show. Wanting not to appear wanting.” She laughs again. “I watched him digging a hole in the bottom of that bunker with the sweat dripping off him and his expression getting more and more racked. And do you know? Just where he was flapping away I had been lying a few days earlier with my lover. Ironic, isn’t it? I started laughing out loud and that made him furious. We had quite a row about it.”
“What did the client do?”
“He didn’t mind. I’m having lunch with him tomorrow.”
“Sandwiches at the seventeenth?”
“No. He’s staying at a hotel. You sound as if you don’t approve.”
“I’m jealous.”
“There’s no need to be.”
She turns towards me and reaches up an arm to pat my cheek. That’s it! I don’t have to have a crystal ball to know what she is thinking. I bend down and kiss her and her tongue comes out like one of those curled up squeaker things that kids blow at Christmas time. At the same time her hand goes down to my fly so fast it might be tied to the top of my zipper with a piece of elastic. She is the quickest worker since God made the world without breaking into double time. I hardly have time to breathe in through the nose before her practised fingers have poured over the side of my jockey briefs like Attila the Hun and she is rummaging away like a champion shop lifter who has got her hand caught down the side of the deep freeze cabinet. Not that there is much frozen goods being displayed. That kind of thing brings me on faster than a Derby winner and I’m giving her a bit of the same before the first appreciative murmur has escaped from her throat.
“It’s a bit cramped in here, isn’t it?” she says.
“Yeah! I used to have a pantechnicon but I fell behind with the payments. Let’s go back to your place.”
“I daren’t do that. I’ve got too many nosey neighbours. What about you?”
“No dice. I’ve got the same kind of problem.” I can just see Mrs. Bendon’s face if I rolled up with this one. She would do her nut. “Come on my lap,” I murmur, helpfully.
“I don’t like that. I can only come when I’m lying flat out.” She’s honest, isn’t she? Germaine Greer herself could not be more direct. “There’s a bunker at the fifteenth,” she goes on. “Let’s go there.”
“Not the sixteenth?”
“It has sentimental memories for me.”
I would not have suspected that she was the romantic type, but there you are. As an alternative to my usual chores as an instructor a length on the links seems very attractive—but in mid-November?
“It’s going to be a bit parky out there, isn’t it?” I say nervously.
“I’ve already told you. Once you get out of the wind it’s alright. Look, there’s even a bit of sunshine.”
She is right, too. A few perished shafts are breaking through the blanket of grey that has hung over my head ever since I left Liverpool Street Station.
“O.K. Let’s give it a whirl.”
“You needn’t sound so enthusiastic. I know some fellows who’d stay all night in an open lifeboat for a chance to hold my hand.”
“I can believe it,” I lie enthusiastically. I mean, really! Twice round the boating pool whilst you finished your cheese sandwich would be more like it. Some women get delusions of grandeur about what they are trying to give away. At least a whore has the guts to put a price on her goodies. As my old schoolmaster used to say: you don’t have to like capitalism but at least it separates the professionals from the amateurs.
Anyway, off we go across the golf course with me trying to look at my watch without her noticing and hoping that we will be able to squeeze a happy memory out of the fifteenth. I reckon she must have played every hole on the course in her day because she does not deviate by an inch but pushes through the bracken and brings us out a long-distance spit from a neat little circle of grass with a flag in the middle of it.
“Where do we go from here?” I ask, but she is already scrambling up the side of a low mound and beckoning for me to follow. When I get there, I can see that we are perched on the edge of a deep sand trap and she squeezes my arm ferociously, presumably intending to suggest the pleasure to come. Down we go and she leans back against the wall of the bunker and gazes at me expectantly. I have to confess that out of the wind it is almost bearable, though I don’t go a bundle on the old Woodbine packets and the used french letter I can see out of the corner of my eye.
“You see,” she says. “It’s quite cosy, isn’t it?”
It is hardly the word I would have used but then I am not a country boy at heart.
“Come here,” I say, which is another great non-phrase I use a lot with birds. Roughly translated, it means: “I can’t think of anything to say so I am going to try to kiss you/put my hand up your skirt/both.”
Mrs. D. offers me her mouth and we chew away hungrily whilst her hands start a reprise of ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’ on the zip of my fly. The sand is a bit damp and I would normally reckon this as being a knee-tremble job but for what Mrs. D. said about liking to get stretched out for maximum satisfaction. She has pulled open my trousers like the mouth of a flour sack and has got both hands round my hampton while I am easing her knickers down to knee level with a skill any window dresser would envy. It may not be the most elegant sight in the world but it is giving us both a lot of pleasure and I am fast forgetting about the weather. I prod forward a couple of times and Mrs. D. gives a shiver of passion which just might be for real and starts licking my ear.
“I want to lie down now,” she says, “and then you put it in.”
Try to stop me, I think, and, perfect gent that I am, I bend down to remove the panties that are flapping pathetically round her ankles.
In doing this I am hindered by her whole weight suddenly flopping over my shoulders as if she wanted to be given a piggy-back.
“Hey! Steady on—” I begin, thinking this is some kinky game she likes to play, or a request for a muff job, but when I straighten up she slides down between my legs and I notice there is a swelling on the side of her head which is growing as I look at it. There is also a small white ball nestling beside my foot and it has more pock-marks on it than my Aunt Ethel. Some clumsy berk has bounced a golf ball off her bonce! Just my flaming luck. The bloody game should be banned.
“Wake up,” I squeal, slapping her cheeks and gazing into her lifeless mug. “Are you all right?” She does not say anything but groans weakly and pulls her hands up to her head. She is not going anywhere in a hurry in the next few minutes and I am prepared to lay bets on it. One possible taker is the prick who clobbered her and I raise my head carefully over the side of the bunker to see if anyone is coming. By the cringe! Two blokes are striding purposefully towards us and I recognise both of them. Minto and Sharp!
“I don’t know what I’m going to do about my slice,” sings out Minto and I can’t hear what Sharp says. Minto may think he has problems but they are fleabites compared with what is facing me. Caught in a bunker with a senseless, knickerless pupil can’t be good for business. Knickerless! I snatch up Mrs. D.’s panties and shove them into my pocket, dislodging one of her shoes in my frenzy. I force it on again and there she is, looking just like any other thirty-year-old woman you would expect to find lying senseless in a bunker every time you play a round of golf.
It is then that I act foolishly—well, act foolishly again, if you feel that trying to shaft a bird in a golf bunker in the middle of November is a bit stupid in the first place. I pick up the ball and roll it carefully onto the fairway, hoping that Minto and Sharp will stumble upon it and not the lovely Mrs. D. and myself. No sooner have I done this than my pupil starting groaning like she is auditioning for the ‘Red Barn’ and I spring to her side and try to muffle the noise with my shoulder. In this position I am glad to hear a cry of surprise from the fairway.
“Good