If you could follow me, follow me about the house, you would arrive eventually at the period lounge with the large inglenook fireplace. It is in truth, a very impressive room and one that I have come to love these last few months since we moved in. Located against the breast of that impressive fireplace, inset in wrought iron frames, as though they had been there, ever since the house was built in the 17th century are two wedding photographs. They feature Francesca in an extravagant gown with a flowing veil and Nathaniel, her black partner, dressed in an immaculate morning suit. In the first he is kissing her, whilst I look on. In the second, with a bouquet of flowers posed they are signing what looks like a register.
The pictures are entirely fake. But this is not a bigamist marriage. No, everything has been done to look as though they married. It is a pretence, a confection, fashioned to fill the dozen or more frames around the lovely old house, including the one on the table beside their bed in the master chamber. Francesa is still, legally, married to me, and I, the prematurely grey figure in several of the images, looking on, am not Francesca’s father, but her husband.
I am fifty although because my hair went a silver grey early, many think I am sixty plus. Francesca is aged thirty and Nathaniel is thirty two. Yes, I was an older husband. There was always a chance that my twenty years younger wife would meet and fall in love with another man. Of course men wanted to fuck my beautiful wife, that was a given. But I had hoped that none would fall in love with her and want to take her as their own. I remember, once, and we were not drunk, saying to Francesca that I would accept it if she discreetly fucked around. I couldn’t remain young and vigorous for so long, but I begged her not to fall in love with someone else.
It took several years before Francesca went with someone. It had been at a weekend party and she had discreetly slept with him rather than me. That man was Nathaniel. Nathaniel admittedly is an extremely handsome man. He is well dressed and extremely personable. He owned his own company, developing properties, although it had some way to go before the man was truly wealthy. That weekend Nathaniel fucked my wife and she insisted, heatedly, that she would see him again. I remember feeling terrified. It had not simply been a fuck. I remember that as we left the weekend party the man actually came up to me with Francesca at my side and told me that there was not to be any trouble, but he would see my wife regularly.
Five months passed. In the first Nathaniel simply dated her and she came home satisfied, different, liberated into a world, a physical world as it should be. I know that he fucked her hard for when we made love, it was as if I was pushing into a cavern. There was no resistance. He had changed her. I remember how ashamed I was. I felt emasculated, useless. I couldn’t give Francesca an orgasm any more. I wasn’t sure whether it was because she didn’t feel me there very much anymore, or whether it was because she didn’t want me now. Comparisons are cruel and Francesca wouldn’t talk about them. She wasn’t then a cruel woman so she suggested that we didn’t fuck any more and that instead I pleasure her with my tongue. It was a solace for Francsca climaxed that way, writhing, locking against my face, pretending (I thought) that she enjoyed me, when she really thought of him.
By month or two, or was it three, Nathaniel slept over regularly. She was very polite about it, telling me to move my clothes to the guest bedroom next door. She hoped of course that the walls would muffle things but I always heard what he did to her. He made my wife beg and groan as he took her. He made her feel utterly woman. Nathaniel and I were quite civil to one another, but it was obvious a territory war had started. I couldn’t match him physically or in sex appeal, but I did have a good salary and some inheritance money. So I started showering Francesca with nice things, a German sports car, an expensive watch, designer clothes all of which she accepted, wore or used and seemed to fuel his ardour with. She said one evening that I was buying those things as surrogate offerings. I couldn’t be a man with her, not properly, so this was my make do effort. She said it to my face in front of him. I remember blushing and answering yes. She nodded. That was ‘OK’ she said, it was pleasant, nice, a compliment, but I wasn’t to imagine that I could ever compete with Nathaniel, not any more.
In truth that was the point when I thought that I would loose my wife. I was convinced that she would leave me. Yes, there would be an interim hardship on the money front, but Nathaniel would make good. He was shrewd. I was desperate, frankly, desperate and so I took the initiative. I suggested that Nathaniel move in to the house, that I would treat him as the master, and provided that she allowed me the tiniest emotional, intimate recognition, then I would support them generously. I would invest in Nathaniel’s business and make a clothing and expenses allowance to my beautiful young wife of £6000 a month.
You think me a fool don’t you? You see the flaw in the plan, in an instant. Eventually Nathaniel’s business would take off and he could afford to support my wife in the style she was accustomed. He would pay for the full livery of her horse and the golf club subscription. Eventually, Francesca would tire of me, hanging around like a corpse, and would divorce me. Well, that is may be true, but when you love a woman that much, you will do almost anything.
I remember, they took a month or more to consider her. There was a case for ‘binning me’ now and creating a clean break. But Nathaniel knew how much money I had. He knew that I could ‘subscribe’ for years on end. If Francesca was prepared to bitch me, with conviction, then they could enjoy a very gracious and comfortable life together. I remember that when Nathanial talked with me about it, Francesca seated at his side, in the jeans, the high heeled boots, I did not know what ‘bitching me’ entailed.
‘She’ll treat you with contempt…as something worthless’ Nathaniel said. I remember Francesca looking at me to see whether that seemed shocking. I framed my expression as best I could.
‘I’ll accept any terms.’ I said humbly.
I think that he wanted that. He liked the idea of Francesca learning to be cruel. But my wife was practical as well and she certainly didn’t want our friends to think of her in that way. We should move house, move locale and start a new life. We should live a different life. A girlfriend had once remarked unkindly that I looked old enough to be her father, so that was what I became. We had mock photographs done and I bought this place, this rather large and impressive period home, gifting it to Francesca.
I moved in with them, the retained father. I was the man that Francesca took pity on because my wife had died in a road traffic accident. I lived in the tiny room next door to their master bedroom and I continued my accountancy work ‘from home’. Their new social life built up and friends came to visit and stay. They smiled at me, not knowing why I seemed uncomfortable when Francesca kissed ‘her man’.
I spoilt Francesca, of course I did. I was searching for anything that would normalise even this arrangement! It was like terracing a sloping garden to retain the fertile soil. More jewellery, more boots, more clothes, a holiday to Barbados for the pair of them. I was truly bereft and searched for any hope.
At first, it worked. We shared affectionate kisses and hugs. If Nathaniel was away on business then she came to my bed and we played. She seemed kittenish, cruelly so, but any attention would do. But as time went by, and she had so much, when he had established his business afresh in the new place, our intimacies changed. I would be summoned to her. Her boots were to be kissed. Always that demeaning ritual. Then she would lift her skirt hem just a little so that I could barely see and she would have me lick her sex.
‘You disgust me’ she would sometimes say, watching me nuzzle and lap. She would tolerate it, sometimes climaxing on my face but always now, dear god, with a cruel expression on her face.
‘I will always always do this for you….anything’ I begged.
Then came a day when she turned and pushed her rear against my face. I was to lick there too. I licked her humbly, gratefully, rolling my tongue around her puckered hole. It became a pleasure of sorts to her. She liked the humiliation of it.
‘When I’m bored with you….when Nathaniel is rich, I will dispense with you’ she said idly, pressing her buttocks against my face one day.
I felt decimated. The blood drained from my face. I must have looked as if I might feint kneeling before her.
‘You didn’t think it any different….did you?’ she queried, indignantly.
I shook my head, my heart plummeting.
‘No’ I admitted.
She nodded.
‘Lick my bottom again then…’ she ordered curtly, that is what you do now, from now on.’
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Lutheran Maid