First Dates are Kissing Dates 4

Murmuring with Starlings

Copyright © Frances Penwiddy 2016

Murmuring with Starlings contains material of an adult nature and is not suitable as reading material for minors.

This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

The second date begins and Emma has a difficult time with her muse, aka Miss Subconscious or Miss SC who isn’t bound by behaviour protocols.

4
By the following Wednesday lunchtime I had the web design finished and the whole afternoon to get ready for my date. I had a long bath, and spent an hour on my hair still pondering on how to play the date, should I stop at heavy petting or go on. I couldn’t make a decision so I pushed it aside telling myself to let the events of the evening take their natural course and then started on my makeup. As soon as I sat at the dressing table, the debate on the likely events of the evening were taken over by my subconscious mind and I went for a sultry look with dark eyeshadow and deep red lipstick and without even being fully aware of what I was doing, I had selected my black basque and lacy bikini, almost a thong, knickers and seamed black nylons and a scoop necked red dress with a straight skirt and black patent stilettoes. When I stood in front of the mirror I realised that if I was undecided my subconscious wasn’t, the clothes clearly stated how the evening was to go and Miss Subconscious was determined to have me sexually penetrated as Samantha had put it.

I had a problem with the dress which was a wool and silk mix and was tending to snag a little, it wasn’t comfortable covering the basque and the suspender bumps were a little too obvious. I returned to my lingerie drawer and took out a black silk slip and rather than take the dress off I unzipped it down to the belt, wriggle out of the shoulders and then eased the black lace slip over my hair and tucked it into the waist of the dress and stooped down to lift the skirt and pull the hem of the slip down before straightening up and putting the top half of the dress back into place and zipping it up. It was just as well I went to aerobic and gymnastic classes every week and I was able to bend, stoop, stretch and wriggle enough to complete the mission. The slip took longer to put on than it did to get the seams straight on the stockings but when I checked in the mirror, I was perfect and the silk of my slip enabled the dress to move enough to make it look as if it was taunting somebody to take it off and that somebody was going to be here very soon and I had just enough time to get my jewellery on.

In fact I was still trying to get the second earring in when the doorbell rang and checking to make sure it was John, I buzzed the street door and heard it open and John’s footsteps approach my flat door. There was a quiet knock and I was still fiddling with the earring with one hand as I opened the door with the other and stepped back, won the battle with the earring and said, “Sorry, I’m running a bit late.”

He stood silently for a few seconds and then said, “Looking like you do, you can have all the time you want, I can refuse you nothing and he held out a large bouquet of red roses framed by olive green feathery ferns, “Oh, John, they’re beautiful!”

“The red is a perfect match for your lips. We have time, would you like to put them in water?” Hugging the flowers I walked through the sitting room to the kitchen and he helped me to crush the stems and place them into the largest vase I had and then I carried them into the sitting room and placed them on a marble coffee table in the centre and I stood back, “They really are lovely, thank you and I kissed him lightly and managed to keep my lipstick on me and not him or the dazzling white shirt he was wearing under a dark grey, definitely Saville Row suit. He took my hands in his and stepped back and looked at me slowly letting his eyes travel from my shoes up to my hair, “Beautiful, no more than beautiful; exciting, a goddess pretending to be mortal, Aphrodite.”

I bobbed a small curtsy, “I love your way of delivering a compliment because I realise you are a man who would only speak the truth so you must be my Adonis. Would you like a drink before we go out?”

He chuckled and bowed his head a little to acknowledge my curtsy, “A very small Scotch and soda and I will be content to just stand here all night admiring you.”

“Show him our bedroom,” whispered my subconscious but I ignored her and went to the sideboard and poured his scotch and a third of a glass of white wine for myself. “Sit down, John,” I invited, nodding at the smaller of my settees, “That’s the way, comfortably close and near enough for him to throw himself on you,” said Miss Subconscious but I continued to ignore her and sat in the opposite corner with perhaps two feet between us, “Where are we going?”

“There’s three films in town, Love story, Star Trek or the Perils of Pauline,” he answered with a twinkle in his eyes.

“I’ll leave the choice to you,” I replied with a challenging smile, “Or we can walk along the river to the Horse and Barge, sit there for a half hour and make our selection or would you prefer going out to dinner.”

“Supper would be better, after the film.”

“We’ll do all four, walk along the river, pop into the pub, choose a film and I have salad and a lobster in the fridge and it will only take ten minutes to serve it up, so we can have supper here.”
“Brilliant,” said Miss SC.

