Alan Hardy's Blog

Excerpt from THROUGH THE GATES

If, after reading this extract, you'd like to have a look at the whole book, here it is:

http://www.amazon.com/Through-Gates-A...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Through-Gates...

Then Mark heard it. A faint drone, like of a fly or wasp. Wavering and irritating. Then increasing in volume and steadiness. He half-heard a medley of warning voices emanating from the house. He made as if to move away. Tomlinson laughed, and blocked him.
"Are you afraid, Mark?"
"It's...it's a doodlebug..."
Tomlinson laughed again.
The drone was all-pervading now, seeming to fill the whole garden and his head, as if it were about to burst. Then it stopped. Silence. Stillness. The calm before the storm. It would take fifteen seconds. Mark started to count. One. Two. Three. For the first time Tomlinson's face twitched, and his eyes darkened. He turned round, spying out the land. He was looking for a place of shelter. A hole. A ditch. A tree. The baluster. He moved as if to get behind it. To put himself between it and the vegetation and fence. Like an animal instinctively searching out a little cave. A cubby-hole. Seven. Eight. Mark grabbed him and for two seconds Tomlinson's startled body shoved back at him. Ten. Eleven. Mark pushed him away, out in front of the baluster. Thirteen. Fourteen. Mark dived behind it. He felt his heart would burst. His ears detonated. The heavens caved in. The whole world. Its hardness disintegrated. The soil gave way. Solid objects, whether of stone or land, whether man-made or organic, shrivelled away to nothing or buckled. Dirt rained upon him. Hotness and hardness in a succession of smallish shapes hit against him. His face felt scolded. His body on fire. He twisted and turned as the world was rearranged. Thrown up in the air and allowed to fall back and spread out into a new lay-out. With himself included. And all his bits and pieces.
Like watching himself from above, slightly to the right, he found himself scrambling up and about, tentatively stepping forwards, arms outstretched, like a befuddled, barely mobile old git. A blind old git. In a daze, he rubbed his head and eyes. He stared at the world as through a filmy gauze, a vicious distancing ache filling his head. He sniffed, and felt his body was seizing up. All his cavities were blocked. He vaguely sensed a rearranged terrain about him, mounds and flat spaces where they hadn't been, and, straight ahead, a big hole where the V1 had landed.
He tripped up against a flabby heaviness, and stooped down. He turned away in revulsion, retching, with saliva dripping from his mouth and leaking from his nostrils. A tug of wind caught the slimy mess and led it to rest against his cheek, like a hot, dirty kiss.
As his senses returned, he gazed at the smashed fragments of stone around him. Large and small pieces of the baluster lying haphazardly around. And Tomlinson. Or, rather, bits of him. Bloodied sections of limb and torso. A pulped mass of bone and flesh which could have been his head. Scorched flesh. Barbecue smell. A smouldering hotness. No semblance of uniform, or boots. Just here, and further afield as he lifted his head, little piles of him scattered about like dog-shit.
Mark heard voices. Noises from afar. He looked at the house. Leaded windows had been shattered. People would be rushing out soon, once they had checked their own limbs and ear-drums. Mark, still robotic and traumatized, instinctively reached into his pocket and drew out the identity card. He flung it on the ground, right next to a hole that had been ripped out of the paved ground by a piece of careering metal. More or less where he had found it all those years later.
He looked down at his feet. A broken fragment of red tile lay there. He picked it up and tossed it to one side, to nestle amidst dirt and mangled vegetation. He would find that later too. He quickly looked towards the steps. Just below them a paving-stone had been torn from the ground, nowhere to be seen.
He saw himself ambling down the driveway to the gates. He avoided bits of earth and stone and what seemed to him a piece of blackened finger. He got to the gates. He stared at them, stupefied. They were closed. The force of the blast had pushed them back. He didn't know what to do. How could he shut out the past if they were already shut? How could he return to the present? He found himself slowly, unsurely opening them. His head hurt. He felt numb. Unable to register anything. He felt he was being watched. He spun round. He had the feeling she was there. His black-haired young lady. The lady perched on the classroom-desk. A flash of sinewy body and flapping black hair took possession of his mind. The figure moved out of the orb of his vision, like moving out of his garden, beyond the boundaries of his sight and imagination. She vanished. Maybe she had slipped off towards the wood behind the house. Anyway, he had lost her. He felt he had shrunk in size, he was seeing the world from a lower level, he was a boy again in infant school. Bemused, full of wonder and very afraid.
"Is it you?" he cried, or thought he did. "Is it you, Mary? Mary, is it you?"
He was gaping at the opened gates. A gust of air had hit him. He was pushed back slightly, stumbling. The universe closed in on him again. He was enveloped by a dull fuzziness. Wrapped up in a misty whiteness. He sensed strange noises, clattering and shouts, and cracks as of whips, and a whoosh of new smells and indistinct shapes passing before him. He tried to move forward, but couldn't. He found himself turning round and walking up the pathway.
"Good Lord! Is that you, sir?"
He squinted at the short, plumpish lady stood before him. She was dressed in black-and-white garb, her shaped skirt reaching down to near the ground. He rubbed his eyes.
"Oh, it is yourself, Mr Templeton! What a state you are in! You have been in the wars, sir."
She curtseyed in front of him.
"Lordy, we never do know when you are turning up, sir. But, as you have ordered, your room is prepared. And I'll make the hot water ready, sir, so you can have your ablutions."
She curtseyed again, waiting.
"OK," mumbled Mark.
"Sir?"
"Very well," Mark whispered. "Prepare everything."
"Sir," she answered with another curtsey, and turned round to waddle up the pathway.
Mark followed her, feeling extremely tense. As if a hollow had been carved out inside him. He vaguely glimpsed the baluster to his right. Undemolished again. In his peripheral vision, trees and bushes seemed misplaced, overgrown and undergrown in the wrong places. He looked up at the house bobbing up and down before his faltering steps. It looked pristine. New-born. As he had always imagined it had looked at its birth. Not a brick or tile out of place. Gaily-coloured in its constituent stone and brick, a powerful, proud edifice of red, black, orange and brown.
"Just a minute," he called out. "What's your name?"
"But whatever is the matter, sir? It's Mabel...your housekeeper, sir..."
She stood still, slightly lowering her body, deferential and expectant, accustomed to the inexplicable oddities of her betters.
"Who is Prime Minister?" asked Mark.
"Prime Minister, sir?"
"I mean, First Lord of the Treasury, or whatever it is...or was then..."
"Lord...of the...Treasure…" mumbled Mabel, totally bewildered.
"Who is the leader of our government?"
"Why, it's His Lordship, sir."
"His Lordship?"
"Lord Salisbury."
"What year is it?"
"Why, it's 1899, sir...You do love your little games, sir..."
"Move on..." commanded Mark, slowly traipsing after her.
He followed her round into the house, and into its dimness, nodding awkwardly at a young chambermaid who curtseyed hurriedly and self-consciously at him.
"How many servants do I have, Mabel?"
"Just the three, sir. As always. The three what stayed on after you bought the house off Mr Manning. And of course John."
"John?"
"John what helps out with the garden."
"Of course."
He waited for Mabel to prepare his room. He glanced round. The house was totally recognizable, just bits and pieces of furniture were different. Arranged as he had seen in old films or TV series set in that era. Umbrella-stands. Small circular table-stands with metal boxes on them. That sort of thing. A musty smell about the place. He wandered off into the room that would become his study. It already was. The same desk at the far side. Fountain-pens and bottles of ink. Blotting-paper. Other bits of furniture he didn't recognize. A different, plusher carpet. He opened up a few drawers. The deeds of the property. The ones he still had, only newer-looking. He had bought the property from Mr Manning on 15th November 1898. Signed and sealed. Witnessed. He would have to make a note to come back on that day.
One drawer was locked. He rummaged around. He couldn't find a key. Then he realized where it was. He sat there, drumming his fingers and waiting for Mabel to knock on the door. There were some papers detailing the terms of her employment. Not much else.
Once up in his room, as threadbare as it was to remain, with an ancient-looking wardrobe, a table with the wash-basin Mabel had prepared, and a rug or two, Mark waited for her footsteps to die out. He lifted up one of the rugs and prized open the floorboard. There were two keys.
He went to the toilet, and then came back to freshen up. His face had been blackened, his clothes dirtied and rumpled. He wondered what Mabel had made of his strange uniform. There were clothes in the wardrobe. He fingered them for a moment.
Back in his study he opened the drawer. He took out a large metal box. The other key opened it. He gasped. There were notes and coins there. But it was the Kruger ponds and half-ponds, and guineas and sovereigns which really caught his attention. So that was where he had hidden them. There must be a fortune here. He chuckled. Emma and Mr Gorman would never be able to guess.
He quizzed Mabel a bit more. He found out a few things. It seemed he only made sporadic visits, often being absent for months. She ordered clothes for him out of money he provided. She asked him if he was happy with her purchases. He said he was. He handed her over a certain piffling amount there and then to cover expenses and wages. It seemed she often deposited smallish amounts of money for him in his bank account. She giggled at the strange questions he asked her, questions he must have already known the answer to. Although she seemed shorter and squatter, her face reminded him of the bicyclist he had once bumped into and subsequently seemed unable to forget and always be coming across.
He wandered out of the house. The wood was as he remembered. The quadrangle and the driveway sloping down in a curve to Watling Street was a dirty white cement with masses of pebbles and flint-stones embedded in it.
He was exhausted. He had been there a couple of hours at least. He needed to get back to his own time. He needed rest. Time for contemplation. To try to work things out. To make lists.
He gave a start. He'd glimpsed a willowy figure flitting about on the driveway, disappearing round its bend. Or thought he had. He ran forward. It could be her. He pictured her black hair flowing behind her as she sped along, and the suppleness of her young limbs as she moved effortlessly. It must be her. Mary came into his head. He remembered her as she had been when he had met her, still young and nubile, and as she was, still attractive, but greyer and more worn. Beaten down by life. And he felt disturbed.
He was being held back. There was a force he couldn't penetrate. It was like an unseen hand, or a blanket of air pressuring him back. He pushed forward, the breath sucked out of him and his legs weakening and seeming to crumple. He sensed vague shapes again, rearing up at him or passing along his vision, with weird clattering and cries, as before. A tightness gripped his chest, squeezing him more and more like a fist closing round his lungs, ending his life, and any hope there might have been in it. Then there was blackness, and a hard thump on his head.

http://www.amazon.com/Through-Gates-A...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Through-Gates...

