On the twelfth, feeling a fool, I went and searched around the great bronze lions in
Trafalgar Square then, only a little disappointed, sat at the feet of one. No gift came:
slowly though, perhaps five thousand people came, for there was to be a ‘rally’ for or
against something. A hopeless morning to leave or find a gift, but neither my Arab nor I
had known that. By mid-morning I was trying to force my way from the crush – if there had
been something for me it would have been taken anyway. I could hardly move, I shouldered
between two bawling youths; one trod on my feet and said ‘Fuck off, Granddad’ – I am
neither ‘grandad’ nor old. In the crush a red-haired girl near me said something to him in
Arabic that included the phrase adu w’Allah which I do know and is very nasty indeed,
meaning ‘enemy of God’. Then the girl, who was singularly attractive and very young,
turned to me to offer sympathy. Not to offer sympathy; to say,
“You’re Peter Mowbray. This is very bad crowd…”
She was pressed against me by the crowd so that we were together, she, shorter,
barely up to my chin, looking up and smiling. In the crush, in the surging crowd in
Trafalgar Square, beneath my big brown drover’s coat and beneath her heavy white woollen
coat she found my hand and led it through warm cloth to warm skin, to a warm, moist
crotch, to warm, soft and yielding labia and said “This is for you. I am for you. I am
yours. I am called Tommi,” and she giggled like small silver bells tumbling; “Tommi with
an ‘i’. Thomasina. There is a letter for you. He sends his blessings to the preserver of
his life.”
She led me through that seething crowd as if it wasn’t there. On the crowded steps
of the Gallery I looked at her, at the red hair and the ivory skin with its freckled face.
At her green, green eyes and at the mischief in those eyes and hovering at red lips, not
believing any of it… How could he have known about my passion for red-haired women…? And
anyway, there weren’t any women like this, except in very rare fantasies: it was all
nonsense, a daydream…
“Here,” she said, extracting an envelope from her little white bag; The cream and
crackly envelope held a sheet of cream and crackly paper which I fathomed to be half a
payment-transfer-confirmation and half a message; the message was in a big, black hand and
said ‘Enjoy her, Preserver of my Life’. There was no signature. The transfer confirmed the
movement into my overdrawn bank account of ‘five million US dollars’ from an
‘authenticated source’. I prayed, oh I prayed that she was real, more so even than I
prayed that the ‘five million US dollars’ was true because she was beautiful and sex and
mischief. She kissed, tongued my ear, then, there, on the steps of the National Gallery in
London – and she smelt of flowers and spices and sex.
“Where is your house?” she said, smiling. For the first time in my life I had no
idea what to do about anything. There was too much and none of it was real. What to do was
to see if there were taxis in this fantasy.
In the taxi I was about to be polite and ask if she was cold in a London February
and was about to contrive a joke about her being an houri but she kissed me as if she had
always kissed me when we met, at once and eagerly; her lips were softer than crushed
strawberries, her breath was flowers and honey and sex again and her tongue sought, found
and wrestled mine. Her body under the white coat lived. During the kiss I had absolutely
no doubt that next in the taxi she would open her coat, that she would be naked beneath it
and that she would offer me, legs wide, a red-gold thatch of pubic hair guarding a sweetly
aromatic mouth. Nothing of the sort happened in reality but she raped my mind that way.
In the entrance to my flat she kissed me and her body pressed mine so that the
green eyes and the red hair, the strawberry lips and the honey and spice and sex made my
shaft climb inside my pants again, seeking her of its own will. Someone had been inside my
flat - but not thieves this time for it was filled with flowers. Not flowers from Paula
apologising for not letting me spank her, not flowers from anybody I knew; nobody I knew
personally could afford to buy flowers in that sort of quantity. For a moment, because
someone, anyone had been in my flat, panic seized me and as before I stumbled to my hidden
CDs. They were untouched. I turned to her, still not believing – and she was standing by
the settee, grinning, looking round the my living-room, had her white coat off – it was on
the back of a chair – and was stepping out of her dark green high-heels - which matched
her plain, dark green dress. Which had a pale green zip from its round collar to its hem,
dividing her bosom and terminating at either end in a big pale-green pull-ring. With her
coat off my living room smelt of honey and spice and sex which was extraordinarily
agreeable…
“Someone said I’d be getting a present today but it didn’t come,” I said brightly,
trying to pretend she wasn’t a fantasy. “Can I keep you instead?” It was meant as a
compliment from older grandad to a sensationally young and beautiful sex-kitten-person…
“I am your present,” she replied, sitting down and massaging one stockinged foot.
“Feet ache… I was supposed to be here yesterday but the plane was held up.”
‘I am your present,’ is what she said. The conversation, such as it was, seemed to
be escaping me.
“I’m sorry,” she said standing up “I should have shown you,” and she made the pale
green zip shirr from her neck to her knees, opened the dark green dress and shrugged it
off. So she was wearing hold-up stockings. Just hold-up stockings.
In my flat, naked. Stunning, wonderful, perfect, naked – ivory and red-gold and
emerald-eyes and honey and spices and sex. In my flat, standing there with her feet apart,
naked, holding up two wide-apart round, firm ivory breasts in her hands and looking down
at them. Yes, she had a triangular thatch of red-gold hair below her stomach…
“…they’re supposed to milk,” she said, still peering at her breasts but squeezing
them now. “They said you’d like that. I’m to keep trying and take the pill-things in my
bag…. Look…” and she stepped to me, all athletic and on springs like a cat, bringing her
nakedness and a dense honey and spice and sex aroma to within six inches, her red-gold
hair almost touching me. “Look, there’s a tiny bit…” – holding two erect mulberry nipples
up so that I could see two tiny beads of liquid. That close and naked she radiated so much
animal body-warmth she was actually scary.
“Who said I’d like – like…?” I wasn’t sure how to frame the sentence…
“To milk me? The training people…”
“What ‘training people’?”
No, don’t bother just now, Peter Mowbray, try to remain calm and stick to the
fundamentals, Peter Mowbray; like you have a stunningly lovely and naked redhead in your
flat who says she’s a present and is holding her sumptuous tits out to you and who is
filling the flat with the scent of her body.
She was standing close and naked and looking at my face; extraordinarily, her green
eyes were brimming tears.
“I-I’m s-sorry. I’m f-frightened a bit, you see. P-please will you f-fuck m-me. I
w-won’t be frightened t-then…” and two tears ran.
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