The face of Martin Buller was set in harsh lines of bitterness and frustration as he crossed the quiet suburban road towards his home. Today was Friday and he had spent the last hour cooped up in a railway carriage with a crowd of local men who had celebrated somebody's birthday in the station buffet before catching the train. Normally Martin was tolerant towards his fellow commuters. A nod here and there, a word about the weather and he would retire behind his evening newspaper. But that had been impossible this evening. They had been merry, and as often happened when no woman was present, their conversation had reverted to sex.
Some of them had ribbed Martin about his beautiful wife. They said he was a lucky man they bet he never said, 'My wife doesn't understand me'. If only they knew! What fools men are, he thought, but I was exactly like them once. I imagined that an outstandingly beautiful girl with a sexy body was just the kind to marry. And she turned out to be as frigid as the North Pole!
In a few moments his wife would be kissing him dutifully, taking his hat and coat and serving him politely with a cocktail. And all without love where had it gone? It seemed to be there for the first few weeks of their marriage and then his wife began to say no to his sexual advances. In his solicitor's files was all the evidence he needed to divorce Jean. But he had hesitated. He knew she did not expect such a move. She imagined he had settled down to this ridiculous regime because he had made no approaches to her for several months. Her wary eyes were still suspicious of 'advantages' he might attempt to take, but her coldly polite manner indicated she had got what she wanted a sexless, hollow marriage.
It's funny, he mused to himself, returning his attention to his dinner, but I think, deep down inside me, I still love her. At least, I can still see the reflection of what I used to think she was like. Maybe I was wrong, but I could not have been entirely wrong. So long as I have a glimmer left in my imagination then I should make an effort to revive her love.
I'm beginning to sound very sentimental and novellet-ish, he told himself as he finished the well-done steak, garnished with mushrooms and tomatoes. Why don't I just tell her baldly and openly I'm going to divorce her unless things change pretty quickly? I've never thought of threatening her before. It would not be unkind to do so; after all, she would be the guilty party in a divorce. Maybe the shock might make her think again?
She was gathering the plates together on a tray to take into the kitchen. He looked up and said quietly;
"Thank you Jean, that was a nice meal. Now I want you to sit still there for a minute because I want to talk to you. I am NOT beginning a row
...." he emphasized as he saw her mouth open to protest, fear of reproach in her eyes.
"Listen to me, Jean. You know our marriage isn't a success ... no ... no ... be honest, Jean, it is not a success. You always avoid discussing it with me, but I'm afraid this time I insist because you see I'm divorcing you."
The look of surprise and bewilderment on her face was almost comical. He continued:
"The necessary papers are in my solicitor's hands, but before I go ahead I want to make one appeal to you. Jean, darling, is there no way we can save our marriage? Are you absolutely sure you do not love me any more and can never love me again? If you are not sure, Jean, please say so and both of us can make an effort to try and live together in a way which does not make me suffer sexual humiliation all the time ... please ... Jean?"
He was astonished by her answer. She ignored his appeal. Her eyes were flashing the fire of her anger, her indignation was as visible as electric sparks from a cat's fur:
"YOU are going to divorce ME? You can't be serious! What for? I've done nothing ... you must be mad! You just want to get rid of me because I won't go to bed with you often. Well, let me tell you I'll never consent to manufacture evidence against myself the very idea!"
"There's no need to manufacture evidence, Jean. I've got quite enough proof for a normal divorce," he said quietly, "or at the very least an annulment. You've virtually ceased to have normal sexual relations with me. In the past three years you've let me fuck you only half a dozen times. That is definitely a marital offence."
"I don't believe it!" she was near to tears.
"Of course it is, you silly ninny," he said impatiently, but not unkindly, "You made certain vows and you haven't kept them."
"But that's my business if I don't want to go to bed with you, it's got nothing to do with solicitors or the law. How dare you think of such a thing," she said furiously; then as an afterthought," and don't use that disgusting word to me!"
"It's not just your business Jean. It's my business. Dr. Menzies has already signed a medical report that it's affecting my health. I have those two letters you wrote to me when I was in Manchester last year remember? You refused to go to see a doctor, or a psychiatrist or even a Vicar, so I can prove I've tried my best to make a go of it but you just won't co-operate. I'm afraid you've got no defense."
"You mean I could actually be a GUILTY party in at filthy divorce case ... and have no alimony ... and lose my home, just because I won't let you make love to me?"
"It wouldn't be quite as bad as that, Jean, but roughly yes."
"But ... but ... oh, it's not fair!" she burst out, in a flood of hysterical tears, ran out of the dining room and upstairs.
He shrugged and went into the kitchen to help himself to rice pudding. What could he do about her? It seemed incredible a girl could reach the age of twenty-five and not know she could be divorced for not fulfilling the sexual side of her marriage vows. On the other hand he had often found her ignorant, although it wasn't surprising considering the bigoted upbringing she had received. He could hear her upstairs bawling her head of. Let her roar, he thought. For three years I've been desperately unhappy and frustrated a few tears won't do her any harm at all.
She cried for the best part of half an hour, then sniveled and then she was quiet. He settled himself in the sitting room with a full bottle of whisky and the siphon. This was something he never did, but tonight well, to hell with it, this was a time to get drunk, he guessed.
She was coming downstairs. He heard her go into the kitchen and make coffee. She brought it to him on a tray with two cups. Her eyes were red and puffed. She had washed off all her makeup and not renewed it. She saw the whisky but made no comment. In silence she poured two cups of coffee and gave him one. He took it, looking at her curiously. The cold distant look had gone. Her sensitive nostrils were quivering, her eyes were hurt and puzzled. She was more vulnerable than he had ever seen her. He guessed she had come down for a slinging match or some sort of appeal. He was wrong:
"I'm sorry Martin, I had no idea you could divorce me ... or have our marriage annulled or whatever it's called ... just for not going to bed with you. I ... I ... well I just couldn't do it any more and ... and ... I thought you'd forget about it in time...." The tears were welling up in her eyes, " ... and I couldn't tell you why...."
He looked at her in surprise. Was he going to get the truth at last?
"Now it's all over ... well, I can tell you about it at last. You see ... you see...." she gulped back the tears, but her confusion was more than tears. She looked away and started on another tack.
"Do you remember Dorothy? She went to London when we got engaged ... I always used to be with her ... well we ... we...." but words failed her again.
He was mystified and beginning to feel impatient. "Yes?" he asked, sipping his coffee.
She gripped her hands tightly together and, staring at them with rigid concentration, forced out:
"You see we were more than friends you know what I mean."
The truth began to dawn on Martin, He could hardly believe his ears. Surely not?
"You mean," he said slowly, "you mean you had a Lesbian relationship with Dorothy?"
She did not seem to understand him, "I mean you were in love sexually with Dorothy?" he asked brutally.
She nodded and hid her face in her hands. "Well I'm damned!! "
Such an explanation had never occurred to him. He was quite dumbfounded. His beautiful glamorous wife, her fair hair falling to her shoulders like Brigitte Bardot, her sensuous figure and clothes sense and she was a Lesbian! Who would have guessed it? Nor did the explanation help his squirming ego not one little bit.
He had been making love to a woman who would have preferred him to be another woman! It was worse than frigidity!
Suddenly he threw back his head and gave a bark of mirthless laughter. The irony of it! But in some remote part of him he felt a stir of excitement and a guilty glow came into his face. He knew he was blushing, but Jean's head was still bent and she did not see. Her confession had reminded him of a guilty secret of his own; secret longings he had been trying to repress for years. He had imagined the normal sexual relationship of marriage would subdue them entirely, but when his wife had proved sexually unresponsive they had returned to plague him in dreams. And it was those dreams which had finally driven him to a doctor, although he had not dared to explain the exact content of them. How could he tell old Dr. Menzies he had been dreaming about raping virgins and teenage virgins at that! Irony indeed; they had both hidden from each other their secret inner sexual life.
She was getting more and more distressed, almost hysterical. He felt sorry for her. He poured a stiff glass of whisky and forced her to drink. She slopped a little but managed to get it down.
"Now Jean, have a cigarette and calm yourself. This is a real tragedy ... tell me about it ... however did it happen? And why, for God's sake did you marry me? I should think your common sense would tell you it wouldn't work, surely?"
"Martin, you don't understand," the big green eyes came up to look at him beseechingly, "You've never understood me really, You always think I know more about things than I really do ... because of the way I look ... and then you get mad at me when you discover I don't. It's not my fault I look more sophisticated than I am...."
"I'm sorry, my dear," he pattered her hand. He remembered the recent conversation on the train and winced.
"Are you trying to tell me you didn't know about yourself?" he asked soothingly, trying to keep the incredulity out of his voice.
"Yes Martin ... honestly I didn't realize ... I'll try and tell you about it," she gulped back more rising tears and went on bravely. "I used to have a pash on a mistress at school when I was only twelve and she used to take me to her home and coach me in math and ... it was she who started it ... she used to ... touch me. And then there was Joan after that when I was fourteen. And then there was Dorothy, right up until I left school and for a little while afterwards until I met you and then we had a row and she went to London...." the words were tumbling out of her now.
"What did you have a row about?" he asked gently.
"Well, she called me what you just called a Les ... Les...."
"Lesbian."
"And she tried to explain all about it, but I was terribly shocked and wouldn't listen. She wanted me to go and live with her in Padding-ton as though as though I were her wife. You see I just thought we were a bit naughty, playing about with each other ... and I could stop being naughty any time I wanted and get married. But ... but as soon as we got married ... I discovered I WAS different ... just as she'd said. Oh Martin, try to understand ... just imagine what it would be like for you having to let another man make love to you!"
He could have struck her down with one blow for that remark. She saw the look of anger and distrust in his eyes and flinched. Then he relaxed and tried to be detached. Yes a thing like that would be unpleasant; he did understand.
She looked utterly dejected sitting there. She wore skintight pants and a pretty fluffy sweater, She was adorable to look at and she was the wrong sex!
He put out his hand in sympathy to touch her shoulders. She flinched away from him, but it was more from habit than present fear. She managed a watery apologetic smile. Somehow he felt closer to her just now than he had ever felt before, even during their courting days. She was just a little lost girl and it wasn't her fault. She was probably born like it, or else that early schoolmistress had so tied her emotions up they became forever fixed, instead of changing when she came into adolescence. He knew this sometimes happened. Nonetheless, it was tragic.
Or was it? He asked himself. Why should everybody assume that people who are a little different from ourselves are necessarily doomed to unhappiness? Now Jean was beginning to understand what she was, and now she could be released from a disastrous marriage why shouldn't she seek fulfillment in the way which was natural to her?
A sneaky thought came up from his unconscious to prick him. If she could do that why shouldn't he enjoy himself with...?
He shut his eyes and bit his lip and tried to fight off the tempting thought. He must not think along those lines. HE MUST NOT!
But a part of his mind would not be quiet.
WHY NOT? it kept asking.
Oh God! This was terrible!
He noticed Jean was staring at him curiously.
"What's the matter, Martin?" she asked.
He had not heard her speak in such a kindly voice for nearly three years and to his utter humiliation the tears came to his eyes. It had been a very difficult three years and not once had he given way. He bit his lip hard.
"Oh don't Martin ... you've drawn blood on your lips! What is it, my dear? What's the matter? I know I've made you terribly unhappy but you can have your divorce I won't stand in your way. I'm terribly sorry, but please don't cry!"
She was genuinely distressed for him and he blinked back the tears which were, of course, only momentary.
He looked at her. He also was in the mood for confession.
But how would she react to such a terrible thing.
He badly needed somebody to talk to. He had never spoken to anyone about it never.
"Tell me, Jean," he said, speaking with difficulty through a constricted throat, "how do you feel about being a Lesbian?"
"I'm desperately, terribly ashamed...." she burst out, "Oh Martin you don't know what it's been like. That's what made me so tight and strained. And the worst of it is that it's only the sex part of life with you I can't bear. I like you tremendously as a person. You've been so kind and patient. But as soon as I relaxed and tried to be natural with you ... you immediately started to make love to me ... oh it was impossible!"
"I see and you feel ashamed?"
"Yes. Please Martin, don't go on about it I just can't help it."
"I'm not trying to rub it in, I'm wanting to tell you something about myself which makes ME ashamed. You see I've got a sort of secret too ... oh no, I'm not a homosexual! ... but perhaps one of the reasons why it's been such a strain on you is because I was desperate to get rid of something of which I was ashamed. That's why I got married although Of course I did love you."
"What are you talking about Martin? I don't understand. You are quite normal, surely?"
"Not quite," he mumbled, and then pushed on desperately, "You see ... young girls ... very young girls ... teenagers ... attract me tremendously" He felt a great surge of relief when he had got it off his chest. Like being rid of a terrible attack of indigestion. I'm just transferring my guilt, he said to himself, but he didn't care.
Her eyes were wide with astonishment. "But there's nothing peculiar about that, is there?" she asked. "I mean all men find women attractive don't they even men your age imagine teenagers. What's so peculiar about that?"
He was looking down at his hands and spoke almost inaudibly. "They attract me Jean, and I want to make love to them. Real teenagers ... youngsters of thirteen or so ... don't you know, that is technically called rape?"
She gasped, "You want to go to bed with them? Oh my God Oh no!" She was horrified.
He plunged on again: "And I've done it twice before we were married and because you wouldn't give me a proper sex life it brought back those terrible dreams I used to have. Night after night I've been raping schoolgirls it's dreadful and I can't go on!" He pulled himself together with an effort and went on quietly: "Now do you understand why we must separate? I must try to marry again and have a normal sex life so I won't be plagued with this awful longing and those nightmares."
There were tears in her eyes again: "Oh Matrin what a terrible mess we've both made of things."
She lapsed into silence, staring at the fire. They sat hand in hand, thinking about their separate hells.
Suddenly he burst out laughing: "Let's get drunk!" he said, "Two absolutely awful depraved people the dregs of society! let's get gloriously pissed!"
She looked startled. But the expression in his eyes was so miserable and unhappy and matched so exactly what she felt that she squeezed his hand and said throwing back her beautiful blonde hair in a gesture of defiance: "Yes! Let's get drunk. But you know in some way I feel a little happier than I've done for years. Why didn't we talk before? I thought you would half kill me when you knew the truth!"
They finally filed up two glasses with whiskey and toasted each other ironically. Steadily they drank their way through the bottle of scotch, confiding tipsily in each other, learning hitherto undreamed-of secrets and finally getting so drunk that they gave up any idea of trying to mount the stairs to their barren dream-ridden bedroom and slept on the sofa in a drunken torpor.
The weekend which followed these mutual revelations was very difficult for Martin and Jean. Each one felt they were meeting a stranger who had suddenly emerged from the person they had known for years. Martin kept glancing at Jean as if to catch a glimpse of that inner inverted self of hers which he had never suspected and which, even now, he could hardly believe existed. And he often caught Jean gazing at him pensively as though she were trying to match up the husband she had known with the new one she had unexpectedly discovered.
As his self respect became restored, so the aching need for sex subsided. And last night was the first night for months he had not dreamed of raping teenage virgins, although he could not be sure it wasn't the unaccustomed drink. So now, he discovered there wasn't any immediate need for divorce. It wasn't that the situation was still the same, but that he had changed.
He didn't feel desperate any longer. He just felt what did he feel? Pity? Curiousity?
Jean, walking demurely by his side, her long fair hair stirring gently in the breeze, her miniskirt showing off her dimpled knees and slim calves to perfection, was also perplexed. Now she could relax and laugh with Martin and what a relief it was, after years of constraint and fear. He was no longer angling to get in bed with her, in fact he was acting like a big fond brother. But she reminded herself it couldn't go on, however delightful it was. He wanted to divorce her and after all it was no marriage for him. What would she do then? The prospect frightened her.
In the evening, they settled down to watch television. But the programs on all stations failed to interest them and finally Martin brought out a fresh bottle of whiskey and they were restless. Finally Martin laid down his book and said:
"What kind of thing did you and Dorothy get up to?"
Jean looked embarrassed. How could you tell your husband about your sexual relations with a woman? It's obscene, she thought.
"I don't see why you shouldn't tell me," he continued, "after all we're still friends, even if we are going to be divorced. You're not still frightened of me, are you."
"No," she said slowly, not looking at him, "but it's not nice talking about such things with one's husband."
"My dear girl," he laughed, "husbands are the only people you can be really frank with, there's absolutely nothing we shouldn't be able to discuss. Most husbands and wives tell each other about their previous affairs ... that yours were a little different was bad luck, but there's nothing wrong in talking about them that I can see. Besides I'm curious!"
"What about?" she asked in a small voice still too embarrassed to look at him.
"Well, did you get really worked up?"
There was a heavy silence for a full minute. Martin waited patiently, determined to make her answer.
Finally she said, "Yes," very quietly.
"And did you make her excited also?"
She knew instinctively that Martin was not fully aware of his own motives for this inquisition. She guessed he was unconsciously trying to hurt her. But he was also torturing himself and then there was a hint of vicarious enjoyment as well as morbid curiosity. It was all confusing. For a moment she regretted having told him, but then she remembered what a relief it had been and that, in a way, she owed him something for all the unhappiness she had caused. Nevertheless she did not want to talk about the intimacy between Dorothy and herself. It had been a wonderful, exciting experience, but it had been wrong, morally wrong, she told herself, and she must never indulge in it again.
"I think you're wrong to be ashamed of it," said Martin conversationally, as though he were reading her thoughts. He helped himself to another large whiskey. "Don't you realize you can't help it? Besides it's not against the law, you know."
She looked up quickly, questioningly.
"Oh, the church things it's mortally wrong, but the law doesn't condemn it, between that, is, consenting adults. And soon male homosexuals may be allowed the same freedom and about time too, poor devils. Personally I don't see why you shouldn't live a perfectly happy life with another woman, just as Dorothy wanted you to."
"But it IS morally wrong, Martin," she protested earnestly, "you know it is,"
"I'm sorry," he contradicted, "I don't agree. You wouldn't be doing anybody any harm once you were divorced from me, now would you?"
"Look," he leaned forward confidentially, "compare your predicament with mine. Now if I followed my own instincts I could be doing somebody harm, couldn't I?"
"Not necessarily," she answered, relieved he had changed the subject, "you forget some kids are quite experienced sexually not like we were at that age. They mature earlier for one thing and teenagers have much more liberty than we ever had. Look at those cases you read about where it's proved a young girl actually lured a man, deliberately tempted him and not just to tease either, the girl actually wanted sexual relations, just like an adult."
"Yes ... perhaps ... but the man is still in the wrong if he actually knows the girl is too young.
"But Martin," she argued, not knowing in the least why she was finding justification for him, "but Martin, if a girl has genuinely matured early if she's say fourteen and yet is physically sixteen or seventeen, it's very difficult for her isn't it? Especially if she's hot blooded and if she's been given too much liberty and does a lot of petting well it's inevitable. What I think is that it's not terrible that she has sexual intercourse in itself, what is terrible is if she gets pregnant and gets left stranded by some inconsiderate man who's just taken advantage of her."
"You mean we shouldn't be shocked, we should just tell 'em about contraception?" he asked, grinning at her.
"Something like that," she said, flushing slightly.
"Well, that's quite an enlightened point of view, Jean I bet your parents wouldn't agree with you."
They both laughed. But Jean was quite shocked inwardly at what she had said. It had come out as a sort of reassurance to Martin in his distress. And yet, reconsidering it, she decided, yes, she DID mean it. Yet it was a surprise to her to find she had an independent opinion of her own. It was probably the first one she had ever expressed; she felt a warm glow of liberation and self-congratulation. Yes she DID think that, so there!
Martin was watching this inner conflict with an amused smile. He guessed what was going on in her mind. He leant forward to replenish her glass.
"Well, even if the kid knows all about contraception and she wants sex, it sill doesn't make any difference to the man and it is really that angle I was talking about. He knows it's against the law and that's that."
"But, Martin, why must you assume the law's always right?" she was shocking herself again, but she plunged on. "You just said there's a law for female homosexuals and another for male well, that's not fair, is it? So why shouldn't the law be behind the times in this also I mean, it's just not caught up with a biological fact the early maturity of young girls!"
"My! My!" he exclaimed, "Listen to young Portia Shakespeare would be proud of you!"
They started to giggle and it broke out into a roar of laughter. After nearly three years of keeping herself in, here was Jean blossoming out with intelligent conversation and new ideas. The dumb, cold, beautiful blonde had somehow matured during those unhappy years.
She stretched her feet out towards the electric fire and took a reckless gulp of her whiskey. She felt exhilarated. Martin, who had so subtly drawn her out, wondered whether he dared go back to his very first question. She surprised him by turning the tables.
"Those kids you ... made love to before we were married," she asked, "you didn't actually rape them I mean by violence, did you?"
"Of course not!" he exclaimed, "only in legal terms. Oh they were willing enough ... but it did not stop me from feeling terrible about it afterwards."
"Why?"
"Well, I suppose mostly because it was against the law and I'm normally a law-abiding citizen and also because I felt that they were too young to be really responsible for what they were doing. Therefore I was morally wrong to take advantage of them."
"But, if you agree with me that they were really quite mature, more than kids used to be, surely the point is did you seduce them or did they seduce you?"
"I've had two little girls, if you want to know ... one thirteen and the other fourteen ... and one positively lured me into bed, almost raped me. But the other, I'm ashamed to say, I definitely seduced but she loved it, I must say!"
"You naughty old man!"
He realized the whiskey was beginning to talk and he filled up her glass once more. He discovered he was finding her entertaining. She was opening up in a manner he had never expected. It was also pleasant to find someone sympathetic to his problem. He had always imagined that if he told her about his dreams and his experiences she would find him abhorrent. It was true her first reaction had been distaste, but he supposed there was nothing like having a guilty conscience yourself for helping you to be kind about other people's shortcomings. In their case each one had defended the other and yet each one still felt they personally were morally wrong. How peculiar!
"Look Jean," he said, turning to her, "Let's stay together for a while yet. If it gets difficult again, well, we can separate how about it?"
She smiled at him tipsily, "S'alright with me ... enjoying myself!"
"And Jean ... if you ... er ... want to go and see Dorothy ... well ... I shan't mind."
She sat uptight, jolted out of a muzzy dream. "What did you say?"
"You 'eard!" he said, smiling down into her green eyes.
"But ... but...." she looked almost frightened.
