He picked her up in the middle of a violent thunderstorm at about twelve-thirty on a late
July afternoon – in the middle of a UK summer. In Feltham, which is a dreary and fairly
pointless outer-suburb of London notable for the constant noise-spill from the adjacent
London Airport. The morning had started bright, sunny and warm – there’d been clear blue
skies and daytime temperatures in the upper thirties for a week but on this particular
morning, by eleven or so, the sky had clouded-over completely and was mostly dark-grey: by
twelve it was raining steadily and vertically at about two-inches an hour, complete with
oversized hail, multiple CLIK-BANNNNGGGGGG lightning and thunder, random gusts of 40 knot
wind - and lights coming on all over the place because the dark purply-grey cloud-cover
was making it more like late evening than the middle of the day. He picked her up because
he’d seen her standing alone at a poorly-protected bus-stop in the hammering rain,
sheltering as best she could under a silly little yellow umbrella and had also seen the
truck ahead of him quite deliberately swerve through a big pool of standing water close to
her, making her vanish completely in the resultant swathe of spray… Her umbrella turned
itself inside out and took off across the road by itself – only to be swatted by traffic
coming in the opposite direction and turned into some sort of big, crumpled, yellow
daddy-long-legs and then to be serially flattened, terminated, by half a dozen other
vehicles. While she just stood there at the roadside, drenched.
‘Bastard’ he said aloud of the truck-driver. Stopping his car by her, he reached
across to the passenger-side door and opened it wide…
“GET IN THE CAR” he shouted, above the traffic noise and the rain noise and the
Armageddon-sound of one of the city-sized Airbus-things climbing away, invisible above the
thunder clouds.
”TAKE YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO GO…”
She hesitated of course, as all good girls should when invited into a stranger’s car –
or boat or plane or tent or bed, but she was wet and shivering and the bus-stop was of the
sort that looked as if you’d need a calendar rather than a timetable to check when the
next bus was due… She hesitated, even shook her head - but half-heartedly….
“GET IN THE DAMN CAR OUT OF THE WET. I’M QUITE HARMLESS…”
So she got into the car, saying variously ‘Thank you” and “I’m sorry” and “I’m m-making
everything w-wet aren’t I?”
“Just shut the door – it keeps the rain out” he said. “Name’s Martin Carver. Quite
harmless…. You are?”
“Josie. Josie Tate…”
He decided that Josie Tate, despite being generally wet and bedraggled, was rather good
to look at and extremely young – he thought about eighteen, which is extremely young if
you’re fifty-one – as was Martin Carver at the time. She was wearing a thin, unlined nylon
anorak, clearly soaked through, over a darkly-wet shortish skirt or dress and sodden
low-heeled shoes…No signs of any sort of bosom – tits – but then the anorak-thing was
loose and wet and oversized so it wasn’t possible to tell…
“Usually go out in rainstorms without a raincoat do you? I saw what happened to your
umbrella…”
She had wet, dark copper-red and slightly matted hair and cornflower-blue eyes – which
he thought a startlingly agreeable combination. “…You’re soaked. Catch your
death…Where’re you going?”
‘Shopping f-for a m-mac.. A raincoat”
‘Romance at las’, he thought. ‘I do a knight-in-shining-armour-coming-to-the-rescue
bit, give her a seat in an Aston Martin, offer to take her anywhere, flash the platinum
Rolex to establish my credentials, act avuncular and therefore harmless and what does she
do? Wants to go to a damn supermarket or something – to buy a raincoat!’
“There’s that big Home ‘n Wear place a mile up the road. Drop you there shall I?”
“I was g-going to T-Town – London…”
Better. You can come to London with me….
“You’d have done better to go by train…”
“The 196 single-decker b-bus goes all the way and stops almost outside the s-shop – it’s
off Ox-Oxford Street…”
Ogod, a maiden-in-distress alright, but a sensible and practical maiden-in-distress…Just
my luck
“Then I shall take you there – I live in Mayfair… ” he said, decidedly pleased at the
prospect of a journey of over an hour with a very agreeable – though wet – young,
red-haired female passenger. During an hour or so of being driven, deliberately quickly,
in a very expensive and very, very quick car, she might become more relaxed… Seducible…
“….Where’s the shop did you say?”
“Just off Ox-Oxford S-street. It’s a riding-shop…H-horse riding th-things…”
He couldn’t make out why she was stammering quite so much – not a ‘speech-impediment’
stammer but a nerves-stammer… It was almost as if she was scared-stiff, as if she
expected to be grabbed or assaulted at any moment… ….
“OK” he said, starting the car, blipping the throttle in order to impress with a moment
of the Aston’s angered-tiger rumble - and for a moment not thinking about what she’d said
but thinking about ways and means to get her into or on to a bed…
“Th-this is l-lovely car” she said, “What is it?”
“An Aston-Martin…”
“Oh…”
So stop talking – I’m trying to work out how to get you into bed… So you’re going to a
riding shop…. Horses and things… Not a pony-girl are you? That would be very nice…
Never had anything to do with a pony-girl – in the flesh as it were…. But pony-girls don’t
buy ‘riding-macs’ do they?
“So you’re going to a ‘riding-shop’ to buy a raincoat? Of course - where else, I
ask myself? Or do you actually ride…?’
