by Paul Charles
I was surprised at how forthright I’d been, but I found myself thinking about Mary Skeffington and my relationship with her, and not about Jean Simpson and John Harrison for once. The reality was that John had better get his act together and get it together soon or he was going to lose Jean. I still didn’t know what she saw in him in the first place. Perhaps it might have been that because he’d been with such a beautiful woman (Mary) he was, in Jean’s eyes, a bit of a catch? And so when he’d shown interest in her, she’d jumped at the chance as a way of getting out from behind Jean Kerr’s coat-tails? Maybe that was it.
Now that she was free from Jean and she was enjoying her encounters with me, free of any emotional involvement, perhaps she felt she was even outgrowing John Harrison? Better now, I thought, than in three years’ time when they’d been married for a year. I saw Jean Simpson as the beautiful body blooming before all of our eyes. Without wishing to be rude, I thought that emotionally she certainly had a bit to go, and she had better address that side of her life before she even started to think about making any lasting commitments. I hope that doesn’t all sound a wee bit amateur-hour analyst, but that’s what I thought, and her behaviour did seem to fall into that particular pattern.
I also had a wee theory about how Jean Kerr’s downfall was directionally proportional to Jean Simpson’s rise. But we’ll leave that for later.
Needless to say, I didn’t take John Harrison into my confidence on either of my thoughts.
‘So you think I need to loosen up a bit?’
‘Well…’ I didn’t want to be negative on him.
‘Jean Kerr keeps telling me I’m too stiff, that I need to let my hair down,’ he spouted, and then he went quiet for a minute.
I felt he had something more to say so I just kept looking at him, saying nothing. It’s funny the way that always works, you know, just looking at someone, demanding they speak to you without actually having to say a word. It always seemed to work.
‘Jean Kerr actually said to me that I should be a bit more like you.’
Then just before I got a bit too big-headed he continued, ‘She also said that you were a waste of space in bed and that the reason she dumped you was not because of the fight at Tiger’s but because you were so interested in your music you’d no time whatsoever for girls.’
Thank you Jean Kerr. I owed that girl a couple of Dexy’s.
‘Well, that’s me put in my place John, hasn’t it?’ I started, smiling as falsely as I knew how. ‘You know, I think it’s all to do with people who are unsuitable for each other trying to get involved with each other. Case in point – it didn’t work out between you and Mary Skeffington, but that doesn’t mean that you’re a waste of space, does it? It just means that Mary wasn’t right for you, and vice versa. You’ve met Jean and Mary will meet someone as well, I’m sure. She seemed like a very nice girl to me, John. I’m sure it’s just that it didn’t click with you and her, but I bet you she’ll get it together with someone else. And Jean Kerr and me, well, we weren’t really made for each other. Yes, it would have helped if we’d both liked the same music, but it was more than that I’m sure. She’ll go off and find someone once she’s sorted out her illness and of course I’m hopeful of finding someone as well at some time in my life. You know, I might have even met her already. Perhaps I’m just too blind to have noticed it.’
I was trying to give him as many hints as possible about Mary as a potential partner, so that when word got out, it wouldn’t be so much of a shock. Tonight, though, he was only listening out for the words concerning him and Jean Simpson; everything else was swishing right over his head. In the future, though, should Mary and I actually get it together, this conversation would replay in his memory and he’d twig what I’d been on about.
John kept looking at his watch then looking back at me.
‘So, you also think I should let my hair down. I mean, could you turn me on to some groups? Who does our Jean like? Which of the groups that you’ve taken her to see did she like the most? Which of your records does she like to listen to?’
Was this a trick question? Judging by his face, it wasn’t anything of the sort, so I decided to go with the flow.
‘Well, I think she’s very partial to the blues. She likes The Spencer Davis Group, John Lee Hooker, Traffic and Otis Redding on record. And she liked Taste live.’
‘Sorry, what’s her taste live?’