"Look Jean, our marriage isn't a proper one, is it? And it's never going to be, I know that now. Well, I don't feel I hate you any more now I know why, and I want you to be happy. If we decide to part I'd like to see you fixed up alright, perhaps with Dorothy, if that's what you want. I don't like the idea of you just going off ... I'd rather you had some place to go to ... and I'll give you some cash to tide you over ... that is if we decide not to go on," he finished lamely looking at her apprehensively, worried about how she'd take this. She turned those beautiful eyes towards him, pushing back the long curtain of fair hair. He was surprised to see there were tears in them.
"Dear Martin ... you really are kind. I don't deserve it, considering everything, and before he knew what she was going to do she gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek which nearly knocked him sideways.
They collapsed into roars of laugher again. Then they got down to serious drinking once more.
CHAPTER TWO
The St. Martin's Church Committee was in session. The chairman, a Mrs. Smythe, was holding forth in her usual domineering manner:
"Now we have decided on the formation of a Youth Club in the old Church Hall, and now sufficient funds have been raised for this venture, the question arises who shall run it? Every member of this Committee will have an opportunity to put forward their suggestion and it is my intention to state my own preference now," she paused majestically.
Most members of her Committee knew her suggestion was not far short of a Royal Command. The funds referred to had been supplied by her husband and Mrs. Smythe considered her wishes should be deferred to. The subservient committee, although privately resenting it, would automatically vote for her nominee, unless she made some really outrageous suggestion, when there might be a mild protest. They were pleasantly surprised when she put forward the name of Mrs. Jean Buller. They nodded their heads enthusiastically. What a relief to be able to vote for a really suitable candidate!
Mrs. Smythe continued: "I have known this young lady since she was a child. She comes as you know, from a most respectable family who are faithful members of this church. She has been married for three years to a pleasant young man whose parents are also known to us.
Although it is true she dresses in what we may consider a very advanced fashion, she is not too young to take on this responsibility. She is a young woman of a good character, pleasant mannered and good looking. She also has the advantage of being childless and therefore, I assume, will have enough leisure time to devote several hours a week to the organization and running of the Club. I consider her very suitable."
A murmur of assent traveled around the table. Mr.. Huxtable, who was often a spokesman for the less articulate members of the Committee, glanced around at the pleased faces, cleared his throat and said portentously :
"I believe it is the opinion of the Committee that Mrs. Buller would be most acceptable. Shall we take a vote on it, Mrs. Smythe?"
The lady could not suppress her satisfaction at such a quick victory, but the conventions must be observed:
"I am so glad to hear you agree with me. But perhaps we ought to consider other suggestions?"
A quick glance around the table revealed, twelve blank faces and so a vote was taken. Mr.. Huxtable was particularly pleased at the unanimous choice. As Treasurer of the newly formed Club he would be in contact with the Youth Leader frequently, and the prospect of it being Mrs. Buller was a pleasant and exciting surprise. He also had watched Jean flower from a gawky child to a ravishing beauty and his covetous eyes had often roved over a slim ankle and a nicely rounded buttock as he watched her at church every Sunday. She had often figured in his masturbatory fantasies with most pleasing results. The idea of being closely associated with her for legitimate reasons sent a thrill of anticipation through him and stimulated his flaccid and elderly penis so that he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He was momentarily distracted from the business in hand as his imagination developed un-likely situations for seduction. Mrs. Buller was his one deviation from an unswerving devotion to teenage girls which had occupied him in a most rewarding manner most of his adult life. The discretion and cunning which he had applied to his seductions would have long since made him a rich man if his interests had lain in that direction. As it was he merely amused himself by altering his firm's books, but this was also an aid to seduction, since teenage girls were inclined to have expensive tastes nowadays, a fact which he deplored. And then again as he grew older he found them more and more reluctant to accommodate him. Mrs. Buller promised to be an interesting subject on which to concentrate his wiles.
He returned from his thoughts just in time to catch the information that he was commissioned to visit Mrs. Buller and ask whether she would undertake the running of the Youth Club. It was suggested he visit her immediately after the Committee meeting, which had been called this Sunday afternoon, to the considerable inconvenience of its members, for the sole convenience of Mrs. Smythe, who was leaving for a winter holiday first thing in the morning.
The Treasurer accepted his task with carefully concealed enthusiasm and the meeting was brought to an end with a short prayer from the Vicar, who was an ineffective and unimportant member of the Committee.
But Mr.. Huxtable was unlucky. The lovely lady was visiting a friend when he called and her husband ushered him into the sitting room and listened attentively to the message from the Committee.
"I see," said Martin dubiously, "of course Jean has no experience of anything like that, although now I come to think of it, she used to be something high up in the local Guides at one time."
"Well, I'm sure that must have taught her many useful things in the handling of youngsters Mr.. Buller. We want somebody youthful and, of course, anyone as charming as your wife would have a great influence on some of the more unruly members."
Martin doubted it, but didn't say so.
"It's entirely up to Jean, Mr.. Huxtable. I'll tell her all about it when she returns. I'll ask her to phone you."
Martin wandered back to the sitting room and thoughtfully poured himself a stiff whiskey. He hated Mr.. Huxtable, nevertheless the Committee's recommendation was quite an honor. He did not see how Jean could possibly accept, however, considering the uncertain state of their affairs. And then suddenly the thought of his wife being in constant contact with the greatest temptation of his life ... teenage girls ... sent a tremble of fear, premonition, excitement and guilt through him.
The youngsters would be calling at the house for one thing or another and be a constant temptation to him. Oh God! ... the hot flush of his cheeks and the quick beat of his heart! He jumped to his feet and began agitatedly walking up and down. It was impossible ... no ... no ... he mustn't let her do it ... he mustn't....
He clamed down when he remembered be was getting excited about a situation which might not arise. She had taken him up on his suggestion of the previous night and gone to see Dorothy this afternoon. He was somewhat disappointed at her promptness, but she explained it would be a good idea to get it over with. If she returned and told him she was going to live with Dorothy in Paddington then that would be the end of their marriage and there would certainly be no question of starting Youth Clubs.
It was no use sitting here brooding. He decided to go to the cinema.
Jean's long blonde hair attracted many wolf whistles in the Paddington street where Dorothy lived. Jean didn't think much of the district, having lived all her life in suburbia The tall shabby, peeling houses of this slum made her feel depressed and uneasy. The colored people lounging around their doorways struck her as sinister and she hurried past, glancing doubtfully at the almost-obliterated numbers on the dirty transom windows.
Jean wondered why her friends had chosen such a sleazy area. Dorothy came not only from the same suburb as herself but from a similar family background solid, respectable, narrow-minded citizens. Why should she hide herself a-way in the most ever-crowded, multi-racial district in London? Was there some masochistic streak in her which found it necessary to degrade herself or was it just that she sought anonymity? She recalled her last agonizing meeting with Dorothy. Up until then their relationship had been romantic, even if their sexual experiments had been awkward and fumbling and always followed by outbursts of guilt from Jean. She would cry and Dot would comfort her and say they'd just been a bit naughty, but it wasn't like doing dirty things with boys and getting into trouble, now was it? Jean would admit it wasn't and the next time when Dot's hands explored her breasts or pried into that wonderfully exciting region between her legs she would give herself over wholeheartedly to sensation and voluptuous pleasure only to weep once more from guilt afterwards. But the last meeting had put an end to it all. Dorothy had seemed to take a malicious pleasure in explaining to Jean exactly what Lesbians were and that undoubtedly she and Jean were inverts: "You'd better face up to it Jean, why don't you come and live with me in Padding-ton? You know how fond I am of you. Come and be my wife!"
Oh the shock of that disgusting invitation! Jean could still go cold and hot inside at the very thought of it. She had vehemently denied that she was 'one of those' as she put it. "How dare you, Dorothy? I know we've been ... well ... naughty but its ridiculous to suggest it any more than that. You're just jealous because I've been going out with Martin, that's all. And you're perfectly normal yourself, Dot, you just imagine being different!"
She could smile ruefully at her own ignorance now. How long had it taken her after marriage to know that Dorothy was right? About three weeks! After that it was agony when Martin wanted sex. It was then she had gone to the public library and furtively read about Lesbianism from a medical book. She had not written to Dorothy and apologized, or even explained the tragic outcome of her marriage. But Dorothy had ignored her obstinate silence, sending her Christmas and birthday cards and the odd small present.
As she mounted the broken concrete steps to number 159 she wondered if Dorothy knew from any source that she and Martin were not happy. It was possible. She studied the collection of battered bells and a note which said: Miss D. Shaldo ... Apply Basement. She descended into the area and discovered that this part of the house was cared for. The steps were scrubbed clean and the paintwork was new. A window-box overflowed with greenery and the door was a cheerful scarlet.
She hesitated, wondering what her reception would be, but apparently she had been seen through the window for the door burst open and there was Dorothy, looking almost unrecognizable but certainly friendly and welcoming.
"Come in come in! I knew you'd come and see me one day, Jean. You look marvelous. Well come in, its cold ... I'll give you a drink straight away, you look frozen!"
Jean was overwhelmed by the exuberant welcome, but it covered her embarrassement and, smiling, she entered the basement flat. It was a surprise inside. Everything was strongly popery a riot of orange, black and purple with exotic flowers everywhere, growing out of a chamber pot and trailing up the wall, half hidden in a piano with no innards.
"How do you like it? Bit of a difference from Mom's aspidistra, eh?" laughed Dorothy. Her mother's favorite potted plant had always been an object of hatred and contempt to her, even as a schoolgirl.
Dorothy folded back the side of the piano and revealed a well-stocked bar, "What'll you have?"
"Whiskey please," said Jean looking around with interest. She didn't particularly like the atmosphere, it was too brashly modern and eccentric and did not give the feeling of comfort and repose which she associated with a living room. Dorothy chattered on in a bottle, flippant manner and Jean studied her. Three years had made more difference to her friends appearance than her own. The untidy black hair was now cut close to her head in a Napoleonic manner accentuating her aquiline nose and deeply sunk eyes. She was dressed somewhat like a Spanish gypsy, in tight fitting black trousers into which was tucked a full white shirt with flowing sleeves and a standup collar. The effect was strikingly sexless despite the feminine breasts concealed in the shirt. She noticed also the supercilious expression of her face and the fixed casualness of her manner, which were new to Jean.
She became aware that Dorothy had noticed her scrutiny and she looked away, momentarily confused.
"I suppose I've changed in three years, Jean darling, but so would you if you'd been through what has happened to me. But you ... you look pretty much the same, but there's a great change in you all the same ... what's happened to the old chatterbox I used to know ... you've hardly opened your mouth since you arrived."
"Well, I suppose it was a bit difficult to get a word in edgeways," smiled Jean, the old mischievous twinkle returning to her green eyes for a moment.
Dorothy sat beside her on the couch.
"You've matured Jean, and it suits you. Maybe you're not such a scatterbrain as you used to be. And how's your husband Martin isn't it?"
Jean hesitated ... what should she say? It was more difficult than she'd realized it would be. There was so much to say and it was all so intimate, and it did not seem right to talk about it to a stranger, as Dorothy now seemed to be.
Dorothy, whose quick brain had made several observations and deductions since Jean's arrival, was quick to take advantage of a situation she had long anticipated. She laid her hand on Jean's knee and said quietly:
"Tell me all about it darling, I've guessed that something's wrong and you know I'll do anything to help if I can. Here have another drink and get it off your chest. Uncle Dot is all ears."
The flippant substitution of the usual 'aunty' for uncle had a jarring effect on Jean and suddenly the whole misery of the last three years and the upheaval of this weekend descended on her. She burst into tears and covered her face with her hands.
Dorothy promptly took her into her arms and smoothed and petted and murmured to her. Rocking the sobbing girl backwards and forwards like a baby, she patted her head and mopped up the tears with a large but spotless handkerchief. The protection and sympathy of those arms she had yarned for so long was too much for Jean she laid her head on Dorothy's breast and gave vent to a torrent of tears and explanations, mixed with admonitions and reproaches. Dorothy sorted it all out with a little difficulty and, suppressing a desire to say 'I told you so,' continued to sympathize and comfort Jean. Inwardly she was delighted with the situation. She had counted on something like this happening because she had always been convinced of Jean's inversion.
But the Dorothy who had left for London three years ago was not the same person as the one who held Jean in her arms, for Dot had become part of the cynical society of blatant Lesbians who frequent the West End of London.
The hand which had been stroking Jean's gleaming hair near her temple now continued its motion the whole length of the blonde tresses, passing over the up-thrusting bulge of her breasts.
Jean quivered beneath her touch. Again and again the gentle hand stroked from head to breast, awakening the memory of half-forgotten caresses in Jean who slowly became aware of the exciting proximity of Dorothy's long remembered body. Jean turned impulsively, capturing the roving hand as she did so and pressing it urgently against her breast.
"Oh Dorothy I've missed you so terribly ... I've dreamed about you night after night ... oh Dot we were so happy together and I didn't know then that I really loved you. I can remember everything we used to say ... and what we used to do ... oh Dot ... it seems so long ago!"
Dorothy smiled wryly: "I can remember too, my dear, but I remember how you used to cry."
Tears came into Jean's eyes again and she nodded: "But I was only a kid Dot, I didn't really understand what it was all about. I mean ... I used to think we were naughty and I was a-shamed."
Dorothy took Jean's chin in her hand and turned the blushing face so she could look into the green eyes. She was captivated by the uncertainty and confusion in the girl's face. There was still an air of innocence there and Dot was overwhelmed by several conflicting emotions ... tenderness ... pity ... excitement ... and sheer animal lust for this lovely girl who was fumbling towards understanding her inner self and patiently in Dot's hand like a ripe plum ready for eating.
Her mouth suddenly swooped down on Jean's. She kissed her long and passionately. Their arms entwined around each other, pressing breast to breast in a convulsive hungry embrace. Dot's tongue insinuated itself between Jean's lips and she instinctively opened her jaws to receive the lecherous searching point which stabbed immediately into her mouth, sending a tremor through her heart, she responded with her own tongue, actively thrusting and retracting it into the wet welcoming cavity. This was something Martin had forced on her and she had never responded, but how different it was when Dot did it how exciting! She felt her whole body melting with acquiescence.
Those firm demanding hands of Dot's, whose memory had lingered for three years guiltily, were roaming her body freely. One cupped a breast and squeezed it gently, the other caressed her thigh and abdomen, pressing the palpitating flesh beneath till she tingled with desire. She writhed voluptuously beneath Dot's hand, indicated to her the extent of her pleasure and inviting still more caresses.
Now Dot's exploring fingers had gained entrance through the buttons of her blouse and were slipping into the tight enclosure of her brassiere, uncupping one flawless orb of honey-colored flesh. Her fingers delicately tickled the rosy nipple, which responded quickly and erected its miniature length in gratitude, standing stiffly up from the brown aureole, mute testimony of her mounting excitement. Dot squeezed the nipple fiercely and Jean squirmed against her, involuntarily clasping her tighter and pushing her tongue even further into Dot's mouth.
Then Dorothy dragged her lips away, bent her head and closed her mouth over the urgent point, her other hand grasping the straining bulge of the other breast. Jean was momentarily embarrassed by this sudden movement, but as she looked down at the dark cropped head at her bosom and felt the delicious prickling caused by the sucking mouth she lent her head against the back of the couch and gave herself up to the exquisite sensation. Dot quarried in the plastic resiliency of her breast, nuzzling, sucking, nibbling, pulling out and pushing in like a dog with a delectable bone. Her other hand had succeeded in un-tipping the other breast and soon she transferred her ministrations, continuing to squeeze the neglected nipple.
Jean's breath was coming so fast that her mouth hung open as she panted. Dot returned to fasten her lips once more on her willing, receptive lips, her fingers not ceasing to tantalize those nipple-encrusted mounds. Now Dot was smothering her face with kisses, nibbling her ear lobes, running her tongue along the delicate down of her cheek, nuzzling against the clean cut pillar of her magnificent white neck. One hand began to explore her thigh again, pressing across her belly and then thrusting itself between her legs. The firm finger ran up the nylon-covered thighs till they reached the delicate flesh above the stocking-tops where they lingered, massaging and squeezing for a few minutes.
Jean was so roused that her hands reached out for the small firm breasts beneath the white shirt. Dot had also enjoyed them being touched when they were schoolgirls and she saw no reason to suppose she wouldn't still like it. But Dot paused long enough to brush her hand away. Apparently she no longer wanted it. Jean relaxed, her lips still pressed against Dot's, still receiving the full pleasure of a French kiss as she felt the inquisitive fingers prying their way into the leg of her panties. She held her breath, heart pounding. Then came the sensation she had almost forgotten, the touching of her clitoris by a woman's gentle hand. She opened her legs wider, pulled up her skirt with a free hand and lay open and quivering to the gorgeous voluptuous sensation.
She had, for the very first time in her life, a feeling of freedom. She did not experience that awful stultifying guilt she used to struggle against. It had gone and in its place was an urgent desire to enjoy Dot's love-making to the full with no regrets. Dot was entranced by this opening up gesture of surrender; if there was to be no struggle or even persuasion there was no need for them to be hampered by their clothing.
"Darling," she whispered, "I still love you and I want you desperately. Let's do it properly without our clothes, eh?" and as she spoke she pushed away from Jean and began to undo her own skirt, looking elsewhere in case Jean was embarrassed. But Jean's hands went automatically to her blouse and soon it had been dragged away, her brassiere following. She undid the hook and zipper on her skirt and stood up to let it fall over her slim hips to reveal a flimsy pair of pretty black panties which quickly followed the skirt to the floor. She stood now, her tall slim body revealed in a tiny frilly suspender belt.
Dot looked up from her undressing to catch her breath at the astounding mature beauty standing before her. The years had rounded Jean, the magnificent breasts stood out perkily from the smooth-skinned torso and her greyhound thighs tapered to a flat belly and the dainty waist. Exciting too was the way her long fair hair tumbled over her shoulders and fringed her breasts like a tawny curtain.
"That's enough," said Dot shakily, unable to wait for the removal of the belt and stockings and knowing they added provocatively to Jean's allure. They sat down on the couch and once more they were locked fast in a furious embrace. This time moist skin touched moist skin and each was intensely aware of the touch of the other. Dot repeated her manipulation to Jean's breasts to bring her back to heat again and then her hand explored the depths between her thighs.
Jean was lost in a sea of sensations, which swept over her yearning sex-starved body in uncontrollable waves. She did not attempt to restrain herself, not even when Dot slid down her body and she felt the warm tongue, which a second before had been in her mouth, thrust between the lips of her palpitating cunt. Once more she opened her legs wide in a welcoming gesture. She was intent on enjoying this seduction to the full. It was wonderful to feel a woman's tender soft body against hers how she hated the hairy masculinity of her husband how she cringed at his too boisterous and sometimes frantic embraces. He seemed too bony and angular, lacking in graceful movement, too eager and uncontrolled. Poor Jean; she had been encountering a man driven half mad with unrequited desire.
In the delirium of her enjoyment she pressed Dot's neat black head between her legs, half suffocating her. The inner membranes of her vagina were now being explored by a darting stiff tongue. An involuntary, indrawn, shuddering breath marked the invasion of that tongue into the opening which, last time it entered, had been virgin. The busy tongue had almost brought on her climax when Dot broke away and once more brought her mouth to Jean's Her hands were pushing Jean's legs apart and suddenly she was astride Jean's, both hands now down at her own cunt-lips between their bodies. With two strong fingers she hooked the lips apart and brought her mound down firmly against Jean's clitoris. The touch of wet flesh on wet flesh galvanized Jean into a wild thrust upwards into Dot, which completed the sensation needed for her climax. She thrust again and again with all her strength digging her elbows and heels into the couch and driving Dot into an ecstasy of lust so that she began to shudder against Jean, grasping her tightly at the hips and levering her body backwards and forwards.
"Jean darling ... I knew I'd fuck you properly one day ... oh darling ... you luscious wanton bitch ... fuck me ... FUCK ME!"
Jean had already passed her climax when she heard that word. It had always shocked her when Martin used it but now she listened in trembling delight. Yes ... she had been fucked by Jean at last! The trembling stopped. Dot fell shuddering on the prostrate body beneath her hiding her face in the mass of perfumed hair, pressing her breasts into Jean's breasts while their cunts gave out the dregs of their mutual desire, one into the other. They lay panting and murmuring for several minutes and then subsided into voluptuous silence.
Jean had almost drifted off into a doze. Her satiated body was relaxed and rid of all the tensions which had been with her so long. Suddenly there came the sound of clattering feet down the outside area steps! Dot sprang up, alarm in her face, but it was too late, a key was turned in the door and immediately someone burst into the room. Jean was so startled and frightened she could not move, she lay sprawled, legs open, vacant arms outspread, her mouth gaping in surprise. Dot stood facing the young girl who entered, guilt and embarrassment all over her face.
"You bitch!" yelled the intruder, "you bloody bitch so this is what would do while I'm at work? I thought I might catch you at something, but this oh you filthy bitch!" and she rushed at Dot, handbag raised to hit her. Dot had no trouble in fending her off, she was much stronger and heavier. She grabbed the girl by the wrists and held her secure for a moment. Turning her head she said hurriedly to Jean:
"Take your clothes and go in there," she nodded towards a door, "And I'll calm her down."
"Calm me down! You cow ... you stinking Lesbian ... I'll murder you ... I'll...."
But Jean didn't hear any more, she was up, grabbing clothes and through the door in a few seconds. She had never felt such a bloody fool in all her life. Once on the other side of the door and the door safely locked, she stood there with beating heart listening to the furious row on the other side.
She was humiliated. That this should have happened at the first time in her life when she had accepted a woman's lovemaking openly and without guilt was terrible to her. Was it, perhaps, a sort of punishment, she wondered in agony, trembling from head to foot from shock. All the old moral objections came flooding back. The shame and the guilt and now the sordidness of this affair overwhelmed her. She hated Dot for making her feel soiled.
She dressed with clumsy trembling fingers. Her body was goose-fleshed and as she dressed it she felt sullied, vile, ashamed, violated. The tears ran down her cheeks unchecked. She was shivering with the shock now and was grateful to see a bottle of whiskey half-full on a bedside table. With shaking fingers she helped herself to half a tumbler and gulped it down, coughing and spluttering with the rawness of the spirit. But it calmed her down.
The noise from outside had subsided to muttering but she dared not re-enter the living room. She hoped she would not have to meet that coarse-mouthed common little slut. Part of her revulsion was because even at such a moment Jean had been aware of the working-class origin of the girl. Her garish cheap clothes, her vulgar jeweler. How could Dot associate with such a creature? It filled her with horror that Dot had probably caressed the coarse body of the girl just as she had Jean's. She poured another tot of whiskey.
