Free Born of Woman by Wendy Perriam Page A

model in his own private life-class. Later, in his art books, he’d seen public paintings of her—‘Susannah Bathing’, ‘Susannah and the Elders’—huge fleshy women with thighs you could get lost in. Laboriously he had copied Rembrandt, Rubens, Tintoretto—using coloured pencils this time, or—daringly—a tiny box of watercolours which cost him five weeks’ pocket money. He always waited till Hester was out or asleep, adding embellishments, erotica, making himself a handmaid attending at her bath, or a slavering elder spying from a bush, admiring those lewd curves and creases dimpled across her flesh. He longed to paint in oils, to give Susannah’s haunches that ripe and rippling texture he had fingered in the books, but how could he hide a canvas or disperse the smell of turps, even if he’d had the money to afford them? At least with watercolours, he could keep his paintings small and secret, hide or destroy each scrap of paper. Only his model survived. Still survived, when she would be well into her sixties now. Impossible! Susannah was always seventeen, caught forever in her youth and bath as she was in those Old Masters. Even now she was lying there beside him, still wet and tousled from bathing, her taunting teenage body whispering into his, her fingers tight around him. Susannah had more fingers than any woman he had ever known. One up his arse, two around his balls, three stroking him bigger, one touching up herself.
    He grabbed the minx awake, turned her into Jennifer. ‘Lie on your front,’ he whispered.
    Jennifer slumped over, still half asleep. She had told him he could wake her if he felt bad, but she’d meant sobbing over Hester, not slavering over Susannah. She would gladly kiss his tears away, but not a bloody great erection. It wasn’t fair to rouse her, anyway. She was exhausted from the day—all that cooking, coping, hostessing. He’d just lie against her, hold her, feel her body soft and calming under his. He envied her that calmness. The way she could sleep the minute she was tired, fit sex into a schedule, sob when it was time to, smile when it was not. With him, everything was scrambled screaming up together—grief, guilt, lust, fever—all revving between his legs. The more he tried to still himself, the more his body urged. He had cramp in his leg, pain in his chest, anger blasting through his bloodstream. Anger with that stubborn, shameless part of him which still cocked up when everything decent begged it to lie down.
    He wasn’t even comfortable. He was lying half on top of a sprawled and supine body, one leg slumped across it, chin against a spine. Warm fleshy buttocks pressed against his balls, keeping him excited, while Jennifer’s deep, shuddering breathing warned him off. Maybe he could do it while she slept—sneak in very gently and be out again before she was fully awake. At least it would be less blatant. But it wouldn’t solve the baby thing. She might swell up in revenge, produce a kid to shame him. A kid could kill a wife—had already killed Susannah. Jennifer mustn’t die. He didn’t want her split apart in childbirth, slimy and heaving like those blood-stained sheep.
    Why enter her at all? If he touched himself again, he could come just lying close to her, spill out on her thighs. He hated that. Made him feel a boy again, furtive and humiliated. He didn’t want it passive, forced to stifle his cries as he had done all his boyhood, having to leak and creep and dissemble when he ached to ram and shout. It wasn’t simply lust. He could make it sacred if Jennifer joined in. Coming would be like crying, a release and a relief.
    He sat up in bed, switched the bedside light on. Jennifer stirred and mumbled something, turned her head away. Slowly he peeled the covers back, eased her nightie up until he could see the long slope of her back, curving out into full fleshy