Country Pleasures (3 page)

Sally picked up the thread. ‘It turned out we could have walked. He only lives round the corner. But there's something about cabs, isn't there? Very dangerous and exciting being in a cab with a strange man.'

‘And you couldn't have walked more than a couple of yards in those shag-me shoes, anyway.'

‘I know. Daft. And those taxis have plastic seats, don't they, and my thighs kept sticking with sweat because it was so hot in there. Every time I crossed my legs, the skin squeaked, and that little skirt just rode up higher. Very unsophisticated. But he just looked at me, and after a while I couldn't help wondering –'

‘That there might not be anything lurking inside those tight black jeans, after all?' Janie cut in.

They both laughed.

‘Yes, in a way, except that he was so
cool
, you know? A kind of Bryan Ferry type. You could just
tell
. And all of a sudden his fingers brushed down my arm and I jumped like a scalded cat.'

‘Oh, Sal, even
I've
had more than a brush on the arm to write home about,' yawned Janie, sipping from her glass and absent-mindedly stroking the velvet cushion.

‘Yeah, but we're talking
starved
here, Janie. I hadn't had more than a handshake from another human being since Jonathan and I got naked on that business
trip to Paris, and that was ages ago … well, two months.'

‘You'll have to tell me about that in our next storytelling session. Tomorrow, in fact, if the weather keeps up.'

‘Oh, it'll be your turn tomorrow,' corrected Sally. ‘My Paris story will have to wait. It's a corker, though – Jonathan has the biggest dick you've ever seen. Stands right away from his stomach when it's erect, all proud and stiff, like some kind of a –'

‘Gendarme
's truncheon?'

Sally grinned lasciviously. ‘You said it. Just like that. It has to be seen to be believed. It's a wonder we got any work done on that trip. Humping away we were. Paris in the spring, or early summer, it was, right on the hotel balcony overlooking the Champs Elysées, those posh shoppers trotting up and down below with their designer bags, all unaware of him taking me from behind, bent over the railings a couple of floors above them, the Eiffel Tower just a few blocks away –'

‘I thought you were going to save it,' said Janie.

‘I'm going to have to, otherwise I'm going to explode just thinking about it. I'm just trying to explain to you why I was so sensitive, sitting in the taxi next to Mastov, after all that dreary celibacy. Like I said, a flick of the fingernail, right on my sunburn, was all it took.'

‘I'm not spending my evening hearing a rampant tale of one man and his fingernail now, am I?'

Janie glanced over at the velvet curtains. The wind outside was strong enough to lift the heavy fabric in lazy ripples. Sally was brilliant at talking about herself, and Janie enjoyed listening but, even so, she did wonder how on earth she was going to keep her randy friend amused for two whole weeks.

‘Janie.'

Janie jolted round to find Sally studying her intensely. ‘If you're totally honest, that must be how it is for you, only ten times over. If you haven't had sex in months, or even years, I don't know, how could you not be fizzing for it every minute of the day?'

‘I can't answer that,' Janie admitted. ‘I don't know. I guess if you don't think about it, the urge sort of goes away.'

‘I don't go for that theory. I think desire is lurking just under the surface, for all of us. Unless you're like me, who's gagging for it all of the time.'

‘Even now?' enquired Janie with a playful smirk.

‘Even now, given the chance. Talking comes a poor second, but it's keeping us happy, isn't it? I promise you, all it would take would be one tiny touch. Maybe even the whiff of a particular aftershave, or even a look in some guy's eyes, and you'd be off – going like a train.'

‘I'd forgotten how you like to instruct people.' Janie laughed and swallowed some more wine.

‘Listen and learn, girl, listen and learn. Which is why I'm telling you that all Mastov had to do was look at me with those incredible eyes. First, he looked at my feet, then my legs, then my tits – which wasn't difficult as they were practically hanging out of that strappy white vest.'

‘Half of West London knows you weren't wearing a bra that day,' Janie pointed out, in between sips of wine. ‘But then you're lucky, you don't need a bra, unlike some of us.'

