The Eyes Have It.

By Billy Bodman

Frankie is commercially legitimate and free of his gambling debts, although outrageous good fortune and risky legerdemain played a major part.
Yet, two years on, he somehow finds himself being pursued over Aintree's Grand National fences, at night and without a horse. Someone in authority believes he is in cahoots with his ex-mate, Blackie, who has absconded with some very damaging information.
When back in south Wales, he eventually chances upon this highly incriminating evidence that Blackie has sly secreted, and finds himself embroiled in a major drugs dealing concern, the blue movie business and a racehorse-doping enterprise.
A body turns up in the boot of his car, and only quick thinking allows him to dispose of the corpse before a couple of very suspect CID officers come knocking his door. All he can do is use his considerable guile and streetwise talents to give the impression of complete innocence while frantically covering the tracks he has made wriggling out of any perceived association.
He has a kidnap and rescue bid to deal with, another body to confuse the opposition, and some improbably choreographed mayhem on the golf course before he can even begin to effect the only conclusion that will clear him of any links. Bluff and double-bluff is the name of Frankie's game and his success or terminal failure depends on how well he plays his hand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Billy Bodman
• Release date: Aug 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005758523

Billy Bodman

Presently (pleasantly) retired and well divorced. 1 novel published to date, 'PAPER ROUND'), the content of which would lead you to believe that the Shades of Grey stuff was penned by Enid Blyton. Interested in having it republished as Ebook along with its sequel 'PAPER BOY'. If successful, there are 3 others to consider.2 novels brought out simultaneously- 'FARADAY'S EYES' and 'INTERREGNUM', both featuring on Amazon et el websites. Exciting, exotic, X-rated.Now have seven (7) novels on Smashwords submitted almost simultaneously, all of varying genres. 2 of them are sequels and a further sequel is being readied.March 2022. Published the paperback version of my latest Billy Bodman novel, 'RUNNER', which can be found on Amazon plus Barnes and Noble et al. June 2020, just published the sequel to 'RUNNER' entitled 'HIRAETH' which is Welsh for 'A longing for home'. Almost a 1000 pages all told, and the family have still not reached the gold-fields of California. A third act is on the cards.So, you'll never be bored with a BOD.

Book preview

Dagger At The Heart

Billy Bodman

Copyright © Billy Bodman

Published at Smashwords 2021

It is a moment to savour I feel, when you can exit smoothly out of a dreamless sleep, with a self- congratulatory smile on your lips.

No lurking demons. No debilating regrets.

Today I will become a legitimate, officially-registered concern.

With a high-spirited ‘yip’, I kick away the sheets in exuberant glee, and looked at my naked image in the dressing-table mirror. The smile broadened.

‘How good does that feel?’ I asked myself.

‘It’s certainly perked little Frankie up,’ I answered, nodding my head groin-wards, although in fairness that is a normal state of affairs. Not so long ago, although not here in my current abode I need to point out, he would generally have been able to avail himself of a very juicy receptacle, but I have doggedly weaned myself off the old carnal impulses.

I have my reasons.

‘Eight o’clock,’ I said, pointing at my image. ‘Wanna bet?’

I didn’t really have to look at the bedside clock to verify my statement, but nevertheless glanced that way.

Just as I prophesied, a mere smidgin after eight; a legacy of my sales management days when I conditioned the old brain cells to click into gear at the appropriate time, no matter how inebriated I ended up from the dubious pleasures of entertaining prime customers before clambering into bed, nullifying the need for an alarm call from the hotel receptionist. It always seemed somehow miraculous to wake up at the designated time, but that internal clock never fails, no matter in what strange and beguiling resting place I sometimes found myself.

I have blessed the knack on more than one occasion.

As I performed my morning ablutions, and staying with the same theme, I amused myself with regurgitated memories of a very parlous situation in some semi-detached house, Risca over the next valley if memory serves, with a husband coming home from a night shift earlier than expected.

It was only the following day – as I was mentally logging the experience for future consumption - that I came to the startling conclusion that I had been manipulated for some unexplained reason.

