by MP Frank
“No coffee, thank you. I’m fine,” Gaëlle said. “I’ll just sit and wait.” The expression on the secretary’s face had revealed that she was probably working out whether to put two doses of cyanide in Gaëlle’s cup rather than just one. When Maya emerged, she led Gaëlle out of the building and along the road towards the centre of town.
“Now, what’s this all about? I imagine it isn’t just a social call,” Maya said.
Gaëlle took a moment to think about how to phrase her reply. What had appeared so simple at home now seemed self-indulgent as well as complex. Maya interrupted Gaëlle’s train of thought. “It’s sex again, isn’t it?” she asked.
Gaëlle nodded.
“Well, get on with it, then,” Maya said firmly. Gaëlle cleared her throat and explained that she’d been thinking about what Maya had said, regarding Gaëlle’s reaction to attractive women. She held out the remote to Maya.
“What I’d like you to do for me, is to watch as I go for a stroll through town, and turn it to green, amber or red, any time that you observe the phenomenon that you told me about, and according to how noticeable my reaction is.”
“So, if I see you taking a sudden, conspicuous interest, I do this, do I?” Maya asked, turning it on to full power. Gaëlle’s insides lurched as the vibration pulsed through her vagina. Maya looked at her.
“You’re somehow wired up to this, aren’t you?” she said.
Gaëlle nodded again
“I won’t ask exactly how…or where. Right, then, here we go,” Maya said. “And behave yourself properly, or I’ll do…this!” She turned it to maximum and kept it there until Gaëlle begged her to stop.
“If you do that, I won’t be able to walk at all,” Gaëlle gasped.
“Just walk!” Maya instructed her. “I need to know what range this thing has.”
They rapidly worked out that Maya could afford to be a few steps away from Gaëlle. They set off towards the centre of town. Offices were closing and the streets were gradually filling with workers on their way home. Gaëlle was very nervous at first, but after a few minutes, she did her best to forget the egg inside her and strolled along, looking in shop windows from time to time. The egg buzzed. Gaëlle hadn’t been aware that she’d looked at anyone in particular. She paused and waited for Maya to catch up with her:
“What did I do?” she asked.
“You didn’t realize? The girl getting into the taxi and showing a lot of rather nice leg?”
Now, Gaëlle recalled. Her interest level had been raised so marginally that she’d already forgotten the moment. “Wow,” she said. “You’re really sharp, aren’t you? I wasn’t aware that I’d noticed her until I got your little buzz.”
“That was why it was only a little one,” Maya said with a grin. “On you go! I’m starting to enjoy this!”
Gaëlle continued her walk, trying to ignore the egg. It was five minutes before Maya surprised her again, but this time, Gaëlle didn’t need to ask why. The young woman bending over to adjust her shoe had revealed a push-up bra in the opening of her blouse, and Gaëlle was almost sure she’d caught a glimpse of nipple. Again she waited for Maya.
“I know,” she said. “I’m behaving like a dirty old man, aren’t I? Does it show?”
Maya laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I only notice where your eyes go because that’s what I’m looking for. Onwards!”
For over half an hour, Gaëlle criss-crossed the centre of Strasbourg, registering little bursts of pleasure every so often, as Maya buzzed her. Mostly, it was a green pulse, which made Gaëlle aware that she must be spending most of her life at present in a state of slight excitement. She felt another quick green buzz. Gaëlle stopped and waited for Maya to come up to her.
“What was that for?” Gaëlle asked. “I was looking at cakes!”
“That was just to get your attention,” Maya said. “And speaking of cakes…Let’s find a café. I want to sit down, I’ve been on my feet all day.”
“I’m sorry,” Gaëlle said. “I was being selfish. Come on, I’ll buy you a coffee.”
She led Maya to a café by the cathedral, where she’d had an exciting experience a few years earlier. They sat on the terrace, watching people walk across the square. Now, Gaëlle was able to concentrate and gradually the little bursts of green pleasure became easier for her to predict. However, she almost shot out of her seat when Maya gave her a sustained, red-light throbbing. The woman who had provoked it was walking their way from the other side of the square. She was fully dressed and had done nothing to reveal thigh or breasts. However, she was very attractive—that was clear, from the heads that turned her way.
