The Goddess Workshop

by Margaret K Johnson

  The girls. How she missed them all. Did they think about her? Wonder where she was? And had any of them had an orgasm yet?

  Estelle, at least, had tried to phone. When Janet had switched her mobile on, she had seen several missed calls from her. She’d tried to ring her at home too. Debbie had taken the call.

  ‘Some woman phoned yesterday while you were out, Mum,’ Debbie had told her.

  ‘Who?’ Janet had asked.

  ‘I dunno.’ Since returning to her parents’ home, Debbie seemed to have adopted the same offhand tone of voice she had used as a teenager. ‘Some posh woman.’

  Janet had kept meaning to call Estelle back, but somehow she didn’t get round to it. Estelle was young, single and strong; she wouldn’t understand why Janet couldn’t find the courage to just to defy Ray and return to the workshops. Come to that, she probably wouldn’t understand why Janet was with such a dyed-in-the-wool chauvinist as Ray in the first place.

  Flushing the toilet, Janet washed her hands, wondering how she could further her plans to become more sensually aware without the workshops. Going without knickers and having luxurious baths was all very well, but she was hardly likely to have an orgasm that way, was she?

  No, she was just going to have to have another bash at masturbation. She had tried it before, of course, with no luck, but maybe if she tried again? Perhaps she could buy some sort of book to help her. Although she would have to keep it hidden from Ray. And it might not be that easy to find the privacy to try it out. Debbie said she had flu now, and she was off work, lounging around the house.

  Janet’s conscience bit her. Poor Debbie. If she said she had flu, then she did have flu. Why should she pretend? And she had just split up with Nigel too. Of course she was going to mope about. What sort of a mother was she, wishing her daughter were out of the way so she could practise masturbating?

  ‘Selfish,’ her mother’s voice told her inside her head. ‘You are a very selfish and uncaring person.’

  ‘Janet!’ Carol De Ville greeted her with a frown when she finally returned to the shop. ‘There you are! I’ve been rushed off my feet with customers, and Mr George is waiting to have his delivery checked! See to it, would you?’

  John George’s eyes twinkled at her over the pile of boxes on the shop counter. The last time Janet had seen him had been on that very windy day at church – the day she hadn’t been wearing any knickers. Not, of course, that he’d known that, but even so… She smoothed her skirt down over her hips, doing her best not to blush.

  ‘Thinks she’s Lady Muck, she does,’ John whispered to her out of the side of his mouth.

  Janet smiled. ‘She does rather,’ she whispered back. She liked John; it was difficult not to. He was such a friendly, good-humoured man, especially since his divorce six months previously.

  Janet had never liked John’s wife, Audrey. She was one of life’s backbiters, never happy with her lot and determined that nobody else should be either. Easy-going John had always been first in the line of fire for her poison, and over the years, Janet had often wondered why he didn’t leave her.

  But in the end it had been Audrey herself who had done the leaving, running off with a neighbour in the village where they lived. The affair had lasted a total of three weeks before Audrey realised that the grass wasn’t greener and returned to her husband, blithely expecting to be able to pick up the reins again. But by then it was too late. John had experienced the heady delights of freedom, peace and quiet and beer and curry in front of the TV. In short, he had come to his senses, so he had politely, but very firmly, refused to have her back.

  ‘Settles her accounts like the aristocracy too,’ John said of Carol De Ville. ‘Months behind, she is.’

  Carol De Ville always settled her bills and accounts late. It was an unofficial part of Janet’s job to stall suppliers about their invoices. She absolutely hated doing it, and she got no thanks for it either.

  ‘Whoops!’ said John, ‘Best get on, she’s looking daggers at us.’

  Stifling a giggle, Janet picked up the checklist for John’s order. John dealt in Victoriana, and today’s order was for door furniture. ‘Two dozen brass finger plates, assorted designs,’ she read.

  John opened a box, picking out samples to show her. ‘Ten basket weave, six cherub and eight figurine.’

  Janet placed a tick by the side of brass finger plates. John replaced the plates in the box and put it to one side.

  ‘Brass door knobs,’ Janet read next.

  ‘Egg-shaped, quantity twenty.’