“That sounds delightful, yes, we’ll do that.”

“You don’t have George waiting outside do you?
”
“No, he went off but I can probably get him back?”

“No, it’s only a short walk and I don’t trust him with my lipstick.”

John laughed, “He’d love the colour you’re wearing now and it might be an idea to bring a light coat or jacket, it will be a little chilly later.”

I finished my wine and stood up, “I’ll get my coat and bag, would you like to borrow one of my scarves, I have a woollen one that’s fairly androgynous and a woolly hat to match but that has a fluffy bobble?”

He laughed and shook his head as he stood, “I’ll risk it how I am and if I feel cold when we walk back you can cuddle me.”

I came back with the coat over my arm and he took it and slipped it over my shoulder and we linked arms and started off towards the river.

“You’re flat is beautifully designed, comfortable but still elegant, a clever mixture of old and new, did you design it or use a professional?”

“I had a painter come in and redecorate the walls and I just picked the colours and spent a week thinking about the soft furnishings but the rest was just piecemeal, not planned at all. I love browsing in antique shops and most of my pieces were just things I liked when I saw them and I put it together a little at a time. A mixture of pieces that looked nice and others that were functional but blended with everything else. The Queen Anne dresser is my favourite and the dining set which you haven’t seen is second and I usually have them in mind when I buy other pieces which are usually irresistible bargains I spotted in shops and even car boot sales. It’s a good way of doing the job because if something is damaged it can be replaced easily without upsetting the overall look. The curtains and carpets I bought at a discount from one of my customers, a soft furnishings group who let me have them at cost, it’s a way of enjoying a luxury lifestyle at knock down prices. Sometimes I think about starting another business and troll the antique shops and car boots buying stuff, cleaning it up and taking pictures of room settings with the furniture included to show what can be done. I do have a couple of web pages already made up and I think it would work.”

We turned onto the river bank, “Why don’t you do it?”

“I like what I do now, designing web sites and it keeps me very busy but one day perhaps - we’ll see.”

“I’ve never walked along this section of the river before, it’s very pleasant, very peaceful for somewhere so close to the town centre.”

“I come here a lot, it’s lovely and almost next door to where I live.”

We walked past a house and a row of large cottage styled bungalows and came to the pub and went in.

We nearly missed the film, I had seen Love Story twice before and had cried at the end on both occasions even though I knew what was coming the second time, so I knew I was at high risk of crying again if I asked John to take me there. If I asked to see the Perils of Pauline John would pay too much attention to the film and forget that he was with me and I wasn’t really in to Star Trek films. I had nothing against Sci-Fi but I much preferred the films that were about things that might happen in the very near future, not about the distant future. I preferred films that were possible rather than improbable and I enjoyed ET for that reason. I sipped at my wine and John made up my mind for me, “I think you would enjoy Love Story but if we’re to see it we had better make a move.”

“You won’t like that, it’s a romantic tragedy, I’m sure you’d prefer Star Trek.”

He smiled, “It’s a chick flick and you think I’d get bored and fidget about.”

“No, well yes, it’s that men don’t really enjoy those type of films, they prefer action films, films where there’s loads of fights, blood and explosions.”

“I’ve seen Brief Encounter and I enjoyed that.”

I looked at him to see if he was just being kind, “You want to take me to see it?”

“Yes, and if you cry I can comfort you.”

“Okay and I’ll do the same for you provided you don’t try to hide it.”

He smiled as he stood up and took my coat ready to slip onto my shoulders and away we went, his arm around my shoulders and mine around his waist, I was going to enjoy the film more than ever this time, I would have a shoulder to cry on.

I must have enjoyed it because he had offered his hanky when the film had only been running a few minutes. I had involuntary raised my fingers and wiped my eyes because the film had gone out of focus and his hand had touched mine and there was his clean, folded hanky waiting for me. I touched it to my eyes and looked down at it and there were two barely damp patches.

By the time we left the cinema the hanky was saturated my eyes blurred and I would have fallen down the steps had it not been for his support. I scrunched the hanky up and slipped it into my bag. As quickly as I had done so his hand appeared in front of me with another clean, folded hanky, “I brought a spare,” he whispered and I pulled away from him, threw my arms around his neck and kissed him and pressed myself in as close as I could. I had moved so suddenly that the couple walking behind bumped into us and the man said “Sorry,” and the woman said, “He’s comforting her, didn’t you hear her inside the cinema?”

