Sexual Politics

"I'm fat... ooh," she gasped as a hand snaked around onto her tummy.

"Not fat, voluptuous maybe... but not fat. Open."

She parted her legs slightly, waiting for him to touch her again. "Are you going to make love to me?" she asked.

"No, I'm not your lover... but I am going to fuck you since you so clearly want me to, and you'll remember it for the rest of your life. Wider."

"Can't we go to bed? she asked.

"Jack? This is a little humiliating."

"No. If you wanted to fucked in a bed, you should have stayed upstairs. This is your choosing, you took your knickers off, and you came back down here. Now be quiet."

She couldn't imagine what he was doing, he wasn't touching her. And then he touched her, and she jumped. He was kissing her buttocks, firmer now, his moustache tickled, she felt his hands move onto her hips, easing her toward him. He began kissing the small of her back, the dimples each side of her spine. He moved a hand between her legs, she knew he'd find her wet, but he ignored the obvious, twisting his hand and cupping her sex through her legs and with the inside of his wrist massaged at her wetness. He placed his other hand on her back and pushed gently across the room, toward the sofa.

"Kneel down and bend forward," he instructed, guiding her.

"Jack... "

"Shhh... I'm not going to hurt you."

He separated the plump globes of her bottom, blew gently into the exposed valley, watched as her anus twitched, she muttered something inaudible. He followed with a finger, hesitating at the smaller opening, curious as to her desire.

"Not there... Jack, please."

"But isn't that what you imagine from a socialist, we're all sheep shaggers and deviants? Tell me what you want."

"Don't be stupid! Will you please get on with it, before I change my mind... oh Christ!"

He'd plunged deep into her with barely a warning other than a quick separation of the folds of her lips, and stayed deep inside her while she adjusted to his presence. Reaching around, he began a slow deliberate grind against her slit with the heel of his hand, nothing delicate, and the effect was to haul him deeper inside her. She struggled to move, wanting to feel him penetrate rather than just fill. He held her firm, continuing to massage with his hand.

"Work for it," he said, "use your cunt."

His use of the word shocked her, "how?" she asked, grimacing against the pressure front and back.

"It's got muscles. Find them, work along my shaft... and then I'll fuck you."

"You're a bastard, Jack," she said, and set about discovering what he was asking her to do.

"You won't say that by morning... that's better."

She found the set of muscles he was talking about, discovered she could ripple them along his shaft and the effect was to magnify his size, he seemed to grow within her, more than filling her. Jack eased the pressure of his hand, letting her begin to move in rhythm with her grabbing muscle contractions. Her breath sharpened.

"Fuck me now," she screamed.

He moved his hand and gripped her each side by her buttocks, digging his fingers into her flesh, hearing her whimper as he began to move inside her.

"Faster," she cried.

He started slamming into her, crudely, almost brutally, his thighs slapping against the cheeks of her bottom.

Later, in bed, they were gentle with one another, and made love. She stayed for the weekend.

Their love making, during the remaining weeks of the Easter Term, fitted around bouts of political argument, they used sex as a diversion from argument; often violent sex, as if each believed they could achieve domination through sex where rhetoric failed. At the end of the Easter Term, Jack told her he was leaving Cambridge. It wasn't exactly unexpected news.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I'm going to the States for a few months, then possibly Australia."

"My God, you are so conservative. English speaking countries... "

"Don't start... It is not linguistic laziness. I want a better understanding of their respective political systems."

"I know. I'm teasing," she leaned back against the kitchen unit quietly thinking, her arms folded under generous breasts still tingling from his earlier suckling, dressed in one of his shirts — her now habitual Sunday morning wear. "Will I see you again, or is this it?"

"Come with me?"

She shook her head, "I can't. Don't ask me to do that."

"I've been offered a junior lectureship, here, at the University, I'll take the job, and stay... if you agree to marry me."

She looked away, trying to disguise her shock at his proposal, not letting him fence with her eyes, knowing he'd win that battle; and also knowing he was serious. He never wasted words.

"We can't... you know that. You... you shouldn't ask for things you can't have, Jack."

"It was a long shot," he said, opening his arms to her and holding her while they both shed tears.

