Chapter 5
"What'll you drink, darling?"
"Bitter, please."
"Two pints of best bitter, please!"
Brenda paid for the beer and carried the two glasses to the table at which Valerie had seated her-self. She kissed Valerie's cheek and discreetly squeezed her thigh. Valerie responded by stroking Brenda's knees under the hem of her skirt. Each raised her glass to the other and they drank. Brenda was surprised to notice that Valerie half emptied her glass at once and she smiled as the thirsty one gasped and used her nether lip to re-move the moustache of beer.
"I needed that. I've got a whacking bit of news for you-I'm up the stick."
"You're.. .? "
"In the family way."
For a few seconds Brenda stared incredulous at the smiling monkey face of her little friend. Then, grasping the horrible significance of what she had just heard, she took Valerie's head between her hands, burying her fingers in the pregnant girl's honey-colored hair.
"Darling! Does Lew know?"
"No. He'll find out when everybody else does."
"But, Val, he has the right to know before any-body else. Why have you allowed me to think you and he--? "
"We're not. I'd have told you, if we were. It's Bernie."
"God! And we're not even sure of his name. Does Sadie know where he lives?"
"Don't take it so tragically, princess!" Valerie said, smiling broadly like a brave child trying to calm the fears of a dear adult. "Lots of girls have bastard babies whose fathers can't be traced and they get by. I don't want to find Bernie. I wouldn't impose such a husband on myself or such a father on my child."
"You don't know him well enough to judge."
"He's shifty, can't look you straight in the eyes, a boastful liar, with Seductive Bounder written all over him."
"You take an instant dislike to a man and then let him flop down on top of you. You fall in love with Lew, almost at first sight, and he's not even allowed to titillate your titties."
"Were you so deeply in love with Lew when you let him spill your blood all over a Parisian bed? I know the circumstances were rather special but you went on letting him have it morning, noon, and night when you were quite free to tell him to stick it up the chimney."
"Because I loved his sticking it up my chimney even though I loathed him. I suppose you and I are even more similar than we thought. In fact, I wasn't favorably impressed by Bernie either, but I was all in favor of his taking me home and messing me about all night."
"I've felt guilty about that, Brenda. This may be my chastisement."
"Goose! Kiss me and to hell with people's suspicions! Darling! In a way, I've a right to your baby. If you hadn't pinched my bit of pick-up gate-crasher, the sperm would have washed my guts in-stead of yours. But then there'd have been no baby because I took Bernie to your party knowing it was my safe period. That you should have been so careless is beyond my comprehension."
"Mine too. Let's have some more beer!"
Valerie got their empty glasses refilled.
"Prosit!" she said. "It was just one of those things which can't be explained. You went out with the gang and I think Bernie got the idea you were slipping out of his grasp. Without consulting me he announced he was sleeping with me. Did I already want him to? Did I already hope he would, and could he sense it, or was it just his brazenness that won me. I felt incapable of resisting, mesmerized. I suppose I could have told him not to be a bloody fool and sent him away with the others, but I said nothing. I felt a sort of gratitude that I was going to get it without committing the sin of willfully and consciously reaching out for it."
"You sound as though you've had more than one pint of bitter, but I think I can understand. It's a sort of magnetism some men have. It doesn't work on all women, or even on any woman all the time. Such a man has the luck to be, from time to time, in the presence of a vulnerable woman in her rare moment of weakness. And then prudence is thrown to the winds and a decent, virtuous, discreet girl becomes the sort of bag who'll let a perfect stranger strip her on a park bench with a dozen people looking on."
"A park bench may be going a little too far, but I knew somebody might come back to look for Bernie. And I knew Sadie still had to come home. She might have had a friend with her, but it didn't make any difference. Bernie didn't close the door or tell me to, so I left it open and if he hadn't sent Sadie away when he did he could have had me in a dozen different positions and he could have had her too. And I daresay anybody else could have had me, if Bernie hadn't ordered me not to let 'em."
