Black Valentines Read online

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  She leapt out of her chair as if it was the most exciting news she had heard all day. “Why should I mind?”

  When I stood up I felt dizzy and found that I had to rely on my cane more than usual. Lydia laughed at me, but now it did not seem so much that she was making fun of me, but just that she loved life and she loved to laugh and have fun.

  I had not realized how dim the parlor of the Balfour house was until we stepped outside. The afternoon summer sun made everything around me sparkle. I stopped a moment to take everything in before I followed her down the steps where a flashy black and red Daimler roadster was parked helter-skelter at the curb.

  She lifted her skirts and popped over the door and into the driver’s seat, barely waiting for me to situate myself before she revved the motor and pulled out into the street. A flock of school children scattered like frightened pigeons. She honked her horn with glee and threw me a look. She reached in front of me to the cubby box and pulled out a pair of round, dark glasses which popped onto her face. They were quite becoming against her pale features.

  She drove like a madwoman, tearing around corners and sounding the horn at anyone who dared get in her way, laughing all the while. In the bright afternoon sunlight I could barely see, or perhaps it was because of the crystalline glow the drug had produced.

  I tried to shout directions but the noise of the wind was too great for my voice to be heard as it whipped around the windscreen. Before long we had arrived at another posh address and she once again abandoned the car recklessly curbside and trotted up the steps toward the house.

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  “Where are we?”

  “This is where I live. Don’t worry. I’m not going to bite you. We’ll only be a moment.”

  I followed her into the house, relieved to be out of the vehicle – her driving terrified me – and out of the blinding afternoon sun as well.

  The house was dim and narrow and not nearly as ostentatious as the house on Crescent Walk. At the foot of the steps she turned to me and said, “I’ll only be a moment. Make yourself cozy, why don’t you?” But then she gave me the once over and said, “No, that won’t do at all. You’ll have to change as well. I’ll give you something of Stuart’s. You’re a bit thinner than he but where we’re going no once will notice.”

  I was so bent I couldn’t have resisted if I had wanted to. She could have told me to jump off the London Bridge and I would have done it, gladly.

  Upstairs, she opened a cupboard and after rifling through a few items she pulled out a most dreadful coat and pair of trousers and thrust them at me. “Put these on.”

  They smelled. “These are awful. I shall look like a common workman.”

  “Well, you can’t go there looking like that.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Lydia winked. “You’ll see.”

  She left me then, and I did as told and put on the workman’s clothes, feeling that I was donning a disguise. When she came back to fetch me, she had transformed herself into a common charwoman with most of her blond ringlets stuffed inside a bonnet which nearly obscured her face.

  She hailed a cab outside, and when the driver was reluctant to take her to the address she named (which I did not recognize but feared the worst if it was somewhere she would not dare take the auto) she bartered with him to take us only part of the way. We were deposited at a dirty corner of a dingy street and within moments we were inside another cab. She settled back against me.

  “We’re almost there,” she said.

  “But where..?” Lydia pressed a finger against my lip, and then her mouth, and then her body. I accepted her tongue gladly, and felt a stirring within where none had been felt for years.

  The neighborhoods grew less respectable. My already heightened sense of smell was assailed by a fetid odor which I recognized as the river, rank with detritus at low tide. We were somewhere near the docks. The houses and buildings were small and leaned into one another. Garret rooms jutted out over the street, blocking out the sun. The atmosphere was dark and dank, and now we were deposited in this unsavory place.

  “Put your arm around me,” she whispered. “Just do it. Don’t look at anyone. Walk quickly.”

  We scurried down a narrow alley, stepping over bodies that lay about in drunken stupors. The effects of the cocaine were wearing off and my senses were inundated by the sights and smells around me. The place stank of human waste, and worse, so that I thought I would be sick to my stomach.

  She opened a door and we were inside a black hall with a low ceiling, and then treading up a narrow staircase.

  At the top she rapped once upon a door. I heard the dragging of feet on the other side. A bolt was drawn back and the door opened to reveal a tiny China woman, old and wrinkled as a newborn baby, with wispy black brows and mustache like a delicate black caterpillar.

  The moment we stepped into the little room my nostrils were assailed by another smell, something smoky and exotic, and I finally understood. The time to protest had long since passed, and so I chose to succumb to what was about to happen. I saw a handful of coins drop from Lydia’s hand into the China woman’s, and then the old woman shuffled toward a low table where the pipes and spirit lamps were displayed in the flickering glow from the coal oven.

  There was a pair of beds stacked one on top of another. Lydia hunkered down inside the bottom one and gestured for me to join her. She lay with her arms around me from behind and I was grateful for the perfume in her hair to mask the myriad other smells in the room.

