Part 15
Two heads are better than one
Lizzie stayed in bed all morning the next day. Sullen, angry and worried. She had hoped this was all a dream but it was too long, too coherent, too real for her to believe that. She was beginning to accept in her mind that the odious Conrad really had stolen her away from reality into the make believe, made up world of his book.
How dare he have had her pelted with tomatoes, how dare he smack her, how dare he touch her bottom, how dare he fuck her without permission. She was incensed â understandably furious.
But by afternoon she had reasoned there was no point simply hiding away. She was here, she must make the best of it and find a way to escape and get back home.
Was Conrad really causing her to do things, controlling her mind, or did he write them up in his book afterwards, after she had done them? She did not know the answer to the puzzle but she knew she needed to get hold of his book and read it.
She stood looking in her great walnut wardrobe trying to find something sensible to wear but all the dresses seemed to have an overly plunging neckÂline and she really would rather her breasts were not free for all to see no matÂter that everyone else seemed to have their genitalia or other private parts disÂplayed. Practical, as always, Lizzie wrapped a silk scarf tightly around her chest to hide her breasts, and stop them swinging free, before slipping a dress over her head. She looked at herself in the mirror. It certainly suited her. Even her grandmother would have approvedâindeed been surprised to see Lizzie so well dressed.
She ventured out. Down in the long corridor she found it bustling with all manner of people. Mallow and one of her friends sauntered by almost naked but for a few bands of ribbon, done up in bows, and great bushy tails that seemed to grow right out from between their bottom cheeks. Lizzie turned to watch their bottoms. "Surely not," she thought but it did very much look like the tails were actually inserted in their bottoms and that was how they were held. Lizzie, always a little contemptuous of fashion, could not see that would catch onâeven on the Paris catwalks.
To the side, seated in a small alcove, in a window seat with cushions, sat the Chevalier. His blue eyes looked up with pleasure to see Lizzie and he rose, smoothing down his impressive gold cloth suit. It would have been really imÂpressive to Lizzie's eyes had his cock not been hanging out from where a norÂmal suit would have had flies with a zipper or even buttons. Even a casual glance showed he had not made a mistakeânot forgotten somethingâthe suit was designed to expose.
Lizzie launched into a complaint, "I don't understand where I am; I don't understand how I came to be here; I don't understand what this house, this place is; I really don't understand at all." Her tirade ended lamely and she stood looking at the Chevalier.
"What a lot of questions, ma cherie, these are not the sort of questions I can answer. This is, after all, how it is." He brightened, "perhaps together we can solve it, a puzzle we can work on."
"Two heads are better than one," said Lizzie.
"Ah formidable, mademoiselle you reach the solution all by yourself. He is the one to assist, yes the very one. You must go and see our friend from Galles, how you say Wales? He has two heads you see and knows a great deal as a result."
The Chevalier seemed so delighted with what Lizzie had said and so sure that this Welshman would help that she did not like to prolong the discussion and thought the phenomenon of a man with two heads was one she had to see. The directions were not complicated.
Lizzie crossed the lawn, over which she had run in such terror only the day before, to join a neat gravel path which wound around a rockery and there she came across a little stone built house with a matching wall to the front with a green painted wooden gate. Resting his arms on the gate was a middle-aged man dressed in tweed. As Lizzie drew closer she could see his suit was exÂceptionally dapper, as if the man took great care of his personal appearance, and comprised plus fours, a waistcoat and a coat in a lovat green with large red squares. His hat was the same material, socks were green to match (with red tapes) and his shoes were beautifully polished brown brogues. Lizzie was puzzled by the modesty of the dress. It was not at all in keeping with what she had come to expect here. Indeed the house, the garden and the man all seemed very normal. He just had the usual single head like everybody else. It was puzÂzling.
"Good morning, sir." The air of the man seemed to command a formal mode of address.
He had watched her approach and slowly raised he hat. He was very bald. "You have come to view, to marvel, to exclaim." His accent Welsh and musical.
It was not a questionâbut a statement. Lizzie's puzzlement grew.
"What have I come to see?" She asked
"What? Me of course." His chest seemed to puff out in his waistcoat. "You have come to see me and stand quite amazed. They all comeâsooner rather than laterâto marvel. It cannot be helped. I am unique, the most interesting person for miles around. Indeed I doubt you will find anyone nearly as interestÂing as me for ten, no twenty, maybe even thirty miles. Though I cannot think that even beyond that distance perhaps verging on forty or shall we say fifty..."
"Yes, I understand." The man was tedious. "I was told I should see you and..."
"Of course you should see me. Quite understandable. Everybody wants to. The Marchioness herself has called upon me several times and professed herÂself quite fascinated and," he paused fractionally, "well satisfied. I..."
"...was told you could answer my question. You see..."
"A man such as me, being quite uniqueâyou will not find a man such as me elsewhere not within or beyond fifty milesâcan certainly answer your question and much else besides. But come in, come into my modest little garÂden through this gate and I will show you the marvel and answer your quesÂtion."
"What marvel?" asked Lizzie and then wished she hadn't.
"What marvel? What! Don't you know? I cannot believe it. Why else would you come? Everyone comes to see David Ambrose Penstimen Fallick. Some days it is almost a queue out there. I really should charge admission on a graduated scale. You are so fortunate today for I do not have an appointment all morning. Very fortunate. Most surprising."
"No, I don't."
He looked puzzled, "You don't what? But before you answer me, perhaps you will take some refreshment. I make my own cordials, you know or perhaps, probably you have been told. Would you like Blackcurrant or Blackberry or Raspberry, or Gooseberry, or Winberry or something exotic like Lime or Lemon or..."
"Winberry please." Lizzie was worried the list would go on forever. For someone whose time was almost permanently taken up with visitors he seemed to have a remarkable amount of spare time for fruit gathering, cordial making and talking.