My On The Job Training

This story, my first for a while, is set in the nineteen eighties and is about a young man who goes to work in his local convenience store, a tiny emporium run by a middle-aged Asian lady.

It contains descriptions of anal sex, so you have been warned.

I hope you enjoy the story and I look forward to feedback, as always.

Sylviafan

I was born in September 1967, so I turned eighteen in September 1985 with still almost a year in school ahead of me before I sat my final exams. Which was all fine because I sort of enjoyed school; I'd got a good social life and plenty of friends and I played a lot of team sports. On top of that my parents had a nice house in a good district of the town so everything was pretty good in that department too. Until my eighteenth birthday that is, when my father announced that now I had 'come of age' he was stopping my weekly allowance. That sucked and it meant that I'd have to go out and earn some money if I wanted to continue enjoying the lifestyle I'd got used to. My dad pointed out, quite reasonably, that most of my friends had part-time jobs delivering newspapers or stocking supermarket shelves and he felt it was time that I started to depend upon my own resources a bit. I couldn't argue with him.

I tried the three supermarkets in town but they weren't taking on any part-timers. I tried some of the bigger stores, then some of the smaller ones. Nearer to Christmas I knew that I'd have no problem in finding something, but in early September there was nothing and I couldn't wait till December - I was broke already. Providence smiled upon me about a week into my penury. It was a Saturday morning and I was at home, mooching around and feeling sorry for myself.

'If you've got nothing to do,' said my mum, 'perhaps you'd like to go round to Sharma's and pick up some bits and pieces.' She gave me a list of about five items, and a twenty-pound note. 'Keep the change,' she said and winked at me.

'Thanks,' I smiled. It was generous of her because the things on the list would come to less than ten quid. It was her way of giving me some money without explicitly undermining my father.

There's a small parade of shops about four hundred yards from our house. I think there's five, altogether: a fish and chippie, a hardware store, a beauty salon, an estate agent and Sharma's. There's a Sharma's in every neighbourhood of every town. It's a convenience store-cum-newsagent-cum-anything else they can cram into the tiny premises like childrens' toys and greeting cards. It was originally a grocer's shop but the old guy who ran it sold it about ten years ago to Mr and Mrs Sharma from Kolkata and they diversified into booze and cigarettes and newspapers and it grew from there.

The Sharmas weren't exactly spring chickens when they took the place over; he looked like he was in his sixties and his wife, although much younger, must have been in her late forties. I was only eight at the time and anyone over the age of thirty looked impossibly old, but as it turned out, my guesses weren't that far out.

Mr Sharma died about two years ago; there was a lavish Hindu funeral and it attracted quite a lot of attention because it was a big novelty in those days. Everyone thought that Mrs Sharma would sell up, but she just carried on as before, except she now did everything in the shop, even though it was open from dawn to dusk every day except Sundays, when trading laws limited when it could open and what she could sell.

Anyway, getting back to the present, I stopped outside the shop and looked at the local wanted/for sale board in the window; there were often some interesting things on it; I'd got my first skateboard through an advert on that board. One item attracted my attention, a handwritten postcard proclaiming 'PART-TIME HELP WANTED - APPLY INSIDE' in thick, black marker pen.

The doorbell clanged as I opened the door. I smiled at Mrs Sharma who was behind the counter and she smiled back, recognising me from many visits over the years. I picked my way through the tiny aisles with their bulging shelves and the piles of things on the floor, seeking and finding the things on mum's list. I placed my items on the counter and Mrs Sharma used a big old electronic calculator to add up the bill before ringing it into an old-fashioned till.

'That's eight pounds and sixty-three pence,' she told me in her thick, Indian Subcontinental accent and I handed her my twenty-pound note which she stuffed into the till and counted out my change. 'Thank you,' she smiled, showing very white teeth against the contrast of her red lipstick and dark skin.

I stood hesitantly for a few seconds until she asked, 'Was there anything else?'

'The note, in the window,' I began, 'saying "part-time help wanted", I wondered what it was.'

'I'm looking for some help in the shop in the evenings and on a Saturday. Why, are you interested?'

'Yes,' I replied and at that moment the doorbell clanged again and a family of four came in, effectively filling the shop.

'Come back at six o'clock this evening,' Mrs Sharma told me.

