Chapter 10

As Lindsey had suggested there would be, there was a welcoming committee waiting for us at the Wherry. The riverside lights were on and a couple of the lads were waiting on the riverbank, ready to take the launch in hand and moor her securely for us. And, of course, to be the first at the Wherry to congratulate us on our engagement.

There was a party atmosphere for the rest of the evening with lots of hugs and kisses and congratulations for Lindsey and me from all of our regulars and their women. Although as soon as Lindsey got the chance she slipped into the kitchen to call her mother on the extension and give her the news.

When I eventually found time to call my mother, you'd have thought she'd been told that I'd won the pools or something. She went blabbering on listing everyone that she was going to have to call to give the news to, until my father came on the phone and told me that it was about time, that Lindsey was something special.

After that the telephone would ring again almost the second that it was put down, with either Lindsey's or my relatives and friends calling to congratulate us and to ask if we'd set a date for the wedding. Neither Lindsey nor I had had a chance to contemplate the date at the time.

"You might want to think about late January or early Feb, luvver," Millie suggested after she'd heard me tell the umpteenth caller that we hadn't fixed a date yet. "I think Beverley's got some plans to rehash the private accommodation upstairs once you two stopped dancing around each other." She went on, "Be kind-a handy if it was done when you're away on honeymoon, wouldn't it? You know the pub's going to be quiet then as well."

I looked at Lindsey who smiled back at me and without much more discussion, the date was selected as the third Saturday in January.

The venue for the wedding was the next problem that had to be solved. After the pub closed that evening, Lindsey and I sat in the bar and talked on the subject long and hard; but we always returned to the obvious choice, what was now our local village church.

Lindsey's folks lived around the Bristol and Bath area. Most of my folks lived in and around London. If we got married in either of those places, the other's families would have to travel and most likely most of our close friends in the village wouldn't be able to attend because we had two pubs to look after there.

We were also pretty sure that because it was out of the season, we could turn up plenty of cheap accommodation for everyone around the village as well.

Having solved that problem to our mutual satisfaction - and after a kiss and cuddle - Lindsey went up to her room, whilst I went around to check the doors were all locked and then turned out the lights.

As I entered my room I heard Lindsey in the shower. I took my shower in the other bathroom. Bev's plans, I knew, were to make the owner's suite more private and install en suite facilities in all of the other bedrooms. The Wherry was a very old building and that was going to call for some major works. Beverley had broached the subject with me a couple of times and Millie was most likely correct - Bev probably was planning to have as much of the work as possible undertaken when Lindsey and I were on honeymoon.

I heard Lindsey leave the other bathroom whilst I was still in the shower. "Night, Lindsey," I called as I passed her room, but I was a little disappointed to find that she didn't reply. I almost opened her door and repeated myself, but thought better of it.

But then when I entered my own room, I discovered why Lindsey hadn't replied; she was lying there on my bed.

I'm not sure how long I stood there staring at her, without saying a word.

"Well, are you coming to bed, or are you going to stand there with your mouth open all might?" she finally asked.

"Lindsey, I thought that you didn't want to ... you know, until we are married."

"And I still would like to be a virgin when I make my vows to you, Mack. But that doesn't mean that I don't want to sleep in the same bed as you. If you want to take me now, you can have me willingly. But Millie and Billie have been teaching me all kinds of things that we can do together without actually doing it."

"Teaching?" I asked smiling and probably in a questioning tone to my voice.

Remember, I was well aware of what Millie and the twins had got up to over the years. Apparently, so was Lindsey by then.

"Whoops, no sorry, I take that back." Lindsey smiled sheepishly. "Millie and Billie have explained all sorts of things about sex to me in the last few months. Mack, Millie is the only person I know who's bi-sexual ... except maybe for the twins. Oh, bugger ... you know what I mean. Don't look at me like that, Mack, please."

I have no idea what expression I had on my face by then. But it was obviously embarrassing Lindsey. I laughed, and went over to the bed to lie down beside her and kiss her.

"Sorry, kiddo, but you talked yourself into that."

She didn't answer; she just pulled me close and hugged me tightly.

I lay there hugging Lindsey, somewhat annoyed with myself. I'd let the conversation go in a direction that had embarrassed her and that prevented me from asking the one question that had been uppermost in my mind for months. The opportunity missed, I'd have to wait until the right situation cropped up again.

Lindsey's and my sex life developed by leaps and bounds over the following few weeks. We did just about everything except the actual deed itself, but, hell, I wasn't complaining. I'm going to admit to you that a couple of times we did come very close, but one or the other of us would shy off at the last minute. Lindsey wanted to be a virgin when she said, "I do!" and I was more than happy to oblige her by then.

I did have to demonstrate to her how to use her new razor though. Although thinking about it, I do believe she enjoyed having me carry out the operation for her, because she has insisted that I always do it for — or to — her ever since. Thinking logically, Lindsey must have been shaving under her arms and her legs, etc. for years. Possibly she enjoyed what I did right after the operation was over, much as Millie and the twins had done.

Lindsey happily demonstrated to me that Millie - and Billie, the terrible two were much like a single entity by then - had instructed her very well in the art of fellatio and she developed her skills very quickly once she started to practice them. Well, they say that practice makes perfect, don't they? Lindsey got in a lot of practice over the next few weeks and I noticed the very rapid improvement in her technique. She also very vocally praised me for some of the skills I'd developed in the preceding couple of years. But no mention was ever made of with whom I'd developed those skills.

