Emma

XLVIII

Sunbury hadn't always been a naturist resort. For most of its history it had been a fishing village, blessed with a beautiful bay at the foot of some hills, with a small pier and a few dozen cottages. However, exhaustive fishing brought a collapse to the village's economy, and its secluded and relatively remote location made it an ideal place to satisfy the growing market for naturism and other related nature-loving lifestyles. It was now quite a reasonable sized town, dotted with a dozen or more hotels and lodging houses, a seasonably busy shopping area and many new entertainment industries. The dock that had once been the home for the fishing boats was now the permanent home for several yachts and motor boats. Emma drove into the town, found a small flat to stay in overlooking the sea, and after unpacking her car set out to look for work in the shops, restaurants, cafés and hotels of the town.

She felt immediately better when she arrived. It may have been the invigorating sea air, or the beautiful view over the bay to the small boats bobbing about on the dark green sea, or just that she was so far away from home and reminders of Maisie. It may have been the delight of staying in a place where almost everyone was naked like her. She enjoyed the relatively unfamiliar feel of the warm sea air on her bare flesh. She loved the fact that she was one of many people who were in the nude, and would almost certainly meet others who had similar opinions and views on naturism as herself.

She walked along the pavement, idly pausing to look in the windows of the shops looking for a sign that advertised for workers. She didn't mind where she worked. She could work anywhere: the main thing was to find something which would occupy her while she was in Sunbury. A strange cheerfulness uplifted her as she walked past men and women naked like herself who did not stare at her or make low-voiced comments to each other. She smiled to herself, the world and her reflection in the shop windows.

It was in a small health food café that she eventually found work. It was towards the end of the Sunbury high street, just opposite a hairdresser and between a hat shop and a shop selling paintings by local naturist artists. The owner of the café was a small quite plump woman with very full round breasts and a disarming grin. She was delighted in the fact of Emma's long-term commitment to vegetarianism and all healthy foods. She quickly judged from Emma's smart appearance and her intelligence that she was eminently presentable and quite capable in the role of waitress. She didn't even have to remind Emma of the unfortunate consequences of spilling hot tea on herself when there was no apron or other clothes to protect her skin. She willingly presented Emma with the small folded linen hat which denoted that she was a waitress, and was quite happy that she could start straight away.

"I'm always short of good waitresses," she confessed. "It's not the sort of job people ever choose to make a career out of."

Emma soon settled into her new role, quite happy in a position with no great responsibilities and with absolutely no stress. She was busy when the café was busy, and able to relax with a magazine or newspaper when it was quiet. It was a delight to continue working in the nude, and to be surrounded by others similarly undressed. She particularly enjoyed the fact that from when she woke up to when she went to bed, she didn't need to wear a stitch of clothing. Her paltry selection of tee-shirts and dresses remained packed in her suitcases exactly as they were when she'd left her home in the care of Charlotte and Josephine.

As a single girl she quite naturally attracted the attention of the single men who were on holiday, but she shrugged off their advances with the same nonchalance and lack of interest she always had. Her serious demeanour was quite enough in most cases to make it fairly clear to them that she was a girl who meant pretty much what she said. Even those who were more persistent resigned themselves fairly soon to brief uncomplicated conversation as she took their orders and hurried back from the kitchen with their tea and scones.

She also came to realise that most people she saw were only in Sunbury for a short while, and that every week or fortnight the regular visitors were replaced by another set who saw her with fresh eyes. Her practised eye soon became aware of the attraction that one of the regular visitors felt towards her. Beatrice was a slim woman, slightly older than herself, naked like everyone else except for a pair of steel-rimmed glasses and who always carried a paperback novel around with her. Her straight dark brown hair fell onto her shoulders and behind the concave lenses of her spectacles were a pair of sparkling light green eyes. She had a tell-tale awkwardness and a shy laugh which betrayed to Emma the nature of Beatrice's feelings towards her. It was fairly easy for Emma to convert a conversation about the relative merits of Dostoëvsky and Turgenev to a night out together after she'd finished work in one of Sunbury's quieter restaurants.

