Despite her joking remarks about him being over-eager, Ben noted that Marcie did not hesitate to seize the initiative by going straight to the bathroom with her mug of tea, swinging the door to before starting the shower. He imagined her undressing quickly in there, stripping down then stepping into the bathtub to get under the water, perhaps rinsing her tear-streaked face before lathering up her soap and washing away the stresses of the day. However he did not disturb her as he heard the water splashing; instead he took a slurp of his own tea before searching the kitchen drawer for the candles. Still, as he rummaged around, he couldn’t help thinking about her naked body under the steaming water, glistening and slick as she sloughed off the evidence of her labours and angst which he’d smelt on her skin.
He found only a box of matches in the draw, so he moved through to the bedroom to look for the candles as she’d mentioned were there. He found his used gym kit was still hung up in an unsightly way though, so he hastily tidied that away then put the airer back in the hall cupboard. Back in the bedroom, he drew the curtains and put a lamp on, before cautiously opening the draw in Marcie’s dressing table, trying not to knock anything over.
It wasn’t hard to find the box of creamy white tapered candles, though he couldn’t see any candlesticks that she might have been using in the bedroom. He did notice the incense holder as he scanned around, which he picked it up, emptying the ash into the wastepaper basket under Marcie’s table, thinking to light a joss stick in the bathroom too. He slipped it into the box of candles, which he carried with his bundle of used clothes to the living room, where he picked up incense and the candlesticks that he had seen on Marcie’s bookshelves. These were a couple of stubby candle holders in brightly coloured orange and green ceramic, and a classic candelabra of tarnished brass with three stems, which he now wished he’d thought to use earlier to light their dinner table. He gripped these between his fingers under the pile on his arm as he went through the kitchen, picking up his mug with his free hand before pushing the bathroom door.
“Oh, well done. You’ve found them,” Marcie stated as she saw what he was carrying.
He’d noticed the sound of the shower had already stopped, but Marcie must have only just finished. She was still standing in the bath as he’d come in, dabbing herself with her towel, with nothing on except her water-splashed glasses and his silver hammer, just as he’d imagined. The way that she clutched her towel to herself, covering one breast and her vulva, but leaving so much still exposed, reminded Ben of how he’d seen her naked for the first time. Her ineffective modesty seemed to only make her sexier, the perfect nude that artists had tried to capture in those old marble statues, yet warm and alive. But back then when she’d taken her pyjamas off, she’d perhaps felt a bit shy of his eyes on her, whilst in contrast she now seemed casually confident, just following her usual bathroom routine whilst he was around.
“Erm, aye,” Ben said, bringing his thoughts back to their plan as he raised his eyes from her naked curves and put his mug down, asking, “Will you have enough light, to read, I mean?”
“I think so, if you put that big one on the toilet cistern, Marcie reassured him, smiling broadly as she wrapped her towel around herself, explaining, “Then it will be behind me if I’m sitting on the lid with the book. You can have the two little ones on the edge of the bath.”
Ben moved around her to place the candlesticks where she’d suggested while she wrapped her dripping hair in her second towel. He resisted the urge to paw at her as he brushed passed, but still couldn’t help himself from checking the smooth shadows under her raised arms. As Marcie picked up her own mug of tea from the windowsill to drain it, he stepped over the pile of her discarded clothes as he put his own bundle from the gym into the laundry basket.
Marcie obviously noticed this, as she said, “Oh, I’m sorry I just dropped those on the floor. You could do me a favour by dumping them in the basket too.” Then a thought seemed to occur to her as she urgently added, “But please don’t try repeating that trick where you sniffed my knickers!” Ben wondered what she meant even as she moderated her instruction, “Or at least not while I’m in the room. I’m a bit embarrassed about the slimy trail I’ve made. It must have happened when I tried to get you to eat my boob instead of your dinner.”
Ben saw what she meant when he noticed her satin knickers, lying on top of the pile as if Marcie had just stepped out of them. A glance was all he needed to see the smear of glossy residue of the inner side of the front panel’s navy fabric. He was actually rather excited to think that she might have been oozing her natural vaginal lubrication earlier, as it gave away just how aroused she had been in that moment of emotional passion. He was also a little surprised at Marcie’s thought that he might be tempted to put them to his face when she wasn’t there. It certainly hadn’t been on his mind, but now that she’d planted the idea, he was strangely tempted to try it. Her bodily odours and the musky scent of her vulva especially must surely be there, perhaps rising as he warmed her knickers back to body temperature with his own hands and breath. The possibility of burying his nose in them seemed to be at the worrying boundary between erotic arousal and a disgusting fetish, intriguing and yet possibly leading to somewhere that he might regret going. Yet he stuck to the polite course of action by simply picking the whole bundle up, before dropping it on top of his own dirty clothes.
