I shake my head, smile sadly.
‘Night then, love,’ she says, and she’s gone.
In the dim light of the living room, with a single lamp burning in the corner, I sit watching the minute hand travel around the face of the clock on the mantlepiece over and over. After a long time, I stand up and go back into the kitchen. As I’m popping ice cubes out of the tray into my glass, I scan Mum’s cork pinboard with my eyes. In amidst the money-off supermarket vouchers are snapshots of me and my brother Jake taken on holidays in Scotland when we were little, of Gran in younger, happier days, sometimes with Grandad. Memories of life before it got so bloody complicated. Heading back into the living room, I pour myself another drink, wondering why things have to change, why the carefree joy and spontaneity of childhood have to go. Why sex has to come along and mess everything up.
Even the first time, things had been complex, confusing, riven with misunderstanding, betrayals and ambiguities. Every summer since I was fourteen, I spent two weeks at my French penfriend Aude’s house just outside Paris, and I’d always had a thing about Eric, the boyfriend of Aude’s best friend Natalie. He wasn’t the best-looking of guys by any stretch of the imagination, but he did have an undeniable Gallic charm. And although he was spoken for, I’d frequently caught him looking at me from behind a cloud of Gauloise smoke as we hung out in the village square, or opened my eyes to find him admiring my tits as we sunbathed at a nearby lake. Even after I’d left for home, I’d often found myself thinking about him as I lay in bed, discovering myself.
One night, the last year I went there – the year of my A levels – Aude and I had heard Eric and Natalie banging away one night as we’d walked down her lane. The window to her bedroom on the ground floor had been flung open to the summer night, and from behind the fluttering voile we could hear her whimpering.
‘Encore, encore,’ she had started to beg him, and the bedsprings had gone crazy, the iron bedstead had clanked against the wall behind it, and we’d stood in wonder, listening to their wild, hooting climaxes. Then we’d fallen prey to a giggling fit and had to leg it down the track before either of them heard us. I don’t know about Aude, but that night I came for the first time, alone in my room, thinking about Eric and Natalie pleasuring each other.
After a late breakfast of madeleines and hot chocolate the next morning, Aude suggested we bike out to the lake and spend the morning swimming. Within an hour we were spread out on our towels on the soft greyish sand, talking about what had happened in our lives since we’d seen each other the previous year. Aude, I soon discovered, had lost it to one of her brother’s friends after going to visit him at university in Poitiers.
‘What was it like?’ I whispered.
She wrinkled up her nose. ‘It hurt a little bit,’ she said, ‘the first time. I think I needed to relax, but, well, you know . . . anyway, when it was over, we went to sleep and then I woke up in the morning and he was licking my pussy and it was heaven, and he put it inside me again and it felt wonderful.’
‘Did you have an orgasm?’
‘I don’t think so. I suppose if I don’t think so, then I couldn’t have done. But it felt lovely and tingly inside, more and more so, and maybe I was on the way.’ She turned her head to look at me, shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun. ‘Eric is aching for you, always has,’ she said.
I looked at her. ‘But he’s with Natalie.’
She smiled, a secretive, knowing smile. ‘No matter,’ she said. ‘He’s yours, if you want him. She doesn’t need to know.’
‘But she’s your friend.’
‘So are you. And I want you to have a good time. Why don’t you take advantage?’
I leaned back against the sand, head spinning. I wanted Eric; he had always done it for me. Would I regret it more if I didn’t give into my desire, even though I knew I’d probably never see him again? Afterwards, I’d go home, and he’d go off to college, or to a new life in a big city, and our paths would probably never cross again. He probably wouldn’t stay with Natalie either, so it was foolish to resist on that count. It’s the way it was. We were all birds about to fly the nest.
In the growing heat, my brain started to feel like melting brie, and after a while I stopped thinking and just lay there baking, letting the gentle lap of the water on the shoreline carry me away to a place where there was nothing beyond the slow pulse of my veins, the red wash of blood behind my eyelids. I drifted, just a body now, and nothing mattered any more.
