Chapter Twelve

‘PLEASE! DO NOT CRY– Janet!’

The use of my first name was like the jangle of an alarm bell. It should have been enough of a warning. In truth it was – but I didn’t heed it, just as I hadn’t heeded all the other signs that had led up to this critical moment. I suppose afterwards I eased the burden of my guilt by trying to blame the whole mess of the disintegrating relationship between my husband and me on his intransigence, his determination to exert absolute rule over me in every aspect. But I must bear my own measure of responsibility for the way things have turned out, as I’m sure you’ve already realised. After more than six years of willing subservience to Patrick, my sudden revolt, and its dire consequences, says as much about the complex deviancy of my nature as the strange circumstances that have brought me here.

Such as that late afternoon when I sat in the patch of flattened grass, on the bank which edged the narrow, turgid water that oozed past the boundary of the school compound. It was known simply as the Ruizi, the “river”. My comforter was Odhiambo, my other Patrick. Already this had become a favoured retreat, a secluded spot where we could meet without much fear of discovery by other staff or students. The only possible observers might be the young boys who brought the native cattle down to drink at the opposite bank, where there was a beaten path and a muddy, hoof-marked strip of shore. But they usually waited until late afternoon before watering the cows, and anyway the bellows of beasts and the yelps of their drovers were adequate warning of their approach. All we had to do was lie down to be screened by the high, dry, golden stalks of the grass surrounding us.

Not that we had anything to hide, I told myself. What was wrong about a teacher giving extra tuition to a favoured student to help him with his GCSE English? Which didn’t help at all to allay my feeling of guilt and subterfuge, nor the feeling of quickening excitement every time I made my way to our surreptitious rendezvous. And Odhiambo felt the same.

The books which were our alibi lay discarded as I told my private griefs to my attentive and, at first, perfectly respectful swain. The tears soon flowed as I recounted the latest in the growing list of grievances at my husband’s cruel transformation, and his cold neglect. ‘He never ... we never ... he doesn’t show me any affection,’ I wept. Odhiambo was a bright boy – young man, young man! I kept correcting myself. He didn’t need me to spell out what I meant but couldn’t say. As proved by the way in which he moved, and those long arms took me into his breast, where my tears wet his newly pressed, white uniform shirt, with the cheap blue cotton badge of the school crest sewn on its pocket. He cradled me, rocked me gently back and forth, like a parent nursing a child. But I was no child. And neither was he.

Suddenly his fingers were lifting my wet face, and we were kissing. I could feel those thickly cushioned lips, pressing ever more tightly, sealing me to him, the strangled little whimper of protest that died in my throat, as my own mouth opened, and our tongues curled and twined and writhed in passionate need both to possess and be possessed. We were lying down now, wrapped together, his long black legs rubbing against my slimmer, paler limbs, our skin fired by the intimate contact, for he wore only the stiff khaki shorts, while the light hem of my thin cotton dress was up around my hips, my little white briefs on peeping show.

‘No! No! We can’t! We mustn’t!’ I gasped, dragging my mouth free for a gulping instant, then gnawing wildly at his face once more. Then I felt his strong hand clamp down, curve into the fold of my flesh, over the narrow crotch of my knickers, felt those long fingers, already such a potent feature of my sleeping and waking dreams, aligned along the groove of my vulva, pressed against my sex lips, felt the flooding wetness of that strip of cotton. I was on the edge of coming. Fear nudged a nose in front of screaming desire, and my legs scissored, my hips dragged away from his touch, and I cried out.

He had a deep bass voice at the best of times, and now he let out a rumbling groan as he desisted from his amorous assault. My hand was on his wrist (a reversal of my heated dreams). I thrust it down, away from the focal point of my clamorous need, and it landed on my thigh, clutched at the softness of my flesh, holding on in desperate plea. I gave up my struggle, let it lie there, my own smaller palm spread feebly over it, and let my dishevelled head stay hidden at his chest. ‘I can’t!’ I wept, my voice no more than a scratchy whisper. ‘I’ve never been with anyone ... except my husband. Please, Patrick. Please understand.’

