Free Universal Carnal Knowledge Pt. 33

XXXIII

"Clever. Very"

When I returned to the office next day after "lunch" – actually a very enjoyable session with Gina and an adorably cute black girl professionally called Sable, short but very curvy with nice big pendulous tits, an excellent choice – I was greeted by the news that I had had three urgent messages from an Elspeth Smith. On checking my cellphone I found no fewer than five further messages from her. Plainly something serious was afoot. With great trepidation I went to my office and rang her back.

Poor Elspeth was in a state of agitation and dismay. She was so upset I was unable to ascertain exactly what had happened, but she said that she had messed everything up, that she had let me down, that she had panicked and had not thought what she was saying. She was sure that I would be furious with her, "And you have every right to be. I've been so stupid." It was evident that the poor girl hardly knew where to put herself.

I felt that if I left her in this state she might do even more damage than she apparently already had, so I decided to bring her fully under control immediately. "You'd better come to London right away to see me," I told her. "I'll meet you at Liverpool Street."

"Oh, James, I don't want to mess around with trains. Can't I drive up?"

I had not realised she had a car, but it would be more convenient, I thought.

"Are you sure you're all right to drive?"

"Yes, yes," she assured me. "I feel much better now I know I can see you. You'll know what to do."

"All right. But drive carefully." I told her to meet me at my local tube station in two hours. This allowed her ample time to get to London without feeling she had to hurry; it also gave me a chance to attend to one or two things at work, warn Fran and Connie that I should be letting them down yet again, and invent some story to justify such an early departure.

I arrived at the station five minutes early and was unsurprised to find Elspeth awaiting me. She was plainly delighted to see me but also seemed nervous and apprehensive. So much so, in fact, that I could not elicit a clear explanation of the problem but I gathered that it was something to do with a Dr Laura Stone, whoever she was. As Elspeth drove me the short distance home her agitation seemed to ease but she kept looking at me rather more often than was consistent with safe driving, and as we turned the last corner before my house she hit the kerb quite hard.

"Careful," I cautioned.

"Sorry, James. It's just that I'd forgotten quite how lovely you are."

I had, in fact, been thinking much the same about her. She had medium-length dark brown hair, parted in the middle, that framed a bright, lively face with a wonderful smile. Behind her round glasses her big brown eyes sparkled with intelligence as well as the lovelight that I was coming to expect as my due. She was wearing a shortish white dress that displayed an exceptionally graceful pair of legs, which, like the rest of her, displayed a rich golden tan.

My original plan had been to get her home and question her in more detail, but I feared that her nervousness might return and make it hard to get a sensible account from her. So I came up with Plan B, which was that I should take her upstairs and fuck her brains out. Obviously this would knock her out for some time, but when she recovered she would answer my questions without difficulty. It would mean a long wait before I found out what had happened, but on the plus side, I reflected, Kylie would be home from school in about half an hour and would help me pass the time.

Plan B was a great success. As soon as we got in the house I took Elspeth in my arms and kissed her. Such was her passion that her knees literally gave way and but for my firm hold she would have collapsed. With a little difficulty (I am not so young as I used to be) I picked her up and carried her upstairs as she kissed me and tried to squirm out of her clothing. Then I laid her on the bed and, well, laid her on the bed. It was done, I must admit, without a great deal of finesse but as always my balls seemed somehow aware of the presence of a new cunt and the flow of spunk seemed endless.

Leaving Elspeth somewhere the other side of ecstasy I went downstairs for refreshment and to await the sound of Kylie's key in the lock next door. As soon as I heard it I called her to come over and soon she was lying blissed-out in Alicia's room.

Whatever anyone might say against FUCK, and it had certainly caused me a great deal of stress and anxiety over the past three weeks, there was no denying it lived up to its name. And take my word for it, if you are fat and nearly fifty, there is nothing like fucking an endless stream of enthusiastic young women to make you feel good about life.

While I waited for Elspeth to surface I turned on my computer and googled Dr Laura Stone. She had her own website, I soon found, and to my surprise her picture revealed not the forbidding middle-aged dragon I had imagined but a distinctly attractive woman in her twenties. I took a few details, including particulars of The Female Future, a book she had written. She was unmistakably intelligent; but why was Elspeth so worried about her?

