Tarton is a town I have made up for this series of stories. I've imagined it along the south coast of England. There are towns over here with strange and rude names. Piddletown was a small village on the river piddle. The village name was changed to Puddletown before a state visit by Queen Victoria, because it was considered too rude. I've imagined Tarton changed its name from Tart Town a few hundred years ago for a similar reason. The small unnamed village as it was back then was called Tart Town, because there was a cleansing on prostitution in nearby big towns. No one knows who scrawled the name Tart Town, probably as a joke, on a wooden sign in red paint, but it stuck. While the name has changed, the town still has more than its fair share of tarts, and this is the story of a few of them.
Sylvia's Story
Nathan Murray is in the pub with a group of men in suits. They are in a happy mood, laughing and joking and hanging on Nathan Murray's every word. He tells them taking their business to his company will be the best choice of their lives. One of the men wags his finger at me. I smile and walk over with the menus.
Nathan Murray catches my eye; he looks me over like I'm part of the menu I'm holding.
"So what are the specials then sweet cheeks?" Nathan asks.
"Sorry we don't have a special, everything we serve is on the menu."
His hand pinches my ass and I jump forward a little, which causes stupid giggles amongst his group at the table.
Nathan's eyes follow me as I deliver the plates of food. I stretch over the table and I feel his hand high on the back of my leg. As I straighten up I bat his hand away, which again causes chuckles. I have thoughts of tipping the remains of his dinner in the Tory MP's lap, but I don't.
An hour later the guy with white hair comes up to the bar to settle up.
"Mr Murray has given you a large tip, and he would like to see you," he says nodding to the door marked toilets.
I push the tip back in his hand and go to walk away but he grabs my arm.
"Don't be like that Sylvia; he has a proposition for you."
"I'm not interested," I reply sternly.
"Mr Murray is a well respected member of parliament; you would do well to meet him. It can't be easy for you working full time in York's department store, and then here at the pub."
Nathan comes swaggering out to the back of the pub with a fat cigar in his mouth.
"Your man, or whatever you call him, said you had a proposition. I told him I'm not interested, but it seems until I tell you face to face that I don't do that anymore, you won't give up on pestering me."
"I would have thought that after a few years, you might have softened a bit. Come on it wasn't all that bad. I remember how eager you were to get your husband's promotion sealed. I still remember coming round to dinner with you, and seeing you all dolled up in that black dress."
"It wasn't black it was blue," I say correcting him.
"So you remember it better than I do?" he says with amusement in his eyes.
I was 20 barely married a year, and yes I did it to get my husband or rather ex husband as he is now, promoted.
He takes out his hanky and wipes it over a stack of beer crates, and then sits on it.
"You sent him down the shop to get me more cigars, while I stood there with my hand up the back of your dress pulling your panties down. I told him to be gone an hour, and we went to bed. You enjoyed it Sylvia, sucking me and then fucking afterwards. I often wonder what happened when I left and he came up to find you still naked on the bed."
"It didn't end there though did it? You'd send him away on business trips and come round to me."
"You didn't stop me, in fact I remember you coming to my offices, dropping that long coat and being naked underneath. I must admit I enjoyed doing you across my desk, and then sending you on your way."
"I was young and stupid back then. You weren't the first if that's what you're so smug about?"
"Oh I know you cheated on him with quite a few guys before, and after me."
"I didn't cheat on him, he liked it."
"Oh yes the cuckold asked you to sleep around. I bet he didn't know everyone you bedded though, did he?"
I watch a plume of smoke rise above his head from his cigar.
"You used me, making me sleep with men to get you some contract for some bloody thing or other. Then there was that fat oaf out there."
"Oh yes Barnaby," he says with a smile, "I didn't think you would fuck him, which is why I blindfolded you and let him in. That was quite something getting you all excited, and then watching him take over. You were too far gone to stop him fucking you when I took the blindfold off, and anyway you got paid. You enjoyed the money, and your husband enjoyed the details afterwards I'm sure."
"You're so fucking arrogant; you walk in here thinking I'll jump when you tell me. I told you no more a few years ago, and I mean it, still."
"Yes you did, after about the fifth guy you slept with. Anyway I've got others who do that now."
"So why are you here bothering me again?"
He ignores my question for a moment and takes another drag on the fat cigar.
"I guess your ex husband is happy now. He's moved to a different town with his new wife, Cherry Anne, my god what sort of a fucking name is that? He was sleeping with her, or so I gather before you split up. Does it hurt that he can treat her differently? I hear she doesn't do what you did."
"Believe it or not I'm happy for him. He told me just before we split up he couldn't stop asking me to sleep with guys, it was our thing I guess."
He raises his eyebrows.
"And you're not bitter in the slightest that he can have a far more normal sex life with her?"
"We stopped doing it for a while, but it was always there in the back ground. Like an alcoholic who has been dry for months, it lurks there underneath, and then it started again. He couldn't help himself he asked me to see other men. I refused for a while, but our sex life started to dry up."
"So you got back into it, and you've never stopped spreading yourself around the town. I guess it's easier now you don't have a husband?"
He gets up off the crate and walks forward. I back against the wall, as the rain starts to fall.
"Yes I've heard a lot about you Sylvia. I hear you're still sexually active, with random men. I was wondering if we could come to an arrangement like we used to have."
"No I don't want anything to do with you."
I go to walk away and my arm gets pulled and I'm spun round, and pulled back under the roof of the lean-to.
"Nobody walks away from me, Sylvia, not without hearing me out, and then they are usually quick to change their mind."
He blows on the end of the cigar. I watch the brown leaf turn red with fire, inches from my face.
"Did you know a cigarette can get to around 800 degrees C? I wonder if my cigar is hotter than that."
I'm staring at the red end as he puffs on it.
"Now all you have to do is take one of my friends to bed. You'll be paid £1000. After all you still get your kicks from fucking around, so why not get something in return, instead of just a full pussy?"
I watch him suck on the cigar and the red tip glows even more. He pulls it from his mouth and looks at it.
"Now, as I remember you were always good with your mouth. So while we are here, alone, perhaps we could have a little fun?"
I watch the cigar getting nearer my face.