Mrs Beattie's Christmas Tree

Foreword:

My entry into the Winter Holidays Contest. It's a short First Time scene set in an English market town back in the late 70s. Some of the terms and expressions might seem odd to some readers, but I hope the context in which I've used them gives an indication of meaning and doesn't interrupt any flow.

Apologies for any errors which remain in the text.

Feedback is appreciated, as ever.

Thank you for reading.

GA -- Calpe, Spain -- 25th of November 2015.

***

"You are quite good-looking," she said, shrugging and adding, "But for me ... you are just a little too nice." Sabrina leaned across to pick up the empty glass from the table in front of me. "Another?" she asked.

I sat there, surprised and mortified while Dave sniggered behind his hand. "Yeah, get him a pint," he said to Sabrina. He showed her his own empty glass. "And I'll have another."

She took both pint pots and turned to go back to the bar, Dave's eyes fixed to the curve of her buttocks packed into her jeans.

"Sorry," said Dave. "I shouldn't have asked her."

"Too nice?" I said, face tilted towards the top of the table, genuinely bemused by the news. I looked up at Dave. "How can I be too nice? How can that be right?"

"Some birds like lads to be a bit edgy, a bit ... dangerous," he said.

"Don't be daft," I replied.

Dave shrugged, pulling a face. "It's true." He thrust his chin towards the bar. "Didn't you hear what she just said?"

"Well, yeah, but she can't mean it that way, surely."

I was nineteen and dogged by clinging virginity, my latest attempt to rid myself of the shameful condition rebuffed. I had a thing for Sabrina, as did most other blokes in the pub. She was the same age as me, an exquisite German girl with honey-blonde hair and a penchant for Rod Stewart and tight-fitting blue jeans. The rumour was she shaved her muff, which was considered slightly deviant in the winter of 1978, especially in parochial North Yorkshire, and I was horny as a dog with two cocks to find out if the rumours were true.

Sabrina worked as a barmaid in the Hyde Park pub, hence our presence at a table in the bar, and I suspect she was the draw for quite a few of the men present on that cold December night. Good beer and a good-looking barmaid: a recipe for success.

"Yeah, she does," said Dave, answering my question. "It's like this," he went on. "Look at me, I'm hardly David-fuckin'-Essex, am I?"

This was true, Dave wasn't exactly blessed by the good looks fairy. "Well, all right, so what?" I replied.

"Well," he continued, leaning in to rest his forearms on top of the table between us. "I've had a few shags..." Dave paused to let this sink in. "How do you think I manage it?"

I blinked at him, clueless.

"They laugh their knickers off, Rob."

"What?" I asked, getting more and more confused.

He sighed and rolled his eyes. "I make the birds laugh. They like me because I'm funny."

"But you said they liked a bloke to be edgy, a bit dangerous. How can being funny be dangerous?"

Dave sighed again, his forehead dropping into his palm. "Jesus-fuckin'-Christ," he muttered, then brought his eyes back up to me. "Are you totally fuckin' dense, or what? I'm not saying I'm dangerous, you daft twat ... that's the way I get into their knickers. But her," he added, nodding at Sabrina as she approached with a pint in each hand. "Well, it's obvious, Rob. She likes the cunts."

Sabrina's arrival curtailed my next question. She put the beers down in front of us and held out a palm for the money. Dave gave her some coins and threw a clever a quip her way to make her laugh, which she did before playfully pushing him on one shoulder.

"You are a very bad man," said Sabrina, eyes glittering at Dave. Some flirting followed, with more chuckles coming from the barmaid.

"See?" Dave said, taking the top off his beer after we both watched Sabrina hip-sway away.

"Cunt," I responded, spitting the epithet as a sign of frustration.

Dave laughed and pointed at my beer. "Drink that, it'll make you feel better."

"Do you reckon she'd let you shag her?" I asked.

Dave pulled a face, shaking his head. "Not a chance," he replied. "I told you, she likes the twats. Probably likes it rough ... Maybe even up her arse."

"She's nineteen!" I exclaimed, appalled at the suggestion Sabrina could be so depraved.

"So fuckin' what?" Dave looked at me like I was some kind of idiot. "It's bloody obvious, Rob. Jesus, you really don't have any fuckin' clue!"

I was about to protest, and probably get shirty, but Dave happened to glance across the bar when the front door opened.

"Ah, there's Paddy," he said. "Sorry, Rob, got to go and say hello. He might have a bit of business for me."

