New Year Serenade

New in town, IT consultant Jim has swiftly succumbed to the adulterous advances of the sexy and predatory Janine, whose beautiful singing voice belies her obnoxious nature. Meanwhile, his well spoken wife Jill has been decoyed elsewhere, unaware of how she has assisted in this seduction. Janine and Jim are enjoying a bit of pillow talk...

**********

"Hey...?"

"Hey what?"

"You were trying to warn your wife off of me back at the Jewel."

"The Restaurant? How do you get that?"

"I just do. Why d'you want to do that?"

"Oh okay, I thought you looked like trouble."

"Aye. But

she

didn't think that, did she? Ha ha.

She

didn't think you could end up in bed cheating with some loud-mouth in a red dress, did she?"

"I guess she didn't. But I thought you were trouble. I thought you'd better be kept at arms' length."

"Aye, that's the way you were thinking—for about five minutes. But

then

you decided to split with the scarlet woman and come back here. Forty minutes, and you're helping me out of the dress and shagging the arse off me like a right little love rat. How does that work?"

"How does it work?" It hadn't been quite that simple of course, but I answered anyway, "Well first off, there's Jill ignoring and overruling me. I thought, 'Fine. I'm being relieved of my responsibilities. That takes me off duty as far as responsible behaviour goes.' Then there's you showing me your stockings and suspenders under the table."

"I beg your pardon, but you were looking up my dress."

"Up to that point, I thought you were just a rude bitch but then I decided you might have hidden depths to you."

"That's for the 'rude bitch'," she said slapping me on the shoulder. "What were these 'hidden depths'?"

"Don't know, I'm still looking for them," which earned me another slap.

"Anyway," I continued, "you managed to trap us into all having New Year together. Then I find I'm paired off with you, heading for an empty flat and a supply of liquor, so you can change your clothes."

"You could have got out of it."

"Yes, but my curiosity got the better of me."

"Curiosity about what?"

"If I didn't go along with it for a bit, I wasn't going to find out what it was you were cooking up. Then I kind of got caught up with it. I certainly wasn't any good at the job."

"How's that?"

"Well when we got here, I was so distracted and nervous, I forgot that I was here to help you so you could get changed for going to the fireworks, not so you could seduce me."

"Seduce—my arse. You helped me change alright—out of my clothes."

"I don't remember you doing anything to help me remember about the fireworks."

"I don't see that that was my job."

"What was your job then?"

She planted a fat, wet kiss on my lips by way of an answer, and started to stroke my back.

"You've got a little tuft there," she said and planted a kiss below my neck.

"I hate having hair on my back... it's the ultimate humiliation."

"I like hairy backs," she said and kissed it. She moved up to the space between my ear and my shoulder and put her chin there. It made me feel quite peculiar, and I think my eyes rolled heavenward and shut as I quivered and her fingertips swept over me.

"You've gone into a dwam there," she said. "What were you saying?"

"I remember at school, looking at boys who'd 'gone hairy' and thinking 'please God don't let me get hair on my chest'. Now I've got it on my bloody back."

"What were you like when you were wee? Did you have a den?"

"A den?"

"Aye, did you have a 'den' when you were a kiddie?"

"A den? Well... that's an odd question... yeah... I'd forgotten all about it but I guess I sort of did have one. I think it was a giant rabbit hole. You couldn't actually get inside but my friends and I would put emergency rations, by which I mean chocolate and stuff there and, and messages made with a code book and we'd sit and have meetings sitting round it and sort out important stuff like eating the chocolate and decoding the messages."

"What happened then?"

"Well one day we came by and there was nothing there but a message. But it wasn't in code."

"What was it?"

"It said 'thanks for the Mars Bars, homos'."

"Ha ha. I'd have had your chocolate too... I was a bit of a predator then. Hey... there's something I need to ask you. You work with computers, systems, yeah? My business—that is Rab's business—we buy in a service, and we think they're

doing

us

.

Get it?

"

"It's not my area exactly to assess things like that but I could have a look. If they're really taking the piss, I should be able to spot... something."

"Aw. So you'll do that? That's smashing. Aw you're a wee darling, Jim. I'll take you to the Jewel afterwards."

"So, did you have a den?"