‘People are never happy with their tits, are they?' said Sally. ‘You know I've always envied your big boobs, Janie. You always try to hide them under those glorious flowing shirts, but it's no good. It's still perfectly easy to see what they're like under there. Blokes
must be trying to take a peak all the time. I wouldn't fancy walking past a building site if I were you!'

Janie shrugged, blushing. ‘What about you, tarting about in your little mini skirt?' she countered.

‘Don't play the innocent with me. If it hasn't happened already, one day some bloke is going to want to tear your shirt off and get his muzzle right in there.'

Janie giggled into her wine glass. Her breasts started to tingle beneath her dark-red linen shirt at the thought of a bristly face nuzzling to get inside her hidden cleavage; a man's nose and mouth, breath warm and tongue wet on her white skin. She started to dream about whose face it might be, then crossed her arms defiantly to stop the encroaching thought.

‘You see? You know it really. You just need to lose your inhibitions.'

‘We're not talking about me at the moment, though, are we?'

‘Why not? We can if you want. There's loads we could talk about.'

‘No, I don't want. I just want to get pissed, and get warm, and hear about Mr Mastov.'

‘You are a curious creature, Janie. You can't live vicariously for ever, you know. I will make it my mission to find you someone to teach you all they know. Maybe I'll even introduce you to Mastov.'

‘But I don't know where he's been!'

‘Oh, but you're about to find out, girl. Listen to this. He had the weirdest chat up technique. He put his mouth right up by my ear and said, “I won't eat you, whatever you may have heard about me. But I might lick you.”'

‘What a sleazy line!' cried Janie, squeezing her arms across her chest to soothe her still-tingling breasts. ‘What on earth
had
you heard about him?'

‘Well, he has a reputation of being a bit of a wolf, so it all fitted, really.'

‘So what did you say back?'

‘My lips were too dry to say anything. I just banged my knees together awkwardly like a schoolgirl and got this picture of his tongue, glistening and red, probing like an animal's under my tight skirt. I imagined it slithering up the insides of my thighs, higher and higher, getting closer to my – I mean, remember I wasn't wearing any knickers.'

‘Whoa, cowgirl, spare us the nooks and crannies.'

Janie rearranged herself on the floor, tucking one of the cushions tight between her legs. An insistent twitching had started somewhere inside her knickers in an echo of what Sally was describing. Tiny tremors fussed across the surface of her pubes. It was the image of someone – the one that had been between her breasts – now probing higher and higher, getting closer and closer to her.

The thunder rumbled away over the sea, the rain hissed and dribbled on the windows outside and an early dusk began to fall.

‘I was really squirming on the seat, I can tell you,' Sally went on. ‘I put on a silly voice and squeaked, “Oh, grandmother, what a big tongue you have!”'

‘Not your usual banter, then. Normally, you say –'

‘Get your dick out!'

They spluttered into their wineglasses.

‘So, let me guess,' choked Janie. ‘He said, “All the better to taste you with, my dear.”'

‘Yes! That's exactly what he said! And to make it even funnier, I caught the eye of the cab driver in the mirror. He'd heard every word. I could see he was interested, his eyes were all glittery.'

‘Perhaps he was part of the plan?' Janie said, then
pulled her knees up to her chin, her legs squeezing the cushion as she started to rock. The cushion rubbed back and forth underneath her, pressing into her crotch. ‘Mastov's partner in crime. Perhaps he was going to stop the car, leap over the seat, shove Mastov aside and push your little skirt up before Mastov had a chance, let Mastov watch you at it.'

‘You're getting the hang of this, aren't you? Was it all that talk of threesomes in the tepee, perhaps?'

‘You put the idea into my head, remember!'

