It’s odd to be sitting here in the Florida sunshine as a great
grandmother and to remember that I never even met my first American until I
was almost eighteen. That was when the big war was being fought in Europe.
I’m an old, old lady now but I still remember that windy April afternoon when
I ran an errand to Mill Cottage and everything that happened to me there.
My home was in a small rural village in England and I was waiting to
be drafted by the government for work in a munitions factory. It was
something I was looking forward to because most of the factories were in the
cities, and I’d never been to a city. My father was a farm laborer who’d
spent his entire life in our village. The only break in his dawn to dusk
chores was when he acted as warden in the village church every Sunday.
Perhaps it was because he was such a well respected member of the Vicar’s
flock that I became a Sunday School teacher. Not that I minded, as there was
very litle else to do while I waited to be called up. There were no more
dances, no more church socials, no outings, not with all the young men away
fighting Hitler and all the older people working twice as hard to keep things
going. The village had become a stagnant little backwater in the river of
life and now even my girl friends were packing their bags and being sent off
to make tanks and shells.
I sometimes wonder how long it would have taken me to wake up to real
life if I hadn’t run that errand for the Vicar. Anyway, I did, and Mill
Cottage turned out to be an instant education by courtesy of our American
allies and a pair of English courtesans. And all because the Vicar wanted to
ingratiate himself with Mrs Harrington by sending her a bottle of home made
dandelion wine!
Mrs Harrington wasn’t a villager at all, nor her friend who lived
with her, Mrs Walsh. They were a couple of snobby upper class London wives
who’d only moved to the countryside to escape the blitz. They were far
richer and more sophisticated than any of us, they wore fancy clothes, their
children were in private boarding schools and their husbands were
stockbrokers or something. Whatever they did for a living, Mr Harrington and
Mr Walsh only came down about once a month to visit their wives. I think
perhaps they were enjoying the war a lot more without their company. Mrs
Harrington and Mrs Walsh, on the other hand, were clearly pining for London
and were only kept away by fear of the bombing. Which all seemed like good
reasons to me why they didn’t deserve anything as a gift, not even a bottle
of dandelion wine. Another good reason was that I was the one who was going
to have to pedal out with it to their home at Mill Cottage, three miles away
from the village.
Transport was always a problem in the war. Very few people owned
cars, and in any case civilian fuel supplies were so tightly rationed there
was none to spare except for the most necessary journeys, so anybody with a
bicycle and a pair of strong young legs was always being asked to run
errands. Mostly I didn’t mind, but I knew just as well as the Vicar that the
only reason he was asking me to run this errand was to curry favour with our
local ladies of substance. Perhaps he was hoping there might be a handsome
subscription from them eventually for his church restoration fund. Yet, young
and naiveas I was, I didn’t think he had much chance of getting any cash from
either of those two, no matter what the length of their purses. Not that I
knew anymore about them than the local gossip, though there was plenty of
that.
In a village as small as mine a couple of women living on their own
caused a lot of loose talk, most of it nonsense, I thought. They were good
looking women though, that was true enough. Mrs Harrington had brilliant red
hair cut very short in what was called then a pageboy bob. She was tall and
athletic and apparently played tennis rather well. The dashing air of self
confidence in the way she walked around the village always had the men
looking after her swishing skirt and the long legs underneath it. As for Mrs
Walsh, she was shorter and plumper, with a well developed bosom and an
unusual combination of dark skin and violet eyes. Both of them dressed like
models, even in wartime, right down to nylon stockings, an almost unheard of
luxury then. Perhaps there was some truth in those rumours about fancy cars
belonging to black market crooks being seen parked near the cottage.
Which was really why I decided to deliver that lousy bottle of wine.
Because I was curious about whether anything out of the ordinary did go on at
Mill Cottage. Not that I was likely to be any the wiser after I’d been there
of course, but at least it was an excuse to go and knock on the door. The
back door, of course. I knew the ladies wouldn’t want a farm laborer’s
daughter knocking on their front door as if I was their social equal.
