Coming Together: At Last, Volume One

by Alessia Brio, L. A. Banks, Lisabet Sarai

  "Don't worry, pet.” She leaned forward and patted my knee. “Typing isn't the most important thing in life."

  Well thank God for that, I thought. I hated it. I looked at the window behind Arabella's head. I wanted to be outside. I let my mind wander to some old wartime posters Mum had kept, recruiting women into the factories and fields. Mum was an illustrator and had designed some of the most famous land-worker images. Strong, proud women, working in the fields and mending tractors.

  "Cookery is a much more important skill to learn,” Arabella announced, and beamed at me, benevolently.

  My heart sank. I noticed then how violently her sticky coral lipstick clashed with the pink blouse.

  "We have a very good cook here, from Norway, and she can teach you."

  Apparently, there wasn't a lot I could do about it. I had never cooked, but I did enjoy food, not that my scrawny under-developed frame attested to it. I was resigned to go along with whatever others decided on my behalf; little did I know that my apathy was soon to be forgotten in the meeting that was to follow.

  Arabella picked up her ornate telephone, asked her secretary to send Matilda up, and then munched her way through a round of Highland Shortbread while we waited.

  I looked at the Norwegian girl with curiosity when she entered the room. She was probably only a year or two older than me, tall, with pale blonde hair tied at the back of her neck. She had clear blue eyes, broad cheekbones and a strong, attractive face. She looked back, her glance taking me in from head to foot, very quickly. It was a blatant appraisal, and it triggered some strange yet delicious response inside me. Heat rose in my cheeks. She gave a slight smile but didn't say anything and then looked at Arabella for instructions.

  "Sally is eager to join in with your baking, Matilda,” she said, over the edge of her shallow bone china teacup. The girl looked back at me, as if waiting for me to say something.

  "Miss Fawcett recommends your class,” I said, unsure what was required of me. The girl smiled, as if to herself, still staring at me. Arabella shuffled, crossing her legs at the ankles.

  "Not so much of a class, as personal tutoring."

  Arabella was mistress of the euphemism—what she meant was that I would be helping out in the kitchens. As it turned out, I couldn't have been happier that my mother was paying for this privilege.

  "Tilly is very quiet,” Arabella added, lowering her voice and leaning forward conspiratorially. “She came from Norway for a few weeks and then stayed with us this past year."

  I realized she was still talking about the girl she called Matilda, though she had shortened her name and lowered her voice, as if the foreigner wouldn't understand what she was saying. Perhaps she didn't understand, I thought. I realized then that she hadn't spoken. I looked at the girl again and saw that she was waiting for me to make a move, so I stood up. Arabella nodded her goodbyes. Matilda led the way from the room and I followed her down the big staircase to the ground floor, my curiosity already beginning to lift my woebegone spirits.

  The kitchens were extensive and maze-like, with many disused anterooms where old pans and equipment cluttered the surfaces. They were in a distant wing, far from the main school rooms. Only the faint sounds of laughter, chatter, and badly played piano followed us. Matilda worked in a long, narrow room with a tall window at one end. It was painted creamy magnolia and a dull pale green. A huge range and two deep ceramic sinks were set into heavy wooden work surfaces down one wall. The opposite wall was lined with shelves of utensils that rattled and chimed when we walked up and down the narrow central aisle.

  Matilda waved me in, smiling secretly. I assumed she didn't speak much English, or wasn't confident with it. She didn't seem to need it, though, for she spoke to me in other ways. She passed me dishes and indicated where I should set them up. I was immediately at ease in her company; she accepted me into her space without reserve, and began to involve me in wonderfully simple and fulfilling tasks. I soon realized that all the bread and pastries—pretty much the only edible thing on the school menu—were baked by Matilda.

  She was beautiful, elegant and proficient, and she intrigued me; I watched her every move. She pointed up at a set of scales, and when I couldn't quite reach, she gave a quiet chuckle and stepped behind me, close against me as she reached up for the heavy brass contraption. Her body seemed to nestle mine; I closed my eyes when her presence all but totally embraced me. She smelled of baking and something else: lemon zest, fresh and tangy. When she exclaimed suddenly, I caught the eight-ounce weight that slid down in front of me, and joined in with her chuckles.

