Anna stroked her long slim fingers over the heavy ivory slip, tracing the outlines of the lace and the thin lines of the shoestring straps as she folded her lover's silk. She pressed it to her face, inhaling the smell of the warm iron; the perfume redolent of that musky female scent Anna loved so well, always there, even through the soapy efficiency of the washer.
She knew that earthy, thrilling scent so well. She remembered the first time when, elegant dress swinging at her calves, curves silhouetted against the winter fire, the dark-haired clever woman whom she loved so much, had crashed into her life. It was a smart party; punch in glass cups, tall expensive men lounging, draped as in a tailor's ad on the mantel piece. Girls fluttered and passed; uninteresting, dull, prosaic birds, trapped by intellect on the lower rungs of conversation, doomed to chase and seek armed only with the odd "Eeuw, really?" and "Oh golly?", vowels trained to fashionable indistinction by the finest schools.
Anna sat quietly on the leather sofa, watching the flames, sifting thoughts through her clasped hands like dry sand. She had long ago lost hope of finding wit and cleverness here, finding the direct panic for connection tedious, over-focused, immature. She longed for that long courtship of the mind, that seduction of argument she found most thrilling. She was, it must be said, smart. Someone described her as having gained "an effortless First at Cambridge". Wrong – she had worked like a dog, thrilling at the feeling of control over those arabesques of integrals and epsilons, at the navigation of territory unseen by most. Like a skilled sailor she relished that ability to go where some could not.
She was odd for a mathematician, socially aware, sexy and elegant, when contemporaries revelled in their introversion. They did not laugh at her short skirts, smart heels and good haircuts; neither did they envy them. Most of her elite class were boys, not all nerdy geeks, but none confident enough to approach her. Not that she would have cared. When asked to dinner she was warm, approachable, smiling, apparently flattered.........but rejecting.
After Cambridge it was internship in GCHQ, the top secret comms house in Cheltenham, home of the finest abstract mathematicians in Europe. She remembered the meeting with the Security Director on the first day. He was polite, even respectful, looking over the top of the deep red file at this small, voluptuous blonde, honey hair brushing the shoulders of her designer suit, endless legs disappearing into the short, expensive skirt. He cleared his throat. "I..uh..have to ask you if there is anything you need to tell me. Anything that might ..umm... prejudice your integrity.".
Anna looked inside herself. She had always resisted voicing her sexuality, letting her discretion speak. But no she knew she had to be open. "Yes." "Oh? Don't be put off, Miss Kallender.."
"I.. ummm...I don't go out much with boys..."
"Uhuh. You're..a lesbian? Excuse my bluntness."
Anna looked at her shoes and said quietly. "I am. I hope that doesn't present a problem.."
"My dear young woman, if that were a disbarment, half the cryptography department would be unemployed." He smiled. "Don't worry. You're expected to be exactly as discreet as anyone else. You would be amazed at the oddnesses here."
She had shone at Cheltenham, her scalpel mind cutting through deep theory to practice in a way that impressed her superiors quickly.
After the internship she decided, inevitably for a doctorate, not in some fashionably obscure number theory problem, but in the field of applicable mathematics , Operations Research in a well-known university hidden in the Lakeland hills.
It had been an inspired choice. A PhD done in two years, an immediate lectureship followed by a string of publications and a breathtakingly fast Readership and, by the age of 28, the Checkland Chair in Systems. Coruscating. Focused. Satisfying...
... except it wasn't.
She'd had a series of girlfriends, all elegant, sweet, charming things, sharing Anna's silliness and need for attention. Many had touched her, resonating with her care for herself and gentleness for others. They had made love, these dolls and her, swaying horizontally on scented sheets, romantic, thrilling....empty.
Empty not through lack of love companionship ,even passion. Empty, rather, from something missing in Anna rather than in her smooth, shaved perfumed girls, lipsticks at their bedside, mirrors to hand. Something missing.... like that difference term in an elliptic integral... something invisible but crucial to her understanding. She continued in her silken, nyloned love; polished nails scratched an occasional breast, a heel came to a hand in passion.
The filles du salon came and went ... and came...and then went. She was good in bed; loving, selfless, erotic, imaginative... frustrated.
Then a tall, willowy, well-bred girl took her to bed one spring morning. They talked of ponies, riding over hills, the feel of flesh between the thighs. And the willowy girl, playing in the fields of her youth, took Anna to hedges and ditches, playing, riding, cropping with each faltered stride. Anna, pinned, breathless, crushed and giving, coaxed to a screaming flight of mind as she came, under her lover's imagination and her strong thighs, as she had never come before.
And she knew.
