Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009

You fellows wanted a bodice-ripper, so here you go. It happens towards
the end of the book:

The Hunchback
The coach pulled  in front of the small cottage and stopped. A woman got
out, went into the cottage, quickly emerged, then tossed a gold coin to
the coachman. She opened the door of the coach and the Hunchback got
out.  The coachman cracked his whip and  took off.

“And here we are,” said Lady Teasley. The Hunchback was too bewildered
to respond. It was a squat, thatched-roof house with flower beds of
lilac bushes, yellow acacia and herbs grown wild for they had not been
tended in months. Unkempt grass was knee-high and growing onto the
pathway. Honeysuckle and rose plants vined up the wall in mad profusion;
marigolds, primrose, and Spanish lavender blossomed. The lavender
smelled like she did. She plucked a flower and tossed it to him.  He
caught it not knowing what to do. “Sniff it!” she said. He looked from
it to her in bewilderment. She made a mock frown and said, “What a sad
boy you are.”  He looked down at his broken shoes.

She reached under a flowerpot and pulled out a long key. She put in the
keyhole and swung open the oak door. “My holiday cottage!” she said as
she waltzed in.  They were in the main room. She walked to the brick
fireplace and kicked the cold embers with her toe. “You’ll have to start
a fire straight away if we’re to take a bath.” She took him through the
bedroom. Everywhere there was dust so she took a feathered duster in her
hand and dusted as she went. A tremendous walnut bed with thick mattress
took up half the room. Despite the dust, he could smell her lavender on
the sheets. Then they were on the back porch. In the center of patio was
a massive wooden bathtub large enough for four people. She pointed to a
stack of cordwood nearby. A woodmen’s ax was learning against the
weather-beaten stack. “There’s a wheelbarrow somewhere. Bring in enough
of the wood to start a fire for our  bath water.”

Soon there was a roaring fire inside and hung above the fire a huge
black kettle filled with bubbling water. The Hunchback used the
wheelbarrow to haul the kettle to the patio then lifted it and poured
the steaming water into the tub. She watched the first time he did this
and said, “I’ve never known a man so strong.” He grunted and went back
into the house. As he tended the water she went to her tiny stone
smokehouse out back and returned with a leg of mutton which she placed
on the kitchen table. She looked prayerfully at the mutton but it was no
use. Its rancid smell was slowly filling the kitchen. Cursing now, she
wrapped it up and left the house with it.

 Just as the sun began to set the tub was full with steaming water. She
came out of the bedroom dressed in a linen smock. She and armful of
thick white towels. She pointed at him: “Well, take off your clothes,
love.” He looked at her as if she had just asked him to lay an egg. No
woman except his mother had seen his naked Hunchback body. She ignored
this, slipped out of her smock and was at once naked before him.  He
looked at her breasts, reared his head and gushed, “AHHHH.” He looked
down from her breasts, down the slender curvature of her waist, past
pear-shaped hips to the wedge of dark brown  between her thighs. His
nostrils flared and his mouth began to water. She watched him with great
concentration, taking in his every breath, blink, shudder. Studying him
like this, she waited for the exact instant then said, “Touch me!”

He shook his head.

A lifetime of forbidding himself the pleasure of touching a woman was
not so easy  overcome. Cautiously now, she took a step toward him. He
jumped and appeared ready to run to the woods. She stopped and looked
out over the yard. In back of the yard was the forest. If he ran there
she might never catch him.

“Right, if you don’t want to touch me, at least take off your clothes
and get in the water so I can wash you.” He shook his head.  “Hurry –
I’m getting chilled!” she said, crisscrossing her arms over her heaving
breasts. He shook his head. “Well, at least pick me up and put me in the
tub.”  This seemed reasonable to him. Lifting people is what he did for
a living. He could lift her into the tub.  He could do that. She waited;
he came forward. He swept her up like she was a doll. “Take off your
clothes and get in with me,” she whispered in   his ear. He looked at
her in animal fright. He heaved her into the tub with a splash.  She
looked back at him her eyes twinkling now. She splashed a handful of
water on his face, “C’mon, scaredy cat!” He reared back. She splashed
another handful of water on his face. He smiled.  “Take off your
clothes, love – or must I undress you myself!” He blinked but did
nothing. Irritated now she got out of the tub, grabbed him roughly and
began shucking his clothes off. He began whimpering at the knowledge
she'd soon see his naked hunchback.  Once he was naked  he immediately
climbed into the tub. As he climbed in she laughed deliciously and gave
him a hard slap on the bum.

