Dark Matter

The Fleet Alley was an unsavoury sort of place, though I knew it well enough from the time when I had read for the Bar. As well as being the location for many marriage houses where couples went that thought to avoid paying as much as a guinea’s tax for the privilege of getting married in a church, the Fleet was a popular area with prostitutes, especially at night, when the trade in illegal marriages dropped off a bit. Even as I walked up the alley, severaljades drew open their dresses most brazenly and, showing me their cunny parts, invited me to partake of their frowzy-smelling flesh. I have seldom cared for a threepenny upright, not even when money was scarce, for thissort of buttock often works with at wang to rob you when you are engaged with cock in cunny, so to speak. But I jested with these squirrels awhile until one of them directed me along the cobbled alley where, next to a most boisterous tavern, was the jettied frame of a house whose double-height windows, separated by friezes embellished with a number of indecent grotesques, lit up the whole alley like a giant lantern.

I was divided in my own mind as to whether or not I should go in; but finally I decided that it was safer in than out and knocked upon the door, in which, after a moment or two, a lattice opened to reveal a woman who asked me my business. This was a common enough precaution in London. At that time it was not so very long since a Shrove Tuesday riot when some of London’s apprentices had pulled down a bawdy house with ropes, and most cruelly beaten the jilts that poured out of it like rats. But I knew the code well enough. Better than I could have described the importance of a judgement in any case at law.

“I hear you admit of very few,” I said, with no small humility, for some of these pussies do think most highly of themselves and the power they possess between their legs. “But I am a gentleman and can present expense in advance should you wish.” And so saying I held up my purse and jangled my coins with much intent.

“Five shillings,” said the whore. “To do what you would.”

I handed over my ounce and waited for the jilt to draw the bolts. After a moment or two the door opened and I was admitted to a small hall by Mrs. Marsh herself who, though quite presentable, was, like many of her kind, the strangest woman in her conversation. Helping me off with my cloak—which she called a toga—and taking my hat—which she called my calm—she then pointed to my sword.

“You had better leave the tail as well,” she said. “And the brace of wedges,” she added, meaning my two pistols. “Here, have you come for a fuck or a fight?”

Having assured her that my intentions were strictly amorous, I enquired of her as to whether my friend Major Mornay was already in the house.

“If you mean that officer of Guards, yes. Only we call him Monsieur Vogueavant.”

“Why? Is he so much in the front of fashion?”

“No, it’s on account of his little partiality,” said Mrs. Marsh.

“I confess I did not know he had one,” said I.

“Then you don’t know much about your friend,” she said.

“In England,” said I, “I believe that is how one remains friends with someone.”

“True,” she admitted, with a smile.

I followed her through to the parlour, where all sorts of girls sat and lay around in various stages of undress. Mrs. Marsh offered me a chair and fetched me a glass of ale. But looking around the room I could not see the Major and asked her where he might be.

“Upstairs, I’ll warrant,” she said. “See anything you fancy, dear?”

Even as she spoke, a servant came into the parlour carrying a large silver plate which he placed upon the table, and a young girl, having made herself naked, lay upon it and struck indecent postures for my amusement. It is certain that life has some strange tricks up its sleeve to play upon us for our general confoundment. If there be such a thing as the devil, he knows how to make sport of our inmost thoughts and feelings. For it could hardly be ignored that the girl who struck these wicked postures, and showed me her bumhole and the inside of her cunny, was like the very twin of Miss Barton, and I was repelled and fascinated by the prospect of her nakedness. This was the same sweet girl that I loved; and yet it was not. Could I ever look upon Miss Barton again and not remember this brazen whore that touched her own bubbies and rubbed her cunny parts so lasciviously? But things were about to become yet more vexatious, for, seeing my interest in the girl that postured, and thinking that by affording me the liberty to do what I wanted with her she might get me out of her house all the more quickly, Mrs. Marsh took the girl by the hand and raised her up from the silver platter and brought us both upstairs, where she left us alone in a bedchamber.