Joanna and Her Lovers Ch. 05

PRELIMINARY NOTES:

1. I originally posted this chapter on Literotica in August, 2010, but asked for it to be removed in November 2011. Now I'm reposting it, along with the earlier chapters, which are already 'up' again.

2. This episode completes the story. There's no graphic sex in it; it just offers explanations for things that happened in the preceding chapters.

~

Do you know how words can sometimes hang in the air for a long time after they've been uttered? Well, that's the way it was after Joanna dropped her bombshell:

"Amelia, you ought to say hello to your father. Because one of these gentlemen — though I don't know which one, I'm afraid — helped me to conceive you just over twenty-two years ago.

"I'm sorry I can't be more specific, but I'm sure it's one of them. So, darling Amelia, say a nice hello to Daddy!"

The seven of us — the men, that is — were struck dumb. I'm sure what she'd said didn't sink in for a while. It was as if we all sat listening to those words in our minds — repeating them endlessly, like some weird internal echo.

What she'd said was meaningless. That was, it couldn't have meaning!

But I know my guts lurched when it all joined up: when the words finally made sense to me. I stared at Amelia with a kind of dread. A horror. My daughter? Perhaps my daughter? Had I fucked my daughter? But Amelia looked, it seemed, as shocked as anybody.

The only person smiling was Joanna.

Of course, we were all doing the same calculation. Joanna had failed to return for her second year at Oxford and Amelia had been born the following January. Which, counting backwards, meant conception in May '64 — when I, for one, had been screwing her. And I had little doubt that the other men had too.

Then Francis stood up and went. It was almost comical to see that tubby, naked man scurry pinkly to the door, looking neither to right nor left.

Nobody spoke as he went out. We heard his bare feet slapping along the corridor's polished boards, then strained to listen as — presumably — he scrambled his clothes on in the other room. He must have been very quick. After what seemed like less than a minute, we heard the front door open and abruptly slam. And still the rest of us just sat there, frozen.

Then Henry said, very precisely, "Bitch!"

He stood up and strode purposefully to the door. Then he paused and turned.

"You fucking bitch!" he said. "You absolute cow!"

Joanna continued to smile as he went out.

Henry precipitated a general exodus. Suddenly, as if joint action had been telepathically agreed, the five of us got up and headed for the exit. Nobody spoke. I was the last to go. I, too, stopped at the door, as Henry had, and turned to look back at Joanna and the girl. I wanted to say something, but I had no words. I just raised my hands, palms spread, towards Joanna.

Her smile was still there, but it had become fixed. Her eyes were glassy. The gulf between us was immense: there was infinity across the width of one room.

I turned on my heel and left. She didn't follow.

*****

We went our separate ways as soon as we left the house, and I didn't see any of the others for over a week. Then Hugo phoned me.

"Some of us have been thinking," he said. "There's a general feeling that we ought to do something about the ... you know ... with Joanna."

I was, I believe, non-committal.

"We want to have a meeting to talk it over," Hugo said. "Will you come?"

I wasn't sure that I would. My one aim at that stage was to forget the whole thing. Not that I could, of course. It had been torturing me non-stop ever since that night.

Hugo must have realised he'd have to be persuasive. "The thing is," he said, carefully, "there's a danger of precipitate action from some quarters. And what one person does could easily affect the others. Do you see what I mean?"

"You mean legal action?" I asked.

"Exactly," said Hugo.

I knew how stupid that would be. "I see," I said. "I suppose I'd better join you then."

"There's another little thing," said Hugo.

I waited for the 'little thing'.

"Because most of us are married," he went on, "it would be difficult to explain a meeting like this to our wives if we held it at one of our homes. And I'd rather not do it in Chambers, for obvious reasons. So we wondered if we could meet at your flat?"

Again, that was the last thing I wanted. But it made sense. Since I lived alone, there'd be no need for awkward cover-ups or evasions when six worried men presented themselves at the door. So I agreed, and we set the date for Thursday evening.

*****

I decided to use my dining room for the occasion, so on the night in question I put a whisky bottle and seven glasses in the middle of the table there. It was a room I rarely used; in no sense cosy. The setting seemed suitably austere and business-like.

