by Nicole Dere
She became brutally frank after the first months, sometimes cosily, with a no-secrets-between-us kind of intimacy, other times (all too often) vindictively, with an awareness of how deeply her disclosures hurt. ‘You didn’t really think you were the first, did you?’ she laughed. ‘Jesus! I had my first fuck on the beach when I was 14. And my best friend Kathy had prepared me well in advance. We did the honours for each other. It was good fun. I could easily become a lezzy! We–e–ell,’ she drawled modifyingly, ‘maybe bi! But then I don’t need to, do I, sweety, when I’ve got you. The fastest tongue in the West!’
Other liaisons were revealed at intervals. She liked to tease me with vividly erotic details of sex with various people we both knew, then, right at the end she would grin and say, ‘Don’t worry, sweet! Only joking!’ until I didn’t know which was truth and which imagination. But I knew where I was all right. Fairly and squarely under the thumb. ‘And don’t you just love it, my cute little catamite!’ she would say, with sadistic pleasure. ‘You wouldn’t have it any other way, would you, my little slave?’ It frightened me to admit to the element of truth in her jibes.
But she began to work late at her PA job, and go out in the evenings to visit “old friends” – ‘If I have too much to drink I’ll stay over, so don’t worry. You get a good night’s sleep. Don’t sit up all night marking.’ I was working at the local comprehensive, dispensing the pearls of my literary wisdom to see them trampled in the mud. I was beginning to grow unhappy on all fronts.
I plucked up courage, my heart thumping, when she returned from work at about eight one evening. ‘Where’ve you been? Why are you so late?’ Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes shone, and her face wore, to my private horror, an expression I could recognise, which I suspected came from sexual fulfilment. And when I drew near I could smell wine on her breath.
‘For God’s sake, Marty! We had to work late, so Alan took me for a drink.’
(My name is Martin, which, at this early stage of our relationship, Clio had already diminished to Marty, which she made worse by saying – ‘Do you think we should spell it with a “y” or an “i”?’ It was to get much worse. By the time we had gone abroad and I became enslaved by her and Ant, she insisted on referring to me as Martina – ‘Martina Cantgetalegover,’ she would explain with relish to every newcomer.)
I suspected everyone and anyone. And said or did nothing about it, except to lie for torturous hours, alone, vividly picturing her infidelities, highlighting the sexual connotations, involving even her female friends in my lurid scenarios – and, of course, myself, either as helplessly captive witness, or transmogrified into my wife herself in her starring role (whichever way you care to spell it). Inevitably, however much I tried to extend my fiction, writhing body would vanquish fertile mind and I would spill my seed, not, usually, on the ground, but equally sterilely, and my shame would be complete. And then came the worst part, the silent whisper of acknowledgement from the weary brain – ‘You love it, don’t you, little perv? Von Masoch, eat your heart out!’ And I’d quietly cry myself to sleep.
Chapter Three
GOING ABROAD BEGAN AS a desperate bid, at least on my part, to keep the relationship going. I lived in constant fear that Clio would leave me. She must surely discard me like an outmoded item of clothing – that was the thought I woke up with every new day at her side. And even worse when I woke up as I often did alone, for more and more she spent entire nights away from home, weekends away in various parts of the British Isles, with Alan, her boss and lover, or maybe with others I didn’t know about. She was forging ahead in her career. It wasn’t only herword I had to take for her success. Smoothie-bastard Alan became a regular fixture of our home and hearth, and he would sing her praises to me, telling me what a lucky bloke I was to possess such a treasure, then fix me with those direct, manly eyes, and I would loathe myself for the creeping wimp I was in failing to meet his challenging gaze, as he would dismiss me like the faithful eunuch I had become: ‘We’ll be up half the night sorting out this mess. You push off to bed, Marty, old boy. See you in the morning.’ And off I’d shuffle, burning with shame, mumbling my obsequious goodnights, afraid even to go over and kiss Clio, who would bustle about efficiently clearing space on the low table for their files, without a glance in my direction.
