A Start in Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

mates.’
    â€˜Did he make you promise not to tell anybody?’
    I smiled: ‘He didn’t need to.’
    The cake had smeared her lipstick, and she took a mirror from her handbag to smooth it right. ‘Was it about me?’
    â€˜He’s got his eyes on another girl and he’s wondering whether to chuck you up.’
    Her lip trembled: ‘You’re a liar.’
    â€˜I told him he’d be a fool to pack you in. I talked and talked to him, so I don’t think he will now.’
    She looked around the coffee bar, as if to make sure no one might recognize us and clatfart the news to Alfie. If that happened, he really would pack her in. She stood up. ‘I’m going now. On my own. Don’t follow me.’
    â€˜You’re going to see Alfie?’
    She wasn’t a very good liar, so didn’t try: ‘Yes.’
    â€˜You’re wasting your time. He isn’t in tonight. He told me he was going up Carlton to see his grandma.’ She looked done for at this news, believing me all along the line, though I don’t know how she could have been so stupid. I held her hand and pressed it so that she could feel my love. ‘You might as well come up Strelley with me. It’s fine out, and you’ll enjoy a bit of country air.’
    She sat down again, and I got her another cup of tea. ‘I’m going home,’ she said, ‘that’s the best thing.’
    Now it was my turn to stand up: ‘If that’s how you feel. I’m fed up with this. I’ve got a date at half past six with a girl from our place, who comes in from Tibshelf every day. She’s a smasher.’
    â€˜Don’t you like me any more then?’ Claudine said.
    â€˜Course I do. But I just want to get out of this dump and go for a walk.’
    Half an hour later we were passing the Broad Oak pub on the lane towards Strelley, arm in arm. There were some two hours of daylight left, and a warm breeze blew in from the fields. ‘Feeling better?’ – and she answered glumly that she was all right. We turned left after the church and made our way into Spring Wood. A courting couple were snogging on the path in front, so I said: ‘Let’s get farther in off the path.’ She didn’t want to, so I thought it was time to say: ‘Let’s go and have it together. I’m dying for you, Claudine. You’re the first girl I’ve been in love with, and we’ve known each other for months. It’s all right now.’ I pulled her to me, and we met in a wonderful kiss under the heavy rustling leaves.
    â€˜No,’ she said, when I put my hand on her leg. I pushed them apart, and she wondered what was coming.
    â€˜I’m going to see Alfie in my dinner hour tomorrow, and I’ll tell him what’s been going on between us all this time.’
    â€˜Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘How could you be so rotten?’
    â€˜Because I want you. You drive me crazy. But I’ll tell him, and then he’ll go to this new girl he’s got his eyes on. I’ll pack you in as well.’
    She laughed it off: ‘There’s plenty of other pebbles on the beach.’
    I laughed as well. ‘The sea’s a long way away, and at Skegness it’s all sand.’
    She stood silent for a while, then said solemnly: ‘Do you mean it?’
    I swore that I did, so she took my hand and said: ‘All right, then.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’ – I wanted it straight and from her own lips.
    â€˜You can do it to me.’
    We found a place, and after passionate kisses she lay down, head back on the grass and her legs open. She was warm and somehow her lips were peppery, mixed with the sweetness of her lipstick that seemed to be sliding all over me. I pushed up and took down everything, and after fingering her for some minutes my flesh-rod went sliding chock-a-block into her, and before I began going up and down I made her large