Free excerpt from BRITT

If, after reading this excerpt, you'd like to check out the whole book, here it is:
http://www.amazon.com/BRITT-Alan-Hard...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/BRITT-Alan-Ha...

Britt smiled awkwardly at Dr Goole as they sat outside the small bar in the centre of the village. Following the morning's operations, he had invited her to take a stroll with him to the nearby village and partake of an aperitif. The fresh air would do her good, he had said.
"How do you feel now, my dear? You were looking decidedly peaky when I was removing that shrapnel from the young lieutenant's knee-cap."
"Oh, I'm much better," answered Britt, glancing self-consciously at the dusty street and its handful of buildings. There was nothing of particular note in the village except for, at its outskirts, a pretty cypress tree by a pond, bordered by a wood.
Dr Goole was in his late thirties, dapper and self-assured, with snappy, determined movements of the head and limbs whenever he moved, spoke, or operated. He was a cool type, who had chosen his profession well.
"Was that the famous Wriggles of Royal Flying Corps fame who was visiting you the other day? He's been in the newspapers recently with his unmasking of the spy Watahuri."
"Yes, our families know each other well. We were always together as children."
"Are you related to him? Cousins or something?"
Britt seemed surprised, and pleased, by his question. She felt a bit more at ease.
"We are very distantly related, I'm not quite sure of the exact details. But we're not first cousins. I don't have any cousins. Wriggles has five."
"And what are their names?"
Dr Goole seemed genuinely interested. Britt's eyes began to sparkle, animated by the turn the subject-matter of the conversation was taking. With the sun catching her livelier features, she suddenly looked beautiful.
"John, George, Daphne, Miriam. And Rebecca, though he's never seen her much. Not since they were children," she answered breathlessly.
"He's very dashing, isn't he?" Dr Goole said. "Is there some sort of agreement between you?" He peered at her intently, an amused curl about his lips.
"Agreement? Oh, no," mumbled Britt, becoming unsure again, her face reddening. "He's like a brother."
"Is there no young beau writing you letters from home, or the Front?"
"Oh, no," she replied, making flustered twists and turns of the head, and fiddling about with her hands on her lap, unable to meet the doctor's nosy, cheeky stare. "I just write to mummy and daddy. And Wriggles, of course..."
"You're a very pretty young lady, it won't be long before there's an engagement ring on that delicate, slender hand of yours," mouthed Dr Goole, a slight stumbling over his words, cleared by a peremptory little cough, betraying a growing emotional entanglement Britt was totally unaware of.
Britt lowered her head, totally confused and discomfited.
"I hear Wriggles is in the Arras region today on some top-secret business," the doctor commented. "He is certainly a busy young man."
He continued to stare at Britt, crossing and re-crossing his legs. Britt remained silent. He stood up abruptly. He cleared his throat.
"Soon time to amputate a couple more limbs, I think," he said. "Shall we stroll back? Breathe in the odour of the flowers?" He gazed around him. "Look at the beauty of France, my dear! You wouldn't realise from the look of the land around us that France is on its knees, brought low by the decadence of revolution and democracy, would you?"
Britt stared at Dr Goole, then at the rich terrain around them, drained a little of its vibrant colour in the sweltering heat, and then back at the doctor. They walked slowly to the hospital.
"Come to my office," he commanded, as they entered the cool of the interior. "I have something to show you."
Once inside the office, he gazed intently at her, unblinking, impassive but for a slight facial twitch. He closed the door of his spacious office, filled with anatomical specimens in bottles, and bits and pieces of skull and bone lying on tables or standing on mounts in the corners. He went to sit down on the red sofa. Britt, out-of-place and shy, continued to look around the room.
"Look here, my dear!" called out Dr Goole.
Britt swivelled round and was appalled. Dr Goole was on the sofa, and held in his hands a wriggling, hideous-looking animal of some description, shaped like a sausage, slightly wet at its tip. For a moment it seemed to Britt that he was massaging it, but she soon realised that the loathsome, snake-like creature was beyond the doctor's control, twisting and turning its ugly mass in its bid to escape his hold.
"My God!" she exclaimed. "What is it? Is it venomous? Shall I call for help? Has it bitten you?"
The doctor did look badly affected, struggling for breath, red-faced, no longer cool and calm, his crazed eyes fixed imploringly on Britt.
There was a knock at the door. Dr Goole became even more disconcerted, looking up at the door with a start. The creature in his hands seemed to shrink, as if looking for somewhere to hide. Britt continued to stare at the doctor and the strange animal, completely transfixed. There was another knock at the door.
"Go and answer," he croaked.
Britt rushed to let in one of her fellow-nurses. When she turned round, she saw the doctor over by the open window, readjusting himself and attempting to regain his composure.
"What's happened?" exclaimed Britt. "Have you got rid of it?"
"No need to worry, my dear," said the doctor, turning round, clearing his throat, and rubbing the fingers of his right hand gingerly against each other. "Everything has been dealt with."
"But what was it?" mumbled Britt, as he man-handled her out of the room. "Are you hurt in some way? Is it dead?"
"See her to her room, Rebecca," he ordered the other nurse. "She's been working hard, things are getting to her. She needs a lie-down."
Rebecca, a red-haired, confident-looking girl who had just joined the hospital-staff that very day, and to whom Britt had not yet been introduced, stared at him, rather questioningly.
"Rebecca, do as you are told," he mouthed deliberately and firmly, giving her an authoritative stare. "You know your own name, don't you? Your real name is Rebecca, isn't it? You must tell everybody. Accompany Britt to her room, Rebecca."
Once in her room, and having thanked Rebecca for her help, Britt flung herself down on the bed. Her nerves were shot to pieces, and her body was still trembling from the shock of the repulsive-looking animal she had caught a glimpse of on Dr Goole's lap. As she closed her eyes, images of it, and its slimy, insidious crawling and wriggling, wouldn't leave her head. They intermingled with images of blood spurting over her from wounded soldiers being cut open and stitched up. She suddenly shot up, stifling a scream, as she frantically searched around her bed and body with her palpitating hands for any sign of the evil creature nearby or even sneaking up on to her person. She gave little cries of panic and disgust, something like sobs, and her breathing came faster and faster. She lay back again, feeling exhausted. She jumped up, and jammed a chair against the door, which had no lock. She had to keep that snake out. She had to keep everything out. She lay on the bed.
She couldn't sleep. She hadn't been able to sleep easily the last few days. She lay there, as she had many a night, thinking of her parents, and their cousins, and Wriggles, and his cousins, and even Dr Goole, and getting them all mixed up as she fell into a half-stupor. She curled up into a foetal position, sucking her thumb, resentful that she had been sent out here to this horrible big world with its creepy reptiles and bloodied pieces of flesh. She wanted to go home, and felt anger welling up inside her. And she also knew it was wrong to want to go home. It was babyish. And anger welled up inside her against those who had made her into a big baby. And those who had sent her out here. She wanted to hit out. She wanted to punish those who were to blame. She opened her eyes, staring up at the ceiling. A chilling look came into her eyes. No longer scared, but scary.

http://www.amazon.com/BRITT-Alan-Hard...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/BRITT-Alan-Ha...

SEXY, STEAMY EXCERPT FROM GOOD QUEEN BETH

If, after reading this excerpt from GOOD QUEEN BETH, you want to read more, here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/GOOD-QUEEN-BETH...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/GOOD-QUEEN-BE...