Having decided to do the job, I found myself heading out of the
village on a blowy April afternoon with tree branches flouncing around in a
cold wind which was blowing straight into my face. By the time I got to Mill
Cottage I was so fed up with the whole stupid business that I just wanted to
turn around and get an easy ride home before the wind changed direction. I
wheeled my bike down the small gravel drive at the side of the cottage and
then stopped in surprise at what I saw.
Parked up behind the cottage, completely out of sight of the road,
was a small car quite unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It was square at
the front and back, painted olive green, with a raised canvas hood and a
long radio aerial sticking up at the back. Obviously it was a military
vehicle of some kind. There were white stars on the sides and I realised it
must belong to the American army. Apart from anything else the steering wheel
was on the wrong side. Then I remembered a picture I’d seen in the newspaper,
with General Montgomery riding in something that looked like this. A joop, or
a jeep, or something like that was what it had been called. I didn’t know
anything about American cars. In fact I didn’t know anything at all about
Americans, except from what I’d seen on the films and newsreels at the
cinema. All I’d ever seen of them in real life were a lot of big planes
flying overhead with these same white star badges on the wings.
Of course I was very curious about what the joop was doing at Mill
Cottage. A large metal box with yellow lettering and numbers on it was wedged
in between the two front seats. I thought perhaps it might contain bullets,
which seemed even more likely when I saw that the lid was closed with a
padlock. Then I took a second look and realised that the hasp was hanging
free. Anybody who wanted to could lift up the lid and look inside the box.
There was nobody in the back yard, nobody at the closed back door, no
flutter of movement at any of the cottage’s curtains. All that was needed was
for me to lean inside and flick open the top of the box, and if anybody came
out I could say I was just curious to see the inside of the joop. So I leaned
in and opened the lid, to find that what I was prying into was a treasure
chest of off-the-ration luxuries.There were packets and packets of cigarettes
with strange brand names in strange soft packets. There were bars of
chocolate, there were jars of coffee, there were the protruding necks of four
bottles. I lifted one of them out far enough to read the label – genuine
Haig whiskey! So much for the Vicar’s dandelion wine as a home front comfort.
Yet the most impressive thing of all to me were the cellophane wrappings with
nylon stockings in them. Now I knew how Mrs Harrington and Mrs Walsh were
able to wear real nylons whilst the rest of us had to make do with seams
painted on the backs of our legs! And perhaps the three boxes of
contraceptive sheaths mixed in amongst all these luxury goods supplied a clue
as to why they were getting such treats.
Of course, even in my remote little village, we’d heard stories about
how US serviceman were incredibly rich, with access to all kinds of fancy
supplies, and how successful they’d been in spreading them out amongst the
looser sort of girls in return for… well, in return. But this was the home
of two respectable married women. It couldn’t be that they were playing fast
and loose with the Yanks, surely?
And just as I was turning that question over in my mind I heard a
woman laugh from somewhere nearby. Bewildered, I looked around and realised
that the sound come from the washhouse on the other side of the small yard.
Smoke was fluttering out of the chimney, which suddenly seemed very odd,
because I knew that Mrs Harrington and Mrs Walsh had a woman come in on every
Monday to do their washing and that day wasn’t a Monday.
This is were I have to give everybody a little bit of an history
lesson in how domestic chores were done in the old days. Before electricity
and washing machines came along the usual thing in most English houses was to
do the laundry in a ‘copper’. A copper was a very large circular sink – made
of copper coated metal – big enough to hold a week’s houshold laundry
together with several gallons of water. Coppers were usually built into the
top of a large square brick fireplace about waist height. Except in the
larger houses it was always put into an outside building, with a hand
operated water pump next to it. The housewife’s job was to keep working the
handle on the pump to fill the copper up with water, with occasional breaks
to tend to the fire underneath it, until the copper was half full and the
water as hot as possible. Then the dirty laundry went in and the whole lot
was stirred around many times until it was considered washed. Afterwards it
was taken out, the copper refilled with fresh water and all the clothes were
rinsed. And after that – well, I’ll tell you about those arrangements by and
by. Anyway, the one thing you didn’t usually hear in a washouse was anybody
laughing – there was too much hard work done in them for that. So I found it
hard to believe our two high society ladies could be doing their own laundry,
and even harder to believe they could be enjoying it.
