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Copyright jeanne_d_artois October 2006
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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The laundry of my ancestors' house is now my workshop. I'm a potter and good enough at my trade to make a reasonable living from it.
However I don't earn enough to maintain the family mansion and estates to the standard they need so the main house is open to the public and the subsidiary buildings are rented out. I have a part of the former servants' quarters converted into a three bedroomed apartment next to the laundry room.
As a child, the laundry room was my favourite wet-weather play area. It had running water, plenty of light from the windows, and a floor that could be hosed to clear away whatever mess I had made. It was bliss.
However the main attraction of the laundry room was Martha, the resident ghost. I was aware of her from an early age. I would sit on the scrubbed table and ask Martha to tell me a story. She always did. At first Martha's stories used to be fairy tales, 'Once upon a time...' and suitable for my age. Her story telling was so effective that I became the princess, the fairy, the heroine. I lived the character while Martha's voice was sounding in my head. As I began older Martha retold the classic tales of Literature covering the Greeks and Romans, through Chaucer and Shakespeare up to the end of the Victorian age.
I didn't know how she could tell the later stories. She had died in the eighteen-eighties so how did she know stories written after her death?
When I became an adult, and particularly after I had returned from Art College, Martha's stories became more personal to her with adult themes. She told me about incidents in her life at the Hall. Each time I became Martha and experienced the events exactly as she had. This is one of the first of those stories.
The Twins' Charade.
In the early part of Victoria's reign the heirs to the family estates were twin boys John and Alan. They were adventurous as teenagers, always in trouble, but never vicious or needlessly destructive. They were popular with the servants and the tenants on the estate, all of whom happily tolerated their pranks.
The twins used to play with Martha who was about three years older than them. Initially Martha acted as a small mother, keeping an eye on the twins when they were toddlers, stopping them from falling into the moat or climbing beyond their ability. They loved Martha. She loved them. In their later games she might be Queen Guinevere or Maid Marion.
The twins were sent to boarding school. In the holidays they would still play with Martha but their games became more like producing a play. All of them had to learn the script and perform in character. Martha's reading widened as she tried to match their enthusiasms. She felt bereft when the left for university. Would their relationship ever be the same?
It wasn't. John and Alan had discovered women. Martha had found excitement with some of the male servants. When the twins returned all three of them knew that they had sexual desires to act out and some of the plays now had meanings they hadn't seen before.
As Martha reached this part of the story I felt myself turning into a young Martha. I could see Alan and John as tall, handsome men and very desirable. I could feel that desire every time they were in my sight. My hands kept straying under my apron as I tried to calm the heat between my legs.
Their father was holding a masked ball for Halloween. The twins had decided that they would perform a charade for part of the ball, and that some of their guests would also play charades. Martha sat on a bench in the walled garden with two blond heads on her lap as the three of them discussed what charade to produce. The first suggestion was Perseus and Andromeda. That was dismissed as some of the guests didn't know Greek mythology.