I broke the kiss and released John, “What did she mean by that?”

“You were sobbing quite a bit.”

“How loudly?”

“Not too loud, they were in the seats behind.”

“Oh-my-God!” I took a hold of his arm and pulled him, “Come on quickly before we’re spotted by one of the staff, I’ll be banned from going in there again,” and I forced him to increase our pace until we were a hundred yards from the cinema and only then did I slow down, “We’ll be okay now. How bad was I, really, could everybody hear me?”

He smiled, “It wouldn’t have mattered there were one or two others having a sob and blowing their noses and there were hankies fluttering all over the cinema.”

“It was probably me that set them off.”

“You were the first.”

“It was the gentle banter between them, the love that was blossoming and their not knowing what lay ahead.”

He chuckled, “I must admit, my eyes felt a little moist towards the end.”

We continued our walk stopping occasionally to look at the meadow in the late sunset and listen to the blackbird serenade us. “I’ve recorded him on my phone,” I pointed, “He’s up there, on top of the ash tree but he has a nest and a wife over there deep inside the shrubbery under the oak. Sometimes when I’m out here during the day, I play the recording and most times he flies to the ash and starts singing back, he can’t recognise his own voice and thinks it’s somebody trying to move into his territory.”

“How do you know it’s a boy and not a girl?”

“Boys are black and the girls are brown and it’s always a boy first thing in the morning and last thing at night.”

“Are you a twitcher?
”
“No, I just like to listen to them but I admit that if I see a strange bird, a type I’ve not noticed before I always look it up in my bird books or on the Net. I’ve spotted nightingales and heard them, but there is one who lives locally, he’ll be out singing later. I’ve also seen a peregrine falcon and a goshawk, fieldfare and even a tree creeper. It’s lovely here, just sitting on the grass and watching them, listening to them sing or have a chat like the sparrows and chaffinches. They have quite busy union meetings sometimes in the evening and everybody shouts at the same time and one evening I had been indoors working all day and I came out here to get some fresh air and saw a starling murmuration, it was an incredible sight, thousands of them diving and swooping together and making really complex patterns. I puzzle over how they do it without bumping in to each other because they’re flying very close and are so good at following the leader’s movements.”

We continued to the flat and went in, “Make yourself comfortable…”

“Clever move, so subtle. Pour some wine and go and sit with him but let him make the first move or he might think you’re a slapper. Just encourage him a little, let your leg brush his as you sit and lean forward a little, give him a chance to see a little cleavage.”
“Shut up bitch or you’ll be seeing a bit of your own cleavage from throat to crotch.”
“No, leave the kinky stuff until you’ve got to know him a little better.”

“I’m sorry,” John said, “I didn’t catch that.”

“I didn’t say anything. Oh, perhaps I did, just talking to myself, I do it a lot especially when I’m working. You sit down and I’ll get supper ready, would you like a glass of wine, it’s only plonk, but we’re having a good white with supper.”

“I’ll help you get the supper ready,” he followed me into the kitchen and looked around, “It’s a large kitchen for a flat, well fitted out as well you obviously enjoy cooking.”

“I do, it’s the artist in me, it has to have an appetizing aroma, look like a master’s still life and taste like it was prepared in the kitchens of the gods. There’s no cooking involved tonight, it was done earlier, just the lobster and potatoes but the salad dishes look colourful and as for the taste, you will have to be the judge yourself.” I poured a glass and a half of wine and handed him the larger of the two, “The white for supper is in the fridge, the left side and you can open it for me if you would and take the dishes of salad into the dining room, I’ll just get the lobster ready and finish the salad dressing and then we can eat.”

“I can see the fridge but where’s the dining room?”

“Oh yes, you’ve not seen all the flat yet, it’s behind that door and the loo is off the hall. Give me a minute and I’ll show you.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll find it when I need it but where do I wash my hands before handling the salad?”

I smiled, “There’s hand basins in the loo and the bathroom next to it. You’d best use the white soap if you use the pink you’ll smell lovely but I’d hate the competition. You can use the sink over there if you wish but there’s only paper towels.”

“You missed a chance there, you should have told him he could dry his hands on the bodice of your dress.”

“This is your last warning now hoppit and stop listening in.”

Who’s going to win this one, Miss SC or Emma. Chapter 5 is where the answer rests or becomes hyper active…we shall see.

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