Bad Penny (17 page)

‘Post for you, Dr Birch,' he announced and disappeared as abruptly as he had arrived.

I smiled, despite myself; for five years, the old man had never condescended to do more than grunt in my direction, only referring to me as Miss Birch when addressing a member of the academic staff. Now that I had my doctorate, he was suddenly all politeness and respect. The envelope had been expensive once but was now dog-eared and covered in mud. It proved to be an invitation from a private laboratory in north Devon, containing a couple of paragraphs of praise and comment on my work on genetic sequencing and an invitation to visit a research institute. It was from a Dr Hetherington, a name that meant nothing to me. This was surprising and a little irritating as I had thought I knew everyone within my field, so I sought out my supervisor, or rather ex-supervisor.

He turned out to have gone to the refectory, where I found him wolfing curry and rice and discussing gastropod polymorphism with the ancient Professor Watts. When I finally managed to introduce the name of Dr Hetherington into the conversation, it was Professor Watts who replied.

‘Hetherington? Fine brain, mad as a hatter.'

‘Did you know him then?' I asked.

‘Certainly, did his doctor's with me. Surely you remember him, Laurence?'

My ex-supervisor shook his head.

‘Couple of years before your time, then. Must remember the scandal though. '62 it was, or '63. Caught in the woods with an undergraduate. Pretty little thing, she was. Had her on a dog lead; hm, sorry, Penny.'

‘Don't mind me,' I insisted. ‘I had a letter from him this morning inviting me to go down and look at his research establishment near Crediton.'

‘Good heavens, I had no idea he was still working. Still, he was a genetics man.'

‘I think I'll accept, then,' I put in. ‘It sounds fascinating.'

‘Certainly mysterious, but watch your step; he's a most peculiar fellow.'

‘Oh, I can look after myself,' I replied airily.

A week later, I took a train to Exeter and was collected by Dr Hetherington's assistant, a young woman named Helen. She greeted me warmly, taking the hand I offered but leaving me with a strange impression that she would rather not have shaken it, but licked it instead. This was obviously ludicrous, so I declined her offer to carry my case and followed her to the car. One other thing struck me about her: although it was a warm day, she wore a heavy overcoat. She was extraordinarily energetic, one moment walking ahead of me, the next behind, and keeping up a constant flow of questions about my research, interspersed with comments about her own. Apparently, Dr Hetherington had been working on inter-specific genetic transfer for years. She had joined him a year ago, shortly after the publication of my first paper on gene sequencing. It was my paper that had enabled them to make a crucial breakthrough, a breakthrough that she refused to discuss until we arrived.

I would like to think that I am not entirely stupid and, by the time we had turned off the A30 and were winding our way through the woody hills to the north-east of Dartmoor, I had put two and two together and reached a conclusion so extraordinary that for a moment I doubted my own reasoning. There was something else as well. Since I had been living with Amber I had learnt a lot about reading the signs of sexual excitement in other women and, unless I was very much mistaken, Helen was showing all the right signs, and in a way that could or ly mean one thing: a desire for domination.

A couple more miles passed and I had decided what to do. Possibly I was about to make a prime fool of myself, but it was a risk I was prepared to take.

‘Stop the car,' I ordered as we came in sight of a lay-by next to a small wood.

She obeyed, looking at me rather uncertainly.

‘Don't worry,' I continued. ‘Just step out of the car and go a little way into the wood.'

‘OK,' she replied, her voice trembling as she looked nervously around.

I followed her into the shade of a thick stand of holly.

‘Now open your coat,' I said, keeping my voice gentle but firm. ‘Then your top.'

Her fingers were trembling as she undid her coat buttons one by one and then started on those of her blouse, keeping the coat close enough to cover her chest. I found myself biting my lip as I caught a glimpse of creamy white flesh. The next moment, my jaw had dropped and, despite my suspicions and my attempt to remain cool, I realised that I was gaping like an idiot.

Helen had pulled her blouse wide open, exposing small, neat breasts, each one just full enough to fill a cupped hand. Only I couldn't have done it; I didn't have enough hands. There were three pairs, one above the other, each identical and set at an even distance apart.