Dave picked up his beer, leaving me alone at the table while he plotted with Paddy, a former jockey-turned-entrepreneur whose business deals hovered around the periphery of shady. Paddy was the sort of wheeler-dealer who did a lot of wheeling and dealing in pubs.

I sipped my beer and pondered my lot, an island of thought amid the hubbub around me. There was chatter and laughter of the primarily male variety, the Hyde Park wasn't a place for the ladies, although they would come later, as would the hard drinkers, which is when the fights would begin. But, for the moment, the buzz was a happy one, the atmosphere convivial at five in the afternoon a couple of weeks before Christmas, a stratum of smoke clinging to the ceiling like a layer of blue icing running through a cake. The bar was filling up at the end of a day's work, which was something I'd been avoiding for the past couple of weeks.

"Paddy's got some Christmas trees," I heard Dave say.

It took a moment to realise my friend was back in his seat. I'd been thoroughly engrossed with thinking about what Sabrina had said, his return going unnoticed.

"What?" I said, blinking at him.

"Fuckin' Christmas trees."

"What about them?"

"Paddy's got some."

It felt like I'd slipped into some other world. I had no idea what Dave was jabbering about. "So what?"

"Look, do you want to make a few bob?" asked Dave with a frustrated roll of his eyes.

"Doing what?"

"Jesus fuckin' Christ!" Dave spluttered. "Helping me, you docile twat. I can get a few orders and you can help me deliver them."

"Deliver what?" I replied, still not getting it.

"Look," said Dave, continuing his sentence while speaking very slowly and clearly and slightly robotic. "Paddy ... Has a few Christmas trees ... Do ... you ... want ... to ... help ... me ... deliver ... them ... If I get a few orders?" he finished.

I looked at him, present concerns put aside at the prospect of earning. "How much?"

Typically Dave, he went all shifty, as I'd expected, eyes narrowing, lips pursing in a moue of concentration. "Two quid for a day," he said after a pause.

I laughed in his face. "Fuck off. A fiver at least."

"Four," he responded, but I stuck to my guns. Dave made a bit of a show of it, but finally agreed. "Give us a couple of days," he went on. "To drum up some orders and that."

I agreed and we chinked glasses, downing what was left of our beers.

It was my round, so I went to the bar, happy with the prospect of a few quid in my pocket.

*

I should have known it wouldn't be so easy. In my naivety I imagined it would be me and Dave doing the rounds as a team, the reality being I was expected to drive around town on my own. To add insult to injury it was a freezing cold morning when Dave handed me the keys to his shitty old van. It was an old G-registration Ford from the 60s, a one-time sturdy workhorse now redolent of old potatoes and damp dog. It was a basic model to begin with, but was now rotting from the inside, luxuries like heating not part of the deal. Not that a heater would be much use anyway. I could see a disconcerting amount of tarmac through rusted metal down at my feet, and had a real concern about the ripped and smelly driver's seat falling onto the road as the van juddered and coughed along Commercial Street.

"Twat," I said when Dave cried off the deliveries.

"I've got other things to see to," he told me, thrusting a sheet of paper towards me. "There's a list of names and addresses."

I took it, quickly scanning the hand-written scrawl.

"Fifteen," said Dave, moving towards the rear of the van. "Trees are in the back."

I took the already laden van as a bonus. At least that was one job I didn't have to do. Then it suddenly dawned on me to ask, "How much are you getting for each one?"

Apparently Dave was afflicted by a sudden onset of deafness. He ignored the question completely and pretended to check the length of grubby twine he'd used to secure the van's back doors. The trees, although bundled tight in a wrapping of netting, were too long for the bed of the van, their clean-cut stumps protruding a few feet.

I decided to let it go about the money, Dave wouldn't give me an honest answer anyway, and five pounds wasn't a bad whack for delivering a few trees. I took the key from Dave and set off after a few minutes of examining the addresses and deciding on which to do first.

It wasn't too difficult, just uncomfortable and cold, the frigid air moaning and whistling in through the corroded panels down near my feet. Another problem I had to contend with were pine-needles shedding from the branches and itching my neck as I lugged tree after tree along wet and slippery paths up to front doors. Four hours saw the last of the deliveries and, job done, I went in search of Dave.

"Just had another order," he told me when I found him in the bar at the Hyde Park.

"Do it yourself," I said, the key to the van in my hand, which was extended in his direction.

