[Rachel sent this final chapter to a friend before her death.]
I went home.
I went to bed and stayed there.
I just stayed there.
Sometimes when I awoke, the gap between my curtains would show the sodium yellow of streetlights. Other times, there would be the blue/grey of morning or the golden glow of evening. I stayed in bed and didn't think about the passage of time; I tried not to think at all.
Mum would come in to try and cajole me forth with bright conversation and optimistic phrases, but I wanted none of that and would not respond. Toby and Robbie just left me alone.
I'd venture out of my room when the house was quiet -- day or night. When they were out or while they slept, the downstairs were mine. But inevitably, I'd venture forth for food and drink, sort of lose my nerve and scurry back to my room for comfort. My world had shrunk to the dimensions of my room and there I stayed; not happy but at least surviving and unchallenged. This was the place I knew, the space I could control.
Time passed.
Another morning dawned, no brighter than any of those it followed. I pulled my head beneath the covers to avoid hearing the sounds about it me, and waited till they went out.
But here came another sound; unfamiliar footsteps. The door to my room opened and I shrank deeper into my shell.
"Oh now, look at you. What are we going to do about you, then?" Those soft tones were like a comforting balm on my spirit. It was Bernadette, and I started crying again. She sat on the bed edge and peeled back the cover slowly and gently to peep in at me. I couldn't resist, I just reached up for her, hugged her and carried on crying. She rocked me like a child, crooning soft `there, there' words to me. Just as sweet and gentle as she could be. I cried my soul out.
She held me, stroked me and loved me, pushing the hair away from my damp face and simply being there for me. I must have presented a terrible sight. I hadn't washed or showered for days; my body was dirty and fetid, but it didn't worry Bernadette, she just comforted me. Hours must have passed as I cried, never seeking to hide my emotions from her, but at last I was done.
"Well, let's see about getting you more comfortable. I'll run the shower while you get yourself up and then I'll find some clean clothes."
She was back in seconds.
"The shower's lovely and warm; it'll make you feel better, so let's get you up."
She turned back the quilt and held it from me so that I could get up. I swung my legs slowly over the side of the bed and sat there for a moment, before letting my toes touch the carpet. Difficult, touching the carpet. Different textures, pressure points, feelings. A big step in more ways than one.
Bernadette was wearing a polo shirt beneath her apron; it must be warm outside. She stood before me and held out her hands to help me stand, I reached out and pulled myself up off the bed. She smelled of the energetic, fresh outside; part of me recoiled but another part of me yearned to rejoin the world. Bernadette smelled like freedom come into my self imposed prison. She would be my way out.
She led me by hand across the hall to the bathroom where the shower burbled warmly away to itself. She kicked the door closed behind us.
"Arms up!" I complied like a five year old, and Bernadette swept my stale T-shirt up and over my head.
"And you can get those off yerself!" She nodded down at my knickers.
I knew they were disgusting. I'd finished my period in them without towel or bung; they were stained and matted: revolting. Ashamed, I pulled them down, gathered them in a ball and tried to think of what to do with them next.
"Here. I'll soak them." And she held out her hand for my blood-soiled pants. I hesitated, but then passed them to her gingerly.
"Right, in yer go!" She span me round and all but pushed me into the hot, stinging shower, before bustling out of the door again. I let the water drench me. I opened my mouth and hoped it would drown me. I wanted it to wash me away like soap bubbles. If I stood there long enough, I could dissolve and never have to care again. I longed for oblivion.
"Right. Let's get you soaped-up, then" and Bernadette was back, clad in an apron from the kitchen. She reached past me and turned the shower down a couple of turns.
"Turn around." She commanded and I turned and presented my back to her. With sponge and soap she lathered me up and washed me down.
"Turn again!" And I did. With the impersonal equanimity of a nurse, she soaped my breasts and belly, before playing the shower head over my body to rinse me clean. I stood before her and lifted one thigh to clean my pudenda; she watched, impervious.
I stood again on two legs in the perfect rainfall of the shower and angled my head back, something cooler landed on my hair.
"Wash that through, now. It says it's got `jojoba oil' in it, whatever that is!"
It smelt like ordinary shampoo, and I rubbed it into my hair and washed off.
"Have a soak there, for a minute and then dry off come back to yer room."
I followed orders. Glad of the direction and unable to think on my own,
Bernadette said soak for a minute, so I did.
Bernadette said dry off, so I did.
Bernadette said come back to my room, so I did.
The open windows fed clean, fresh air into the room. It was chill on my skin and I got goosebumps immediately. B stared up at me in surprise "Put something on yer silly cow, before you catch yer death!"
She'd been stripping the bed and paused to fling a sweatshirt and pair of knickers towards me. I scooped them up and straightened, looking over her shoulder and out of the opened widow. Miles away down river, between the castles, the sun lit the sea in an effervescent silver boil. It looked like freedom.
I pulled the sweatshirt over my head; the image of freedom was still there. I picked up the pants and automatically stepped into them still, intent on the shimmering silver at the end of the river.
"And yer jeans, if yer please!" She held them open for me and I stepped into the trousers with my hands on her steadying shoulders. I slipped in and stood upright with her. Face to face with my liberator. I couldn't say anything. My focus flicked nervously from her eyes to her mouth and back again.
"Bernadette, I-"
"Now just hush will yer, I want to get you something hot inside you. Build yer up a bit! Let's get downstairs."
She led me down into the kitchen where the most welcoming pot of chicken and potato soup burbled quietly on the stove.
I wept. Wept for the warmth and love of it all.
With unfocussed gratitude in my heart I ate and filled the aching void inside me. The sticky soup almost glued me together again.
"Now. You just stay there in the sun for half a mo' while I busy!"
I sat as I was told and gazed at the sparkling water. Only two things existed: me and the sparkle. Joined by an invisible tunnel; everything else was just irrelevant.
The sun moved around the sky and waned in power, turning from blue-white to pale then golden yellow. The day was dying and I had hardly moved all afternoon.
B was bustling about in the kitchen and upstairs as I sat contemplating the infinity of the tides and sunshine.
"Yer room's ready." She announced. "All clean and fresh!"
I stood, climbed the box stairs towards that welcoming prison again.
"Yer don't have to go now! Wait and see your family at least."
I stopped and thought about the possibility for a few moments. Too many people, all at once.
"Think I'll just go to bed."
I continued climbing.
She'd changed the sheets and opened the windows wide to freshen the room. On the sill was a pot of daffodils. The lowering golden sun shot yellow light through them and all around the room. There was a future here; an optimism. But at that moment all I wanted was to cocoon myself again against the world, just for a few more hours, till I was stronger and ready.
Time passed, and the sunlight dimmed to evening. She brought me shepherds pie on a tray and I fiddled around with it before she took it away again, tutting.
When it was late and dark, I heard her enter the room again. The rustle of her clothes told me it was time for bed and she slipped in beside me, snuggling in to warm herself behind me. Laying on her side and against my shoulder, she played her hand across my breasts.
"No. Not tonight."
"Ok, sleep well. Just remember I love yer."
As I lay on my side the tears welled in my eyes and the impossibility of my isolation became apparent to me. Bernadette loved me, Mum loved me and so I think did Toby and Robbie. How could I deny them all, but how could I face them again?
The next morning I heard them all get up and go out, all except B, of course. She brought me breakfast and blustered me out of bed and into the shower.
"You've to come down as soon as yer ready!" She called over her shoulder as she clonked back down the stairs.
Down the box stairs and open the door to the day at the bottom. Look out over the estuary towards the very center of freedom in the sparkling water more than a mile away.
There on the breakfast bar lay an open book showing The Annunciation by Fra Angelico. I stopped and gazed into the picture plane, I stroked the paper; looking into the colonnade behind the foreground figures. I wanted to walk there, I wanted to stroll in the anonymous woods beyond the fence. I wanted to share the peace of these frozen figures. I wanted to dissolve into the painting.
