Georgia

  It was after one when they finally left the club. The fuses were mended after twenty minutes of pandemonium and the show went on, but they had lost their edge.

  The boarding house was ‘The Gainsborough’ a tall, sombre looking house of grey stone set on a corner, just behind the Lee’s on Plymouth’s front.

  ‘I can’t be doing with staying up to let my guests in,’ Mrs Pengelly the landlady snapped at them, standing in the doorway wearing a brown plaid dressing-gown wrapped round her formidable large body.

  ‘We’re sorry,’ Ian tried to charm her, explaining as best he could about the storm.

  The rain was still lashing down and it was so cold Georgia’s teeth were chattering. She hoped Mrs Pengelly would offer tea and perhaps even a hot water bottle, but instead she just slapped the bolts across the door behind them.

  ‘Rooms three, four and six,’ she snapped, taking three keys from a hook on the wall. ‘And don’t make any noise.’

  Georgia and Ian got the largest and coldest room, set on a corner of the house with two large windows which rattled ominously.

  ‘Christ it’s cold in here,’ Ian shivered as he pulled off his shirt. ‘There’s hardly any blankets on the beds either.’

  She was glad to be sharing a room. The house was creepy with the wind howling outside and she was so cold and tired she felt like crying.

  When she got back from the bathroom wearing her striped pyjamas, Ian was already in the double bed, the covers pulled right up to his chin, curled up as though frozen. She prodded her narrow single bed and banged the hard pillow. It was like so many of their digs. Scratchy nylon sheets, a bedside light with no bulb and a bathroom full of notices about charges for a bath.

  ‘What was going on in the van on the way down here?’ she asked once she’d turned the light out.

  ‘The usual,’ Ian’s voice sounded a long way off, almost drowned by the howling wind. ‘Rod wanted to go and look up a couple of birds we used to see down here. I refused and he got a bit nasty.’

  Rod had girls everywhere. He rarely stayed in digs with the rest of them, even if he didn’t have a girl lined up before they arrived, he soon found one.

  ‘Why didn’t you want to?’ Ian had once been as keen as the others to look up girls, but in the past few months he had become almost a hermit. ‘Didn’t you like her?’

  ‘She was okay,’ he sighed. ‘I don’t feel the need to prove myself like Rod does. He said I was turning queer.’

  Rod was very cruel sometimes. He had taunted her too, suggesting there was something odd about a girl who showed no inclination to meet other men. There had been times when he made her so angry she had almost spat out her reasons for not trusting anyone enough. Yet something inside her told her it was better to keep her past firmly to herself.

  ‘Are you cold?’ Ian asked, his voice sounded sweet and warm from across the room.

  ‘Freezing,’ she said.

  ‘Come in here with me then, this bed’s quite comfy.’

  Georgia got out. Her feet were like ice, her breath was like smoke in the darkness. She pulled a blanket off her bed, laid it over Ian’s and hopped in beside him.

  It wasn’t the first time they’d shared a bed. But it was the first when there wasn’t someone else in the room with them. He was good to be close to. He always smelled nice and he didn’t try anything on.

  Georgia curled her back up against his stomach, his arm round her middle.

  ‘Better?’ he whispered.

  ‘Much,’ she curled her feet round so they lay on his warm legs.

  ‘I didn’t want to go and see those girls because I prefer to be with you,’ he said softly.

  She understood everything with that one simple statement.

  It was she who made the first move. She turned over and nestled her head in the crook of his arm. The warmth of his slim body was comforting, and the faint smell of aftershave stimulated long forgotten feelings.

  The wind howled outside. A tree creaked somewhere down below in the garden. In the distance they could hear the sea hurtling onto the rocks. But the wild night was forgotten as he kissed her.

  That gentle tugging inside her she remembered so well with Peter, warm lips tempting and teasing her, his arms round her so tightly, fear banished.

  His kisses were more practised than Peter’s had ever been. She felt herself moulding her body to his, aware her breathing was becoming fiercer.