I had been idly standing at the bar of the Hilltop night-club, when I found myself being frankly appraised by the blue eyes of this compact little blond that I had spotted on the dance-floor earlier on. She had given me a sparkling, wide-eyed stare accompanied by a winsome smile and I knew immediately that I would do no better that night. The surprise was that I had no need to go overboard with the charm, which spoke volumes for my chances.

Inside the hour I was left in no doubt that, should I be interested, a taxi to her place would bring unexpurgated dividends. I told her my motor was in the club carpark (I was being careful with my drinking as the breathalyser now had become standard practice and was used widely), although clearly would not be required as the ubiquitous ‘passion wagon’, but she insisted that a cab would attract less attention, leaving no doubt that I was on a dead cert winner.

It just proves how thoughtlessly careless I had allowed myself to become during that period of my life.

‘You’re not downstairs?’ Had been her opening gambit, referring to the newly-opened ‘Speakeasy’ gay bar that Martin, the club manager, had prudently instigated.

‘Not of that persuasion,’ I had answered, recalling a comment I had recently overhead that amused me. ‘Are you with the hen-night party there,’ I continued, nodding to the nearby table of raucous females.

‘No, just two friends. They seem to be occupied.’

‘Husband?’ I’d asked, after taking her to the floor to find out how adroitly her body introduced itself to mine and then ordering a gin and tonic apiece.

‘Steelworks. Night shift,’ she had answered with no prevarication. ‘Continental. Back mid-morning.’

‘Kids?’

‘My mother’s got them both for the night. At her place.’

I remember clearly being mildly surprised when she had said ‘Upstairs’, as soon as she shut the front door, and ‘Two minutes. Door at the top. You can use the downstairs loo,’ before heading upwards. Protocol usually indicated a vigorously-smooching build-up in a downstairs lounge before the main course of indulging in whatever sexual proclivities were on the menu. Even a bungalow or apartment/flat unerringly follow the same ritual.

Bedrooms were out-of-bounds.

As I now exit the bathroom, be-robed, and head for my kitchen and a pre-planned breakfast, humming cheerfully, I seem to recall a fleeting feeling of foreboding that tickled my senses, due, I am sure, solely to the fact that experience has taught me to always make a note of potential escape routes. Upstairs, the only alternative way out when cornered is a jump from a two-storey bedroom window.

Flamboyancy has never been my style.

The scented soap in the toilet sink and warm towel had been thoughtful, and so, after removing my shoes and prudently setting them against the bottom riser, trotted softly up the carpeted steps. One door was open with a light on. I edged in and there she was. Nakedly spread-eagled on a coral-coloured eiderdown, with thighs spread un-self-consciously wide, leaving no doubt where my attention was intended to focus. The reason was clear. Her plump/pink pudenda was as smooth as a sea-shore pebble.

I am sure I squealed, a Frankie Howard ‘Ooo missus’ whine, as I rushed headlong forward.

I would not hesitate in stating that my preferred option is for hairiness, but the clean-shaven look certainly has its merits.

To say that I am an aficionado of the fanny would be an over-statement, but I confess to having an overwhelming fascination with that mystical haven. Like snowflakes, no two minges are alike and, from the moment I was given the freedom to explore that magical idyll those dozen or so years ago that is even now still indelibly imprinted on my retina, I have been as studious in mapping and logging the imagery as any committed lepidopterist.

I could so easily convince myself that I had been specially chosen by some benevolent deity (female?) to be the recipient of some esoteric knowledge when, in an episode that I still find surreally dream-like, I was handed the key to the gateway to orgasmic Nirvana when I was so ardently introduced to the shy-hooded clitoris and the joys of the crème de la crème of tongue-twisters, cunnilingus.

It would not be an exaggeration to say I have felt privileged and not a little humble ever since.

‘I’m not ashamed of my body,’ she said, almost defensively, eyes as wide as her wish-bone knees.

‘I should think not,’ I replied appreciatively, giving her a quick all-over scan before stooping low to stop any meaningful dialogue being aired.

