Walking the Dog Page 6

  We carried on chatting in a desultory manner for a while as we finished up the preparations. I put everything on to cook slowly and opened a bottle of wine. It was something red and Australian is all I can remember but it can’t have been too pernicious as I did manage to drink it without comment. I made a mental note to ask Angela a bit more about her reasons for leaving Estonia. I felt sure there would be quite a story.

  The four of us ate my stew, Niall and Liam displaying great relish. I wasn’t entirely sure it was sincere but I am a passable cook and the food was hot, tasty and filling; what more could you ask for on winter’s evening? After supper, the twins disappeared outside with a holdall and a couple of torches to ‘secure the perimeter’ as they put it. When they reappeared, I asked them if they were concerned.

  “Nah,” said Niall, “but better safe than sorry. I doubt we’ll be disturbed but we’ve just been making sure of it. Set up a bit of an early warning system. Shouldn’t need it, but just the same…”

  Not for the first time, I was intensely glad that I had friends like Liam and Niall.

  Chapter Seven

  Angela’s cottage had only one bedroom. The twins made subtle, but nonetheless obvious, hints that they expected us to take it while they sacked out in the parlour. Another khaki holdall produced two sleeping bags, which they proceeded to unroll.

  “Sorry, old son, we’re bushed,” said Liam, ”not too much kip last night!”

  We murmured agreement and Angela and I headed off to her room. I was relieved to see a large old-fashioned brass bed with thick quilts. It would have looked inviting even without her beside me. I hadn’t slept too well the previous night either.

  Angela lit a squat candle and its pale glow lent an appropriate ambience. There was still a chill in the air so we hurried through our ablutions and dived under the welcoming quilts. The sheets were cold and we hugged each other close like a couple of children, giggling and tickling each other with cold hands. Of course, I was aroused but it wasn’t urgent. I was happy to lie alongside her, stroking the velvety softness of her skin and learning the intimate topography of her body.

  We talked in whispers, sharing little intimacies as new lovers do. The conversation turned to our first time. I recounted my own experience. It wasn’t much to write home about. It had been during the summer between school and University. I had gone on holiday to Greece, riding slow trains and hitchhiking under the achingly blue skies of that magical country. After doing the cultural bit, Athens, Corinth, Mycenae, Cape Sunion, I had gone island hopping, catching the slow and crowded ferries that serviced the Sporades, Dodecanese and Cycladese.

  One glorious, star-filled night on a beach in Rhodes, I had lost my virginity to a pretty Danish girl. Her skinny, tanned body had been an unexplored country and she let me find my stumbling, hesitant way without complaint. She was sweet and kind to a fumbling young Englishman and her done her best to make it memorable. Unfortunately, it was memorable only for its brevity. I still think fondly of her, for all that. She pretended she was not disappointed and had laughed gently at my chagrin. We stayed together for the rest of the summer and she taught me to please her and to control myself better over the ensuing weeks. I was more than a little in love with her when it came time to part. Looking back now, what I value most was her unfailing good nature. I don’t think I ever saw her without a smile. I guess I was one of the lucky ones.

  Angela listened in avid silence as I described it all. When I finished, she snuggled against me and said,

  “She was a very nice girl, this Astrid.”

  I could only agree. “What about you,” I asked.

  She sighed. “Once upon a time, there was this little, fat Estonian girl.”

  “Fat? Surely not!”

  “Don’t interrupt! This is my story. As I was saying, there was this little, well, chubby Estonian girl. When she was eleven, her breasts started to grow. When she was fifteen, they were still growing. She used to walk with her shoulders hunched so, so people wouldn’t stare so much at her chest. Her sister was a little jealous, I think, because the men did not stare at her in this way. One day, a young soldier came to see my, I mean her, father. He was very dashing, very handsome in his uniform.

  “He told her not to hunch her shoulders, to be proud of what nature had given her. He teased her and made her blush. When he passed her in the corridor, he gave her a squeeze, just here.”

  She took my hand and placed it on her breast.

