Chapter 2

With Gordon lying in hospital, life took on its expected hectic pace during the next weeks. I had two sets of clients to handle. Jenny and Nicola worked their socks off re-arranging my appointments, and Nicola, who had a law degree, helped with conveyancing and research. However, the extra interviews and paper work only I could do, meant I was in the office by seven each morning and didn’t leave until my self-imposed deadline of ten at night. Day after day the routine went on, and it was gruelling. There was no pub visit that Friday, and I was in the office all day Saturday and most of Sunday.

Lovemaking between Sally and me was non-existent. We met briefly on the way to bed and even more briefly in the morning, and we hardly spoke. On Tuesday evening of the second week, I phoned home at nine to say I was coming home. There was no answer and the answer-phone was not switched on.

Sally was home when I arrived half an hour later, but I had no energy to ask where she had been, and she did not tell me. On Wednesday I decided to finish early and was home by nine. Sally was home and working on her own stuff. We were both dead beat as we fell into bed and slept.

On Thursday evening, I phoned again at about eight thirty. Again there was no reply. This time I did comment when I got home.

“I phoned Tuesday and tonight and you weren’t home.” It was a bald statement: I had no energy to soften the remark even though it sounded accusatory.

“I took Corrie to the hospital,” she said woodenly. “She always asks me in for a cup of tea afterwards. She’s someone to talk to. With you working so late every night I’d go off my head if I didn’t talk to someone.”

I sensed criticism in her reply. “I can’t help this you know,” I responded grumpily, “and I don’t enjoy what I’m doing at the moment either.”

She turned to me in the bed and kissed me.

“I know, darling. I wasn’t grumbling, but taking Corrie to the hospital gives me something to do and someone to talk to. That’s all. By the way, Gordon’s likely to be going home tomorrow.”

“That’s quick,” I said, wondering. “He was at death’s door just over a week ago.”

“That’s the way they do things,” she replied with a yawn. “There’s pressure to vacate beds, and the drugs they give are pretty effective. He’ll have to go in again for further treatment,”

We settled down, and I berated myself for reacting badly, before I fell into exhausted sleep.

I finished early on the next day, Friday – a measure of self-preservation – and felt at last I was now on top of the extra work. I would be free for the weekend! The following week would be easier, though it would still be onerous. I knew I would need to talk to Gordon about promoting Nicola to the position of solicitor’s clerk and getting a temp in to do her secretarial work. Nicola had the degree qualifications and Jenny didn’t.

When I got home just before five, I was grateful I had phoned ahead to announce my arrival, for Sally was already making the evening meal. After the meal she went upstairs to change and I followed, sitting on the bed while she stripped off her working suit and put on jeans and sweater. I noted she left on her sexy bra but changed her knickers for another pair just as sexy. It was quite erotic and I felt a response below.

She kissed me lovingly and promised to meet me at the pub after printing the newsletter. I met Julie and Frank at the pub half an hour later. They were neighbours with whom Sally and I had become friendly over the years as we helped each other out of various crises. I spent a happy hour with them, before we were joined by Colette and Declan, who belonged to Sally’s church. Sally and I had introduced them to Frank and Julie at a party and now they saw a lot of each other.

We laughed and joked about the events of the week at our respective places of employment. Because I always seemed to have a strange collection of people passing through my office door every day, while protecting the anonymity of clients, I had a fund of stories and kept my companions entertained most evenings. The strains of the week began to fall away.

Another hour passed before Sally arrived looking flushed and out of breath. She apologised profusely for her lateness, citing printer problems. Everyone spent another half hour together before Sally and I left to go home. On the walk home Sally again apologised, but I brushed the apology off with a smile I did not feel, and Sally seemed relieved. She said she was tired after all the trouble at church, and went straight off to bed.

I pottered round the house tidying up and making the place secure, before climbing the stairs to our bedroom. Sally seemed to have already fallen asleep, and I joined her in our bed and fell asleep in my turn.

On Saturday morning, our special time, when I returned to bed with the inevitable tea, I saw as I entered the bedroom that she had put on her sexy white see-through baby-doll nightie and under it I could discern a g-string in red. That particular baby-doll, and a provocatively erotic pose, was her signal that she wanted some immediate more athletic sexual attention, and not the usual relaxed kissing, cuddling and caressing with which we usually began our Saturday love-making.

This was no surprise, since for two weeks we had hardly spoken, let alone made love or even kissed.

She batted her eyelids at me.

“Come to bed, lover. I need you. You’ve no idea how frustrated I am after these weeks.” she growled with a seductive smile.

“Oh dear,” I said, feigning reluctance, as I climbed into the bed and into her arms, “that means the tea I’ve carefully made will get cold.”

“Fuck the tea, we’ll see what we can do about that later, or better, fuck me!” she asserted with a giggle, pulling me to her with an intense open mouthed kiss as her hand went straight for my cock, which had obligingly begun its journey to full size. I cupped her breast quite firmly through the flimsy garment and brushed my other hand over it, causing her to shiver. Our tongues continued to wrestle with each other as she rubbed me, and my hands took a trip downwards, and finding her thong, burrowed inside it.

