(Author's note :- I never expected my Ambridge 'saga' to have mass audience appeal - it is a pretty specialised 'market'! But, readership of chapter 1 is teetering on the verge of a very respectable 1,000 - and, so far, it has attracted five 'straight 5' votes. The only disappointment has been a complete absence of e-mail feedback, and I really would welcome an exchange of ideas with 'Addicts' anxious to delve into the murkier depths of Borsetshire life. So, see what you think about Clarrie's hidden secrets - then let me know...)
Rum-ti-tum-ti-tum-ti-tum...
"Good-morning, Joe," Clarrie Grundy greeted her father-in-law cheerfully as she bustled round the kitchen in her dressing-gown, fresh from her morning shower.
"I don't see what's so good about it," he grumbled as he picked up the cup of tea waiting for him, and drank it noisily, looking round for the morning paper.
"Where's Eddie?" he asked. "Ain't he up yet?"
"Been up ages," said Clarrie, heaping four rashers of bacon and two eggs on to Joe's plate. "He's laying slabs for Linda Snell this morning. He went half an hour ago."
"Better him than me," said Joe, attacking his breakfast vigorously. "That woman could talk for Borsetshire – drives me mad. What about Edward?"
"He's working up Oliver Stirling's – mending some fences, or something."
Joe nodded, his mouth full.
"What about you?" Clarrie asked. "'Ave you anything on this morning?"
"No – nothing much," came the indistinct reply, as Joe mopped up the remains of his egg yolk with a piece of bread.
"Well, I'm on lunchtime shift at The Bull," Clarrie announced as she picked up Joe's plate and carried it over to the sink, dropping it into the basinful of hot water. Turning round, she leaned against the sink and folded her arms in front of her.
"So, I've got a good hour before I have to start getting ready," she said. Her father-in-law looked up at her.
"Is there anything you need, while I've got a bit of free time, then, Joe?" she said, her voice a little lower than before.
"What you got on under that thing?" he asked, his eyes glittering.
"Why don't you come over and find out?" As she spoke, Clarrie's tongue slid over her lips, and she watched as Joe levered himself out of his chair and crossed the kitchen floor. She unfolded her arms and put her hands on the edge of the sink, supporting herself with her arms.
Joe's rough, gnarled hand reached up and pushed the material of one side of her dressing-gown aside. A full, heavy naked breast was revealed. Joe's fingers closed round it and his index finger and thumb gripped the thick brown nipple and twisted it. Clarrie gasped and closed her eyes.
"Ah, you got lovely tits," said Joe. "My Susan had nipples like yours, God rest 'er. Her tits wasn't so big, though."
He always said that, Clarrie reflected, but she did love the way he treated her breasts – roughly, painfully, sometimes, but it always aroused her. He had never kissed her – she wouldn't want him to. To Joe, sex was an animal act and it excited Clarrie to be treated the way a stallion would service a brood mare. Not that Joe was everyone's idea of a stallion, but, for an old man, he was astonishingly virile and his cock was half as big again as his son Eddie's – Clarrie's husband.
Joe's other hand was already busy unbuttoning his trousers and Clarrie reached down to help him. As usual, his cock was already hard and it was difficult to get it out. Joe gave up in disgust and left it to Clarrie, raising his other hand to drag the top half of her dressing-gown fully open so that he could grab her other breast.
As he twisted her stubby nipples, Clarrie felt the wetness between her thighs and her mouth dried with excitement as she released his penis and it slapped against her palm. The tip was already leaking and her fingers grew sticky. She gripped his cock at the base and flooded as her fingers failed to meet round its circumference and she anticipated it stretching the mouth of her vagina as it pushed its way into her.
As a young bride, when she had first come to live at Grange Farm, Clarrie had been very careful about locking the bathroom door and getting fully dressed before she emerged from the bedroom she and Eddie shared. Not that Joe ever tried anything with her, but she could sense his eyes on her, especially if she was bent over, showing a bit of cleavage, or sitting awkwardly, affording a view up her skirt.
