Chapter 8

Friday 15th May to Monday 1st June 1970

Friday was another busy day and I spent the usual Friday evening at home. Penny had promised she would ring at 7.30, but I wondered if I would get a call after what happened on Thursday morning. A weekend with her was clearly out of the question, not that I wanted to see her anyway.

I suspected her, and she suspected me. No call. At 8.30 I left the house to meet Ian at the local for a game of darts.

Ian was an overweight round faced man. By overweight I mean obese, he was like a barrel. For some reason, and it certainly wasn’t his athletic figure, he was never short of a girlfriend.

Mind you, he was entertaining and very funny, the epitome of the GSOH (good sense of humour) of the ‘partners wanted’ columns in the papers. Penny and I had been out clubbing with him and his latest squeeze a few times, and Penny liked him, in fact she said she could fancy him, with a twinkle in her eye.

When I asked why, Penny had smiled enigmatically and simply said, “Girls look for different things from boys.”

No, he didn’t have a 10 inch cock either! I just wondered with his paunch how he had sex at all, if indeed he did.

When I arrived, there were two women sitting with him. I knew Gabby, his latest, but he introduced the other woman as Susan. The girls talked nineteen to the dozen, but Susan found time to talk with me and she was an attractive and interesting companion for the evening.

“I know you’re engaged an’ all,” Ian said as we counted down from 301 on the dartboard (If we’d played 501 we would have been there all night), “but what d’you think of Susan?”

“Very nice, good looking, easy to talk with – yes, very attractive.”

“So if we move on to her place, you’ll come?” He had put on his wheedling tone.

“OK,” I said patiently, “but just remember I am engaged.” I wondered with a start whether that was true any more.

He laughed with relief. “You need to sow some oats before you settle down. You’ve admitted she’s good looking and fun. Bit older than you.”

“Bit?”

“She’s thirty five,” he said, “that put you off?”

“No way!” I replied. “She’s a lot of fun.”

We did go to Susan’s place afterwards and had a few more drinks. Ian drank and was driving, but I did not worry. I thought he was a good driver, and we never had an accident.

Susan met me as I was coming from the bathroom.

“I’ve got tickets for Tom Paxton next Wednesday at the Free Trade Hall, fancy coming?” she asked. I did fancy; Paxton was a great favourite of mine. I loved playing his stuff on the guitar.

“Love to,” I said. “Would you like to have a pre-concert dinner in town? I can book.”

She would like.

I heard nothing from Penny over the weekend, and the post was early on Monday without a letter from her. I certainly was not going to write, but I had an idea. I wondered if this Monday would be a repeat of the first, so on a whim, I took my expensive modern camera with its telephoto lens and was outside her house by 5 o”clock.

At 5.15 there they were, walking hand in hand to her house. There was a kiss at the door, her arms round his neck and his ranging over her back and bottom. I was glad the camera had a fast wind mechanism, it was after all top of the range for that time.

I got more pics to and from the Church, and this time they stopped in a local park and snogged on a bench before strolling home. His hand was up her knee length skirt, and hers on his crotch. I had always thought she was quite demure. What had become of the ‘no sex without commitment’ mantra she was always reciting?

I didn’t bother to wait once they went inside the house, but drove home. I felt depressed, she was a lovely woman, very generous, very loving. However, there was also a sense of relief that I’d caught her before we married rather than after. There was still that unhappy emptiness in the stomach, that I had lost someone I loved dearly, but I knew I had really lost her. There was no point in trying to talk it through with her. It was the trust thing really: she was happily living a lie.

First thing on Tuesday morningI after dropping Zena at work, I got the rolls of film to the photographic shop, asking them for extra prints with the date on each print, and they were ready with them when I called on the evening journey home. Zena looked at them and sighed, but made no comment.

As I sat in my car at my slot in the flats’ car park and looked over the pictures I was quite impressed with the quality. The closeups of their tongue play on the park bench were particularly clear, and it was obvious where their hands were and what they were doing.

