Chapter 2

That evening after dinner Margaret sat in front of the fire in her drawing room and waited while her husband busied himself upstairs packing the technical necessities for his trop. She had already completed her share of this task, the assembling of his travelling requirements.

She held a book in her hands, but one page had occupied her attention for the last hour.

Her mind was across the lawn and through the orchard and down over the twelve acre field and up to the stream where she knew a solitary tent was pitched in the darkness away from the drop of the trees but near enough to the stream to hear the clean song of the water over the stones. She could, in her minds eye, see the glint of the light from a hurricane lamp upon his fair hair. She could see the reflection of the light on a damp spot on his thick, sensual lower lip. She could almost hear the whisper of the wind as it slipped beneath the tent flap and and see it toying with the wide leg of his khaki shorts as he sat clasping his kness and eating a bar of chocolate.

Engrossed in these contemplations she had become rigid. For a moment she looked wildly around her, and then shook herself and rubbed her moist palms hard together. She was intelligent enough to be struck more by the symbolism of the boy eating chocolate in her fantasy than in the purely erotic content of the wish-projection.

She breathed deeply and reached for a cigarette from the ivory cigarette box beside the chair. She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply and her face relaxed in thought.

This thing had to be faced. From one extrem she was going to another. Once upon a time she had seduced a friend of her father, a man old enough to be her father, now it was in the conscious part of her contemplation to seduce a boy young enough to be her son. Her nipples glowed and erected at the use in her mind of the word 'seduce'. That was perfectly true. The thought of his hard young body astride hers, his strong, wiry thighs pounding on her's as he drove his small white hardness into her made her writhe for a moment in her chair.

Then she smiled and the fantasy was relieved for a moment as a typically feminine thought struck her. What the hell was she saying... that she was almost old enough to be his mother? She was twenty three, rising twenty four. Tony Deveraux was fifteen... almost sixteen.

Her smile faded as she realised that this was straight-forward justification. These were terrible thoughts and must be stamped out. Face it another way. If Gerald were actually gone now... not upstairs packing, but gone... actually in Jamaica... and that boy walked in that door and sat beside her and touched and let his young hands wander over her taut body and she were aware of his bright, hard young sex erect and wanting to dare the passage between her thighs... then, then would she allow him? Her thighs felt hot and she closed her eyes to concentrate on rendering herself a fair answer. She was saved the necessity by the sound of the door clicking. Her heart thumped and her vagina contracted.

It was Gerald. "Well, that's that," he said.

She breathed deeply.

"Yes," she said, "that's that!"

He walked over to her. "I beg your pardon, darling?"

"Oh, nothing."

He set down in the armchair oppositie. "Throw me a cigarette," he said. "My case is empty."

She opened the box threw him a cigarette. He lit it with an old fashioned silver lighter and leaned back and sighed deeply.

"Well, that's that." "So you've said," nodded Margaret. He looked at her. "What's the matter with you, darling?" he asked. "You sound almost snappish." She shrugged. "Sorry."

He looked at his glowing cigarette tip and frowned. "I know it's rather a bind... I mean, me having to go away like this... But you know how it is. This will be a ; ally fantastic opportunity for me. If I manage to win this case the results could be absolutely stupendous."

She closed her eyes in irritation. The superlatives! If only he could display the same extravagant characteristics in bed!

He was going on. "Compagny Law is my speciality and fraud is really something that offers tremendous opportunities as a of luck."

Bored, her mind snapped into coarseness. She thought "He's worrying about a damned silly court case half way across the world and I'm wondering what it would be like to be fucked by a boy of fifteen!"

The thought was so vivid that for a moment she looked at him, startled, half convinced that she had given voice to this domestic attrocity.

Gerald's face, however, was calm and comfortable. He puffed on his cigarette and expended his little ambitions.

"All this could lead to Privy Council work. Colonial practice and all that could lead to P.C. work.

Could be quite fantastically interesting. You do see my point, don't you, darling?"

"Oh. Yes, yes," said Margaret.

"By the way, I've left you a dozen blank cheques signed. You'll probably need them for household expenses."

She looked at him. "I could quite well pay that sort of thing until you come back."

"Let's do things properly," was his only reply.

She laughed. "And you paying all the bills is doing things properly," she said.

"I say Margaret, you are in a damned funny mood tonight. You know very well how we work things."

"I wonder if I do," mused Margaret.

"Whatever's the matter with you. I say, it's not that you're shattered that I'm going away, is it?"

She shook her head. "No, no. It's nothing like that at all. It's just that I'm a bit nervy. Take no notice of me. I'll be all right."

"That's my girl!" smiled Gerald, smugley.

She winced at the expression, which he seldom used to do him justice, but which annoyed her immeacurably when he did, but said nothing.

He crossed his legs contentedly.

"I phoned the old man just now," he confided. "He'd heard I was going. Gave me a couple of tips on procedure. "He paused and then broke into a short chuckle.

"What's the matter?" asked Margaret.

Gerald threw back his head and laughed quite loudly. "Gave me a word of advice about the natives," he chuckled.

"Oh?"

"Yes, told me to be jolly wary of the local girls. It seems that some of them are damned attractive and only too keen to collar themselves a white man."

Margaret didn't feel up to arguing the logic or likelihood of this belief so she said nothing.

"Of course, you can see their point of view," Gerald added, smugly.

"I'm afraid I can't," she replied, tartly.

"What do you mean?"