This was a nightmare. She wished profoundly she had not come. And how was she going to get out? She looked around the room with seeing eyes for the first time. There were two single beds. So the girl in the living room was Dot's mistress! What else could you call her. Perhaps there was a word, but she didn't know it.
There was a knock at the door. Jean went close to it, cautiously.
"Who is it."
"It's me, Jean. Will you come out now it's alright."
Jean grabbed her bag, finished off the whiskey and unlocked the door. She came out briskly, saying:
"I'll go right away. Where's my coat?"
But Dot's girl was standing in front of her and said aggressively:
"Oh no you don't not just yet. You sit down for a minute."
Jean looked despairingly at Dorothy but she was smiling enigmatically and merely nodded at a chair. Feeling helpless, Jean went and sat down, noting as she did the position of her coat and the door to the area stairs, in case she needed to make a quick exit.
Dot was approaching her with yet another drink and she took it. Her hands were still trembling. She looked over at the girl. Even now that some of the anger had disappeared she was, to Jean's eyes, very common looking. But she was handsome in a sluttish way, with big breasts and a wide generous mouth which was now set in a grim line. She was also quite articulate.
"Dot told me who you are. I've always known about you and that one day you might come here. But how was I to know it was you I thought you were a mystery from Alf's place Dot had picked up."
This was gibberish to Jean. She was merely waiting for the girl to finish talking so she could escape. She didn't understand why Dot had ever mentioned her to such a girl.
"Well now you're here, I've got something to say. I've been here nearly three years see, and I'm not just going to move out without a fight even though I knew you were coming. I've got my rights see, and this is my home."
Jean stared at her openmouthed.
"I don't understand," she stammered.
"What Judy's trying to say," said Dot, quite calmly, "Is that I always warned her that one day you might come and then all this would be finished. She agreed to it but now its happened she's chosen to be awkward,"
"But Dot ... I still don't understand ... why do you have to turn the girl out just because I've visited you?"
There was a short silence.
Jean was staring fixedly at Dorothy.
"Aren't you going to stay Jean move in with me? You can. I've always expected you ... I've never forgotten you."
"Oh yes ... the beautiful Jean! The marvelous blonde cow! Oh yes, we've heard all about you. Selfish cat! Just typical of your class to walk in and turn someone like me out into the street," spat out Judy, her eyes flashing fire....
"Just a minute! Now let's get this straight. I have no intention whatsoever of moving in here. I'm sorry Dot ... not now ... maybe if this hadn't happened ... but I just couldn't ... not now ... I'm terribly sorry."
Somehow she felt she had to placate Dot who had waited for her but had not hesitated to bring a mistress into the very place she expected Jean to share with her. She felt quite revolted at the lack of sensitivity Dorothy had shown.
"I don't see why you should be so choosy," said Dot, obviously feeling humiliated herself now, "You've spent three years wallowing in a man's bed and dreaming of me at the same time so what's the difference between us?"
Jean felt sick, nauseated. It was all so horribly unpleasant.
"Personally," said Judy, "I don't see why we can't live here. There's another bedroom. After all Dot's pretty virile and we might get along alright. There are some things I'm pretty sure you don't know about ... I'll bet you've never seen a dildo in your life. She'll be wanting me as much as you."
Jean jumped to her feet, she couldn't bear another minute with these two degenerate people.
"No! No ... no...." she mumbled, frantic in her desire to get away from this disgusting scene. She put on her coat hurriedly, "No ... no ... no ... no...." she repeated, as Dot stood up and showed signs of trying to restrain her, "No ... I'm going ... goodbye...."
She rushed for the door, banging it tumultuously behind her and clipped up the area steps as fast as she could. At the top she encountered a crowd of lounging colored people who didn't take kindly to her pushing rudely through them and cat-called after her as she ran headlong down the street.
CHAPTER THREE
Martin was standing at the sitting-room window when Jean returned by taxi. He had been to the cinema but had not stayed to see the program through because he found it impossible to concentrate on a silly horror film with the problem of Jean's visit to Dorothy on his mind, as well as Mr. Huxtable's proposition. Part of him still wanted to divorce Jean and get it over with, but another part didn't want to let her go, despite the discovery of her inversion. He felt there was a link between them which had been established since the truth of their relationship had become clear.
As soon as he opened the door he saw she was upset. She was no longer crying but her face was tear-strained and tragic. He took her arm and guided her into the sitting-room, serving her a drink without a word and noticing her trembling hand as she took it.
"What happened, my dear," he asked smoothly, "Did you see Dorothy?"
She nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
"You look as though it wasn't a successful meeting," he said lightly, taking a cigarette from a brass box. "Let me guess ... I'd say Dorothy has found herself another girl-friend and was a bit embarrassed when you turned up is that how it went?"
The tears were now openly running down Jean's beautiful pale face.
"Oh Martin ... it was horrible--horrible!" she looked so stricken he went over and sat beside her on the sofa, taking her hand in his.
"Tell me about it Jean. I'm sorry it upset you, but tell me about it I'll understand."
For the second time that day Jean threw herself into another's arms and sobbed out her un-happiness. Martin, like Dorothy, slowly pieced together the disjointed tale. But, unlike Dorothy, he was genuinely sympathetic and really moved at her experience. The manner of Jean's seduction and the embarrassment she had been subjected to told him his wife's former friend was callous and insensitive, whatever she might have been in the past. If it had been a man who had put her in such a position he would have punched his nose in. But you couldn't do that to a 'Butch' Lesbian who had all the outward signs of being a woman, even if she no longer behaved as one.
"Oh Martin ... I felt so degraded ... you can't imagine. It's no use telling me it's alright to go with a woman it's not and that was my punishment."
"Don't talk silly, Jean," he told her, "You're all mixed up. It was unfortunate, but you can't expect her to stay the same after three years. You've changed yourself and you know it. With a decent person it would be quite different, I'm sure of it. Now don't cry my dear, it's all over and done with. Just try and forget."
"I'll never forget it Martin, never as long as I live. I'll never be the same after that."
"But Jean, listen to me ... look at me and be perfectly honest. When she was making love to you did you enjoy it? Honestly now!"
Jean turned her unhappy tearful eyes and looked at him imploringly, then she dropped them to look at her hands where they lay twisting her handkerchief nervously. Finally she whispered:
"That's the awful part of it ... I enjoyed it ... really let myself go for the first time in my whole life ... and then that had to happen to me! Don't you see? I wouldn't be minding it so much if I'd found it unpleasant."
"Well, at least you've proved something to yourself Jean. It's what you need. It's the proper sexual relationship for you ... so it's only a matter of finding the right person, isn't it?"
"I'm not sure. I'm still not sure if it's morally right even if I did enjoy it. And what if all Lesbians get like that ... maybe I'd become a person incapable of real love and loyalty?"
"Of course you wouldn't, you haven't got it in you," he said, decisively, none too sure himself, but determined to comfort her. "Now snap out of it I'll make some coffee and sandwiches ... here, finish your drink."
She got out of her chair wearily and took off her coat and her shoes, quite willing to have Martin wait on her. She was emotionally exhausted. He returned after a long time, not being used to domestic chores, with some very rough-looking sandwiches and coffee which was too strong for her taste. But she ate and drank gratefully, finding she needed refreshment.
He waited until she had relaxed a little.
"I had a visit from Old Huxtable," he said finally, "he had a rather extraordinary message from the Church Committee."
She made an effort to be distracted by listening intently as he told her about the Youth Club. To his dismay she said:
"Well ... it's not a bad idea to have a club like that in the Parish. There's a need for a place the teenagers can go to, other than the cafes and cinemas. You know I think it's a wonderful idea really ... and what a compliment to ask me to run it...." she paused thoughtfully, now fully concentrated on the subject, "Do you know I think I'd love to do it? All those innocent fresh-faced youngsters might make me feel clean again after what happened to me today."
"But Jean you can't you mustn't!" he protested vehemently.
She looked up in surprise. "Why? Oh! You mean you want us to be divorced after all? But I thought...."
"No, no, I want us to stay together, as a matter-of-fact. Don't you see ... I couldn't have you mixed up with teenagers when I've got this thing about girls. I would be too much of a temptation to me it wouldn't be fair!"
A painful despairing look came into her eyes and once more the tears gathered. Suddenly she flung herself full length on the sofa in a paroxysm of misery. He rushed across the room and tried to comfort her, dragging her upright and holding her in his arms. But she could not be comforted. Life seemed to her utterly hopeless and without meaning. After a while she calmed down.
"Oh Martin ... I'm so unhappy, every way I turn seems a dead end and now there's one thing I feel I could do and that's denied to me also ... I wish ... I wish I were dead!"
He was stricken by the misery in her voice and an idea which he had been chewing on all day came back into his mind. It could be a solution if she would co-operate. He decided he would suggest it, but he'd have to be cunning about it. He remembered that whiskey always broke down her inhibitions.
"Have another drink Jean ... let's get blotto again ... things don't seem so bad after a few drinks. Remember last time?"
She didn't answer, but she didn't refuse the drink when he put it in her hand. He turned up the electric fire, pulled the curtains, switched off the center light and left one standard lamp burning in a far corner. The comfortable intimate atmosphere, plus several stiff drinks, soon had her relaxed and slowly the shock of her experience began to wear off.
She began to talk about it once more and for the first time was able to see the funny side of being discovered almost naked in the arms of a woman. Martin gradually edged her off this incident and managed to get her talking about her actual seduction and he was gratified to notice that Jean became sexually aroused as she talked about Dorothy's lovemaking. She shifted uncomfortably on the sofa beside him.
"Tell me, Jean," he said slyly, "What have you been doing during our marriage I mean about sex? I know it's not aimed at me but you must have felt excited sometimes thinking of Dorothy."
She blushed. "Well you know," she said looking away from him.
"You did the same as I did of course," he said, "You masturbated yourself in your single bed while I lay beside you doing the same thing in mine, eh? What a couple of clowns!"
His bantering tone made her more at ease.
"Well ... yes."
"It excites you talking about Dorothy, doesn't it?"
"I suppose so, if only I could forget about what happened this afternoon. You see I've never talked to anybody about her, except you."
"So when I talk about Dorothy to you, you get sexy?"
She nodded and blushed again.
"Jean, I think we could work something out between us along these lines. I mean if I were getting some sort of sex life with you, even if it wasn't actually fucking you, I think I could withstand the temptation of having teenagers around. In fact I'm sure of it."
"But I don't see what you mean," she protested.
"Well, what I mean is ... it's terribly difficult to say but we've just go to be honest with each other ... I mean you'll probably go on masturbating and thinking of Dorothy because one's got to have a sex-life of some sort ... well ... would you let me watch you doing it?"
He waited with baited breath for her answer.
She looked bewildered, staring at him uncomprehendingly.
"Look," he went on hurriedly, "I could talk to you about Dorothy to excite you while you're doing it."
"But that wouldn't be enough for you surely not?"
"It would I promise it would. I'd never touch you, I swear it! If only you'll do just one thing for me...."
"What's that?"
"Put on schoolgirl's clothing while you do it," he answered, watching her reaction closely.
There was a glimmer of a smile on her face but she suppressed it quickly. He turned and filled her glass once more, leaving her to chew it over in her mind.
"You mean that would compensate you for a proper sex-life?" she asked quietly.
"I'm sure of it," he answered convincingly.
"But I don't think I could do a thing like that in front of you," she said tentatively, after a few minutes thought.
"You could close your eyes and just listen, couldn't you? And besides if you wear schoolgirl's gear it will remind you of Dorothy as she used to be not as she is now wouldn't it?"
"I suppose so," she said dubiously.
"Jean, we've got to do something to solve our difficulties. Either we try this or we'd better go ahead with a divorce, because I don't think we could carry on as we were before."
"No," she said, "I couldn't bear that again and it has been better between us since Friday.
I think ... perhaps ... I'll give it a try, if you like Martin. But I'll be very embarrassed, I expect."
He leapt from the sofa and went rushing out of the room and bounding up the stairs. In a few minutes he came clattering down again carrying a parcel done up in brown paper, which she had never seen before and wondered where he had hidden it. She watched curiously while he undid it. The parcel contained a gymslip and blouse, navy blue panties, a liberty bodice with suspenders attached, black stockings, and lace-up shoes. They had all been bought before his marriage in the vain hope that one day his new bride might co-operate in his aberration.
She was certainly embarrassed. She did not know which way to look when she saw the clothes. But she agreed to the experiment, so she stood up reluctantly and stripped off her blouse. Martin sat in the big easy chair beside the fire. He especially did not want to frighten her by being too near although he would have loved to help her change. It seemed to him important that she shouldn't be startled or surprised, so he said:
"I'm going to take my penis out, Jean, but you don't have to look at me ... I'm just warning you."
She flushed and did not look at him. He undid the buttons of his flies. Already at the very thought of seeing her undress and dress again IN THOSE CLOTHES had got him to fever pitch. No sooner had his tool emerged from his trousers than he had an immediate emission. It was not surprising after three years of sexual frustrations and masturbation.
But she did not know. He mopped it up in his handkerchief and watched her as she took off her skirt, her panties, her corselet, her nylons, and her pretty frilly brassiere. And then she redressed. In the liberty bodice which hardly reached her waist, navy blue school panties which stretched tight across her adult buttocks. Now the blouse, then the gymslip over all and, one by one, the black stockings which were long but only just reached the stretched suspenders. Finally she put on the lace-up shoes.
She stood for a few minutes undecided. What was she supposed to do now? She looked quickly over at her husband. He was staring at her with a concentrated, almost ferocious, expression on his face while his hand worked vigorously to revive his penis. She looked away.
Suddenly he began to speak:
"You told me," he said, his voice low in the dim room, "That Dorothy used to sneak into the same lavatory as yours when you were at school.
"You used to lock the door and then you used to put your hands up each other gym slips. Just like the one you've got on ... your fingers would feel each other's mickey's through the material...."
Jean's face was flushed. She had not realized he intended to excite her at the same time she was exciting him. But of course that was what he meant ... she closed her eyes.
"... of your school panties and you would open your legs and pull the elastic wide so that the other's hand could get up the leg...."
Into her mind's eye came the youthful Dorothy ... there she was with her untidy black hair, standing with her hand up Jean's panties, her gentle fingers producing the most delicious feeling in her young puss. The years rolled away in an instant, invoking the most vivid memory of the past. Her hand began to find its way up the leg of her schoolgirl panties, her face glazed and sightless. Martin held his breath this was perfect! Not only had he got the schoolgirl he craved for, but he had a schoolgirl masturbating herself and on top of all that she was his wife! His pumping hand once more brought a marvelous thrilling climax. His semen dribbled hot and thick over the back of his hand. He looked down and watched the white liquid start and stop from the pinkish-mauve head of his weapon. He looked up and went on talking to Jean:
"...and then when you got very excited, you pulled your panties right down to the knees and stood in front of each other pulling back the lips of your little schoolgirl quims with both hands so that the other girl could get a good look. And one of you would then go down on her knees and look up at the other's twat and push a finger about and explore and...."
His voice droned on. Jean was ecstatic. She stood in the middle of the floor. As he spoke about the knickers being brought down she lifted her gymslip and dragged down her own navy-blue panties. She hooked two fingers into her hairy adult cunt and exposed it to Martin with her long legs bent at the knees so he could see its slimy interior from front to back. This was obviously the stance she had adopted with Dorothy all those years ago. She was acting it out before him....
And Martin thought he would almost burst with excitement. Her pose was lascivious in the extreme. To see her standing dressed as a schoolgirl in her own living-room, the electric fire showing her bent open legs, her exposed cunt, her eager working fingers, was erotic beyond his wildest dreams. He was seeing an aspect of Jean he had never dreamed existed.
He leant back in his chair, his legs wide open, one hand slowly masturbating his limp penis and the other hand cupping his balls which he gently squeezed from time to time. His eyes were fixed on the wonderful scene in front of him. She was no oblivious of his presence. The afternoon's session with Dorothy had certainly had an effect on her, he decided. She had, without realizing it, broken down all her inhibitions at one stroke.
He was positive she would also break down all those moral scruples she still had. He caught his breath. Suddenly he was jerked back into the reality of their situation and saw objectively what had happened to their lives from the minute he told Jean on Friday of his intention to divorce her.
He was appalled at the avalanche of eroticism which had overwhelmed both of them. He was nauseated. Had they gone mad? Here was his wife, whom he had associated with a cold sexless attitude, exhibiting herself in the most lewd, undignified manner imaginable and here was he condoning a Lesbian relationship between his wife and anybody she fancied and deliberately asking her to encourage him in his unlawful erotic dreams about teenagers. How could such a moral degeneration have occurred so quickly? He was sick with shame and turned his eyes away from the lustful writhing of his schoolgirl wife. Thoughts were stirring around in his head like a whirlpool.
The trouble with both of us, he thought, is the silly outdated way we have been brought up and the church's puritanical outlook on sex. We've had it shoved down our throats since we were children and when we discover the pleasure of sex we feel guilty at our enjoyment.
His eyes traveled back to the figure of his wife, still standing, eyes shut, in front of him. His diversion had really only lasted a few minutes but he felt he had lived a lifetime and cut the umbilical cord from his childhood. I'm a whole responsible person now, he thought, I've broken away from a conventional attitude which is all lies, and I'm free at last. With a sense of relief his fingers closed once more over his tool and, with an appreciative eye, he looked at the gaping hole a few feet away from him and noticed it was so wet that the light was making it glitter as she moved.
Two of Jean's fingers were working furiously inside her vagina and each time they went in her thumb came down expertly on her clitoris so she was stimulating both sensitive parts of her genitals at the same time.
Jean hand obediently slipped up her body and pushed her gymslip, blouse and liberty bodice right up her arms so that one luscious boob came into view. Martin's hand worked faster on his cock at the sight of it. Her fingers squeezed the sunken nipple and slowly it erected to a hard protuberance, red and demanding. He knew a breast which had never been sucked before would not be able to produce a nipple as big as that. It was obvious it had received a lot of attention as a schoolgirl. That first lover of hers, her math teacher, must have titillated her youthful teats, and he had no doubt that very afternoon Dorothy had enjoyed their white and pink beauty.
A lustful urge to suck at it himself overcame him, but he dare not approach her. If the illusion were broken that she was playing about with Dorothy it would all be ruined for her and for him too! Nevertheless he licked his lips oh how he'd love his mouth around that thrusting teat. She was pulling the nipple out now in a milking action.
Her heaving belly was close to him, but her eyes were still closed as he rubbed his penis and felt the spunk lurking ready to shoot. He saw her hand drop away from her breast and her deliberate movement as she offered it to him to suck, turning a little sideways so it was only six inches from his face.
He did not dare touch her with his hands, but craned his neck forward and took the proffered nipple between gentle teeth and pulled it out deliberately towards him. Her breath came sharply at the feeling she experienced and he guessed this was one of the things which had been done to her before. To his surprise she began to speak!
He listened in wonder to his wife's adult voice speaking the words she must have uttered to her school friend years ago:
"Oh Dot my breasts are burning ... suck it hard and pull it out with your teeth ... ooohhh that's lovely! My cunny's so hot darling, your fingers are tearing me to bits ... oh, it's naughty Dot, but it's so marvelous ... it's wonderful, Dot, push your fingers in further and rub really hard. Oh Dot I want to wee-wee!! I can feel it ... leave your hand there while I do it let me wee all over your hand. Hold it under me Dot...."
Martin was almost beside himself. This was developing into an orgy of eroticism for him ... and now to have a schoolgirl actually asking him to hold his hand out to peed on nearly made him come there and then. In fact he had stopped tossing himself off and just left his enormous erection twitching in front of him as he put his hand to feel her warm yellow stream descend in a gush. He took his lips away from her nipple so he could watch. There wasn't much of it and he marveled. Clearly this had been part of the ritual between Dorothy and Jean and she was able to control it so her stockings and shoes didn't get drenched while they played in the school lavatory. It was just the idea of going in a friend's hand which was exciting to her. Indeed it appeared to be nearly the climax for Jean. Her hand went back immediately into her cunt and her thumb once more touched the little erect clitoris. Her other hand returned to her breast and Martin was able to lean back and watch his wife toss herself off lasciviously within inches of him.
The spunk rushed up his shaft in an enormous spurt of lustful enjoyment. He did not catch it in any way and it shot out from him in several forceful jerks as he watched the school girl near him shuddering in her climax, her gymslip and blouse all tucked up under her armpits, her black stockinged legs opened wide and her palpitating slit dripping with her own come. Into his mind's eye came the memory of thrusting his tool up into the tight twats of the two schoolgirls he had fucked and the blissful thought brought this glorious experience to an end.
Jean fell onto the sofa, her gymslip dropping down over her delectable buttocks. She was panting heavily and he marveled to see her excited for the first time since he'd known her. Wisely he didn't speak or move, he merely leant back and tried to composed himself a little. It had been a tremendously thrilling thing, this co-operative masturbation. He felt he could go on enjoying it indefinitely, without humping her. If only Jean had no misgivings about it all (he remembered the fits of guilt she'd had as a schoolgirl) it seemed to him their sexual problems were solved.
He mopped up the scattered blobs of his emission with his handkerchief, and zipped up his flies, knowing Jean's illusion was still important. He refilled their glasses with whiskey and lit a cigarette. When she showed signs of reviving he took a drink over to her and offered it with a smile. She took it from him, her glance as shy as though she were afraid he would make fun of her, or be disgusted. But he just smiled cheerfully and lifted his glass as a toast. She responded immediately.
"To us and sex!" he cried.
"Yes," she answered, "I'll drink to that," and raising her glass, drained the drink in one gulp and then threw her glass into the stone fireplace, narrowly avoiding the electric fire.
He was surprised at her defiant gesture, so unlike her normal reserved manner but he understood it immediately; she was burning her boats, refusing to be guilty or ashamed. He gulped his own drink down and threw his glass, watching as it shattered on the hearth.
They looked at each other triumphantly and laughed.
CHAPTER FOUR
From that Sunday night a new life started for Martin and Jean Buller. Alongside their new-sexual relationship were all the new experiences due to her acceptance of the Committee's offer to run the Youth Club. Members of the Committee, prominent amongst them being Mr.. Huxtable, were constantly in the house at all hours discussing the new organization. It was agreed that Jean should have several helpers and a program of activities was drawn up. The Treasurer wrote cheques for sorts of apparatus, in eluding a tennis table and a record player. Second-hand canteen equipment was installed and then a printed leaflet circulated in the neighborhood inviting young people to join the new club.
