When, Sally, who had worked for my employers ever since she had left school but, having been redeployed, was to me, the new receptionist, I really took notice. She was an extraordinarily pretty, slim lass, with long blond locks, sparkly blue eyes, a pert nose with a cutely bulbous tip, slightly younger than I and, unfortunately, possessed of an engagement ring that she displayed with, considerable, pride. Her virtues were many but she could be very argumentative, particularly about literature, and she appeared to have read, and remembered, every work of fiction that had been ever been written in the English language. One afternoon she and I became embroiled in an increasingly heated debate about J.G. Ballard, I'm a fan but, apparently, she had read every single one of his novels too.
"Bet you!" she snapped.
"What you bet?" I snarled, consumed with aggrieved self-righteousness.
She paused to think, for a considerable time, then broke into an evil. "I've spotted you ogling me when you thought that I was not looking. Well now's your chance; if you're right I'll be your slave girl for one night, we leave work, go to your place and we do whatever you want to, until we have to return to work the next morning. But if you're wrong, I introduce you to my Aunt Kate and you have to be her slave boy for the night, right up until I collect you on my way to work, on the following morning."
"Deal." I snapped triumphantly, undressing her mentally. Despite my knowing that I was right she proved me wrong. Auntie's slave for the night, entirely due to my own conceit; there was, I concluded, only one way to withdraw from such a stupid bet with a shred dignity, tough it out and pray that the other party was forced to back-down.
Sally promised me a big soppy consolation kiss if I could specifically manage next Thursday and if, in addition, I would undertake one tiny, but unspecified, favour. As long as it was not too silly I would have anyway but, for me, her promise of a kiss was a definite bonus.
Thursday morning, the butterflies in my tummy gradually evolved into elephants; during the afternoon the elephants began to clump around in ever larger sizes of hobnail boot. My hands shook, my ability to concentrate was destroyed, utterly, I knocked over piles of paper, I fumbled files, their content tumbling everywhere, I still cannot find a spot where I did not splash coffee. Sally would relate nothing about her Aunty Kate, except that when her husband had died the family made sly winks, conjoined with knowing nods and alluded that she had worn him out.
By the time we were walking up the garden path, to a large detached house that was set well back from the road, I was shaking quite visibly; I was terrified. At the front door Sally said, "now you earn your kiss, hold still," and she wrapped a long red ribbon around my neck and tied it in a big bow. She placed a hand on each of my cheeks, glued her lips to mine and, by the time we broke contact, I was sporting a very stiff todger. Sally rang the bell and a slim lady of about fifty answered. "Happy Birthday Auntie Kate, this is Harry. He's your present, he lost a bet and now he has to do whatever you care to ask, until I come and collect him at about seven thirty tomorrow morning. Don't you Harry?"
"Yes Sally," I replied, my manhood wilted. It was not that the woman was ugly or anything, in fact she was quite attractive, in her Mumish way: it was the humiliating way that she was eyeing me up and down, like a dog scrutinising a tasty bone, a bone with lots of meat still left on it. If she had had a tail it would have been wagging.
"So Harry you have to do whatever I ask you to, absolutely anything in its entirety?"
"That's the deal Auntie Kate," I replied. Kate was, I presumed, in her late forties or early fifties, over twice my age at any rate. She was slimish, she had short black hair and brown eyes, not in the least like Sally. Her skin had lost its sheen, her brow had gained a few lines but it was her chin and neck that really gave her age away, that and her grainy hands and wrinkled elbows. She was wearing a black top with a lacy back and denim cut-offs held up by a broad belt. Her legs were still slender and muscular, her thighs firm and lightly tanned. Elderly, yes, but not without attraction.
"What could you have won?"
I blushed, but it was Sally who responded, promptly, to the blunt question "me, I'd be in his flat right now, in his shoes. Except I probably wouldn't because I expect I'd already be stark naked by now."
"Ooh, that kind of anything," her aunt replied with evident relish, "well thank you for such a lovely present Sally and me thinking I would have to spend a boring birthday evening in on my own. I won't invite you in as I suddenly have a lot of things that need attending to, many of them rather urgently."
Sally drifted down the path as I entered the house. "Sally quite likes you Harry, she has told me all about you. If she were to split with that boyfriend of hers you'd have a really good chance there. She is a bit quarrelsome, especially about books, but otherwise she's as nice as she looks and so generous. It was only a few weeks ago that I was telling her how hard it is to find a man who is kind and sensitive, yet has a bit of lead in his pencil."