Tremble (4 page)

“Found what?”

“The record! Here!” She slipped on her thick National Health glasses and read aloud.

“The hanging of the traitor Llewelyn the Fierce was conducted by Lord Cedric Huntington, who took particular pleasure in prolonging the execution by partially reviving the Welshman before hanging him again. When the news of Llewelyn’s final demise spread there was great mourning all over Wales.”

Dorothy, suddenly aware of ancient enmity between their two races, frowned. “Lord Huntington sounds like a real sadist,” she volunteered.

Stanley edged a little closer then thrust a hand into his trouser pocket; the way she had lisped over the word
sadist
had given him an instant erection. “Sadism does not exclude greatness,” he announced grandly, the perfume of her hair driving him crazy. He tilted his face forward at an angle he knew was flattering. “Say, what are you doing later?”

They went for scones at Dorothy’s favorite tearoom. The seventeen-year-old waitress with orange dreadlocks and a nose ring, who normally made a point of ignoring Dorothy, was at the table in a flash. She simpered all over Stanley but Dorothy noted that he had eyes only for her. His attention was immensely flattering but she couldn’t help feeling slightly guilty. She actually toyed with the idea of warning him that he might be attracted to her under a false premise. But as he leaned toward her, a blond lock of hair falling over those heavy-lashed eyes, she realized that she was far too fascinated to disillusion him, even when he embarked on an extraordinarily detailed and boring thirty-minute soliloquy about the beauties of medieval roof-thatching. In short, Dorothy was hooked.

Afterward Stanley wanted her to take him back to her village, to sample “the border culture” as he put it. Dorothy hesitated, which only encouraged Stanley further, his wide eyes wandering across her bosom as if he were caressing her already. Dorothy had been celibate for months and she was finding the way his fingers made love to the sugar container more than a little distracting. Prudence won in the end. She promised to meet him for lunch the next day.

Stanley walked her to her car. There was a slight sullenness in his step. He wasn’t used to not getting his way immediately and he couldn’t remember a time when a woman had interested him so profoundly. Perhaps it was her very ordinariness that attracted him. He pondered
over the absurdities of lust—desire certainly fell where it wanted, yet, try as he might, he could not banish the vision of her lying naked beneath him, preferably still wearing those rather old-fashioned glasses. That fantasy was enough to bring him to orgasm later that afternoon and keep him going most of the night.

Dorothy returned home in a state of considerable excitement. Was this love? Her racing heart, the dryness of her throat, and the way she kept glancing at herself in the mirror, as if searching there for the mystery that he so obviously perceived in her, indicated the prerequisite emotional turmoil. Even the penis, trailing her around forlornly, seemed to sense a transformation it didn’t particularly care for, as if somehow it realized in its blunt primordial head that perhaps it was no longer the center of her attention.

Before going to bed, Dorothy sat at the walnut dresser she’d inherited from her mother and examined her reflection. She loosed her thick black hair and leaned forward to study her blue eyes and high forehead. She did possess a certain charm, but considered herself a little overweight. Pulling back the skin of her face, she noted with harsh objectivity the sagging of her cheeks and the thin wrinkle that ran down between her eyebrows. She reached for a tube of makeup.

The penis, perched between a black-and-white photo of Dorothy’s mother in her Girl Scout uniform and a miniature plastic statue of the Virgin Mary, watched her with a slightly critical droop. She ignored it and smeared the pale liquid over her cheeks, then peered tentatively into the mirror. She looked like an amateur Noh actor. Was there any hope for a woman incompetent in the arts of feminine beauty, clumsy in her movements, with a second-rate degree in military history? There had to be something she could improve on.

Her eyes wandered back to the penis. It had inched its way across the dresser and was busy dipping itself into a pot of lip gloss. It toppled forward and got stuck, its tip in the pot while its balls dangled uselessly in midair. Dorothy laughed out loud. It resembled a bizarre Japanese erotic print she remembered seeing. Just then the obvious occurred to her: perhaps she could become a wonderful lover. She had something to practice with, even if it lacked the dimensions of a full-size man.

The penis fell over with a crash. It waddled blindly toward her, now wearing the lip-gloss pot like a ridiculous helmet. Dorothy’s mind was made up.

In bed that night she reached across and picked the penis up from where it was curled in its usual spot on the pillow.

She ran it gently along her body, over her nipples and down across the soft skin of her inner thighs. It stiffened immediately. Then, with a kind of impatience, it shook itself out of her hands and took over.

The man who the penis was originally attached to must have been a wonderful lover, Dorothy concluded, lying back in a haze of bliss. That night she experienced pleasure she hadn’t known she was capable of, relaxing in a state of near ecstasy as the organ prodded, probed, caressed, and sort of licked her body for hours. It finally reached a shuddering orgasm of its own after Dorothy’s fourth climax…or was it the fifth?

Now satiated, Dorothy found it far easier to distance herself from Stanley’s advances. She canceled on him twice and three times rang to rearrange dates. Her coolness surprised and excited him; it wasn’t something that he’d experienced before. What had made her so mysteriously resilient to his charms? He thought she might have a hidden lover, but a few strategically placed questions debunked that theory. Maybe she just didn’t like men? But he could tell from her sudden blushes, the way she walked beside him, her hips swaying, her body leaning toward him, that she found him attractive. Her elusiveness heightened the chase. Stanley was decided: he must have her.