Response was good and Jean found she had a constant stream of callers. Parents, schoolteachers, newspaper reporters, people who wanted to help and other Youth Club organizers crowded into her home and she rarely seemed to have a moment to herself. Martin and she had long since given up having their orgies in the sitting-room and now confined their sex-life to the bedroom where they had a larger electric fire installed so the place was really cozy. It became their only refuge.
After a month, the hurly-burly died down and the real hard work of running the club and keeping it going began to devolve upon Jean's shoulders. She was an expert organizer and her enthusiasm for the venture infected other people, especially a bachelor girl called Jacqueline Summers who lived in a small furnished flat a few houses away. It was this girl whom she chose to be her second in command. She was a tall athletic type who had been Head Girl at her school and still kept up various activities connected with sport. She was about nineteen, with short black hair beautifully groomed always trimly dressed in short-skirted suits and low-heeled shoes. There was a vigorous, healthy, straightforward air about her which appealed to the teenagers and they got along famously with her. Towards Jean she was respectful and admiring and Jean could not help feeling the girl's attitude somewhat resembled a perfect towards a schoolmistress. But never by the blink of an eyelid was there the slightest suspicion of sexual attraction towards Jean, who was glad of it, since she had become fond of Jacky.
Jean found she enjoyed her work at the Youth Club enormously. She was popular with the teenagers because she wasn't too strict and didn't lecture them about their short skirts, hairdos or the secret smoking she knew went on in the toilets. Soon she found she had a little following of about six girls who admired her and copied her to such an extent they became nicknamed 'Jean Brigade'. She didn't mind, in fact she liked it, but she was very careful not to show favoritism and to keep the emotional temperature down and did not encourage any hanging onto her arm or anything which might stimulate a young girl's sexuality. She knew only too well how that could happen and although she wasn't unhappy any longer with her secret knowledge of herself, nevertheless she could see it would be a pity if normal girls were waylaid into relationships at an impressionable age.
With the young boys in the Club Jean had little to do. She delegated the administration of their affairs to a male helper and only came in contact with them when they shared their activities with the girls. She was popular with them too, because of her beauty and elegance, but she had to be somewhat aloof, realising that if she interested any of them sexually it might be even more embarrassing than amongst the girls.
Martin was witness to all this activity and viewed it with a somewhat sceptical eye. His sex life was now completely satisfying and he found Jean's preoccupation with the Youth Club could be annoying. But he was sensible enongh to see that it diverted her from brooding over her inversion, or the question of divorce, or even their somewhat unusual sex life. He noticed she was infinitely more cheerful, and bright, out-giving and it was now a pleasure to return to the house after a long day at work and find a smiling face and plenty of news awaiting him.
After a while he began to distinguish some of the teenagers who frequently called at the house on one errand or another. The club had elected its own Member's Committee to organize games and amusements and the girls and boys who had obtained office often needed to consult with Jean. He was delighted to find that all his previous misgivings now seemed unfounded and his dreams had completely disappeared. Nevertheless he was quite capable of casting an appreciative eye at a girlish leg or the pert bulge of a youthful breast through a tight sweater. He told himself this was quite normal in any man and refused to allow it to upset him. Jean dressed up for him every other night or so and he had his very own schoolgirl-wife to watch and enjoy. He felt he had nothing to complain about and everything was under control.
Then that fateful day arrived when Tracy was elected on to the Youth Club Committee to replace a girl who had taken ill and gone into hospital for a long stay.
Tracy was fourteen. She had not left school, but she had all the signs of teenage sophistication which usually comes when girls are at work. Her parents allowed her to dress in extremely brief mini-skirts and brightly colored stockings. Her sweaters were skin tight and her long blonde hair hung down in two straight lines down the sides of her sprightly knowing little face. She had beautiful eyes and when she was not at school she made the most of them with mascara and shadow and fantastic jeweled false eyelashes which made her look like a startled but far from innocent, fawn.
Martin came home from work one day to find Jean deep in conversation with this teenage apparition. They were talking about a record concert which was to be put on that evening, the major contribution to which was to be made from Tracy's own collection of discs. When Jean went to find the key to the club record player for Tracy, Martin found himself being eyed speculatively under those provocative eyelashes. He felt uncomfortable and tried to make time-passing conversation, but Tracy wasn't very responsive and hurried away busily when Jean returned.
He sat down to his dinner with the uneasy feeling that the girl had got under his skin, and he resented it. Surely he was invulnerable now? But the girl's expressive eyes kept coming back into his memory until he had to make a real effort to suppress them. After the dishes had been washed and put away Jean went off to the Youth Club to supervise a table tennis tournament and Martin settled down with a glass of whiskey to do some accounts he had brought home from the office.
At eight o'clock there was a ring on the bell.
It was Tracy.
"I'm terribly sorry, Mr.. Buller, but I left my handbag here earlier on. Can I have it please?"
"Are you sure Tracy?" I haven't seen it."
"Oh yes, I'm sure. I know where I left it."
He ushered her into the sitting room and she went immediately to the chair in the far corner from behind which she produced the handbag. It was quite obvious to Martin that it had been deliberately placed there and he knew the girl had planned to return when Jean had gone. He was flabbergasted. The cunning of the child the impertinence! And yet he was flattered. The little devil, he thought, the scheming little minx!
She was watching him under those fluttering eyelashes, perfectly aware of the effect she produced and also aware he knew she had deliberately hidden her handbag.
She glanced at the open cocktail cabinet.
"Oooh! You've got that new soft drink I saw on the television the other night do let me sample it, Mr.. Buller, please."
Helpless before her blatant effrontery he walked over to the cabinet, removed the cap from a bottle and poured the sparkling pink liquid into a pretty Venetian glass. She took it daintily and he enjoyed a whiff of expensive perfume as he bent to give her the glass. She had seated herself without invitation and now nonchalantly produced a tiny cigarette case and helped herself to one and a jeweled lighter soon applied the light.
"Surely," he protested, "You're too young to be smoking?"
"Oh everyone smokes nowadays. And I don't do it often. But I like to look grown up because you see I am grown up in many ways, although I'm only fourteen."
He digested this information and decided not to argue, after all she was his guest.
"And how grown-up do you think you are, Tracy?" he asked jocularly, "Seventeen eighteen?"
"Oh no! Much older than that. Sometimes I feel all of thirty!"
"Goodness!" he laughed, that's almost ready for the old age pension to someone of fourteen!"
She pouted: "I wish people wouldn't keep emphasizing my age. Why can't they just take me as a person and let me be?"
"It takes some of us a long time to get used to schoolgirls who look like their mothers, that's why," he said, somewhat petulantly.
"You mean I ought still to be wearing those ugly gymslips and black swollen stockings?"
His heart gave a terrible jolt at her words for he had been secretly wondering what she would look like dressed in those clothes hidden away in a drawer upstairs.
"I don't see why not. Schoolgirls have an awful long time of adulthood ahead of them they ought to enjoy their schooldays as long as they can."
"But Mr.. Buller, I enjoy my schooldays thoroughly. I don't have to wear ugly clothes to make them any better. But you know I've come to a conclusion about school uniforms and I've never told anyone else about it."
"Well ... what is it?"
"I think it attracts men ... I don't know exactly why, but I know it does. I still have to wear a gymslip sometimes you know, we don't have shorts for games at school, and I've noticed how the men look at me when I go home in the afternoons. Sometimes they look at me more than when I wear my mini-skirt."
Martin had a lump in his chest and found it extremely difficult to breathe normally. There was a vivid impression in his mind of Tracy with her long legs in black stockings gracefully bending over to pick up a hockey ball and her short gymslip revealing navy blue panties and a tiny white crack of flesh between her panties and her stocking tops ... he found he was trembling.
"I sometimes see you on Fridays," she said confidentially. It was apparent she did not expect any reply from him on the provocative nature of gymslips, "We stay late to play hockey and then I go to a dance class, so I'm very late going home. You get on the bus opposite our school you know in Springfield Road, near the Common."
"er ... yes ... I know," he muttered with difficultly.
She had finished her drink now and stood up, "Oh well, I'd better be going. You're awfully sweet really Mr.. Buller all the girls in the Youth Club think you're just like a TV star," she simpered.
"Me?" he was outraged. "Whatever do you mean?"
"Oh you're just handsome in a nice rugged way, that's all. Please don't take offense. Well thanks for the drink. Goodbye."
As he saw her to the door she spoke inaudibly and he was not quite sure he heard her rightly, "See you Friday," was what he thought she said but surely he was mistaken?
She gave him a ravishing farewell smile, fully aware that she had made quite an impression on him, but in her innocence she could not possible have known the devastation she left behind her. He leant against the front door, sick with relief. So he was vulnerable to teenagers still ... it came as a heavy blow.
He went back to the sitting room and poured himself a stiff drink. Friday indeed! The audacity of the child! Of course he would not see her....
When Jean returned home later that night she could see he had been drinking heavily and was preoccupied and worried.
"What's up Martin? I feel something's the matter."
He told her about Tracy's visit.
"Oh my God, Martin, the little Devil! Were you ... were you attracted by her?"
"Damn it, Jean of course I was she's a pretty, naughty little thing. Oh Jean, let's go to bed straight away.
"I think what you really need is someone to make love to properly. This isn't very easy to say, darling ... but if you want to ... er ... go with another woman ... I won't mind, so long as you do it discreetly!"
He looked up at her quickly and then glanced away in embarrassment
"Perhaps I will," he muttered.
He looked broodingly into the fire. "It's been fine up till now. But I suppose it's only a compromise when you look at it baldly. Basically we've still got the same problems we had before. It might be your turn next Jean to be tempted. You're damn lucky teenagers don't attract you that way but you never know...."
She shivered apprehensively: "What do we do get drunk, like we did before?" she asked, smiling painfully in spite of the strain and worry on her face.
"No that doesn't solve anything really. Let's go to bed and have an orgy come on!"
And husband and wife went rather morosely to bed. The orgy was not a success for either of them. In fact it fell flat and they both felt silly and uncomfortable for the first time. Their self-deception had come to an end.
The next day Martin was back to his old mood of black frustration. The fantasy he had built up with Jean had come tumbling down at the first temptation and now he had to admit to himself that he was absolutely dying to go to bed with a woman and have a proper and satisfying fuck. Maybe if he did that he would get out of his mind the tantalizing thought of Tracy in a gym slip. He tried to think whom he could invite to bed. Martin was an attractive man and there was usually someone around whom he knew would need little persuading to hop between the sheets with him. He had been sorely tempted during those sexless years with Jean. Now he had the go-ahead, so to speak.
There was his secretary for instance. But he decided not to mix business with pleasure, reluctantly though; Miss Greenlees was very attractive. What about the receptionist at Goddard and Price? No she was too thin. The waitress at the restaurant where he went to lunch? No too fat. He was annoyed to find that just when he wanted a bed worthy woman there was none in the offing.
The idea of a prostitute came into his head and then the remembered a friend of theirs, Phillip Church, who often came round with his wife for a drink, although they hadn't seen much of them recently. Last time they came Phillip had mentioned a girl to Martin while their wives were in the kitchen making sandwiches. What was it he'd said? He couldn't remember half of it being more than a little pickled at the time. She charged high prices and kept herself exclusively for just a few men. She didn't hustle you in and out but made a semi-social occasion of it ... she was an accomplished pianist and an intelligent, educated woman. He remembered thinking at the time she must be something exceptional but hadn't taken Phil up on it.
He telephoned Church at his office from a booth during his lunch time. Phillip said he would try to arrange it by personally recommending him, but it might take time. She was choosy, apparently. Martin put on pressure to make Phillip arrange it as soon as possible. His friend sounded surprised, but since he owed Martin several favors he took his request seriously and must have taken the afternoon off from work to visit the girl, because he phoned back at four o'clock and told Martin it was all arranged for that evening. Her name was Anna Celestini-que and he gave her address.
With genuine gratitude Martin thanked him and then rang Jean and tactfully told her he was staying in town for dinner and a show. She understood immediately and cheerfully wished him a pleasant evening.
The discreet luxury of Anna's flat in Bond Street impressed Martin as he entered the leather lined one-man lift which took him directly up to her suite. But when she open the door he received a tremendous shock. Standing before him was a most beautiful colored woman! She was the living embodiment of the tragic Dorothy Dandridge and for a few moments he stood entranced, mouth open.
Recovering he asked tentatively: "Miss Anna?"
"Yes: please come in Mr.. Buller, I see my appearance has surprised you. I take it you did not expect me to be colored?"
"Well ... er ... no ... I...."
"That's alright Mr. Buller, but if you feel you cannot go on with the arrangement made by Mr.. Church please go, I do not want either of us to be embarrassed."
"Certainly not! I should be delighted to stay," he said, gallantly, meaning it.
She flashed a magnificent smile at him, her eyes sparkling at his compliment.
"Let's have a drink on that, Mr.. Buller."
"Martin, please."
"What will you have, Martin whiskey."
"Please straight."
Her apartment was expensively furnished but the luxuary was unobtrusive. He saw one valuable painting on the wall and two Ming bronzes of exquisite patina but they were not placed with ostentatious prominence.
He took the drink she offered in a crystal glass, exquisitely cut and delicate. He appreciated the informed love of beauty with which she surrounded herself and he was soon delighted with the ease of her manner. She was a practiced courtesan of intellect and refinement, yet she had not subdued the animal magnetism which exuded from every sinuous movement of her beautiful body. She was that ideal synthesis of sense and sensuality so rarely met and yet so ardently wished for by men of discernment.
She made him feel like a Greek patrician imaginative, cultured, master of the situation. He was aware of her subtle flattery and ad mired her skill and beauty.
"Phillip told me you sing rather well; would you sing for me, Anna, please?"
"Of course," she responded immediately "a pleasure. Now, what would you like ... something operatic? A folk song? Or a naughty song?"
She went over to an elegant grand piano, painted pale green and decorated with pink roses in the French style. It stood centrally in the crescent of an enormous bay window, now shrouded in heavy dark green curtains. A crystal pendant lamp was the only illumination at that end of the room. He watched as she sat on the long piano stood and noticed that the shimmering floor length grown she wore was slit from ankle to thigh, revealing a ravishing length of golden brown leg.
"Ah, here's something. I'm a collector of erotic folksongs and this one...."
He listen to her singing as she accompanied herself on the piano. Her voice was low, velvety and of exquisite caressing tone. He felt himself getting warm at the very sound of her, let alone the sight, which was devastating enough. He wished fervently he could remember more of what Phillip had told him about her. What was it?
Like a panther ... something primitive ... Her hair was jet black and had never been frizzy. It was coiled in great loose loops on top of her head, emphasizing the classic curve of her cheekbone and the lustrous black eyes. Her nose was straight, finely molded, and her head was poised delicately on a long, graceful neck. Her shoulders were rather bony, but not inelegant. Her breasts were truly magnificent not too large but generously proportioned and holding themselves in such a natural manner that he was sure she wore no brassiere beneath the scanty gown, which was split down to the waist back and front, leaving two glittering bands to swathe her breasts. Altogether a ravishing creature.
The song was certainly erotic, but amusing also. He laughed heartily at its cheerful obscenity and came to sit down on the piano stool beside her. He put his arm casually around her waist and she moved sensuously against him, sending a thrill of delight up his spine. He played a little ditty with one hand and sang a song which matched her own for obscenity and she laughed throatily, capping it with another even more obscene and they continued singing and playing for several minutes until he suddenly caught her in his arms, almost roughly, pressing his eager lips on hers. Her arms closed around him willingly and he knew she had taken to him and was genuinely attracted, or else a superb actress it didn't really matter which.
After the first kiss he held her at arm's length and studied her with curiosity. Somehow, although he had only known her about half an hour he felt quite at home and that was not because of the nature of the songs they had been singing but from some spark in her character which had struck a spark of affinity in him. The sort of thing you recognize only once or twice with a stranger in a lifetime. That he should feel this towards a colored woman filled him with amazement he had not even met one before, let alone kissed one or planned to hump one!
She smiled under his scrutiny, turning her head from side to side, balancing the exquisitely coiffured head on the dark column of her neck in a provocative mocking gesture.
"You are very beautiful," he said, running his white hand gently down the smooth velvet of her neck.
"You're not too bad yourself!" she said in a low crooning voice.
"My friend called you a panther...." he said grinning and wondering how she would react.
"Phillip? Ah yes and he's like a big white bear!" she gurgled and Martin laughed. Yes Phillip with his mane of fair hair, fresh complexion and enormous shoulders yes, very apt.
"And what would you call me?" he asked challengingly.
"I hardly know you yet but I've got a feeling you're a male panther!"
The black eyes were eating him up, searching into his innermost thoughts ... he was drowning as he looked into them ... his face came down slowly, his lips searching as his eyes drank in the primitive promise in those hot dark depth. His tongue came out hesitatingly and was immediately sucked into the vortex of her mouth. The erotic symbolism of this intimate action sent his mind in a mad whirl and his arms tightened savagely. She reacted vigorously, her body writhing against him, a vivid, live, human woman, all breasts, belly and thighs, a personification of primitive desire, offering herself with no selfish reservations, but demanding greedily in return. A primeval woman, pure in the innocence of her generosity and the honesty of her lust.
He was astounded at the vividness of his sensations. Every pore, vein, artery and organ within his body seemed to be pulsating with a super-consciousness ... he was aware of his body as an entity within and without ... his lips, pressed hard against her mouth, were inexplicably connected to his racing heart and the tingling roots of his hair, even his toes curling ecstatically in his shoes. He was electric, throbbing, alive, almost painfully aware of the aura of desire which flowed from her palpitating body into his. She ignited a primitive hungry passion that flared and ate away at his normal reserve. The barren years dissolved in an instant and left him shaken as though by some religious ecstasy.
His gyrating senses slowly returned to normal and he took his mouth away from those devouring lips to ease his panting lungs. Their arms relaxed and a soft voice whispered in his ear:
"You were gone my dear out of this world. Are you high?"
He shook his head, both to clear it and to answer in the negative.
"No," he said in a shaking voice, "But if taking drugs produces an effect like that, then no wonder people take them!"
She laughed softly while he kissed her arching neck, slowly becoming aware that they still sat on the long piano stool.
"I'm sorry if I lost control ... I haven't been with a woman who responded for three years and it was too much for me."
"Good God. Three years?"
"Yes," he said, feeling his body taking solid shape again and his heart resuming its normal beat.
"I think you need another drink Martin," and she slipped from his loosened arms and walked sinuously to her cabinet. He stood up and then became embarrassingly aware of the stickiness inside his trousers. He wasn't surprised, but he was unaware of when it happened. It was as though the world had stood still for those few minutes and he had stepped off onto a wildly revolving planet where gravity did not exist; in fact this was an excellent description because he found the floor strangely jarring and solid beneath his feet as he walked towards her outstretched hand and took the proffered glass.
She was a woman of unusual sensitivity. After glancing keenly at him over her tall glass she gently pushed him into a comfortable chair and returned to the piano. She began to play cool, expressive music, Chopin, he guessed, and left him to recover in private.
He watched the sensuous curve of her brown back and the silhouette of her breasts against the velvet curtains. One leg, silver shoed, was revealed from ankle to thigh, the muscles tautening and slackening as her foot touched the piano pedal. Yes ... she was a panther alright, a silent dangerous creature lurking in the undergrowths of lust, ready to show her teeth to the unwary and to stalk the willing victim to the depth of his unconscious.
Through a half open door to the right he could see a dimly lit bedroom where a large luxurious bed, covered in deep crimson velvet, crouched invitingly, backed by a huge mirror in gold frame decorated with miniature leprechauns and satyrs peeping slyly from the carved foliage. He picked up his drink and wandered in. The tenor of the sounds changed and as he undressed leisurely he felt the mounting tension of her music invoking a response from his senses. There was a climax of thunderous chords and then silence.
He lay relaxed, his eyes on the door. When she appeared she carried her glass in one hand and a half smoked cigarette in the other. She stood in the doorway watching him, admiring the male beauty of his vigorous young body, at rest yet revealing the vile tension of his slowly erecting penis, sturdy witness to her approach.
She drained her glass, doused her cigarette and, standing in the doorway, framed in the brighter light from without, she lifted a slim arm ad undid a concealed fastening at her hip. With a provocative twist of her body the scanty glittering dress slid reluctantly to the floor and revealed her golden-brown naked body.
He guessed that instead of powdering as white skinned women do she had oiled her body sufficiently to highlight the curves and indentations of her flesh so that she glowed like some incandescent vision in a sexual dream. His first reaction was to compare her to Jean and then he realize it was not possible to do so. Jean typified the Western ideal of beauty as exemplified by willowy fashion models and the influence of teenage underdeveloped womanhood. Anna's body was a mixture of Eastern voluptuousness and the primitive conception of basic femininity.
Her torso was slim waisted but her shoulders were broad and bore the weight of her magnificent breasts with dignified grace. The black cluster of hair at her pube was a mysterious shadow and her belly was a dimpled gentle mound. Her buttocks and flanks were rounded and strong and tapered to long slim legs with flexible knees and dainty ankles. Her feet were sinewy with the big toe well separated. She was the embodiment of sexual potency, the waiting seed pod for the deposit of human semen, a voluptuous delight to the eyes and a promise of sensuous pleasure to the touch.
He held out one arm in a gesture of welcome and she walked across the deep carpet and sat beside him on the bed, leaning over him, her breasts swinging free, one nipple lightly touching his chest. His hand traveled up her arm to the bony shoulder. Kneading his fingers into the nape of her neck he watched her throw her head back, eyes closed, enjoying his strong exploring fingers. He drew her down towards his searching lips and felt her breasts touch and then flatten r against him, the two dark brown nipples hard against his hairy chest. His hand traveled down the groove of her spine to the flexible bend of her waist whilst his tongue raked her moist mouth, meeting her own enquiring point.
She swung her legs up onto the bed and rolled onto her back, looking up at him with smoldering eyes, the lustrous hair tumbling in beautiful disarray about her forehead.
He cupped the smooth, oiled swell of one full breast and found he could not contain it all in one hand. His fingers were buried in the resilient dark flesh. The nipple was erect and surrounded by a brown aureole of darker skin. He bent his head and took it into a sucking mouth where he felt it lengthen and harden. He pushed his nose into the succulent fruit of her breast, quarrying in that feminine mound for the delights of smell and touch to rouse his senses.