"Jason, come on in!" Beth called out. "We're feeling lonely."
Jason ambled into Beth's large bedroom, seeing himself reflected in the maze of mirrors there, shuffling along with two left feet, his face red as a beetroot, his gaze cast down. Sandra was laid out on the bed, on her back, her tiny mini-dress pulled up and revealing a skimpy beige-laced G-string. Beth, still in her spaghetti-top and jeans, was standing by the bed, waiting for Jason. Sandra seemed barely conscious.
"What's the matter with her?" asked Jason.
"Nothing. Just can't take her alcohol," answered Beth with a slight grin.
"Have you spiked her drink?"
"Course I haven't."
Jason looked down at Sandra. Sleeping Beauty. Her eyes were half-open, gazing blankly at both of them. Her body stirred gently, and her lips made vibrating movements, her tongue coming out and licking over them.
"There you are, Jason. The bitch who messed you up. The slut who threw your love back in your face, and tore up your poncy poem. You can get your own back. Go on." Beth looked at him. Her eyes were wide-open and nastily bright. She had a big smile on her face. "Give her a good seeing-to."
She moved away to a wardrobe, and came back with pieces of string. She went up to Sandra's prone figure, placed a hand under her bum and roughly raised her up, pulling off her knickers with her other hand. Jason heard a slight tearing of lace. Beth seemed driven, focused on what she was doing, and angry. She pushed Sandra's inert body this way and that, even pummelling it at times, getting it into position, and began tying one arm to the bed-railings.
"What are you up to, Beth?"
"Help me. You tie that arm." She gave him a piece of string. "Tie it really tight."
Sandra started moaning, and Beth put her hand on Sandra's fanny, pushing her fingers inside and rubbing. Sandra's lips curled with excitement, and her eyes shone appreciatively. Beth withdrew her hand, fixing Sandra with a smile, and moved down to the bottom of the bed. She took Sandra's right leg and began to tie it to the railings. Sandra let her do what she wanted, wriggling about with her midriff, haunches, groin, her left leg, everything that was not tied down, but still caught up in her body's constriction. Beth pulled the knot tight, and a cry escaped from Sandra's lips. Beth tied down her other leg, and came to inspect Jason's fumbling efforts, all fingers and thumbs.
"That's fine," she said.
They looked at Sandra, imprisoned, twisting, turning, making writhing movements with her torso, getting hot and bothered, moaning and moaning, her eyes still dull and, Jason would have said, dissolute. Beth moved up to her, half-turning her body over, as much as the strings would allow, and hitched up her dress even more. She laid her back in her former position, and pushed her dress up to match its position under her body. She grabbed Sandra's shoulder-straps and yanked them, ripping them, and pulled the top of her dress down a little, revealing more of her heaving breasts. Beth worked her hand in amidst her bosom and dress and squeezed and pressed hard, causing Sandra to fling her head about and push her body up and, coming up against the limit of the play she had for free movement, it fell back. Again and again she would push her torso up, and fall back, churning up the duvet, dampening it with her hot sweat. There was a panic about her eyes; Jason couldn't be sure if it was fear or maddened desire, maybe both. He felt himself getting aroused. His bollocks got that ache, that independent life of their own where he thought he was losing control, and the images in his mind wouldn't be able to hold him back.
Beth was pawing at him, helping him take his clothes off, discarding them on the carpet, and rubbing her hands expertly over his body, harsh yet lovingly. She took hold of his bollocks, breathing over him, and gave them a good squeeze.
"Go on, Jason! Get in there! Give her a good shagging! She can't wait! She wants you! Murder her!"
She practically man-handled him on to Sandra, breathing harshly, and giggling all the time. Jason also felt excited, infected by her laughter, and made ridiculous-sounding gasps or even sobs of desire. He plopped his penis somewhere around her fanny, prodding about, and awkwardly entered Sandra, with the help of a rough, swift hand around his dick pushing him into place. He got really excited riding the rocking bronco horse that was Sandra, as she pulled and twisted against the knots holding her down, and writhed and wriggled her middle bits for all she was worth, up, down and sideways. Her shuddering, heaving body he was held within, squeezing and clamping hard on his dick, thrilled him, and he felt this time...As he thought that, the excitement which was running through his body lessened, became localised in his bollocks, and, quickly, he found himself rubbing and thrusting against a growing numbness and limpness, that post-coital flaccidity he always got even before he had come. He was slipping down the hill. Rough hands gripped his bum and pushed him into Sandra, back and forth, to the rhythm of Sandra's gasps and half-yells; he tried hard to make the thrill return, but it was useless. He slipped out, and climbed wearily and sweatily off the bed, jarring against Sandra's limbs, and found himself standing at the bottom of the hill again, next to Beth.
She took his hand and placed it on Sandra's fanny, moving it about. He let her do it, limp and lifeless. He kept his gaze fixed on the floor. Beth was caressing Sandra's breasts, pulling her dress down even further, and then suddenly took her hand away from Jason's, which was still up Sandra's throbbing, soaked sponge of a vagina, and smacked her savagely across the face. She smacked her again and again, and Jason felt Sandra's yearning straining body explode and her frantic gasps mingle with her screams, at one and the same time unable to bear it any longer, and unable to resist.
"What are you going to do, Beth?" he croaked, giggling, red-faced, excited.
Beth ran her finger-nails down Sandra's pulsing body, and then dug them deep into the flesh of her hips. She took Jason's free hand, and dug one of his long finger-nails into Sandra's inner thigh below her groin. Sandra's body became like a snake in torment, wriggling, writhing, coiling. Her screams were terrifying. Jason had withdrawn his hand from Sandra's fanny, intimidated, scared, still giggling like a titillated schoolboy. Beth, her face enraged and savage, pressed hard on Sandra's groin and delivered slap after slap to her face, breasts, midriff, and thighs. She even seemed to punch her. Sandra's skin became blood-red, and trails of blood like veins trickled down her hot, wet flesh and intermingled, tributaries running into each other over the hills and dales of her body. Sandra's passionate writhing never ceased, nor did her screaming and paroxysmal shuddering of body, as she, crazed, wrenched hard against the strings that kept her pinioned to the bed, a prisoner within her body's endless explosion of pain. Beth grew tired of Sandra's insatiable appetite, and moved away, dribbling saliva, giggling, a wicked gleam in her eyes. She looked at Jason, and he, naked and shaking, giggled back.
Beth moved to the bedside-table, took out a fag and lit it, inhaling deeply. She moved back to the delirious slab of flesh that was Sandra, who was mouthing without sound, drifting in and out of her sexual high, one moment trying to wriggle away her body's itch, the next moment flat out in a zombie-like stupor. Beth held the cigarette, and its curling halo of smoke, high above Sandra and, with a slow descent, brought it, to an accompanying gasp from both entranced members of her audience, down on to her right breast. As Sandra winced and yelled out, Beth snatched the cigarette away, and flicked a route with its lighted end along Sandra's midriff. Sandra was in agony, her body shuddering madly; she made whining noises. Beth held the fag over her, and Sandra tensed up, watching the fag, waiting.
"Shall we kill her, Jason?" Beth asked.
"What?"
"Shall I get a long sharp knife? We can cut her nipples off, stab her in the shoulders, the belly, anywhere...You can stick it up her fanny! Up her arse! Why don't we kill her? She deserves it. For what she did to you. She made you what you are." Jason stared at her, unable to breathe. "Frank will know where to dump the body somewhere where it will never be found. Anyway, there are always bodies lying around every morning, and the police never bother about them any more..."
She was excited, rabbiting on, her deep blue eyes glimmering intensely, scarily.
"You're not being serious, are you, Beth?"
"Course I am. Kill her! Knife her up her fucking arse!"
"You're having me on, aren't you?"
"Won't it be fun to see what noises the slag makes when we slice her up? Go on, do it. I'll fetch the knife, will I?" She was vicious. Possessed. Crazed.
"Beth, Sandra didn't make me the way I am. I would probably have always been a bit of a weirdo."
Jason moved towards her. She stared at him, and seemed to relax, to relent. She went over to the bedside-table, and stubbed out the fag. She went to the wardrobe, hurriedly took off all her clothes, and took out the tiny white tennis-skirt Jason liked her in so much. She slipped it on, came back and led Jason to the far wall. She leant back on it, and toyed with his dick as he stood obediently in front of her. She guided him into her, and he, excited once more near the top of his hill, pushed and thrust, demented again, feeling her flesh and the material of her skirt upon him, and, just before the excitement was about to shrink back into his bollocks, she pushed him out and turned him round against the wall, jamming herself up against his back and bum, enveloping him with her body. He wanked himself against the wall, and saw himself reflected in a tall mirror to his right, naked against the wall, and Beth behind him, naked but for the white mini, within him it seemed, pushing him, hugging him, controlling him, her arms around him. He couldn't stop, banging and banging himself against the wall, until he came. He waited a while, pulled himself away from Beth's hold and moved off to the bathroom, exhausted.
She came in to join him. They had a shower together, side by side, letting the suds and warm water cascade over their bodies. They didn't touch each other, just gave each other two or three kisses on the lips. When they came out, Beth went over to the inert figure of Sandra on the bed, and undid the knots tying her to the bed-railings. Sandra, in some dream-world of her own, turned over on her side, hunching up her body. Beth pulled the duvet around her. Sandra needed to sleep.
Jason was already making himself a drink in the next room.
"Make me one too," she said, standing naked in the bedroom's door-way. "What do you want me to put on? It's all right," she said with a laugh as she noticed Jason's expression, "you don't have to perform any more. But you like looking at me, don't you? What do you fancy?"
"It doesn't matter. Put your tennis-skirt back on." She turned round. He called her back. "Beth! You weren't serious about that, were you? You know, slicing her up?"
"Of course not. I was just playing you up." She stared at him. "Anyway, she's only a dirty old slag. She loved every minute of it. She's a perv. Did you notice all those marks on her body?"
"No."
"She loves it. Pain and that. And I bet she doesn't mind dishing it out either. Well, you know all about that already. She's a little shit."
She put on a green spaghetti-top. When she came back, Jason looked at her. In her green top and white skirt, with her damp hair, she was stunning. But then Jason always found her stunning. He looked at himself in one of the free-standing, tall mirrors dotted about the room. Smart black shirt and grey trousers over his slender frame. Drawn face. And that thin moustache. He watched her again, in the flesh, and also reflected in another mirror behind her. The stillness of the reflected figures, his and hers, on opposite sides of the room, were like stained-glass images of themselves, frozen apart from their real bodies. He felt he wanted to move those mirrors side by side, even face to face, and unite them forever, but, if he did move the mirrors, the images they held would disappear. They would slip off the glass, the magic would be gone and all that would be left would be their bodies. Again.
"Come and sit down on the sofa, Jason. We'll talk."
Already her grey-blonde hair was drying and fluffing out. The nasty glimmer in her eyes had gone. Her face looked serene, chirpy as ever, but tired.
"You have a face hewn out of rock," he said.
"What the fuck does that mean?"
"A face that will live through the ages, Beth. It's an image of eternity. It represents your class, all its anguish, all its beauty, all its durability, even all its nastiness."
"You do speak shit, Jason."
"But, Beth," said Jason as they snuggled down side by side on the sofa, "we are the good guys, aren't we? We're on the side of the angels, aren't we?"
"Aren't you so sure about me now, Jason?" Beth asked, laughing at him.

http://www.amazon.com/GOOD-QUEEN-BETH...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/GOOD-QUEEN-BE...

