The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(108)

My mother has upheld this narrow-minded attitude all her life, and the same can be said of most of my married women friends. However, I am different, Derek. I have always hated this absurd inhibition in the same way I detest crochet and needlework. I believe we women have as much right as you men to experience pleasure and express it freely as individuals. Moreover, I do not believe a woman needs to be married to a man in order to engage in intimate relations with him: in my view it is enough for her to be in love with him. These are my beliefs, Derek, and as I walked down the corridor in the boardinghouse, I suddenly realized the time had come for me to find out whether I was capable of putting them into practice or had merely been lying to myself, and whether my fear was only a sign of my complete ignorance of such matters.

Now you know, and I imagine that is why you treated me so gently and tenderly, but let us not get ahead of ourselves. Let me reveal everything step by step in an orderly fashion and, out of respect for you, I shall do so using the future tense, as from your point of view none of this has as yet happened. Well, I will not put it off any longer.

The room in the boardinghouse will be very small but cozy. The winter evening will almost have set in, which is why you will first hurry to light the table lamp. I shall watch you from the doorway, unable to move a muscle.

Then you will look at me warmly for a few moments, before walking towards me very slowly with a calming smile, like someone afraid of scaring off a nervous cat. When you are near me, you will gaze into my eyes, whether to read what is in them or for me to read what is in yours I do not know. Then you will lean very slowly towards my mouth, so slowly I will be able to perceive your warm breath, the warmth of the air inside you, before feeling your lips firmly and at the same time gently pressing against mine. This subtle contact will unsettle me for a few moments, and then it will be transformed into my first kiss, Derek. And although I will have spent many nights anticipating what it will feel like, I will only have imagined the spiritual side, the supposed floating feeling it gives you, but it will never have occurred to me to consider the physical side, the soft, pulsating warmth of someone else’s lips on mine. But little by little I will give myself over to this sensual touch, and I will respond to you with the same tenderness, sensing that we are communicating in a much deeper, more sincere way than with words, that we are putting all of ourselves into that tiny physical space. Now I know nothing brings two souls together more than the act of kissing, of awakening desire for one another.

Then a pleasant tickling sensation will ripple over my flesh, penetrating my skin and overwhelming me inside.

Is this rush of sensations what my mother and my most prudish friends try so hard to suppress? I will experience it, Derek. I will taste it, delight in it, and cherish it, my love, in the knowledge that I will be experiencing it for the first and last time, for I will know that after you there will be no other men and I must live off these feelings for the rest of my life. Then the floor will give way beneath my feet and except for the pressure of your hands around my waist I will almost believe I am floating.

Then you will take away your lips, leaving the imprint of your mouth on mine, and you will look at me with tender curiosity while I try to regain my breath and my composure.

And then? It will be time for us to undress and lie down together on the bed, only you will seem as hesitant as I, unable to take the first step, perhaps because you think I will be afraid. And you will not be mistaken, my love, because I have never undressed in front of a man before, and all at once I will feel nervous and bashful and wonder whether taking off our clothes is really necessary. According to my aunts, my mother kept her marriage vows without my father ever having seen her naked. In keeping with the customs of her generation, Mrs. Haggerty lay down in her petticoats with a hole in her undergarments revealing the scented opening where my father was permitted entry. But it will not be enough for me simply to lift my skirts, Derek.

I will want to enjoy our physical contact to the full, and therefore I will overcome my shame and begin to undress, fixing you with a gentle, solemn look. I will begin by taking off my feather hat, which I will hang on the stand, then I will slip off my jacket, my blouse with its high neck collar, my overcorset, my corset, my overskirt, my skirt, my bustle, and my petticoats, until all I am left wearing is my slip. Still gazing at you tenderly, I will pull down the shoulder straps so the garment slides off my body, like snow slipping off a fir tree, and lies in a furl at my feet. Then, like a final act of a long drawn-out ritual, I will slip out of my drawers, offering myself to you utterly naked, placing my body at your disposal, surrendering myself to the touch of your hands and your lips, giving myself completely, knowing it is to the right man, to Captain Derek Shackleton, the liberator of the human race, the only man with whom I could ever have fallen in love.

And you, my love, you will watch the elaborate process, like someone waiting for a beautiful figure to emerge from a block of marble as it is teased out by the artist’s chisel.

You will see me walking towards you, and will quickly take off your shirt and trousers, as if a gust had torn them from a washing line. Then we will embrace, the warmth of our bodies mingling in a happy union, and I will feel your fingers, so accustomed to touching hard metal and weapons, exploring my body, sensitive to its delicacy, with exhilarating slowness and respectful tenderness. Then we will lie on the bed gazing into one another’s eyes, and my hands will search your stomach for the scar from the bullet with which Solomon tried to kill you, and which you survived as one recovers from a fever, only I will be so nervous I won’t be able to find it. Then your mouth, moist and eager, will cover me with kisses, leaving a trail of saliva, and once you have thoroughly charted my body, you will enter it slowly, and I will feel you moving inside me with such gentleness. But despite the care you take, your intrusion will cause me to feel a sudden sharp pain inside, and I will cry out softly and even pull your hair, although immediately it will turn into a bearable, almost sweet ache, and I will become aware of something dormant inside me beginning to stir. How can I describe to you what I will feel at that moment? Imagine a harp marveling at the notes it produces when a pair of hands pluck it for the first time. Imagine a burning candle, whose melted wax trickles down the candlestick, oblivious to the flame above, and forms a beautiful latticed pattern at the base.