Chloe

Needless to say, neither could keep their mind on the task in hand. After a lengthy discussion with a salesman who could have been promoting Brylcreem as much as second-hand cars, Carl made a decision.

‘I’m interested, mate. I’ll have a think about it. But first I’m going to kiss Chloë.’

Humming away, Chloë was studying a vulcanite D-ring snaffle while filling her nostrils with the heavenly scent of a dressage saddle when she was suddenly grasped from behind and pirouetted. She did not notice the running martingales fall from their hook and bind themselves around JR, nor did she hear the clang of ten hoof picks as they hit the floor. She was oblivious to bridles slithering off the wall and was unaware that the dressage saddle was slowly slipping off its stand. All she knew was that Carl was kissing her and the world could wait. Heaven sent him, thank you, God. With her favourite smell of leather (‘Shit Chlo! Mine too!’) surrounding her, she was being expertly kissed by her chosen Adonis, surrounded by merchandise devoted to equitation. Heaven now had no mystique, for it could only be such a place.

Pressed against the wall, dislodging an entire selection of clincher brow bands, Chloë gladly welcomes Carl’s leg between hers and rides him gently and subconsciously as she kisses him. She can feel his erection poking through his jeans, through hers, and just above her appendix and she says to herself that it can give her peritonitis for all she cares. Slipping her hand through his hair to the back of his neck, she can feel his skin prickle and dampen under her touch. It thrills her. She feels rather proud. Carl is making noises that Chloë has never heard a man make. Spontaneous gulps and groans stifled by the intensity of lip work. She can hear similar sounds an octave higher.

It’s me!

It’s involuntary.

This girl can’t have been kissed for a good long while, thinks Carl as he thrusts his tongue up between Chloë’s cheek and teeth, but man, can she kiss good!

This is kissing, thinks Chloë, sipping Carl’s tongue deep into her mouth. Brett must have been doing something completely different all those years, something horribly lizard-like.

Jones the Tack, as he was known, would have been quite content for the lady and her young man to kiss all day were it not for a giggle of girls imploring him to let them in to marvel at his wares. He cleared his throat and Carl kissed Chloë deeper. He said ‘Hem hem’ in as nonchalant a way as he could. Chloë nipped Carl sharply on his bottom lip and then pulled him tight against her, kissing and teasing it better. Jones the Tack put his index finger up to the girls to say ‘A minute, will you?’ and gave out a cheery whistle. JR waddled towards him under a knot of reins but Carl’s hands merely wriggled through Chloë’s hair to stroke their way down her back and rest at the base of her spine.

Or the top of her ass, thought Carl, ever the optimist. It was when his hands ventured gamely over Chloë’s bottom, which gave an inadvertent thrust, that Jones the Tack felt things were just a little too steamy. For a tack shop. For lunch-time. For Abergavenny, my goodness!

‘Ten hoof picks, was it?’ he bellowed under the sweetest of smiles. Chloë and Carl leapt apart and found themselves in a tack shop in Abergavenny at lunch-time. Jones the Tack grinned away. Carl whisked himself around to bury his erection in a mountain of sweat rugs stacked conveniently behind him. Chloë stooped down to hide her blush and pick ten hoof picks from the muddle of bridles.

‘And ten mane combs too, please,’ she said huskily, not daring to catch the man’s eye.

‘Ten mane combs it is!’ sang Jones the Tack. ‘Anything else?’

‘Hoof oil and plaiting bands, please. Thank you. Very much.’

‘It’s my pleasure, lady!’

‘Yes,’ mumbled Chloë looking at JR intensely, doubting whether she was now much of a lady. She scurried away saying ‘Yup, thanks, bye’.

‘Lady!’ called Jones the Tack as she reached the door. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

Chloë looked aghast. Hoof combs. Mane picks. Plaiting oil. Hoof bands. Nothing missing. She shook her head with eyebrows askew. Jones the Tack nodded in the approximate direction of the sweat rugs without actually looking, and without his smile diminishing.

Carl!

Fortuitously, it was now safe for Carl to emerge. He and Chloë left the shop with a barrage of effusive gratitude and as elegant and honest a walk as they could muster. This they retained quite impressively until the corner of the street, when they fell about laughing until the tears squeezed from their eyes and their sides and faces ached quite unpleasantly.

The journey back to Skirrid End was beset by the all the usual afflictions of a day out in Abergavenny. But now, each traffic jam was a wonderful opportunity for another kiss. And why won’t the Land Rover stall? They have skipped lunch because they were too busy using their mouths for other things. Carl gladly forsook his research on combies because a stroll to the Linda Vista Gardens was far more attractive a proposition. There, on a picturesquely placed bench looking out over the castle meadows to the River Usk, they practised their kissing some more. Chloë declared it a far better cure for chapped lips than Vaseline.