In fact, even when Elspeth became available for questioning I failed to get to the bottom of the mystery because although she was wholly co-operative, she proved not to be in possession of all the facts. The full story, had she been able to tell it, would have gone something like this.

After questioning Elspeth the previous Thursday, Dr Laura Stone had formed the working theory that her student was probably having an affair with some married man on the academic staff. Her interest and her suspicion both thoroughly aroused, she had casually introduced Elspeth's name into conversations with colleagues. However, no one had reacted in a way that struck Laura as significant, although one or two of them commented that the girl's mind did not seem to be on her work. After these fruitless inquiries it is possible that Laura might have forgotten about the whole subject had her interest not been rekindled by an overheard conversation in the college refectory next day.

That morning all the popular newspapers had been full of a story about a Hollywood film star, famous for preserving his rugged good looks into his early sixties, who had been captured by long-lens photographers snogging a gorgeous publicity girl barely a third his age. Two female students were gossiping excitedly about this trivial piece of tabloid tittle-tattle and Laura, sitting with her back to them as she lunched alone, was trying to ignore them.

"Eurgh!" said one.

"I know," agreed her friend. "He's so old. What sort of girl would do something like that?"

"Elspeth," suggested the first.

Laura stopped chewing and pricked up her ears. She no longer wanted to ignore the conversation.

"What, Elspeth Smith? What do you mean?" demanded the second student.

"Well," explained the first, "the other day we were walking to a lecture and I asked her, just making conversation really, what the Marjoribanks twins' birthday do had been like and was there any decent talent on show? And she said there were a few boys but they were really boring. I said they couldn't all have been boring and she said yes they were, boys our age were always boring, older men were the only ones worth bothering with. And then she went off on this long spiel about how older men were so exciting, sophisticated and sexy."

"Well, you know what that means, don't you? She's gone dippy over some old git. Did you ask who it was?"

"I didn't get a chance, we'd got to the lecture by now. But I bet it's the Marjoribanks girls' dad."

"Really? Isn't he married, though?"

"I gathered from Elspeth that she wouldn't see that as a problem."

"Did she say that? That's awful. Hang on a minute; isn't the twins' dad 'something in the City' with wads of cash?"

"So I believe."

"Well, there you are. That must be the attraction."

With that they went on to other subjects, leaving Laura to revise her working theory. Her blood was now definitely up. She liked Elspeth and wished her well, and it was disturbing that she should be mixed up with a man so much older than she and married to boot. And let it be admitted that old-fashioned feminine inquisitiveness was coming into play as well.

Laura happened to be away from Cambridge over the weekend so she could not immediately pursue the matter, but on Monday morning she had spotted Elspeth in the Junior Common Room, sitting by herself staring into space with a vacant expression on her face. She sat down next to her.

Elspeth, happily daydreaming of me, was taken by surprise. As they exchanged greetings she tried to think of an excuse to leave but Laura fixed her with a steady but friendly gaze and said she was worried about her.

"About me?" asked Elspeth, vainly trying to disguise her unease. "I'm fine, really."

"But you've been so distracted and preoccupied. It's not at all like you."

"Honestly, Laura, there's nothing wrong."

Laura could sense Elspeth's disquiet. "Elspeth," she said firmly but with a reassuring smile, "I've seen the symptoms before, you know. Who's the lucky young man?"

This was a cunning trap. Laura, who knew full well how much Elspeth hated lying, had deliberately phrased her suggestion so that the girl could truthfully deny it. "Oh, Laura," answered Elspeth with a relaxed laugh, "there isn't one."

It was the palpable relief that gave her away. On Laura's mental checklist a big tick appeared against the query "Older man?" But she did not pursue the matter directly. Instead she gossiped for a few moments about some friends of Elspeth's, worked her way skilfully round to the twins, and finally mentioned the birthday party. Elspeth answered warily and with a growing confusion and alarm that Laura did not fail to discern.

