Chapter 6

At Redprick University, if I may coin a name, my name was now habitually coupled with Lena's, almost as often as I was coupled with Lena; which was in rooms, railway compartments, shop doorways, dry ditches and the college refectory (though not at mealtimes), sitting, standing or lying as the opportunity afforded. Rarely in bed, for we rarely had a chance.

We did it with zest, and made it a point of honour not to speak of love. If we were separated for a day, we wrote notes to each other-about a new gramophone record, or the syllabus of the debating club.

But for my self-esteem, and the exercise of freedom, and for the feeding of that healthy appetite between my thighs which asked for a less monotonous diet, I had to hunt up some new women for myself. Lena was all very well, but life is short, one might die tomorrow.

I felt that what I really wanted was a mature woman, say thirty years of age, who could positively teach a young man something new. A provincial Messalina, with gilded nipples and breath that smelt of Spanish fly, would do very nicely. It was only necessary to look around.

Meanwhile, my only alternative to Lena was dreaming: either by night, of my usual exotic variety of loves, or by day, often lying in a steaming hot bath, fondling my erection with lazy, loving fingers, till some sudden vision, the Venus of the beach, or simply the blushing and outraged mother of the baby next door, would start me frigging like mad, racing to a climax and curdling the scented water of my bath.

I was particularly angry with' myself for never making advances to that outraged mother, as the more I thought about it, the stronger my conviction that her shame had sowed the seed in her mind, and that if I had boldly been my shameless self I could have laid her. She was at an age when many women begin to develop a secret desire for very young lovers, and I was well enough developed, before I left home, to have given and received joy in that quarter. Ah, well, we all have something to regret

Did Lena open her legs to other students before I knew it? Looking back, I can only wonder.

A party was the turning point. It was to be on a Sunday night, at the house of a student fortunate enough to be a native of the same town-and his parents were away for a long week-end. He was laying in drink, to which we contributed in advance; drink was cheap in those golden days. Even penurious students could afford to get drunk; they did not have to rely on rock-n'-roll and Coca-cola to "send" them.

"I'll collect you and take you along," I promised Lena.

It happened that the previous day, Saturday, I went on an expedition with a local antiquarian society to see an old abbey of the north. A long railway journey-I always like long railway journeys-and adult company, instead of students, a nice change. For once, I was not actually thinking of cunt! I was looking forward to a chaste outing of scenery, conversation, historical interest. Besides, I was sore and satisfied from a heavy bout of the previous night.

But...

It turned out to be one of those days, common in lusty youth, when I was randy without cause. On the way to the station I kept noticing women's legs, the way their arses swayed, the pleasant bouncing of their breasts, and finding far too many of them attractive. I knew what this signified, and it worried me, for I could foresee no outlets.

But one never knows.

We filled one of the railway coaches, one of the saloon kind with little tables. I knew a number of people, and we talked away merrily. My eye flitted from one middleaged woman to another, but I did not see my Messalina among these amiable schoolmistresses and wives of architects. They were all over thirty, the right age-group, but they were bread and butter types, in sensible shoes; their breath would smell of glycerine-of-thymol and their cunts of carbolic soap; not my favourite aphrodisiacs, those. It should be easy to forget my randy mood, in this company, though the train motion kept me half-erect.

I was never one of those youngsters who wear jockstraps or specially-designed underpants to ensure that they do not get the horn when dancing or riding on a bus. I took all sex sensations with thankfulness. I was more in sympathy with the tactics of a youth I used to know who deliberately unbuttoned his flies before entering the room at adolescent parties, to draw the whispering attention of the girls; though whether it led him to the goal, I can't say.

Suddenly among the company I saw someone entirely different from the rest, and my heart missed a beat.

Was she thirty? She was not. She was fourteen, and looked less.

She had a soft, pointed, babyish face, fair hair and blue eyes, and her name was Hope. Her surname, alas, was something like Stubbings, and she was the daughter of the secretary of the society, who wore thick pebble glasses and said everything twice. Hope stood on one foot, tapping and turning the toe of the other, making shy answers to a motherly dear who was asking the usual questions about school and what-do-you-wantto-be? The girl had flat heels, bare calves above her short white socks, a dark blue pleated skirt, a white blouse lightly caging a pair of just-developed breasts like fluttering doves, and a school blazer. There was not a single point of distinction anywhere, she might have been any one of a million English misses. But at sight of her, my dream of Messalina flew out of the window, something went soft in my stomach, and something went hard in my trousers. I talked about vegetarianism to the woman at my side, without taking my eyes for an instant from little Hope.

But on the whole outward journey I never got a chance to speak to her at all. I passed her, going to and from the train lavatory, and to the buffet. She gave me a smile now and then-mere friendliness, but I felt very grateful for that. Once I passed her in the narrow space between the seats, when she was standing up, and my loins ran over the soft hills of her buttocks and the valley between, with conscious pressure; and I let my hand trail across the same geography, lightly, after them. She smiled again, over her shoulder. She was so innocent, I think she would have smiled the same way if I had put my prick into her hand. For two pins I would have done that, and more.

