Free Universal Carnal Knowledge Pt. 46

"Fran, darling, it won't work. I can't marry you."

"It's up to you, darling, I'm yours either way. But why not, if you wanted to?"

"Family," I explained.

"But darling," she replied, "so far as I can see you haven't got any family. You lost your parents years ago, your uncle's died, you mentioned some distant cousins, but that's it, isn't it? Apart from Wendy, I mean, and she's all for it, bless her."

I gave her naked rump a firm slap. "Pull yourself together. I meanyourfamily, dunderhead."

"My Mam and Dad? I've thought of that. They won't like it at first because you'll be divorced, but –"

"And because I'm a little matter of twenty-seven years older than you, don't forget that."

She considered this. "Come to think of it, you're a couple of years older than my Mam and six months older than my Dad. That's a bit spooky. You're right, they won't be wild about it, but – trust me, darling, you don't know them and I do – it's the divorce that will really count against you. But they love me and want what's best for me, and when they see how I feel they'll come round."

"Well, it's not just your parents," I went on. "It's the wedding. You know how I have to avoid social occasions. I don't want another garden party. What about your sister, the one with the new baby? Suppose I fancy her and FUCK gets to work?"

"Jess? I hadn't thought of that, but you'll be safe enough with Jess. I mean, she's a lovely person but she's not very, er ... Look, I'll show you." She jumped out of bed and fetched a slim photo album. "I took this when I went up to see the baby. Isn't she just adorable?"

A glance at the picture was enough to confirm that she must be talking about the infant. Jess, Fran's sister, glowed with maternal pride as she held the child up to the camera, but no one could have called her adorable. She had quite heavy features and, even so soon after childbirth, looked distinctly on the skinny side. You would not call her ugly, but she was not remotely my type.

Somewhat reassured, I thumbed idly through the album in search of embarrassing childhood pictures of Fran. These were her parents, obviously; this was a younger Jess; this was the kid brother she had mentioned once or twice; and this gawky schoolgirl must be Fran.

"No," she said. "I'm behind the camera. That's my sister Annie. Can't you see she's a lot fairer than I am?"

"I thought it was just the light. I didn't know you had another sister. I should be all right with her, though; she's only about thirteen."

Fran fell silent. When she finally spoke it was in a low, sad, hollow voice. "It's an old picture," she said. "Here's a recent one."

She flipped to a photograph I had missed near the end of the album. Out of the page there smiled a girl of about eighteen, very like Fran in the face but with blonde hair instead of red, worn long like Fran's but with a bit more of a curl to it (Fran's was poker straight). In her blue eyes she had a playful glint, very different to Fran's serious gaze. I let out a long, low whistle. "She's absolutely gorgeous."

"I know," wailed Fran as if it were the worst news imaginable. "She used to be all gangly and awkward but in the last year or two she's filled out a bit and suddenly she's lovely." She went on to tell me about her little sister. "As soon as she could toddle she followed me everywhere and copied everything I did, it was so cute. It's thanks to her that I got to be 'Fran'. My Mam and Dad still call me 'Frances' but she called us 'Frannie and Annie', and it stuck. She so much wants to be like me. She still wears her hair like me and she insisted on applying to my old university, even though I told her she was making a big mistake."

"St Andrews? But it's got a fine reputation. What's wrong with it?"

"It suited me," explained Fran. "I just wanted to get my head down and study. But it's the worst place for Annie. I said she should study in London, because she loves excitement and bright lights, and St Andrews is the quietest, most out-of-the-way place you could ever imagine. But she wouldn't listen, and she's been accepted. She starts in the autumn. She'll hate it."

"Well, anyway," I had to tell her, "the wedding's off. You know what will happen if I'm in the same room as this girl."

Fran nodded sadly. We left it there, and when I got home I explained the situation to Wendy (who said it was unfortunate, but she understood my reasoning) and after that I forgot about it and assumed everyone else had.

I was wrong. A certain Scottish redhead was giving the situation a lot of thought, and in the end she came to a remarkable decision.