The wash house door was closed. Of course, normally, if I’d have just
opened it and walked in, because it wasn’t like going into a house uninvited.
Most wash houses were usually shared by several houses anyway. This time
though I could justify it to myself to be rather cautious, as Mill Cottage
already seemed to have a guest, or guests. I was therefore perfectly entitled
to take a cautious peek through one of the wash house windows before I
disturbed anybody. At least that was what I told myself as I sought a way to
satisfy my burning curiousity about what was going on in the place. So I
walked around the small building until I found a small window misted up on
the inside. So misted up that it was impossible to see through.
It was an infuriating situation because it was clearly the only
window in the wash house and it was ideally situated, on the far side from
the cottage and facing a high hedgerow at the back of the cottage garden.
Nobody could see me standing there, but I couldn’t see anything either. If it
had been an ordinary sort of window the situation would have stayed like
that. Only it wasn’t an ordinary sort of window, it was one of the old
fashioned type made of lots of small diamond shaped panes of glass set in
lead strips. Old fashioned and flimsy, and one of the panes near the top of
the window was missing. If only I could just lift myself up a foot or so….
Looking around, I saw several old bricks at the bottom of the wall,
stacked together and almost completely hidden from sight by overgrowing grass
and nettles. I plucked out three of the bricks, carefully, but still got
stung on the wrist by a nettle in my hurry. With the bricks put back on top
of each other and with my right foot resting on the top one I was able to
lift myself up high enough to put my eye to the gap in the window.
The brickwork around the copper and the metal chimney pipe at the
back of it were set in the very middle of the wash house. A steady fire was
burning in the grate underneath the copper, with a gently rising cloud of
steam above it, and a considerable pile of firewood still waiting to be used.
There was a table, a plain old wooden table, near to the fireplace. On the
table was a naked man.
Well, naked except for a green towel draped over his bottom as he lay
on his stomach on top of the table. On top of the table and on top of some
more towels which had been spread across it like table clothes. His hands
were resting near his head, the bent arms showing great bulges of muscle on
the upper biceps. His face was turned away from me but it was easy to see
that he was a young fellow in the prime of life and physical condition, at
least six feet tall, and heavily tanned from the sun in a very un-English
way. Another alien thing was the way his dark black hair had been cut right
down almost to his skull, top and sides.
If I was astonished by the sight of the American, as he must be I
supposed, I was even more astonished at seeing a woman leaning over him,
rubbing her palms over his shoulders and neck muscles. It was Mrs Harrington,
smiling as I’d never seen her smile before, Mrs Harrington wearing a short
white tennis skirt and a matching white shirt, so damp it seemed to be
sticking to her like a second skin. In fact it was obvious she had nothing on
underneath the shirt at all!
This was like something the Vicar often preached about in church,
about Soddom and Gomorah and all the world’s wickedness. And here in his own
parish, a married woman indecently dressed was putting her hands on another
man! Yet if I was shocked I was fascinated by the scene, scarcely daring to
breathe. Even better was to come though, because Mrs Walsh came around the
copper carrying a tray in her hands, a rectangular wooden tray with one small
drinking glass on it. Incredibly, she was wearing a normal sort of blue
dress, but pinned up with a fringe of clothes pegs almost to the top of her
bare legs. The upper part of the dress was unbuttoned and looked as if had
recently been splashed with water.
The next thing that happened, astonishingly, was the sight of Mrs
Walsh getting down on both her knees at the head of the table and holding the
tray up to the man as if she was acting the role of a slave girl! He laughed
and said something to Mrs Walsh I couldn’t catch, but she stood up again. In
response he raised his other hand and my eyes bulged when I saw the huge
shiny pistol in it. I’d never seen one before in my life except in gangster
films! The Yank pointed the pistol at Mrs Walsh and she stood still. Then he
said something else and Mrs Harrington took her hands off his shoulders and
walked around behind Mrs Walsh. Then, and not believing it possible, I saw
her reach around in front of her friend and peel off the wet material of the
blue dress to display Mrs Walsh’s naked breasts! And Mrs Walsh held the tray
underneath her big dusky white pillows and gently lifted them up on it with
the glass carefully balanced between the mounds of flesh. She was watching
the American as if unsure of his reactions. Then she slowly knelt down in
front of him again, being very careful not to spill the glass. Without any
hurry at all he put down the gun on the table, reached out with his thumbs
and forefingers and brazenly tweaked both of Mrs Walsh’s bared nipples
jutting out over the edge of the tray!
