Tread Softly (30 page)

‘Who?' she asked, confused. Seeing her strange garb, he had evidently assumed that she had sneaked out expressly to see him, leaving her husband asleep.

‘Oakfield House.'

‘Er, no.'

‘I thought you might have phoned them?'

‘No.' His voice – lack of voice – was mesmerizing. The throaty rasp imbued every word with emotion.

He led her into the sitting-room, turning on just one dim light. The room was small and stiflingly hot and contained a few shabby pieces of furniture: a table, a couple of wooden chairs and a low-slung, battered sofa. He didn't invite her to sit down but simply stood, swathed in the grey blanket, looking at her intently. He seemed to be drinking her in, assuring himself of her presence. The room was uncannily quiet, holding its breath, as she was. The blustering wind was shut out; even the rain had stopped.

‘Lorna' – he spoke with effort – ‘are you OK? You look upset.'

‘Well, yes, I …'

‘What's wrong? Do you need help?'

‘Yes … No … I can't really discuss it.'

‘But I don't like to see you sad.'

‘I'm not sad.'

‘You are. I can tell from your eyes. And you're shivering. Are you cold?'

‘Mm. Freezing, actually.' She forced a smile.

‘Then I must warm you.'

She felt his arms latch around her and the blanket graze her cheek. She inhaled its musty smell – and
his
smell, of heat and sleep. He seemed so big, so solid, a bulwark, a protector. His very calmness and composure were already beginning to soothe her. She could feel herself thawing in his heat, blurring with the soft shadows from the lamp.

A car passed in the road outside. The noise rose and died away, lost in the pooling silence – a silence that seemed to enter her, fill her veins, her mind.

‘Better now?' he whispered.

‘Yes.'

‘I'm
too
hot.' He stepped back and let the blanket slip. His naked body was only inches away – the pubic hair tight-curled and fiercely black, blacker even than his skin; the penis long, thick, erect.

One step forwards and the tip of that erection would nudge against her stomach. ‘
No
, Oshoba. We mustn't. It's …'

He placed a finger on her lips. ‘Shh, shh. My brother says I'm not allowed to talk.'

He eased the coat from her shoulders. It fell to the floor with a soft, surrendering swish. He moved his face towards hers. The kiss was simple, chaste.

She closed her eyes – she had no need to see. Feeling was enough: first the pressure of his hand as he pulled her nightie up, then the gradual sensation of warmth and breadth inside her, of being filled and fused. He used no force; indeed he hardly moved, just stood pressed against her, as if he had slowed the night down, transformed its churning nightmares into a sensuous reverie. She too stayed motionless: if she took no active part it was all a dream, and in dreams you had no choice but to submit.

Gently he withdrew a fraction, and then pushed back, repeating the sequence in a slow, tantalizing rhythm. She was amazed at his restraint. Most men would slam and thrust. There was no urgency, no haste – she could simply
be
, savouring the feeling of him rooted in her. His hands were clasped tightly round her waist, his body so hot, the room so hot, she was liquefying, melting. A tiny sound escaped her, a sharp intake of breath.

Aware of even her slightest response, he pressed more deeply into her. She let it happen. If he succeeded in arousing her it was not of her volition. She no longer owned her body: it was part of his, joined to his, moving to the same dream-like rhythm – deep and slow, deep and slow.

Languorously he slid out. ‘Lie down. I want to look at you.'

He led her to the sofa, turned her round so that her back was against his chest, and slipped the nightie over her head. For a moment she was blinded, trapped in a billow of nylon before he lowered her carefully down. She watched his gaze travel from her eyes to her mouth, down to her breasts and belly, down further to her groin and thighs. The tiny golden hairs on her arms were standing up, not from cold but from the fierceness of his scrutiny. In turn, she looked at
him
, intrigued by the contrast in their bodies: hers fleshy and milk-pale; his long, broad, solid, muscly, black. And his hair, a close-cropped frizz, was joltingly different from her tawny, tangled mane. Even their navels were individual in shape – his a tiny swelling; hers a tiny cavern.

‘Your skin's so smooth,' he murmured. ‘I could spend the rest of my life kissing it and still want more. I'm going to kiss every single part of you.'

