Chapter 25: Shapeliness

The next day was memorable chiefly for Yvonne.

I had invited her to Fran's flat at lunchtime. It seemed only a courtesy to mention this to Fran at work the next morning when I apologised for again failing to return her keys. She told me not to worry, she had assumed I meant to retain them and had had another set cut on the way to work.

"So keep them," she smiled. "You'll need them if you're going to keep using my flat as a handy knocking shop. How many girls this time, darling? Three? Four?"

"Just the one today," I assured her.

She looked at me in mock concern. "Only one? Darling, you're slipping. Maybe the stuff is wearing off."

I promised to show her after work whether it was wearing off.

I got to the flat ten minutes before I had told Yvonne to arrive but she was waiting outside in the street. She was clearly overjoyed to see me but also deeply confused about what was going on. I hurried her inside and into Fran's bedroom, where she looked at the bed and then at me. Despite the hesitancy of her general demeanour, her eyes blazed with desire. She made no move to disrobe but did not resist as I began to undress her. So that we should not proceed in total silence I asked a few questions and learnt that she was only seventeen years old and came from Zambia in southern Africa. Her family had sent her to stay with relatives in London to earn some money to send home. She was in the country entirely illegally and had worked in a succession of menial, low-paid jobs where employers pay cash and ask no questions. She was essentially a very quiet, calm and level-headed person for whom the raging sexual desire that had consumed her last few days was entirely out of character. Its grip on her was so strong that she made no attempt to resist it but at some level she realised that something strange and disturbing was happening.

I was desperate to resolve her anxiety in the only way I knew, but once I had undressed her I contained myself long enough to stand her by the bed while I sat down to study her form closely. I was intrigued by the way there seemed somehow to be something beyond mere shapeliness in the lines of her exquisite young chocolate body. Naked before me, her skin a flawless velvety brown from head to foot, she reminded me of erotic drawings in which women's curves are exaggerated beyond the natural.

My fingers gently but firmly rotated her on the spot so I could examine her from every angle. "Please, sir," she begged as the scrutiny continued (I had told her my name but endearingly she continued to address me as if she were still waitressing at the garden party); "I'm so confused but I need you, sir."

"Soon, little one," I soothed. She trembled with a mixture of desire, anticipation and fear as my fingertips, barely touching her, traced the curve of her buttocks.

I finally decided that the secret was something to do with the way the hips related to the spine. The join between them, in fact the entire pelvic bone, seemed to be angled farther forward than in most women. This had the effect of raising the buttocks and making them more prominent; it also projected the lower torso forward and made the small of the back into a much deeper declivity. By itself this pelvic tilt would have caused her to stoop forwards; to counteract this, the "S" shape of her spine was unusually pronounced so that her shoulders were forced back. This backward tilt of her upper body not only ensured that she remained in balance overall; it also lifted her beautifully formed breasts.

I was struck by the realisation that if I had dropped a plumb line from her shoulder blade it would have reached straight down to the floor. Or, putting it another way, if she, in her normal standing posture, had slowly backed toward a wall, her shoulder blades would have been the first part of her to contact it.