by Unknown
‘So you’re going camping? On your own?’ asked Mum anxiously.
I shook my head. ‘Nah, seemed like it was asking for trouble, apart from which we had enough grief trying to put up the tent with two of us, let alone sticking pegs in and stretching guys out on my own.’
‘Stretching guys, sounds right up your street,’ said Rachel defensively but obviously feeling guilty.
‘I am taking a sleeping bag and mat, though, as I’ll probably have to do the Inca Trail in an organised group, and I’d rather have my own than hire. Can you imagine, a sleeping bag that tons of dirty travellers have slept in.’
Rachel looked even more remorseful, as well she might. One of the impetuses that had propelled us into going now, this year, was that soon the authorities are going to stop people hiking the Inca Trail on their own, and force them to go on organised tours. I do not like tours in any form and so we booked our flight to get to Cuzco in time to beat the new rule. Now, of course, that was irrelevant.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said for the zillionth time, but this time there were tears in her eyes and I realised she’d had enough booze to blub all night. Franco tried to wipe away her tears and Unity turned to me.
‘Are you coming back to work?’ she asked quietly.
I shrugged. ‘Only if all else fails. I want to do something a bit more me, you know? This was only supposed to be a temporary job for some experience, and it’s been five years now. Just because I did that textile project at college doesn’t mean I want to spend my life designing dress material.’
‘You’re good at it,’ she observed.
‘Yeah, well, I’m good at screwing but I don’t want to spend my life as a whore either.’
‘Oh, Bliss,’ sighed Mum. ‘I am going to worry about you. Peru can be dangerous, you know. What about those revolutionaries?’
‘It’s all died a death, Mum. Don’t worry, honestly. Kip’s old college friend lives there. He’s going to meet my flight.’
She beamed. ‘Oh, that’s marvellous; I’ll stop worrying then, I promise.’ She ruffled my hair as though I was still ten years old. ‘You do look like your dad with your hair short.’
Frowning, I moved her hand. ‘Mum, I thought when you lived with Dad he had hair halfway down his back.’
‘Yes, he did, until he got that job. Such a shame. But you look like him now.’
‘You mean I look like he did when he reached thirty and decided to be sensible.’
‘He deceived me,’ she said solemnly. ‘Changing so drastically . . . still, it worked out all right in the end.’
Briefly I wondered why Mum couldn’t have fallen for someone who looked more like Willem Dafoe than Willem van Bon. Sculpted cheekbones and a wide mouth would suit a girl far more than Dad’s snub nose and round face. Still, can’t have everything.
I finally stopped dropping hints and threw them all out. Common sense had kicked in for once and I hadn’t held the party on the eve of my departure, so I had the whole of the next day to clear up. The only thing I had to get done in order to get to bed was move the sitting-room furniture out of the bedroom. I piled my leaving presents on the sofa: guide books, condoms – amazing how many people thought that was original – a couple of decent paperbacks, which was thoughtful considering the long flight, and a watch that lit up in the dark, which would have been perfect in the tent, but Mum had bought it before the Rachel disaster.
That out of the way I poured a last glass of wine and sulkily reflected on the irony of finally meeting one of Vicki’s friends who doesn’t make the sign of the cross and eat garlic at the thought of shagging a straight woman, only to have my chances scuppered by so-called friends and my mum. But maybe I was too tired anyway.
The phone rang; I expected Mum telling me they’d got back all right, as though she was the errant child. But it wasn’t.
‘Have they gone?’
‘At last. Wish you’d stayed.’
‘Sorry. Your mum’s boyfriend was giving me the creeps.’
‘Me too. I suppose there’s no chance of seeing you before I go?’
‘Not unless you’re sober enough to drive to Peckham now.’
‘I doubt I’ll be sober enough to drive to the end of the road tomorrow. But seeing as I don’t have a car, that’s no big deal.’
She giggled. ‘Well, I’ll still be here when you get back.’
‘I’ll send you a postcard.’
‘See you.’
