Esther later told me I was abandoned as a baby runt: disposed of, tipped into a food bank, a squalid pile of human waste left behind a supermarket. I never did manage to trace my parents. Instead, I grew into a shy, reclusive, insular boy living in an orphanage run by a community of caring young nuns who believe in developing their children to thrive on the talents that make them unique. For my part, I excelled at adding numbers, taking them away, dividing them into shares, multiplying them until they grew larger and larger.
An acclaimed mathematical child genius, at the age of seven I was adopted by Esther and Richard, a childless firm of chartered accountants living in the rural suburbs, who sent me to state infant, junior and grammar schools. Naturally, I was top of the class at maths, but I was also quite good at running, winning the school inter-house cross country race three years in a row, excelling at long distance sports track events. In no time at all I was joining the nearest running club, Gresham AC, encouraged by my ever-doting parents.
It was while hurdling fences at the club, at the impressionable age of sixteen, that I met a chubby girl called Beth. I fell in love with her. The two of us became inseparable. As soon as school was out, I’d run home, have an early supper of baked beans on toast with tomato ketchup and Esther, go upstairs to my bedroom, change into my running gear, pack my black leather zip-up bag then scurry off to meet Beth at the sports ground. There, we’d run five thousand metres, one-on-one, races on the flat and over the hurdles. Every so often, I would stumble after a hurdle to give my girlfriend a chance of winning. After our run, we would shower separately, change into our casual gear, walk to the rectory, find an empty park bench well out of view, sip our energy drinks, share an energy bar – and kiss.
Beth, fifteen with shiny eyes full of fun and joy, loved to be kissed on the lips, but since her teeth were locked in a brace, that was as far as she was prepared to go. If I dared to run my palm down her long, straight, hazel hair, kiss the lucky silver pendant on her golden necklace, stroke the soft insides of her thighs or fondle her plump breasts, she would invariably politely say, ‘No, not till I’m a grown-up,’ and stay my wandering hands.
One hot, sultry summer’s evening while kissing her after a gentler run, I sensed she felt different.
‘Well, did you remember?’ she asked me.
‘Sorry, Beth. Remember what?’
She jabbed me hard in the ribs, ‘My birthday, stupid! I’m sixteen today.’
I clapped my hand over my head and groaned, ‘Oh, no! I can’t believe I forgot.’
‘How could you, today of all days?’ she said, scolding me, mildly, mocking me.
She was laughing at me, too, though. Beth knew I didn’t have much money to buy her presents with. I was, after all, still at school and I spent all my free time running with her. My parents did give me pocket money, I told her. On account of me staying out of trouble, being kind to those souls less fortunate than me, achieving the highest grades in the summer exams – which I thought I might, and excelling at track sports – which I always did.
‘I didn’t forget really,’ I smiled, flushing, kissing Beth on both cheeks, ‘I brought you a present.’
She squealed like a piglet with delight, ‘I love presents! Go on then, give it to me. Let me see it.’
‘It’s a magical present. You can’t see it. You can only feel it…I love you, Beth.’
Her mouth slackened, her eyes shone, ‘And I love you, lots and lots. Can I feel my present now?’
I grinned at her, the cat that just tasted the cream for the first time, ‘If you’re a good girl, I’ll let you feel it.’
Beth clasped her hands behind her back, smiling from ear to ear, ‘Promise, I’ll be a good girl. Can I have my present now, please?’
‘Lie down then, close your eyes and count to ten.’
She lay down in the freshly mown grass, hidden from view by the tall trim privet hedge bordering the empty sports ground, closed her green eyes then, very slowly, she began to count.
‘One, two, three, four, five…’
I lay beside her, drawing her body close to mine, wrapping my arm around her waist, stroking her hair, holding her head, my love trophy, bringing her expectant, smiling face inches from my lips. Her breath smelled of pear drops, sugar candy twists, dolly mixtures, all mixed up into one sweet aroma.
‘Six, seven, eight…’
I pushed my tongue greedily between her wired teeth, tasting her sweet nectar, her palate. She reacted lovingly, caressing my ear lobes, cheek and neck, holding my hands to her soft breasts. Electrified, I massaged her, feeling her nipples go all stiff under her loose shirt. Her hand roamed over my hairy lower back, delving eagerly inside my flimsy shorts to squeeze my muscly buttocks.
