Hotbeds

CHAPTER 9: MUTUAL SOLACE

Introduction: The sexual adventures of a prep school teacher in the 1950s and 1960s continue with his crossing the channel and entering another channel. His liaison with Denise and his threesome with Gwen and Tony are covered in Chapters 1 and 2, and his encounter with the art mistress occurs in Chapter 4.

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For a couple of days, I mooched about the grounds. I even had a swim in the lake. I could hardly be bothered to get myself meals, and I felt ashamed of feeling sorry for myself. I wished I, too, had left. But if I was going to move into state education it would be wise to have a teaching qualification. That required taking a course. There would be a grant, but I would need cash as well. Hence I planned to stay where I was for another year and continue saving. This was also why I intended to stay there for the summer, leaving almost free.

There is a tendency for something unexpected to occur when there is a crisis in one's life. This time it came in the form of a letter with a French stamp, forwarded from my previous school. The sender's name and address were on the flap. My heart leaped up. Denise was going to return to England! We would be together, or why else would she write?

This was not the situation, I soon learned. She reported herself as well and happy, and hoped that I was, too, wherever I was. Her reason for writing was to ask whether I would come to spend some of the summer vacation at her and her husband's cottage in Normandy. Not only might I enjoy a holiday break, I might also be able to offer special help a friend who would also be staying there. Could I arrive at the end of July? If I could get to Cherbourg she would pick me up.

I might have refused if Clio had stayed on with me. But the idea of just dashing off to France, especially with some kind of mission involved, offered a welcome distraction. Never mind the expense, which would not be great. There was time to overhaul the second-hand bicycle I had bought, and look up the ferries. After all, I could get to Portsmouth in a day.

Denise met the ferry, and kissed me on both cheeks. It was tricky getting the bike into the small Citroen, but taking off the front wheel made it possible, and away we went with the top open.

After a few kilometres and some small talk she pulled over and switched off.

'I know Gwen and Tony took care of you,' she said, 'We keep in touch. They're probably going to retire to Australia fairly soon.'

'They certainly did,' I said.

'They knew you got together with the art mistress at your next place, too.'

'Well, I would have liked to have had much more together with her, but that seems to be my fate.'

'You've just had a similar experience?'

'Longer one this time,' I said, 'Six years. I would have liked sixty.'

'Well, I can't promise you six years, or six days, but I think you could greatly help a colleague of mine. You're a kind man, with respect for women I think, and you're not squeamish. Of course, you can't promise anything, and if you don't want to come and meet her that's fine. I'll take you to a hotel, and you can stay there or go home again, and we will cover all expenses.'

I was enjoying the warm breeze, the scenery of the Cotentin peninsula and the sense of sudden freedom from the familiar. So I said, 'Tell me about this colleague.'

'Jeanne teaches English at my school in Paris. She's a great teacher and a dear colleague, but she got breast cancer and had to have a double mastectomy. She's recently been declared free of the cancer, but she's devastated by the loss. Her husband can't make love with her and she feels her marriage is over. She even feels she's been robbed of her womanhood, that she's a freak. Nothing anyone says makes any difference.'

'You want me to try and reassure her she's still a woman?' I was daunted by the idea.

'I want you to befriend her. I've told her you want to practice your French, and she can practice her English with you. I'm only here till the end of the month. Marcel and I are July vacationers and he has to be back at work at the start of August. He's already gone home.'

'Well, practising my French would be good. I've just finished a languages degree.'

'Couldn't be better. That makes you being here all the more plausible.'

'All right,' I said, 'I'll be glad to stay, but, yes, I can't promise anything beyond the mutual language practice'

The details of the partly restored farmhouse on the edge of a village within three kilometres of the sea are not important. Suffice to say the situation was delightful. What mattered was whether Jeanne and I would be able to relate to each other.

Jeanne was out for a walk when we arrived. She returned as I was unpacking the few garments I had brought in my saddle-bag and washing. I suspected Denise had told her more about me.

She and I were both apprehensive about meeting and likelihood of our sharing a house with no-one else in residence. But we knew at once we were going to like each other. We saw it in each other's eyes. I certainly knew I was going to like, to admire, this person greatly.

