Lady Wycherley's Secret

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

Lydia was her best friend. When she had married and come to London, Guinevere knew no one, and very soon she realised that she could not count on her husband to take her out into society. He was too busy; often he was out of the country, bent on diplomatic missions. But Lord Wycherley’s youngest brother, Harold, took her to the theatre one evening, and from that moment she was hooked. She began going to plays at least once a week. One night, after a show in which a young lady friend of his was appearing, Harold had taken her backstage. Also in the cast, in a small part, was Lydia; she and Guinevere became instant friends.

It was Lydia who had initiated her into Mrs Atkinson’s circle. Soon after their first meeting, for lunch, the two young women had begun to talk of intimate matters. Lydia revealed that her husband, an actor like herself, was homosexual. Though in fact it would be more precise to call him bisexual, Lydia said. “He’s f****d girls, quite a lot of them, including me, of course. But he prefers boys.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“When I first discovered he was going with boys, I was devastated. I felt rejected. And deceived. But Brandon convinced me that he truly loved me, and very much wanted our marriage to succeed. We talked a lot. I told him what I had never revealed to anyone, not even properly admitted to myself, that though I liked s*x with men, it was really only if it was on my terms that I enjoyed it.”

“What does that mean, on your terms?” Guinevere asked.

“I was having all these fantasies about controlling men.”

“In what way?”

“Tying them up, spanking them. Teasing them, denying them.”

Guinevere was silent. But she was thinking hard. She remembered how it had been that time with the butcher’s boy, how thrilling it had been to give him the merest glimpse of her private parts, and how much pleasure she got from m**********g him, then dismissing him. Ever since that time, she had re-enacted the scenario in her mind, often in bed at night. And gradually the scenario had become embellished, with more explicit practices, more dominance, and more boys.

“So you told Brandon about this?”

“Yes, and he was very sympathetic. He said that it wasn’t a fantasy that fitted with his own; if anything, he wanted to be the one in charge. But he said that perhaps our marriage could evolve so that I might fulfil my fantasies elsewhere and thus find physical satisfaction. It would be a kind of live and let live marriage, where each allowed the other the freedom to find the pleasures they preferred. I wasn’t sure if that could work, but we tried it. At first I was still jealous of the boys he went with. But from time to time Brandon showed me that he had not completely lost interest in me sexually. And I started to meet boys who were amenable to what I wanted.”

“How?” Guinevere asked. “How did you do that?”

“At first it was difficult. You can’t just ask a man if you can tie him up and spank him. But the theatre is a very open world sexually. People are very tolerant and very confiding. And Brandon helped. He found one or two boys who were bisexual like himself, and who liked domination. He offered me one. I spent a torrid afternoon giving the poor boy a very hard time. He was bruised when I finished with him. But happy, I think. And so then one thing led to another, and eventually I came upon Mrs Atkinson.”

“Who is she?’ Guinevere asked, all ears.

“She’s a rich lady whose husband seemingly leaves her to her own devices. She hosts regular soirees at her house, to which she invites girls like me, girls who like to dominate. I think she gets a vicarious thrill from what goes on at her parties. And although she’s rather secretive herself, there seems to be a boy she plays with.”

Guinevere absorbed all this information eagerly, but at first she was too shy to confess to her own s****l preferences. She was still in the process of trying to work things out with her husband, not certain of how the marriage would develop, and lacking confidence sexually. It was some weeks, after she and Gerald had settled on an accommodation, before she could bring herself to tell Lydia her own story. Not surprisingly, Lydia was very sympathetic, since Guinevere’s experience so closely mirrored her own.

Guinevere had married Lord Wycherley at the age of eighteen. Delighted to find an exit from the stifling respectability of her parents’ home in a small country town, where her father was the local vicar, she had jumped at the chance to get away. Lord Wycherley offered the freedom of a great city, a fine house and another in the country, and an established position in society. He was also handsome and had good manners. But within days, after the wedding, she feared she had merely exchanged one prison for another. Lord Wycherley was a decent man at heart, but he had been brought up in an atmosphere of extreme formality and emotion repression, not aided by several years away at boarding school, which meant that by the age of eighteen he scarcely knew his parents at all. Nor had he any experience of women, as became all too apparent on the wedding night. Lord Wycherley had tried to do his duty, but it was a poor attempt.

Guinevere was a virgin, but not wholly ignorant of the technicalities of s*x. She had an older married sister, who she had relentlessly pumped for information, and over the past year she had experimented with herself, exploring her anatomy and discovering the satisfactions of m**********n, and on one memorable occasion enticing the butcher’s boy into the shed at the bottom of her parent’s large garden. There she demanded that he show her his c**k, and she spent a delightful half an hour examining its appearance and discovering what it could do. She was wise enough not to give him access to her person, restricting him to a quick view as she lifted her skirts and lowered her drawers, but as reward for his patience and good behaviour she asked what she might do for him short of intercourse. He elected to have her give him a “hand job”, as he called it, and she watched fascinated as, after a short time rubbing his c**k harder and harder as he requested, it suddenly spurted copious amounts of semen over her hand and onto the ground. Curious, she had put her hand to her mouth and tentatively licked up a few drops. She found the taste indifferent, but it was the idea that was exciting. Then she sent him on his way with dire threats of the consequences should he mention the episode to anyone.

