What a tit, Joe thought as he felt the firm breast swell inside his cupped palm.
He won’t stop at feeling me, she thought when he pressed her back into the sofa and lowered his body on to hers.
His mouth tore from her greedy one. “Marissa... let me take your clothes off!”
“Joe... no! Don’t... oh, darling Joe...”
She lay supine as he undressed her. Every revealment excited him tremendously. She had the silky flesh of a screen heroine, the maturity of a goddess. Touching her naked skin sent shivers coursing down his spine, arousing his manhood.
A kettle could not have boiled in the time it took Joe to whisper his lustful demands. Marissa writhed – eager as a teenage virgin for this marvellous youth’s strident passion. His hands roamed her nudity everywhere; pleasing her, teaching her, bringing her womanhood to blossom-bursting beauty.
“Joe... the bed creaks,” she moaned as he tried to pull her off the sofa.
“Let it!”
She pleaded. “Do it here, Joe... not in the bedroom.”
“Beds are for what you’re going to get,” he panted.
“They’ll hear us downstairs...”
“Let ’em... maybe he’ll give his old woman what you’re liking!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“You’ve got to stop saying those terrible words, Joe,” Marissa said as she cradled his head against her moistly warm breasts. “I can’t stand them.”
“What do you mean?” he muttered to a turgid teat.
“You know...” She refused to repeat his pleadings at the height of their mutual climax. It had almost ruined a delightful, exquisite moment for her when he began to four-letter her into wild spasms of glory.
“You mean f...”
“Joe!” She pulled back and held his face in her soft hands. “Please don’t say it again. Please?”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m not. I’m a lady, Joe.”
Suddenly, he knew the difference between his East End tarts with their lavatory-wall language and the genteel taking of a superior woman like Marissa Stone. But she must have words for what they had done, for urging her mate to reach that exotic plateau when all but the pulsating togetherness seemed remote and immaterial.
“Joe... Joe... Joe!” Her fingers curled into his hair. “Let your hair grow long. I like doing this.” She caressed his head, massaging the scalp.
His hand rested on her stomach. “I like this, too.” He massaged her with newly aroused inclinations.
“You’re a naughty boy,” she giggled, spreading herself for his pleasure.
“The bed creaked like hell!”
She pushed his hand away and sat upright. In the semi-light of the lounge he could see her marvellous breasts and her slender body until it dipped invitingly under the sheet. “It did?” She sounded nervous, almost frightened stiff.
“You said it creaked – and it did!”
“Joe... stop! Don’t touch me there...” She brought his hand above the sheet. “Oh, this is terrible...”
“Are you worried about the downstairs people again?”
“Yes!” She kicked free of the sheets, stood naked and unashamed in her confusion.
“If you want me to do it again...?”
She knelt on the bed, listening to the rusty creak. “I do, Joe – oh, God, I do!”
“Then find another pad!”
“It won’t be easy getting a decent place for this rent.”
“You could share my place...”
She blushed. “I could not!”
“Why?”
“It’s out of the question. I just couldn’t...”
“You’d like it every night, wouldn’t you?”
She touched his cheek with fresh love tenderness. “Yes.”
“Then move in with me.”
“Joe, you’re a darling but I can’t. It wouldn’t be right!”
“What the hell is right?” he asked savagely. “Listen, Marissa – we’re good in bed together. I like the way you make it and you like getting me. Okay, so who cares if you’re older and paying me rent...”
“Rent?”
“Sure – you didn’t think I was wanting a wife, did you?”
She chuckled. “Joe, you’re fantastic. All right, I’ll think about your proposition.”
He shoved the sheet back and got randy when he saw what she could offer. “Come here, Marissa...”
Willingly, she flung herself down on him, her hands as eager and as intimate as his. Pent up years surged to a forgetful surface and she wallowed in instantaneous thrills...