THE JUMPER

If, when you’ve read this story, you decide you liked it, please do check out these full-length novels:

http://www.amazon.com/GOOD-QUEEN-BETH...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/GOOD-QUEEN-BE...

http://www.amazon.com/BRITT-Alan-Hard...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/BRITT-Alan-Ha...

http://www.amazon.com./Gabriella-Alan...
http://www.amazon.co.uk./Gabriella-Al...

THE JUMPER
by Alan Hardy

Amelda was roused from her slumber by John's loud closing of the door. And the irritating sound of his steps. And his exasperating little cough, his effeminate clearing of his throat.
She had been having a lie-down on the sofa, with her long brown coat pulled up over her, while John had been outside, sweeping up the leaves.
He was now wearing his dark-blue jumper, the one with light-blue-and-red diamond shapes on the front. The jumper he had said he had thrown away. Two years ago.
She didn't say anything. Kept on lying there, eyes open. She and John ignored each other. He soon left the room again.
When he came back, he was no longer wearing the jumper.
So, two years ago, when he had said he was going to throw it away, he had lied. He had put it somewhere secret, in the shed or attic or basement. Every now and then, when he did the gardening, or some other job, he would put it on. He had come into the room with it still on and, realizing his mistake, and hoping she hadn't noticed, had slipped out again and taken it off.
But she didn't say anything about it.
She and John never really spoke much now, even though, with the children grown up and off to uni, they were nearly always together. Latterly John had started working a lot from home. They'd even got into the habit of going out together on quite menial tasks like buying the chops and accompanying veg, just for the sake of getting out of the house.
One day he said he was going out to mend the fence. She nodded as she lay on the sofa. When he was out of the room, she got up and positioned herself by the corner of the window so she could look out without being easily observed. She eventually caught a glimpse of him over at the far end of the garden, wearing the dark-blue jumper. She went back to the sofa to lie down. She kept her ears open.
When she heard him making his usual sounds, slamming doors and smashing into furniture, and always that ridiculous irritating little cough, like someone trying politely to gain someone else's attention, she sprang up, rushed to the door and carefully opened it. She heard sounds coming from the steps leading down to the cellar at the other end of the corridor; she glimpsed something navy wending its way down them. She tip-toed along the corridor and down the steps and looked into the cellar. She could see the door of the little white cupboard that stood by the far wall was ajar. John, who was fiddling with something in the cupboard, was obscured by its open door, except for his booted feet and the very top of his greying hair. She could see a key inserted in the lock of that door.
So, that was where the stupid man kept the jumper. She crept back up the steps and along the corridor into the living-room again. She looked carefully into the little white dish by the television which held the household keys. She memorized them all, even the couple she didn't recognize, probably old keys for no-longer-existing doors or changed locks that her poor hubby couldn't bear to discard.
After John had returned, fiddled about, and then left the room, she wandered over to the little dish. There were two more keys there, one which she recognized as the cellar-door key, and a small one which, obviously, would open the white cupboard.
When John said the next day that it was time to go shopping, Amelda complained of a headache and told him to go alone.
"Anything troubling you, my dear?" he asked.
"No. Why do you ask?"
"You look a bit excited, breathless. Have you tried your temperature?"
"It's just a headache. I'll survive. And don't buy that tinned veg any more. Get the real stuff."
He took ages to get ready. Putting on his jacket, combing his thinning, lifeless-looking hair, going twice to the loo to squeeze out every last drop of pee, and have a fart or two, rummaging around looking for the car-keys before finally finding them. In the dish, where he always put them.
"Can't you hurry up?" she blurted out.
"What's the matter with you?"
"Bye-bye."
"Stupid cow," she heard him muttering as he moved off.
As soon as she heard the car spluttering into life, she picked out the two keys from the white dish, and held them to her chest, standing quite still. She felt tense. She ran down to the cellar. She knew she wouldn't have long. He would be back in a quarter of an hour.
It took her ages to unlock the cellar-door and, once inside, in the stuffy atmosphere, she found it difficult to breathe. She was excited, but a little scared, as if she might find something disgraceful. A body or two. The unknown. Secrets.
She opened the cupboard easily. There was a whiff of musty maleness. A hot male breath that hit her body. On the shelves there were electrical bits and pieces. Plumbing bits and pieces. The detritus of one man's refusal ever to discard anything. Probably all broken or not working. She saw the jumper rumpled-up on a shelf. She pulled it out nervously, and something heavier came with it. She gave a start. It was an old, thick belt. Curling like a snake. She saw something else further back on the shelf. She touched it tentatively. The fabric was thick and rough. It was an old pair of John's jeans which, like the belt, he had taken to the dump a year or two ago. Or, rather, said he had. She looked at all the shelves; the only other thing she found was an old white shirt which years ago had been John's best shirt. She had always liked him in it.
She fingered it tenderly, brought it close up to her and smelt it. She ruffled her face in it. She felt scared. She quickly put everything back, and locked the cupboard. She rushed out, closed the cellar-door and, by the time she got back to the living-room, realized she hadn't needed to panic. John didn't come back for another ten minutes.
That was John for you, she thought. He never wanted to discard anything. He grew attached to possessions, even old clothes. Even though he had special clothes for his gardening or DIY jobs, he had kept those old rags to put on in secret. He was a waste of space. He probably believed the jumper and belt and the rest were sentient beings who didn't want to be thrown on the rubbish-heap just yet. It was an act of charity. Even love. There was something womanish about the man. Like his nervous cough. He wouldn't even throw away theatre-ticket-stubs. Just like a giddy girl. But she didn't say anything when he came back.
In fact she couldn't wait to return to the cellar. Her opportunity came when he had to go into the office one morning. She opened up the cellar-door easily this time, and hesitated for a moment before turning the key in the lock of the white cupboard. She tongued her palate and twisted on her legs like a little girl. That male smell made her feel dizzy again. She arranged all of John's bits and pieces into one heap on one shelf.
She fingered them, their differing texture, as if she were in a clothes-shop. One by one, she took them out to smell them. Then, without having really thought of it before, she started to take off her clothes. Her hands and fingers trembled and fumbled, little gasps coming from her lips as they touched haphazardly, in her nervous undressing, parts of her flesh. She flung her clothes in the cupboard. She took out the jumper and ran it across her breasts, midriff and thighs. She did the same with the smooth white shirt, and then the rougher jeans, fingering their dry itchiness. She tried putting on the shirt, but quickly took it off. That didn't do her anything. She put the belt around her waist, squeezing it tight; she then did the same around her hips. She tied the jumper around her waist and caressed her body, becoming more and more, ever so gently, excited.
She fondled her fanny with the rough jeans and pressed her flesh with her other hand everywhere she could reach, squeezing the fat skin of her stomach and caressing the skin of her thighs. She moved the jumper to her fanny and pressed it close, working her hand around; she held the white shirt to her face and mouthed kisses as it delicately smothered her.
When she had finished, she hastily put everything back and got dressed, giggling in between her laboured breathing. She couldn't remember the last time she had had an orgasm which had been in any way related to John. She felt mischievous, naughty, and satisfied. Fulfilled.
It was still a few hours before John came back with his silly clearing of his throat and sense of self-importance as he stood there speaking of his day at the office as if it had been a day out hunting gigantic blood-curdling carnivores.
"What about you, dear?" he asked. "Have you had a good day?"
Now he wanted to make conversation. He thought he was the adventurer returned. She had a funny feeling the silly twat would be getting frisky tonight. She didn't answer him.
As he stood there Amelda could see he had literally no arse. She could remember his pert little bum of years ago, but now it was so sunken in as to be a negative-bum, some sort of black hole, a minus-entity. She doubted he had one at all.
That night, as she lay in bed on her side, turned away from her big lump of a hubby, smiling as she thought of her next visit to the cellar pencilled in for tomorrow, as John had told her he had to go to the office again, he did suddenly start making irritating little jabs on her bum with his willie.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Amelda, darling, I was just wondering--"
"Don't be ridiculous. Please turn the other way, and keep your thingy to yourself."
"But, Amelda, we don't do anything any more. How's a chap--"
"Good night."
The next day she didn't overdress. She did, though, put on the little kinky red knickers that she hadn't worn for years, a leftover from the time when she was youthful and sexy, and that she couldn't bear to throw away, even though they were a bit past it, with one or two tiny holes in the crotch-area. Slipping them on, working them along her thighs, had made her shiver, as if she had an itch in the small of her back.
