Chapter 4
Maria passed her eleven-plus examination and was sent to a secondary school in Roundhay.At about the same, time her father got a better job as a foreman and, with the money Gina had saved from her "brother", the family was able to move into a semi-detached house in a somewhat better area called Chapel Allerton. Gina had put enough on one side to buy most of the furniture for it, and there was even a spare bedroom. The Hardisty family was on the way up: from working-class status to that of the petite-bourgeoisie, though, of course,neither John nor Gina would have seen it in this light, or ever used such terms.
The surprising thing about Gina was that she had been little affected by the four years that she had earned money by what must frankly be called prostitution, albeit of a slightly genteel kind. She never stood around those streets off City Square or Boar Lane where, before the new legislation came into force driving prostitutes off the strrets,the majority of better-looking tarts plied their trade. She was scarcely ever seen in the area at all, for once having made a contact with a new "client" she almost invariably went to his flat direct for future meetings. She was sufficiently attractive and gentle to be des desired by a man time after time, and at the end of four years she had built up a loyal and dependable clientele of about half a dozen men that satisfied her mercenary instincts while providing her with a considerable amount of pleasure. For she was still the sort of woman who needed regular sex, with the result that she gave herself to the men she slept with enthusiastically, almost convincing each one of them that she kept most of her favours for him alone, that she might even love him. She had taken care of herself and she spent lavishly on hairdressers,beauty parlours, and couturiers. She improved her taste as time went on, took the advice of the better-educated shop girls, only bought the best cosmetics, never used over-much make-up, and would never have been taken for a tart by a passer-by. She was so clever at dissimulating that her husband never suspected her,and few of the regular tarts that hung around Commercial Street knew her to be one of them.
' Indeed, far from getting harder with the passage of time, in many ways she became softer, gentler, and more relaxed. The chief reason for this was that she was no longer dependent on her husband for the good things of life and she was able to provide for her daughter and her future. She looked on John with a kind of benevolence, as if he were an immature child. Her shrewdness, the result of her peasant background, enabled her to keep a balanced view of things: Her original hope had been dashed when she was young, but for the sacrifice she had made subsequently something had been salvaged. They had adequate means, they had now a moderately decent home, and, above all, Maria had the things she needed and, now she attended the secondary school, she had a place to which she could ask back her friends. Gina somehow chose to overlook the fact that her daughter was an only child who spent much of her time on her own and seemed to have grown more and more independent of her parents in the years since she began school. She chose not to face up to the fact that the price had been paid largely by Maria who had become a lonely, taciturn and often unfriendly child. She wanted to forget the long interval of time that had elapsed since Maria first went off to school and hoped that now she could take things more easily it would be possible to make amends, give her more attention, devote more time to her needs.
Maria started at the new school soon after her twelfth birthday. She wore a green uniform, with a white blouse and brown stockings. She had grown into an attractive child, showed all the signs of pubescence with her swelling breasts and plump legs that would later fine down and become slender and shapely. Her features, more regular than those of her mother, nevertheless possessed that imperfection that is always present in a truly at tractive face. There was fire in her darkbrown eyes, sensuality in her mouth, softness in her olive-coloured skin and quiet determination in her chin. But the fire and the sensuality and the determination would often seem to be absent when she looked pensively and introspectively at the world around her, almost as if she was a thing of the spirit, something evanescent and immaterial. She had even been likened by one of her teachers to a changeling, such, at times, was her remoteness, her apparent unawareness of the world around her. And yet underneath,the fire burned; the curiosity about the world, the urge for experience, the desire to gratify her sensual appetites were only temporarily repressed and would at times take possession of her and lead her into the byways of life that very few girls of her age ever glimpsed.
Her first term at the secondary school was a time of adjustment to the new circumstances and her emotional development seemed to,come to a halt. In a sense she made peace with the new situation, accepted more readily her mother's efforts to please her, and took her lessons seriously. She gave up thinking about the experience she had had with Donald, and what she had seen happen between Tom and Sheila. Sex went into cold storage. The days were full and passed quickly.
