Emma

by Bradley Stoke

  Maisie eulogised about Tanya and expressed her sadness about leaving Emma. “But it had to happen. We’ve been together for such an absolutely long time.”

  Josephine tenderly kissed Maisie, aware of how guilt in leaving Emma was welling up in her, and how Charlotte was clearly quite upset at the news of her best friend’s loss, and, knowing Emma’s passion for the girl, how miserable she must now feel without her. Perhaps it was because of this sorrow that Emma hadn’t visited her in these days?

  In fact, Emma did visit, but only briefly. She arrived early in the visiting hours, looking pale and slightly unwell, and quite uncomfortable in the long thin overcoat she wore to cover her nakedness. She wasn’t very chatty, and smiled only very politely. Her thoughts were not focused on Charlotte or little Thomas at all. Charlotte could see that her best friend was not overly keen on children anyway. She showed very little of the enthusiasm for babies that most of her visitors had displayed, and asked only the most perfunctory questions about his well-being. And then she left, leaving a very sad kiss on Charlotte’s cheeks and lips, and swept out of the hospital ward, caring little as always for the eyes that trailed behind her, questioning just how much was not hidden beneath her coat.

  Soon, Charlotte was out of the hospital and back at the flat she now shared only with Josephine and the baby. She was still weak, and felt rather depressed despite herself. She didn’t know how she was supposed to feel, although the ante-natal classes had given her fair warning that recovery from childbirth was by no means instantaneous. Part of her felt that she should be feeling more positively about life now that she had achieved what she had been hoping for so very much for all these months. But instead she felt drained and somewhat disorientated by the strange routine of life dictated by Thomas’ needs to eat and sleep, and his equal and consequent needs to shit, piss and vomit.

  Josephine stayed by her side as much as she could, doing rather more than her fair share of feeding the baby, caring for Charlotte’s needs and keeping house. She also acted as hostess to the stream of visitors coming to see how the new mother was and to admire the progress of little Thomas. And when there were no visitors and she had no chores to attend to, she would lay on the bed next to Charlotte, holding her close, admiring the stomach which had so recently swollen so monstrously, and showed clear signs of the stretching, the swollen breasts and the lactating nipples, and Charlotte’s sad plaintive smiles as they lay hand in hand on the bed.

  Much as Josephine so much desired Charlotte’s body, sex was not the frantic frequent affair of not long distant months ago. Cuddling, caressing and kissing was usually all there was, although Charlotte had the energy and inclination to take Josephine’s clitoris and vulva to her mouth and lick, chew and taste the object of her most passionate desire. Josephine knelt up, her knees on either side of Charlotte’s chest, her arms supporting herself up against the bedroom wall, while below she felt the familiar lapping of her wife’s tongue amongst the folds and contours of her most private parts. She could see that even this little amount of lovemaking was all Charlotte was as yet willing to embrace, and that it would be several more weeks until sex between the two of them would recover its previous pitch, and longer still until Charlotte would once again entertain the company of men.

  Enid was Charlotte’s most frequent visitor. She would sit naked bestraddled on the massive double bed, holding Charlotte’s hand and staring admiringly into her eyes. Josephine, however, knew that as much as Enid loved Charlotte, even though they had only made love together on less than a dozen occasions, it was towards herself that Enid’s feelings were strongest. The girl’s reaction was so transparent whenever Josephine took her by the hand or gave her a kiss. Enid’s mouth would open in ever-frustrated anticipation and her eyes would close invitingly.

  Then Thomas burst into tears from his cot at the end of the bed. Josephine jumped up, and picked up the baby who instinctively grasped at her naked breasts, and fixed his wet hungry lips on Josephine’s nipples.

  “There’s nothing for you there, Tommy!” Josephine said with a good-humoured smile pulling the disappointed child off from her bare breasts and passing him over to Charlotte, who very quickly cradled the baby in her arms and manoeuvred her large aureate breasts towards the baby’s greedy toothless mouth. Enid was fascinated to see the very different hunger that Charlotte’s breasts were satisfying, so different in kind from that which they had so often done for her.