I’d lie there cold and naked in the spacious marital bed, my imagination feverishly relaying every caress, every slide and rustle of the clothes they eventually shed, or peeled from each other, and then the writhing, multiple combinations of their naked flesh, rosy in the gas glow of the fire, spread on the rug, or deep in the cushions of the three-seater settee. I’d try to pluck up courage to go down, to push open the door of the sitting room and catch them in flagrante, at it! And then what? Confront him, mano a mano, one prick to another, administer the damned good thrashing he deserved? But he was, and had, a much bigger prick than me, and my humiliation would thus be complete.
Sexual relations, or our bizarre version of them, were even less frequent, though we continued to share a bed (on the nights Clio was not elsewhere or otherwise occupied with her endless “work”). Most of the time we managed not only to be civil but even amiable, as long as I allowed Clio to hold the initiative in everything, and I invariably did. But still I lived under the strain of that haunting fear that she would at any moment cast me aside. When I heard talk in the staff room, then read the article in the TimesEducationalSupplementabout the opportunity to teach abroad in a former African colony, I grabbed at it like a drowning man at a lifebelt.
Sick with hope and anxiety, I finally plucked up courage to tell Clio. I couldn’t remember when she had last looked at me with such deep astonishment. Perhaps never? And all at once, to my horror and helplessness, I felt the choking tears rise, and suddenly I was on my knees in front of her chair, my face buried in her parted thighs, and the tears were gushing forth. I could feel them soaking the thin material of her dress; my whole body was racked with my sobs, and her hands were lifting me, hauling me up towards her. ‘My God, Marty! What have you done?’
‘Nothing! Nothing, I swear, my love! It’s just – I’m afraid – don’t want to lose you! I couldn’t bear it – if you left me!’
I collapsed, crouched between her feet, my arms resting on her knees, my head down. I wept abandonedly, like a child lost in its misery. ‘I know I’m no good to you – I can’t satisfy you – you and Alan–’
‘What? Don’t be so fucking stupid, Marty! Alan?Me and him?’ She drew a deep breath, there was an instant’s pause, as if she were debating whether to continue, then she seized my head, pulled it down, pressed my wet face hard against her lower belly. I breathed in her sweetness, the musky perfume of her sex through the fine layers of material, her dress, the tiny knickers. She squeezed the back of my head so tight I could feel the curls of her pubis through the material made damp with my tears. ‘You think I’d ever leave you for him? Just cos I let him ...’
I waited, tensed, to feel the crushing blow of truth, of her confession. My body curled, every muscle waiting to take the impact, but she paused, and I loathed myself for the cowardly relief that flowed through me for not hearing that truth. ‘Good God, Marty! How could you? I know he’s taken up a lot of my time. Too much! I’m getting sick of it. I was going to tell him. Darling! This sounds a great idea! Africa! What an adventure!’ She stopped suddenly again, held my face up by my ears, lifting me away from her, staring down as I knelt between her knees. ‘You areasking me to go with you, aren’t you? It’s not youthat’s leaving me, is it?’
I gazed up adoringly, tried to shake my head against the pressure of her grip. ‘Oh, Clio!’ I blubbered. ‘You know I couldn’t ever do anything without you. I belong to you!’ Sick with nerves, I plunged on, stammering. ‘There’s just one thing – we’d have to be married. For us to go out as a couple.’
‘I thought you’d never ask!’
She beamed at me, and I burst into fresh tears. ‘Oh, my darling! You know I’m yours. I alw
ays will be!’ And even then, I guess I didn’t know how profound, how deep and complete, my assertion was.
I probably believed in my naivety that this new start, or second chance, in this novel and entirely foreign environment, would mean an equally revolutionary change in our personal relationship. Perhaps we would even recapture that magical closeness we had achieved in our earliest days, like the night we had spent on Observatory Hill, when we had been joined both physically and spiritually, truly in LOVE. (Or was I just pretending, as always? Not quite succeeding in fooling myself, mental masturbation, to go with the ten-finger exercises that took up so much of my solitary fantasising?)
Everything was so new: climate, surroundings, our status – like the majority of European or American expatriates, we were elevated far beyond the humble social levels we had held at home. We had a big, comfortable bungalow, servants – a cook, a maid for the housework and laundry, a shambaboy to keep the large garden in tip-top shape – a sports club where, for a very modest monthly subscription, we could swim at its private pool, play squash or tennis, golf and, most important of all, drink at any hour of the day or night.