I went to bed with Sally in my head but also a little tingle at the thought of Carlos ‘Charlie’ Garcia, who liked women to dress up. As I drifted off to sleep I was in a black leather catsuit kneeling in front of Sally, who was dressed in red lace and PVC and chained to the wall. Carlos, who looked like Che Guevara, was got up in a military uniform like a South American dictator and directing my tongue action with barked instructions. My hand moved down into my slipperiness and just a few strokes later I tensed and came, and the next thing I knew it was morning.
Chapter Two
Flying has got to be the most mind-numbing way to pass the time apart from prancing up and down on a Stairmaster – though at least you can think that’s doing you good. I know, flying doesn’t have to be harmful unless you get a blood clot, and as long as you follow the no-booze and not-much-food rules, but while I always like to imagine myself as a disciple of health, fitness and asceticism, it is of course a complete lie. I can’t do the common sense stuff in life and the bit about drinking nothing but water and not eating on a plane always strikes me as the first step to catatonia. So although I resisted breakfast en route to Amsterdam – a bizarre route but it was cheap – I was more than ready for a little sustenance, especially of the alcoholic variety, by the time I got on the next plane.
The woman who had sat next to me had obligingly moved to the aisle seat when no one else appeared after takeoff, so I had contentedly spread out my sweatshirt, mags, books and diary when the stewardess appeared. Ready to order a large anything I was more than irritated that instead of taking the drinks orders she was guiding someone else into the empty seat. I picked up my things resignedly.
‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I was at the front with a load of kids, and –’
Smiling politely I stowed my stuff in the sickbag pouch. ‘Don’t blame you. No problem.’
Still I was a bit annoyed to have had space and to have lost it. However he was a nice-looking guy, Dutch, but dark and fine featured, not the homely farmer type like yours truly. I could have flirted with him but in view of his Wall Street Journal I put my nose back in Marie Claire and began the countdown for the drinks trolley.
At last I got my miniature vodka followed shortly by one of those quarter bottles of wine with my ‘lunch’ and felt a bit better. I’d managed to prop the Peru hiking book by the window so I could pretend I had no neighbours but I wasn’t going to be allowed to get away with a long flight like that without conversation.
‘Looks like you’re planning an adventurous trip.’
I couldn’t blame him for wanting to chat; he had no room to read and the woman in the aisle seat looked like Nana out of The Royle Family.
‘Yeah. I guess.’
‘Have you been before?’
‘No.’
Maybe it would be entertaining to see how long I could keep the conversation going by answering only in monosyllables.
‘Are you alone?’
Even better, I looked round as if startled at having lost my pal. ‘Yes.’
He laughed. Nice deep chuckle.
‘You don’t have to talk to me. Are you afraid of flying?’
‘No.’
‘It’s just the way you’re going through the booze . . . maybe you’re just an alcoholic?’
‘Cheek.’
‘OK, you’re just bored. So I’ll carry on talking to you. My name’s Peter, what’s yours?’
‘Bliss.’
He really burst out laughing at that one.
‘Seriously?’
‘Y
ep.’
‘Peter Verhoeven.’
‘Bliss van Bon.’
We shook hands. His face was grave but his mouth was dimpling rather nicely at the corners. I wondered if he believed me or thought I’d invented my name as part of the monosyllable game.
‘You’re Dutch?’
‘Half.’
‘Which half?’
I shrugged. Like Mum, I like the Dutch. It always seems to me that they’re very similar to the English; they have the same sense of humour and practicality; their idea of a good meal is Indonesian food while ours is Chinese, and we’ve got Soho and they’ve got their red light district. The only difference is that we’re more buttoned up about sex and drugs than they are. I like to think the broadness of my mind is Dutch rather than English, though Kip would tease me that the broadness of my brow is ditto.
Peter Verhoeven had turned his attention away from me and managed to flag down the stewardess for another bottle of wine for each of us, for which I was duly, monosyllabically grateful.
‘It’s brave of you to travel to Lima alone. Do you know anyone there?’
‘Yep.’
‘Will they be meeting you at the airport?’
‘Sure.’
