RAGAMUFFIN JO
This is a story of 5128 words. It's very descriptive so if its quick action that you are hoping to read then maybe this story is not for you. Enjoy.
With a population of just four hundred people, the village sits at the base of steep cliffs with high headlands on both sides where the coastal plain is so narrow that we only have one road which runs along the drop off to the beach before climbing up the high headlands and on to other distant towns. It's an ancient town having first been settled over eight hundred years ago. The quaint shops are on the opposite side of the coast road with a wide pavement known as the terrace where during the summer we have a farmers market. At one end of the town stands St Johns Church and at the other, we have the Post Office while commanding the very center of town you find the Three Bores Inn which doubles as hotel and pub. During the summer it does a roaring trade with tourists requesting refreshment and accommodation.
I am Jane McPhee and at the age of twenty-six own the only antique book and art gallery in town. It may sound surprising that we have such a business but during the season with the town full of tourists eagerly looking for bargains we do an incredible trade. The shop has been run by my family for four generations and I took over as owner-manager when my parents died while on a fishing outing. Since then with the general shortage of employable people I have run the business with just one twenty-year-old woman helping me and this morning she announced that due to her impending engagement this would be her last summer in the town.
It can be very pleasant eating a plowman's lunch at one of the tables overlooking the beach. We call it the beach, but it really is a small cove with a half-moon gravel shoreline, but it still attracts fossickers and people wishing to sit on a hired chair by the seaside. It was one of these lunchtimes that I noticed a stranger walking slowly along the beach: she was not much taller than five feet three. As she approached the steps leading up to the village, I noticed that she was little more than a vagrant wearing what looked to be an ill-fitting multicoloured tee shirt which was torn down one shoulder which she had repaired with a stapler. Stranger, still she appeared to be wearing a black cotton dress two sizes too big for her which was tied around the waist by a discarded piece of greasy cord. The dress was long hanging well below her knees and on her feet she wore different coloured tennis shoes which were also held on by pieces of colourful cord.
Making the top of the steps she paused to roll a cigarette and so I got to observe the stranger more closely. She was of European origin and although terribly thin, I noticed a true beauty in her features. Her hair which was roughly combed being tied with another length of the same cord was black and long. Although she had tried to repair her tee-shirt it didn't hide the side of a small pale breast with a dark cheeky nipple just visible. As she stood with her legs slightly parted I couldn't take my eyes off her incredible beauty. Her face was round with a small pushed up nose and when she smiled, I noticed that although stained with tobacco her teeth were well-formed. As she was just a matter of feet away from me, I decided to start a conversation but was shocked when she replied, "fuck off cunt."
My trouble is that I am incredibly shy and so hearing her reply I dropped my shoulders huddling over my lunch. On arriving back at work, I asked my assistant if she had noticed the strange woman and she told me that there were rumors of a woman living in the big cave at the southeast end of the beach. Getting up the nerve I asked what she was doing up there, but my assistant was hesitant to reply. It was only that I was infatuated with this woman's beauty that I continued to push for more information and although my assistant was reluctant to tell me I finally broke her resolve. In a half-whisper, she said she was making money giving tourists blow jobs.
Regardless of this information, I was still attracted to the stranger so I decided to ask my assistant if when taking her evening stroll along the beach she could give the girl twenty pounds from asking that she call around to my residence at the rear of the shop. Of course, she was shocked, but I told her that all I wanted to do was help the poor unfortunate woman out of the gutter.
It was nine days before the money was given to the stranger and while taking my lunch she stopped once more to roll a cigarette but this time she shuffled closer and thanking me for the money told me that she couldn't come round to my house until eleven on account that she had a lot of work that evening. Knowing her nature of work and that the town was bursting with tourists I didn't ask for information other than saying that I would be waiting for her.
It was a spectacular evening and the twilight had just faded at ten-thirty five when I heard a soft tapping at my front door. Opening it I found the stranger dressed in more respectable clothes holding a small box of chocolate which she offered me as she stepped into my kitchen. Although she was in better clothing, I noticed that it was still threadbare. Sitting at my old deal kitchen table with a cup of tea I nervously started the conversation.
"Thank you for dropping round."
"I should be the one thanking you after calling you a fucking cunt I'm amazed you want to see me let alone talk with me."
"Listen I have forgotten that so let's forget about it. What I want is to get to know you then I may have something to offer you."
"If you want a fuck then you have to pay three hundred pounds like everyone else."
"I may hope that one day in the future we may fuck but I am not going to pay you. Making love is a thing between consenting adults. For now, let's talk and get to know each other then if I feel confident, I may have something to offer you."
"What do you want to know?"
"How about I start then once you know who I am you can tell me about yourself."
"I am Jane McPhee and I am twenty-six. My family have lived here ever since the first houses were put up: we were fisherman back then."
"Shortly after completing an arts degree my parents were drowned in a fishing tragedy and as the only child, it means that not only am I an orphan but having no known relatives I am alone in this world. I have been managing this shop ever since."
"Will you marry?"
"Not as we know it because I am lesbian something that although the townspeople are okay about, I know that they would never accept me having a relationship with a woman from this village."
"Well that's my story so what about you."
"Hmmm! My story is a little more involved I'm afraid."
"Okay, how about you start tonight, and we set a time for you to explain the rest."
"Well my name is Josephine Jacobs although I am known as Jo and as you can see, I have fallen on hard times ... but it wasn't always like that. I was born in Thailand where my father was heavily involved in trade and so we travelled a lot. As a child I had everything a Kid could want but all this fell apart just after I had turned eighteen: I am also twenty-six. When my parents died, I had a boyfriend who was five years older than me and he promised to help me manage the fifteen million Euros my parents left me. He sure managed it right from under my nose and into his fucking Swiss Bank Account. After that, I had three other short-term relationships all which ended in betrayal and worse: the last man raped me forcing me into bondage servicing people he owed money to."