  I watched mesmerized, as she lovingly gave the bread life. I felt warm and alive when I was with her. Her hands rode the dough back and forth, her fingers flexing as she pressed the ball of her hand into it. She altered her supple touch in response to the dough; it was her strong sensuality I was witnessing and absorbing then, only I did not realize that until years later. She hummed quietly when she worked, a half-smile hovering around her broad mouth as she glanced at me from under her eyelids. I liked being with her. She didn't seem to expect much of me, but at the same time, she seemed to enjoy having me there.

  When she looked up at the loaf tins that first day, I reached for them, trying to guess her needs. She nodded, smiling, and then grew serious when I rubbed briefly at the tension in my neck. She laid a floury hand against the knot of muscles at the base of my neck and pressed into my collarbone. I flinched; it was painful because so much tension had gathered there during the previous weeks at home. She gave a tutting sound against the roof of her mouth and gently kneaded the muscle, as if I were dough. It felt strange, but good. Just as a quiet groan escaped me, she stopped, and turned to roll the dough into the loaf tins. She rested them on top of the range, covering them with a gingham cloth. Then, dusting her hands off, she crooked her finger at me and led me from the kitchen.

  She took me to a small attic room that housed a patchwork-quilt covered bed, a set of drawers, a chenille rug, a plain dressing screen and little else. She turned to me as I shut the door behind us and lay her hand on the bed. I smiled, nervous, but also intensely curious. She guided me to sit on the edge of the bed. She seemed able to show me how to move without pushing or saying anything, and I found her actions intriguing.

  She touched my shoulders and then moved her fingers, indicating that she was going to massage me. I stretched out, face down, as directed. She undid the back of my dress and began to stroke and knead my back across the shoulder blades and up the column of my neck. I was distracted from the rather odd feeling of sudden and unexpected exposure, because I was immediately focused on her actions. Her hands moved to loosen a deep disharmony in my body, freeing me from the burden I carried.

  I remembered that Scandinavian people did things like this; I had seen pictures of their wooden sauna houses and steaming coals. I found myself imagining Matilda stepping out of one of those sauna houses into the snow, naked and laughing. I blushed into her pillow. With her hands on my body, so sure and confident, I felt suddenly weak and dizzy.

  "It feels so good,” I whispered, almost unconsciously. I had almost melted into her bed. She leaned forward and smiled at me over my shoulder, her cheeks rosy, pleased with my praise. When she had covered my entire back with the firm deep massage of her fingers, I thanked her, and sat up. I was tingling all over. I wondered if I was the only person she had done this for. I wanted it to be so.

  "Will you teach me this too, as well as the cooking?"

  She beamed, her cheeks warming, and nodded.

  "I hope I can learn,” I murmured. I suddenly realized that I had spoken without thinking, and that she had understood me.

  Tilly picked up my hands and looked at them, squeezing the pads of my fingertips. She slid her hands up to the slight muscle of my upper arm, circling it with her fingers as she felt its shape in her hand. The way she touched me, so firm and decisive, made me feel light and weightless, as if I would float away if I wasn't sitting down.


  My dress was still open at the back, and it slid down as she moved around me. She glanced across my partially exposed breasts, spreading heat beneath my skin, and then she continued looking at my hands, feeling my knuckles. I looked at the outline of her torso with curiosity, before she smiled again and gently pulled my dress into position. I felt a sense of disappointment when she covered me up but wasn't sure why.

  "You will be able to learn,” she said, in a low, halting voice. I jumped, surprised to hear her speak. Her voice was deep but quiet, heavily accented. I blushed, embarrassed at my surprise.

  "Oh, good,” I said, feeling suddenly awkward and silly, and stood up. When we returned to the kitchens, she pulled back the gingham cloth that covered the loaf tins. The pale dough had begun to rise and swell, and she let me look at its first transformation before she put it into the oven to continue its development.