I wanted a pencil.
She made me a fried egg and bacon sandwich for breakfast. One earthy, gluey, soft-yolked egg with sharp and salty, fatty bacon between buttered bread. A mountain of cholesterol and indulgence, and absolute enjoyment at the same time.
It was a memory too of when B first stayed the weekend with me all those years before. I remember we had bacon sandwiches for breakfast; this was a restatement of that event, we were beginning again.
That sandwich and a glass of orange juice made me feel a bit better about things.
"Right then! Let's get you out!"
"Hm?"
"We need to get yer out into the air. You've been far too long in the house, y'know."
"Oh no, I can't. Not today."
"Yer can, so yer will!" And she knelt before and pushed my feet into my unfamiliar shoes.
"Up and out now!"
We walked up the hill away from the town, onto the ugly flat hilltops above the river valley. It was still cold even though I bundled up in my mum's borrowed windcheater. B marched ahead and bellowed around to me to hurry up, her words whipped away by the wind.
By the time we reached the road junction and turning to the south, I was exhausted and chill. I must have presented a pathetic figure in the blustery sunshine because Bernadette relented. "That's enough for one day; let's go home."
And she grabbed my arm and steered me back down the hill towards refuge. As we descended we escaped the wind and I was able to walk upright and unaided, Bernadette kept hold of my arm.
"Buds on the trees."
"What?"
"There's buds on the trees. Those one's, back there. Soon be Spring!"
"Mmm."
"You've got to leave it behind Rae, carry on with life and stuff."
I didn't reply.
"Supposin' it was you. Y'know; you that died. What would JJ have done, eh?"
"Dunno."
"Gone out and got pissed, and then found someone to fuck as well! An' that's the truth of it!"
Rarely, rarely indeed did Bernadette ever swear. Two rude words in one sentence indicated the passion in her. I looked across; her jaw was set and she looked straight ahead. I knew she had never liked JJ and always felt intimidated and uncomfortable in her company. But I had needed JJ, I allowed myself to relax and be a bit `girly' in her company, relying on JJ to look after me. Now she wasn't there, I'd have to find my own way. I thought I'd have to look out for Bernadette too, but B was already demonstrably more life-confident.
B looked across at me. "She would too! And good luck to her."
I knew B was right, but that didn't help either.
She fed me love and calories. Vegetable soup for lunch with cheese and crusty bread.
"We've to go soon."
I looked up questioningly.
"You're having yer hair done. I've booked it!"
She led me down to the town on the flat. Down the stepped streets too sheer for traffic, around the tightest bends between the nestling cottages. Down to the flat land jammed between the river and the surrounding hills. Along the crowded street and into the pink-fronted salon.
"And what are we doing for you today?'
I didn't know how to answer, I just gaped into the mirror.
"Needs a tidy, all around. And she wants it straightened, too."
"Straightened?"
"With highlights." Benradette nodded to herself in certainty.
And that's exactly what they did over the ensuing hours.
"Hello Rachel."
I looked up into the mirror as a figure walked through my narrow filed of vision. She carried something to the back of the salon and walked back to the reception desk. God, it was Cathy! I panicked. She knew about me!
But then I remembered the last time I saw her, when she knew all about me and Maggie, and she still touched my hand.
Cathy looked at Benradette sitting, waiting behind and then back to me. She smiled at me in knowledge and acceptance. I smiled back; she was a friend. I felt happy that there was someone local whom I could count on and from whom I did not need to disguise. I was pretty sure that Cathy was not a homosexual, but the fact that she was sympathetic and understanding gave me strength.
At last I was done and the stylist and Benradette `oohed and aahed' about my head behind me. The stylist was building up her tip and Bernadette was rebuilding my self-confidence. I wanted to go home and examine myself in private.
Bernadette paid a frightening amount of money to Cathy at the desk.
"Nice to see you again; are you staying long Rae?"
Bernadette shot a look at me; she hadn't expected anyone to know me.
"Well I sort of live here now, but I think I'll be going back to London soon. But I'll drop in later."
Bernadette's back stiffened when I said I was going back to London and she remained silent until we got outside.
"Yer feeling better then."
We turned the corner and the breeze fanned out my straightened hair over my shoulder. I loved it. I ran my fingers through my fragrant, straight hair. The late afternoon shadow showed my hair moving in the light air, I felt renewed, uplifted.
We climbed the stepped lanes back up towards Prospect.
While I'd been `being done' Bernadette had stepped out to do some shopping in the street behind the salon. Now I carried the bag for her in the last two hundred metres or so of the climb.
"Fish?"
"Mackerel. With parsley sauce and new spuds. Ok?"
"I didn't know you could cook that."
"I'll learn!"
And learn she did.
She had bought five large Mackerel and sent me away `to rest up' while she busied herself in the kitchen. I climbed the stairs back to my room and just sat at the open window looking at that simple patch of water between the Castles shimmering in the sun.
As the sun dimmed, I heard them all come home. Toby first, then Mum and finally Robbie. I could hear them talking, but not what they were saying, although I knew they must be talking about me, or rather carefully not talking about me.
"S'ready!" Mum shouted up the stairs and I duly peeled myself away from the still open window and opened my bedroom door to go downstairs. At that moment, Toby opened his door too. He stopped and looked at me.
"You look great, Rae! Glad you're here!" And he hugged me briefly before skating down the stairs before me.
I had to sit down for a moment. Here was my baby brother as tall as me and actually pleased to see me. Down there, there were people who loved me and would be pleased to see me; I couldn't let them down if I loved them at all.
I went down the stairs slowly and carefully, I knew they'd all be waiting for me and careful to disguise the fact from me, but still they'd be waiting. I didn't want too make a grand entrance, in fact I didn't want to go in there at all.
At the foot of the stairs, I sank down and sat huddled in nervous humility; I could not open the door and join the people I loved. I just couldn't do it.
The door before me flew open and the direct evening sun assaulted my eyes as I sat there.
"I thought I heard yer descending." Bernadette lied.
"C'mon now and have supper."
She led me to my place and I sat down quietly, anxious to avoid attention and enquiry.
Bernadette still wore the apron she had worn to wash me in. Now that she sat at the head of the kitchen table apronned she looked like the earth-mother-cook and provider. I'm not sure if she intended the effect, but it worked for me.
Lovely fresh fish and earthy steamy potatoes, served with a buttery parsley sauce and green beans. I ate a grateful mouthful and glanced at the faces around the table. They were all busy with inconsequential chatter, carefully avoiding the subject of me. I looked around at the view out through the river's mouth. If I needed it; freedom was always there in the water.
I turned back to the table and smiled at them all. I put down my fork and knife and touched the hands next to me; Toby on the left and Bernadette on the right. The room quietened as Mum and Robbie looked at what I was doing.
I looked into their faces; each and every one.
"I love you."
That evening I felt as though something stirred in me again, but that something was imbued with a little more experience, a greater depth of ability.
We sat in the lounge after dinner, watching some silly show on the telly. B fell asleep in the armchair across from me and I just felt myself just itching to draw her. I filched Mum's crossword biro and used the back of a letter to start scratching away at my portrait of B asleep. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad and I turned the armchair into a sort of endless divan of pillows with a moonlit sky behind her. That bit didn't work so well in biro, but the rest gave me heart.
I tossed it to one side as the programme finished and Bernadette stirred.
"What did I miss?"
"Everything!"
"I wasn't asleep, just had my eyes closed."
We clonked our way up the uncarpeted stairs to my room.
That night I brushed my hair. I brushed my hair, I didn't fight a brush through it trying to untangle the frizz. I brushed my straight and lovely hair. And I looked at myself in the mirror; shiny, blonde(ish) straight hair. It made me feel valuable; it gave me back some idea of self worth. I wiggled my shoulders and loved the languid wave of my hair drifting about my neck in sensuous waves. Hair long enough to swish.