Anyway, I was always taught not to speak with my mouth full, and later this athletically-nubile blond gave every indication that she had been similarly schooled.

And yet, all the while I was aware that my little sub-conscious workers, ever on the look-out for potential mine-fields, were beavering diligently away – as was I – sending minute prickles of warning up my spine that complacency might have grave consequences.

Whatever, the combination of a nagging instinct and the knack of waking up on cue, despite the paucity of sleep, got me slipping furtively out of bed, with the snuffling snoring of the exhausted nearby to urge me onward, collecting my neatly discarded clothing and then dressing quietly on the landing. Downstairs, I could feel that same sense of unease once more creeping over me, as I tied my shoelaces. A glance at my wristwatch told me 7:30, a good time for furtive retreats I had found, which was when I heard the distinct sound of car-tyres on a gravel drive.

Was I teasing myself with danger, I ask myself, not for the first time? I do not remember being fazed in any way, unhurriedly finishing the tying of my laces. I had risen calmly, gone along the hallway into their kitchen, thankfully finding the key in the back door, which suggested he (surely the husband) would not be entering that way. I turned the key gently in anticipation. I heard a car door slam shut, then, seconds later, the scrape of a key in a Yale. I was out of the back door like a wraith, shutting it quietly behind me, ducking under the kitchen window and creeping to the side of the building. There was a wooden fence and a gate blocking the way, with just a bolt to slide for an exit. I took a moment to wonder what the (assumed) husband – I never did find out of course as I very prudently stayed clear of the Hilltop for a few weeks just in case – would think about finding the back door unlocked and then the side gate ajar. Also, he would have needed to be assailed with chronic sinusitis for the distinctive aromas of gladiatorial sex to pass him by when he entered the bedroom.

I was smartly away along a high-hedged alley milliseconds after I heard the front door click shut. I had but a ten minute wait at the high street bus-stop and a half hour trip back down the valley to reclaim my car. I was back home by ten with no need to justify my movements to Betty, my heavily-pregnant wife (ex now), as I had ‘thoughtfully’ rung to say that the stand I had been fronting for the past couple of days at the Plymouth building exhibition would not be dismantled until late the Friday evening.

It was around that time that I began to feel the griping sensation of guilt, not guilty because of the self-indulgent life-style I had engineered, but for the simple reason that, since she had become pregnant, she had never questioned my explanations or displayed the slightest sign of suspicion.

I quite frankly did not deserve her.

As it transpired, despite other intriguing options dangled my way, I had already planned to steal away before lunch and make my way up that long, tortuous Devon/Somerset drag before the traffic became impossible, toward the evening flat-race meeting at Chepstow. Once there, I deliberately kept to the Members as a prudent means of keeping a low profile, and just had one little interest bet which paid the entrance fee, but I was only there to eke out the time. A bar meal in The Beaufort followed later, a clean-up and change of clothes, courtesy of Trish the landlady, and I was all set for topping off the night at the Hillside.

I occasionally tried to fathom out what might have been going on to see if there were lessons to be learned, but several scenarios offered themselves up for debate.

Despite the long, drawn-out bouts of multi-positional sex – we must have gone through the card twice – it had, on reflection, been oddly mechanical, as though she had devoured the contents of a sex manual and had finally advanced to the practical (number six had been awkward, but eminently worthwhile). She had eschewed any hint of mouth-mash kissing, as though it was too intimate an act to bring into the action, but her body had so vigorously attacked mine it suggested she had a passel of demons to exorcise.

Had she chosen me as the instrument of some revenge on her husband, reassuring me that he would not be home from work until mid-morning in the expectation that we would be caught dilecto inflagrante when he arrived around 7:30, with no concern for my ultimate fate? Whatever the motive, there was no doubt it had been pre-planned, and carried out by her with a certain amount of panache.

If I had been less intent on indulging the carnal urgings of the old one-eyed ramrod, and being too blasé by half about my well-rehearsed pulling power, I should have known from any amount of social interactions what Continental Hours entailed.

