Close Observation Ch. 21

***

Ron went down once more. Layla sodomised Katie on the rug. She lay on top of Katie and pumped away at her with the strap-on. Katie had her right hand between them, around the root of the strap-on, positioning it against her clitoris as she sodomised Katie. Katie's eyes were closed, she almost looked to be in a trance. In one corner of the room, Caroline and Vicky had sex on a settee. It looked very intimate. Ron thought they seemed to be crazy about each other. Emma was fellating Faisal, and Ahmed and the non-English speaker were having sex with Annabelle; they were double penetrating her.

Ron went back up and lay on his bed. He couldn't get to sleep and didn't think he would do for hours. Emma eventually came in and lay next to him. He pretended to be asleep.

***

'Morning sleepyhead!' said Emma, when Ron woke up in the morning. Her face was next to his on the pillow. He thought she was beautiful. 'I tried to wake you up last night, but you were gone,' she said. She kissed him, intimately, on the mouth.

'Sorry, I was shattered,' said Ron.

'That's ok,' said Emma. She kissed him again and hugged him tight to her.

'Ron, I'm not saying today, or this week or anything, but we could always wake up together, every day, if you came and lived with me,' said Emma.

He held her and pressed her against him.

'Wow,' he said. He didn't know what to say to her. 'I don't know... Yeah, that would be worth thinking about,' he said. 'There's been so much going on... I suppose things have sort of... grown, haven't they?' said Ron.

'They have. I just wanted a shag at first, and I didn't want Annabelle to get you into bed first. Now I don't like it when I've got to fall asleep and you're not there. It doesn't feel right,' said Emma.

***

Ron went home. He hadn't had hardly any sleep the night before, but he managed to get off again when he got into his own bed, despite how preoccupied he was. He slept till late. When he got up, he didn't know what to do with himself. He'd said he'd go to Emma's that night; she was going to cook a meal.

He phoned Katie. She didn't answer his call but phoned back about five minutes later. They'd been on her when he'd phoned. She said she was ok, but tired. They'd been at her right into the night. She'd been woken up this morning by Yousef, and it had started again. She said they'd been gentler with her that day, and that it hadn't just been anal, they were using her mouth and her vagina as well, so she wasn't too sore. She was making them use loads of lube. Boys night was cancelled, they'd put a mattress in the front room, and she was going to entertain all of them. Ron said he wanted to be there to make sure things didn't go too far, but Katie insisted she'd be fine. She told him how much she was being paid. Ron said he would have judged her if she hadn't taken that much money if it was on the table.

He didn't know what to do that afternoon. Normally he would have gone for a run if there was stuff on his mind, but he didn't today. He took the district line to St James' Park. He came out of the station and walked through Queen Anne's gate, then left onto Birdcage Walk. It was a beautiful day. As he looked up through the trees, there didn't seem to be even one cloud in the sky. He walked the short distance to Waterloo barracks. He'd spent quite a few periods at the barracks when he'd been in the Guards. The Queen's birthday stuff had always been bloody hard work, when he was a lowly guardsman being shouted at by NCO's, and then later when he'd been an NCO doing the shouting. He remembered that some of his blokes, down the years, had been so shit at drill that he'd get so angry and frustrated with them that he'd barely be able to speak.

There was no one on the square today. Ron went into the Chapel. A Welsh Guards Sergeant was stood by the entrance. Ron knew him by sight and nodded, the sergeant tipped his peaked cap to Ron. Ron rated the taffs. He didn't think of them as a proper Guards regiment, but he thought they could fight their corner. Ron went in and paid his respects to the people in the Brigade who'd been killed whilst he'd been in. There were tourists and families in the chapel. He saw the names of some people he knew well on the walls.

Ron went in the Guards museum. There was a famous battle where his regiment had defended a farm on the battlefield against the French. It was probably the regiment's proudest moment, and there were artefacts from the engagement in the museum. There was the lock of one of the farm gates, which men from his regiment had had to forcibly close to stop the French taking the farm over. He liked to come to the museum and look at those items every now and again.

There weren't many people in the museum, and no one was near him when his phone went off.

'Hi,' said Marie.

'Hello,' said Ron.

'How are you?' asked Marie.

'I'm ok, you?' said Ron.

'I'm good. Have you had a think about what I said?' asked Marie.

'It wasn't the drink talking was it?' asked Ron. She laughed.

'No Ron. I feel like you feel,' said Marie.

'Ok,' said Ron.

'Come over... Come over tonight, come and stay with me,' said Marie.

***

He stayed in the museum for a while. He came out and walked into St James's park. He sat at a bench for a while when he finally found one that was free. There were squirrels running around; the tourists were feeding them. He was at the Buckingham Palace end of the park. When he felt like leaving, he knew St James' Park tube was closer, but he liked being outside in the sun, so he walked towards Victoria. There was a lot of people by the palace.

Ron had a dilemma, and he didn't know what he was going to do. He didn't know where he was going to spend that evening, and that night.

He'd thought that Marie felt sorry for him, that she thought he was weak and that he was a coward. Now it seemed like he'd misjudged. When she'd said what she had the night before, the way he'd felt had been indescribable. He thought about Emma as well.

***

The streets around the station were teeming with tourists. The station itself was busy, and when he went down into the underground there were people everywhere. He headed for the district line. Two young, female American tourists were going down the stairs to the platform and Ron carried their heavy cases down for them. They thanked him profusely.

There was no roof over the platform. The walls rose high on either side of the tracks, but he could see the blue sky above him. There wasn't a cloud up there, it was beautiful, and it felt beautiful, being there on a day like that. The sunlight reflected off the bricks of the station buildings, and a warm, golden light seemed to wash down on to Ron and the other people waiting. Ron thought about Marie and Emma. He was going to go to Charing Cross on the District Line, then change to the Bakerloo to go down to Elephant and Castle. When he got to the Elephant, he didn't know what he was going to do, he wasn't sure where he was going to go.

He heard a train and looked around: it was on the track on his side of the platform. He got on the train; it wasn't that busy. He stood by the doors and held on to a rail. There were big, wide, windows on the train and he could still see the light from the sunlight and from the walls as the train pulled away. He thought the light was beautiful.