The Three Halves of Martyn Manning--Chapter Ten: Progress

It was an uneventful Friday evening in the Feathers. Charlie moaned
about work and how he was worried about losing his job at the building contractor. Simon moaned about his new employee,a young girl who despite a first class marketing degree from Oxford Brookes was turning out to be spectacularly useless. Martyn tried to lighten things up by reminding them of the days when they all played football for the village team and how on one Friday night in The Feathers after several pints they’d made a pact that in the next day’s game they’d all get booked or sent off. But neither Simon nor Charlie really engaged. Martyn was finding it difficult to focus anyway because as he was walking to the pub he’d got a call from Monika Radountcheva.

“Good evening Mr Manning. I’m sorry it’s taken me a while but I think I have
a girl who matches your brief and she is very interested in the role you have on offer. Her name is Elena and I think she’d be a very good fit.”

“I hope so” he thought, he’d like a good fit..

“Is it OK if I e-mail you over her details for you to have a look at and then you
can get back to me with your thoughts?”

“Of course Monika. That sounds terrific. I assume you’ve explained to her the full range of duties and responsibilities involved, and the salary?”

“Yes I have Mr Manning, all the duties and responsibilities and she’s very keen to move forward. She’s already in the UK and she’d very much like to meet you.”

When he got home the kids were in bed and Caroline was in her room, presumably watching TV or on her laptop. All was normal on a normal Friday night. In the kitchen he poured a whisky, lit a Hamlet and settled
into his rocking chair. He fired up his tablet. The mail from Monika Radountcheva contained three attachments, a CV, a file entitled “Letter” and what looked like what might be a folder of photos. He resisted the temptation to immediately open the photo folder and opened the CV. Full name: Elena Florescu. A pretty name he thought. Did Florescu mean flowers? She was aged twenty-six, from Timisoara
in Romania. Timisoara? He’d never heard of it. He quickly googled it and found it to be the third biggest city in Romania and “the main social, economic and cultural centre in western Romania.” Interesting. She claimed to be completely fluent in English. He could believe this. He’d heard that Romanians had a gift for
languages. She had a diploma in childcare from some college in some place he’d never heard of and couldn’t be bothered googling. She’d been in the country for the past five years and had only had the one employer, a family in Somerset with two kids. That all sounded positive. And Somerset! She clearly wasn’t drawn to the bright lights. Monika Radountcheva’s covering mail explained that she was looking for a new role because her current employers were moving abroad. OK. She also said that Elena could start in early September, which was exactly when Caroline would be leaving for St. Andrews. Perfect.

He moved on to the file titled “Letter”. It was a reference from
Elena’s current employer. Martyn knew from bitter experience that references were hardly worth the paper they were written on but he read it anyway.

To Whom It May Concern

Elena Florescu has been our childrens’ live-in nanny for the past four
and a half years. Throughout this time Elena has shown outstanding
responsibility and maturity in taking care of our children and in
keeping the house in good order. She is kind, trustworthy and the
children adore her.

Working with children is clearly a passion for Elena. She also has excellent
communication skills and is full of creative ideas for activities.
She keeps the children occupied, engaged and most importantly, safe.
She is hard working, punctual and honest.

We will shortly be moving to the USA where I will take up a new role and
where childcare will be provided by my employer. It is with great
regret therefore that we have to let Elena go.

We all wish Elena the very best for the future and hope she keeps in
touch.

We recommend Elena to any future employer without hesitation.

Best wishes,

Richard and Rebecca Tyler-Morgan

Well at least it wasn’t negative, and it didn’t feel like an edited template off the internet. He read it again, slowly, looking for anything that could have a double-meaning, a code, a hidden message. No, it looked clean. A shame there was no assessment of Elena’s skills between the sheets but he supposed that was too much to hope for.

He closed the file and went to open the photo folder but then paused
and let his finger hover over the keyboard. After all, this was
important. This could be the woman he’d be shagging for the next
few years, and he wanted to savour the moment. He
decided he needed another whisky. He got up and poured it
then came back to his chair and opened the file.

He was a little disappointed that there were only two photos in the
folder. The first was a full face shot which showed neatly trimmed
shoulder length black hair, blue eyes, a happy smile showing white
even teeth. Her high cheekbones and very slightly narrowed eyes gave
a noticeably Slavic look to her face but nothing that detracted from
the overall pleasant impression. (Actually, were Romanians even
Slavs? He’d google it later. East European anyway.) He would never
describe her as beautiful but she could probably get away with
pretty, at least when she smiled.

The second photo showed Elena standing on a lawn with a young child
holding each of her hands. All three were laughing. He presumed the
lawn was in the garden in Somerset and that the children were the two
in her care. She still looked quite attractive. He studied her body.
She didn’t look overweight but neither did she look slim. She
looked like she might be a little “big-boned”, so she probably
wasn’t his elfin-waif ideal, but everything looked in proportion.
He couldn’t really tell much about her breasts but he’d never
really been a tit man anyway. Of course he couldn’t tell from the
photo how tall she was. He quickly checked back through the CV and
covering letter but there was no mention of her height. He’d have
to check back with Monika Radountcheva. He didn’t want a six foot
Amazon towering over him! He pondered for a moment. Didn’t he? No
he didn’t.

