by Paul Charles
It’s funny how at times like these, you experience flashes of your childhood. As I closed the door and followed Jean Kerr into my flat I felt like I was back at school and I was following the headmaster into his study. You know, that mixture of butterflies in your stomach and wanting to be physically sick? Now Jean Kerr had summoned me in a similar fashion. Why did I give a fig what she knew or thought she knew?
There’s a very easy and obvious answer to this question. Don’t you see? I cared about Mary Skeffington and I didn’t want to see her hurt. It was that simple.
‘Okay Jean,’ I said, ‘calm down and tell me what this is all about.’
‘Something’s going on. Jean is always complaining about John. Yet on the other hand she doesn’t seem to care. In fact, she seems positively happy. What’s that all about? And then she’s taken to wearing make-up and seems a lot more conscious about her clothes. Now, Jean Simpson has always been a clean girl, but you know what, she never, ever seems to be out of the bath these days and… and… when I go in the bathroom after her, there’s always lots of funny smells wafting around. Do you think she’s on drugs, David?’
‘Of course not, Jean!’ I said, before laughing, part from relief and part from the fact that there was a very funny side to thinking that Jean Simpson was taking drugs. I couldn’t think of one person less likely to indulge in drugs. ‘She’s probably just taken to using patchouli, and one can perhaps be forgiven for mistaking it to be the musky aromas of dope.’
‘The musky aromas of dope, for heaven’s sake!’ she lampooned, ‘Hark at you would you, Mr Cool!’
The last time I’d been referred to as ‘cool’ was when I figured out how to lodge a lollipop stick between the brakes of the back wheel of my bicycle, so that the other end of said lollipop stick just about touched the wheel spokes. The end effect I was after was the faster I pedalled, the more my bike sounded like a motorbike. The reality was that my so-called endeavours to ‘be cool’ never sounded much more than a bumblebee on (a different kind of) speed. If that really was the definition of cool, I was happy to leave it behind.
‘She’s definitely on something,’ Jean barked. She sat down on the sofa in her full regalia, which tonight was topped off with a pink overcoat. She used her umbrella to prop her hands up in front of her and she looked as if she was a cocker spaniel begging from its master. ‘I can tell you, the way she’s wandering around all the time, always with a wee bit of a smirk on her face. It’s as though she knows something I don’t.’
‘What’s this thing with her and John, what’s the problem there?’
‘Oh they’ve had a few blazing rows about you.’
‘They have?’ I asked. Maybe I wasn’t going to get away so lightly after all.
‘Yes. He thinks she spends too much money when she goes out with you to the clubs. He also thinks that if you weren’t going out to see all these groups she wouldn’t be spending anywhere near as much on clothes. He said, if they’re saving to get married they should be saving to get married.’
‘Really?’ I said, hoping the relief wasn’t visible in my voice.
‘She told him to take a running jump. She said that she wasn’t going to hang around waiting like a nun for two years on bread and cheese just so that she could fit into his plans. And then he said why doesn’t David pay for you when you go out. He said he’s the man, isn’t that what men do.’
‘He did?’
‘He did.’
‘Wow!’ I said.
‘She said that you weren’t her boyfriend so why should you,’ Jean reported, with the beat of a poem. ‘She said that you were good enough to let her tag along in the first place, she wasn’t going to get you to pay as well. She said that if anything he, John, should be paying for you to be entertaining his girlfriend.’
‘She did?’
‘She did.’
‘What did John say to that?’ I said.
‘John Harrison just blew a gasket at that point, for heaven’s sake! I was sure smoke was going to come out of his nose. His face went bright red. He started to say something several times but couldn’t get it out and he had to leave without saying another word. It was hilarious. Our Jean and I cracked up the minute he left.’
‘And how are you these days, Jean?’ I asked. She was a bit puffy around the cheeks and I’m sure she’d put on a bit of weight since I’d last seen her.