But this was a situation that could not last for long. When she began to menstrurate, her longings and desires took possession of her with a new urgency, the days of brooding were over. Menstruation was not a shock to her because she had learned about it from the Guides mistress; nor was the fact that she grew pubic hair. What really troubled her was the fact that she realized that she could now become pregnant; this coupled with her great desire for sexual experience created a problem for her that often preoccupied her as she lay in her bedroom naked on her bed,fondling her already large breasts.
The problem became acute for her when she fell in love with the arts master at her new school. He hod shown that he was aware of her interest in him, and she felt certain that it would not be long before he would approach her and ask her to let him make love to her. What would she do then? She would certainly want him to make love to her, but what if she became pregnant? 5he sat on her bed and pictured him in her mind, seeing him as a kind of Greek god with his fair hair, delicate features and, she had no doubt, his perfect physique. Oh, how much she wanted Him to possess her! She felt her breasts,touched her nipples and as they grew larger and firm, she felt a current of excitement run through her body. She lay back on the bed, keeping her mind the picture of the arts master. Then for the first time she put her hand between her legs and felt her genitals. Her index finger moved along the dark hair that, already ran down both sides of her vulva almost to her perineum. She had been told by the Guides mistress that the lips that ran between the angle of her legs were called the labia, but she preferred to call them her cunt Hop a= Sheila had called them. "My cunt lips," shp said to herself as she caressed them, moving her finger up and down the length of her slit. "Oh, my lovely cunt lips," she went on almost audibly, "oh, how I want a man to stroke them. She remembered that the old man in the wood on the edge of the Common had been the first to touch them when he had attempted to force his thumb into her vagina, and she recalled, too, the day that Donald had tried to fondle her there. That was about the only sexual experiences she had had; yet her friend Sheila was not even a virgin. Nor was her new school-;-nd class-mate, Valerie Walsh, who had had sexual intercourse for the first time that Christmas. She was only thirteen and therefore only a few months older than Maria. But it would not be lony,she was sure, before she would give herself to a man, and she felt that it might be Mr Hutchings the art master. As she thought of him she now began to push her finger between her cuntlips and feel the soft inner lips lying en either side of her clitoris and vagina.
But Mr Hutchings did not make the advance to her that she longed for. The days went by, the Easter term ended, and nothing had happened to her by the middle of the summer term. Once or twice she had walked home with one or other of the boys from her class but they had done no more than kiss her on the doorstep before saying "good night". She went to the pictures with Donald and he tried again to get her to let him fuck her, but . when it came to it she had resisted him, telling him that it was impossible because she had got the "curse". He tried to provoke her by telling her how he had made love to Sheila "just like Tom did that day in Newlay woods," but she had not relented. She decided that it would be better if she saved herself for John Hutehings as he would be sure to ask her to go to bed with him soon.
Meanwhile, Gina had broken the vow she had made to herself never to take a man back to her home. Her husband was working farther away from home than in the past, travelling to Stanningly on the other side of Leeds. He was scarcely ever at home before nine or ten in the evening,often much later than that,and and Gina, taking his absence for certain and knowing that Maria was away at school, weakened in her resolve one day when she met an attractive young man in a pub off Briggate, who was visiting Leeds and had no flat in the town. He was a well-spoken, dark young man of good education, several years younger than Gina. 5he liked him at once and wanted him for her own sake, not for what she would get out of it. But she was unwilling to break the rule she had observed from the beginning, and it was only after trying to find a room in a suitable hotel and finding that everywhere was booked up, that she gave way to his pleadings and agreed to take him back to Chapel Allerton. Maria wdu1d be at school until half past four at the earliest and it was only just one o'clock. They took a taxi to a point about a hundred yards from the house and then she told him to follow her, keeping well behind. She had also arranged to give an appropriate signal from the front window if the coast was clear.
When he reached the house she took him to the spare room. Even if by some awful accident her husband should return unexpectedly all would not be lost. There would be a some chance of the man making his escape while she entertained John in the living-room.
