The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 7
Page 33
I expected to be in trouble when I got home. I lived with my grandparents: my mother was dead and my father had vanished so long ago that for all practical purposes he was as well. My granny wouldn’t want to be hanging around making late teas. Saturday night meant the whist drive for her, brown ale and dominoes at the British Legion for my grandad. But for some reason she was in a good mood, so instead of a bollocking a big plate of egg, chips, and beans was set in front of me with even an enquiry about how the match had gone. She then hurried off to her whist drive. Grandad had already gone to the Legion, so I was left to eat my tea in peace. Normally, I would have dawdled over it with a comic. Instead, I wolfed it down in record time and didn’t even consider raiding the larder for any cake that might be going begging.
As soon as I had finished, I got as far away from the window as possible, pulled down my trousers, and started to jerk away for dear life. Nothing happened: no nice feelings, no increase in size, not a drop. After about ten minutes, since it was hurting and I had got a bit of a belly-ache as well, from doing it too soon after tea I supposed, I packed it in. I had no idea why it hadn’t worked. Perhaps I could contrive to get Frank Blunt to explain the problem without seeming to be asking.
What was I going to do next? There was no prospect of a gang meeting, and my pocket money was already spent. I decided to wander around the village. There were usually a few lads outside the pub waiting for their grown-ups. Or a game of kicking-in under a street lamp. But I was out of luck. There were not even any cats or dogs to throw stones at.
I was on the point of jacking it in and going home, when I found myself walking past the cricket field. It occurred to me that I had lost my penknife somewhere there the other day, so I thought I’d go and see if I could find it. Fat chance at night, you might say, but the village council had put up quite a big light next to the pavilion to discourage people like me from vandalising it, so it wasn’t entirely a waste of time.
As I approached the pavilion, a wooden affair with a verandah and four steps leading up, I thought I heard some sort of noise coming from it. Good-o, I said to myself, maybe there are some lads having a crafty smoke in there. But just as I was going to put my foot on the first step, the door opened and somebody came out. Not any lad I knew, in fact not any lad at all, but a girl.
And not any old girl. It was Helen Rowe, the village bike, who was said to give anything in trousers a ride. The grown-ups said she “got it” from her mother who’d farmed Helen out to some relative early in the war and gone off to join the Woman’s Land Army, whose motto was Backs To The Soil. There was a lot of guesswork about who her father was. The official one had gone missing in action and was presumed dead, but my granny was not the only person to say he was more likely buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Quantity.
There was a Helen Rowe in every village. The sort of girl that gets buried in a Y-shaped coffin. It had very little to do with the way they looked. Faces didn’t count. It was common knowledge that you didn’t look at the mantlepiece when you were poking the fire. What mattered was that they had the experience and the know-how to take you in hand and get things started.
Our Helen was not actually all that bad, if you didn’t mind a girl on the tall side with slender legs and frizzy red hair wearing a mohair jumper over average bazookas and a knee-length tartan skirt. The snag about the skirt was that where it stopped emphasised the knobbliness of her knees. No one in the entire world has nice knees, in my opinion. As always, her face was lathered in make-up; this was one of the biggest things about her in the eyes of the village. Lots of black mascara and bright orange lipstick which under the pavilion light looked all smudgy.
The thing about Helen, though, was not so much what she looked like, or even the things she was supposed to do, but the way she behaved in general. She talked like a boy, swore like a boy, and seemed to think she was as good as a boy. She even smoked, Woodbines at that, not cork-tipped. As my granny was fond of saying about my grandad, she smoked like a chimney. I had heard Frank Blunt remark that Helen Rowe didn’t have red changes like other girls, she just had a fall of soot once a month.
“Baldy,” she said in that off-putting tone she had, halfway between “hello” and “bugger off”. It was typical of her to launch right in with the nickname I hated but which anyone called Baldwin is bound to have at that age. “Christ, look what the wind’s blown in,” she went on, her voice going up almost to a shout. Did she think I’d been struck deaf? “What brings you here on a Saturday night? Looking for something?” Her voice went down again on this, for no reason I could fathom. But how did she know why I was there?
“I was just looking for my penknife,” I replied, feeling quite proud of myself for not stuttering.
“He’s looking for his penknife,” she echoed, loudly again, as if there were somebody else there. Then she went on in her normal voice with a funny sort of smile that got you even worse, “Looking for your penknife, are you? At this time of night? Don’t tell me you’ve got to get a stone out of your horse’s hoof?”
Our penknives were always judged in terms of the number of gadgets they had attached, chief of which was the one that was supposed to be for hooves and stones, although that wasn’t so daft in those days; there were still plenty of dray horses around. What got me, apart from the voice and smile, was how this girl came out with the sort of line you associated with the comedians on the wireless.
“No, it’s just that I lost it here a few days ago and I was walking past so I thought I’d have a look.”
“He thought he’d have a look,” said Helen, reverting to the invisible third person. Then back to the low tone and smile, “You’ve come to the right place for a look, I can tell you. Bugger your penknife, aren’t I sharp enough for you?”
“You what? Come on, let me look for it. I won’t be a minute.”
