Fletcherloyal

Above stairs

"You rang, my lady?"

"Yes, Hoskins. I shan't be needing the car today, so you may remove your uniform."

"Very good, madam." Hoskins took off his peaked cap and laid it on a chair. He took the driving gauntlets from his belt and placed gloves and belt alongside the cap. He unbuttoned his hussar style jacket, took the jacket off, and hung it over the back of the chair. Lady Charters gazed approvingly at the muscular torso revealed by his red singlet. He had been in her service for more than twenty years, but was as fit in his fifties as the day that his late lordship had hired him.

She was lying languidly back, with one leg trailing over the edge of the bed. Her only garment was a lacy peignoir, open down the front and fastened but loosely by a belt. Hoskins gazed with respectful admiration at the sight, one which his years of service had made familiar to him. Time had not been unkind to her. There were traces still of the beauty which had adorned Mr Cochran's chorus line of young ladies forty years ago. The eyes, albeit now wrinkled at the edges, were still the translucent caerulean blue which had entranced so many young men. The flesh of her once plump cheeks was now crumpled and blotched, but her lips still pouted temptingly, their invitation enhanced by her heavy application of scarlet lipstick.

There was no denying that her body had run somewhat to fat, a development that Hoskins viewed approvingly; he was no admirer of skinny women. The two plump breasts which flowed across her chest he viewed with approbation, matched as they were by a soft domed abdomen whose convexity emphasised the depth of the intriguing belly button which interrupted the otherwise smooth expanse of skin. Her belly terminated below in a horizontal crease, beneath which spread the plumpness of her pubic mound. This area never failed to evoke in Hoskins a feeling of awesome veneration. The lips of her vagina were still fully inverted, showing only a youthful slit dividing a puffy mound adorned by soft curly locks of golden hair; her ladyship had always been a genuine blonde. True, there were now hints of gray amidst the verdure, and Hoskins often found himself humming 'Silver threads among the gold' as he admired her ladyship's mons veneris.

She interrupted his reverie. "Carry on, Hoskins."

"I beg your pardon, madam. I allowed my thoughts to wander for a moment." She smiled indulgently as he bent to remove his black leather gaiters and boots. Discarding his flared cavalry breeches, he stood revealed in boxer shorts matching his singlet.

"You may massage my feet, Hoskins."

"Yes, madam." He took a bottle of moisturiser from the dressing table, and squatted on a low foot-stool in front of her. She placed her feet in his lap. They were small and neat. The amount of champagne contained in her tiny slippers had never been enough to test the sobriety of the young blades who had quaffed from them, and she had wisely resisted the foolish post-war fashions for winkle pickers and stiletto heels that had crippled many of her contemporaries. Hoskins massaged the cream into her soles and insteps, easing it gently between her toes, while she amused herself by playfully nudging his member with her feet through his shorts.

His caressing fingers moved to her ankles and up her calves, still firm and shapely from years of tapping and kicking in the chorus. Her knees were narrow and dimpled, but above them her thighs flared dramatically into two substantial hams of white flesh. They reminded Hoskins of two soft pillows, and the accompanying association of ideas provoked a tingle in his nether regions. As he smoothed the cream higher up her legs, Lady Charters' breathing grew more rapid. Hoskins brushed his fingers lightly through the hair of her mound, causing her pussy lips to pulse and producing a slight ripple across the soft flesh of her belly. Her breathing was now audible as a low rumbling sound, which Hoskins interpreted with some justification as the purr of a tigress.

She spoke throatily. "You may kiss my cunt, Hoskins."

"Thank you, madam." He knelt between her widely open legs and lowered his mouth to their juncture. She bucked immediately with a grunt, seized his hair, and pulled his head forcefully into her cunt, already flowing juicily. Customary though this reaction was, it took Hoskins aback as usual. He gulped a rapid gasp of air before his mouth and nostrils were engulfed in her ladyship's swimming lubricity. Her hips were bucking wildly as she screamed and shouted in ecstasy. "That's right, you bastard! Suck it! Lick it! Harder! Faster! Swallow my clit! Drink my juices!" Her shouts and screams rang out as she mercilessly fucked Hoskins' face. He tried desperately to inhale whenever her spasmodic writhings produced the merest gap, but his need for air more than once reached perilous limits as he blew bubblingly through his nostrils.