  * * * *

  I was issued a big cover-all apron, rather like a pinafore dress. Tilly had one, too. They slipped over the head, tied at the sides, and kept the mess off our clothes. Mine was a bit too large for me, so I gathered some of the material up on the shoulders into safety pins. I felt a bit like I had as a little girl, dressing up in my mother's clothes.

  As the days passed, I settled into a routine. After dull morning classes on etiquette and conversational French, I would pick up my things and hurry off to join Tilly. After lunch in the refectory with everyone else, we would escape together and walk over the sand dunes to the wide shoreline. We stood there and joyously threw yesterday's bread out for the gulls, running back quickly, laughing, when they swooped down from the sky. When I close my eyes now, I can still see her flaxen hair fanning out against the roaring skies.

  Exhilarated and alive, we would return to the cozy kitchen—or equally cozy room—to learn the skill of massage in her attic room. The two interchanged and overlapped. She showed me the massage techniques on the dough, and then we would go to her room to put them into practice. She would always turn and smile at me when I followed her through the door, as if secretly amused by the baggy pinafore that made me look like a little girl. Between massages, she teasingly tweaked my skin, like the gentle twists on a plaited loaf, making me giggle and squirm.

  "Sally, stop with this wiggle,” she laughed, her pronunciation of my name softening the “S” into a “Z” and lengthening the “e” sound out into a long oral caress. Everything about her made me feel warm and alive.

  When we were alone in the kitchens, I told her stories of my friends in London, miming or pulling faces to explain what I meant if she did not understand a word or phrase I used. It was a time of many smiles. I learned slowly that her father was a diplomat and her parents were stationed in the Far East. She loved to read and wanted to write about places she had visited with her parents. She usually traveled with them, but it was a dangerous place they were in and that's why she had been sent to England. They wanted her to continue to learn and experience different cultures, as they had. And she would write about it: Matilda became a renowned travel writer.

  When we walked in the gardens, she showed me a chestnut tree and stroked her hand over my hair. “Your hair is like the beautiful color from the nut of this tree,” she said, stepping cautiously over her words. Affection flowed through me at her efforts to describe. I couldn't contain my smile; the way she looked at me then made me feel proud and vibrant.

  When she was satisfied that I had memorized some of the massage techniques, she offered me her back to massage. I felt so nervous, trying to focus on the lean smooth stretch of her body when she lay down on her bed. Her body was beautiful; it reminded me of the wind-smoothed dunes at the outer shoreline, smooth and gently undulating. Her skin was soft and warm and my tentative fingers spread out against it, eager and yet afraid.

  "Your strokes are too gentle, Sally."

  I found it hard to press against her as firmly as I wanted to. Something made me resist. But Tilly patiently led my hands and worked my muscles until they began to respond naturally to the layered mysteries of the flesh.

  That night I dreamed she lay over me on the sand dunes with the sun streaming behind her head as she smiled down at me. I awoke embarrassed, yet I could not ignore the heavy hot longing I felt inside. My fingers crept into the humidity between my thighs. I stroked the eager, damp swell there and let the dream continue.

  * * * *

  After less than four weeks, I got a letter from Mother: she wanted me to come home. She missed me. I supposed she had finished with Jack. Although part of me missed my home and my friends, I felt quite happy as I was. I didn't want to rejoin the real world for a little while, and I didn't want to leave Tilly.

  She watched me with a thoughtful expression. We were in her room. I was only half with her, half with my thoughts. Her stare gradually transgressed my detachment, and she looked as if she were going to say something and disrupt our easy pattern of behavior somehow. In fact, she was looking at me with a directness that set my pulse going faster. The atmosphere of suspense harnessed my attention. I wondered what she was going to say.

  "You must go home soon, yes?"

  My silence was confirmation enough. After an infinite moment, she walked toward me. She reached forward to touch the knotted material of my pinafore at the shoulder.

  "It is my dress,” she whispered. “It is from Oslo, too."