He took her to Little Shelford for a largely silent lunch; and after lunch, they walked along the riverbank, conducting their particular style of dating out of sight of the observant fellows and undergraduates.

"When are you leaving?" she asked.

"Tomorrow."

She stopped walking and shook her head in disbelief. He knew damn well she had tutorial commitments; she couldn't spend the rest of the day with him, or that night.

"Shit, Jack!"

He stopped a few paces on and turned to face her, mindful to keep distance between them, the anger in her tone more than evident.

"Why for God's sake can't you behave normally? Why are you punishing me? You bastard!"

- - - - -

Two days after he left Cambridge, she received a letter from a Nottingham solicitor. The letter granted her a notarized Power of Attorney over the Cambridge house and details for accessing 'the house' bank account, there was also a note, from Jack, 'Look after the house, only one rule — never sleep with anyone in 'our house'. Love, Jack.' She phoned the solicitor.

A very 'put-out' solicitor informed her the house was effectively hers, evidently the solicitor did not concur with Jack's instructions and wasted no time in expressing his concern and reminding her of her responsibilities. Jack had given her total control over the house, with the single exception that she could not sell the property. He'd left enough money in the house account to cover all the house bills for her remaining two years at Cambridge.

She didn't see him for five years. He sent a single rose each Valentines Day, at least, she presumed the roses were from Jack; there never was a message. Jack was in the hall, in 1987, when she won, at the age of twenty-four, her first parliamentary election. She caught a brief astonished sight of him before the television company whisked her away for interview. She appeared nervous to the interviewer who put it down to her being the second youngest woman, after Bernadette Devlin, ever elected to the UK parliament. Her nervousness had nothing to do with the election result, and her disturbed state continued across the next few days, until Jack called her.

"Jack! Where the Hell have you been! Why haven't you called?"

They met very late that same night at Cambridge. Jack arrived first and walked through the spotlessly clean house. She had changed a few things, marked the house with more than ethereal presence. He found some of her clothes hanging in his wardrobe; a rare picture of the two of them on the bedside table, and a few items of her underwear in the dressing table drawer, his nervousness, heightened by memory, steadily grew as he waited for her to arrive.

He was in the kitchen when he heard her key in the door, and walked two paces to the kitchen doorway where he could see her as she quietly closed the door to the street, and turn to face him. She wore a pale blue knitted top over a simple black skirt, and shook her hair loose to cascade onto her shoulders, it was longer now than five years ago. Her eyes betrayed her anxiety, no more than he felt, and immutable desire. She didn't move, she leaned back against the door, waiting for him, arms by her side, fingers spread, palms pressed against the door shutting off the world outside.

"You look... beautiful," he said, moving slowly toward her, his eyes searing her.

"I haven't forgiven you," she whispered as she blinked back the threatening tears, "you left me... "

He moved a hand to her hip, lent forward, his lips brushing her neck. She ducked away.

"No! We're not starting that that again, not unless... "

He grabbed her wrist and turned with her, pinning her to the hallway wall. He moved to kiss her; she pulled her face away, and felt him ease his grip. She looked up imploring him with her eyes to make sense of how she felt. On the drive north from London, she'd tried to instil in her mind the idea that Jack was out of her life. The close she came to Cambridge, the wilder her thoughts became, and her desire. Finally, as she parked the car, she resolved she'd never allow him to dominate her again, but that was before she saw him, before she tasted his breath and smelt his skin.

"Unless what?" Jack asked.

"Did you send me roses?"

He nodded.

"Why?"

"You know why. "Kiss me," Jack asked. His dark eyes sparkled dangerously, spilling answers to unasked questions.

She shook her head slowly. "No, I'll not kiss you, you'll mess with my heart. You can mess with my body, but I'm not letting you back into my heart. Fuck me, Jack. That's all you really want."

Jack released her and walked away to the sitting room, shaking his head. She breathed deeply. 'Round one to me,' she thought as she ran her fingers through her hair; 'strange, before I arrived I had no idea how to play this, and now... ' She walked into the sitting room and found Jack sprawled on the sofa, looking more than a little despondent.

"I'm going to bed," she said, "I'd like it if you came to bed too."