‘Good, because it’s quite intimidating. Your friend: male or female?’
‘Male.’
‘Uh-huh.’
He looked slightly disappointed and I started to feel just a bit interested. After all, should Carlos prove to be a pain, or gay, or even a masochist – I’d had enough of Kip for a while – it would be nice to know a decent-looking Dutchman in the city. But it was a hell of a long flight and I didn’t want to end my game just yet, so I knocked back the wine and put my seat into recline and my sweatshirt behind my head.
‘Sleep.’
I closed my eyes and astonishingly drifted off.
I awoke to find Peter Verhoeven immersed in my Marie Claire.
‘Hey, Bliss van Bon. Good sleep?’
‘OK.’
He put the magazine down. ‘Oh no, are you going to carry on with that stupid game?’
‘No, give me a chance; I’ve just woken up.’
‘Good. I’m just reading about what women really want, and I was hoping you’d tell me if it was true.’
I glanced at the article and then along the row to the woman next to him.
‘She’s Dutch. She doesn’t speak English,’ he explained.
‘Hope she speaks Spanish if she’s going to Lima.’
‘No, she’s getting off in Aruba to visit her son, who works there.’
‘OK. What do women really want? Right now, a gallon of water and a mouthwash. Any offers?’
Bless, he produced a big bottle of Vichy. That got me looking at him with new respect. If there’s one brand of mineral water that tastes different to me, that’s it. It’s got that sort of salinity that tastes, frankly, like cunt juice. I told him.
‘Oh, Bliss,’ he said intimately, moving slightly closer. ‘What a lovely thought. Even nicer to see you drinking it.’
I immediately put my mouth firmly round the neck of the bottle and tipped it down. Not all at once, so I could lift it from my lips just a trifle carelessly and spill some down my T-shirt. As if rehearsed he produced a clean white handkerchief and after hesitating while I nodded approval touched it delicately to my wet throat. I closed my eyes to savour the progress of his hand wrapped in fine cotton as it caressed my collarbones and slowly moved down the front of my top, carefully and gently ‘drying’ me. I hadn’t realised I had spilled so much water but he had to go as far as the satin of my cream bra before he was satisfied.
‘Silly girl,’ he reproved me. I opened my eyes. He was leaning over me, his handkerchief now on the magazine he had put in my lap while he did the wiping-up operation, his fingers trailing across the swell of my breasts above the T-shirt. ‘I think you’re dry now.’
‘Oh no, I’m not. But you’ve mopped up the water I spilt, thanks. I’ll be more careful this time.’
I took another slow swig of the water then handed it to him. He put his mouth where mine had just been and swallowed.
‘I’m not sure if you’re quite right about the taste of this water. I need a comparison.’
‘That’s a shame. It’s too public here, and if you think I’m following you into the toilet for a fuck over someone else’s pee you’ve got another think coming. I grew out of that sort of thing a long time ago.’
He laughed. ‘I can imagine, and I wouldn’t dream of asking you to. Who I had in mind was the stewardess with long blonde hair. Think I stand a chance?’
Oh yes, that’s more like it. ‘Do I get to watch?’
‘Why not?’
I could think of one or two reasons, like arriving in Lima so wired I’d want to sit on Carlos’s face before I even saw it, or the effects of a dramatic increase in blood pressure a mile and a half up in the air, but the thought of a private sex show was too much to turn down. I crossed my legs, not easy in a 747, and squeezed my sex muscles and my thighs. With the seam of my jeans pressing into my crotch I was just a finger’s breadth away from an orgasm. Peter watched me and I had absolutely no doubt he knew exactly what I was doing.
He replaced the magazine on my lap and wordlessly offered me his empty wine bottle.
‘No, tacky. Let’s just continue our little chat for a bit, if that’s all right with you. Then maybe after we leave Aruba you can try out the taste test – if you can set it up.’
‘Fine. Actually I’m in marketing and it’s just the sort of thing I’m going to Peru for.’
‘What, oral sex?’ I laughed out loud.