Just as he felt that he was going down for the third time, and was about to drown in her ladyship's vaginal liquids ("How would the coroner word the verdict?" he wondered), Lady Charters gave a final shout, and thrust his head from her. He sank gratefully onto her pillowy thigh, breathing heavily. He lay there panting, his eyes only inches from her cunt, no longer the maidenly crack it had been, but now a gaping gash awash with sticky juices. He could not resist blowing gently towards her silvered golden curls, but to no effect, so wetly plastered were they.

After a while she spoke. "Did you enjoy that, Hoskins?"

"It was most pleasurable, madam."

"I still taste good, do I, Hoskins?"

"Like nectar, my lady."

She gave a short coarse laugh. "Henry always used to say that he would sooner have cunt juice on his cornflakes than milk any day of the week."

"His late lordship had good taste, madam. If it were marketed under a suitable brand name, 'CunnyHoney' perhaps, it couldn't fail. I can see the slogan now: 'Luscious lucubrations from her ladyship's lower lips.'"

"You've got a smooth tongue, Hoskins, in more ways than one. Unfortunately I cannot see myself being able to satisfy the market demand, even with its help." She gave a sigh and added, "You can stand up now."

As he stood before her, she reached forward and fondled his prick. "I'm glad to see I can still give you a good stiffy. I suppose my maid Farthingale will be getting the benefit of this later. I hope she realises how lucky she is."

"She has made no complaint so far, madam."

"You can be a smug bastard sometimes, Hoskins, do you know that?"

"So I have been informed, madam."

"Be good to Farthingale, Hoskins. She misses his late lordship even more than I do. So she should, seeing that he fucked her more often than he fucked me." She spoke dispassionately, without rancour. "She was my dresser, you know, and came here to The Hall with us when his lordship and I married. There's not a room in The Hall he hasn't fucked her in, and not a stick of furniture that he hasn't had her bent over. Not that I minded. I don't think I could have coped with the randy old goat without her help. He even had her in the broom cupboard once. For three days the poor girl couldn't look a brush head in the face without going weak at the knees and wet between the legs. They were the days, Hoskins. I fear we shall not see their like again."

"We shall do our best to preserve their spirit as long as we can, my lady."

"Thank you, Hoskins. You may go now. Please tell Farthingale that I want the curate to call this afternoon to give me a special service in remembrance of his late lordship."

"Very good, madam." Hoskins gathered up his clothes and went in search of the kitchen, Farthingale, and breakfast.

* * *

Below stairs

As Hoskins sat at the kitchen table, a plate of eggs and bacon in front of him, Farthingale stood by his side pouring coffee. "Her ladyship was in good voice this morning. We could hear her down here," she observed.

Hoskins casually slid his hand up her skirt and stroked her between the legs. She moved her feet apart to allow him easier access. There was no real intimacy in their actions, merely their customary morning ritual. "It's a special day for her," he replied, "being the anniversary of his late lordship's death."

"I don't need reminding of that. All the female staff have been ordered to wear black to commemorate his passing."

"Really? Then why aren't you in mourning? And I haven't noticed any of the others in mourning either."

"You wouldn't unless you lifted their skirts." She pulled her own skirt up to her waist, revealing a pair of black silk panties. "Her ladyship thought that black knickers would be the most appropriate way for the female staff to remember his lordship, given his propensities."

"Ah, quelle delicatesse, as the French would say. Before I forget, Madam wants you to get the curate to call this afternoon to give her a special service, as she puts it."

"I'd better warn the poor lad to keep his powder dry then and forgo the rites of Onan this morning. Judging by her performance so far, he is going to need every ounce of holy oil he's got in his locker."

Hoskins toyed briefly with the idea of enlightening Farthingale on the concept of metaphors, mixed and unmixed, but decided that life was too short. Instead he went to his room to put his uniform away.

* * *

Fletcherloyal

There was, in the village of Fletcherloyal, a building in the Norman style which looked like a church. It had stained glass windows, and a tower with an added spire. Within there were pews, an altar, a pulpit, and a font. It was undoubtedly a

de facto

church.

Every Sunday morning the pulpit was occupied for twenty minutes or so by a gentleman named Egbert Arbuthnot wearing a white surplice and a clerical collar who would address an audience of respectable villagers, consisting mainly of middle-aged ladies, occupying the pews. Variously styled by his congregation as Reverend, Rector, or Father, Arbuthnot served undoubtedly as the

de facto

vicar or priest of the parish. He dwelt close to the church in a large house which was variously called the Vicarage, the Rectory, or the Manse.