"Did I have a den? Course I did. And a bit better than yours. There were these sea defences down the coast, world war two, pillboxes and places where they set up the big guns. I was eight. We took over an old hut, y'know, we had chocolate, messages, codes, same stuff as you. Turns out it's getting used by someone else."

"Who?"

"Dealers. I know it's corny stuff that but it's a bit of a corny place. Anyway, pretty soon we ran into them and they started running us?"

"You mean abusing you?" I said this with an urgency, as if I was somehow meaning to go there to protect her, thirty, forty years later.

"No-oh. Distribution. They got us to take the stuff—speed—to their clients. It was kind of like a pizza delivery service before its time."

"That's awful."

"Naw, it was brilliant. It was good money, and I learnt a lot about business. It was my first official encounter with the police, and—hey—it gave me a head start on what I do now in the planning department with coastal installations."

"So what happened to you with the police?"

"Well nothing. We were kids remember? Our parents got bawled out and 'interviewed' by social workers. But that was it. We were wee kiddies. We were victims."

"Well I'm glad you let me go first. Mine would sound a bit tame after that."

"No it wouldn't. Ours was exactly the same as yours. Same stuff. Same reasons. Just bored kids making a story up. I wish I'd known you then. I might have been a bit nicer. I like you Jim. Really."

"I think.. you know... I like you. Did you sing then?"

"Sang in the church choir, school choir. I had high hopes of getting into the Royal Scottish Academy in Glasgow... But I never made it."

"What happened?"

"Boys happened." I felt her breath on the back of my neck, and then a couple of plopping kisses.

"You got distracted?"

"I got pregnant. He was adopted. I wonder about him sometimes. But..."

"How old were you?"

"Fifteen. That was the end of school and the end of the singing career. They don't waste time on girls who drink, smoke and quotes 'chase boys'. Not the end of singing, mind. I love it too much. I've always sung—ladies choirs, charity concerts etc. They're no much like ladies..."

"You never finished school, then?"

"

That was not

going to be a viable option. But I've always kept myself busy with reading." She looked me in the eye with this. "I read a proper newspaper and a book a week. I bet you've never read anything by Walter Scott."

"Yes. That is technically true." I didn't intend to interfere with the story by correcting her. "You were a bright girl. You had ambitions. That must have been a difficult place."

"Look, I wasn't the sort of girl who sits around feeling sorry for herself. The thing I really regret is that I didn't get out of this place—like I would have if I'd gone to uni or the Royal Academy—that I didn't get out of it before I got trapped."

She started singing some song that had words in it that went something like,

"For

there's nae bonnie laddie to tak' me awa".

She rapped me on my upper arm. "Hey d'you think I could find a bonnie laddie to take me away? Where did you say you were?"

"I live in a place called Saffron Walden but I don't get to see it that often."

"Nice place? I like the name. D'you think I'll like it there?"

She had a giggling fit. "Christ. You wanna see your face. You—are—a—picture. Naw. I'm no serious—yet."

She looked at the ceiling in some secret calculation.

"Anyway before you ask, I did some pretty terrible jobs, and I got a joint mortgage with a guy who wanted to go abroad. So I bought him out and took lodgers and I started to see an opportunity there and I moved into property and services full time."

"But I thought you worked for the council."

"Well at a certain point I decided I'd be better to have something steady and I put all that into Rab's name. But I'm the brains—and the brawn too sometimes..."

"Err... conflict of interest?"

"They're Rab's businesses. But I'm kind of like a poacher turned gamekeeper. I have my uses there, examining abuses of the system."

**********

Speaking of

abuses

reminds me of an exchange I overheard that evening, just after arriving at the restaurant. I was about to come out of the toilet, when I heard raised voices and paused before the door.

"I'm sorry but that's quite impossible. All the tables are reserved."

"I don't really care if you have to bring something in from the outside catering store. I want to eat here tonight, and I think you should ring Mr Mustafi now. Tell him that Mrs Coulter wants you to find her a table, and that she would like to wish him a happy New Year and all the best of luck with his application."

Upstairs back at my table I was waiting for Jill and Simon. A dray-man was wheeling in a barrow stacked with crates right through the tables of the restaurant.

"Isn't there a better way to bring in your deliveries," I said as the waiter brought me a beer.