‘But I’ll need a daily dose,’ she implored.

‘Morning and night?’

‘And noon!’

‘Noon too.’

It was bitterly cold. February after all. Late afternoon. A feeble effort by the sun now swallowed whole by a flat grey sky. Their noses ran and the chill ate into the muscles on their faces causing frequent twitching of the chins and the occasional physiognomic spasm that only served to make the kiss more interesting.

Skirrid End was anomalously quiet when they returned. The tractor was put to bed and all snoozed peacefully in the kitchen. Tiptoeing to the top of the stairs, they could hear the faint rumbles of Gin’s porcine snoring and knew all to be well. They fed and watered the horses, bedded down and rugged up. They sneaked into the tack room for a gentle, good-night kiss and parted company for the night. Both felt simultaneously exhausted and yet still on fire. Their lips felt large. Carl soothed himself by masturbating vigorously in front of the mirror in honour of Chloë. Chloë unwound by writing in minute detail to Peregrine and Jasper.

Just before she put her light out, she inched back the curtains. Carl, gloriously bare-chested, was waiting for her. She ran her tongue over her lips and could detect no roughness. Miracle. She whirled her tongue around her mouth and tasted something unfamiliar. Somebody else’s mouth. Somebody else’s desire. Desire. Unfamiliar. Delicious.

Carl blew her a kiss; chaste laced with amorous intent. She cocked her head and smiled broadly. Closing the curtains as slowly as she could, she clambered into bed with a daft grin on her face. With a sigh, she closed her eyes immediately and welcomed the cushion of silence that preceded sleep. She had neither the time nor inclination to brush her hair and talk to the Andrews. In fact, she didn’t dare.

ELEVEN

‘Peregrine, my true love, where are you?’ Jasper cupped his ear at the foot of the stairs and waited.

‘Up here!’ came a faint reply.

‘Up where exactly?’ yelled Jasper as patiently as he could.

‘Up up up!’ sang Peregrine, ‘right at the top.’

‘Oh God,’ said Jasper to himself, climbing the stairs with a heavy hand on the banister and a lighter one supporting his gammy hip, ‘not the damn frocks again.’

To his relief, he found Peregrine safe in his corduroys handling a Coalport tea service with reverence. He brandished a dainty milk jug in welcome.

‘Look what I found! Isn’t it divine! Wouldn’t First Flush Darjeeling taste incomparable in these darling cups?’

‘First Flush Darjeeling,’ said Jasper as sternly as he could, ‘is indeed incomparable. It’s almost thirty pounds a pound!’

Peregrine pouted most becomingly. ‘If we can’t have a little luxury – us, at our age and stage in life – then what! I may as well give up the ghost right now as face Typhoo bags in my dwindling days.’

‘Don’t be such a drama queen,’ Jasper said. ‘You know I would rather drink no tea at all than drink anything other than FFD! Look here, look what we have!’ He waved an envelope in a gracious arc high above his head.

‘Postmark?’ squealed Peregrine, clasping both hands tight around the sugar bowl.

‘Guess!’

‘Gwent?’

‘Abso-blooming-lutely!’

Sitting with perfect posture and an empty cup and saucer each, Jasper and Peregrine enjoyed Chloë’s letter. It seemed appropriate that as she had written from The Rafters, so they should be ensconced in Jocelyn’s attic aboard an old but deceptively supportive two-seater sofa covered with a dust-sheet. Envisaging Chloë huddled beneath her New Zealand rug, they pulled an old tartan blanket tightly about their knees and placed the china cups daintily on their laps.

‘Hullo you both,’ Jasper trilled in falsetto. Peregrine took the letter from him and, placing pince-nez exactly where they should be, started to read.

‘Hope you’re happy and healthy, bla bla, weather cold but clear, der der der, horse, bla bla. La la, up in The Rafters, cosy, private etcetera. Early nights ditto mornings. Bla bla. Work hard but have lots of fun. Don’t miss London, der der. No regrets, etcetera. Miss you both – us both – madly. Good! Etcetera. Gin Trap a hoot. Good Gracious Me!’ Peregrine fell silent while his eyes rampaged along the remaining paragraphs which ran to two pages.

‘What?’ Jasper nudged him, alarmed that his eyes were so wide and that his jaw had dropped. It was either something utterly horrendous or gloriously disgraceful. ‘What what what?’ he piped, craning for a glimpse at the page and cursing his appalling eyesight.

Peregrine folded the letter, put it back in the envelope before taking it out again and unfolding it slowly.

‘Little Hussy!’ he proclaimed with unbridled pride.