The Paul & Jenny Stories

A Romance.

Paul.

The air outside felt cool when we left the pub. I breathed deeply. I was so happy. I was getting married the next day. Two-thirty in the afternoon. I saw Skip helping Steve. I was glad I wasn't as bad as he was. He couldn't stand. I must help them. I left the wall I found myself leaning against and took a step forward. The ground was coming closer. I felt strong hands holding me.

"Steady Paul."

It sounded like Len's voice.

"Steve." I managed to say the one word.

"Don't worry," said Len soothingly. "I'll look after you."

That was nice. I was just going to close my eyes for a second. Somebody else was standing by my other side. I was going to tell them about what my grandfather had told me. It seemed such a long time ago. I was sure he hadn't told me everything. Missed out the juicy bits. I wondered if they still had sex back then. I just had to rest my eyes for a moment.

Spain 1937.

Roland Wagstaffe. I awoke in the bed next to Margaret. I looked across at the lumps and hollows she made in her bed-covers and thought of joining her. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. She turned over and smiled at me. I reached out and we held hands.

A second knock.

"Hallo." I called. "Who is it?"

"It's me. Alistair." He replied. "Breakfast in fifteen minutes in the main dining room."

"We'll be there." Margaret answered.

"Damm." I exclaimed, swinging my legs out from beneath my bed-covers and sitting up still holding her hand.

"What's wrong?" She asked.

"I didn't want to get up just yet."

"No?" She asked. "And what would you have rather done instead?"

"I think you can guess?"

"I think I probably could."

I stood up and looked down at her. Nearly twenty years and just the sight of her still excited me. Her eyes went to the mound in my pyjama trousers. I moved closer towards her.

"Do you think we have time?" She asked, giving my hand a squeeze.

"Yes." I replied, reaching with my other hand and pulling back the bedclothes.

I looked first at the swellings of her breasts beneath the material of her nightdress and at the secondary mounds formed by the swellings of her nipples.

I released her hand and, reaching down, pulled up the hem of her nightdress exposing her mass of dark pubic hair as her own finger wormed their way inside the fly hole of my pyjamas and pulled my cock out through the opening.

I gasped as her finger pulled my foreskin back and forth. I reached down between her legs and ran my finger along her slit feeling it open beneath my touch. It was her turn to gasp as I pushed my finger inside her. Her thighs opened wider allowing my hand full access.

I could hear people moving in the corridor outside.

"We haven't much time." She whispered.

"I know." I agreed and, taking my finger from her hole knelt between her legs and undid my trouser cord.

As my trousers fell to my knees Margaret guided me forward by my cock until I loomed over her. A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth as she positioned me against her opening, releasing her hold as I moved forward, sliding it slowly into her. She placed her hands on my back and gripped my hips with the insides of her thighs as I moved in and out. I kissed her forehead then her nose as she lifted up her head and then her mouth.

She gasped out loud as I quickened. Her breathing shortening. I could feel the sweat breaking out on my back, running down between my buttocks. I could tell she was nearly there and held myself back from coming until I felt her tense beneath me then I came.

I kissed her forehead again, as we lay joined together.

"Hmm." She sighed.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"Of course." She lifted her head and kissed my chin. "It was lovely."

Another knock came at the door.

"Mum. Dad. Are you ready yet." David called.

"Yes." I replied.

With very little encouragement I could be.

Margaret smiled up at me.

"We'll be along shortly." She said. "You go on."

I could feel her hole tightening around me. I was growing inside her. I started to move. She closed her eyes and turned her head to one side. I could see the throbbing vein in the side of her neck. I moved faster. She groaned then gasped. I moved faster still. She was making little noises in the back of her throat. She planted her feet on the bed and lifted her hips to meet my thrusts. I could feel myself building. I was panting. I was moving faster. She cried out as I came inside her.

I pulled out and lay on the edge of the bed by her side. I felt one breast then the other as our breathing slowly returned to normal.

"I think we had better go in." She said, lifting my hand and kissing my fingers. "They'll be waiting for us."

After breakfast we were all taken into a large room in a building behind the mess. It was set up as a classroom and I could imagine it was used for teaching junior Officers and for planning meetings. We were going to have one of those.