I believe it was as a result of that encounter that I began slowly to acknowledge the self-destructive path I had been pursuing, although it took a heart-stopping brush with the law, amongst other exigencies, that pulled me back from the brink of disaster.

I realise that it is tempting fate – that furtive Fay – to believe I am close to the top of my game, because I know the feeling, that cloak of confidence that hints of an air of invincibility, and am consummately aware of how ephemeral that state can be, but I have every reason to look ahead with confidence.

Legitimate, that word again caresses my synapses like silk on marble. It hangs in the air like a neon-lit sign, as I pour the tea, putting that cat-who-nicked-the-cream smile back on my face. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been respectable for some time, but this was the first occasion when I could enunciate it out loud with such self-satisfaction.

It was I suppose a perfect case of one door closing and another one opening, and I refuse to put it down to a stroke of luck or fortune smiling on me because it was simply one of those nice things that happen now and again. You need them to balance out the sads, the bads and the downright- fucking-unfairs of this world before you begin to question your role in life.

This was one of those ventures that you couldn’t even think about embarking on without having lots of ready cash, and the foresight and resolve to make sure you pay up on the nail without any hint of prevarication. A bit like betting without the benefit of credit. It felt, I thought, as though a loose gaggle of disparate strands were finally coming together in one neat knot. It could be even more accurately described as a feeling of having wandered aimlessly up and down lanes and B-roads for some interminable time, to suddenly find oneself on the motorway and the welcome appearance of a desirable destination.

It had only been something like five months - five intensely-concentrating months it must be stated - and there is no doubt that the decision I made to give up on the Flat had been the crucial factor (not even a bet on the Derby or Oaks) but there seemed to be a definite purpose to life now, something tangible on which to build. Gambling, although speculating is a more accurate description of my interest, did not seem to fit in with the life-style somehow, as though indulging in it would stand out as a jarring intrusion. I hadn’t even been tempted by this new Summer sticks season, although I will admit to being one of the few amongst my contemporaries to think it was a splendid idea, and although the National Hunt season proper had already started, at the Market Rasen meeting in August as usual, in my mind the jumps did not start seriously until the Chepstow meeting on the first Saturday in October, which always coincided with the first leg of the Autumn Double, the Cambridgeshire at Newmarket, the day before the Arc De Triomphe at Longchamp in Paris.

I used to live by those date-marked signposts, and I suppose they will always be etched on my memory bands, like rote-learned arithmetic tables.

Today is the first Saturday in October, and I am going to Chepstow once more but with absolutely no intention of laying a bet. It is doubtful whether I would have gone at all were it not for the fact that I had to begin the ball rolling on this next business phase of mine. It wasn’t really a new venture, just a diversification from a previous one. Hauling topsoil from Herefordshire building sites to prospective playing fields on the tops of flattened Welsh coal-tips is not that much different to hauling clay from Gloucestershire building sites to dis-continued County rubbish dumps.

The weather is unquestionably the definitive factor in the decision. It is all but impossible to transfer slurry-wet topsoil out of the bucket of a digger into the back of an empty lorry, and even if that messy task were accomplished, tipping the soil back out of the wagon when it sticks to the metal floor and sides like nougat to a hairy blanket is a ridiculous exercise. So carting topsoil is a summer programme, and then only as long as the sun shines.

Clay however is slab-like and impervious to the wet, which is why the County surveyors needed it to form a covering layer to seal off the toxicity that is redolent of a long-term rubbish dump. I had proved my honesty and trustworthiness with the topsoil contracts, and as a result now had the benefit of a one-year supply of Gloucestershire clay. If I could have located a steady supply of the stuff for five years – and I have my feelers out constantly - the surveyors would have handed me a contract for that amount without hesitation. To top it all, the real cream on the cake – I giggled myself silly on more than one occasion at the simplicity of it - the building contractor was actually paying me to remove the clay as, unlike topsoil, it is superfluous to a new housing site and would be dumped any way, and then being paid again to deliver it to the County Council designated site.