"Soon, soon. We need to take down part of an old wall—very old, then they can come in round the back."

In the meantime, someone jacketed and front-of-house was walking extra fast in the direction of a woman in a red dress and a white coat, to make an effusive and hand wringing apology, and assurance of good will.

"That's fine. We'll have an aperitif next door while we wait," she said and turning with a smug smile, walked back to her party. As she went past, her eye caught mine with a look that was hard and frank. I saw her turn back and point at the table next to mine, which was being cleared. She then turned again with a bright smile which included me as it passed. I noticed the easy sway of her hips as the lace of the petticoat bobbed, and underneath it, the black seams running over her calves.

Meanwhile, I saw that a folding table was indeed being set up in a corner. While I waited there, I resumed reading Walter Scott's—yes Walter Scott—'Old Mortality' on my Kindle which I'd picked for some daft reason to do with living in Scotland.

Presently, Simon and Jill arrived. They had been watching a film and got lost. A bit later, I looked up to see that Mrs Coulter's party had turned up again and were making a bee line for the table next to us.

"Uh oh."

"Uh oh what?" said Jill.

"Tell you later."

"Hem hem. Red dress alert," she said as Janine's coat came off. Jill lowered her voice to make this remark, but as is frequently the case, not nearly as much as she thought she was doing.

**********

I don't know precisely what Jill means by Red Dress Syndrome and whether it applies to more than red dresses, but I think it involves 'obviousness' in various ways: wanting to be noticed; wanting to attract men; wanting to compete sexually; wanting to appear younger. In other words screaming 'fuck me' out to the world. I should say here it was a 'mutton dressed as lamb' desperation put-down.

However as I said to Janine, an awful lot of men seem to be genetically programmed to respond to this obviousness. Something inside their heads screams 'Yes!' at the promenading 'fuck me' message and their cocks shoot up like a ten gun salute. What someone like Jill doesn't get is how much time and attention someone like Janine spends looking at the alternatives before settling for the set piece traffic stoppers whose basic message is 'fuck me'.

**********

"You still haven't told me why you decided I was 'trouble'."

There was no way I was going to tell her that I knew all about her using the Jewel of India's planning application as blackmail. I should think that Mr Mustafi was heartily sick of Mrs Coulter by then.

But I wasn't.

So I said, "Someone who seems to be trying to pick you up in a restaurant, right in front of both the afflicted spouses—I'd call that trouble."

"You were thinking about it, big boy. Don't tell me you werenay. But don't worry about Rab. He's used to it."

"I'm not. But good sense suggested it might be an idea to get out before things got really complicated."

"But you didn't."

"I'm blaming Jill," I said with a laugh. "She said you were 'harmless'."

"Jill knew better, did she?"

"She knew better. She always knows better."

"And what do you think now? I've got a few things I could say about your wife, but go on."

There's a few things

I

could say about my wife. For some reason I thought of Jake, and pictured his face, remembering how our friendship had decayed into peacekeeping as our wives asserted their territory and their right to loath each other.

"You're trouble. Maybe I like trouble. I think I'm going to live more dangerously. I think that's my New Year's resolution."

"Hmm," she said, in acceptance of this version. "So you noticed me?"

"Janine, who couldn't? For some reason you left, and when you did you saluted the whole restaurant as if you were Eva Peron, and treated us to your Marilyn Monroe smile: it was as if you intended to bare all of your teeth to the restaurant, in a border of bright red lipstick. You might as well have shouted, 'If you think these are good you should see my labia!'

"You awful man!" she shouted, slapping me repeatedly on my midriff.

I drew her to me with some force. But she came unresisting and nestled against me. We lay there cuddling. In the aftermath of our lovemaking I was calm and free of desire, but conscious of holding the woman who had released me from nearly three years of sex-free misery. We were gazing into each other's eyes and smiling.

"What are you thinking?"

"Oh," I said. "I was thinking you're a bit different on the inside, when you get to know you..."

"I'm a mess of contradictions, Jim," she murmured dreamily, playing with my hair, which I keep quite long these days.

I was looking for some tenderness in this mess.

To begin with, I have to admit, I thought she was a dreadful creature—loud, aggressive, very impatient and ready to find fault. However, when I looked closer I found redeeming qualities. I couldn't help being moved by the passion and artistry in her singing. She seemed to have a natural physical rapport with me, shown so tellingly in the way she dealt with my loss of erection.