“No, I bet you wouldn’t be,” she replied mysteriously. “All right, let’s find this shitting knife of yours. Where is it?”
I suppose Helen would have thought more of me if I’d made the answer she’d set me up for: if I knew where it was, it wouldn’t be lost, would it? But I wasn’t up to that level of repartee. So I just said, if it’s here, it must be down in the grass somewhere.
“Hark at clever clogs. You ought to be on Paul Temple.” Yes, I thought, but daren’t say, and if you were Steve, the wireless sleuth’s wife and helper, he wouldn’t get a word in edgeways. Instead, I mumbled, “I don’t think I’ll bother, after all. I’ll come back tomorrow when it’s properly light.”
“Don’t be mardy, you’ve only just come. Look, I’ll help you.” She promptly got down on her knees, contriving without seeming to do anything to let her skirt fly up high enough for me to see her knickers.
And not just any old knickers. Not for Helen the usual girl’s brown ones with elastic at the waist, the ones Frank Blunt called Harvest Festivals because everything is safely gathered in. Hers were black. Real black, I mean, not dirty. Black knickers! This was real Jane of the Daily Mirror stuff.
“Come on,” she ordered, not turning her head. “What are you gizzhawking at, as if I didn’t know?”
“Nothing.” I was still hypnotised by the sight.
Helen was back up as quickly as she had gone down.
“Did you like my knickers, then?”
“They were all right.”
“Drop dead, Errol Flynn. All right, were they? How about this, then? Have a proper gleg.” She stood close to me, pulling the tartan skirt up high. I knew I was going to mess myself if I wasn’t careful. I also knew that the front seat view I was getting beat anything we had ever seen in the Tuesday Night pictures at the village hall. It crossed my mind that the little blotches which stood out on her thighs might be the knicker burn which Frank Blunt said happened to girls who dropped them like lightning; but they were only freckles. I heard myself saying, “I have to be off”, then, making myself sound even more like a soppy-cake, “I’ll get into trouble if I’m not home.”
“Yes, come on, you prat,” a third voice suddenly boomed out. “Get stuck in.” I was even more petrified at this, and when the owner of the voice came out of the pavilion into the light, my bowels almost went into my boots. It was Gonge.
This Gonge was a figure of unique fascination in our world. None of us knew his real name. He lived just beyond the end of the main street in a tumbledown cottage, lower on the social scale than even the council houses and the worst yards. Gonge must have been several years older than the rest of us, though as far as we could tell, he didn’t read or write. At least, he was never seen with so much as a comic. Although he was a great lummox of a lad, it was his fierce eyes that most intimidated us, along with his Sod You way of walking and his conversation. Well, conversation isn’t the right word for it. He had this knack of looming up on us at street corners or as we were walking home from the bus stop or waiting to bat at cricket and launching straight into a monologue about minge. Unlike Frank Blunt, though, he specialized in lurid descriptions of “breaking girls in” or how he did it to them when they had their jammy rags on. The blood and the hurting were what was most important to Gonge: he never seemed to mention the pleasure side. There were rumours in the village that he had put at least two of his many sisters in the pudding club, tales which the grown-ups themselves believed, making him seem even more formidable. Of course, I ooh-ed and ah-ed over his reports like everyone else, though privately and not out of any sympathy for the girls I was more than a bit put off by all the stuff about blood and hurting.
Incidentally, if you’re hoping Gonge came to a bad end, you’re in for a disappointment. The last I knew before leaving the village for good was that he had followed contentedly into his father’s idling and poaching footsteps and was married, with no kids which ruled out the obvious reason, to a girl from the posh end, a girl so plain and prissy that not even in my most wankful moments had I honoured her with a wet fantasy.
“Get stuck in,” Gonge urged again. “Do you want me to show you how?” He seemed more het up than Helen over the proceedings.
“Hold hard, you’ve had your lot,” Helen interrupted. She might have been arguing over who should have the last chocolate from a box of Milk Tray.
To my amazement, Gonge seemed almost as in awe of Helen as I was. “I was only trying to help poor old Baldy here. He’s not got the first idea . . .”
“Don’t bother, I’ll be teacher. Fuck off, Gonge.”
Not even Frank Blunt had ever been heard to say a word of disagreement to Gonge, let alone “fuck off,” the ultimate deterrent, not one you heard a lot of adults use in those days, at least not in front of us. Yet here was Helen, a girl, telling Gonge of all people to do it, and not even shouting. And he did, there and then, with a tame “Best of British, Baldy, you’ll shagging well need it.”
“You don’t want to take any notice of Gonge,” observed Helen mildly. “He thinks he’s it, but he’s shit.”
I didn’t say anything. Mentally, though, I was storing up this phrase for future use at gang meetings.
As she spoke, Helen moved right up to me. I fumbled at her knickers, first with one hand, then both. I didn’t get far, what with nerves and having my eyes closed. I would have done anything rather than meet her gaze, except have a gleg at what was inside the knickers. There’s nothing worse for a lad than having his sexual dream come true. Why wasn’t I at home reading the Adventure?