He felt his penis lift itself from along his thigh and point lecherously to the ceiling. A warm exploring hand passed gently over his belly and clasped the root of his weapon It swelled and throbbed to the knowing fingers which did not attempt to move the foreskin down. She did not want this pillar of his tribute to be stimulated by anything except the hot luscious hole of her cunt, and divining this he threw a leg over her thighs, dragging his mouth away from hers for a moment while he adjusted himself, one knee on either side of her. Her dark thighs opened like jaws to reveal a red glistening mouth lurking in the black undergrowth between her legs. She lifted her knees high, reached up and clasped him urgently in her arms.
Once more he sunk into her, guiding his shaft to her with one hand and slipping the other round to grasp the firm flesh of her buttocks. He sunk into her in one glorious smooth gulp, coming to rest hard against her body as it surged eagerly upwards to meet his, their bellies closing with the insistence of mutual possession.
Immediately he was galvanized into frantic action. The muscles of her vagina were alive, tightening spasmodically on his throbbing prick as it thrust in and out of the well lubricated sleeve of her sex. His ravenous mouth devoured her lips or foraged madly at her breasts. They rolled and writhed in the rhythm he created which she followed with intuitive ease, responding to downward thrusts by upwards heaves and to withdrawal by controlled retreat. He felt the gathering thunder and braced himself for the approaching charge which seemed to shake every fiber of his body by the force of its ejection into her. Anna's receptive body shuddered and then he was engulfed in her circling legs and arms like the victim of a voracious female spider. The room spun lopsidedly as he felt a momentary spasm of primitive fear. Then he collapsed sideways onto the bed, panting, every taut nerve relieved and relaxed ... his body a glow of hunger appeased and sense gratified.
He opened his eyes and turned his head. Anna was lying facing him with the satisfied smirk of a cream-fed cat.
She rose and took a black nylon negligee from the chaise lounge at the foot of the bed. He noticed there was a man's robe there also and he draped it around his shoulders and returned to bed. Not that he needed to wear it, the flat was obviously centrally heated and turned on full at that. He just felt right wearing it at that moment. She returned with a silver salver on which was the whiskey bottle, two glasses and a Dresden dish of cocktail savories. She offered him a cigarette from an alabaster box beside the bed and he chose a black Turkish one, just for devilment's sake. The evening for which he had paid was far from finished yet, but he decided that after one more hump he would leave her. She was too overwhelming to take for a whole night after his famine years. He knew instinctively she would allow him to return, there was a rapport between them which he was sure she also had felt.
They chatted amicably about this and that, but he did not commit the insensitive offence of asking her about her other clients or how she liked her life, or anything about herself at all, other than those things you would say to any strange woman you had just been to bed with. As a consequence she opened out and spoke freely on a number of subjects but discreetly avoided her profession. He was unaware of her deep appreciation of his delicacy. She was attracted to the young man far more than she would admit to herself, for it was a dangerous thing to become too involved with clients. She was in a position to pick and choose whom she took and rarely had more than six lovers at a time. Martin had been fortunate because of the death of a young baronet who had crashed his car at a race track. Phillip she liked and trusted, and had been willing to take Martin on his recommendation.
"You must come often if you can afford it," she said, quiet sincerely.
"I shall," he replied, calculating just how often he could afford her. Once a fortnight would be a squeezed at the rate she had charged for this night.
"Oh don't take any notice of my first fee," she laughed, "I always make it high, then I know the man is really eager! I like you," and she named a price one third cheaper. This delighted Martin and he smiled with such obvious pleasure she was almost tempted to reduce it still lower but prudence restrained her. There was something appealing about this young man. She guessed there was a sadness, a tragedy somewhere in his life, but she did not pry.
He knew his performance so far had not been exactly expert, but he was not dissatisfied. Considering his lack of practice he hadn't done so bad, in spite of his inadvertent emission on the piano stool. She had come at the same moment as he had and prostitutes did not normally react in that manner, whatever they pretended On the other hand, of course, she was not a common whore, nor even a call girl. It was difficult to place her in modern society, so few independent women of taste and culture are prepared to be courtesans. He lay back against the velvet cover once more. She finished her drink and turned to him. One delicate brown hand, pink tipped, traced its way across the hairs on his chest from nipple to nipple, then descended over his belly. She saw the muscles tighten at her touch and she smiled. His limp penis lay wrinkled and bent over a drop of moisture oozing from the tip. She began to stroke it gently and watched as it slowly grew, the head emerging gradually from the extending sheath.
She grasped it firmly at the base where the crisp brown hairs encircled it and lifted it from his leg. Now it was hard enough to stand straight out and she drew the foreskin back, revealing the bright skinny knob with its prominent rim. Suddenly she bent her head, but she did not put the penis in her mouth. A pointed tongue darted out and snaked around the rim where the delicate skin quivered and the cock immediately hardened and stood even straighter and more vigorous.
Her tongue tickled the little hole on top which exuded a few more drops of colorless liquid then once more she ran her tongue around the rim. Edging down the bed, she took the prick in her other hand and pushed her face into the wrinkled bag of his testicles, nuzzling and sucking and poking her tongue into them, burying her face in the scanty hairs and smelling the acrid odor of his maleness. Her tongue traced once up the trembling stalk of his weapon and this time her mouth opened and took in the great knob.
He caught his breath in sheer delight. To be sunk into that wet orifice where before his tongue had explored was tremendously exciting. He felt her create a vacuum which sucked the stretched skin of his knob and the rough surface of her tongue was a delicious abrasive which filled him with a trembling, rising passion. He flexed his loins and hardened the muscles of his belly, pushing his prick up into the soft contracting, sucking opening.
Now she was moving her head up and down as she imitated the action of the sleeve of a cunt, he saw her breast swaying and the sinuous flex of her neck.
"Turn around" he whispered, and wriggled down further in the bed so that there would be room for her legs on the pillow as she brought her rounded buttocks down towards him in a sweeping arc. Then her body turned and near his face was the enchanted thicket of her black public hair through which, at such close quarters, he could see the faint pink line of her glistening slit with his two forefingers he separated the lips of her sex and revealed the fleshy wet interior with the protuberance of her clitoris and the dark hole of her vagina. The dusky skin was darker between her thighs and the lips of her vulva were almost black. The hair was profuse on her pubes and there were many straggling hairs around her mickey, like eyelashes on a Cyclopean eye. He was amazed at the gradation of color and took it all in leisurely, whilst she gently sucked him. At her knees the skin was quite pale, becoming gradually darker on the inside of her thighs only. Her buttocks were pale in comparison. Inside, her vulva was a vivid red, shading to pink around the clitoris. He poked his finger into the rudimentary penis and remembered, irrelevantly, that the technical term for it was PENIS MULIEBRIS. It was a part of a woman's sex which always fascinated him. At what time in man's evolution, he wondered, did the mammals stop being both male and female at the same time and divide themselves, so that a man's penis grew and a woman's shrank? And was it at the same time that a man's breast shrank and a woman's developed? How many millions of years of evolution was he gazing at between these dark mysterious thighs? What a strange primitive organ it was which lurked in that primeval thicket into which he was now inserting an inquisitive tongue.
Ah! He'd touched the sensitive spot! She squirmed and wrapped her legs around his head. He closed his eyes and plunged his face down into the most intimate part of a woman her very essence. He smelt the rancid nether-saliva of her and buried his nose in the crisp damp hair lost in communion with the need to come into close contact with the target of man's desire.
He insinuated his arms around her buttocks and felt the soft protuberant cheeks. Taking a large handful in each hand he pulled her right over on top of his face so that he was smothered in public hair and cunt, a blind man wallowing in a fetid hothouse. He ran a rigid finger along he crease of her buttocks and found the tight hole. Once more she quivered against him and almost deprived him of breath as her thighs closed on him like jaws. He came up gasping for air, his whole body vibrating with lewd pleasure.
Now she was thrusting his cock into the full extent of her mouth and then gradually drawing it out under strong suction, only to release it and then start again, deliberately and rhythmically. Her breasts were constantly thrusting into his belly as her mouth went down and up the length of his penis. He felt the springy resistance and the prick of her stiff nipples into his soft flesh.
His loins began to jerk uncontrollably as he thrust his bursting weapon into her moving mouth. He lost her rhythm and she became still, receiving his simmering cock as it stirred and fermented and finally boiled into her warm receiving mouth.
As his climax came, he bit the little stalk of her clitoris and rubbed his tongue hard against it. He felt her shudder several times and then her body became fixed and rigid for a few seconds, suspended, while she relished her own climax. Then she relaxed, her body flaccid against him along the whole length of his torso.
They lay almost senseless for quite a while until she rolled sideways onto the bed, her hot panting breath warming his thigh. He reached for a cigarette with a trembling hand and, incapable of the effort, flopped back onto the bed and fell sound asleep.
He woke half an hour later to the tinkle of coffee cups and the sudden flood of light into the room. For a moment he was startled for she appeared to be standing behind the head of the bed. Collecting his wits he realized it was her reflection in the mirror. Turning his head he smiled at her.
"I'm exhausted," he said, "I think I'll go home soon, or I'll never make it."
She raised her eyebrows, "You know you can stay if you wish."
"The wish is there but the flesh is weak," he said apologetically, "I don't think I could raise anything for another twelve hours!"
"You've not done so bad if you haven't had much sexual exercise for a long time," she remarked, pouring coffee from a tall silver pot. "Cream? Milk?"
"Neither but plenty of sugar please."
"Would you like a shower before you go?"
"Yes," he said gratefully, "I feel hot and sticky,"-
"You are hot and sticky," she said, "Shall I ring for a taxi?"
"No, a mini-cab would be better. I've quite a long way to go."
She swayed out of the room and he heard her on the telephone. She spoke to someone called Mike and he guessed her customers were regular users of a local firm.
"May I come again next week?" he asked, when she returned. "I've never enjoyed myself so much as I have tonight."
"A very handsome compliment, Martin. I hope I don't disappoint you now you've broken your fast."
He laughed, "You're the nicest whore I've ever met," he said, "You've got everything, including a sense of humor. I'd be satisfied with you until the day I died and then I'd come back to be your phantom lover!"
She roared with laughter, "I think I'd only be satisfied with flesh and blood," she said, "I'm pretty fundamental."
They chatted while he showered and dressed and when the bell rang to indicate the cab was waiting he took her in his arms.
"Thank you for being so fundamental," he said, and slapped her on the bottom, "You'd better be prepared I'll be ravenous next week!"
"Mmmmm...." she purred into his ear, "I'll be waiting."
After Martin's visit to Anna there was a tangible change in the atmosphere at the Buller house. Although it was Jean who had suggested he find sexual satisfaction elsewhere, the promptness with which he had taken her up had disconcerted her. She was extremely curious as to whom he had been with and would have liked to hear about it but he was reticent on the subject. She resented his attitude since she had been quite detailed in her description of the affair with Dorothy. This tension between them did not result in a return to the old hostilities, but by silent consent they put an end to their mutual masturbatory activities. The temporary satisfaction they had received had served its purpose as a safety valve but now it had failed, even once, they felt reluctant to continue.
One thing only was established between them; they recognized the dangerous vulnerability of each other and were prepared to offer sympathy and understanding. This was really all they had left! this, and a reluctance for changes which would solve nothing in the long run. And so they settled for what so many couples settle for the status quo. Martin took to visiting Anna drinking in the local pubs, playing golf; and Jean carried on with the Youth Club.
Her friendship with Jacqueline did not flourish. They worked very well and efficiently together, developing an understanding of each other and the inevitable problems of administration, but socially they had no contact. Jean did not regret it. Although she knew it would not be difficult to fall in love with Jacky (as she soon called her assistant) she was reluctant to form any attachment with anybody after her experience with Dorothy. The girl herself appeared to be normal, except for the significant lack of boy friends. She played hockey, netball and rounders with various women's teams and obviously enjoyed herself but she had no special attachments, either male or female, as far as Jean could observe, and lived alone self-sufficiently in her bachelor flat.
Jean's relationship with the Church Committee remained one of mutual respect, except that Jean became increasingly aware of Mr.. Huxtable's unwanted attentions. This gentleman, so used to the response of girls to his flattery, admiration and generous affluence was piqued by Jean's lack of response. He had been generous out of his own pocket (or rather his firm's!) towards extras for the Club, but felt Jean showed no appreciation of his effort and he was beginning to be resentful. Mr.. Huxtable would be a dangerous man to offend, but Jean was not aware of this, she merely avoided him as much as possible and treated him with distant politeness when forced to be in his company.
Fortunately, Mr.. Huxtable was constantly diverted by the teenage girls at the Club. They soon became aware of his interest, a fact which reminded hidden to Jean and Jacky. Most of the members were of working class origin and well able to look after themselves. They only tolerated him as a dirty old man who would pinch their bottoms behind a door if he got a chance, because he was willing to buy them innumerable cokes in the canteen and often slyly passed over a box of cigarettes or chocolates. It was his usual softening-up process, this time aimed at a whole group of victims but he still hoped to hook an interested fish.
One of the girls who continually caught his attention was Tracy. Her brash sophistication entertained him. He was unaware that for the first time in his life he had made a mistake. It was inevitable that an elderly man, reared in a far different atmosphere in understanding the freedom of expression and movement of modern girls and misinterpret it as an indication of licentious behavior in private. Mr.. Huxtable had merely been lucky (if that's the word) up until now. His conquests had been girls half-willing to experiment with anybody and he had found no difficulty in persuading them. Tracy's provocative dress and open manner convinced him she was one of them.
He was wrong. Tracy was extremely interested in sex, but not sex for its own sake. She had fallen in love with an intense juvenile passion which was making her life a misery. Martin Buller showed not the slightest interest in her since that time she had shamelessly returned to the house after Jean had left. She was sure he had shown some response that evening and she could not understand why he froze towards her afterwards. For weeks before that incident she had watched him with growing interest and she had leapt at the chance of a place on the Committee which would bring her in contact with him. But it had been a failure. Several times she had been near his bus stop on a Friday to see whether be was looking round for her, but he usually stuck his nose in the evening newspaper and showed no signs of expectation.
Right through the winter she watched him secretly and hungrily. Poor Martin was aware of this hidden regard and squirmed uncomfortably, but he resolutely turned his face away from her. Jean was also aware of Tracy's unrequited love and it did not take her long to discover that, despite the girl's appearance and sometimes daring conversation, she was innocent of any sexual experience and came of indulgent but respectable parents. She tried to distract Tracy by giving her more responsibility, but the girl visibly languished.
As the Spring approached, Mr.. Huxtable suggested to the Church Committee that it might be a good idea to organize a camp for the Youth Club, Mrs. Smythe, always looking for ways to be Lady Bountiful revealed that she owned a farm in Bedfordshire which had a fallow field beside a river suitable for erecting tents. The Chairman, the Treasurer and the Youth Club Leader went down to inspect the site in April, traveling comfortably in Mrs. Smythe's chauffeur-driven Austin.
Mr.. Huxtable sat beside Jean in the back seat, pressing his leg against hers and feeling increasingly annoyed at her lack of response, despite the hamper, the pile of magazines and the chocolates he had provided for the journey. The proposed camp was his own brainchild and he was hoping he could wheedle himself into staying for a couple of days during the Summer. He reckoned it would be an opportunity pregnant with all sorts of possibilities for seduction either of Jean or one of the girls, preferably both!
The field turned out to be a ideal spot for any camp. There were several magnificent weeping willows along the edge of the swiftly flowing river, which was narrow but quite deep. Further up the river was a bridge, a tea house, a pub and a place to hire boats. Mrs. Smythe's tenant at the farm was a stout prosperous looking farmer with an equally stout motherly looking wife who viewed the proposed camp with tolerance. They struck a bargain with Mr.. and Mrs. Jenkins which was satisfactory to both sides, since the campers would buy milk, butter, eggs, vegetable and fruit from the farm.
On the return journey Jean delibertely man-oeuvered the voluble Mrs. Smythe into the seat beside Mr.. Huxtable and sat in the front with the elderly chauffeur.
CHAPTER FIVE
When the arrangements for the camping site were definite it only remained to be decided who was to take the Youth Club camping. Naturally Mr.. Huxtable pressed for Jean to be in charge, emphasizing her experience in the Guides as an obvious recommendation. Nobody realized the cunning Treasurer was trying to manipulate things to his own lascivious ends. Jean expected Jacqueline Summers to be asked since she was unencumbered by a husband, but the Committee (to Huxtable's dismay) suggested that Martin might like to accompany Jean and share the responsibility of the boy campers. Jean certainly wanted to take them, she had been enchanted by the delightful riverside spot in Bedfordshire, but she approached Martin a little nervously, wondering how he would feel about it.
Martin declined. Tracy was to be amongst the campers and he wanted no contact with her, or any of the others. Jean was relieved at his decision. Since their brief sexual experience of a few months ago she knew how deep were his feelings towards schoolgirls and she kept a wary eye open for importunate teenagers and, of course, she took especial care always to know where Tracey was on Club nights. But he encouraged Jean to go alone, assuring her he would take his own holiday at the same time so he would not be left alone in the house. When he had convinced her he did not mind going on holiday by himself she told the Committee she would be willing to take the campers and would like Jacky and Fred Crant, the boys' Leader, as assitants.
And so it was arranged. Martin was delighted. Unexpectedly, things were turning out rather well. He was aware of the attraction Jean felt towards Jacky and he hoped some kind of a relationship might develop between them while they shared a tent together. Also he would have complete freedom for two weeks.
He brooded on the matter for several days and in the end decided he would ask Anna to come away on holiday with him. He was well aware what he was asking of her. She was after all, a prostitute, who depended on her clients for a living and it might endanger her position to go off with one of them. Nevertheless Martin had a feeling there was more between them than just client and customer and he thought a holiday together might clinch matters. He was so enamored of his colored mistress that he wanted her all to himself. Tentatively he asked her; she was delighted.
"What a wonderful idea, how kind you are, my dear. When will it be though? I have to go to Paris during the last two weeks in July to see my mother. I go every year."
"That's fine Anna. My holiday is the first two weeks in August. It'll fit in perfectly. In fact ... tell you what ... I could come over and meet you in Paris and we could take a holiday in southern France somewhere."
The enthusiasm with which Anna agreed told Martin more than she realized. She was prepared to leave her clients for a whole month to be with Martin! When they made love later, naked, in her bedroom, his mind was not entirely on the matter in hand. He was planning and scheming in a most Machiavellian way. This holiday was going to be the turning point. If Jean did not work something out with Jacky then he would arrange for a divorce. He no longer felt resentful of his empty marriage and would allow himself to be the guilty partner. He was positive Jean would not stand in his way. Everything was going to work out for the best he was sure of it.
But there was one obstacle to be surmounted which he had left out of his calculations. As the time approached for Anna to go to Paris he began to fret. He had not realized how dependent he had become. For some time now he had been visiting her more than the twice a month he had first arranged. She had contrived to invite him tactfully so he did not need to pay and now he was seeing her nearly every day, even if only for half an hour. Two whole weeks without her! It was almost unthinkable.
He began to miss her on the second day and his secretary at the office, Miss Greenlees, soon knew her boss was depressed and miserable. She feared he was returning to his old taciturn self which at one time she had assumed to be his normal mood, until the transformation recently. By Thursday the feeling of being utterly cut off was almost terrifying and that night he woke up sweating and horror-struck. Once more he had dreamed that old dream ... he had just humped a schoolgirl! There was spunk all over the inside of his pajama trousers. It had been splendid in his dream, but he hated himself and lay trembling and desolate, knowing he could not run to Anna for consolation and forgetfulness.
The next day seemed like every other day, but before he had lived through it he would know it was exceptional. Miss Greenlees found him a little more difficult to deal with, but the routine marched along as usual and found him in the bus queue outside his suburban station, waiting for the single-decker which set him down at the corner of his road. He did this daily and had long since forgotten the significance of Friday.
But there was somebody else who had certainly not forgotten.
Suddenly he was confronted by Tracy!
At first he did not recognize her; he had become so accustomed to the flamboyant clothes she wore in the evening that the schoolgirl in a navy blue tunic and blazer with a red beret perched on top of her head was a stranger, and it was astonishing to be greeted as a friend.
"Hello, Mr.. Buller, I knew I'd meet you one Friday," she smiled up at him.
"Good gracious Tracy! I didn't recognize you," he said lamely, "are you waiting for the bus?"
"No," she said, "not yet. I've got to go and get my diary. I dropped it on the common during the dinner hour and I must find it before I go home."
"Your diary?" he said vaguely, looking in the direction where the bus should emerge and wishing it would come soon. This was the first time he had spoken to her alone since the episode in his sitting room and he was anxious to escape.
"Yes, I must find it. I've written all sorts of intimate things in it. Do you keep a diary, Mr.. Buller?"
"Er no."
"I've always kept a diary. I tell it everything I think about. There's something about you in this one...."
He was immediately attentive.
"Oh really?" he said, trying not to look too interested.
"Yes, I've written quite a lot about you. Of course I don't write what actually happens all the time ... sometimes I make it up you know I put what I'd like to happen," her voice was heavy with insinuation.
He looked at her, horror-struck at the implication. If she had written something fanciful and someone should find it! He had visions of an enraged father ... the police ... God know what! You're a fool, he said firmly to himself. It's only your guilty conscious working why should you be afraid of a child's imagination? But he was afraid, very much afraid.
"Do you know where you left it?" he asked, remembering her little trick with the bag and wondering if this was a more subtle version of the same thing.
"No," she said, "I was playing with some friends and we suddenly heard the school bell and started running. I don't know where it jumped out of my pocket."
Two people came and stood behind him at the bus stop. He glanced at them uneasily, but they were deep in conversation.
Tracy, who had concocted this story after weeks of longing for her romantic Mr.. Buller, could see she had him interested. Despite her cunning she had not understood the implications as he saw them. To her it was perfectly natural for anybody to be extremely curious about anything written about them, having discovered this human egotism amongst her school friends. The innocence of her real intentions lent weight to her actions and Martin was convinced of his danger.
"I wonder if you'd help me find it?" she asked pleadingly, "It's getting very dark and I'm not used to the Common at night."
He merely nodded. With a feeling of helplessness at some inexorable fate. Martin followed her across the road. He watched the slim legs encased in the unaccustomed black stockings and lace-up shoes, the flirt of the box pleats of her tunic protruding under her blazer, and the long fair hair now decorously tied back with a red ribbon to match her beret. The old feeling of longing began to stir in him. She was charmingly young and innocent-looking in her uniform and the fact that he had known her dressed in a different manner added to her present appeal. But she was also a siren, a female lure, against whose wiles he must pit his wits and his fast-disappearing discretion.
As he followed her along the dusky street he was a man sorely divided. He had a premonition of danger and he felt he was walking into a trap. It was a honey trap, a tender trap, but it was also a poison berry trap.