‘No, it’s a group called Taste – they’re from Ireland, we saw them in the Marquee Club once and she loved them. I think they’re her favourite live group. They’re certainly one of mine.’
‘Right,’ John said, like I’d just been speaking a foreign language. ‘So, do you have any records here that she likes?’
‘Yes,’ I answered, looking at my wall of albums, ‘just a few.’
‘Could you play me one of them?’ he said, as he looked at his watch again.
‘Certainly,’ I said, this time unconsciously checking my watch. It was 7.53 p.m.
I found Traffic’s Mr. Fantasy and placed it on my record deck. I dusted it with my record cleaner. ‘The thing you should know about Traffic is that the lead singer of this group is a chap called Stevie Winwood and he’s about twenty years old but he sounds like he might be fifty, and he used to sing in a group called The Spencer Davis Group.’
I put on the record.
He stared at me.
I stared at him.
I hate playing records for unbelievers. It’s a bit like people smoking cannabis for the first time: they keep looking at you to see if it’s kicked in with you yet, just because it hasn’t kicked in with them yet, and then they start to wonder if there’s something wrong with them. Yes, there is something wrong with them – they’re too uptight!
John Harrison didn’t get Traffic, and he didn’t get them in a big way. I defy anyone with a soul to listen to ‘No Face, No Name and No Number’ and not be moved. Stevie Winwood sings this song like his heart is breaking before your ears. He makes you want to cry.
But John Harrison was far from moved. He wasn’t in the slightest bit moved. That’s a fact, and there’s no denying it. How was someone like Jean Simpson going to spend the rest of her life with a person who wouldn’t be moved by ‘No Face, No Name, No Number’?
There was one more chance for him. I stood up and placed the needle at the start of the final track, ‘Dear Mr. Fantasy’. There was still no sign of movement from the sceptic. He kept staring at me, waiting for me to go all funny on him. It wasn’t working, all this energy I was spending on him. He really was a hopeless case.
I tried yet another tack.
‘The magic thing about Traffic is that they have two amazing singers and songwriters in the one band. The first is Stevie Winwood, the one singing this song; and the second is Dave Mason, and he’s also got a brilliant voice and is a good songwriter to boot.’
‘To boot what?’ John Harrison said, ‘what does that mean?’
‘It just means “as well’’,’ I said.
John looked at his watch again. It was now 8.03 p.m.
‘Is this the music that you and my Jean listen to?’
‘Well, we talk about it, and I think one night when the two Jeans were around we played this album. Jean Kerr, she doesn’t like any of this stuff. She doesn’t even pretend. But your Jean, she’s got a good ear for music. She loves her music does your Jean. Did Mary, Mary Skeffington like music, John?’
He surprised me. A large, warm smile came over his face as he said, ‘Ah Mary, she loved her classical music. She wasn’t a big fan of this pop music but she and her mother used to go to a lot of classical concerts and I also believe they went to the occasional Latin music concerts. Her mother, well now, there’s a strange one. She’s too independent for her own good, if you ask me. She could be living off her rich boyfriend by now but she insists on holding down her own job. Everyone knows she’s loaded. You know I walked away from a fortune there, David? Yes, a fortune, and all for the love of Jean.
And then she’s accusing me of being a penny-pincher. Humph, I could have been set up for life with the Skeffingtons.’
He looked at his watch again.
‘Do you have to be somewhere?’ I asked. Then the penny dropped. ‘It’s Tuesday, of course – you’re meeting Jean.’
‘No I’m not, David. She blew me out for someone tonight. And to tell you the truth I thought it was you. Jean Kerr said it was you my Jean was going see. She was delirious in Derby but she told me to watch my Jean now that she wasn’t going be in London. She said to watch David Buchanan. And I have, David, and I’m convinced that you’ve been hiding nothing and I’d bet whoever it was she was going to see tonight, it isn’t you.’
