Chapter 4

“I’m sure he won’t mind. He needs the exercise.” Jacqueline was saying to old Mrs Gambol as Jack came back up the street. “Would you dear?”.

“Hello Mrs Gambol, Humm? Would I what, love?”

“Mrs Gambol has a sticky door. I said you’d take a look at it. You don’t mind, do you?” He was speaking to her, and now his wife was talking over the old woman, telling him what Mrs Gambol was saying, anyway. Well, even if he did, he could hardly say so in front of the old lady. He made a mental note to apply a little more effort to the spanking he was going to give his wife this night. She tolerated spanking. It wasn’t her preferred activity, she liked being tied, exposed and unable to stop him ravishing her. But she tolerated spanking, and quite enjoyed it up to a point. Jack loved spanking naked, bare, female behinds. In a slightly perverse way, he liked the three older bottoms he got to spank more than the younger ones he just looked at from a distance (respectably covered). He loved to see them wobble and ripple as his hand hit the, no longer firm, flesh.

“Of course. It probably just needs a slight shave to stop it catching. Shall I pop round this just after lunch?”

He was easy going most of the time. This was the first weekend free for some time, he had thought he might even go and watch the footie at Boscam Park (now officially called “Millar’s Lighting Park”, but everybody still called it Boscam Park). Still Mrs Gambol could do with some help, and he would probably still have time afterwards.

He walked in to the house, smiled at Mimi, who was becoming a regular visitor now it was all out in the open. Mimi would sometimes spend the night with Jacqueline, sometimes with Jack, and sometimes with both of them. It was very flexible. Then again, sometimes he would pop next door to visit Joan if “the girls” (as he called the two ageing housewives) wanted some female only time.

Joan really didn’t approve of any of it. She thought it wrong that Jack two timed his wife, she thought it wrong that Jacqueline didn’t mind, she thought it wrong that she, Joan, was a fallen woman – but secretly relished the idea of being the Mata Hari, the Shanghai Lily of Acacia Close. But she really did think it wrong that Mimi and Jacqueline were also having an affair. Women shouldn’t do ‘that kind of thing’. She thought that, even when Jack came round because the two women were doing ‘that kind of thing’ all night. She thought it wrong that he was rogering her in her single bed because her cousin was in her neighbour’s marriage bed with her neighbour and doing goodness knows what.

Actually, she had a good idea what. Jack had introduced her to fingering delights, he had got her to taste herself when he gently inserted his middle digit, and then made her suck it. It had taken a while, but her body had learned how to lubricate itself again. He had also gone down on her a couple of times. One particular night (when ‘the girls’ were away) he had set himself the task of seeing just how many climaxes the dried up old stick could have (she wasn’t quite so dried up, but she still had very fixed views. She had said that a woman should only have one orgasm, else she was a nymphomaniac). He had licked, stroked, vibrated, caressed, sucked, kissed, rubbed and finally, when she was begging him that she had had enough, he had roughly fucked her ... and she had come again! He may have mentioned to the other two that Joan was capable of six climaxes, one after the other, just to see their reaction. As expected, it was a challenge. Unexpectedly, they had gone off for a weekend to test each other out, without him.

All three girls were now very clear about what was happening. They were pleased that their mother was, as Susan put it, ‘getting her leg over’. Susan wasn’t sure she wanted to know any details. Annabel was clear that she didn’t; but Jane was always hinting and probing. What she was keen to find out was if it was acceptable for a boy or man to just come all over a girl or woman’s hand. She was starting to realise that that was part of the trial of being female, they were expected to clean up after their man. She thought she might prefer the alternative that Mimi and Jacqueline engaged in, alone.

When Joan had been kept up all night, in the morning she was ashamed and embarrassed that the girls knew what she had been doing; she was also proud and delighted that they knew she was such a “horny bitch” (Joan had overheard one of them say that, was disgusted to be called a bitch, and pleased to be called horny).

“Hi Mimi, is it me or Jacqueline that you are looking for?”

“It’s Jacqui, actually. We’re going shopping together.” ‘Hmm, so he gets volunteered for DIY duty, and she gets to go shopping’, he thought. ‘And Mimi gets to call her Jacqui, I never was allowed’

He went to his garage (he always maintained it was ‘his’ garage, Jacqueline just ignored him and filled it with junk for the dump, or bags of clothes for the charity shop), cleared a space on the bench and took down one of his proudest possessions, an oilstone set in an old box that his grandfather had made. He smiled at it, put some oil on it and started honing the plane blade. This job always gave him a smile, the smooth sliding of metal across the block, the shiny edge of the knife or blade. After twenty strokes, he turned the plane blade over, two strokes took the bur away, and he was ready.

He walked up the hill to Mrs Gambol’s, knocked, waited, knocked again, and then looked down the side. Should he? He called, knocked and called again. Then he made his way down the side entry to the back. Mrs Gambol was in the old garden shed, he could see her moving there. He knocked on the window, saw her jump and went in. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, I did knock. I called too. I -” He stopped, and looked at what was in her hand. It was a magazine, he’d seen that already; now he saw what the magazine was. “I ... umm. I”

“Oh, hello dear, sorry. Now you know my secret vice. These were my husband’s. He used to sit in the potting shed looking at them. I didn’t realise until he was dead. I had no idea, I say. It was after he’d died, and I was tidying his things up. Sacks of clothes for the hospice shop and that kind of thing. And I thought ‘I wonder if there is anything in the shed that we don’t need’ I was still thinking ‘we’ rather than ‘I’. I came in here, and ... well I was shocked at first. Then I was fascinated. Can I tell you something? I went upstairs and undressed to see how I compared. It wasn’t that good, I have to admit. But then, Henry stayed with me all those years, so I must have had something that the pictures of naked women didn’t. I guess I was real life flesh and blood. He never played away, you know. Well ... hardly ever. Just the once. Can’t say I blame him that time. He got the offer of an eighteen year old. Amelia I think she was called, yes, that was it. I mean he got offers from some of his pupils, but he wasn’t like that. And some of the teachers tried to get advantages from him; but only Amelie. Amelie? Emily?”

“Amelia?”

“Yes, that’s it. Amelia. Did you know her? No, must be before your time I think. Anyway she was very determined, she stalked him. And she was, he told me, willing to do anything to get promotion. She didn’t even try to blackmail him; just offered anything he wanted. Including, that thing ... you know, the prick up the bottom. What’s it called?”

Was he really talking about anal with this old woman. “I’m not sure.” “I don’t believe that. Anyway. He couldn’t resist. He told me after. I made him tell me what he did. Then I told him that if he wanted to do the same to me, then he’d better not ever betray me again. And he didn’t. Anyway, I found them. And there are some good articles in there too. Now I come and look at them sometimes. I don’t really know what to do with them. Would you like them?”

Jack said that no, actually, he was fine. He was pretty sure that he had enough in his life without a bunch of 1960s pornography.