Nevertheless he walked along while she chattered charmingly, holding onto his arm now and again, or jumping up and down, or running ahead. She was deliberately behaving like a schoolgirl several years younger and she watched his helpless fascination with typical female triumph. After all this time she had 'got her man', and they were on their way to an assignation in the dark secret places of the Common.
They turned down a path and then another and another until Martin, who hardly knew the Common, was hopelessly lost. Suddenly she caught her foot in a rut on the path and fell headlong into the grass. Like a man in a dream he knelt to pick her up, knowing this was the moment he could not avoid. She lay sideways looking up at him. Slowly he bent down and then her outstretched arms clung round his neck. Her beautiful eyes, no longer encrusted with makeup, were staring wonderingly up at him, inviting, a little fearful but not bold. Her face came nearer and nearer in the failing light. He could see her white blouse and tie and the red beret which had fallen on the grass beside her head.
Now his lips were on her trembling youthful lips, so unlike the demanding knowledgeable lips of Anna. She smelt of Lifebuoy soap and clean hair and that inexplicable odor of innocence. He tried to back away but her arms tightened around his neck and her moist pouting lips clung to his. He was caught and yet he still struggled against the inevitable, his strength draining from his as his senses quickened.
He dragged his head away: "Tracy ... Tracy, my dear ... you mustn't."
"Oh please ... kiss me again ... I've wanted you to kiss me for so long...."
"You don't realize what you're asking."
"I only want you to kiss me ... please...."
"No, Tracy, you must let me go. This is all wrong and you know it."
"But I love you don't you understand? I love you!"
Hopelessly entangled in her youthful emotions, he didn't know what to do. The girl was pleading with him desperately and he became aware that she was trembling; Up until now she had merely been a temptation to him, a provocative schoolgirl-figure, the reflection of his fantasy, but now she emerged into a living person who wanted him and was apparently passionately in love with him. It was in his nature to respond to love much more than to a purely sexual appeal. This had always been one of the reasons for his disgust at his desire for teenagers; he knew it was only a selfish gratification. But Tracy was breaking down this last scruple by her passionate appeal to the romantic side of him.
He kissed her tenderly and once more she wound her slim arms around his neck and put every ounce of feeling she could into the kiss. He was almost lost as he felt his resistance collapsing as the dam of his repressed sexual desire burst almost like a thunderclap about his ears.
"Oh Tracy ... Tracy ... my dear ... my sweetest little one...." he whispered in a delirium of delight as he pressed himself against her on the grass. They had rolled over sideways into some bushes and were concealed from the path.
Tracy, who had not really allowed her imagination to go beyond a few stolen kisses, was transported by the passion of his response. Although she was a virgin she was not a poor innocent and she realized her temptation of an adult married man had gone further than she intended. But she was so in love and carried away that she was prepared to do anything if only he would kiss her.
She felt his tongue pushing insistently against her teeth and forcing open her jaws to enter her mouth. It was a strange thrill to have someone else's tongue touching your own and thrusting uninvited into your mouth. It had never occurred to her that this was something people did to each other. She had been kissed many times but never this way. She was entering an adult world of sex for the first time how much more would she learn, she wondered, and would he be kind and romantic or would it be horribly cheap and nasty?
And at such ecstatic moments who can say what's in a man's mind? Afterwards he may remember a host of things he thought and be amazed they all seemed to be there simultaneously. The human brain is still more complicated than any computer yet invented. There were at least three parallel lines of thought in Martin's mind as he lay kissing Tracy. Those were the conscious ones; the others were so numerous he was only half aware of them, they involved the sensations of his hands, his lips, his body, his eyes, each one separate and leading to ultimate pleasure.
The thought uppermost was the desire to possess Tracy, to fuck her here and now, to succumb absolutely to the raging desire beating in his heart and throbbing through his body to the rigid penis urgently raging against the confinement of his trousers. His second thought was he most certainly must not do it! His third was one of tenderness for the girl herself. She was only a child, yet she had said she loved him to take her would be to consummate her love and to run and leave her would be cruel. How can a man, trembling and half persuaded by his desire, think logically or sensibly? Her large pleading eyes were asking for more than she knew and offered something she was hardly aware of possessing.
He could feel her trembling and held her tightly against his body, kissing her eye and cheeks and the slim white neck, brushing wisps of hair from her eyes and murmuring sweet comforting nothings and endearments. She called him by his first name and spoke it so lovingly he knew she had uttered it in her secret thoughts many times. He remembered what calf love was like how painful it was how sweet and intense. A memory of his own youth checked the urgent selfish lust bubbling inside him. The difference between a man and a beast, he told himself, is the thinking, bending reed of the mind, that flexible persuasive force of conscience and reason. This child would soon be making experiments, whether he made love to her or not. Better something beautiful and loving than a lewd fumbling in the dark by some ignorant schoolboy oaf. But she was adult enough to make her own decisions, even when overwhelmed by unaccustomed sensation. Perhaps it was cowardly to pass the buck, but this was what he made up his mind to do. If she consented he would take her, here on the grass under the bushes. If she refused, then they would get up and leave.
"Darling Tracy," he whispered, kissing the tip of her nose, "I love you too ... not as much as you love me I think ... but I want you. Do you understand what I mean? I want to make love to you properly will you let me?"
"Oh Martin!" she turned her head aside and he guessed, although he could not see in the gloom, she was blushing. But she turned back very soon and began kissing him urgently.
He was beginning to reach the extent of his self control. But he was determined to have an answer. She was fourteen and well able to decide such things for herself. He was not going to rape her, not in any sense at all. She was a person, schoolgirl or no schoolgirl, and if she wanted him he was only too willing, but if not....
"Tracy darling answer me! My sweet I can't be content with just petting. You've started something, my dear, and you've got to go through with it or stop now."
She hid her face in his neck.
"Do you love me?" she asked.
What a difficult question to answer! Did he? Yes, in a sort of way he did. He was enchanted by her youth and her innocence and her vivacity and her charmingly immature body. He wouldn't hurt her for the world. Nor would he lie to her.
He held her tightly to him and whispered in her ear.
"My dear, I don't love you in quite the same way as you love me. I'm a married man and I'm not going to leave my wife and run off with you or anything like that. You've got all your life in front of you and it would be a bad beginning. The sort of love you feel for me is the same as everyone of us feels at your age ... be guided by me ... it isn't the life-time sort of love."
He could feel her head shaking vigorously against his neck.
He pulled his face away and looked down into her eyes.
"You mean you know that?" he asked.
"Yes," she whispered, and he could see her eyes were wet, but she was not crying. "I know it's a hopeless sort of love. I never even thought it would come to this. But Martin, I want something to remember, even if I never see you again."
"Are you sure you won't be sorry or be ashamed afterwards? You realize you could get me into terrible trouble?"
"Oh darling Martin I love you...." and she reached up to kiss him.
He drew back: "No Tracy we must get this over first. You must, you just must know what you're doing."
A trembling shy smile came over her face.
"Yes ... yes ... I want you to make love to me. Darling, I know the difference between loving and being in love ... I won't misunderstand when you say it ... but please say it ... I want to hear it."
"I love you."
He kissed her passionately, folding his strong arms around her slim body in a bear-like embrace.
Just at that moment they heard someone coming along the path beside them. They froze, although they knew they could not be seen. The person passed, but both had realized their position was dangerous.
He whispered: "Do you know a more private place on the Common, Tracy?"
She nodded: "Not far from here there's a circle of gorse bushes and I found the way inside ... you'll have to crawl a few yards!" and she giggled obviously amused at the idea of a grown man crawling into a thicket.
Come on then," he said and they rose, somewhat disheveled, from the grass, pushing aside the bushes. She picked up her beret and stuffed it into her pocket. He saw he had dropped his evening paper but left it there, forlorn and crumpled. He followed her through a dark glade. In her navy blue uniform and black stockings she was almost invisible except for her fair hair, which gleamed every now and again as the new moon filtered through the overhanging trees.
His heart was beating fast. Now the decision was made he was like a man with no past and no future. He was suspended in time because he knew afterwards may come the regrets and the remorse, and beforehand lay the experience and the dread; the present was all that mattered he would live it with every fiber of his being, because he knew this would be the consummation which would lay his lust for schoolgirls to rest for the remainder of his life. He did not know why, but he knew it was so.
He saw her fall to her knees, reach up and draw aside a great branch of gorse bush. He took it from her and she crawled out of sight. He found his stronger arm could bend the branch much further and it was not necessary for him to get on his knees. He edged around and let the prickly arm swish back with a crackle behind him.
Tracy was sitting several yards ahead of him, completely surrounded by bushes in a small green-grassed enclosure. He glanced around; nobody could possibly see through the impenetrable mass provided they lay down, and should anybody try to enter by the same way he would hear them.
He took off his jacket and, seeing him she stripped off her blazer, the white suddenly gleaming in the gloom. He sat down beside her and they fell into each others arms, lying back on the thick grass. She pressed herself against him and he felt the soft protuberances of her pert breasts against his chest. His arms enveloped her, protecting and passionate. Her hands kneaded his back, making themselves felt through his thin shirt. She was exploring his muscles, feeling the strength of this man who was just old enough to be her father, but was still youthful and virile. She could feel the bulge in his trousers against her thighs and a delicious thrill for the unknown swept through her body. Tracy had seen a boy's penis, and touched it too, but only briefly and in the giggling dark. This was different; this would be the fully blown male organ and its destination was no mystery.
Their kisses became more passionate. This time she ventured to extend her own tongue into his mouth. It was immediately sucked into its full extent and then pushed back to allow his own to penetrate right to its root. They rolled from side to side in an ecstasy of physical contact. She felt his hand close over her breast through the pleats of her gymslip and a shiver of delight shook her. He tried to get through the armhole of the tunic but his hand was too big. Next thing he was at her waist, untying the girdle and he was up under her gymslip and blouse and had clasped the small breast which was not confined in a brassiere. He discovered it still to be covered by a vest, but soon this was pulled down and at last the delicate mound lay quivering like a small bird in his tender hand.
Tracy, who had done a little hard petting, was more aroused than she had ever been. Her breath came in gasps and she began to whimper with pleasure. He thrilled at the sound of her excitement and pulled the folds of her tunic up under her armpits so that he could see the pearly beauty of her breast. He scooped the other from the confining vest and looked at her lying there, the twin perky little nipples pointing up provocatively, tempting his mouth which closed over one of them. Once more she whimpered in a quivering mew as she felt the sudden suction. Two fingers closed over the other point and squeezed. She squirmed in his arms, her hands clasped around his waist and delving down under his trousers at the pit of his back. He took his mouth away and began to tickle the hard little nipple with the tip of his tongue, running it around the base and up to the tip.
Her hands came out of his trousers and one began to investigate timidly around the front. He released her breast and leant away from her to undo his flies, looking up into her face questioningly. She gazed back at him levelly and pleadingly. If she had wanted to draw back at this moment he would have done so although reluctantly, but she so obviously wanted to go on and, as he fished inside his pants to release his penis, he knew that the Rubicon had been passed.
In a few seconds it was out, rearing up white and rampant against the dark of his trousers. She gazed down at it, wondering and a little shy. He took her hand gently and laid it across the end and her fingers automatically encircled the thick length. His quick indrawn breath made her look up and she smiled sweetly, a feminine knowledge of her power dawning in her youthful eyes. His hand still covered hers and he showed her how to move the foreskin to and fro.
"Gently now...." he whispered.
He watched her as she began to move her hand tenderly, looking quickly up again to see if she was doing it right. He smiled and once more bent his head to her breast. They lay quietly for a long while, he sucking and nibbling, his eyes shut and oblivious of anything except the sensation of her hand on his prick and the smell and taste of her breast as his nose quarried in the softness and his mouth caressed the bud of her exquisite fairy hillock.
"Oh Martin...." he heard her sigh on a long breath, "Oh Martin ... oooohhh...."
He drew back and once more she was able to see the tremendous weapon she was holding. It almost frightened her, but not quite. On one of the downward motions of her hand she felt his soft balls and, inquisitive, she reached out and cupped them within her other hand and was delighted at his obvious pleasure at her initiative. His hands were fumbling at her waist, his fingers hooked in the elastic of her navy blue panties. He was pulling them down. She had to dig her heels in and lift herself off the grass so they could be taken from her. Now he could see she wore a tiny suspender belt of white nylon; he undid the two front ones with trembling fingers. Her vest was already well up and there, shyly revealed before him, was the plump virgin mound, lightly fuzzed with hair, but maturely curved and womanly. At fourteen she was ready for love, and he guessed ready for motherhood too. He reached over to his jacket and fiddled in the pocket.
She knew what he was searching for and looked away, considerably embarrassed by this evidence of their intention. But curiosity drew her eyes back and she watched, her breast still heaving with her excitement, as the envelope was opened and the tissue rubber sheath fitted over the shaft she relinquished so reluctantly.
He looked up at her face. It was filled with uncertainty. He took her in his arms and kissed her passionately, pressing his cock flat against the bare skin of her belly as they lay side by side. All resistance vanished and she responded by straining against this wonderful evidence of his masculinity which bored into her. When he was sure of her once again he pushed one leg across her nearest thigh and swung himself over onto the knee. Her legs widened instinctively and he brought his other leg over to kneel between her thighs. He lay on top of her taking the weight of his body on his elbows and knees, and once more he pressed his prick into her belly. She wound her arms around his neck and pushed herself up into him. He lowered himself until he felt the tip of his penis nosing its way into the tight little cleft. She quivered and opened her legs even wider. He felt that now he could cease from kissing and touching her breasts, she did not need reassurance any more, the uncertainty was gone she knew what she wanted now.
He knelt back and looked down at her. What a delectable sight she made!! Her tunic was drawn up in navy blue profusion under her armpits and her short white blouse protruded, framing her taut little breasts which strained over the neck of her vest. It was fucked up to her waist to reveal the scantily haired nest between her slim thighs. The lips of her cunt had parted slightly and through them he could see the peeping tip of that strangely developed one-sided inner lip, the name for which he had never found out. He gently inserted his finger between and slid it upwards to touch her clitoris. He felt her jerk as soon as he touched it and smiled up at her in confirmation. But he saw her eyes were tight shut and both clenched hands lay beside her face on the grass. She was waiting....
Ah yes ... she was waiting for the inevitable pain which must be hers before the pleasure started. Well, that was a job he knew how to do smartly and effectively. He nosed his sheath-covered knob into the entrance of her vagina, eased his knees into a better position and leaned forward on one hand.
"Tracy...? " he whispered, "It'll be over in a minute, my darling, I won't hurt you very much...." and before she had time to dread it any longer he had thrust himself forward with all his force into the vaginal opening. She was tighter than he had expected, but his prick reared forward, breaking down the maidenly defense with no trouble and coming to rest an inch or so further on.
Tracy let out a loud gasp and a strangled squeal and then lay panting with two tears running down her face. Immediately he closed on her, not pushing in any further, so as to kiss away the tears and once more arouse her passions. She took several minutes before she responded once more.
"Does it still hurt?" he asked.
"It stings a little, but that's all," she whispered back tremulously, "is that thing still on?"
He smiled reassuringly, "Yes my dear everything's alright."
She began to tremble, but not from fear. The tool which now lay motionless just inside her had aroused the sensitive membranes encasing it and the unused muscles came into action of their own accord, grasping and sucking at the intruder, anxious for movement and a resumption of their natural function.
He felt her reaction and a thrill shook his body from head to foot. Yes, he had been right, she was ready for love, this schoolgirl, eager to lose her innocence and take her place as a mature woman. And he was there to end the dream of childhood, to show her the way to sensual oblivion, to the heavenly delights of carnal pleasure.
He began to exert a gentle pressure and slowly, inch by inch, the tight sleeve gave way to his entry. The virgin flesh was young and he could feel the tender convolutions of her vagina through the rubber of the sheath. He had a large penis, a good ten inches and he was quite prepared for only three quarters of it entering her. But she was a well built fourteen year old, nearly as tall as his wife and, he discovered ecstatically, mature enough to take it all. He felt his balls come to rest on the soft cheeks of her butt and then the tip of his prick touched the lip of her womb. He was encased the full length ah at last!
He heaved a sigh of utter contentment and rested for a moment. But her urgent muscles were still working on him. He realized she could not possibly have anything like his own control and, once started, would need to go headlong into orgasm or suffer frustration.
As soon as he started to withdraw he was overtaken by the violence of his own passions and only by a steely control was he able to stop himself from brutally ravaging her with no concern for decency or tenderness. He knew that soon she also would be able to feel abandon in just a few minutes he must wait.
His mouth found hers once more. She was eager and hungry, fully recovered from fear and uncertainty, her immature body trembling violently and her legs wound round his back. He steadied himself on knees and elbows and once more pushed into her, this time much quicker ... and out again ... and in ... and out....
He had to take his mouth away from hers because they were both breathing too fast for comfort during their kissing. Her slim arms were clutching him tightly and he felt her take a handful of shirt and vest in each hand.
IN a violent hard thrust.
OUT a quick withdrawal, feeling the reluctant pull of her muscles.
IN a lunge which bounced his balls against her butt deliciously.
OUT oh the gorgeous suction....
IN how tight and clinging it was....
OUT aaaahhhh!
"Tracy...." he gasped, "My darling ... darling ... do you like it?"
She replied immediately: "Yes ... yes ... yes ... yes ... Martin ... it's...."
But apparently she could find no words to express something she had never experienced before.
He was working in and out of the youthful cunt like a piston in its mounting. Now he had got going he knew he could control himself for a while yet. She would need some time to become fully aroused. Besides he did not want to come yet he wanted to prolong this ecstasy as he was able.
She had become used to the rhythm and now when he pushed up into her she responded and their bodies met, coming together with the force of both movements. He found his trousers were getting in the way he wanted to feel their bellies flesh to flesh. He fumbled with the waistband clasp and then hooked down his pants. The hairy base of his belly came into contact with the warm sweet skin of her flat belly with an electric shock of pure unadulterated pleasure, felt by them both. He bored his masculine body into hers, flattening her breasts and enveloping her. But she held her own, all inhibitions gone, and responded with passion and fire. This was no juvenile rape but a thorough going co-operative fuck (whatever those legalistic fools might call it!)
"Tell me when you're going to come...." he panted, wondering if she would know what he meant.
"Not yet ... not yet ... oh Martin don't stop ... it's wonderful!"
He hoped to God he'd be able to last out and decelerated a little, feeling the lust rumbling in his body.
"Fuck me Tracy!" he experimented, wondering if the word would be a spur or an unpleasant shock to this excited schoolgirl.
"OH YES! Fuck me Martin ... fuck me!" So she knew and she liked it! The darling little hussy!
But it did the trick she began to shudder; went rigid....
"NOW! Martin quick NOW!" He let go....
Oh the exquisite pleasure of spunk rushing down ... the uncontrollable jerks the body gives ... once ... twice ... three times ... and again ... he couldn't stop jerking and ejecting, jerking and ejecting....
He shut his eyes and entered into a weird kaleidoscopic heaven, Tracy, his own body, the grass and trees whirled around his dizzy head and his body had no weight, no gravity ... and yet he was all organ ... one big prick inside an enormous cunt ... there was no other part of him or her but these two enchanted organs, existing in perfect unison ... suspended for ever in his fantasy ... his dream....
But the dream had been true this time. He had taken Tracy. He had humped a schoolgirl once more. And he didn't care! He felt no remorse whatsoever. No guilt. Just a weary satisfaction
... a gorgeous release ... complete relaxation.
He lay on the grass gazing up at the still trees and the early evening stars. Happy content satiated.
He turned his head. Tracy lay, her breast heaving, her schoolgirl clothes dishevelled, her black stockinged legs still wide apart and her eyes shut.
He did not rouse her. Silently he reached for his cigarettes and as he took one from the packet a slim trembling hand reached out and he passed her one too. They lay smoking, on their sides, looking into each other's eyes.
"Well, my dear?" he found he felt shy with her, like a young boy.
She smiled tremulously, but did not answer.
He propped himself up on one elbow.
"And how does my little schoolgirl feel now she's no longer a virgin?"
"I'm all trembling inside ... I don't know yet."
"Do you still love me?" He found he wanted her to still be in love with him, to gaze adoringly up as she had before.
"Yes, of course ... I'll always love you Martin, always and always and always," She paused, "But I'm sad it's over; that's all there's going to be, isn't it?"
"Yes Tracy. As you said it's hopeless. If we went on from here we would be unbearably unhappy and you'd be even more hurt than saying goodbye now."
She was silent. He had a terrible qualm that she was going to protest, to insist on an intrigue. But she was more mature than he had realized.
She sighed.
"It was wonderful Martin. I'll always remember I once read a book belonging to my father and the girl in it said her whole life had been ruined because the first time she made love it was disgusting and awful. I was always frightened it would happen to me. Well it hasn't. And do you know what, Martin? I'm not going to do it again until I fall in love and get married!"
"I wish you luck, Tracy," he said sadly, hoping it would happen to her like that. But the world's a cruel place, he thought. I've given her a taste of forbidden delights who knows what will happen to her now? What temptations might make her a promiscuous slut? But he put this firmly out of his mind. He was not going to feel guilty. It had been too marvelous to be wrong.
He turned his back to Tracy and rolled off the slimy French Letter into his handkerchief, then he folded the handkerchief up and pushed it amongst the tall grass to one side. The evidence of their love would molder on the Common and disintegrate into the fruitful earth, a fitting burial ground.
"We'd better be going," he said, smacking her bottom as she rolled over, "Put your panties on, you bad girl!"
She giggled and stood up to put on her panties, struggling with the fabric as it clung to her thick stockings.
"I'm glad we didn't find my diary," she said.
"You little devil it didn't exist, did it?"
"No!"
They laughed and she sat down again for a last kiss before they left.
Mr.. Huxtable always walked across the Common at this particular time. It served a twofold purpose. Firstly it was a genuine short cut from his local office in the High Street to his Common-side home, and secondly it was an opportunity for various forms of voyeurism both winter and summer. The school playing fields being nearby, he often encountered schoolgirls of his acquaintance, playing amongst the bushes and had often enjoyed the pleasure of seeing a naked juvenile fanny whose owner was under the impression she was relieving herself in privacy.
He rarely kept to the paths but walked silent and soft-footed through the grass and glades he knew so well. It was not a coincidence therefore that he happened to be passing when he caught sight of Tracy standing up amongst the bushes and struggling to put on her panties whilst she spoke to someone still lying on the grass.