"What I say... I can't see their point of view."

"My goodness, you are being bally awkward tonight, Margaret. Oh, well I suppose it's my going away. Don't worry darling, I'll be back the very second it's possible.

"I still don't see why it's the point of view of West Indian girls to want to get themselves a white man. I may be dense but I just don't see it."

"Then I'm afraid you must be dense, darling, because it's quite obvious why they should."

"All right. Why? Tell me why."

"Now look here darling..."

"Tell my why!" shouted Margaret.

"Well, just because it is natural."

So it's natural for a coloured woman to want some effete bastard of a white man bouncing up and down on her belly?" snapped Margaret.

Gerald was stunned into silence for a moment. When he could speak he almost stuttered. "Margaret.... Margaret... really!"

"Do you think it's natural that a white woman should want to go to bed with black men rather than men of their own colour?" she demanded.

He was horrified. "Now you're being downright disgusting," he said, "and I must say I've noticed that when you get excited... and that is usually about nothing... you do tend to become coarse."

"Thank you. Now answer my question. You said you can see the point of view of a coloured girl wanting a white man. That seems to me that it doesn't need much imagination to extend that to the white man being naturally attracted to a coloured woman."

"Nothing of the kind... I..."

"No, I know what it means," she interrupted. "It means that you believe in the superiority of the white race and that with coloured people you're dealing with animals. Frankly, I often think it's the other way around."

"Perhaps you'd like to associate with a coloured man," sneered Gerald.

"If he could do the things I like done, when I like them done, how I like them done and I could respect him... it wouldn't make one iota of difference to me!"

"This sounds to me like a conscience apology!" snapped Gerald.

"I don't doubt it does... to you!" snapped Margaret back.

"If I thought..." started Gerald.

"If you thought what?" asked Margaret, her eyes now blazing with fury. "If you thought I'd ever been fucked by a black man?"

Gerald leaped to his feet and raised his hand. Margaret raised her face towards him.

"If you thought that what would you do?" she sneered. "Not forgetting, of course, that what I did before I met you is just as much my business as what you got up to before we met is your business. You knew I wasn't a virgin when you married me What are you going to do now? Worry about the colour of the pricks I've had?"

Gerald's jaw quivered in a spasmodic convulsion and his fingers writhed as he tried to summon up the conviction that would let him lay his hand hard across his wife's mouth.

"Well?" she asked, in a small voice, exhausted by the flush of obscenity that had made her speak thus.

"You usually confine this kind of talk to bed," he said.

"And there you can understand it?"

"I can never understand it... but there I have been able to tolerate it. Now I wonder if I was right to ever do so. What a terrible thing you've said, Margaret."

"Just a minute, I haven't said that I've ever had an affair with a coloured man. All I've said is that I wouldn't be ashamed of it if I had."

"A small practical difference."

"I should have thought that as long as the difference was practical that was all you needed to worry about."

Gerald began to pace the floor. This always irritated her and now it did so more than ever.

"Are we happy together?" he asked.

She was in no mood to compromise.

"I usually feel a distinct absence of misery," she said.

"That's a horrible thing to say."

"You keep accusing me of horrible thought and of saying horrible things. Hasn't something occurred to your

He looked at her. "What do you mean?" "Perhaps I'm a horrible person?" He took rather longer to reply to this than she could have wished.

"Well, you certainly have some horrible ideas. Now, look here, let's face it, Margaret. You are very... well... well, sexy."

"Can you bear to face it?" she smiled.

"Yes, I can."

The smile left her face. "You can bear to face it but you can't bear to do anything about it." "What are you saying?" I thought I was being obvious." "You mean that I should arrange some treatment for you? Well, that has occurred to me."

She almost allowed her jaw to drop as she assimilated this remark. Then she threw back her head and burst out laughing.

"The man's convinced I'm a nymphomaniac!" she yelled, gleefully.

My interpretation of nymphomania is an inordinate preoccupation with sex on the part of a woman," he said, coldly.

"That's mine too," she nodded. "How would you like to hear my interpretation of impotence? I think impotence is on inordinate pre-occupation with anything but sex on the part of a man!"

"Are you suggesting that I'm impotent... or undersexed?" demanded Gerald, furiously.

"Darling, just leave it that you're sexed... lightlybut sexed. Just be my Saturday night stallion and don't get ambitions bigger than your balls!"

"Margaret!"

"Gerald!" she mimiced.

"You've never been like this... at least..."

"Out of bed," she supplied.

"I've never inquired into your... your past," he said, slowly. "But it's beginning to look as if I might have done."

"I could say the same. I might have found that you had a pathological history of unbridled sexuality. You probably masturbated twice a term between the ages of fifteen and twenty."

"Fifteen!" She shut her eyes. Why had she chosen that precise age for her taunt? "Fifteen! She could see Tony again. He was in a sleeping bag now. His hand was gliding up and down his erect penis, forcing the white skin back over his crimson mount. His face was set and his eyes starting. He convulsed and she saw the thick spurt of his grey sperm as it gushed out of his pulsing penis. She shuddered deliciously.

Oh, to be holding that rapidly limpening penis between her writhings lips and feeling the hot gush of his spunk in her mouth! She opened her eyes and thrust her hands, palm to palm, between her clenched thighs. She could feel the wetness of her passion in her tight knickers.

She looked at her husband who was staring at her in almost frightened amazement.

"Let's go to bed," she said. "You have to be up early in the morning."