She got undressed in the cellar again, putting her clothes on a shelf. She wrapped each of John's garments around herself in turn, and caressed her body with them, slowly, sensuously. She tied the dark blue jumper around her waist and toyed with the belt around her crotch, even slightly jabbing herself with its buckle. She covered her face with the clinging softness of the white shirt. Penetrating through her gasps of excitement, she heard doors closing and a series of little coughs. She came out of her dream, stood stock still, distinctly heard the noises again, and frantically flung away John's bits and pieces, grabbing her own and feverishly, all fingers and thumbs, putting on her tee-shirt and jeans. She could hear his steps and effeminate grunts coming down to the cellar. She ruffled her hair, wiped her face with her hand, and tried to assume a normal expression. She probably looked hot and sweaty. She was breathing too heavily. She turned to face the door.
"Hullo, Amelda. What's up?"
He stood framed in the door. Her natural contempt for the great stupid lump took over.
"And what are you doing back here? I thought you were spending the morning in the office."
"I forgot some papers," he blurted out. "What's up?"
He came towards her. She felt guilt written all over her face. Could he guess what she had been up to? Could he see it in her face, her awry clothes? He looked beyond her at, and into, the cupboard. A look of uncertainty came over him.
"And what have you been up to?" she asked roughly. "All these old clothes in here. Why have you been hoarding them?"
"What do you mean?" he said uselessly, like a guilty child. "Anyway, why have you taken your slippers off?"
Amelda looked down at her slippers lying by her bare feet, where she had discarded them. She ignored his question.
"I saw you wearing your old jumper. I knew you were keeping it somewhere secret. And I've found out where. And all the rest of these things. You're such an idiot. Why did you make out you'd thrown them all away? Why are you hoarding them?"
"It...it just seems a waste to chuck them out...I use them for gardening and such..."
He looked sheepish, blushing childishly. He shifted his feet.
"You are a pain, John. You've got special working clothes. You don't need these. I'll get rid of them."
"Do you have to? It's nice to hang on to things...they're not so old-looking...it's like a memory, you know...like, keeping things as they were...time passes so quickly..."
"You are such an arsehole, John."
She turned round, sweeping up his clothes off the shelf into her arms. She closed and locked the cupboard-door. She tentatively, hesitatingly extended the key towards John. After all, it wasn't hers. He took it. He looked churlish. And embarrassed. Found out. And put in his place. Again. She slid her slippers on. She walked out of the cellar, leaving John there.
Once he had gone off with his papers, she hid his clothes in her wardrobe, way back in its recesses where John would never find them. She had no intention of taking them to the dump. She would pretend one day that she had done it, or was about to. She would keep them for herself. For her own pleasure.
She had been wandering happily around the house for a few minutes, revelling in how she had turned the tables on the silly man, when it dawned on her that she hadn't slipped her old red knickers back on. She rushed over to the little white dish. For a moment she couldn't find the key for the white cupboard. She thought he had hidden it somewhere. Then she saw it.
Down in the cellar she opened the door of the little white cupboard. She looked on each shelf and in the bottom of the cupboard. Her red knickers were not there. She frantically looked around the cellar floor. No sign of them. Then she ran off to her own wardrobe, assuming they had been swept up in John's clothes as she grabbed them. But, to her intense disappointment, they weren't there either. She looked all around the house, every bit of floor-space, but they had not been dropped anywhere. She went back to the cellar and white cupboard. Back to her wardrobe. Nothing. There was only one possible answer. John had them. He had opened the cupboard when she had left him there. To see what she had done with his possessions, not just the clothes, but the electrical and plumbing bits and bobs he hoarded there. He had found the old red knickers she had inadvertently left there in her panic. They were probably now in his brief-case. She should never have given him back the key there and then in the cellar.
Why hadn't he said something? He was no doubt waiting until he returned for lunch. He probably suspected she had been up to something sexual, he had seen that on her face, her general disarray. The knickers would have proved it. Maybe he had even seen her while she was playing with herself, while she was in her ecstatic seventh heaven, and had then crept away and come back down the steps more noisily, with a cough or two, as if for the first time. Not very likely...but, then, what was he up to? He might keep his knowledge of her little secret, her little world of sexual abandon, as a sort of threat hanging over her, a means by which he could blackmail her. With a little shudder, she wondered whether he would try it on again tonight, and whether she would have to let him have his nauseating little grope-and-fiddle-about with his thingy, and his pathetic moan of an orgasm. It didn't bear thinking about.
But she soon realized there was no need for panic or guilt. The explanation she would give him was obvious. She would say she had been getting together a pile of old clothes to be thrown away. Anything she found of John's, plus her old red knickers, plus maybe a few other things of her own. She fished out an old pair or two of tights and a jumper she no longer wore and laid them on her dressing-table. She would say she had had the knickers in her hand when she was looking for John's hidden clothes, and, in the confusion following his return, she had left them in the cupboard. She had no need to worry.
Her pride kicked in. There was no way she was going to feel embarrassed or guilty in front of that lump of manure. She could handle him. As she always had.
In fact, when John returned, he didn't mention the matter at all. He never alluded to the episode of the morning, let alone the missing red knickers. And nor did she. They didn't speak about it in the evening, nor over the next few days. The only thing that happened was that the tights and jumper she had left on the dressing-table also went missing. She had realized it the same evening. What was he up to? Was it simple revenge? Nicking her old stuff because she had taken his? She knew instinctively that if she kept quiet about it, so would he. That was understood. Or had he suffered a mid-life sexual crisis? Was he, on the odd occasions she would go out alone or he said he didn't feel like coming shopping with her, putting on her tights and red knickers and parading about the house? She pictured him, maybe after having smeared some of her red lipstick all over his thin-lipped gob, getting a perverted thrill out of staring at his grotesque reflection in the mirror. She did check over the next few days whether anybody had been using any of her make-up, but it didn't look like it. There again, he could have his own supply.
She did once have a peremptory, half-hearted look around to see if she could discover where he was keeping her clothes. She shouldn't really have tried. She promised herself not to do it again. Otherwise, he would have the right to do the same to her, and her fantasies. Attempt to break in on them.
Maybe he was doing what she was still doing, every few days, when she would take John's clothes with her down to the cellar. Where she would open the door of the little white cupboard. Where there was that musty maleness, that whiff of male smell that tingled her body. Maybe he was doing the same. Running her clothes along his body, caressing his skin and face with her smell and touch. His memory of her.
Probably she would never find out. And, to be honest, she didn't really want to. Whether he was doing it to annoy her, or because he had turned into a ghastly filthy transvestite, or because he was still madly in love with the Amelda that used to wear those sexy red knickers, whichever one it was, it wouldn't send her into ecstasy, or break her heart. It just wasn't important.
He had had another little go at her that night. He had crawled up close to her, breathing all over her with his stale breath, and nervously coughing that cough of his.
"Amelda, do you think we could..."
"John, I'm not really in the mood. Be a good boy."
He had turned away grudgingly. The little baby. She had just for a moment felt a pang of regret, that, maybe, she had been too harsh with him. Perhaps it was because she feared he might say something about the red knickers. But she had felt like adding a couple of words so that it didn't sound so final, something like "Maybe later" or "Another time", or, failing that, giving him an affectionate pat or nudge on his back.
She had hesitated, and then thought better of it.

THE END

Have you just got a moment..?

Have you read a book which describes bloody battles outside the gates of Buckingham Palace between the monarchy and its forces, and, on the other side, half-naked female warriors? No? Well, it’s time you read GOOD QUEEN BETH.
Have you read a story that combines First World War aerial battles, dastardly German spies, shameless femmes fatales, and…the greatest love story ever told? No? Well, it’s time you read BRITT.
Has anyone ever mentioned to you that the game of cricket has a lot in common with sexual intercourse? No? Well, it’s about time you read GABRIELLA.
For further information on these books by Alan Hardy, please check the following links:

http://www.amazon.com/l/B00GDDS4UG/19...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alan-Hardy/e/...

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

GOOD QUEEN BETH, BRITT & GABRIELLA

If you enjoyed my stories ALL THE WAY TO GENEVA(https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...), DEATH'S TRACK (http://www.amazon.com/Places-Hallowee...) and ON CHRISTMAS DAY (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...), in THE INDIE COLLABORATION Short Story Collections, then do check out my novels GOOD QUEEN BETH, BRITT and GABRIELLA, they'll do your head in. They're shocking, cheeky, bawdy, irreverent, sexy...and respect nobody and nothing. They're...well, just grab a look yourself...one look at BETH, BRITT & GABRIELLA, and you'll be dying for more...

http://www.amazon.com/GOOD-QUEEN-BETH...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/GOOD-QUEEN-BE...

http://www.amazon.com/BRITT-Alan-Hard...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/BRITT-Alan-Ha...

http://www.amazon.com/Gabriella-ebook...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gabriella-ebo...