‘My own developmental sequence and morphology, canid location sequencing,' she said quietly. ‘It only took six months. Would you like to touch them?'

I stepped forward, entranced by her. Reaching out, I took the lowest pair of breasts in my hands, exploring their soft, rounded shape and trailing my thumb over the nipples so that they became stiff. I could feel her trembling as I moved to the second pair and stood closer so that I could kiss her, first on the neck and then on her mouth. I wanted to bury my face in her breasts, suck and fondle each one, in awe as much as in ecstasy, but I resisted the urge, sure that there was a better route to follow.

‘Be my puppy-dog,' I said, doing my best to sound commanding but feeling as if I was pleading.

She looked into my eyes, her own very wide and moist and I knew that I had struck exactly the right chord. She dropped to all fours, never taking her eyes off mine, and knelt, waiting for praise or rebuke, a stroke or a smack, whatever I cared to give.

‘I think you need a little walk,' I said and strode off into the wood, ordering her to heel and completely ignoring her difficulties with holly leaves and sticks. After about fifty yards, I felt secure enough and seated myself on a convenient beech trunk.

‘You wanted to lick my hand at the station, didn't you?' I asked as she reached me and sprawled out at my feet. ‘No, don't respond. I know you wanted to, so now I'm going to beat you for it, not really because you deserve it, but because I want to and because I can. First, I think we'd better have those clothes off. Whoever heard of a puppy in a coat or jeans?'

I pulled her clothes off, taking plenty of opportunity to stroke her wonderful breasts and exploring her without the slightest thought for where she might or might not want to be touched. She looked exquisite naked, her body soft and vulnerable in her kneeling position, her breasts dangling like teats under her chest. I was desperate for my own pleasure but held back, determined not to show my feelings.

She knelt, presenting her bottom for punishment, trembling in apprehension of what I might do but accepting my choice. I decided to make her wait and to amuse myself with her for a bit.

‘Roll,' I ordered and watched her turn on her back, apparently oblivious to the display she was making of her open vagina.

‘Now come to me and beg.'

She crawled over, squatting down with her hands tucked up like paws under her chin. I placed a foot between her legs, the curve of my boot running from the soft swell of her bottom to her tummy. I let her rub herself against me for an instant and then pushed. She fell back in the leaf mould, her big eyes looking hurt as she curled on to her side, tender bottom stuck out towards me. I picked up a long beech twig, watching her eyes follow my movement as I raised it over my head.

She squealed as the stick came down on her buttocks, leaving a crooked red line across the white skin. One was enough; she began to whimper and I took mercy on her, sliding one hand between her legs to cup her pubic mound, the ball of my thumb spreading her sex-lips and my other hand exploring her multiple breasts. She came fast, pressing herself frantically against my hand so that she was doing all the work.

It was just too much. I stood back, almost tearing my knickers in my haste to get them down then kicking them to one side as I sat back on the beech trunk and pulled my skirt up to show her my pussy.

‘Lick,' I ordered unnecessarily as she scrambled over and buried her face between my open thighs. I felt dizzy with pleasure, the canopy of leaves spinning over my head as her tongue worked at me, making me tense a little bit, then harder and finally bringing me to a peak that made me scream as her front teeth nipped at my clit.

For a long while I sat on the log, saying nothing, Helen kneeling in front of me with a coy smile on her face, making no move to dress or cover herself and still clearly my puppy-dog. I gave her a kiss and took a final squeeze of her middle left breast.

‘You may get dressed,' I said. ‘At least for now.'

She got to her feet and began to brush the leaves and bits of twig from her body, then started to dress.

‘By the way,' I asked, bending to retrieve my knickers, ‘I understand the physical change, but what about your behaviour? Is it psychosomatic?'

‘Not at all, or at least not in my case,' she replied, reverting to the sharp young scientist as easily as she had left. ‘The truth is, I've always had puppy-dog fantasies; that's why I chose what I did. I could as easily have had tortoiseshell fur or a real pony-tail.'