"You look great, y'know"
I smiled at myself in the mirror.
B came and kissed me upon the shoulder.
"Come to bed."
I put down the brush and followed he across the room, but before I lay down I opened the curtain just a few inches and looked at the dark water out at the river mouth. Escape was still there.
I slid into bed with B and we wrapped our arms around each other and slept.
Late morning, the next day B whisked me back up to my bedroom.
"I've sorta planned this" she whispered as she closed the door behind her, half turning to look at me over her shoulder. "Yer mam and Robbie are out, so's Toby. So it's just us."
She took a step towards me and wrapped me in her arms, kissing me hard on my lips.
I was a little taken aback, but I regained my composure and opened my mouth, admitting her wriggling tongue and kissed back.
"I went shopping" she breathed into my ear. She wriggled away from me and crossed her arms in front of her lift and take off her lamb's wool sweater. She smiled hopefully at me; hoping that I would approve and appreciate whatever she had bought.
Her pale lithe body emerged from the pale blue wool. A new bra; red and stitched with gold. She looked at me as she undid the zip of her skirt and let it fall to the floor.
Matching red and gold briefs with a semi-clear panel to the front, plus charcoal grey self-hold-up stockings. She looked fine, but it didn't excite me. Through the front panel of her pants, I could see the black fan of her pubic hair climbing her stomach.
"What jer think?" she breathed.
"I think you're lovely."
She swept back into my arms and I kissed this sinuous lissome body about her face neck and shoulders. We sort of half fell and half reclined onto the bed with Bernadette grappling hard at me.
I knew what I was all about of course, Bernadette was reintroducing me to the physical world. First love and care, then food and drink, now sensuality and sex. She was almost reminding me of reasons to live.
She pressed me down upon the bed and slithered down my body, pushing my sweater up and above my breasts. She kissed me hard on the mouth and shoved my bra up without unclipping it to reveal my breasts below.
"I want you," she breathed in my ear and her soft hand excited my nipple. "I want you now!" And she pinched me lightly, rotated my button slightly between thumb and forefinger and thrust her tongue into my mouth again.
She licked around my breast and then sucked my nipple up, lifting her head away from my boob as she did so. I nearly screamed as she did it again.; my nipple was being elevated by erotic suction, and as she did so, her fingers played my other boob like a musical instrument. How much was a girl supposed to put up with? I was being overloaded with sexual stimuli.
But just as I got used to B's attention to my breasts, she wrenched her hands down an unclipped, then unzipped my jeans. She gave me no `exploratory caress', she just pulled my jeans and knickers straight down, exposing me to her attentive passions.
Her head came back to my breast and she began to lift and suckle my nipple again as her right hand played through my pubic hair and wrestled my mons vernis back and forth.
While I craved it, lusted for it, but it still made me cry out as she pressed her fingers into my vagina. Four fingers tight together inside me, shoving quickly and sharply. In and out she moved her hand, exploring and expanding me.
I wanted more. Bernadette sensed as much and slid off the bed giving me a smirk as she did so. I lay there and listened; there was a zipping noise and a sharp sort of a fumble. I half sat up to see what she was doing.
"Just wait right there." She grinned at me. I was none the wiser. I lay down again, but lifted my head to see a few seconds later as I hear a sort of quiet tearing noise.
There was Bernadette on her knees at the end of the bed rolling a condom onto the monstrous girth of a cucumber.
"Just wait, it'll be fun."
I could not believe the size. The cucumber was at least 50 mm in diameter and the condom covered about 200 mm of its length. She couldn't hope to use all that on me, could she?
Bernadette glided up over me again, smiling as she lowered herself upon me and kissed my mouth. "Ready?"
I must have nodded or smiled or something as she moved her hands and I felt something tickly at my lower lips. It pressed up and between them and I gave a little gasp.
"Let it come"
I spread my thighs wider and angled my pelvis up presenting my pudenda like an offering.
The chilly cucumber entered a few millimetres at a time, and with each penetration I nearly screamed. Bernadette withdrew the cucumber entirely and played it around my lips as she kissed me.
"Watch this," she commanded. And she wormed her way down my body and brought the cucumber up. With her head on my stomach, she opened her mouth and let the condom-clad cucumber slide into her mouth. She looked up at me, it was totally pornographic; it was supposed to be.
Now she brought the cucumber back to my entrance. Wetter now, my lips accepted the intrusion more readily and the thing entered me shallowly at first, now deeper.
Oh I moaned and stretched as millimeter by millimeter B worked that thing into me. It felt cold and knobbly inside its latex sheath, but it served the purpose of intruding into my introverted world; it burst my personal bubble. She worked it in and out of me slowly, gently, but with purpose. As she worked away below, I massaged my breasts, pinching my nipples just lightly, lifting and rubbing my boobs.
"That's all there is, y'dirty cow" B whispered to me as she slid her way up my body and kissed me again on the mouth.
"It's all inside you!"
I ran my hand down to my crotch, there was Bernadette's hand holding the vegetable in; there was the thick rolled rim of the condom just outside my lips; the rest was inside me. I wanted to be still and filled forever, I could feel this powerful intrusion controlling me. There was nearly 20 cm of vegetable inside me.
I tightened against and forced it out a centimeter or two. B watched me, smiling, put her hand down and pressed it into me again.
Back and forth she worked it, just an inch or so at a time, but gosh was it good! I felt replete, stretched and almost fulfilled. This was why I was made a woman; I love being full down there.
She lay between my thighs and holding the cucumber with her right hand pressed it into me and she shoved her hips towards me. She was simulating fucking me, and I wished I hadn't smashed the strap-on vibrator I bought in London.
There, that was the first time I had dared to think back to London with anything like regret. I felt sort of queasy, but better for it.
Now she smiled again and slithered down my body, still working this green dildo in me. Now as she pressed and withdrew it rhythmically her mouth connected with my clitoris. I lifted my head from the pillows and gazed down at almost in incredulity as she started to lick. A stroke of her tongue as the green dildo withdrew just slightly. As this welcome invader returned, Bernadette would lick me again. The rhythm worked it's magic on me and I began to come.
Still inside me, and just gently moving back and forth the cucumber was my friend and lover. I lifted my hands over my head and pushed back against the headboard as Bernadette and the vegetable pushed me relentlessly up the bed.
She lifted her mouth away from my clit but continued to work the dildo inside me.
"God. Make me come!" I whispered to her.
"How and why?" She smiled and demurred.
"Lick me!"
She smiled a self satisfied and self-confident smile.
Now she dipped. Now she bent towards me. Now her mouth rustled my pubic hair again; I breathed in sharply; now her tongue found my clitoris and Bernadette's eyes blinked open and up into mine as I lay before her and experienced my supreme sexual climax.
She stared fixedly into my eyes as I wriggled, stiffened, flexed, moaned, gasped and came. I stared back at her. She gave me this orgasm and I gave it back to her.
Now I wanted to send her to heaven. So I rolled her over, as she grinned and smiled at my involvement. It was mission accomplished for Bernadette as she had managed to restore me to the sensual world of self, food and sex. With my head locked between her thighs I snuffled my way into the very nexus of her being and luxuriated in the perfume of her sex. I loved her lips; angular and sharp as they spread before my invading tongue I loved her hood; delicate and soft. But most of all, I loved her taste. Musky, sharp and metallic all at once and impossibly delicious.
It can't be beyond chemists now to make a perfume, or even a drink that smells and tastes of female sexual juices. I think it would sell by the barge load to both sexes, call it `Clit' or something equally provocative and it would fly out the door. Are you reading, Jean-Paul Gautier?
The next night we strolled down into town and went to one of the many pubs for something to do.
We went into one of the fast-disappearing `cider pubs' in the town and tasted both the horrific and the wonderful in a very short time. As we left, I realized that my tongue had become numb and their innocuous-tasting apple juice was horrifically alcoholic.