She was in her late forties, I guessed, tall and slender but well-muscled. She was swarthy, with a mane of wiry black, dusty-looking hair bunched into a great mass and tied back with a ribbon.

She was wearing a short-sleeved blouse and a short skirt, and her limbs were covered in dark hairs. This makes her sound unattractive, but the hirsuteness suited her, and in no way detracted from her femininity, because she was, breasts or no breasts, certainly female. This was partly because she gave off an aura of aliveness. I was to observe very shortly that her every expression, movement, stillness, expressed vigorous life.

Above all, this quality burned in her huge dark eyes. I had no choice but to look deep into them as we shook hands, longer than was courteous. But she seemed more amused than offended by my gaze, and by my holding her hand a trifle too long. She was also amused that we greeted each other in each other's language.

Denise cooked us a simple meal, with wine, naturally, and took us for a stroll round the village. We sat drinking coffee and talking, in both languages, until we went to our rooms.

I woke early and crept outside with the intention of going to the sea, and found Jeanne was also up and about. Without saying anything we set off and strode to the beach. It was large, sandy, with marram-grass clad dunes above the tideline, and deserted.

Fancying a swim, I took off my shirt and went into the water in my shorts. Jeanne sat on the sand and waited for me. I had not expected her to come in, though she could have bathed like me, in the shirt and shorts that she was wearing.

I don't think we exchanged a word on the walk back, either. Not much language practice so far that day. We were easy in each other's company, though. And over the coffee and baguettes we chatted a little, all three.

Denise drove us around the sights that day. It doesn't matter where we went. We were relaxed and relishing the warm sun, the salty breeze and the slight light-headedness resulting from the wine we drank at lunchtime and the sense of freedom.

Denise left next morning and Jeanne and I were alone together, drifting through the days, eating when we felt like it, drinking wine and coffee, and walking, walking, walking. We drank in the air, relished every minute observation, such as the time we came across an adder, which unhurriedly slid away, with us following until it poured itself into some scrub.

We were now talking, talking, talking, in a wonderful mixture of French and English, teaching each other new words, idioms and constructions. We discussed literature, art, music, philosophy, mythology and discovered shared tastes and relished each other's knowledge and insights. She was, in fact, much better informed and read than I was.

Sometimes we remained companionably silent for long interludes.

The first time I stripped to go for a swim, in the hottest part of the day, she showed no particular reaction, and she didn't follow suit. But that evening, as we prepared supper, she asked, 'Would you swim naked in front of any woman?'

'If I knew and felt relaxed with her, I would,' I said. 'Not if she would be shocked. I didn't think you would be shocked.'

'I was not shocked. A little surprised. I thought Englishmen were too conventional for doing that.'

'We don't have to think about conventions, do we? We can do as we like, can't we?'

She thought about it. 'I suppose we can.'

'Are we agreed about that?' I asked.

'But there may be some things one of us can't do,' she said.

'Of course,' I agreed, 'But even those may turn out not to be impossible.'

'What do you mean?'

'I cannot think of anything we might do that is impossible,' I ventured.

She made no reply, but after supper we went for another walk, down to the sea, and sat in the dunes as night fell.

'I love to swim in the dark,' I told her. 'Come with me?'

'All right,' she said.

She accompanied me down to the water's edge, and as I strode in she followed, without undressing.'

She was obviously a strong swimmer and thrashed back and forth, sometimes duck-diving and disappearing for what seemed a long time, surfacing to shake her head, her hair clinging to her scalp. Afterwards, she walked back to the house dripping.

She changed into an enveloping dressing-gown and we settled to wine and coffee and began to talk more intimately.

'You have had a sad parting, I think,' she said, 'Denise told me. Tell me about it?'

I gave her an edited account of the six years with Clio and found my eyes welling up as I concluded. Jeanne took my hand and murmured comfortingly in French.

'There was much love-making with your Clio, I think,' she said. 'I think you are a man who likes love-making and now you are missing it.'

'Yes,' I said. Then I risked saying, 'Denise told me a little about you, too. I think you are missing it, too.'

She tensed and looked away. Then she fixed me with a sad, penetrating gaze. 'Now I am like a man, with a flat chest,' she said, 'My life of a woman has gone.' That's how she put it in French. In English I guessed she meant she had been deprived of her womanhood.