In the event, only five of the glasses were needed. Francis, it seemed, had been completely unobtainable. He'd put up the shutters to the world. And Anthony, though initially willing, had cried off. He'd discovered an urgent reason to be abroad. So, five of us sat down around the table: Henry, Hugo, Aubrey, Jeremy and me. Henry still looked furious, Aubrey seemed close to tears, Jeremy was stolidly serious and Hugo had adopted the mask of professional detachment that all lawyers wear. I tried to do the same myself, but I doubt I was convincing.

As host, I became the de facto chairman. I looked around the table, then asked: "Who wants to begin?"

Perhaps predictably, it was Henry who spoke. "We need to bring a prosecution," he said. "What she did was outrageous. It has to be illegal. You chaps must know all about that."

He looked hard at Hugo and me. I glanced towards Hugo, hoping he'd take the challenge, but he demurred. He shrugged his shoulders, so I answered.

"Well," I said, "it's a legal minefield."

"Incest!" spat Henry. "Of course it's a minefield. But that's what the Law's for, isn't it? To protect the innocent?"

I glanced sideways at Hugo and saw he was trying to suppress a smile. The naïvety of non-lawyers is always the occasion for amusement.

"The thing is," I said, as neutrally as I could, "we have no way of proving that incest actually took place."

"We have her word for it." — This again from Henry.

"But she might be a lying bitch," put in Jeremy, succinctly.

"And even if she isn't," I said, "there's considerable uncertainty. Perhaps one of us did inadvertently commit incest, but which one? Nobody knows."

"Blood tests," said Henry. "We'll all take bloody blood tests."

"Blood tests are often inconclusive," Hugo said. "They're better at excluding paternity than proving it, but even then the success rate's only about seventy percent."

"And," I added, "we'd need the girl's cooperation. She'd have to be tested too."

"Amelia?" said Aubrey. It was as if, in mentioning her name, he'd broken a taboo.

"Er, yes," I said. "The ... er ... girl. The young woman, rather."

I'd been reasonably cool up to that point. Now I was suddenly flustered.

There was a silence. I think the others felt as I did. Finally, however, Henry set the ball rolling again.

"At least," he said, "if we were tested, we'd know which of us were in the clear."

"With a six out of seven chance," mused Jeremy. "Like Russian roulette - one bullet."

"Not even those odds," said Hugo. "You could go through the whole rigmarole and still be none the wiser."

"But some of us would," insisted Henry. "Some of us would be excluded."

"And what about the poor bastards who aren't?" asked Jeremy. "Have you thought about that?"

"It's true," Hugo said. "Putting some of us out of the running in this case increases the odds on the guilt of those remaining."

"There is no guilt!" exclaimed Henry. "The bitch tricked us, that's all."

"So why try to disprove it?" I asked him. "If there was no crime, why investigate it?"

"Because she's guilty!" Henry shouted. "It's Joanna we're after. She's the one that has to be made to pay!"

*****

What I'd said didn't really wash, of course. Henry was right. Whatever the legal position, we all wanted to know we were innocent and we all needed to punish Joanna. But the issue was academic anyway.

"The point is," I said, "we'd have to get the girl's — I mean Amelia's — cooperation. There's no guarantee of that. And to get it, we'd have to trace her. Which could be difficult," I added.

"A private detective!" said Henry. "We'll hire one. We'll hire ten!"

"It's a possibility," admitted Hugo. "But there's no guarantee we'd find her."

"And even less chance of her cooperating," I repeated. "Do you think she'd want to be involved in a court case of this nature? After all, she was a willing participant in the, er, event."

"Do you think she knew?" asked Aubrey.

Thinking back to Amelia's expression after Joanna had made her announcement, I had to admit it was unlikely.

"No," I said. "On balance, I think she didn't."

"So she may be as angry as we are," Henry said.

"Or as scared," muttered Jeremy.

"I don't think she'd go to court," said Hugo.

"And I don't either," I said.

*****

We chewed the thing over for another two hours. It was only with extreme reluctance that Henry finally agreed not to prosecute. The clincher, of course, was the press. A trial would damage our reputations irreparably.

Hugo and I pointed out that, whatever the outcome, the tabloids would have a field-day. Even then, Henry was unwilling to accept defeat.

"It'd damage Joanna more," he said. "We'd sink the bitch!"

We reminded him that she worked in television — in current affairs, in fact.

"She's ideally placed to manipulate the media," said Hugo. "She'll know all the tricks. We don't."

