CHAPTER XIV : BOARDING A MISSED TRAIN.
We started walking, now in a hurry, towards my house. It was a two-minute walk from the Chanterelle. Won’t your mother be worried? I asked. No, she answered, I sometimes spend the night with Edgar. Did she know you were going out with me this evening? Yes, she said. That’s awkward, isn’t it? Not really, she said. My mother knows I’m not a tramp. Her one word of advice is, never have sex without a condom, never, not even in your safe days. That’s what’s wonderful about English mothers, I said. They are realistic, tolerant and sensible. Dear, gentle Mrs. Fremantle, she must have the worst possible opinion of me. We went up the stairs quietly to the third floor. Omar’s room was silent. If he was in he must be asleep. I opened my door and switched on the light. Diana entered and looked around. It’s not as nice as your Drayton Gardens room, George. But after all you had to sever all ties with me and come hiding here. I have never quite understood it. I went up to her and kissed her. Never mind, I said, we are together again. Yes, she said, but now we are three. Won’t that change soon? I asked. I don’t know, she said. I can’t be bothered with this problem just now.
I took off her jacket and removed mine. We started kissing passionately and I pulled her to my bed. I’d better take my dress off or else it will get terribly creased, she said. I undid the buttons at her back and she stepped out of it by letting it drop to the floor. She stood in a bra supporting baby breasts that did not need support, scanty panties and lovely thin legs. Opened my cupboard, brought out a clothes hanger and hanged her dress and jacket. I looked at that elfin body, sylphlike and almost immature and was aroused. Perhaps a mature female body would daunt me and not have the same effect. Strange how the waiflike Diana aroused my virility. I removed my shirt, shoes and trousers and pulled her to bed. We kissed and caressed wildly and removed the rest of our clothes and Diana was as uninhibited in manipulating my body as in indicating the caresses she desired. I realized how vastly more experienced and talented in lovemaking she was than I and the only other girl I had been with, Carol. For all her promiscuity and army of lovers Carol could not compare with Diana. It seemed finally to be true that nymphomania is a never ending quest for a fulfillment that evades it. Diana seemed to be throbbing with constant, audible sighs of arousal and desire, a communication of enjoyment and love, to me her lover, as her tongue explored my mouth and her mouth sucked my lips, licked my ears and bit my neck. The durex, George, she whispered. I want you inside me, I’m soaking. I opened the bedside drawer and brought out the small envelope. She took it fitted the condom on my penis and initiated positions, kisses and caresses I had never imagined and would have never been able to endure without the two cups of champagne and the Beaujolais. Her stifled cries and moans intimated her excitement and repeated orgasms, her vast pleasure and sexual joy. They went on and on and on until I felt my soul about to depart from my dry throat. Finally, her momentum subsided and her kissing turned calm and tender. Goodness, she said, what a delirium. You did not ejaculate, George, but I can’t go on. Neither can I, my darling, I said. Let’s sleep. I got up fished out a clean towel from a drawer and wiped as much of her sweat as I could, first from her back and then rolled her over and wiped her lovely, exhausted face, body and beautiful thin legs. Then I dried myself and removed the condom. We were literally drenched. I got her to stand with some difficulty, unfolded the bed sheets, pushed her back on the bed and closed the overhead light which was on all the time. I lay next to her and spontaneously we hugged. It must have been sometime after three when we went to sleep in each other’s arms.
I had forgotten to draw the curtains and daylight woke us up early. I got up to shut them and she pulled me back. Good morning my love, let there be light, she said smiling. Good morning, Diana. I need to go to the toilet, George. I gave her my bathrobe and told her the bathroom was one floor up. Don’t worry, I told her, it’s Saturday and the tenants are still slumbering. She tiptoed upstairs barefoot and returned smiling. She took off the robe and fell upon me. Her hair was messed up and she had washed off what little makeup she had on. Her white skin and blue eyes were Nordic and enticing to a Greek from the Middle East. I thought it wonderful that a young girl had sway and control over her own body openly with her mother’s thoughtful approval whereas Annie’s sexual liberation was furtive and would have shocked both her family and the prudish Cairo society. I caressed her proffered, uninhibited body and small breasts with the taut, aroused nipples. We started kissing and I was well aroused even before that. Almost before I woke up. They say insomnia is aphrodisiac and we had slept very little.
You gave me many orgasms last night and I owe you at least one, she said. Let me repay you. Have you tried a sixty-nine? No? Then let’s do it. It’s lovely. She lay on me, light as a baby with her lower body on my chest and her legs spread on either side of my head. She turned to me, you can lick me if you wish, she said smiling. I washed myself upstairs. She took my penis and put it deep in the well of her mouth. The feeling was warm, slimy and delicious. I looked at her genitals, the first good look I ever had of the female vulva. I touched them, held them, opened them and started licking them with my tongue. Her head bobbed up and down and the sensations that were building up were mind turning. As much as I could I kept up my side of the play. The tension eventually became unbearable and with a loud groan I ejaculated in her mouth. When the last drop was out, she stopped, got up quickly and spat in the sink, washed her mouth and came smiling to bed. Diana, you sex Goddess, I said, you are amazing. Are there many more things you can teach me? Yes, my darling, she said, many, many more. And the irony of it is that I learnt all of it because you left me. Which means, I said, that it was Edgar who taught you. Yes, she smiled. There’s often something positive that comes from a bad experience. But please let’s not go into it now. We kissed tenderly for a while and her eyes told me that the sixty-nine was not enough for her, my tongue just wetted her genitals and whetted her appetite, and her’s teased my lips sending a message, an obvious plea. We embraced and kissed and went on to make painfully needed, urgent and wonderful love after Diana fitted me with a condom. A sun had dawned in my life, a sun I had scorned.
