Sympathy & French

They sat in their usual place; the regulars had got used to them, and they were friendly in return without joining in. They sat close together, fondly, she with her New Zealand sauvignon and he with his pint of lager. They sat with the newspaper sometimes, and she did the crossword while he read the sport, or more often that not they just used to look around them at the others in the bar and talk quietly between themselves.

"I want her. Look at those lips."

"You're shameless. She looks so dumb."

"She does not, it's just the fashion with girls these days. Who do you fancy anyway?"

"I don't fancy any of this lot, dear! I've got better taste."

"Oh come off it, you tart. Any bulging pecs, any prominent lunch boxes you want to get your hands on...?"

Matt would have blushed at that if it was new to him, but this was their banter most nights, with all their topics of conversation quite oblivious of it. Matt and Leanne were such a contented-looking couple, mid thirties and quietly dressed, looking into each other's eyes from time to time with flashes of delight, that few would believe their secret if told, let alone guess it. They'd been living together for six years, and this was now their fourth move. This was not the closest pub to their flat but seemed to be the nicest around.

"Okay," Matt conceded. "He's rather tasty. Green T-shirt."

"Oh yes. Shaved head not really your thing though."

"It doesn't look right on him, I'm guessing it's just a fashion thing. He was a schoolboy two years ago and now he's rebelling. Nice body."

"Think you've got a chance?" Leanne asked.

"Nah, no more than you and your bimbo."

"God I want her. Those lips on my pussy. I don't care how dumb she is."

"Well I want an early night tonight, and we're not going to score, so how about it? Or do you want another drink?"

Just at that moment the answer was decided as a party of four young people almost cartwheeled in. What had been a quiet pub of mainly old men was filled with laughter and vitality. Leanne gave a suppressed whoop, and gasped, "Two for me and two for you. And I'm buying!"

Before Matt could stand up, she was moving towards the bar, where she was able to stand and wait behind the puppyish antics of the newcomers. What particularly interested her was that not only were the two girls linking arms and hugging as they told secrets, a common enough sight, but the boys were also in contact with each other. It was nothing to arouse the suspicion of the old drinkers, but it was an ease and sensitivity that gave her hope.

She concentrated on her own pair: one sultry and willow-thin and almost gothic but so fragile and Edwardian, with scarlet lipstick, a Laura Ashley skirt, and fluttering jade earrings. Her eyebrows kept raising in surprise, her wide lips kept bursting apart in laughter as her friend told her things and almost kissed her in the ear to do it, so sensual was the telling. And the other, plump and short, a mane of gold hair streaked with pink and green, and piercing dark blue eyes that roved all over her friend as she spoke.

Leanne, enchanted and half intoxicated by their flowing beauty, overheard snippets of how Marilyn would do this, and Jane was coming back then, and where Jill had bought it, but to her satisfaction no secrets about boys. She was annoyed when another barman appeared and served her; she'd been hoping to languish behind them for some time.

As she made to go, they both looked up at her, one taking the cue from the other, and in the same way they both smiled, an unspoken apology for silliness and high spirits. Leanne gave them a light, motherly smile and trotted back to her table, feeling her legs slick with desire against each other.

"I need sex

now

," she hissed to Matt, who had been looking on with much amusement.

"Well

I

can't give to you," he drawled. He watched her shift uncomfortably and adjust her dress, guessing what she really wanted to fiddle with. It was dark enough in this corner for wiggling not to be embarrassing, but not enough to hide anything more overt. "They're awfully young."

"They looked at me like I was their mother's friend," she said miserably. "Oh Matt, I think I

am

old enough to be their mother. How old are they, do you think?"

"Legal. Possibly."

She looked him in the eye. "Uncalled for."

"I meant drinking age, why, what did you think?" he said innocently.

"Oh of course they're not," she snapped, looking back at them. "Oh damn, and look, Roddy's ID'ing them, he's going to throw them out. Oh well, that was short."

"Well I'll be. Eighteen."

"Ooh! They can stay! We can look!" she squealed. "Do you like your two boys? I've been saving them specially for you. If they're eighteen that means I'm definitely

not

old enough to be their mother."

"Not for another--"

"Don't you even think it! Aren't they beautiful? Don't you just want to take that dark girl to your bed and--"

"Well no actually. But she is gorgeous, I take your point. Mm, that muscly one, I bet his bum's nice and tight."