At the front of the room stood Alistair and the man in the grey suit together with a third man who they introduced as Miguel.

The remainder of us, Margaret, myself, David, Roddrego, the Commanding Officer and another man in uniform who was not in the Royal Artillery from his cap badge sat at desks.

"Miguel comes from that area," George, the man in the grey suit explained, "but moved to a village just north of the border with Spain ten years ago when he married. He has kindly agreed to drive Senior Roddrego and."

He paused and looked towards Alistair.

"As you know, Rolly." Alistair said, looking straight at me. "The President is not on very good terms with Roddrego. We discussed it last night and feel that there is a better chance that he would agree to leave if you went as well."

I looked at Margaret. Suddenly she looked worried. I wasn't too happy myself. No. That was wrong. This had been planed from the beginning. Asking Roddrego to provide his own pilot when Alistair knew that the only one he knew in England was I.

"If you leave within the hour you should be back before nightfall or at the very latest tomorrow morning." George coaxed.

"It would be a little adventure my friend." Roddrego smiled at me.

Yes it would. After our return from South America in 1920 I had lived quietly. Owning a succession of small planes and flying them was the only excitement in my life. Some might say that to have survived a tour of duty in the trenches in the Great War and then to have become a fighter pilot and escape a revolution was excitement enough for one lifetime. I also had a wife and a child to consider. A thriving Accountants company. Reasonably well off. Did I really need this? Yes, I did.

I looked at Margaret again and smiled. She smiled back. I could see a light in her own eyes.

"Of course I'll come with you." I said.

The man in the uniform of a Major in Army Intelligence stood up and started to speak.

"There is a certain amount of unrest in the Malaga area but it hasn't developed into open warfare. Most of that is concentrated in the central plains around Spain and towards the northern coast. We don't envisage your having too many problems getting there or getting back. We had word from another contact in that area that the President is well and that no harm as come to them. This information is only three days old, but we feel that the sooner you make this trip the better."

"Miguel has kindly agreed to drive you to the Presidents villa and return with you." The Major continued. "The vehicle is very basic but it is unlikely to attract any attention."

Miguel's job was delivering fresh vegetables to the military bases in an old open-topped truck. After kisses and handshakes Roddrego and I climbed into the back and sat on some green canvas behind the cab, the rear window of that had long been broken, so we could speak to Miguel as we drove. We both wore our shirts open and left our jackets behind in our rooms. We carried our passports stamped with entry visas for Spain inside our shirts.

Miguel took the road east to Malaga, an hour or so along what was little more than a dust track in places. The nearer to the town we came the clearer were the signs of unrest. We passed one farmhouse in ruins. The remains were still smoking. We passed two groups of men carrying an assortment of weapons from rifles and pistols to hand axes and pitchforks. Many carried bottles and were obviously drunk. One man tried to stop us by standing in front of us but Miguel refused to halt and the man leapt to one side at the last moment. We could hear the laughter of his companions as we sped away.

We entered a small village near the outskirts of Malaga and Miguel pulled up in the small square. There had been a number of shops in the main street. All had been looted and burnt. Some old women and children were picking through the rubble.

"This is my village." Miguel said, looking around at the devastation with tears running down his cheeks. "My sister and her husband ran the cantina."

We followed him across the square to a two-storey double fronted building. Both of the large glass windows had been smashed and the tables inside were overturned as if there had been a fight. A man sat with his back to the short bar starring at the doorway. His hair was matted with blood around which flies were buzzing. I didn't need to feel for his pulse to know that he was dead.

Miguel knelt by his side for a second.

"Juan." He said, looking up at us. "My sister's husband."

The door which opened onto the stairs leading up to what I imagined to be the living quarters had been broken and torn from its hinges.

Miguel covered Juan's head and shoulders with a serving cloth then stood up and walked slowly to the foot of the stairs. He stood still looking up for a few seconds.

"Stay here." Roddrego said in Spanish placing his hand upon his shoulder. "We will go."

Miguel didn't move as we filed past him and climbed the open wooden staircase. Looking up I could see the sky where the roof used to be.

