Free Universal Carnal Knowledge
XVI
“Just like Sue”
I allowed myself to fall asleep next to Alicia knowing that sexual desire would awaken me in the small hours. When it did, instead of turning for relief to the gorgeous and compliant little creature next to me I went to the main bedroom where Wendy was sleeping. She was my wife, after all, and had been wonderfully understanding and supportive all evening. There are wives in this world, I reflected, that might object if their husband brought home a big-titted eighteen-year-old and shagged her senseless in the spare bedroom while the wife was busy in the kitchen. I wanted to show my appreciation in the best possible way so I slipped into bed and after gently waking her I slipped into Wendy.
We had our usual repeat in the morning, of course, and as we were getting over that there was a knock at the door and Alicia appeared with cups of tea.
Alicia had obviously had what must have been a desperately-needed shower and had found an old dressing-gown of Wendy’s in the spare room wardrobe. She looked terrific. It was not just her sparkling eyes and radiant smile; there was a satisfaction and fulfilment about her that had not been there before and it seemed to convert her extreme prettiness into a glowing beauty.
“Why, thank you Alicia,” said Wendy, taking her tea. “How very thoughtful of you.”
“James asked me to do it,” beamed Alicia, looking at me with frank adoration. (It was the night before, as we had been about to get down to our second bout, that it had occurred to me to suggest that morning tea in bed would be most welcome.)
I motioned Alicia to sit on the bed and the three of us made plans. Alicia said she would talk to her parents and the friends of theirs she was lodging with and somehow she would get clearance to move in with us. She hoped she would be able to move on Saturday.
“Would you like a hand moving?” I offered.
Alicia looked doubtful. So did Wendy: “Er, James darling, maybe that’s not such a great idea,” she advised. “Won’t this couple Alicia’s lodging with feel a bit uneasy if this bloke turns up to help her move?”
I was ahead of her. “No they won’t,” I replied, “because you’re going to do it.”
“Oh, very clever, darling,” acknowledged Wendy appreciatively. “They won’t be worried about a woman.”
“Exactly, especially if you charm the socks off them the way I know you can. And Wendy, I’m not asking you to lie to them but unless they ask straight out there’s no need for you to mention you’ve even got a husband. You too, Alicia,” I added. “Tell them all about Wendy but don’t mention me if you can help it.”
Looking back on it now, I squirm with embarrassment about the smugness and self-congratulation I was displaying at this time. It seems incredible but I really thought that I had the measure of FUCK, that if I managed things carefully and avoided any more silly mistakes I was going to get on top of it. How little did I know.
Having been royally fucked Alicia was now, of course, safely under control and I could travel with her into town knowing that she would, however reluctantly, obey my instructions to ignore me on the tube. At work, still confidently arranging my ducks, I asked Fran and Connie to see me. I had to tell them that because of this wretched dinner party I could not see them tonight, and I ruled lunchtime out too because colleagues would notice if the same three people were always out for long lunches on the same days. But my main purpose in seeing them was to sort out future living arrangements. Fran, of course, instantly agreed that Connie would be a wonderful flatmate. It was comical watching her enthusiastic response to a suggestion that she would have treated as a bad joke until a few days ago.
I turned to Connie. “This means Tommy has to go, I’m afraid.”
“Fine, James, I’ll do it tonight but,” she gave me a puzzled look, “I thought you weren’t jealous.”
I explained that it was not a matter of jealousy. It was simply that her living with a boyfriend meant she might not be available when I wanted her. But I stressed – “and this goes for you, too, Fran” – that there were bound to be times when she knew I would be otherwise occupied and on those occasions I was happy for her to enjoy herself elsewhere. I was, frankly, slightly taken aback to hear myself so unsentimentally explaining the logic of the situation but the girls seemed to accept it as a matter of course, although Fran, much the more empathetic of the two, did spare a thought for the innocent victim.
“Do what you have to with Tommy, Connie,” she said, “but don’t be too hard on him. He’s bound to be upset.”
