Chapter 34

Thus at the beginning of July, Toby found himself going home each evening to an empty flat and he quickly realised how much he missed the easy undemanding company of his friends. Fending for himself did not in fact cause him any worries and indeed the flat looked a great deal cleaner and tidier when he was on his own, but the evenings seemed awfully long and dull. The month passed slowly and he was glad when the time came for him to return to his family for a couple of weeks.

It seemed strange to be back in Nalchester Branch, sitting on the number three till each day. Toby felt that it was almost as if the previous few weeks had never happened. He was extremely pleased when, at the end of the first week, Beevish announced that his stay would be extended to a month, because the O&M inspection was taking longer than expected as one of the Assistants was taking his annual leave in the middle of it.

On the second Wednesday, during the quiet lunch-hour, Toby was drawing up the Manager’s weekly list of overdrawn accounts. This was a small but tedious job that traditionally went with the number three till. He managed to do it easily between customers, who were few and far between at that time of the day and the task was made easier by little Mary O’Toole, who invariably bored would stand beside him and read out the data from the computer print-out.

‘You know I got terribly sunburnt last weekend,’ she said casually as she turned over the page idly.

‘Yes, the weather was great, wasn’t it,’ agreed Toby absently, drawing a box around an account which he noticed had been overdrawn for some weeks without permission.

‘So sunburnt in fact,’ continued Mary quietly, ‘That I haven’t been able to wear my bra or panties ever since.’

Toby looked at her in surprise and she regarded him steadily with her enormous waif-like brown eyes. For all the world she looked like an innocent child. What she did next though was hardly innocent. Slowly she lifted the hem of her dress to reveal a surprisingly luxuriant growth of dark pubic hair. She continued to look at Toby unwaveringly and his heart missed a beat. Just as slowly she lowered her dress and moved closer to him.

‘0096782, Jones, J.F., £43 overdrawn,’ she read from the sheet.

Toby shook his head and tried to focus his attention on the task in front of him. He could feel the steady pressure of Mary’s body pressing against his side. It was a warm day and his jacket and waistcoat were hanging over the back of the chair behind him, so there was only the thin cotton of his shirt and of her flimsy summer dress between them.

‘0096845, Witherspoon, Miss K.W., £16 overdrawn,’ she said.

Looking casually round the office, Toby observed Beevish Shagwell deeply immersed in a formidable looking pile of title deeds. He could hear Felicity Fox processing batches through the computer terminal.

There were only the four of them in the office. Slowly he reached over with his left hand and it made contact with Mary’s thigh. She gave a little shiver of anticipation. Gradually his fingers crept higher.

‘0097526, Smith, K.E.H., £79 overdrawn,’ announced Mary. Toby looked at her out of the corner of his eye and she licked her lips.

‘0097854, Jefferson, Oooh,’ Mary shuddered with pleasure as Toby’s fingers reached their goal.

‘How much?’ he asked, grinning at her wickedly.

‘£47 overdraaaaawn,’ gasped Mary.

They continued with their risky little game and Toby could tell that Mary was almost on the point of orgasm when the front door opened and in came two customers.

‘Oh shit,’ she whispered as he drew his hand away quickly.

She had been lubricating copiously so Toby hastily felt in his pocket for a tissue to wipe his fingers before taking the cheque that was passed to him through the dish beneath the bandit-screen. Mary’s luck was obviously out, because from then on he had a constant stream of customers until the end of the lunch break. The rest of the staff returned and he sadly finished his list on his own.

Toby thought about the experience all afternoon. His concentration was destroyed and for the first time ever he had extreme difficulty in balancing his till. When he had first joined the Bank, Beevish Shagwell had told him that Mary O’Toole was the Branch nymphomaniac. With her innocent looks, child’s body and barely-formed breasts he had found the claim hard to believe. That was until the time that he caught Mary and Ernie Danglers in the Stationery cupboard. Ernie had been making up the annual order and Mary had supposedly been in the rest room making afternoon tea for everyone. When Toby went in for a new pile of register sheets, Ernie wasn’t making his order up and Mary wasn’t making tea next door, but from the moans of pleasure coming from both of them, they were obviously making something.

