The Promise
Pt. 0
3
of
4
Previously: When Rob Cumberland leaves his job at a Further Education college in inner London to take up a lectureship at a university, the last thing he is expecting is for any of his colleagues to make a move on him. Popular and politically correct Rob assumes his safe sex promise to be a measure that also guarantees his fidelity to girlfriend Stephanie, the mother of his child, who is at that moment, out of town. But domineering college administrator Christine Cutler spots a weakness in this assumption, and decides to personally add a carnal postscript to his leaving celebrations, by ensuring he has a supply of condoms, and treating him to a night of casual sex. The ageing, acid tongued social climber loathed by his friends, exploits the weakness to spring an ambush on her youthful colleague. When
the
scheming bureaucrat succeeds in initiating intercourse through her cunning advances and blackmail tricks, his initial reluctance goes AWOL as he finds that he enjoys sex with her: too much, in fact, to want to stop. So, rather than making good his escape, and owning up when he rings Stephanie, he returns instead to Christine with an erection, for more rubber coated action in her bed. But his sudden proposal of an affair takes both of them by surprise and Christine concocts an excuse for popping out, in order to give herself time to consider how to play this situation to her advantage, and to make a few private phone calls...
Note about Phones: i
n 1992 in the U
K,
Caller
Display
did not exist and
cellphone ownership had yet to really take off.
**********
Earlier, on the way to and from her flat to his home, Rob had turned over the matters of the night and he now returned to these thoughts while he waited for Christine to return.
He had felt like the discoverer of a new continent, of something with life transforming nature and opportunities. It bloody might as well be new, it had been so long.
When he left Christine earlier, it was in a mood of high euphoria, full of himself, full of an imbecilic sense of his own virility and full of—
"Christine. Christine."
He kept repeating her name in a nearly noiseless whisper of wonderment, drowned by the din of the underground train. He'd been having sex with Christine. He felt a strong urge to shout this out to the other travellers. He caught a few of them by the eye for a little too long by the undocumented code of the Tube, but their faces spoke of amicable amusement at his breach of protocol.
He could barely believe how he felt about his woman who had stepped out of the dingy shadows of their workplace to take control of his cock, and to open the door to an irresistible torrent of pleasure. He felt warmly towards Christine and he felt that they had parted on good terms, almost tenderly. If two people could bring each other pleasure in this way, then that seemed to him to be, as an outcome, unreservedly good. Somehow, at this point in time, he seemed to be blind to any other assessment of their behaviour. If the world disagreed, it could go and fuck itself.
By the time he had got home however, the world he was seeing was not going to fuck itself: he was back in the real world. He was going to own up and put an end to it then and there and forget all the jollity.
But he hadn't. He hadn't put an end to it; not then and not there. When the moment came to come clean, he realised that it wasn't going to work over the phone.
Fuckit.
He would have to wait until Steph returned from her parents, so he could do it face to face. But...
But that meant he could now
go back
.
And he decided that that would be for the best; that it would be for the best if he did go back, to clear things up with Christine, in a grown up, civilised way. He had a kind of picture in his head of them discussing it like adults and agreeing rather nobly that it was best that they didn't see each other again. But in this picture he saw another matter that might crop up: She might want him for a few more of the precious, dwindling hours that remained to them before they had to draw a line under it forever. Like the singer of a song of star crossed love, she might beg him to spend one more night with her. And he might not have the heart to refuse her. But that, would then present another problem: he had arranged to meet his colleagues Linda, Ellen and Carol for Sunday lunch. If he ended up staying the night with Christine, it would mean he would have to go home to wash and change, and then come back into town.
Unless he made up an overnight bag and took it with him.
Of course, he had no expectation or intention of staying the night. but it would be very inconvenient if this contingency actually did arise.
The way things had happened, he had so far said nothing to Stephanie about the events of his weekend, and he was beginning to wonder if he should now. After all, she had said that she didn't want to know about a one night stand as long as he had practised safe sex.
So be it
, he thought. It would all be history by the time Steph came back from Up North. He didn't stop to consider how far this dispensation of hers was supposed to go. Would it include a night of repeated fornication with a work colleague? A night which spilled over into the next day, as he rushed back to see her and then moved on from it all in a deceitful silence?
But, he told himself, he was returning in good faith to finish whatever had been started with Christine, so he decided that it would be fair enough just to forget about it: let sleeping dogs lie: he would say nothing to her. Why would he do otherwise?
But there was another matter which troubled him: At the back of his mind, a narrative was building in which this cheating was somehow Stephanie's fault. He had been stupid to put his trust in these resolutions to reinforce his good intentions, and to have told all and sundry about them.
But the safe sex promise was Steph's idea, and because of it, he, Rob, had felt that he could guarantee his fidelity. Without these vows and the attendant assumptions, he wouldn't have fallen for Christine's advances. But all the while that she had been achieving his seduction, right up to the point where she was bringing him to the boil with her fingers round his cock, he'd been travelling into her territory and her power in the conviction that there was an emergency brake.
But there was no emergency brake, and he'd shot irresistibly into Christine's cunt and into involvement with her, an involvement whose scope was not yet clear. The fact was, if there was anyone was to blame for this, it was not himself but Steph. He and Christine had only done what comes naturally.
He could hardly not think about Stephanie, but he managed to treat her simply as a problem. He found himself thinking of Steph's legs and he resented them both for their form and their presentation. Steph's legs were made for hiking holidays in outdoor sports trousers, while Christine's elegant stocking clad limbs were made for the dance floor and the bedroom. There had been a time when he couldn't get enough of Steph. Now he was sick of the sight of her. Suddenly, within the space of one day, it was all about Christine.
The orgasmic eruption of the last night and morning seemed to have come out of nowhere. He was in complete denial of the fact that Christine was something that had been happening to him over a period of months. Somehow, he would find that they would coincide in confined spaces like the alcove in the office, where the creaky old photocopier was kept. When Christine joined him to offer her wisdom on clearing out jams and so forth, her cheek would nearly touch his and he would blush furiously. He could often feel and smell her breath, as she spoke in a soft, low, confidential voice. But Rob resisted the impulse to withdraw like a startled rabbit. He was quite sure that it was she who had invaded his space and not vice versa.
Since the beginning of the year, when Christine arrived, he had given up trying to involve Steph in the social life of his workplace and he never mentioned Christine in any of the anecdotes and moans he swapped with her about the nine to five. If he'd thought about it, he might have realised that the very idea of being in the same room with both of them made him feel uncomfortable. Normally loquacious in the staff room, he became uncharacteristically quiet when her name came up in conversation. His feelings for Mrs Cutler had spawned a conspiracy long before he could see it, and it was too far gone to stop now.