We slept a little with the curtains open and the daylight flooding in. It was Saturday and the cleaning lady would not be coming in to hoover and fix the bed so I did not worry about it. As I was dozing between sleep and wakefulness I heard Omar go to his room. I hoped he wouldn’t knock at my door. He went in and there was silence after that. He must have spent the night with Annie and went in to sleep a little. I decided to get up. At twenty it was not too difficult to do so even after so much exertion, mental and physical. I went to the bathroom upstairs in my robe and returned to wash and shave while Diana was still asleep. I kept turning to look at her, deep in slumber, her shiny, blond hair splayed on the pillow and half her body out of the sheets. I had this profound satisfaction that I had slept with her and the embarrassing mishap of a failed erection that I dreaded had not occurred as it did with Carol. I think my lovemaking, for all my inexperience, was adequate because it was heartfelt and my declarations of love were genuine and not ornamental to embellish temporarily a situation. She derived a good deal of pleasure from it, of that I was sure. This Edgar, it seemed, had caused her sexuality to blossom which perhaps was previously awakened partially and not too passionately by an oafish and overbearing Reginald and put back to sleep by my inability to function. Did she love me after the probable hatred she must have felt when I left her in such a gutless manner? I could not be sure despite the darlings she uttered during our intercourse. Whereas my feelings were unambiguous. I loved her without shadows, I had pined for her for a long time and now my dream had been fulfilled. I should enjoy the happiness and triumph of the victor. Victor? With an Edgar lurking in the background? Or, maybe, even in the foreground? It was a puzzling situation.
I finished shaving, brushed my teeth and went to the bed. I sat down next to her and uncovered the rest of her body. What a perfect delight to look at a naked woman. For me it was almost a reverie at a time when even the most daring girlie magazines meticulously covered the pudenda. I softly squeezed and caressed her backside for a few moments and she turned and smiled. Time to get up? she asked. As you like, I said. It’s almost ten and I thought we might go down for some breakfast. She got up and drank some water with the glass I kept handy at the sink. Always drink two glasses of water as soon as you wake up, she advised me. It’s like pressing the started in a car and gets your body functioning. I could not take my eyes off her. She was quite comfortable with her nudity. She fixed her hair with a comb that was also lying on the ledge of the sink with the soap, my toothbrush, toothpaste, the shaving cream and Gillette razor. I noticed her pubic hair was carefully trimmed and I assumed that it was a normal part of female adornment once a girl started having sexual intercourse. She took my robe and went upstairs to the bathroom and returned smiling. The glasses of water did their job, said my earthy Diana. I had already started dressing. The weather was beautiful outside with just a slight breeze that swayed gently the branches of the trees I could see from my window. I was ready in a jiffy and she was still naked fixing her hair at the mirror and complaining how tired and worn out she looked and no makeup to camouflage the puffed bluish pouches under her eyes. Can I use your toothbrush? she asked. Yes my love, I answered. Considering we exchanged our bacteria with our kisses, there’s no danger of contagion. As she was brushing her teeth vigorously, looking at herself in the mirror, I held her from behind moving my palms from her haunches to under her armpits to the sides of her legs. I could not keep my hands off her. I was working out my repressed teenage fantasies at the age of twenty. Stop it, George, she said laughing, or we shall jump back in bed. Finally she started dressing and I learnt, though I had an intimation from Annie and earlier from my mother, that you cannot rush a woman when she is dressing and making up her face. I helped her with her bra and the buttons of her dress and she said she was ridiculously overdressed for a sunny Saturday morning.
We walked to South Kensington tenderly holding hands to the Lyons Teahouse. I used to go there often last year when I attended the tutorial college and did not have early morning classes. It was a traditional working-class sort of place with branches all over England and was frequented by manual workers and noisy cockneys with their idiomatic, mispronounced English I could rarely understand and who felt uncomfortable in the new trendy coffee bars with the pretty, hoity-toity waitresses and their cappuccinos and espressos. It was cheap and wholesome with fat, oldish waitresses that called you, love. Moreover it had black, strong tea, eggs and bacon, buttered toast, all kinds of jams, fruit salads and juices, and kippers. We went in, Diana definitely looking out of place with yesterday’s clothing, and passed with a tray each picking our breakfast from the long zinc buffet on the way to the cashier. We had a little argument on who was to pay and went to an empty table. No kippers after yesterday’s late-hour Chanterelle meal. We talked about the play and the talented actors that were forgotten rather quickly last night after the subway kiss and the subsequent developments. I said I would start thinking what to see next. Should I try to find a play for next Friday? That would be lovely, she said, but you must let me share the expense. In Egypt, I said, men always pay for their dates and, in any case, whenever I need a little extra money my dad sends it without a fuss. Yes, but we are in England and I am a working girl. We shall not quarrel about that. It’s not a problem, I said.