Sketchbook

An older artist takes a young, inexperienced boy as her muse

Chapter 1: Angelfire

I suppose I would have crossed paths with Anastacia 'Angelfire' Kempston sooner or later the way things panned out. But seeing her picture in the local newspaper that fateful late spring day seemed to make it all the more special for me. Almost as if fate was taking a hand.

I rarely read the local paper -- it was all the usual provincial small-town piss and bluster; bigging up the smallest event to make it sound exciting. Making a minor shoplifting spree in the new supermarket sound like the Great Train Robbery.

My gaze always stopped at the inside back page and then only between May and September when the paper covered the results of Amberdown, my local cricket team. That day, I had just come back from my first team debut and it had been a chastening experience. I had been scoring runs for fun at under eighteen level and in the second eleven. Now I was too old for the age-group team having turned eighteen some months before, they decided a promotion was in order.

Ok, it was only a midweek cup game, but I was excited and thrilled at getting my first team cap. It didn't last long as I was out for a second ball duck and dropped a catch I would normally take in my sleep. The guys were good about it and told me at least it could only get better.

I consoled myself by turning to the inside back page of the Amberdown Courier and sighed in satisfaction as I saw the headline from the previous Saturday, 'Adams (18) impresses in Amberdown 2's Win Over Torbridge.'

At least that was something the local hacks couldn't build up -- my uncle was the club's press liaison officer and he did all the bigging up I could cope with. He described my 75 not out with glowing praise and the scorecard that read 'Adams (J) not out, 75' made me feel a lot better than tonight's 'Adams (J), bowled Carter, 0.'

Sighing, I tossed the paper aside and it fell on the floor, open on an inside page. I didn't need my Mum on my case after my already bad evening so I bent to pick it up and my heart almost stopped.

I have to admit that I was not exactly a hit with the girls and that most -- no, make that all -- of my sexual activity came from my own fair hand and vivid imagination. I had short list of local female 'personalities' that helped me through the dark hours and if what I saw on page 13 of the Courier that night was anything to go by, my list had just grown by one.

I am not sure how long I must have stared at one of the pictures accompanying the article, but I let those incredible eyes burn into mine from the page for a very long time. She was utterly stunning -- huge round eyes with pale irises -- I imagined light green or ice blue, but the black and white picture was giving nothing away. Her heart-shaped, slightly freckled face was framed by a mass of dark ringlets, her pale lips open in a half smile, revealing perfect white teeth. One finger was hooked into her lower lip as she gazed languidly out of the page, her face a mask of wonderment.

She was completely and utterly gorgeous and I could feel myself hardening at the sight of her. There was no doubt who would be featuring in my little fantasy later that evening and I hoped the website version of the picture would be in colour so I could see those amazing eyes properly.

I had the perfect excuse to retire to my bedroom early -- revision for my upcoming final exams. I didn't need to revise -- I knew I was going to get good grades and the fact that I wasn't going to University meant that the pressure was off in that direction. My father owned a local garden maintenance and landscaping company and I had known from a very early age that it was all I wanted to do. He and my Mum had resisted at first, but eventually gave in and I think they were looking forward to having the company livery changed to 'Adams & Son' as much as I was in joining the business, even at apprentice level. They were determined that I make my way up the ladder properly -- there were no privileges for the son of the owner and the staff were fully aware and appreciative of the situation. I had put in enough hard graft over the school holidays in the last few years to show I was no free-loader and the lads treated me as a workmate, which I appreciated.

I set a few revision books on the bed for effect and fired up my laptop. I had seen the Courier website a few times so I knew what to expect. The first years at school who ran their little newsletter would have blushed at the standard of the site. Full of splashy, banner advertising, clunky navigation and loading times that seemed to run into days, it was an object lesson in how not to run a website.

It took me almost ten minutes to find the article, fighting a search engine that seemed to throw up the same half-dozen pages no matter what I entered. Finally that face appeared on-screen and I held my breath as I took in the pale skin once more, the subtle freckles, the almost jet-black hair.