  I smiled, realizing why it had always amused her when I had wandered in with those two clumps of material on my shoulders. Tilly chuckled as her fingers stroked the material at my shoulder. She seemed to be taking pleasure in the fact of her clothes against my body. The pinafore was hers. For some reason, that was more arousing than if her hands had been on my naked body; the intimacy of her caress through that pinafore of hers. She did not meet my gaze, looking instead at her hand on the pinafore, but I felt her speaking to me within, asking if I wanted her to touch me more. The atmosphere was filled with anticipation. My heart was racing.

  I wanted to respond, but wasn't sure what to do or say. Would I even have been able to, back then, had she been English? Somehow, the silent barrier of our difference made it that much easier, but still I was unsure. She must have sensed it, because she became serious and gently let her fingers slide down to my breast, laying her hand gently on the material, as if in inquiry.

  Desire blossomed beneath her hand. I instinctively moved forward, wanting to feel the pressure of her touch more firmly against my breast. Tilly reached her free hand to my face to slip a stray hair from my cheek and tuck it behind my ear. She bent down and tentatively touched her lips to mine. Physical longing rose inside me, a reaction that made me suddenly move forward to cling to her, my mouth responding to hers, pressing my body close against her. I wanted to feel every inch of her body against mine.

  She took my face into her hands and kissed me more deeply, her mouth a warm moist caress that made me melt with relinquishment, then chase after her for more when she moved her face away between kisses. My hands began to explore her body, touching the outline of her waist, the swell of her breasts. My body leaned forward to meld and shift against her strong high hips, her thighs, and the jut of her pelvic bone.

  Tilly smiled at my anxious movements against her body and whispered, “May I undress you, little one?"

  I nodded, my body tingling with anticipation. I wanted to be seen, to be touched, to be loved by this girl with whom I had grown so close. She undressed me, her beautiful hands carefully laying the pinafore and my petticoat across the screen, and then she turned back to me. A little voice in the back of my mind reminded me of awkward fumblings with boys after school dances, but it went unheeded as my body followed hers in the sure path of reciprocated need. I was flushed with desire. This is what I wanted, and she wanted it, too.

  Tilly began to unbutton her dress, and I helped. Her breasts, full and heavy, buoyed up on the strong outline of her ribs and shoulders. As the dress slipped down to the floor, I pressed forward, eager and jittery. I lay my face against the soft
rise of her breast, my fingers fumbling on her nipples. I wanted so much to feel those nipples pressed against mine.

  She drew me down to lie on her bed with her, her body against mine. The feeling of our breasts meeting was divine, soft, flesh on flesh. My juices began to melt onto my thighs. I couldn't help but give a moan of pleasure as Tilly lifted onto her arms to lie over me and pressed our hips close together. I let my hands curve around her breasts, the weight and texture of them resting against my palms. Her body was strong and athletic, the muscles shaped and smoothed by her work, but her flesh was softened with beautiful curves.

  Her nipples stiffened at my touch. The thrill of it sped through me. I found my thighs aching to part, to open, to be touched; overcome with eagerness, I was unable to stop myself moving under my friend. The blood was pounding between my thighs. Her face was equally flushed with desire, mirroring my own, and she reached forward and slid her slim tongue into my open mouth, running it along the inner surface of my lips and along my tongue. I captured it with my lips, tugging gently at it as my body curled up against hers.

  She slid her hand along my thigh and into the moist crevice of my sex. My flesh was palpitating against her fingers, suffused with heat. I leaned my pubis into her hand, while my mouth followed hers. She caressed my tongue with gentle embraces, and my arms wrapped around her, caressing her body. She laid one finger gently over the rise of my clit. A loud moan escaped me with the excruciating pleasure it brought. As she moved her fingers over my flesh, I heard my voice echoing through the room, as if a calling bird was in flight above us.

  When I felt I could bear no more tension, she inserted her finger. The muscle of my sex gave a brief instinctive flinch and then opened to her touch. She went gently, aware that I was anxious; I wanted this, but I still felt unsure.