Footsucker

Fourteen

I arrived at Catherine’s flat in the usual way. I gave a firm, sustained ring on the front doorbell, a ring that meant business. She was expecting me and she let me in immediately. I knew she would be waiting, wearing a pair of Harold’s shoes, ready for me as usual, ready to do the things that we always did. But this time there was going to be a difference. This time I wasn’t alone. This time I had a female companion: Rosemary.

Rosemary and I went back a long way. Rosemary was no beauty, not even from the ankles down. She was heavily built, brassy, and she was in no conceivable sense my sort of woman. But she was supremely willing to try just about anything sexual, and there had been a number of times over the years when we, she and I, had had need of each other. This was just such an occasion. Today she was wearing a black raincoat and her rather plump feet were gamely crammed into a pair of purple velvet high heels. She had considered all other clothing unnecessary.

We stepped into the building, walked briskly up the stairs to Catherine’s floor, then to her front door, which she had left open. We went inside, into the hall where Catherine was waiting. She did a double-take when she saw Rosemary, looked at her curiously, suspiciously, but she didn’t speak. I imagine I was looking both furtive and pleased with myself, while Rosemary looked around the flat and its furnishings as though she might be a prospective purchaser or perhaps a burglar.

Catherine stared hard into Rosemary’s round, painted face. For a moment she looked as though she was about to ask who this stranger was and what she was doing there, but explaining would have spoiled everything and, in any case, she was in no real doubt what was going on, or about to. I put a finger to her lips to hush her. I nodded to Rosemary and, as arranged, she shrugged the raincoat from her shoulders. She stood there naked apart from the purple velvet shoes; very white, unembarrassed, very lewd. Her breasts looked enormous, and Catherine and I could see that the colour of her pubic hair did not even remotely match that on her head.

The three of us went into the bedroom and there proceeded to do everything we wanted to and could possibly think of. I suppose a certain amount of it might be considered predictable. The combination of mouths, organs, fluids, feet and shoes are, inevitably, limited. However much one strives to be inventive there are only so many options, so many possibilities. Nevertheless we achieved a number of combinations and conjunctions that I, at least, had never managed before.

It was a long session, hot and exhausting. When it was all over, when Rosemary had put her raincoat on again and gone, she left her shoes behind as a sort of souvenir, and suffice it to say that they were thoroughly sodden with both male and female juices.

Catherine and I lay together feeling emptied, carved out. It seemed to me there was nothing to be said about what we’d done, no room and no reason for discussion. But Catherine said, ‘I think that may have been too much.’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘I think that may have been a “this far and no further.” ’

Catherine turned away from me slightly, gathered herself to herself.

‘That was the most obscene stuff I’ve ever done,’ she continued. ‘It was more obscene than anything I would ever have imagined myself capable of doing.’

I had not been consciously testing Catherine. I had not been pushing at limits, extending boundaries, seeing how far we could go, how far I could take her with me. Yet I was sensible enough to realize that bringing Rosemary along to participate in our sex life was some new high-water mark. I could understand that someone might think this episode had been conceived of as an act of transgression, of desecration, a conscious smashing of the rules, but I hadn’t imagined that Catherine would be that someone.

‘Is that such a bad thing?’ I asked.

‘I think it may be,’ she said.

‘I don’t see what the problem is,’ I said. ‘You certainly looked like you were enjoying yourself.’

‘Of course I looked like I was enjoying myself. I was enjoying myself. That’s what the problem is. That’s why I think it may have been too much. I think I may have gone too far.’

At the time I thought she was exaggerating, and I didn’t believe her; but I should have.