William Acton.
Without thinking, I reach for the spine.
It has gold lettering and a brown leather cover.
The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs.
This manual must be the one that Alfred told me about. The one he was forced to read as a boy and which put so many absurd restrictions upon him.
I open the book at random and my eyes fall upon a passage:
We may confidently assert that no man is entitled to the character of being chaste who by any unnatural means causes expulsion of semen. Chastity must beentire. This definition, of course, excludes the masturbator from the category of chaste men, even though he may never have had connection with a female.
The words, so cruel in their certainty, in the provision they lay down, take my breath away.
They make me remember Alfred as I first knew him. So uncomfortable and bothered by his longing. How hard his cock was and how he did not allow himself relief.
I flip through and keep reading at random.
Many a man has, until his marriage, lived a most continent life; so has his wife. As soon as they are wedded, intercourse is indulged in night after night; neither party having any idea that these repeated sexual acts are excesses, which the system of neither can with impunity bear, and which to the delicate man, at least, is occasionally absolute ruin.
What absolute bollocks!
I keep reading, each passage a new horror.
Soon, I am not sure how much time I have lost to this book.
It is not a short time, I am certain, but I am unable to keep my eyes from the page. Page after page of well-meaning cruelty pours over me. Nonsense about the enervating effects of orgasm on men, on the excesses of sexual congress to be avoided even in marriage—and completely abstained from outside of it.
I cannot believe that Alfred was taught that these edicts were the truth.
But reading the words of this devil, this William Acton, shakes something loose in me.
I think of my husband seated on that desk. The way his body was unsure, tentative, his eyes wide and his lips parted.
Had he truly not been aroused? Or was he only being careful? Perhaps I was right, and he did not approach me in the last three weeks because he wanted to respect my state. That such abstaining would not strike him as odd or unusual, given what he was taught.
Certainly, he had excellent training in ignoring his desires.
Perhaps he needed a moment to adjust to my abrupt switch.
The knot in my chest loosens just a little at the notion.
“For Christ’s sake, there you are, Annabelle.”
I whirl around, still holding the book.
There Alfred stands, his brow wet and his face flushed, as if he has been running.
He seizes me, grabbing my elbow abit roughly.
“You must promise to never run from me again, do you understand? I thought I would have an apoplexy.”
And then he pulls me into his arms.
I don’t resist. I don’t want to.
Then he pulls back again.