‘And what does Dr Hetherington think?' I asked, recalling the reason he had had to leave the university.

‘Oh, he knows all about it, believe me,' she replied mischievously. ‘He probably won't let me eat out of my special bowl for a week when he finds out what we did.'

We walked back to the car and twenty minutes later arrived at the lonely farmhouse that held Dr Hetherington's laboratory. The man himself greeted us at the front door. He was tall and silver-haired, with a humorous face and an expression that gave only a hint of the fierce intelligence that it concealed. He wore loose trousers under a standard white lab coat, his hands thrust deep into the pockets. He noticed immediately that Helen's coat was open and made the correct deductions, or at least some of them, and he gave us a knowing smile.

‘Ah, Dr Hetherington,' I greeted him. ‘I am astonished by your brilliance, but I feel I must question your ethics. Was it right to allow Helen to risk the first trial of such an elaborate technique?'

‘Helen? The first?' he replied. ‘Not at all, Dr Birch, not at all. No, no, the first trial was an equine developmental sequence, Persheron Cart Horse, as it happens. Would you like to see?'

Dr Hetherington reached for the buttons of his lab coat.

11

New-Age Rough

‘You must go and talk to her,' my mother said, spearing a runner bean with her fork in a deliberate manner. ‘She'll listen to you.'

‘But . . .' I began.

‘Don't quibble, Penny,' she retorted in her ‘no-nonsense' voice. It was a tone I could remember from my earliest childhood and I knew that there was no point in arguing.

‘Oh, all right,' I sighed, giving in to the inevitable. ‘But how am I supposed to find them?'

She started to explain that it should be simple to find a London bus with a psychedelic paint-job in the mere few hundred square miles of the West Country. I filled my mouth with chicken and bread sauce to avoid having to reply and switched off. It was one of those awkward family discussions. Kate's little sister, Susan, had taken it into her head to shack up with some ageing hippie and was travelling around southern England in his clapped-out bus. Inevitably, both Kate's mum and my own. sisters with a similarly tough and old-fashioned outlook on life, disapproved. We all knew she wouldn't take any notice of Kate, so it was me they expected to go and talk her out of what they saw as a foolish liaison. ‘You are the sensible one,' my mother had explained. ‘Katie's so woolly-minded and Elaine and I are really too old for this sort of thing.'

What made it worse was that, although nothing had been said, I was sure Kate and my closeness hadn't gone entirely unnoticed. It was typical of my mother that while her daughter and niece having had sex together was ‘. . .  one of those things that shouldn't be mentioned . . .', another niece being in an open relationship with an older man, and a hippie at that, was' . . . quite simply beyond the pail . . .'.

‘. . .  you can start in Blandford Forum, that's where her postcard came from,' my mother was finishing, ‘and don't put so much in your mouth. Really, Penny, your manners are dreadful.'

I grimaced and loaded my fork with a rebelliously large roast potato.

My intention was to drive around Dorset for a few days, visit Lulworth Cove and perhaps the fossiliferous strata at Lyme Regis and then return to report that I had been unable to find them. Fate was not keen to let me have things so easily. As I was threading my way through the small roads to the south of Salisbury Plain, I passed a long-abandoned chalk quarry and there, making an extraordinary contrast with the dirty white quarry and the bright green vegetation, was a London bus, an undoubtedly psychedelic London bus.

I stopped the car and reversed back to where I could see the bus. It had to be the one: luminous yellow, fuschia pink and lime green were the predominant colours, painted in swirls, crazy zigzags and concentric rings. Someone had been painting big turquoise flowers but had given up, and an open tin of paint stood on the ground by a front wheel. I parked and walked into the quarry. The last time I had seen Susan, she had been a gawky schoolgirl, already taller than me, but with all the sex appeal of a stick of celery, and that was the picture of her that was in my mind. Neville, the boyfriend, I imagined as a sort of cross between John Lennon and a tramp: lanky, stooped, bespectacled and with matted hair hanging to his knees.