A fleeting trail of thought flashed through her mind that at one time, she would not have given way to such unbridled sensual pleasure, thinking it was somehow sinful. The idea trailed away as she felt George's tongue leave her right nipple with regret and start to lazily lick her path all down her body. The delicate touch of fingers grazing her nipple immediately replaced it but she wasn't sure of the sex of those fingers. Gloriously, she decided that it didn't matter. Sensations of uncomplicated pleasure rose up in her, as George weaved a zig zag downward trail. Her thighs opened eagerly in anticipation of her entry into her. As John moved up to kiss her deeply, her gratitude to him led her own sensitive touch to enfold John's shaft and delicately massage him, touching him on the very spot that he was most sensitive to. As her own climax rose in her, she was equally thrilled to hear John's own sounds of pleasure. At one time, this had been her only glimpse into what was once his only direct expression of love, and the reciprocal sexual pleasure that he could bring to a woman.
Presently, they lay together all in a heap, exhausted and content with each other on that perfect day.
"I could do with a cigarette." Mumbled George into John's chest.
"Me too," Jo said sleepily
"Think of it, you'll be all the healthier from refraining." John teased them. He could never pass up that chance to wind George and Jo up.
"How frightfully smug and oh so politically correct you are, John." George reproved him."Let's see how courageous you are if someone told you to give up sex for a week. You'd soon be a gibbering wreck"
"You can't contract lung cancer from sex." John argued back with irrefutable but tactless logic. If Jo and George weren't so languorously content from love making, both of them could have pointed out what unpleasant health hazards that sex did pose. Neither of them could be bothered to argue. The quilt that lay on their bed was crumpled and halfway off the bed, letting the night air gently cool their damp skin. All three of them rejoiced in their nakedness.
"I suppose that we'll have to suffer the whims of our lord and master." Jo tactfully replied.
John lay back content in the very large sized bed that accommodated them so perfectly.
Charlie had gone out with a crowd of her friends, but was feeling tired and out of sorts. A junior barrister had taken this irritatingly intense interest in her, and was boring her to death with flatteries that she had heard many times before. Some perverse instinct in her made her want to duck out of an evening clubbing. Besides, she could hear her father's sonorous voice, sternly advising her of the path of duty, to get home not too late so that she would be in reasonable shape the next day for court. She didn't really want to struggle with this voice of conscience, especially as the desire to be 'going out' was artificial and unreal. As she set out from the pub with the others, she regained her bearings and realized that she was close to her father's flat. She fumbled in her handbag , and found the key that he had left her and a smile split her face. How pleased he would be with her dropping in for some impromptu quality time, especially as he was such a good conversationalist.
"I'm dreadfully sorry but I'm dropping out of this. I'm not very well and I'm going to crash at my father's flat. See you guys another time."
The barrister's face fell but, at the critical moment, opted to tag along with the others , rather than to drop out of the party. After the farewells had faded into obscurity, Charlie's heels clicked their way round the corner. As all the windows were dark, she carefully opened the lock quietly and let herself in. She glanced round the lounge and the room was deserted, everything neatly put away in their rightful place as she might expect. Dad was very methodical in that way.
"Are you in, dad?" Charlie called out unthinkingly from the hallway.
The three bodies in the bed were frozen like marble in total horror. They were derailed from their dormant parental roles. The three of them realized in a flash that there was not a hope in hell of any of them even gathering their own clothes from the tangle of clothes strewn round the room. To whip them in record time was utterly impossible in the few seconds left before Charlie walked towards the bedroom. In an incongruous flash of memory, John recalled Charlie's youth when he had come home at an unexpected hour to the flat that he and Charlie shared. He had stared suspiciously and protectively in true parental manner at a slightly dishevelled looking Charlie, smiling bright eyed at him with false innocence while some adolescent boy lounged insolently on his settee. There was nothing in the unwritten parental code to deal with a situation like this. At least Charlie had all her clothes on in the first place with which to look disheveled.
"Keep quiet everyone, and maybe Charlie will just go into the spare bedroom"
"As if, Jo," whispered George in despair at Jo's foolish optimism.
Carelessly, Charlie automatically flung open the door. It was only five minutes ago that she and the carefree crowd she was with had been laughing and drinking at a noisy singles bar. It was probably as well that her eyes look a few seconds to adjust to the darkness of the room, but her mind took a lot longer to assimilate what lay before her eyes. At first, Charlie's mindset simply assumed that her father had been merely caught out with one of his stray flings that her supposedly sophisticated mind had had to get used to. She hadn't ever seen anything , that's all. Then her mouth opened wide as she realized that the blond haired woman, her father's typical sort was in fact her own mother. Her eyes opened as wide as her mouth, as she took in the sight of a taller shape with tousled hair was, in fact, her mentor at the law firm and her sort of mother substitute, Jo.
"This can't be happening." Breathed Charlie.