He would expect her to kiss him in return. Instead, she lay passively, her only role to acquiesce.

He bent to kiss her eyelashes, with the lightest, teasing touch, and ran his tongue along the lids. The sensation was exquisite, but she gave no sign of pleasure – no one should accuse her of encouraging him. She simply registered the feelings as he kissed her neck and throat: the deftness of his tongue; the slow, voluptuous pressure of his lips.

He took her hand and pressed it into his, his broad, chunky fingers straddling her slender ones. Then, turning it palm upward, he licked between each finger, lingeringly, deliciously, and along the base of the thumb. His lips moved from her hand to nuzzle the length of her arm, from the inside of her wrist to the soft hollow of her elbow and up to the ridge of her collar-bone. He took his time, relishing the texture of her skin, its smell, its taste, the blue tracery of each vein. Then he stroked the curve of her breast and, cupping it in his hand, touched the very tip of his tongue to the very tip of her nipple, flicking to and fro across it in the subtlest of caresses. His mouth made gradually widening circles around the nipple until he reached her belly.

‘I can hear your secret sounds,' he whispered, laying his head against it. ‘I'd like to bury myself in your flesh and stay there for ever and ever. That would be my heaven.'

His extravagance, in word and deed, astonished her. No one had ever worshipped her body like this.

Now he was exploring her navel, probing the tiny cavern, licking a slow pathway to the top of her pubic hair. ‘In Nigeria we call this tocohair,' he smiled, letting his fingers brush teasingly across it. His voice sounded painfully hoarse.

‘You mustn't talk, Oshoba.'

‘No, I mustn't talk – I must kiss.'

He eased her legs apart, but before using his tongue he gently fingered every fold and cranny, making a minute examination, as if she were the first woman he had ever seen. Perhaps he had never made love to a white woman. The thought was pleasing – to be his first.

‘Your labia are wonderfully long. And one's just slightly bigger than the other. I love that – it's exciting.'

He stretched them gently between his teeth, as if to make them longer still, then he kissed them, kissed between them, pushing his tongue swiftly in and out.

The tension was unbearable. She was forbidden to respond, yet her body was betraying her, aching to move as he used a finger as well as his tongue, alternating one with the other, setting up tiny shock-waves from the friction of his knuckle.

She bit her own knuckle in an effort to keep silent, but her body was arching under him and she knew she was losing control. Pushing his hand away, she suddenly cried out, ‘Oshoba – make love to me.
Now!
'

Without a word he stood up and eased her body to the very end of the sofa, until her feet were resting on the floor and her neck and head were arched back. Then he knelt on the carpet, between her legs, and insinuated himself into her, centimetre by centimetre, as if the slightest haste or roughness might upset or alarm her. And he was right – this must remain a dream, a delicious lassitude, a dawdling drift to ecstasy.

Time itself seemed suspended as he moved rhythmically back and forth, back and forth, letting her feel the length of him, spinning out her pleasure in slow motion. She knew she would come, eventually, extravagantly, and that he would come with her, thrillingly, exquisitely, and then they would come again, together.

And again.

Again.

There were no limits in a dream.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Pearson. How are we?'

She bridled at the ‘we'. He was probably fighting fit, judging by his sleek appearance. ‘Never been better,' she said.

The sarcasm was lost on Mr Hughes. ‘Splendid!' he smiled. ‘So I take it the foot's improved?'

‘No. It's worse. A lot worse. I've been getting a pain just here.' She indicated the underside of her foot. ‘A sharp, searing pain. It's difficult to walk.'

He gave his professional frown, combining dismay and concern with a hint of incredulity. ‘We'd better take a look at it. Would you remove your shoe and sock, please.'

He placed her naked foot on his pin-striped thigh. His hand was hot, her foot was hot, and all at once she felt herself melting in the heat of Oshoba's embrace – a pin-striped Oshoba with silver hair, shafting her so wildly the sofa-springs were gasping in shock.

‘Good job you don't live somewhere like Iran. You'd be stoned to death for adultery there, or at the very least have your hands and feet cut off.'

‘I wouldn't mind my feet being cut off,' she retorted to the Monster, wincing as Mr Hughes pressed hard against the ball of her foot.

