Climbers – Part 3: Girl and Boy

Calmer now, fearless, she pulled her dress off over her head, revealing first her lush pelt of pubic hair, then her cute stub of navel, then her small, round, pert, breasts. He hadn’t planned to see her like this so soon: naked. He’d hoped she might, at least, have worn her bra and panties for him. She embarrassed the young man with her soiled beauty, a beauty that liquefied inside his heart, tore at his inhibitions, and played love games with his mind. Her beauty: so exposed, as she stood before him, broke his heart into bits. The girl was unbearably beautiful stripped, denuded of her filthy blanket, her grubby roses dress. Alex instinctively wanted to kiss her, hold her, caress her, but didn’t have the faintest idea as to where to start. At awkward, intimate moments like these with girls, he just felt inept.

She gave him a curious, inquisitive look and spoke, ‘Like watching me naked, don’t you?’

He began to wonder why he had even brought her here in the first place, for what purpose? Shy, besotted, beguiled by her, he had to turn away, thrilled by the aspirations she created in his frustrated mind, conscious of his own lack of self-discipline, frightened of where his fascinated obsession with the vagrant girl might lead. He smelt her edging nearer to him.

‘Think I should have my bath, don’t you?’ she whispered, alluringly, breathing in his ear.

He felt her dress kiss the backs of his firm calves as it fell to the floor, ‘I think you should.’

‘What shall I do with my dress?’ she asked, bending over to insert the plug in the bathtub so that he could appreciate her taut buttocks, turning on the taps, adding a healthy splodge of scented foam, swishing the water with the blade of her slim hand, then, rather eagerly, climbing in.

What should she do with the dress she had worn, just for him, ever since they first met?

‘Pop it in the bin,’ he decided, smiling broadly as he left her to bathe, ‘I’ll put on a wash.’

Having settled the girl into, Alex suspected, judging by the foul smell of her, her first bath in weeks, he set about preparing her new home. He had a list of tasks written in his mind, scheduled under different headings:

Day-to-day living considered all the things they would do when they were together, some activities for the girl to do when he had to leave her on her own in the wagon, cooking, shopping, choosing and buying clothes for her to wear online, dates: outings, adventures, romantic candlelit dinners, nights with her inside the play room playing his bizarre games.

Administration: Then there was all the paperwork he had to complete. The girl had entered his life wearing just her roses dress. She possessed no form of personal identification or passport. It occurred to him that, despite the feelings he had for her, feelings she’d clearly reciprocated, they even didn’t know each other’s names, a small mutual oversight which needed to be sorted out.  

He’d have to register their wagon as her new home address, give her access to the internet, let her use his personal laptop and mobile until she had her own, access his social media, assuming she could read and write.

How literate was she in IT, if at all? How far did he trust her? How far dare she trust him?

Entertainment: Last, but not least, how would he enrich her life through entertainment: TV, films, visits to the theatre, exploring the countryside: rambling, gardening, climbing?    

The laptop and printer were on the office desk in the main bedroom. He took a blank sheet of paper and a biro, scrawled as many tasks as he could remember, then stowed the list in his chest of drawers underneath his clean socks and pants, where she would never find it.

Alex went to her bedroom and prepared her bed for the night: fluffing her pillows, turning down the duvet. Her jumper, socks and jogging bottoms were stored, freshly laundered, neatly folded, in a white cupboard next to her single bed. He took them out and arranged them, fondly, tidily, on the bedspread with a pair of clean pink towels.

The lounge diner looked like a tip. He tidied the pile of newspapers, magazines and books, straightened the cushions on the L-shaped velvet sofa, then tested the remote. At one end of the lounge was the door to his private secret playroom. He checked to see it was locked. It wouldn’t do for the girl to see the toys he kept in there, not yet anyways: she mightn’t understand – and leave him.

Satisfied that he had made her new home as warm, welcoming and homely for his girl as he could, given the short time he had had to get ready, his thoughts turned to feeding her.

Hope she doesn’t suffer from any food allergies, he wished, sliding the mega barbecued pepperoni, mozzarella and tomato pizza out of its wrapper onto a flat baking tray, setting the oven to gas mark 5, and placing it in the oven, ‘She’ll be starving. The pizza won’t be enough for her.’

He opened a can of beans, put them on to simmer, stirring regularly, toasted two slices of thick wholemeal bread, made her up a bowl of lemon yogurt with sliced bananas to restore her energy, took his 18+ mugs off the tree, and put the kettle on to boil.

That should fill her up, he thought. Can’t have my girl going to bed on an empty stomach.

As for Alex, he wasn’t all that hungry. He was too excited to eat. He would happily make do with a mug of hot tomato soup accompanied by a buttered wholemeal bap filled with mature cheddar cheese and homemade tomato chutney from the village hall market – his favourite bedtime snack.