I put a story on literotica called A Moment in Time a year or more ago. A number of readers were so kind as to ask me to finish it, and I decided that doing so would enable to revisit some of my favourite characters from The Sacred Band. So here it is. Please refresh your memory of part one. It won't take long.
Thank you, Colin the dogg for kindly reading and giving painstaking editorial help. Your participation was friendly and helpful. Hope I can do the same to you.
A moment in time, part two.
It took all of two weeks for the hammer to fall.
Once Sally made up her mind to stay with me, and walk away from her tormented family relationships, she quickly made herself at home. We got out of bed and went down to make tea. I wrapped her in my dressing-gown, gathered up her white blouse and underwear and put them into my twin-tub washing machine.
"There now," I said triumphantly, "Now you can't get away." She just laughed. Later, after her clothes had been spun dry, hung over chair-backs and put aside for ironing, we went back to bed.
"I've never spent the night with a man," she told me happily. "I think I could get to like it."
"It's just the first of many first times for us both," I said with more confidence than I felt. Tom Lehrer's too vivid phrase, "soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life", jumped unbidden into my mind.
In the morning, I made porridge for us both, and boiled a couple of eggs. Sally was not ready to take control in the kitchen, and I was used to living alone and fending for myself. As we ate, I said what was in my mind.
"Sally, I don't suppose you want to go home and collect your stuff? If you do, I'll be happy to go with you to give you some moral support."
"No. Thanks for the offer, but if I have my way I'll never see them again as long as I live. I shall just have to buy new stuff."
Car boot sales have recently become popular in our area. I always went to a couple of them on a Sunday, looking for useful bits and pieces of costume jewellery, watches and the like. I suggested that Sally should come along with me, and see what she could find for work on Monday. There was nowhere else to buy clothes on a Sunday, but market traders brought cheap clothes and shoes to boot sales and a load of people brought what they had turned out of their garages and lofts. Some really good second-hand stuff turned up at knock-down prices.
Sally had nothing to wear but her navy pinstripe work suit, so I lent her one of my old shirts. It was too tight around the neck for me. I am as thin as a rake and a good six inches taller than she is, so, whilst the shirt fitted tight to her body, the shirtsleeves dangled down past her fingertips, like the sleeves of a Chinese Mandarin. We both laughed at the sight, but she rolled the sleeves up to just above her wrists, and somehow she managed to make the fat rolls at her wrists look attractive, giving her a look that was quite stylish, especially as the softly liquid movements under the shirt betrayed that she had to forgo her bra.
The Sunday morning boot sale in the carpark of the racetrack was already buzzing at nine, when we pulled my old, white Combo van into the car park. Sally had giggled when she first saw the dirty white paintwork and rusty chrome, but I explained that this was natural camouflage. Nessie, as I called her, was disreputable enough to carry valuable antiques to and from sales without much risk, but she was serviced regularly and her Daihatsu diesel engine, the top of the range, was always in perfect running order. I think Sally was impressed; or maybe she was just humouring me. What does it matter anyway?
As we walked towards the stalls, we could see a couple proudly carrying off a lovely pair of art deco onyx and chrome lamps with tiffany shades, and a book-dealer friend of mine was staggering away with a double armful of old, leather-bound books. The race is not always to the swift, but the swift and knowledgeable usually get more than their share of the spoils.
We looked around. I picked up a few inconsequential items, mostly old clock parts; a set of really nice gilt brass spandrels with lion-heads surrounded with foliage, a brass clock-key with a rosewood knob, an eighteen-carat gold watch chain and fob, and a lovely little oil of a bird's nest and eggs in a Victorian gilt frame - unsigned but very much in the style of George and Vincent Clare. All in all a good morning's work.
Sally was sorting through clothes racks when I saw something that made me smile. Draped over the back of a stall were two hand-painted kipper ties in bright, vibrant colours. One was a pin-up of the wartime heart-throb Betty Grable, looking over her shoulder, showing her delectable bottom and long shapely legs in a white one-piece swimsuit. The other showed the Loony Tunes cartoon character Daffy Duck. How could I resist? I could picture off-duty US airmen in zoot suits, wearing ties like these, flinging their partners around, doing the Lindy Hop to the music of a hot swing combo. I paid ten shillings for this little piece of Anglo-American social history and tucked the package away before Sally came back.
Five minutes later we were bearing away our spoils. It was too early for a pub lunch, but perfect for a leisurely coffee and hot-dog at one of the stalls. We drove back to the shop in my trusty Combo, and she proudly laid out her purchases on the counter. At my urging, she had bought two pairs of shoes and three changes of clothes, plus a good angora sweater and a pair of Wrangler jeans. Giving me a glimpse of bare bottom under the shirt-tails, she tried on the jeans right there and then behind the counter, flashing me a cheeky grin.
"I've never been allowed to wear jeans", she said. "My mother would have had a fit, and my brother-in-law would make a fuss if I even wore a skirt that showed my knees."
She looked wonderful in jeans as she checked all her purchases for buyer's remorse, but seemed satisfied. Off came my shirt, and she once again flashed her lovely breasts at me, looking at me from under her eyelids to see how I felt about the display. I was thrilled, as anyone walking past the shop door could have seen her standing there half-naked. She pulled on her sweater, and came over to me for a kiss and a long grope of her wonderful tits. Ten minutes later we were back in bed for a leisurely afternoon of love-making.