  “And then here”

  She moved my hand to her buttocks and pushed back against it with a wiggle.

  “Many times he did this and he made excuses to come often to her house. Once, she opened the door to let him in and he kissed full on the mouth, like so!”

  Angela rolled on top of me and proceeded to kiss me passionately, forcing her tongue between my lips and undulating her entire body against mine.

  “Of course, she was very confused. She liked the way the soldier made her feel but she knew what he did was not polite, not nice. Her body liked it but it heart did not. She could have hidden away, of course, when the soldier came to the house and, after he left, she told herself that this was what she would do, the next time. When the next time came, she couldn’t wait to see him. It was very, mixed up? Is that what you say?

  “Then her father went away for a while and the soldier stopped coming to the house. She was very sad. She couldn’t eat, did not want to go to school. She wanted to sleep all the time. When she slept, the soldier came to her dreams and touched her again. After about six months, her father came back. She was just sixteen, now, and no longer chubby. Her father was surprised and told her she looked like a woman now, no longer a little girl. The young soldier came to visit again. He, too, was surprised. She had changed very much.”

  I detected a sudden change in her mood. I had the feeling that she just made a decision. She rolled away from me and lay very still. Her voice dropped its teasing quality and became very small as if she was speaking from a distance. The gentle modulations that I had come to associate with her disappeared entirely and she spoke on in a flat monotone.

  “One night, he came late to their house. Her father and mother had gone to Moscow for the week. She wasn’t expecting him. He knocked on the door and stood there, in the rain. He had some flowers. She let him into the house and later, into her bed. He was very experienced and made it good for her, at first. Then he wanted her to suck him. She didn’t know about this, thought it was dirty. He made her do it to him. She was very angry. He laughed at her. Called her a silly schoolgirl. She spat at him. He beat her. Then he left. She never saw him again.

  “When she was older, she came to think that he had used her innocence. She never told anyone. Until tonight.”

  “God, Angela, that’s awful! He really beat you?”

  “Yes, but he was clever, no bruises would show outside my clothes. He knew I would tell no one. For two reasons, first, I would never to confess what we did and second, he was a Russian.”

  We lay in silence for a while. I could think of nothing to say and felt the sadness that was in that in her through the tension of her body. I simply held her and let her regain her equilibrium. All desire had deserted me. I was filled with a senseless fury. It had happened years ago. I would never meet the Russian soldier. Still I seethed and raged inwardly. In part it was my impotence to change anything that stoked my anger. She must have sensed this and rolled towards me, putting her hand up to my face and stroking it gently.

  “You must not mind, my Martin. I was a silly child and played with the fire. It is simple. I was burned. But all that is in the past, now. It makes me sad sometimes, to think of this thing. Now I am with you and we are not children. I was not going to tell this but then I thought I must. I hate secrets, you understand?”

  I told that I did and wiped away the solitary tear that glistened in the candlelight. We kissed, gently, without passion but with deep affection. She gave me a merry smile.

  “There, yo
u see, I am all better now.”

  We kissed again; this time had a more urgent quality and held the promise of something rich and wondrous. She trailed her kisses down my face and neck and put her head on my chest. Then she began to move slowly down my body, planting a succession of the faintest brushes of her lips over my ribs and stomach.

  Mindful of the story she had just told me I whispered that she didn’t have to do this. She hushed me gently.

  “I want to,” she said, “This is something for me, you understand?”

  As the tip of her tongue flicked out and touched my glans, I couldn’t have answered even if I wanted to. She swivelled in the bed so that she was now kneeling beside me. Her mouth was warm as she opened her lips and took me in. She pushed her head down very slowly, taking a tiny bit more and then another bit until she had captured about half my length. Was there ever a more willing captive? All the while she swirled her tongue around the head of my prick.

  Her left hand came up and she gently grazed my sac with her fingernails. Electricity jolted through my frame, I swear I saw stars. She raised her head and slowly eased back down, taking more of me insider her mouth and imparting some sort of rippling sensation with combination of lips, palate and tongue. Again, her nails scratched slowly and softly and she sucked more firmly as she withdrew this time. Then, instead of taking me in her mouth once more, she licked in circles round the head of my prick and planted a line of minute kisses down the shaft until she came to my balls.