Brenda wished they were in some secluded spot, so great was her desire to have Valerie naked in her arms. She wanted to give her tall, slender, black-haired body to her sturdy little sweetheart and she wanted to taste again the juices of the vagina in which Bernie had sown his seed. More than that, she wanted Bernie. She envied Sadie that she had seen him taking off Valerie's clothes. Had she been in Sadie's position, she would have refused to leave the room. She would have done what Sadie had hoped to do-stay, witness Valerie's bloody initiation and then take her place underneath Bernie. Brenda knew lots of men whom she found more attractive than Bernie but his virtue was that he had fructified Valerie. What a pity that Auntie Brenda would never be able to say to Valerie's son or daughter "My loins too have tasted sperm from the spring from which you originate!"
"Enough of your erotic reminiscences!" Brenda exclaimed, one of her hands resting in Valerie's lap. "Let's be practical! Hasn't Lew ever hinted at marriage?"
The negative shaking of the blond head was not so much an answer to the question as a rejection of the proposal behind it.
"We'd probably have married eventually," she said sadly, after taking another swig of her beer. "But we've never directly discussed the subject. Now, of course, I must give up all hope of that. When he gets to know about this he's going to be hurt and furious. It'll be the end of our courtship, and if he doesn't thrash the living daylight out of me by way of adieu, I shall be surprised."
Brenda was raising her glass to her lips, after a pensive moment of silence, when an idea came to her.
"Why not surrender to Lew the next time he tries," she said, lowering her glass to the table. "Then wait a couple of weeks and tell him you're a few days overdue?! If he's been thinking of marriage it might give him the necessary push. And only you and I need ever know that Lew's seven-month baby is really Bernie's nine-monther."
"And what if it really is a seven-monther?" Valerie replied, laughing. "Anyway, I couldn't do that to Lew. What I had in mind for us was the sort of marriage which is based on faith and honesty. I'd rather lose him altogether and keep pleasant memories of him, than go through life with him knowing I tricked him into marriage by a lie which I repeat, even if only by my silence, every minute of every day."
"Darling, I didn't know you read shoddy novelettes! That sort of junk sounds noble in films, but it's dotty on the lips of a normal intelligent woman. If you can get your kid a daddy, and you do all in your power to keep daddy happy in bed, as well as regards his food and other comforts-why should you reproach yourself that you hoodwinked him into marital bliss? You'd be doing Lew a favor if you gave it to him regularly without being to fussy about his getting a little bit elsewhere from time to time. He'd be looked after and he'd eat regularly, which is what he needs and also what he wants, though he doesn't realize that himself."
"I shall break it to him as gently as possible, and try to get him to forgive me," Valerie said, as they got up to go. "If he wants to go on seeing me after-wards, he might eventually decide it's better to sleep with me and bring up another man's child than never get more from me than a chaste kiss."
Brenda and Valerie parted company at the Charing Cross underground station, the former having an appointment with Doctor Peter Buxton, while Valerie hoped Lew would visit her later in the evening. (He did not do so, but the following evening he took her to a public house for a few drinks.)
Normally a heavy drinker, Lew drank in moderation when he was either with Valerie or intent upon meeting her. He had drunk two pints of brown ale and she two small glasses of bitter when the landlord of the "Grantley Arms" called "Last orders, ladies and gentlemen!" Faithful to tradition, Lew ordered another pint of brown ale and a small glass of bitter which he and Valerie drank at their ease-until about eleven o'clock, at which hour they walked arm-in-arm to her home, stopping every twenty yards for a kiss and cuddle. Was she a little warmer, softer, less reserved than usual? He thought so. And when she acceded to his request to be allowed to accompany her to the very door of her apartment he was sure their relationship was taking a turn for the better. She usually insisted on their good night kiss taking place on the footpath before the entrance to the building. When, how-ever, after climbing the ill-lit stairs they halted on the first landing at the door of her rooms and he sought to bestow upon her a kiss of the sort capable of weakening the will of the most virtuous of maidens, she protested in a good-natured way.
"Be a good boy, Lew, or I shan't let you come as far as this in the future, assuming we have a future together."
Inarticulate, Lew could only gesticulate and grimace to express his puzzlement.
"I have something very important to tell you. But it's not going to be easy and I'd like to be sure you're not going to get upset and rush off without giving me a chance to explain."
