Shame The Devil Chapter 3 Part One

Even though it was not quite ten, the day was already shaping up to be another warm one. The sun slanted into Helen’s bedroom glinting off the crystal hanging at the window. Helen didn’t believe in feng shui and all that nonsense about chi, but she did take pleasure in how the light refracting through the crystal swaying in the gentle breeze through the open window sent little rainbows dancing round the room.

Changing out of her cream GAP pants and crisp white cotton shirt, Helen slipped designer gym wear over her lacy lingerie – an essential subterfuge should anyone be passing as she opened the door to Marcus. The devil was in the detail and keeping up appearances was second nature to her. Dabbing perfume behind her ears she glanced out of the bedroom window at the sound of a car parking outside. She smiled, adding an extra dab of perfume in her cleavage.

She was damned if she’d cow-tow to some unknown person so craven they dare not accuse her openly. Besides, if anyone were watching, what would they see? A woman in gym wear admitting her personal trainer into her home for a fitness session – try proving it’s anything other than that.

Helen had decided that as a week had gone by without any further notes and there was little he could do about it anyway there was also little point in telling Marcus. Why allow someone’s spitefulness to poison their brief time together?

As Helen and Marcus tumbled onto her bed, a gardening company’s van drew up outside the Allwright’s house. Sean, the lithe, good looking, twenty-something gardener closed the driver’s door unaware that Shirley was watching him through the sitting room window a tingling, longing sensation gathering in her demanding to be satisfied.

After another drunken beating from her possessive husband convinced of his wife’s imagined infidelity, Mira had had enough, finally surrendered to the attentions of a local n’er-do-well who, although willing to risk the wrath of Tommy Flint, was reluctant to take on a child as well, and fled three days before Shirley’s seventh birthday.

Shirley learned early how to survive on her wits. Ungifted academically, she only had her looks to fall back on, but these had been ample. Sexually advanced she’d entered puberty earlier than the other girls on the rough council estate and she knew how to use her blossoming womanliness.

From the age of eleven she had boys lining up ready to do her bidding for the promise of her favours behind the garage block. Yes, Shirley knew what boys wanted, but she was astute enough to pick carefully the one with whom she would finally go all the way.

At eighteen, Ian had the cachet that comes with being older. He wasn’t like the boys in Shirley’s retinue. While they had nothing to show for the summer spent hanging around other than a tan and half remembered drunken nights, Ian Allwright had earned enough to buy his first car. To his mind the fact that the means of earning the money had been shady was neither here nor there. He’d achieved his goal.

Shirley could smell his ambition. Not for him the life of a menial nine to five job, evenings slumped exhausted in front of the TV and the occasional night down the pub. Ian was going places. He was going to be someone. He was going to have Dosh. For Shirley, Ian represented an escape from a dreary future of scrimping and making do; an escape from a father who treated her as his personal skivvy and was too free and easy with a backhander. She set her sights on Ian like an Exocet missile locking onto its target.

For Ian, Shirley was the prize. He knew about her reputation. Shirley was a tease. She’d only let the boys get so far. Ian knew what girls wanted. He wooed her and on the evening of her sixteenth birthday his patience was rewarded. Ian convinced Shirley’s father to give his consent and they were married in the local registry office three months later.

However, in choosing Ian, Shirley was unwittingly guilty of repetitive behaviour. Much as the little things about Janet that Russell had once found endearing, but which had gradually begun to irritate him, so the very things that attracted Ian to Shirley became a source of distrust. Shirley’s provocative dress sense engendered his lust and he took pleasure in her voluptuous bountiful figure, but Ian was often quick to rile if he thought another man was ogling his wife. Shirley’s flirtatious nature only made this worse. In becoming Mrs Allwright, Shirley had unsuspectingly become Ian’s possession and she had found herself once again on the receiving end of the back of a man’s hand. If truth be told, Shirley was scared of him.

So why did she stay? In many ways Ian was good to her. He was generous and she wanted for little materially. They may have originated at opposite ends of the social spectrum, but having left school without qualifications, Shirley was equally as incapable of supporting herself as Helen. And she wanted a comfortable life without the effort of having to obtain it for herself. Whilst this may not be a commendable attribute, she is not alone in or singularly deserving of condemnation for having it. The plethora of reality television shows are proof of the many wanting a short cut to the ‘good life’.

Helen and Shirley would have done well to compare notes when it came to intimate marital relations. If they had they would have found some common ground. True, Ian hadn’t lost interest in his wife as Phillip had his – far from it. The problem wasn’t Ian’s lack of desire or frequency of his attentions, it was one of speed. The backseat of Ian’s car may not have been the most romantic of settings for Shirley to give up the remnants of her virtue, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. It hadn’t taken long, but Shirley had put this down to Ian’s youth, inexperience and eagerness. But over thirty years of experience later their couplings were still as brisk and unsatisfactory – at least for Shirley. Still, where there’s a will there’s a way...

‘You’re new, err...?’ Shirley asked, her hand shielding her face from the sun that shone behind Sean, radiating a corona of brightness around this new star that had been delivered unto her.

The young man smiled naively like a baby antelope who thought itself safe being friendly to the salivating lioness. ‘I just started today.’

‘So I’m yer first.’ Shirley sighed.

‘You’ve got a lovely garden Mrs Allwright.

‘Shirley, please.’ She looked Sean up and down and got straight to the point.

‘I have needs Sean. You see the problem is me old man isn’t really up to the job.’

‘No?’ A new-found nervousness sounded in Sean’s question.

‘Nah, he ain’t got the touch and I ain’t never been one for any kind of, D.I.Y. – well you don’t have a dog and bark do ya..? Now about my box...’

Sean’s nervousness gave way to terror as Shirley advanced.

‘It’s gettin’ a bit scruffy and I do like to keep it well trimmed. Spoils the look of it otherwise. Don’t ya think?’

Sean took a step back looking behind him to see what he’d nearly fallen over: a straggly Box sphere in need of a trim.

‘The thing is we’re a bit short-staffed today. I’ve only been sent to mow the lawn. Someone will be round to do a, err...’ Sean struggled to find the appropriate words. ‘A proper job next week.'

Behind her bedroom window Shirley watched Sean below rhythmically mowing the front lawn: back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Sweat glistened on his chest, his vest T-shirt clinging to his young virile body.

She had lied when she said she was no good at D.I.Y. Her eyes locked on Sean, Shirley slipped out of her panties delighting in the naughtiness of knowing only she knew she was standing there knickerless. She fumbled in the top drawer of the dressing table – thank God Ian never looked in there. Slipping The Clever One into the wetness between her legs, Shirley watched Sean wipe the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. It is true that women become aroused firstly in their head – and God knew she was almost there already. A spasm shuddered through her the instant she pressed the On button.

Orgasm is a paradox that blurs the line between pleasure and pain; a pleasure that threatens to engulf and devour. The French call it Le Petit Mort. Shirley sank to her knees, at once giving into and forcing herself not to pull back from the deliciously overwhelming convulsions, losing herself in a tumult of imagined bodies sliding together slippery with sweat.

Unseen by Shirley, Sean turned off the mower and took the ringing mobile from his jeans pocket.

‘Hello... Yes I know, believe me I’m going as quick as I can... It’s not funny. She’s older than my Mum!’

He held the phone away from his ear as raucous male laughter erupted on the other end of the line. He’d survived his initiation.