‘But, madam! My darling! I must – I want to play sex – I have to fuck with you!’

Even as I forgave his lack of expertise in the subtleties of English, my mind winced at the gross indelicacy of his language. Why couldn’t he say “I want to make love to you”, as he did in my own solitary fantasies? His hand was creeping once more up my inner thigh, his fingers touching the tight seam of my briefs. I could feel my resistance seeping from me like the increasing stickiness only a fingernail’s distance from his searching digits. Somehow, I made a last desperate stand. ‘I’ve never been with another man!’ I pleaded. ‘My husband is the only one. When you exposed – showed yourself to me – in the sick bay that day – that was only the second penis I have seen!’

Now it was his turn to be shocked. I could feel it, in the manner his spreading fingers stiffened on their way to my crotch. ‘What! That is the truth? Did you never jig-a-jig– play sex as a girl?’

Oh yes! I thought bitterly, distracted by the tone of utter disbelief, and vividly recalling my lonely bouts of masturbation at the swimming pool, and the cinema. ‘Of course not!’ I answered, disgusted with my duplicity at the equally outraged note of my reply. My mind was spinning crazily, my body hammering out its own urgent plea for fulfilment, but somehow, caution, or fear, or downright perversity, triumphed. Perhaps what followed waswhat I wanted, that sick facet within me that needed true satisfaction to be discovered only in that hunger to abase and debase myself in sex.

I thought he was going to go ahead and take me by force, as I threshed anew, squirmed and fought free of his fierce grip. His hands clawed, and caught in the elastic of my briefs, dragging them partly clear, exposing the trimmed little triangle of pubic hair, before I escaped, clutched and hauled them back over my mons before I rolled onto my knees. The hard dry spikiness of the long stalks cut into my skin. Later I found my kneecaps were grazed, crisscrossed with tiny red welts, but I was unaware of it at the time. It was my turn to be the aggressor now, pressing home my attack even more desperately, sobbing as I ripped at the stiff waistband and flies of his shorts. I could see the thrusting bulge of his engorged prick straining against the cloth. I babbled frantically, my fingers searching to bare him, my words caught in my wild need. ‘I can’t let you have sex with me, Patrick. I can’t! But I understand. Please! Let me do it for you – bring you relief.’

And all at once he gave another mighty groan, his hands fell away impotently to his sides, and he lay back, surrendering. My own excitement flooded wetly through the thin material of my briefs, I shivered, my breath almost failing. But my hands became swift with avid strength. I tore and clawed at the fastenings of his shorts, ripped them open, exposing that blackness of belly, the little fuzz of kinked curls at its base, and the brown, rising fecundity of that long column of flesh, the brown tautened scrotum and the huge pink glans, the emission of its narrow mouth glistening in the sun. My fingers were on it. I felt its throbbing heat, its power surged through my fingers, my hands, and arms, my breasts, to that beating core so moistly close to its own crisis. I grabbed at the flexing muscle, iron hard, and he lay back, his hips swaying, his buttocks squirming in the grass, moaning in yielding submission.

Somehow I dragged with one hand his gaping shorts further down his quivering thighs, and ripped his shirt wide open, so that the gleaming length of his body, almost from knees to slightly turning, rocking, fuzzy head, was nakedly revealed to me. My fist closed around his rearing hardness. I spanned the shaft, lost in the wonder of its living thickness, its majesty of dimension. The biggest prick I had ever seen – only the second in the flesh, I painfully remind myself now, after so much more has befallen me, but definitely the bigger!

