The second estate agent was in his forties. He had a heavy, ponderous look about him and a blue shadow round his jaws as if her were poorly shaved. His name was Cheetham. It was he who watched her. She looked to be early twenties, seemed nervous, as if she was unsure of herself. They'd been married three months. The husband's name was Christopher. He was in a wheel chair.
"Shall I show Mrs Faysham upstairs?" suggested Cheetham, eyes on Mrs Faysham. The senior agent nodded. "This way," said Cheetham to the newly-wed hiding his pleasure. "What's your name?" he asked as they made their way up the narrow staircase.
"Lillian," she answered.
"Nice name that, Lillian," Cheetham mumbled in gruff good humour as they turned into the right-hand door at the top of the stairs. It was a small bathroom with blue wallpaper and tiles half-way up its height. The ceiling was low. A mug holder with space for two toothbrushes was attached to the wall next to a white-framed mirror on which someone had laboriously hand-painted neat blue flowers. "It's small, but cosy in winter," said Cheetham, squeezing into the small space behind her. She wore a neat grey suit, box jacket buttoned over a white blouse. The skirt was short enough to show how good her legs were. Her stockings were charcoal. Shoes high-healed and black.
Cheetham's stomach lightly touched her lower back and rear. She looked at the mirror. "What happened to your husband?" said Cheetham, making conversation, watching the pretty face in the mirror. She told him it was a ski-ing accident, on their honeymoon, broken pelvis, sounded resentful. "The bed room's in there," said Cheetham, moving the conversation on, inclining his head at the second door at the top of the stairs. He swayed against her as he reached around her to the small glass ball handle of a cabinet to the right and above the sink. She didn't move. He opened the cabinet. On the top shelf was a blue china mug with a broken handle and a red heart, and the name 'Mary' in flowery script. "Plenty room to store things," he said, leaving the door open, dropping his hand to his side.
She looked up at the mug on the topmost shelf.
"Belonged to Mary," said Cheetham, as if it were the punch line of a joke. Lillian Faysham didn't respond. Cheetham glanced between them, the tiny space, the touch of groin to shapely ass. He rotated the hand that had opened the cabinet and gently eased the open palm towards the curve of her butt. The hand was large and the fingers short and square. He moved it gently against her. Compared to the neat mound of her firm rear in grey worsted the invasive hand resembled a red elephant on the flanks of a grey gazelle. Lillian Faysham didn't move. The elephant began to roam the gazelle. "Wonder why they left it?" mused Lillian Faysham studying the mug on the high shelf, seemingly impervious to elephants.
"Have a look," said Cheetham, keeping his hand on her, allowing the fingers to mold and cup. She reached up and in so doing her buttock clutched. Cheetham stretched his neck and rolled his head as if seeking to loosen the constraints of his collar, then his fingers firmly cupped her buttock and gently squeezed. "It's handle's broken," she said, stretched up on tiptoe, fingertips curiously stroking the mug. She seemed to loose her balance, catching herself with a hand on the shelf, her thighs pressed into the basin. Cheetham wrapped a hand around her. It slipped under her jacket.
"I've got you," he said, to reassure her.
"Thank you." Her eyes caught his in the mirror but quickly flipped away, back up to the mug. Her fingers tentatively released the shelf, went back to the mug, closed around it's base -- back up on tiptoes to do so. "Funny thing to leave," she remarked, moving the mug, then moving it back. Cheetham's eyes were on the hair that touched his nose. He was sniffing her as if she were a bitch on heat and he a dog. A mastiff perhaps.
"Maybe they don't want it, cause it's broken," he suggested. Her fingertips ran over the stub of broken china where the handle had been. The hand he had around her flattened over the thin material of her blouse beneath her jacket. It covered her stomach. He eased her back against him.
"I suppose you're right," she said, her voice tight with the strain of reaching up so high, yet she made no move to bring her hand back down. Her other hand was curled around the hand painted frame of the mirror. The hand beneath her jacket moved upwards like a burrowing shrew beneath a grey serge mound. Lillian Faysham swallowed.
"A broken mug's not much use," said Cheetham, as he lowered his face into the long blond hair that cascaded round her head like fluffy seaweed. Her stretched fingers moved absently over the heart on the face of the mug as Cheetham's left hand strayed further in under her jacket. His other hand, his right, the one at her bottom, had taken possession of a tight worsted-covered buttock and was kneading it softly but firmly as one might a block of plasticine, or dough. Lillian Faysham's fingers seemed to slacken in their task. Cheetham's mouth found the newly-wed's ear and his tongue cleared a path through the fluffy curtain of hair to the warmth that was beneath.
"Wonder who Mary is," said Lillian Faysham.
"Some pretty young thing," Cheetham whispered. Then his tongue went into her ear.
She stretched her back and arched her neck and angled her head into the probing tongue as if to impale herself on its wet warm bulk. "Please don't," she whispered.
"Lillian love!" was shouted from downstairs. Her husband, Christopher. "Do you want to come outside and see the garden shed, or will you stay up there?"
Cheetham was aware that the shouted offer signaled the end of his little game with Faysham's wife so by way of fond farewell he quickly ran his hand up her front to her breast and squeezed it hungrily. It prompted a high-pitched gasp from her. Quite loud. Then she called to her husband downstairs, "You go ahead, dear."
Cheetham stared at the face in the mirror, a look of confusion in his eyes. His mouth hung open. His face was flushed. But so too, he noted, was Lillian Faysham's.
"I suppose you're right," the newly-wed said, one hand still at the mirror frame, the other stretched up to the mug on the shelf.
