigantic dropsical bottles above seemed to be growing fungus in the coloured waters within.

The bell on the shop-door defied the genius loci by jangling merrily as I entered. In response, a thick-set figure in a grubby white cotton coat emerged through a doorway beyond the counter, staggering like a bear on hind legs and enriching the air with an odour of brandy.

"Ah, Mr Jones," said I.

Mr Jones only stared at me blearily, until he turned his head to bellow over his shoulder, "Customer!" He then staggered back whencever he had come.

Through the open doorway I could see down a long corridor. A pale figure materialised in the darkness at the far end: a pale-faced, pale-haired young man of slender outline, also in a white coat. It was only when he emerged into the shop that I saw that "he" was in fact a shy young woman with hair cut unusually short.

"Miss Jones?" I asked, assuming she was Mr Jones's daughter.

"Mrs Jones," was the unexpected reply. "What can I do for you, sir?"

My first thoughts as to what she could do for me were of a frankly scandalous nature. She was pretty, in a blonde-eyebrowed, large-blue-eyed, fair-skinned way; but much more than that, she had a timid grace about her that roused all my manly instincts, both good and (as the world would say) bad. And her white coat was spotless.

Now, of course, came the ticklish part. "I think I must speak to Mr Jones. It's about some particular photographs."

In her diffidence she would not look directly at me. She swallowed and said, more or less to the furthest corner of the dusty floor, "I could speak to him, sir. Would that be the regular type of photography, or a special kind?"

"Well, it's not a regular sort of photograph, no."

"Excuse me, sir."

She disappeared through the doorway. I heard her murmur a question. The reply was a loud, slurred, "Show him some, then. Don't disturb me when I'm resting, woman!"

There was a delay, and then she reappeared holding an envelope of sturdy brown paper. "These are some half-size samples, sir," she said, and blushed. "Mr Jones takes the photographs himself. You won't find them elsewhere." She handed me the envelope at arm's length, as if wanting as little to do with the contents as possible.

When I saw the photographs I understood. They showed figures in a state of undress, two, three or even four persons at a time, engaged in a variety of practices -- all of which were punishable with imprisonment, for every one of the figures was a well-equipped male.

I could not help but burst out laughing. "Put them away, young lady!" I exclaimed. "They're not to my taste at all."

"You won't tell the authorities, sir?" She was shovelling them back in the envelope.

"Please say you won't tell. Only this sort of thing is all that keeps the shop from going under."

"I wouldn't dream of betraying you. For one thing, as a Utilitarian I regard that sort of activity as harmless. Still, the pictures I have in mind are not entirely unlike these. A few tintypes. They would have come in to be developed not long ago."

For the first time she looked directly at me. She stared for a moment, then she lifted the flap of the counter, stepped to the shop-door, turned the sign from "Open" to "Closed", pulled down the blind and returned to behind the counter.

"We do recommend tintypes as robust and convenient for the inexperienced, sir, and we also develop them."

I leaned my head conspiratorially towards hers. She mirrored the movement. "And have you developed any recently?"

"I believe we have, sir," she said softly. "I did catch a glimpse of them, and the more I look at you, the more I'm reminded of a gentleman in the tintypes."

"And could you show me them?"

"Ah, that's the problem, sir."

My heart sank, for it seemed likely that Handscombe or an employee had already collected the pictures.

"A tintype, sir, has no negative, and therefore being impossible to replicate in case of loss, Mr Jones always locks them in his safe. If we still have them they will be there."

"You say the shop is struggling. The pictures belong to another customer, but perhaps for a consideration you could...?"

Our heads were now so close together that I could see her every blonde eyelash -- which eyelashes were fit to break a man's heart, if that heart was not already broken by Miss Lydia Courtenay.

"Mr Jones keeps the safe-key in his trouser-pocket, sir, on a chain."

"Perhaps tonight...?"

"Maybe no need to wait so long, sir. In half an hour he will be in a stupor in his reclining chair."

"Mrs Jones, how can I repay you?"

She blushed again, and became irresistible. "You can call me Jenny, sir, to begin with."

"And I am Frederic."

She lifted those lashes for a moment to reveal eyes the blue of a spring sky and whispered, "Frederic."

One of her slender hands rested on the counter. I reached across and took it in mine. "This shop is not a fitting pasture for such a 'dear gazelle'," I said gently.