I was relieved to see Henry's resolve falter at that point. He made a few more attempts to persuade us but his heart was no longer in it. When I saw them all out later, we had an explicit agreement to let the matter lie.

"It's a sleeping dog," said Hugo. "Let the poor hound snore forever."

So that should have been the end of it. The others had dropped it, thus avoiding disaster for us all, and I was sure there'd be no objections from Francis or Anthony. But, strangely, I couldn't let it go myself. I was injured and the wound wouldn't heal. I had to keep on picking at the bloody, festering scab.

*****

I started by phoning Joanna but made no progress. At her home, I got her answering machine. I left messages she didn't answer. At her office, I got her PA — who explained with the same exquisite patience every time I called that Joanna was in a meeting. I left messages with her too, but to no avail. So I wrote Joanna a letter, carefully worded, avoiding vituperation but almost pleading for an explanation. She ignored it. So, after a week or two, I took to lurking in the shadows outside her house at night.

I think I'd kept vigil there four nights in a row before I finally saw her. She arrived in a taxi, paid the driver and let herself in. I gave her ten minutes, then crossed the road and rang the doorbell. I wasn't sure she'd answer, but eventually she did.

She opened the door and stood there, looking at me. She didn't speak at all. Her face was curiously blank — without emotion.

I didn't say anything either. She knew why I'd come. I just looked back at her, staring her down.

We stood like that for what seemed a long time. Then, abruptly, she stepped back for me to enter. I went inside and, as I did so, she turned and walked off down the hall, leaving the front door open. I closed it, then went after her. I found her in the kitchen, sitting at the table.

There was a glass of white wine in front of her, half empty. She didn't offer me anything, but I'd have refused it if she had. Perhaps she knew that. She didn't invite me to sit down either but I did so, taking the chair opposite her, across the table. And it was only then that she spoke. She said:

"Well?"

"Was it true?" I asked her. "That's all I want to know."

"True?" she echoed, vaguely. "Yes. Of course it was true. Wasn't it obvious?

"I'd say she has your eyes, wouldn't you, Toby? But she's got my chin, of course, and my bone structure.

"Naturally," she added, "she gets the nymphomania from me as well. But you'd expect that, wouldn't you?"

She let all that hang in the air for a moment, then burst out savagely: "Of course it wasn't bloody true! What do you take me for?"

From a long way away I felt — no saw, in my mind — the relief seep into my bones.

"So why did you say it?" I asked.

"I thought you said you just wanted to know if it was true?" she snapped back. "Well, I've told you. It's not. Isn't that enough? You've had your answer. You can bugger off now, can't you?"

As I relaxed, I saw her more clearly. Joanna, I realised, was tired; exhausted maybe.

"Why?" I repeated. "Why did you say what you said?"

"It was a bloody joke, that's all." She said it wearily.

I waited. After a moment, she explained.

"I'd planned it," she said. "I put Amelia up to it. I made her learn that birthday off by heart. What was it, January the fourteenth, nineteen sixty-five?"

"So she wasn't twenty-one?" I put in.

"No, she's about twenty-five, I think. And her name isn't Amelia, by the way. No more than it's Scylla."

"Tell me about the joke," I said.

"I just wanted — " She faltered, then carried on. "I just wanted to shock the lot of you. So, after you'd all had her, I said it. I was going to let you off in a minute or two, but it all got so bloody serious, what with Francis bolting and then Henry storming out.

"And the rest of you were no help," she added. "Not one of you said a thing! You all just swallowed it. That's what hurt me! That you'd actually believe something like that of me! That you believed I could really do that!"

I wondered if she'd cry, but she didn't. I waited. After a few moments she went on.

"I met 'Amelia' in Germany, at a porno shoot," she said. "She was introduced as Candy, though. It's Candy Hole, I think, or maybe Candy Fuck. I can't remember. All those girls have tons of aliases anyway. Or maybe you'd call them stage names."

I was some way behind the story. "At a porno shoot?" I asked, with some surprise.

"Yes," said Joanna. "I did a segment for the prog. Directed it, I mean. It was about pornography. All very worthy. You know, should we or shouldn't we in Britain? Total balance, so total crap. The usual.

"We went to a studio in Germany to film. A porno company. Of course, we couldn't air most of the stuff we shot. It was mostly po-faced interviews with a few glimpses of naked flesh, thrown in to titillate the so-called intelligentsia. We're a serious programme, after all."