Although he had a feeling he was going to learn something disagreeable, Lew was not inclined to miss an opportunity to weaken Valerie's resistance to his immoral advances, so he unhesitantingly suggested they go into her apartment and discuss the momentous matter in comfort. It seemed to Valerie to be a good way of making sure Lew gave her a chance to appraise him calmly of her condition. If he should take unfair advantage of the intimacy of her apartment to make a further attempt at her seduction, it was no longer as serious a matter as it had been. What she had to tell would almost certainly be the end of their friendship or the real be-ginning of a deeper love, so that if circumstances led either to her angering him by refusing to surrender or to her becoming his mistress, no great harm would have been done.
Valerie opened two bottles of beer and allowed him to take a deep, refreshing draught before sticking the dagger into his pride.
"You and Brenda are my best friends so I wanted to tell you both my secret before it reached you from another source. To you it's of special importance, because I would like you never to think I'd been wasting your time or trifling with your affections. I'm going to have a baby"
"When?"
"What you really want to know is when did the misconduct occur. About seven weeks ago. On my birthday."
He rose abruptly to his feet, knocking his chair over.
"Yer mean since we've been goin' out regular?" he stammered, flushed.
Ashamed, she nodded her head. "I hadn't realized you thought of us as going out-regular. I thought you were just after my body and that once you got that you'd cool off."
"Well, what's wrong with a man going after a bit of fun? The other guy, whoever 'e is, has had his lark wi' yer and I bet that's all he were after. Me, I come straight out. I've been after yer ring, but if I 'adn't been fond o' yer, I'd have given up trying long back, 'cos I know I shall never get it without marrying you."
"Would you have married me, Lew?"
"Why not? Got to settle down some day and you're more than a good looker. I reckon you'd make a good wife for somebody."
"But not for you?" she said shyly, scarcely daring to hope.
"Why not?"
"You mean-even with the child?"
Without realizing it, Lew had come to the verge of making a marriage proposal and Valerie was in a mood to give him the gentle push which would have him swimming in matrimony. He hedged.
"Well, a man looks a bit of a fool marrying somebody else's castoff when the other chap's got 'er in trouble. Anyway, who is the other chap and 'ow does it come 'e can have a bit and I can't?"
She told him how she had come to lose her virginity and then explained why she had refused to become his mistress while allowing a stranger to have his way with her.
"I love you, Lew; and I want you to love and respect me. I've hoped we'd marry almost from the start-I mean before it became more or less necessary for me to get married. But I didn't want to marry a man who'd found me easy to get. I wanted you to know I was decent, so that you'd always trust me and take pride in my fidelity. I cared about what you thought of me and I still do. I wanted you terribly, in the physical sense; and of-ten your kisses made me so wild with desire that I had to get away from you to prevent myself from dragging you into my bed. But I took a dislike to Bernie the moment I saw him and I didn't give a damn what he thought about me. When he made it clear he wanted me I gave in without a struggle. My need of a man had been getting more insistent with our every meeting and I thought that letting Bernie give it to me would cool me down for a bit. I never intended seeing him again and I certainly wouldn't have gone with him a second time. He was just an unimportant stranger who could render me a service and then be of no further value or interest to me. He got me easily; he thought I was a bag. Well, I didn't care what he thought as long as you went on thinking I was good."
It was all very difficult for an uncomplicated animal such as Lew, but he at least realized that Valerie loved him and wanted him to think well of her, whereas she loathed the other man. Having given him time to think it out, Valerie went on.
"Lew, if we got married soon, people would think the child was yours. We could have children of our own as well. And I'd be a good wife to you."
"I know yer would, gal. If only I could be sure folks wouldn't know it wasn't my brat. I don't mind about Brenda. She's a bitch, but she'd hold her tongue to please you. Nobody else knows, do they?"
She moved close to him, knowing he was her man and determined to devote her life to repaying him for the service he was willing to render her.
"Sadie and Basil both think Bernie had me that night," she whispered, running her fingers through his sandy hair, "but they can't be sure. And only Brenda knows you've never touched me. So there's no reason why people shouldn't think you've been slipping it into me regularly and that the state I'm in is a result of your slipping it in once too often and not taking it out quick enough. Kiss me, Lew, and say you forgive me!"
Ignoring her second command but eager to obey the first, Lew drew Valerie down to his knees and into a reclining position, his right arm pillowing her golden head. While his lips rejoiced in her softness, his tongue darted in and out of her quivering mouth and he toyed with the hem of her frock.
"That's the sort of kiss Brenda warned me about," she whispered.