God’s overcoat has a multiplicity of pockets and I was presently nestling nicely in one of them.

Glyn Haulage, the coal merchant, would be well pleased with me considering the boost I had engineered to his turnover, which simply meant that his drivers could now return from their coal-hauling delivery service fully loaded instead of having an empty wagon. We had formed a pretty good arrangement out of nothing, and now had continuity for as long as the material was available. If I could also keep the summer topsoil going with some other sites I had earmarked, I would be set fair for a lucratively profitable future.

I put the frying pan on the cooker, thinking that the earth definitely moved for me these days.

When in a free and easy circumspective mood like now – few and far between until recently - one memory invariably leads to another interconnected one.#

I was watching one of those work-shop documentaries on TV the other day, of a potter moulding his wodge of clay into a classically-shaped vase. The way his hands coordinated so adeptly with his thumbs, as he delicately caressed the wet clay into responding to his ministrations, was an extremely sensual performance. It made me think that to reach that level of skill a person would have to take lessons in a pottery class, even if they began with a natural aptitude. For myself, I had been Grammar school educated by clever, experienced teachers into gaining half-a-dozen ‘O’-levels in a variety of subjects before I left, but you would not find an ‘O’-level in SEX among them.

All we had, my classmates and I, to sustain the compulsive and constant bouts of masturbation were the naked photos of big-breasted, Swedish models in well-thumbed copies of ‘Health and Efficiency’ magazines, posing on rocky beaches, but there was not a clue about what was between the smooth, featureless fork at the top of the thighs.

How utterly gauche we were.

I remember lying in bed, contemplating my muscularly rock-hard knob with a sense of despair. I could not even begin to imagine the reaction of a girl on discovering that hidden in your trousers was this disproportionate monstrosity. How had it suddenly got so big, almost as if it had been pumped-up overnight? How could you possibly fit such a thing into that tight-tiny hole that you only knew from seeing baby girls being nappy-changed.

How apprehensive was I, I wonder, in the Summer of that final, exam-filled year of school, tremulously graduating to teasing games of ‘Nervous’ while stealthily closeted in fields of six-foot high ferns where you and your girlfriend-of-the-moment took turns to finger-creep up each other’s thighs, whispering ‘Nervous?’ every couple of inches until fear of the unknown prohibited any further progress?

Was it just that dread of being cringingly embarrassed if she suddenly found out what was swelling up at your groin like some lecherous beast lurking in the undergrowth– it had an uncontrollable mind of its own – that was the cause of so much time being needlessly wasted during those balmy days, or was it that little worm of anxiety gnawing at your entrails advising you that you are so far out of your depth a watery grave would be a welcome exit, because now I know without doubt that it was not the adolescent females who were inhibited? It was no wonder girls of a contemporary age - those with whom you had shared junior schooling, and practiced your snogging techniques in the flickering gloom of the afternoon pictures - began suddenly to set their sights on the older lads, as they lost patience with our nervy reluctance to ‘go further’. Now it was the girls from a Form below that set their sights on us, although you would never guess if you only encountered them parading about at the local, Friday night hop.

And it was a bubbly bundle of fun of that ilk named Geraldine, in possession of the kind of curves that would have baffled Pythagoras, who would daringly shake me out of my stultifying complacency. She was as excitable as a new-born foal in a paddock who, in the shadows to the side of the dancehall (the ‘stute’), snogged me with a no-holds-barred, full-front-on urgency that later on that evening gave me serious pause for thought.

When we arranged to go for a walk the next day – it must have been early August not long before I started work – something about her mien as she boarded her home bus (the opposite direction to me) set my pulse tap-dancing. She gave me such a piercingly wicked and knowing look, full of innuendo and suggestion, that I am sure my sub-conscious immediately began to prepare itself for a revelatory experience.

Little vignettes of the meeting are still indelibly stamped in my mind’s eye.