SEX & CRICKET: MORE INFO ON GABRIELLA

Here's some more info about my novel GABRIELLA (a tale of sex and cricket, it's wicket!) You don't have to know anything about cricket to know what this story is really about!

I think it’s a story that’s been buzzing around in my head for years, and it demanded to be written down. Adolescent love (and teenage fascination with sex) is a pretty significant time and experience for us all. The idea of a love-story set around a cricket match has its roots in an earlier pimply-faced version of me as a fast bowler when at school and the scary, obsessive ideas that went through my adolescent head. When I sat down to write the story, it automatically turned into a bawdy, comical narration of a young man’s faltering (though very sweaty) first experience of love and sex.

I think I want to reach as wide an audience as possible with the story. A story of elemental love and sexual desire is something readers of all ages can identify with, young as well as old. And there’s no reason sport-lovers shouldn’t be able to take to ‘Gabriella’. After all, wicked, probing deliveries, rubbing the ball to give a bit of spin, doggedly defending your wicket, keeping out rising balls, trying to knock over the wicket, or squeeze one through, etc., are all excellent metaphors for the game of love.

This is 'Roman de la Rose' updated from medieval France to present-day England. No longer a question of plucking roses, or even stealing cherries, but more of whipping off bails and knocking stumps over.

HERE'S THE BLURB:

You’ll love this bawdy, comic account of love and sex during a cricket match, where red balls, long-handled bats and probing deliveries are ideal metaphors for the game of love. This is a game of cricket played in a way you’ve never seen before. Watch the love contest between Gabriella, the aristocratic hot totty, and Jim, the virginal working-class rebel. Read of Jim’s balls smashing against Gabriella’s body and rearing up between her legs as she pads up and tries to fight off his probing deliveries. Thrill to Jim’s vicious balls divesting Gabriella of her sexy clothing until she stands defiant in her naked and beautiful glory. Read spellbound as Gabriella comes close to losing Jim to a rival. Find out the truth about Gabriella’s parentage. Follow Jim and Gabriella with ball and bat as they play out cricket’s equivalent of sexual intercourse. Will Jim and Gabriella live happily ever after, or will someone destroy Gabriella’s plans?

Available at

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gabriella-ebo...

http://www.amazon.com/Gabriella-ebook...

http://www.amazon.ca/Gabriella-ebook/...

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Gabrie...

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/gabr...

https://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/ala...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/gabri...

Fresh excerpt from GABRIELLA

GABRIELLA GETS READY FOR BATTLE (AND A MATCH-WINNING INNINGS!)

...Mary picked up the skirt Gabriella had just discarded, and began to fold it neatly on a bench, but not before she had held it to her face and sniffed and gulped in its dreamy perfume. Gabriella smoothed out her knickers, pulling them up tight, and ran her hands over her thighs, squeezing her flesh absent-mindedly as she observed the wide-eyed little brat. She picked up the pointed white bollocks-protector and slipped it into her scanty G-string, nestling it with a fiddle or two against her fanny, thereby ruffling her pubic hair, which Mary was gawping at. She pulled her knickers up tight again, and gave her legs a rub-down once more.
"Gabs," said a little voice. "Can I touch you?"
Gabriella paused in her movements.
"Where do you want to touch me?"
"I don't know," said Mary, going all coy and wobbly.
"You can touch my right thigh," said Gabriella. "There we are. That's enough. Not so high."
Gabriella slipped on Mary's pleated white skirt; it fitted her waist to a T. Mary looked ecstatic. Of course, on Gabriella, it was very, very mini, showing acres of firm-fleshed thigh, barely covering her bum. As she stood there, her legs and thighs seemed to go up forever until they reached the hem of the skirt.
"You look gorgeous, Gabby," said Mary.
"I know."
She sat down and slipped on the pads, strapping them up behind her calves, and tried them out, the ribbed tops flapping against the tensed muscles of her thighs. The tops of the pads at times caught against the hem of her skirt, and, as they flapped outwards, pulled the skirt slightly up, revealing the red and blue of the crotch of her knickers and the protrusion caused by the protector, as if she were a beautiful sexy woman who also had a massive cock.
"You have to remember this moment, Mary. Great things are going to be done. This is like a warrior-queen putting on her armour before going out to do battle with the barbarians. You have played your part in this. Come, give me your hand," she said, and took Mary's eagerly-extended hand and placed it on her protector. They stood there for what seemed a minute or two, Gabriella overcome by the sentiment of the occasion and Mary's hand tingling from the warmth exuded by Gabriella's fanny.
"What's your other name, Mary?"
"Collier," Mary answered.
"Well, Mary Collier, remember this moment. Remember this day. Your part too in this, Mary Collier, will be remembered."
She put on the thick white gloves, and moved over to the mirror on the wall. She stood upright, tears coming to her eyes as she gazed at herself. Her gloved hand had just started to move towards her genitalia, itching to give herself a caress, or even a rough little tug, or even bit of fevered rubbing, when there was a concerted cry or gasp from outside, and some rough-vowelled-sounding cheers.
"I must go," said Gabriella, stirring herself, and brushing her skirt with her hand in a business-like way. "My nation awaits. My race awaits. My class awaits. Mary Collier, you may kiss my hand. Shit, I need a bat! Where's a bat?"
"Here you are, miss," said Chivers smarmily, suddenly appearing and extending out to her a gleaming, new-looking bat with its handle covered in red rubber.
"Thank you, Chivers. Now piss off."
"Very good, miss."
Gabriella went back to the mirror. She looked at herself in profile with her wonderful curve of bosom and posterior and raised the bat high above her head: "I name you Excalibur."
As Gabriella issued from the interior of the pavilion and walked down its steps, her head held high, her back straight, her steps precise and regal, the flip-flop of the pads on her thighs like the accompanying tum-tee-tum of subdued military music, there were gasps from all around, getting louder and louder and wider and wider, and soon there was a crescendo of hurrahs from all around the ground and the sound of grown men and women bursting into tears of joy...

GABRIELLA available at:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gabriella-ebo...

http://www.amazon.com/Gabriella-ebook...

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Gabrie...

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/gabri...

http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/item/SW0...#

https://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/ala...

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/gabr...

2 MORE POEMS

A couple of poems recently published in Poetry Salzburg Review. Hope you like them:

MY ETCHINGS

On the margins,
simply inexpert,
of pages' stuffy smell,
like medieval maps where half-way down
unknown regions began, imagination scrawled
women and their parts.

When no-one was looking,
I etched sweaty things,
cartoon body-bits,
breasts and arms and legs.

A body had a smell all its own,
alone and breathing, slightly unwashed,
cheap paper curling yellow.


DUE

I have in the end to scribble something.
Not to churn out a commonplace commentary on her demise
would denote disrespect, unwillingness to observe due rites.

Not to scribble some drivel,
trite sentiments on the reaper, and our common fate,
would negate her, at least within my orbit.
We deserve more.
A few minutes of time, churlishly given,
records she had a life,
and it crossed at times with his or hers or mine.
We knitted together a bit of the frail twine
which patterns our length of time.

Grief and despair belong to her own,
in their houses,
but a minute or two of my time
is the least I can do.
I recall the plump space she filled
the wobbly line she walked
accented words she spoke
blue eyes which sparkled at me
during the crossing of our paths
in the time I was there.

Extra examples of my work

I've just posted extra samples of my work (prose and poetry) at

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

CHAPTER ONE OF GABRIELLA

You can get GABRIELLA at any of the following:

http://www.amazon.com/Gabriella-ebook... »

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gabriella-ebo... »

http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/gabri... »

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...

HERE IS CHAPTER ONE:

