Country Pleasures (17 page)

‘Coffee?' she trilled. She needed five minutes to gather her skittering thoughts or else she would fall prey to the laughter that threatened to engulf her. She snapped her fingers at Sally, who shuffled up to her meekly, tripping over the long cotton pinafore, and bobbed a curtsey. That did it.

‘We'll just sort that out for you,' Janie choked, fiddling with the bow of Sally's pinafore. ‘The coffee, that is. How rude of me not to think of it sooner. Perhaps you'd see to that, Sally, and then I think that we ought to get dressed. You know, properly. You must excuse our appearance. We were expecting –'

‘More gentleman callers,' Sally piped up, twirling away from Janie's bossy hands, and displaying a totally bare bottom as she bustled into the kitchen. The pair on the sofa were still open-mouthed with disbelief.

‘Don't go away, will you?' Janie beamed. ‘I'll be with you in two minutes.'

She rushed up the stairs and pulled on her faithful dungarees along with a long-sleeved T-shirt. Suddenly she felt faintly ridiculous. There was no point pretending it was warm enough to be prancing about in a negligee. In any case, if Jack came round later, she could always boot Sally and any other hangers-on out of the room, peel off the dungarees slowly, deliberately, in front of the fire, make them somehow just as alluring as the negligee. She had learned a lot in the last couple of days, in particular that it was her body, not her clothes, that the men wanted.

When she came back down the stairs Sally had produced the coffee and was sitting cross-legged by the fire. The pinafore was stretched like a tent across the
tops of her legs so that the slightest dip of a curious neck would afford a perfect view of her pussy. Shona Shaw was glancing anywhere in the room but at Sally, while the photographer was slurping at his coffee as if it was the last drink on earth, squinting furiously into its grainy depths.

‘Thank you, Sally. I think you should cover up, now. The housemaid's outfit will do, or perhaps, as it's a day of leisure, some sensible gardening gear.' Janie turned to Shona Shaw. ‘We're a good pair, actually. I'm the creative designer, she's the dogsbody.'

Sally coughed loudly and flapped the pinafore. Janie went and stood over her, draping her arm across the mantelpiece. Shona slowly crossed one leg over the other with a swish of stocking and flipped her notebook to a blank page. The photographer hadn't yet taken off his lens cap, but was huddled next to her on the sofa, clutching his bony knees.

‘Light the fire, would you Sally, before you get dressed?' Janie asked, smiling over Sally's head at the visitors. ‘Lovely real fire, even in summer. It makes you want to just lie down on this rug here, wriggle about in front of the flames, you know? Especially when the weather is so shitty. But we never close the curtains. Not like you would in London. No need for that kind of privacy out here in the country. We're open house, you see.'

‘For all gentleman callers,' added Sally, bending over the hearth.

Shona cleared her throat. ‘Let's get down to business, shall we? Tell me, if you love the cottage so much, why do you want to change it?'

‘Well, we've worn it out, you see.' Janie ran her finger thoughtfully along the mantelpiece.

‘People come to visit, and we rarely let them get
away within twenty-four hours. It's like a love shack, really, and we want it to stay that way. But the décor is, well, more Goldilocks than Goldfinger, don't you think?' Sally piped up, bending right over to light the fire so that the crack between her butt-cheeks widened and the photographer gulped his hot coffee down too fast.

‘Yes, and when our visitors are not fixing things with their hoary hands, everyone out here seems to be hung like donkeys,' Janie added thoughtfully, tapping her chin and cocking her head as if the idea had just occurred to her. She looked hard at the young photographer, as if seeing him for the first time. He had beautiful green eyes, spaced far apart, she noticed, and jutting cheekbones like Rudolf Nureyev. ‘Not like our boys from the smoke.'

‘Who are all hung like chipmunks,' chimed in Sally.

‘They'll never seem so manly. Not after the men we've come across, as it were,' Janie was still examining the boy. ‘What's your name?'

‘Derek,' he croaked, and licked his lips.

‘Time to get out your Hasselblad, don't you think, Derek?'

Sally sat back on her haunches and reached lazily under the pinny, flipping it aside to scratch at herself and giving a little titter of pleasure as she did so. Janie kept her face straight and perched on the arm of the sofa next to Shona. The lady editor nibbled her biro and uncrossed her legs again, keeping her eyes nervously on Janie.

‘Perhaps a guided tour?' she suggested, tottering to her feet. She turned her back to Sally, holding the notebook in front of her like a shield.