  One hand crept under her pyjamas jacket, stroking and soothing, slowly upwards till it reached her breast, fingers straying across her nipple.

  Half of her mind was telling her to move away, to stop this now before it went any further, but the other half was responding and wanting more.

  Her hand crept down towards his waist, sliding under his T-shirt. His skin was silky, she could feel his spine under her fingers, knobbly and vulnerable.

  ‘Don’t Georgia,’ he whispered, trembling at her touch. ‘Not if you don’t mean it to go any further.’

  Perhaps it was his willingness to back away which made it safe. All she could do was pull him fiercely to her and offer her lips in silent agreement.

  A delicious warmth was spreading over her as his fingers became bolder and unbuttoned her pyjamas, then he moved down the bed to kiss her breasts. She held his head to her, tears filling her eyes with the beauty of it, breathing suspended as waves of sensual delight washed over her.

  Slowly his hand moved down to her waist, pushing down her pyjamas, smoothing her belly in circling movements, growing lower and lower with each one. As it moved down to her legs, caressing, teasing, she could feel a strange wetness between her legs and she longed for his fingers to make their way there.

  But each time she thought he was going to touch her, so he moved his hand away, to her breast or to her bottom, his lips covering hers, and teasing her with his tongue.

  Her heart was pounding, breath coming loud and harsh. She grabbed his hand shamelessly and guided it to where she wanted it, groaning with delight as his fingers touched her parted lips.

  She hadn’t expected it to be so wonderful. Her own fingers had never felt like this. She was on fire, driven to some wonderful secret place, oblivious to anything other than those probing, gentle fingers and the heat of strange sensations washing over her.

  Again and again her hands reached down to touch the bulge she could feel so close to her belly. His deep breathing would pause, she sensed he was willing her to touch it, yet she was afraid.

  He moved away just slightly, his lips still on her breast, sucking at her nipples, taking his pants off with one hand. She stiffened involuntarily.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he whispered, burying his face in her neck. ‘I love you Georgia, trust me.’

  Instinctively she knew this wasn’t a trite remark made in the heat of passion to persuade her. Their close friendship had been building up to this moment and she was just too naïve to see it before.

  He took her hand, held it for a moment to his chest, then slowly moved it down onto his belly.

  ‘There,’ he whispered as he closed her fingers round his penis. ‘Is it so bad?’

  There was laughter in his voice, nothing intense or scary. It wasn’t even slimy as she’d expected, just hard and warm. He was kissing her again, his fingers probing deep within her and all at once she really wanted him.

  ‘My love,’ he whispered. ‘You can’t imagine how often I’ve dreamed about this!’

  It was she who rushed things, pulling him on to her, digging her fingers into his back and although she braced herself for pain, there was none.

  The icy room, the wind outside had all faded. Waves of pleasure, coming hard and frantic, getting faster and faster, in time to his movements. Lips reaching for the other’s. His hands on her buttocks, hers caressing his back. She was beginning to drift away onto some strange fiery plane, where all sense of time and place had ceased, when he moved back from her, dropping on to her, panting furiously.

  For a mome
nt she didn’t understand, her hips were still undulating under him and their bellies were hot and sticky.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered against her neck as his breathing slowly returned to normal. ‘I only remembered at the last moment.’

  ‘Remembered what?’ she whispered back, feeling strangely let down, but unsure why.

  ‘About Durex,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to get you pregnant.’

  He lay down next to her then, pulling her into his arms and kissing her deeply.

  ‘Did it hurt?’ he whispered.

  ‘No,’ she wound her fingers into his hair, her heart filled with tenderness for him. ‘It was beautiful.’

  ‘Tell me about you,’ his voice was husky with emotion. ‘I know something happened before. Was it rape?’

  Their act of love was an anaesthetic. She found she could tell him the whole story without pain. For Helen and Janet it had been abridged, the poison left inside the wound to flare up again unexpectedly. But now as she told Ian safe in his arms, she felt the healing process begin.

  ‘I’ll make you forget,’ he whispered, squeezing her to him. ‘One day it will be so perfect he’ll be wiped out forever.’

