Entertaining at Large Ch. 18

'And you don't mind that they're playing free-and-easy with your girlfriend's arse?'

'Course not. Look at her. She's clearly loving it.'

'And?'

'I meant what I said before, you know. If she wants to fuck half the pub I'll still love her.'

I was getting the same damp panties Scarlett had suffered from earlier; he really was special. I leaned across the table and kissed him gently on the lips.

'I was a little bit in love with you, you know, after that first night.'

I wondered at what age teenagers stop puttingyou know in every sentence. When they realise that whatever it is that's exciting them at that precise moment is not necessarily something they're the first ones to discover, I guessed. I sighed, wishing that Alice would get herself back over here. This was getting far too deep.

'There's nothing like knowing the woman who makes your heart beat faster had screwed ten men in quick succession before getting round to you to put fidelity into perspective.'

I punched him on the arm.

'It wasn't ten, you little creep, it was nine. And that's including you, so technically only eight-and-a-half.'

'Yeah. But it was at least twice each sotechnically that's seventeen, isn't it?'

'Fuck off, Nigel.'

We were laughing now and I was feeling a little easier. It didn't last long.

'Did you tell her I wasn't a virgin?'

'No. Absolutely not. She'll work that out for herself in a few hours. And what you tell each other about your past experiences is down to the both of you.'

'Thanks Sue, you're a pal. And completely wrong of course.'

He started laughing again.

'The graffiti in the college bogs is a pretty good source of information about what your girlfriend's been up to in the past. Accurate too, if what she's told me when we werejust friends is anything to go by.'

Nigel let out a loudoof when Alice made a three-point landing on his groin in a replay of Scarlett's earlier arrival. By the look of them it was going to take significantly longer for normal conversation to resume. I turned my attention to Scarlett's uphill task with her ensemble while I waited and then went over to the bar. I thought I'd identified a significant training point: they all needed more alcohol.

'Four pints of lager and a bottle of whatever that stuff Scarlett drinks, please Mandy. I think they're beginning to flag.'

'They're good aren't they?'

I looked at her sideways trying to work out if she was serious.

'No they're crap. Still, beggars can't be choosers.'

'Come on Susan. A pub full of pissed, screaming women'll soon iron out any wrinkles.'

It began to dawn on me that this was going to be fun.

'They'll tear them to pieces, won't they?'

'Yup.'

'Make sure I get a seat up the front then.'

'I'll save you a warm one right next to me.'

She took my money and hefted the tray over to the stage. By the time I got back to love's young dreamers they had come up for air.

'Why's everyone leaving? It's only half-ten.'

'Work tomorrow. And that lot, of course. Enough to put anyone off their beer.'

'You fancy going on to a club, or something? I'm off tomorrow.'

'Susan's asked if we want to spend the night at her place.'

She was a smart girl that Alice. It took less than a nanosecond for the full implications of my offer to sink in. The warm-up exercises which followed went on for significantly longer. Nigel was checking his lips for bruising when she'd finished with him. He took himself off to the toilets claiming he wanted to make sure there was no bleeding. We both smiled at his retreating back.

'I can't thank you enough for the tip about Saturday. Worked a dream.'

'That's OK.'

'And for the invite. There's no way I'd have lasted until then and I really didn't want his first time to be in the back of his mum's car, or up against a wall outside some pub. Been there, done that.'

She came round the table and hugged me, making me feel even more like mother Theresa.

'Nigel said you wanted to ask me a favour. Wouldn't tell me what it was.'

'Yes.'

She suddenly looked shy. And definitely younger than her almost-nineteen years. I composed a serious look ready to dispense older-woman advice if need be. She took a deep breath.

'I want you to teach me how to be a stripper.'

To be honest, I think I'd already guessed it wouldn't be long before she decided to take that road. I was a bit surprised we had come to it so soon. She was staring at me with a serious look on her face, biting her bottom lip while she waited for my answer.

'You need lessons?'

'I think so. I want to win the amateur show - I've always had a competitive streak - and Nigel says you're the best he's ever seen.'

'Then I'd be honoured.'