To both of us, Monday morning seemed a significant moment in our new life - Sally departing for work for the first time from what we both hoped would be her home. She dressed carefully in her crisply ironed white broderie anglaise blouse with its cute Peter Pan collar and her serviceable navy pin-stripe suit. Then, as she did a little twirl, asking for approval, I stopped her. From behind the counter I produced the brown paper bag, took out the Daffy Duck tie, put it round her neck, tucked under her collar, and tied it at half mast in a huge, loose windsor knot. It looked stunning - almost Parisian.
"There you are my duck, the new you", I said proudly.
She took one look in the mirror, burst into tears and flung her arms around my neck. We kissed, long and deeply. Then she dried her eyes, touched up her makeup and ran for the bus. When she came home after work she told me that her new look was a triumph.
"I couldn't believe it, Davy, They were so sweet to me. Mr Hendricks, my boss, came out of his office, took my two hands and kissed my cheek. He said: 'Sally, me duck, you look a different girl. Where did this new look come from? It's gorgeous. You look so happy. I couldn't be more delighted, we've all been so worried about you.' Now wasn't that sweet of him Davy?"
"Then the girls took me down to lunch in the canteen and pumped me dry. They know how miserable I have been in the past few months, and now they are all demanding to meet you!"
We had two wonderful weeks of learning each other's ways, and accommodating each other's foibles. I learned that Sally hated the shower I had put in, and longed for the bath I had taken out. She learned that first thing in the morning I needed two pints of strong tea to kick off brain functions, and that I liked to be in my workshop before six each morning, leaving her to snooze on until I brought her tea at seven thirty. I learned that that a painless way of getting her moving was to switch the wireless on in the kitchen as I took up her tea, and she would be down within a few minutes to listen to the eight o'clock news.
It was not all plain sailing, and at times I felt I was walking on eggshells. Sally had gone from a tyrannical, but loving relationship with her parents to a tyrannical and distinctly unloving one with her sister and brother-in-law. I suppose I thought that I had to avoid confrontation at all costs, and this led to our biggest confrontation of all.
Sally really wanted a bath to relax her after work. I really wanted a shower to wake me up in the mornings, and the bathroom was too small for both. To me it was an open and shut case. Take out the walk-in shower stall, put up a curtain rail, re-install a bath and fit a shower attachment over it.
Nothing of the sort. Sally did not want to deprive me of my shower. She felt that, as the interloper, it was for her to make the compromises. In my mind, this said that she was insecure in the relationship, and just waiting for things to fall to pieces. I tried to say this, as sensitively as I could. She started to raise her voice. I consciously lowered mine in an effort to lower the emotional temperature, and this just seemed to provoke her more. Suddenly she screamed:
"Oh, what's the use? It's no good talking to you. It's no good talking to anyone!"
She ran upstairs in a flood of tears. I sat at the kitchen table and looked at the wreckage of breakfast. After a minute or two, I got up, cleared the table and started to wash up. I felt crushed; sure that all my hopes and dreams were going to come to nothing. Still - no good lying around like a wilted lettuce.
Ten minutes later I was preparing an alcohol bath for a fine old "Parliamentary" clock out of a coaching inn in Market Harborough. The movement was so garmed up with over a century's grease and tobacco tar that it was a wonder that it had kept going for as long as it did. As I worked away steadily with an old toothbrush, stealthy footsteps crept up on me from behind, and a pair of arms crept around my waist. A head came over my shoulder and a pair of soft lips caressed the side of my neck.
"Davy, I'm sorry I'm such a mardy bugger sometimes. You know, you can show you care for me without giving in to me on everything all the time. Tell me I'm being silly. I can take it. I don't need you to agree with me all the time; tell me I'm wrong! Tell me I'm behaving badly.
"Let me tell you something. Glore was twelve when I was born, so I felt like an only child, and I suppose I was treated like one. When I was about eight years old, I started acting really spoiled. The least little thing would send me into a rage and I would scream and throw myself on the floor in a tantrum like a two-year-old. Dad would just send me to my room to cool off, and when I calmed down I was allowed to come downstairs.
"Then one day I did the same thing at school, and they were not so tolerant. Mum had to come to the school and take me home. That evening Dad put me over his knee and spanked my little fat bottom until I cried. Then he cuddled me on his lap and told me he loved me, and Mum came in and hugged me too.
"He had to spank me two or three times more before I got a grip on myself. Each time I felt loved and cherished, and, at the same time, ashamed of my behaviour. Honestly Davy, I would rather you spanked me than humoured me when I'm being a pain. Just as long as you love me afterwards."
I could not really envisage punishing Sally, and the last thing I wanted was for her to be ashamed of her perfectly natural behaviour. In my mind, the relationship of man and woman demands equality and mutual respect, although men and women's roles must necessarily be different. Play spanking is a different kettle of fish, and that, I could see, might be fun for us both.
That same evening she suddenly sat up bolt upright:
"What if I fall for a baby? I haven't exactly been careful with contraception.
"Then I shall beg you to marry me a little earlier than I intended."