At six o'clock on the dot I entered the shop again. Mrs Sharma was moving stuff into the back storeroom but when the bell sounded she came through and locked the front door, changing the sign to "Closed". She led me through the shop and into the windowless storeroom which was packed to the ceiling with cardboard boxes and crates. There was also a tiny school desk and a single chair. Mrs Sharma sat in the chair and motioned me to sit on a stack of crates of baked beans.

'So you're interested in coming to work for me?' she began. 'I've seen you around for years, but I'm afraid I don't know your name.'

'Martin Price,' I supplied.

'And how old are you, Martin?' she asked, looking at me with her dark, heavily made-up eyes. I later learned that the black make-up was kohl.

'Eighteen. I'm still at school I added.'

'Very good,' she said, half to herself. 'Now, the hours are from four to six on weekdays and eight till six on a Saturday with half an hour for lunch; the work is serving in the shop, helping to unload the delivery vans and stocking the shelves. Do you mind hard work, Martin, because those are my busiest times?'

That was twenty hours, if you discounted the lunch break, rather more than I had planned on doing. But I could get to the shop from school easily by four o'clock on a weekday and I'd be free by six. As for Saturday, I'd resigned myself to losing that.

'Hard work doesn't bother me Mrs Sharma,' I told her.

'Good,' she replied. 'Do you have any questions for me?'

'What are the wages?'

'One pound and fifty pence an hour.'

I did a rapid mental calculation. That was nearly thirty quid a week, more than I got from my dad.

'That sounds reasonable,' I said, trying to be cool.

'Alright,' said Mrs Sharma, 'can you start on Monday?'

Thus ended my very first job interview and two days later, instead of going home at the end of school, I went round the corner to Sharma's where Mrs Sharma gave me a grey nylon work coat and, in between serving customers, showed me around the shop and the storeroom and the little yard at the back. She also taught me how to use the till and how to keep an eye on youngsters who came in to steal sweets. 'Call up the stairs if you want me, Martin,' she said and then she left me to it and went through a door in the storeroom and up the staircase into her flat which, like the flats of all the shops on the parade, consisted of two floors above the premises.

And that was the extent of my training as a retail assistant. The work was generally boring with interludes of frenzied activity if there were four or five customers waiting to be served. There was also the distraction of customer rudeness and the occasional shoplifter, not to mention regular attempts by boys, obviously under eighteen, to buy alcohol. They were usually local and I knew most of them and knew their ages but they seemed to think I'd be a soft touch, although I never was and after a few weeks they mostly stopped trying it on.

Saturdays was busy pretty much from the time we opened at eight until we closed at six. Mrs Sharma would serve customers while I stocked the shelves and sorted out the storeroom, so we were spending a lot of time in quite close proximity, with the inevitable result that I started sneaking peeks at her. I was well aware that she was in her middle to late fifties, but I was eighteen and seething with hormones. Furthermore, I was still a virgin; I went to an all-boys school and had had only limited exposure to girls of my own age. So the female form, whether clad or unclad, and regardless of age, held a fascination for me. In fact if anything, I found the idea of an older woman even more appealing than my contemporaries. An Oedipus complex undoubtedly, looking back. In fact I must admit to some pretty inappropriate thoughts about my mother!

Not that there was much to see with my employer; she remained firmly clad at all times, almost always in heavy, full-length brocade dresses that looked like they'd been made from furniture upholstery. They were bright shiny-red or green or blue and featured embroidered flowers or birds or intricate geometric patterns. The dresses, which were usually high-necked and long-sleeved, did a good job of concealing Mrs Sharma's figure from my prying eyes, but I became expert at engineering situations where I could look at her as she bent over or knelt down or stretched to a high shelf. At these times, if I was lucky, I would see, for a few seconds, the curve of her hip or buttock under the heavy fabric and the muted shape of her breasts as she reached to the top shelf of the wines and spirits display for a bottle of whisky for a customer. It wasn't exactly a centre-page spread but I realised that she was full-figured, without being fat, and full breasted.

