Chapter 1

There’s a heatwave going on as we head towards the end of August, but it’s the heatwave of 1976, rather than 2023.

Having completed my degree, I’m feeling rich with the finance that goes with a doctorate scholarship and I ask (beg, rather), my lover Mary to marry me. We’re young, both of us 22, but we’re Irish, and the society in which we live frowns, for people like us at least, on informal physical relationships, or, as it’s called, “living in sin” (!). So, it’s,” Do you, Mary take Jack to be your lawful ... etc”, and with broad smiles, we do.

Why wouldn’t I? There are good-looking girls aplenty at University College Cork, but a gorgeous woman who makes me think, shares my ideas and has a stock of filthy jokes, who can switch from serious to hilarious and back within a couple of sentences? There’s only one, her name is Mary, and she’s mine, all mine. Not that I’d ever dare say that last bit to her, my ego wouldn’t survive her cutting riposte...

We haven’t the finances for more than a two-day honeymoon at a seaside boarding house, but we really don’t care. Mary has a thesis to finish off and submit, so she’s telling me to piss off for a few weeks so she can concentrate.

As I did the previous two summers, I head off to the French and German border, to the vineyards of Alsace for the grape harvest which is about to begin. Mary says she’ll join me as soon as she can. I’ve explained to her that, married or not, she’ll be sleeping in a dormitory with the other girls. She says that’s ok, because having been educated by the nuns, she’s used to that.

They know me at this farm, and I’m well-liked by the owners, partly because I’ve taken the trouble to get to know their son Jakob. He’s a tall young man, film-star handsome and built like a heavyweight boxer. It’s only when you notice the blank look in his eyes that you realise there’s something missing. A breakdown in the oxygen supply after a premature birth has left poor Jakob with a brain way behind his chronological 19 years of age. Some of the others from the gang of casual workers tease him heartlessly. He gets sent to look for left-handed screwdrivers and the like. He takes it remarkably well, with a patience that would be beyond me. I get on fine with him. I respect what he can and can’t do, and I know that among the vines, he gets through the work of two men, if not three.

We make a good team, and when Mary turns up a fortnight later, he painstakingly shows her what is to be done and how best to do it. He looks at her, of course, as any man with taste would. It’s normal. She’s beautiful. She’s as tall as me at just over six feet, with short red hair that shouts her nationality. Her slim body, pale skin and a scattering of freckles have encouraged more than one agency to suggest that she could have a modelling career, but she knows what she wants to be, and that’s an electronics engineer. She has fabulous tits. On one of our first dates, I cheat and check out her bra size. 34C. She complains frequently that they get in the way, but I’m happy to worship them. In the vines, she works wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a loose long-sleeved dress that covers her from neck to knees and wrist to wrist.

I was her first lover, in year two at Uni, and I knew as soon as we’d met that if she wanted me, I’d be not only willing, but happier than I’d ever expected to be. Being in love hasn’t prevented me, though, from telling her how much I appreciate it when she is (very) lightly dressed, even, or if I’m being brutally honest about my fantasies, especially, when there are others around to enjoy the view. Her milk-white skin means that asking her to sunbathe topless at the beach isn’t often an option. Last summer in Italy, though, the waiters in one restaurant got to admire her wearing her birthday gift from me, a loose, delicate teeshirt that showed off her braless tits wonderfully. She trembled throughout the meal, unnerved by the excellent service and very close attention we were getting, but her enthusiasm and wetness when we got back to our campsite said this was something to be further explored. Our sex life has been very active from the start. Seven years at a convent boarding school have given Mary a pronounced taste for cunnilingus, and I’ve quickly learned just how she likes it, how often, too. I’m still working on performing as well as some of her school friends, but apparently, I’m not bad.

Jakob is very shy, and uncomfortable with physical contact in general. He’s fascinated, though, by the paleness of my wife, and shortly after her arrival, he asks me if her skin is as soft as it looks. Without thinking, I tell him that her skin is beautifully soft all over, and he blushes. I know that some of the girls arrange to be naked in the showers when he comes to clean them, just so they can squeal and enjoy his embarrassment. He is, after all a very attractive young man. He doesn’t really understand that for them it’s a game. He’s like a small boy to whom people say or show things that he feels somehow, he should understand, but doesn’t. He adores Mary, but a bit like a dog adoring his kind mistress.

We get to the end of the harvest. That evening there’s a celebration supper. Tables covered with bedsheets acting as tablecloths, are set up in the courtyard of the farm, which is lit by oil lamps, and as the light fades, everyone gathers there. Mary is wearing a floaty emerald-green cotton dress, knee length. The top is held up by spaghetti straps that leave her neck, shoulders and arms bare, so no bra. That’s not an everyday occurrence and she looks amazing. To me, she’s always sexy, but tonight, it’s her elegance that singles her out. When we arrive in the courtyard, Jakob waves, showing that he’s saved places for us. Mary sits down next to him, with me on her other side at the end of the wooden bench. Food is served, wine, too, and we eat and drink.