She was silent, then she said, "At least in Moore's poem the gazelle was loved."

Her voice faded, and I saw a tear creep down her cheek. I was mute with astonishment. At length -- "Oh Frederic," she burst out. "People don't know the half of it. He makes me wear my hair short like a man's, and he prefers me in this chemist's coat because it hides my form. And on our wedding night he -- he..."

Thinking of the brown-paper envelope I took her meaning at once: from behind, and not in the natural orifice.

She gave a long sniff, and steadied her voice. "Sometimes when he's drunk, he loses his way, if you take my meaning, and I'd have a little pleasure if only I felt truly desired. If he would even touch me at front it would be something, but it's plain he doesn't want anything that's of a woman about me. Frederic, you don't know what a relief it is to meet someone I can confess this to."

Here was a young woman repelled by the very thing all my amours had lusted for, and repelled with good reason -- a lesson in the psychology of desire.

"Jenny, poor girl," I said, "I long to help you, but it would be unfair to trifle with your affections."

She smiled sadly. "It's my body needs trifling with. My affections must fend for themselves."

At that I reached a hand across the counter, placed my fingers under her chin, and kissed her full on the lips. The kiss was ardently returned.

"Half an hour, you say. I'd guess there's a bedroom upstairs."

"Yes, I have my own little room up there."

"Then let us while away half an hour in your own little room."

The rooms above the shop were, as far as I could see when we got there, clean and well-kept. Apparently they were her domain and the shop, his.

At this point I have something to say that may surprise the reader. When I was a student, one summer at home we employed a temporary cook, not especially pretty, aged I suppose about fifty, whose carnal appetite was irrepressible, and to my way of thinking, beautiful. By sight and hand only, she taught the younger me all the secrets of the female anatomy and its pleasures, and just as my hands pleasured her, her hands pleasured me, and often. A memorable summer. But that, reader, was the sum of my amorous experience before events in these chapters. Therefore, it was with an eager sense of novelty that I approached Jenny's bedroom.

The room was bright, but cold, with a rug on bare boards and an iron bedstead. We undressed with that urgency only a combination of lust, gooseflesh and the prospect of an eiderdown can induce. When she caught a glimpse of my manhood she stared and paused in her undressing a moment, and then resumed with still more haste.

At first we sought warmth between the cold linens by pressing our naked bodies together, devouring one another's kisses. The breasts that swelled against me and the rear that I cupped and moulded with my hands seemed at that moment so perfect, they might have been those of Aphrodite herself.

After a few minutes of this she reached down a graceful hand and ran it over my straining member. Her eyes closed, and she breathed, "Oh, how I've longed to play with a great big one of these, one that really wants me." And with a joyous smile she dove beneath the linen.

I held the sheet so that I could look down on her busy blonde head. First she peppered my member with kisses: the shaft, the head, and my balls too. Then she fell to licking, as if she wanted to know it all with every sense. It was plain that she had no idea of pleasuring me, but her joy in encountering my "splendid thing", as I heard her call it, was so ardent and yet, in a deep sense, so pure that it would have been vandalism to interrupt.

At length she discovered my foreskin, which intrigued her. She pulled it right back and slid it up a few times, then pulled it back and kissed and licked the naked head. My breathing must have betrayed my pleasure, for she murmured, "I think it likes it." And then she popped the whole head into her mouth and sucked it while she continued licking.

I gave a deep groan of pleasure, which however caused her to pop it out of her mouth again and wriggle back up to my level, grinning. "Hello Frederic. I almost forgot you were there, but then I began to think I might get your seed right in my mouth."

"You might well have, young Jenny," I replied.

"How wonderfully improper!" she exclaimed, pressing her fingers to her mouth to suppress a bright-eyed giggle. "Tell me -- we girls are so ill-educated -- there must be a word for when the seed comes out."

"I think you mean ejaculation."

"I wish there was time for you to teach me all the words." She went on more seriously, "Well, you know, it must do its ejaculating in my special place."

I rolled her onto her back. "Then open your legs, young lady," I smiled.

But she was still grave. "Wait, Frederic, do. Don't think me silly, but I'm afraid of its length." She added with an anxious smile, "It looks really long enough to tickle my navel from the inside, but I'm sure it would hurt me instead."

