Barbara Bradford - A Woman of Substance

‘Please, Emma. I won’t do anything wrong. Just let me hold you for a moment,’ he implored.

She hesitated, and he pressed his mouth to hers before she could refuse him, and he continued to fondle and stroke her. Almost without his conscious knowledge and quite unable to control himself, Edwin slipped his hand under the tablecloth which was draping her. He ran his fingers over her satin-smooth skin, his touch delicate but lightly quivering in his spiralling excitement. Emma pulled away from him with a small cry, a blush rising on her face, but he took hold of her and lovingly enfolded her in his arms, kissing her forehead.

‘I love you, Emma,’ he whispered, his face close to hers.

‘But it’s not right, ter be together like this,’ she whispered back, trembling and afraid, her mind awash with dire thoughts of wickedness and temptations of the flesh that sent you to hell.

‘Hush, my sweet Emma,’ Edwin said consolingly, his voice reassuring. ‘I am not going to do anything improper. I only want to feel you close to me. I won’t harm you in any way. One never harms the person one loves the most in the whole world.’

His words filled her with sudden joy and she drew closer to him, searching his face hovering above hers, that sensitive face she knew so well. It appeared to shine with radiance in the candlelight. His eyes were widely open and full of adoration.

‘Do yer really luv me, Edwin?’ she asked in the softest of voices.

‘I do, Emma. Oh, how I love you! Don’t you love me?’

‘Yes, Edwin. Oh, yes!’

Emma sighed, aware of his hands fluttering over her again, smoothing and patting and feeling every part of her, but so soothingly she began to relax, enjoying his warm and affectionate caresses. Suddenly his finger touched that most forbidden place of all, insistent but as light as a feather. She was hardly conscious of what he was doing at first. And she could no longer protest or stop him, for she was overwhelmed by unexpected and strange but delicious sensations that sent small tremors through her, and made her heart pound. His mouth, his hands, his body, all enveloped her and he drew her closer and closer until she felt as if she was melting into Edwin. A lassitude settled over her as he continued to fondle her, arousing her to the pitch he himself was aroused to.

Edwin paused and looked at Emma. Her eyes were closed and he saw that she trembled slightly. He slipped out of the carriage blanket and, with the lightest of movements, he parted the tablecloth that still half covered her. She did not stir, although her eyelids fluttered and her eyes opened, became wider, as she stared at him kneeling over her. Edwin Fairley’s not a boy, he’s a man, she thought, with a flash of amazement, and a trickle of fear, for that masculinity was now fully revealed. Edwin sucked in his breath, gazing at her wonderingly, filled with a yearning desire to possess her completely. And he marvelled at her loveliness. Her skin had a floral pallor to it, but it was dappled golden, here and there, from the candlelight and the fire’s rosy glow. She resembled a perfectly sculptured marble statue.

Slowly and with great tenderness and delicacy Edwin helped Emma to overcome her terror, her reticence, and her inherent shyness. In spite of their mutual virginity, Edwin began to make love to Emma, and eventually she to him, under his softly whispered guidance. His desire flared into a passion he could no longer check, and it was this passion that imbued in him a finesse that was unconscious yet remarkable in its expertise. Only once did she stiffen, and he heard a small cry strangled in her throat as she bit it back. But he was so exquisitely gentle with her and adoring, this moment instantly passed, and soon he was carrying her along with him on a mounting wave of ecstasy. They were clinging together,moving now in perfect unison, engulfed by the sweet warmness of their fresh young bodies. Emma thought she was slowly dissolving under Edwin, becoming part of him. Becoming him. They were one person now. She was Edwin. She moaned and moved her hands down to the small of his back which vibrated under her touch. It was then that Edwin experienced such a sensation of joy he thought he would scream out loud. As he rushed headlong into the very core of her he did not know that he shouted her name and begged her never to leave him.

Some hours later the thunderstorm died as instantly as it had erupted into life, the torrential rain easing into a light drizzle that finally ceased with an eerie abruptness. The gusting high-powered gale that had ventilated those quiet hills had dropped away and an awesome stillness suffused the air.

The remote and cloudless sky was a darkling bitter green, almost black in its depth of colour, yet glassy and clear and filled with a curious luminosity, as if lit from within. A full moon was out, hard in its metallic whiteness, a perfect orb pitched in the cold wide sky, illuminating the moors and the fellsides with the clarity and brilliance of a noonday sun. Its sharp radiance fell upon the terrible devastation, bringing it into stark focus. The fulminating storm had ravaged the landscape.

The immense fells, poised in precarious leaning angles above the moorland, were towering precipitous cliffs and from them the unceasing torrents of rain had rushed down in streaming cataracts, inflating the natural waterfalls so that they had become liquid avalanches, bloating the becks and streams until they were swollen and spilling over their banks, which were already bursting under the pressure. The cloudburst had swept over the moors like a gigantic tidal wave, its force and speed uprooting trees and shrubs and heath, dislodging rocks and boulders, hurling all before it on its relentless downward journey. The small glens and hollows between the hills that punctuated sections of the moorland were completely flooded. Animal life not swift enough to escape had been trapped in the onslaught. Stray sheep had been drowned in the flood, their stiffened bodies floating grotesquely in the murky waters of these newly made but unnatural ponds. Battered birds littered the ground, mangled bits of broken bones and bloodied feathers, their trilling songs stilled for ever.

And lightning had left its stamp everywhere. It had struck trees, slicing them apart sharply and cleanly, and charring their scant foliage to blackened ashes. A horse tethered in the long meadow near Top Fold had been knocked down by a bolt, dying instantaneously before its owner could reach it, mane singed, grey coat dappled red and black. Not even the village was unscarred. Slates had been ripped off roofs, windows broken, plaster torn from interior walls, flaking off like minute sprinkles of snow, and one cottage was almost completely wrecked. A stained-glass window in Fairley Church had been shattered into hundreds of rainbow-tinted slivers. It was the memorial window recently endowed by Adam Fairley in commemoration of Adele Fairley’s death.

Up at Ramsden Crags, water sluiced over the great elevation of rocks and the ground was so muddy it was like running oil, a veritable bog, mucid and slippery. The two lone trees that had stood there for years, solitary sentinels to the left of the Crags, had toppled over in toy-soldier fashion, also demolished by the incessant flashes of violent lightning. Edwin crept out of the cave first and gave his hand to Emma, who was closely following him. They ducked away from the water that tumbled unchecked from the Crags relatively close to the aperture, their feet sinking ankle deep into the mire that oozed under them. Edwin placed the picnic basket on a boulder and helped Emma up on to the drier rocks, swiftly climbing after her. They gasped, almost in unison, and exchanged alarmed glances, dismay washing over their faces as they viewed the destruction so appalling to behold.