By this time I had left the insurance company but I did not want anyone to associate my departure with Fran's so she was still working there, patiently disengaging herself. Now and then we would rendezvous at her flat for a lunchtime fuck so it was no surprise when on this particular day she rang to ask me to call round at midday. She had the flat to herself by now, since Connie and Gabby had found new accommodation more convenient for their new calling. "I've got something to show you I think you'll really like," she told me, so I called a cab and ran over.

Fran had been watching for me because when I reached the flat the front door opened by itself and she stood there with a look of eager excitement on her face and a finger to her lips. She led me to the front room.

There on the sofa was the original of the picture I had seen in the photo album. She gave me a welcoming smile as Fran did the courtesies: "James Walker, my sister Annie."

"Hello, Annie," I said. I shot an accusing look at Fran. How could she do this? But she looked blithe and relaxed, not a care in the world.

"Hello, Mr Walker," said Annie. She stood up to shake my hand, revealing she was a couple of inches shorter than her sister and generally smaller all round, in fact. The mischievous energy I had seen in the photograph was even more evident in the flesh, and contrasted with Fran's more serious and sedate manner. But anyone would have known they were sisters; their features were very similar and their lovely lilting Scottish accents were identical. "Fran's told me so much about you."

"Really?" I asked, trying not to show my mounting alarm.

"Yes, how you were so kind and helpful to her when she first came to London." That was a relief; I had no idea what Fran was up to and had feared she might have said far more. "I've always loved London," Annie went on, "even though I've never been. It's so big and exciting and glamorous, isn't it, Mr Walker?"

"James, please," I said automatically. Desperately I reflected that I had only a minute or two to escape this situation. I glared at Fran again. She had an infuriating butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth expression on her face.

I was loth to appear rude or eccentric in front of the delightful Annie but even as I decided there was nothing for it but to give any stupid excuse that entered my head and clear out, Fran, I suspect sensing my intentions, suddenly spoke.

"That problem, James."

I had no idea what she meant. "Problem?"

"The one we talked about a few weeks ago. You know, the album."

I got it at last. My desperate state of mind must have left me slow on the uptake. "Oh, yes, that problem."

"I've solved it," she announced smugly.

I reeled. Surely she could not mean what I thought she meant. Could Fran – Fran of all people – deliberately be introducing her little sister into my collection? In mounting dismay I realised that such an act had a brutal logic to it. If Annie were already mine, there would be no further obstacle to the wedding. "The solution might have some drawbacks," was all I could think of to say.

"None that I can think of," she replied. "Anyway, I must pop out. Shan't be long. Don't go 'way. 'Bye!"

Her exit, although obviously carefully pre-planned, was so abrupt and unexpected that I had hardly a moment to react. As she reached the door I opened my mouth to order her to stay but then I realised how odd it would seem to Annie if a word from me stopped Fran dead in her tracks. My momentary hesitation was fatal. Fran was gone. I heard the flat door slam and her feet on the stairs. I was left alone with a nonplussed Annie.

"What got into Fran?" she asked.

"No idea," I lied. "She must have remembered she'd run out of milk or something. I'm sure she'll be back in a moment. Look, I'm sorry, Annie, I have to go too. You'll be all right on your own, won't you?"

She looked both puzzled (who can blame her?) and disappointed at the prospect of my departure. "Oh, Mr Wal – sorry, James – please don't go just yet." She took my hand and sat down in such a way as to try to steer me down beside her, but I stayed resolutely on my feet. "I'm so excited to meet a real Londoner," she said. "Can't we talk for a bit?"

It crossed my mind that within a few miles' radius there were several million real Londoners, a high proportion of whom (pretty well the whole of the male half, at a rough estimate) would have been delighted to talk to her. "Annie, you don't understand," I said. "I really can't stay. Sorry."

"But it's the first time I've ever been here," she pleaded. "Fran told me about how you showed her round. She said you were such a kind and generous man that she was sure you'd do the same for me as you had for her."

The way she put this had me speechless for a moment. I noticed how her chest was beginning to rise and fall as her breathing became slower and deeper. And then my cock intruded on proceedings. I had arrived with nice full balls ready to empty into Fran, and at my first sight of her beautiful little sister I had felt my cock twitch into greater alertness. It had been steadily growing ever since and now, as I stood there with this lovely girl sitting right in front of me, her face inches from my groin, a sudden hardening and stiffening forced it free of some restraining fold of underwear and it pushed itself as an unmistakable prominence against the outer fabric of my trousers. Her eyes widened and she gasped, but not with the horror or disgust one might have expected in a girl of eighteen.