He looked up, "You know that I still love you."

"Yes," she sighed, "you just have a funny way of showing it. Come on," she held out a hand to him.

She made him lay on the bed and undressed him slowly, exploring his body, refreshing her memory, searching for signs of damage or adventure. Then she undressed for him, sensually and, she hoped, erotically. She passed him her top, then her bra as she undressed, letting him smell on her clothes the imprint of her body, then slowly, kneeling alongside him, she unzipped the side of her skirt, shimmying it down her hips, no panties.

"You see," she murmured, "you didn't have to try to re-claim me. Make love to me, show me you still need me."

- - - - -

It didn't last. In '88 the United Kingdom imploded economically and whatever personal hopes they may have clung to, collapsed with the political fall-out. Jack had returned to the UK not just to try to win her heart but in a vain attempt to try to steer her away from politics. He'd seen the pending economic disaster, easier to spot from afar, and tried to convince her to quit politics and marry him. She faced a stark choice delivered to her by the Chief Whip of her governing Party, either to fall in line, or quit politics; her dalliance with the increasingly outspoken Socialist son of an ex-miner was deemed by her masters to be a luxury the Conservative Party could not afford.

Jack could afford to be outspoken, he had made millions leveraging to buy gold shares in an upstart gold mining company in Australia and sold out to the avarice of clambering buyers before the peak — and the subsequent share collapse after the reported gold findings were certified as less than projected. When he returned to the UK, he began investing in run-down coal mining properties. He bought vast tranches of land in the Midlands at rock-bottom prices following the stock-market collapse in 1988. He married his old girl-friend in 1990, and divorced her two years later, before too much damage had occurred, recognising the mistake of marrying for revenge.

He spent quiet years obtaining planning consent for his land-holdings, and began selling and developing when the economic climate recovered, increasing his already large wealth. He became a major contributor to the now governing Labour party — though bitterly disappointed by they adherence to the former Conservative government economic plan — and slowly he shifted his focus from commercial development to providing the socialist infrastructure he perceived the New Labour party to be ignoring. He cast his first social project, a welfare centre for the disadvantaged, with an adjoining youth centre, in her constituency, knowing she would be unable to ignore him. By this time, she was a Junior Shadow Minister for Health and Welfare in a stripped apart Conservative Party, a party barely able to keep its head above water. Jack invited her to 'open' the Centre.

They slept together at the Cambridge house on the way back to London. She told her party officials, as she set off with him in his car, that she was hoping to persuade him to financially back the Party. She'd been married a month and still, within a few miles of joining the motorway, her underwear was in her handbag, and her skirt hitched up to give him free access as he drove through the night. By the time they reached Cambridge, she'd have agreed to anything, almost, and attacked him as soon as he'd closed the door. She fucked him on the hallway floor amid the debris of free newspapers and pamphlets before letting him lead her upstairs. She cried most of the night, partly in pleasure and mostly in frustration, for not having had the courage to surrender to his love.

Jack told her to use the Cambridge house as a refuge. He wouldn't be using it. He told her the time would come when she need some place no one knew about to escape the glare of publicity. He told her he would come to her side whenever she called. And he told her he would wait for her, for as long as it took.

Increasingly, Jack found himself invited to Conservative Party functions, he was now a financial contributor to both major political parties, arguing publicly that he divided his political stipend equally between them, as they were, in every substantial detail, equals; he gave a larger financial contribution to the Liberal Democrat Party. Inviting him to functions was her way of maintaining contact. He was discrete, maddeningly discrete, often arriving with an escort guaranteed to raise her jealousy. Once, in the Houses of Parliament, during a party following a re-vamped political manifesto launch, she swept him off to her office and they'd made frantic urgent love on the carpet, the excitement heightened by the risk both knew they were taking. They contrived to meet at Cambridge a few times, even managed to spend a long week-end hidden in the terraced house, but as her stock within the Party grew, such trysts, infrequent as they were, became impossible to arrange.

Following defeat in the 2001 General Election, the Conservative Party decided on an entirely radical approach to their party leadership. She was one of few Conservative Members of Parliament to increase her voting majority in the election, owed in no small part to Jack's pioneering educational programme in her constituency, the benefits of his programme now evident in higher academic standards and achievements. The Party elders invited her to meet with them.