Connie shrugged. “He’s young. He’s nice-looking. He’s good in bed,” she said matter-of-factly. “He’ll get over it.”
After that the day passed with nothing worthy of report except frequent reminders from Brian to suck up to George at dinner that night. Towards the end of the working day reception rang to tell me that Wendy had arrived.
A midweek evening commitment in Surrey was a bit of a logistical problem. We needed to drive because public transport would have got us home ridiculously late so Wendy left work early and drove in to meet me in the City. She welcomed the opportunity, in these new circumstances, to see Fran again and meet Connie, and we all gathered in my office. They both looked a bit nervous about seeing Wendy but she, of course, put them instantly at ease. “It reflects so well on me, don’t you think,” she asked them rhetorically, “that my husband has such lovely admirers?”
Wendy looked great in the outfit we had chosen but I thought it looked a little tight here and there. I mentioned this as we fought our way through the South London traffic towards George’s place and she agreed she had put on a little weight lately: did it bother me? Not at all, I assured her.
To be honest I was more worried about Sue Marjoribanks. What if Wendy had been wrong? Suppose I still fancied her: what then? As we neared our destination my feeling grew that something was bound to go horribly wrong. Just as we found the turning my cellphone rang. Wendy took it: it was Alicia, reporting with great excitement that she had spent much of the day on the phone to her parents and had swung it; she would move in on Saturday.
George’s house was reached by a long country lane and turned out to be even bigger than I had feared, with acres of grounds. It was not in the stately home category but it was a most handsome and imposing nineteenth-century pile, originally built for (here I am guessing) some prosperous mid-Victorian City gent and now occupied by his twenty-first century successor. We drove through the gateway and up the immense drive. Our hosts must have been watching for us, because before we reached the house the front door opened and George stepped forth proudly, very much the monarch of all he surveyed. I pulled up. “Sorry we’re late, George; the traffic.”
George shook my hand warmly and kissed Wendy’s graciously as I introduced her. “And of course you know Sue,” he said as his wife emerged from the house. I looked at her nervously. When I had last seen her we had been students together and I had yearned for her desperately. It was with huge relief that I saw that the intervening quarter century or more had not been kind; it is not that she was ugly or grotesque but she had acquired a fair amount of weight and a lot of wrinkles and overall everything just seemed to have, well, sagged a bit. The raving beauty I remembered from my youth had turned into a thoroughly unremarkable woman approaching fifty and I was delighted to find that she was not at all fanciable.
“It’s all right,” I muttered to Wendy as I followed George into the house, a weight lifted from my mind.
My relief lasted for as long as it took George to lead us across a vast hallway into a handsomely appointed sitting room where he announced, “And I don’t think you know my daughters.
“James and Wendy Walker,” I heard him say as if from a great distance; “Vicky and Simone.” I did not take in which was Vicky and which Simone, nor would it have made much difference if I had, for no two peas in the proverbial pod could have been more alike. Only now did I faintly recall reading a few years ago in an article about this rising star of the banking world that he had twins at some posh girls’ school or other. But it was not their unexpected presence at the house that unmanned me; nor was it their being so utterly alike down to the last detail of makeup and attire; nor even their startling beauty. It was the fact that they resembled not only each other but also, with uncanny precision, their mother as she had been at the same age.
It got worse. As I feebly kissed their politely proffered hands, I heard George say, “Of course you don’t mind if Vicky and Simone join us this evening? They’re just down from Cambridge for a few days. It’s their twenty-first on Sunday – you appreciate they’re twins?” he asked, as if anyone could have overlooked the fact, “– and I’m giving a bit of a garden party for the occasion. It’s going to be quite a big do, and there’s a lot of preparation.”
“All our friends are coming down from Cambridge,” smiled the gorgeous Vicky (or it may have been Simone). “It’ll be such fun.” Even her voice and the way she moved exactly recalled her mother.