Emma was pleased that Beatrice had never heard of her work with Harlot TV. Indeed, Emma was sure that those who did recognise her as a one-time television presenter and spokesperson did not believe that she was really the same person as the waitress she now was in the Chestnut Tree Café. Several people had commented on her resemblance, but her remark that this was something that many others had spotted before was sufficient for them to be sure that this was merely superficial and not at all substantial. Emma ensured that her conversation with Beatrice remained focused on abstract issues or on Beatrice herself. She worked as a librarian in a small town. She knew nobody who shared her passion for naturism, and so it was only on holidays such as this that she felt able to present herself to the world in her true colours.

After a couple of glasses of Chardonnay in the Montpellier wine bar, Emma easily persuaded Beatrice back to her flat, knowing perhaps better than the librarian herself how the evening would turn out. Indeed, Beatrice was quite startled when Emma's lips pressed to her and her arms clasped the girl to her breast. Within minutes, the two girls were laid out on the double-bed that dominated the bedroom, their faces close together and Beatrice's spectacles discreetly placed on the bedside cabinet. It was glorious to once again taste a fresh vagina on her tongue, to feel a different set of breasts: these ones small and perky, and a slim waist that merged into her narrow hips and tight bottom.

Beatrice was not an expert lover. In fact, Emma was sure she had enjoyed very little passion with any women before, but she was careful to avoid any questions on her earlier love-life. It was better somehow not to know. It was far better just to enjoy Beatrice as she was, using her fingers to bring the nervous girl to spasms of orgasmic ecstasy, and careful also not to frighten her with any of Emma's rougher tastes in lovemaking. Beatrice tried her best to respond like with like. She greedily gobbled away at Emma's clitoris, her long slim tongue probing the folds beneath the dark brown hair of her crotch, while Emma below parted her vagina and pushed her fingers in and out of its depths. However, she resisted the urge to probe a finger into the tight puckered anus. That was for another night.

Beatrice discharged herself from her hotel and stayed in Emma's flat for the duration of her holiday, declaring so many times that this was the best holiday she had ever had. Emma could see that Beatrice was falling in love with her, so she resisted any opportunity for conversation to take too personal a tone. Making love was one thing. Being in love was another. She enjoyed Beatrice for her body and her company, but she was still in love with Maisie and she was just not ready yet to become committed to anyone else. Furthermore, she doubted whether Beatrice would enjoy the company of her friends. And she was sure she wouldn't really approve of the nature of the employment most of them were engaged in.

As the days went by, Maisie became a more distant memory. Occasionally, she found her thoughts drifting back to the girl and their life together. Every time she saw a girl in the streets with long curly hair. Every time she reflected on her life before she came to Sunbury. Every time when the relative inexperience of Beatrice's caresses and gropings reawoke a memory of the earlier days of her lovemaking with Maisie. Her life was nevertheless mostly quite contented. She worked all day in the café, she spent pleasant evenings at her flat or in the town of Sunbury with Beatrice. They would walk together, hand in hand, along the sandy beach or the promenade. And on Emma's days off, walk off together through the woods and countryside around Sunbury, often straying dangerously close towards the textile world beyond. Beatrice's warm hand in her hand, or her fingers on her crotch, were thoroughly agreeable distractions. And it was a pleasure too, to converse on their shared views on the merits of nudity, vegetarianism and, quite curiously, a shared passion for twentieth century poets like T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath.

They would lie together on the grass, in the hills high above the busy town below, idly discoursing until, inevitably, lust got the better of one or the other of them and the two would once again become a writhing entwined body of one flesh, the sun beating on them from above and the grass prodding and poking into the crevices of their flesh from below. Emma didn't care, unlike Beatrice, if ever anyone passed by and saw the girls making love together. These moments of outdoor lovemaking were too precious to interrupt for the sensibility of people and their children, who in any case would be seeing no more flesh than they themselves were displaying.

Emma was genuinely sad to see Beatrice leave after her holiday romance to return to the Lower Bridlington Public Library, although clearly not as sad as Beatrice as she left in clothes that had been unworn all the time they'd been together. They exchanged addresses and agreed to write, but Emma knew there was no future in their love affair. She returned to the bed which was once again hers and hers alone, a fresh gap in her life as she missed the comfort of her lover.

