Les Autres Ch. 05

All Sexual Activity In This Story Is Between Characters Who Are 18+ Years Old

******

September 20, 1940

Arlene Hart stepped out of the lavatory, minimally, but presentably, dressed. Under her sheer pale blue raw silk blouse and knee-length gray wool pencil skirt she wore, for modesty and comfort, her opaque silver sateen camisole and matching half-slip. For convenience and haste, she had eschewed re-donning the other lingerie and hose she had lost in the 'Two-Up' game with the Halsteads. These items remained strewn on the Carrara marble counter when she closed the bathroom door behind herself.

Barefoot in her black leather pumps, Arlene crossed the private rail car's main salon to the settee arrangement where her nineteen-year-old daughter stood, all but naked, between the thighs of Tom Halstead, Jr. While Cynthia Hart twerked her bare fanny in the nineteen-year-old boy's strong grip, he drilled his tongue into her tummy button. Holding him close to her, with her sheer slip tenting his head and draping his shoulders, she thrilled to his teasing.

On the opposite sofa, sitting with his back to the large rosewood dining table between him and the lounge, Tom Sr. watched the ardent youths with more than passing interest. He was unaware of Arlene until she gently closed her fingers on his shoulder tops and pinched slowly into his tight trapeziuses. The muscles reflexively rippled under her deep touch as she watched her daughter dance.

While young Tom rooted, rolling the back of his hidden head under the warm weight of her otherwise unsupported breasts, Cynthia kneaded her fingers into his scalp through her slip. Between short sharp irregular breaths, she protested weakly, "But Tommo... you heard Ma... she's calling for the steward. At least... I should put on... my overcoat. Aa-aa-as a robe... until he's come and gone."

Tom Jr. reluctantly abandoned Cynthia's ever so slightly reddened thirteen-week-old baby bump and removed his face from her slip, allowing, "Alright, Cindy, but fair warning: As soon as he's GONE, you'll come AGAIN!"

Arlene, herself, looked forward to a second round with Tom Sr. Stroking his shoulders out to their points and back, she opined, "I think it would be best if you three wait in the master bedroom." She pointed to a door on the right side of the train, at the far end of the open observation area between the main salon and the sleeping compartments. "Take all the dropped clothes and shoes with you. I'll knock when the steward leaves."

The plan's pragmatism was immediately apparent. In less than a minute, the men, clad only in their boxers and dark stockings, gathered all the lost Two Up bets in their arms. Cynthia held the door open, ushering them into the compartment, while Arlene moved back through the car to its main entrance and pulled the tasseled velvet bell cord for service. The F & C 'Farragut Flyer' blew another long mournful blast on its horn as it approached yet one more urban Little Rock level crossing and further reduced its track speed, preparing to arrive at the Mopac Station.

The distracting wigwag signals, and the streamliner's forty miles per hour pace, protected the actual privacy of the varnish's casually undressed occupants. Still, Cynthia hurriedly pulled the draperies on the suite's three right-side five-foot wide panoramic windows while the burdened Australians strode to the dressing area and unceremoniously dumped the clumped clothes on an overstuffed armchair. Retracing her steps in the sudden dark, she found the bedroom lights' switch.

When the compartment lights came on Cynthia was standing in profile, between the train windows and a rosewood armoire. Her slinky silk slip, sheer between its upper white lace trim and its hem, hugged her every contour from breasts to hips before falling straight away to her knee-caps. Sixteen feet away, between the chair and a marble-topped dressing table, Tom Jr., remarkably for the first time, noticed her barely bulging belly as it distorted her figure. He nudged his father and silently indicated the discovery with a discreetly pointing finger.

For her part, without having taken precise measurements, Cynthia was aware of certain body changes. In the past three months she had gained five pounds; her bust and waist had each expanded an inch. Her 35-24-33 figure remained hourglass, however, when she looked in a mirror, she noticed it was thickening. Also, her breasts, decidedly more sensitive, now crowded each other and spilled over the cup edges of her too-small size 32B bras.

Tom Jr. closed the distance to Cynthia and rested his square chin on top of her head as he hugged her from behind. Sliding his hands forward from her hips, he cradled her protuberance with splayed interwoven fingers. Pressing lightly with his pinkies and thumbs at four points on its oval perimeter, he asked softly, "Are you working on a joey, here, Cindy?"

He kept the friction constant as he drug his hands, and her slip, slowly upward. Cupping his palms under her breasts, Tom stroked his thumb pads out and down, over the silk, to the tips of her stiffening nipples. Grazing her scalp as he tipped his chin into his neck, he breathed into the bottom of her braided brunette crown, "Is that why you're so... SENSITIVE? So... TENSE? Are you... pregnant?"

