The Lady Galatea

Galatea gasped, and pressed her hot palm to the cold, rippled glass. Outside, the granite sky and flinty moorland blended into a windswept, frigid underworld. As dark a mid-day as there ever could be. Moor House creaked and groaned around her. Every empty room leant into the wind and heaved like a stuck shipwreck.

She pushed her rear to her husband's hips and wedged his rock solid manhood deeper inside her. She grunted and shuddered.

"My lady is satisfied?" he whispered.

"Yes," she said. Then, "No."

She slipped off his shaft, and rustled down her black dress, but would not turn to face him.

"Please, My Lady," he said. "More."

She ignored him. In the feeble light of an oil lamp, her ghostly reflection glowed feverish, despite the luminous pallor of her skin. She untied dark ribbons and re-fastened her hair. Next time she would visit a lover. Maybe even take a new one.

Then quite by chance -- but magical nonetheless -- she saw the figure, little more than a smudge, wobbling in the distance. She snuffed her lamp. Impossible. The moors were all but impassable on a fine day. To venture across them during such intemperance was madness. But still, the shadow plodded; bowed, resolute. Shoving itself into the wind as if into a challenging lover.

He was early.

Galatea ran to light the fires.

#

Harris pressed his hat hard to his head and cursed his Editor again, longing for the day when his private work might free him from working for The Times. His boots scraped and stumbled on slick stone, the wind-blasted rain needled at his skin even through the kerchief he had fastened about his frozen face. Moor House loomed on the horizon like a great cliff, never getting closer.

Still he had come this far. If his Editor's sources were correct, daguerreotypes of the old battle-axe, Lady Galatea, would be worth his efforts. If she had managed to stay alive for some two hundred years, the very least he could do was put up with a few days discomfort to preserve her image for eternity.

He stooped into the wind and pushed on -- one step at a time, boxes and bags flaying his shoulders -- wishing himself in the comfort of his warm studio. Preferably in the company of some pink and perfect morsel; vacantly disporting herself on his couch.

The winter sun was a bright band across the sky's last quarter by the time he arrived at the monumental entrance; the edifice bringing a deeper shiver than the howling wind. The great house was more mausoleum than dwelling place.

An iron knocker rang cannon-shots in the gloom, and almost immediately, the door creaked open.

A girl, brushing back an errant, raven curl. The fairest he had ever seen, skin of alabaster and eyes of glittering obsidian. Sunlight beamed briefly through a crack in the cloud and was swallowed again. She smiled. "Can you not speak?" she said.

Harris yanked down his kerchief, doffed his hat and bowed. In an instant he was drenched. "Forgive me, Ma'am. I seek the Lady Galatea. Is your mistress...?"

The girl bit her lips. "You are sodden, sir. Please, come in."

Once inside, the girl -- considerably stronger than her demure frame would suggest -- took Harris's luggage and led him into an enormous room glowing by the light of a fire as tall as he.

Together they peeled off his wet coat, and -- at the girl's insistence -- his boots, also. She sat him down and disappeared with his soaked apparel, returning in minutes with a teapot and two cups on a silver tray.

She sat opposite him, and poured tea. By the light of the fire, her skin glowed with a lustrous marble whiteness.

"Perhaps, when I am dried, you will introduce me to the good Lady Galatea?" Harris gulped his tea, steam rising from his breeches.

The girl sat primly, hands in her lap. "And what would you ask of her?" she said.

Harris started to tire with this bauble. She was too elegantly dressed to be a maid. A charge no-doubt, by her carriage and manners. So sad that she should be so in mourning, though. Head to toe in black... Harris wiped his hand over bleary eyes. Idiot. She wore black. "Oh my dear," he blustered, "Has your Lady... passed on?"

The girl snorted. "Why ever would you think that?" she said.

"Well..." He cleared his throat. "The woman's longevity. Time catches us all in the—"

"Dear Lord, you are a pretty fool." The girl frowned. "I am Galatea."

"But—"

"I look too young? How old should a Bicentennial woman look, sir? Fifty? One-hundred?"

Harris's head lurched. The girl, the Lady Galatea, took the cup from his trembling hand. This was not possible. But he stood and bowed, nonetheless, finding the Lady's outstretched hand, limp, in the old style. He pressed his lips to it, surprised to find her pale skin radiantly hot.

"Harris. Of The Times," he said.