At five o’clock that evening Toby made a brief telephone call to his mother. At just after five he sidled up to Mary’s desk. She was packing her work away for the night.

‘I’ve just realised that there’s something that I need from my flat in Bristol,’ he said casually.

‘Is there?’ asked the girl with studied indifference.

‘I thought I’d go down and fetch it now.’

‘Now,’ repeated Mary.

‘Well?’ said Toby, leaving the actual question unasked.

‘I’ve always wanted to see your flat,’ said Mary, not meeting his eye.

‘You could come if you like,’ Toby deliberately stressed the third word.

‘Oh yes, I’d like to come,’ she responded, ‘I’ll ring Mum and tell her I’m not going to be home for tea, shall I?’

‘Tell her you won’t be home for supper either,’ said Toby gently.

The journey down to Bristol was hair-raising. They never said a word to each other and their hands never left each other’s groins. They left a trail of clothes from the front door all the way up the stairs and into Andrew and Emma’s bedroom.

‘That was wonderful,’ sighed Mary afterwards.

‘It certainly was,’ chuckled Toby, ‘I’ll never know how I managed to drive here though.’

Mary giggled.

‘You’re very good in bed,’ she observed.

‘And so are you,’ said Toby, slipping his hand between her legs, ‘Would you like to do it some more?’

‘Oh yes please,’ she replied, rolling on top of him.

Later they went out and bought some fish and chips. They ate sitting in the middle of Andrew and Emma’s bed.

‘I hope I can get the smell out of this room before my friends come back next term,’ laughed Toby as he rolled up the newspaper into balls and threw it out onto the landing.

‘What’s the time?’ asked Mary.

‘About nine o’clock.’

‘I’d better be home at around eleven,’ she decided, ‘That gives us plenty of time,’ she lay back against the pillows and looked up at him innocently. ‘Would you like to fuck me again, Mr. Adamson?’ she asked, ‘I should like to feel that great big prick of yours inside my cunt again.’

‘Oh, Miss O’Toole,’ he laughed, ‘You have such a wonderful way with words. It would give me the greatest pleasure.’

It did.

At work the next day they could hardly keep their hands off each other and Mary pleaded with Toby to take her down to Bristol that evening. He had a better idea. Under some vague pretext he retired to the flat for the weekend and took her with him. They only got out of bed to eat and go to the bathroom.

‘Well, that’s it,’ said Mary as Toby dropped her off on Sunday evening, ‘Ernie’s back on Monday and it’s business as usual.’

Toby laughed. In a way he was quite pleased, because she had absolutely exhausted him.

‘You don’t mind too much?’ she asked anxiously.

‘No. I don’t want to mess up whatever it is that you have going with Ernie,’ he replied, ‘It’s been a lot of fun though.’

‘Perhaps you might come on relief when he’s away next year,’ said Mary hopefully.

‘That’s possible,’ agreed Toby, ‘I’ll get a course of vitamin tablets in advance next time though.’

The one thing which Toby’s chance encounter with Mary O’Toole definitely did do was to reawaken his appetite for the opposite sex. With a vengeance. When Amber had gone off to the States, almost a year previously, Toby had almost unwittingly switched himself off. Although he made himself come almost every day, encounters with the opposite sex gradually became low on his list of priorities. Initially he had lived in hope that Amber would indeed be able to keep to her plan and visit England during the summer, but when letter after letter arrived with no mention of an impending visit, he gradually gave up hope. When she wrote telling him that she had been offered the chance to cross America in a camper with some friends during the long summer vacation, he had replied wishing her an enjoyable trip. It was then that he realised in his heart of hearts that the likelihood of ever seeing her again was remote. Watching Emma and Natasha stalking unconcernedly about the flat in the nude had given him a sense of longing, but of course both girls were spoken for and the last thing that he wanted was to stir up trouble. In fact trouble had been stirred up by his mere presence in Bristol, as he was to learn shortly before the end of his month at Nalchester. Emma rang him one evening to tell him about it.