She laughed at her own joke with considerable scorn.

"Anyway, we filmed a lot of sexy stuff we could never use and we had a good time. And I met Candy. We got on very well. And, since she's English, it occurred to me that she might enjoy taking part in one of my soirées. She does lots of gang-bangs, you see. She's good at them."

"Did you pay her?" I asked. "That evening she was here. Did you pay her for her services?"

"Yes," said Joanna. "I gave her two hundred and fifty pounds. That worked out at just over thirty-five pounds a fuck. Or a little less if you include my go at her. A very reasonable price altogether, I'd say."

"You realise you could be prosecuted for procuring prostitution," I told her. "It's known rather quaintly as pandering."

She laughed at me. "Who's going to bring the charges? One of you lot? I hardly think so."

I thought to myself that I knew someone who might, but I didn't say anything. I resolved to keep the information to myself, in case Henry got wind of it.

Joanna had finished her wine. She went to the fridge for a refill and waved the bottle at me. But I shook my head. I was relieved at what she'd told me — immensely relieved — but I wasn't feeling forgiving towards her. I didn't want to share a friendly drink.

She sat down again, so I asked another question. "Did Amelia — I mean, Candy — know you were going to pass her off as your daughter?"

She shook her head. "No," she said. "I just made her learn the birthday. I told her it was for a joke, but I didn't say what kind."

"Was she upset afterwards?" I asked. "When we all walked out?"

Joanna shrugged. "A bit, maybe," she said. "But, you know, it was all in a day's work for her."

"And what did you mean when you said you were in training?" I asked. "I wasn't there, but Hugo told me."

She looked nonplussed for a moment; then her face cleared as she remembered.

"It was just a private joke," she explained. "Candy challenged me to a gang-bang. With twenty men or something. I think the porno producers put her up to it. They could see I was fascinated during the filming."

"And you said 'yes'?" I asked.

"I said 'maybe' to be polite, but I meant 'no'," she said. "I can't afford to get involved in anything like that. So it was just a private joke I had with myself. A little fantasy, maybe, to sex myself up."

I changed the subject. "I want to know about Oxford," I said. "I want to know about that first year — why you did all that sleeping around. And afterwards. What happened when you didn't come back?"

"You want to know a lot," she said evenly. "Do you think you have the right to ask?"

"Yes," I said. "Actually, I do. I think I have every right in the world."

*****

What she told me next was a revelation. Some of it might seem obvious to others — to women, maybe, who've been through similar things — but, I have to admit, a lot of what she told me had never crossed my mind.

"You have to remember how it was for girls at Oxford," she said. "Back in the early sixties, I mean. There were so few colleges for women, and they were all so tiny. We had to compete so hard to get in as well — much harder than you men. And then we were like an alien species when we got there. Female undergraduates I mean.

"Do you remember the staring? Perhaps not. You were much too busy doing it, I'd imagine. But I remember it. Everywhere I went, there were horny undergraduates looking at my boobs; peering at my arse; undressing me in their minds. For the first couple of weeks I wanted to wear a veil. I shuffled around like a hunchback, trying to hide my tits.

"And then I just gave up. I got really angry. I thought fuck it! — if they want to stare, let them stare.

"So I went in the other direction. I flaunted it. I imagined all the hard-ons I was provoking. I decided to enjoy myself.

"But staring isn't just looking. It's about sex. When you boys stare like that, you want to put your knob in someone. And I decided, if that was the reaction I was provoking, I'd better oblige."

"You decided to fuck every man in Oxford?" I asked, incredulous.

She smiled at me wryly. "In principle, yes. Of course, it wasn't a practical proposition. I knew that. But I went for a representative sample. For as many as I could manage, that is."

I thought of the differences between her Oxford lovers. Of how there was almost nothing in common between us — between, for example, Henry, and Aubrey, and me.

"You went for variety," I suggested, but she shook her head.

"I just went for volume, really. The variety came with the numbers. It's inevitable if you aren't too choosy."

That touched a nerve. "And were you choosy with me?"

She smiled at that. "Not so choosy, actually. Of course, you met my basic criteria: two arms, two legs and a dick. The head was optional. I mean, you didn't use it much for thinking, did you?"

I tried to hide my hurt, but she knew me too well.