We arrived. We viewed the old abbey and ate lunch at the flashy hotel.

Now at last I made some progress. We were the youngest there, and it seemed natural to everyone that we should talk to each other, walk round the ruins together, and sit side by side for our meal. Our elders began using phrases like, "you young people." They even poured out some wine for us at luncheon, which was unwise of them! They did not know I had already stolen a kiss, lagging behind the others among the ruins. She gave it so nicely, and let me crush her in my arms. I pushed my tongue between her lips, and probed masterfully with it dll she got the idea and parted her little white-teeth to admit it, though I don't think she had ever had that sort of kiss before. Her mouth was small and hot.

At lunch I tried to sparkle and she laughed at everything. Her own remarks were all absolutely common place, but she said them as though they were original, and I was enchanted. She readily promised to sit next to me on the way back, if she could get away from her father. "I'll ask him," she said, and she did so, with great simplicity. With equal innocence, he agreed, and I took care that our seat was at the farthest point from his.

We sat in the extreme corner. The wine and fresh air had left Hope perfectly dizzy. She lolled against me, smiling, and I kissed her. Somebody on the opposite side of the carriage said: "Hey, steady, there!" in a half-joking reproof, and we simply smiled and did it again.

Before the end of the journey, there was a real rumble of indignation at our end of the coach, and people were saying, "Well, really!" and "It's shameless!" The more acute observers had noticed that I had got my hand into the armhole of the blouse, inside the concealing blazer, and had that virginal breast in my hot palm. Hope's willing cooperation was a great help. If she had struggled, I could never have managed, as I astonishingly did, later in the journey, to worm my hand round behind her, under her skirt, slow inch by inch, and inside her pants. Moving with infinite caution, taking my time, I got to her slit. She had hardly any hair, and the lips were firm as a toddler's. They were soon wet on my fingertips.

Her body simply curled against me, with artless pleasure, our flesh was in contact and accord from top to toe, her head lay drowsily on my shoulder, and I kissed her whenever I felt like it, on the silk-soft cheek or the mouth. We were so close, we were almost inside each other, almost one. I doubt if any of those shame-ridden and embarrassed fellow-passengers of ours detected that I was feeling the soft parts of this wonderful child, and that she was allowing herself to enjoy it, or that for a time I held her hand under mine on my thigh, and secretly guided her fingers over the shape of my prick, which she explored thus passively but without coyness. They cannot have known those facts, or they would have created a real stink, I suppose. But they sensed our bodily intimacy, quite strongly enough to upset their moral applecart. It began to sound like a lynching party by the time the train was in the station.

I risked a last quick kiss before she went back to her father, and then I hurried away. My head was singing with delight. Hope had promised to go with me to the party the following night, if her father would let her. I said I would ring up and find out if it was all right.

Funny about those dear excursionists (with whom I had now lost my young-man's popularity for good): at the beginning, when we two were being shy and sentimental with each other (as it seemed to them), we were love's young dream incarnate, and they adored us. But when we made it obvious that our bodies as well as our idealistic little souls were warming up, that we actually felt desire for each other and didn't mind who noticed it, the bile and gall of their life's frustration rose against us. They hated us, venomously, out of their cleanly respectability.

I wanted that child madly, I wanted to push my cock in her to the hilt, do you hear, you flat-heeled sensible teachers and virtuous fathers? You are protecting her innocence, aren't you? What if she doesn't want it protecting?

Is she too young? Not a bit. I make my own age of consent. Through Hope's sweet body, which is fresh as calves' breath, alive as a farmyard buttercup, Nature is giving her consent, and that's good enough for me.

If I could have got her to that party I would have seduced her like a shot. (What, and spoiled her for marriage ? Nonsense, educated her for marriage. Virginity ruins a mort of marriages, don't the experts tell us so?)

But it was not to be.

Was I mad in the first place to even contemplate taking her to that student party, flaunting her before that ribald crew, and knowing that Lena would be there, perhaps angry and jealous? Why not take her to the pictures instead? Because I had a scheme. I knew what I was doing. At that party there would be drink (she had taken wine on the excursion) and beds. I could think of nowhere else where I would have such an opportunity. Not for a long time, at any rate; and in case I wanted to strike while my iron was hot, and she was soft. I feared the word might go round from the members of the society to Hope's parents, and their vigilance be aroused.

I was afraid this might have already happened by the time I telephoned the next day; and I was slightly nervous as I lifted the receiver. Her mother answered. Yes, Hope had asked her about the party: was I sure it would be "nice"? Her father was away preaching, he was a lay preacher, and the timid mother had to make up her own mind on this difficult problem: "You will take care of her, won't you, she's only a little girl?" The best, never fear.

