Chapter 3

Friday 28th March to Monday 16th December 1969

Penny did not refer to the matter when we met the next time, which was a week to the day after our first ‘tiff’, but she ended up at my flat and came to bed wearing a new bra and knicker set, plain white with lace edging but much briefer than before, and that was all she wore. She had been shopping. She discarded the bra pretty quickly once I’d seen how pretty it was.

We made love, manually, as we did the time before, though this time she initiated it by giving her attention to my prick. I did the same for her pussy and her tits, and by carefully balancing her rising orgasm against my own, managed to get us to orgasm together.

I learned something about her that night. She had gone away and thought about it, had agreed with me, and then simply shown that agreement physically, and without alluding to it verbally. Perhaps that was how she was, perhaps she always just acted on what she learned, without words. It’s not always the best way.

She was not going home for Easter, but was staying to complete her dissertation, which I asked one of the secretaries at the practice to type for her at home for a consideration.

Trouble.

I was summoned to Kieran Walsh’s office.

“What’s this about using our secretarial staff for your own personal needs?” he asked with a dour expression.

“A private arrangement,” I said tersely.

“You have no right to make use of secretarial staff in practice time. Consider this a reprimand.”

“I object to that strongly,” I replied. “I want a meeting of the partners if you place this on my record. This is a private arrangement with Holly Smithson to work for me, typing a document for my girlfriend in Holly’s own time, and off the premises. Certainly not in practice time.”

“Another of your liaisons with office staff? You are aware that the practice disapproves of relationships between employees.” He said the word ‘relationships’ as if it were one of the greater evils besetting the human condition.

“Mr Walsh,” I snapped. “What staff do in their own time is their own business. You don’t own us. I saw no clauses in our contracts ‘disapproving’ of entering into ‘relationships’ with other employees.”

“You are on dangerous ground, Proctor. Your behaviour with the female staff does not enhance the reputation of the practice.”

I was not letting that go.

“What do our clients know about inter-staff relations?” I asked. “However, if it puts your mind at rest, I have a girlfriend and have no interest in any member of staff.”

“Not the impression among the staff here.”

“A false one.”

“This meeting is over. Just watch your step Proctor. No one is indispensable.”

I returned to my office and was followed into it by Zena who had seen me pass her open door.

“Walsh?”

“Yes. Objecting to Holly typing up Penny’s dissertation at home, and me having ‘relations’ with other members of staff.”

She laughed derisively. “It’s all in his mind, Graham. He’s a sad little tyke. Don’t pay him any attention. The other partners know all about his funny ways.”

We both shrugged and went back to work.

During the Easter Vacation, Penny worked all day at my flat, going back to her flat for notes and books as she needed them, and shared my bed each night. We did not have our limited sex every night, but over the three weeks of her Easter break we would pleasure each other on average two or three times a week. There was much hugging, kissing and feeling in between.

After Easter she applied for a post-graduate teacher training course at a Liverpool College of Education, and was accepted readily, depending on her gaining a pass grade for her degree.

Thinking ahead to our separation the following academic year, she urged me to get a telephone, so I made a booking with Post Office Telephones.

I was told that I could get a phone on a party line fairly quickly, but a line all to myself would take longer. I would have to join the queue. I opted to join the queue. It took three months to get the line installed and the phone working, just in time for her to leave for Liverpool.

It seemed something of a luxury but it made it easier for Penny to call me, and I could call her by arrangement at her local telephone box.

She graduated with a upper second class degree, a 2:1. I was not invited to the degree ceremony, nor to the meal with Penny’s parents, her brother and his family. I was not surprised, and made no comment. Penny looked embarrassed, and seemed on the edge of apologising and explaining, but perhaps did not have the courage to bring up the subject.

I took her for a celebratory meal the following week. It was the best restaurant I could find, ‘Orchards’, and I knew it was far better than the one her family had been to. This embarrassed her further, especially since I still had not commented on my exclusion. This time she felt compelled to speak.

“Graham,” she said, “I’m really sorry you were not invited to the degree ceremony. There were only three tickets available. Ingrid and the children couldn’t go either.”

I stared at her. “And the celebration meal?” I asked. It had irritated me, that snub.

“Well, you see...” she stumbled to a halt.

“Your parents were in charge and I was not invited by them. You mentioned me, but that idea was rejected. The excuse was ‘family only’. Am I right?”

She gazed at me in surprise. “Well, yes, that’s exactly how it was.”

“So I know exactly where I stand with your parents. Nowhere. I’ll bet they tried to put you off me as well?”

She nodded. “They said you were not suitable and you’d bring me nothing but trouble. They said they knew what you were like. I didn’t understand how they could know anything about you.”

So the Roasburies were snobs. I bet myself their real name was Roseby, or Rosby or some such; affected or what! I would be happy to keep clear of them, as long as they kept clear of me. Her next comment endeared her to me.

“But,” she hastily added, “they won’t succeed there. I’m with you, my love. This restaurant is streets ahead of the one we went to, and the food is superb.”