These glimpses of almost nothing had a cumulative and tantalising effect on me, probably more so than if she'd worn a mini-skirt and T-shirt. The allure of the unknown, I suppose, and the allure of a lady from a different cultural background - plus one who was probably fifteen years older than my mum! But it wasn't just her body, Mrs Sharma was very attractive in a severe sort of way; she reminded me of my statistics teacher, a forty-something married lady who was the fantasy of most of the pupils in the school. She had the same facial structure: high cheekbones and a straight nose above a generous mouth with sculpted lips. And Mrs Sharma had amazing hair, too: very long and jet black with no trace of grey. She wore it loose, mainly, but sometimes she would pile it on top of her head and secure it with a coloured scarf or wear it in a bun. Her skin was a dark honey colour and smooth; she had a few fine lines around her eyes but that was about all. And her eyes were dark, almost black and very penetrating; I found it hard to hold her gaze.

In fact I was a bit in awe of Mrs Sharma; thrilled and attracted by her hidden sexuality and her air of authority. So the very idea of making a pass at her was utterly absurd and unthinkable. I had to content myself with nightly fantasies about making love with her as I masturbated, my fevered imagination giving colour and resolution to her concealed figure. I wondered what her vagina would look like, whether she had a thick, black bush of hair; I imagined her breasts, heavy and pendulous with big, dark nipples. I imagined thrusting myself into her and squirting my seed into her and at that point I usually came and splashed spunk over my abdomen and chest, gasping her name in the darkness of my bedroom.

So although my passion was completely unrequited, I enjoyed my new job and the contact with my employer. But our relationship was very firmly one of employer and employee; she called me Martin and I called her Mrs Sharma; I didn't even ask her first name. If she told me to do something, I did it, without question. On Saturdays, after we had shut the shop up, I transferred the alcohol and tobacco from the shop to the more secure storeroom while she did the weekly accounts. After that she would hand me an envelope with her slim, caramel-coloured fingers with their red-painted nails, and sometimes we would talk. I told her a bit about my life at school and she talked about her childhood in Kolkata and the noise and the heat and the dirt and how strange it had been coming to England in the nineteen-seventies after more than forty years of living in India. And sometimes, especially if I'd been secretly looking at her backside or her breasts, she would look at me with her dark eyes and I would shiver and look away.

September turned into October and then into November and the days got shorter so that it was dark when we shut the shop. One Saturday, in late November, we stood facing each other as the last customer left. We'd been on our feet right from the start of the day without even a lunch break and I was starving hungry and exhausted so I could only imagine how my employer felt.

'Well that was a day and a half,' I said with feeling.

'Wait until Christmas,' Mrs Sharma replied. She paused, looking at me with her dark eyes. 'Would you like something to eat and a drink?' she asked. Nothing had ever been offered in the past.

'Thank you,' I said, surprised. 'That would be lovely.' I followed her up the mysterious staircase into her flat above where she led me into her sitting room and switched on a couple of table lamps.

'Sit down,' she nodded at a leather settee and disappeared out into what was, I assumed, her kitchen. I heard the clatter of dishes and general food preparation noises while I looked around the room. It was cluttered with ornaments, pictures, photographs and heavy furniture in dark wood. I gazed around and studied some of the framed photographs. One showed a couple on what was evidently their wedding day. The likeness was still clear after the passing of time and it was obvious that the bride was my employer, then about twenty, I guessed, and strikingly attractive. I was still looking at it when she came back into the room with plates and a tray of samosas.

'I looked a bit different in those days,' she smiled sadly as she passed me a plate.

'Not that different,' I told her, daringly. She looked at me for a couple of seconds.

'What would you like to drink? I'm having a glass of red wine.'

'Oh, that would be lovely,' I said, surprised. I'd assumed Mrs Sharma didn't drink alcohol. She disappeared again and came back with a two big glasses of a dark red wine. I must have still had that stupid surprised look on my face because she looked at me and said, 'Don't worry, Martin, I'm not a very strict Hindu and besides, it's not completely forbidden.' I suddenly felt young and callow and I took a big sip of my drink to cover my embarrassment and choked as I gulped it down.

The samosas were delicious and I wolfed them down and thanked Mrs Sharma and she smiled again from her chair and topped up my glass and we talked about the day we'd had and the customers and the weather. 'Do you have a girlfriend, Martin,' she asked suddenly in her strong, Indian accent.

I blushed. 'Not at the moment,' I said, implying that his was a temporary state of affairs. She nodded slowly as if to herself.

