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Catching Up (Part 1)

"Joanna is reminded of a love that got away."

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Tuesday 22 February 2011. Twelve fifty-five pm.

That was when a devastating earthquake hit my home town of Christchurch, New Zealand, after which nothing in this city will ever be the same again.

Unbeknown to me at the time, that same moment was also to trigger events after which, in a much happier way, nothing in my life can be the same again either. Not ever.

I was one of the many city council and other public service staff who were taken from their normal work and pitched into a myriad of emergency relief jobs. I went to manage a shelter for traumatized and homeless families that had been established in a school, working in an improvised office in a corner of the school library, snatching sleep on a camp-bed beside my desk and making equally snatched visits back to my fortunately undamaged home to see if it was holding up to the aftershocks, to check email, and to have the nearest thing possible to a shower in comfort and privacy. At some stage, I vaguely remembered, a TV camera had been thrust at me and some journo or other had asked me something, but I had no clear memory of when, what or who.

It was gone 8pm on Friday the 25th when Lynda Clegg, my immediate boss, came to see how things were going and how I was coping. After taking one look at me she said, in that let’s-not-fuck-around Geordie voice for which she is widely known (and which, incidentally, belies a sweetly loving and caring heart): “Christ, girl, you look a mess. You’ve done enough for now, Jo — go off home. Now! Don’t let me see you till next Monday.”

After a token resistance I briefed her on the ongoing stuff I had been responsible for, used one of the Portaloos in the carpark rather than wait to use the hole that my elderly neighbour Fred Curtis had kindly prepared for me in my back garden (the city’s sewerage system having been extensively wrecked), and drove gingerly home, circumnavigating gaping sinkholes, piles of debris sprawling across roads, and Army checkpoints along the cordon that had closed off the city centre, forcing through-traffic to make long detours. It was 9.30 before I was back home, slumped at my desk with some chicken pot-noodle and an ice-cold beer (thank god the power was on and the fridge still working!) in front of my main computer.

I scrolled quickly through scads of are-you-OK emails from friends, relatives, past colleagues, and clients of my part-time translation business. One of my regular clients in Europe, with whom I had been working on a long-term project, and whom I had emailed explaining why I was temporarily unavailable, had taken the time and trouble to write back expressing concern at quite decent length, and I dashed off a quick reply in German. And then, quite suddenly, I felt my stomach tighten and my breath start to quicken.

Facebook was telling me that I had a new message, from Fen Hazelhurst - Professor Fenella Hazelhurst, Docteur ès Lettres (Sorbonne), PhD (Berkeley), no less, Head of the School of Language and Culture of our old university.

I sat back, my eyes closed, and carefully took a long, deep, slow breath. After releasing it gradually, I could feel that, although my breathing had steadied, my heart had taken on a more urgent pulsing and my stomach muscles were gently but firmly clenching and unclenching,

These were disturbing but not in themselves unpleasant sensations. They were accompanied by memories of an old, never-quite-forgotten hunger, of other, long-past sensations, memories more than twenty years old, of lips parting beneath my own, of the scent of her hair and body in the darkness, of the warm, firm softness of her in my arms, of breasts pressing and moving gently against my own through the fabric of our summer dresses, of our breath and saliva mingling, of her wet, probing tongue, of – yes, yes…and then of the sudden, chill, awkward moment when that sweet body stiffened, the embrace slackened and broke, our bodies parted, and we looked down and away from each other.

Oh Fen, Fen…

My lips moved involuntarily and I breathed the last line of a sonnet by Charles Baudelaire, the nineteenth-century French poet who had been a favourite of both of us back then:

Ô toi que j’eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais!

Oh you whom I would have loved, oh you who knew it!

Now, decades after that might-have-been moment, Fen was seeking me out.

She and I had been language students in the same year at Massey University in Palmerston North, which I still think is the most beautiful campus in New Zealand. I had been studying French and German, she French and Spanish, and our subject overlap had resulted in our spending quite a lot of study time together - time that for me had come to be coloured by sweet torment.