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was surprising how little Marissa had to contribute. Her soul cried out for a kindred mate which it could never find in Joe. For the young man, Marissa was a frustrated old woman soiling her flesh in pursuit of youth’s virility. They had nothing in common outside the bedroom athletics which both indulged in to demented extremes. Dishes did not get washed after the evening meal, so great was Marissa’s desire to recapture those excruciating cadences Joe’s love-making produced inside her long without body.
Once, after a lengthy session striving to bring the woman to full fruition, Joe remarked: “Can’t you make it quicker?”
“Joe, darling, don’t be greedy and don’t ever be too selfish. Let me have the same amount of pleasure you’re getting.”
“Okay – but don’t drag it, eh?”
Marissa sighed. “Can’t you feel things building to a wonderful climax? Can’t you hold back a few minutes until I’m with you?”
“I haven’t got time for fancy stuff.”
“Fancy stuff? Joe, you’re so wrong. A woman enjoys being a plaything for a man’s slowly emerging passion. You’re so quick I get frightened. You can’t just think it and have it happen, you know. There are so many beautiful sensations we can share if only you remember it’s not just for me... it’s for us both. Slow and easy is best. Modem slap-dash isn’t letting either of us find the true wonder of love.”
“I want to go to the pub, Marissa,” Joe said as if that finished the discussion, the excitement his hand was sending through her loins.
“And am I supposed to stay here and wait until you come home drunk?”
“You can come with me.”
“I don’t like pubs.”
“So stay at home!” He got from the bed.
“You’re like all those Jamaicans I’ve ever met. A woman is a receptacle for their lust – nothing more.”
“You’re letting your bias show.”
She got off the bed and stood stark naked before his admiring gaze. She knew he adored her body – those sensual curves and her mature slenderness which could still perform sexual miracles his little trashy girlfriends could not begin to understand.
“Want it now?” he asked crudely.
“Not now – not tonight, Joe. You go to the pub and find a tart to satisfy your wham, bam techniques.”
He put on his jockey shorts and his vest. She had already covered her essentials with a pair of cotton knickers and a bra. The need for getting-to-it talk had vanished. “You’re a bitch,” he said. “You profess to like everybody yet you single out Jamaicans for ridicule.”
“I’m allowed to think the way I want, Joe.”
He pulled his electric-green socks on. That she had not been able to stop. His socks were as important as the Crombie overcoat. Even in summer he felt it necessary to sport the coat. There were suedeheads who did not take kindly to bowlers and umbrellas, he knew. But none of the fraternity would ever be caught dead in “ordinary” socks. Regardless of all those statements to the contrary each suedehead had a large part of the skinhead left in his symbolic attitude towards recognition.
“Are you going to meet your friends, Joe?”
He glanced at her with mounting disgust. She was old enough to be his mother and every day saw her acting more and more like an instructing mother-hen. She had tried, unsuccessfully, to “beautify his thinking processes”. She na
gged when he went to football matches, when he got away from her demanding sexual possessiveness. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy screwing her – he did. But there were other woman equally qualified to relieve Joe Hawkins. Women who would not stop short because what he suggested was morally abhorrent. The vicar’s ghost still haunted Marissa even if she denied it.
In the months they had shared his flat, Marissa had given him a new slant on life. She had taught him how to hate sections of the community without realising that she shared those aspects of the confirmed bigot. Joe had been unable to associate her work at the club with her very narrow views at first but the more she opened up the deeper insight he got. She was a frightened woman packed with vastly contradicting motivations. She liked to be seen as a neighbour, a “sister in need to the oppressed”, a do-gooder without blemish, a social reformer. Yet, inside her fears manifested themselves in night’s terror, she loathed coloured people, detested anything remotely connected with trades unionism, opposed blood sports, decried a widening of British involvement in Europe because “those foreigners will overrun us” and could not tolerate a different religious viewpoint.
All her pet hatreds brushed off on Joe. All her noble – but insincere – mouthings, left him untouched. The only really lasting impression Joe would ever have of her when they eventually parted would be the memory of her slender nudity writhing beneath him, of her almost insatiable desire for orgiastic completion.