  The China woman held out the long stemmed pipe to me and when I placed it between my lips she used the flame from the spirit lamp to light the bowl at the end. I inhaled deeply. The smoke was thick and potent. Lydia took the pipe and placed it to her lips and also smoked.

  It went on like that for a short time, first me and then Lydia partaking of the pipe. The effect was immediate and wondrous. The pain in my leg was forgotten. The smells in the room no longer bothered me. I was wrapped in a comforting gray cocoon. All inhibitions washed away. I turned and faced Lydia and pressed my phallus against her.

  She responded greedily, meeting my thrusts. She stroked my face. My hands were in her hair, those beautiful soft yellow curls, Laura’s curls, the ones I had dreamed of burying my face into, and now they at last were mine. We tore at each other’s clothes until she had me in her hand and guided me assuredly between her thighs.

  There was no fumbling, no shame, no hesitation. I surrendered to the sensation as our bodies thrust against each other, wave after wave of ecstasy sweeping over us. Her body seemed to break beneath mine and I buried my face into her neck and sunk my teeth into her flesh, and when I felt the bitter taste of blood cross my lips, I slipped into blissful oblivion.

  When I awoke it was morning and I was in my own room in the lodging house in Black Friars. At first I thought it had all been a dream, but I was still dressed in the dirty workman’s clothes. I stood up, surprised I felt no worse for the wear and tear, and looked around for my cane.

  I looked everywhere without result. I couldn’t imagine that I had made it home without it, but as I had no idea how I had gotten here, anything was possible. With a shudder I recalled climbing the stairs to that vile room. Had I had it with me then? I tried to visualize my journey. I recalled leaving the house on Crescent Walk and the wild ride in Lydia’s motorcar, and the brief layover at her flat.

  There was the remote possibility that it was yet in the parlor on Crescent Walk. Would Laura find it and know I had been there? Would Laura send word of regret that she had not been present at the appointed time for tea? Perhaps it was best the appointment be left forgotten, for she would surely know her sister well and suspect the worst of me.

  Laura. Lydia. Each of them so beautiful yet so vastly different.

  How had I succumbed so quickly to Lydia’s temptation? It was not only the enticement and excitement of the drug, so boldly presented right t
here in the house. It was her allure, her utter daring as though she couldn’t care less what society thought of a woman like her. And after all, this was the twentieth century and women were bolder and more modern than ever before. Soon they would have the right to vote, I had no doubt of it. Of course I had been raised to believe that women were to be docile servants to their husband’s but the thrill of a woman as bold as Lydia was undeniable.

  Moreover, had we been intimate? I was not certain we had, but the thought that it was only part of the dream panged me with disappointment. Did she find me attractive or was I simply a plaything for her own amusement. I thought of that man who had come after her, the fiancé, Stuart Noyes. He was not at all like me. He was more the man who would want to tame a woman like Lydia. But she struck me as one who would not tolerate ownership by such a man, which begged the question, what were they doing together?

  I ambled about the room, acutely aware of the pain in my leg, but also I recalled that, for the past half day or more, it hadn’t bothered me in the least. The local chemist kept my ration of morphine closely guarded, which was for my own benefit, and if I went to him before the month was out he would give me nothing more than a bottle of laudanum, as if I were merely a woman with her curses.

  Perhaps if I could locate Lydia I could persuade her to take me back to that place. Yet the moment this fancy crossed my mind, I knew it was folly. Surely I was nothing more than an afternoon’s delight to her, and my allegiance was to Laura.

  Or was it? Damn Lydia! I could not banish her from my mind.

  I spent the rest of the day in turmoil and was glad that the day after was Monday and I was able to return to work. I did not fare well traveling without my cane, and even a fellow clerk in the office commented crassly that I must have gotten drunk and forgotten it somewhere. If he only knew the half of it!

  Before leaving for the day I sat at the typewriter and composed a letter to Laura. I did not mention the forgotten appointment but asked if she was well and told her that I looked forward to our next meeting. I left the letter addressed to her with the post to be picked up the following morning and resigned myself to the fact that it would be several days yet before I received reply.

  The following day as I hunkered over the typewriter I was peripherally aware of a commotion on the stairs outside the clerks’ room. At first I paid no heed, but then I recognized a voice that was shouting my name.

  The door to the office was torn open and Stuart Noyes burst into the room. Our office is narrow and cramped and he would have difficulty navigating toward me, but already my heart had skipped a beat. In his arms were my clothes which I had left in Lydia’s flat, and, of course, my cane.

  He shouted obscenities at me. The other men in the room were as startled as I and so terrified they were rooted to the chairs where they sat. He hurled the clothes at me. They fell far short of their target. I could tell my fellows were as frightened of the man as I, and so to try to ease the tension I left my desk and, with caution, approached Noyes.