“I can wash it all later, next week, while you’re at work,” he said vaguely as he turned by to her, avoiding the more ambiguous topic of what he’d imagined doing with her dirty underwear.
“Thank you, my helpful little elf,” Marcie said teasingly, coming towards him to hold his cheeks and crane her neck up for a big soft kiss. She let Ben turn that into something more serious as her mouth opened to accept his eager tongue. But they only lapped at each other for a moment before Marcie pulled back to say, “That’s enough. I want to finish drying my hair properly before we get too involved again. Why don’t you start running your bath while I do that? You can see the bubble-bath there too, alright? And it looks like you’ve left it for me to find the actual blessed book if we’re going ahead with your soppy plan!”
As Ben thanked her, she left the bathroom with her empty mug, promising to be back soon. Ben pushed the door to behind her so that he could swing the glass shower screen out to reach the bath’s plug and taps. As he knelt down on the damp shower mat, he heard Marcie moving around in the kitchen, but that was drowned out by the loud gush of water and rumbling boiler as he opened the tap wide. It was soon running hot, so as the bath began to slowly fill, Ben took Marcie’s bottle of bubble-bath and poured a generous slug of the red gloop in. The label said something about muscle soak, which he thought sounded good after his gym session and trips around the perimeters of Jesmond. As the pleasant spicy smell rose from the foaming water, he finished his own tea, then started setting up the candles and incense.
The tall tapering candles fitted the holders well, standing stable and upright as he lit the candelabra, with the joss stick next to it, and then the stubby ceramic candlesticks, placing them on the edge of the bath. With the bath still filling, he turned the lights out and saw how dark the room was. Hoping it would still be okay for Marcie’s reading, he stepped out to turn the kitchen light off, making the candles seem a little more effective. Satisfied, he undressed, folding his jeans to wear tomorrow but dropping his t-shirt and pants into the laundry basket, resisting the slight temptation to examine Marcie’s dirty knickers more closely.
He was aware that he was still a little aroused from the strange mixture of intense intimacy, uninhibited tears and innocent chatter he’d shared with Marcie. As he knelt back down beside the bath to test the hot water, fiddling with the taps to get the final temperature right, he felt his penis hanging down heavily, thick and elongated but not erect. He slowed the taps’ flow, playing his hands through the water and bubbles, and began reflecting a little more deeply on the day. His thoughts moved beyond his poignant evening with Marcie and their shared physical activities, back to their gut-wrenchingly awful row and the distressing fire.
He had certainly been upset this morning, but perhaps that was merely the stress of getting pulled in and interviewed by the police, as well as the blunt shock of seeing the ruined workshop and the nuisance of the looming admin tasks. It felt as if those external forces had more to do with his passing low moods than the actual loss of his old flat and the stuff that was in it. He wondered if at some deep level he’d already turned his back on that old life, so that the physical destruction of all its material trappings was a mere confirmation that it had passed, that that chapter of his life was now unequivocally over.
He thought what that meant as he stopped the taps and stood up, stretching as he straightened out in the steamy air with its wafts of fragrant smoke. In some sense he’d been liberated to focus all his attention on his new life here with Marcie, celebrating their shared companionship. She would help him find a new way to balance his health and his vocation, and perhaps he’d take the lion’s share of the domestic arrangements, putting her brilliant emergent career before his own plans. He also realised that focus, on the future rather than the past, explained why he’d been far more upset by their row than by the whole fire.
He recalled the agony of his brief alienation from her, when he’d felt so desperately lost, and also so ashamed of his careless words. He recognised that their brief falling-out had struck him far deeper and far more painfully than the loss of his old home and possessions, yet that seemed quite right to him. He knew that what he now had with Marcie was far more precious than material things. In some sense, he almost felt glad of their row, if it had made them both recognise how valuable their new relationship was. Their brief argument had triggered a mutual desperation to fix things, to urgently repair the damage and any hurt feelings. He felt it had helped them see that they were both sincere in their shared commitment to their new life together, and it gave Ben confidence that if they quarrelled again, they could recover safely and quickly.