We strolled back through the town and we dared hold hands whenever we thought we were unobserved. On the Market Square, I stopped before an `arts and crafts' gallery.
"Look at that! I could do better than that. I mean, fifty quid for that crap!" The watercolour was truly awful with poorly executed linework, pathetic perspective and sickening colours.
"Well go on then! Do it and make us a bloody million!" And she closed up right behind me and pinched my bum - hard.
"Ooh! You bitch!" But she'd already run off giggling, so I ran after her and caught her by the arm in the dark corner at the foot of the steps. I pulled her into my arms and we kissed.
"Just wait till I get you home!" I breathed.
"Can't wait." She whispered back and pinched me again.
We started running up the steps, but we soon tired as the steep sloping lane wound its way up the hillside before us, and we were reduced to breathing heavy and climbing step at a time with burning lungs and thighs.
It gave me time to think as we ascended, and I realized I could do a lot better than those pathetic watercolours they sold in the tourist shops, and at £50 or so each, I could be absolutely rolling in it in no time! I resolved to get working the very next day.
Back at Prospect, we arrived slightly breathless from the climb and definitely tired, but still I chased her up the box stairs and into my room. I closed the door behind me and as she turned towards me, I breathed "Now. You pinched me didn't you!"
She grinned over her shoulder "So? What yer gonna do `bout it?"
I darted forward and gave her backside a mighty backhand slap.
"Ow! Ow, that hurt!"
"It was meant to. Bend over, I'm not finished yet", I didn't know if I meant that bit or not, but it seemed too easy to call one slap `punishment'.
She turned and looked at me; I gave her a stern face and I think she half believed me.
Very slowly and hesitantly, she turned away, placed her hands on the dressing table and began to bend over. Very slowly, mind. And looking into the mirror to see how I'd react and what I'd do. Her slim body angled forward over the dressing table and her straight arms held her torso above. Her hips were clad in thick denim jeans with a roll-neck sweater tucked in; I'd have to go some to make her feel anything through that lot.
"Take them down."
"What?"
"Take them down!"
She straightened up slightly and undid the button of her jeans. I heard the rasp of her zip as she began to wiggle her jeans down over her hips. Her white pants nearly went with her jeans, but she pulled them back up over her buttocks. Faint shadows showed me where the cleft of bottom was and where my target would be.
"Stay exactly there and do not move." I spoke firmly, before turning away and lifting my dressing gown from the back of the door. I lay it carefully across the half inch gap between the bottom of the door and the carpet. It wouldn't make the room soundproof, but it would muffle the sounds a bit.
"Now."
I moved towards her and she watched me in the mirror.
"Now."
I stood to her left and rubbed my hand over and around her bottom. Over her pants, and her bare thighs below.
"Let's get properly ready" I breathed, and carefully slipped my hands inside her pants on each side of her hips. Down went her pants onto the top of her trousers around her knees.
I caressed her lovely buttocks with my hand, moving each delicious cheek independently. Now she was ready and I was resolved. I swept my right hand forward with a sharp smack on her right buttock and then a matching blow to her left. It stung my palm and fingers; Bernadette bent her knees slightly, but straightened again quickly.
Another rub of her buttocks, then four more blows.
And another four.
I loved the crisp crack of my hand on her flesh. I loved the way her knees gave way to the pain just slightly. I looked carefully at her rear; it was more than slightly flushed already. As I gently rubbed her bottom, I could feel the rise in temperature beneath her rosy skin. I pressed myself against her buttocks and wished again for my strap-on dildo. Like this, all warm and tender, I could fuck her until she exploded, I was so aroused.
Even B's tiny and tight buttocks were a big enough target for me as I spanked her. I spanked away my disturbance, my dislocation. And I spanked away my fury with JJ for having died without telling me.
Bernadette's bottom was magnificently pink with the occasional stripe of deeper, angry magenta.
I was so turned on.
I stood to one side again and swatted another quartet of blows onto her again, while watching and relishing her grimace into the mirror. Now her cheeks were truly red, hot and florid, and she was crying.
Crying quietly in pain and humiliation while I found pleasure in the same scenario. At this very personal watershed I gasped and gaped that she would let me feel pleasure while she felt pain. This was how much she loved me; she could endure the pain if it gave me pleasure. Her tears ripped the passion out of me and I broke down on the floor behind her. How could I have done this? How could I enjoy her pain and subjugation?
I loved her; I should respect and even worship her, so how could I hurt her and oppress her? And how could she endure this gratuitous punishment? How could she allow me to use her body for my own perversion?
Passion has consequences, perversion builds up debts and I owed much to the one I loved.
She curled around and held me as I quaked with guilt and remorse upon the floor.
"It's all right. It's all right. It's okay." She comforted me between sobs. "I know, I understand, it's okay."
She coaxed me to bed and we lay together while I tried hard to come to terms with what had happened. I had defiled her, indulging my disgusting lust at her expense, whilst she accepted and acquiesced. My very spirit collapsed; this had nothing to do with JJ. This was about me as a lustful spirit and how destructive I could be and how badly I could harm those I loved. This was worse than ever; this was me stripped bare of every conceit and pretension and compared to some vile, hateful beast. This was me as unreasoning lust. I loathed myself.
I think I slept but woke at about five am. Quietly I dressed and slipped on my trainers before leaving the back door quietly.
I walked around the back of the slumbering town in the continuing darkness, and then south in the lightening road towards the sea.
At W* Cove I made my way down onto the rock and towards the sea. This was it; this was the point at which I had focused from Prospect; this was my shining sea. I sat on the rocks for a few minutes and then very deliberately took off my shoes and placed them neatly on the weed-gripped rock beside me.
It was getting lighter as I sat and the pressure increased on me to seize that twilight moment and to claim that day that increased. So I stood and quickly unclasped and struggled free of my jeans, Stepping carefully over the uneven rocks I made my way into the incoming tide.
This was it. No second thoughts, no regrets, no misgivings. This was it. Now. There could be no 'later'.
Now.
I took a step backwards. And another, shrinking away from the uncaring tide, but still bewitched by its force. I sat down on that selfsame rock and put my trousers on again. I clambered awkwardly back to the road, the stopped and climbed back down to retrieve my shoes.
Here was the road, coarse and rocky beneath my feet. There was the sky, lowering and contrasty. The trees writhed and yawed as I passed, the cottages recoiled and shrank.
I walked back into town as it started to wake up; milkmen and paperboys, shop deliveries and roundsmen. I passed them all in my state of heightened awareness and they appeared as grotesques before me.
I climbed the paved hill back towards Prospect.
"Where have y'been! Yer Ma's worried half t'death and yer Da's gone out to look for yer."
"He's not my father."
"He loves yer, so it doesn't matter. Christ Jesus yer cold! She's here! She's here!"
I heard thumping footsteps.
"Oh Rachel! I was so worried. Thank god your back!"
Arms wrapped around me, I smelled the special aroma of my mother; that most particular perfume familiar to all of us, the aroma of the women who bore us. I smelled my mother. I felt this comforting, reassuring body around me and allowed myself to be weak and small again.
Hot bath. Wash away those feelings. Start again. Wash it all away.
I started drawing again. I sat at various locations in the town and started sketching the more distinctive and prettier bits of my adopted home. Taking them home, I refined the scribbles to a set of seven outline drawings that I then traced and added colour too. Not difficult, colour wash and then Rotring ink to define the outlines. Didn't look bad, after all.
I took them in my folio to the art/gift shop on Market Square.
Success. They would display them at £35 pounds each and pay me half the selling price, and as I left I saw the manageress placing two of them in the windows. I wandered home still trying to do the arithmetic `Seven times thirty five, divided by two.'
"That's one hundred and twenty pound -- odd! Yer silly cow, that's a bloody fortune!" Exclaimed Bernadette.
The next day we walked past the gallery and looked at my pathetic paintings in the window.
"Looks great!"
"They're awful. Hate them."