I took her for a walk along the local woodland paths, to a mossy bower I knew, that was hidden by tangled bushes and brambles. I remember there was a look of high expectancy in her eyes as she lay back while I hovered above. I had developed a successful technique that I had deployed for quite some time, intended to show the chosen partner how experienced I was (just in necking to be truthful) but now I thought I might be a bit bolder and tease her into startled rejection by moving my hand slowly and meaningfully down her neck, across the shoulder of her sweater towards the fulsome thrust of a brassiere-encased breast. I broke free from the lip-writhing combat, and stared into her eyes with what I trusted was a challenging look. All she did in response was smile and pull my head back down to her parted lips.

It wasn’t as if breasts were a mystery, as there was always the hint of a swelling in films with scoop-necked dresses, and the eye-opening, unmissable sweater-bulges of Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe and Mamie Van Doren, but that was the first time I had handled one. It wasn’t as if it was an experience laden with sensuality – the agricultural bra took that out of the equation – but it was an instance of a once-closed door being un-latched.

I knew I was in un-chartered territory, but there was an un-stoppable impetus building that urged me on. My hand went to her knee, as the opening move in what I sensed was no longer a game. Geraldine had seemed to be quite content to go through the stop/start stages, and I have often wondered if, even at that age, she was teasing herself to get the most out of the rising tension, until my hand arrived at the very top of her wonderfully-muscled thigh.

Who was trembling the most?

Was it my hand shaking or was the tremble under my palms a symptom of the thrill she was experiencing?

‘Nervous’? I asked through kiss-bruised lips?

A shake of the head was her mute response, which was when I utterly surprised myself by rearing backwards to take in the closed eyes, the part-opened mouth and the skin-flush to either side of her dilating nostrils as though I was a cine-camera recording a changing landscape.

My all-encompassing roving eye, from here-on in, never stopped recording, logging and filing away every nuance of human behaviour that caught my attention.

I think that was another moment to savour in my pursuit of sexual discovery as, marginally before I moved my hand that vital last inch, I noticed she had raised her knees which were slightly opening and closing as though her body was telling her to open her legs wide but her mind was warning her of the consequences.

I almost forgot to ask the question as my knuckles encountered the thrilling, spongy bulge of cottony gusset at the very apex of her thighs, as an inquisitive finger hesitatingly caressed the flesh at the gap that led beneath the elasticated leg. I believe we both held our breath for long, long seconds until I saw her eyes blink open with a twinkling spark of wickedness meeting mine and she muttered the one-word-truce.

I clearly remember the sudden thrill at the suggestion of a thicket of hair, as I slid my hand slowly and meaningfully back down her thigh.

As she took her turn at hovering, placing a hand at the inside of my knee – that definitely showed intent and knowledge – I think it struck me that she might not be as innocent as he had surmised, which was disconcerting, because it immediately occurred to me that she acted as if she had some sort of pre-planned agenda. Her hand, at the previous excursion up my thigh, had come perilously close to where my balls nestled. The further her hand moved through the staging-post halts, the more I could feel my knob beginning to fatten and push against the cloth of my trouser leg. She was not studying me, as I had her, but had her eyes fixed on the relentless progress of her hand. I can almost replicate in my mind the guttural rasp in her throat as the palm of her hand finally traced the raised hillock that uncontrollably throbbed and twitched in response, and in that magical moment I could feel all my unwarranted fears, like discarding a winter overcoat when the sun begins to shine.

Thinking about it now, I believe I still had some unfounded reservations about what her reaction might be if I should suddenly ‘shoot’, as she continued beyond the parameters of the ‘game’, clearly intent on her set path with no intention of asking if I was ‘Nervous’, unzipping me and sliding a hand inside to grasp the exponentially-expanding muscle.

‘Oh, good God,’ she gasped, but it was in wonder not horror, as she teased it upright to lie hotly along my belly. She had, thankfully to me, seemed to be content to grip my knob as tightly she would a baton when sprinting the final leg of an Olympic relay, as if she had told herself ‘mission accomplished’.

She had then lain back and closed her eyes contentedly, clearly inviting me to fulfil my role in what had become a far more serious pursuit.

