The eleven minutes past ten pulled out of Doncaster station bang on time, pulling me towards an interview that could change my life – if I got the job. Big 'if,' I thought, sweating and feeling distinctly un-presentable as I made my way down the carriages, looking for an unoccupied seat.
I don't deny it, I'm fond of women, but no thought of sitting close enough to chat one up, or anything like that, crossed my mind, as I walked down the carriage that Tuesday morning. My mind was still on how I had only just caught the bloody train – how the useless taxi-driver had dawdled all the way to the station, and the queue at the ticket-window.........
I sat down, with a resigned grunt, in the first free seat I found, dumping my slim briefcase on the overhead rack, and watched as the trees gathered speed outside the window. It wasn't until we had passed Bawtry, and I had settled more comfortably in my seat that I became aware of the woman in the seat opposite. Dark glasses obscured a slim face under a swept-up blonde hairstyle, exposing very long pendant ear-rings, which touched her silk-clad shoulders. She was reading a paper-back copy of what appeared to be an Anaïs Nin novel in the original French. Interesting, I thought. But what was most fascinating about her was her fingernails. They were longer than is fashionable, painted vermillion red, and one – the left pinky – had a ring inserted through the nail itself, from which a diamond (I can't say with honesty it was diamond, on second thoughts, it could have been any stone) depended. What a remarkable thing to wear! My interest was really piqued.
By the time we passed through Newark, we had been served coffee, and I had offered her my napkin when the train's motion made her spill a drop on the table between us. She smiled slightly, and put down her novel, shifting in her seat. I felt then the electric touch of her ankle against mine, and wondered instantly if it were an accident. I decided on a bold test, and responded in kind, moving mine against her's in a deliberate way. She made no move to retreat, but I felt her gaze upon me, even though she kept her shades firmly on.
I now knew that my advance was not unwelcome, and began to caress her leg with my ankle slowly and firmly. I was getting hard and no mistake. She pursed her lips ever so slightly, then I felt her foot come creeping up the leg of my trousers, infinitely slowly, until it reached my crotch. I reached down and took a hold of her foot, finding it encased in a strappy, patent leather, stiletto-heeled sandal. I looked at her, and saw a gentle smile playing across her lips. Then, very deliberately, she opened her lips just a fraction, and her tongue darted out for a fraction of a second, and back again, in a gesture I could easily have missed. Taking that as an invitation, I unbuckled her shoe, and took it off, placing it on the seat beside me. Her nylon-clad foot ground into my groin, and I stiffened so suddenly that I almost came there and then. She knew, and grinned. I wished she would remove the glasses, but no word had passed between us, and somehow to speak would have broken the spell.
When she withdrew her foot, we were passing through Huntingdon, and I couldn't believe how quickly the journey was passing. She became almost distant again, and picked up her novel again as Biggleswade came and went. Then the London suburbs, and we rolled, on time, into Kings Cross.
I thought the episode over, and was about to consign it to my store of nasty memries, when we all got up to alight from the train. I took down my briefcase, and the lady opposite took down an almost identical one from the same shelf, then walked down the aisle ahead of me, without glancing back. I now saw she wore a blue business suit and was slim and elegant – probably around forty years of age. As she got off the train, she stood for a moment on the platform, and turned as I got down, looking deliberately in my direction. Then she simply extended a finger into the air and crooked it, just once, indicating that I should follow. With that, she turned on her heel, and left the platform in a clicking of high heels. I followed obediently.
The other side of a line of black cabs, were three limousines, and she walked straight to the first one, a black Mercedes limo with blacked-out windows, just like the rest. She got in, and motioned me to join her. When I did so, and sat with her on soft leather seats, above shag-pile carpets, she rapped on the obscured partition in front, and we moved off, I knew (nor cared) not where. I had several hours to kill before my interview, anyway – what the hell?
Making no move, still to remove the sunglasses, or to speak, my hostess, took off her jacket, and motioned that I should do similarly, then poured me a whisky into a cut-glass tumbler as we moved smoothly through the traffic. But I was more interested in completing what we had started on the train.