B went back to uni the next day and I trudged back through the town lost and depressed without her. My random path took me past the gallery. One of paintings had been removed from the window and replaced by some garish crap. I trudged on feeling rejected and alone.
Two days later I walked down to the town again. I needed to visit the library to see if they had anything about Lorca and his `Cruel Garden'.
I asked the librarian for Twentieth Century Spanish Poetry, and she just looked at me blankly. In those days, librarians were expected to unhelpful and forbidding, keepers of the arcane knowledge of their collections, deriving power from the impenetrable nature of their collections. This one was no different.
"No. We haven't. What did you want it for?"
"I'm trying to write some stuff about him" I floundered. "What about. Have you got anything on Claude Cahun?
Her meandering attention fixed on me.
"Why do you want this information? It's not generally available." And her gimlet eye fixed me with a severe and unblinking stare.
"I just want to. I saw a photograph by him in a magazine, and I was interested in . . ." my voice tailed away pathetically before her interrogation. She was about forty, I suppose, with neck length black hair, a thin pinched face with brown eyes above a short and slightly rotund body. She wore a plain white blouse and a grey herringbone skirt.
"Come with me."
And she turned quickly on her heel and marched away into the library as I gathered coat and bag and struggled after her. I caught up and followed her ample bottom. Inside her strict skirt, her thighs made swishing noises as she strode before me.
She led me through the body of the library and towards the `staff only' area.
"Here. Reference works covering Cahun. You can't take them away, just study them here, and leave them on the table when you're finished."
She stood taut and repressive before me with her feet in their sensible shoes neatly together, calves and thighs clad in dark tights touching, they disappeared beneath her tweed skirt. The white blouse was buttoned to the neck and showed nothing. No jewellery around her neck, no bangles, just a plain gold band on her wedding finger. She looked at me with something approaching disgust and clasped her hands together about her waist. She nodded quickly, meaning there it is, get on with it' and clattered away leaving me there with these books not generally available'.
I pulled out the book she had indicated and took it to the table. It was on surrealism in Europe -- all Max Ernst and Man Ray, so I looked up Claude Cahun.
Which is when I learned that this wonderfully surreal photographer was not Monsieur Cahun at all, but a woman from the eastern part of France who had settled with her lover on Jersey. And her lover was also her half-sister. Together they had fled from the incoming Nazi army from Paris to the Channel Isles where they thought they could remain unmolested. My mouth gaped open as I read; it hadn't been so long ago that I had encountered the old lady in Finchley Road. She and her lover, Miriam, had fled in the same way. But they had found safety. Cahun and Suzanne had found only terror as the Channel Islands were occupied. Bravely, they fought back with what weapons they could invent before being captured and sentenced to death. The sentence was never carried out.
Cahun survived in poor health until 1954 and her partner Suzanne survived her by eighteen years. But they survived. How many others had perished?
I scrabbled away at the other books on the `not generally available' shelf and ruffled my way through Beardsly and Schiele and De Sade. If they weren't generally available, what were they doing here at all?
"Have you finished?"
"Oh. Yes. I suppose so."
"Then I'll show you out!"
I gathered myself up and followed her swishing thighs back to the public area again.
I plonked myself at a study table in the main library as the double doors clanked closed behind me. What a woman! Strict and straight, but with a luscious, even corpulent exterior; quite formidable. Idly, I wondered what it would be like to fuck her.
Deep in thought and fantasy, I wandered back towards Prospect via the Market Square.
"Rachel!"
The sharp voice called out behind me and like a punishment. It reminded me that I hadn't intended to be there in the first place. It was the manageress from the gallery that had taken my paintings.
I turned towards her, ready for the tirade of abuse.
"I need more. We've sold all your paintings!"
Sold them all? This didn't make sense, it was less than two weeks. They couldn't have sold them all. But here in her office, Jean wrote me a cheque for one hundred and twenty two pounds and fifty pence saying "we need more of the same, but more of the riverfront and the boats, they went first. Forget the bandstand, why not try one of Middle Street or Bayards Cove, we could sell loads of those!"
I just stood dumbstruck and managed to gasp out yes' and no' at what I thought were appropriate points.
When I left the gallery, it felt as though I was walking on cotton wool. Nothing felt real or logical. I'd been mucking about with paints and here they were paying me real money for it. It didn't seem moral, decent or legal.
I laid the cheque on the kitchen table.
"How much?" Exclaimed Mum when she saw the amount.
I phoned B back at uni
"Damn and great and bloody hell! I told you'se w' bloody good! Do loads more and knock `em dead!"
So I did. Another set of seven for the Market Gallery, plus two more sets of traced and coloured six for other locations.
I walked down to Newcommen House at the head of Bayards Cove and showed my wares. This time I upp'ed my price a bit as Bayards Cove was the really touristy bit of town.
Next I took the ferry across the river and placed the other set of six at XX gallery, right by the ferry.
On the way home, I juggled the money in my purse and bought a half bottle of vodka to keep me company while I painted more.
I loved it and painted in series crap as the summer progressed.
I'm sure real artists experience the same; you hit upon a style and your audience laps it up, and so you vary the subject a bit but stick with the style. Well, with me, the audience kept arriving on holiday, bought the style and went home. So I never had to alter the style or subject matter of the pictures.
I made hundreds, and would have continued mindlessly, but the summer declined towards autumn and the crowds thinned, which is when Robbie cleared his throat and said to me
"I've got a friend -- someone I went to school with actually -- who runs a publishing firm in Town. Seems their art director is going on short time in a couple of weeks and they need an assistant."
Robbie looked across at Mum and then back to me.
"What do you think, Rae?"
Mum nodded slightly and B smiled. They were all in it together. They all knew.
They all knew I could never go back to College to complete my degree. They all knew I would hide myself away forever, given half a chance. And they all knew I had some talent and ability. What else could I do? I agreed to go to a sort of interview and see what was what.
It was just a fortnight after the August Bank Holiday that I arrived at XX Publishing near Islington tube in London, but one would have been forgiven for thinking it was deepest December. The weather was vile and it made me want to contract into my shell like a hermit crab in search of shelter and comfort.
This archetypal, blank office block in dreadful London seemed the least appealing place on earth to me, and the prospect of coming here every working day made me shiver with alarm.
But then I arrived at the fifth floor offices to meet Sheila. She kept me waiting in Reception at least twenty minutes and I began to think about leaving. But at last she came flying in, all apologies and shouted instructions to the Receptionist. Sheila was in her early forties, I guessed, mousy haired and of average height. She wore a totally unfashionable orange, woolen poncho, white blouse, short tartan skirt and black tights. But the most outstanding visual feature was not her costume, but the fact that she was at least six months pregnant.
"Come on through Rachel, meet the team and the rest of the idiots!"
She shoved the door open with her behind and beckoned me through with her head while she clutched an armful of paperwork above her ample tummy.
The offices were terminally untidy; piles of paper occupied every surface and scrap of floor space. Between them were enclaves of cheap white desks and work surfaces covered in more paper, cardboard and general rubbish. There were drawing boards on high metal stands, desks with phones and faxes, but every workstation was empty. I looked ahead and saw a tight knot of backs -- male and female- bent and engrossed over something on a desk, Sheila tottered towards them, "It works, then?"
"Fucking amazing!" called someone from the huddled group.
I hurried after Sheila and strained to see what they were all looking at so intently. There was an off-white box at their midst. It was a computer monitor, and on the display I could see lines of type and a photo of some sort. As I stared in disbelief, the display moved and changed scale. Around the operator, the huddled audience gasped in awe, and I was hooked, sold and totally captivated. I stopped to gaze in awe.
"Over here, Rachel!"
Sheila held the door open for me and I dutifully scurried into her office. The chaos behind me paled into insignificance as I looked around me. There were piles of rubbish, paper and artwork boards absolutely everywhere.
"Sit! Put that pile of crap on the floor -- anywhere."