Three hours later, the courtyard is almost empty. There’s a ball in the village nearby, and most of the harvesters are teenagers. I’m happy just to sit beside the woman I love and relax. Only Norm, an obnoxious Australian, and his mates are still there, at a table over the far side, getting steadily more drunk. Norm is a good worker when sober, but he’s also a shit-stirrer, especially when with the pair he calls his mates, who follow him like acolytes.

I’ve spent a lot of time with Jakob, and I can tell when something is bothering him.

“Is there a problem, Jakob?”

“No ... not really ... well...”

“Jakob, we’re your friends,” Mary chips in. “Please tell us what is worrying you.”

So, he explains, with hesitations, pauses, half sentences. Under pressure, his already limited language skills fall apart. I listen, then interpret for Mary.

It’s Norm, who is frankly a pain in the arse. Jakob has unfortunately let slip what I’d said about Mary’s skin. Norm’s view is that Jakob needs to check this out for himself, and that a real man would just grab her without asking, because women enjoy that.

“If Norm tried that he’d be on for a pair of bruised balls,” Mary declares. He wouldn’t be the first to find out how efficiently she deals with anyone trying to take liberties with her.

“It wouldn’t bother me if Jakob stroked my arm, if that would help,” she offers.

“Norm is watching to see what Jakob will do. He’ll be too happy if he thinks he’s won. Listen, a chara, would you let Jakob touch your knee? Nobody else would know, and it would make Jakob’s day.”

A chara, dear friend, is a term of endearment in Irish. I use it with Mary, usually when we’re making love, because it does things to her libido.

“A chara?”

I can hear her voice trembling. She’s come a long way, at least as far as men are concerned, since her boarding school days, but tonight will be the first time since we’ve been together that another man has touched her like this. She swallows and nods her agreement.

I explain to Jakob. He must take care not to let anyone guess what’s happening. His face never shows much expression, so as long as he doesn’t look down, nobody will know. He says he understands.

I put my hand on Mary’s knee, which is hidden by the sheet covering the table. Jakob’s hand, the size of a shovel, comes to cover mine. I slide my hand out from under his, and I hear his sigh of pleasure at discovering that Mary’s skin is indeed beautifully soft. A few seconds pass, and I’m about to say something when Mary places her finger across my lips.

“There’s so little enjoyment in his life,” she murmurs, in English so he can’t possibly understand. “Leave it for a bit longer. I don’t mind and it something we can afford to do for him.”

She’s sitting with her knees together like a well-brought-up Irish girl. I rest my hand on her other thigh. I can sense that Jakob’s thumb is gently caressing her knee. Her eyes are half-closed, and her breathing is a little faster than normal. She is amazingly sexy. It had slipped my mind quite how sensitive her knees are. What should I do? The temptation is too strong.

“If I asked you to pull your dress up a bit, what would you say?”

“Like this?” Mary asks, after a brief hesitation. She slides her dress up her thighs by several inches. I check with my hand...

“Yes. Like that it’s good ... very good, in fact”.

Jakob seems to be lost in his own little world. I tap the back of his hand and move it a little further up Mary’s thigh.

“Soft everywhere,” he murmurs.

“I’ve watched him caring for the animals here,” my wife says. “He’s always very gentle with them and they love him. I’m a farmer’s daughter and I can tell. He’s stroking me as if I were a cat. It’s nice. I feel completely relaxed.”

I can tell that’s true, so I join in, stroking the inner side of her other thigh.

She smiles at me. “That’s nice, too, but maybe not quite so relaxing.”

“Would you like to move your knees apart a bit?”

“Like this? I’m sure that Jakob isn’t thinking beyond what he’s doing right now. Am I the only one thinking that it isn’t normal to let you caress my bare thighs, especially not the two of you at the same time...”

“Oh, I’m aware of it. Believe me! I think it’s doing things to you, too. Am I right?”

“Yes. You’re each caressing me differently. It’s a very new sensation for me. Should I move my dress up some more? Would you like that?”

“Yes, please!”

She slips her hand under the tablecloth.

“That’s as far as I can go. If I pull my dress up any further, the cloth won’t be hiding my legs and I’ll be running the risk of my knickers being on show.”

“Only to someone under the table!”

“But you understand what I’m saying. Never mind. Leave it. I’m not promising anything.”

While this discussion is going on, I’m carrying on with my caresses and I can sense that Jakob is doing the same. Little by little Mary has been parting her thighs, and she’s now in a position which, without the tablecloth to hide her legs, she would never adopt in public. She has her elbows on the table and is resting her chin on her hands. Suddenly, without her expression changing at all, she puts a hand down and pulls her dress right up to her groin. The tablecloth is no longer hiding anything, and I can see her pale thighs, her black cotton knickers and also my fingers, which have crept up to within an inch or so of her sex. What stiffens my erection even more, though, is the sight of Jakob’s hand in an almost identical position, even if his is simply resting on the top of her leg, whereas mine is between her thighs. Not even in my wildest fantasies of that time had I fantasised that Mary might accept such a situation, let alone take the initiative. Jakob and I can now see clearly what we are doing to my uncomplaining, or more accurately, totally complicit wife. Her thighs are at an angle of at least thirty degrees. My fingers, Jakob’s too, are only inches from the tight black cotton that hides her sex.