He leaned back in his chair to gather his thoughts. He prided himself on
never making snap decisions. He wanted to sleep on it but all-in-all
yes, it was all pretty positive and he thought he might well like to
go to the next step with Miss Florescu. However, he still had a few
things to clarify with Monika Radountcheva. It was clearly too late
to call her now, but tomorrow was the weekend which meant he couldn’t
call her till Monday. He felt he should at least acknowledge her
mail. But could he be bothered writing a mail to her now at this late
hour? What did Shakespeare say in Macbeth? “If it’s to be done
it’s best be done quickly” or something like that.

Dear Ms Radountcheva,

Thank you for your mail and attachments which I read with interest. I’ll
get back to you next week with my thoughts as to moving forward. In
the meantime please can you confirm that should I decide to take
things further I will be able to meet with Elena’s current
employers, or at least have a telephone conversation with them. Also,
how tall is Elena? I can find no reference to her height in the
documents you sent.

I look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Best Regards,

Martyn

*****

Martyn wasn’t one of those people who fall asleep as soon as their head
hits the pillow. It normally took him about fifteen to twenty
minutes. He usually filled this time by thinking about sex, and
tonight was no exception. Hardly a surprise given the circumstances.
He started by imagining his first night with Elena, undressing her,
undressing himself, her mouth on his cock, her fingers guiding him to
his first entry and his first slow thrust. Then a thought struck him.
Could it be that at age twenty-six Elena was a virgin? Unlikely at
her age, but oh man, wouldn’t that be a bonus! But then on second
thoughts, would it? It would be nice to think that his was the only
cock that she’d ever known, the only cock that had ever been inside
her, the only cock that had withdrawn leaving its placemark behind.
But she’d be so inexperienced. Did he really want to start from a
blank sheet of paper with a novice at his age? Probably not. But that
was no reason not to fantasise about it. He pictured the first time
she straddled him and rode him cowboy, moving slowly up and down,
then faster, the look on her face, her breasts trembling
independently of each other, leaning forward then back. It reminded
him of the time he’d been in exactly that position with Janet and
she asked him how many miles he thought she’d travelled on his
cock. That was an interesting calculation, especially if you included
all of his past girlfriends. First you’d have to list out all the
girlfriends and how long you went out with them. Then you’d have
make an assumption about how often you made love and how much of that
time was spent riding. And how long was the average thrust? And did
you count the up thrusts as well as the down thrusts or only the
down? It was way too hard with far too many variables. Maybe he’d
come back to it in the morning.

*****

But he didn’t come back to it in the morning because when he woke up
and switched on his tablet to read the news he was surprised to find
he’d already had a reply from Monika Radountcheva.

Dear Mr Manning,

Thank you for your mail and I’m glad you found Elena’s details of
interest. With regard to her height, I don’t have an “official”
figure but she’s around the same height as me so I would say 167
cm? With regard to a meeting or telephone call with Mr and Mrs
Tyler-Morgan I will do my best, but to be honest I’ve always found
them quite difficult to get hold of. I believe that they both have
demanding jobs in the City requiring them to work long hours, which
is exactly why Elena is so valued by them.

I look forward to hearing from you early next week.

Best Wishes,

Monika Radountcheva

167cm? What the hell was that in real time? He quickly googled a converter.
Five foot six or thereabouts. OK, so he was three inches taller. That
put his mind at rest. As for the line about demanding jobs in the
City, it seemed reasonable at face value, but it might also be an
excuse, a deflection to prevent him speaking to them. He’d have to
keep an eye on that.

He was hungry. It was time for his shower then some breakfast. He got
out of bed but as he walked to the en-suite he passed the full length
mirror on the wall and paused to contemplate his naked body. To be
honest he was contemplating his cock. The week before he’d been
walking through a shopping mall when he’d passed a stall selling
framed art house photographs. One of these photographs was of a naked
reclining black man. The man’s penis was flaccid but it looked like
an enormous hunk of meat compared to his own. In fact, whenever he
saw other men’s penis’s in photographs, films or TV they always
seemed intimidatingly large to him. This raised a number of questions
in Martyn’s mind. Firstly of course, was it true that black men
generally had bigger cocks than white men, or was it just an urban
myth? He’d never been able to get to the bottom of that one.
Secondly, maybe cocks just looked bigger from a third party
perspective compared to looking down at your own. That’s exactly
why he was looking in the mirror. His didn’t look too bad so maybe
there was some truth in that. Thirdly, was there any sort of
correlation between the size of a flaccid cock and the size of an
erect cock? Maybe his cock engorged more than a larger flaccid cock
and maybe even ended up bigger. Or maybe that was wishful thinking.
Still, he’d slept with a respectable number of women and no-one had
ever complained, or even commented. In fact one ex-girlfriend had
complained about her previous boyfriend’s tiny cock, so his
couldn’t be too bad.

What the hell, it is what it is.

END OF CHAPTER