‘Absolutely, Miss Shaw. And I think we should start
with the bedrooms, don't you? Always the cosiest part of a cottage like this, and actually the least run-down. Not that we've spent much time asleep, have we, Sal?'

‘No, Janie,' agreed Sally, rearranging her pinafore demurely.

‘Clothes, Sally, please. We don't want our guests thinking we're on heat. Coming, Derek?' enquired Janie.

Derek was still drooling across at the fireplace, and didn't hear her. Sally rose smoothly from her cross-legged position and gave the pinafore one last sideways tweak. Young Derek sat up straight as if he'd been shot.

‘One or two of the bedrooms have already been decorated by my cousin, the owner,' explained Janie, as she took Shona's Chanel-pink elbow and steered her briskly out into the hall, ‘but there are other parts of the cottage and garden that need attention.'

She noticed that Derek's hair was very neatly combed into a side parting, and she ruffled it with her fingernails as she passed him. He swiped one hand absently across his locks, then stood to attention, and allowed Sally to lead the way.

‘Come and see the attic room,' she said to him as she skipped up the staircase. ‘There are spectacular views, you know. You can take pictures, while I get changed.'

‘Hasselblad, Derek,' barked Shona. ‘In here.
Now
.'

After showing them round, Janie and Sally left the journalists alone to tramp over the cottage and take their shots. Sally, dressed in Ben's old jumper again and the infamous denim miniskirt, stoked up the fire.

‘There's no excuse not to do the work now, is there?' she remarked.

‘Just as well you're here to help, then, isn't it?' replied Janie, suddenly sombre. She glanced out at the
dripping leaves around the window. ‘Anyway, it was always my intention to make good use of our time here.'

‘And so you have, doll, though not perhaps as you planned.' Sally paused, then went on casually, ‘You could always get that Maddock along to do the job. He might be along later on, anyway, you know. Checking things out, sniffing about.'

‘You hope. Why did you make that call, Sally?' Janie demanded, nailing down what was bugging her. ‘I mean, it's turned out to be a great idea, but why behind my back like that?'

‘Honest answer?'

Janie nodded.

‘I thought it would liven things up a little. Keep my toes in the water, keep my pecker up, so to speak, while I'm stuck – while I'm staying here. And get you some publicity into the bargain.'

‘I see,' Janie mumbled doubtfully. ‘So you're bored already?'

Sally wasn't an ex-performer for nothing. She snuggled up to her friend on the sofa, and tickled her under the armpit till Janie laughed hysterically.

‘Janie,' Sally said. ‘Do I
look
bored?'

‘Excuse us.'

Shona and her assistant were in the doorway.

‘It's a wrap then, is it, Derek?' giggled Sally, leaping away from Janie, who resumed her stern expression.

‘We'll have to run this past the editor.' Shona's face was very flushed. She glanced at Derek, and her face softened a little. ‘It'll make a marvellous feature, after all. I wasn't too sure, at first, but it's perfect for our magazine. Come along, Derek.'

Derek trooped obediently after her, throwing a sorrowful look over his woolly shoulder.

‘Best little whorehouse in Devon,' he muttered behind his hand.

‘And you be sure to visit again soon, now, honey,' crooned Sally, in a perfect Dolly Parton response.

‘More to that boy than meets the eye,' remarked Janie, as the front door rattled shut.

‘He's a “before and after” feature waiting to happen,' chuckled Sally, as she watched the car jerk unevenly through the potholes a few minutes later. ‘Pure as the driven snow when he left London this morning, and now look at him! Corrupted the moment he sets foot inside the witches' cottage!'

From Sally's vantage point, she could see the journalists clearly through the rear windscreen. Shona's head was up very close to Derek's in the front of the car, and he, aware that the girls were watching, was attempting to accelerate manfully away from the cottage.

‘Look! She was as turned on by us as he was. I bet she'll have him in a lay-by before they reach the M5.'

The silence was almost high-pitched. It sang in Janie's ears, accompanied by the thump of blood that supplied oxygen to her body. The only other sound was the occasional squawk of a sea bird. She reached her chosen spot and stood still for a moment while she got her breath from the climb through the uneven sand dunes. Her eyes watered as she looked out to sea. Apart from some sailing boats leaning into the wind on the horizon, the beach was deserted.

The temperature had soared, in more ways than one. After three more days of enforced seclusion in the storm-battered cottage, the rain had finally retreated overnight and a rectangle of bright-blue sky had woken Janie early that morning. It was a belated answer to her prayers.