“Oh, please!” she cried, “Touch me, Caleb. Hurry!” I knew that ‘me’ was her rampant clitoris.

Obviously I did not obey immediately, that would be no fun, but continued tracing up and down her inner petals. As her wordless cries of frustration became more shrill in pitch, I ran a finger as lightly and slowly as I could over her swollen nub. She growled, squeezing my cock hard, and I capitulated, rubbing across it twice. She came loudly and long, shaking and twitching. I rubbed her lightly and relentlessly, her climax going on and on.

Eventually her cries became more muted and resembled the mewling of a kitten, so my caresses now roved more widely over her body, over her back, stroking her neck, her ears and her cheeks and lips, as she tried to catch my fingers in her mouth. Then I traced down over her bottom and over the length of her legs. She came down from her high and snuggled into the crook of my arm.

When her orgasm had hit her she had let go of my cock. Now she sought it again and found it limp. She smiled with evil intent, and knelt up on the bed. The nightie fell back into place, allowing her to grasp the hem and begin to raise it, revealing by stages, first the thong which looked decidedly mauled and damp, then her gently rounded stomach, followed by the unveiling of her breasts. Her whole body stretched and elongated as her hands were raised to their full height and the garment was cast aside. She slid her fingers into the sides of the thong and slowly pulled it down her thighs, rolling over onto her back and sliding it off her legs. My erection eagerly returned at her display as she began to speak.

“You see my wet pussy, my love? It wants your cock. Are you going to fuck your wife’s hot pussy? Put it in me darling, I want to feel it sliding up me.”

I growled, raising myself over her and pushing her legs over to her shoulders as I brought my engorged cock to lie against her sex. She reached down and lined me up.

“Hard now, my love. Stuff me!”

I pushed into her with all my might till my root banged hard against her mound. Then withdrew and slammed in again and again.

“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Sally with each pounding thrust. “Do me! Oh yes, do me hard! Fuck me!”

I was working so hard I had no time for any conversation on my part. I jack-hammered her again and again until I felt that gathering in my groin and grunted “Coming!”

“Yes! Fill me!”

Always the obedient husband, I came. I held my breath for what seemed an eternity as I spasmed and squirted, until the sucking sensations eventually ceased, and I gasped for breath.

We settled into each other’s arms, exhausted.

“What came over you?” I asked, as my breath returned to normal. “We’ve not done it that way for ages.”

“I don’t know. I just needed to be done hard. It felt good to feel your power. I just wanted more and more of you. Don’t forget, we haven’t had sex for over a week!”

“As long as you don’t want it like that every time from now on. You’ll wear me out.”

“No. That’ll do me for a while.”

“The tea is cold. I’ll get more,” I said as I slid out of bed.

“Don’t be long! I want you here.”

I smiled and went to make more tea, which we drank as we cuddled in the wrecked bed for a while, completing the re-establishing of our love and desire for each other, before rising for breakfast at noon.

We shopped for food in the early afternoon, and then did some gardening into the early evening. It was good to do something gentle and relaxing together. As the Spring evening light began to fail the air became colder and we went inside, but we still had a salad for supper with a nice bottle of Chardonnay to wash in down.

Suddenly a comment out of the blue from Sally set me on edge.

“Oh, by the way, I promised Tony I’d give him a lesson in book-keeping after Mass tomorrow, so I’ll be about an extra hour later. All right?”

I felt a frisson of annoyance. “I suppose so. Seems to me after hardly seeing each other for two weeks or more, we’re now getting less and less time together at weekends, especially with me being on call for legal aid nearly every other weekend or so doing Gordon’s weekends as well as my own.”

“Well, I said I’d do it this weekend, but I’ll tell Tony I’ll not be going for so long in future. The parish needs to buy a new computer and printer. I’m sick of these old things going wrong all the time. And they’re so slow!”

I grunted. I was not happy and Sally knew it. She got up and came behind me, fondling my neck and shoulders in a gentle massage, kissing my head.

“You come first, darling,” she whispered. “If I can train Tony how to do the books for himself, I won’t have to go at all on Sundays. He’s not very computer-literate, but if the parish can stretch to a new office system, he can do his own newsletter as well. I won’t have to go at all, then.”

She made sense, and I grudgingly agreed. “For heaven’s sake, Sally, let’s buy him a new machine and printer ourselves. It’ll be worth it, if only for lessening the stress on us every weekend. Especially at the moment.”

“Yes, why not!” she said with enthusiasm. “I should have thought of that. Let’s do it.”

“Do it again? Don’t know if I can get it up now you’ve drained me,” I said with a smile.

“You know what I mean!”

“I now exactly what you mean. And I know what I mean.” I growled.

I reached round and pulled her onto my lap. We caressed each other for a while in silence, sipping our wine from time to time, but soon I took her to bed, where we made gentle love for nearly an hour, listening to the radio before falling asleep.

The next morning, just before we left for church, the phone rang. It was Julie in a blind panic.