I almost had to fight her off when she squealed her thanks and started to hug me. I could tell how excited she was from the beating of her heart as she pressed her boobs against mine. I couldn't help remembering the lessons I'd had from Tracey and then Scarlett and Mandy. I managed to get her off me without resorting to violence and tried to stop myself thinking what it might be like to roll her clearly protruding nipples between my lips. The moisture content in my panties went significantly higher.

'She saidyes then?'

Nigel was back. Alice nodded excitedly.

'I'm going to tell George and get him to book me for the Sunday session after the competition.'

'Is that a good idea?'

She looked serious for a moment.

'I think so. He's only going to keep going on about it every time I come in here. Don't want him to think his nagging had anything to do with my decision. Be better for the next girl as well.'

I was impressed. She was wise beyond her years.

'Be quick then. Alan likes to be in bed by midnight and he's only been to my house three or four times. Could be a long drive.'

She skipped off towards the bar. George was obviously pleased with the news. She came back a few minutes later with a whisky for Nigel, what looked like a gin and tonic for herself and a bottle of water for me. I saluted the Buddha-of-the-bar who blew me a kiss.

'He was pleased then?'

'Delighted. He insisted on giving us these. I said we had to be off so he gave Alan a coke as well. You sure you're OK with water?'

We sipped and giggled and Alice kept looking over towards the stage; as if anything that was happening on it bore any relationship to exotic dance. Our drinks were soon gone. As we got into our coats and I checked my bag to make sure nothing had been nicked, I saw George whip Alan's half-finished drink away. His new favourite person needed her chauffeur, pronto.

It still took several minutes to get her out. She hopped up onto the stage and obviously broke the news to Scarlett and her soon-to-be-fellow performers. Reactions were mixed. Scarlett kissed her on the cheek and gave her a quick hug before turning to me, shrugging and waving an admonishing finger. The boys were much more enthusiastic. They had obviously seen Eric and Josh and all needed to fondle her bum themselves to reach an independent judgement of its qualities. When she unzipped her puffa-jacket and lifted her shirt for them, Scarlett drew a halt to proceedings and shoved her back to us. James was coming in as we were leaving.

'Hi Susan, Mr J said he's got some proofs for you to look at. It's a bit urgent but he didn't want them going back to the publisher without your say-so.'

'That's nice. Thanks. But you needn't bother, I trust both of you.'

'An extra pair of eyes is always good. And you know what George'll do to us if we fuck up your bit.'

These good-lookingand considerate, nice guys were ruining my independent streak. I kissed him and gave him a big hug. Alice did the same. When in Rome and all that.

'This is James. He's Scarlett's boyfriend.'

'Well in that case, you owe me one.'

She used his shoulders for leverage, hopped up, clamped her legs around his waist and kissed him on the mouth. Long and deep. He took it in good part.

'You must be Alice. I told Scarlett when she rang that I was busy and that she should hook up with Nigel if all she wanted was a shag. She said he wasotherwise engaged.'

'She almost swallowed poor Nigel when she came in tonight. I thought I'd repay the favour. I'm going to be a stripper, you know.'

'Good for you. If you want to do any modelling, let me know. Hi Nigel, you ever miss the days when we thought men were calling the shots?'

He pushed past us with a weary sigh and exchanged a knowing wink with Nigel. I took it from the shriek which greeted his entrance into the main body of the pub, that rehearsals were over. Alan was getting impatient.

'Come on you lot. I've recorded tonight's match off the telly and I want to watch it before I go to bed. Steaua Bucharest.'

'Sounds like the match of the season.'

Nigel murmured as we followed Alan out to his minibus. We only got lost a couple of times on the way to my place so got there quite quickly. Alan was more interested in talking soccer than Alice's burgeoning new career. They bickered about the relative merits of teams I'd never heard of. She seemed to win the argument and was a lot less frisky when I let them into the house. It didn't last long.

Five minutes later, Mr J knocked on the door and walked straight in. I was in the kitchen making coffee. I was definitely having a cup and had tried to persuade the other two it might be an idea for them. They were in the front room, exploring my collection of bottles and seeing whether any of my music would pass muster for Alice's lesson. I could hear them playing the occasional snatches of some of my favourite albums, switching hem off and then laughing. It was pissing me off a bit.

'What ho, Mr J. You're a sight for sore eyes. I'm making coffee.'