She wasn't to remain alone for long, as now it was clear to others in Sunbury where her tastes in love lay, she attracted the attention of others who shared her predilections. She was soon sharing her bed with Petula, a short-haired slim girl barely much more than five feet tall who worked in the Montpellier wine bar. It may well have been her gamin-like appearance which attracted Emma, who still measured her lovers against her beloved Maisie.

Petula was a far less serious girl than Beatrice, but not one nearly as promiscuous as Emma's friends in the city. Emma chose not to disabuse the girl of her own opinion of how adventurous her lovemaking was, although she felt freer to indulge in her rougher sexual practices, which at first alarmed the girl but to which she soon became more enthusiastic. Indeed, she came to view the bruises that were concomitant with a passionate night spent together with a kind of pride. They were evidence to anyone who cared to know that she had a truly passionate sexual relationship. Although Emma missed the conversations on literature and the arts she had so much enjoyed with Beatrice, Petula's passion and desire more than compensated. Furthermore, she was substantially more mature than Maisie, which at first Emma viewed as a vice but soon came to see as a virtue. But not so mature that she was not attracted to the one night club which Sunbury boasted in the basement of the Bel Soleil, the largest hotel in the resort.

Emma had never been much of a clubber. Those times she had gone to a night club in the city with Maisie on the girl's insistence had not been especially pleasant for her. The music was too loud and she found the music more headache- rather than ecstasy-inducing. However, the Chemise was not as unpleasant to Emma as those she'd been to before, mostly for the reasons which earned Petula's contempt. The music wasn't quite as ear-shattering and she was able to discern tunes which she'd enjoyed listening to on the radio. It was also pleasant to be in a place where nudity was the rule and no one stared at her in that peculiar way they did when she attired herself as she felt most comfortable back home. She even assented to dancing with Petula even though she invariably found most danceable those very tunes which Emma liked the least. However, as she gyrated woodenly around her much more excitable lover, she began to appreciate more clearly the patterns and rhythms in the general muddle of sound. She might not actually want to buy these records herself, but she could see more of their merit in the bright lights and swooping shadows of the dance floor.

During such nights, Petula's passion rose to new heights, barely able to keep her hands or tongue off Emma's body whether they were on the dance floor or sitting on the margins of it with glasses of wine or mineral water. And when they returned to Emma's flat, the sheets were soon damp with the mutual sweat and juice of their shared passion, occasionally bringing even Emma to orgasmic gasps which she'd thought she'd never experience again.

Emma's misery at the loss of Maisie soon vanished altogether. She knew that she was cured when one morning she awoke early, the rays of the morning sun flooding through the window and lighting up Petula's huddled form squeezed against her. She gazed at her lover, her face wreathed in a smile even in her sleep, and felt her heart lift inside her as she reflected that Petula was hers to enjoy and remembered the girl's passion of the night before. She felt a smile break across her face: quite a new sensation when she was not being observed. And feeling the smile, she felt as if a great weight had suddenly been dispelled. There wasn't a tinge of regret in her that Petula wasn't Maisie. She genuinely loved the girl for what she was, and not what she reminded her of.

She leaned over and eased her hand down between Petula's thighs to the girl's vagina. So moist and so warm! She ran her hands through the curled hair which was packed so tightly into a triangle. And then kissed Petula tenderly on the forehead. Petula stirred, looked up at her lover and her smile broadened to reveal her slightly crooked teeth between her full lips. She sighed long and low, as the two girls followed the rhythm and pattern of their sensual passion and were soon wrapped together, crotch pressed against crotch, face firmly against face, arms around each other, Petula's hands threaded through Emma's hair and Emma's hands cupped against the nape of Petula's neck.

Emma knew that the passion that accompanied the subsequent lovemaking was due as much to her relief that she no longer mourned her separation from Maisie as for her feelings for Petula. She also knew that Petula knew nothing of her thoughts. One thing she had been careful to avoid discussing with her was her life before living in Sunbury. She also knew that Petula recognised a new kind of reciprocity in Emma's feelings for her, the previous lack of which had caused her so much unspoken grief, and now with it there brought her to orgasm after orgasm that melted her body into Emma's own, shook through her limbs like spasms of electricity and triggered emissions of fluid from between her legs that both frightened and delighted her.

Emma was cured. She could now face the world with fresh confidence. Her love for Maisie was now gone like an illness, and she was more than ready for a fresh infestation.