He fell on her at once, pushed her on the bed and kissed her greedily, feeling up her stockinged legs for the soft flesh of her inner thighs. She pushed him off and began to undress, taking off her jersey dress to reveal in her bra and panties her splendid figure.He jumped out of his clothes and again pressed her onto the bed, not waiting for her to remove her brassiere or her panties. He grasped her bra cups and felt the hard nipples urderneath. His prick hardened almost as soon as he touched her and a moment later he was dragging her bra from her and burying his head in the deep hollow between her breasts.
He caught the scent of her body and was almost driven mad with desire. His hands reached down to her thighs, and then began to pull her panties down her legs, pulling them over her knees and feet. She lay there, her massive breasts rising and falling, wearing only the narrowest suspender-belt to keep up her almost transparent nylons. She had a momentary doubt-in her mind as to the wisdom of letting him continue, but as his head went down between her legs and his lips came into contact with her pudenda, his tongue probing her thick cunt lips to stimulate her clitoris as expertly as she had ever experienced it, she abandoned herself to the pleasure of the moment, losing all sense of time and place...
Relaxed she lay back to enjoy the exquisite touch of his tongue, the feel of his fingers on the soft flesh of her inner thigh, 3nd the promise of his hard throbbing prick.
He sucked her clitoris and her whole was immediately aflame with desire; she wanted to feel the hard urgent prick inside her so that she could caress it, possess it completely. The man lifted his head up and moved himself between her parted legs, his throbbing prick sliding up her thigh towards her avid pudenda. Its uncovered knob moved between the cunt lips and the man knew the delight of the first contact with receptive female flesh, the woman the excitement of the first touch of the male organ. Full of urgent desire for each other the prick found the wet warmth of the vaginal orifice and a moment later it was sliding into the soft,ready sheath that gripped and sucked him in. The man then lowered himself onto the buoyant flesh, felt the resilient stomach under his own, then the splendid breasts,, the hard nipples against his chest as he sank into her.
Her arms reached out and pulled him as close as possible. He felt her move with him as slowly he withdrew a little way down her luscious cunt, and then-he was sucked back in again, his prick caressed by her, as he moved deep against the soft flesh of her cervix. Their tongues entwined and his hands moved under her heavy Renoir-like buttocks as they fell into a rhythm that sent shivers of excitement through their tingling bodies.
Gina moaned with a pleasure she had hardly ever known before. The man seemed to give her the exquisite delight she had sought ever since she was seventeen: at last, she had what she wanted and she abandoned herself to the frenzied demands of her body,no longer concerned about the consequences. The man,equally, finding in the lovely dark-haired girl the lustful fulfilment he had never believed possible, forgot the demands of time and business and gave himself totally to the utter pursuit of sexual nirvana. It was incredible that there could be such flesh, such womanly warmth, such heights of pleasure as this girl he had picked up in a bar was giving him.His prick was being caressed in a woman's body in a way he had never known, driving him to a lustful violence that brought him, before he wanted to, to an orgasm of unparalleled, unbearable pleasure. He felt her body go taut for a moment as his hot spunk entered into the waiting flesh and then he knew that he was being bathed at the same time in her love juices, all his desire and lust assuaged. "Oh, I have come," she whispered to him in a voice soft and mellifluous and full of contentment. And then she relaxed and he lay utterly fulfilled in her arms as his limpid prick slowly slipped for her.
"You liked me?" she said to him as the man woke up from a timeless sleep almost two hours later. She kissed him tenderly on his lips and caressed his neck and shoulders.
"Like you? Oh, I have never had anyone so wonderful. How often can I see you? I shall come to Leeds as often as I can now that I've nice you. Can I come here again?"
"I" ought to say no. But if you cannot get somewhere to entertain me, then I shall let you come, my husband is always away in the day and my daughter never comes back from school before half-past four. So I shall have to let you come." She smiled at him as she had rarely smiled at anyone for years.
"I cannot understand why you were...," he hesitated, not wishing to put it into words.
"Yes?"
"Why you were in that pub, waiting there to be picked up. What about your husband? Please explain to me."