“Here, let me do it,” chafed Helen. “There, they’re off. Do you reckon you could manage the rest by yourself?”
I hesitantly lowered myself to the ground, hoping there were no nettles, and lay on the grass waiting for her to join me. But this was wrong as well.
“Now what are you up to?”
“Getting ready. Isn’t this right?”
“What about your precautions?”
“Precautions . .?”
“A Durex, cloth ears.”
“A Durex?”
“No, of course you haven’t. I bet a bob you’ve never even seen one. Look, if you don’t have a Durex, you’ve got to do it standing up. That way, I don’t get put up the spout. I thought everybody knew that.”
Miserably, I levered myself back up to my feet, helped on by a sharpish kick from Helen. “Get your trousers down, then,” she ordered, adding in her third person voice, “Christ on a crutch, he’s still wearing braces.”
There was no point in trying to explain that I did wear a belt these days, but had mislaid it at home, and only had the one. I eased down the offending braces and stood shuffling about with the trousers round my ankles. I knew what was expected of me. How I was going to do it was another matter, but I wasn’t going to risk another explosion from Helen by asking. I got my arms around her, more for balance than anything, and started a vague prodding at her lower parts with mine. Helen pulled me as close as she could, then put both hands on my arse and tried to manoeuvre me into position for a better aim. She was strong for a girl. So strong, in fact, that she knocked me off balance and in the flailing panic that followed we ended up on the ground, her on top of me.
“This is no shitting good. I tell you what, I’ll stand on the top step and lean on the verandah post. You get on the next step down and work from there.”
Battle stations. This must be what the minge experts called a knee-trembler. I could see why. My knees were trembling, all right. The trouble was, the part of me that needed to be, wasn’t. I heaved away at her for ages without getting anywhere.
“Sod it, we’ll be here all night at this rate.”
Taking this to be my dismissal, I backed down a step before she could change her mind, dragged up my trousers, and was about to escape when she said, “Where do you think you’re off to, then?”
“Er, home. I thought you’d had enough.”
“Had enough? Haven’t had any yet, have I? You want to eat your greens, get some lead in your pencil. Any road, get back up here. Nothing wrong with your hands as well, is there?”
“Hands? No . . .”
Helen took tight hold of me again, grabbed my right hand, and guided it down to her middle. I could feel a sort of rounded area, covered in bristles and sticky, a bit like an old cricket ball in a cowpat. “Don’t muck around there. Get your fingers down in and keep them moving till I say different.
“Come on, duck,” she added in her quiet voice.
I did as I was told, relieved that here was something I could apparently do to her satisfaction. I went on with it, my eyes glued to the ground, until after some squirming about and a funny noise, she said I could stop. I risked a quick look at her face. Just for a second, she seemed different. I had an idea of what it was all about, though couldn’t have put a name to it. That was the other thing about village bikes: they liked it as much as the lad, maybe more.
Not that Helen was letting on. She replaced her knickers in an impatient sort of way, then pulled out a packet of Woodbines from a pocket in her skirt and lit up, not offering me one. I suppose I was looking up at her like a puppy wanting approval. “Never mind, Baldy. You know more than you did an hour ago, don’t you?”
As I left, I was vaguely wondering how many reserves Helen might have lined up inside the pavilion. She didn’t seem very surprised or even that much bothered by my failure to perform. “Sling your hook, you useless article,” were her parting words, but they were said in her mildest tone.
Wouldn’t you know it, the moment I got clear of the field and Helen, my balls started bouncing as though they’d been invented by Barnes Wallis and my thing shot straight up and wouldn’t go down until I went under a tree and scratted it a few times and got the second ration that day out of it. Then I took myself off home and went to bed. Or would h
ave, but there was a big rumpus going on over something between my granny and grandad and I got clouted by both of them for being there, so it was a good while before I could get myself bedded down.
Even though I hadn’t gone all the way, I had had my first go with girls and boys. In fact, it was the most versatile day of my life in that regard. But thinking about it kept me awake for five minutes at the most, and it played no part at all in my dreams which were routine ones about playing for England and scoring the winning goal in the last second.
I never had another crack at Helen. God knows what became of her. Perhaps she took a lorry ride to shame, as the Sunday papers used to say. Or else turned into a nun. Who cares? Well, perhaps I should. Helen was a sport in her way. She didn’t let on to anybody about me missing my big chance. At least, no one ever taunted me about it, not even Frank Blunt who would have if he’d known and, whatever the truth about him and Gina, there could be no doubt that he had Helen a good few times. And Gonge himself did no more than loom over me a few days later outside Ma Pocock’s and say, “You didn’t get lost, then. You could get a horse and cart up it, couldn’t you?” I was thrilled at this unexpected and never to be repeated chance to feel on an equal footing with the great Gonge.
Gina left the village after three or four months. Everybody remarked that she was going away a good deal bigger than when she came. Since it was unthinkable that someone from Canada could have fattened up on our austerity food, tongues wagged. The gang members started to look at Frank Blunt with renewed respect, and there was talk about Gonge as well, until Mr Grover suddenly left The Grange with his suitcases, never to return.