“All right! I confess! She’s lovely!” Gaëlle gasped. Maya smiled, but the vibration continued. Gaëlle wanted to writhe in ecstasy, but fought to maintain some degree of control, given that the café and street were full of people who would notice if she gave in to her desire.
“Maya! Please turn it off, I’m going to come.”
“In a moment,” Maya said. As the young woman came nearer, Maya waved to her. She changed course and came towards their table. Gaëlle panicked.
“What on earth are you doing, Maya?” She gasped. A moment later, the vision was walking up to Maya and kissing her on both cheeks.
“Séverine, meet Gaëlle,” Maya said. “Séverine teaches at my school.”
“Pleased to meet you, Séverine,” Gaëlle managed to say, relieved that Maya had moved the control to green for the moment. The young woman was very tall, with long black hair. Her skirt and jacket had a designer label, and her crisp white blouse showed just a touch of cleavage, hinting at beautiful breasts. The urgent buzz in Gaëlle’s vagina made it hard for her to make intelligent conversation. For what felt like an age, Gaëlle sat trembling on the brink of orgasm, while Maya and Séverine exchanged politenesses. They behaved quite formally, which made Gaëlle feel that her turned-on state was even less appropriate, escalating her excitement. Maya released the control, and Gaëlle breathed deeply. However, as Séverine was shaking Gaëlle’s hand in farewell, Maya went up to red again, making the waves in Gaëlle’s sex attain tsunami proportions. She barely managed to say goodbye and restrain herself until Séverine’s back was turned, before she doubled over and came.
“That’s for taking advantage of me with the dress!” Maya declared.
Gaëlle couldn’t speak for a moment. When she got her voice back, she said, “That was amazing, but I was terrified, too! It would have been awful to disgrace myself in front of one of your staff. I hope that makes us even.”
“All square,” Maya assured her. “But now it’s time for me to go home and for you to go and lie down, from the look of you. By the way, you aren’t the first to have ogled Séverine. I suspect that most of the adolescent boys in her Human Biology class spend their nights with willy in hand, imagining what she must look like in the nude.”
“Some of the girls will be fantasizing, too, I bet,” Gaëlle said. She cast a quick glance at Maya. “And maybe even a few of the staff…and their husbands?”
“I’ll see you Monday evening,” Maya said firmly. She handed the remote to Gaëlle, kissed her, then turned and walked away.
Chapter Twenty-three
“Have you recovered from our stroll through town?” Maya asked with a twinkle in her eye, as she parked herself on Gaëlle’s sofa the following Monday evening.
“I didn’t need to recover, but it took a while for me to calm down,” Gaëlle told her. “I don’t remember if I thanked you for your help, but if not, I do thank you sincerely. The world isn’t full of people who could be trusted to do what you did for me.”
“When I first agreed to listen to you, I didn’t realise I was going to be involved quite so…shall we say, intimately,” Maya said. “But it was fun and it did allow me to get you back for the dress you sneaked into my bag for Eric.”
Gaëlle laughed. “So we’re even. Where had we got to?”
“Actually, speaking of Eric, he
and I were discussing you a few nights ago. He was surprised you’d been such a late starter. He was wondering what triggered this urge to test yourself to such an extent.”
Gaëlle thought for a moment. “Well, meeting Jérôme was the most important event in my whole life, not just the erotic part of it, but the specific spark for the exploration came from a book.”
“The Story of O, I suppose?”
“No. I’ve never been a fan of pain and humiliation. I love sex, but that book left me cold, well, mostly. The book that got to me was Emmanuelle.”
“I’ve never read it, just seen a couple of the films. I didn’t find Sylvia Kristel particularly sexy, I have to admit.”
“She didn’t look as I’d imagined Emmanuelle from the book, that’s certain. There’s a lot more to the book than was in the film, too. It was how they set about visualizing what happened to her that was interesting to me when I saw the film.”