Cynthia slumped slightly. Her back melted against Jr.'s hard hot chest. Her breasts ached as they settled their weight. Her cunny contracted and collapsed on itself as her desire built. She nodded and spoke, nearly inaudibly, into her bosom, "uhhn-huhn..." Then, in a hoarse whisper, she asked, "Am I... WICKED? I'm not married." Choking back small tears, she confessed, "I'm not even sure who the father is."

Young Tom kissed Cynthia's center part, raised his face and turned her within his embracing arms. Pulling her close, he bent his head again, dried the tears on her cheeks with softly mimping lips and replied in a tender tone, "Not 'wicked' at all. You're perfectly LOVELY." Tom stroked her head and neck with his left hand while his right reassured her with steady firm pressure on her back. He emphasized, sotto voce, "SO perfect. SO lovely. Why can't I be your child's father? Will you marry me?"

Cynthia was so surprised by his questions that she nearly fainted. She sagged against her strapping six-foot two-inch support and sighed, "Oh... TOMMO... Oh, Tommy... OH! Say you are not just being CRUEL... Tell me you LOVE me and WANT me and mean to HAVE me!" Like a brook breaking through a pebble dam, her words rushed as her voice gathered strength.

"I DO love you and want you, Cindy," Tom answered earnestly. "And if YOU will have ME, I'll take you to Wikawurri. This baby... and all those we make together... will be beautiful and forever loved." Tipping her chin with his left index finger, he sealed his pledge with a long kiss. Cynthia clung to him, like lichen on a live oak.

Tom Halstead, Sr. stood quietly nearby while his son proposed marriage. After what seemed to him an interminable period, he became impatient to hear Cynthia's confirmation. Stepping in, he wrapped his arms around the couple, squeezed them, together, against his torso and demanded, as he gently shook them, "So, Cindy... is it a 'YES'? I could not ask for a sweeter daughter-in-law... and GRANDCHILD. Make us BOTH happy. Tell Tommo you'll be his bride."

Cynthia broke the kiss but not the hug. Gazing into Jr.'s blue eyes, she excitedly hissed, "YESSSS!" Then, turning her face to her future father-in-law, she dropped a quick kiss on his nose tip and asked, "May I start calling you 'Dad' right away?"

Before either Halstead could speak, a door-knock reminded the trio that Arlene was also on the train. Jubilant, they backed away and slid the door into its wall-pocket. Arlene knew from their faces that something had happened while she was waiting for the steward to clear away the remains of their earlier brunch, but she had no inkling what caused the illumination and wide-eyed joy she observed. Her daughter, however, was quick to inform her.

Bursting from the men's arms and through the portal, Cynthia threw a bodacious bear-hug on her mother and cried, "MA! I'm to be MARRIED! Tommy asked me to MARRY him... and I said, 'Yes!'" Suddenly scared and child-like, Cynthia's voice dropped in register and volume. She looked apprehensively at Arlene and asked, "I CAN, can't I, Ma? Will you be too BLUE?" The teen shuddered and began weeping again, into her mother's neck.

Arlene reflexively pushed her daughter away and held her at arms' length. The news was too much to process quickly. Buying time, she stared silently past Cynthia's shaking shoulders at the Australian sheepmen. She searched their countenances for signs of deceit. Seeing nothing to alarm, she trusted her earlier judgments and accepted them, just as they, apparently, had accepted her and Cynthia.

Taking a long deep breath, she exhaled, "WELL now... isn't that just LOVELY!" Kicking out of her high heels, Arlene pulled her daughter back to her bosom and rocked her while she cooed softly, "Of COURSE you can marry Tom, Sweetheart... I'm tickled pink for you."

The Halsteads each gave out a sigh of relief and moved from the bedroom into the observation area. Tom Jr. continued forward, huddling beside his new fiancée, while his father stepped around the happy couple and side-hugged Arlene to his bare rib cage. The parents, each two inches shorter than their children, were physically well matched and naturally nestled comfortably against one another.

Smiling down at Arlene, Tom Sr. kissed her sweetly, then, clearing his throat as he raised his face, he looked at her and the betrothed youths. "There is ONE loose 'roo to worry, though," he said thoughtfully.

"Crikey! What'd THAT be, then, Da'?" Tom asked, as his eyes crossed and his mouth pursed in a concerned expression.