The Right Hon. Gabriella Blenkinsop, hands on hips, surveyed the vast green expanse. There was a scattering of stalls selling odds and sods, and blobs of people standing or reclining on the grass all along the boundary rope. In the pavilion to her right, quaint in its old-fashioned gabled twenties look, sandwiches were now being prepared for lunch. She glanced at the match taking place out in the middle. Except for their gaily coloured caps, male figures ambling about the pitch were clad all in white. She vaguely registered the smack of leather on willow, followed by casual bursts of applause as middle-aged matrons released their hands from wide-brimmed hats, quickly returning them to hold on against the breeze's gentle gusts. Gabriella felt the breeze play about her billowing skirt and, as if someone were breathing on her fanny, curl shiveringly up her thighs. She gave a little self-induced inner squeeze to her genitalia, sensing her hotness and the rub and pull of her pubes on knicker and flesh. She ran her hand through her golden hair, tied loosely halfway down her neck, and gave a lick to her reddish lips, swallowing the clinging taste of the Harrods lip-gloss she had lovingly rubbed on that morning. She stood there, self-confident and supreme, wallowing in everybody's admiring gaze. As always, she was the belle of the ball, the idol of her school. She was tall and sexy. Her features were pronounced and classically beautiful. She had firm, swelling breasts, the tiniest of waists and quite sturdy hips. She stood with her legs apart, the wind stirring her loose skirt like washing on a line to swirl here and there a glimpse of knee and fleshy thigh.
She was the Head Girl of St. Swithin’s Girls School. There were just a few weeks left to the end of year, and her time there as Queen of All She Surveyed would be over; then she would be off to Oxford, where her uncle was Vice-Chancellor. She looked around for her current beau, Algernon Montague-Smythe, the Head Boy of St. Swithin’s Boys School. He was just coming off the pitch, leading in his team, who had managed to restrict the visitors to a very modest total. She gave him a look and wandered off to the back of the pavilion. Once there she took off her knickers and waited under the chestnut tree. When Algy got there, all considerate and breathless, she took a hand-mirror and an apple from her shockingly expensive leather handbag, lay back and waited. While Algy was humping and groaning away, she lay propped against the tree-trunk, looking at herself in the mirror in her left hand and munching on the apple she rotated and rubbed in her right. As always, she made sure he withdrew his thingy before the messy stuff came out; all that disagreeable business was finished off by him the other side of the tree-trunk. When Algy, all sweaty smiles and ingratiating coughs, emerged from behind it, she'd already buggered off, ready to do a majestic walkabout of the cricket ground and milk all the envious looks and gasps.
It was the annual end-of-term match between St. Swithin’s and the local grammar school. It had been played for years, a special treat for the middle-class and working-class lads at the boys' grammar; the public-school toffs walloped them each year, and the grammar-school boys felt all the better for it. As she passed by the nets, she saw some of the plebs warming up for the St. Swithin’s innings. Two of their bowlers were practising. One was tall and blond, and looked almost upper-class; the other one was shorter, a bit stockier with shortish brown hair and a slight half-fringe. He looked a little younger. She didn't like the moody, disrespectful way he glowered at her as she passed by. It made her feel a bit wet. She stumbled on an ant-hill in the field, jarring her legs, and some moisture dripped down on to her upper inner thighs, collecting in blobs on her flesh. She stood still. She must put her knickers back on. She stood like that for ages, seemingly impervious to the boy. He couldn't take his eyes off her. In the breeze, and in her stillness, she felt the drops of vaginal sweat cool and her flesh drying out and becoming chapped. She moved her hand down as if to scratch her thighs but stopped, resting her hand near her fanny. She stared at the boy. He glowered back at her. She opened her handbag, took out her knickers and placed the bag on the ground. Without shame, and with smooth movement of legs and hands, she slipped on her knickers, running their thin fabric up her superbly shaped legs. She pulled them up tightly around her bum, giving them an especial squeeze as she stared at the cheeky boy. She gave him a final jab of her groin, like a genital pout. He stared at her, his face turning crimson, and gulped. She gave a languid chuckle and moved on. What she couldn't stand were uppity lower orders. They had to be put in their place. She would have a word with Algy; when he was batting he would be sure to give the yobbo a good whacking.
When she had done her tour of the ground she returned to Daddy's Rolls-Royce, parked in gleaming splendour in front of the oak tree near the entrance gates to the ground; Chivers, the chauffeur, gave her her salmon and cucumber sandwiches, chilled but not over-chilled, taken out of the car's refrigerator, as she always liked, ten minutes before she would begin to nibble. She carried on her regal tour, munching, and sipping from her champagne-glass. She waved away Algy as he rushed up to her, and he bowed as she went by; she signalled she would see him in ten minutes. The grammar-school shits were moving out on to the playing area, throwing the cricket ball around and getting in more practice. So common of them. The two public-school openers were only just getting padded up, sitting outside the pavilion, giggling about the working-class females, mothers and sisters, they would give a good seeing-to after they'd knocked off the paltry sum of runs amassed by their boy-folk. She saw that young boy standing there awkwardly again, embarrassed and slightly apart from the others. How she despised such gaucheness, such lack of presence, such lack of savoir-faire. Young girls from lower down the school came to ask for her autograph which she condescendingly provided, passing her glass, and the last mouthful of salmon sandwich she didn't want, on to them to be held for her. She waved them away when she returned their gold-embossed autograph-books. She took back her glass. 'With love and kisses, and a wet hug, from Gabriella', she had written. As she turned graciously round, two of the fawning third-formers hadn't got out of the way, transfixed by her glorious presence, and Gabriella collided with their stupid, inert masses and stumbled. The glass was jarred and champagne got splashed over her white blouse, soaking through on to her breasts and nipples, tingling them with its gassy chill. She instinctively turned to look for the young boy, but he was looking away. She felt sure, though, that there was a smirk about his lips. She was furious. She smacked one of the stupid girls on the face, despite her profuse apologies, and the girl's mother, furious and red-faced, came up, grabbed her daughter and started to pummel her.
"How could you do that! To Gabriella! Oh, Gabriella, I'm so sorry..."
"Yes, Yes!"
Gabriella waved her away.
Chivers was sent for. He came running up with a new blouse.
"Oh, Gabriella, surely not...Oh, Gabriella, you're so shameless...Isn't she a card..."
They all watched, parents, lower-formers and Gabriella's fellow sixth-formers, as she fearlessly began to take off her blouse, which had been made to look flimsy and thin by its wetness. She lingeringly, like in slow-motion, toyed with the buttons, as if struggling to work them through the damp, clinging openings. Clumsily erotic. She licked her lips. Her acolytes surrounded her in order to preserve a modicum of modesty, but Gabriella, with an imperious wave of the hand, didn't allow them to come too close. Through the other bodies it was quite possible to view snatches of her firm bosom cupped in its Harrods bra, pink and black and laced, little trails of liquid still visible on her right breast. Algy was called up to unstrap her bra and was allowed to lick up the residue of champagne from her tits. When he got a bit too excited and tried to suck her nipple she kneed him in the groin and, now bra-less, slipped on the dry blouse, her nipples pushing forward their brownness against the whiteness of the blouse, like tracing-paper held tight over some etchings, or brass-rubbing paper pressed tight over engravings prior to being rubbed. She moved away, followed by her entourage, leaving Algy rolling about on the ground, his hands clasped to his groin.
"Sorry, Gabby, sorry," he kept murmuring. She turned round abruptly, a vicious gleam in her eyes. "I mean, sorry, so sorry, Gabriella...sorry..."
She looked round to see if the boy was watching her. He was looking away, head bowed, unable to look up. Little shit. He'd be wanking all night now. Dreaming of her. Dreaming of his betters. She gave a wave to Mummy and Daddy as they wandered by, she in her wide-brimmed Ascot hat and he in his top hat, probably heading off to the chestnut tree to have sex with a couple of the yokels that Chivers had rounded up. Probably Daddy would hang on just long enough to see the team knock off the runs and would then drift off back to the family pile to make sure the gardeners were gardening and the cooks were cooking and the maids were maiding or whatever they did, or maybe would go off to the factory with its great big chimneys that belched out smoke and kept all the locals in employment so they had enough to spend on getting cancer and rotten livers. She didn't really know what Daddy produced there; he had tried to explain once but she assumed, since there was always so much of it coming out, that that was where smoke was made. You couldn't have a modern industrial society, with hand-outs for the criminal classes and all that, without smoke. It was people like Daddy who kept everything going. Kept everything burning away. She also reckoned her daddy's place, with its great big furnaces, was where the unwanted foetuses of the working-classes were burnt off.
She gazed round again at the scene. The endless green. The collections of fawning people. Her sixth-formers wandering off as she dismissed them. Algy running up to the chestnut tree to receive her commands and maybe a quick hand-job. Life was wonderful. She put on her gloves, her suede white ones, and gave Algy a few twists and turns, moving away towards the end so that Algy could finish himself off and she wouldn't get messed up. The sticky mess was all over his hands.
"Lick it up," she ordered him.
She wandered off past the pavilion and headed towards the boundary rope to watch the innings. Algy came up to join her a while later. He sat down on the grass beside her.
"Now, Algy, you see that young boy over there who's opening the bowling for the grammar-school shits? I want you to give him a good thrashing."
"Has he tried to take liberties with you, Gabby? Let me get my belt," Algy said, licking and swallowing the lingering remnants of his sperm.
"I mean, give him a thrashing when you're batting, stupid!"
"Sure, Gabs. Actually, I think his dad works for my dad."
"What does he do?"
"Who? My dad?"
"No! The little tyke's dad."
"I don't know," he said.
"And what does your dad do exactly?" she asked.
"My dad? Well, people work for him. That's what he does. That's what I'm going to do when I leave Oxford."
"I see," said Gabriella, just for a moment, despite herself, feeling a stab of admiration for Algy. He wasn't Head Boy for nothing. "Remember to teach that shit a good lesson."
"Your wish is my command."
"And never, ever, call me anything but Gabriella in public in future."
"Sorry, Gabby."
St. Swithin’s only had eighty runs to score, so the game wasn't expected to last too long. The grammar-school boys had probably gorged themselves on the cheap paste sandwiches made especially for them and, once they had been made to run around a bit, would probably throw in the towel fairly quickly.
"When are you batting, Algy?" Gabriella asked.
"Number four, Gabs," he answered. "Might be all over by then. They're only grammar-school types."
"Be thankful for small mercies," murmured Gabriella. "At least we're one of the areas that still have grammar schools. My cousin, Rebecca, you know, down in Hertfordshire, she says they have to play against the local comprehensive. Just imagine; probably here we'd have to play against the local colliery first eleven."
"Crikey! Isn't that a sort of dog?"
A sudden shout of "Howzat?" distracted them. A ripple of applause echoed desultorily around the ground, and a white figure, scuffing the ground with his white boots, taking off his red-and-blue St. Swithins cap, and shoving his bat under his arm, walked slowly from the cricket pitch to the pavilion.
"That's a turn-up," said Algy, looking bemused. "George is out. That bugger of yours got him, lbw. I'd better get padded up."
Gabriella looked annoyed. She stood up, screwing her eyes to focus on that young boy surrounded by his smelly working-class mates patting him on the shoulder. As she moved to the right to get a better view, Algy stretched out his left leg in order to put on his pads. She tripped over his leg and fell flat on her face.
After she had stopped kicking his balls in, Algy stood up.
"Remember, Algy, if you sort him out, I'll let you stick it up my anus."
"Oh, Gabby, what can I say..."
She watched Number Three go in, take guard and prepare to receive his first ball.

