Authors: Bryce Courtenay
'Lie down, darlin',' Maggie says. The bed is big but not long enough, and my feet stretch several inches over the end.
'That's right,' Maggie says. 'Now lift yer bum.' Leaning over me, she grabs my breeches on either side of my waist and pulls them down. They get stuck on my stiff cock and I think I must die of shame. But Maggie laughs and takes hold of me. She pushes downwards, and pulls with her free hand, and down go my trousers. I have closed my eyes at her touch, praying to whatever gods there be. Now she pulls my breeches over my ankles and I am naked. 'Oh, Jesus, yiz beautiful, Hawk!' I hear her say. Then there is silence but for the rustle of a garment, and I must open my eyes to look.
Maggie has loosened her gown and it has fallen to her waist. Slowly, she pushes it down further still, until it pools at her feet and she steps out of it. She stands naked with only the magpie still perched on its nest of hair. 'Oh, Maggie,' I venture to say, my voice trembling. 'You are beautiful!'
'Nah. Only cute,' she says, stroking her lovely breasts and then running her hands down the curve of her slim waist and over her thighs. She touches her breasts again, pushing them upwards so the two little nipples look like rose buds. I ache to do the same, to touch and then lick them. I take a quick peek at the neat, little upside-down triangle of fur between her legs but I'm not brave enough to let my eyes linger.
'My, my, Hawk, that be a Maypole worthy of a dance or two,' she giggles, climbing onto the bed so that she is leaning over me. I hope she will kiss me again, lie on me and kiss me, but if she does I don't know how I shall hold out. I feel her lips on my chest and then my stomach, soft little kisses like a butterfly's wings touching against my skin. Then her hands reach out for my cock which lies hard against my stomach. She lifts it and her mouth closes over it. With her hands and with her lips, Maggie begins to stroke up and down.
'Maggie!' I gasp. 'Oh God, Maggie!'
'Shhh!' she murmurs. 'Hold on, Hawk!'
Just as I think I'm gone, she stops. 'A-ah, not yet, darlin', it's Maggie's turn. I wants some black magic! Show me yer tongue.'
Mystified, I do as I'm told and stick out my tongue. Maggie's leaning over me, and she and the magpie are having a gander down into my gob.
'Further!'
I stick it out completely, feeling foolish.
'Now wiggle the tip, up and down and sideways.'
I laugh, but do as Maggie says.
'That's good. Now put it deep into my pussy, darlin', right here.' She rolls over and lies on her back, guiding my hand to the triangle between her legs. I'm completely confounded. Tommo has told me about sixty-nine, but this is thirty-four and a half, a sum I don't know how to do!
Maggie grabs me by the hair and pulls my head towards her so I have no choice but to go down between her beautiful legs, not knowing what to expect. Well it doesn't take a moment to see why my tongue is needed, the way she begins to pant. I caress her with my tongue for all I am worth, not knowing if I am doing it right, but anxious to please.
'Gentle, Hawk. Talk to me pussy with yer tongue, talk soft, rub nice and slow and ... oh yes, oh, oh!' I'm amazed at how soon I get the hang of it and how nice it is, Maggie's taste on my tongue.
I put my hands under her bottom and lift her gently to my mouth so that her back is arched and more of her is open to me. Soon her legs are gripped about my neck as I eat from her delectable dish, exploring her hidden places. She begins to moan and whimper as my long tongue moves and flicks over her. Then I find a little button, a sweet, hard little button which I begin to stroke with the very tip of my tongue. Maggie gasps, 'Hawk! Oh Hawk, yes, yes... ya bastard, yiz got me! Oh, oh! I'm coming home, darlin'! Oh Jesus! Ooooh. ..' Her hips grind frantically into my face and my tongue darts and moves deeply inside her, as she moans loudly and spills a great sweetness into my mouth, all the while whimpering and sobbing. Then she collapses back into my hands and I lower her gently to the bed, where she rolls away onto her side still moaning, with pleasure.
My darling Maggie. I spoon her with my body, her back against my stomach, my hard cock resting between her legs and my arms about her so that my hand cradles her left breast. I rock her like she's a little girl, kissing the back of her neck where her hair is damp with heat.
Maggie rests a while, breathing hard. I can feel her heart beating under my palm. Then as we lie spooned together, her hand takes me by the stem and guides me deeply into her. She takes every inch of me as she moves her beautiful derriere against me, pulling the whole of me into her, then out again to the very tip, then sucking me slowly in again until I think I must die of ecstasy. It is all done slowly and firmly and tightly. She is panting again and I am too, as she leads me into a state of bliss I have never known before, not even on that night with Hinetitama.