John grabbed the duvet to cover his own modesty, not sparing a thought to Jo or George. After all, he reasoned, there are certain functions in life, best performed naked and others where being fully clothed was a definite necessity. For the first time in life, he found himself utterly stuck for words. Neither Jo nor George was helping him out, he thought ruefully. After all wasn't it the case that women were on average more verbally fluent with words? By default, he was the first one to eventually speak.
"Can you give us a minute, Charlie?"
It had the incongruity of tone as if he were seeking an adjournment in court, before sentence was passed.
Charlie's feet felt as if they were riveted to the floor and her legs felt frozen. John's words did her that one favour, enabling her to beat a retreat. She needed some fresh air fast and, still being unable to form a coherent sentence, she headed out to John's balcony. On the way, she spotted a packet of cigarettes on the coffee table and her fingers reached out to take them with her. It must have been a memory of her mother, which prompted her to light one of them up when she was outside. As the taste of the smoke hit her airwaves, she started coughing. This seemed the last of her worries. It puzzled her that people could voluntarily clog up their lungs for pleasure, far less to alleviate stress. She stared round at the normality of the balcony trying to reassure herself with familiar surroundings.
Charlie's exit galvanized the three of them into frantic action. John clicked on the bedside light and all three of them scrabbled round for their own clothes. John was luckier than the other two women in this respect. All three of them were prompted by the irrational thought that the quicker they dressed, it might go some way towards remedying the situation. It escaped their attention that Charlie was hardly likely to make a reappearance. As John buttoned up his shirt and achieved respectability by the time his last button but one was fastened, he was dismayed to see that both Jo and George were reaching for their coats. He might have been the progressive minded single parent bringing up Charlie but it struck him that there were limits to pride and independence. He needed them. Surely they weren't planning on deserting him in his hour of need? "Aren't either of you staying?" He asked almost desperately. "This has absolutely nothing to do with me, John," Jo informed him firmly. "George?" He asked, feeling that she at least owed him some support in this matter. "I had to tell her about sex the first time round," George replied as she picked up her handbag and fished out her car keys. "Now, I do believe, it's your turn. Good luck, darling."
Oh great, he muttered under his breath as he straightened his clothes as best as he could. Life was so unfair, he moaned to himself. He had more or less got away with it all those years when he had been a sexual reprobate but had somehow avoided the direct consequences being visited on Charlie. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should express his love towards the two women who were dearest to him in the world and, in turn, they to him and to each other. Intellectually, he had gone through that journey in his mind to not just accept but rejoice in their love for each other. It had never crossed his mind that Charlie had not been on the same journey, being physically away from his life. Still less had he anticipated being caught in flagrente. That had never happened before with the exception of the over zealous spy who had photographed him and Jo at the digs. He had always escaped being caught by the skin of his teeth. Right now, he felt uncomfortably naked and exposed as he heard Jo and George open the door and escape into the night air.
In his mind, the three of them were virtuous enough if unconventional. It was quite another matter to convince Charlie of this.
John made a supreme effort to set foot towards the balcony. This was much harder than walking into the courtroom to face the most difficult trial ever. At least his line of law books were the visual equivalent as his incisive memory were props to give him form and structure. Right now, he had nothing except what he might conjure out of the situation. John paced to the drinks cabinet and poured both him and Charlie a drink. He wasn't sure who would need it most. He strolled out onto his balcony, where unaccountably he smelt tobacco. Automatically, he raised an eyebrow at her smoking but refrained from commenting at her blatant disregard of his upbringing and especially that she was smoking in his flat. He crushed the automatic thought down. In view of what he was going to face, it hardly seemed to matter.
Charlie stared out towards the street, refusing to look in his direction. John gulped nervously as he realized that, intentionally or otherwise, because Charlie wasn't going to make this easy for him. How could he talk to her when she wasn't making any eye contact, or any human contact of any kind? By definition, his normal pose of adult sophistication was one that was impossible for him to assume. The only problem was that all his other poses failed spectacularly to support him. He was driven to somehow invent a new method of coping but exactly what that was felt utterly beyond his imaginings.
There was a long and very awkward silence between them. It felt that there was a huge chasm between them, as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon, even though Charlie was only three feet away from him in physical distance. He was haunted by the ancestral instinct that parents weren't supposed to act like this which made his modern liberal values seem terrifyingly skin deep. Words struggled within him for articulation but his feelings felt too intense and articulate for words. It was only eventually that the simple truth of his situation was forced out of him, without a clue as to how the conversation might be directed.
"I really don't know what to say, Charlie," he admitted. This was a real first for him.
"How long has this been going on between the three of you? I assume that this was not a first night"
It struck John that Charlie's lack of name for their relationship betrayed her own intense awkwardness.
"You're right"
"But why, dad"
"Would you rather that Jo and George were trying to scratch each other's eyes out, both eaten up by jealousy of each other as they have done for so many years"
"So does that make things right"
"Would you rather that I betray the trust of both of them, sleeping with any casual woman that took my fancy as I used to"
Charlie's eyes flitted every way but at John. Her fidgety body language betrayed the fact that Charlie was as awkward as he felt. Somehow, he had overlooked that, seeing Charlie only as a relentless force for judgment over him. He might have consoled himself with the pretence that children were infinitely adaptable but didn't . It hadn't worked for him so why should it work for Charlie?
