The main bedroom was at the end of the corridor, about four yards on. I reached the door. Jerry had left it open, as planned. I went in. I stood absolutely still just inside the door, listening for any sign that Samantha might be awake. All was quiet. I felt my way around the wall until I reached Samantha's side of the bed. Immediately, I knelt on the floor and found the plug connecting her bedside lamp. I drew it from its socket and laid it on the carpet. Good. Much safer now. I stood up. I couldn't see Samantha, and at first I couldn't hear anything either. I bent low over the bed. Ah yes, I could hear her breathing. Suddenly I caught a whiff of the heavy musky perfume she had been using that evening, and I felt the blood rushing to my groin. Quickly I tiptoed around the big bed, keeping two fingers in gentle contact with the edge of the bed the whole way.
All I had to do now was get in. I did so, but as I put my weight upon the mattress, the creaking of the springs underneath sounded as though someone was firing a rifle in the room. I lay motionless, holding my breath. I could hear my heart thumping away like an engine in my throat. Samantha was facing away from me. She didn't move. I pulled the covers up over my chest and turned towards her. A female glow came out of her to me. Here we go, then! Now!
I slid a hand over and touched her body. Her nightdress was warm and silky. I rested the hand gently on her hips. Still she didn't move. I waited a minute or so, then I allowed the hand that lay upon the hip to steal onward and go exploring. Slowly, deliberately, and very accurately, my fingers began the process of setting her on fire.
She stirred. She turned on her back. Then she murmured sleepily, "Oh, dear…Oh, my goodness me…Good heavens, darling!"
I, of course, said nothing. I just kept on with the job.
A couple of minutes went by.
She was lying quite still.
Another minute passed. Then another. She didn't move a muscle.
I began to wonder how much longer it would be before she caught alight.
I persevered.
But why the silence? Why this absolute and total immobility, this frozen posture?
Suddenly it came to me. I had forgotten completely about Jerry! I was so hotted up, I had forgotten all about his own personal routine! I was doing it my way, not his! His way was far more complex than mine. It was ridiculously elaborate. It was quite unnecessary. But it was what she was used to. And now she was noticing the difference and trying to figure out what on earth was going on.
But it was too late to change direction now. I must keep going.
I kept going. The woman beside me was like a coiled spring lying there. I could feel the tension under her skin. I began to sweat.
Suddenly, she uttered a queer little groan.
More ghastly thoughts rushed through my mind. Could she be ill? Was she having a heart attack? Ought I to get the hell out quick?
She groaned again, louder this time. Then all at once, she cried out, "Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes!" and like a bomb whose slow fuse had finally reached the dynamite, she exploded into life. She grabbed me in her arms and went for me with such incredible ferocity, I felt I was being set upon by a tiger.
Or should I say tigress?
I never dreamed a woman could do the things Samantha did to me then. She was a whirlwind, a dazzling frenzied whirlwind that tore me up by the roots and spun me around and carried me high into the heavens, to places I did not know existed.
I myself did not contribute. How could I? I was helpless. I was in the palm-tree spinning in the heavens, the lamb in the claws of the tiger. It was as much as I could do to keep breathing.
Thrilling it was, all the same, to surrender to the hands of a violent woman, and for the next ten, twenty, thirty minutes how would I know?-the storm raged on. But I have no intention here of regaling the reader with bizarre details. I do not approve of washing juicy linen in public. I am sorry, but there it is. I only hope that my reticence will not create too strong a sense of anticlimax. Certainly, there was nothing anti about my own climax, and in the final searing paroxysm I gave a shout which should have awakened the entire neighbourhood. Then I collapsed. I crumpled up like a drained wineskin.
Samantha, as though she had done no more than drink a glass of water, simply turned away from me and went right back to sleep.
Phew!
I lay still, recuperating slowly.
I had been right, you see, about that little thing on her lower lip, had I not?
Come to think of t, I had been right about more or less everything that had to do with this incredible escapade. What a triumph! I felt wonderfully relaxed and well-spent.
I wondered what time it was. My watch was not a luminous one. I'd better go. I crept out of bed. I felt my way, a trifle less cautiously this time, around the bed, out of the bedroom, along the corridor, down the stairs and into the hall of the house. I found my raincoat and slippers. I put them on. I had a lighter in the pocket of my raincoat. I used it and read the time. It was eight minutes before two. Later than I thought. I opened the front door and stepped out into the black night.
My thoughts now began to concentrate upon Jerry. Was he all right? Had he gotten away with it? I moved through the darkness towards the gap in the hedge.
"Hi, sport," a voice whispered beside me.
"Jerry!"
"Everything okay?" Jerry asked.
"Fantastic," I said. "Amazing. What about you?"
"Same with me," he said. I caught the flash of his white teeth grinning at me in the dark. "We made it, Vic!" he whispered, touching my arm. "You were right! It worked! It was sensational!"
"See you tomorrow," I whispered. "Go home."
We moved apart. I went through the hedge and entered my house. Three minutes later, I was safely back in my own bed, and my own wife was sleeping soundly alongside me.
The next morning was Sunday. I was up at eight thirty and went downstairs in pyjamas and dressing-gown, as I always do on a Sunday, to make breakfast for the family. I had left Mary sleeping. The two boys, Victor aged nine, and Wally, seven, were already down.
"Hi, daddy," Wally said.
"I've got a great new breakfast," I announced.
"What?" both boys said together. They had been into town and fetched the Sunday paper and were now reading the comics.
"We make some buttered toast and we spread orange marmalade on it." I said. "Then we put strips of crisp bacon on top of the marmalade."
"Bacon!" Victor said. "With orange marmalade!"
"I know. But you wait till you try it. It's wonderful."
I dished out the grapefruit juice and drank two glasses of it myself. I set another on the table for Mary when she came down. I switched on the electric kettle, put the bread in the toaster, and started to fry the bacon. At this point Mary came into the kitchen. She had a flimsy peach-coloured chiffon thing over her nightdress.
"Good morning," I said, watching her over my shoulder as I manipulated the frying-pan.
She did not answer. She went to her chair at the kitchen table and sat down. She started to sip her juice. She looked neither at me nor at the boys. I went on frying the bacon.
"Hi, mummy," Wally said.
She didn't answer this either.
The smell of the bacon fat was beginning to turn my stomach.
"I'd like some coffee," Mary said, not looking around. Her voice was very odd.
"Coming right up," I said. I pushed the frying-pan away from the heat and quickly made a cup of black instant coffee. I placed it before her.