  Georgia stroked his face, feeling the dampness round his eyes.

  ‘I love you, Ian!’ she whispered. ‘You’ve made me whole again.’

  She did love Ian. How could she not love someone as special, sensitive and caring as him? He filled a place in her life so fully she didn’t need anyone else. They had the same dreams and ambitions for their music. He’d driven the demons out of her head, shown her the beauty of sexual love.

  Secrecy was necessary. If Max found out they both knew he would move swiftly to put an end to it. Ian crept into her room after the others had gone to sleep, hidden hand-holding in the van, secret excursions together during afternoons in strange towns.

  She saw new maturity in his angelic face. He put on a little more weight, his delicate features grew stronger.

  Disappointment and hardships bound them closer together. He didn’t ask for commitment, he was content just to share his days and nights with her. Never asking about his part in her future, urging her to take Max’s offer. Yet why with all this perfection were there times when she despised him! What sort of person was she that she was so irritated by his sheer goodness? Why did she want to scream at him, shake him, anything to make him wake up and see things as they really were.

  Her feelings for Max baffled her still further. She hated the way he was manipulating her and the boys, yet admired his single-mindedness at the same time. He was cruel, greedy, ruthless. As far apart from Ian as a predatory eagle to a chirpy robin. Sitting back in his plush office watching her struggle helplessly just like that fly in his gold spider’s web. What weakness on her part made her feel that eventually he would get exactly just what he wanted? Not just a gold record or two, but maybe her body and soul!

  But one thing was clear, which ever way she turned Ian would lose. Samson would flounder without her; if she stayed the pressure Max created would do the same. Had Ian really thought what would happen if she became a big star and his role was little more than a hanger-on?

  ‘Let’s go,’ Speedy picked up the red stage dress and brushed it off. He shot a look of understanding at Georgia. ‘There’s a party to go to, remember?’

  This party was the one thing the boys had been looking forward to for weeks. It would be a glitzy, star-studded event that would hit the newspapers the next morning. Girls in plenty, free food and drink. Enough to make them forget the humiliations Max had thrown at them.

  ‘I don’t fancy it,’ Georgia said wearily. She was sick and tired of people for now. She wanted to be alone in her room, not getting dressed up and posing as the rising star.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Rod said brightly. ‘You can’t not turn up. We’re all ready to go.’ Rod looked like a star himself, in black leather trousers and a ruffled shirt, his hair cut in the new ‘Beatles’ style.

  ‘You all go,’ she said firmly. ‘Have a great time, get drunk and screw as many birds as you can find. I’m going home.’

  Ian was looking at her, one eyebrow raised. A ‘does that mean you want me to come home with you’ face.

  ‘You go too Ian,’ she said turning away from him so she couldn’t see the sad look she knew would come into those beautiful blue eyes.

  He followed her out the door, catching hold of her bare arm and squeezing it.

  ‘Have I done something?’ he said, his eyes soft like a puppy’s.

  For a moment she weakened. His long dark lashes framing his eyes, a perfect straight nose and that soft vulnerable mouth. He was perfection, not just his angelic beauty but the depth of his love and understanding for her.

  ‘No, of course not,’ she lifted a hand to his face, stroking it tenderly. ‘I just can’t cope tonight. I’d only spoil it for all of you. Get drunk and be silly and you can tell me all about it tomorrow night. We’ve got a week off remember? Maybe we can go somewhere together.’

  ‘I love you,’ he took her face in both his hands, regardless of people barging along the corridor.

  His kiss was sweet and lingering. She felt the dressing-room door open behind them and someone look out, but she no longer cared.

  ‘I love you too,’ she whispered. ‘Now go on and have fun.’

  He was still standing by the door as she reached the end of the narrow corridor. Downstairs there were shrieks of girls’ laughter, mingling with male voices and the popping of champagne corks. ‘Love, love me do’, the Beatles’ song was playing at full volume.