And the palest blue eyes you could imagine. Once again, I found myself being drawn into them and I ran a finger across her lips, imagining them opening and gently sucking on the tip. I wriggled uncomfortably as I hardened once more and rearranged myself down below. I laughed as I realised that I would be jerking off to the Amberdown Courier tonight instead of Pornhub or Xvideos.

I finally tore myself away from the vision that had consumed me for so long and began to read the article it was illustrating.

Returning Local Artist to Open New Gallery in Amberdown.

The Courier is pleased to reveal exclusively that local artist Anastacia Kempston (42) is to open her new gallery, 'Angelfire,' in Town Square next week. Ms Kempston was born in Amberdown but has been working abroad and in London for a number of years and is delighted to be returning to her hometown.

'My traveling has led to some great experiences and London has been fun, but I've been looking to come back to Sussex for a while now and the opportunity has finally arisen. I am excited to be coming home and will be featuring my own work and that of other local artists in the gallery.'

As I scrolled down the page, another picture was revealed, this one of a tall, willowy woman leaning on the doorpost of the gallery, smiling out into the world. Her black ringlets fell almost to her waist, which was wasp-like. She was wearing a simple, embroidered white blouse and a voluminous gauzy ankle length skirt that I just wanted to disappear under and sample the delights beneath.

The words, 'Angelfire by Anastacia Kempston' were written above the gallery window in an elaborate font and it was almost with shock that I realised the picture I had seen in the paper and now on the website was in the gallery window. It was not a photograph as I had first suspected, but a painting. I scrolled back up and shook my head in amazement. It was clearly a portrait or self-portrait of her younger self -- I would have said mid-twenties -- but zooming in on her picture in the doorway, it was clear that she had barely aged and looked every bit as good in her early forties as she did in her earlier days.

The article went on to give a few more details, including the fact that she painted and sketched under the name 'Angelfire' and that her main genres were fantasy, erotica and wildlife. The gallery was to have a small, over-18 only section that dealt with her 'tasteful' erotica and in time she hoped to expand and introduce a café-bar area.

Once I had exhausted the limited bio of her on the Courier website, I Googled her name and found some of her work. Her fantasy stuff was a little dark and overbearing for my tastes -- dragons and elves had never been my thing, but I had to admit she could certainly draw and her wildlife portfolio was truly beautiful. Her erotica was a different thing altogether. Simple - almost minimalistic, but so evocative. Faces contorted in ecstasy, buttocks straddling a thigh. Two tongues curling towards each other, lips wide. There was nothing overtly pornographic about them, but they just screamed sex and I found myself involuntarily stroking myself through my shorts.

It was when I found 'that' picture again that I finally succumbed. It was called, 'A Real Selfie -- Angelfire at 30.'

I was thankful as ever that I was using the bedroom my older sister had used until she went to University and then moved away from the area. It was en-suite, which was a Godsend considering the pile of paper tissues I had built up before finally calling a close at 1.30 in the morning.

The perfect start to a day that included the first of my final exams at school.

Chapter 2: First Contact

Over the next week, I changed my journey home from school so that I could pass Angelfire and see how things were progressing. We lived on the southern outskirts of town, in what used to be a village called Lowdon-by-Amberdown until the town slowly encroached and subsumed the sleepy hamlet, which was now universally known as 'The Village'. It retained a small green with a duckpond and a nice village pub called the Green Man. It was handy for the cricket club, half a mile back towards the town on the River Amber and next to the Cricketers Arms pub.

Newton's school was on the north side of town and my direct route would never have included the town centre, let alone Town Square. But my curiosity needed to be sated and I negotiated the busy town streets on my mountain bike and for that week at least, found that nothing appeared to happening at Angelfire, at least on the surface. Everything must have been going on inside as there was no sign of any movement on the outside.

I got a couple of exams out of the way and was looking forward to leaving school. It was one of the best public schools in the south of England, but I had gone there on a local scholarship, not because we were loaded like most of the families who sent their offspring there. Being a 'townie', me and the few other locals were often looked down on as 'oiks' who didn't deserve the privilege that money had bought the boarders. At least I could get away at nights and didn't have to live in like so many others. It was going to be a real pleasure not to have to make the acquaintance of so many of the other pupils and now it was almost here, the end couldn't come quick enough.