"It must have been a big do," said Laura. "Cambridge seemed empty that Sunday. Still, I suppose Mr Marjoribanks can afford it, can't he?"

"Yes. He's quite well off," answered Elspeth cautiously.

"I've never met him," said Laura casually. "What's he like?"

Again Laura sensed it as Elspeth relaxed. She was happy to answer questions about George Marjoribanks all day.

"Pompous," she replied. "He wants to make sure everyone knows how much money he's got."

Laura was surprised. She had an acute sensitivity to deception and evasion, and it seemed to her that Elspeth's reply was both frank and candid. Mentally she entered a tentative cross next to "Mr Marjoribanks?" But she needed to be sure.

"Don't you find, though," she asked, as if raising a point of abstract academic interest, "that there's something appealing about a man of substance like that? A slightly older man with a bit of experience, one that's done something with his life?"

Elspeth was instantly suspicious. She had never heard Laura express any such sentiment before, and while she agreed with it wholeheartedly (although not as applied to George) she hesitated to say so. So she equivocated. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, Laura, but I don't find George Marjoribanks at all attractive."

"Well, I don't know him; but," persisted Laura, "I was thinking more of older men in general."

Even such an honest person as Elspeth, forced into a corner like this, could see no alternative to outright denial. "Well, some girls might think so," she said, "but older men are definitely not for me."

It was a fatal misstep. Laura knew instantly that she was being lied to. But she did not make an immediate accusation. Instead she stood up abruptly, told Elspeth that she was glad everything was all right, and walked briskly off.

"James, I was terrified," Elspeth was telling me. "I knew I'd made some awful mistake, and she'd got what she wanted out of me. I couldn't think of anything except that I'd made a mess of things and I had to tell you about it."

I tried to reassure her (and myself). "Is it really that bad? She's obviously worked out somehow that something was going on at the garden party, but doesn't she think you're carrying on with George?"

"No," replied Elspeth. "That's not it. It wasn't when I denied liking George that she suddenly left; it was when I said I didn't like older men at all. She knew I'd lied to her; I could tell. But it beats me how she could be so sure; just like it beats me how she knew to start asking about the garden party. I always knew Laura had a brain, James, but this is getting eerie; it's like the woman has second sight."

"It's very disturbing," I agreed. "But what can she do about it? It's none of her business, really, is it?"

"But James, you don't know what she's like. When she gets interested in something, she makes it her business. She'll worry and worry away at it until she gets to the bottom of it. And she's clever. Very."

"We'll have to allay her suspicions," I said. "It was your distracted manner that first intrigued her, wasn't it?"

" 'Distracted'?" smiled Elspeth. "That's a polite way of putting it. 'Gormless' and 'lovelorn', I'd call it."

"Well, if we can bring you back to your normal self, maybe that will reassure her."

"James, you've done that already. I feel absolutely fantastic."

She looked it, too. Still on the bed stark naked, not that it seemed to bother her at all, she was by this time sitting with her knees drawn up and one arm resting across them to make a kind of platform on which she could lean forward to rest her chin. She was talking in a bright, breezy and intelligent way and every time she paused a huge satisfied smile illumined her face. Surely, I thought, quite wrongly as it turned out, if this Dr Stone saw Elspeth this way she would realise she had been getting all worked up about nothing.

I invited Elspeth to stay the night and drive back to Cambridge in the morning. I also made arrangements for the upcoming weekend, telling her to drive down to Surrey.

"You know the way," I reminded her.

"I'm not sure I do," she replied. "I knew I'd be drinking so I came by train last time. Just a minute, where's my bag?" She rummaged in a rather untidy handbag she had left on the bedside table. "I really must clear this out, there's so much clutter – Ah, here it is!" She held up a frayed piece of folded A4 paper. "The twins gave these out in case anyone was driving."

It was a map with very clear directions to George's house. On a fatal whim I took it from her, crossed out the date of the twins' birthday and substituted that of the coming weekend, drew a large circle round George's house on the map, and wrote "Elspeth, looking forward to having you – J". I gave her the paper back and she folded it carefully and replaced it in her bag.