There had been no more visitors in the rain. Janie and Sally had spent another couple of days holed up together, stripping paint and washing curtains but, despite the diversion of the photoshoot, Sally's cold had got worse, she'd retreated to her corner of the sofa, and tempers had begun to fray.

‘Come on, the holiday has begun!' Janie had chirruped that morning, tearing up the spiral staircase to Sally's attic. She'd flung the door open into the dark-red room. Sally was awake, and muttering into her mobile phone.

‘Only place I can get a signal,' she'd grumbled,
putting her hand over it. ‘That's how I got hold of those magazine people.'

‘Get off the phone! No more work! We're going to the beach. Holiday time!'

‘Too grotty. I think I've got sinusitis. I'm just speaking to Erica –'

‘Whose Erica?'

‘My agent; my head-hunter.'

‘What for?'

‘I might go back to London. I'm sick of doing your decorating, and all the talent seems to have melted away as rapidly as it appeared.'

‘Well, we can go and find some! Look, the sun's out.'

‘Yes, I'm still here, Erica.'

Sally had rolled over under the rumpled quilt, clamping the mobile to her ear, and a hard lump of anger expanded in Janie's chest. Sally was like a spoilt child. The minute things didn't go her way, or there wasn't enough entertainment of the male variety, she flew into a sulk.

‘And there was I, thinking we were having a lovely girlie time of it these last few days. Stuff you! Go back to London then.'

Janie bent her head now and spread her towel out on the sand. She regretted saying that. She didn't want Sally to go, especially in a poisonous mood, and especially when there were no clouds tainting the bright blue sky. But Janie had driven a couple of miles to get to the beach. She wasn't about to go back to grovel.

A movement caught her eye just as she was stripping her clothes off. Two people at the far end of the beach were running towards the water in wet suits, dragging their surfboards. She couldn't tell with the sun in her eyes whether they were male or female.
From where she stood they were simply silhouettes; very agile silhouettes. Within minutes their surfboards were on the water and skimming off in front of the wind. Janie watched the silver splash of the waves and couldn't resist the invitation. She tore everything else off and half slid on her backside, half scrambled down the dune and across the beach, her heavy breasts bouncing against her ribcage and her loose hair slapping against her shoulders. She screamed out loud as her toes hit the freezing shallows, but she waded in confidently, bending to scoop and splash the water over her limbs, feeling the skin cower into goose bumps. Then, with a gasping breath, she plunged forwards into the waves, following the distant surfers. Her mind emptied: there was just her, the sea and the sky.

Janie swam until her limbs were numb from the Atlantic cold, and then she turned back to shore, her legs wobbling like a new-born colt's as she staggered through the waves. Water ran down her legs from her dripping bush to tickle her thighs. She jogged on the spot for a moment, sure that no one else was around, her nakedness no longer hidden by the ocean, and then she ran towards the shelter of the dunes.

‘Must … get … fit,' she panted as she flopped down onto her towel and let the sun start to warm her. It gradually seeped through her skin and into her aching muscles. Eventually her heart stopped drumming and her chest stopped heaving for breath, but her body still buzzed with exhilaration. She turned onto her back and stretched her legs out luxuriously, pointing her toes across the big towel. A breath of air tickled the hidden layers inside her slightly parted sex-lips, and she opened her legs a little wider. Her fingers groped about in the sand to find her bag but she couldn't reach it,
and instead her hand flopped down onto her stomach. She nearly screeched with electrified pleasure. She snatched her hand away, and brought just the very tips of her fingers down on a different place: the hairless groove that ran along the top of her leg towards her pubic mound. Again her skin shivered beneath her touch. She remembered that the skin was the largest organ of the human body, and today that organ was the most sensitive, too. It was as if a taper had been applied to it, kept it smouldering, and every time it was touched, even by her own fingers, it would burst into flame. She knew one place that would be more sensitive than all the others. She allowed her hand to stray over her breasts, just a gentle brush across the top, firmly avoiding the nipples, and she felt them swell hopefully under her touch. There was a fluttering in her stomach, and she dropped her hands, smiling broadly to herself, letting the sun rest on her closed eyelids. There was so much promise in her body, she thought. Promise she'd never before believed in; promise that had occasionally blossomed at the hands of one or two past boyfriends. But that had only ever been for a few months at a time, and then she had allowed it to wither away again. Now she knew that, as Sally had predicted, her lust might well remain permanently on the boil. But how was she going to keep this new hunger satisfied?