“I can just see you in the cinema, nudging Jérôme and saying that isn’t right, or they’ve changed that bit. So, what was it about the book that set you off?”
“It was the idea of trying out all sorts of erotic experiences. As you just said, testing myself to discover what excited me…and Jérôme too, of course. The first time I read it, the book blew me away. There was one moment…” Gaëlle paused, deep in recollection. Maya sat looking expectantly at her and waiting for Gaëlle to carry on.
“Well?” she asked, her patience apparently running out.
Gaëlle told her about the night-time carriage ride and how Mario had invited a drunken stranger to caress Emmanuelle’s legs, then ordered him to take off her knickers, before thrusting the man away. He declared that Emmanuelle wasn’t to give everything she had to just one man, but to offer the various parts of her body to several men, in sequence or as a group.
“I see. Exciting as a fantasy, I suppose,” Maya commented. “Not so sure of it in practice, though. Especially that it wasn’t her decision.”
“It was, in a way. She could have refused.” Gaëlle said. “But since she’d put herself in Mario’s hands for her sexual education, it wouldn’t have been easy to back out at that point, I agree.”
Gaëlle went on to tell Maya about some more of her experiences and when Maya called a halt, pleading the need to cook for her family, Gaëlle let her go.
“The cooking is the simple part,” Maya said as she was leaving. “I can foresee Eric will be demanding some activity later, based on this evening’s revelations. You know, I totally forget that he’s listening in, now. He says I haven’t talked in my sleep since he was invited to hear our discussions. My subconscious must have wanted him to know, I guess.”
“It’s a relief to me that you aren’t having to hide anything from him,” Gaëlle said. “Give me a call to tell me when you can come again.”
“I wouldn’t miss our chats for the world. Bye.”
Gaëlle closed the door and went back to sit down. Being reminded of the carriage drive incident in Emmanuelle had brought back the memory of something that had happened not long after Jérôme and she had arrived in England. She’d been in her mid-twenties and her English at that point had been rather hit-and-miss, so she hadn’t felt confident enough to take a job. There had been days spent decorating their house, of course, but she’d felt the need to find a way to practise her spoken English. A neighbour, Mary, had come to the rescue. She ran a group that visited old people who lived alone, giving them company and providing minor assistance. Gaëlle had taken to it with enthusiasm, as the people she went to see were less concerned about her grammatical mistakes than that she was a punctual and cheerful visitor. Then Mary had asked her to take on a man who was said to be difficult.
“He’s the stereotype of a grumpy old man,” Mary told Gaëlle. “He’s in his late seventies, has only one arm and is in a wheelchair. He can be very abrupt. Will you give him a go?”
Gaëlle pulled up outside the man’s bungalow with a degree of trepidation. She rang the bell and went in, as she had been instructed. At the end of a long corridor, a figure was sitting in a wheelchair. He must have been a big man in his youth, and she could see the remnants of a fine bone structure in his face.
She went up to him. “Good morning,” she said. “My name is Gaëlle. Mary sent me.” Now she was closer, she could see the signs of plastic surgery on both his cheeks. Mary had told her that he’d suffered a severe facial injury during the war which had also shortened his tongue, so he would be hard to understand. Gaëlle’s first job was to read the newspaper to him, because with only one hand, he found it difficult to manage. Mostly he grunted with displeasure or disgust at the news, with which Gaëlle could sympathise. Over the next few sessions, she began to feel more relaxed in his presence, enough to want to have a conversation. It was difficult. His inability to articulate frustrated him hugely. She didn’t always understand him, and that was when she witnessed the anger that Mary had warned her about. Gaëlle thought hard about how to overcome the problem. She turned up a few sessions later with a large pad of lined paper. She pushed the wheelchair over to a table and handed a pen to him.