  Charlotte looked at Enid as Thomas drank the milk from her nipples, as the girl sat with Josephine’s arm around her shoulder at the foot of the bed. She reflected on Enid’s lust for Josephine and smiled sadly. “You can, you know,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

  “What do you mean?” gasped Enid, uncertain that she had heard right, but nonetheless aware of the tightening squeeze on her upper arm from Josephine who had heard quite clearly and knew exactly what her spouse was saying.

  “I know what you want,” Charlotte elaborated. “And I know what Josephine wants, too. But as for me … I don’t know … after all that effort: the straining and whatever … I’m just not so keen. And I so want Josephine to be happy.”

  “If you’re sure?…” asked Josephine extending an arm out to the hand that wasn’t supporting Thomas.

  “I’m sure,” said Charlotte firmly, seeing that Thomas was now fed, and just as suddenly as he’d awoken, had fallen back to sleep. She lifted the boy up to her wife, who carried him carefully and tenderly back to his cot. Enid watched with a thumping heart, her breath short with dread and anticipation, as she watched Josephine’s arched, tall naked form bend over the cot: the line of her spine raised up and trailing down in descending hummocks to the valley of her buttocks.

  And then, making sure the baby was settled, Josephine turned around to display the full beauty of her perfect body: the swan-like neck, the slim waist, the natural firm breasts, and the tidy triangular patch of hair that almost obscured her greatest treasures. She strode towards the bed, a broad smile across her face, her eyes shining in that unmistakeable way that Enid had come to recognise in Charlotte when they had made love, and the cheeks shining like a pair of apples between the lines of her toothy smile and the sparkling jewels of her eyes.

  Enid felt her passion rise from a deep well of longing as Josephine’s lips approached her own, and then she was lost in passion and desire as their lips met, their tongues battled against each other, and Josephine’s hands explored her naked body. Awkwardly she opened her arms and grasped Josephine’s body to her own, pulling her down onto the bed on top of her, breathing heavily as her lust and desire erupted from her and shook her body in a way that she’d only experienced before with Charlotte. And then hands, lips, fingers, tongue all over her body as Enid returned the intimacy as best she could. Josephine was at last in her arms! That beautiful body, the face which shone a beauty greater than the sum of any parts! Such ecstasy!

  Charlotte lay beside the pair, her lower torso and legs beneath the duvet and sheets that covered her, watching with approval the lovemaking of her wife and her colleague. Her hand moved down beneath the sheets and stroked her crotch as it moistened from the pleasure Josephine’s pleasure brought to her. She had worried so much that her wife had sacrificed so much for her, and here in the form of this little girl of such single-minded passion was what was needed to bring relief. As her fingers explored her clitoris and the slippery folds of her vulva, she wondered if she had the energy to participate, but though a part of her desired the thrust and grapple of sex, she knew she had none of the energy and somehow lost the sexual inclination to relieve herself in such a gross physical way.

  Josephine took Charlotte’s hand in hers while her tongue and eyes explored Enid’s vagina, the rich whiff of passion filling her nostrils, her tongue and lips slipping on the moist folds of the vulva, small strands of brown hair between her teeth and tickling the back of her tongue. Beneath her, she could feel Enid convulse with pleasure, shuddering as her sweaty body slid about on the sheets
by the pushed-back duvet, her tongue and teeth and nose thrust deep inside her own vagina, a finger occasionally probing and exploring the puckered anus and adding to the pleasure of sex she had almost forgotten these past few weeks.

  And eventually, after gasps, cries and yelps of pent-up passion and release, the couple disengaged and slumped on the sheets by the side of Charlotte. With a sigh, Charlotte put an arm under and around the two lovers and her lips tenderly kissed Josephine’s cheek. Such bliss! Such joy!