  With infinite care and tenderness, she took one swollen orb into her mouth and suckled gently. I was gone, lost at sea without a trace. She switched her ministrations to my other ball and started to pump my shaft gently with her hand, her fingers loose and fluttering. All the while she continued the scintillating torment of my balls, first one, then the other, back and forth, until I was writhing involuntarily and my hips were pumping upwards of their own volition.

  At last the exquisite torture ceased and she kissed her way back up my shaft. It was now so hard I really thought it was about to split, to shed its skin like a snake. Then she thrust her mouth down on me hungrily and began to bob her head with a deliberate rhythm. I put her out a hand and cupped her swaying breast. Her nipple was a piece of fiery agate in the palm of my hand. She was making a low crooning noise reminiscent of the sound a mother might make to her baby, a soft counterpoint to my harsh panting.

  I felt my orgasm beginning to build, coalescing like a nebula, somewhere near the base of spine. I gasped a warning. “Oh, Christ, Angela, I’m going to come!” This seemed to rouse her to greater efforts for she sped up and her crooning became a moan, redolent of need. It was a haunting sound, the very encapsulation of desire. It tipped me over the edge.

  I thrust my groin upwards, twisting myself towards to gain better advantage of that heavenly mouth that grasped me like some exotic orchid or diaphanous sea-creature. My head was filled with clouds and the candle light seem to be diffusing some esoteric essence, the distillate of a thousand times a thousand years of passionate human love. She flicked me more firmly with her tongue and I went over the edge. My seed erupted and she made a sound that was almost a howl of triumph as spurt after spurt poured into her mouth. My entire body was rigid. All my earthly existence was concentrated into that scant bundle of over-stimulated nerve endings that sent a vast surge of ecstasy coursing through me. It was though she had caught my very soul and drawn it out through the tip of my penis, leaving me utterly drained, devoid of even the slightest conscious thought, a slave to pure sensation.

  She gentled then and continued to suck lightly on me for what seemed like an eternity, letting me soften, held lightly between her lips. All the while she massaged my balls with a feathery touch, as if to make sure I had nothing left to give. I floated free, disembodied. I had never experienced the like.

  I fell into a brief but deeply refreshing sleep. When I awoke, a few minutes later, her head was still resting on my stomach and her tongue still traced the faintest of circles around my glans. Her touch was so light I could barely feel it but it was enough to re-awaken my desire. Her movements became slightly firmer as I stiffened. I drew her up beside me and kissed her, tasting the salty, alien flavour of my own emissions on her lips. Her eyes smiled lazily into mine and I slipped softly into her.

  We made love slowly, letting our passion build at its own pace. Her hips moved gently back at me and she arched her body like a cat, stretching her arms up and grasping the brass rails of the bed. This lifted her breasts and brought them just into range of my tongue. She sighed contentedly as I swirled my tongue over first one adamantine nipple, then the other. I could feel her vaginal lips sliding on my shaft and she squeezed me gently.

  Our control couldn’t last, of course. Her breathing became more ragged, my thrusting more insistent and I seized one nipple in my teeth and grazed it, sucking down hard with my lips. She made a startled noise that smoothed into a moan of pleasure and then she was coming hard, her pelvis jerking spastically, her eyes huge and luminous in the candlelight. That set me off and I galloped to my own finish with her legs clasping my hips and urging me on, pulling me deeper in, if that was possible.

  Once again the lights flashed behind my eyes and the seed surged out of me, hosing into her in five or six juddering spurts that seemed to carry my heart with it. The pleasure was almost too much; it had a manic edge, overwhelming. I was grunting like a wild beast. Constellations of shattered candlelight spun in my half-closed eyes and the room receded from me as I floated free. We clung together for a long time afterwards, descending from our ethereal high like a pair of feathers, swooping and side-slipping back into the real world until all that remained of our love-making was an abiding sense of peace.