"Oh, it's too long a story to tell you now. You should really not ask me questions; just be content with having met me. That's how I'd like it. But I can tell you that my husband doesn't care about me, though, naturally, he would go mad if he found me here with you."
There was a long silence and then he looked at her, holding her chin in his hand. "Oh, my God, you ore beautiful and I shall do nothing but think about you until I come next week. Can I come here on Tuesday?"
"No, please, please do not come here on your own. We must always meet in town first, and if I do not come I shall telephone you. Let us make the pub our meeting-place:"
John Hutchings was certainly fascinated by the thirteen-year-old Maria. Many a time he stopped himself suggesting a date with her; many a time he pulled himself together as he was about to touch her or put an arm round her as he passed by her desk. He knew that it was ridiculous to think about her. Not only was he twice her age; he was also a teacher into whose care she had been entrusted. She was also a minor and he would be committing a grave offence if he made any kind of sexual advance towards her.
And yet! And yet! The child was beautiful, beautiful beyond belief. And she seemed mature enough to be trusted, and had exchanged glances with him on more than one occasion. And he was certain that it was not because she was a brazen little nymphette for she did not appear to take much notice of any of the boys in the art class as the other girls did. She did not giggle and guffaw as the little hussy called Valerie Coles did, or answer him back with a salacious grin on her face as did her friend Valerie Walsh.
As the end of the summer term cams in sight he became more restive about the girl, more eager than ever to talk to her. Unlike the other masters on the staff he did nothave a room of his own at the school. That was because he wasa visiting master, teaching art at two other schools in the north Leeds area. If he wished to speak to the girl he would be forced to do so during class, or ask her to come to the art room at the end of the afternoon. The only other alternative was the very risky one of trying to see her outside the school, hanging about in the road in the hope that she might come along on her own. When he finally decided to take the risk of talking to her on her own he chose the second alternative, telling her that he wished to see her in the art room at the end of the afternoon to discuss one of her drawings with her. It was a lame sort of excuse, but it covered him against criticism to some extent. She had recently done some quite good work in class, and a case could be made out for having a private talk with her to give her as much encouragement as possible.
She turned up punctually and he immediately began to tell her that he had been impressed by one or two of her drawings,adding that she seemed to have quite a flair for the subject.
He found it rather difficult to keep an with the conversation when she simply nodded, looking at him as she did so with her dark, enigmatic eyes. Coming to a full stop, he started to ask her about herself.
"By the way," he said, "you have an unusual Christian name. It does not quite go with your surname. How did it come about?"
She blushed, despite her olive skin, and began to tell him about her Italian mother and English father. "You see I was born in Italy, but my father brought me here when I was a baby. Do you like the name Maria?"
"Yes, it is attractive," he said, and unable to restrain himself he added, "Almost as attractive as you are."
"Oh, so you find me attractive," she said, now speaking with more self-assurance, "I think you are attractive too."
Things, he realized, were beginning to get out of control, ^ere he was exchanging compliments with one of his pupils, a thirteen-year-old child. She had just told him that she found him attractive! He knew that he ought to bring the conversation to a close but he found her almost irresistible, and he knew that in some strange way she liked him.
"That's very nice," he managed to say in the end. That's very kind of you." And now he knew that he was about to take the utterly irrevocable step of asking a thirteen-yearold girl, a pupil at that, to meet him.
"It struck me that it would be quite a good idea for you to do some drawing in the holidays. And if you liked I could meet you sometime to see how you are getting on with it...." The die was cast. She would probably go off now and blurt it out to the whole school, or to her parents and he might well find himself confronted by her father the next time he. came to give his lesson at the school.
But to his relief she said: "Would you really see me during the holidays? I would like that very much," and then, looking down at the floor, her dark hair falling in front of her face, she said simply, "And, of course I wouldn't tell anybody I. was going to see you."
He looked at her, looked at the dark eyes that seemed to be burning with a light he had not seen in them before, looked at the full, sensual lips, the lovely oval face with its fine features, and then at the shapely bosom rising and falling under the white blouse, and he knew that he would break all the rules in the world to possess her beautiful young body.