Studiously fixing his eyes on his son, Sr. squeezed Arlene until her unharnessed left tit squashed between its right-side mate and his hard chest. She did not struggle, except to breathe, as, unseen by the others, she snaked her left hand into the elder Halstead's boxers' waistband and seized a fistful of his firm ass cheek. "Well, Tommo," he said, "What about THIS mum, HERE?" Now turning his face to Arlene, he froze her with his icy blue windows and asked sincerely, "Will YOU marry ME, Arly? Come to the station? Be my everlovin' for the duration?"

Arlene laughed loudly. "Oh, that is RICH, Holly," she replied, burning through his glacier with her own penetrating brown eyes. "I was going to ask YOU if you couldn't stay HERE!" Turning ninety degrees left, she threw her right arm around his gut and kissed his flat hairy breast, ending with a sharp nip to its hard nipple . "Of COURSE I'll marry you and move to Australia. There's nothing holding either Cynthia or me here."

Pandemonium took over as the quartet hugged, kissed and danced with each other in unfettered joy. Lurching slightly as the slowing Flyer came to a halt, Cynthia exclaimed, "We must CELEBRATE! What shall we DO?"

Her mother stepped back into her pumps and said, "The train lays by here in Little Rock for a half-hour." She pulled the nearest window curtain back and peeked through its slit, confirming they were in the station and stopped at the platform. "Since I'm the only one of us dressed anywhere near presentably for public, I'm going to find a phone or telegraph."

Winking broadly, Arlene finished, "YOU three can plan our celebration and tell me about it when I return." Then, without further explanation, she turned about-face and strode with determination, sixty feet through the varnish sections, to the car's entry to the rest of the train.

Back at St.Luke's Catholic Church, Mary Trotter weaved uncertainly down the dark ambulatory from the priest's library toward a small bathroom. She clutched her suspenders, stockings and panties in her left hand and used her right to periodically steady herself on the hall wall as she moved. She was worn to a frazzle and could not understand why.

Locking herself in the lavatory, she leaned against the door and spoke soundlessly, "My GOD, Eli... I CAME and CAME and could NOT stop coming!"

Limping to the toilet, she unrolled a hank of tissue and stuffed the wad under her skirt, wiping her tender thighs on the way to her weeping wasted pussy. After sopping up her mess, she flushed the saturated mass and took a deep breath. Continuing her soliloquy, she exclaimed, "The Father was so LUSTY; so POTENT! Has he never fucked before? Was I his FIRST? Oh, Eli, why did you send me to him?"

As her strength returned, Mary put on her underwear, snapped her hose tops into her garters and straightened her seams. Re-applying her Revlon dark cherry lipstick, she prayed that her passed-on true love, Eli Farragut, would again appear to her in the mirror. She longed for his face; his voice; his tender touch. The apparition did not materialize. Sighing, she exited the bathroom and walked through the annex to the Women's Auxiliary Office in the administration building.

When Mary entered the room, twenty-year-old Greta Van Der Molen looked up from a box of donations and noted the time. "Hoi, Mary," she greeted pleasantly. "It is ten o'clock already. Time for coffee... I can bring a cup for you, ja?"

Mary smiled slightly and declined the offer. "I'm sorry, Greta... actually, I feel exhausted this morning. You'll have to carry on without me today, I'm afraid." She raised her right hand to her forehead for effect and continued, "A headache, you know? I'm going to go home and lay down."

Naughtily curious, Greta eyed Mary carefully. It had been an hour since the very attractive, and smartly dressed, WAO volunteer had said she was going to drop in on Father Logan. She had seemed well enough then. While Mary's appearance gave nothing away, the imaginative girl speculated, from her own experience, about the priest's powerful prick pumping into the older woman. Greta's pussy tingled at the thought and she made a mental note to surprise Father Logan herself later in the day.

"Oh? Well, that is alright, Mary," Greta graciously replied. "You get a good rest. Maybe on Monday you can come again, ja?" She smiled, waved, and left by a side door for the kitchen.

"Yes, well, maybe," mused Mary. "That's something I need to sort out, alright." Lost in thought, she closed the WAO door and walked to the parking lot. When she settled behind the wheel of her ten-year-old Cadillac, its deceased former owner's bass voice resonated in her head, in French, "Attention aux flics, ma petite chérie!"

Turning her head sharply, but seeing no one or thing, Mary retorted aloud, "I wish you had given me that warning BEFORE I ran that stop sign, Eli! I nearly got a ticket." As an afterthought, she asked the empty air, "And why are you making me remember the French you taught me? No one ELSE I know speaks a WORD of it!" After waiting several minutes, and hearing nothing else but the incessant 'cherr-o-wit-cheree' song of invisible red-eyed vireos, in the trees surrounding the sedan, she wondered, "Could THAT be ALL I heard, EVER?"

