CHERYL BOUNCED on the bed. It creaked rhythmically, but didn't collapse. She kicked off her shoes.
"Mustn't get dirty marks on the sheets." She rested on her elbows and grinned up at Jack.
"Nor footprints on the ceiling. Aren't we having dinner first?"
"Bed first. Dinner second. Bed third." Cheryl had her priorities straight. "We mustn't be late. You've got an early start in the morning." The hotel courtesy bus would be taking Jack courteously away to the airport at seven thirty. "I'll have a bit of a lie-in, myself. To recover. So you'd better give me something worth recovering from, okay?"
Jack was hopping around the room, trying to get out of his trousers. More haste, less speed. He made it eventually, and they coupled with practised efficiency. Being English, Jack kept his socks on.
"I wonder if the waitresses at the Splatwick Hughton will be anything like the receptionist." Cheryl studied her reflection, her head on one side. "Does this make me look fat?"
Truthfully, Jack reassured her that it didn't. "The receptionist?" he asked innocently.
"You remember. The girl behind the desk downstairs? At least, most of her was behind the desk. Some parts of her were in front. What is it about this place, anyway?"
"I wasn't really looking," Jack lied. "Was she a big girl, then?"
"Have another look when we go down to dinner. If she's still on duty. She might have gone to have a fitting for a new bra. The one she was wearing was a bit marginal. You mean you didn't see her when she stood up?"
"No, that must have been when I went out for the other suitcase."
"You missed an experience. Funny thing, though, when we came up the High Street, there seemed to be more than the usual quota of busty girls around. All in one little village. I mean, what's so special about Splatwick?"
Jack probably hadn't really noticed anything special, she thought. That was the problem of having a boyfriend who wasn't a fan of big breasts. Perhaps he even thought Cheryl had an unhealthy obsession with big tits. But that receptionist did seem to be on the well-developed side. Even bigger than Cheryl up top.
"This bra's getting tight," she complained, easing the straps where they dug into her shoulders. "Either it's shrunk, or I'm getting bigger again. You're sure this skirt doesn't make my arse look huge?"
"It looks great, dear."
She regarded him for several seconds before deciding there was no intended hidden meaning. That was the problem of being a well-built girl whose boyfriend wasn't really into the fuller figure. And Cheryl's figure was fuller. It was fuller than most other women's, and it was fuller than it had been a couple of months before. A black skirt helped disguise her hips, but there was no disguising everything else. Even if she'd wanted to.
"Dinner, then. I'm starving. And you'll need feeding as well. It will be nine whole months before you get a proper meal again."
Jack sighed. Cheryl didn't trust foreign cookery. She took after her mother.
"They must take after their mothers," she said as she unhooked her bra with a sigh. "Wow, that's better. That poor little waitress! Imagine how she must feel when she takes her bra off. I've never seen anything like it! Maybe she's the receptionist's sister or something. It must be hereditary, having boobs that size. Only young, too. What d'you reckon she was, eighteen? Seventeen? Sixteen?"
"Hard to say. You can't tell how old girls are these days."
"Like policemen," Cheryl said mechanically. She raised an arm and rubbed at the red marks on her side. "I definitely need a bigger bra." She giggled. "I bet there's a shop in Splatwick that sells them."
"Sells what?" Jack was concentrating � taking things out of one suitcase and stuffing them into another.
"Bigger bras. Ye Olde Splatwicke Bigger Bra Shoppe. You haven't been listening at all, have you? I think maybe I'll take a wander round Splatwick tomorrow morning. I don't have to be back home until Monday. Maybe there's the makings of a story in it." She spelled out the headline in the air. "'Village of the Domed'. How about that? Maybe not. I'll leave the headlines to the editorial staff. But a couple of thousand words might go down well with Super Woman readers. They do seem keen on big tit material. Strange, really. Course, it would be even better with photos, but we can't expect miracles..."
The Airbus tilted nose-up and climbed steeply, disappearing within seconds into the thin cloud. No point in waving bye-bye, really. He'd be up there trying to unblock his ears and thinking about the cabin staff. Skinny air stewardesses of either sex.
Cheryl turned away, wandered indoors out of the viewing gallery where spectators could get an unrivalled view of any disasters occurring on take-off or landing, and into the little shop selling aviation books and souvenirs. Time to get back to the hotel, check out, take a look round the village. She stopped, picking up a guidebook of the district. It had a map of Splatwick on the back cover.
"One ninety-five," said an automatic voice from behind the counter. A hand reached out for the money, stretching around a bulky woman who was serving another customer. "Lovely, fanks."
