Unusually for me this is a one-off. I found it, three-quarters finished, in an old file while I was cleaning up my computer. It's about five years since I last looked at it. I hope you like it. Comments and support welcome as usual.
*****
It was raining when I left the municipal building. The grey of the sky matched the concrete façade of the building; both reflected my mood. I dodged back inside the plate-glass doors as a squall of cold wind sent a near-wave of rain across the bare paved concourse.
'Forgotten something, love?'
George, customer relations
. His badge told me all I needed or wanted to know about him. His beer belly stretched the buttons on a cheap white shirt, a stained tie with the municipality's logo covered some, but not all, of his exposed, white, hairy belly. A lecture on not patronising women, I decided, would be wasted. If the fact he had directed me to an interview for a senior executive position an hour ago was not indication enough that I deserved respect, nothing I could say to him would.
'No George. But you could direct me to a store where I could buy an umbrella, an off-license that sells decent wine and the nearest taxi rank.'
He looked me up and down ignoring my snippiness and then glanced at the rain through the glass. It was washing down in small rivulets as the near-gale pushed buckets of the stuff against the windows.
'Tell you what, sweet. You just park yourself there...'
He indicated a small sofa next to his desk with a nod of his oversized head..
'... I'll get our Maureen to watch the desk and I'll go out for your umbrella and booze. Can't have you getting those nice clothes wet, now can we darling?'
I was momentarily speechless. I hate men who call me 'love', 'sweet' or 'darling'. The decades have equipped me with a number of cutting ripostes which normally I do not hesitate to employ. But something about his generosity, I still could not bring myself to think 'gentlemanliness', touched me. I smoothed my well-cut silk suit over my thighs and hips as I did as I was told.
George struggled himself into a garish, authority-branded rain jacket as I reached into my bag for some cash.
'If its not too much to ask, could you go to the best wine merchants in town and ask the manager to pick out a bottle of red and another of white from their ten quid shelf?'
'Ten quid! I could get you three bottles for that... tell you what...'
'No. From the ten-pound shelf. I insist. And get another for yourself while you're there.'
I handed over two twenty pound notes and a ten with a stern look. George just opened and closed his mouth. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to decide what kind of idiot he was dealing with.
'Well I don't know,' was all he managed to say as he took a large golfing umbrella from a stand by his desk and made for the door. Maureen, his replacement, was in her early-twenties with the timid demeanour of someone who knew her place in the hierarchy. She tentatively handed me a mug bearing the legend
Builders Always Get it Up
. I managed a mouthful of the strong tea without grimacing; it had at least two sugars. I do not take any.
I sighed as I opened my phone and saw the twenty messages and emails which had arrived in the last couple of hours. It reminded me of one of the reasons I had come for the interview; the never ending stream of petty diktats from above and self-protecting arse-covering from below. As a middle manager in a busy local authority department I was used to getting it from both sides. It was the constant nagging pettiness of it all which was getting me down.
The interview had gone well. The all-male panel seemed impressed with my qualifications, experience and answers to their fairly straightforward questions. I knew from their web site that the authority had no women in senior positions. I guessed I was there for one of two reasons: either they wanted to drag themselves into the twenty-first century by addressing the gender imbalance; or, they had one of the boys lined up for the job and this was just a formality. Either way, I had decided, I was going to go for it.
The chief executive seemed particularly taken with my legs; I had rewarded his covert stares by crossing and uncrossing them frequently in the course of the cross-examination. The odd private smile, just this side of flirting, probably gave the old boy something to think about. I instinctively ran my hand along my thigh to check my suspenders were holding firmly the sheer stockings I had chosen that morning.