I recognised the smell of burning flesh before we opened the first door. A woman, perhaps in her late thirties, was tied in a St Andrews cross to the metal-framed double bed. She was naked. Somebody had set alight the bedding on which she lay and most of her hair was burnt away and her face and shoulders blackened and blistered. There were bloodstains and flies on the insides of her thighs and a hole through one of her breasts where somebody had plunged a knife into her chest.

I took out my pocket knife and cut free her limbs. We closed her legs and folded her hands across her breasts then covered her body with a blanket. As we turned to leave I heard what sounded like a sob coming from the big old-fashioned wardrobe. I stepped up to it and pulled on the handle. Both doors opened to reveal a line of clothes hanging from a single rail. A pile of loose clothing was heaped in one corner. I lifted the top of the pile. Something inside pulled it back. I pulled again. The sobbing increased. I pulled really hard and the bundle tumbled out onto the floor of the bedroom. Part of the bundle stood up and ran towards the door into Roddrego's arms.

As the loose clothing fell away I could see it was a girl. Not much older then my David.

She screamed.

"Don't worry." Roddrego said, holding her wrists as she struck for his eyes with her finger- nails. "We are not going to hurt you."

I heard Miguel on the stairs.

"Uncle." The girl cried on seeing him.

Roddrego released her and she flew into Miguel's arms.

"Conchita." Miguel said smoothing her hair as he held her tight; his eyes on the blanket covered mound on the bed.

"Oh Uncle." Conchita blurted. "It was horrible. They came last night. They wanted drink. Lots of it. Then they wanted woman. Mother made me hide when we heard the sounds of fighting downstairs. Then they came for her."

"Shush." Miguel said into hair, his eyes still fixed on the bed. "Try to forget."

We took Conchita out to the truck then, after installing her in the cab, discussed our next move.

Roddrego was for pushing on straight away. We were only fifteen minutes away from Malaga and the Villa was a further twenty minutes drive up into the overlooking hills. Miguel was adamant he was going nowhere until he had buried his sister and brother-in-law. They both looked to me for the deciding vote.

What was I to decide? We needed to get on and yet I couldn't leave this man's family to the flies and whatever else might visit. I could see a number of dogs sniffing through the ruins of the various buildings and crows and Vultures were starting to gather. "What if we?" I hesitated, it was a horrible prospect but we needed to get on.

"Yes." Roddrego said expectantly.

"What if we take them with us and bury them properly when we reach the villa." I wasn't over keen on spending an hour in the back of the truck with two corpses but I could think of nothing else.

Roddrego and Miguel looked at each other. "We will do this." Roddrego declared.

"Yes." Miguel nodded.

Miguel explained to Conchita what we were going to do whilst Roddrego and I collected Juan from the bar. When we came out of the bar carrying him I saw Conchita was crying and that Miguel had lowered the tailgate of the truck. We handed him up to Miguel who laid him out. Then it was his wife's, Marguita's, turn. Roddrego and I carried he body down the stairs wrapped it a blanket and we laid her beside her husband. Then we climbed back on board and Miguel lifted and secured the tailgate.

"I think we should fit the cover." Miguel said.

Roddrego and I struggle to fit the heavy material over the metal frame but finally succeeded and Miguel and Conchita laced it into place.

Finally, after what seemed an age, we were off. I could see more smoke ahead of us through the windscreen of the truck as we drove out of the village towards Malaga.

Jenny.

I looked at Paul's mother, Mary over the rim of my wineglass. For the first time in days, it seemed' I was almost alone.

Paul's father, David, had gone to have a drink with him and to check that he wasn't doing anything silly. My parents had gone to bed as had Shirley.

This was nice wine. Mary poured some more into her own glass and offered to top mine up. I shook my head.

"No thank you." I said. "I must keep a clear head for tomorrow."

"You're right I suppose." Mary agreed sipping from her glass.

She seemed a little tipsy.

"Have I shown you the pictures we have of Paul as a child?" She asked, rising a little unsteadily from her armchair and opening a drawer in the sideboard.

She had, but I enjoyed looking at them.

"Not recently." I replied.

"Good," she said, sitting by my side with a large photograph album in her hands.

