Chapter 36: James "Henry Ford" Walker

The previous evening — that is, the Thursday — instead of visiting Fran's I had gone straight home from work to rendezvous with Wendy and Alicia. We had our stuff already packed (not that we needed much) and set off in high spirits for my weekend party at George's. Kylie wanted to join us but was under strict orders not to miss the following day's school; I consoled her with a nice fuck while Wendy and Alicia got ready.

We reached George's at about nine o'clock. Elspeth had already arrived and was helping Vicky and Simone with preparations. The only other girls due that evening were Fran, Connie, Gabby and Yvonne, who were due to assemble at Fran's flat while Gabby, the only driver among them, collected a hire car. Because they had to wait for Yvonne, who was waitressing at some reception earlier in the evening, I did not see how they could arrive before ten. But it was only twenty past nine when the Surrey air was rent by the sound of a car engine being ferociously revved and a sporty red number roared up the drive and screeched to a halt in a cloud of dust and flying grit.

The driver's door opened and a long olive-skinned leg languidly appeared. The limb was followed by its owner, looking cool and poised under a broad-brimmed straw hat. She slinked over to me and embraced me warmly; only then did she deign to say hello to Wendy and the others.

After a longish pause the passenger door opened and Fran emerged, quivering like an aspen, her face a sepulchral white dramatically framed by her red hair, her eyes staring with sheer terror. She staggered toward me. "James," she gasped, "I am never, ever, getting in a car with that woman again!"

"Relax, Fran darling," replied Gabby calmly. "I told you we'd be fine."

"You nearly killed us!" retorted Fran, her spirit starting to return. "James, darling," she told me indignantly, "on the motorway she went on the hard shoulder and simply flew past a cement lorry on the inside —"

"He was going too slow," explained Gabby.

"— and then swerved right across all three lanes. I thought we were dead."

"James, lover, she's exaggerating," said Gabby.

"No she isn't," cut in Connie, who had now emerged from the back seat to join us. Normally irrepressible, she too was shaking visibly and in the gathering dusk the whites of her fear-widened eyes stood out starkly against the background of her black face. She would have been as pale as Fran, I suspected, had her skin pigmentation permitted it. "It was terrifying. And when she overtook that bus on that winding country lane —"

Gabby clearly felt this was not her fault. "These roads are too narrow," she said. "They should make them wider."

Fran turned on Gabby. "And another thing," she asserted; "when a traffic light's red, you're supposed to stop."

Gabby's expression suggested that no reasonable person would take seriously such an absurd regulation. "Fran, honey," she explained, "there was no traffic."

"There was an old lady crossing!" Fran retorted indignantly. "You made her run for her life!"

"These old people," said Gabby coolly; "they're nimbler than they make out."

Yvonne had now joined us, and I asked her what she thought.

"Wonderful, sir," she grinned. "When I get a car, I'm going to drive just like Gabby. Only faster," she added.

I set the girls to work making preparations under Wendy's overall direction. It was a big day tomorrow and I wanted nothing to go wrong. I took them off duty one by one, of course, for some rotational fucking as I limbered up for the next day. By one o'clock everything was in readiness.

Our guests, having been instructed that they must first attend to any existing commitments such as lectures, school, or work, would be arriving next day in dribs and drabs. Only one or two had access to a car; the rest were to come by train, ringing when a few stops away. Wendy, Elspeth and Gabby were on standby to pick them up. I was not sure when to expect the first caller but two of the Cambridge girls must have got up very early because it was only a quarter to nine when they called to say they were approaching.