I turned up for Hope with a taxi (which I couldn't really afford) and repeated my reassurance to the mild mother. I entirely forgot that I had said I would collect Lena and take her to the party.

Hope was in a pink organdie affair, which ought to have made her look grown up but didn't. She was a very different girl, and my heart sank: I was going to have to work hard to get her to relax. She was nervous, afraid of having her frock crushed perhaps, but unyielding in my taxi embraces. She submitted, but with a slight struggle, to my kisses, but only on the lips, refusing to part her teeth. She let me caress the shape of her breast, through her frock, but as a concession, not as though she enjoyed it; and she would no longer laugh at anything. Her only remark about the party was the discouraging one, "I can't stay late."

Wait till we get there, I thought. We were late already, as I had been unable to get a taxi by telephone and went into the town to pick one up-a ridiculous manoeuvre; actually, I must have been dawdling on purpose, from obscure motives.

There it was; but I wished she would ease up a little before we arrived among a crowd who would be an hour's drinking ahead of us.

We arrived at the grey-brick Victorian house: jazz was boom-booming and chortling within, and all the windows were lit up. The front door was open, and somebody saw us and ran out with a whoop, just as I was paying the driver.

The somebody was Lena. She appeared to be dressed in a torn veil, the colour of yolk of egg, which adhered to her at some points and left her at others. Her left breast was showing, like the shell of the said egg. She had black high-heeled shoes, on which, being wildly drunk, she rocked perilously. In one hand she had a half-empty glass of Scotch. She waved to me, then took in Hope at a glance, and let out a laugh like a maenad. I always thought that Lena had the most abandoned laugh I ever heard. She grew into a quiet, studious person, with a discreedy complex love-life, but always if something touched the right button she could let out that hair-raising laugh, with the effect of a sexbomb exploding.

Hope looked at her, with terror and dismay, jumped back into the taxi and told him to drive her home.

I was shrieking, "No-please-Hope-stop" but I knew it was all up. The taxi gathered speed, and I had lost the little girl forever. Lena, who had unwittingly helped all those flat-heelers to save the virgin from a fate worse than death, looked bewildered, gazing into vacancy. Then she let out her laugh again, and screamed, "Bob-bin, Bob-bin! who was it, what happened ?"

"Come in, Lena, and shut the door," I said. "Where can I get a drink?"

It was hardly possible for me to reproach Lena! But if she had consciously planned her effect, she could not have done better.

I found my host and began drinking and presently dancing, too, though not with Lena. I was feeling sulky where she was concerned. Not less so when I saw her soon afterwards in the embrace of a brawny footballplaying idiot whom I had always despised. His hairy hand was holding that wayward breast which refused to stay in the veil. I went back and furiously mixed my drinks. The gramophone wailed Downhearted Blues.

Now at last I was pleasantly tight. The music wove in and out and around itself, chasing its melancholy tail, and one tune blended into another. The lights were much dimmer, the smoke was thick, and in it I saw a fresh-faced girl looking sadly at me, shaking her head. She was Sandra, a friend of Lena's, and dull but good-natured. I resisted a strong impulse to show her my arse. I grabbed the nearest girl and began trying to dance with her, though it was no more than a boozy reel around the room, and we had circled it once before

I even looked at her. I then saw that she was dark, lurid, fleshly: I kissed her as we hurtled round, and then slid my fingers over her bottom. She broke away, laughing, and went out of the room. I followed her, chasing her along the passage and up the stairs like a loony, shouting about what I'd like to do. She disappeared round a corner. I could not tell where she had gone. I opened a door at random and there-with the light on-was Lena, still half veiled, on a bed, with the footballer, trouserless, shagging her like Old Harry.

"Hello, Bobbin!" she called cheerily, waving her hand.

The athlete swore, and his big hairy buttocks went on driving away without a pause. I swayed, holding the doorpost, watching in hypnotic fascination. It's a curious sight, at any time.

"Put the fucking light out," commanded the young man, panting between the words. This made me laugh, and Lena laughed too. He probably did not like that. Nor would he be pleased that I had not obeyed him. But he was getting into his rhythm and was past caring, really. Good lad! I began to admire him; he went manfully on, come hell and high water. Lena too began to take it a bit more seriously, and to shut her eyes and give little yelps, which he silenced-as if embarrassedby clamping his mouth on hers. He had been chivalrously resting on his elbows, but now he let her take his full weight and put both hands under her arse, to gather her more tightly to him, and pounded away at full tilt.