“I just w-want a proper riding-mac”
‘Riding-mac’ he thought, ‘As in heavy, belted, probably oatmeal-coloured,
double-texture, rubber-lined – red rubber lined - deliciously odorous classical
riding-mac. Skirted, with little rubber straps to go round the legs to prevent it blowing
up when riding the horse or pony or whatever. She’d be very tasty, buckled-up in a heavy,
classic, red-rubber-lined riding-mac. Josie whatever-her-name-is buckled-up in a heavy,
classic, red-rubber-lined riding-mac and nothing else, lying on a bed in his flat…. Or
buckled-up in a heavy, classic, red-rubber-lined riding-mac and wearing tall, shiny black
rubber riding-boots and nothing else – lying on a bed in the flat… Not riding-boots but
tall, crotch-high, unlined shiny black rubber boots, leg-fitting rubber boots from the
shop in Soho. Lying on the bed in the flat with her shiny black rubber boots spread wide
and the room filled with the sour-sweet inviting, arousing aroma of body-warmed rubber….
A red-haired young girl in a riding mac and boots and nothing else…. Nicely strapped down
– gagged only if necessary…’
Thinking all that, with the associated mental video-clips, whilst driving in heavy
traffic in a thunderstorm took about 2.5 seconds, after which, concentrating fiercely on
driving, he said
“Oh, you mean a c-classical riding mac. ‘Double-texture’ or whatever it is. Rub-rubber
lined… That sort of thing. My word yes, jolly expensive. Cost the earth… Cost you a
couple of hundred….Why one of th-those…?”
He glanced at her face quickly and she was in the middle of some sort of hot-looking
blush – agreeable to watch but what on earth had prompted it? A pink tide seemed to flow
slowly down from her hairline to her chin and on downwards, causing him to lose his
driving-concentration for another moment while he wondered if the blush flowed on and down
over her tits……
“I just want one. Al-always w-wanted one, always…..” She hung her words up for a
moment, then started again, as if she was coming back from another room... “…they’re
s-sexy aren’t they…? No, s-sexual… I just – I just w-want to wear one, feel it on me….
Do they really c-cost as m-much as that? How do you know? I can’t afford anything like
that…”
‘Josie sweetheart’ said his mind, ‘you shall have the very best red-rubber-lined
heaviest-double-texture classical riding-mac I – we - can find and you shall have the
tallest, shiniest unlined black rubber boots we can find… And then you can come with me to
my place and try them on properly, just your mac and your boots of course. I wonder if I
should buy a riding crop too? Just in case she’s not too keen on being shafted in a
rubber mac and rubber boots and needs encouragement….’
But then the increasingly loud and throaty grumbling of the Aston made him realize he
was trying to get Josie Tate to London much too quickly…. ‘Cool it’ he said to himself,
it’s not going to happen, you’re letting your imagination get the better of you. You’re
fantasizing…’
“Do y-you think they’re s-sexy?” she asked, as in ‘do you think we’ll have rain
tomorrow…’ “Riding macs I mean…”.
“Sexy? Depends on the – er –wearer. Suit you down to the ground…” Say it... “A really
good, traditional double-texture rubber-lined riding-mac - …”
“The – the k-kind with a red r-rubber lining are s-supposed to b-be nicest….m-more
s-sexy” she said matter-of-factly, but stammering. “But they’re much m-much too
expensive…”
Hold it right there… Young women like you – well spoken – young women like you don’t say
things like that to male strangers… Especially scared young women alone in a car with a
large male stranger…..
“I suppose you’d have to have the tall black rubber riding-boots as well” he
suggested. “To complete the – er – outfit…?
“B-brown” she said, “not black… B-brown w-would be n-nice…Do you think I’d look s-sexy
in things like that?”
This is one very odd young woman…. She’s not on the game – or if she is this is her
first day at it – and I’m her first…. No, she’s not on the game…. What’s with the
rubber-lined-riding-mac and the ‘sexy’ and the ‘do you think I’d look sexy in things like
that?’ then? Scared-stiff and stammering – as if she’s forcing herself to say such
things. Saying them out of some kind of bravado, as if she thinks she has to…
He turned his head and looked at her, testing: she was staring straight ahead through
the windscreen – scared stiff.
“I imagine you’d look very sexy indeed in things like that. Even sexual – rather than
just sexy…” At which her pale face went very nicely pink and she startled him completely
by looking quickly down at the knees of her still-damp dress-thing and saying, almost
without drawing breath
“I can only afford a cheap mac - I don’t really need riding b-boots I suppose – I don’t
have a horse or anything - I’ve got some green wellies – Wellingtons, they’ll have to do…”
At which point she lifted her face, but only to stare blankly out through the
windscreen:
“...not sure I’ll be brave enough to actually go out in a riding m-mac – in town on
foot I mean - in fact I ought to stop fantasizing about being all s-sexy in a riding-mac
because… Because it’s – because it’s completely irresponsible“. She said ‘completely
irresponsible’ as if there was no worse form of crime… She was silent for a minute or two
before turning to him…
“So you see, I think you’d better put me down in Richmond or Twickenham where I can
get a train back home, because I need my head examined: I don’t need a riding-mac, I
cannot afford a riding-mac, there are other things I do need and can afford – or just
about afford - and I have to grow-up and stop f-fantasizing, don’t I? I’m sorry, you’ve
been very kind to a very silly person….” She was looking down at her knees again, still
scared-stiff – and he was sure she looked about to cry….
‘Fantasising? Fantasising about what for crissake?
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