Of course it was inevitable that I missed the grand opening of Angelfire. There had been a few delays and it was put back to a Saturday, which coincided with one of our away cricket matches on the south coast. I had to make do with the Courier website for pictures of Anastacia smiling as the ribbon was cut by a prominent artist based in Brighton, a few miles to the south. It was hailed as a valuable addition to the local cultural scene, though there did seem to be some adverse reaction to the 'Erotica' room, despite it being over 18's only.

Now the gallery was open, there was no excuse not to keep my vigil. I had four more exams to go and soon found myself on a familiar route from school to the Square. Angelfire was on the north side and my favoured spot was a set of benches thirty or so yards into the square and facing the gallery. Closing time seemed to fit nicely with my school exit and each afternoon I found myself on a bench, idly pretending to play with my phone as the gallery door opened and the new woman of my dreams closed up shop for the day.

Her routine seemed as invariable as mine. She crossed the square, hair and skirts swirling in the breeze as she headed towards the back of the White Lion. Within seconds she was joined by two other women, both long-established on my local celebrity list as they sat and chatted in the beer garden over a bottle of wine. I longed to be sitting at the next table, hearing their gossip, but even if I'd had the courage, my school uniform would not have gone down well despite being old enough to drink.

Instead, I watched from afar as Anastacia laughed and talked with her friends - two women who ran the local cake emporium, 'Confection Confidential'. I knew them from the cricket club, where they sponsored the women's teams and ran a stall at most of their games and some of the bigger first eleven fixtures.

Josie and Isadora 'Izzy' Napier-Jones. They had made local headlines a few years before as one of the first same-sex marriages in the area. The former was a short, fiery redhead with a no-nonsense reputation and laser-like green eyes. In her late thirties, she was utterly gorgeous and thanks to my prowess with search engines, I knew that she had been a soft-core model back in an earlier life. She had been renowned for her light fetish and smoking sets, and whilst the latter did little for me, I had to admit she had been - and still was - a spectacular sight.

She was certainly on my celebrity list, but it was her wife Izzy that did it for me. She was of Anglo-Chinese descent and her father had been a Master at Newton's back in the day. Tall, elegant and heavily tattooed and pierced, she scared the life out of some of the guys at the cricket club, but I longed to see those elongated oriental eyes gazing into mine as she did something unspeakable to me. My mother had been a huge fan of the American forensic science series 'Bones' - I always suspected mainly for David Boreanaz than anything else. I managed to get past the disgusting, stomach churning openings with rotting, insect infested bodies for one thing alone.

Or at least one person alone - Angela Montenegro. How many times did I imagine her instructing me in the art of sex? As soon as I first saw Izzy Napier-Jones, the similarity struck me. The oval face, the long hair, the easy smile. In my fantasies, they almost became the same person.

The Napier-Joneses were also neighbours of ours in The Village, though if there were any truth in the rumours of debauchery and sin attributed to them by some, I was yet to see any evidence of it, and believe me I had searched long and hard for it with a very powerful set of bird watching binoculars. The nearest they came to causing a commotion was when Josie's cats got out one night and the Village was in uproar as they tried to herd six assorted felines back into their corral.

More exams came and went and a few days later I was back in 'Position A' as I had come to know it. Two more to go and I was free. In truth I had no real idea why I was there. What was I doing? I was hardly going to talk to her when I was tongue-tied and like a nervous kitten with girls my own age. I hadn't the courage to take a phone pic of her, however surreptitiously. No - it was just pure obsession. Sad little Josh Adams, aged eighteen and with barely a sexual experience worth its name behind him, lusting after a woman about the same age as his mother.

Yes, I was a pathetic loser, but I didn't need reminding of it from a slimy school bully named Nigel Pygge and his cronies. I was breathlessly waiting for the door of Angelfire to open when I felt hands on my shoulders. I could smell the dope on his breath as he leaned in, his posh voice full of disdain.

"What are we doing here then, oiky townie? Waiting for the man with the stash?"