Prior to her wedding night, that was the full extent of her physical contact with another human being. What she most remembered was not so much the physical revelations, about what a c**k looked like, how it might be stimulated and what happened when it was; rather, she was excited by the sense of power she got from the boy’s evident eagerness to please in the hope of getting some pleasure for himself. She felt the power that derived from being able to use his desire against him, as it were, to get for herself what she wanted. If men wanted s*x so much, then she would assure herself of satisfying her own desires by exploiting theirs.

Unfortunately, on her wedding night things did not work out quite the way she had intended. It became clear all too soon that Lord Wycherley was less consumed by desire for her person than the butcher’s boy. Despite her youth and inexperience, Guinevere was not overly shy about displaying herself naked. She had come to bed in a nightgown which, when her mother had seen it, she had pronounced “nothing but a w***e’s tawdry finery”. It was cut so low that her breasts were in constant danger of falling out, and it was split up the side almost to her hip-bone. Moreover, it was virtually transparent. Yet even, when disappointed in its effect, she had removed it and stood naked before her husband, he was clearly reluctant to touch her.

“Do I not please you?” she asked. “Is there something about my person which you find distasteful?”

Lord Wycherley sat on the bed, his face tortured with embarrassment. She could see he did not know where to look. “It’s not you, it’s me,” he said miserably.

“What about you?” she asked.

“It’s what I am.”

“And what is that? Spell it out, for goodness sake.”

There was silence for a moment, then he spoke again, in a low voice. “When you have spent seven years exclusively in the company of your own s*x, it is not surprising that you become habituated.”

“Habituated to what?” she demanded. She was determined to get to the bottom of this. But what could be the problem? “Won’t you let me help you?” She came closer and touch his face. He shrank away.

“Don’t you know? Must I spell it out?”

“It seems that you must,” Guinevere said, not unkindly.

“I’m a queer,” he suddenly blurted out. “Didn’t you guess? I’m homosexual.”

Guinevere’s researches into sexuality had been concerned only with the basic connection between a man and a woman: what the man does to achieve the essential connection, how the woman ought to respond. She had heard only vaguely of other forms of s*x.

“You mean,” she said slowly, “you don’t like girls, you prefer to do it with other men?”

There was a long silence. “Yes,” he said at length. “I thought you must have guessed it. I hardly touched you during our courtship.”

Guinevere had certainly noticed that. She longed ardently for his kisses and caresses, yet there had been scarcely any. She had put it down to his upbringing, and resolved that once they were married she would set about dismantling his inhibitions. She was eager to explore the pleasures of the marriage bed. She had hoped, despite first impressions, that he would be an enthusiastic lover and that together they would drink deep of s****l pleasures.

Scarcely any longer conscious of her nakedness, she sat down on the bed beside him and took his hand. “You have had s****l relations with boys?” she said gently.

“Yes,” he said.

“Often? What do you do exactly?”

“Yes, often. Well, what do you think we do? Is it so hard to imagine?”

Defensiveness was making him angry. She cared for him and wanted him to take her into his confidence. “One of you plays the part of the girl, is that it?”

“In a way, yes,” he said.

“And one of you puts his thing into the other? From behind?”

“That’s mostly what happens,” he said.

“I see,” she said. There was much that she didn’t see. In particular, why did boys want to do that? It seemed a messy business. Surely girls were altogether more appealing? But there was one question she must have an answer to. “But if you only like boys, why did you marry me?”

There was a long silence. “I have done you a wrong,” he said. There was despair in his voice. “I suppose the short answer is that I wanted children. I still do. But I have trapped you for my own selfish purposes.”

“I want children too,” she said. “We will have to find a way.”

He turned and looked at her. “You don’t want to leave me, dissolve the marriage?”

She gave a wan smile. “I think that would kill my mother. I think somehow we shall have to work something out.”

“Is that even possible?” he said.

She thought for a moment. “You are right, you have done me a wrong. If you want to help put it right, as far as that is possible, you will have to meet me halfway. More than halfway.”

He lifted his head, as if a weight had been taken off him. “I had been thinking about killing myself,” he said. “But if you think there is any hope…”

“Never let me hear you say such a thing again,” she said sharply. “We must be constructive.”

Afterwards, they had got into bed, Guinevere still naked, and lain side by side together in the darkness. Deep inside, she was by no means as optimistic as she had sounded. The obstacles were grave. But there was steel in her character. She would find a way to live.