I was wakened by the angry buzz of moped engines and opened my eyes to see Eric and two of his friends raising dust as they braked sharply on the little path leading down to the lake, looking over at us. They thought they were too cool to wear helmets, and in the sunshine reflecting off the water I could see Eric’s eyes sparkling like clusters of gems. Like I said, he was no oil painting, but sometimes even a downright ugly man can make a girl cross her legs and squeeze hard. Eric’s floppy brown hair could have done with a wash, and his crumpled face suggested he’d gone a few rounds with a local thug, but in his own dishevelled, slightly grubby way, he was sex on a stick.
Aude stood up, walked over to them, hips sashaying in a little pink and white sarong she’d brought along, and spoke with them for a while. Then she came back over and looked down at me, the sunlight a halo around her head
‘We’ve been invited for lunch,’ she said. ‘Eric’s house-sitting for his brother while he’s on holiday. Wanna go?’
Yes and no, I felt like saying. All at once I was afraid. But short of pretending I suddenly felt unwell, there was no way of getting out of it. I stood up, picked up my towel. I glanced over towards the boys and my tummy cartwheeled. Eric was staring right at me, a weird smile in his eyes. I looked at my feet.
Dressing quickly, Aude and I walked over to the mopeds, where she hopped onto the back of Eric’s friend Stefan’s. Eric, now smiling with his mouth as well as his eyes, slung his leg over his own, looked at me and patted the rear seat. I climbed aboard, put my hands around his waist. Immediately I felt my pussy start to throb as my clit pressed up against his backside through my jeans. I tightened my grip as we span in the dust and sped away, afraid that in my dizziness I might lose hold.
It wasn’t far to the house, set apart from the rest of its village on the edge of a small wood. Outside, a wooden table and chairs took up a little patio area, and Eric invited us all to make ourselves comfortable there while he fetched us some beers. He disappeared into the house and after a moment loud music began to pump away. I recognised it as The Prodigy, ‘Firestarter’.
We sat on the sun-drenched terrace, smoking and chatting and enjoying our cold beers, as Eric flitted in and out of the kitchen before finally materialising with plates of steak frites.
‘Voilà!’ he said with a flourish, and I blanched as I looked down at the plate he set before me. Blood oozed from the barely cooked meat. It could barely have touched the pan. I might as well be taking a bite directly from a cow’s arse.
However, at that impressionable age I was highly conscious of drawing attention to myself. Not only that, but I was still of the opinion that anything French was sophisticated and chic. So without a word, I took up my steak knife and fork, cut myself a piece of flesh and sunk my teeth in.
It was, for all I say above, delicious, as were the thin frites and cheap red plonk we washed it down with. As we all ate, and The Prodigy continued to belt out from the living room, I listened to them chatter but spoke little. I was pretty proficient in French by now, but when lots of people were speaking it together, and using lots of slang, I sometimes found it hard to keep up. Mixed with that was my natural shyness, and my nervous anticipation of how things were going to turn out with Eric.
As I finished my meal, I became aware that Eric had also fallen quiet, and when I finally dared glance over at him, I found he was looking at me too. He smiled when our eyes met, a slow, soft smile, not at all predatory. The moment had come, I realised. It was now or never.
‘Where’s the toilet?’ I asked him, and he waved back towards the house. I stood up, walked around the end of the table, and as I passed him he stood up.
‘It’s upstairs,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you.’
As we moved away from the others, his hand was in the small of my back. At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped and turned to face him, and he put his arms around my buttocks and pulled me up towards him. I folded my legs around his back, and as he lowered me down to the staircase, our teeth were clashing in the savagery of our first kiss.
I was losing it already, gasping and uttering little sobs as our bodies adjusted themselves against each other, tried each other out for size. My T-shirt had ridden up as Eric reached inside to clasp one breast in his sweat-moistened palm, and as he moved up and down against me, I felt the weight of his cock as it strained at the heavy fabric of his jeans, as it pressed against my belly.
‘Baise-moi,’ I commanded.