While I might have been congratulating myself on my prowess with the camera and its telephoto lens, the vivid sharpness of the images drove me deeper into depression, despondency and hopelessness.

I looked forward to my rendezvous with Tom Paxton and Susan.

On Wednesday evening over the meal with Susan I learned she was divorced, and owned and ran a hairdresser’s salon. I related my present problems and she sympathised, saying that her ex. had cheated as well.

We both enjoyed the concert.

It reminded me of the concert with Bob Dylan four years before. When he used an electric guitar in the second half, someone shouted ‘Judas’, and a number of people noisily got up and left. I remembered thinking that was weird. Dylan and the group played really loudly in response, which was fun though hard on the ears. All in all a brilliant concert. Tom Paxton suffered no such dissension, he was and is a master writer and performer.

Afterwards, she asked if I wanted to go home with her. The implication was obvious, even to me. I told her I had my car, and led her to some waste ground near Tommy Duck’s pub. She wondered at the pub standing alone in the waste land, and I took her inside to show her the ceiling decoration. She looked up and gasped. Pinned all over the ceiling were women’s knickers, all shapes and sizes. I told her that women were known to visit the ladies and on emerging hand over their used undergarments to the landlord, who would pin them up.

“No!” she said with an unbelieving laugh.

“It’s not compulsory,” I said, with a leering smile. She laughed. We had a quick drink and left for her flat which was over the shop she rented. She left no knickers behind, they were still on her.

“My little boy is at home,” she said. “He’ll be fast asleep. I’ll pay off the babysitter.”

Her flat was about the size of mine, and like mine had two bedrooms. She steered me to the larger of the two.

“You may kiss me now,” she said smiling, and I obliged. “Good,” she said, “Again.”

This time we went at it like teenagers, and in the process she cleverly removed her skirt, then with a minimal break her tee shirt, leaving her in her bra and briefs.

“You too,” she said, as she unhooked her bra and slid her panties down her legs.

I undressed quickly, and she led me to the bed.

“I’m using a coil,” she said, “You can do me, but we need to be quiet.”

I moved down to give her some oral attention, but she stopped me.

“Let’s just do it tonight,” she said, “We’ve both got to be up in the morning.”

So we did it. She lay back, legs apart and I pushed into her, finding her moist and open. I thrust in and out, and she lifted and sank in opposition, making my travel all the longer.

“Harder,” she said, “I won’t break. Maul my tits.”

So I went at her hard, and she grunted her appreciation, which transposed into hushed moans of rising pitch as I squeezed her little tits and pinched her nips hard.

She pulled me on to her and gasped, “Coming! Oh, fuck, keep doing that!” as she twitched and bucked. She bit my neck hard making mewling noises and a hickey, and it pushed me over the top. I groaned, feeling the juice spurting from my prick as the spasms took me.

I fell off her to the side, and we lay next to each other as we caught our breath for a short while.

Then she said, “Time to go.”

“Now?” I asked, being used to women wanting to cuddle after sex.

“Work tomorrow. I really enjoyed this evening, especially the last bit. Paxton was good too!” she laughed, “but I have early clients from seven on their way to work.”

I got out of bed, kissed her as she lay languidly, then dressed and left, feeling a little puzzled but almost satisfied and happy. I wondered if I had performed to her satisfaction, and also how I could disguise the hickey on my neck. Thankfully it was nearer my shoulder than my ear.

I arrived home at two in the morning, and fell into bed, asleep immediately.

My feelings about Penny came and went, as did my resolution to contact her somehow. I vacillated between the need to confront her with what she’d done and get closure, and the apathy which comes from depression and hopelessness which meant I would just leave her and the whole sordid business alone. Perhaps I did not want to face her possible reasons for what she did.

While I had things to do, and people to talk to, especially if they were attractive women, I did not feel too bad, though I wasn’t full of the joys of life any more. It was when I was alone at home that the loss of someone I had loved very dearly was felt most deeply.