I was as helplessly caught in the web of my own lustful, worshipful desire, as he was beneath my frenzied attack. My fist flew, harder, faster, rapping against that kinky tight clutch of hair at the root of the long column, crazy, my cunt throbbing in flowing syncopation. We were both moaning, then whimpering, in time too, and, possessed, I lowered my sweating, tear-stained face, stretched my mouth wide, and strove to take in the huge swelling dome, jaws agape before I succeeded in encompassing it like a python devouring its prey. I felt the unique taste of his fluid, its distinctive salt and sweet flavour. Breathless, I had to pull back to gasp in air, my wet lips flubbering against its wonderful swelling softness, my chin streaming with its issue and my saliva. I licked at it then, desperately, hungrily, moaning with my urgency to consume him. I nibbled, the sweat ran down my brow, my nose, my cheeks, mingled with his juice, and my saliva, in a wild meld of ecstasy. I immolated myself on his hugeness once more, felt it fill my mouth to its utmost capacity, then there was a huge heaving eruption. His hips and belly drove upwards, bouncing me violently in his thrusts. He pumped his semen deep into me, down my working throat, filling my mouth so that I had like one drowning to tear myself free. His fingers clasped convulsively in my hair and held me to him as he ejaculated into me.

I turned my mouth sideways, spitting out the thick tide of come, felt its lubricity coating my lips, my chin, flowing onto his skin, nestling like pearls in his pubis, sealing my face in its rapidly gelling viscosity. I felt the slippery softness of the penis now, still impressively proportioned, like a snake curled about my lower features.

It seemed as though an age had passed. I lay there, my lank hair, sweat damped and plentifully gummed with his discharge, spread across his still quivering belly, and the curling cock. The taste of him filled me, crusted about my face and neck, and even abundantly stained the crumpled bosom of my dress. Like battle-scarred warriors we finally disentangled ourselves, groaning, otherwise silent, shaken and stirred by the storm of passion we had shared. Suddenly I felt the tears coming, couldn’t hold them back. ‘I can’t go home like this,’ I whimpered desolately. Patrick quickly did up his shorts, moved down to the stream’s edge, then returned with a soaked handkerchief.

‘Clean yourself.’

With weary obedience, I did as he bade me, wiping at least the worst of the thick coating of come, sweat and tears from my face and throat. At last we stood, ready to depart. The whole world looked different to me in the mellowness of the evening sunshine. ‘We cannot meet again,’ I said, my voice hoarse, and flat with my exhaustion. ‘I’m sorry, Patrick. You’re a lovely boy. But we cannot do this again.’

He stood head and shoulders taller than me, gazing down with those limpid dark eyes. ‘You are beautiful, Janet. I love you.’

Too late. I had to get away before tears engulfed me again. ‘No,’ I said, my shame and confusion making me harsh with my desire to hurt. ‘You don’t love me. You just want to fuck me.’ I flung his words back at him, and turned away, leaving him there. At least he couldn’t see the tears that streamed once more down my still unclean face.

I avoided him for the next few days, went round in a daze of fear at what I had done, and what the consequences would be. Surely Odhiambo would betray me? And in the eyes of a condemning world I would be a sexual predator, a pervert, a schoolteacher who had abused her position of trust by preying on an innocent pupil. Except that my schoolboy was no more than six months younger than me, and had had more sexual experience than, as my unoriginal dad was fond of saying, I had had hot dinners. I was so terrified that I even hid away, taking to my bed, sending word to the office that I was sick with “influenza”, and telling Patrick (my husband Patrick!) that I was having a particularly nasty period. Not that I needed any excuse to ensure that no physical activity took place between us. It spoke volumes of the condition of our relationship that he didn’t even realise that I was a good two weeks away from my time of the month. There again, I reflected, maybe he did, and the thought made me even more miserable. In any case, he didn’t question me, and didn’t come near me. This time heoccupied the spare bed, and showed little eagerness to return to my side. By the time he did, I had been caught up in yet another immoral dilemma, one that would make my sucking on Odhiambo’s cock seem as innocent as an infant seeking solace with its dummy.