It was a novel experience. I was not in the least roused by it, sexually, nor yet repelled: I watched and drank in the details, and wondered with a faint pang whether he was better at it than I was, whether she enjoyed him more. She had her arms round his neck now, rather fetchingly, and gave him mouth to mouth with a will, while the bedsprings did the groaning for them. Damn it all, I did feel a sensual stirring at last, looking at the romping of her smooth thigh, between stocking top and flimsy dress-for she had not bothered to take her stockings off, this time. It was the sudden uncovering of the soft waist, between pelvis and rib, that got me. I almost identified myself with the young man in the last moments, as he came.

I heard Lena's laugh again, as I went out of the room.

Well done, old side of bacon, I thought, if you can't have the fucking light out you'll fuck in full view rather than be thwarted, and give a good account of yourself at that. As for my dear Lena, she's fairly launched on her cent baisers, and if she wanted revenge for my intended disloyalty to her, she has certainly had it. O Hope, Hope, will these fingertips ever forget the feel of your twat, now snatched from me forever? Will there ever be anything as pleasing as the lolling of your young and silly head on my shoulder, the drowsy pressure of your thigh against mine? A wave of self-pity hit me and I began to submerge.

The dark, fleshly one ran away when she saw me approaching again. I gave it up, had another drink, and joined a group who were arguing in another room about whether modern art was living in an ivory tower. I rook a vociferous part in this, and made what I thought to be exceedingly brilliant remarks. Some of the others were apparently drunk enough to think so, too. But all the time, my head was spinning faster, and my heart was sinking as if into a whirlpool, being drawn down to the depths of misery. I've lost everybody and everything, I kept thinking. Nobody wants me.

In the background I could hear our host saying indignantly, "Why the hell can't some of you put towels under you? The beds are covered with whitewash, how the hell can I get it off? Are you going to leave it to me to talk my way out of it tomorrow, when my mother comes back? I call that bloody immoral!"

I suspected he was speaking of the eiderdown on which Lena and her Tarzan had been cavorting. It must have been her juices, if so, as I noticed (with approval) that he used a French letter.

I became gloomier and gloomier. I'm the man that girls forget, I thought. I had two more drinks, and passed out.

I came to myself with a most wonderful and unbelievable sensation. I don't know how long I had been unconscious. Apparently I had had the good sense to he down in a corner of the most dimly lit room, separated by a bookcase and an occasional table from the halfdozen dancing couples, and someone had kindly covered me with an old mackintosh.

My cock was standing and was experiencing infinitely delightful sensations. All by itself? No, it was being sucked. A wriggling pair of legs, not mine, projected from the mac, a silken high-heeled pair, which I had no difficulty in recognising. Lena, alcoholic, madly randy, remorseful and sorry for me, all at once, had more or less discreetly clambered into my corner, crawled under the mackintosh, and found her way to the root of the matter. She had aroused it before she aroused me, and I lay there like a sultan while she inhaled it, smoked it, licked it industriously, even avidly. Her fingerdps played lightly on the shaft of it, and the other hand played with my balls and tickled the sensitive skin between there and my arsehole. Where had she learnt this art? Perhaps it was a natural gift.

I caressed her head with one hand, to show I was awake and appreciating it. I tickled the nape of her neck, and this seemed to stimulate her to a frenzy. Her lips now began to do all the work, pulling my foreskin back and forth in their soft wetness, like an infinitely active cunt. Her saliva was spilling over my cock, and my excitement was extreme, but because of all I had drunk, I took ages to come.

She would surely flag in her efforts, she began moving slower-heavens, how tiring it must have been!-but I held her head hard down on me; she must not stop! What could I do to make her continue? Some new stimulus seemed required, but I was in no position to provide it! The best I could think of was to toy with her ear-lobe and then wriggle my finger suggestively into the ear. Strangely enough, this succeeded! It gave her the assurance that I wanted her, wanted the thing she was doing, wanted a climax. She sucked with a new thirst, as if she were a baby and I were her mother's breast. She would soon get the milk. And the delicious agony prolonged itself, while I wanted and didn't want to come, would and couldn't, and my cock seemed distended, as if twice its normal size.

I remembered Pip, in the park lavatory where like an Indian brave I was initiated by my elders: how Pip made the big boy, Derek, come in his mouth, and then spat it out, and how repellent I thought it. Here was Lena doing the same thing, and it wasn't repellent at all, it was marvellous. God, she was almost coming too, wriggling and squirming, well past weariness and into that state of entranced determination that marathon dancers and Olympic milers have in the end. Her fingers scrabbled fiercely, almost painfully, at my scrotum and my groin, then she pressed my prick between both palms like a praying mantis, and went into a real ecstasy, as at last, at long last, my milk surged up and boiled over into her mouth. She did not draw back or spit out, she swallowed it in great choking gulps, straight down as it came, and did not stop work until her tongue had licked the last drop as it oozed from the tiny hole in my end. Then she lay there, her sweaty head couched in my crotch. I heard laughter from the dancers.

I was happy. Lena and life had made amends to me.