I had known since I was seventeen – in fact, since having been gently, caringly, and deliciously seduced by my mother’s younger sister - that it was girls and women that I wanted; and I wanted Fen from the moment I saw her. Trouble was, the attraction was only one-way. Nothing personal about it – it seemed that she just wasn’t into women. Nor, seemingly, much into men either. In fact, during our first two years, except for a couple of rather desultory brushes with male students of my acquaintance, she acquired the reputation of being a sexless wonder as well as a bluestocking.

I had reluctantly had to recognize that, if I wanted to keep her friendship (which I very much wanted to do), then I would just have to accept that sex would not be part of our joint agenda, and to seek satisfaction either alone or in other company – both of which I resolutely did. Sex, they say, is like bridge – if you haven’t got a partner than you need a good hand...

Fen’s sexless reputation came crashing down in our third year, when to the amazement of all she made a determined and successful bid for the body of an inoffensively nerdish member of our French Lit Hist class, one Dan Scarsdale. Poor Dan didn’t know what had hit him. From the moment they became an “item” Fen not only wore him on her arm like a handbag but, as time went by, it seemed that she was also wearing him out; while she blossomed ever more radiantly he gradually changed from appearing as if all his Christmases had come at once to turning up in class with a look that gave the expression “shagged out” a new dimension of meaning.

Then, with only a few weeks to go before finals, it was suddenly over. Dan cut and ran, telling not only his regular mates but all who would listen that she had drained him dry – not only, but especially, sexually – and that he could take or give no more.

Fen was distraught by this humiliatingly public rejection , and for a while it looked as it she was close to falling apart. Sisterly solidarity caused Dan to be treated like an unperson by the female side of the student body. And among this wave of sororial support, guess who took on the task of helping Fen pick up the scattered pieces of herself and her self-respect, get her brilliant mind back into gear and her exam preparation back under control – providing solace and counsel at any hour without ever seeking a sexual quid pro quo? Yes, muggins Joanna Solway, that’s who.

Of course, this was not without self-interest. I was, I persuaded myself, playing a long game, casting my bread of sympathy on the waters of Fen’s distress in the belief that in the fullness of time it would come back to me as sexual hot buttered toast.

And this strategy seemed to be working. It helped that I was in the same hall of residence, and between regular partners at the time.

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Our evening “solace-and-study” sessions started to end with goodnight embraces and kisses that gradually, while still on the chaste-ish side of the border, became more lingeringly affectionate. Intimate almost… After which I would hurry back to my nearby room and jill myself silly, moaning mingled obscenities and endearments into my pillow.

Up to the last moment I was so sure.

Then came that fatal post-finals booze-up and dance in the Student Union

All evening Fen was hardly away from my side - sometimes holding my arm, or pulling me down to sit beside her, or dancing with me increasingly smoochily in slow numbers. It was still quite early when she whispered into my hair as we danced, “Take me home, Jo, please.”

We walked out into the early summer night, arms around each other, occasionally stopping for long, deep kisses.and embraces in which I felt her body rubbing against mine and heard her faintly sigh with what sounded like pleasure.

By the time we reached her room she had pulled my right hand up to her right breast, and through the fabric of her dress and her bra I could feel the nipple erect and hard already under a circling finger.

You’re in now, Jo girl, I said to myself.

Shutting the door of her room with my heel, without even pausing to feel for the light switch, I turned her and pressed her against the wall. Her mouth opened wide and wet, her tongue writhing against my own. Her hands slid up behind my neck, then she moved one down to my left breast. I could tell from the way she was moving and the mmm-ing, mewing and sighing noises she was making, as if echoing my own, that she must be about as turned on as I was…

By this time I had got the zip of her dress half-way down her back, and I was kissing her neck and the exposed softness of her right shoulder. Soon I would be able to ease the dress off her shoulders entirely, unhook her bra and shift my kisses to her breasts and those sweetly upstanding nipples.

And in hindsight that is probably what I should have done. Instead, I slid my hands down her back making her shudder as my fingers traced the line of her spine, pausing to cup her arse and gently squeeze both cheeks. She sighed loudly and I could feel the muscles in those sweetly rounded cheeks tense as she pressed against me. I shifted slightly sideways so that one thigh would be putting gentle pressure just about where I knew her clit was by now probably starting to stir its sweet little self. She sighed again, more loudly, pushing back against my thigh.

