Chapter 16

Life had some genuine meaning and purpose at last. If a Mistress can be called a girlfriend, then finally I had a girlfriend. I felt ... safe, sort of, in a comfortably dangerous way that helped me much more than spiralling drug abuse and sex with random strangers.

It wasn't a lyrically romantic love like I'd known with Sarah, not the heady rush of raw emotions, but love grew between us, steadily, almost imperceptibly, until I badly wanted to say it, to tell Margaret how I felt. Their were opportunities aplenty, but something held me back, a fear that uttering those words would break the magic, that allowing myself to confirm my feelings out loud would curse us, and something dreadful would happen to ruin everything, as it had with Sarah.

Sarah. After several months as Margaret's favoured one, I dared ask if my Mistress had heard or seen anything lately of her. We were in the library, resting after one of our gentler bouts. I was sitting on a cushion on the floor, leaning back against my Mistress's bare shins while Chopin etudes rippled through the log-fire warmed air. Once the words had left my lips, I turned, clasping her legs for reassurance. She looked down at me for a long time without replying, while my stomach knotted in fearful anticipation. If I had over-stepped the mark, I would suffer for it, and not necessarily in ways I enjoyed. The worst, which had only happened once, was for her to banish me indefinitely from her presence. Margaret took out a Senior Service and lit it, inhaling, holding the smoke in and then letting it flow from her flared nostrils. I didn't move.

"I hear of her, occasionally," she said at last.

I saw the warning flicker in her pale eyes that would not quite meet mine, and knew better than to pursue the matter. I turned away, letting out a quiet sigh of mixed relief and frustration. So they were still aware of each other, even if they didn't meet. Sarah would be twenty by now. I wondered if she'd gone to University, as she was supposed, or whether she had dropped out, as was more likely, especially as according to both Edie and auntie Susan, she had left home before her A levels. Unless Margaret chose to elaborate, all I could do was speculate. She was young, she was lusty and sexy; she must have had other girlfriends by now ... Did she love them more than me? Did they love her with the all-encompassing intensity that had coloured my life ever since? And how, as for the first time in three years I had achieved some equilibrium, would seeing her again affect me? I loved her still; of that I was sure, but was I in love with her?

I turned again, looking up at Margaret, and found her watching me thoughtfully, as if reading my mind. She leaned forward, and kissed me, her lips slightly open, soft, seeking my response. It was her way of making it clear that she wanted me. My heart began to pound as my tongue flowed into her mouth, her left hand grasped the back of my head, while the right dropped to my breasts, and rolled a stiffening nipple between finger and thumb. I needed nothing more. I forgot Sarah for a few more hours while Margaret repaid my impertinence with the ruthless caress of the tawse, and I thanked her for her indulgence with the unrelenting stimulus of a large vibrating dildo.

After Christmas I had found myself becoming more and more involved with study. I was twenty-six years old now, and I still hadn't had a proper job. Dad's money meant I didn't need one, but the desire to learn had been re-awakened, partly by Em's tutelage, and partly because I no longer spent my days and nights in a haze of hash smoke or the artificial fizz of cocaine. Law was beginning to genuinely fascinate me, so much so that I began to go to lunch occasionally with Felicity, now a junior solicitor in the firm, to discuss whether I should go further, and perhaps return to university with a view to actually getting into practice myself.

When I stayed the weekend with Margaret we always visited Lady H for high tea on Saturday. High being the appropriate description, by the time we left. The old dear existed mostly on sandwiches and gin, the intermittent largesse of Em, and more recently me, because I just couldn't resist her. I was growing very fond of the old dear, and sometimes joined her in teasing Em, which generally led to painful but mutually rewarding consequences. There was a housekeeper of sorts; old Alice, once a nanny, now well past pensionable age, possibly even older than Lady H, but with nowhere else to go and an old-fashioned allegiance to the Hunters that meant loyalty unto death. I deduced from their studied avoidance of each other that she and Margaret held a long-term antipathy.

One afternoon just before Easter 1973, while Em was suffering from bad period pains, I took Lady H to an afternoon matinee at the Odeon in Cambridge, and then on, to an early dinner at the University Arms.

"Is she good to you, Jill dear?" She asked me over lamb cutlets, and a rapidly disappearing battle of Burgundy.

Her questions were always frank and frequently disconcerting, and I found that I liked that. Em was so secretive that chatting to her mother was like a lifeline to her other life.

"Yes, she is ... Em is a remarkable woman." I replied.

My reply was obviously not sufficient for inquisitive Lady H.

"Do you love her?"

I found myself stumped. I wanted to say yes, if only to please a long-suffering mother, but the words stalled on my lips. I suddenly realised that a part of me was still very wary, hanging back until Margaret declared herself to me more clearly. It was her reticence, her reluctance to share anything of her personality, her past, her hopes now held me in a strangely charged stasis. I knew my mind a little better than I had before, and I found myself to be a fan of frankness, openness and emotional honesty. I didn't need to know everything about my lover, but I realised at that moment that I needed much more than I was getting from Margaret. Lady H's question had crystallised my unspoken misgivings. Ironically I sensed that Em wanted more too, but couldn't find the means to express it. Could I bear that, the emotional separateness? For the moment it worked well enough, but it was bound to cause problems sooner or later. A drift away would be painful enough, but...

How did I get myself into this position? Almost the same as Tori had been in last summer. Falling in love with someone not unwilling, but unable to give their heart and soul fully and fairly. Time had not run out, but the clock was running. To survive, there would have to be changes, because I knew we could not stand still, marking time in this albeit pleasant hiatus. And now I would have to be honest with Lady H, happily swigging back her wine and waiting expectantly.

"Um ... it may sound odd, but I still don't know Em all that well ... what I do know, what she's let me into, I do love, but soon I'll want more, and..." My voice began to waver, "I don't know if she wants to give all that to me ... I've found out more about her from you than she's ever told me herself." I had to reach for a napkin and dab my eyes.

"Oh Em ... how typical of her," sighed Lady H. "Please Jill, hold on, give her a little more time. I know she feels for you very deeply. I'm sure she loves you, because you're the only one she's brought to see me more than once or twice, for years, and she's never let me spend time alone with any of her ... girlfriends before. That I happen to like you has been a pleasant surprise ... Waiter! One more bottle of that delicious Burgundy please ... oh, I'm sorry dear, was that all right? I was quite forgetting myself. Eating here ... almost like the old days. Are you very wealthy?"

I laughed out loud.

"Oh Lady H, I'm certainly rich enough to afford another bottle of wine, and I will hang on, I promise, for as long as I can."

"You're softening her up nicely dear, if you carry on doing whatever it is you do to her, she'll find a way to get closer to you. You've changed her you know, already. She ... not that she's deliberately cruel, I would never say that..." I stifled an inappropriate giggle, "but for the last few months Em has been kinder to me, more considerate, than for ages, even though she took that big drop in her income, and it's been harder for her to help me than before..."

Lady H wittered on while I took in a strange new knowledge. It seemed that Em had been using my money to support her aged alcoholic mother! And then she had had to make a choice, comforts for Mummy, or ... loving me? She have written 'Payment no longer required.' It turned out that simple phrase had far more meaning to her than it did to me! Then I felt a wave of guilt to have caused material suffering to sweet Lady H. 'Bloody life!' I thought, and tried to re-focus on what she was saying.

"But it's all right now, Em seems to be making more money again, and now she has you."