I was also hungry, and presently we emerged from the mac, and we went in search of something to eat. In the kitchen we found bread and fish-paste, and were soon munching sandwiches happily together, sitting on the table.

"You didn't even wash your mouth out," I said. "No," she answered, "why should I? It was all you." I put my arm round her. Her friend Sandra came in.

"You know Sandra, don't you? She knows all about us."

"Who doesn't?"

"Now, you needn't worry, Sandra's awfully nice, she's my friend." "I wasn't at all worried."

"She understands how I feel, even if she is a virgin." "Do you?" I asked Sandra.

She only smiled, and said nothing at all. Her silence began to bore me, and I made my excuses and left them ferreting for more food.

The party was still battling on. The drink was nearly finished and the lively were looking after the sick.

"You might refrain from trampling broken glass into the carpet," said our host. "You are a lot of skunks. I've got to answer for this tomorrow."

I drifted off into the next room, and for the next halfhour I joined in a new argument about science and the subconscious. But I wasn't brilliant any more. Every thing looked sweet and simple to me. All my pearls had been sucked away by Lena.

"Whose French letter is this on the sofa? You are a lot of hounds," said our host.

I went upstairs to relieve my overladen bladder, but opened the wrong door, as usual. There was a demurelooking girl, about nineteen, dark, with a quaihdy attractive cast in her eye, getting dressed. She was standing by a tousled bed, fastening her suspenders to her stocking-tops. I remembered seeing her through the smoke, drifting in the arms of a youth who was now downstairs begging for aspirin.

"No," she said. "Wrong door."

I went out, found the right door, pissed, and then went back into the same room. She had her pants in her hand.

"I think this was the right door, really," I said. "No, why?"

I took the knickers out of her hands and put them on the bed.

"Don't be in such a hurry," I said. "Kiss me first."

"No, don't be silly. No. Please."

I kissed her. Her lips were swollen from the attack of her recent lover.

My hand slipped down to her bush.

"You've been making love, with Alan."

I kissed her again. I whispered into her ear: "Wouldn't it be exciting to have it again, from me, while you're still wet from him?"

"You say the most terrible things."

"Wouldn't it? from a stranger, like me?"

"I don't know."

"Take hold of this."

"No." But she did.

"Take these things off again."

She let me undress her. A plump, round little body, all spheres, round head, round breasts, round belly, round buttocks, round, rosy knees, all as nice as pie. She had the giggles.

"Hush!" I said. But she could not stop giggling. Her body was still throbbing with her laughter, as I slid my cock easily into her. She was wet as a sponge. I fucked for a long time but again it seemed to me I would never come. This seemed the more likely, because of all Lena had taken out of me. Besides, Beryl's cunt was so wet and relaxed that it did not grip me at all. And damn the girl, she could do nothing but giggle, one would think I was putting nothing in but a feather; Perhaps that's how it felt, after Alan.

I drew out. "Turn over," I said, rolling her over by the hip bone. She buried her laughing face in the pillow. I got in from the rear position, and this seemed a bit better, because of those nice cheeks to push against. I reached one hand up to her breast, the other underneath so that I could thumb her clitoris. She was enjoying it like fun, but still laughing.

"Have you. got anything in?"

A contraceptive, I meant.

"No."

I did not want to be a father, especially as it might be Alan's child. Should I give up altogether? But to fuck without an orgasm isn't good. I suddenly drew out my wet shaft and pressed it into her arsehole. It was the first time I had done such a thing. She stopped laughing and tried to wriggle away from me, but I pressed and urged and eased, while my hand worked double time in her cunt. She did not say a word, and ceased to resist. Once she relaxed it was surprisingly easy to get it in, all slippery with her juices as I was. After all, she doubtless often excreted shit thicker than what was now entering. Pushing my finger far down in her cunt I could feel my own prick through the thin dividing membrane. And this round, virginal hole, with its sunray creases and its powerful circular muscle, gripped me wonderfully tight, at every point.

The door of the room opened and shut, and the light went on.

"Bobbin, I've been looking everywhere for you," said Lena.

Beryl began to giggle again; it sounded like real hysteria this time. I was furious.

But I could not think of anything to say. I stopped riding, but did not' dismount. We had a blanket over us, thank goodness.

"I wanted to tell you," Lena maundered on, sitting on the bed foot, "I didn't mind you bringing that girl with you. And I don't mind you having Beryl, I hope you're very, very happy."

How could she again be so drunk? There must have been a flask stashed away somewhere, which had just come to light. The private liquor of our host's unlucky parents, probably.

"I'm very tired, can't I come into bed with you?" she said and lifted our blanket as she said so.

"Bob-bin!" she exclaimed, observing how we were coupled. She climbed in alongside us, pulled the blanket up and whispered, "Go on, then, don't stop!" in her maenad voice, the voice of her hidden wildness. She ran her hands over us, and lay as close as she could get.