Then she pulls away from me and turns to lie on her back. She takes up my glistening branch and feeds it slowly back into her softness, her hand holding my throbbing stem. I can hardly bear the pleasure of it. 'Me breasts, darlin', kiss Maggie's tits,' she says. I put my lips over her right breast, rolling her nipple on my tongue. In a moment it grows hard and her breast seems to swell and stiffen under my tender kissing. 'The other, kiss the other please, darlin',' she urges and I can feel her starting to pump against me as her legs wrap about my waist. I am trying to remember every second of it, in case this should never happen to me again. I want to touch and suck and stroke and make love to every part of her glorious body.
Maggie is now surging against me. It is magical what her pussy can do, and a miracle I have lasted this long. 'Now!' she says abruptly. 'Now, Hawk! Hard! Hard!'
I lift my head from her breast, and put both my hands on her shoulders. Arching my back and neck, I drive downwards so strongly that I fear she must surely split open or the bed must break. My body is drenched with sweat - it runs down my neck and chest, and into my eyes. I have become a wild animal possessed of some instinct which cannot be contained. Maggie is thrashing under me, crying out, and I cannot think but to ride her up and down, my urgent shaft driving with all my force. I am about to burst asunder when Maggie cries out, 'Take me, Hawk. Take my pussy. Fuck Maggie. Fuck me!'
I explode into her, thinking I must surely die, and that if I should, how happy I would be. Maggie cries out, panting and gasping, and I am laughing and crying, so pleased to have made her so happy. It seems to me that I have discovered something two people may do together which allows both to touch the face of a loving God.
And then I see it looking at me! Maggie has lifted her head and reached out her arms to me and I see her damned magpie still on its nest. Though her pretty curls fall every which way from their former neatness, somehow that blasted bird remains undisturbed. It looks at me with its hard, bright eyes, and I shudder.
'Maggie! That bloody bird is still upon your head!'
'Of course. Where else should it be? I told you it's me trademark, goes everywhere with me, Maggie Pye's magpie.'
I try to laugh, yet I don't like it one bit. 'But it's seen everything, you and me, us making love!'
'Hawk! That bird's seen more fucks than you've had hot breakfasts!' She laughs. 'It's a magpie, not a stickybeak!' She stretches out and grins wickedly. 'Don't worry, lovey, it's too busy on its own nest to be bothered with you on yours!' She points to the bottom of the bed to where the golliwog lies sprawled. 'He's the one what's got the dirty mind!'
'Maggie, is that all it was, you and me, just another trick, like another hot breakfast?' I am hurt, even angry, though I know I have no right to be. Maggie has been most generous. Why should I think I hold a special place in her affections? Maggie looks at me and, for an instant, I think she is going to cry. Then she sniffs and brushes the underside of her nose with her forefinger. 'Hawk, I'm a whore. That's all I am, all I'll ever be. You hear me? Maggie Pye is Maggie Pye and don't you forget it.'
TOMMO
The Rocks
March 1861
Two things happen at the Rocks on the Sabbath what always tells me it be Sunday, even when I has the worst head after a heavy night. The first be the church bells, o' course. They don't only call folks to worship but also, from the crack o' dawn onwards, they toll for the week's dead. One peal for a child, two for a woman and three for a man. Though I dunno why a man gets three and a child one. I reckons there ain't nothing what makes you any better than anyone when you've snuffed it.
The second thing 'bout Sunday is the delicious smell of roasting meat. It be the only time in the week when the Rocks don't smell of the shit what comes from the houses of the wealthy who lives above us in the big houses on the cliffs above the Argyle Cut. Us lot, what live at the bottom of the cliffs below them, receives gratis and free of charge the sewage, what runs over the cliffs into our streets and homes. There's talk of building sewage pipes to go out to sea but it ain't happened yet. Maggie Pye, Hawk's sweetheart, says she can't wait for them pipes to go into the briny, so's when the rich eat a fine fish, they'll find it stuffed full of their own shit! In the meantime, when the church bells toll, it is mostly for the poor.