I did as I was told and placed the pile of manuscripts carefully on the floor before me.
"Now Rachel. What I need from you is time! Time for me to get rid of this," and she gave her expanding belly a wriggle "time in the office to help me sort out this," and she spread her arms wide to encompass the morass about us "and more than a bit of critical intelligence."
I opened my mouth to launch my sales pitch on how I could save the publishing industry, but the bloody phone rang. I closed my mouth, utterly deflated as Sheila reached for the phone. She listened for a few seconds.
"Fuck. I'm running late. Send her through."
She threw the receiver towards the cradle and miraculously it rattled into place.
"Got an illustrator here. Need you to take a look."
Almost at the moment she finished the sentence, the door opened and there stood the most striking figure. She had long, wavy brilliant red hair that I would have said came out of a bottle, apart from the fact that her skin was incredibly fair and bespattered with deep pink freckles. She was probably well over six foot tall and wore a fly away chiffon dress with enormous orange flowers on it. Her dress was totally unsuited to the weather and the occasion.
She stood framed in the light of the doorway.
"Here I am! On the seventh day, as requested and with all the illustrations finished!"
I gaped at her. As she stood there in the doorway, I could see straight through her dress, beneath it she wore stockings, bright red suspenders and red, lace knickers.
I had never seen anyone wear auto-erotic underwear like this before. In my stupid, insular understanding, I had thought I was the only one who wore underwear for her own gratification. Mentally I was rocked back on my heels; I had a lot to learn from these women.
"Jenn, darling! Throw all that crap on the floor and sit. This is Rachel who will be dealing with the day-to-day while I'm away" Jenn, the newcomer smiled and nodded in my general direction. I smiled back.
"Jenn is doing work for a series on Virginia Wolfe. Y'know, the writer?"
Yes, I knew. I did two of her books at `A'level.
"Ok, sweetie. Show us what you've got!"
"Well, it's not easy brief to get into. But I think I've found the centre of the proposition."
Jenn opened her slim portfolio and produced a piece of Bockingford with an illustration on it.
"Good, good." Muttered Sheila as she peered over her bump at the artwork. Jenn cast another piece on the table; and another.
"What`jer think Rachel?"
"Well."
This next thirty seconds would be my entire interview. If I flunked it and praised Jenn I would fail. But I needed to find a valid and critically acceptable standpoint.
"Lovely characterization here and here." I swept my fingers vaguely over drawing one.
"But Virginia Wolfe killed herself in March, so we wouldn't see the trees in full leaf as you have it in this illustration. And I think we could make more of the storming clouds -- think in terms of Masefield's Butting through the Channel in the mad March days'. That's when she died. We should emphasize the tragic -- the village would have been huddled against the wind, not bonny and blooming as we have it here. And we need to be consistent with Virginia herself; there's a lot of difference between these two faces." Jenn fixed me with a glassy smile. In her eyes I read You bitch'.
"Hmm. I think you may be right. What do you think Jenn?"
"Well of course I put these together as stage one, if you like. They need more work, as always."
Jenn looked at me. This time her look said `help me out'.
I continued "I think we should persevere with this overall effect as it has immediate off the page appeal, but look for increased tragedy in this one and a bit more drama here as well. Ooh, but I like this, and this."
This allowed Jenn to preen herself and re-inflate her ego.
She whittered on about how this tiny detail was the way she wanted to go, and if we supported her, it would be the greatest series of editorial illustrations they had ever published.
Rubbish!
Jenn was selling and Sheila was buying. Me? I just happened to be there.
The meeting concluded and we all said our goodbyes, Jenn opened the office door and the daylight flooded in, offering me another chance to look straight through her dress at her underwear and shapely legs.
"Well, that went well. You certainly have got the critical eye!" Sheila stood and stretched her back, shoving her bump ever outward.
"She's a formidable artist -- and quite a woman."
"She's that all right!"
Sheila went all embarrassed, fiddling things about on her desk for a few moments.
"You'll meet these women." She looked up at me, then down again.
"Hmm?"
"Jenn doesn't like men. She prefers other girls; understand?"
"Oh."
"Yes, precisely."
Robbie obviously had not divulged my sexuality any further; he hadn't said "My probable step-daughter, who is a Lesbian . . . ". For which I was extremely grateful.
Sheila lifted a piece of paper nervously and tried to find another pile on which to organize it. She gave up and let the sheet rest again on her chaotic desk.
"I think you've got the job."
I hadn't realized the depth of the connection that Robbie had with the publishing company. I should have guessed by the resemblance between he and Sheila that they were brother and sister, and Robbie's `friend from school' was in fact his brother in law. Anthony ran the publishing, and Sheila his wife, ran the art and illustration side.
Anyway, I was confirmed as Assistant to the Art Director. My salary was in my eyes, ludicrously large and Robbie's sister even put me up at their house in Islington.
The deal was that I would work six months part time and full time as Sheila had her baby and then returned to work in the Spring. In reality it meant that I would fetch and carry stuff from the office to Sheila's home and manage the tyranny of rubbish as well. It still seemed like good fun.
On my first morning I worked through all the piles of art and paperwork on this side of the desk. On the other side I worked in terms of project deadlines; in the middle the two areas met in Chaos. I organized and categorized projects and suppliers and tried to set up a card index.
Tap on the open door.
"I bet Sheila didn't even show you where to get coffee."
He smiled at me around the doorframe. Dark haired and disarmingly handsome.
"No, she didn't! And I never thought to ask either."
"C'mon, I'll show you. I'm Hugh, by the way. Paste up artist extraordinaire!"
"I'm Rachael, filling for Sheila -- as you know!"
Hugh gave me a tour of the offices; the kitchen, Anthony's office, the editor's offices the accounts office and the fire escape.
Fire escape?
"Well we use petroleum based adhesive and lots of paper, so smoking is banned in the offices and studios. So if you need to puff," he raised his eyebrow conspiratorially "this is the place."
I didn't smoke but logged away the fire escape as a good place to find people away from the work place and relaxing.
Over the next two weeks I reclaimed order from the all-consuming chaos. I sorted art into chapters, chapters into projects and projects into publications. From the opposite perspective, I sorted publishing dates into production dates into `finishing' dates. By the beginning of the third week I had a card index and master calendar that made sense of every event. And I could accurately locate any piece of artwork for any publication we had. It wasn't me being picky and anal-retentive; I had to sort all this out to be able to understand it and what I was supposed to do with it.
I had become a consummate harridan, going around with clipboard and demanding to know what everyone was working on and where on earth their time-sheets were for the past three months, but after three weeks, I thought I knew where each product and each worker was. Hugh had been my key. After work, or after all the others had gone for lunch, he would drop a careless line such as "Have you got XX Complete Cookery on track?" And that would be enough for me to search the progress and sticking points of said book before it came back to bite me. Hugh knew what was going through the studio and he made sure that I knew too.
I was kneeling on the floor stacking the art for `Twentieth Century Korean Ceramic Review' when the door was pushed wider and Hugh's feet were visible on their way in.
"Need to talk to you. Want some coffee?"
"No but talk. Let's go to the kitchen."
We followed the corridor round to the tiny, fetid kitchen.
Hugh pushed the door closed behind me.
"Did I tell you I was leaving?"
"No. Why?".
Hugh leant back against the coffee stained kitchen unit in the staff `relaxation room'.
"Why?" I was a bit taken back and rather offended that Hugh, my chief ally in the publishers should dare to leave.
"Been offered a job at GBWA."
I raised an eyebrow and shook my head slightly. If it had been intended to impress me, it failed as I had no idea what he was talking about.
"Award winning ad agency in Berkley Square. They've asked me to head-up production." He turned towards me slightly. "No bloody silly computers there. It's all top quality typesetting and proper art."
I was impressed, even though I tried to look impassive. I had never know anyone who actually worked in a real advertising agency; it sounded terribly exciting -- and lucrative! Hugh was going to be paid about half as much again as he earned at the publishers.