She went through them for me. Paul in his christening robe, Paul in his pram, in his wheel chair then being held by various members of his family. Then growing up. A photo of him as a Wolf Cub then as a Scout. With his friends. I could recognise Len and Steve and Tommy. Tommy. My anus automatically clenched tight whenever I saw a picture of him. He had been an animal. Trying to bugger me in front of everyone like that.

Then some pictures with me. With me and Linda and Len on the beach. With me and Shirley and Steve.

She turned the last page. There was an old brown envelope I'd never seen before in the back of the book. Her hand hesitated over it for a few seconds then she picked it up and took a picture out of it. Again she hesitated then she handed it to me. It was a picture of her holding Paul dressed for his christening seated next to Paul's great Uncle Alistair.

Alistair was looking down at Paul with a smile on his face whilst Mary was looking at him with, what was that look? I looked at Paul that way sometimes. There was a softness around her eyes. The hint of a smile on her lips. A face filled with love.

Her eyes were full of tears when I handed the photo back.

"I wish he could have been here." She said.

Spain 1937

Roland Wagstaffe.

It took us nearly three hours to reach the Villa. Malaga appeared to be on fire. Masses of people thronged the streets looking for somewhere to go. Some had tried to climb on board our truck but it had been well laced down and the few who managed to get a finger hold we pushed off. Gangs of men, some carrying weapons were following the crowds. Pulling some people out. I saw an old man shot and a young girl, a very young girl, dragged into an alleyway by three men.

Miguel stopped for nothing. If it looked as if we would be stopped he would put his head out of the window and making the fascist salute, swear with some profanity. Finally we were out of the town proper and heading up into the hills.

I went to the back of the truck, carefully stepping over the bodies of Juan and Marguita, and looked out through a slit in the canvas. The world seemed to be on fire. I could hear the crackle of gunfire and the louder boom of an explosion.

The truck was pulling to a stop and I quickly unfastened the back flap and Roddrego and I climbed out.

The Villa looked so peaceful. Seven times Margaret and I had visited the President and his wife here. Everything looked the same except that it was so still. So quiet. Something wasn't right.

A gasp from Conchita drew our attention to the drainage ditch that ran, like a small moat, around the high walls of the Villa. In the bottom of the ditch lay the bodies of two men in Policemen's uniforms. They both appeared to have been shot in the head.

The Government of the King had always provided a token guard for this guest of the country. I even recognised them. I didn't know their names I just knew them from previous visits. They had been old then. They must have both been past retirement age. To end their lives like this. Lying in the bottom of a ditch with their faces blown off from a bullet in the back of the head and I didn't know their names.

The others were heading through the gates towards the Villa so I quickly followed. The front doors were open and we entered. It was cool inside compared with the heat of mid day outside.

A man lay dead at the top of the stairs that lead down to the servants quarters. He wore corduroy trousers and a khaki shirt. There were two holes in the front of his shirt and a generous puddle of blood beneath him.

I gestured to Conchita to remain where she was but she caught hold of my hand and followed closely as I started down the stairs.

A second man lay curled up in a little ball at the foot of the stairs his hands clenched tightly to his stomach. He still wore the beret that was the uniform of the Communist faction. I'd seen people die of gunshot wounds to the stomach before in the Great War. Two hours of agony where all you companions could do was watch and listen.

I touched the man on the shoulder and he toppled onto his side. Protruding from the waistband of his trousers was the blood stained butt of a revolver. I reached down and pulled it free. Pulling my hand free from Conchita's grip I broke open the weapon and checked the chambers. Five were loaded and the sixth empty.

I continued down the corridor holding the revolver out in front of me. I could smell death. Two men lay dead in the first room we came to. One still grasped his rifle in both hands. The other's lay in the corner of the room as if he'd thrown it a way in disgust.

On the floor, by the side of the narrow bed lay the body of a man with a full head of grey hair. His automatic pistol lay on the floor by his side, the carriage pulled back exposing the empty chamber. He'd fired his last bullet before they'd killed him.

Roddrego looked down on his body. His shoulders were shaking with emotion.

"Who was he." Conchita whispered by my side.

"He was my father's Chief of Staff and my friend." Roddrego replied.