She flattened the curl of her pink lips, looked at the spot where he kissed, and sighed. "Forgive an old women her impatience, sir," she breathed. Her heat lingered in his lips, a vitality at odds with her utterance. Warm blood flushed his midriff and his trousers grew slowly restrictive. He had never responded so fully and so immediately to a woman. Her lowered eye snagged at his hips and Harris quickly sat, crossing his legs.

The Lady spoke with a smirking dimple to her cheek that betrayed she was well aware of the spell she cast. "So what do you desire of me, Mr Harris?"

"My Editor believes your story may be of interest to our readers in the City, My Lady."

"Ah. Dear Frederick. I have known his mother since she was a child, you know. We often write. I cannot fathom why he should be interested in me, now. I have led a simple life, albeit for a very long time. What do you need to know?"

Harris rummaged out his notebook and pencil. "May I ask... your exact age?"

"The date is 1849, is it not?" She stirred her tea. "I was born in the year of our Lord, 1622. Give or take a year."

"Two hundred and... twenty-seven?"

The girl, the woman, shrugged.

Harris's heart hammered so, his pencil trembled. He would make a tidy purse from his work here, today. Possibly more than he made from eroticising his tawdry whores. "And, forgive my impertinence," he ventured, "but you could provide proof of this fact?"

"I could not." Lady Galatea leant back in her seat, suddenly girlish, swinging a knee. "Perhaps you should return in a century and see how I have changed?"

But Harris had his proof already, in church notices and village records. There had been but one owner of Moor House and no births or deaths recorded in all that time. The locals called it 'Barren House.' The last death in 1656. Her husband.

Galatea shone. "You have a stimulating eye, sir. It is like you see me... unwrapped. May I ask your profession?"

Harris leapt to his feet with his finger in the air. "Of course, My Lady." He rummaged amongst his bags and boxes and pulled out a loose-leaf portfolio. He moved the tray of tea things and spread out his daguerreotypes. A mountain. St Pauls. A dowager's portrait. Galatea's eyes widened at the portrait, running her fingers lightly over the woman's cheek.

"You are an accomplished artist, Mr Harris."

"I am, my Lady, but in a new art. The art of photography." He unwrapped his camera. "A system of lenses capture the light directly from a scene and record it exactly onto a specially coated paper. It is my sincere hope you might..."

"You wish to capture me for posterity?" Galatea laughed, a quiet hissing noise that caught her tongue between her teeth. "What a delectable irony. I would be honoured, sir. Please, go ahead." She struck the dowager's formidable pose.

Harris stifled a smile. "If you will indulge me, we will need a larger space for the equipment. And rather more light. Is there a brighter room?"

Galatea picked up his heavy bags as if they were empty. "Follow me," she said.

The woman led Harris, uneasy in his bootlessness, through long dark corridors, dusty and cobwebbed with neglect. Finally she flung open a pair of metalwork doors into an overgrown, sculpture stuffed, conservatory.

"Is this suitable?" Galatea stopped in the centre of a circular clearing. Rainclouds meant the light was even and perfect, if a little dim. A longer exposure should fix that, Harris calculated. Flesh glowed deliciously in indirect light, overexposed.

Then Harris took in one of the sculptures, and his ears heated. He cleared his throat and nodded stiffly. The circle was girded by a fearsome group of white stone men, a veritable army of nude figures, every one arched from the soil as if rearing up from the grave and taking to the air. All grimacing. And all erect. Harris fiddled with his equipment.

With a loud scrape, Galatea slid a formidable looking chaise into the middle of the space as if it was a picnic blanket. She blinked at Harris's discomfort. "Forgive me my art, sir. I have dabbled with sculpture in the past. A strictly private collection, you understand. Perhaps you would be good enough not to include them in your... doggy-types?"

"Daguerreotypes. But of course, my Lady. You must forgive my intrusion into your private realm."

The woman sat and surveyed her work with narrowed eyes, while Harris unfolded and assembled stands and boxes. He would catch that expression, though. The young lady with the lascivious eye of a sexually experienced woman. And only he would know what had peaked her attentions so... He only wished his work was colour, so he might catch the flush to her cheek. But how often he had wished that, when a pink tongue dipped into a livid rose.

"Do you know, Mr Harris," Galatea spoke to her sculptures. "I stopped aging when I was twenty years old. I am as much a sculpture as these goodly specimens, do you not think? A daguerreotype of stone."