"I can see it is from here."

"Bum

hole

, dear, bum hole. I was trying to keep the tone refined. I can just feel myself sliding up him now."

"God we're going to be in a mess when we get home," Leanne sighed.

"We'll just have to fuck each other."

"Don't joke about it. I've got to have someone with a tongue, and Margaret's on holiday for another week, she's the only one I know here. I might have to force you."

"Yuk."

* * *

Leanne had a chance to talk to the girls very briefly as they went to the toilet, made a little joke, and got a couple more brilliant smiles, and that made her linger in the cubicle, fingering herself, but she dared not bring it to completion. As she came out to wash her hands, the dark girl was waiting alone, idly contemplating her face in the mirrors, not in vanity but as if searching for answers. Seeing Leanne behind her, the girl beamed once more.

"It was very quiet before you four arrived," said Leanne, trying to return this as brightly as she could. "We were just saying it was so dull we should go home."

"We're too loud, everyone hates us."

"I'm sure they don't!"

"Term's finished so we'll be in here all the time now. That'll stir up the hornet's nest."

Leanne smiled to herself at the expression and looked down at her hands as she scrubbed, to stop herself staring. After a short time she dared look up again to view the lovely and soulful face. "Term? What are you studying?"

"English and French, mainly. I like Molière. I

love

Molière."

"I love French too," Leanne said, before she could stop herself, having started by meaning it quite innocently. They both doubled up immediately in laughter and were like that when the plump girl came out and immediately demanded to be let into the joke.

"Nessa, Nessa, tell me!"

"We share an interest, we both like Frenchies," said her friend.

"Oh who doesn't," the other said, turning the tap on, and wrinkling her nose, but Leanne thought she detected a faint blush when her friend Nessa added a rather careful and pointed comment.

"It has to be someone who knows how to do it right."

"Someone gentle," Leanne offered.

Nessa nodded and turned back to look at her friend, as she went across to the hand dryers. It was a slight movement of friendship, surely, nothing else, but Leanne couldn't help observing it and thinking of more.

"She's nice," she said in a low tone. The girl looked up at her with almost a question. "You both are," Leanne said to defuse the energy, suddenly feeling that if there was anything there she was intruding. "I'm glad we'll be seeing you in here again. We'll be in too sometimes. We're new here and this seems the nicest pub."

"It is," she confirmed solemnly, offering her hand as Leanne began to leave. "Vanessa."

"Leanne."

"And that's Chess."

"Chess?" said Leanne, feeling a hot soft hand, slightly slick, hover within hers. Vanessa was looking back again, and Chess was coming up to her. They stood shoulder to shoulder and Chess brought her chin down so she was almost smelling Vanessa's neck.

"Katy Chester," she said, "but Katys are ten a penny."

Vanessa's hand was withdrawn, and so was she, seeming to concentrate on Chess. Something was making them both quiet, their exuberance having been replaced by a private communion. Leanne made her excuses and turned away, once more getting that slight sense of needing to leave them. And though she knew she was fantasizing all this, she now felt that if they were doing anything together, it was a very recent discovery, one they had not yet come to terms with.

* * *

At home, she tried once more to explain her feelings about it to Matt. They had finished their meal, taken glasses of Rioja to the coffee table, and had the television down low. Matt had an arm round Leanne and was idly stroking her upper arm with one finger. She felt soothed and comforted by the softness of his breath as it occasionally reached her skin.

They often sat like this, more intimate and affectionate than they ever showed in public, discussing the events of the day and their hopes and disappointments. At the end of the evening they kissed lightly on the cheeks and departed to their separate beds.

Sometimes, as tonight, when loneliness was too prominent in both their hearts, they went to the same bed, and lay naked and warm together, spooned or entangled. He admired her perfect breasts and sometimes lay his head between them or caressed them with his fingertips. She snuggled their pubic regiions together, and they both ignored his erection, her wetness, until they went away, and then they resumed being comfortable with each other.

* * *

Their next few meetings with the girls were socially inconsequential, except that they came by the table and talked to Matt too. They weren't always with the same company they'd been with before, other boys and other girls, but they were together each time.

Except one day Vanessa was with a large group of others and no sign of Chess. And very miserable she looked too. She was snappish with one of the boys when they went up to the bar together, and ignored Leanne. At one point they happened to be in the toilets at the same time and Leanne risked a "Hi. No Chess tonight?"