These thoughts had run through his mind quickly as he stood over the bath, feet apart, arms above his head, alternate hands on elbows, stretching his muscles. Now he heard the rustle of Marcie’s approach over the soft crackling hiss of the bursting bubbles. He turned to the door as she tentatively opened it, pushing the shower screen back, returning her warm smile. He saw that she’d dried and plaited her hair, and that she was wearing her white nightdress as well as her blue silk robe, open and loose over her shoulders. Her towels were draped over one arm, whilst in her hands she clutched her cherished book and to Ben’s slight surprise, a fresh glass of wine.
“Oh, it’s lovely in here,” she immediately said, “You’ve turned it into a magical nocturnal sanctuary. It smells exotic too, so long as you’re sure you’re okay with the incense. It’s too warm for this dressing gown though,” she judged, putting her glass down and dropping the towels before shucking it off her shoulders and laying it over the laundry basket, carefully placing the familiar book on top. As she hung up the discarded towels, he asked, “Did you want another glass of wine too, by the way? I thought I’d go for it after all when I went to dry my hair, as it still feels like a special evening after a trying day.”
Ben said that he still thought he’d go without, as she stepped up close to him, laying one hand on the bulge of his pectoral muscle and, to his further surprise, gently taking his long soft penis in her other. “Meanwhile, best of all, I see this enchanted grotto has its own resident satyr, or mythological demigod-hero, a blonde northern Perseus of my own to play with.”
Ben felt his erection stretch and rise to firm rigidity in Marcie’s delicate hand as she raised her other hand to his face, tracing his lips and cheeks with her fingertips. As she gazed with earnest concern into his eyes, her face now framed by his own big hands which he’d brought to the back of her head, she asked softly, “Are you okay?”
“Aye, I’m better than that. I’m utterly happy,” Ben replied confidently, finding it a little difficult to concentrate in his rising excitement, as Marcie now wrapped her hidden hand softly around the base of his shaft and his scrotum. He felt himself spasm as his glans strained to escape his foreskin, but he took a slow breath and tried to explain, “I was thinking just now, the fire was bad, but I felt worse about our row. Yet because it happened, I feel we’re stronger, like we’ll come through anything now, always coming back together again, even if we row again. I love you Marcie, I feel that even stronger now.”
“Oh Ben, I love you too, heart and soul,” she responded with yearning sincerity, dropping him suddenly to wrap her arms around him, so that his erection was now squashed against her chest, tangling in the loose folds of her nightdress just beneath her soft breasts. He hugged her to him, feeling the hard edge of her glasses pressing into his collarbone even as he relished the close touch of her body, with the warmth of her skin brushing him intimately through the soft white cotton.
“You talk of strong feelings,” she mused softly as she rested her head against his bare shoulder, “Well I’ve never known feelings as strong as these that I have for you now. I said it scares me, the sudden depth of my need for you, but maybe I’m learning to trust my own instincts. They brought us together and now they seem to be binding us together, but it also seems that we both recognise that and we’re okay with it. Our eyes are open to what’s happening, what we might be committing to, and we’re happy to take that on, taking it seriously as well as taking joy from it. In that mutual dependence, the storms of the cruel outside world and even our own careless mistakes are only making us closer. Maybe it’s easier to think we’re in the care of that angel you spoke of, trusting him or her to lift us into new open skies on those wings of true love.”
Ben knew that she was right, even if he guiltily felt a little sorry that she wasn’t just giving him the chance to gratify his bodily urges. A part of him had hoped that she’d encourage him to rub his penis against her breast, as he had done before with selfish over-enthusiasm in this same situation, naked in the bathroom against her soft nightdress. He let that urgent pressure of his eager arousal fade away though as his erection now softened, thinking instead of Marcie’s tender and sincere thoughts.
“I think I know what you’re saying,” he responded carefully, “And I’m glad we’re honest about sharing our feelings. I guess we’re both finding a new future, exploring unknown lands. But we can do that together, and we can make them our magical secret Narnia. I have faith in that angel too, even if we’re just dreaming her up for ourselves. Maybe she’s Mother Nature herself, as you said, taking our hands and folding them together, knowing neither of us could find anyone better to fulfil her plan, making a fertile lifelong union, letting our fresh tender sapling grow to that mighty oak.”
