Alice Marlowe

Chapter Two-2

Was this possible, that on the second night of her honeymoon her husband should simply ignore her? Surely anyone who was half a man would wish for a repetition of the s****l act. She wondered what frequency Douglas would think proper. Once a week? Once a month? Once a year? She seriously thought she might go mad with frustration. Until her marriage, she had managed to keep her desires more or less in check through the use of her hand, or other aids to satisfaction. She usually counted on m**********g once a day; sometimes more. She had no idea if this was normal; she and Charlotte had not got round to comparing notes on this matter, so she had no way of knowing. All she knew was what would keep her happy. Or rather, not happy exactly, for m**********n had always been in her mind a substitute for that s****l congress with a man which she would one day enjoy. But once a day stilled the craving a little.

And now, what did the future hold? She was reduced to m**********g once again, which she began as soon as Douglas was asleep. And an occasional, very occasional perhaps, act of highly unsatisfactory intercourse.

The next day she didn’t raise the subject, fearful of another outburst from Douglas. But that evening, to her surprise, when they got to bed Douglas turned to her and kissed her. His kisses were not as she had hoped for; they were messy, too wet, not the hot, dry, urgent kisses of her imagination. But a kiss was at least a kiss. He fumbled with her nightdress; realizing his intent, she helped him raised it up, and over her head. The room was dark but there was a shaft of moonlight which caught her as she lifted her nightdress. Looking down she could see the soft silvery light on her breasts, the dark brown n*****s outlined. She lay back and took hold of his head, trying to bring it down to her breasts. “Suck them,” she said. “Oh please suck them, bite them too.”

She knew she had gone too far. “Hush,” he said, trying to stop her mouth with kisses. He got himself on top of her and lay between her legs, which she had helpfully opened for him. He pushed up and his c**k went into her and she put her arms round his back and held him tight as he f****d her. It was good, or at least it was better. But all too soon he was done, with a brief jerking of himself inside her, then he withdrew. Immediately he turned over and was soon asleep. Once more Alice was reduced to satisfying herself with her hand.

The next day she resolved to speak to him. Surely it must be possible for husband and wife to speak of such matters; her happiness depended on it. After lunch they went for a walk on the beach. Again, there were no other walkers nearby. As they walked along, she took a deep breath.

“Douglas,” she said, “I loved it last night when you took me in your arms. I could feel you deep inside me and I was happy that my husband wanted me. But I think I must speak about how it ended. I am glad that you came and had your pleasure. But I have needs too. I need a climax if I am to feel satisfied. Now there are ways in which you might help me to that, if you would allow me to speak of them.”

She intended to suggest he might use his hand on her, or, though she felt it unlikely he would consent, he might use his mouth. She longed for this; it must be such delight to be kissed and licked down there. But what she wanted most of all was that he should hurt her. The night before, she had tried to let him know. Perhaps now she could try again to raise the possibility. Yet when she looked at him she saw his face was dark.

“Are you sick?” he demanded. “Are you in the grip of some kind of dementia? Decent women do not speak of such things, and decent men do not do them. It is filthy. I forbid you to speak to me in that way.”

“But why should I not?” she persisted. “These things are of supreme importance to me. If I don’t get satisfaction, my body will not let me rest.”

“A woman’s role is to lie still and allow her husband to commit the act, not look for ways to satisfy her animal lusts. I am shocked, deeply shocked, that you should even think to speak to me of such matters.”

Alice fell silent. Three days, and already her marriage was a disaster! She had married a man who either suffered from a weakness of desire, or who was so inhibited that he could not bear to speak of the s****l act, nor scarcely perform it. What could she do? She was trapped. Why had she not engaged in some love-making with him prior to the marriage? Not full intercourse, since she could hardly expect him to go against the teachings of the church, but there were things which couples surely did which stopped short of the s****l act itself, things that were arousing and pleasurable. She had had fantasies of touching his c**k, as Charlotte had done with her boy, and going further. She imagined what the c**k would look like, feel like. And even smell like and taste like. She had imagined it in her mouth. She would willingly have done this for Douglas. Would that she had tried; then doubtless she would have discovered things about his s****l nature which would surely have made her hesitate to go through with the marriage.