“I asked if you were going to meet your friends, Joe?” she repeated with hands on firm hips, face drained of colour.
“What if I am?”
“You might be chasing after some little whore.”
He laughed. “If I find one I’ll do more than chase!”
“You couldn’t... I won’t allow this!”
“You won’t allow it?” He moved across the untidy bedroom. “Listen, Marissa – you don’t own me and you don’t give me any bleedin’ orders, either.”
“You’re mine,” she said as tears suddenly trickled down her pale cheeks.
“I’m not, you know,” he grinned deliberately provoking her. “Why don’t you find an old man your age and screw him to death. That’s what you want, Marissa – an old bastard willing to be hen-pecked. ’
“You’re a rotten devil!” she screamed.
“Cool it, Marissa. I don’t want my next door neighbours thinking what an old slut you are.”
Her fists beat against his chest.
“I’ll bet half of them don’t believe you’re my aunt.”
She stepped back, stunned. “Wh...at?”
“I told everybody you were my aunt. You didn’t imagine I’d have ’em believing I was getting off with some ancient biddy, did you?”
Her hands clawed wildly at her brassiere, yanked it off. Next she ripped her knickers and flung them into his face. Sharp fingernails raked down her magnificent breasts drawing trails of blood. “I’ll have you arrested for rape,” she moaned, swaying from side to side in a hysterical fashion. “I’ll accuse you of perversions...”
An explosion erupted in Joe’s head. Blind, red rage took a hold of his muscles and his clenched fist bounced off Marissa’s jaw. Her eyes glazed but he didn’t notice. Like a prize-fighter gone berserk he attacked, slamming her back against the wall, hitting, bruising, battering as she slowly sank to her knees. Even then his viciousness could not be checked. His toe smashed into her stomach, caught her full in the face. Only when her pathetic groans subsided into unconscious silence did he relent and step back to examine his handy work.
There was nothing beautiful about Marissa now. She was what he had said – an old woman bleeding and discoloured and ready for the refuse heap.
Joe felt terrific. The unleashing of jungle emotions did something wonderful for his savagery-starved system. It was like the days when the gang had taken brutal delight in mauling anyone stupid enough to stand in their way.
Washing the blood from his knuckles he finished dressing. Taking a final look at Marissa he frowned. “When those heal she can get the hell out of here,” he said aloud...
*
Two hours later, Marissa Stone pulled herself to rubbery feet and staggered into the bathroom. Great racking sobs shook her when she saw the terrible condition of her face and flesh. A bath did not take away the aches nor lower the swellings. Naked, she reeled into their bedroom.
I must have been mad to let the bastard talk me into living with him, her mind screamed. I’ve got to get out before he comes back... Forcing her unco-operative body to act, she found her suitcases and threw clothes and belongings into them. Fortunately, her precious furniture had been stored in a warehouse. Joe had not been able to convince her she should bring everything to his flat. Maybe it had been a premonition that had saved her from having to stay in order to safeguard her life’s belongings.
She did not care how she looked. She just wanted out. Fast. Dressing, she closed her cases, locked each securely and telephoned for a taxi. She would stay in a hotel until fit. She would inform the clubs she no longer cared to give of her time. She would report sick to work. She would hibernate until not one trace of Joe’s handiwork remained. Then, and only then, would she re-enter a society for which she had nothing but contempt.
*
Joe slept like an innocent that night. Being alone did not bother him. When he first saw she had gone he had been crazy angry. But, slowly, her absence had assumed pleasant proportions. She had outgrown her welcome, her sexual hold over him.
“To blazes with her,” he had muttered as his drifted off into that semi-sand heaviness when all things, all dreams can be seen with startling clarity.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Pierce sat unyieldingly stiff in his ornate chair, fingers steepled pontifically before his nose. “Mr. Totter informs me you’ve been returning from lunch smelling of drink, Hawkins.”