Still, some folks here below at the Rocks like to keep up a bit o' decency. If they save a spare florin by the week's end, they'll have a proper Sunday roast. Few if any goes to church, knowing themselves to be of no consequence to God. Instead, while the rich kneel at prayer, the poor partake of the ancient ritual of the Sunday roast. The cottages and skillings here don't have no stoves nor colonial ovens, only open hearths. So the women buy a joint o' meat at the butcher shop and take it to Berry's Bakery, what on a Sunday turn their ovens over to meat-roasting.
Comin' home from me cards one Sunday morning, I happen to pass the bakery and I see women standing in a long line outside - each holding a baking dish with a piece of meat and lots o' taties. Some even has Yorkshire pud. They all be waiting to cook their roast, though it's no more than ten o'clock in the morning.
I stop to have a gander. Inside the bakehouse stand two tables what run the length o' the room and on these you can see two great rows of dishes with more than a hundred baked dinners in the making. Two bakers push the dishes deep into the oven with long poles. The women bring their roast in no later than eleven o'clock and call for them at one. Each woman is charged threepence and given a tin disc with a number on it. Another disc, what's got the same number, is stuck into the roasting joint.
Many's the fight to be seen when the time comes to collect the tucker. Some of the women has gone down to the pub to wait, supped a few drinks and lost their number discs meanwhile. Others remember their particular joint as bein' a much nicer cut o' meat than what they gets back. Often there's a bit of a set-to amongst the women, and the bakers are called on to sort it out. Then they make the offenders wait 'til last, in case they are just chancing their arm, hoping to steal another's dinner.
Mostly, though, waiting for the roast is a friendly time, with poor folk catching up on a bit o' gossip. And later every street and lane smells of mutton, pork and roast beef as the women hurries home to their families so's the joints still be steaming hot for their triumphant arrival.
After I sees this, I tell Hawk about it. What a damn fool idea that were. A do-good expression comes upon his gob, like God's touched him on the nose or something. 'Righto, Tommo,' says he, 'the first quid you win at cards on a Saturday night goes to the butcher and the grocer for meat and potatoes. We're going to feed the urchins with Sunday roasts!' I'm none too happy about this. Sometimes the first pound is hard-earned and then, quick as a flash it's purloined by Hawk, and I has to begin grafting and relocating 'til I've earned it back again. Knowing that if I don't take a quid right off them brats will go hungry is a bother I don't need at the card table. Hawk don't mind reminding me o' my responsibility neither. 'Don't forget my urchins, Tommo!' he always says before a Saturday game.
Hawk's bought ten roasting dishes and every Sunday, he's up at dawn peeling spuds. By seven o'clock he's at the butcher's, haggling like a fishwife over the size and quality of the meat, demanding with that big, scary smile of his that a portion o' cracklin' and basting lard be thrown in for free. By half-nine he's in line outside the bakehouse along with twenty or so dirty little ragamuffins, each pair holdin' a dish, with meat and potatoes set out pretty as a picture.
There's our Hawk, mother of the unloved and unwanted, standing two and a half foot taller than all the old biddies in line. They're teasing him about the size of his brood and what's in his breeches - all of 'em havin' a grand old cackle like people do when they's expectin' a good feed. Soon as it be ready, there's Hawk and Maggie Pye down by Semicircular Quay, carving meat for fifty or more little brats, what guzzles on the proceeds of me toils like a pack o' starvin' dock rats.
Mr Sparrow were anxious that we finds ourselves better lodgings as soon as we was able, in a more respectable part o' town, but Hawk would have none of it. He seems to want to stay here and look after his urchins - and me. All he agreed was that we should get better rooms, nearer the Argyle Cut, which is where we be now. Hawk loves his brats and they loves him, following him 'round like he's the Pied Piper, a ragged army of starvin' kids what he tries to feed best he can. Every chophouse knows him for he goes knocking on doors to beg for leftover scraps for his ragamuffins. In the evenings, down by the ferryman's wharf, he can be heard telling them tales o' derring-do. They listen enchanted and for a short time seem to forget the hunger gnawing at their bloated bellies.
Today, though, it's gunna be Flo what feeds them their Sunday tucker, for Hawk, Maggie and me are goin' up the Parramatta River to a prize fight. In the evening Mr Sparrow has arranged a game o' stud poker at the Woolpack Hotel. 'Some of the Irish gentlemen,' he cocks an eyebrow, 'if there be such a commodity, fancy their luck at the card table. I count on you to oblige them and to win 'andsomely.' He sticks a bony finger in me chest. 'So mind you do, lad.' I confess, there ain't much left what I likes about Mr Sparrow.