For the first month or two Clio was quite content to live the pampered life of a memsa’ab, hiring and firing our little band of domestics at a fine old rate until she eventually found a trio to satisfy her, spending her days around the pool down at “the club”, gossiping salaciously with the other women. With the erotic content of the conversations, which she related delightedly to me each evening when I came in from work, it wasn’t surprising that they needed the pool to cool off in. And I readily confess that I was an eager listener, and revelled in this secondhand excitement. Even when she teased me sometimes.
‘You know Mags Evans?’ She was the rather statuesque wife of our deputy head, with burnished, sun-bleached hair, aged 30-something, and winner with monotonous regularity of the annual Ladies’ Championship at tennis. I simply nodded, aware that the question was merely rhetorical, the header for a juicy piece of scandal. ‘You’d better watch yourself, my lad. I think you might have a rival for my affections.’ She giggled like a schoolgirl. ‘She only touched me up in the showers at the club today!’
I stared, genuinely startled as well as aroused. There was also just the smallest touch of uneasy embarrassment. Our sexual relations, though on a much sounder footing than they had been during the latter days of our former life in the UK, were still largely based on my lingual and manual dexterity. Penetration by penis was as rare an event as it had been in our native land, and as brief. But there was no overt malice in her tone as she continued.
‘She was already in there, huffing and puffing away after lumbering around on that bloody tennis court, and called out, “Come and do my back for me, sweetheart! I’m absolutely knackered! Must be getting past it, I think.”
‘Well, I was a bit embarrassed, of course, but there was nobody else in there, so in I go. Well, you know how tiny those cubicles are; there was no way we could help rubbing together. So there I was up against that great big arse of hers, my front plastered against her as I started to sponge down her back. “That’s gorgeous!” she groaned, and leant back against me, so that we really were all over each other. Then she turned round, and honestly! I felt like a school kid all over again. “Your turn now!” she says – couldn’t wait to get her hands on me! She spins me round, only she wasn’t really interested in my back. A quick feel of my bum, then those great big hands of hers were sliding round the front, and grabbing a feel of my tits, and copping a bloody goodfeel, I can tell you! I let out a squeal and gave her a shove in her great belly, then shot out of there like a cork from a bottle!’
I goggled at her. ‘What on earth happened? I mean afterwards. What did she say?’
‘Well, she tried to laugh it off, of course, but there was no way she could get out of it. Started to tell me what a gorgeous little thing I was – how much she envied me being so dainty. The big fat cow! But I could see she was embarrassed as hell. I just got my clothes on as fast as I could and got the hell out of there.’ She didn’t sound at all upset about it now. ‘Poor old Dave Evans! No wonder he’s such a miserable-looking sod. I bet he doesn’t get a look in! Never mind getting anything else in!’
She sniggered, and I tried to disguise my discomfort as I smiled back. But there was no doubt she was perfectly well aware of my unease with the direction of the conversation, and that it gave an added edge of pleasure to her revelation. For the next few days, Mags Evans’s dyke qualities figured largely in Clio’s gossip, and she claimed to have confirmation of similar instances from other females at the club, until more compelling situations and characters occupied her attention, and she forgot all about it.
However, it made me begin to observe both the Evans with new, surreptitious interest, titillated by my private scurrilous fantasising, which led to my first discovery of their private unconventionality. Unfortunately, Clio wasn’t present to witness it at first hand. The expatriate community of the small township was no more than 120 or so, and though there was a vast majority of African and Asian members in the sports club, the social circuit was, unavoidably, almost incestuously limited.
Not long after Clio’s encounter with Mags Evans in the showers, we received a dinner invitation from the Evans. ‘Just you and Clio,’ Dave told me, with the kind of smile that made me eye him speculatively. There were a lot of jokes (and whispered scandal) about various instances of partner swapping, and my fertile imagination read a high degree of nudge-nudge, wink-wink into Deputy Dave’s murmured, ‘Much more intimate and relaxing when there’s just the four of us, don’t you think?’ Say no more, as they say.