I held those huge, beautiful eyes. 'You are one of the most womanly women I have ever seen,' I said. 'It shines out of your eyes, it glows from your body.'

Since I had to express this in English it took her a moment to understand.

There was a long silence. She knew what I meant. She knew that I liked, admired, desired her.

'Let's go for a swim,' she said, and I understood this was how we would move closer, without necessarily making love. Whatever we did would be good.

She went to change again and returned in another blouse and skirt. When we set off she took my hand. 'What you said,' she said quietly, 'It was - good. Thank you.'

I was tempted to tell her I meant it, but she knew that. I gave her hand a little squeeze and drew her to me, and kissed her. Her lips were large and warm and they kissed back, though our mouths remained almost closed.

When we reached the beach I undressed and moved towards the sea. It was not so dark that I was able to see out of the corner of my eye that she took off her skirt. Then I was in the water and she was following me, and had also taken off her knickers.

We swam slowly out to sea and turned parallel to the coast. We drew together and embraced, treading water and kissed, this time long and deep, tongues twining. She ran her hands down my back and sides and I stroked down her back and held her bottom. She felt my erection probing her at her thighs, and laughed.

'You like my bottom?' she asked. 'That is still there, yes.'

'It's beautiful,' I said.

'But you haven't seen it.'

'Can I see it?' I said.

'Oh yes, that is something you can see. Perhaps my life of a woman is in it?'

'No,' I said, 'Your life of a woman is everywhere.'

'It is here, for example?' She pushed her pelvis close and I felt her pussy-fuzz, against a thigh.

'Everywhere,' I said.

She detached herself and began to swim ashore. I followed, and when we reached the shallows I embraced her again, then turned her round, urged her legs apart and ducked down to take her on my shoulders. I don't know why I did that, but she let me lift her in that way, and she knew, and was content with, how I relished to the maximum the feeling of her wet hair and vulva against the back of my neck and of her bottom cheeks on my shoulders.

I walked out of the sea and up the beach into the dunes. It was quite an effort making my way up the slope in the loose sand, but I felt as if I could carry her for ever. Though once amongst the marram grass I knelt and slipped my head out from her thighs. It was time to take her in my arms, and for us to kiss long, hard and patiently, till I laid her down on her back.

'We can't,' she said.

'I know,' I said.

'Because of the salt water.' Of course, that would have neutralised her secretions and effectively sealed her vagina.

I spread her thighs and brought my mouth to bear, inserting my tongue into the labia. Her vulva was deep, very deep, and I loved the slow accumulation of vaginal fluid as I licked and sucked and nibbled. She lay still, but held the top of my head and above the sound of the little waves and the whisper of the breeze amongst the grasses I heard her beginning to moan.

As I continued her clitoris began to swell. It was enormous, the largest I had seen, and, indeed, it was the largest I ever saw. It grew from the hood like a little penis and I took it in my mouth, gently sucked it, held it with my lips and tongued it.

I felt her orgasm gathering as her labia massively engorged and laid open her vagina. But she tugged on my hair and pulled me away from her pussy.

'Now it is possible,' she gasped.

'Not yet,' I said, and returned to her clitoris and slipped fingers into her cunt, which was sticky as the lubrication overcame the salt scouring.

She came, with a scream, bucking and twisting her pelvis. I laid my head on her mount and we remained still a while.

'Wouldn't you like now?' she asked.

But when I put my tongue to her clitoris again it was still hard and I began slowly, gently to stimulate it again, and she came again almost at once, this time bursting into tears and crushing my forehead into her drying and abundant hair.

When we had rested a little I got up, pulled her to her feet and we embraced. She kissed me all over my face and chest, squeezing my bottom. 'Can you not?' She asked. 'It is because I have no bosom?' She pronounced the word 'booze-om,' which is how I have heard it ever since.

'I'm longing to,' I said. 'But I want us to be warm and dry, and to sleep together afterwards, and make and make love, and to eat and walk and make love, and sleep and make love again.'

She kissed me again, took my hand and led me back onto the beach. I turned her to look at her bottom. It was lean, muscular, like the rest of her, but shapely, and also hirsute up the crack, which I liked. We put on our clothes. Her knickers were tight, elegant, with lacy hems. I was no longer erect, because I felt content that we would be making love, again and again.