I had been wondering about this myself on the way up the stairs. "You're not being silly at all, though it's not really quite so long. What I think you should do, is grip it tight with your hand, down near the root, and take charge of its going in. Don't you think?"

"That's a lovely idea, Frederic, because I do like the feel of it in my hand. Put it in now please." And she gripped me as suggested.

"I will not," I smiled. "First I must try and get you good and ready for it, because it's thick as well as long, you know." Kneeling between her open legs I bent my head to her left breast while I cupped her right in my hand. Her nipples were as perfect as the rest of her, being a healthy pink, clearly defined around the areolae, and the teats protruding sturdily as if demanding a mouth. Very soon I was sucking and flicking with my tongue on the one nipple while my fingers caressed the other -- fingers I made wet with saliva, since she clearly enjoyed my mouth's attentions very much. Meanwhile she took a grip of me with both hands and fondled me roughly, again more for her satisfaction than mine, but with the joyous grin of a newly-escaped prisoner that was as gratifying as the most skillful manipulation.

After a while I reached down to feel her "special place", and finding everything more than a little wet, tried her with two fingers, then three. Then I kissed her mouth and nodded, and she drew my hardness up to her soft opening. Her face was serious again. I believe we both felt this was our first sortie into a new realm.

She drew me into her inch by inch with a pause between, taking a deep breath before drawing me in further, eyes closed and frowning. I saw that my thickness stretched her to discomfort, and yet she adored that same thickness too. For my part I had experienced tightness before, but only as a ring around my phallus, whereas now I felt that my phallus was a ploughshare forcing wider her whole sex-passage.

At last she stopped and opened her eyes and smiled softly at me. Her fingers were wrapped around my shaft between my pubis and hers, the base of her palm against her delicate parts. I felt her passage relax somewhat.

Then she set to pulling me in and pushing me out, and began to have that expression of being transfixed with pain, that means high pleasure. Her hand and wrist I knew must be rubbing across outside, aiding the friction inside. I contemplated her face in a rapture of admiration.

Then she threw back her head and said faintly, "Oh, Frederic!" Quivering head to foot, she convulsively crushed my torso against her with her free arm while I passionately kissed her ear and neck.

When her quivering died away she opened her eyes. She had a look of astonishment. Then almost at once she eagerly resumed using my hard member to please her sex-passage, and with a faster tempo. She bent her head against my ear and took it between her teeth -- her breath was like a gale in my ear. I truly could not resist forcing thrusts almost brutally into her. She did not protest, but drew up her knees and seemed to be riding my manhood, rising to the thrusts as one rises to the motion of a horse. With a great plunge I reached my climax -- I believe my glans was pressing her cervix -- and flooded wave after wave of semen into her.

Though I would have relaxed, she was still working my manhood in and out, and though it was losing its full hardness, she reached a second climax very soon, a gentler one that made her laugh with delight.

Then we were smiling joyously into one another's faces between many kisses. For quite a time we did this, our genitals still coupled, until something occurred to me. "Jenny my dear, I hope I haven't got you in the family way!" Lust had quite blinded me to this possibility.

She smiled. "The phases of the moon, dear Freddie. I've heard there's a time when babies don't come. But anyway, I'd like a little friend to brighten my life, and I could always tell Mr Jones he'd done it by accident when he was drunk. But now I must really go and get the safe keys. I shouldn't leave the shop shut so long."

She slipped out of bed, and I admired the perfect proportions of her body. When she was dressed -- she left off her drawers, as she said the sensation of my seed running down her thighs would make her happy, the funny girl -- she trotted downstairs.

I was dressed by the time she returned holding another brown envelope.

She said, "He stirred when I slipped my hand in his pocket, and murmured 'Julian', which is the name of one of the young men he takes photographs of." She sat down beside me on the bed. "I believe he's sadly in love with him. I could almost feel sorry for the dirty old brute, except that he sometimes calls me by that name while he forces himself on me."

Meanwhile I took three tintypes out of the envelope.

"Why, these photographs are quite unrecognisable,' I exclaimed with relief. "My face -- my whole body -- just a blur!"

But Jenny took my hand and said gently, "Look at the envelope."

I did so, and saw scrawled in lead-pencil, "4 Tins."

One had been removed.