smugness had been exacerbated by a sudden, violent explosion of jealousy because she had waltzed off with Lysander. This was the more appalling because after all she had suffered over Larry, Marigold thought she was immune from feeling jealous about anyone else.
‘The bitch,’ she stormed, ‘not taking saides indeed. “Don’t be bitter, Marigold, if you like your hair, that’s what matters.” And being so patronizing about Georgie and poor darling Kitty.’
‘Have a drink. One won’t hurt. What’s brought all this on?’
‘Then insistin’ you drove her home. God, I’m unhappy.’
Marigold was so upset, she unthinkingly picked up the remaining quarter of chocolate cake and was about to shove it into her face when Lysander grabbed her hand, squeezing it until she dropped the cake on the floor. Then he took her in his arms.
‘Don’t be miserable. She’s just jealous. I think you’re absolutely gorgeous.’
‘You do?’ whispered Marigold.
‘Yarss,’ said Lysander, and catching her off guard as she giggled, he kissed her, nearly losing his tongue in the process as Marigold clamped her teeth and lips together with a squeal of horrified rage.
‘How dare you?’ With shock fuelled by years of respectability and inhibition, she was fighting him off, pummelling his chest like Frank Bruno. ‘No, no, no!’
But Lysander grabbed her arms, and much stronger than her, drew her towards him, tantalizing her with the lithe, youthful warmth of his body, refusing to let go, until, panic-stricken, she raised her leg to knee him in the groin. But somehow her leg never reached its target, for far above it, Lysander was whispering words of such affection and desire into her hair.
‘I want you, Marigold. You creep into my thoughts like that pink mist stealing up the valley.’
Glancing up, amazed by such poetic sentiment, and seeing the gentleness in his adorably innocent eyes, and feeling his fingers stroking her face, seeking some loving message in braille, she let him put his beautiful mouth on hers.
As she kissed him back, the raised leg retreated and coiled itself round the other leg in ecstasy, and the pummelling Frank Bruno fists unclenched, and, ‘may goodness’, she was hanging from Lysander’s neck like a chimpanzee because she was so dizzy with lust it was the only way she could stand up.
Slowly, slowly like a Harrods lift at Christmas, Lysander progressed downwards. Worried that her breasts might be droopy, she clamped her arms back over them, but as Lysander caressed her neck, she couldn’t remember if she’d plucked out that bristle on her chin this morning. Raising her hand to check, she left her right breast exposed. Next moment it had fallen like a ripe pear into his hand, as he unhooked her bra.
‘Let’s go to bed.’
‘We can’t. Ay’ve never been to bed with anyone but Larry, and he says Ay fuck laike a dead… ’ Marigold gave a wail.
‘Hush, just regard it as a superior form of work-out.’
People are said never to remember how they get upstairs to the bedroom’ but it was imprinted on Marigold’s memory, because Lysander kissed her on every stair, but still half her mind was fretting about stretch marks and whether her body would be creased by such tight jeans and, although she’d had a bath two hours ago, whether she should wash again, so she wouldn’t smell of mouldy old woman. As they reached the landing, she nearly led him into the airing cupboard.
‘No, not in our bedroom,’ she squeaked with a resurgence of virtue, ‘and certainly not in there,’ as Lysander tried another door. ‘That’s where I caught Larry and Nikki.’
‘Good, I can lay you and the ghost.’
‘But the central heating’s been off for days.’
Lysander’s body was warmer than any radiator as he drew her close, and slowly began to unbutton her navy-blue cardigan.
‘Turn off the laight,’ moaned Marigold as she shot between the peach satin sheets.
‘I want to look at you,’ said Lysander.
In the end they compromised by leaving the light on on Lysander’s side with the lampshade tipped outwards.
‘God, I love snogging. Let’s go on for hours.’
And Marigold, who hadn’t snogged since the Purley Odeon in the sixties, responded with alacrity.
Then with the joyful excitement of a child unpacking a Christmas stocking he began to explore her body.
‘Christ, these are beautiful.’ He buried his face in her heavy breasts. ‘And do you like being stroked here?’ He turned her over to admire her surprisingly high rounded bottom. ‘This is my favourite bit.’ His hands crept up the velvet inside of her thighs. ‘No, it isn’t quite. This is.’ His long fingers disappeared into the sticky, spongy burrow.
‘Aaaaaah,’ sighed Marigold.
‘Eureka,’ said Lysander as like a doorbell in the dark his middle finger found the nub of her clitoris.
‘Ay reek of what?’ Marigold jumped away in horror. She knew she should have washed beforehand.
‘The only Greek I know. Come here.’
‘Ay truly shouldn’t.’
‘Isn’t it nice?’
‘Heavenly, but we mustn’t, oh, please go on, oh, gracious me, how lovely, oh, help me, help me.’ Marigold went silent and rigid, her breath came in little gasps, and she forgot to hold her tummy in. Finally she gave a contented moan.
‘Oh Laysander, that was top ’ole.’
‘It certainly was.’ Opening her eyes, she saw he was smiling down at her. ‘Open your legs, and I’ll turn you to cream. Did you enjoy it?’
‘Oh, very much, and now Ay must give you pleasure.’
Dutifully Marigold reared up on her elbow. The progress of her hand down his flat belly into the down of hair was impeded by a cock rearing up like the Tower of Pisa.
‘May word.’
Marigold had never really liked Larry’s cock, which was rather small and, because he preferred to make love in the morning, she’d never known after a night’s sleep what was under the folds. She’d always treated it like an unexploded bomb.
But Lysander, having had a shower after their jog, smelled as fresh and sweet as the violets that had scented the valley that afternoon, and his cock tasting faintly of Pear’s soap was so hard and smooth beneath her lips that she began to give it puppy licks.
Used to Dolly’s snake-like flickering expertise, Lysander was curiously turned on. But when she grew bolder and tried to take his cock in her mouth he sensed her fear, and detaching himself slithered down the satin sheets, pulling her on top of him.
‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ gasped Marigold, feeling gloriously thrust upward. ‘Oh Laysander, I’m flaying from your flagpole. Oh Laysander. LAY-SANDER!’
‘That was miraculous,’ said Lysander, retrieving the duvet from the floor, as he collapsed back on to the satin pillows.
‘You’re amazing, a complete revelation.’
‘Men are supposed to go on for hours, I never last more than a minute — if I’m lucky, so I make up for it beforehand.’
‘Ay should feel guilty.’
‘Why — we must have lost at least five hundred calories.’
Then, suddenly, he sat up, put the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, screwed up his face engagingly like Hermione, and sang in a high falsetto: ‘
‘We mustn’t tell Ferdie,’ said Marigold.
‘No, he’d be livid,’ said Lysander in alarm. ‘He insisted no bonking.’
‘We won’t do it again.’
‘We might. If we use up another five hundred calories, we could get a take-away for supper.’
‘Oh, yes please.’