Well, not in the bedroom anyway. The odd comment did fly around between all of the girls in the bar on occasion - usually when it was exceptionally quiet, and designed, I was sure, to embarrass me most of the time. And possibly when Lindsey made them, to show that she wasn't bearing any grudges. Jealousy developing on Lindsey's part - concerning what I'd done with Millie and the girls — was something that I had begun to worry about.

Eventually one evening, on a customer's birthday, Lindsey had imbibed a little more than she normally did. Jesus, Lindsey rarely got tipsy, but that night she was off duty, and somehow managed to get herself really tanked up. I think that possibly Millie and Billie had a hand in that. Millie was working that night, but Billie had hit the booze harder than she usually did as well.

Anyway I summoned up the courage to broach the subject of jealousy with Lindsey whilst we were clearing up. Well, to be precise I was clearing up; Lindsey was making a pretty half-hearted job of it. I'm afraid the confusing conversation that developed between us went in directions I hadn't intended it to. But it did clear the air some.

Excess of alcohol affects different people in different ways. Some it turns into fighters, others into sex-starved lovers; and some people start spewing out verbal diarrhoea. Because Lindsey was usually very conservative in her drinking habits, I can't say that I'd ever noticed that she was a talker before.

Well, that's not exactly true; I had noticed that when Lindsey got tipsy she'd talk a lot. But because of the situations we'd generally found ourselves in when she'd got tipsy, I'd always assumed that it was because alcohol lowered her sexual inhibitions a little. For some reason I'd always taken the chat for nervous talk. I told you there were a few times when Lindsey would happily let me get her tits out and would even go as far as to give me a hand job. So I'd put all her talking down to her nervously trying to distract me from taking things any further. Well, that evening, Lindsey was to prove to me that I was wrong on that assumption.

"Jealous! Christ, Mack, of course I was bloody jealous of them. Why do you think I rushed out of the Willow's like that, that day! Jesus, when I saw you standing there with those four women, I knew that you'd ... gotten laid, that's the word you use, isn't it? Of course I was bloody jealous. I just couldn't stay and had to get as far away from you and them as I could."

"I'm sorry, Lindsey. Look, if you want, after we're married we can move right away from here."

"Don't be stupid, Mack. I said 'I was' jealous of them, but I'm not any more. They are my very good friends now; I know that not one of them, or you, would ... oh, Mack, you know what I mean. Look, all of these women look at life - well, sex anyway - differently to how I used to look at things. I don't know, I was repressed I suppose; I always thought the real purpose of sex was to make babies."

"Some of my friends back at college seemed to enjoy having sex with their boyfriends. But most of them treated it as a chore they only did to keep their boyfriends from straying. I never did think that was much of a basis to build a long term relationship on."

Lindsey stopped wiping the table she was standing over, turned around and sat on it, looking at me with an embarrassed expression on her face.

"Look, Mack, most of the guys at college only wanted a girl who let them ... oh, you know what I mean. If a girl had sex with too many different blokes, she soon got a reputation. She found that she had plenty of guys chatting her up all the time, but we all know it wasn't for the intellectual quality of her conversation, or her looks either. So that sort of reinforced the promise I'd made to myself that I would remain a virgin until I got married."

"Most guys didn't hang around me for very long when they found out that I had no intention of letting them ... and then I met you, Mack. You were something different, kind of special. Yeah, you liked to sneak the odd grope in now and again when my defences were down. But you didn't make a big thing out of it when I told you of my plans to be a virgin bride. If I remember correctly, you just smiled."

"I did?" I commented in surprise, I thought that I'd been pretty disappointed at the time.

"And then can you remember what you did?" she asked.

"Eh, well, knowing my penchant for the dramatic, I should imagine I said something pretty memorable. But not so memorable that I can recall exactly what now, Lindsey."

"It wasn't what you said, Mack, so much as what you did. You rather ceremoniously took a pack of condoms out of your pocket and threw them in the waist bin!"

"I did?" I said trying to pretend that I couldn't recall the incident. But it had quickly jumped back into my mind. That was nearly two quid that I'd discarded that night, remember? Throwing cash away was not something I'd be likely to forget in a hurry.

"Yes, you said that we wouldn't be needing them and that you were quite happy to wait."

"Must have had too much to drink that night!" I quipped, trying to make light of the occasion.

"I don't think so, Mack. I took it as you telling me that you were willing to wait until I was ready. It told me that you were not with me for what you could get from me; but that you had genuine feelings for me!"

"Never believe in empty gestures, Lindsey. There's a condom dispenser in most pub gents, you know."

"And quite a few of the ladies conveniences as well, Mack. It was a nice gesture anyway, even if you did grow more arms than an octopus sometimes, when you got excited. I felt safe with you and I knew that I could trust you. I knew that night that you were the man I was going to marry ... well, I thought I knew, until it all went wrong."

"Ah, yeah, well, I fucked up big time, didn't I? But why the hell didn't you tell me that you were on the bloody pill in the first place? God, I got it all arse about face when I found those buggers in your flat."

Lindsey walked over to the bar and refilled her glass from the optic on the wall behind it. Then after sitting on one of the bar stools and taking a sip of her Scotch, she smiled at me.

"Well, Mack, you know that I had this stupid plan to walk down the aisle a virgin."

"It isn't a stupid plan, Lindsey. You've got the perfect right to do as your conscience guides you."

I was beginning to get the feeling that Lindsey had consumed a lot more than I'd thought she had that night. She was quite definitely much more vocal than usual and I was sure that it was the alcohol doing most of the talking. But even if Lindsey was my intended, I had my barman's hat on and let her talk.