‘No, setting up tastings. We’re test-marketing a new soft drink.’
‘Really? I thought they had their own. Inca Kola, isn’t it?’
Peter made a disgusted face. ‘Wait till you taste it; it’s like bubble gum. This one’s going to be a winner, though possibly not in the South American market. It’s a cross between fizz and milkshake. Did you ever have ice-cream floats when you were a kid?’
‘Mmm, delicious. But how can you export from Holland to Peru? Surely it’d cost a fortune to get it there?’
He laughed delightedly. ‘Oh, Bliss, you’re not very up in the ways of business, are you? Of course we wouldn’t export it; we’d get a factory to make it there and just send the secret concentrate, like everyone else does. After all, there’s no reason why the Americans should hog the whole of the market with Coke and Pepsi.’
I digested that information. He was right, I wasn’t up in the ways of business at all. My job was to design fabric, and that was as near to the material world as I wanted to get.
‘Great. Can we go back to talking about sex?’
By the time we had to fasten our seat belts to land in Aruba I felt like I was sitting in a pool of melted ice-cream myself. Seizing my hand and guiding it under his Wall Street Journal Peter quickly demonstrated that he too was ready for action.
Only a handful of people were ending their journey in Aruba but after they’d gone the stewardess announced that anyone who wanted to stretch their legs could get off for half an hour. I immediately stood up but Peter pulled me down.
‘See how many are getting off,’ he said quietly. ‘It might be nice and quiet on here.’
Sure enough nearly everybody left the plane. The stewardess with the blonde ponytail came round telling everyone the doors would soon be closing. As she leaned over our row Peter said something to her in Dutch and she shook her head. Quietly he said something else, looking at me briefly and back, and she burst out laughing and answered him with another shake of the head. He persisted and an exchange I couldn’t even begin to follow ensued. Finally she walked to the front of the plane and Peter immediately pulled me up and went to the back.
As he slid open the toilet door the stewardess finished the announcement she had made in Dutch and began in English: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we would remind you that the toilets are not to be used while the plane is in the ai
rport. Thank you.’
Two minutes later she joined us, Peter having in the meantime done another pretty efficient mopping-up operation on the washbasin and spread paper towels over the floor.
‘Marjo, Bliss,’ he introduced. ‘Bliss doesn’t speak Dutch, Marjo, despite being a van Bon. Do you mind English?’
‘You want to lick me out, Peter; I don’t care what language you do it in,’ she answered, winking at me. ‘I don’t think I ever had an audience before, Bliss. You do this sort of thing a lot?’
‘First time for me too.’ I almost felt like a gawky virgin as Marjo casually unzipped her skirt and wriggled out of it. She was wearing stockings and suspenders, so don’t tell me she wasn’t in the habit of screwing someone during the course of a long haul. Folding the skirt, she put it neatly on the toilet lid and pulled her knickers down and placed them on top.
‘I’ve had more propositions than I can remember on flights but it’s the first time a man’s ever said, “I want to lick you out and this girl here wants to watch,” ’ she confided as she perched on the edge of the washbasin and opened her legs. ‘Hat on or off?’
‘Oh, definitely on,’ said Peter gravely. He undid her blouse and exposed quite startlingly big tits in black lace to match the rest of her underwear.
‘You said no first off,’ I guessed as Peter kneeled on the paper towels and ran his hands up her stockinged legs to the creamy flesh above. I was almost tempted to elbow him to one side and have my second taste of Vichy water but instead was transfixed as his thumbs moved gently up to her light brown thatch – her hair was dyed – and pulled her lips apart.
‘Sure I did. Then he told me you said Vichy water tasted like – like sex juices and I thought, how does she know? And when he said he didn’t want any payback I thought, why not? That’s another first.’
Her eyes closed and I saw Peter’s tongue brush lightly over her clit. It looked like a pink opal, hard and gleaming, set in lush pink moistness, and I heard her breathe in sharply.
‘Nice, Marjo?’
She laughed deep in her throat. ‘I’ve never had a tongue on my clit that wasn’t. Have you?’