Eddie, of course, never noticed a thing and she never talked about it to him. As far as Eddie was concerned, Clarrie was his wife, pure and simple. It would never occur to him that his own father could think of his daughter-in-law in a sexual context.
Things had been different with Eddie's brother, Alf. He had never made any secret of his sexual interest in his fresh young sister-in-law, and Eddie, who looked upon his no-good elder brother as some sort of a hero, had been quite unable to cope with the situation. Fortunately, when Clarrie first arrived at Grange Farm, Alf had been serving time in Winson Green prison – not his first prison sentence, by any means.
But he came out, a year after the wedding and, from that point on, Clarrie had never felt safe. Whenever he was in a room with her on his own, he bombarded her with suggestive remarks about what she and Eddie got up to, in bed, together – and, even worse, he lost no opportunity to touch her whenever he had a chance. His favourite trick was to creep up behind her when she was reaching up to a cupboard and grab her breasts from behind, holding her in a tight hug, so that she could feel the pressure of his erection against her bottom as she squirmed and wriggled in his embrace.
At first, Clarrie had said nothing to Eddie, and had coped as best she could by taking pains to ensure that she was alone with Alf as seldom as possible, but the dam had burst the morning he had caught her returning to the bedroom, after a bath. Clarrie had been wearing a dressing-gown, but nothing underneath, and Alf had pinned her up against a wall and thrust his hand inside the dressing-gown, and between her legs...
Clarrie would never forget the shock as his middle finger slid inside her moist vagina, or his mocking laughter as she wrenched herself free and fled to the bedroom, in tears. The other thing she would never forget was the arousal she had felt afterwards. At first, she had cowered in the room, terrified that Alf would come in after her, but then she heard the front door slam and, looking down from the window, saw Alf jump into the old van and roar off down the farm track.
It was then that she realised, for the first time, that her vagina had been wet when Alf had slid his finger inside her – and that it still was – even more so. The thumping of her heart, which she had attributed to fear, she now realised, had more than a little sexual arousal mixed in with it and, as she contemplated what might have happened if Alf had pursued her into the bedroom, she felt her insides turn to liquid and couldn't stop her own hand straying down between her thighs...
It was the first time she had masturbated since she had been married and, when it was over, and she had enjoyed a tumultuous climax, her conscience – and her fears – kicked in and she had forced herself to confront Eddie. In all fairness to him, her nerve had failed her when describing the extent of Alf's advances, and she hadn't been able to confess that he had fingered her pussy, but she had told her husband about his brother's sly tit-gropes – and Eddie had said he would talk to Alf.
Clarrie often recalled the night Eddie 'talked' to his brother. She was had spent the evening, alone, in the house, watching an old black and white 'weepie' on television, with a bottle of sweet white wine for company, and was feeling quite relaxed when Eddie and Alf returned from the Cat and Fiddle. It was clear, right from the moment they came through the door, that Alf had managed to get his younger brother very drunk, while remaining relatively sober, himself.
It took a little longer for Clarrie to realise that their 'talk' had consisted, mainly, of Eddie boasting about his love-making technique, and prowess, and that, by the time Alf had worked on him for three hours, he was determined to give Alf a demonstration...
At first, the danger signals hadn't been clear – it wasn't the first time Eddie had rolled home from the pub, his ardour greatly enhanced by several pints of beer – and, probably, a series of increasingly lustful leers down the barmaid's cleavage – and Clarrie was prepared to fend off his drunken advances with a certain amount of indulgent good humour – and even give in to them, later on, in the privacy of their bedroom...
But she hadn't reckoned with Alf's intervention. As she wriggled free from Eddie's attempted embrace for the umpteenth time, with increasing irritation, another pair of hands gripped her upper arms, and Alf pulled her back on to him, so that she was lying across his chest, on the settee, her arms pinioned by her sides.
Eddie had just cackled drunkenly and knelt on the rug beside the settee, his hands falling on to his young wife's large, unprotected breasts, fondling them openly in front of his watching brother.