  And then, as babies do when disturbed by unfamiliar sounds and smells, Thomas suddenly burst into tears, demanding yet more succour. Without a thought, Josephine pulled herself away from the caresses of both Enid and Charlotte and rushed to bring the baby to the teat it desired so much. As she carried the yelling baby, she smiled with pleasure at the stretched out forms of Enid and Charlotte over the disarray of sheet, duvet and pillow: the one with a breast raised by a hand to receive Thomas’ eager mouth and the other engulfed in the silliest of grins, curled up in a foetal ball and her arms thrust between her legs. So, she thought as she passed Thomas to his mother, this is what married life is like.

  Chapter XLVII

  The shock of losing Maisie hit Emma harder than she could have ever imagined. She lost the will to get up in the morning, to care for herself, and even to go to work. Every venture into the world beyond her house was a struggle. She hated the looks she got from other people, and imagined that everyone was aware of her loss, whereas, of course, most people were simply trying to establish what it was she wore underneath her loose clothes. These visits were almost always brief ones to fill her fridge with food that most often she had lost the appetite to eat, and just once to see Charlotte and her new baby at the hospital. This depressed her even more as she felt so inadequate to express to her best friend how pleased she was that the childbirth had been so successful.

  She didn’t tell anyone at work for over a week she wasn’t coming in, and was extremely upset when she got a very brusque and angry phone call from Amelia who demanded that she return to work immediately. She went to bed with the full intention of returning, but when she awoke she was too depressed to carry her resolution through. Instead, she went to a doctor and got a sick note to excuse her from work. Her next communiqué from Harlot TV came as even more of a shock. She was told in no uncertain terms that her recent work was simply not of the high standard that the station had come to expect from her and was frankly totally unsatisfactory. She was given three months notice, which started retrospectively from the first day she had failed to turn up to work, and informed her that she was not expected back at the studio.

  Her depression exploded into tears and cries which darkened even further the clouds which gathered in her head and made normal life impossible for her. She returned to bed where she stayed all day, wailing her misfortune, comforted only by thoughts of selfpity and tortured by rage and anger at Tanya. She had been betrayed by one who had taken advantage of her good nature and stolen the love of her life from her, and now she was left to fend for herself. And not very well either.

  The days passed by, each one indistinguishable from the one before, Emma’s rests in bed often lasting all day. She lost the ability to concentrate on literature or any reading matter at all. In fact, other than weep and flagellate herself with her regrets and despair, all she could do was watch the most mindless and undemanding television programs. No programme was too banal, no show too hackneyed: quiz shows, soap operas, chat shows, and news programmes. She lost all appetite for sex television whose content only served to remind her of what she was missing. She read the mail that arrived with more attention than ever before, though most of it was junk mail, and most of the rest were bills. She lost the appetite to check her e-mails, and the only music she felt inclined to play was as despondent as the mood she felt.

  It was while she was sitting on the sofa, listening to a requiem, that she heard her doorbell ring. She wasn’t expecting a visitor: in fact, she lived quite some way from her friends and was never used to calls anyway. Her heart began beating in foolish anticipation and hope. Was it Maisie? Had she had enough of Tanya? Had she come to realise that it was only with her that she’d ever find true love? She hurried to the door, and peeked through the eyehole, half-expecting Maisie and half-expecting a postman.

  What she saw, distorted by the magnification of the eyehole, was Charlotte and Josephine standing at the entrance: Charlotte with Thomas clinging to the bare breast she uncovered under the long coat which was all she wore. She hesitated. Could she let her friend see her like this. A perverse sense of self-worthlessness almost persuaded her to pretend she wasn’t in, but her love for Charlotte, and her regret that she’d not seen her best friend since she’d left hospital, got the better of her, and she carefully opened the door, forgetting that she was still naked, and would once again scandalise the posh neighbourhood.

  “Emma!” smiled Charlotte. “How are you? We were so worried. We heard you’d lost your job. And we heard about Maisie. Can we come in?”

  “Of course! Of course!” said Emma, unable to smile and feeling wretched for her lack of friendliness.