Harris slid a plate into the back of the camera, and dipped beneath his black velvet cover to the viewfinder. "My lady, you are very much alive. We can only make facsimiles of life with our art, I fear. Not life, itself. Please remain absolutely still." He waited for a smirk to drift across her cheek, and then opened his lens, carefully timing it with his pocket watch, then replacing the cap.

He changed the plate. "I cannot stifle my curiosity any further, My Lady. What accounts for your longevity?"

Galatea swung her eyes at him, glassy as lenses, but black as holes. "I might show you my husband's method, after, if you wish. At least what little I understand of it.

"Indeed? You are too kind. I am but twenty, also, and would prefer to remain so, too."

Galatea changed position, reclining. "I had noticed your... robust physique," she said, parting her knees, most indecently, and pushing her skirts between. Harris swallowed as she revealed a good part of her ankle. She smiled. "I am afraid the technique has worked but once, Mr Harris, and the demon plague took the secret, with my husband, to the grave."

Harris opened the shutter. Let light sigh into his bellows, and closed it again. He stayed under the black cloth for a breath longer, behind the viewfinder, staring at the woman. He relished the fact that she would not move until he told her to. That for this tiny moment, something so perfect was completely his.

Harris recalled his most recent conquest and replaced the girl in his fancy with Galatea. Promised eternal youth via his art, how eagerly the hired harlot had glugged on his fountain...

The Lady curled her lip and shifted in discomfort. He coughed, leaving his lurid thoughts hidden under the dark cloth.

"Your skin, if I might say, My Lady, is utterly flawless. It is a great pity to lose such a secret."

Galatea's brow wrinkled. "More a pity to lose one's husband, sir."

Harris wished for a hole to climb into. She caught his mortification. "Oh don't fret, Pretty Fool," she muttered. "I have had many years to mourn. Come, continue with your... objectification of me."

He was aware of the challenge in her smile, but did not look at her. "An interesting turn of phrase," he said, his skin prickling with an odd, delirious sense of loosening ties. This woman radiated a cool kind of heat that quite bedazzled.

The Lady sat primly, then raised and hooked one leg over the arm of the chaise. A highly suggestive pose. She pulled the hem of her skirt up, presenting the white-stockinged calves above her boots. He made this out but from the corner of his eye, unable to face the glare of her provocation.

"Dear Mr Harris. Art, by its very nature, objectifies. Yet it is also a sublimation of our libido, is it not? There is but a veil of silk between artifice and... animal passion."

Harris ducked beneath his photographer's cowl, but even that could not hide the distortion in his breeches, or Lady Galatea's level gaze at it.

He would have this woman. And, by the flagrance of her pose, he wondered if she might have him, too. He swallowed. "My Lady... you really wish me to capture this image?"

She lifted her chin, and the hem of her skirt, even further. Harris's knee wobbled at a glimpse of her inner thigh. He uncovered his lens for the length of a lick of the lips, and covered it again like a guilty secret.

When he emerged, the Lady was stalking about his equipment, brushing her fingers along a box of lenses. Flipping her hip. "You will, of course show that image to no-one Mr Harris, it is just for you."

"You have my word as a gentleman, My Lady, and thank you. You are too kind."

He gripped a bolt, to dismantle his camera. She put her hand on his. He almost flinched at its heat, and within it the hint of a tremble. She spoke to their feet. "Tell me, sir, in return. Would you take a picture of me, just for me?"

Harris bowed, he even clicked his stockinged heels together. Blood sloshed into his head. This woman really made him quite giddy.

"Just..." she tipped her forehead toward him, her hand squeezing his. "For me?"

Harris drowned in her beguiling attentions and the imploring in her upward glance. Then he jolted. "Oh. You mean-- Well there is no reason why not. If you are— are we quite alone?" His skin felt oddly feathery. He doubted his pulse had ever been so quickened, intoxicating him on his own blood. Something squirmed in his shorts.

Galatea flapped her hand. "Quite alone, but for these." She nodded to the priapic army around them. "Then, would you mind...?" She turned her back to him and pulled her hair away from a ribbon fastening up the back of her dress, even though it was quite long enough for her to reach it herself.

With fumbling fingers, Harris unfastened her bodice. He parted the black dress off her fine, porcelain shoulders. She paused -- and he fancied she might be offering her long neck to his lips -- but she slipped out of range before he could muster the nerve.

There was no comparison between the Lady Galatea's graceful complicity and the slumped, hopeless disrobing of his usual rented beauties. She wriggled the dress to the floor with a slow deliberation, and turned to face him, then watched his expressions as she stripped her boots, corset, and stockings. Then, finally, her underwear.