"The sort of kiss she liked too," he answered, slipping his hand between the white nylon of her slip and the beige nylon of her stockinged thighs.
"She said what came after was nice too."
Her mouth opened and relaxed and her tongue lazy, she kissed him. The first contact of his fingers with the smooth pink-white flesh of her thighs above her stocking tops sent a shiver of anticipatory pleasure through all her flesh.
"Lew!" she moaned.
"What?"
"She said you did it ever so well."
"Did what?" he asked, chortling victoriously as his gross hands mauled her silk protected belly.
A frightened baby, she clung to him, almost sobbing.
"I daren't say it, darling. I do love you, Lew. Crush me!"
His lust-distorted mouth swooped down on hers. His kiss was long and brutal. She wanted to forget Bernie, but she could forget neither what he had done to her nor the joy he had poured into her. She wanted it again-had to have it, whether Lew married her or not; and at that moment she did not care if he despised her. If her heat was contemptible, it was better he should know of it before publicly declaring his willingness to bind himself to her for life.
"Stay with me!" she cried and opened her thighs wide.
His claw shot upwards into the angle of her crotch and a drop of his forehead perspiration burned her inflamed cheek. His fingers felt her vaginal moistness on the silk of her panties and even obtuse Lew realized that her body wanted him. She was no pregnant young spinster in search of security and respectability. She was a woman, begging her man to masculinate her screeching, oozing femininity; and Lew's hungry, frustrated, long-denied phallus yearned for soft, warm, humid, willing, unmercenary vagina.
Valerie was jelly, Lew's hunk of clay, to be molded, twisted, poked and pulled according to his excited whim. His hands were all over her, possessing her, dominating her, squeezing her fleshy parts, pinching her buttocks and breasts, and kneading her thighs as he muttered hoarse obscenities into her willing ears. Desire crazed her. She moaned, writhed, kicked, perspired and howled like a frantic bitch in heat and Lew enjoyed his power over her. He made her wait. His bottom and his own thighs agonized his over swelling sex. He feared he would ejaculate into his underpants, but he hung on grimly, torturing her physically and mentally, driving her into a desperate corner from which she would have to beg him to shoot her with his phallic pistol. Kissing lasciviously and fondling each other disgustingly, they whiled away a further half hour, during which they fell from the chair onto the carpet, where he slowly undressed her, careful garment by prudent item. She was a tropical flower slowly opening but oh, so luxuriously spreading her velvet petals. He was the sun-masterful, scorching, and adored.
Her panties in the valley between her breasts, her stockings torn to nervous ribbons, she tried in a frenzy to help him to bare his pepper-haired chest, his rarely-bathed belly and his pullulating penis. Under the table her eager oil darkened the Burgundy and beige carpet and her vagina made acquaintance with his hard, insistent rod of bone. It was so easy. Pain there was not, nor fear nor shame, but depth, pleasure, love and cries of de-light and encouragement. She was his as no woman had ever been. It was utter, ritual, godly and pagan. The hairs of his crotch fused with her groin's beard, and she raised her loins as his sunk into them. Slow, deep and rhythmic they devoured each other, violated each other and completed each other. Her thighs widened and widened, but her tunnel tightened jealously upon his sexual peninsula, occupying it, annexing it, liberating it. Their tongued, lipped, teethed mouths played a sonata, while an erotic symphony was composed by their screeching sexes.
"It was never like this," he cried, lunging.
"I know that my redeemer liveth," her clitoris sang.
She arrived, squealing ecstasy; and he went into her again, pulled out his slimy stick and thrust it into her harder than before. Her apogee only served to augment her excitement. like a wild female beast she gave as much brutality as her victorious man crashed into her. Her fingernails drew blood from his shoulders and with a conqueror's smirk on his ugly face, he rammed himself more strongly into her ever deepening, ever widening cavern. Her flesh dissolved into a second, flushing paroxysm and a few seconds later he fouled her fructified womb with his sperm, as if ripping Bernie's baby out of her guts and pouring his own child into the vacant niche.
In bed she loved him and he used her until the room was bathed in sunlight.
The next day Lew transferred his belonging to Valerie's apartment. Until and after their special-license wedding he exploited her flesh to the utmost degree, so that she said to Brenda that "Every day is Christmas."