He was assisted in his duties by his son Gerald, a young man in his late twenties who had obtained an undistinguished degree in divinity from St John's College, Cambridge, and had forthwith assumed a clerical collar and a cassock, and joined his father without troubling any ecclesiastical organisation with the formalities of ordination. He was accepted by the village as the

de facto

curate of the parish.

Lying within the curtilage of the church was another imposing Gothic structure variously referred to as the Abbey, the Priory, or the Convent. It was occupied by a small group of ladies, known locally as 'The Sisters', whose habit clearly marked them as

de facto

nuns. An unusual feature of the Convent was the crèche and other facilities for the care of the infant offspring of the Sisters.

The number of '

de facto

's involved in this account will have raised a suspicion in the mind of the attentive reader that none of these arrangements had any

de jure

authority. His late lordship would have stoutly denied such a suggestion and would have referred sceptics to a speech made in the House of Lords on Wednesday 18th July 1917 by his great grandfather, the 40th Baron de Chartreuse-en-Brie.

* * *

Flèche-a-l'Œil

On that occasion the Baron, having taken care to lubricate his vocal chords generously with an ancestral tonic known as 'Calvados', spoke eloquently for an hour, claiming that King William the First had granted the fiefdom of an English manor known as Flèche-a-l'Œil to the 1st Baron de Charteuse-en-Brie as a reward for a certain signal service performed by that Norman nobleman at the Battle of Hastings, the nature of which service, the Baron asserted, was obvious from the manor's designation. The demesne, he declared, was granted to all the Baron's heirs and assigns, in perpetuo, ad infinitum, and ad nauseum, free of all taxes, imposts, scutage, tithes, geld, tallage, ullage, or pillage. This grant was, he assured the House, amply recorded in the Domesday Book, was affirmed by the Magna Carta, was referred to in Froissart's Chronicles, and was even alluded to, obliquely, in Benjamin Franklin's Declaration of Independence.

By order of the grant, he declaimed, the church living of the parish was in his gift. It was therefore nobody's business but his own how or by whom the parish was run, and he was thereby exempted from any need of endorsement by church commissioners, papal edicts, or episcopalian bureaucracy. Throughout centuries of chaotic British Christianity, he asserted, the Vicars of Chartreuse-en-Brie (sometimes collectively referred to as 'The Vicar of Bray') had administered sacraments low, high, and at all intervening altitudes, steering their way through conformity and noncomformity, separatism, congregationalism and unitarianism, dissension, ascension, and invention, atheism and pantheism, quakers, shakers, and candlestick makers, seventh day adventists and latter day saints, the teachings and preachings of Knox, Calvin, Kelvin, Celsius and Fahrenheit, through reformation, deformation, and information, orthodoxy, heterodoxy, and paradoxy, embracing presbyterianists, methodists, baptists, brownists, and evangelists, latitudinarians, longitudinarians, puritans, and impuritans.

"In my parish," his lordship declared solemnly, swaying slightly as if beset by a strong breeze, "you may cross yourself or not, with as many fingers as you please, and in any direction -- from left to right, right to left, up down, in out, shake it all about. What's more, you can do it over the water, under the water, through the water, or without water. Without water, that's neat. " He paused, took a handkerchief from his sleeve, and burped discreetly into it. He glared triumphantly around at his fellow peers. "But," he shouted, "but my lords," in a somewhat moderated tone, "that was not what I came here to say, was it? Was it?" He paused and frowned, as if waiting for someone to answer his rhetorical question.

He looked towards the Lord Chancellor, hoping for a prompt. The sight of the coat of arms behind the chair reminded him. "No, by Jove, it wasn't," he exclaimed. "What I want to say is that now that His Majesty King George V, God bless him, has changed the name of the Royal House from 'Coburg and Saxe-Gotha' to 'Windsor', I intend to follow his patriotic example and anglicise my titles. Henceforth, my lords, I wish to be known as Lord Charters of Fletcherloyal."