“God almighty,” Joe retorted indignantly. “One lousy beer to wash down a dry sandwich.”
“That is not what Mr. Totter says.”
“Then he’s a liar!” Joe suddenly got a cold, crawling sensation racing down his spine. He knew, instantly, he had committed the great faux pas.
“That will be enough of that,” Pierce said quickly. “I have never known Mr. Totter to castigate an employee without justification. Personally, I agree with his assessment of your condition. I have seen you looking the worse for drink, Hawkins. And heard your language, too... in front of the ladies!”
“A few little oaths,” Joe pleaded.
Ignoring Joe’s attempted reconciliation, Pierce unsteepled his fingers, lifted a paper and held it menacingly in front of his face. “If that were all, Hawkins!” he said behind the official looking document. “I requested our bankers investigate you and they have turned up rather a remarkable history...” His eyes darted to one side of the paper, fixed Joe with unflinching disgust. “You have been in prison, Hawkins.”
“So what?” Joe felt no need now to hide his past. He was sick to death of Pierce’s attitude. He was going to get the boot so why not enjoy himself.
“Your salary is being prepared. We shall not require your services any longer.”
“I paid my debt, “Joe growled. “But that wouldn’t interest a snooty-nosed bastard like you or Totter. You think everybody has to be pure, eh? Like hell they are. You’d climb into bed with that sexy secretary of yours if she gave you the chance...”
“Leave this office at once, Hawkins,” Pierce roared, the paper dropping from his hands. Coming to his feet, the stockbroker placed bunched knuckles on his desk and bent forward. “Young man, I could thrash the hide off you but I refuse to soil myself. However, a word of warning – if you are not outside these premises in five minutes, I shall forget my upbringing and give you what you most deserve.”
“You and Santa Claus,” Joe sneered.
Pierce straightened and moved round the desk. Something in his expression warned Joe he could do exactly as he said. Raising a hand in defence, Joe said: “Okay... ok
ay... I’m going!”
“That’s true,” the man said grimly.
Watching Joe hurry from his office, Pierce breathed deeply. His age and health did not warrant such extravagant thoughts as he had nurtured then although he had meant every word. He was glad that Hawkins had not stood his ground. These young louts seldom cared for their elders. One blow could have sent him into hospital.
*
I’ve got two alternatives, Joe thought as he nursed his Skol lager in the remotest comer of the pub. Most of the regulars had dashed back to work leaving the unemployed, the problem drinkers and the expense-account layabouts to wait out the afternoon closing hour. I can wait for Totter and follow him home and beat the bastard to a pulp for grassing on me. Or I can report to the Labour and draw dole. I’m entitled to do that. I got kicked out.
A pair of young people took the table next to Joe’s. The girl wore beads, a long mauve dress without shape or attraction, a band around her uncombed, straggling hair and a minimum amount of lipstick. Her bare feet certainly showed how much dirt London’s streets held. Her companion was likewise barefooted, had the same colourless straggling hair banded in Indian style and there the resemblance ended. He had a handsome face whereas hers was plain and pockmarked. He had a hairy chest peeping from under a loose, unbuttoned shirt and she was practically flat – with or without hair! He wore tight Levis and made no attempt to conceal an overly developed manhood.
Joe leant back and considered their way of life as against his. They could never get decent jobs in the City but then, maybe they thought he was uptight being chained to the Establishment. One had to admit they were “loose people”. Not hippies, certainly. Listening to their muted conversation Joe could tell they were highly educated, completely extrovertish, distantly aware of his interest and uncaring for his opinion.
Bloody fools, Joe concluded. Them and hippies, yippies, snobs, drop-outs, protesters, shop stewards, bus conductors, manual labourers, desk-jockeys, soldiers, shopkeepers, fuzz, skinheads, Hell’s Angels... the bleedin’ lot! All stupid. All bastards.
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