He set his glass down on the floor and got up to leave. He walked into the kitchen area and doused the butt of his Player under the cold water tap and threw the damp remains in my bin.
‘There’s something else I should tell you, David. This taste music, I can’t stand it, all the Dave Winwood and Stevie Mason and Traffic, what a silly name for a group! But come to think of it, they do sound like a load of vehicles roaring along the road. What an almighty racket!’
And with that he staggered out of my flat into the cold winter night. One glass of wine had him staggering. The boy definitely needed to let his hair down a bit. I do think he felt very good about putting me in my place once and for all about my music.
That wasn’t what was troubling me though.
What was troubling me was if Jean Simpson wasn’t seeing me and nor was she seeing John Harrison on this particular Tuesday night, who the feck was she seeing?
Chapter Twenty–Six.
I’d like to say that when I received a call the next day from Jean Simpson looking to know if my flatmate was out that night and, if he was, could she see me, that I’d replied ‘No, he’s not but I’m not really into us messing around any more.’ But I said none of the above; in fact, I agreed to see her immediately. Maybe I was intrigued with finding out who she’d been out with the previous night and maybe I was intrigued by the fact that she’d said I could do anything I wanted to her the next time we met. Anything, that was except enter her.
Hang on there, hang on just a minute, David; weren’t you meant to be dropping your encounters with Jean and concentrating on Mary now that she had made a commitment to you? Well, yes, I suppose so, but in another way one scene had to end before the other one could begin properly, don’t you think? That may all just be justification after the fact because when she rang up, no matter what my brain was thinking I ought to say and do, I heard this familiar voice, which I recognised immediately to be my own, inviting her to come straight on over.
Jean Simpson streamed straight into my flat without saying a word. She was nervous – this was to be my dance after all – but still I’d have to say, for all of that, her nervousness somehow made her even more attractive.
Her experiments with make-up were proving effective. She’d used blood-red lipstick, added a bit of colour in her cheeks and added a few subtle dark colours around her eyes. Her hair was slicked back and held in place with some kind of shiny gel. She stood in the middle of my floor on the very same red carpet where we’d experienced our first encounter no more than a few months previous. In that short time a magical metamorphosis had occurred. This transformation had perhaps taken place at Jean Kerr’s cost or perhaps it was always destined to happen no matter what was happening in the other Jean’s life.
She allowed me to come up behind her and remove her wine-coloured duffle coat. Was this coat now the only remaining link to the mousy girl from Derby? Who knows? Underneath her favourite coat she was dressed all in black. New black pleated miniskirt, black stockings, black high-heeled shoes and a black satin, clerical-type shirt with a high collar.
I placed her coat over the chair and put on a Dylan record. I knew it wasn’t her favourite, but it was mine, and this was to be was my dance after all. She was still standing in the middle of the floor when I returned to her and again I approached her from behind. I couldn’t resist putting my hand on the inside of her thigh and running it the whole way up to her stocking tops, where I felt what I knew to be the smoothest skin on her magnificent body. I felt her relax a little as she leaned back against me with just the slightest hint of her weight. I caressed her skin for a few seconds more before pushing my hand further up until it was between her legs. She was already damp.
For one who had led the dance so well she was enjoying not knowing what was going to happen.
Neither of us had spoken since the initial greeting on the doorstep.
I walked around her so that we were facing each other. I removed her shirt and then her miniskirt. She was wearing her usual white underwear. I would have been devastated if she hadn’t been. Miss Simpson was staring at me, a hint of apprehension visible in her eyes but at the same time she was willing me on, willing me to take the lead in our dance. I led her over to the bed and lay her down. I brushed her eyelids shut with the palm of my hand. I knelt over her and kissed her eyelids. I pulled her hands up over her head, kissing the full length of her bare arms as I did so. Next I kissed my way down her body, bypassing her glorious breasts, down past her naval and straight to her milky thighs. One by one I removed her stockings, rolling them down very slowly, kissing the newly revealed skin as I went along. I pulled her legs gently apart and gently kissed my way back up her entire body, omitting only her lips. As I was using my lips to caress her I was positively drinking in large dollops of her aromas. I adored the smell of Jean Simpson, she just smelled so darned lusty!