“If I don’t understand you, just write what you want to say,” she told him. The grunt that was his reply, as well as the expression on his face, seemed to her to contain elements of pleasure and satisfaction, as well as surprise that she’d cared enough to think of this way forward. Over the following weeks, she learned that he’d been in the British army at the fall of Singapore, and had spent several years as a prisoner of war, labouring on the notorious Burma railway. That was where he’d been wounded, while trying to escape. The scars and the damage to his tongue had come from a bayonet thrust intended to kill him. Gaëlle had read The Bridge on the River Kwaï, so she had an idea of the background. The ice had been broken between them.
When she arrived the next time, a large photo album was sitting on the table. After the newspaper ritual, she sat beside the wheelchair and opened the album. The first caption, next to a photo of him as a young man, surprised her. He’d been a captain, with several decorations for bravery. She made appreciative noises. His life in Singapore prior to the Japanese invasion had been great fun, it seemed, to judge by the photos of parties, horse racing and sailing boats. He’d been an attractive man and she commented on the number of different women with him in the photos. He pulled the pad towards him and wrote—
Just friends!!! Flirting allowed.
Gaëlle smiled and turned another page. It showed a wedding photo, but clearly after the war. The captain’s scars were very apparent. Gaëlle had the impression the bride was also damaged, but psychologically, perhaps. The captain wrote again.
Damned fool. Her, too.
“Both of you? Why?” Gaëlle asked.
Widow of best chum. Went down with battleship. Both of us in mess. Thought help each other. NBG. She left.
“NBG?” Gaëlle asked. He guffawed, his open mouth revealing the stump that was all that was left of his tongue.
Sorry. Forgot foreign. No Bloody Good.
“At least you tried. Your intentions were good.” Gaëlle turned the pages, discovering nephews, nieces and other family members. The captain wrote names and cryptic comments about them, some of them very cutting and witty. As she was about to go, an envelope fell from the back of the album. She held it up.
“Do I open this?” she asked. She was shocked to see tears beginning to slide down the captain’s scarred cheeks. He waved his hand in dismissal, clearly wanting to be alone. She put the envelope away again, patted him on the shoulder and left.
When she returned a week later, the envelope was the only thing on the table. She looked at the captain quizzically. He nodded. Gaëlle sat down and opened it. There was a newspaper cutting, yellow with age. Gaëlle unfolded it.
Ex-Luftwaffe pilot tells all said the headline. How 200 Wrens died in a dive-bomber attack, on their way to their first posting in Gibraltar in July 1942.
“Someone you knew?” Gaëlle asked.
>
Margaret. Fiancée.
“Oh, that’s awful. And you didn’t find out until after the war?” He nodded. Gaëlle looked in the envelope again and pulled out a photograph of a young woman. She was blonde and slim, and was wearing a light summer dress with a striking geometric pattern. It must have been taken on a windy day, because the dress was blown tight against her legs.
“She was beautiful,” Gaëlle said. “Did you take the photo?” He nodded, and wrote—
Last leave. Never saw her again.
“I’m so sorry,” Gaëlle said.
Never shown photo. Nobody interested
“Then I’m honoured,” Gaëlle stood and kissed him on the forehead. He smiled, and wrote—
Newspaper now?
“Of course.”
Gaëlle told Jérôme all about the captain each time she returned from visiting him. He was fascinated and also happy that Gaëlle had found something to occupy her.
During this period, while Gaëlle was preparing herself to find a job, she’d got into the habit of wandering round the charity shops. It was a new experience for her, since these shops seemed to be a particularly British phenomenon. There were books, baby buggies, china tea sets and racks of clothes, and while browsing one day, she came across a dress not unlike the one that she’d seen in the captain’s photo, a cotton summer dress, a frock, the woman in the shop called it, calf length, buttoned all the way down the front. It was cream in colour, and with a blue and red flowered pattern. She was unable to resist.
“What on earth is that?” Jérôme asked when he saw it.
“I thought I might wear it for the captain,” Gaëlle said. “If I take it in a little, it will fit me.”
“You don’t think he’ll take it wrongly?”
“I don’t think so. After he’d shown me the photo, he seemed relieved, much happier. I suspect he’s been bottling up his feelings for all these years.”
“Well, if you’re prepared to take the risk. You know him better than I do.”