That was encouraging, and I felt good. She called me ‘my love’! I forbore to comment that it seemed the way to a girl’s heart was through quality goods going into her stomach, though it did cross my mind.

We made the journey to Liverpool to find her a furnished place to live for the year. We found a Victorian house within walking distance of the college, and, as it happened, a slightly longer walk in the other direction to a parish church with six bells (yes, I looked it up at the time), which was adjacent as many are to a very pleasant pub with good ‘Happy Higson’s’ beer. There was a supermarket and some local shops at the end of the road on which the house lay.

The room, for that is all it was, was fairly large on the upper floor, fully carpeted, with a double bed, a cooker, a wash basin/kitchen sink, a table with two chairs, book case, one armchair, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers.

The bathroom was shared with the other two rooms on that floor. The bathroom was very clean and was maintained by the owner who lived on the ground floor, rather in the fashion of the flat she was living in already. The room was a little down at heel but clean, and Penny paid the deposit and was set to move in the following September.

It was while we were in the room that I mentioned that the local parish church had a ring of bells, and she expressed an interest in joining me, and seeing how it was done. So once we were back home, I took her to my local tower, and she watched, then asked to learn to ring. I did not teach her, thinking that like learning to drive, it is best taught by someone else.

Summer had finally arrived, and we only had the four weeks in June before she took up a summer job with a firm in London which translated texts to and from different languages. Her degree had been in French and Italian.

For my part I had my work to do, and this included a trip to the States to put feelers out for our practice to expand its specialised services there for companies that wanted to get a foothold in Britain. I was also to explore prospects for opening an office there with indigenous talent and expertise in British law. Penny and I would be apart for the whole of July and August.

I had hoped we would be able to take a week’s holiday together at the beginning of September, but she was going to her parents’ for a fortnight before she went to Liverpool.

I was miffed, but she pointed out that she had not seen them since graduation and after all they were to fund her post graduate training. I had to agree with her decision: I had no choice.

She promised we could spend a week together in Liverpool before her course started and I changed my holidays to suit. I noted I had not been invited to see her at her parents’ place, not that I minded much after my experience at Christmas and their behaviour at her graduation.

We did spend that week together, and I moved things a little further in our love making: I went down on her. I was kissing her breasts and fondling her pussy, and taking my courage in both hands, or rather in my mouth, I kissed down her body.

Now I had kissed her navel many times, so there was no reaction apart from her chuckles at the tickling sensation, and the little sounds of pleasure that followed them. Then I moved further south.

“Graham!” she squeaked. “What are you doing?”

“Loving you!” I reposted. “Relax!”

“But...”

“Just relax.”

I pulled her legs apart; they had clenched together when I reached her furry mound. She let me, but was still murmuring her distrust.

I held her petals apart and licked from vagina to clit, merely grazing the latter. She gave a startled, “Oh!”

I began to repeat the procedure. She pushed at my head.

“Graham don’t, it’s dirty. I smell! Please don’t.”

I raised my head and gazed into her eyes.

“Penny, my darling,” I said gently, “you’re not dirty, and your smell is a good healthy woman’s smell and I like it. So just let me get on with this.”

She sighed with resignation, but her legs opened wider.

“Go on then,” she said, “if you must.”

I went to work. Tongue across her crease, swirl around her button, across her button. She jerked, and gave a little yip. I sucked a little on her button and she moaned. Another few traverses, and she was beginning to writhe while making more and more noise.

“Oh, Graham, what are you doing to me? Oh, yes! Oh right there! Please, ooh! Oh, I think I’m...”

She squealed, cried out my name, called upon God and heaven, and took off in a mad bucking and twitching, her thighs crashing together round my head, her hand pushing my head against her sex. It’s a wonder she did not crush my skull!

“That was...” she panted as she regained the power of speech, “I thought I knew ... Couldn’t get better ... But that! Oh I love you Graham!”

It was the first time she had ever said it with such fervour and conviction. I would not hold it against her, said as it was in the languid aftershocks of a strenuous orgasm, but she did say it.

“And I’ve told you often enough, that I love you,” and I left it at that.

We lay for a while, then she stiffened.

“Graham, I ... I don’t think I can ... You know – in my mouth.” She raised her head from my shoulder to see my reaction. I stifled my disappointment.

“It’s all right, my darling,” I said looking into her eyes softly, “Just do what you are comfortable with, you get me off just fine.” What we suffer for the girl we love!

She relaxed and smiled, nestling into my armpit. Then her fingers strayed to my very much alive erection, and worked her magic, finding my most sensitive areas, stroking lightly then hard, slowly then quickly, until I begged for mercy, and she brought me off.

It didn’t make the earth move but it relieved my tension and I enjoyed it immensely. Perhaps one day, I thought, the oral will come, or rather, I will come from the oral.

It was on the Monday of the week we spent together, we were in her room and heard the sound of bells. Monday was the Parish Church’s practice night.