Fifteen minutes later, still enervated from Father Logan's protracted unholy fuck, Mary entered the library at 46 SE Garvey Street. Kicking off her high-heels, she removed her suit jacket and collapsed there, onto a plush copper velvet button-upholstered camelback couch. With a small sigh, she settled herself, curled up around a great fringed-and-tasseled purple satin pillow, and quickly fell asleep. When her telephone rang she was surprised to see the Kienzle mantle clock displayed a quarter past eleven. She felt as if she had only just shut her eyes.

Crossing the dense Oriental carpet between the sofa and Eli's massive antique mahogany desk, Mary picked up the receiver on the fourth ring. After saying 'Hello' and immediately recognizing Arlene Hart's voice, she double-checked the clock and exclaimed, "You can't be in St. Louis yet! What's the matter, Arlene?"

Arlene laughed into the phone and said in a bubbling burst, "You're right, we're NOT... We're in Little Rock... and NOTHING is 'the matter'... everything's JAKE!" Catching her breath, she rushed on again, "Listen. The Flyer's pulling out again soon... I have to KNOW... Can Cynthia and I ride in the F & C private car... to CHICAGO? We're not getting off in St. Louis and if we need tickets I need to know before we get there."

Mary wrinkled her nose and squinted through the drapes into the late morning sun. "What? What are you talking about? CHICAGO? Mr. Schuster is meeting you in St. Louis... he has your hotel information... What do you MEAN you're 'not getting off' there?"

Arlene blurted, "Oh, HONEY, you won't believe what's happened, but it's TRUE! Cynthia and I met two fellas on the train. They're AUSTRALIANS! And they want us to MARRY them... and live with them on their sheep ranch! We said, 'YES!' So, we're heading to Chicago with them and then flying Down Under as soon as we can... after we find a PREACHER, of course!"

Mary held the phone out from her ear as she processed the exuberant news. When Arlene finished, Mary shook her head in wonder while she said, "Well, that's some pick-up... Are you sure about this? I don't want to rain on your parade, and OF COURSE you can use the car all the way to the end of the line, but... REALLY... is this what you want? It's pretty short notice and a LONG long way to go."

"Yes, Mary," Arlene replied, more calmly. "All of what you say is right, but we ARE sure and it's going to work out great." She heard the loudspeaker announcing final boarding and quickly added, "Hey! Got to get aboard... We have an hour in St. Louis... I'll call you again after five... THANKS, Mary!"

Hanging up the phone, the bewildered benefactor breathed, "Good luck, ladies." She was still sorting the astonishing development when she heard a series of loud door-knocks. Stepping from the library into the dim hall, Mary wended her way to the spacious kitchen and its enclosed porch. Unsure how her day could be stranger, she wondered, "It's not even noon, yet... who could possibly be at the back door?"

Deciding that her mother must have ordered something and forgotten to tell her there would be a delivery, Mary hurried too much. With her first step from the carpeted hall, onto the kitchen's cool slippery glazed tile floor, her shoeless nylon-clad foot slid from under her. Sprawling ungracefully to the floor, she banged both her knees. Her head bumped the nearest cabinet.

When she looked up, across the wide cooking area and past the square ash breakfast table, Mary saw, at the Victorian mansion's back door's filigree-edged frosted-glass window, the shadowed silhouette of a man in a vaguely military peaked hat. Laboriously hauling herself back to her feet, she called out loudly, "Just a moment, please!"

When she opened the door a prickly heat flashed down her neck. Her shoulders involuntarily shuddered in her bronze taupe silk blouse and her cheeks colored briefly beneath her make-up. A uniformed police officer filled the door frame. Despite his charming smile, Mary was quite taken aback. "Officer... JANSSEN," she gasped. "Wh-what are you doing here? Did you decide to cite me, after all?"

Using his trained observation skills, Janssen immediately took in Mary Trotter's slightly askew appearance: Her blouse was untucked half-way around her bone linen pencil skirt; Both her nylons were torn at the skirt's hem; Her left knee was discolored beneath the sheer beige stocking. Remembering the loud thump he had heard, just before Mary called out and then came to the door, he deduced she had stumbled.

Wasting no time, Janssen crossed the threshold, steadied Mary lightly, but securely, by her upper arms and answered with a calm voice, "No, but, are you OK, Mrs. Trotter? It looks like you've taken a nasty tumble."