I sidled up to Wendy. “We’ve got to get out of here,” I whispered.
“We can’t,” she hissed back. “We’ll just have to get through it as best we can. I know they’re lovely but can’t you resist? Think of cricket averages or something.”
“You don’t understand,” I told her. “They look just like Sue used to.”
Wendy gave a sharp little intake of breath as the significance of this sank in but she had no time to reply because Sue appeared and announced that dinner was ready. Before following everyone into the dining room, I found my way to George’s loo for a quick wank, mostly because I needed to but also in the hope that it might reduce my sexual magnetism. When I emerged the others were finding their places in the dining room. The table, a solid oaken structure, obviously an antique, was long and relatively thin and in deference to the informality of the occasion the prime positions at the head and foot were unoccupied. Instead there were three places set on either side. George had to sit facing Wendy, of course, with me opposite Sue (there are rules about these things), which left the twins to face each other on the middle two seats.
This arrangement meant that Wendy and I could speak to each other only if we were willing to be heard by the table at large. It also meant that one twin was next to me (George addressed her as Vicky – “How can he tell?” I wondered) and the other faced me diagonally. They were surely, I thought gloomily, both well within range.
The food was good but came with long intervals between courses during which wine and chatter flowed freely. Sue, facing me, talked about nothing but her geraniums and the prizes she was going to win with them. I remembered now that her conversation at university, although not so unrelentingly horticultural in those days, had been equally boring (not that it had put me off at the time). George, meanwhile, kept casually mentioning his various badges of success: the house, the cars (three), the holiday home in Tuscany, the apartment in Manhattan, the skiing holidays in Davos. I wanted to kick him but Brian would never have forgiven me and in any case he was too far away.
I had a side view of Vicky and a three-quarter-face view of Simone. It was impossible to avoid looking at them as they gaily chattered away; nor could I fail to be reminded of Sue as a young woman and how desirable she had been. The twins had the same perfectly proportioned faces that their mother had had, with rich, healthy-looking honey-coloured complexions and beautiful ethereal grey eyes set off by ash-blonde hair, which they wore rather longer than Sue used to. They looked about five foot five with excellent figures, maybe having a little more on the chest than their mother had had (so they have even, I thought ruefully, improved upon perfection). Although their conversation was trivial and tiresome, all “Daddy this” and “Mummy that” and routine gossip about university friends, their overall manner was the picture of youthful vivacity.
At one point Simone told a story about their schooldays and mockingly used the full name of the establishment: “And of course they couldn’t possibly allow that sort of thing at Cheltenham Ladies’ College.”
Something connected in my brain: “Ladies!” I exclaimed, and everyone looked at me quizzically. “Sorry,” I said. “I just remembered something. Please go on.”
The meal had been under way for nearly an hour when the first alarm bell rang. While George had gone to fetch more wine, Vicky left her place, allowing Wendy to lean across and mutter, “It seems all right so far.”
“I’m not so sure,” I replied. “Look.”
She followed my eyes. Vicky had walked round the table to whisper something in her sister’s ear. Both girls giggled and kept shooting surreptitious glances at me.
George returned and Vicky came back to her seat. As she walked behind my chair she brushed against me, although there was ample room to pass. It could have been an accident; both girls had been working their way freely through George’s wine. But it was no accident a few minutes later when I felt an exploratory toe against my calf. I could not blatantly look under the table to see who it was; I looked at Simone but she had gone quiet and was sitting apparently passively (but her eyes were resting in my direction, I noted). Vicky was also quiet but had a more focused expression on her face; when she saw I was looking at her she gave me a little smile and the rubbing against my leg grew stronger.
I moved my leg away and cranked up the conversation. I deliberately kept to neutral topics – City talk, political gossip, that sort of thing – in which the twins had exhibited no interest but they seemed to be hanging on my every word and when I ventured on some mild joke they both collapsed in fits of giggles. Even George noticed. “It wasn’t that funny,” he said (accurately but, I thought, rather ungraciously).