With her saucer-like eyes fixed on the obscene bulge in my trousers, she spoke in a quiet, hoarse voice, "And you're such a wonderful man, a big, strong, beautiful man, a big, kind, loving man, a big, big ... big ..."

She trailed off. She was simply sitting there with her mouth slightly open, her eyes staring at my cock as it pressed even more firmly against the fabric.

I gave up the struggle and sat down next to her. "All right, Annie, I'll stay a while."

When it came to the sex I have to say I was probably not at my most caring and sensitive. In fact, I think I took out on this poor child some of my frustration at being manipulated in this way. Not that she seemed to mind; despite her wholesomely innocent appearance, it was clear that she had some experience (so she did not follow Fran in everything). Being well charged with spunk and irritated to boot, I came very quickly and I must have put more juice into her perfect young cunt than I ever had with any girl before. I pumped and pumped and pumped and with each spurt she screamed and wailed as waves of ever-mounting ecstasy flooded over her. When I withdrew she looked obscene, flat on her back with unfocused eyes and white sticky spunk bubbling and frothing as it oozed out of her.

Leaving her there, I angrily rang Fran on her cellphone. I got a recording telling me the phone was switched off and asking me to leave a message. Ignoring this invitation, I made myself a cup of tea and waited. I had a feeling she would be back soon.

Not long after I had finished the tea I heard a key in the lock. I stood up to confront Fran sternly as soon as she came in.

"Hi, darling," she said brightly.

"What do you think you're playing at?" I demanded.

"I've been feeding birds in the park. It's very relaxing."

"Fran, don't play games with me. What's the big idea with Annie?"

"I told you. I'm solving our problem."

"You call this a solution? Fran, how could you? Your own little sister."

She looked totally unruffled. "Darling, you're not thinking. It's a perfect solution. As soon as I started approaching the problem logically, I saw it at once. And it works splendidly for everyone. Annie gets you. I get my beautiful James for my husband. And you come out best of all, darling, because you get a lovely girl and the wife you want, too."

"But Fran, your little sister –"

"Look, darling, I know her a lot better than you do and trust me, she's far more grown-up at eighteen than I was. And when she comes down, she won't blame me for it, she'll thank me. In fact, I'm envious of her; I wish I'd met you when I was her age."

"I wasn't FUCKed up when you were eighteen," I pointed out.

"Well, if you had been."

I was far from convinced, and told her so. But I saw Annie several more times over the next few days, and I had to admit that Fran had a point. The girl was simply radiant, gloriously happy, and effusively grateful to Fran for introducing us. She stayed in London for three weeks and she was so sweet and fresh I fucked her constantly. She was crestfallen when I insisted that she must return to Scotland and honour her commitment to study. She had made her bed, I told her, and she must lie in it. But I gather she has lain in a lot of other beds as well, besides having plenty of company in her own, and all in all her social life has enlivened sleepy St Andrews no end. And, of course, after giving herself away all term she comes to London to sell herself in the vacations.

Annie makes me smile. She so wants so much to be like Fran but she is quite different; where Fran is thoughtful, sensible and serious, Annie is frivolous, vivacious and light-hearted. She is also, as predicted, desperate to get away from St Andrews, a town (she says) with no night life and next to no day life; even the nearest railway station is five miles away. Once or twice I have almost relented, but so far I am sticking to my decision.

Fran invited her parents down from Scotland for a week to meet me. She told them I had some very valuable properties all over central London, a statement that, besides bearing an interestingly oblique relationship to the truth, adequately reconciled my apparently affluent lifestyle with the fact that I never seemed to do any actual work. They soon got used to the idea that I would regularly disappear for an hour or two, doubtless supposing I was inspecting potential new acquisitions or possibly attending auctions. They were, as she had foreseen, not altogether comfortable about me as a son-in-law but I was on my very best behaviour and Fran was so obviously in love that they came to accept the idea.