Her hands were trembling. I knew they were because the tray was, and
I knew the tray was trembling because both of the large breasts piled up on
top of it were quivering like newly set jellies. Mrs Walsh was staring down
at her own vibrations and at the fingers playing on her with a kind of pursed
mouthed concentration, apparently determined on keeping the glass from
spilling over. As for Mrs Harrington she leaned forward over her friend and
squeezed the Yank’s biceps as if to encourage him. Then I saw her bend
forward a little closer as though he was telling her to do something. She
nodded, smiled again, reached down with an extended finger between her
companion’s breasts and apparently dipped it into the glass. Then the Yank
released his grip on Mrs Walsh and Mrs Harrington immediately applied her
long fingernail to the very same places, apparently smearing each of her
friend’s nipples with a drop of liquid from the glass!
Talk about exciting! I was watching all this in complete disbelief. I
saw Mrs Walsh wriggle further forward on her knees and lift the tray higher
towards the Yank’s face. He had the pistol in his hand again and pointed it
down towards her legs. Then he leaned forward and started to lick on each of
the nipples in turn as Mrs Walsh apparently struggled to keep the tray level,
struggling even more as the man slid further forward yet on the table and
took a mouthful of her right tit into his opened mouth. The tray began
quivering again and Mrs Walsh surprised me by suddenly laughing out aloud in
the same way as I had first heard outside.
My impression was that the pistol wasn’t a real threat, more a kind
of symbol of power. Neither of the women seemed to be in real fear, I was
sure of that. They were playing out roles which they were willing to do and
the gun was there as a kind of stage prop. Whatever was going on there was
no doubt that both of them seemed totally unabashed in doing whatever the
Yank wanted them to. It also seemed just as certain that one or both of them
were soon going to get treated in the same way as married women were treated
all the time. I certainly hoped so because I really wanted to watch that! I
was also hoping that it wouldn’t be long before it happened because my eye
was watering already with squinting through the small hole and my right ankle
was aching from balancing awkwardly on the bricks. Still, it was well worth
it because now Mrs Walsh had put down the tray and was holding each of her
nipples in turn up to the Yank’s mouth, dribbling a few drops from the glass
onto herself each time, apparently as a way of encouraging him to keep on
sucking both of the vivid pink tips.
It was simply so obvious how excited she was, obvious not only
because her teats were sticking out like chapel hatpegs, but by the way she
was offering them up to him with an almost abject eagerness to please, as if
she was a puppy lying on her back surrendering to the authority of the pack
leader. When I remembered how the pair of them strutted around the village
with their noses in the air – well, I would have given a fortune to have some
kind of a magic crystal ball or television set at home which would show this
scene over and over again. Not that I’d ever seen a television set, of
course, but I had once met a man who said he’d watched one in London before
the war.
Soon there was something better to see than any television. Mrs
Harrington went back to the side of the table, where she had been before, on
the opposite side of it to the window I was looking through. She calmly
reached down and pulled the towel off the man’s bottom. As she was neatly
folding it I stared at the sight, the paler rounds of flesh in the middle of
the long stretches of well tanned skin. Then she put her hands on each of the
taut buttocks and stroked them with her palms, just as she had done to his
shoulders. The Yank stirred and moved around, then apparently lost interest
in Mrs Walsh’s bosom, glancing back and lifting his bottom up an inch or so
off the table. The reason why was probably because Mrs Harrington’s right
hand had slid out of sight, down between the top of the legs, and the only
place those long fingernails could be now was around his balls. It was like
getting a bull aroused for a tupping session with a cow.
