‘Do you ever stop thinking about sex?’ Janie asked.
‘Nope. It’s twenty-four seven for me, girl. Are you sure you want to spend two whole weeks with me?’
‘Well, I’m beginning to wonder,’ mocked Janie.
‘Because I’m not sure I’d want to spend two weeks with me in the horny frustrated state I’ll be in by the end of it.’
‘That’s not why you’re here, and you know it. You’re here to put the world to rights, and I’m here to help you.’
‘I’ll try my best not to behave.’ Sally lunged at Janie to get past her. ‘Now, let me see the master’s chamber.’
‘Later. I haven’t settled in yet. Now I’m the one who’s freezing,’ said Janie, turning to go back down the stairs. ‘We’ve got to get some heat going in this house.’
‘Ooh, look up here! This is going to be my room!’
Sally had vanished up a little spiral staircase in the corner of the landing. So Ben had been doing some work to the house. This was all new. Janie climbed up into what was once the attic, and found Sally clattering around under the eaves. The room had been transformed into a hideout. The walls were painted dark red, the timbers were all exposed, and an enormous dormer window had been set into the thatched roof to look seawards. A telescope rested on a tripod, and was aimed at the sky.
‘This used to be just full of clutter. I wonder when he converted it,’ said Janie.
‘Think what larks you could have had hiding up here. Especially with that telescope.’ Sally peered through the lens, shook it a bit, then gave up. She threw her bag down on the patchwork quilt that covered the low bed, which looked like a raft made out of driftwood. ‘It’s very homely, all these little signs of cousin Ben everywhere. But I can’t get rid of the feeling that we’re trespassing.’
‘He knows we’re here, silly.’
‘Yes, but what does he do on his own here? Have orgies, do you think? Plenty of room, after all!’
Janie took Sally’s arm and led her back down the spiral staircase. ‘He relaxes; chills out. Now stop asking questions.’
The wind gave an extra loud howl through the front door as they came down, as if to reiterate its unseasonal violence. With much grunting and heaving, the two girls dragged a couple of electric heaters and some picnic rugs out of the cupboard, along with a dusty box of Trivial Pursuit and a chessboard.
‘Phew, it’s like the mummy’s tomb in here now.’ Sally screwed up her nose as the warming heaters gave off the smell of scorched dust. ‘I take it our Ben doesn’t have a Mrs Mop, like my Mrs Mop in London. You can see your entire reflection in the shower door-handle when she’s finished at my flat.’
‘Welcome to the good life, mademoiselle,’ commented Janie, holding her hands over the heater for a moment and surveying the room, which at least looked cosy now that it was more cluttered. ‘No domestic help, no cook, no bottle washer. Just moi. Now, does the ambience, if not the temperature, meet with your approval?’
Sally wrapped her arms around herself, her hands invisible beneath the long sweater-sleeves. She jogged up and down on the spot for a few seconds, then sat down on the sofa that she had now earmarked as her own. ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘It’s adorable once it’s lived in, isn’t it?’
‘So that means I don’t have to go out into this infernal storm, hunting for logs?’
‘Maybe later. You’re excused for the moment, but the fireplace does look kind of bleak without a fire going, doesn’t it?’
Janie changed the CD and enjoyed the few moments’ silence.
‘Trivial Pursuit?’ she asked eventually.
They both shook their heads.
‘Draughts?’
‘Too many draughts in here already.’
The wind rattled the window in agreement.
‘I’ll tell you what’ll warm the cockles and cheer us up.’ Janie leaned over the squashy sofa and rapped her knuckles on the top of her friend’s head. Sally blew her nose into a bright-pink handkerchief and looked round eagerly.
‘You’ve dreamed up Big Chief Hard-on. You’ve planned the big surprise. Any minute now, Ben and some hunky mates are going to roll up in an enormous black four-by-four, loincloths akimbo, armed with tomahawks and baying for our bodies.’
‘Guess again. I told you, this is a man-free zone. Anyway, Ben’s overseas, working in Amsterdam or somewhere. He’d go running straight back there if he knew a harlot like you had designs on him. Ben needs protecting.’