  She lifted her hand and blew him a kiss. She could see his soft lips curved into a smile, brushing back his floppy fair hair impatiently from his eyes. Tomorrow she had to come to a firm decision about him, it wasn’t fair to take his love yet give him no real commitment in return.

  Outside in Hammersmith Broadway she slipped unnoticed through the huge crowd of fans waiting for the big stars to make their appearance. It was a hot night, only just getting dark, the traffic as heavy as if it were six in the evening instead of ten thirty. No one noticed the slim dark girl in a pink dress pushing her way through the crowd.

  She would catch a tube to Piccadilly, wander about the way she used to do with Helen. Tomorrow she would go in and see Pop and the girls. By then she’d be feeling her old self again. It was just exhaustion that made her feel so prickly.

  It was almost twelve as she approached Berwick Street. Nothing had changed here. It was as dirty, smelly and full of noise as always, but just seeing her front door made her more cheerful.

  Bert had surprised her in the last year. He’d spent money on the house, turning the lower rooms into a suite of offices, and she was the only tenant left. What had once been the small landing outside her room was now a tiny bathroom just for her, only a shower, basin and toilet, but it was bright and new. A fitted carpet had been laid. Not only in her room but up the stairs too. The old cooker and sink had been replaced with a smart fitted sink, a baby belling cooker and a fridge. She knew Bert had made these improvements not for her, but as an investment. When she moved out he would treble the rent, or even sell the entire place at a huge profit. But at least she had no need to feel ashamed of where she lived now.

  ‘Georgia! What are you playing at?’

  She had been so deep in her thoughts she hadn’t spotted the new maroon MK 10 Jaguar parked outside. Max was sitting behind the wheel, his arm resting on the open window, wearing a white dinner jacket.

  He could have passed for a film star as he leapt out of his car. His tanned, rugged face, the white jacket gleaming under the street light, his wide shoulders, animal grace and his sensuous features were enough to make any woman stop and stare.

  ‘Why aren’t you at the party?’ he asked.

  ‘I couldn’t face it,’ she sighed. ‘Don’t get at me Max. I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘I didn’t come here to get at you,’ he snapped. ‘I was concerned about you. I was in the audienc
e tonight and I thought you lacked your usual sparkle. Then the boys said you’d gone off alone. What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m just pissed off,’ she snapped back at him, getting out her key and putting it in the door. ‘Don’t say I’m not even allowed an off day or I’ll spit at you.’

  His big hand covered hers on the lock.

  ‘Come and have something to eat with me?’ His voice was softer, almost understanding. She could feel his body close to hers and for some reason it felt comforting. ‘I’ll take you somewhere nice and quiet, feed you up and let you relax. I didn’t come to fight with you.’

  ‘I want to go to bed,’ she said weakly. In fact she was very hungry and she knew the only food she had was a tin of baked beans.

  ‘You don’t,’ he insisted. ‘I know perfectly well you didn’t get up till two o’clock today. You may be tired and fed up, but you aren’t sleepy. Now hop in the car and we’ll go somewhere.’

  She hadn’t the will to argue further. Perhaps it was time she talked to him instead of ducking the issue. Maybe if she told him about how bad things were he might stop persecuting the band.

  He drove silently up the narrow road to Oxford Street, then turned up towards Marble Arch.

  ‘Don’t even think of taking me to the party,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Not all roads lead to Park Lane,’ he grinned. ‘Though what on earth you’ve got against a bash like that I’ll never know.’

  ‘Girls getting goosed in corners. Loud-mouthed louts making fools of themselves and all the PR birds falling over themselves to get one of the stars into bed,’ she said bitterly. ‘I can live without that.’

  ‘You sound like an old lady,’ Max smiled. ‘Could it be you wouldn’t be the centre of attention?’

  ‘I’m just tired!’

  He was right of course, when had she ever wanted to pass up a party before? Adam Faith was fun, he wasn’t such a big shot, and if the PR girls were a pain, at least all the other performers agreed with her. ‘But we can’t go on like this Max, it isn’t fair and you know it. Our band is far better than any of the others. We deserve more than bottom of the bill.’