  He struck so quickly that I had no time to react. Besides, there was nowhere for me to go. The cane swung through the air, cracking against my ribs with a sickening thud. I threw up my hands in self defense but he only hit again, so hard that I felt the bones in my hand break. Before I knew what was happening the cane collided with my skull. I dropped to my knees, blood streaming down my face.

  I fully expected the assault to continue, but it did not. I slumped against a cabinet and through the blood sluicing into my eye saw that several of my colleagues had pinned his arms behind his back and wrestled him out the door.

  “Next time I will kill you!” and of that threat becoming reality I had no doubt.

  I tried to bring myself to my feet, but even with the aide of my colleagues I was on the verge of collapse. The damage was done. My body was wracked with unimaginable pain and there was so much blood pouring from the wound in my head that I could not see. The floor tilted beneath me and blessed darkness overtook me.

  That was one way to get the drug I craved. I was laid up in hospital for several days until the danger of a concussion had passed. I had broken ribs and a broken hand, and a kindly nurse came round to offer me the needle which I happily accepted.

  I slipped in and out of blissful lassitude. I lost track of time. I thought of Laura. I dreamed of Lydia. I thought of her reckless gaiety. I thought of my hands in her hair, her arms wrapped around me. I imagined her naked with her supple breasts in my hands, thrusting deep and fast and hard inside of her.

  And when I emerged from my stupor, she was there beside my bed.

  Or was it Laura? Yes, it had to be Laura. And when she did not notice that I had opened my eyes but continued to stare vacantly into empty space, I was sure of it.

  “Laura,” I said.

  A smile broke across her face and in that moment it was the single most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

  “Clive! Oh goodness me, I am so glad to know you are all right. You are all right aren’t you? I know this is a rotten thing to say but I am so very glad I can’t see how bad off you are for I am afraid I would burst into tears.”

  It was then that I noticed a young woman sitting in the room not far from Laura who could only be her maid and escort.

  “It’s not as bad as all that, just a few cracked ribs and a nasty shiner on my left eye. You wouldn’t find it very attractive.”

  “No. I’m sure of that. Tell me what happened.”

  She didn’t know? Of course not, how could she? I don’t suppose Noyes dropped by her house to say, “Guess what, I’ve just beaten up that chum of yours,” nor would Lydia have mentioned anything about it. I understood that Lydia was at odds with her brother and sister so I hardly think she would have been the bearer of the news either.

  “I took a detour down the wrong alley, that’s all. I worked late and it was already growing dark and I thought I would save myself a bit of time.”

  “Do you live close by?”

  “Not close enough, obviously. But how did you find out where I was?”

  “When you didn’t arrive for tea I was concerned. And when you didn’t answer my telegram I telephoned your place of employment.”

  “And what did they tell you?” Please, God, don’t let her catch me in a lie.

  “Only that you were in hospital and that you had suffered quite a beating.”

  “Laura, I did come to tea, but I thought perhaps you were the one who forgot. I was there on Saturday.”

  Her face sank. “No wonder! I expected you on Friday.”

  But I didn’t see how I would have agreed to tea on Friday. It was difficult enough for me to get by only working a half day on Saturday. Friday would have been out of the question.

  “Didn’t Soames tell you I was there on Saturday? He showed me into the parlor. I was there for some time.”

  “He did not. I shall have Lionel speak to him. Perhaps he told Lionel and Lionel did not want me to know. Lionel can be overly protective at times. It will take some time for him to get used to you. He will come round, I’m sure of it. Perhaps when you are on the mend you would come again. I’ll give you a hint about Lionel. If you haven’t already gathered, he loves attention. Do you play billiards?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not very good at it.”

  “Cards?”

  “Not very well.”

  “Well, let him teach you and then let him win. You’ll be best of friends before the night is over.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to be best of friends with Lionel Balfour, but if keeping in his good graces enabled me to see Laura more often, then I was certainly willing to play along.”

  Before she said good-bye, Laura leaned down and kissed me on the cheek, and it was all I could do not to take her face in my hands and kiss her full upon the lips. As it was, moving my left arm caused my ribs to ache and so I had to content myself to lay there with my hands folded across my chest.

  “Laura,” I said.

  “Yes, Clive?�
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  “I just wanted you to know that I am smiling.”

  It was several weeks before I was well enough to leave the hospital. The pain in my ribs was strong and frequent, but at least now I had access to a higher ration of morphine. I would not be able to take the needle during the day as I would not function well at work, but at night I indulged to my heart’s content.

  When I returned to Bates and Reed, it was to a nasty shock indeed. As I entered the building, I received a few cautious looks from colleagues, and before I set foot on the stairs – which would prove to be a daily challenge until I had completely mended – Mr. Reed himself, a man whom I almost never saw, accosted me and steered me into his office and gave me the news. Due to the disruption I had brought upon the offices of Bates and Reed I was being dismissed from my post.