‘You mean you want him for yourself,’ said Sally.
‘Don’t be silly. I’m going to put the kettle on.’
‘Kettle?’
‘OK, I’m going to open some of that Chardonnay you brought,’ Janie corrected. ‘You must have spent your entire redundancy cheque on those cases of food and wine. And then, for this evening’s entertainment, you’re going to tell me what happened with that waiter.’
‘What waiter?’ asked Sally, feigning innocence.
‘Come on, you haven’t said a word about that particular close encounter since I left you creaming yourself at the café last Sunday.’
Sally laughed and wriggled herself back into the soft cushions.
‘Oh, right, him. I haven’t had a chance to tell you, and anyway, I’m still recovering from the experience.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Janie. ‘You can take all comers.’ She wandered into the kitchen to fetch the wine, and decided that the cupboards would look good painted a misty blue.
‘Too right I can, but I thought you had declared this a man-free zone,’ called Sally.
‘That doesn’t include telling stories about them,’ Janie said returning to the room with the wine, two glasses and an assortment of savoury snacks. ‘At least, not for today. Come on, you can start with, “it was a dark, dark night …”’
‘Well, if you insist. And if you’re sitting comfortably, I’ll begin. Except that, as you know, it wasn’t a dark, dark night. It was a boiling hot afternoon, not seven days ago, although the welts and bruises are still there to remind me.’ Sally’s voice went husky with remembered lust. ‘Now then, what you’re about to hear makes cowboys and Indians look like child’s play.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Janie, pulling out the cork with a pop just as a clap of thunder exploded over the cottage.
‘Well, for a start, it turned out that he wasn’t a waiter at all. He owns the bloody joint! I recognised his name from the financials when he told me. Rod Mastov. He owns a whole chain of cafés and bars.’
‘Good name, Rod. Especially if he turned out to be the sex dog you thought he was. Or perhaps a sugar daddy?’ said Janie, crossing her legs under her on the floor and scooping up a handful of peanuts.
‘Nothing daddy-ish about him. Admittedly he’s older than he looked when he was strutting about in those tight black jeans taking orders, but he’s still fit as a flea. We were jumping into a taxi before you could say Marco Pierre.’
‘Haven’t lost your touch, then,’ murmured Janie, easing a peanut from her tooth with her tongue.
‘I was on a roll. After this knock-back at work, I needed a good seeing to. It’s what I always need when I’m stressed, and that’s why I cast my beady eye over him.’
‘I didn’t even notice him,’ said Janie.
‘That’s because you’re never on the lookout. Wake up and smell the coffee, Janie. You never know what or who is out there. And it’s usually where you least expect it.’
Janie laughed and pulled a couple of cushions off the sofa: one to sit on and one to hug. The wind rattled the latch on the door and she shivered.
‘I don’t care if Antonio Banderas is out there today, imploring me to come out and play,’ she said. ‘I’m staying put!’
‘That’s why you’ll never have adventures like I do,’ mocked Sally.
‘No, poor old me. I’ll just have to get my kicks out of hearing about yours.’
‘We’ll see about that. Now, where was I?’
; ‘Zooming through London in a cab with a shady tycoon.’
Sally picked up the thread. ‘It turned out we could have walked. He only lives round the corner. But there’s something about cabs, isn’t there? Very dangerous and exciting being in a cab with a strange man.’
‘And you couldn’t have walked more than a couple of yards in those shag-me shoes, anyway.’
‘I know. Daft. And those taxis have plastic seats, don’t they, and my thighs kept sticking with sweat because it was so hot in there. Every time I crossed my legs, the skin squeaked, and that little skirt just rode up higher. Very unsophisticated. But he just looked at me, and after a while I couldn’t help wondering –’
‘That there might not be anything lurking inside those tight black jeans, after all?’ Janie cut in.
They both laughed.
‘Yes, in a way, except that he was so cool, you know? A kind of Bryan Ferry type. You could just tell. And all of a sudden his fingers brushed down my arm and I jumped like a scalded cat.’
‘Oh, Sal, even I’ve had more than a brush on the arm to write home about,’ yawned Janie, sipping from her glass and absent-mindedly stroking the velvet cushion.