He responded to my order by lifting me up in his arms and carrying me upstairs. At the top, he pushed a door with his foot and it swung open to reveal an unmade bed surrounded by balled-up clothes, which I gathered to be his. His guitar, with which he had sometimes serenaded us in the village square after nightfall, rested next to the bed.
Marching over, he threw me down on it. ‘I’ve wanted you for so long,’ he muttered as he tore his clothes off. ‘If only you knew how many times I’ve dreamt of this moment.’
‘I know,’ I said, slithering out of my jeans and knickers, then spreading my legs for him, emboldened by sheer lust. ‘Look how much I want you,’ I said, awestruck. I dipped my fingers into my sweet sap, held them out to him. He took them in his mouth, closed his eyes. Beneath him I reached for his prick, and marvelled at the hot handful that accepted my caress so willingly. As I start to pump him, I groped beneath him again with my other hand, cupped his lightly furred balls, squeezed and then relented several times over until his breath was coming jagged on my neck as he gnawed at me with his teeth.
I couldn’t hold out a moment longer. Taking him by the shoulders, I shunted him round and pushed him down on the bed, then climbed on top, slotting myself down over his dick. Then I leant down to kiss him, hair trailing down onto his face as my lips sought his, breasts crushing against the mohair of his chest. His hands on my buttocks, Eric guided me on and off him, helping me to gain a position and a motion that had us both bordering on orgasm within moments.
‘Attends,’ I whispered urgently. ‘C’est la première fois. First time. Go slow. Doucement.’
He eased me up off him, rolled me over and brought his face down to my cunt, where he slurped at me, making satisfied little noises like a cat awarded its ration of cream. I giggled uncontrollably, confused by the simultaneous urge to throw him off me and to pull his face tighter into me, to mash my pussy against his jaw. His tongue flicked in and out of my hole, and his stubble grated, not altogether unpleasantly, at the plump skin surrounding my arsehole. I could see his hand busy between his legs, keeping himself primed for me. Gripping his upper arms, I pulled him up towards me again and he dipped back inside me.
This time there was no way of holding things back, of putting on the brakes. Our bodies met like old friends, and he went deep inside me, then, though I thought it couldn’t happen, deeper still, until I felt so full, so complete, I knew that I would always be seeking to find this feeling again, wherever I went, whoever I became. My clitoris, lost inside the soft pile of Eric’s pubic hair, was kneaded by his weight. Complemented by his movements inside me, it had me snatching for breath as wave after wave built up, crashed down, retreated and then came back to bowl me down.
Eric held on, fought valiantly, and my contractions were ebbing away when his own climax bore down on him, and he pulled away from me and gripped his dick in his fist as his white jelly rained down on me.
By the time we got downstairs, the others were gone; a note on the wooden table informed us they had returned for a swim. We climbed on the bike and set out for the lake, and as darkness stole over us we all sat by the water smoking and talking. Others arrived, and soon there was a large gang of us. Among the newcomers, I soon realised, was Natalie. I moved away from Eric, located Aude and sat down beside her.
‘How did it go?’ she whispered.
I smiled at her. ‘Natalie’s here,’ I said.
‘Don’t panic,’ she said. ‘Nobody’s going to say anything, I promise you. So, how was it?’
I leaned in towards her. ‘Amazing,’ I breathed. ‘It was amazing. I feel – I don’t know how to describe it. Life will never be the same again.’
‘I’m so happy for you,’ said Aude, pulling her sweater up over her head. ‘Look,’ she pointed.
I followed her gesture, saw figures moving into the water, naked flesh glowly faintly in the light of the crescent moon.
‘You coming?’ she said.
I stripped off, followed her into the lake. The skinny-dipping bug took hold quickly and before long there were twenty or so of us floating around in the water.
I don’t know how much time had passed when Eric appeared beside me, the water level at his chest where it reached my shoulders. Looking around anxiously, unable to see Natalie anywhere nearby, I knew this was my last chance – I was flying home the following evening. I put my arms around Eric’s neck, encircled his waist tightly with my legs and kissed him, feeling my hardening nipples press against his chest. I felt so grateful for what he had given me that afternoon, I would have done anything for him at that moment.