I reached under the bed and pulled out four neckties and tied two of them around her wrists, pulling them to the opposite side of the bed-head. I repeated the process, and completed the sensual X, with her ankles at the bottom of the bed. All the time this she was obediently lying still, her eyes closed. As she felt my weight move up off the bed she opened her eyes and pulled against all her restraints as if testing their strength. She seemed content that she could not free herself.
I sat on the chair opposite her, drinking in every inch of this incredible sight. All her curves, the multitude of little nooks and crannies, which formed this… this perfect body. There is no other way for me to describe the vision for you. Jean Simpson’s body was my idea of perfection. She wasn’t exactly struggling but she was moving against her restraints and as she did so her breasts would rise to fullness and then her thigh would rise into my view, and then her long neck would strain to rise from the bed to see what I was doing. She’d wriggle her bum to find a more comfortable position and that sensual action would nearly be enough for me – she nearly got me with her every move. The thing that I keep going back to about Jean Simpson, and perhaps the single biggest turn-on for me, was the fact that she never once acted brazen or flaunted herself in anyway. Her tentativeness was, to me, a large part of her charm.
I slowly removed my clothes, not slowly in an exhibitionist kind of way, but more so that I could continue to feast my eyes on the sight before me.
Just then Dylan’s ‘She Belongs To Me’ gently caressed the speakers of my stereo system, his distinctive, compelling, talk-along voice singing:
She’s got everything she needs. She’s an artist, she don’t look back.
She’s got everything she needs. She’s an artist, she don’t look back.
She can take the dark out of the night-time and paint the daytime black.
I swear to you Dylan was singing about Jean Simpson. She was an artist, and her art was sex. She was never more the complete artist than she was that night, as she lay restrained, reticent, tempting and exquisite upon my bed.
All my clothes removed, I lay beside her and caressed every part of her body. She moaned gently. She was wriggling quite a bit now, encouraging me by her movements to where she wanted to be caressed. When I touched between her legs she did as best she could to pull her legs together to trap my hand there. No further encouragement needed, I continued to explore her softness. I was no
w kneeling between her knees and started to kiss her softness as well.
It was all too much for her and after a few seconds she screamed, ‘You got me! Oh, did you get me!’
These had been the first words spoken between us since she’d entered the room.
She examined me up and down as she recovered and relaxed into a more normal breathing pattern. Her eyes widened as they focused on my midriff, or somewhere thereabouts.
‘Oh my goodness, David you’d better kneel above my head and lean over me, quickly,’ she ordered. It was my dance, and of course I could have said no. I didn’t. I did as she bid, and she took me in her mouth, and it was so sensational, she got me immediately.
We lay there for several minutes. Me beside her, she still restrained and not asking to be untied. I caressed her breasts this time and she was so responsive that I was in the same instant responsiveness again. I lay on top of her and we started to grind against each other.
‘Agh, this isn’t fair,’ she whispered breathlessly, ‘I can’t feel you properly. I need to feel you close to me, David.’
All the time she was saying this she was rising to me and falling away from me. I have to admit, in my mind’s eye, the vision of her in her bra and pants was much more appealing than her completely unclothed. I was happy to continue as we were, so I did. It was my dance after all.
‘David, I can’t feel you – I need to feel you next to me, please!’
‘I’d have to untie you first,’ I said, resisting and offering the first excuse I could think of.
‘Tear them off, flippin’ rip them off! Oh please, David!’
I pulled feebly at her pants. The cotton wouldn’t give. So I worked out a compromise; I pulled her pants down as close to her knees as possible. But now they were digging into her skin and making her uncomfortable.