“Caleb, we’ve got a burst. There’s water everywhere. Please come!”

I promised I would be there soon, told Sally and gave her the car keys. She drove off and I gathered my plumbing tools and walked over to their house. On my way I gave a wry smile: first, Sally and I were looking forward to a relaxed weekend when Gordon had a heart attack. Now, Sally and I, being shattered after all the stress of the previous two weeks, were looking forward to the rest of Sunday in blessed peace and quiet, and Frank had managed to spring a leak!

They say that troubles come in threes, I thought. What else could possibly happen? and laughed out loud at how unlikely it was that a third catastrophe could strike. I should have known better. Fate was saving the worst till last.

Julie and Frank had suffered a comprehensively burst pipe in the kitchen. Well, not exactly burst – Frank had put a nail through it, then the force of the water had blown part of the plaster off the wall, and the water was pouring out unrestrainedly in an graceful arc though the air across the kitchen.

Frank was not a practical man. In fact he was the sort of inept character that should never be allowed near tools of any kind. The water had been cascading over the kitchen for three quarters of an hour. I entered the room, saw the stop tap near the floor below the source of the inundation, and turned it off, though I did not escape a drenching in the process.

“Stop Tap!” I said significantly, pointing to it. “You turn it off to stop the water, hence the name.”

“Ooh, that’s s good idea!” laughed Julie, such to Frank’s embarrassment.

“All right, all right,” groused Frank. “I panicked, that’s all.”

The ensuing job took a long wet two hours as the pipe was embedded in the plasterwork. Then it was a matter of cutting the pipe and using a straight compression fitting. Sally joined us another hour after I completed the repair, having being informed of my progress by Julie.

Frank and I had become thoroughly soaked, so Julie made us strip naked and put on dressing gowns, while she dried our clothes in the tumble drier, to the risqué remarks of our wives, which we didn’t mind at all!

Sally and I stayed for a late lunch and then for supper, and so we did not return home until late in the evening. On arrival we only had time to set everything up for another week at work before falling into bed after a long day. There was time for a quick kiss, some words of endearment and perfunctory stroking (after all, we were naked) before sleep took us both.

Another week of busy activity followed, though the worst was over. I tried to keep my hours shorter, I was still arriving home after eight each night.

Because it was getting to March’s end, Sally was always unlikely to return home much before eight – it was an annual ritual at the end of the financial year. There were always people in a company who forgot receipts or failed to fill out the correct dockets, or simply submitted very late with mistakes, so there was a good deal of chasing for her to do.

On Thursday afternoon I began to feel ill, with a migraine featuring partial blindness, then an intense headache and nausea. I was of no use at work, so I returned home early.

I made a pot of tea and sat down in a darkened living room. After relaxing and dozing for an hour or so, I prized myself out of my chair and went to the kitchen to prepare the evening meal, a casserole. It was another flexible meal from our freezer, to be ready whenever Sally arrived. I then returned to my chair, took two pain killers and fell asleep.

An hour later I was woken abruptly as Sally ran into the room, and threw herself onto my lap, her relief evident at being home at last.

Over the meal she narrated the events of her day and her frustration with her tardy clients. I tried to follow her words, but found my eyes were still heavy, and more so now I had a full stomach.

“Oh. darling,” she exclaimed, noticing my eyelids dropping for the third time. “You’re worn out, and I’m prattling on. I’m tired as well. Come on, let’s get an early night.”

Getting an early night was the easy part, but going to sleep, not so easy. I think I realised, after nearly an hour tossing and turning, that I was over-tired, or perhaps it was the naps I’d taken before Sally arrived home. Whatever the reason sleep would not come. Eventually I went down and drank a glass of milk, which seemed to settle me and after another half hour back in bed, lying perfectly still, I slept.

However, that truncated sleep meant that next morning I still looked and felt tired and ill. I don’t think I was actually ill, simply that now the intense pressure was relieved, My body demanded some rest.

I felt so worn out that I did not resist when Sally took one look at me and phoned the office to say I would be late or perhaps not in at all. Nicola assured her there was plenty for them to do,

Sally fussed over me, gave me some breakfast, kissed my head and left for work. I slept for another hour and then went to the office, arriving in time for coffee at eleven. With Gordon still away I needed to be there, even if I didn’t do much. It reminded me to see Gordon about reorganising the office.

A day’s work calmed me down and I regained my wits to some extent. Now, I thought, I could survive the next days. It transpired I was wrong. I didn’t realise how exhausted I was; I’d grown used to feeling that way.

Because I had been late to the office, I had to stay later to finish essential work the girls could not do, so once more I was tired when I arrived back home. Even arriving late home, Sally was even later. She trudged in and came for a kiss, which I did my best to reciprocate, but it was half-hearted. She stood back and examined my face.

“You’re still not well, are you?” she said. “I bet you went into work. Why didn’t you stay in bed?”

She didn’t wait for an answer but sat me down and served the meal. As we ate she talked about her day, and after the meal she prepared to go out, kissing me on the forehead as she left. Of course: it was Friday, parish newsletter day.