Then my hands moved again. Down below the hem of her dress. Gliding over the soft skin of her outer thighs. Down as far as I could reach; then round to the front, then to her inner thighs, then slowly starting upwards, fingertips trailing teasing traces on her skin as they moved towards her panties and her cunt.

And just as they reached there, her whole body stiffened in sudden spasm, her breathing stopped with a choking sound, she reached down and pulled one of my hands away, and then I heard a tormented whisper: “Sorry Jo – I can’t. I wish I could…”

I wrenched myself away from the memory of that moment and back into the present.

Two mouse clicks, and the message was there at the foot of my Facebook page: “Jo, are you alright? Saw you on TV – you looked and sounded exhausted. Please phone, no matter what time…” there followed her work direct dial number, her home landline number, her mobile number and her private and work email addresses.

Mechanically I groped for my cellphone; then my hand stopped in mid-air. I was tired, dirty, smelly, and my hair was in a mess – I couldn’t possibly talk to her looking like this. My hand re-directed itself towards my handbag and a comb, but then common-sense cut in, and I picked up the phone again and jabbed a finger at the first button of her home number.

The voice that spoke the melodious “Hello” was deeper in pitch than I expected, with a rich musicality, and without the Kiwi accent in which I remembered her uttering those chilling, killing words in my arms.

(Ah, I thought, all those years in Paris, Buenos Aires, California must have done things to the way she talks…)

“Fen…” I began; then her voice cut in again, at a higher pitch and with an urgent edge, words tumbling in bursts.

“Jo, thank God – I’m so relieved – you’ve no idea…”

“Sorry to be calling so late, Fen,” I said, “I’ve just come off duty and got home. Saw your message.” I was striving to sound cordial but matter-of-fact. “That was such a surprise.”

“Well, Jo, I’ve thought a lot over the years about you and our days here at Massey, and then when I saw you on TV in the middle of all that dreadful chaos my heart just turned over and I had to know how you were. It’s unbelievable what’s happened, with so many people dead and so much destruction. Is your home OK?”

“More or less, as far as I can tell right now,” I said. “Down the road it’s quite a mess, but not half as bad as elsewhere in the city. We’re having to boil drinking water or buy it bottled, and we can’t flush toilets, so things are a bit primitive right now.”

“Well, look, Jo, you must need some time out of there. Can you get away some time? I know it’s a long way, but what about a weekend up here? I’ve plenty of room in my place, and I’d love to have you.”

Oh would you now? I thought ironically. “Fen, that’s lovely of you, and I will need a break at some stage, but I can’t think of that right now.” Even though I had the weekend off, there was a tacit understanding that I’d be on call. “I’m needed here. Not just me. Every available person’s needed here now – and more.” I had a fleeting memory of Akiko, one of my two past Japanese lovers, who had taught me a phrase that meant literally: We’d even like the cat to lend a paw…

“Of course, darling. But you must take care of yourself. You won’t be good for anything or anyone if you burn yourself out. Let’s plan a break and a get-together soon, OK?”

“Mmm.”

“…and in the meantime let’s make sure that we don’t lose touch again. I mean it, Jo. We mustn’t. We have to catch up. We’ve probably both changed quite a lot – I know I have. Give me all your contact details now, please.”

I obediently did so. And that was more or less how we finished our first proper conversation since that dreadful night .

She had put in a Facebook “friend” request, and I quickly friended her. The face that smiled up at me from her profile page was very recognizable, but it had lost the girlishness that I remembered, and now bore an air of strong, knowing womanliness. I sat staring back at her. The hair that had been short when I had last seen her now flowed lustrously around her face and down onto her shoulders.

It was late, and I was tired. I should by now have showered, washed my hair, maybe pampered myself with a hot bubble bath and another ice-cold beer or two, and be settling in bed with my trusty tablet and toys, ready to reward myself for my labours with some nice lesbian videos and my first serious orgasm – no, make that at least three – in days.

But there in front of me was Fen’s Facebook page, and that look of hers; and echoing in my ears was that urgent “We’ve probably both changed a lot. I know I have…I have…I have…” And I knew that there would be no sleep for me before I had searched Facebook for clues as to how she had changed, and why she was so apparently anxious for me to know this.

(to be continued)

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Written by tak0chan
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