She stood before him as pure as her sculptures. Her nipples knotting under his gaze, blushing as he took in the curled pink pleats of her sex, as hairless as a doll. She stroked fingertips over her mound-of-Venus as if it were a skittish kitten. "An unfortunate side-effect of the treatments," she said, smiling as if to a spellbound child.

"Wondrous, My Lady." Harris resisted the urge to drop to his knees. In worship, or—

"Pretty fool," she whispered, laying herself back on the chaise. "Prepare your machine, then we might..." she nodded at the stout lump in his trousers. "Play."

Lady Galatea stretched out, her feet together. An almost innocent picture, but for the domes of her breasts and mound pushing up to her hands; dancing over her front like impatient lovers.

His head whirling as if punched, Harris settled behind his viewfinder. "I cannot capture such movement, My Lady. As exquisite as—"

"Concentrate. There will be one still moment. It is this you will capture. My... rapture." Her body -- smooth and pale against the red velvet -- squirmed up at her hands. Her eyelids drooped as she stared into the lens. Into Harris. She gasped, the fingers of one hand curling under her sex, stirring. The other skating gaily about her breasts.

He had posed this scene so many times. Never had it been offered without the silvered tongue of coercion. Never had it beguiled him so. He cursed the weakness in his knees and the magnetism of this woman. Her skin so without flaw that his lens could not find focus, her eyes so black he could find no end to the depth. He gripped the tripod for fear of tumbling into her.

"You have... captured this... before." She said.

"Yes, My Lady."

"I see it... them... in your eye. The wretches."

Harris was lost to the implication. He quaked so hard he had to release the camera for fear of shaking the image. Sweat prickled his forehead. His hand poised over the lens-cap, ready to spring. But when? The good Lady grew less still by the moment. Her body winding her hips at the dip and dive of her intrepid fingers. Clawing her breast, her lips parted and purple cheeks buried in the tense crook of her shoulder.

If he was to open the camera now, Lady Galatea would be no more than a blurring ghost. And still she enlivened, knees rocking her hips hungrily at both her hands. One curling a finger in and out of herself, whilst the other held her petals open and tickled her swollen stamen between. She rippled sinuously along her form, like a cracked whip; a fluidity only broken by the increasing, uncontrollable shudders of her belly. Then, suddenly, she tipped back her head, stuck out her jaw, and arched her hips high off the seat, locking completely rigid.

His mouth dry, and breeches fit to burst, Harris lunged at his lens. He counted, one, two, three and the Lady remained, silently releasing her ecstasy to the heavens. Then he covered the lens and she collapsed, grunting out her climax, knees curled up, and hands clasped between them. Foetal in her blissful abandon.

Harris politely watched from behind his camera until Galatea finished; rocking on the chaise like a ship returning to harbour from stormy seas. Her hair loosened over her face.

"Now," she said croakily, sitting up and securely fastening her hair. "I promised to show you my secret."

Far from seeming sated, Lady Galatea's eyes burned. She smouldered so much Harris flinched as, still naked, she stood on shaky legs and took his hand.

She led him through the house and up the sweeping staircase, as pale as a phantasm against the houses dark furnishings. His vision swam at the exertion of climbing the stairs and he wondered at how exhausted his muscles felt within the aura of Lady Galatea, despite his arousal. She led him into a candlelit bathroom, a great roll-top bath steaming, brim-full, next to another enormous fire.

"I took the liberty of drawing this for you, sir," Galatea said, pirouetting and fiddling with the buttons of his waistcoat. "When I saw you approach."

"My Lady." The room was replete with a heady scent. Was it this -- some thick kind of lavender -- that turned his limbs quite limp? Or maybe her quiet song, a humming that lay beneath her voice, unstoppable and direct to the centre of his skull. "Is this part of the... process?" he said, his tongue thick in his mouth. He pulled off his shirt as the Lady Galatea crouched and un-buttoned his breeches.

"Preparation, sir. You must be relaxed... " She tore at his trousers and underwear like a child with a Christmas present, her eyes widening as his manhood unfurled and flexed in front of her. "That will do very well, indeed," she said, and ran a fingertip underneath its nodding length. Harris groaned, she hissed her little laugh. "Otherwise relaxed, hmm? Quickly, Mr Harris. Into the bath. There is much I would do to you."