Why did I not contact her? Partly just acceptance of a perceived fact she found someone else more attractive (and I admit he was better looking), nearer her age and therefore perhaps a better proposition, but I now think it was mainly because I had been unfaithful before I knew of her betrayal, and the only reason for that was Colette’s seduction, her devastating good looks, and my own sexual starvation after three weeks without even being near Penelope. In the case of my own betrayal there was no strong reason why. It was just lust for an exquisite woman.

Into this mix there came the sex with Susan, and over the next few days I wondered why that particular liaison impinged so little on my sense of guilt.

As I thought over that event it occurred to me that on one level, having sex with Susan was disappointing and meaningless. It seemed to me to be a merely physical act. It was two people who liked each other enjoying some pleasurable sensations to round off a pleasant evening.

We took off our clothes, copulated, she came and I came and put my semen in her. I had always wanted more than that. I had more than that in the incomplete sex I had with Penny.

Sex with Penny seemed to sum up everything we meant to each other. I simply lay inside Penny twice only, so as not to come inside her, for she would not use any form of contraceptive, but the act of putting my body into her body was an interpenetration of our selves, symbolising our commitment.

My fingering or eating her, both to orgasm, was always an act of love, as was her tossing me off manually and orally. I couldn’t help grinning as I thought, she used to toss me off, now she’s tossed me away. Ho, ho.

That was why I felt so much more guilty about Colette. Somehow there was more investment even with her: there was an intensity there; a raging desire to be together, rather than simply to relieve tension. Colette wanted me, and I wanted her. Susan just wanted the relief and the action. There was admiration, affection, friendship with Colette. Admittedly it was quite light hearted, and the commitment was not in any sense complete, but there was a certain investment in each other.

Whenever I went over these things, I felt a growing anger and sense of betrayal and also guilt, both. Penny had deceived me, not once but over and over, and she had lied.

I had betrayed her trust, but she did not know that. As far as she was concerned, in those weeks before I went with Colette, she believed I was totally committed to her, as indeed I was, and she had made a promise to me. She broke it, but it was the lies that hurt most.

I had begun to worry about her commitment after those weeks apart and her putting me off. That was no excuse for what I did, but there was at least an emotional reason why I fell for Colette’s seduction.

In Penny’s case, it was clear I was asking again and again to see her, she could not fail to believe I was totally committed to her. She simply no longer wanted me. Why didn’t she say so, preferably before we got engaged?

So went the reasoning when I was alone. The arguments went on and on, and sometimes I was on the point of going to Liverpool and having a showdown, but something would come up and the feeling would go. Then it would be replaced by the usual despondency and apathy, and I let things lie.

Nevertheless, each Friday and Wednesday, the days when she would usually phone, I waited at home until the time passed. Each day I would scan the post for a letter from her. Illogical but that’s the way it was.

I wonder now what I was hoping for, because by then I had abandoned any hope we could be reconciled. I resented that she had not communicated in any way, though I think I ignored the fact that I did not write to her either. Rather childishly I thought it was her turn to contact me so why should I? I’d wait.

Harriet was hosting the bridge meeting, and the dinner and the evening went well. There was a very brief update on my situation, on the lines of ‘Any news?’ ‘No.’ ‘How d’you feel?’ ‘OK.’ Of course I wasn’t.

There was also a little ribaldry about my hickey, about which I remained coy. Then it was on with the game after which I was duly hugged and kissed, Zena making to give me another hickey on the other side with a wink, and then I made my way home, feeling loved and valued by my three girlfriends.

On the floor behind the door, among the letters and adverts, was a small package. I opened it and had to sit down. It was Penny’s engagement watch, sent in a padded envelope. I looked for a note, but there was none. I checked the packaging, no note. She did not even put a return address, or send it registered post, which, considering its high value, was criminal and additionally disrespectful.