"Last day next Friday, so we'll all go out and get pissed!"
And we did.
We sauntered back to his flat, arm in arm in the autumn warmth. I felt this could be the start of something wonderful; here I was with a man, the like of which I had never encountered. Knowledgeable and confident, yet inquisitive about me. Relaxed but attentive, kind and considerate. I was a little bit drunk, but not that much; I thought he might be the one.
He kissed me and I melted into him, just loving the surrender of self into a stronger whole. He opened the door and flicked on the light.
He kissed me again and again as we waited for the kettle to boil. I felt his lips peck from my ear down my neck, over my collarbone and onto my breast as the kettle boiled, and so did he, I simmered.
He intended his mouth to continue its searching kisses downwards, but my clothes were in the way.
"Lift!"
Hugh lifted my top at the waist and lifted it up over my head, casting it aside as his hands swept around me to unclip my bra.
Hugh bent his head and loved my breasts, licking and sucking my nipples until I wanted to scream. I wasn't convinced about the feel of his stubble on my boobs, but I was inquisitive enough to allow him to continue. Still flicking his tongue over my left breast, I felt his right hand fiddle with and undo the top button of my jeans. I breathed in as he unbuttoned and eased the zip down. I wanted him to do it. I wanted too feel a man's hand on me. I wanted to see what on earth this heterosexual sex had to recommend it. I wanted it to try it on like a dress and cast it away if it didn't suit.
Inside my pants, he stroked me from perineum to clitoris and back again; several times. I wriggled involuntarily and between kisses he parted my lower lips and inserted his finger in me. Not since Guy, when I was sixteen had a male penetrated my vagina, and now I was going to let Hugh fuck me as well.
He pulled my jeans and knickers down, laid me on the bed and while I waited breathless in the dark I heard him remove his trousers and underwear as well.
Now, here it would come. The monstrous ravaging beast, bringing pain and humiliation. I was scared and excited at the same time. He moved towards me and I parted my legs beneath him.
I was the target: he was the arrow.
He kissed me again as his body descended onto mine. I felt his penis long, hot and powerful upon my stomach, he arched back and presented the tip at my entrance. He thrust with a controlled viciousness that almost took my breath away. His penis skidded away over my clitoris but the power, the lust, the strength was foreign to me.
I couldn't guess how large his penis was; it felt enormous there on my stomach, but more impressive was the power; the power.
He arched himself back again and thrust at me. I felt his penis hit my lips and nudge them apart, forcing a passage into the entrance to my vagina. I gasped. He withdrew and gently thrust again, between my lips and deeper into me; he collected my lubricant on his glans and shaft, withdrew and penetrated me again. I almost died as he split me apart; it hurt!
"Oh!"
He was in me, and I wasn't ready for this. I could feel the very rim of his glans plunging in to me like a ramrod. There was a pressure wave in front and a vacuum behind as he thrust himself deeper and deeper into me. The shaft of his penis brushed the walls of my vagina and sent mixed signals to my brain. Part of me wanted to repel the invader, but the rest of me craved this continuous stabbing to the very pit of my being. The fullness forced my thighs apart and made me open my mouth in sympathetic reception of his penis.
Now I was properly lubricated and Hugh's penis moved more easily inside me, the pain had disappeared replaced by desire and expectation. I raised my hips higher and spread my legs further to admit him as deep as I could. I could feel him press the very length of himself into me and the sack of his testicles slapped against my perineum. We fucked for ages and I began to worry that somehow I wasn't stimulating him sufficiently. I was about to say something, ask him what I should be doing when I began to notice a difference.
Now as he thrust I could feel the tip of his glans at the very neck of my womb.
His mouthed locked to mine as we fucked, licking and sucking and wrestling tongues back and forth. All the while his mammoth penis split my very being in half as he thrust into me.
But now the flavour changed and he ground himself deeper into me, his breathing deepened and became more ragged.
"Haven't got a condom. Coming out; hold me!"
Quite suddenly Hugh withdrew his penis from the very center of me and deprived of that essential stimulus, I wanted more.
He hung above me and I dutifully grabbed his penis as he excitedly thrust into my hands with astonishing force. His slick penis slid between my palms and I looked down at the deep red head pointing at me.
"Now!" and he thrust again with a guttural cry; suddenly there was additional wetness in my clasped hands as he ejaculated.
"Mmmmm!"
My hands were covered in the extra warmth of semen. Forced between my hands jets of semen hit my stomach, breasts and up onto my neck.
"Oh!"
His thrusting movement buckled and like a collapsing bridge, he fell upon me pinning my disgusting hands to my stomach.
And there and then I knew that I was a lifelong lesbian. For all the excitement and explosive sex of a man, I wanted the sensuality and satisfaction of a woman. Really, it had taken me nowhere.
Now that Hugh had achieved orgasm, his desire for me disappeared and he just wanted to sleep, whereas I wanted hand and tongue satisfaction, with continued deep penetration from penis or plastic; I either needed three men or one woman.
Hugh slipped towards sleep and I turned away from him to replay the events of my defloration in detail. I loved being entered; the feeling of his penis parting my lips was priceless, but I hated the position of subjugation beneath the tirade of his hips and I hated the hair on the shaft of his penis. And I loved the pounding assault to my womb; Hugh's penis reached the very end of my vagina and filled my desires completely, but not for long enough. I could have done without his stubbled chin scratching my cheeks. Oh, and semen was disgusting.
I slept too, but unsatisfied.
I awoke to a warm and sensual feeling. Hugh was rubbing my bottom.
I lay on my side, facing away from him and he was gliding his large, strong hands down my back, over my hips and buttocks. As he did so, I would wriggle slightly and I could feel his penis rubbing in the cleft of my buttocks.
I knew what he wanted of course, I could have angled my hips slightly and allowed him to enter me from behind. But I couldn't quite face passive submission: it wasn't in my nature. I rolled over towards him and smiled.
"Good morning!"
I stretched out my hands towards his groin and fumblingly encountered his penis. I wanted to know my assailant. It seemed enormous as I tried to measure it with my hands. I kissed him and pressed him back on the sheets as my hands explored his body.
Hard and bony; not soft and comforting as a woman's. I ran my hand across the rippled muscles of his stomach and down to his erect and waiting penis again. He groaned and flicked his pelvis up involuntarily. His stomach muscles flexed as he did so and the power in his body was clearly evident.
I measured him with outstretched fingers; from the tip of my ring finger to the tip of my thumb was the distance from his body to the rim of his glans. This thick, hairy tree trunk was surmounted by a bell-shaped glans with a mushroom rim standing well out from the supporting shaft. Lying with my head on his chest, his penis was pointed towards me like a purple headed missile. Carefully I encircled it with my fingers and lifted it away from his body to get a better view.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing! Just playing."
"My turn to play."
And he slithered out of my arms and lay me down where I had been deflowered the night before, but this time he gathered lower down the bed and placed his head between my thighs. Hugh was going to perform cunnilingus upon me.
I held my breath as his mouth approached my lower lips and flinched just slightly as his tongue nestled between labia before finding my clitoris. The roughness of his unshaven cheeks scratched the delicate skin of my inner thighs.
I hoped I didn't smell; and that was the first time I had ever had that kind of thought. With another girl it was all natural, but with a man, I felt I had to be squeaky clean and presentable.
I lay back and tried to concentrate on him, but I knew I was comparing his licking and loving to Bernadette's. Maybe it was just because he was a man, maybe women know about women's bodies better, but he didn't compare to her delicious tongue.
And as he licked and slurped away, I realized there was something more pressing on my mind.
I needed a wee.
Although I was confident in the efficacy of my bladder, I couldn't guarantee my ability to retain control of urine under orgasm. If I came, I might piss on Hugh; not exactly the `done thing'.
And so I resorted to a gambit proven by my sex for millennia before and no doubt for millennia to come.
I faked an orgasm.