‘Yeah, but we’re talking starved here, Janie. I hadn’t had more than a handshake from another human being since Jonathan and I got naked on that business trip to Paris, and that was ages ago … well, two months.’
‘You’ll have to tell me about that in our next storytelling session. Tomorrow, in fact, if the weather keeps up.’
‘Oh, it’ll be your turn tomorrow,’ corrected Sally. ‘My Paris story will have to wait. It’s a corker, though – Jonathan has the biggest dick you’ve ever seen. Stands right away from his stomach when it’s erect, all proud and stiff, like some kind of a –’
‘Gendarme’s truncheon?’
Sally grinned lasciviously. ‘You said it. Just like that. It has to be seen to be believed. It’s a wonder we got any work done on that trip. Humping away we were. Paris in the spring, or early summer, it was, right on the hotel balcony overlooking the Champs Elysées, those posh shoppers trotting up and down below with their designer bags, all unaware of him taking me from behind, bent over the railings a couple of floors above them, the Eiffel Tower just a few blocks away –’
‘I thought you were going to save it,’ said Janie.
‘I’m going to have to, otherwise I’m going to explode just thinking about it. I’m just trying to explain to you why I was so sensitive, sitting in the taxi next to Mastov, after all that dreary celibacy. Like I said, a flick of the fingernail, right on my sunburn, was all it took.’
‘I’m not spending my evening hearing a rampant tale of one man and his fingernail now, am I?’
Janie glanced over at the velvet curtains. The wind outside was strong enough to lift the heavy fabric in lazy ripples. Sally was brilliant at talking about herself, and Janie enjoyed listening but, even so, she did wonder how on earth she was going to keep her randy friend amused for two whole weeks.
‘Janie.’
Janie jolted round to find Sally studying her intensely. ‘If you’re totally honest, that must be how it is for you, only ten times over. If you haven’t had sex in months, or even years, I don’t know, how could you not be fizzing for it every minute of the day?’
‘I can’t answer that,’ Janie admitted. ‘I don’t know. I guess if you don’t think about it, the urge sort of goes away.’
‘I don’t go for that theory. I think desire is lurking just under the surface, for all of us. Unless you’re like me, who’s gagging for it all of the time.’
‘Even now?’ enquired Janie with a playful smirk.
‘Even now, given the chance. Talking comes a poor second, but it’s keeping us happy, isn’t it? I promise you, all it would take would be one tiny touch. Maybe even the whiff of a particular aftershave, or even a look in some guy’s eyes, and you’d be off – going like a train.’
‘I’d forgotten how you like to instruct people.’ Janie laughed and swallowed some more wine.
‘Listen and learn, girl, listen and learn. Which is why I’m telling you that all Mastov had to do was look at me with those incredible eyes. First, he looked at my feet, then my legs, then my tits – which wasn’t difficult as they were practically hanging out of that strappy white vest.’
‘Half of West London knows you weren’t wearing a bra that day,’ Janie pointed out, in between sips of wine. ‘But then you’re lucky, you don’t need a bra, unlike some of us.’
‘People are never happy with their tits, are they?’ said Sally. ‘You know I’ve always envied your big boobs, Janie. You always try to hide them under those glorious flowing shirts, but it’s no good. It’s still perfectly easy to see what they’re like under there. Blokes must be trying to take a peak all the time. I wouldn’t fancy walking past a building site if I were you!’
Janie shrugged, blushing. ‘What about you, tarting about in your little mini skirt?’ she countered.
‘Don’t play the innocent with me. If it hasn’t happened already, one day some bloke is going to want to tear your shirt off and get his muzzle right in there.’
Janie giggled into her wine glass. Her breasts started to tingle beneath her dark-red linen shirt at the thought of a bristly face nuzzling to get inside her hidden cleavage; a man’s nose and mouth, breath warm and tongue wet on her white skin. She started to dream about whose face it might be, then crossed her arms defiantly to stop the encroaching thought.
‘You see? You know it really. You just need to lose your inhibitions.’
‘We’re not talking about me at the moment, though, are we?’