"Meeting Paddy," he countered. "Might have some more work," added Dave as an incentive to the unexpected overtime.

"It'll cost you two pints when I've finished."

He gave me a look, head tilting towards his shoulder. There were a couple of seconds of deliberation before, "Yeah, all right."

"What's the matter with you?" I asked when I saw his smirk.

"Me?" replied Dave. "Nowt's wrong, Rob." He shook his head and went on to say, "Mrs Beattie was in half-an-hour ago. There's a tree in the shed at the allotment. You know where she lives, eh?"

There was a hitch of some indefinable emotion inside my chest at the mention of Mrs Beattie, a voluptuous lady of some undetermined age, undeniably attractive in a chestnut-haired, dark-eyed, gypsy kind of way. There was always a hint of gossip about regarding Mrs Beattie. She'd been around for years and was a fairly steady Saturday night face in the pub. Divorced or widowed, nobody seemed to know for sure. If she had a steady man in her life, that was also a bit of a mystery and the subject of murmured speculation.

"Not exactly," I told Dave, a tickle of anxiety deep in my core at the prospect of encountering Mrs Beattie as a one-to-one basis on her territory. I'd never spoken to the woman beyond a nod and a hello if we passed in the bar. And, to be honest, I was a little intimidated by her.

Dave gave me her address and told me she was expecting the tree the same afternoon. "Take you half-an-hour," he added.

I was going to ask for one of the beers before I did the job, but Paddy walked in and took Dave's attention.

Fifteen minutes later I pulled up outside Mrs Beattie's brick semi-detached place on Beverley Road.

I dragged the tree out of the van, cursing at the chafing needles abrading my neck, lugging the thing up the drive to the door at the side of the house as per Dave's instructions.

"Ooh, there you are," Mrs Beattie said in a smoky-voiced drawl which caressed my cock and tightened my balls. "Come in. I've been waiting for you."

She made me take off my boots before allowing me into the house. I left them on a square of lino in a small enclosed space between the back door and kitchen, following Mrs Beattie through to a living room beyond.

"We'll put it up in the front parlour," she told me, opening a door off to the side as we went in.

I lugged the tree into a hallway, stairs immediately in front of us a door left and right. Mrs Beattie turned left to lead me into a room at the front of the house which seemed little used. I got the general impression Mrs Beattie kept to the room just beyond the kitchen most of the time. As we'd passed through I'd seen a television and sofa in there, as well as a table set under the window where she probably took her meals. That back room had been a little less tidy than the one where she wanted the tree, the front parlour she'd called it. Not that the house was a mess, it just struck me she didn't use this room much day-to-day, that she kept it for something more formal. I rested the tree upright in a corner, silently cursing the pine needles until I saw Mrs Beattie was looking at me.

"I've seen you in the Hyde Park. What's your name?" she asked.

"Robert," I told her, blood warming my cheeks. I felt silly because of the blush, my eyes sliding down to the carpet. "But I get called Rob."

"I'll call you Robert," she told me, her voice bringing my focus back up. "I'm Jane. Pleased to meet you." I saw her standing a few feet away, hands on her hips, her generous frontage packed into a cream-coloured cardigan. "Would you be a love and help me set the tree up? It would be a struggle doing it all by myself."

I felt an odd slide in the pit of my stomach, my eyes lingering on the skin of her exposed throat and chest. She was modestly covered despite the top three buttons of her cardigan being undone. I could see the very top of her cleavage, but not much of its mysterious depth. However, the way the cardigan clung to her body made it very obvious Mrs Beattie was very well endowed. It would be disconcerting, but very pleasurable to spend some time in her company.

I was just thinking about how much opportunity I'd have to ogle her breasts when she said, "Are you all right, Robert? You look a little flushed."

Startled from my appreciation of her physical form, I blinked and looked at her face. "Oh, uh, it's cold outside," I managed to stammer, discomfited by finding her watching my face. My cheeks felt hotter than ever when I realised she must have seen me clocking her tits, the tug of desire through my core making me feel even more uncomfortable in her presence. "And that fire's pretty fierce," I added, nodding towards the flames flickering behind a fire guard.

"It'll be cosy in here when the tree's decorated," Mrs Beattie said. "You can stay to help me, can't you?"

I was caught by her question, nervous at the idea of being alone with Mrs Beattie for too long, anxious at coming across like a mumble-mouthed fool, but also excited at the prospect of being in her immediate orbit.