I often think in the months that followed, since being given free access to the fleshy flaps and slithery/wet ‘cave’ at the bay at the top of Geraldine’s thighs, that I could only equate to a chrysalis being magically transformed into a glorious butterfly, (I got one more opportunity to probe that amazingly – to me at that time – copious tunnel, before she went off on a family holiday) I got more satisfaction from my initial forays along the eager thighs of random girls and under the fork of their knickers where hot/moist flesh parted to the insistence of my questing fingers, than any of my consequent sexual encounters.

And when I furtively sniffed my fingers after each encounter, I knew there was more to sex than I had been led to believe.

And even when I did sense that I was entering a brand-new phase in my life, as I got a job and started work, it was as though I had been blindfolded and transported to a foreign country.

I wonder which of the Fates took it upon Herself (always female) to nudge me along that particular career path, as though I had been chosen as an ideal candidate sufficiently worthy to have my burgeoning curiosity satisfied.

I was a naïve, clueless ingénue, slung unceremoniously into the sex-charged atmosphere of a dizzyingly busy office, as a trainee estimator in the roof-contracting department of a large Builders Merchant Company. Inside a week, it was clear to me that everyone knew I was a lost lamb in a forest of wolves.

How I got through the first three months without committing some gut-churning faux pas was a miracle of happenstance, but fortune stayed on my side when it was decided I would be better employed gaining a more rounded experience by spending three days a week physically working on a large housing site and one day at technical college on a building construction course. Friday was spent in the office being introduced to the intricacies of the filing system and the methodical stages of Bill of Quantity estimating.

What I learned on a building site, particularly in the raucous banter in the lunch-time canteen, when the various trades of all stripes gathered to drink tooth-achingly sweet tea you could stand a spoon up in and scoff inch and half thick sandwiches, was eye-opening in genital crudity (much of which went over my head, although I pretended to be au fait with it all). I was aware that my obviously youthful look would inevitably be a focus of interest, but I steadfastly refused to be intimidated and nodded and laughed appreciably at every, occasionally malicious, jibes. It completely stopped when, during a morning when the lashing rain saw the canteen full and a disgustingly filthy joke session began – I have kept and refined many for future use – I was nominated to contribute. I knew I could not compete with that level of obscenity, so I came up with one I had just appreciated in a Rag Magazine. I told the one about the junior girl reporter sent to the Olympic village to get an inside story of some kind, but no-one would talk to her. Eventually, as she was about to give up, she spotted a bloke walking towards her, six foot two, athletically built short-cropped blond hair.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘But are you a pole-vaulter?’

‘No,’ he replied in puzzlement, ‘I’m a German. But how do you know my name?

There was an all-encompassing silence, as though the air had been sucked out of the room until, as though someone had tossed a wasp-nest through the door, the entire work-force erupted. I am sure I have never had a reaction to a witticism never mind a joke as that, as men fell about clutching their bellies, hanging onto each other’s’ necks as though asphyxiated and pounding the tables in appreciation. In no time the joke had flown around the site, and suddenly I was a ‘known’ person, accepted into the club.

Even the floor-tilers, who ran me back and forth in the company van, suddenly seemed to see me in a different light and began to include me in the conversation.

But it was Friday in the office that was to prove to be the catalyst that, like a Cape Canaveral space rocket, elevated me into the rarefied atmosphere of sexual knowingness.

What can I say about Evelyn, the dedicated teacher we could all have done with during those confusing, angst-filled school years. Evelyn, twenty-one years old, head-typist in the roof/floor tiling division, who wore her vibrant sexuality like an electrically-charged field-force. Evelyn, who blatantly invited saucy innuendo, but let them slide by as though she was novice-nun innocent. Building Contractors would come into the office on the most spurious of excuses just to catch the way she extravagantly crossed her Ann Miller legs as though unaware of the attention. Evelyn, who I now believe saw me as a tabula rasa, a clean slate, on which she could write whatever instructions she deemed pertinent, and who calculatedly and subtly tempered me from crude, metal-ore into cold, hard steel. I bit fanciful I suppose, but when I look back and analyse the rising graph of this slow-blossoming intimacy, the sign-posts along the way are pretty clear.