'I know you look at me sometimes,' she said unexpectedly and my guts froze. There were a few seconds of silence as Mrs Sharma looked at me and I tried to think of something to say, feeling my cheeks burn. The moment was broken by my employer draining her wineglass and standing up.

'You will have to excuse me, Martin. I'm very tired and I still have the accounts to do.' I stood up and she led me downstairs and into the storeroom, dimly lit by one naked lightbulb, both the door to the shop and the door to the back yard closed. I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of Mrs Sharma's presence. I could have reached out and touched her; I could smell her scent and I felt dizzy as she turned to look at me, her eyes black and unreadable, her face dark in the poor light.

'I don't mind you looking at me, Martin,' she said quietly. Then she stepped forward and my world turned upside down and inside out as she put her hands on my chest and pushed me quite forcibly against the door to the courtyard. I was rigid with shock, too surprised to feel any sexual arousal, feeling her press me to the unyielding door, her face almost level with mine and about six inches away in the gloom of the storeroom.

Then she kissed me. Mrs Sharma actually kissed me, tilting her head and leaning forward to press her mouth firmly against mine. I felt her full lips against mine, firm and dry and warm, I felt them move, working against my mouth, teasing, caressing, opening. I felt her tongue slide between my lips and I started to feel a surge of arousal just as she broke off and pulled me away from the door, unlocking it to expose the November night with its star-spangled sky. I stumbled out into the cold air and as the door shut behind me I heard Mrs Sharma's voice. 'Goodnight, Martin. I'll see you on Monday.'

I must have masturbated ten times between getting home on that Saturday evening and Monday morning. I was in a constant state of tension, my mind occupied only by the kiss, running it over and over in my mind, trying to recall how it had felt. In fact I had been frozen in shock; I hadn't even put my arms around her, so it was hard to remember the sensation of her lips against mine, that faint smell of cloves. And as Sunday turned into Monday and the school day dragged by, the tension increased as I imagined what the second kiss would be like. Although my virginity was firmly intact, I had kissed girls of my own age and I reckoned I was experienced enough to kiss Mrs Sharma with confidence and ability. If there was going to be a second kiss, I kept reminding myself.

It was quiet when I got to the shop at four o'clock on Monday. Mrs Sharma was sitting down behind the counter reading a newspaper. I greeted her and she stood up and folded the newspaper and returned it to the rack by the till. My heart raced and blood thudded in my ears as I went round the counter and stood next to my employer.

'Did you have a good weekend, Mrs Sharma,' I asked her a little breathlessly.

'It was alright,' she replied, neutrally.

I'd been psyching myself up to this moment for two days, now I leaned forward to kiss my employer, but she just moved her head back. 'Not in the shop, Martin,' she said bluntly.

Crestfallen and embarrassed I went into the back yard and started moving the day's deliveries into the storeroom. What was I thinking of, trying to kiss her as soon as I got into the shop? Where's your cool? And now you've blown it, I told myself. Except that she'd said, 'not in the shop', which could mean elsewhere, like in her flat.

I tried to avoid Mrs Sharma for the next two hours, which was difficult because the areas we operated in were so small and cramped. Six o'clock finally came and the front door was locked and the little sign turned to "Closed" and I was taking the booze and tobacco into the storeroom while my boss did the day's accounts. When we'd finished there was a pregnant silence as we stood by the counter, me looking at the floor and aware that Mrs Sharma was looking at me.

'Do you want to do more kissing?' she asked and I gulped and my guts deliquesced.

'Yes, please, Mrs Sharma,' I managed to gasp out.

In silence she led me up the stairs to her flat and indicated to me to sit on the leather sofa. She was wearing a patterned silk headscarf and now she untied it and let her hair cascade down her back in a shiny black wave before sitting down next to me on the settee. I raised my arm to put it around her and draw her to me but she was ahead of me, half-turning and putting her hands on my shoulders, pulling me to her, her head tilted, her lips parted, eyes closed. Our mouths engaged and again I felt the warmth and firmness of her lips and I smelled her scent, spicy and exotic and above all I felt her

physical presence

almost overwhelming me. I put one arm around her, resting my hand on her shoulder, on the silky fabric of her dress. The other arm I put round her waist, holding her loosely as our mouths twined together, lips mashed against lips, tongues probing and tasting, drinking each other's saliva.