  Charlotte and Josephine entered the house; Charlotte immediately feeling guilty that she’d not come to see her friend sooner. But it was not easy being a mother. Thomas was so demanding, and it was only recently she had recovered sufficiently to venture out of the flat herself. Emma was clearly not herself. Her home showed the signs of neglect. Nothing had been cleaned, polished or even tidied away. An untidy row of empty bottles lined the hallway, and some magazines had been left on the floor in an untidy heap where Emma had dropped them and had never bothered to throw away. The living room where Emma took them to was similarly untidy. Cushions lying on the floor, a rug turned up at the corner, records and books scattered about randomly. Normally Emma was so tidy. Almost obsessively so. And now everything was untidy and unclean. Even her long hair was tangled and unwashed, and Charlotte couldn’t help noticing there was the slight smell of mustiness from her unshowered skin. She handed Thomas over to Josephine, who was wearing a sobre blue blouse and white skirt, and grabbed Emma around the shoulders and pulled her towards her.

  “We’ve been so worried!” Charlotte cried. “We haven’t heard from you so long! We thought you might be busy at work, but Maisie told us how you’d been sacked. Is it because you’re sad that Maisie’s left you?”

  Emma nodded and sniffed bitterly. “It was that cow Tanya! She picked me up, exploited me and then just threw me away. And then, as if that wasn’t enough she took my little Maisie away from me!”

  Charlotte smiled sadly at Josephine, as if to say that it was as they’d suspected. “You must forget about Maisie now. She’s gone. I don’t know what this Tanya’s like. I’ve never spoken to her; but Maisie’s made her choice and what’s done is done. It’s you that you should think about. Did you lose your job because of Maisie? Or was there some other reason?”

  Emma sank her head onto Charlotte’s bare shoulder, tears bursting through and onto her friend. “I was so depressed. I am so depressed. I just lost the will to go to work. Or even, sometimes, to live. It’s been so hard.”

  “Now, now,” said Charlotte comfortingly, patting her friend on her bare back, aware of the desire returning in her for her friend, despite her express intention to not feel that way. She held Emma to her, while Josephine watched with sympathy, Thomas gurgling contentedly in her arms.

  Josephine then placed the baby in the carry-cot the girls had brought along with them, and tucked him under the thin woollen blanket, naked except for his nappies. She then removed her clothes and sat down on a chair, her legs crossed and her arms folded. Charlotte took this as a cue, and eased Emma off her, as she removed her coat to reveal her own naked body. Despite herself Emma was interested to see the changes childbirth had brought on her friend. Her breasts were fuller and her nipples much more prominent. She was still somewhat fatter round the waist than she used to be and there were stretch-m
arks on her stomach. She kissed Charlotte tenderly, aware of her selfishness in not paying more attention to her friend’s needs.

  “How is Thomas?” she asked.

  “He’s doing very well. He had a small fever last week. We were very worried, but apparently it’s quite normal in small babies.”

  Conversation became more relaxed as the girls discussed motherhood, and then gradually took in gossip on the girls’ friends and how life was back at the flat. Charlotte complained how the flat somehow didn’t seem right for the needs of parenthood. Josephine joked about the trials of feeding the baby and changing his nappies. Despite herself, Emma felt a smile break across her face as Josephine described in detail the problems they’d faced in cleaning up his sick and excrement, and some of the comments that had been made to them as a lesbian couple with a baby.

  Charlotte sat next to Emma on the sofa and stroked and kissed her as they spoke, her mind flashing back to her earlier desires for her friend, and finding that they were still inside her. On occasion her lust for Emma overwhelmed her and she would kiss her friend on the cheek or on the face, tenderly wiping off the tears with her tongue, her arms around Emma’s shoulders. Emma also began to feel the warmth in her feelings for Charlotte return, gingerly at first, and then ever more boldly, her own arms looped around Charlotte’s waist and she stroked the stomach which had so recently carried such a greater load.