Chapter 6

By 2am, they both had to get out again. The wind had blown away the clouds and the sky was bright with stars. Claire insisted on staying right beside Stephen this time, in case the rat reappeared. The machair around the tent was once more given an extra dose of nitrogen fertiliser in the form of urine. Stephen had to wait for her to go back inside before his hardon went down from seeing a girl with her pants at her knees crouching beside him. For her part, Claire was unable to control her laughter. It wasn’t like he’d seen anything, she said. Not the point, he explained to her laughter, it was knowing what he’d see if he looked that gave him the trouble.

Two days to go, where to go on a day that dawned bright and cheerful? The campsite owner appeared to give a quick clean to the toilets, so Stephen asked him. “Aye, well, you could head up towards the airport. The beach goes for miles. If yee’re lucky yee’ll see a plane land.” He was joking wasn’t he? “Nay, nay, You not heard of the beach runway? Aye, head away up. It is a sight.”

So they headed that way. To people used to Heathrow and Gatwick, this was nearly incomprehensible. The wide flat beach was the landing strip, at low tide. The flights in and out were tide dependent. Stephen took some pictures. “Steve, can I have copies? This is just unbelievable.” In the small cluster of buildings, a woman assured them that at low tide, the flight from Glasgow was due. They went to the tiny cafe to eat greasy sausage rolls and wait.

The tide dropped, a few people arrived, meeting passengers, or flying out. They carried on waiting. Vehicles drove out on the sand and back to check it. Then a speck appeared, got rapidly larger and finally zoomed down and landed. Claire was nearly jumping with excitement. “This would be a fantastic place for a fashion shoot! They were talking about some place in Spain, but this would be way, way better! Steve! Steve!” She had the concept clear in her head. The ‘independent miss’ the small plane, the wide open spaces, the (if it cooperated) wide open sunny skies. It would be amazing, she said. Even the cafe, “Imagine a shot of someone – okay, me – all dolled up, drinking my coffee waiting for the tiny plane to come in and take me away. I mean it.”

“You’ll have to draw up some story boards or something. You can have my photos, if they come out.”

The cafe shut after the plane left, so they walked along the dunes. In amongst the dunes, in a little dell, they saw two young people; maybe twenty or twenty five. One had been on the plane, he had flown in from the oil rig he worked on. Before going back to his parent’s house, he and his girlfriend were having some ‘me’ time. This consisted of her skirt being up round her waist and his trousers down round his ankles. Claire and Stephen moved on, unnoticed. “Everyone is having sex except me, I think.” she said. “That tent further up, with the estate car. The car was rocking this morning when I got up; it wasn’t the wind.”

“Wait until the right person comes along. God! I sound like my parents! But it’s true, I’m sure. It will happen.”

‘It already has.’ she thought, ‘why doesn’t he realise?’

They went back via the gourmet pub again. No-one had heard the term yet, but that was what it was. A pub that served really good high-quality restaurant food in a basic pub environment. They went for sea-bream and skate this time. Stephen had only had skate once before, and hated it. All bones and skin, he thought. It was time to try it again. It was lovely. As he expected, if the food was cooked and presented well, it tasted much better. If it was just thrown on a plate, you remember how awful it was, whatever it tasted like.

Stephen pleaded ‘driving’ to only have a fruit juice. Claire went for a glass of white, followed by a sambuca with her coffee (this latter was actually technically illegal since she was allowed a glass of wine with her meal, but not spirits). The raspberry cheesecake was semi-local in that the raspberries came from Inverness.

Claire was content; happy and content. Stephen was replete. They went back to the tent, got ready and crawled in. “Stephen, I want you to make love to me.” she said, just like that. The small amount of light let him look at her and, despite being sober and her not, this time he was ready to take advantage of her. He was getting desperate to stroke and kiss that smooth, young body, all over. He started to nuzzle her neck; she lay quiet and let him. He slid down to her breasts and pulled the bra away and sucked on her nipples; she mumbled something in appreciation. Moving back to her lips; she didn’t speak at all. She was fast asleep. A voice in his head said ‘fuck her, she said to. Just do it. Be a bastard for a change. What’s she gonna do?’ but he knew he wouldn’t. She slept through to the morning, waking absolutely desperate for a pee. He had had to get up in the night. He watched her try and struggle into jeans. “Here, take the blanket.” She wrapped herself in it and rushed out to the toilet, it being too light now to pee in the field. No one was stirring, it was going to be another damp day, no-one was in a hurry to getup. She wondered if anybody would have seen, but of course the road was near by, as she walked back, a school bus went by and a load of school children saw a woman dressed in a blanket in a field. Every boy was convinced she was naked under the blanket; every girl knew how unlikely that was.

She crawled back in, allowing the blanket to slide off her. On her hands and knees, her breasts hung down, emphasising their size, the bra hung away from them a little. He was looking at a valley of delights and wasn’t sure if it was deliberate. “I fell asleep last night, sorry. How about now?” she whispered; he didn’t ask if she meant it. He had resisted his primal urges for too long. The devil on his shoulder had pointed out, quite rightly, that she could hardly have refused him, given the circumstances; but the angel on the other shoulder had, so far, persuaded him to keep her at arms length (metaphorically). Now, with her words, the angel shrugged and said “Go for it. You’ve earned it.”

He pulled her forward, on top of him; reaching round to undo her bra and remove it. Breakfast would wait this morning. He already had his hands down the back of her pants, squeezing the bare flesh of her perfect bottom. He was tempted to just roll them both over and enter her, but even now, the angel on his shoulder whispered ‘I know you’re desperate, so is she, but it is also her first time.’ There was the down side of being the first to have sex with a virgin, he felt a duty to make it special, to make it fun. “We’ve got all day.” He said, and allowed his fingers to pull her buttocks apart and gently stroke her rear. She murmured something that suggested having a finger, not her own, stroking her anal sphincter was a surprising and pleasurable event. “Pull off my pants.” He ordered, and she slid down and pulled them down. She knew enough about boys to know that they liked being sucked, though she’d never done it, so she looked at his hard penis standing to attention and opened her mouth. “No, not yet.” He would have exploded in her mouth almost immediately.

She had had four boyfriends, on and off. The first was a schoolgirl/boy crush where they had eventually kissed, mouth closed, and thought there was nothing else to do. They had gone their separate ways soon after, though both still remembered the electric feeling of someone else’s lips. Peter had been nice, but they had had no interests to keep their love alive. They weren’t allowed in a bedroom with the door shut (and both only had a vague idea why not); they had walked Peter’s dog, kissed and cuddled; but they liked such different things that almost any discussion was one-sided. He made no effort to understand her interests, and she found football the most mind-numbingly boring subject in the world. Peter would talk over the last match in forensic detail with his friends, ignoring her until they had finished. Nigel Pantire was different. By this time she was filling out nicely. His hands were everywhere; under her shirt, down her trousers, up her skirt. If he had taken things slower, he could have possibly been ‘the one’; but constantly fighting off an octopus was tiring. His family didn’t mind them closing the bedroom door. They left him to it. He was clever, sophisticated and handsome. If only he could have left her bra strap alone for one evening! Somewhere inside her brain, she realised that once she gave him what he wanted, he’d move on; she wasn’t some easy girl to be ridden and dumped.