Jim Collier looked out towards the boundary and saw the tall blonde girl staring at him. She had her hands on her hips and stood legs wide apart. He swallowed hard. He was at the end of his fifth year. Next year would be the sixth form. He already found the ethos of the grammar school, with its public-school pretensions, a bit overwhelming and unpleasant, let alone all these upper-class twits and tarts he was surrounded with today. He'd asked one of his mates who the blonde bombshell was. Gabriella Blenkinsop. Same name as the street his family's terraced house was in. Blenkinsop Terrace. He hadn't known where to look when she'd put on her knickers for him. He was a shy, awkward little virgin. The only experience he'd ever had with a girl was at the age of twelve when, every now and then, the girl two houses down had sucked his fingertips. He was a boy who diligently did his homework, and dreamt one day he might write decent poetry. Girls scared him, especially old eighteen-year-old tarts like her. And all those upper-class twits she belonged to.
He was the second opening bowler. He had a short run-in, and then, a yard or two from the umpire, he would extend his right arm out to the right and turn a mini-circle with it like someone signalling to turn left with hand-signals, as in the old days, and would then straighten his arm out and bowl with the straightest of arms, if anything, bent in a bit towards his own body. He was very accurate, and the ball would swing in to the batsman; he would pitch it up and he often got wickets through bowling batsmen out or getting them lbw. His type of bowling allowed the batsman to come forward on to his front foot. If the batsman missed the ball, it would hit the stumps or his leg; that's how he had just got his wicket. He had started to develop an alternative ball, where he would bowl with a rounder arm and pitch the ball shorter; this would make the ball rise up into the body of the batsman, and force him on to the back foot. He had yet to use it in an actual match.
Blenkinsop Terrace was just round the corner from the ground; he'd rushed off there during the lunch-break to see if he could get his parents to come round and lend some support. He'd felt a bit vulnerable before the gentry and their ladies, and especially before that girl with the upper-class fanny and tits.
He'd found his mum and dad in the sitting-room. His mum was sitting in an armchair, with her apron on, wearing her glasses, her legs lazily apart. She was reading her celebrity magazines. His dad was sitting in the other armchair, snoring, his newspaper, open at the sports pages, laid over him. The television was on.
"Hey! Mum! Dad! Why don't you come and watch the match? Give a bit of support against the toffs?"
"Oh, I can't," said his mum, "I've heard on the telly a couple of celebs have just died. Isn't it sad? I'm waiting to hear when the funerals are on. Maybe your dad can come to watch you."
"Hee-up! What's up, son?"
"Do you want to see the match?"
"What match? Football doesn't start till August."
"Come and support us against the toffs!"
"Oh, I don't know," his dad said, scratching his balls, "cricket's not really my game. Hey, luv, what's up?"
"Oh, nothing," said mum, sniffing a bit, and wiping a tear away with a corner of one of her celebrity mags. "I'm OK. It's just I've heard two celebrities have died. Isn't it sad?"
"Oh dear. What's their names?" asked Dad.
"I can't remember. I've never heard of them. Isn't it sad? I'm waiting to find out when the funerals are, so I know which issoos of my magazines they'll be in."
"C'mon, Dad! Support the revolution!" Jim interrupted.
"Now, don't start that again," said his mother. "Speaking against Her Majesty and all that. I've told you I don't like that. She's wonderful, when she's got her tiara on, and her jewellery, she's just like one of us...now, Jim, you run along and play with your friends..."
"S'long, son," said his dad, closing his eyes and dreaming of his favourite footballer's biceps. "I'd better stay here, son. Mum's just 'ad two bereavements."
Jim rubbed the ball against his white flannels, to the right of his dick. It was still a fresh-looking ball, as red and untouched as a ripe cherry. Well, a large ripe cherry. He put his first two fingers across the seam and stood still at the mark he had scraped in the grass. Ten paces. That was all he ran in. His first ball was off the mark, slanting off down leg-side. The second one was on target, and the batsman, tense and blinking, nervously concentrating, kept it out. The third was fast; he put an extra sling of arm into it, grunting loudly, and the batsman, legs wavering and retreating a bit, just kept it out, getting an inside edge on to his pads. Jim sensed the rich tosser's son was scared.
Gabriella had glanced up on the first grunt from the pitch, like being slapped in the chest or poked in the ribs, or tickled in the fanny. It was like the grunt of an animal. The next ball about to be delivered tensed her body; she watched the little shit approach the crease and turn over his arm, bringing it down with force, his head drooping down and falling away as the body bent double and moved to the left, towards her. That loud grunt hit her again. The stumps shattered, the bails spinning into the air. Gabriella's mouth opened and she gasped. Or even moaned. She flung back her body. Algy gave her a curious glance.
"Ten for two, old girl. Time for me to shape up, and sort things out."
He stood up, and undid his white trousers. Gabriella slipped him the protector, and he wriggled in the plastic oval-shaped box over his bollocks, but not before Gabriella had given them an encouraging tug.
"Go out there and do it for me," she said. "Massacre that little runt."
Nothing much happened the next few overs. Algy may have been a woolly sweater short of a full cricket kit, but he knew how to steady things, play with a straight bat, calm things down, and ride out a storm. It was in the blood, the genetic inheritance gained from those past generations who grittily faced down the natives and irate yokels incensed over the deflowering of their offspring. Algy managed to withstand Jim's onslaught, straight-batting everything bowled at him. He automatically came on to the front foot, and, however fast Jim bowled, or however he varied his pace, it became a little too easy for Algy. On the other hand, such defensive play meant very few runs were being scored. The other bowler, the taller, blond one, was quite fast, but inaccurate, often giving away runs through wides or byes when he sent down the ball beyond, not just the batsman, but the wicketkeeper, the slips and the covering fine leg. Suddenly, though, he got one on target and Algy's partner was bowled.
Gabriella had moved over to the pavilion, and winced when she saw the fall of the wicket from there. She looked up at the scoreboard. Twenty-one for three. It was tense. It could go either way. As the batsman entered the pavilion, he was given a few claps, but Gabriella strode up to him.
"You wanker! You've let your class down!" she hissed. The poor chap looked heartbroken. "Get out of my way!" Gabriella said abruptly, pushing away one of the third-formers she had nearly tripped over earlier, the one she hadn't slapped, and who was still hanging around her, starry-eyed.
Another few overs went by. Thirty for three. Fifty more runs needed. Gabriella felt she would burst from the tension. She paced up and down, the breeze ruffling her golden hair, strands of it straying and playing about her mouth and even entering it as she breathed excitedly; she licked them and then spat them out, only for the breeze to waft them back. She placed her arms on her hips, mouthing obscenities each time the little grammar-school devil geared up to bowl. It was always the same: first he would approach his mark, steady himself, look up and walk a pace or two, then begin to run in until there would be a flourish of his body and that vicious flinging away of the ball and falling away of his body. It would bring a shudder to her own body. She would have to turn away, waving her hand before her face as if she were feeling faint and placing her other hand on her midriff and giving it a nervous touch or two. But she had stabbings lower down, such that she had to tense up her fanny area and go and sit down now and then. She felt as if the honour of her race depended on the outcome of the match, and all she had to rely on were silly, weak-backboned males like Algy and his chums. To keep her chin up, she had even needed to retreat round the back of the pavilion and sniff up some of the white stuff Chivers had laid out in a couple of lines on a napkin spread out by the chestnut tree. Chivers. Dependable old Chivers. That was how it was supposed to be. Her toothbrush there in the mornings, with toothpaste freshly squeezed on it, or her cocaine, whenever required, neatly laid out for her.
In between balls Jim would glance over at the blonde figure in her white blouse and billowing skirt in front of the pavilion, nervously pacing up and down. In a funny way, he was bowling both for her and against her. Thirty-five for three. He was getting a bit anxious. That Algernon git was just blocking him out, and the other batsman was getting a run or two at the other end, and John, his bowling partner, was giving away the occasional run through untidy, uncontrolled deliveries. Jim tried everything. Slower balls. Pitching the ball at leg, middle or off stump. Even giving the ball a twist to try to spin it. Nothing worked. Algy was an unadventurous, unimaginative sod, stuck in a groove, but it was working. There was only one other thing Jim could try. His new delivery. The one he had been practising recently. Where he bowled with a rounder arm, keeping his arm lower and his back not so straight. That way the ball wouldn't swing in but, if he pitched it shorter, in line with middle-stump, he could make it bounce and rear up at the batsman's body. That would disconcert them. Then he could vary the deliveries, and one moment the batsmen would be on the back foot, the next on the front, and they would get confused, and make mistakes. Anyway, that was the plan. And, as he, at fine leg, sprinted after one of John's wayward deliveries and failed to catch it, giving away four runs as the ball bubbled over the boundary rope, he realised he would have to try it next over. He looked towards the pavilion and grimaced angrily as he saw that dirty tart jumping up and down in upper-class ecstasy.