She sighed enthusiastically, ‘What would you like me to do?’
‘Take off your shirt and bra.’
‘Only if you let me see your tackle first.’
She made me chuckle with her use of funny words, ‘Tackle? That’s an unusual name for it.’
‘Not tackle as in rugby tackle or fishing tackle,’ she said, tittering, ‘tackle as in equipment needed for us to play sport.
My heart raced at the stress she placed on the word play. Beth was more articulate, intelligent, refined, and much better off materially than me. Yet, I still worshipped the ground she walked on.
‘Play sport with you, Beth?’
‘Yes, silly! Who did you think I meant, the groundsman?’
Picturing her canoodling in the grass with Fred the ancient groundsman, I changed the subject.
‘Guess you were always better than me at English.’
‘And you beat me at maths,’ she reminded me, ‘But I do beat you over the hurdles sometimes.’
I didn’t have the heart to tell her, I let her win. She was too precious to upset, too nice a girl. Her face lit up in a lovely natural smile that made her eyes shine and gave her dimples around her mouth and showed off the whole of her dull metallic brace in contrast to her shiny white teeth.
‘Let me see your tackle now,’ she whispered naughtily.
I stood over her and pulled off my cream club sweatshirt revealing my sparsely haired chest, the delicious smattering of dark chocolate moles spread over my torso. I dropped my shorts and pants.
‘Gosh he’s so big,’ she gasped, ‘I’ve never held a boy’s tackle when it’s all, you know. Is it safe for me to touch him?’
‘You can if you’d like to.’
‘I would like to,’ she said brightly, then she hesitated, just for a moment.
‘Go on then, touch him, he won’t bite you.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she giggled childishly, racily overcoming her first time nerves, ‘I know he won’t.’
I stood perfectly still while Beth ran her closed, soft hand up and down my rigid straining shaft, cupping my taut balls in the palm of her hand, giving them a gentle squeeze, making me squirm.
‘Do you like it when I do that to you?’ she asked me innocently.
I let out a long, contented sigh, ‘Yes, it feels lovely.’
‘Would you like to see my breasts now?’
‘I would like to, very much.’
‘Alright then.’
Beth slid out from under me, sat up, pulled her tennis shirt off over her head, felt behind her back and unclipped her bra. Her breasts flopped out. I groaned in admiration. I’d never seen a girl’s breasts before, and Beth’s were beautiful, kissable. She lay on the ground for me, the harsh spikes of freshly cut grass scratching her exposed back.
‘My back’s all itchy. Can you brush the grass off for me?’ she said, sitting up at the hip.
I knelt behind her, picking each damp shred of freshly mown grass off her fleshy, sweating back.
‘Can I lie on your towel?’ I heard her saying in the foreground.
Patting her back dry with my sweatshirt, I lifted her fine drape of hair so I could kiss the nape of her neck, ‘It’s still a bit wet.’
She tutted, clucking like a content hen on heat, ‘Doesn’t matter, it’ll soon dry out in the sunshine.’
The sun burnt her pale skin rose pink. She watched me unzip my sports bag and draw out a large fluffy bath towel. I spread it out on the lawn for her to lie on, marvelling at her in stunned silence as she stretched her arms, tanning her face, chest and breasts in the pleasant evening sun, flapping her arms like butterfly wings, my divine, dusky pink Painted Lady butterfly.
Recovering from her bountiful display, finding my lost voice, I asked her, ‘How does that feel?’
‘How does what feel?’ she said, teasing me.
‘The towel.’
‘Oh, it feels comfortable. Would you like to share it with me? We can kiss, and cuddle, and love?’
I lay with her on the towel. I kissed her moist lips. I lavished her sugary, liquified mouth with my saliva. I stroked her silken hair. My eager hands crept stealthily across her tender sunburnt flesh.
‘Kiss my breasts,’ she murmured daringly.
I obliged her, cupping her heaving breasts in both hands, kissing them, sucking her pink rosebuds. Lightly, she ran her soft fingers all over my belly, combing my coarse pelt of hair, grasping my turgid flesh. I felt her release her grip on me, felt like a coiled-up spring ready to unwind for her, her private love-bomb, primed and ready to explode.