‘Is this where it hurts, Mrs Pearson?'

‘Yes. Ouch!'

‘If Ralph finds out he'll divorce you.'

‘We may as well
be
divorced. We're hardly speaking to each other any more.'

‘It'd be far worse on your own. Mega-panics every night – you'd soon be hauled off in a strait-jacket.'

Mr Hughes was still squeezing her foot – a form of third-degree torture. ‘Mm,' he said, shaking his head, ‘I'm not quite sure what's going on here … I suspect you either have a transfer metatarsalgia or you've developed a plantar digital neuroma. Possibly both.'

‘I'm sorry, I don't understand.' Couldn't he speak plain English?

She stifled a scream as he touched a particularly tender spot.

‘A neuroma is a swelling on the nerve, Mrs Pearson. You can't see it, but it does give rise to acute neural pain. As for the metatarsalgia, I'm afraid we, er, may have shortened the bone a fraction too much, which means you're now taking the weight on the second toe. That causes pain in the ball of the foot. We call it a transfer lesion.'

‘In other words, he's made another balls-up. Nice pun, eh?' the Monster cackled.

‘So what can I …
we
do about it?'

‘Well, temporarily, I'm afraid you'll need more pain-killers.'

‘I'm already gulping them in handfuls.' And not only for the foot. The shingles had returned with a vengeance – a stress reaction, no doubt.

‘Probably a stronger variety would be better. I'll write you up for some Distalgesic. And we'll arrange to make you a pair of orthoses.'

‘A pair of what?'

‘Anti-pronatory devices.'

She looked at him blankly.

‘Special insoles for your shoes. I'm afraid they're not a cure, but they can help in the short term. They work in the same way as, say, a pair of spectacles, accommodating a problem without actually correcting it. We'll make an appointment for you with Mr Weekes, the podiatrist I use.'

Podiatrist? She was in need of a medical dictionary.

‘I'm afraid his practice is in Plumstead, which is rather a trek for you.'

He was right about that, especially when she wasn't supposed to drive and had to walk with the aid of two sticks.

‘But why I recommend him is that he's just invested in a state-of-the-art scanner which shows exactly where your feet are taking the pressure. It measures the transference of your weight through the feet as you walk. And another thing Mr Weekes can assess is the articulation between your ankle and your knee, your knee and your hip, your hip and your pelvis, the whole of your spine, and …'

She was reminded of ‘Dem Bones, Dem Bones' and wondered if he was about to break into song:

‘Your thigh-bone's connected to your hip-bone,
Your hip-bone's connected to your …'

‘Then they take a plaster-of-Paris impression of your feet, and the orthoses are moulded over the cast. But of course with all those different processes they do tend to be rather expensive.'

Forget it then, she bit back. ‘How expensive?'

‘Oh, four hundred pounds. Five hundred perhaps. Somewhere in that region.'

‘Five hundred pounds for
insoles
?'

‘And all because he did a crap job in the first place.' The Monster was flexing his own feet, demonstrating their innate superiority.

‘Well, they are custom-made, Mrs Pearson. And Mr Weekes is extremely sound. He's made some first-class orthotic devices for many of my patients.'

‘Would BUPA cover the cost?'

‘BUPA?' jeered the Monster. ‘You can't afford those luxuries now. You'll have to wait your turn on the NHS like everybody else. Which means you'll get your insoles by 2010 – if you're lucky.'

‘Unlikely, I'm afraid. Most health-insurance companies are unwilling to fund such devices.'

Well, what was another few hundred pounds compared with forty thousand? Perhaps she could sell her gold-and-diamond bracelet – or her wedding-ring, come to that.

She stared glumly at the wall. Oshoba's bare black body was superimposed on the stark white paint. If Ralph were ever to hear of it … Was a casual affair worse than letting the insurance lapse? Had she any right to be angry still? Had he?

Mr Hughes was now examining her toes, palpating each in turn. ‘I'm not completely happy about these second and third toes. I think I'll send you along to X-ray. They should be able to fit you in within half an hour or so. Then if you come back here with the plates we can look at them together and see what's going on.'