The quiet of the reception area, the lulling sound of the rain against the glass and the clicks from the phone as I deleted messages, or, occasionally, forwarded one to my office PC allowed my mind to wander. The touch of a hand against my thigh - albeit my own - brought thought of sex to the forefront. Again. As it had increasingly over the past few months since the final explosion of my relationship with Paul. I sighed rather too loudly as I mentally ran, once more, through the interminable rows and petty points scoring which characterised the end of the marriage. Maureen looked up and asked if everything was OK. I reassured her it was, smiling to myself as I enjoyed the feeling that any regrets I had about the end of our time together was in the past. I was definitely looking forward to the next chapter in my life.
My pussy twitched as I involuntarily pressed my thighs together. My fantasy life had been running on overdrive. What I could not work out was how to make the transition from day dreams to some real action. On the train journey up I had noticed the over-perfumed businessmen checking me out as I jolted down to the buffet for a coffee. It was flattering that I could still get second looks even though I am well into my forties. I mentally screwed half the carriage on my way back to the seat.
Masturbating in train toilets is not my usual habit. I was definitely blushing now and I stole a quick glance up to check Maureen had not noticed. She was too engrossed in a gossip magazine and was oblivious to everything. I hardly ever use trains any more. Not like when I was a student. Then almost every weekend we went off somewhere: gigs, demonstrations, festivals. I had been thinking of those days earlier on my way up to this bleak northern town.
I had been adjusting my makeup in the large mirror over the sink when for some reason I noticed how clean it was. The combination of the small strip light above it and the filtered sunlight through the frosted window made the whole vestibule glow with reflected light. That in turn brought back a flood of memories of the feeling of grubbier, colder glass against my face as my panting breath clouded my flushed reflection whilst someone fucked me from behind. In my memories it seemed every one of those journeys included me knocking someone off in the toilets, knickers round my ankles, fist in my mouth trying to suppress my groans or to stop myself laughing when I caught the reflection of the facial expression of whoever was screwing me. I had taken to wearing dresses or skirts on trains, I remembered, and always carried clean panties in my bag. Too many experiences of pulling on jeans damp from piss-soaked floors.
The morning memory of cooling cum slowly running down the inside of my thigh when we had finished was too much for me and I had had to straddle the toilet again and give myself a good seeing to. As I slipped my finger into my soaking slit another vision from those days came back to me. Eight of us had been going to some gig or another in a distant town. We had reached the station just in time to catch the train, but not soon enough to buy tickets. The journey was going well, things always did on a breakfast of crisps and bottled cider, and as we had a carriage to ourselves a certain amount of, well, naughtiness was already occurring. Things had changed when the guard arrived. He was clearly having a bad day.
Alan! God, I even remembered his name after nearly twenty-five years. OK, I told myself, twenty-five years and then some. Train guards, like today, were issued with a uniform and a rule book. But unlike today, they were encouraged in the view that passengers were an unavoidable irritant to an otherwise satisfactory career. Alan was not much older than we were, but the company clothes made him look middle aged. Given that tipsy students think they know it all, and, when it came to tickets - regulations for the issue of, Alan did know it all, or at least a lot more than we did - the situation deteriorated rapidly. There was a very real possibility that if things had continued much longer we would have found ourselves put off the train and quite possible arrested. Not that my friends seemed much daunted by the prospect.
I slipped another finger in my snatch as my mind's eye recaptured the scene as I stood.
'Alan, can I have a quiet word, do you think?'
I remembered pulling down my already tight T-shirt and stretching the material over my tits. I had spotted Alan ogling my nipples; no one wore bras back then and, well, it was a hot day. I brushed an imaginary speck off my left boob and felt a tingle as the nub grew even stiffer. I had Alan's attention.
'Let's talk over here.'
I took him by the hand and led him down the carriage away from the argument. He followed reluctantly. His palms were sweaty and his face stiff and red.
'I'm sure we can sort this out, don't you? It's a lovely day; much too nice for all these quarrels.'
'Yes, miss. But rules are rules...'
I put a finger up against his lips - I'm short, only just over five feet - and fell against him as the train lurched.
'Sorry about that.'
I pushed my chest against his as I righted myself. In those days there were only two types of aftershave in most chemists. Alan was a