He paused behind a tree. The fair hair was unmistakable and so was the familiar tinkling laugh which he soon recognized. But her companion he could not see, nor did he think it prudent to go nearer. Thirty years of experience in the game of stalking teenagers had taught him the value of a little gentle blackmail. He was not interested in who the lucky recipient of Tracy's attentions might be, he was only interested in the use to which he might put his discovery. What he had seen confirmed her promiscuity, of which he had already been convinced. He waited a few minutes but Tracy had sat down again so he walked on, meditating on his fortunate discovery. He had no immediate plans, but soon, when the opportunity arose, he would exercise his masculine rights over the naughty little girl.
He chuckled with pleasure. Everything came to those who waited patiently even Mrs. Jean Buller would one day drop into his hand like a soft ripe peach, of that he was certain.
* * *
When Martin returned from the Common he was grateful to discover Jean was at the Club and so did not know he was late back. She had left a cold meal for him in the dining room and he ate it heartily, opening a bottle of wine to make it more interesting. He sat in the empty sitting room afterwards and tried to collect his thoughts. The warm glow of satisfaction within him was certainly not caused by the wine. In some strange way the episode with Tracy had resolved something. Although he had enjoyed making love to Tracy and what man wouldn't have relished her youthful innocence and enthusiasm he had somehow got rid of his burning desire to possess schoolgirls. The sophistication and technique of Anna far surpassed any of the juvenile charms which Tracy had to offer. As he sipped his wine he knew he would never be troubled with those dreams again, or with that constant itch which had bothered him for so many years. Nor was he filled with any sense of guilt about what he had just done. Tracy had enjoyed it, so had he, and although she may be sad for a little while he convinced himself that the resilience of youth would heal the wound. His relationship with Anna was no longer an insurance against disaster. He could face the loneliness of the coming week without a sense of dread. He was a free man at last.
When Tracy returned home she was flushed and disheveled. Her mother took one look at her and decided she was sickening for a cold.
She was dosed and put to bed with a hot-water bottle and generally cosseted until she thought she would scream. Finally they left her alone and she lay quietly crying, the tears trickling down her cheeks and wetting her pillow. She was not desperately unhappy, only bewildered. Her experience had been too unexpected to cope with properly. The long months of being ignored by Martin had ended so ecstatically she was hardly able to understand it. She had tried to be so grown up in her attitude towards their brief love affaire, knowing it meant less to Martin than to her, but knowing also that something was better than nothing.
It was all very tragic and romantic and already she was able to enjoy the drama of it. Many years later she could be objective also, and admit that the diary had been a last despairing effort before writing Martin off. The ruse had come off in a manner she had not anticipated. She did not regret it, but she was filled with a terrible longing in her limbs and her heart which lasted for a whole week after she lost her virginity so willingly on the Common. Several times she revisited the spot in an orgy of schoolgirl sentimentality, the last time being the day before she was to go to camp.
It was pouring with rain but she stood there in a sort of masochistic dream, reveling in the guilty exciting secret, the memory of which was already receding in a golden haze as though it had been a particularly vivid dream. When she found her way to the main road again a car stopped beside her and she heard her name called. She bent down to see who it was. Mr.. Huxtable's lean face stared at her through the rain-streaked window. He opened the door.
"Better jump in Tracy, I'm visiting a house in your road and I'll give you a lift."
She didn't like old Huxtable, but she was already late for tea and wet through, and after all he was a most respectable pillar of the neighborhood and there was no reason why she shouldn't accept a lift from him. So she climbed in the car.
Mr.. Huxtable welcomed this unexpected opportunity to exert pressure on Tracy. She had not been at the club all week, a most unusual thing, and he had been very disappointed at not having a word with her before she went to camp.
He started off by offering her chocolates which he always kept in the car for the delectation of any prospective victim. After a few minutes he put his hand on her knee. The pouring rain obscured the windows and he felt quite safe from prying eyes. She moved her leg away and his hand dropped off, but he replaced it. She edged towards the door, more annoyed than anything. She was used to his bottom pinching at the Club and just looked on him as a harmless old bore. Now he was being an embarrassing old bore.
She began to talk in an effort to distract him. but the hand continued to squeeze her knee. When it began to push up her thigh she became indignant: "Mr.. Huxtable! Please don't do that, it's not nice," she said primly.
"Don't be silly, my dear," he said, grinning slyly, "You don't have to pretend to me you don't like it I know different."
"But I don't like it," she protested, "And I don't see why you should think I do."
"Oh, don't you?" he said nastily, turning the car round a corner so vigorously she was thrown against him and his hand automatically went further up her leg. She tried to cringe back against the door but he grasped her leg with his old sinewy hand and she could not move away.
"I know more about you than you realize," he said teasingly looking at her sideways, "You're a naughty little girl. But, you see I. like naughty little girls."
"I don't know what you mean," she answered blushing and beginning to feel frightened.
"Don't play the prude with me, my lady, I know what sort of things you get up to on the Common!"
He was not expecting the horrified reaction he received, but even so he merely thought she was playing hard to bet, a game which he usually thoroughly enjoyed, understanding all the ins and outs of schoolgirl wiles.
She was trembling now and managed to ask in a strangled voice: "You saw me on the Common when?"
"Last Friday night. Now then, are you going to be friendly to me my dear. You'll find it worth your while, you know."
This crude approach was not like Mr. Huxtable's usual tactics, but today he was suffering from indigestion and feeling a little too impatient for games. He was almost at the corner of her road and he needed to make his intention clear in a very short time.
"What do you mean?"
"Now don't be difficult, Tracy. You be nice to me and that's the end of it. If you don't behave I'll have to tell your parents what I saw, won't I? "
Tracy was too frightened to show much reaction, even to speak. She took it for granted he knew whom she had been with and what they had done and she was too ignorant to realize his threat was meaningless without a witness or some sort of evidence. Her guilty conscience saw the awful consequences of his revelation to her father, who was a stern man when she was really bad.
He stopped the car outside her house and spoke hurriedly.
"I'll be seeing you soon Tracy and we can talk about it some more, eh?"
"But what do you want?" She couldn't quite grasp what it was all about. She understood he was blackmailing her but it seemed incredible he wanted to blackmail her to touch her leg. That an elderly man would want to go further had not quite penetrated.
"Oh, for God's sake, Tracy," he rasped irritably, "Don't play the bloody innocent with me, do y'hear? I want what you've been giving around liberally for quite a few years I expect, what else do you think I want?" He glared at her through his beady little eyes.
"Now get in the house quick, or your father will be wanting to know what it's all about. And button your lip, or you'll be in real trouble, see?"
She got out of the car and he drove off, very annoyed with himself for a tactless beginning. The older he got the less able he was to cope with the teasing little bitches. Nevertheless he was satisfied with the outcome. She would think about it and when he came to the camp next week there she would be waiting all soft and pliable and consenting. He hugged himself with anticipation.
Tracy stood motionless in the pouring rain, distracted and terrified. She knew her parents could see her from where they were sitting at the tea table so she ran along the path to the porch. She was trembling so violently she had to pause to pull herself together and when she opened the door she nearly fell across the thresh-hold.
"Are you all right, Tracy?" It was her father speaking and standing at the door of the dining room, a napkin in his hand.
"Yes Dad," she bent down to hide her face, pretending she had hurt her ankle, "I only caught my foot in a stone sticking up near the door."
"Yes, I must fix it tomorrow, I noticed it the other day. Was that Huxtable who brought you home?"
Her heart nearly stopped with fear. Still with her face turned away from him she managed to say: "He gave me a lift home in the rain."
"Well, don't you have anything more to do with him, my dear. He's a rogue if ever there was one," and her father turned back into the Dining Room. Tracy heard him continue talking about Huxtable to her mother. She tiptoed to the doorway and stood listening.
"... he's been cooking the firm's books very cleverly, Mary, but they got suspicious and passed their accounts to us a couple of weeks ago. So far I've gone back five years and he's had about 3,000. God knows how long he's been at it.
"Mr.. Huxtable?" her mother sounded astounded. "Good gracious Arthur, I should have thought he'd be the last person to embezzle! How dreadful ... why! he's the Treasurer of the Youth Club do you think...? "
"No Mary, I doubt it, their accounts wouldn't be complicated enough and besides he has to show his books at every meeting. There won't be anything wrong there. But don't you mention this to anyone, there's a lot more work yet to be done before I've got a complete case. He goes on holiday next week and I'm to inspect his office immediately. It's a nasty business; probably he'll be arrested when he returns."
"Oh Arthur, what a terrible scandal for the Church and the Youth Club, I do think he might have considered...."
Tracy tiptoed back and hung her coat and hat on the hallstand. She sighed with relief. She was off to camp tomorrow and by the time she returned Huxtable would be in no mood for dallying with her she was saved!
CHAPTER SIX
The Youth Club camping site was a bustle of activity. Jean, a veteran of many camping holidays with the Guides had been instructing the would-be campers for many weeks before their arrival. Now each boy and girl had their particular job to do and was engaged upon it with more enthusiasm than expertise. The majority of the teenagers had never been camping before and the release from brick walls and parent's discipline had rather gone to their heads. They were noisy and excited. Jean took it all in her stride. She was used to it and kept a firm hand on everything. Her two assistants were also experienced campers and soon the tents were up, the equipment stored, the cook tent organized and a camp fire built. There were eight bell tents for the girls, separated by the Leader's tents from the six tents of the boys. A mixed camp was a new departure for a Youth Club and there had been some protests from parents and a few of the members' bookings had been withdrawn. The Leaders knew the responsibility they carried but were confident of their ability to keep reasonable order and an eye to morals.
Tracy was as carefree as the rest of them. She had come to terms with her great romance and, although she would not admit it, felt a certain relief to be back in her own world again after pining for so long for the unattainable which had suddenly dropped into her lap. She felt more than a little superior to her friends and regretted she was unable to boast about her wonderful experience. It said much for her character and genuine regard for Martin that she had never dropped any hints of their brief relationship. She was, however, being very mysterious to the girls in her tent about something special she had brought with her in her kitbag. She had them guessing and intrigued all day, to such an extent that anything less than what she did produce that night when they were all in bed could have fallen very flat indeed.
Tracy, Marion, Erica, Barbara, Lisbet and Katy were all snuggled down in their sleeping bags when Mrs. Buller came in to say goodnight and told them to put out their lantern in half an hour's time.
"It's a book!" said Tracy dramatically, as soon as she had gone.
"A dirty book?" asked Marion whose sleeping bag was next to Tracy's.
"Come on, Tracy, let's see it," urged Erica on the other side, craning her neck forward as Tracy fumbled in her lumpy kit bag.
"It's not a story," said Tracy and a groan of disappointment went up, followed by noisy shushes, "but it's about dirty words, I found it in my brother's room. He's on holiday in Italy and I was looking for something to read," she explained.
"Ah! Here it is...." she produced a book, carefully covered in brown paper. "But it's ever so interesting. You can all read it whilst we're here, but for goodness sake don't let Mrs. Buller see it."
"Is it a French book? asked Marion, "Dirty books come from France, don't they?"
"You've got it all wrong," said Tracy, opening the book while five pairs of eyes watched her, "It's a book about prudery."
More groans.
"Now listen, it's really interesting. The man who wrote this book says that it's people's minds which are dirty and not words and...."
"We don't want to hear all that bosh," said Barbara suddenly, "What are the words themselves, that's what I want to know the only rude word I know is cunt."
"Well, it's not a rude word see, Barby, it's the perfectly proper word for the female sex organs," Tracy was leafing through the book, obviously looking for the relevant passage, "It says here that cunt is real Old English and it was probably used all over Europe at one time it's even found in Ancient Egyptian where it also means mother!"
"Cor! If I called my mother a cunt she'd beat the daylights out of me," exploded Lisbet in a shriek of laughter.
"And do you know there used to be streets all over England called Gropecunt Lane it was supposed to mean 'a dark and disreputable passage.' "
"Bloody cheek," said Kathy edging forward into the light, "That's just typical of what men think of women."
A murmur of agreement at this insult to women's integrity went round the tent.
"Are there any other words for cunt?" asked Lisbet.
"Oh there are hundreds, all this chapter is about the words which used to be used instead of cock and cunt. People were so scared of the real ones they invented their own, and he's got lots of them here, right back to the 12th Century."
"You mean he's collected euphemisms?" asked Marion quietly, she was the studious one amongst them.
"Yes, that's right, that's what he calls them," said Tracy, "and some of them are screamingly funny honestly!"
"But," persisted Lisbet, "is cunt the only real word for a woman's sexual organs?
"Oh no ... there's tail (that's 14th Century), gear (16th Century) and twat and quim (both 17th Century). And then there's the technical word which doctors use vulva is that the one you wanted?"
"Ah yes! Now if I wanted to say to Dr. Menzies that I had a pain in my cunt I ought to say vulva to him, is that right?"
"You wouldn't dare!" laughed Marion, "you'd do what we'd all do you'd say 'I've got a pain down there'. "
Oh no I wouldn't," argued Lisbet.
"Don't you see that's what this book is all about silly prudery," insisted Tracy. "You've just got to read it to understand what he means. But those euphemisms really are funny listen to these for a man's prick: peacemaker, middle finger, flapdoodle, clothes prop, pudding, sugar stick, mouse, goose's neck, star gazer, fiddlestick, pike of pleasure, fowling-piece, master of ceremonies, thorn in the flesh, cuckold-maker, water-engine, cunny-catcher, rump-splitter, ass-tickler, grinding tool, cream stick, Old Slimy, pisser, merry maker, giggle-stick, thingumy...."
By this time the girls were in fits of laughter.
"Well go on Tracy tell us some more" gasped Barbara.
"But isn't it funny about 'thingumy'? " said Tracy, looking up with her finger on the page, "My mother uses it all the time, she'd die if she knew what it originally meant, and thingumybob and oojahmaflip they mean prick also!"
"I've heard Miss Prentice say thingumybob hundreds of times. You'd think she'd know what it means. I won't be able to keep my face straight next time she says it," giggled Erica. Miss Prentice was her headmistress, a very straight-laced and hated person in her life.
"Are there any euphemisms for a woman's sex, asked Lisbet, who seemed to have that part of her anatomy on her mind.
"I'll say there are! How about: open wound. Queen of Holes, mouth that says no words, port hole, the Netherlands, cat's meat, thatched house under the hill, fanny artful, watchermacallit, itching Jenny, little spot where Uncle's doodle goes, manhole, poke hole, hot passage and slimy pit of sin!!! "
The girls were now so convulsed with laughter they had forgotten they might be overheard. Miss Summers, hearing all the noise decided she ought to go and investigate. She was horrified by what she heard through the flimsy canvas walls of the tent and hurried to Jean. They both stood listening to Tracy continued to recite lists of euphemisms to her rollicking audience.
"Surely we can't allow this sort of thing to go on in the camp Mrs. Buller?" whispered Jacqueline, "We ought to confiscate the book and punish those girls.
"I'm not at all sure you're right Jacky. No, I'm not sure. As a matter-of-fact I rather like their attitude towards those silly words, it's quite wholesome. They aren't treating it as pornography to get a thrill out of it, are they? They are simply laughing at prudish grown ups who are too scared to use the proper words. Do you know I think it would have done me a lot of good to read a book like that when I was a teenager? "
"But Mrs. Buller surely they are far too young to even know about such things like that let alone discuss it amongst themselves or even read about it?"
"Nonsense, Jacky. Sex shouldn't be a mystery to children at any age. Things are better now than since I was a child and these girls' children will know even more and the more the better."
Jacqueline seemed quite upset: "But Mrs. Buller there are boys in the camp," she protested. "If the girls are reading books like that, they might try to experiment and after all we are responsible for what they do and what happens to them."
"Yes, Jacky, that's something we've got to think about. I agree it could happen, but in a way it's an argument not against the book but against their ignorance. Their parents don't tell them a thing and all the Church says is THOU SHALT NOT. There's rarely anyone telling them WHY NOT? and certainly nobody telling them HOW!"
Jacky was shocked: "Surely nobody should ever tell them how?"
"Why not?" asked Jean, gesturing Jacky away from the girls' tent, which had quieted down considerably while they were talking. It was possible they had heard the Leaders' voices. "It's just because they don't know how that they experiment. Most of the time it's just sheer curiosity about a forbidden subject. I can tell you this quite honestly. If I'd known as a teenager even half the things I know now I'd be a much happier person right at this minute."
Jacky pondered as they walked back to the tent they shared.
"I see what you mean, Mrs. Buller, but it's so difficult to throw off this idea that children should be kept in ignorance. I find I do it instinctively. But the parents of those kids would be outraged if they knew you had discovered they possessed that book and did nothing about it."
"The trouble with most parents," said Jean as they entered the tent, "is they refuse to understand their children are people, with all the same emotions and senses they have themselves, they just can't keep them in ignorance without damaging them in some way. I don't think there's anything beautiful about innocence unless you believe sex is dirty then it makes some sense perhaps, but it's a point of view I don't agree with.
"Even so, Mrs. Buller what are you going to do?"
"I haven't made up my mind. I think I'll sleep on it."
Jean began to rearrange the blankets on her camp bed and laid out her cigarettes conveniently beside her on a box. She suddenly became aware that Jacky was sitting, staring at her.
"Mrs. Buller what did you mean about being a happier person if you had read a book like that. You seem quite balanced and normal to me."
Jean looked at her steadily: "It's all according to what you mean by normal, Jacky. There is a small minority of people who are different because they can't help it. To themselves they seem quite normal, but the world tells them they are not, and some of the poor devils believe it and live terribly unhappy lives because of it."
"Are you talking about homosexuality, Mrs. Buller?"
Jean realized she had gone a little too far. She did not know Jacky's attitudes towards sex. It could be disastrous if she revealed her Lesbian tendencies and the girl went and reported her to the Committee.
"I didn't say I was one of those unfortunates myself," she said carefully, "I was just questioning your use of the word normal."
"Oh...." Jacky sounded disappointed, and Jean was interested in her reaction.
"Do you know anything about homosexuality, Jacky?" she probed.
"Only what I've read," replied Jacky eagerly, "I'm terribly sorry for such people, and I understand them...." she rushed on, obviously in a confiding mood after the conversation they had just had.
Jean slipped off her mac and got into bed. Then she lit a cigarette. This was getting even more interesting.
"Have you ever met one?"
"Oh yes ... there was a girl in my class at school and...." Jacky in her turn felt she had gone a little too far. She blushed and, to cover her confusion, Jean leant across the space between their beds and offered her a cigarette. She decided to probe a little more.
"It's quite a common thing for teenagers to experiment with others of their own sex, Jacky. That doesn't mean they are homosexual they just grow out of it."
"Oh but this girl was one definitely she even looked different from us. I didn't get to know her until the last year at school and...." once more she blushed, but Jean did not drop the subject.
"There's no need to be embarrassed with me, Jacky. I know about these things. Was your friend very unhappy?"
"Oh no ... at least she had been but I suppose she made the best of it, and of course she had friends, I mean...."
Once more Jean covered up: "Have a biscuit? That little trip in the night air has made me hungry."
Jacky gratefully helped herself from the proffered packet.
"Do you still know your school friend now you've left school?"
"Not now," Jacky said mournfully crunching a biscuit, "She moved away. I miss her terribly. She was the best friend I had and she was ever so clever. I'm saving up to go to Ireland and visit her."
"I had a friend like that once," said Jean, carefully feeling her way, "and she moved into the West End. It nearly broke my heart. I went to see her quite recently and she had changed so much I didn't like her any more."
"Really?" There was no mistaking the interest in Jacky's voice, "You mean she was a ... a? "
"Oh yes. But I was very disappointed when I saw her again. So you mustn't bank on your friend staying as she used to be. You must make new friends now."
Suddenly there were tears in Jacky's eyes: "But I can't. You see she understood me so well and there aren't any people like her around, I mean ... I...."
Jean stretched out her hand and was just able to take hold of Jacky's trembling hand where it lay on the bedclothes.
"I know exactly how you feel my dear. Now don't get upset. It's part of the business of growing up when we lose our friends. You'll soon find someone else just as sympathetic as she was and in the meantime you've got me around.
I understand perfectly and you can tell me all about it any time you want. Just now we must get to sleep because we've got a tough day tomorrow. Now settle down and I'll turn the lamp out. Goodnight."
There was a smothered goodnight from Jacky, but Jean could tell from the way the girl still clutched her hand that she was deeply moved by their conversation. She gently relinquished her hand and lay pondering the unexpected insight she had just gained into Jacky's life. She had purposely cut short any further confessions in case the girl might regret it later. Her heart went out in sympathy for the obvious loneliness she had tried to express. She was very fond of Jacky and a tremendous yearning built up to hold her in her arms and tell her that she need be lonely no longer. But, she told herself, there was a lot of difference between needing sympathy and actually loving another person, she did not know yet which Jacky sought.
The next morning left Jean in no doubt as to Jacky's feelings. The girl followed her round like a dog with adoring eyes: she wanted to fetch and carry for her as though she were a slave. Jean was afraid the others would notice and realized she would have to do something about it pretty soon or there would be a scandal. In the afternoon she invented an errand for Jacky and herself and asked Fred Crant to take the campers boating up river. This suggestion was very popular and they soon went off merrily, leaving Jean and Jacky alone in the camp, ostensibly getting ready to go into the village.
Jacky was delighted to spend the afternoon alone with Jean and eagerly questioned her when the others had gone.
"I don't really have anything for us to do," admitted Jean, "But I had to get you on my own. You've been behaving in a rather tactless way all the morning, don't you realize it?"
The girl blushed furiously, "I'm terribly sorry ... I ... I"
"Now look here Jacky, I'll have to have a talk to you. But first pull down the tent flap, so we can be absolutely private."
Jacky obeyed her, with wide excited eyes.
"Come and sit down beside me." Jean took the strong brown hands in hers, "We didn't say much to each other last night but I've come to the conclusion we understood each other quite well I'm right aren't I?"
"Oh yes!" breathed Jacky.
"I thought so. But my dear there's something you've got to get into your head. Nobody must know how we feel either about each other or in general surely you see that?"
"I suppose so," said Jacky reluctantly, "I was so happy I didn't think ... and I wasn't quite sure ... I wanted to make you like me ... oh Mrs. Buller you're such a nice person...."
"I don't think you need call me Mrs. Buller anymore my name's Jean. I like you very much my dear. You're sweet and clean and you wouldn't hurt anybody. But one thing I'm frightened of is that you might get hurt yourself. You will have to be honest with me, even if it does embarrass you ... how far did you go with your friend? "
Jacky's face went even redder. She looked down, swallowed and then said quite firmly: "In the beginning we used to just talk and sometimes show each other our private parts ... but towards the end we used to play with each other properly, until we'd ... satisfied ... each other ... you know what I mean. It was wonderful."