Beryl flinched and tried to shrink away when Lena's drunken hand touched her breast and her hip-bone.

"Christ, not that!" she exclaimed in a muffled whisper, half loathing, half humorous resignation and a "let the heavens fall" tone. For she could not get away, or move even a fraction, without hurting herself quite a lot. My hand in her cunt was still pressing her on to me. All these minutes I had not moved, but used all my weight and contrivance to keep her humbly still, with a warning pressure here or there if she twitched a limb. Meanwhile my prick felt twice its normal size. Tales I had heard floated into my head, and I began to wonder if I had really got swollen and would never get out without the surgeon's knife, and would be the centre of a national scandal about student orgies, and would go straight from hospital to jail. For I knew that under the grotesque laws of England, what I was doing to Beryl, my very new acquaintance, to wit buggery, was a crime, even between husband and wife. A law more honoured, I might say, in the breach than the observance... and I was well in the breach now.

Lena stroked my unoccupied hand, and placed it without bashfulness between her own legs, where she held it in place and did her own frotting. Her legs squeezed and writhed, and she again whispered hotly, "Go on, go on!

I recommenced my strokes, relieved to find I could still draw in and out, and Beryl gave a groan of pain at the first pull, but I think it did not hurt her appreciably after that. Whether she didn't know what my other hand was doing, or whether she was past caring, I have no idea. I moved the hand under her a little, till my thumb was in her neat little navel, my hand spanning the soft roundness of her belly, my little finger inserted in the top of the lips, just caressing the head of the boy-in-the-boat. Beryl was silent except for her heavy breathing, while Lena was whispering and moaning like the jungle, with my hand in her mango-swamp. But I knew, all of a sudden, that Beryl was enjoying it, and not merely in the clitoris. Her whole self was enjoying the sense of being forced to do something wicked and forbidden, (notions quite alien to me, needless to say), and something she had never done before, with an element of pain in it, like a second virginity to lose. Perhaps she was anal-erotic too, and got physical pleasure from the stretching of that hole, and the deep stirring in her bowel, perhaps this probing awoke infant memories of the enema that daddy pushed in so lovingly when she wouldn't shit! or daddy's well-greased finger itself! I don't know. I think the whole situation was enough, without that, to excite her to the point of hysteria, and did. For she suddenly began to gurgle and for a moment I thought she was suffocating, it sounded so strange, with her face buried in the pillow.

Good God, she was laughing again! that mad, bubbling, underwater laughter, and it shook her from head to foot. I felt it in my toes, and in the very inside of my prick-sinews, in the threefold welt of the tool; and her buttocks shook with her laughter, vibrating like soft drums against my balls. It fired me, and I began to gallop like a horseman, pulling her on to me, and myself deeper into her, working and working and rising to it, with Lena going crazy and flinging her arm over us both, Lena's wet kiss on my ear, Lena's leg, clammy-hot, touching mine and Beryl's full length, pressing us and eager to share us somehow, and Beryl laughing and nearly losing her breath. This girl under me throbbed with laughter, I pushed with my belly on to the quivering cheeks of her bum, and her wonderful ring held my prick tight as I mounted, mounted, then flung away all control and came inside her. Lena came, too, a second later, digging her nails in my wrist; I think she had already come once or twice, she seemed to have reached the non-stop stage where nothing would finish her but exhaustion. I don't know about Beryl.

I think she did, but it may just have been the climax of her laughter.

I did not he long upon her, but pulled out the shrinking member, now very sore and sorry for itself.

"Bob-bin!" cried Lena, in a pleading voice that was not difficult to interpret.

"Good Lord, what do you think I am, a steam-engine?" I asked her, reaching for my pants.

At that she let out her fearful and unmistakable laugh, which must have been audible and recognisable all over the house.

Beryl sat up and bounced out of bed: flushed, sweaty, no longer laughing, but smiling in a friendly sort of way. There was no resentment on her face. I admired the aplomb with which she wiped her bottom with a lace-edged handkerchief and then dabbed it with some perfumed hand-cream which she found on the dressingtable (doubtless the property of our host's mother or sister, and rarely put to this use). Soon she again presented the same picture as when I entered the room: fastening her suspenders to her stocking-tops.

We made ourselves presentable, Lena and I joking together, Beryl putting on her horn-rimmed spectacles, which made her look as if she had just come out of anatomy class, as she had, of course. Then Beryl led the way to the door, remarking, and it was the only remark of any kind that she made: "Alan will be wondering what's become of me."

"I doubt if he will guess," I said.

We joined the merry throng, many of whom were now sleeping in chairs and on settees, singly or in one another's arms. There was more tobacco smoke than ever, the same gramophone record was playing, the same untiring couples were dancing. Our host came up to me.

"I hope you put a towel under you," he said darkly. "Under her, I should say. I always considered you less of a sod than the rest."