She didn't mind  his stench. His rank smell excited her the way the
stench of a wild boar excites the hunter. Never before had she seen a
man as savagely muscled as he. She looked at him wondrously and the more
she looked the more she was in awe. He was the creature all humanity
descended from, a beast man. Knowing he could not escape, she sprung
through the water like a crocodile at him. She grabbed his hump with
both hands and held on to it like it was put there for a woman to hold
on to.  She  hooked  her legs around his massive thighs.  She beat her
thin lips  into his thick lips so hard she drew blood. She was at him,
cursing, biting, savaging him for his transgressions. He took it
disbelievingly, shocked, paralyzed at her savagery. She jumped off him
and slammed him against the wall of the tub so violently it caused a
wave of water to splash out the tub and rain onto the patio. “Don’t ever
run from me again! Now here! Wash yourself! Wash yourself!” And she
began scrubbing the front of his body and when finished there, spun him
around and scrubbed his back. She was talking to him as she did this,
whispering into his ear vile things:  “You’re not a man. You’re an ape,
you hear that? A bloody ape! You smell like a forest animal! You have
more hair than a bear! You are a bear—Eeee-yaaah!” Then she was out of
the tub and pulling  him out by his ears.  They were knocking things
down as they went. “Look at that! You're breaking all my pretty things,
you woolly mammoth!” Such was her madness now she didn’t bother with the
towels; instead she dragged him into the bedroom leaving a trail of
water in their wake.  Then she wrestled him to the bed. Then she began
screeching – “Drill me, you monster! By God's blood, drill me!” But he
did nothing.  She cursed him again, this time with the vilest words she
could think of, but he did nothing. Then she smacked him, hard, with
front of her hand then the back, but he did nothing. Then she reached
for the nightstand, picked up an oil lamp smashed it into his
Neanderthal skull, but he did nothing. Totally disgusted and unable to
think of anything else to do now, she spit on him. Big mistake, that.
Getting spit on was the one thing the Hunchback hated. He roared like an
enraged bear, bucked so high she flew two feet above him, then slammed
her to the mattress and rolled atop her. She screamed for her life but
it was too late. The head of the  beast was at her brown tuft, probing,
butting to get in. She caught her breath the spread her legs wide, wider
than she had ever spread them before, so wide she took him in, swallowed
 him so deeply they but gasped in wonderment.

“Oooh!” he bellowed. He did not know what was happening. “Aaaah! …Oooh …
Aaaah….”
She whispered in his ear that it was all right, that he shouldn't stop,
that she wanted more, that it was all right. And he slammed his massive
hips into her again, this time because he wanted to do it more than he
had ever wanted to do anything before–“Oooh!” He slammed his hips into
again and again, and once so hard the great walnut bed shuddered and
collapsed, the chairs shook, the pewter fell from the shelves, and then
the bed was on an incline but he would not stop …  could not stop until
the explosion came, came like a cloud burst, his howl like thunder. He
opened his mouth to scream and they screamed together. And  then the
burst came spitting and spewing into her enough sulfur and seed for 1000
hunchback babies.

The next morning Lady Teasley was up daybreak. Still in the bed, the
Hunchback slept like a corpse. She put on her checkered skirt and
wide-brimmed sun bonnet, got her egg basket and left the house barefoot.
 Farmer Brown, her nearest neighbor, lived a mile down the road. When
she got to the farm she bought eggs, cheese, bacon and bread.

Mrs. Brown handed her the egg-laden basket back. “So, Lady Teasley, how
long will you be on holiday this time?”

Lady Teasley smiled. “Permanently, I should think.”

Over-hearing this, Farmer Brown turned to her: “Permanently? Lady
Teasley? But how?”

“Love finds a way,” said Lady Teasley, after which she giggled.