Mrs Walsh got up and walked around table on my side, blocking my view
of what was happening but apparently helping her friend in her work. Mrs
Harrington stepped back and undid the buttons at the top of her tennis shirt,
reached down to the bottom of the shirt and began to pull it up over her
head. After eventually managing to wriggle it over her close cut red hair she
dropped it on the floor, revealing exactly what I expected to see: nothing
but bare skin. Her breasts were smaller and firmer than Mrs Walsh’s were, and
she winked and smiled at her friend and ran her hands over herself before she
stepped up to the table again. Her nipples were browner and larger in
proportion to the other woman’s but equally as taut.
Then I saw the American’s face for the clearly for the first time as
he rolled over on his back. He was very good looking, with a strong chin and
a straight nose, like the cowboys we saw in Hollywood films at the cinema.
Or perhaps I was put in that way of mind by the pistol he was still holding.
Mrs Harrington looked at his face, then down at what was in front of her and
then back at the man as if she had some great satisfaction in what she was
seeing. I couldn’t see much myself because Mrs Walsh was in my way, but it
seemed as if they were both playing with him together, which surely, I
thought, there couldn’t be room for. Mrs Harrington moved sideways a step or
so, leaned forward over the American, rested her hands on the other side of
the table and began rubbing herself over him with her breasts swelling up
underneath her as she dragged them to and fro against the mat of curly black
hair on his powerful chest. She seemed to be enjoying the feeling. He laughed
and put his free hand round behind her, up underneath her short tennis skirt,
bunching up the pleats around his wrist as he took his chance. Mrs Harrington
moaned loud enough for me to hear as she wriggled her bottom around under the
man’s touch. His other hand and the pistol in it was still pointing towards
Mrs Walsh.
She moved around to the end of the table and I gaped at what I could
see now, the jutting length of maleness that stood up proudly from the
American’s loins. Without the slightest hesitation Mrs Harrington reached out
to her side and stroked his length from top to bottom, from tip to balls, as
calmly as if she was polishing a church candlestick – which was about the
length and size of it as well. It didn’t seem necessary to threaten the
women with a pistol when he could point something like that at them. Mrs
Harrington certainly seemed to be fascinated by it and in watching her
companion lean forward between his legs, further and further forward until
her face was between his thighs. And then Mrs Walsh put out her tongue and
lapped at the side of the rampant horn nearest to her.
Mrs Harrington giggled at the sight, still clutching the top of the
Yank’s cock. Then she slid further up his body and lowered her head to kiss
him full on the lips as he kept on fondling her amongst the folds of the
rucked up tennis skirt. After that she moved back again in the other
direction, her tongue running over his body hair, until she was face to face
with her friend. Mrs Walsh was still licking the Yank’s cock and both of
their tongues met as if by appointment on the very tip of his straining
flesh.
As for me, by this stage you could have dropped a bomb nearby and I
wouldn’t have noticed it. Our two most stuck up ladies, our local snobs,
bellies down over a Yank soldier doing things I’d heard of but hardly
believed possible. Both of them playing the same pink piccolo at the same
time and to the same tune! But who would ever believe me if I told them? Oh,
this was going to be good!
It was. First of all Mrs Harrington went to the side of the copper
and picked up a small packet she tore open with her teeth. As she came back
she took out what was inside it and put on the tip of his policeman’s helmet.
With a lot of laughing the two respectable married ladies helped each other
unroll the rubber sheath down over the American’s rearing flesh, stretching
the rubber so tightly it glinted in the faint light from the open fireplace.
It was obvious from the way that the man was rubbing himself up and down
against their hands that there was a pressure bursting up inside him he
urgently needed to relieve.
As soon as they’d finished the Yank jumped up off the table and bent
Mrs Harrington over the top of it, pushing her skirt up around her waist to
show she was wearing no more underneath it than she had been under her shirt.