I didn't bother to shake him off. I just stared at the door of Angelfire. "You may be stupid enough Pygge, but not me. That dealer will be bankrupt when you lot haul your sorry fat arses out of town."

He squeezed harder on my shoulders and hissed in my ear. "Cannot come soon enough, Adams. Be rid of this fucking Godforsaken one-horse shithole of a village and return to civilisation. King's College Cambridge if you have heard of it. One of the best in the land and certainly better than daddy's labouring business, huh?"

I didn't rise to his bait about the family business but had a dig at his college of choice. "Oh great, finally get rid of you and next year you'll be on University Challenge. I suppose they'll put you on the captain's left-hand side in the place reserved for the fucking weirdos. I can just imagine it -- 'Five-point penalty King's - the boy answering the question is a total cunt.'"

He slapped me hard on the back. "Not bad for you, Adams, not bad!" He turned to his two cronies. "Funny boy, we'll miss him, hey lads?"

I barely remembered his henchmen's names. Despite his dark, curly hair Pygge was universally known as Malfoy and of course it naturally followed that they were christened Crabbe and Goyle. It was taken as gospel that Pygge was so obnoxious due to his unfortunate surname, and as my best friend Daniel often liked to remark, which parents in their right mind in the new millennium would call their child Nigel? He was destined to be a twisted, malicious little turd from the start.

I was suddenly distracted from the Neanderthal behaviour behind me when the door of Angelfire opened and I involuntarily sat up straighter and felt myself reddening in embarrassment as I gazed longingly at Anastacia Keltner locking the door behind her.

I heard a little evil chuckle from behind and above me. Crabbe - or was it Goyle? - now added his sweaty hand to my shoulder. My school blazer was almost superfluous to requirements but at this rate, it would need to be fumigated before my penultimate exam. The voice was wheezy and unpleasant in my ear. "Look, the little perv's waiting for his girlfriend!"

That set the three of them off giggling in their stoned state. The amount of weed they were exhaling around me I was in danger of succumbing to its effects myself. Pygge began to pound on my shoulders. "Only two things wrong there, guys. And fuck me, they are soooooo wrong! Firstly, the lovely artist lady is old enough to be his fucking granny, and secondly, she's a fucking dyed-in-the-wool dyke. Just waiting for her lessie friends from the cake shop to creep out of the woodwork so they can go and slime up the seats in the White Lion beer garden as usual."

As I heard him spit on the ground in disgust, something snapped in my head. For a very good reason, every fibre of my being abhorred what he had said. My older sister Leonie had come out three years ago when she left University and she was now happily married to Bella, with beautiful twin daughters. I had never seen a couple so happy together in my life, whatever their sexuality.

I tried to shrug the hands from my shoulders but sensing something was coming, all three of them were now pushing down on me. Fully expecting a heavy beating, I couldn't control myself. I hardly recognised my own voice. "Fuck off, Pygge. What does it matter, huh? As long as people are happy, who gives a flying one? But then again, you think happy is getting stoned with two fucking morons and bad mouthing everyone and everything. What's wrong with people being who they are? We should be rejoicing that we have the freedom to be who or what we are and be proud of it. So just fuck off back to-"

I got no further as I felt a tension behind me and was now certain I was in real trouble, but I didn't care. I thought of Leonie, Bella and the twins and felt a swell of pride that my sister and her wife were so brave, so beautiful and so happy. I braced myself for their blows but instead heard a horrible screech that I dimly realised had emanated from Pygge. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Crabbe and Goyle scuttling away across the square and for the first time since they had flanked me, I turned my head.

What I saw made me bite my lip to stop laughing. Pygge was now bent almost double as long, elegant fingers gripped the ring in his left ear and tugged on it so hard I thought - and indeed hoped - it would tear through the lobe. Smaller fingers pinched his right ear and he screamed and squirmed anew as Izzy Napier-Jones twisted his earring hard and Josie squeezed with all her might on the other side.

He managed a few obscenities and called them some predictable names, his eyes streaming with tears as he howled. His henchmen were now on the far side of the Square, mouths wide open as the 'fucking dyed-in-the-wool dykes' got to work on their prey.