  Janet ticked brass doorknobs and moved her pen down the list. ‘Free-hanging robe hooks.’

  ‘French-style, quantity one dozen.’

  Tick.

  ‘Cast iron door hooks.’

  John rearranged the boxes to get to the right one. Janet reached for the ticked off boxes and shoved them beneath the counter to make some space for him.

  ‘Ram’s head design, quantity two dozen,’ he said, holding one of them up.

  Janet placed a tick next to ‘Cast iron door hooks,’ becoming aware as she did so of a strange buzzing sound nearby. Puzzled, she swivelled round, searching for the source.

  ‘I think it’s coming from beneath the counter,’ she said.

  John George paused in the act of closing the box of door hooks. ‘Sounds like your electrics,’ he said, leaving the box and coming round to take a look.

  Carol De Ville bustled over, frowning. ‘What is that noise?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re not sure,’ Janet said, just as John brought out Estelle’s gift-wrapped package from beneath the counter where it had been jogged by the boxes Janet had just shoved there. The package was making a loud, mysterious buzzing sound.

  ‘That’s yours,’ Carol De Ville told Janet irritably. ‘Estelle Morgan brought it in for you yesterday.’

  Mystified, Janet took the package from John’s hand.

  ‘Well,’ said Carol De Ville, ‘you’d better open it!’

  And so, watched by both her boss and John George, Janet did so. And brought out… a box. Whatever was causing the buzzing was clearly inside it, and, even without the vivid full-colour pictures and the emblazoned name of ‘Mule Rutter!’, it was patently obvious what it was.

  ‘Well, really!’ said Carol De Ville, scandalised.

  John George began to laugh. ‘Mule Rutters, life-size,’ he announced. ‘Quantity one.’

  * * * * *

  At lunchtime Janet was alone in the shop, a still outraged Carol having gone out on an appointment. The Mule Rutter was burning a hole in Janet’s handbag beneath the counter. If the thought of finding the privacy to masturbate had been difficult, then Janet had no idea how she was supposed to use something that buzzed quite so loudly as the Mule Rutter.

  But remembering once again her boss’s scandalised face, Janet couldn’t help letting out a snort of laughter. A woman who was browsing through some colour charts looked over at her. Janet ‘sneezed’, pretending to dust a display. ‘Don’t know where all the dust comes from, do you?’ she said, but then she caught sight of Estelle’s package poking out of the top of her bag and snorted again, louder this time.

  She wasn’t too surprised when the woman left shortly afterwards.

  Whoops! For all Carol De Ville’s earlier protestations about being rushed off her feet, trade had been pretty slack lately. Carol really needed all the customers she could get.

  Smirking to herself, Janet reached down to her bag to tease the gift-wrap aside. Whether she ever used it or not, the Mule Rutter was so fantastic, she just had to take another peek. Next thing she knew, the wrapping paper was off, the box was open and she was holding the ‘veined’ shaft of the Mule Rutter in her hand.

  Blimey. It was incredible, absolutely incredible. Were mules really so well endowed? Poor lady mules! Or was it enviable lady mules?

  As Janet was pondering this question, the shop door pinged.

  ‘Oh!’ Hastily thrusting the Mule Rutter under the counter, Janet
stood up, red-faced, to see…Estelle, Reenie and Kate, striding determinedly towards her like characters from a western.

  ‘We’ve come to order you to come back to the classes,’ Estelle told her.

  Kate stepped forwards. ‘Yeah,’ she said, hands on hips. ‘And we’re not taking “no” for an answer.’

  Reenie tried, and failed, to keep the same straight face as her friends. ‘You’d better believe it, sister…’ she managed to say before her voice dissolved into giggles.

  Janet looked at the three of them – her new, her dear friends, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘But what about Ray?’ she said tremulously. ‘You see, Gwen told him all about it and he banned me from going again!’

  Estelle shrugged. ‘Sod Ray,’ she said.

  Sod Ray. She wanted it to be as simple as that, but it wasn’t, was it? If she went behind Ray’s back and he found out, then she would be in big trouble. Their marriage would be in big trouble.