"No," Vanessa said with surly vehemence, pushing past Leanne and striding away without another look. But a few minutes later she was back at the table, avoiding Matt's eyes, and asking if she could talk to Leanne privately.

Leanne looked around for an unoccupied nook but finding none suggested they walk outside for a little. The moon was new, the stars were cold, the air brought freshness into Vanessa's lungs. Already on the edge of tears she apologized for her behaviour but couldn't bring herself to start any more. Eventually, when Vanessa began shivering with the cold, being dressed too lightly for walking around like this, Leanne took the matter into her own hands, and the young woman into her arms.

"Tell me," she said. She could hear tears well up, she could feel the shaking that was not cold. She enjoyed the radiant warmth of Vanessa's body soaking into her, ran a hand down her bare arm, drew her closer.

"It's all over," Vanessa said at last. Then the tears came freely and nothing more could she say.

Leanne was flooded with a new affection for her. After much sniffling, hugging, choking, caressing, sighing, and patting, she pieced together the story from a few disjointed things Vanessa said. Amid other issues of trust, and conflict of taste (Chess refused to go to anything classical), and plain fear of discovery, was the carnal fact that Chess could not bring herself to eat out her new lover: kissing, and breasts, and the awed fascination of having it done to her, but she could not bridge that physical thing.

"Oh Nessa, Nessa, sweet Nessa, who could refuse you?" said Leanne at last, holding up the child-face pinched between her hands. It was wet and puffy-eyed but still heart-stoppingly beautiful, and Leanne's heart began racing as her sympathy turned back to desire. For Vanessa was looking at her with an O, a wondering O of a mouth, not yet parted into a smile, but holding her eyes unflinching. The girl's hands gripped her back just a little harder.

They were away from streetlights, in an alley between dark houses with neat gardens. No-one had passed for a long time. It was getting late, time to be getting back and going home. They stood there looking into each other's eyes.

A hundred thoughts flickered through Vanessa's mind but two were strongest and most conflicting, that she knew so little of this older woman and couldn't risk making another mistake, with her of all people; and that she was perhaps being offered the love she had just discovered she desired, how much, how richly. For all their gazing, they were in darkness, and it was so hard to see into another's heart with such cues.

"Can I take you home?" Leanne whispered.

"Mine?" Vanessa breathed.

"Mine."

The space between their mouths fled into the night. Their lips touched, and made fire, and lit their nights. Every minute, every hour, every day they stood like that, sinking into the ocean of their mouths.

On the way back Leanne explained about Matt. Vanessa said goodbye to her friends, joined Matt and Leanne at their table, and when they finished their drinks they went home. She phoned her parents. Matt hugged her and went to bed. Neither Vanessa nor Leanne knew quite what to do next.

They were close together on the sofa but not touching except for stockinged feet rubbing one on another.

"I wish Chess was here," said Vanessa. "Friends with both of us."

"Friends?" Leanne said, amused as well as touched.

"Well..." Vanessa amended, her drawn face breaking out into a faint smile.

"I'd like her here too, but not just as friends."

"When I tell her about you..." she began but then stopped, open-mouthed, guilty.

"Tell her what you like, darling, I don't want to stop you. Do you think you'll be friends again?"

"Oh yes, yes, I know we will. It was just... I rushed her, I expect."

Leanne leant across, kissed Vanessa on the forehead -- Vanessa responded, they kissed on the lips, they parted uncertainly. They kissed again, wet tongues, hot cheeks. Liquid legs, flushed with heat, fluttering with hope.

"Mind if I rush

you

?"

She took Vanessa into the bedroom and took off all her clothing, piece by piece, stopping to gaze as each flank and hillock was revealed. She did not touch her until she had then made herself naked, and then she approached Vanessa.

Their breasts joined. Leanne tasted Vanessa's breasts. She stroked her hand over Vanessa's buttocks. With all this flesh, where to start? They kissed, they drank from their tongues, and Leanne slid a finger inside her love. It slipped around and it and two more delved deep.

On the bed, legs spread, arched, at last Nessa felt what it was like, a tongue questing within her, a face rejoicing in her wetness. Two hours together they licked and dived and clung, inhaling and infusing in their scents, and senses, and sexes. Then they slept, lovers, and when they woke they began to make love in earnest.