"Don't worry," I said, with a false smile. I was pretty sure the bed would be stiff with Lena's overflow. We might try, later, what a clothes brush would do, I thought.

I helped him make coffee; we had to water it a good deal to make it go round, but it was very welcome. A great revival followed. A young man read a short story he had written. A heated discussion on its symbolism began, in which I took an active part.

"But it's supposed to be funny," he exclaimed angrily. "You were meant to laugh."

He was told to pipe down. His humorous intention had nothing to do with the real significance. It all showed the state his unconscious mind had got into.

"Balls!" he said, getting really cross.

"You never know what underlies laughter," I remarked, with heartfelt sincerity. I looked at Beryl, but she did not even smile.

"Arc you enjoying life, old man?" asked a fellow I was rather fond of, a fat and jovial character whom nobody took seriously.

"No," I said. "I'm sick of students. I want a cosy, middle-aged mistress, for a change."

"You think she'll be grateful, and give you presents, I suppose?"

"I want one who has slept with a hundred sailors, and knows all the oriental arts of love. And how to make Turkish coffee," I added.

"Don't you think this has been a damn good party?" he asked, changing the subject.

"I suppose that means you've had your end in."

"Not exactly, but I think I'm going to get it, if there's still time. Another hour's coaxing ought to do the trick. She lets me kiss her, but she keeps mysteriously disappearing." "Who is she?"

"That plump one, Beryl. Do you think she'd play?"

"No," I said, "I should think she's rather a prude."

"Well, I actually asked her, when I was tight, whether she was a virgin, and she admitted she is. I'm a bit scared of breaking one in, come to that. But she's bloody attractive in spite of her squint. You can't see her very well from here, but don't you think she's nice?"

"She is rather attractive," I said, "from the back."

I wished him luck. The coast was clear for him, as Alan had deserted her and was going mad over a vamp creature with very long dark hair, large loose lips, and enormous scarab ring, purple eyelids, and a tidemark on her neck.

"I know you're a sadist," Alain said, loudly, "but as long as you're not a lesbian The arguers had now gone on to politics. Tempers were rising and an owlish man with a pipe was declaring, "Every philosophy student knows that dialectical materialism is a lot of cock."

"But it works, doesn't it? It works!" said another, waving his arms.

"As a political force, of course," said the girl whom I had been vainly chasing earlier in the night.

I turned away from that bunch. My brain was flagging, and there was now an important diversion: our host had found a sheet with a patch of blood, left to soak in the kitchen sink. Who had been deflowered? We never knew. But I was sure it was not Beryl.

"If you can't observe the ordinary decencies," said our host, "I simply shan't be able to throw another party."

Lena came up to me, leading her friend Sandra by the hand.

"Listen, Bobbin," Lena said. "This is my friend Sandra, and she's a virgin."

"Still?" I said. "She must have had a dull party."

"She wants to go to bed with Jack Maitland," Lena went on.

"But he's not here."

"Not tonight, stupid, but sometime. And she doesn't want to till she's seen what it's like, and she would like to watch somebody do it."

"Do what? Fuck?" I asked brutally.

"Yes, so I've said she can watch you and me, do you mind?"

Sandra, rather pink-cheeked, looked solemn and bovine. I considered this crazy Lena-ish proposition Perhaps it might lead to something of interest, some variant on the great theme.

Always the little gentleman, and happy to oblige, said, "O.K., why not? When shall it be?"

"Let's do it now," said Lena.

"Hell, no, I couldn't," I said. "I'm squeezed dry darling, as you well know."

"No, Lena, some other time," Sandra said. Somehow this piqued me.

"Come on, Bobbin, no time like the present," said Lena, brightly ignoring my plea of incompetence.

"It really doesn't matter," said Sandra, "I didn't mean it."

This determined me.

"Come along, then, girls, we'll see what we can do," I said, and ushered Sandra and Lena through the door

We went back to the same bedroom in which I hac had Beryl.

"Here we go round the prickly pear," I said, locking the door, this time. The previous time I had never noticed the key.

Lena began to strip, and I did the same, almost mechanically.

"But what's Sandra going to do, work herself off with her fingers? Is she going to stay fully dressed?" Sandra said nothing. She sat demurely on a chair. "Do get undressed, Sandra," said Lena. "No. I'd rather not."

And there she sat, fully dressed, watching with blushing cheeks and hungry eyes as Lena and I uncovered our nakedness. My cock was soft but longer than normal, because of all its usage. It was sore, too, from the tightness of Beryl's bottom. We sat on the bed and Lena began playing with it.

"Let Sandra touch it. Come and touch it, Sandra," Lena said.

"No, thanks, I don't want to."

"Yes, do, you must! Have you never touched one?" Lena asked.

"Naturally not," said Sandra, with prudish dignity.