So Wendy divorced me by consent and Fran and I were married in the spring. We insisted on a small wedding in London, immediate family only. On her side this meant her parents, her elder sister and her husband, her little brother, and Annie. On my side, there was only Wendy (whose presence raised several Scottish eyebrows, but she threw rice as promised, and charmed my new in-laws as only she can). The only other guests were Alicia, practically one of the family by now, and Connie, proud beyond words at Fran's invitation to be her maid of honour.

Fran lives with me in my Marylebone home, the only girl to reside there permanently. However, Wendy and Alicia share a flat round the corner and are in and out all the time, making themselves useful either between the sheets (always very welcome) or in the kitchen (almost a necessity, since for all her sterling qualities my precious Fran, hailing as she does from the nation that gave the world porridge, haggis, and the deep-fried Mars bar, is quite possibly the worst cook on earth). Other girls visit constantly, of course, and each new girl stays a few days with me to be fucked senseless while we sort out her future living and working arrangements. But Fran is the wife; she got after all what she begged me for all that time ago, in my office the day after Albert's funeral.

*

And I ought to add that Fran has been nothing but a delight, full of surprises large and small.

Last autumn, when I was looking for a new house and beginning to despair of ever finding anything that would meet my needs, I went to visit a mews property in Marylebone – the house I was ultimately to buy, of course – and I took Fran along, as I always did when she was available. We were shown round by the vendor, a charming man in his mid-forties, a freelance television producer apparently, who explained that he was selling only with the greatest reluctance in order to fund a divorce settlement with his wife. I had introduced Fran as my fiancée, partly because it was true (this was not long after she had cleared the obstacles by introducing me to Annie) but also because I enjoyed the look of intrigued envy I knew I should get as he wondered why this strikingly attractive young woman would have thrown in her lot with such an unprepossessing man easily twice her age.

"You're a lucky man," he muttered to me at one point when he thought Fran was safely out of earshot.

But she has the acute hearing of youth and immediately replied, "No, I'm the lucky one," with a calm conviction that earned me another envious glance.

I liked the house immediately, and as we looked it over I let the vendor know (without seeming too keen) that I was seriously interested. After being shown round we returned to the large, tastefully appointed living room, in the corner of which there was a stately grand piano. Fran, attracted (or so I assumed) by its undeniable magnificence as a piece of furniture, walked slowly round it, eying it admiringly and running her fingers appreciatively along its shiny black surface. The vendor, who in any case had been unable to keep his eyes off her as he showed us the house, could hardly have failed to notice her interest.

"Lovely, isn't it?" he said, adding optimistically, "It's for sale too."

"Really?" said Fran, failing to keep the note of excitement out of her voice.

"Yes. You see, it was my wedding present to my wife in happier days, and she's asked me to sell it. In fact," he went on, putting his cards on the table, "it was such a tough job getting it in here – four burly shifters and a pulley system, and we had to take the frame off the door – that I was rather hoping that whoever bought the house might want the piano as well."

This idea, I felt, had to be nipped in the bud. "I can see it would be very convenient, but," I said firmly, "I'm afraid we don't play."

"Yes we do," said Fran quietly.

I looked blankly at the vendor and back at Fran. "We do?" I said.

"We do," she confirmed. "May I?" she asked the vendor.

So she sat herself at the piano, looking instantly at home I noticed, and after a moment's thought began to play Beethoven'sFür Elise; maybe not the most demanding piece (I believe the great man wrote it as an exercise for a pupil with whom he was smitten) but a charming one and rendered very sweetly on this occasion with a nice touch and no obvious errors. I was so astonished at the way Fran had pulled this trick out of her hat that, as the final note died away and she sat back looking thoroughly pleased with herself, for a moment I failed to join in the polite applause with which the vendor acknowledged her performance.

"Well," I said to the vendor, "in the light of further information that has only now been brought to my attention," and I shot a sharp glance at Fran, who had risen to acknowledge the applause with a modest bow and was now standing there looking smug, "I think we might be interested in the piano after all."

As we were leaving I had to tackle Fran about this incident.

"Well, young lady, you've been hiding your light under a bushel, haven't you?"