  Isn’t it in trouble anyway, though? asked a voice inside her head, and suddenly Janet remembered her husband’s expression after he’d been confronted by Gwen. He’d been so furious, mouthing off at her and not even giving her the chance to explain herself. He’d acted towards her like some sort of stern parent.

  For some reason Janet found herself suddenly thinking of another man’s expression: laughing, affectionate, and about as different to a stern parent as it was possible for anyone to be. John George, when she had pulled the buzzing vibrator from its packaging earlier that day.

  ‘You’ve already got me into big trouble today,’ she told Estelle, pointing a finger at her and beginning to smile.

  ‘Me?’ asked Estelle, mock innocent, and Janet wiped a tear away, reaching below the counter for the Mule Rutter. She held it aloft, grinning.

  Reenie burst out laughing. Janet flicked the switch to make the vibrator buzz. Kate cheered.

  ‘So?’ asked Estelle cheekily. ‘Are you coming back to the classes?’

  ‘I want to,’ Janet said. ‘But I’d have to go behind Ray’s back if I did.’

  ‘Well,’ said Reenie. ‘Look at it this way. He’s the one who’s likely to benefit if you’re transformed into an all-singing all-dancing Sex Goddess, isn’t he? In my experience men don’t always know what’s good for them!’

  ‘That’s true,’ Janet said thoughtfully.

  ‘Come on, Janet,’ Estelle urged her. ‘Say yes. You know you want to!’

  Janet smiled. She still didn’t like the idea of going behind Ray’s back, but it served him right for reacting the way he had. ‘All right, then. Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Yes, I’ll come back to the classes.’

  Estelle grinned at her, thrilled. ‘Don’t you mean, “Yes! Yes! Yes”?’ she asked, her voice getting louder and louder with every word, and Janet laughed and came round the other side of the counter to give her a hug.

  Sixteen

  ‘Remember, ladies, don’t neglect your perineum!’ Jade told them in her usual over-the-top style. ‘Caressing this delicious soft spot will be a revelation, believe me. And your man will love it if you caress his too.’

  ‘Didn’t even know I had one!’ Reenie whispered out of the side of her mouth to Kate. Which was the truth. Well, almost the truth. She’d known about the bit of skin between her vagina and her anus, but not what it was called. And definitely not that it might hold the secret of untold pleasure…

  ‘Sure you don’t mean primula, Jade?’ Kate said, and everybody laughed.

  ‘You can call it what you like, Kate,’ Jade said. ‘Just don’t let it go to waste!’

  Kate grinned in Reenie’s direction. The pair of them had become halfway matey with each other, against all the odds. A few more weeks and Reenie had decided to have a go at persuading her to try to fix it to let Marcia go back to college, but she didn’t want to push it. Best to be subtle; let her think it was all her idea.

  Maybe she should use the same principle to get Ted massaging her perineum. Because the fact was, even though the classes had been Ted’s idea, ever since she’d been attending, he’d been having a spot of trouble in the bedroom department. Kept on about not finding the whole business intimidating, but since the evidence kept on saying something quite different, that didn’t quite wash with Reenie. In fact, a couple of times lately she thought he might have been hinting that she could pack the classes in if she wanted to. Not that she had any intention of doing that. The classes were a real bright spot in her week.

  ‘Before you all go,’ Jade was saying now, ‘here’s this week’s tip for getting you in the mood for raunchy sex. It has the added bonus of keeping you fit at the same time.’ And she reached into a bag to pull out a glittery, jingly piece of fabric.

  ‘Belly dancing,’ she announced, tying the fabric around her hips and giving them a quick wiggling demonstration. ‘Here, have a go yourselves.’

  Which was how Reenie and the others ended up with a glittery scarf thing tied around their hips, attempting to shimmy along with Jade to some Arabian-sounding music from Jade’s iPod.

  ‘Liquid spine, sensual hips,’ Jade kept on saying, making it look easy. ‘That’s the way, Reenie.’

  It was? Blimey. Though, come to think of it, those sultan types liked a woman with a bit of flesh on them, didn’t they? Maybe she should have become a belly dancer earlier on in life.

  ‘Where d’you get these scarf things from, Jade?’ she asked at the end of the session.

  ‘I send away for them, Reenie,’ Jade told her. ‘But you can borrow that one, if you like.’