  Chapter Eight

  We were up early the following morning. It was one of those rare bright winter days where there is no wind and the world looks made anew under its carpet of shimmering frost. The sky was an achingly blue vault with the only clouds a couple of puffs left over from God’s cigar. It isn’t possible not to feel glad to be alive on such a morning, whether you’re Man or dog.

  Liam and Niall strolled off in opposite directions through the dunes to spy out the land while Angela, Trotsky, Magic and I headed down on to the beach for an early morning walk. Magic ran in circles in his own loopy, uncoordinated way while Trotsky paced beside us, ears erect, his great bush of a tail held high and curling over his regimentally straight back. Periodically he would spot a particularly brazen seagull that refused to concede his passage and he’d charge off in full hunting mode until the offending bird took to the air, leaving him with a lolling tongue and slightly sheepish air.

  Angela held my hand and we talked lightly as we strolled. Once I saw Liam standing watching us at the edge of the dunes and he raised a hand, as if in benediction. Angela waved back gaily and he disappeared from view, a cell-phone clamped to his right ear, the picture of a professional. I found a piece of driftwood and hurled into the sea for Magic. He plunged in, unbounded joy showing in every fibre. His two favourite occupations – swimming and retrieving, he must have thought Christmas had come early.

  We walked for an hour or so. Ours were the only prints defiling the pristine sand. The sea was that particular hue of green that characterises that stretch of coastline. It was only marred by the silty brown stain that marked the river’s effluence. The North Sea is too shallow ever to be truly blue, whatever the weather. This is the Wash, where legend has it King John lost the Crown Jewels. The land and sea lie constantly at war. One can imagine hearing the faint tolling of bells in drowned steeples when the wind rises. All around, the flat country recedes from the eye, interrupted only by occasional evidence of human habitation and the odd stump of a church tower. The coastline sweeps away to east and west, vanishing into a blurred and low horizon. It is a bleak place, bleak and beautiful.

  The seductive smell of frying bacon greeted us on our return. Niall was busy in the kitchen and Liam was stacking fresh-hewn logs in th
e outhouse. His shirtless torso glowed with health. The muscular perfection of his body was only spoiled by two livid people marks of puckered flesh just below his ribs. I knew these to be the legacy of a fierce night engagement on Tumbledown Mountain in the Falklands War. Neither brother would ever talk much about their experiences but I had seen the citation for Liam’s Military Cross. He had been hit twice early in the fighting but had continued to lead his platoon throughout the night. He was hit once more later on and was eventually persuaded to go to the First Aid post. He walked out; four miles over rough country in the darkness. It was later discovered that the last bullet had broken his ankle. Recalling this, I was once more grateful those two lunatics were on our side.

  Over breakfast we made our respective plans for the day. Angela and I had to go to the police station in Cromer to settle the matter of her disappearance. We decided to stick to the truth but leave out the inconvenient bits. Angela had found her place trashed, got scared and come to London. There was nothing taken so it could just be a case of vandalism. Then I had to speak to Ted Allen at the Capital Taxes Office to find out who might know a bit more about this ikon. Liam and Niall offered to come with us to Cromer but it was clear that they were merely being polite. They agreed, instead, to do a bit of ‘snooping’ locally, just in case the opposition were about. Half an hour later I loaded Magic and Trotsky into the Volvo and we set off, surrounded by the pungent aroma of wet dog.

  The Cromer police were icily polite and made no secret of their annoyance. Like most policemen, they trod warily around a lawyer, punctiliously correct but no more. We breathed a sigh of relief when they eventually let us go after Angela had given a statement. I doubted very much we’d hear from them further. We drove back to the cottage slowly. Angela pointed out various places of interest. This was her manor; I was the visitor. I felt a certain reluctance to get back into the world of Russian ikons and Chechen Mafia. The morning walk, the weather and, not least, our growing intimacy, had lulled me into a false sense of well-being. Now it was time to plunge back into the murk once more.