"Do you have to be somewhere else?" Mrs Beattie went on. "More deliveries, perhaps?"

I thought about lying and telling Mrs Beattie I had some more urgent business elsewhere. There were two pints and five pounds waiting for me in the bar of the Hyde Park, but when she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, cocking one hip while fixing her gaze on my face, I saw her breasts roll under the cardigan and couldn't stop myself from croaking about not having anything else to do.

"Thank you, Robert," she murmured, moving towards me to pat her hand against my forearm a few times. "You know," she continued, "I've got some cans in the fridge -- can I get you a beer?"

She didn't wait for any reply, just eased past me and said, "You make a start stripping that net off the tree. I'm going to pour myself a white wine. I'll be back through in a moment with the drinks."

I watched her go, taking a quick, appreciative glance at her arse and legs when she went, the skirt tight across her hips, its hem at a flattering point just above her knees. There was a fleeting urge to smack the palm of one hand across Mrs Beattie's broad beam, her buttocks a counterbalance to the plentiful bounty beneath her cardigan, her earthy sexiness sending a surge of yearning through my cock.

"Fucking hell," I quietly groaned, resisting the temptation to squeeze my dick in case she came back through the door. If I succumbed to temptation and touched myself, Mrs Beattie might get a shock when she returned to catch me yanking a full-blooded erection. "Jesus," I added, consigning the image of her tight cardigan to memory. I'd make use of it later that night when I was alone in bed, my fevered imagination conjuring up all manner of lewd intimacies between the voluptuous lady of the house and myself.

I set about stripping the net off the tree, man-handling the thing to a large ceramic pot she had set up in front of the bay window, curtains pulled shut against the early gloaming of mid-December. Mrs Beattie returned with a wine for herself and a beer for me, placing the drinks down on a sideboard set across the back wall.

Between us we got the trunk of the tree embedded in its new home, with Mrs Beattie then setting me to rearranging furniture. I shoved an armchair around before realigning a two-seater settee in the same green velvety flock covering as the chair. After that, when the heavy lifting and shifting were done, and I thought my usefulness was at an end, Mrs Beattie pressed me into helping her with a string of fairy lights and some tinsel.

We were two drinks in by the time I stood on a ladder-backed chair I'd lifted through from the other room, fixing the star to the top of the tree.

Mrs Beattie let out a gasp of approval when she switched off the overhead light, the tree twinkling and sparkling, garlands of fairy lights gently glowing. "Oh, Robert," she cooed. "It's wonderful. Thank you."

She was alongside me, glass in her hand, her words making me turn to look at her just as she was swivelling her face towards mine.

I glanced down at her chest, the sight of her weighty round tits tugging my vitals. Then she moved in close to place her lips on my cheek.

"Thank you ever so much," I heard her murmur as the two beers and her proximity overwhelmed me.

It was a gentle, chaste kiss on one cheek, but the heat coming off her and her scent wafting between us brought the uncontrolled words slipping out of me before I knew I was speaking. "You smell lovely," I mumbled. I think you're gorgeous."

"Then show me," she purred, moving face-on.

And the next thing I knew, we were kissing, her breasts pressed against me while her tongue probed my mouth.

*

She stepped back, smiling while taking the can from my hand. I was boggling at her, not quite believing what had just happened, stunned by what I'd said and her response to it.

My astonishment grew when Mrs Beattie placed her glass and my can on the sideboard and said, "I think you're quite gorgeous as well. Then she layered on another layer of shock by deftly unzipping my flies. She asked, "Got a liking for ladies with big tits?" her fist working my length. "I saw you looking."

I gaped down at where her hand worked back and forth, stunned to see myself so huge in her fingers. "Mrs Beattie," I groaned.

"Touch me," she breathed in reply, stepping in to kiss my mouth once again. "If you want to, you can feel them. Be as rough as you like. I'm just in the mood."

She chuckled when I growled and mauled at her breasts. Mrs Beattie let me squeeze her for a few seconds, then took a step back, her eyes set on the jib of my cock poking through the gap in my jeans.

"Is there anywhere you have to be soon, Robert?" she asked me, fingers going to her buttons.

"No," I managed to whine, gulping when she shrugged the cardigan down off her shoulders.

She smiled and allowed me to ogle her boobs, head canted to one side. Still in her bra, she dropped the cardigan onto the arm of the chair, hefting her breasts with both hands. "Would you like to spend a little time here with me?"