Dara

wants a cuddle.” You couldn't help laughing at the things he said. He was always coming out with comic remarks like that and, mind you, always with a straight face.'

'Well go on,' I said, interrupting her again. 'What happened?'

'To tell you the truth I was frightened out of my wits. Being a virgin and in the flower of my youth, as you might say, what with his wife asleep downstairs and him up with me, I didn't know what to do. I put up a struggle but he got it in me just the same. It hurt a bit at first but not all that much.'

She broke off for a moment to serve some drinks then came back to me. 'Where was I? Oh, yes. He was a handsome forty at the time and very clean about his person-if you know what I mean. I was big for my age, a grown up girl before I was fourteen and that's when I started to get as much pleasure from it as he did.'

As she seemed to have run out of words, I asked, 'How long did it go on for?'

'Oh! Let me see. I was twenty-three when he collapsed all of a heap on the kitchen floor one day. His heart gave out I think. About eleven years I would say. The day after they buried him, his widow had a stand up row with me and kicked me out, bag and baggage. You see she had known all along what was happening but never let on until after her husband had died. He had always given me a shilling every time he did it and as I never spent any of it I had quite a bit put by for me when I needed it.'

'What did you do when she kicked you out? Come to London?'

'Yes, that's right. I had never been anywhere but Chelmsford and I had always wanted to see London. That's when I met Fred. Oh, he was a lovely man, was Fred. A wonder in bed and a wonder with his tattoo needle. That's how I got all the tattoo pictures on me. I'll show you them some time. You will be amazed. I'm a living work of art. It wouldn't be decent,' she said with a giggle, 'but sometime I would like to walk around stark naked so that everybody could admire Fred's pictures.'

She came to an abrupt stop when Pig Face brushed past me, nipping my bum as he went by. 'That's just like him, the dirty old sod,' said Florrie. 'This was Fred's regular drinking place and after he died I came to work here. Pig Face's wife was still alive then, but that didn't stop him trying to get his hand up my skirt. He didn't get very far because I pushed my thumbs into his eyeballs and kneed him hard in the nutmegs. He never tried it on again after that.'

Awakening before Adam the following morning, I found myself cuddled to him with a hand on his crotch. I don't know how long I had been in that position but he was firm and sticking up proudly. It jerked each time my fingers stroked. Each twitch of his cock brought a tremor to my giny and sent a thrilling spasm of desire through my burning flesh.

His eyes were still closed in sleep as I eased under him and guided him into me. In this drowsiness he lay heavy on me but that's the way I wanted it. After all those months without ever feeling the full weight of a man on me it was good to feel the hard muscular belly pressing into mine. Twining my legs around his, I levered my hips upwards, forcing my giny hard up against him. Swooning with joyful bliss my swiggling buttocks raised my fevered passions to the dizzy heights of fulfillment.

Adam was fully awake by this time and in his usual crouched position driving himself deep into me. I lay back with languid limbs, in blissful submission, as he savaged my throbbing giny and rose again to join him in a thunderous whirling storm that left us clasped tight against each other.

Clinging to him in warm contentment, I opened my tear-smeared eyes to find him smiling at me with tender amusement and, for the first time since we had met, received a fond kiss on the lips. A kiss that opened the flood gates of my affections, but he pulled away when I reached out to caress his lips with loving fingers and rolled out of bed to pull on his trousers impatiently, as if ashamed of showing the soft underside of his nature.

It didn't happen all that often but whenever I awoke before Adam my persuasive caresses soon had him ripe and ready for loving. With his head clouded in sleep I could take full advantage of his drowsiness to have it my way. My clinging legs held him close to me until my giny tensed and I lay back, all passion spent.

It was only on such mornings that we got together as lovers should, allowing the deep longing of the flesh for union with someone of the opposite sex to reach fulfilment. It seems contradictory but, after I had risen in joy and happiness to achieve the sensual bliss that follows desire satisfied, I welcomed the onslaught of his aggressive lust. Satiated with sensual warmth I submitted willingly to the rapist that is in all men and opened my thighs wider to further his passions. Clinging to him after he had emptied his loins into me I would await the tender kiss of gratitude that was my reward for awakening him with loving caresses.

It was about this time that I discovered who was living in the cupboard on our landing. I can only assume that in better days, when the house was occupied by a family with servants, it had been used to store bedding. It protruded into our room to a depth of about three feet.

Adam was having an evening out with Tom Biggs and had left me to my own devices. As I sat mending a small tear in my skirt, my concentration was disturbed by scraping and scratching sounds coming from the space taken up by the cupboard. Often during the night I heard rats scuffling under the floorboards but this was altogether different. Coming out onto the landing I cautiously opened one of the doors of the cupboard to find a ragged boy about eight-years-old, smeared in oil and grime, scraping away at a piece of copper by the light of a tallow candle. He was squatting on a straw-filled mattress which covered most of the floor of the cupboard. His clothing was tattered and torn and between his open legs was a basket of odds and ends; bones, copper nails, pieces of coal and a filthy variety of other curious objects. I was about to ask him what he was doing there when a girl of about ten or eleven rudely pushed past me to sit down beside her brother.

'Wot d'you want?' she demanded of me.

'Nothing. I heard a scraping noise and wondered where it was coming from. How long have you been living in this cupboard?'

'Wot's it to you?' she said and pulled the door to.

I went back to my sewing, intrigued at the thought that Adam and I had neighbours who lived practically in our room. More in a sense of fun than anything else, I knocked three times on the wall that was the back of their cupboard. In less than a minute there was a knock on our door.

'Come in,' I shouted.

The door swung open and there she stood, bristling with indignation. 'Wot the 'ell d'yer want now?' she asked, prepared to do battle with me.

She was completely disarmed when I took two apples from our fruit sack and offered them to her. Viewing the apples with a stark, hungry look she licked her lips and slowly moved towards them. When she was within reaching distance she grabbed the apples and stepped backwards and took a bite out of one of them. Munching away she looked at me doubtfully. 'Wot's yer name?' she asked through a mouth full of apple.

'Dara-what's yours?'

'Polly Barnes.'

And your brother?' I asked.

'Peter. You frightened 'im when you came on 'im suddenly like that. You're a bit of a nosey parker, ain't yer?'

I laughed. 'Bring him in here and I will give him an apple.'

She banged on the wall and shouted, 'Peter, come in 'ere.'

When he appeared in the doorway I offered him an apple and asked what he was doing with the bits and pieces he had in his basket.

'Sortin' 'em aht,' he mumbled as he chewed on the apple.

'We're “mud larks',' said Polly in the way of an explanation.

'What the hell is a “mud lark”?' I asked.

'Cor. Where've you been? Mean ter say yer never 'eard of mud larks?' I shook my head. Alright, tell me what you do when you are mudlarking.'

'Well! Everyday we search in the mud by the riverside for coppah, nails, coal, old iron, bones-anyfink that we can get a penny or two for. Las' week Peter fahnd a shillin' an' I pulled aht a baby's shawl. We got thrupence for it-it was a good 'un-that's arter I'd washed it.'

As the weeks went by we became good friends. On the nights that Adam was out I would often sit in their cupboard helping to sort out and clean the pieces of copper and iron. Everyday they were down by the river banks, up to their knees in mud and floating scum, searching the dregs of the tide.

They had previously lived with their mother and her man in the room now occupied by Adam and me. When their mother died the man just got up and walked out on them. They had no money for rent so they sought