After a short pause for applause which never came, Lord Charters, as he now was, sprang the bombshell he had reserved for the climax of his speech. He proposed that the army should form a Royal Regiment of Archers, and he announced that his own grandson, having won a runner's-up medal for archery at Bisley, stood ready to lead a platoon of bowmen to be dropped by parachute into Germany, where they would swiftly bring the war to a close by shooting the Kaiser through the eye.

The Lord Chancellor looked wearily along the red benches. "Is the motion seconded?" he asked mournfully. A bluebottle hovered hopefully near the nose of a drowsing Lord Sutton, who flapped his hand at it sleepily. "Seconded," the Lord Chancellor sighed. "Opposed?" There was no response. "Carried nem con," he droned.

Before this elegant English plan could be put into operation however, the United States entered the war and ended it with brash transatlantic efficiency.

[Editorial note: modern researchers are advised that current editions of Hansard do not contain any report of the Baron's speech, or indeed of the debate in which it was made. His late lordship, however, solemnly averred on more than one occasion that his family possessed an unexpurgated original edition in which the text may be read, were it not so precious and rare that it was necessarily deposited in an airless vault, never to see the light of day for fear that it would disintegrate forthwith. "But," he would add, "if you can't take the word of an English gentleman for it, what's the world coming to, dammit?"]

* * *

Miss Trimble

It remains to introduce one other habitué of the church and its environs, a tall angular lady whose forbidding appearance was accentuated by her steel-rimmed pince-nez and long black neck-to ankle gown complete with a chatelaine belt. She was known as Mother Amelia, and performed the roles of secretary, verger, and general factotum to the Vicar, as well as performing undefined managerial functions at the Convent.

This lady possessed an alter ego. Whenever she left the purlieus of the church and abbey, she would change into a lady's suit of tweed skirt and jacket, over a blouse or cardigan. When accoutred in this garb she was usually addressed as 'Miss Trimble', and here some documentation exists. The records of the Department of Work and Pensions and the records of HM Revenue and Customs both show that a Miss Amelia Trimble paid National Insurance contributions and Income Tax in respect of her employment as Headmistress of the local school until a few years ago, when she was compulsorily retired at the age of 60.

It was Mother Amelia who took Farthingale's telephone call commanding the curate's attendance upon her ladyship that afternoon. The message seemed to disconcert her. "Oh dear," she uttered, "the Vicar will be put out. He always liked attending to her ladyship's needs himself. Still, one can't blame her, I suppose. The curate is the best hung male we have in these parts."

"You speak from personal experience, Amy?" Farthingale queried teasingly.

Mother Amelia laughed. "Only manual and visual, dear. I doubt that my old quim could withstand a penetrative pounding by such a potent penis. It would take someone of her ladyship's capacity. Unless of course you yourself... I hear that you were no mean performer in your day."

"It's a tempting thought, but it would be more than my job's worth to pre-empt Madam's satisfaction. But when she's finished with him, I might try to get his measure, if she's left him able to stand."

"Good luck with that, dear. But I must go now. I've just had an idea to placate the Vicar."

* * *

Sister Eulalia

After advising the curate of his afternoon appointment, Mother Amelia sought out the Reverend Arbuthnot. "I have asked our newest novitiate to arrange the flowers in the church this afternoon, Vicar, and I thought you might like to supervise her. She is in her early twenties, but still rather naive and inexperienced."

"Are you saying that she is a virgin, Mother?" The Vicar seemed affronted by the suggestion that a state of chastity might exist among his nuns.

"A moot point, Vicar. Medically, I suppose that she is not, there no longer being any hymeneal obstruction. But that has resulted only from the manipulations of her own slim fingers and those of her fellow novitiates, possibly augmented by the application of candles and handles. Of the male member she remains, I am sure, totally innocent."

"Candles and handles, Mother?" The Vicar was momentarily diverted by her remark.

"Yes, Vicar. I have noticed that when purchasing a toothbrush or a hairbrush, our novitiates invariably pay more attention to the size and shape of the handle than to the operative end. And you may have noticed that the votive candles they supply to the church are always tapered, never blunt ended."

"Ah, I see. Now I understand why they burn with that peculiar haunting fragrance. But tell me more about this new girl. Is she good looking?"

"Another moot point, Father. Her face is plain with a peasant-like vacuity, which no doubt explains why no man has taken his pleasure with her, but when fitting her with her new habit I saw a body that Aphrodite herself would envy. Her name is Sister Eulalia."