To my dismay, Clio refused point blank when I carried home the invitation. ‘No way! You realise what their version of “swappers” will be? Me being hauled off by fat Mags and you measuring up to Dave – and I bet he’s got a massive one – he must be sofrustrated! You can tell them I’ve got the curse like Niagara, or a gyppy tummy, or fucking leprosy! Anything you like, but I ain’t going, OK?’ Then, to my further dismay, she refused to allow me to cry off too. ‘Certainly not! I was only joking about Dave, and you’ve nothing to fear from Mags. Actually, I fancy a night on my own. I might nip to the club for a swift one, then back for an early night. I’ve got a new set of batteries, and it’s ages since I had a good gallop on my Knight Rider. If I’m not flat out in exhausted slumber when you get back I might let you finish me off as long as you keep a civil tongue giving head!’
I was edgy with nerves as I made my way by torchlight to the Evans’s house. I had little confidence without Clio’s dominant presence. I was terribly afraid that Mags might insist on going over in the guise of ministering angel, to find either our bungalow empty or her senses teased by the subtle purr of electricity, and advance to discover a sprawled and naked Clio caught in flagrantewith her faithful vibrator ... I must admit my fear was tinged with a hearty dose of pornographic invention in my cinematic vision of what might happen next.
And Mags did indeed express both keen disappointment and concern over my wife’s absence, but my emphasis on Clio’s desire and need for bed and aspirin must have been convincing enough. And I have no doubt that her absence did indeed lay the foundation for what turned out to be a night such as even my fertile imagination had failed to anticipate.
There was a strange atmosphere of unexpected intimacy in the fact of our threesome. The meal was even more informal, almost rushed over, the house servant dismissed, and drinking seemed to be the primary occupation of the night. Mags in particular was the leading light in this. She sparkled, her brown eyes flashed, energy seemed to flow from her like light, and I was startled at just how striking her vitality – and her physical attributes – were. Far from being “Fat Mags”, as Clio insisted on labelling (and libelling) her, she was voluptuous. Her curves were generous, perhaps a little full for the topical aesthetic slimline fashion, but the longer I gazed on them, and the longer I came under the spell of her vivacity and warmth, a
ccompanied by her husband’s friendliness and liberal generosity with his excellent booze, the more wonderful she appeared. That bottom, so splendidly outlined, caressed by the hug of her gown, or rather dress, I should say, for its hem came only to mid-thigh, entranced me, the twin curves jutting so splendidly from that hollowed back, and those superbly athletic shoulders, so tanned, so silk-smooth, as was all the brown skin exquisitely revealed by her brief garb. Only the lightest of straps upheld the dress, and allowed a discreet, enchanting view of even slenderer dark bra straps beneath. The neckline plunged a little daringly (thought prudent, prurient old prissy me!) deep between her imposing breasts. Their perfect smoothness was revealed to an entrancing depth, so that my pulse quickened (and even my limp and securely hidden prick) at their fluid movement. And as she sat, and then resat, and later lounged, the skirt of the dress rose and rose inevitably, and showed more of those magnificently athletic limbs: sturdy, well-delineated calf muscles, then those tapering, muscled thighs, so splendid, so full, of life and strength. I could almost faint as I lewdly and helplessly imagined their grip about my waist, or even more consumingly, about my humble, slender neck as I drove my worshipful face into the wiry bush, and the soft, enveloping tissue of her yielding yet conquering sex lips on my searching mouth.
Transformed by booze and bonhomie, they insisted on putting on some music, and soon all three of us were bobbing and weaving and ducking about to the thumping pop rhythms or the closer-to-“home” Congolese beats. Then the slow, treacly, smooth and smoochy melodies took over. Definitely not music to gyrate to solo, and I slumped down on the cushions of the rattan settee and watched, with increasing excitement and embarrassment, Dave and Mags wrapping themselves more and more intimately together, until their hips and bellies were grinding glued, and my gaze was fixed hypnotically on Mags’s magnificent buttocks clenching and writhing under their thin, shining cover in the very dim light.