She puffed and panted as she undid the copper stud on her tight-fitting denim jeans. She wriggled out of them, tugging them off over her plump thighs, her slender calves. Off, over her socked feet.
Beth’s socks were primrose with bright pink heels and toes and happy, smiling teddy bear faces. I held my breath while she plucked them off her feet and arranged them neatly in a cotton pile on top of her jeans, shirt and bra. She stretched out on the towel beside me in her women’s light pink hi leg serenity lace briefs. My hand wandered over her navel, gently tugging at her delicate satin bow. I felt her hand caress me, felt I was going to burst. She kissed my lips, cheeks, neck, chest, tantalising me, casting her magic spell over me, trapping me in her seductive spider’s web of love.
‘Touch me,’ she said.
I did as I was told, sliding my hand under the gusset of her lacy briefs. My heart pumped crazily when my fingers finally felt her lush growth of hair, her pliant folds. I heard her implore me to go further, deeper. Caught up in her dream world, I marvelled at her dexterity as she reached for her jeans, extracted a silver foil sachet, tore it open with her teeth, grasped my stalk and sheathed me.
‘There,’ she sighed, ‘Now we can make love like grown-ups do.’
I sat and watched Beth pull off her lacy pink briefs. Naked we lay on the towel kissing, embracing, contemplating what inevitably came next. She lay on her back in the birth position for me, staring at me expectantly, her hope and joy written all over her happy crying face. I slid my tool clumsily inside her. Her body shuddered a little as I entered her. I asked her if she hurt? She wouldn’t say.
At the age of sixteen, Beth won a sports scholarship to a boarding school, Dene High in Sussex. I would never see her again. She collapsed and died of a hole in the heart shortly after winning the annual school cross country run. I was devastated, lost without her, lonely beyond words. I started to binge eat, put on weight. I learned to hate myself, staring at the fat mess in the bedroom mirror, hating my rampant folds of flab, my gross rump, my bloated pot belly, sagging into the single bed in despair.
Single. Alone. Lonesome. Unloved. Beth was my first love. My life was meaningless without her.
I truanted from school, missing main meals, avoiding contact with anyone. Instead, I frittered my time away locked inside my bedroom, lain on top of the bed naked with my eyes closed, dreaming of our loving sexual initiation, the wondrous, single time I had sex with my dear, dead, girlfriend.
*****
While Flyn is busy performing her ablutions some low life at the next table: an unshaven, greasy, slob clothed in a threadbare coal black sweater, leans across to chat to me. His exposed chest and tiny head are coated in thick, wiry, fuzzy coarse hair. His breath stinks of stale whisky. He’s just as unpleasant to listen to: candid, blunt, a misogynist and utterly disrespectful towards his woman.
‘Stunning, isn’t she?’ he comments, ‘You’re a lucky man having such a lovely woman. Mine let herself go after she bred, went to fat.’
Disgusted, I regard him in much the same way that I’d treat a turd stuck onto the sole of my shoe. My mind turns to Beth, not yet a woman when I thoughtlessly thrust myself inside her, penetrating her with such force that the sheath split, embedding itself inside her, leaving my intimate deposit. Overwrought with guilt, I recall how her hole-in-the-heart autopsy revealed she was six months pregnant, with twins, when she died.
All the while, the interfering drunken imbecile leers at me, goading me with his smug looks, the intrusive nudges of his shoulder, his pervading, putrid stench of halitosis, stifling, suffocating me.
‘She isn’t my woman,’ I emphasize in a flat, monotone voice, hoping the turd will leave me alone.
He doesn’t leave me, instead he says, ‘Will you breed with her tonight? Lots of men would give their balls to breed a woman like her.’
Will I breed her?
Before I can answer, Flyn returns to our table having loosened herself, put on a fresh face, a sheer black polo shirt with a faded suede jacket, and an extremely tight red lycra micro mini skirt. More sober, she eavesdrops our conversation. As he tries to speak, she gives the turd a disdainful sneer and asks him if she is interrupting something important. Caught out by her subtle charm, he slinks off to the next table to chat up the redheaded woman wearing an ash grey bustier and badly soiled tomb grey high waist yoga pants.