‘Oh,’ she replied, hiking her shoulders, ‘I’ve been better. I’m going home at the weekend for a week’s sick leave. I’m just hoping I can wait it out until my supervisor leaves, then I know I’ll get on better at work. Once I get my career back on track, everything will fall back into place for me. Just you wait and see, David Buchanan. You’ll be begging me to come running back to you.’
Noticeably she didn’t say ‘But you’ll be too late then.’
‘My loss,’ I said. I said it to try to make her feel a little better, but I had miscalculated. She visibly picked up in her mood.
‘Well, of course you don’t need to wait until then if you don’t want to!’
‘Ah Jean, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it’s not to be.’
‘I bet it would be easier if I was into all these weird groups of yours. But then you wouldn’t be interested in having a relationship with me, you’d just want someone to talk to about your music.’
As she said this she started to eye my extensive record collection, which was directly opposite her and just behind me. I clicked my teeth in an ‘ah well’ expression.
‘Tell me; what do you and our Jean talk about all this time you’re together? Don’t you ever get bored just talking about music?’
‘But look at all these records, Jean,’ I said, swinging around by gripping my hands around my knees to use my bottom as a pivot. ‘We have to work our way through these. I think we’re only as far as The Spencer Davis Group and Autumn ’66. In fact, we were only examining in detail a song from that particular album the other night – ‘I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water.’
‘Oh well,’ Jean said, without missing a beat, ‘at least you’re making progress if you’re already up to the D’s.’
Chapter Twenty-Two.
‘Jean Kerr is definitely behaving very strangely, dear boy,’ Jean Simpson announced, as she entered my flat
‘Really?’ I said. I was getting a bit of a system together: just sit back and say ‘Really?’ – make sure you mean the question mark though – and it’ll all come spilling out for you.
It was the following Friday. I was missing Mary – that’s not an excuse, that’s a fact. She was due back at work the following Monday and we’d planned to meet that evening.
In the meantime it was, as I’ve already said, Friday. 7.45 p.m. to be exact, and Jean Simpson had just walked in as per the arrangement we had made the previous Wednesday. Interesting to note that she had started to give me more notice about her arrivals. Not that it really mattered, because when she did turn up I have to admit it, she was stunning, absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful. She was getting the make-up stuff together, particularly her work around her eyes. She’d clear blue eyes, which sparkled, and so she had to be careful that her eyeliner didn’t make her look like Piccadilly Circus. She was wearing her wine-coloured duffle coat, which she allowed me to remove by standing about five inches in front of me and shaking her hands like she was a runner doing their warm-up. Okay. The next bit was too much for any man to resist, I promise. She was wearing a satin minidress that clung to her bottom and the tops of her legs like it was second skin. For a change she wore a white blouse, which was slightly transparent – well, transparent enough for you to be able to see the shape of her white bra and the contrasting white of her breasts immediately above it. Over this she wore the briefest of cardigans, black with three buttons all undone. Finally, to complete the ensemble, she wore white stockings and black lace-up ankle boots. I looked back up to the blouse; until now she’d never drawn any attention to her breasts. In fact, the only way I had any reason t
o suspect that they might be as marvellous as they now appeared through the thin white material, was the night I hugged her. That night I suspected. Now I knew.
‘Yes, David, she’s behaving very strangely. She’s always following me around, looking at me funny and scurrying off somewhere, muttering when she sees that I notice her.’
I decided not to dig and I decided not to mention Jean Kerr’s visit.
‘You look amazing, Jean,’ I said, changing the subject to a subject I preferred. My tact seemed to have worked because she dropped the Jean Kerr topic like a ton of hot bricks.
‘Oh, I’ve been so looking forward to this evening,’ she said, with such conviction that I accepted the statement as truth and not mere politeness. I mention that only because people use the funniest of words to describe things. For instance, people are prone to say ‘I could murder a cup of tea’ or ‘I’m dying to go to the toilet’ or ‘I’d kill for a bacon buttie.’ And so forth. But they don’t actually mean that literally now, do they?