  ‘Thanks. I think I will.’

  Jade was reaching down into her bag again. ‘There’s a bra to match if you’d like,’ she said, and held out a large, tasselled bra to Reenie.

  ‘That’ll get your hubby going,’ Kate said as Reenie jiggled the bra about, making the tassels swing.

  ‘I hope so,’ Reenie said, wrapping the bra in the glittery shawl.

  ‘Remember, Reenie,’ Jade said. ‘If belly dancing doesn’t get your husband going, as Kate puts it, it doesn’t matter. The really important thing at this stage is that it gets you going. After an erotic belly dancing session, you should feel ready for pleasure. And it doesn’t matter whether that pleasure is provided by your husband or yourself…’

  Later that evening, dressed in both bra and glittery scarf, Reenie jiggled and gyrated like a good ’un, doing her best not to feel like a total prat, while Ted just sat there at the head of the bed, arms folded, a big stupid grin on his face.

  ‘Wait ’til I tell the lads about this,’ he said, ‘they’ll be green with envy.’

  ‘Don’t you dare, Ted Richardson!’ she said, slightly breathless, stopping to take a breather. ‘Don’t you dare!’

  After five solid minutes of belly dancing, Reenie’s back was killing her, her heart was pumping like billy-o and, by the looks of him, Ted was just amused, not aroused.

  ‘Only joking, love,’ he said, laughing.

  ‘You’d better be!’ Reenie said, but beneath the bantering tone, she felt disappointed and let down. Where were the results Jade had promised? By the looks of things, Ted wasn’t about to fall on her anytime soon, and it was difficult to tell whether she was feeling aroused when all she felt like was a figure of fun.

  Stomping irritably across the room, Reenie took her battered old dressing gown from the back of the door and put it on. Ted looked crestfallen. Now he looked crestfallen.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That the end of the show then?’

  ‘Yep,’ Reenie grunted.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ Ted said. ‘I was taking the mickey, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Just a bit, yes,’ she said, sitting on the side of the bed to brush her hair.

  ‘Come on,’ he said coaxingly. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. You looked fantastic.’

  Reenie didn’t reply. Sparks fairly flew from the hairbrush.

  ‘You always look fantastic to me, Reen.’

  Then why in almost forty years had she never, not once had an
orgasm? And why, when they were supposed to have such a good, strong marriage, couldn’t they talk about it properly?

  ‘Reen?’ he said, sounding worried now.

  The doorbell rang downstairs. Reenie tossed down her brush and went to answer it, grateful for the interruption.

  * * * * *

  It was the first time Kate had ventured onto the Larkton Estate; she’d never had any reason to go there before. Walking through to Reenie’s house, she felt self-conscious, waiting to be recognised. Half her students lived on the estate. But in the end she saw nobody she knew, and she reached Reenie’s house without incident.

  Reenie’s house stood out from the others around it, mainly because of the garden. Even in the half-light of evening it was obvious someone spent loads of time on it.

  She and Ian had done a lot of gardening. Trips to the garden centre, propagating seedlings in the greenhouse, neat rows of onions and potatoes, moss killer on the lawn – the lot. The day after she’d caught Ian sucking on Jennifer’s tits, Kate had filled a gallon can with petrol at the local petrol station, taken it back to that pristine patch of green and used it to spell out the words ‘cheating bastard.’

  Then she’d set fire to it.

  Ever since then, she hadn’t so much as tended a houseplant.

  Kate quickly knocked on Reenie’s door before she had the chance to change her mind. Three weeks ago, two weeks even, she would never have dreamt she’d be doing this. She’d had zero intentions of getting involved on any level whatsoever with any of the other workshop attendees. A lot of sad women without enough to do, that’s what she’d had them down as, not individuals with feelings and problems of their own.

  And now here she was, come to do something she knew would please Reenie. She was going to have a word with Marcia with a view to her returning to college. Just like the old Kate would have done. She was going soft; had to be.

  ‘Kate! Hello!’ Reenie opened the door in her dressing gown, which seemed to suggest to Kate that she’d come at a bad time, but Reenie’s smile seemed genuine enough, and there had been warmth as well as surprise in her voice.