“Oh, you’re so right Ben,” she said, pulling belly and hips against him even as she leant back to look up into his face with a broad grin, “We’re embedded in such natural impulses, eager to make love, but now desperately keen to stay in love for the long term too. But I’ve been teasing you again, haven’t I? Tickling your most intimately personal parts and winding you up, but not letting you satisfy your masculine urges, and all the while distracting you from your lovely innocent plan in your special bath. I haven’t made you want to abandon it, have I?”
“No,” Ben reassured her, “Maybe my urges, my crude and obscene hard-on, just prove I need to relax, to share that innocent story with you instead. As for the bath, if it’s cooled, I can top it with hot.”
“Oh, don’t say your erection is obscene,” Marcie reassure him, standing on tiptoes to peck his lips before continuing, “It’s wonderfully healthy and natural, just as we said, as well as being excitingly sexy for me to see and touch. And the innocent story isn’t instead of anything, it’s as well as, I hope. I’d like you to still have your urges once you’ve soaked your cares away, because I’ve got urges too, as you may have realised.” She bounced up to give him another pecked kiss, then released him, letting his engorged penis flop down between them, saying, “So go on, why don’t you test the water?”
Ben smiled happily at her, then turned to the bath, raising his foot, but hesitating and turning back. Feeling a little embarrassed and foolish, he explained his thoughts, “Marcie, I hope you don’t think I’m daft, but this feels like a special moment, bathing in our magic nocturnal grotto, as you put it. It almost feels like we need a prayer, do you know what I mean? But I don’t know how to make one.”
Marcie was already sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, finding Ben’s place in her book. She looked up with surprise, but smiled kindly as she said, “Oh, well that shouldn’t be too hard. Let’s see,” she cleared her throat, took a sip of wine, then began in a low steady and clear tone, “Holy queen of the night, goddess of the Moon and stars, universal mother, we are in your care, and we give thanks for the love you have kindled in us. By your grace, we ask that you bless our home, our shared lives and this baptismal bath, in which my lover, Ben Osborne, will immerse his precious body. May he be healed, purified and revivified by it, and may we both find mutual bliss, contented rest and lifelong fortune as we subsequently share in your vital energies of life.”
“So may it be,” Ben found himself solemnly saying as she concluded her surprisingly heartfelt and powerful prayer. Spontaneously he stepped forward and held his big hands out. Marcie gripped them while still seated, and they looked into each other’s eyes with warm affection. Ben wondered if there were welling tears in Marcie’s wide brown eyes that echoed his own stinging eyes. He felt sure that she’d conjured up something that was genuinely spiritual and profound, even if they were just making it up as they went along. Standing naked before her, he felt somehow honest and humble in his exposed masculinity, adult and potently virile, yet also as pure and unblemished as a newborn child with his whole life ahead of him. In contrast, Marcie seemed like the white-robed priestess seated on her throne, serene and transcendent, an initiate of the secrets encoded in those strange ancient myths. As he gazed down at her kind upturned face, glowing in the candlelight, he felt utterly supported by her smiling encouragement.
“Thank you Marcie,” he said simply, then he dropped her hands and turned to step into the bath.
After that, the sensation of the warm bath on his feet and ankles was something of an anti-climax. He lowered his hips into the bathtub, immersing his genitals and his legs, which he found he could just about stretch out to their full length under the thin foam that was left. But when he experimented with raising his knees and lowering his back into the water, he felt a little more as if he were pushing through a boundary, submerging himself into a magically healing pool. He rose again, splashing the water over his face and head a few times, pulling his foreskin over his sensitive glans, then reaching for the hot tap to set a trickle flowing, hoping to bring the temperature back up a little. The boiler on the wall behind him came to life with a rattling purr, and he apologised to Marcie for it.
She’d obviously been watching him play in the water, waiting for the right moment to start reading from the open book in her lap. She reassured him that the noise was nothing, then asked if he was ready for her to begin. Ben confirmed he was as he reclined in the bath again, grabbing his towel to quickly improvise a pillow. Then Marcie’s voice began unrolling the story as Edmund and Lucy returned from Narnia, triggering a spiteful scene between the siblings. Ben felt calm as he kept listening, his hands coming to rest naturally on his penis and scrotum, yet they remained still. If Marcie looked up or noticed him, she gave no hint of it as she read on confidently and smoothly, without stumbling and only briefly pausing to sip her wine. It made Ben feel a little ashamed of his own poor literacy, but he knew Marcie had only kind sympathy for that too.