Then he seized her waist belt in one hand like the reins of a horse and held
her in front of him for a moment whilst Mrs Walsh reached down between the
two of them, apparently positioning him for the first lunge forward into her
friend. Mrs Harrington screeched like a scalded cat and then much louder
again as the Yank jerked her against him, wedging her on that massive piston
and beginning to pound it into her like the driving rod on a steam
locomotive. Now he was on his feet I could see he was a giant of a man, as
wide across the shoulder as the village well, with cords of muscle on him
like a blacksmith. With one hand he was jerking the tall and strongly built
Mrs Harrington like a puppet backwards and forwards along his long inches as
she clutched the edge of the table and squealed with approval. His other
hand, still holding the gun, pushed Mrs Walsh in the back towards the table.
She clambered awkwardly onto it and stood up, stepped over the top of her
friend with her back towards the Yank. Again, he put his gun down, to have
both hands free to pull her skirt up. As soon as Mrs Walsh’s bottom was fully
exposed she knelt down on top of her friend, her fat round buttocks pinning
Mrs Harrington to the table top, her hands resting on the other woman’s
shoulders as if to make sure she couldn’t move.
The American reached around Mrs Walsh with his huge hands and seized
both of the plump breasts that hung down as if they were ripe fruit ready for
harvesting. She seemed to enjoy that well enough, but I could see what she
couldn’t, Mrs Harrington’s petulant expression at being held still and
suddenly deprived of the Yank’s full attention. She twisted her head around
to the left and then to her right, calling him to keep on fucking her. Yes,
that was the word she actually used, loud enough for me to hear her, and with
her supposed to be middle class and posh. The Yank grinned in great good
humour, suddenly looking like a schoolboy stealing a slice of cake, and then
answered her begging with several thrusting strokes so powerful that I was
sure the table was shoved forward an inch or so, even with all the weight
that was on it. Mrs Harrington made a lot of sounds something akin to a goose
honking.The man’s right hand dropped down onto her spine in front of Mrs
Walsh, then slid back to the dark bush of hair pressed on top of it. The
fingers moved between the two women, underneath Mrs Walsh and up into her.
Her thigh muscles tensed and her fingernails clutched at Mrs Harrington’s
shoulders as if she was riding her like a jockey, though it was clear that
the only riding Mrs Harrington was concerned with was the one she was getting
from the Yank. And it was then, at that moment, that Mrs Walsh lifted up her
head, looked at me and shouted out in anger.
It was one of these times that you can see what’s going on in
somebody’s mind without any need for words or even signs. She was already
gasping for breath, her face screwed up and ruddy cheeked as she concentrated
on her pleasures, and then she was staring at me and trying to warn her
partners in sin. The problem for her was that neither of them were interested
just then in anything she had to say. As for me, I couldn’t believe she’d
been able spot my eye with everything that had been happening to her. Only
when I looked down at the window did I realise what had happened. The fire
had burnt down, the water in the copper wasn’t quite so hot and some of the
mist on the window had disappeared. Not much, but enough for me to see the
firelight through it – which must mean, I supposed, that the upper part of my
body was silhouetted against the daylight. Which was how Mrs Walsh must have
seen that somebody was watching them. The question now was what to do next.
There was total confusion in my mind about whether to run away or
apologise for being there. Then I realised that I was being a fool for
thinking that any sort of an apology would get me out of this situation. The
only thing to do was to get away as soon as possible. But Mrs Walsh was a lot
more quick witted than I was. She forced herself up and back and looked down
to where the Yank had put his pistol on top of the table. She reached for it,
picked it up and aimed it directly at the window I was looking through.
“Stay there!” I heard her shout.
The pistol was waving around a lot but her finger was on the trigger
and the barrel looked as big as a milk churn as it was aimed straight at my
eye. Until then I hadn’t had the faintest idea of how frightening it can be
to have a gun of any kind aimed at you, especially when you don’t know if
it’s loaded or not. And especially when you’re in a situation where the
person holding the gun might really be angry enough to use it. So I did
something I never thought I’d have to do in my life, and held my hands up
over my head like a surrendering soldier. But in my shock at what was
happening I’d stepped down off the bricks and lost my viewpoint through the
latched window. I could hear through it though, a mingled bellow of male
triumph and a higher pitched shriek of absolute pleasure. It seemed as if the
Yank and Mrs Harrington both had reason to be satisfied with their present
position in life.