'Susan, looking wonderful as usual. And such a good liar. I'm exhausted. These things will be the death of me. I will have a cup if you don't mind.'

He nodded down at the large envelope under his arm.

'I understand you won again tonight. Well done, you're in the top half of the table.'

'Didn't realise we made the TV news, but I don't think we're that good. Strugglers, that's us.'

'Don't deceive yourself. James looked it up on the web. He thought you'd been doing rather well recently.'

He held out his phone to me. I whistled. I never checked our position and was amazed to see that what he said was true. We were still a good few points off the top, but there were one or two teams above us we'd beaten already.

'I must let Tracey know. She'll be delighted.'

'I heard about her little scheme. She doesn't change, does she?'

'I don't know? She's bulk-buying panties and I'm sure I saw her sketching plans for mass production of a quick-release bra.'

He carefully extracted the proofs for my section of the forthcoming coffee table book from the envelope and laid them on the table. I poured our coffees in a space next to the sink for safety reasons and found a couple of coasters withPresent from Eastbourne written on them. Dave, my ex-husband's gran had bought them for us. I speculated about posting them on to him every time I saw them. There was a light cough from the vicinity of the door. I could hear Mr J's chair scrape as he stood up.

'Nigel. Good to see you. Studying hard, I hope.'

He reached out and shook his hand. He took Alice's hand next and bent over to kiss it. I was always amazed at how effortless and natural he made such an old-fashioned gesture seem.

'And you must be Alice. I've heard so much about you, it's a pleasure to meet you in person.'

She looked at me confused.

'This is Mr J, he's my neighbour and Mandy's boyfriend. We were talking about him in the pub.'

''Nothing too respectable, I hope.'

'Oswald?'

'That's right. Though most people have taken to calling me Mr J, only Mandy uses my first name. I'll let you choose.'

He kissed her hand again, looking into her eyes the whole time. She was blushing.

'You knew my name?'

'We were on the news tonight apparently. It'll be all over town by now.'

'Not about me...?'

I couldn't keep a straight face any longer.

'Nigel brought an innocent young thing down to the Crown. Three hours and several pints of George's beer later and she's telling everyone she wants to be a stripper. There'll be an irate father doing some horse-whipping before the week's out. She's holing up here to keep out of his way and pick up some tips.'

Mt J's eyes lit up. He looked Alice up and down again, this time making no secret of the fact that he was admiring her body.

'An honourable profession. And you couldn't have chosen a better mentor. I'll look forward to your debut. You really are beautiful.'

She was melting under his charm. Nigel, in the meantime, was looking over the proofs.

'These are really good. Did James take them?'

'Stop that. Don't put that glass down.'

I scraped the pages together and almost leaned over them to protect them. He'd pushed some of them towards our coffee cups and had been about to our a tumbler down on top of the opening folio. My kitchen was not big enough for four people, two of them drunk. I could see disaster looming.

'Let me take those away. I didn't realise you had guests.'

'Liar. You just wanted to get a look at the next stripping superstar.'

'You know me too well. But the proofs are rather urgent. If I left them with you, do you think you could check them thoroughly and let me have them back by lunchtime. There's a courier from the publisher coming in the afternoon.'

I moaned. I was expecting to spend the morning in bed recovering. This was the last thing I needed. Nigel was still flicking through the pages while Alice leaned against his shoulder, nibbling his ear. Inspiration struck.

'Alice? Remember plan one?'

She looked at me blankly.

'In the changing rooms after the game?'

Recognition lit up her eyes and a grin spread across her face.

'Why don't you try it on Nigel and get him up to bed? By the time you've finished, we'll be done here and you can rehearse to your heart's content.'

Nigel was oblivious. He was scanning the photographs as if they were old master paintings. She tapped him on the shoulder.

'Mmm?'

'Just turn around for a moment will you?'

'Have you seen these? They're brilliant...'

Alice unzipped him as soon as he was facing her and had his dick in her mouth by the time he started the second sentence. I was impressed at how hard he got and how quickly. He was leaning back against the table with his eyes closed a minute later. A few more and she rocked back on her heels and looked up at him resting her palms on his thighs while she caught her breath. She spoke as if talking to herself.

'You don't know how long I've wanted to do that. Let's go upstairs.'