'Monty' Montgomery chaired the meeting. The same 'Monty' who'd delivered an ultimatum to her in 1988 over her publicly scrutinised affair with Jack. He'd invited her to his rooms before the meeting, wanted to 'go over' a few matters with her.

"Of course you are not married. That might be a disadvantage," he said. "The public set great store by stable relationship," he looked at her questioningly, "no hubby on the horizon? Anyone we should know about?"

"No. I think that opportunity has passed me by."

"What about Jack," he asked, "is he still sniffing around?"

She didn't answer, not at all comforted by his probing.

"He might be an answer to all our problems. Jack would help unite both sides of the Party and he'd be hellishly important to you with the voters. Of course you couldn't have children, that would be quite out of the question. No one wants to see a potential Prime Minister weighed down by the burden of children."

He continued in this vein for some minutes more, talking down to her, letting her know that if she were to become the next PM, she could not expect to enjoy the free-reign of the Maggie Thatcher era. In the ensuing committee meeting, he reassured one or two wavering Members that there was no danger of children interrupting Cabinet meetings, that she were past the age where children were a consideration, assuming that is, that she did the decent thing and persuaded Jack to make a respectable woman of her.

- - - - -

"Jack? It's me. Can we meet? I'm in Cambridge. I'll be here all week-end. I need to talk with you."

She disconnected the call wondering if he were even in the country. It was almost two years since they'd had any chance to be alone together, though they spoke telephone or managed to contrive a meeting most weeks. He arrived shortly after nightfall on a wet early October night; she had made lasagne, figuring it would be easy to re-heat in the microwave.

"Something smells good," Jack called from the hallway.

"I do hope you mean me," she called. "I'm in the kitchen."

Jack kissed her tenderly, then pulled her too him, wrapping his arms around her, hugging her tight. "God, I've missed you," he said.

"And me, you," she answered, kissing his neck. "Are you hungry? It's ready."

"For you... or food."

"Food, you fool. I expect you to be always hungry for me."

They ate in the kitchen, practical and quick, catching up on news and gossip, steering clear of politics. She felt relaxed, warmed by his presence and more certain than she'd ever been about anything. Jack opened a second bottle of wine and brought it, with their glasses, as she led the way to the sitting room.

"So what's the emergency," he asked, "can't make up your mind now the moment has come? You know I'll support you as much as I can."

"What have you heard, Jack," she asked, curling her legs onto the sofa alongside him.

"That they are going to offer you the leadership of the Party. Too early in my view, shouldn't make you opposition leader with the best part of four years before the next election. Are they going to hold a 'beauty contest', or will it be a unanimous election?"

She looked at him for a moment; nervous now she needed to broach the subject.

"What... do you think I could win the beauty contest, the leadership election, if I were pregnant?"

"This is a hypothetical, I take it?" he asked, looking distinctly anxious.

"Might be."

"Might be what... hypothetical or pregnant," his voice raised a notch, "I didn't think you were seeing anyone."

"Jack, don't look so alarmed. I'm not seeing anyone, and I'm not pregnant." She moistened her lips before continuing, "However, if I were pregnant, do you think I'd win the 'beauty contest'. Be honest. It is important."

Jack raised his eyebrows, furrowed his brow, stretched his face, recently acquired traits, she remembered he used to shoot from the hip.

"Honestly? No. You wouldn't even be nominated. You couldn't run for Prime Minister with a babe in arms. The Party wouldn't stand for it."

"That is also what I think."

"What is all this about, Maddy?"

"Christ! You must be worried, you almost managed to use my name," she smiled. "I'm thinking of having a family, before it's too late. I'm thirty-eight, I can't leave it much longer.

"The Party thinks I stand a much better chance of winning the next election if I'm married. It has been suggested to me that you would make the perfect husband."

Jack sat grim faced.

"Apparently, you have the necessary attributes to unite both wings of the Party and your philanthropic work will reap a harvest of socialist voters. I'm supposed to seduce you; though it has been discretely pointed out to me that it wouldn't be for the first time. There are micro-cameras in my office.