Besides, I don’t know if you noticed it there, but she didn’t say ‘I’ve been so looking forward to seeing you, David.’ Yes, I know it’s kind of implied. But at the same time it’s not. Not really. That one little omission probably spoke volumes about our relationship. The vision before me, however, without even uttering a word, spoke volumes of every man’s fantasies. Well, at least my fantasies.
That Friday, Jean was up for some wine and she had brought a couple of bottles of her own, the first of which we made short work of.
‘Good, I needed that,’ she said, as she drained the final drops of the first bottle into her glass. ‘I was a wee bit tense. Now I’m relaxed. I need to feel loosened up. Why don’t you go and open the other bottle, David?’ she said, as in issuing an order she wanted obeyed. I’m a good soldier when I have to be.
But as I opened the second bottle in our sparse kitchen, Mary Skeffington jumped into my mind. I thought of our time in Bath. I wondered what she was doing at that particular moment. Was she still troubled about what to do about us? Had she already made a decision? Should I tell Jean? But tell her what? Tell her that someone was thinking about having a relationship with me? That didn’t seem to make sense. Then I remembered Jean waiting for me in the other room and I grew preoccupied by her again.
I was thankful I’d been a good soldier, because when I came back into the room she had removed, from the floor up, her boots, her miniskirt, her jumper and her white blouse, leaving her standing – feet apart – in only her stockings, bra and knickers. I should tell you here that her underwear was functional underwear, and all the more erotic for being so; I really can’t abide all this lewd, whimsical lingerie. I find it rude and crude, and, as I’ve said before, rude and crude is not a turn-on for me. Now, that probably makes me an L 7 (write the letter and number down. Still don’t get it? Okay, this time write them very close together).
Jean just stood there – not especially brazen, but not especially shy either. She stood there, I believe, in a position she felt would give me the most pleasure. Then she took my hand and led me to the sofa bed. The difference being that night that this time she pulled back the covers, revealing the white sheets. Thank goodness they were clean.
Then she threw the blankets on the floor and said, ‘We’ll be more comfortable tonight between the sheets.’
She lay down. I made to lie down beside her. Well, you would wouldn’t you?
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ she said, and then let out a little chuckle as she continued, ‘or should I say, aren’t you forgetting to forget something?’
I calmly removed my shoes and socks and trousers. After careful consideration, I also removed my waistcoat.
‘I think we can do a bit better than that,’ she said, pointing to my green t-shirt.
So I joined her in the bed wearing only my green boxer shorts.
As with previous encounters, we snuggled up closer to each other and I felt a shiver flash down both our bodies. I knew mine was from the sheer excitement of her cold flesh next to mine. Hers, I suppose, could just have been from the chill of the night, but from the look in her eyes I wouldn’t have said so. This time, though, it was different. Every inch of her skin was next to mine. I could, for the first time, feel the fullness of her breasts. That’s one of the things that I loved, you know, that she could have such absolutely beautiful breasts but that she’d kept them hidden from me all this time, even after all the things we’d done together. I was dying to remove her bra and feel those breasts.
But don’t forget, this was her dance.
She turned her back to me and manoeuvred her bum into my hips, forming the classic two spoons. Another first during our series of encounters was that we’d both been so excited to lie with each other that we’d forgotten the music. But it didn’t distract us. In fact, we lay like that for a time, very, very close. I didn’t want to push, though I did want to get her again. That was a big part of the thrill for me, ‘getting’ her, or at the very least her pretending that it was me who was doing the getting.