We did not hurry, but stopped to kiss, to look into each other's eyes in the starlight. When we arrived back at the house we went up to her room and I switched on the bedside light. I made to take off her blouse. She held it at the waist to prevent me. I pulled off her shorts and paused to enjoy her knickers and the escape of her now dry pubic tangle from under the hems. Then, with a little difficulty, because they were damp, I took them off. A rich, salty, vaginal aroma filled my nose. I inhaled and exhaled several times, savouring the scent.

'It is good perfume?' She asked.

'Aphrodisiac,' I said, undressing. 'But now I ask you to be naked.'

She turned round and took off the blouse. 'Now you see my bottom in the light. Perhaps it is not so aphrodisiac as in the dark?'

'More,' I said, 'Because I can see everything. Not just bottom, but under and through, lovely pussy.'

'But it is hiding in the forest. I don't cut it anymore.'

'I'm glad. I love it forested, and now I want to see it from the front, and go through it into the bower of bliss,' I said, urging her gently towards the bed.

'The bower of bliss is in The Fairy Queen,' she said.

'Yes. But it is also in you.'

She sat down, holding an arm across her chest, then lay back, drawing the coverlet across her upper body. Then she lifted her knees and opened her legs. 'Can you go in the bower of bliss now?' She asked, and then saw the answer as I undressed and my penis stood forth.

I lay down between those inviting thighs and gently opened her vulva.

'Perhaps it is ready,' she said. 'Don't wait.'

In answer I applied my tongue and lips to that honeyed crevice. Her clitoris had slackened, but it was ready to engorge again, and I marvelled at its size and hardness.

After a few minutes, she said, 'Come into me now. It will go.'

I moved up to bring my cock to her entrance. She reached down and guided me in, and I sank home and began to rock back and forth.

'Quick, quick,' she said.

Such was the size of her clitoris, pointing down and back, my cock was brushing it as I stroked in and out. She was coming, so I thrust to the limit, and my semen burst into her depths. She clamped her thighs against me and her orgasm burst and shook her like a volcanic eruption.

She stammered out some phrases in French and pulled my face down to kiss me again and again.

After a while she said, 'You had great need, I think.'

'Yes,' I said, 'But most of my need was for you. I have wanted to be inside you since we first met. My need began then.'

'But you didn't know me.'

'Yes, I did,' I said. 'I knew everything through your eyes, everything that mattered.'

She thought a little. 'You looked in my eyes, I know, and I saw much about you.'

'Did you see my desire for you. For you?'

'I didn't believe it. I saw it, but I thought I was mistaken.'

'Now you know it was true,' I said. 'It is true.'

I lifted my chest, so we could look into each other's eyes. 'You see,' I said. 'It is true.'

'I thought you might be so needing to do sex that any port in a storm,' she said.

'You knew really that was not true,' I assured her. 'It was your port.'

She laughed. 'Yes, it is my port, isn't it?'

'You also had great need,' I suggested. 'You needed, as you put it, to do sex, but you more needed someone to do it because it was you, beautiful woman Jeanne.'

We snuggled down, embraced and relaxed. We slept a while, woke at the same time.

'Let's have breakfast,' I said, 'And afterwards I will have need again of your port and bower, if you will open them again.'

She said, 'You open them.'

'Don't dress,' I suggested. 'I don't want to lose sight of your forest and bottom, forested bottom, though I suppose you'll sit on it.'

I headed downstairs to brew the coffee, and when she joined me she was bare-bottomed, but back in the blouse. After baguettes and coffee, we were back in her room, but again Jeanne turned away to remove the blouse, held her arm across her chest, as she lay down replaced with a corner of the coverlet.

'Please,' I said, as I lay down beside her, 'People making love should be naked.'

'I can't,' she said. 'It's ugly. You will be disgusted, like my husband.'

'No,' I said. 'I want to see all of you. However you are, it's you.'

'All right!' she exploded, 'Don't say I didn't warn you,' and she flung aside the coverlet.

There were neat scars with slight ridges across her chest where the breasts and surrounding tissue had been excised, but there was nothing horrifying about the aftermath of the surgery. In fact, I was expecting much more damage to the flesh.