They became unaware of our presence. Alice led the way pulling her T-shirt over her head as she left. Nigel hobbled behind, his cock bobbing about like a blind man's cane. He had not yet worked out that pulling his trousers back up might help the forward mobility. Mr J and I smiled at each other, arranged the pages and our cups and set to work.

'I doubt you could have got them out faster by yellingFIRE.'

'It's incredible how urgent everything is at their age.'

'You sound as old as I am. Let's check these proofs to make sure it isn't true.'

We laughed and set to work. And I became increasingly impressed.

James' photos were always good; the quality of the paper and the skills of the printer made them amazing. Every shape and fold of my body seemed softened and almost caressable. I felt sexier just looking at them.

Scarlett's lay out and choice of typeface made the very old-fashioned clothes and poses look bang up-to-date. There was lots of white space and the clean type was printed in dark-grey rather than black. While I was oohing and ahing, there were rather more urgent noises coming from upstairs.

'She thought he was a virgin. By the sound of it she's enjoying finding out he isn't.'

'You didn't tell her did you?'

'Nah, course not.'

'You'll get your reward in heaven.'

'Did you write all this yourself?'

The text sections for each chapter followed a set format. The first was a reprint from the original magazine. Generally they were short, emphasised the innocence or naïveté of the model and stressed how delighted she was to be given the opportunity to display her secrets for the delectation of the nation's masturbators. Then there was an edit of the original shoot notes where they were available. These were technically accurate and uniformly disgusting. I'd looked at a few and was pretty convinced the photographer would have been busted for rape had any of the models complained. Mandy's were missing, so Mr J had included a short interview with her Instead.

'I honestly can't remember whether I had sex with him or not. But it was pretty much expected that you'd put out if you were modelling so I probably did. What I do recall, looking at the photographs, was that the studio was freezing cold. I really couldn't wait to get dressed again.'

Mr J had drawn her out sympathetically about what it had been like to work as a stripper and photographic model back in those days. Both her enjoyment and the exploitation were set out clearly. Mr J had inserted his own memories of what it had been like as a buyer of the magazines with her pictures in them and his fondness for her which had lasted through the decades.

The last bit was either written by the modern models, or a short description of the shoot and her reactions by Mr J. Mine was complete fantasy. He had written me up as a professional jazz singer and militant lesbian, subjecting herself to the humiliation only to ensure that men who bought the book would know there was at least one woman in it they would never have. Ever. I laughed when he described how I threatened him with a knife if he didn't get out of the studio and leave her alone with the photographer.

'Really nicely written. You're good. Makes me want to think seriously about giving up on men and going to bat for the other side full time.'

I kissed him.

'If you do I'll burn that bloody computer. My name'd be mud if people found out I was responsible.'

We'd only managed to find a single typo which Mr J had carefully corrected. As we stacked the pages back into their envelope and began to think about what to do next, I realised the racket from upstairs had stopped.

'Do I make as much noise as she does, do you think?'

He looked like he was thinking.

'She was certainly enjoying herself. Tell you what, I'll ask the miserable git in twenty-three. He's bought measuring equipment to back up his noise complaints to the council. I'm sure he's got you fully logged. I'll ask him for a comparison chart.'

He gave me one of his sweetest smiles.

'That's not working on me, you old rogue. Though I do owe you; you've made me look and sound great. There's going to more than a few women willing to let you have your wicked way with them once that comes out if my chapter's anything to go by.'

'It was a labour of love. I've learned a lot working with James and Scarlett. And it was nothing but pleasure to make one of the hobbies of my youth at least a little more respectable.'

'I wonder what those two are up to now? Do you think they're going to stay in bed?'

'I would if she were mine.'

'It's just that, watching her blowing Nigel started me thinking. It's ages since I had a prick in my mouth - pardon my French. I could suck you off in the front room. As a thank you, you understand. Between old friends.'

'Don't let me stop you.'

Mr J dropped his coffee cup and I almost jumped out of my skin. Alice was standing at the door wearing one of my bathrobes and drying her hair with a towel. I tried to shake off a feeling I hadn't had since my mum caught me on the front room sofa when I was still at home. Canoodling she'd called it. The boy I was with had managed to get his fingers out of my snatch before she spotted what we were really up to. I was flustered.