Finally the meal came to an end and George ushered us all into the drawing room (which was different from the sitting room, of course). More alcohol flowed, although not in my direction since I still had to drive home. The twins, well oiled by this time, showed signs of becoming gushing on the subject of me. A delighted, “Oh, Daddy, James is so funny and clever, isn’t he?” followed some perfectly innocuous remark of mine, and I saw that George was beginning to look put out. To please him, and change the subject, I encouraged him to expand on his affluent lifestyle. It was a good move; plainly this was his favourite theme and the twins, who had obviously heard this sort of thing many times before, looked bored and subdued and just sat there staring at me.
George got onto the subject of the house. “The grounds are at their best at this time of year,” he told us. “It’s a shame you had no time to look round before dinner.”
“Yes,” agreed Wendy politely. “Some other time, perhaps.”
One of the twins (Simone? I had lost track) suddenly spoke up. “Daddy, James and Wendy could come to our party! James, Wendy, do come!”
“Oh, yes!” chimed in the other. “Daddy, wouldn’t that be lovely?”
George looked surprised and slightly embarrassed that his daughters wanted this middle-aged couple among their fashionable young friends but it would have looked very mean to refuse so he said he and Sue would love us to come. “You could have a good look round the grounds,” he added, offering us a more grown-up reason to attend.
I was still formulating a polite refusal when Wendy, who to tell the truth had always rather hankered after the kind of lifestyle George was describing, got in first. “It is a beautiful place you have,” she replied – noncommittally, but with the distinct air of one willing to be persuaded. “Ow!” she added as I gave her a sharp kick.
“Sorry,” I said. “Touch of cramp.”
At this crucial juncture whichever twin had first invited us most providentially dropped her glass and red wine went all over what looked an expensive settee. As George and Sue hurried to clear up and everyone’s attention was on the spillage, Wendy and I had a furtive conference.
“We mustn’t go,” I whispered.
“But darling,” she hissed back, “the damage is done, surely. They’ve hardly taken their eyes off you for the last hour. And they are lovely,” she added, with this strange connoisseurship she was developing for my girlfriends.
“It’s not the twins,” I muttered. “We’ll just have to sort them out later. It’s all the others.”
“Others?” She looked puzzled. “What others?”
“Think, Wendy,” I replied with some asperity. “The place will be full of girls from Cambridge and you can bet some of them will be irresistible.”
She got it at last. “I must have had too much of this excellent wine,” she said apologetically. “You’re right. What can we do?”
George looked up from his dabbing. “Damage contained, I think,” he reported. “Well, James, Wendy, we’d be delighted if you’d join us on Sunday. Will you come?”
Wendy brought out her most charming smile. “Oh, George, Sue, thank you so much for inviting us, but I’ve just remembered we’ve got someone coming to stay with us. She’s moving in on Saturday. We can’t go off and leave her on her own the very next day, she’ll think it odd.”
I wanted to kick her again. I knew she meant well, but how could she give George an opening like that? He looked at me in all his patronising smugness. “Paying guests, James?” he teased. “Times aren’t that hard, surely?”
Wendy, realising her gaffe, shut up and stayed shut up while I made the best I could of it. “George, you know perfectly well it’s nothing like that. But we’ve got more space than we need and she’s a lovely person and excellent company and she needs somewhere, so it just made sense.”
“All right,” said George expansively. “Bring her along as well.”
My refusal was polite but firm. George and Sue pressed me as hard as they decently could, and the twins begged me to change my mind and gazed at me imploringly with those beautiful grey eyes, but I held my ground.
It was well after midnight when we left. I courteously held the car passenger door open for Wendy so I should have an opportunity to kick her again as she got in. “I know, I know,” she said, rubbing her leg ruefully as we drove off. “Too much wine.” With that she yawned and fell asleep and left me to drive home in silence wondering how to manage the now smitten twins.