Jean was impressed. The girl was quite capable of talking coherently, and above all, she was not ashamed, or didn't seem to be.
She leant over sideways and kissed the girl's cheek tentatively and the next moment found herself enveloped in strong arms which wound around her and drew her body close to Jacky's.
"Jean ... Jean ... oh Jean ... I love you I love you!"
The passion in the girl's voice took her completely by surprise. Somehow she had imagined she would be master of the situation, but it seemed to be taken out of her hands. Presumably Jacky was the male counterpart of their inversion, a revelation which made Jean's heart beat wildly.
Nor was she prepared for the fact that poor Jacky had been driven nearly mad by the lack of sex in her life and was frantic to relieve herself of the oppression of her frustration. They fell back on the bed and Jacky was now on top of her, pressing her urgent body against Jean's and kissing her face and eyes and neck in a fever of desire. She thrust her own body back into Jacky's in response and suddenly she felt the girl's frame shake, go rigid and tense and then relax. She burrowed her face into Jean's neck and lay quiet.
It was obvious she had reached a climax without any manual stimulation whatsoever. Jean lay stroking her hair and delicately caressing her cheek, running her fingers along the line of the brow. She was aroused herself but tact suggested this was as far as she should go for the time being.
She whispered in Jacky's ear.
"We'll share my bed tonight when all the others have gone to sleep, will you like that?"
"Oh yes ... yes!" breathed Jacky into her neck. "I'm sorry about what happened just now. I couldn't control myself any longer I wanted you so much. But it'll be better tonight, I promise. I'll do all the things I learned from Hilary ... and you can teach me as well ... I'm sure you can teach me a lot ... I'm only a beginner really. Oh Jean, I love you!"
She rolled off Jean and lay beside her. Jean could not resist running her hand the full length of her relaxed body. The pleasure of touching a woman's curves again sent an electric thrill through her. She felt her genitals tingling and her breasts throbbing. Yes, these were normal feelings for her now, she felt no shame, only an intense desire to experience and enjoy. In the semi-darkness of the tent, laying beside Jacky, she felt her body tremble with suppressed desire. She liked the secretness of their confinement under this canvas covering and, hearing a car pass on the road nearby, wondered what they would think if they knew two women were lying here vibrating with eroticism.
"Tell me what you like," murmured Jacky, her face still buried in Jean's neck.
"I like my breasts being sucked I love that. I like my clitoris being massaged and I'll love it when you put your mickey against mine and rub them together ... oh Jacky, I love you too, darling ... darling...."
The girl reached up with searching lips and kissed Jean passionately pushing her tongue into Jean's mouth and pressing her body hard against the older woman's. Jean let herself go ecstatically for a few minutes and then gently pushed her away.
"We mustn't talk like this, we're getting too excited and it's too risky in broad daylight. The farmer might come and visit or ... or....
"The flap is tied on the inside and nobody could get in quickly," said Jacky, very clearly the dominant party now. "Let me just make you come with my fingers it's not fair that I enjoyed myself, I can feel you want it badly," And as she spoke she ran her hand quickly up Jean's skirt. Jean made a gesture to stop her but the hand pressed against the crotch through her panties and brought such a surge of excitement she was helpless.
"Open your legs," whispered Jacky, and immediately Jean did so and soon felt a probing eager finger inside her slit. With unerring knowledge the finger found its way to her clitoris.
"It that the spot for you?" she was asked.
She nodded, breathing deeply.
"Just relax and let me do it to you, you don't need to do anything to me at all...."
Jean opened her legs wide, one on each side of the bed and closed her eyes and let the gentle finger work away expertly. It didn't take long to have her writhing in sexual ecstasy. She did not control herself in front of Jacky. She wanted there to be no inhibitions during the coming night and this was as good a way of demonstrating her sensual nature as any. Jacky was whispering in her ear: "Oh darling Jean you love it don't you? Your cunt is lovely and wet and I can feel it responding under my fingers. I'm dying to get my mouth on it. I'll suck every spot of wetness out of it and then you can come again and I'll suck that too!"
This was quite sufficient to have Jean shuddering in her climax, jerking violently upwards into the probing finger. When Jacky took her hand away she licked her finger with every sign of enjoyment, so that Jean could not help laughing at her.
"Come on we'd better get moving and have the kettle on the fire for their tea before they come back."
"Alright," said Jacky, "But will you just touch me there once just for a second?"
"Where?"
"On my quim please."
"Now we can't get started again."
"Please ... just for one second," she pleaded. Jean reached out and ran her hand up Jacky's skirt.
"Why you haven't got any panties on."
"I know I hoped and prayed you might touch me some time during the day and I wanted to get the benefit of it straight away."
"You naughty girl!"
"I know I didn't think there was much chance but just in case! Please Jean, touch me once ... just once."
Jean ran her hand through the very coarse-haired bush she encountered, poking her finger once into Jacky's clitoris, ran her finger down the crack and poked it in her vagina. She was startled at the reaction of the girl. Once more just because of the contact she had a climax. Her legs were thrown wide, her breasts were heaving and suddenly Jean was aware that her hand was receiving a little spray of liquid into the palm. Jacky was panting and thrusting her body in spasmodic jerks up and down on the bed. Jean looked at her in amazement until she subsided. The girl was obviously very sexually potent and it thrilled her to think she would have such a virile lover.
During the week Jean received an unwelcome postcard from Mr.. Huxtable. He would be in the neighborhood that weekend, he said, and would pay them the compliment of staying at the local Inn and spending Sunday with the campers. He would arrive Saturday night and invited two of the three Youth Leaders to dinner, which he had already ordered by telephone. Doubtless Mr.. Huxtable imagined they would be pleased to eat a civilized meal after camp-fire rations. There was such marked reluctance to go to dinner with their Treasurer that the Leaders were forced to draw lots and neither Fred Crant nor Jacky, who were successful, looked very enthusiastic at their good luck.
The imminent visit of Mr.. Huxtable was explained to the campers, who took it good humouredly, probably because the envisaged his usual open-handed generosity and pocket money was short. There was one camper however, to whom the visit was a real shock. Tracy had imagined she would never see the man again. His forthcoming social ruin was a secret she hugged to her breast and looked forward to with almost bloodthirsty anticipation. Although she felt uneasy at his visit she was not unduly disturbed, she felt pretty safe living a public life amongst the campers.
Huxtable was in a fever of impatience. He had been standing under the weeping willow tree for half an hour. The consumption of half a bottle of whisky to protect him from the open-air rigors of the countryside had done nothing to calm his senses. He watched Tracy's slow and reluctant approach and took it for typical teenage teasing. He stood in pajamas and raincoat, holding his long thin penis in his hand and pumping it vigorously. An afternoon's exposure to a bevy of teenagers, their delectable asses enveloped in tight shorts had worked him to fever pitch. He was in no mood for coy dalliance.
It had been a brilliant idea to write Tracy a letter at the last moment and make this appointment. He had pinpointed the willow tree when he came down to view the site earlier in the year. It was far enough away from the camp to ensure they could not be heard and they certainly could not be seen. All day he had been in a fever of. anticipation for this moment, but his natural sense of caution had also sent him prowling around the sleeping camp just to make sure there was no sleepless person who might take a moonlit walk and interrupt him. And what a windfall his precaution had presented him with! Standing silently outside Jean's tent he had heard enough of what was going on inside to know he had one more opportunity for blackmail. He would extend his visit for a couple more days and before his holiday was up he would add Jean Buller to his list of conquests. This was certainly a vacation he would remember for a long time.
"If I don't get rid of this load of spunk in a few minutes," he thought crudely, "I'll scream like a madman! Look at her, the little bitch, playing hard to get right up to the last moment. You wait till I get you, my lady, you'll get what's coming to you alright and you'll love it, the way they all do."
Tracy pushed her way through the trailing forest of the willow's branches and was taken unaware by the eager hands which grabbed her in the darkness and the hot rough lips which came down harshly on her mouth. She fought to free herself from the sudden onslaught, making a screaming sound in her throat and thumping with her fists on his chest. Huxtable, who had not thought there would be resistance, was also taken unaware, and they crashed to the ground, Tracy underneath, every ounce of air knocked out of her lungs. He grabbed her wrists and croaked at her: "Stop fighting, you silly bitch stop it I tell you! Who the blazes did you think it was, you knew I'd be waiting stop it!"
But Tracy was hysterical. Now his mouth had left hers she took in a great gulp of air and began to scream wildly, turning her head from side to side in an anguish of fear. Huxtable was furious. He put a hand over her mouth and hit her viciously with the other hand. It did no good. So he smacked her again and again and again with the flat of his palm until she subsided in choking, shuddering sobs.
Instead of realizing the hideous mistake he was making, Huxtable was so inflamed by drink and lust that the only effect the screams had was to rouse him inordinately. His long skinny body already pinned Tracy to the ground. Holding both her wrists in one hand above he head he pulled aside his raincoat. Her nightdress had ridden well above her crotch because of her thrashing legs and he had no difficulty in thrusting his prick between her thighs into the dry hot slit. She began to struggle again, but feebly, despairingly, whimpering and crying like a whipped cowardly puppy. With a dip of his knees he was between the lips of her quim, one wriggle of his hips and he felt his shaft enter the tight hole he had been thinking about so avidly for the past half hour.
Tracy felt the burning entry of his long elderly tool and was overcome with an automatic revulsion of rejection which wracked her body to such an extent that she nearly succeeded in dislodging him. But he held on, like an eagle clutching its prey. The entry was overwhelmingly painful, because Tracy, not being sexually roused, had not exuded any of the natural juices which normally help the entrance of a welcome intruder. She squirmed her bottom on the scratchy ground, trying to wriggle from under him, pulling ineffectually at her imprisoned, wrists with her puny arms but Huxtable, driven half crazy by her struggles had the strength of two men in his body and pinned her down with his chest, grinding his loins into her pelvis, bruising her tender flesh between their two bones. His feet were hooked around her calves in a vice-like grip. She was powerless, no breath left in her body to shout and tired already from the fight.
Suddenly she collapsed indifferently all resistance gone. He bore up her reluctant cunt and pushed impertinently against her womb. She hardly felt it her whole body seemed encased in pain. Huxtable was almost disappointed when she ceased to struggle but the long awaited orgasm was very near and he pounded in and out of her, regardless of anything except the satisfaction of his licentious passion. He was panting and growling. One hand clawed at her breast tearing the flimsy nightdress and rousing her to feeble resistance once again. But he was inexorable. His. cruel fingers closed on one pretty breast and squeezed hard and painfully, pushing and pulling it as though he were milking a cow.
She began to cry, desolately and hopelessly, the tears running across her cheeks and down her neck. Her mouth gaped open as her head rocked from side to side, her eyes unseeing and her mind in an agony of sheer misery, shame and disgust.
The raping man was nearing his climax now, riding her like some savage wild beast covering his mate. He squealed as he bounced and thrust, until his shuddering body shot its sour deposit into her defenseless womb. Finally he crumpled and fell panting and sweating to the ground beside her.
In thirty years of technical rape he had never actually raped a schoolgirl. This experience had temporarily unhinged him. His sex life had been very restricted for the last year, his supply of ready victims being unaccountably short. In his raincoat pocket was a Durex sheath, but Tracy's unexpected resistance had prevented him from putting it on. As he lay beside her it dawned on him for the first time what he had done.
Tracy suddenly reared up, turned her head and was violently sick on the ground. When he saw her, she merely lay down again he knew she was genuinely upset, for the stench of her evacuation reached him from where he lay. He dragged her over to the other side of the tree but she lay supine, almost senseless. He could not understand what had caused her useless fight. He presumed she had just panicked because of his sudden approach. He was still incapable of understanding he had misjudged the girl. Not that it would have mattered very much if he had known. Like so many men who make sport of youngsters he only wanted his own gratification and cared very little for them. Nevertheless self preservation was important and it wasn't in his own interest to push a girl beyond caring a-bout scandal, or beyond reach of blackmail.
There was still a mouthful of whisky left in the bottle in his pocket and after rummaging in his raincoat he crawled over to the girl and tried to lift her to drink it but she immediately rolled over and away from him, cringing against the tree bole and holding her torn nightdress against her ravaged breasts.
"You brute! You brute!" she panted, her eyes staring wildly, her hair in a tangle about her throat, "I'll tell my father about you I'll tell him what you've done to me and he'll go to the police!"
"Oh no you won't," he said, carelessly, kneeing up and tipping the whisky down his own throat. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and threw the bottle amongst the branches. "Christ knows why you're making such a bloody fuss anybody would believe you'd never been screwed before. I know I'm not the first and probably not the fourth or fifth either. Do you think your father would stand for a scandal like that coming out in court? No you'll keep your mouth shut, my dear and next time just you stop this fighting ... you know you like it really."
"You nasty ... bastard. There won't be a next time, you'll be in prison see?"
"Now don't be a fool Tracy, keep your mouth shut or you'll bring on trouble in a big way," he snapped, standing up and brushing down his trousers. He was feeling just a little uneasy. Her resistance had excited him tremendously and he was afraid he'd been a little too rough. He was not particularly worried about possible pregnancy. It had never happened before, even when he'd been careless and he had a sneaking suspicion that he was barren.
He squatted down beside her, fishing in his back pocket: "Here, Tracy, buy yourself something really nice and then it won't seem so bad dearie here take this," and he thrust a handful of notes at her.
"I don't want your stolen money," she spat at him, cringing back and trying to crawl away.
He stared at her thunderstruck and the next moment pounced on her viciously, holding her down with her back pressed painfully against a protruding root.
"What did you say? What are you talking about? Answer me come on!"
She was terrified and trembling violently, "My father told me you were a ... thief ... you've been fiddling your firm's accounts," she stuttered.
"How does he know?" he shook her mercilessly, intent on an answer. "He's an accountant."
He released her. There was no need to question further. The game was up. The details were irrelevant. He stood for a moment staring down at her then turned abruptly and walked away through the trailing curtain of leaves which surrounded them.
Tracy sat a long time with her back against the tree trunk. She was dazed and numb. The horror of her experience was so great she could not think properly. There was only one person who could comfort her and that was Martin and he was over a hundred miles away. How could she go to his wife or Miss Summers, or any of the other girls? The thought of telling her father, as she had threatened, was impossible also. She would have to suffer it all alone. This was the penalty of growing up. She had stepped from childhood into womanhood when she let Martin make love to her and now she was at the mercy of the world which contained beasts like Huxtable.
After a while she tried to stand. Her legs still trembled. Her nightdress was torn irrevocably and she wrapped her summer coat around her as she began to shiver from shock in the chilly night air. Slowly and painfully she made her way through the overhanging branches and stood in the meadow looking at the distant white tents, quiet and peaceful. How could they rest so assured when she had been raped so mercilessly ... it seemed impossible they could be unaware ... the whole world should have been up in arms on her behalf. She swayed and fell to her knees but struggled up again and made her way to the river's edge. There she bathed her face and breasts in the cold water and sluiced the white ooze of Huxtable's emission from her sore genitals. She sat on the bank for a while and watched the swiftly flowing river glittering in the moonlight. She thought of throwing herself in the clean healing water, but Tracy was a fighter, not a loser and soon dismissed the idea.
Feeling better, she made her way painfully to her tent, crawling quietly under the brailing and slipping into the soft warmth of her sleeping bag. Utter exhaustion and shock sent her off to sleep almost instantly. She had not one thought for Huxtable, whose loathed existence she banished from her mind.
Further down the river bank he pondered on the inscrutable hand of fate which had guided him to forcibly rape the daughter of a man who was, presumably, to have a hand in his downfall. This was undoubtedly a situation he would not get out of with his customary ease.
As soon as Jean opened her eyes the next morning she remembered the terrifying experience of the night before. Hearing a sound outside the tent she had left Jacky's bed and investigated, saying she was going to the restroom. The retreating back of Huxtable had been quite unmistakable. She had also heard him chuckling to himself. There was no doubt in her mind that the Treasurer had heard their amorous and sometimes obscene conversation through the tent wall.
She had stood outside for several minutes. This was the end of her career as a Youth Leader, she was sure of it. Jean was naturally unaware of the true character of Mr.. Huxtable. Although she disliked the man she had no means of knowing his prediction for schoolgirls. She had sensed his interest in her during his visit to the camp that day. Whenever she had looked at him he had seemed to be already looking at her. She had been uneasy, her guilty conscience making her wonder whether he knew about her and Jacky. She had dismissed this as foolish several times, since their new relationship had only grown during the last few days and they were behaving most decorously. Now she was absolutely sure he must have been suspicious and prowled around to confirm it. When she went back into the tent she told Jacky what she had seen. They did not make love again but lay discussing the threat which now hung over both of them, the threat of exposure which would bring disgrace on the Youth Club they had helped to found and prosper.
Jacky was still sleeping. Jean reached for her cigarettes but before she had put a match to one she heard her name being called. She pulled a raincoat over her pajamas and emerged from her tent into the cool morning air. Mrs. Jenkins, the farmer's wife, was standing near the camp fire with a policeman in uniform who looked very uncomfortable.
Mrs. Jenkins hurried towards her, "Sorry to disturb you Mrs. Buller, but the Sergeant wants to speak to you and he insisted I brought him over."
"What does he want at this hour of the morning?" Jean asked.
Mrs. Jenkins was opening her mouth to explain when the Sergeant intervened: "I'd be grateful if I could have a few words with you, Mrs. Buller," he said in a thick country accent, "you see there's been an accident...."
Jean immediately thought of Martin traveling on the continent, and her face went white.
"It's about a Mr.. Huxtable I understand you know this gentleman who's staying at the Rose and Crown?"
His serious face did nothing to calm Jean, although she was much relieved the accident didn't involve Martin.
"Yes," she said slowly, "I know Mr.. Huxtable. He's one of the sponsors of the Youth Club I've brought down here. What ... what about him?"
"I'm sorry to inform you ma'am that Mr.. Huxtable was found in the river early this morning."
"Oh my God is he dead."
"Yes, ma'am."
Another feeling of relief flooded over Jean, but this time she was ashamed of it the poor man.
"Was he drowned?"
"Yes ma'am. I'm sorry to have to ask you, but would you be kind enough to identify the body? You knew him well?"
"Oh yes. I've known him since I was a child. He's not married but he's got several relatives. What a terrible thing to happen ... but ... how did it happen?"
"Well ma'am...." the policeman was obviously not used to dealing with serious cases, "we have reason to believe it could be suicide."
"Surely not!" protested Jean, "Why would he come down here to do such a thing, with all these youngsters around. It sounds absurd."
"Perhaps so, ma'am, but we've been through to his local police station in London and they say a warrant for his arrest was taken out yesterday by his employers and it could be considered a motive for suicide. However, I shouldn't be discussing this with you and I hope as you will keep that aspect of the death to yourself."
"Of course," said Jean, bewildered by the turn of events, "when do you want me to identify the body?"
"Later this morning, if you please Mrs. Buller, a police car will take you into town."
"I see. What about the campers? Should I tell them?"
"Well ma'am, I think it would be better if you just told them briefly that Mr.. Huxtable is dead and I've got to ask them a few questions. Sort of prepare them like?" I'm sorry, Mrs. Buller, but in view of the suicide question I must find out things like who saw him last and whether he said anything which showed he intended to take his life."
"Well the campers won't be able to tell you anything like that. Miss Summers and I walked back with him to the Inn last night after he had spent the day with us and we said goodnight after having a drink with him in the lounge. That was about 10 o'clock. We returned to the camp and went to bed. The campers were already in bed and most of them asleep by that time."
"I see." The Sergeant was now writing now, laboriously, and Jean was feeling very uncomfortable. "And did Mr.. Huxtable say anything about taking his life?"
"On the contrary. He was very cheerful and said he had enjoyed himself thoroughly. He was a bit edgy and nervous though, I did notice that."
"And nothing else? Can I have a word with this Miss Summers then, please Mrs. Buller. After that I'll see the campers just in case they noticed anything."
"Very well," said Jean reluctantly. She returned to her tent to find Jacky just awakening. Quietly she told her about Huxtable's death. Jacky was very shocked, although Jean detected the faint relief which she herself had felt. She then went from tent to tent telling the Club what had happened and that the Sergeant would be questioning them.
Her news came as a bombshell to Tracy. She was still dazed after her experience of the night before and this new development was almost more than she could take in sensibly. But after a while the full significance of it dawned on her. Although no mention of suicide had yet been made she knew instinctively that Huxtable had drowned himself and that her revelation of his impending ruin had been the cause.
She remained silent amongst the chorus of questions from the occupants of her tent. Soon she slipped away to have a quiet cigarette amongst some nearby trees and there managed to come to terms with herself. She must not tell the policeman that she had seen the Treasurer. That would be fatal. Her guilty secret might come out; she would not trust herself not to break down under searching questions. She would merely say the same as all the other campers and there seemed no reason at all why she should not be believed. Fortunately she had already burned Huxtable's letter at the camp fire and there was no clue to connect them together.
The Sergeant did not spend much time questioning the campers. The case seemed pretty cut and dried to him. He had come to the conclusion that Huxtable had telephoned London some time during the day and found out about the warrant for his arrest. His enquiries therefore should be at the Inn or the local telephone exchange and it was merely routine to get statements from the Youth Club.
When he got on his bicycle and pedaled away he had no idea he left behind him two unhappy people who had not told him all they might have done.
There is very little more of this story to tell. Jean and Jacky found themselves brought even closer together because of the tragedy of Mr.. Huxtable's death. The threat of exposure they imagined had hung over them was now dispelled, but they realized the danger of continuing their work with the Club. Sadly they decided to give in their resignations. Nevertheless a new life was beginning for both of them, as the tragedy receded in their memory, so they began to plan for their future together.
And Martin, bathing in the sunshine of the south of France in the daytime and enjoying the charms of his mistress in bed every night was as happy as a man can hope to be in this uncertain world. He had not asked Anna to marry him yet but he would do so before the end of their holiday. He felt their lives were inextricably entwined, whether they married or not and he knew she would give up her other lovers in his favor when he asked.
And Tracy, as the shock wore off, was able to transform her experience into high drama which she scribbled down in half a dozen notebooks and read to heir friends, gloating over the fact that they could never know it had all really happened. Even so, it left a mark on her which would always remain in her memory. In the first flush of her youth she had known tenderness and the consummation of love. If she could cling to that memory to the exclusion of the rest, then the damage was not irreparable.