Ben listened as Peter chastised Edmund, before going to the professor with Susan to talk about their concerns for Lucy’s sanity. He turned the dribbling tap off while the professor argued that Lucy’s hidden world may be real, as the bath was now quite full and hot enough to make his cheeks feel flushed. With the boiler falling silent, he sunk deeper into dreamy relaxation under the spell of Marcie’s steady voice, hearing how all the children were almost chased into the wardrobe together by the housekeeper, then found themselves in “Lucy’s wood”, as Peter called it. Peter apologised to Lucy formally and concisely in a way that reminded Ben of the apologies that he and Marcie had exchanged earlier, then Edmund gave himself away as a liar. But when the children found Mister Tumnus’s cave ruined, with charred sticks and ashes scattered across the floor, Marcie paused.
She apologised to Ben, obviously sensitive to the empathy that he felt for the destruction of the faun’s home, saying that she’d forgotten that was coming up. Ben reassured her that he did not mind, that it only brought the story to life a little more, then asked her what happened next. So she read on a little further on, giving voice to Peter as he read aloud the sinister note about the faun’s arrest. When Lucy spoke up to say that they must try to rescue him, Ben interrupted to suggest they leave it there. Marcie agreed, saying that it was surely a turning point in the story, when the children commit themselves to a quest that they know nothing about.
Ben watched her close the book and carefully lay it aside on her silk robe, then belatedly thought to give himself an actual wash. Marcie asked what he thought of the story now as he began to quickly soap up, rubbing his face first. He explained he liked the professor’s views, listing them once he’d rinsed his face and begun lathering the rest of his body, working quickly under his armpits and across his chest, then his under his feet and finally, twisting out of the bath, around his anus and diminished penis. He remembered the old man’s logic about taking someone else’s supernatural vision on faith if they were usually truthful and of good character, then his insistence on the plausibility of parallel worlds, and finally his concluding judgement that the other children should simply mind their own business.
As he splashed around, washing the soap off, Marcie pointed out that the professor’s voice may have been the author’s own, and that last injunction reminded her of the quote from Queen Elizabeth the First, that she would not open windows into men’s souls. Ben hadn’t heard it before, so she explained it meant that the authorities should not care if their citizens were Catholic or Protestant, so long as they did their duty by the local church in their outward acts. Ben wondered if that meant Lewis might have had pagan sympathies even though he was a professed Christian, but Marcie said she thought not as she looked down at him with a kind smile. She explained the man was such an enthusiastic convert and worked so hard at proselytising the Christian message that even though he was clearly enthusiastic for myths and folklore from many sources, he can’t have believed they were in any way as true as the Gospels were to him.
As Ben finished rinsing himself down, pulled out the plug and moved to get up from the bath, Marcie sprang to her feet to help him with his towel. She shook out the squashed bolster pillow that he’d made of it as he stepped from the bathtub, then shyly pecked his lips as he took it from her, before retreating to her seat and picking up her wineglass as if hiding behind it. Ben felt a little embarrassed too, as his former arousal had now receded. He realised that Marcie’s eyes may have been on his manhood when she asked if he’d been masturbating while she’d read to him. He said not as he kept towelling himself down, explaining that wouldn’t have seemed right at all, even though he admitted it was comfortable to rest his hands on his Roddie. He considered asking the same question of her, thinking of how she had spontaneously tried to rub herself through her clothes while he’d sucked her breast earlier, but he was almost certain that she had not, that she could not have whilst she’d been concentrating hard on reading aloud so well.
Instead he explained as he hung up his towel, “I was just relaxing, letting the story in your words reach me. You read so beautifully, I’m very grateful.”
“Well thank you for the undeserved compliment,” she responded, “But I’m glad you managed to relax, as I thought that was the general idea when you first said you’d like a good soak. But do you perhaps feel healed, purified and revived too, if that’s what I prayed for?”
“Yes I do,” he admitted, turning towards her and holding out his hand to take hers, “But you’ve helped so much with each of those anyway, since I first walked into your flat, I think.”
“Oh Ben, you know you’ve helped me too,” she said, setting her glass aside and rising to her feet again to put her hand on his chest. Then she looked up with a coquettish smile as she said, “But I’m very interested to know if you felt revived in one quite specific part of your body.”
Ben put his own free hand to the curls of dark hair that escaped her plait behind her ear as he replied, “I think I know what you mean, but as you can see, he’s become quite relaxed too. Still, I’m quite sure, if we kissed and cuddled again, he’d soon be proud and ready for action, in just the twinkling of an eye.”