Being tall and skinny, I'd concede there's an attraction of opposites thing going on between us. She has terrific tits and a tremendous arse—luxury quality, and yet she contrives to have quite a slender waist. Her breasts are generous without sagging and the nipples stick out like raspberries, begging to be sucked, while her arse has something of a fast but smoothly flowing river about it as her hips turn fluently from side to side. I find that I am powerfully attracted to her and that this desire and its consummation has dispelled many bouts of bad feeling between us since then.

"So what

d

o

you

think of my labia now? Now that you know them?"

"Like the gates to a better world. Probably the best labia in this one."

"You crazy bugger... what about Jill's?"

"Jill's aren't the gates to anything at the moment," I said bleakly.

"Speaking of Jill..."

I'm tired of making peace with people Jill has offended over the years. You could make quite a long line out of them.

"What

about

Jill?" I said, and wondered,

Do we have to

talk about

her

?

as I spoke.

"Has she got any new friends?"

"Hmm. Funny question. Recently? Yes... I suppose so. There's Sandra, someone she knows from the Arts Society."

"Single? Friendly or unfriendly?"

"Oh, friendly. Quite flirty, actually."

"That's a good way of getting you off your guard, eh? Did you say single?"

"Oh. She never mentions a partner."

"'Never mentions a partner'? I wonder if anyone says that about Jill? What about cards... credit, debit?"

"What is this? Some sort of cross examination?"

"Just a little lifestyle questionnaire. I'm always curious about how folk live. Cards?"

"Alright, She's got a second card on my account. I think she got one herself this year—I mean last year."

"So you don't have sight of the statements on that one? Clothes, any changes?"

"Not outwardly. Sandra's always teasing her in front of me to wear sexier underwear, and forces her to buy it when they go shopping. But of course she doesn't wear them."

"Of

course

. What sort of things?"

"Oh thongs, push up bras, not classic stuff like you wear—"

"You mean stuff that makes me look like a whore in an old movie, eh?

T

hongs?

Jill?

"

"Yeah, and can you stop calling yourself a whore? It's not good manners."

"You don't want good manners, Jim. What you want is a good fucking, and you want it from me because I'm nothing like your snooty wife."

"Well, you've got some of the assets of a high class one, then."

"High class? Well speaking of that, did

Jill

ever play the demon in bed? Any tricks to pass on there? Private little quirks? Wild, weird foreplay?"

"Umm...we used to play noughts and crosses."

"

Noughts and crosses

?" This was obviously hilarious. "In bed? What do you write on? I was thinking more skin on skin action."

"It was. We played on our backs. It was gentle foreplay."

"Aah...?" she said with some interest and, "Show me," while suddenly turning round to present her back.

I looked at it, and at those wide, inviting hips and the thought fell on me that I'd crossed a line without thinking about it.

"Okay. So I draw a grid—two lines up and down, parallel, two lines horizontal."

"Draw it with...?"

"Fingers."

"Do it," she murmured.

"Oh... alright..." It wasn't alright, but making a fuss was not going to help.

I started to trace up her back with my forefinger.

"I think you get the idea..." I said, the fingertip signing off an 'x' in one of the invisible squares.

"I get the idea that you don't want to play it with me."

I was quite shocked that she would presume to get me to play this game and compromise these old loyalties by sharing with her something that had so clearly belonged to Jill. I had done it without thinking, but now I saw that this breach of trust in revealing our bedroom secrets to an outsider, might be worse than a heat-of-the-moment drunken fuck in a time of collective merriment.

"Look, I'm sorry but it kind of is private, a bit personal. That's kind of non-negotiable"

"A guy with non-negotiable scruples, eh?" she said contemptuously. That's pretty impressive. Mind you, I'd say screwing me is pretty private and personal and you didn't do much checking on your conscience there... At least tell me how we'd play it if we did play this non-negotiable pastime."

I explained how we numbered the invisible squares on our backs, how the 'scribe' drew in the moves on the other player's back etc.

"Cool. I guess that is pretty personal..."

This could have turned awkward, but she started humming some tune in my ear and then moved round so that she was looking right into my face.