"You're forgetting that at least I knew where I stood. As I was brought up on all the women in your life, why should you expect me to be stable and understanding? You have a nerve, dad"
For once, Charlie's blue eyes locked with him, and it was his turn to look away. The shaft of mingled reproach and accusation diminished him in her eyes. No matter how dysfunctional his upbringing, he had never had to deal with what Charlie was having to deal with. At least this was the case as far as he knew though in those days, parents didn't talk to children in the same way that he talked to Charlie. Desperately, he blindly reached out for an answer, and by chance, he found it.
"You can't clutch onto the scars of your upbringing, Charlie. There is so much I have reason for feeling guilty in my life, but my love of both George and Jo and their love for each other is not one of them"
Although John's words were pitched low, their understated manner acted as a bucket of water thrown over Charlie. She stood open mouthed. This was a father that she had never known before. His total candour was both embarrassing and poignant for her. She simply couldn't get her head round it.
"I just don't get it, dad. Whatever can Jo and the Ice Maiden have in common"
"Because they both have a capacity for love only George had more problems in showing it. Because they both realized that they were wasting their time in fighting each other and over me. They couldn't rub each other out of history. Once they learned to share their love for me unselfishly, they could learn to properly love themselves and each other. Because, both of them forced me to devote myself only to them, and no one else. At least each of them knew where I was when we weren't all together. You might get to realize how much that is worth if you settle down"
"Settle down?" echoed Charlie with something of her mother's capacity for heavy-handed sarcasm. Bad move there, John noted, but this is not irretrievable.
"Well, we are settled, more or less. You must admit, it has to be better than the anarchy of my past life."
Even as he spoke, he realized that the simple formulation of present and past meant that a sea change had taken place and that for once in his life, he was talking simply and plainly. Helen might be proud of him when he came to think of it.
"That's very convenient for the three of you," Charlie said at last with something of a sneer," but where do I fit into the picture"
"Both of them are fond of you in their different ways." Explained John patiently.
"Jo, perhaps," admitted Charlie, "but mum"
"There's a lot that you know of this world, but you don't know her as much as you might. It's easily done to not see what is right under your nose."
John drew a breath of relief that Charlie had accepted his delicately phrased point. Nothing had riled the teenage Charlie more than his air of intellectual superiority in the ways of the world.
The conversation tailed off as Charlie reflected on what John had patiently and tentatively explained to her. Her cigarette end smouldered away between her fingertips, ash dropping off it and onto the floor. Neither John nor Charlie was aware of this.
"It's going to take me a while to get my head round the fact that mum likes women, never mind Jo"
"She would say the same if you talked to her. The only explanation that I can come up with is that what was a lingering temptation over the years finally came to the surface. Ask yourself something, do you really choose who you will fall in love with? What I am truly and genuinely sorry about is that you had the reality of our situation thrust on you in the way that it was. That should not have happened"
There was a look of genuine contrition on John's face, that was a revelation to Charlie as it was totally novel. Usually, John had always kept a mask on both his face and feelings when he felt uncomfortable. She had only got to know how he really felt with the sharp eyes of a child, who sees more than an adult normally gives credit for. This time, John's candour was so obvious that it almost hurt Charlie's eyes to look at. Finally, one last question in Charlie's mind rose to the surface.
"What I really don't understand, is how you can still find her attractive, looking the way she does."
The irritation on John's face was plain to Charlie and testified to his growing confidence. He had also expected better from her than this superficial glamorized view of the world.
"I admit that thirty years ago, something like that may have mattered to me, but not any more. I love George, and I love Jo, and nothing is ever going to change that, no matter how they look or what happens to any of us."
"You must have really changed, dad." Charlie asked quizzically, slightly feeling embarrassed and gauche. "How did that happen"
"I don't honestly know, Charlie." He confessed frankly. At the moment when a change in thinking comes to take place, exactly when is it that the penny finally drops. He couldn't remember.
Charlie finally noticed the cigarette end in her fingers. She stubbed it out and looked thoughtfully at the ashtray. She didn't need it anymore. She was finally starting to make sense of her surroundings.
"So that's why George and Jo have been getting on better than before." It was a flat statement, not a question.
"Partly that, and partly finally becoming friends after all these years."
"You did look ridiculous, trying to preserve your modesty with that quilt." Charlie suddenly giggled. "At least I've been smart enough to know when you were coming back to the flat when I've had a boyfriend round"
John came the nearest to blushing that he ever had in his life.
"This has had to be one of the most mortifying experiences in my life. I'll never live it down and George and Jo cleared off to let me face the music"
Charlie laughed for the first time in what felt like a very long time.
"It could have been worse, dad. Want a refill"
The gratitude in John's eyes touched Charlie. He really looked as if he needed a drink as well.
"I've never needed a drink so much in all my life."
He meant it.