Lena seized Sandra by the hand, pulled her out of the chair and brought her over. She guided her hand to my parts. This was a very good idea, as it turned out. I had not been responding to Lena's handicraft, so far. But the shrinking touch of this bovine virgin, a strange hand without experience, quickened my flesh. She felt it turning stiff. Lena held her wrist, so she could not escape, and her hand gained a little in boldness; her fingers dared to explore, even into the grass-roots. Sandra looked amazed at the change, as the bolt of flesh stood upright and the foreskin rolled back.

Lena was now impatient to have it, and pulled me with her as she stretched out on the bed with her eager legs parted. Sandra sat on the chair again. Her bosom heaved. Not a bad bosom, when one came to notice it She held the sides of the chair tightly and stared with determination at the process now beginning.

I laced into Lena with all the old zest. She was a good girl, after all. At first I pretended she was Hope, and then gave up and decided to have her as Lena; I thought she deserved it. I kissed her nipples, squirmed my tongue in her mouth, rammed my fingers into her arse, and rode on her long smooth limbs with joy and ease. Turning my head aside, I saw the hard-breathing Sandra was squeezing her legs together for all she was worth. Fully dressed, and without so much as putting a finger to her clitoris, she was coming in her panties. That did the trick for me. I had Lena crying out with inarticulate pleasure and in a few moments we came, simultaneously, with a mighty bound.

I was puffing like a dog in a heat-wave, Lena was subsiding with little moans, and Sandra had her eyes shut as if she was praying. My prick shrank down in no time, and slid out.

I gave Lena a friendly good-night-and-thank-you kiss, and climbed off her.

"O blast!" I said. "Why did nobody remember to put a towel on the bed?"

Lena laughed. Sandra looked shocked. Then Lena swung her legs off the bed, with her pubic hair all damp and glistening, and said, "Now I think I'll watch, I never have watched."

"Watch what?" said I.

"Watch you have Sandra," she said.

Sandra jumped to her feet, exclaiming: "No, no!"

It was my turn to laugh, and I was simply doubled up.

"I know it's supposed to be Jack, but Bobbin's so kind, he'll be ever so gentle."

"Gentle!" I spluttered.

Lena had her arm persuasively round Sandra, half coaxing, half imprisoning her. Sandra looked positively frightened of Lena's nakedness, to say nothing of mine. I was limp and laughing, quite unarmed.

"Don't you want her?" Lena asked me, reproachfully. "She's very nice, look!" She upped Sandra's frock and pulled her pants down before the poor girl knew what she was doing. I saw a rather nice pair of hips and a triangle of hair so fair and so slight that her cleft was undisguised. But it was a short glimpse: she pulled her pants up again as soon as Lena would let her.

It didn't mean a thing to me, alas! When we first went up to the room together I think I had in mind the possibility of fucking the pair of them. But having just had my third orgasm of the night, I felt it didn't matter if I never saw a cunt again. A glass of hot milk and a nice rest, that's what would suit me now.

Those two girls, the naked and the clothed, were struggling like wrestlers, and arguing the toss, both talking at once so I couldn't sort it out. I was standing up, about to get dressed ,and feeling satisfied but anything but randy. Yet it suddenly seemed to me a bit of an outrage that Sandra should get all her fun for nothing, and play Madame Touch-me-not, when she had touched me, and had that free demonstration in the ars amoris. She was full to the brim with shame, my old enemy shame: she was ashamed of her thoughts, ashamed of having watched, ashamed of having enjoyed it, and ashamed of that little private come she had in her pants, I bet.

"Come on, Sandra, let's have a look at you," I said, going close to her. "Uncover your tits, for a start!"

She said nothing but "No, no!" and tried to push me away. I seized her shoulder.

"Are you going to be as mean as that? Take all and give nothing?"

She stopped resisting and looked pensive. She must have some sense of justice after all; or a bit of secret exhibitionism hidden away, a tiny wish to be admired. She did not have to do anything except stop fighting. Lena eagerly pried Sandra's tits out of the bra, having already slipped the dress off her shoulders. They were white, defenceless little things, with baby-pink nipples. Just because of her shamefastness, I toyed with them, and gave one a little suck. Then I pulled her pants down (no resistance this time), and felt her virginal vagina, strictly on principle. My principles were the only upright thing I had, at that moment.

"Sometime we'll give a show for Lena, won't we, Sandra?" I said, kissing her, and taking my searching hand away.

She did not say a word, but with dignity pulled her knickers up and re-bagged her breasts. She went to the door of the room, then turned before going out and said, "Oh-and thank you, both."

I went to the window. Daylight was beginning to appear. "Why don't we get some sleep?" I said. "Lock the door again and turn out the light and come over here."

I was mad to imagine I'd get much rest if Lena stayed with me. As if it mattered. One could always sleep through a lecture next day as long as one didn't snore. Well, there's the student life. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Lena entwined me and we went down into the depths.