The cushion was heating up under her. Janie stopped rocking. An invisible, untouchable part of her was aching. She crossed her legs the other way and started to wind her long hair into another plait. Now she was back in the rickety tent made out of bamboo shoots and an old blanket, which the boys had built in the copse behind the cottage. In fact, she'd never been allowed into the copse, or the wigwam. But in her mind she was barging her way inside to find Ben and Jack huddled together, rubbing sticks to make a fire and muttering made-up curses. Her entrance made their mouths round and dark with surprise. Jack was squinting through the gloom at her and Ben was frowning. They weren't quite the kids of her childhood in this fantasy, and not quite men either. She was pushing them off their haunches so that they toppled sideways onto the grassy floor and she was standing over them, long legs stretching up to the tattered buffalo-skin wrapped tightly round her body and fastened with safety pins. She was not being dragged in there at all. On the contrary, she was the one in charge. She was her grown-up self, staring down her nose as she started to unhook each pin. Strips of animal skin were dropping one by one onto the floor as the boys clutched their bows and arrows and watched. Each
smooth curve was revealed, little by little, in the weak daylight filtering from the smoke hole at the top of the tent.

Then only the last pin was left, the one bending under the strain of her breasts, and she was yanking her shoulders back so that the pin flew off its moorings. Her squaw outfit disintegrated and her breasts bounced out for the boys to see.

‘Are you listening to me, squaw?' Sally was wiggling her empty glass under Janie's nose like smelling salts.

‘Er, sure.' Janie took the glass but didn't refill it. ‘I was just wondering how far you'd got with the taxi driver?'

‘Liar. You were getting down to business inside that wigwam, weren't you?'

‘I hadn't got that far, actually. I was just standing over them, teasing them.'

‘That's my girl. Go on, tell me more, get further into it.'

Janie got up off the floor. The cushion dropped from between her knees, and her legs were shaking from the effort of grasping it.

‘I was teasing them, that's all, letting my squaw outfit drop away so that they'd get their first ever eyeful, and it would be me who would show them a real woman's body; me who'd be their teacher.'

‘You're doing so well. Let those inhibitions go. Get those boys eating out of your hand!'

‘I can't.' The heat that bubbled up in the spot where the cushion had been rubbing was too sudden and too strong. ‘I'm not like you, Sal.'

‘Tell you what,' Sally said, ‘when I've told you my story, my challenge for the week is for you to match it with your own. Ideally it has to be a true one. You have these next two weeks either to recall something that
has actually happened to you, or to make something happen before I go back to London.'

Janie staggered into the kitchen and swished the glasses noisily under the tap, gazing at the thick branches of violet wisteria drooping over the window.

‘That's some challenge,' she called. ‘Do you realise just how quiet it is down here? There isn't even a shop, or a pub, or a bus stop, for at least a mile.'

‘Like I keep saying, there are men and boys everywhere, if you just open your eyes. Honestly, Janie, do I have to do it all for you?'

‘For now, yes.' Janie came back into the room and switched on one of the lamps. There was still some greyish light outside, but it didn't penetrate further than the windows. She decided against pulling the curtains.

‘And at the end of two weeks, if there really isn't anyone or anything with a decently proportioned, fully operational willy between here and John o'Groats, I'll make you tell me the wigwam story.'

‘Deal,' conceded Janie, then she started to giggle.

‘What?'

‘You and your way with words. Now I can't get this picture out of my head. Rows and rows of them, penis after penis, all lined up along a kind of yellow brick road with a signpost at the end.'

‘Honey, ain't no good if they're not attached to anything!'

Janie poured two fresh glasses of wine, still giggling.

‘What was his house like?' she asked.

‘Whose? John o'Groats?'

They laughed some more.

‘Oh, it was one of those big pastel houses in Holland Park. Vast inside, with black and white marble walls and floors, and echoing rooms. He's obviously too busy
ruling his catering empire to bother with personal trimmings. Definitely no woman's touch.'

Janie handed Sally a fresh glass of wine and sat down again, this time on one of the armchairs. She grabbed the cushion and stuffed it between her legs once more and immediately she felt the heat seep through her again.

‘So you felt perfectly safe alone with him in there?' asked Janie, trying to ignore the rush of excitement she was secretly experiencing.

‘I just kept going over his share offers I'd read about in the
FT
. I knew that if he turned nasty I could always just name him and shame him.'

‘So why don't you?' enquired Janie with a wicked glint in her eye. ‘That would put you back on the map, too. Think of all those City jerks who would sit up and take notice. You could do a centre spread: M
Y NIGHT WITH
M
ASSIVE
M
ASTOV
. You'd make a fortune.'