‘You don’t miss much,’ she had astutely said, after a few weeks of office-work, drawing me into her orbit of complicity with impish smiles and a wink each time Mr Williams the office-manager ‘accidently’ dropped his pen on the floor so that he could sneak a look up her dress from under the desk.

In my naiveté, I believed Evelyn was merely using me as a sounding board to hone her teasing techniques, and when, alone in the tea-room, she swung around on the swivel-chair and me treated me to a high-kicking leg-cross that gave me an eye-full of the flesh above her stocking tops (no tights), all I did was give her a shrill whistle and thumbs-up of appreciation. When taking me through the filing system, I let her know I was aware she was teasing me when she pressed her breast against my arm, and again, when looking over my shoulder at some calculations I was conducting, the nape of my neck was the recipient of a plush bosom. I remember, half-heartedly attempting some intimate gesture of my own when I stood behind her while she typed out a roof-tiling estimate of mine and hummed while peeping down the front of her dress.

She had laughed and waggled her shoulders.

But then, at the Christmas office party, tipsy from an innocuous-looking punch-bowl I thought was Cordial, and being snog-targeted by girls and women (a couple married I learned later) brandishing sprigs of mistletoe, who made me wonder if an invitation to dabble further was in the offing (fortunately for me I never tried to find out), I found myself being cajoled into the switchboard room by Evelyn who pinned me against the inside wall with a full-body press that left me in no doubt that she was challenging me to respond.

I was shocked and confused at the intensity of the assault, so combative, as I (at least expertly) matched her lips with mine, I could clearly feel the mossy patch of hair cushioning the arch of her pubic bone as she sinuously writhed against mine.

What was going through my mind? The claustrophobic air of the little room and the light-headedness brought on by the alcohol gave the whole situation a surreal feel, almost as if I had dreamt it all. Was I so bemused by the lustiness of the attention that I almost convinced myself that I knew what was expected of me, as I blindly felt for a breast as a precursor to wandering back down her body and over her hips before shucking up her jersey wool dress. I do recall hearing a throaty, feral-like grumble in her throat as little Ben began to flex his muscles against her searching thigh as though he had been rudely shaken awake from a deep sleep.

But it was all conjecture as, at the very moment I was about to put my tangled thoughts into some kind of action, the door was suddenly opened to a shriek of girlish laughter, then a startled apology as a tousle-headed face caught sight of Evelyn and I springing apart as though we had been caught with our hands in a sweet-jar.

The spell was broken, and we sidled off in separate directions without a parting word.

As nothing was said subsequently, I convinced myself that Evelyn must have been under the influence of drink and not responsible for her actions, and so began to slyly cast my eye over those kissing partners that I remembered, but there was no enthusiasm in it, as work and college studying curtailed my leisure time.

Within three months I was in the office full time, knocking out the estimates to good effect, which ensured that Evelyn and I continued as before but with increasing intimacies being exchanged as work dictated we worked in one another’s’ pockets. Bit by bit, it began to dawn on me that, for all the saucy flirting and (occasionally) explicit word-play - the ‘cock-sucking’ exploits that she described, po-faced, as though she was telling me how to make a soufflé, had shocked me to the core (you don’t swallow all that…ugh!) - she was waiting for me to make an irreversible move.

Adulthood was slowly but surely beckoning me on with an impish grin.

It was the first week of April, a Friday, and I was staying on to finish off the roofing B of Q’s for a major housing contract and I could hear Evelyn banging about in the mailing room and then the taps running in the toilet. Everyone else had gone home. I had just finished pricing up, idly thinking that it was the weekend that she met the bloke from Swindon who came down on business once a month, which meant she didn’t hang around, when she appeared in the doorway.

‘Aren’t you meeting your Swindon bloke tonight?’ I asked, eyeing the