‘Why not? We can if you want. There’s loads we could talk about.’
‘No, I don’t want. I just want to get pissed, and get warm, and hear about Mr Mastov.’
‘You are a curious creature, Janie. You can’t live vicariously for ever, you know. I will make it my mission to find you someone to teach you all they know. Maybe I’ll even introduce you to Mastov.’
‘But I don’t know where he’s been!’
‘Oh, but you’re about to find out, girl. Listen to this. He had the weirdest chat up technique. He put his mouth right up by my ear and said, “I won’t eat you, whatever you may have heard about me. But I might lick you.”’
‘What a sleazy line!’ cried Janie, squeezing her arms across her chest to soothe her still-tingling breasts. ‘What on earth had you heard about him?’
‘Well, he has a reputation of being a bit of a wolf, so it all fitted, really.’
‘So what did you say back?’
‘My lips were too dry to say anything. I just banged my knees together awkwardly like a schoolgirl and got this picture of his tongue, glistening and red, probing like an animal’s under my tight skirt. I imagined it slithering up the insides of my thighs, higher and higher, getting closer to my – I mean, remember I wasn’t wearing any knickers.’
‘Whoa, cowgirl, spare us the nooks and crannies.’
Janie rearranged herself on the floor, tucking one of the cushions tight between her legs. An insistent twitching had started somewhere inside her knickers in an echo of what Sally was describing. Tiny tremors fussed across the surface of her pubes. It was the image of someone – the one that had been between her breasts – now probing higher and higher, getting closer and closer to her.
The thunder rumbled away over the sea, the rain hissed and dribbled on the windows outside and an early dusk began to fall.
‘I was really squirming on the seat, I can tell you,’ Sally went on. ‘I put on a silly voice and squeaked, “Oh, grandmother, what a big tongue you have!”’
‘Not your usual banter, then. Normally, you say –’
‘Get your dick out!’
They spluttered into their wineglasses.
‘So, let me guess,’ choked Janie. ‘He said, “All the better to taste you with, my dear.”’
‘Yes! That’s exactly what he said! And to make it even funnier,
I caught the eye of the cab driver in the mirror. He’d heard every word. I could see he was interested, his eyes were all glittery.’
‘Perhaps he was part of the plan?’ Janie said, then pulled her knees up to her chin, her legs squeezing the cushion as she started to rock. The cushion rubbed back and forth underneath her, pressing into her crotch. ‘Mastov’s partner in crime. Perhaps he was going to stop the car, leap over the seat, shove Mastov aside and push your little skirt up before Mastov had a chance, let Mastov watch you at it.’
‘You’re getting the hang of this, aren’t you? Was it all that talk of threesomes in the tepee, perhaps?’
‘You put the idea into my head, remember!’
The cushion was heating up under her. Janie stopped rocking. An invisible, untouchable part of her was aching. She crossed her legs the other way and started to wind her long hair into another plait. Now she was back in the rickety tent made out of bamboo shoots and an old blanket, which the boys had built in the copse behind the cottage. In fact, she’d never been allowed into the copse, or the wigwam. But in her mind she was barging her way inside to find Ben and Jack huddled together, rubbing sticks to make a fire and muttering made-up curses. Her entrance made their mouths round and dark with surprise. Jack was squinting through the gloom at her and Ben was frowning. They weren’t quite the kids of her childhood in this fantasy, and not quite men either. She was pushing them off their haunches so that they toppled sideways onto the grassy floor and she was standing over them, long legs stretching up to the tattered buffalo-skin wrapped tightly round her body and fastened with safety pins. She was not being dragged in there at all. On the contrary, she was the one in charge. She was her grown-up self, staring down her nose as she started to unhook each pin. Strips of animal skin were dropping one by one onto the floor as the boys clutched their bows and arrows and watched. Each smooth curve was revealed, little by little, in the weak daylight filtering from the smoke hole at the top of the tent.
Then only the last pin was left, the one bending under the strain of her breasts, and she was yanking her shoulders back so that the pin flew off its moorings. Her squaw outfit disintegrated and her breasts bounced out for the boys to see.
Country Pleasures Page 2