Neither that night, nor the next, did Douglas attempt again to have s*x with her. On their fourth night together, she once again had the terrifying dream. This time, in the half-light of the room into which the stranger had entered, she saw his c**k again, a monstrous organ sticking out rigid from the front of his trousers. He pushed her down onto the bed, and forced her legs apart. She could feel his c**k, so hard, so hot, at the entrance to her cunt. She braced herself; it would be like getting stabbed. Then she woke up.

Douglas said that when they got back she must see a doctor; clearly she was ill. He muttered something about hysteria. She wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but it was one of those things which only women suffered from, apparently.

Douglas made no further advances towards her while they were in the guest house. When they returned home, he took her to a small house he had rented near his church. It was quite a pretty little place. Alice thought she could be happy there; if only… She tried a couple more times to raise the question of s*x, not by making physical advances, she could see that this would not work, but by talking in a reasonable tone of voice, in a friendly manner, of what she thought a wife had a right to expect from a husband. Douglas would not listen. Either he left the room, or he shouted at her. On the second night in the house she had another nightmare. In the middle of the night, instead of comforting her, Douglas moved into the spare room, and there he stayed. Her marriage, it seemed, was over. Every night she cried, and every night, after giving vent to her emotions, she got herself to sleep by a prolonged bout of m**********n. It had become a kind of act of resistance, a mute and hidden assertion that her needs would be met somehow or other. She would not be desexed.

Douglas said he had been to see a doctor to discuss her condition. “What? You went without me?” she said in astonishment.

“I do not think you are in a fit state to give a doctor a rational account of your state of mind,” he said. “I told him what your symptoms were.”

“And what are they?” she demanded. She was angry he had gone behind her back like this.

“Firstly, the nightmares, with their lurid s****l content, are surely evidence of a diseased mind. Secondly, your constant harping on about what you require in the marriage bed is another indication that you are not in proper control of yourself. No decent women speaks of such things. Or does the things you do.”

“What do I do?”

“After you think I am asleep you do filthy things which no pure and virtuous woman would even think of. I can feel you writhing, obscenely.”

“I masturbate because my husband either does not know how to satisfy me or does not care to. Do you think I prefer it to what should be normal relations between a husband and wife?”

“Something will have to be done,” Douglas said firmly.

“What?”

He was silent. Suddenly she was afraid. Did he have some plan? Something secret he would not tell her about? Surely she could not be the subject of medical treatment without her consent.

Things went on in the same way for another two weeks. They hardly spoke; there seemed no point when they were utterly at loggerheads. One morning she was having breakfast, eating a piece of toast, drinking her tea. Douglas was in the parlour, writing a sermon. There was a ring at the doorbell. She heard Douglas opening the front door, and the sound of male voices, several. Then the door to the dining room opened and Douglas entered, with two men following. They were dressed in white coats. Alice got to her feet. A dreadful fear possessed her.

“No,” she cried. “You cannot. I will not.”

One of the men came quickly towards her. In his hand was a white cotton handkerchief. He caught Alice’s head under one arm and pressed the handkerchief to her face. She tried to struggle, took a breath, too late smelled the chloroform, and then all was darkness.

She woke to find herself in a small room, painted white. She was lying on a bed, dressed in a grubby flannel nightgown. She saw with alarm there were bars on the window. When she tried to sit up, she discovered that her arms were strapped to the side of the bed; she was a prisoner.

She lay there for a while, waiting for her head to clear. Slowly, as her brain got working again, she pieced together what must have happened. Douglas had arranged for two men to drug her and take her away, to this place. It was a prison, or perhaps an asylum. Did they think she was insane? Because she wanted her husband to make love to her? Because she had nightmares about rape? No one knew about her secret s*x life, about how she wanted, even needed, pain for full s****l satisfaction. Only Douglas had been given a hint of that, and she doubted he had any real idea of her s****l desires, of the things she fantasised about as she pleasured herself. So all they knew was that she had a normal s****l appetite, and that she had bad dreams. Was that a crime? Was it an illness?

The door opened and a man in a white coat came in. He had the air of a doctor, someone of authority.

“Please,” she began, “set me free. You have no right to hold me here.”

Two other people entered the room, one of whom seemed also to be a doctor, and the other perhaps a male nurse. The senior doctor gestured to them and they went outside, then came back with a kind of wooden frame, on wheels. Alice started talking again, with increased urgency.

“You cannot hold me here. Let me go!” She started screaming.