His tongue wrestling mine, plunging far inside my mouth, he slipped one hand around my buttock, supporting my weight with the other, and shot one finger up inside my cunt. Finding me wet and ready for him, he took it out and, prising my bum cheeks apart, entered me with an almost bestial grunt of pleasure. I looked around to see if the others had heard, but the light had died and I could see no one save a few stragglers on the shore, and even them I could only make out by the orange flare of their cigarettes. But even had Natalie been standing there watching us, even if she’d been striding out into the lake to tear us apart from each other, I don’t think I’d have been able to stop. I was so far gone, not taking this all the way was not an option.
I turned back to Eric, started to eat at his face again.
‘Je t’adore,’ I said when I pulled away, and in that moment I really meant it. His fingers tightening on my arse, driving into my flesh, Eric responded by pushing himself even harder into me, burying his face in my tits. When he sensed the dam ready to burst in me, he walked me back and laid me on the shore, where he rode me as I spasmed violently beneath him, tears rolling down my face. Then he kissed me long and hard, into the night. It was, we both knew, our farewell kiss.
So it wasn’t bad, for a first time. In fact, it was pretty damn wonderful. But I left France, and I left Eric, without any real regrets. Like Aude had said, we were young adults, on the threshold of new lives that would take us far away, in directions and to places we couldn’t predict. It had been brewing up between us for several years, and the air had finally been cleared by one almighty storm that neither of us would ever forget. That was worth a lot.
Back in Brighton, I was a different person – a woman, I thought, at last. I walked differently, I talked differently. I cut my long straight hair, and I took down my old pop posters. The old Alicia was gone, and an enormous sense of freedom and potential washed over me. A new life was beckoning – a life in which the potential for pleasure was only limited by my imagination.
14
THE FOLLOWING MORNING Mum brings me breakfast in bed after coming home from her shift, and I lie in until lunchtime, taking the train back to London in the early afternoon. On the way I decide that I do need to get away, and soon. But I know that if I leave without confirming my suspicions, without finding out what has really been going on with Paco and Carlotta and how much they know of each others’ activities with me, I’ll always be wondering if I overreacted, if I misjudged them. The
re are things I need to do before I head off into the sunset.
I call Jess, and after I’ve listened to her remonstrations about not having returned so many of her calls, manage to sweet talk her into meeting me for a drink at the Moroccan bar. Within an hour she’s there, smoking like fury, gesticulating with her arms as she tells me about her new conquest.
‘His dick was like this,’ she says, bending her arm at the elbow and drawing her finger the whole length of her forearm.
I laugh. ‘And just as thick, no doubt.’
‘No kidding, Al – I could hardly walk the next day.’
‘So what happened after that first night?’
She leans in to me over the table, a wild look in her eyes. ‘I picked him up after work the following evening,’ she said, ‘and we drove out of town.’
‘Where did you go?’ I imagine Jess in her red convertible, whipping along at some fantastical speed, auburn hair flying out behind her like flames, the gorgeous barman beside her, one hand on her thigh, the other on his cock.
‘Out into the sticks,’ she said. ‘Who knows? It doesn’t matter. It was dark, and we got into the back seat and he went down on me and I was wailing like a banshee with no one around to hear me, just the owls.’
She takes a long drink, readjusts herself a little in her seat, which I take to be a sign that she’s getting just a little bit moist down below. She grins.
‘I let him drive home,’ she says. ‘And we hit London at 100 miles an hour. I straddled him all the way along the Westway. He came just as we reached the Marylebone flyover, struggling to keep hold of the wheel. I thought we were going to take off, go out in a blaze of glory.’
They were an item now, she told me, and she was blissfully happy. She thought she’d been fucked in her time, but she creamed her pants just thinking about this guy and what he was going to do with her at the end of each day. She couldn’t concentrate on her work, could barely eat. She was even thinking it might be love.
The Blue Guide Page 18