She turned around to face me and lay on her back. She took my hand and said, ‘Look… feel how wet I am already.’ This was the first time any physical contact with hands had taken place. I think she did it as a test – you know, to see how much would I feel? Would I try to grope her, would I be rough and hurt her? I intended to stick with what I’d done up to this point, and that was to follow her lead in this dance. Around and around, gently holding my hand in a position where my fingers could only brush the damp cotton. Then she pushed my hand tightly between her legs and gripped my wrist between her thighs to hold me there. After a few seconds she released my hand and turned me over on my back, before straddling me. She was now on top, riding me horseback style, as she had done in our fully-clothed first adventure. She was steadying her hands on my shoulders and I had an amazing view of her breasts. I was itching for them, quite literally itching to just touch them.
Jean Simpson must already have been quite excited because about a minute later she went rigid, pushing firmly down on me. Her eyes were shut, her hair was behind her ears and her head was tilted back. She had such a perfect body. The entire combination made for such an incredible view that I could gladly have stayed in that position all night.
‘David!’ she screamed, at the top of her lungs, ‘Agh David, you got me!’
She bucked a few times and collapsed on top of me where she lay panting for a couple of minutes.
‘That was incredible, David,’ she whispered. ‘Let me put on a record – I know you’re not in a position to walk very comfortably. Just wait there, dear boy, I’ve got another little treat for you.’
As she went about selecting her music, Otis Blue by Otis Redding, I tried to work out what her little treat for me was. Had she made sure I hadn’t spent first time around because she’d something else in store?
I was soon to find out. Otis was blaring out of the speakers as she returned to the bed and vanished under the sheet. Ooh la, la! She seemed to be fighting and twisting around beneath the sheet for a few seconds before she made any actual contact with me. It appeared from the shape of the sheet that she was on all fours and now she leaned over on me, so that our bodies would soon touch again. I could see her move closer and closer to me. Then her breasts came into contact with me somewhere about my midriff. The effect was electrifying and I quite quickly realised why: she’d removed her bra and her nipples were on my skin. That realisation sent the shudder the whole way down my spine.
‘And now for your little treat, for being such a good boy to me,’ she said, at least that’s what I think she said – you see, her head was under the sheet and her voice was muffled. I thought I’d already enjoyed the treat, but I gave myself the benefit of the doubt and assumed that’s what she said.
With that, she raised her body back up from me and rested on her knees. I could feel her hands interfering with my boxer shorts.
‘Now I’m going to take you out, David, so y
ou must promise to be very good,’ she ordered.
I muttered, ‘Okay.’ By this point we were both shivering with excitement.
She cupped me in her hands, then leant over to rub me between her breasts. The sensation sent waves of shudders up and down my spine – nearly unbearable, just nearly, mind you. I was prepared to force myself to enjoy it.
Jean Simpson must have considered me to be a very good boy because my treat didn’t stop there.
She took me in her mouth.
I mean, I should, I suppose, have been expecting something like that to happen but I can honestly say I never dreamed that she would do such a thing. I was so excited at that point. I was clinging on for dear life. I mean, I knew if I should let her get me, then the sensation would be short-lived. But how do your resist the inevitable when every nerve in your body is no longer under your control? Jean Simpson now controlled the horizontal and she definitely controlled the vertical.
I stretched my hand full length down my side and then worked my way up to find her breasts. I could feel her whole body tense above me. She held me in her mouth but stopped her magic. She froze in that position for a few seconds. I gently kneaded her breasts with each hand. She seemed to relax. I assumed it was because I wasn’t grabbing handfuls of flesh and squeezing the life out of her. She held her position, still not moving. I continued caressing her breasts, working my way to her nipples. They were already hard and I gently rubbed them. I didn’t know what else to do, I just wanted to do something to her in return for all the pleasure she was giving me.
Panic over, she started up her magic again. I’m glad I persevered, though; I thought that someone must have been very rough with Jean Simpson in the past so now I needed her to know that I wasn’t going to be rough too. As I said, I always remembered being told by my mother never to do anything to a girl that you wouldn’t like someone doing to your sister. I wasn’t exactly sure that this was what she meant, but forget my sister, I’d hate anyone to grab handfuls of my chest and maul me. (I assure you I wasn’t having this exact thought right then, just the much quicker version of it.)