They dated for four weeks. The budding historian swung between tortured frustration and masochistic anticipation. The daily proximity of Dorothy made every inch of his body throb. Baffled, he channeled his chagrin into his work, discovering within himself new depths of intellectual discipline. To his amazement he even started to see Dorothy as his muse. Finally, determined to ensnare her, he decided to recruit her as his editor. Dorothy was ecstatic. It was the first time anyone had acknowledged her creative potential. She threw herself into research.

As Stanley developed the outline of the book, he began to project parallels between himself and Lord Huntington. He imagined that he could see a faint resemblance between himself and his famed ancestor in the aristocratic arch of his nose, the high forehead, the intelligence behind the limpid blue-green eyes. But there was one aspect of his forefather’s personality that Stanley did not wish to emulate. It seemed
Lord Huntington had been universally hated, even by his own men, his legendary cruelty undermining any potential loyalty.

One fifteenth-century account scrawled in Latin by a local cleric described the pillage and destruction of a Welsh hamlet that, during the border battles, had unfortunately slipped over to the English. Lord Huntington had personally supervised the rape of the women and girls, as well as the beheading of all males over the age of ten. Even Stanley was nauseated as he plowed through the account, pages of which appeared to be blood-splattered. It was becoming increasingly difficult to find any redeeming features in his heroic relative.

Meanwhile, Dorothy started collecting and editing material for Stanley to incorporate into the main work. He gave her the task of researching Llewelyn the Fierce—Lord Huntington’s sole nemesis, until his execution. From all accounts Llewelyn appeared to be a Welsh Robin Hood, famous for his generosity to the common people, even those he conquered. Folklore rumored that Llewelyn always offered the choice of Welsh nationality before he impaled anyone. He was also infamous for the number of women he had scattered throughout the Welsh foothills and as far east as Kidderminster.

His promiscuity fascinated Dorothy. He was described physically as a short, stocky man with a mane of thick black hair, yet there were records of his beautiful voice, and one eloquent mention of a wit that could charm even the crows from corpses.

There was also reference to Llewelyn’s soul mate: a witch mistress of remarkable beauty, but rarely seen as she lived as a hermit. One witness, a woman who ran an alehouse near Bangor, described how she had seen Llewelyn flying naked with his sorceress on Allhallows’ Eve, twisting and turning in the light of a full moon, his hair standing straight up like the mane of a lion.

Dorothy was enthralled. She searched in vain for more information. All she could find were two facts: that Llewelyn’s mistress had been considered a heretic by her peers, and that she was definitely Welsh.

Over the next couple of months Stanley planned his strategy. He would convince Dorothy of his sincerity, then seduce her and maintain the relationship for as long as her research skills were needed. It was callous but practical; he couldn’t envisage taking her back to London. There was no way she was presentable to any of his friends and he certainly could not take her to his literary club. He had his reputation
to think of. Dorothy had her skills; wife of an upwardly mobile historian just wasn’t one of them.

He took her to a demonstration of roof-thatching in a village outside Shrewsbury. They stood with a group of enthusiastic Japanese and German tourists waiting for a muscle-bound Yorkshireman to haul a bale of hay up a ladder. In the dappled sunlight, Stanley started a loud discourse on the history of thatching, describing the feudal implications. The tourists, hungry for any kind of information, listened intently and the Japanese filmed every one of Stanley’s dramatic flourishes. As he finished they burst into spontaneous applause, and Dorothy felt a rush of pheromones shoot through the lower half of her body. She had never realized that roof-thatching could be so sexually stimulating. It seemed Stanley’s strategy was working.

That afternoon they kissed. The proximity of Dorothy’s voluptuous body was almost too much for Stanley to bear. She felt the length of him stiffen through her clothes and the faint outline of him pressing against her reminded her of the six and a half inches she’d left waiting at the gate that morning. Stanley’s organ felt considerably bigger. Dorothy blushed; six months ago such a thought would never have occurred to her. But her nocturnal liaisons had imbued her with a sexual bravado that had surprised even herself.

Next Tuesday night, she thought, that’s when I’ll have him over. I’ll cook something extraordinary and afterward he will be so swept away by my lovemaking that he’ll make a commitment to me there and then. She smiled, her eyes on Stanley’s mouth, which, she noted, held great promise. To hell with emotional caution. A lineage of wild women tugged at every molecule of her muscle tissue—Dorothy Owen was going to take a chance.

Dorothy got home later than usual that evening. As she was driving down the muddy lane that led to the cottage, an object flew at her car window, giving her a terrible fright. She swerved violently and screeched to a stop, inches away from a massive oak tree. For a second she sat stunned at the wheel, her eyes closed, waiting for her heart to crunch to a halt. It must have been a bird, she thought, or maybe even a bat. When she opened her eyes she was shocked to see the penis
clinging to her windshield wipers, shriveled and trembling in a kind of desperate last stand.

Dorothy pulled on her gloves and climbed out of the car. The delicate skin of the penis was beginning to adhere to the frozen glass. She leaned over and breathed warm air on it to lessen the pain as she peeled it gently off the icy glass. The frozen organ rippled with pleasure; this was confirmation that its mistress cared. After another little puff of hot breath, Dorothy slipped it into her pocket to warm it as she walked to the house.