Gradually, I began to contract my stomach muscles and flex my hips outwards to him. Next I gasped rhythmically and grabbed his shoulders. Lastly I placed my hands on the back of his head and pulled his willing mouth hard into my crotch as I thrust against him.
Performance over, I slumped back against the pillows. Hugh kissed his way up my body to my mouth. I tasted myself upon his lips and tongue before I slithered out beneath him.
"Stay there" I whispered. "Back in a second."
I slipped into the bathroom and peed mightily.
Hugh was lying in bed as I returned with the duvet partly covering his loins. I wasn't sure what was expected of me and I wasn't sure how far I could go. But I curled up on the bed alongside his prone body and pushed the quilt away from his giant penis.
I held it and marveled at its girth; to think that all this had been inside me last night and I didn't even feel sore this morning. I pulled the skin towards the glans and Hugh grunted, I kissed his stomach. Did I dare? Did I?
I kissed closer and closer.
His glans brushed my cheek and he grunted in pleasure and expectation.
I decided to try it.
I kissed the very crown of his glans and he groaned again. I opened my mouth and admitted the violent purple head into me. My tongue explored this unfamiliar surface and swept around the sharp angular rim of his glans. It felt hot and powerful, it tasted vaguely sweet and salty at the same time.
`What if he wees?' I thought. What if Bernadette wee'd when I was licking her; that was far more likely.
I took as much cock in my mouth as I could and ran my hand up and down the rest of the shaft whilst sucking desperately. That's what I was supposed to do, wasn't it?
I remembered watching a porno film in art school and the girl moved her mouth in time with her hand as she fucked the man's penis into her mouth; so I tried that.
Hugh grunted moaned and gave every indication of enjoying it.
Could I let him come in my mouth? Would I choke, or worse, be sick?
There were hairs sparsely along the shaft of his penis and when I moved the wrinkled skin, they moved too. Inside the elastic envelope of skin, his penis was as hard as rock and extraordinarily hot. Gently I pulled the skin up and down and moved my mouth in rhythm.
I tried to avoid catching him with my teeth, but he was so large, inevitably his thrusting penis hit my teeth a few times. I took it out of my mouth, looked up to Hugh's face "Sorry!" He half smiled and looked down at me. I looked up at him as I lifted his penis and licked around the glans. Now I parted my lips around it and pulled the skin of the shaft up towards the head, still I looked at him.
Hugh moaned and wriggled.
I sucked and tugged.
Now Hugh became rigid beneath me. His penis safe in my mouth, I observed him carefully. Now he began to thrust a little into my mouth; now stronger; now intensely.
He was coming, what would I do? I still didn't know.
Too late, Hugh pressed the back of my neck, forcing my head down onto his penis as he came in my mouth. He moaned out loud and thrust his hips upwards. A jet of semen, followed by another, then a thrust and another jet. More thrusts, more jets and the volcano subsided into mere after-shocks. Hot semen in my mouth, bruised lips, a very full mouth.
I slipped off the bed and away into the bathroom and spat quietly into the basin. I had let him come in my mouth; the previous night I had let him enter me. There wasn't anything I hadn't experienced! I rinsed out and tried to look myself in the eye in the mirror. I looked awful.
And I felt ashamed of what I had done, guilty for my experience. I tried to look myself in the eye, but kept missing and examined my hair, my cheek, anything but look myself straight in the eye and acknowledge precisely what I had done.
I sat on the loo and just thought. Beyond that little room, I could hear Hugh moving about in the tiny flat.
I sat a few minutes more and then recognized that I would have too face him and my actions (and their consequences), opened the door and scooted back into the bedroom. Hastily I scrambled on my blouse and tiptoed out towards the sounds of breakfast in the kitchen.
"I've made you tea. Sugar's there." He gesticulated towards a bowl of white granuals.
"S'fine without, thanks."
"I'm making toast, ok."
"Mmm."
"Let's go out today! How's about Brighton. Day by the sea and all that!"
"No! I can't."
Hugh half turned and looked at me inquisitively.
"I've got to help Sheila. She's nearly due and needs help taking care of the house. And the kids . . ."
Hugh looked at me carefully. He knew it was just an excuse. He knew I was lying, but I hoped he didn't guess why.
"Ok. Another time perhaps" he said slowly and carefully, still watching me.
I nodded and went to get dressed without waiting for the toast.
When I got back to Islington, I quite literally ran into Anthony on the steps of Number Seven.
"Christ! Thank god you're back. Sheila's started! Kids are indoors. Off to the hospital!" He looked scared, in all honesty. Behind his round glasses, his eyes were wild and his face was flushed unnaturally red. He was frightened, but I didn't know why.
And he tore past me into a waiting taxi where I glimpsed Sheila's pain wracked face in the first stages of labour. The cab disappeared and I was left gazing after it and wondering what on earth I was supposed to do now.
I gathered them to me. Jack, aged seven and Daphne, just five and we played silly games with the telly turned up loud to drown my fears. I fed them lunch and we settled down for a Disney movie. Daphne fell asleep on me as I played with her angel hair. She looked perfect as she laid across the settee with her head on my lap. Her deep auburn hair curled and waved about her shoulders and hid her pretty face. She was pretty then, and I knew she would become beautiful as she grew. Alabaster white skin and delicate features, Daphne looked like a Raphael cherubim come to earth, and now asleep on me. I didn't dare move for fear of waking her from her innocent slumber.
I waited in vain for a call from the hospital.
As the movie ended, I gently wakened Daphne and we crossed the road to the gardens in the square and played in the weak autumn sunshine. They bowled around the neat gravel paths between the well clipped shrubs as I sat and worried, and waited. I took them home as the light started to fade. I checked the answering machine as soon as I had got their shoes and coats off; no calls, no messages.
We played more games; lego and potty putty.
Evening.
I fed them again. No calls.
Bathtime.
Bedtime.
Jack fell asleep easily; beautifully. He had very proudly and determinedly got himself ready for bed without my help or interference. This was a young gentleman clad in traditional striped pyjamas in total equanimity. He was superb.
Daphne didn't settle. I heard her moaning on the edge of tears several times. I almost felt she knew that something was happening; Mummy wasn't home and something must be wrong.
She started wailing, half asleep but upset and worried. So I wrapped her in her favourite blanket and gathered her up in my arms. I carried her up to my bed, stripped off quickly and lay with her nestled in to me.
I dozed, not daring to disturb this angel in my care, nor miss any phone call from Charring Cross.
But none came.
My room was on the top floor of the house in what had been the servants quarters, well it still was in some ways. In the architectural style of things, the dormer window was set behind a decorated false balustrade. Standing in the road before the terrace, one could not see the servant's windows as they were behind the solid balustrade; from the servant's windows, one could not see the ground -- only the sky.
And so, I had never bothered with curtains, indeed I loved the open sky and the arrival of the dawn unobscured by curtains.
And here came the dawn. As Daphne slept deeply upon my breast, here came the dawn.
I awoke but lay still in the early grey light, in the distance beyond the balustrade I could see the concrete grey city towers catching the first rays of the Autumn sun. Daphne lay sleeping on my left breast, and quite literally there. Her mouth was less than an inch from my nipple.
I wished she would suckle; I wished I had milk. I wished she was mine.
Sunday in London is wonderful. Before midday when the tourists take to the streets, London is beautiful. The serenity in the Square must have been disturbed though by the squeals and screams from the bathroom.
I made Jack bathe first and washed him all over before squirting him with a water-pistol just for fun. Screaming with laughter, he tried vainly to splash me before I hoiked him out and wrapped him in a towel. Pretty boy; keep him warm, love him. Wrap him up, dress him.
Now it was her turn.
I put scent in the fresh warm water, and added a bath oil capsule just for fun.
Daphne reacted just as I hoped, and expected. A bath was not a method of getting clean, it was method of enjoying one's sensuality and for loving one's self conscientiously.