They always said 'lovely' when you gave them money, whether it was the right change or not, as in this case.
"Three pounds and five pee change, fanks."
Cheryl took the coins, but she wasn't looking at them. The large woman sales assistant had moved away, and the automatic girl had come round to a gap in the counter to hand the change to Cheryl. At something well under five feet, she probably wasn't really tall enough to reach with any comfort across the glass-topped counter. Cheryl found herself staring. The girl was strikingly attractive, with long dark hair in a ponytail and large glasses which made her eyes look the size of saucers. But Cheryl was looking lower down. The girl wore a white shirt and a little bow tie. The shirt was so overwhelmingly full that it was a wonder she could fit herself in behind the counter at all. Yet she wasn't at all fat. From what Cheryl could see of her, her hips were narrow. And her wrists and arms were slender.
"Sorry?" the girl said.
"What?"
"I asked if there was anyfink else."
Cheryl pulled herself together with a major effort. "No, no thanks." She moved away. The little shop had emptied. An airliner was rattling the windows. "You don't ... by any chance...?"
The girl looked up at her, cupping a hand behind one ear.
"You don't have a sister, by any chance? Sisters? Working at the Hughton Hotel?"
"A sister?" The girl blushed, following Cheryl's gaze down to her chest for an instant. "No. No sisters. Must be someone else..."
"Sorry! My mistake." Cheryl ducked her head and hurried out of the shop. There was something strange about this place.
Where to start, that was the question. A word with the receptionist might work, if she was on duty this morning, and if the hotel wasn't too busy. Cheryl would legitimately be speaking to her anyway, when she checked out.
The desk was swarming with guests as she passed through the lobby, but as luck would have it, by the time she came downstairs with her bag, there was only one client occupying the receptionist's attention. She was explaining something at great length to a swarthy character who didn't seem to understand. At last, despairingly, she changed to rapid French, with the full range of hand and arm movements. The effect was miraculous. The guest beamed, suddenly understanding. He thanked her, in English, and made off with a great sense of purpose, clutching a briefcase.
The receptionist puffed out her cheeks and rolled her eyes expressively. She was dark-haired and attractive. Not, Cheryl noted, as well-endowed as the girl at the airport shop; not as bosomy as the dinner waitress, but still exceptionally developed. She wore a tailored blue costume which swelled out magnificently over her full bust. Perhaps it was cut to disguise her shape, if that were possible. She looked Cheryl up and down, not in an overt way, but noticeably.
"Checking out, thank you. Room two-three-six." Cheryl placed the key down on the desk. "You don't have a sister who works here?" she asked, conversationally.
The receptionist laughed. "You mean Sandy? The waitress?"
"That's probably the one! Shortish girl, about eighteen? Brunette..." Cheryl faded out the audio and resorted to hand signals.
"That's her. No relation. Everyone asks. Well, not everyone. Men, mostly! She's only sixteen, by the way!"
"She is?"
The receptionist inspected Cheryl's card, inserted it into the machine. "There are a lot of us in Splatwick. Girls like us..."
"I thought I'd seen one or two."
"One or two? There are dozens of us. You ought to hang around the village for a while."
"Maybe I will! Is there any reason for it? Something in the water?"
She laughed again, then looked furtively round as if the boss might be listening. "Nothing like that. There is a reason for it, though. You ought to see Maisie Chadwick. She's the fount of all knowledge round Splatwick."
"I'm a stranger round here..."
"You'll find her easy enough." She pushed the form across the desk for Cheryl to sign. "She runs the bra shop in the High Street. Just past Smith's on the right hand side."
"The bra shop?" Cheryl wondered if she was hearing things. "Does it have a name?"
"It's the only one in the High Street. The others aren't as good, they're tucked away down by the fruit n' vedge market." She looked up at the clock. "She'll be open by now. Tell her I sent you. Thank you for choosing the Splatwick Hughton. We do hope you found your stay with us to be not only an enjoyable but also a rewarding experience. Please call again!"
Cheryl's mouth fell open. A forbidding looking bald man had appeared at the end of the reception desk. The receptionist winked at her.
"Thank you! Most rewarding. I'll come again."
The shop did have a name, although it wasn't Ye Olde anything. Susan Shaw at Discoveries, it said in flowery gold script on the window glass. Not Maisie Chadwick. Maisie Chadwick at Discoveries wouldn't have had quite the same ring to it. The bell tinkled. It was an almost empty shop, with a counter across one corner and a couple of dummy upper halves of women mounted on purple velvet plinths. They wore large but not quite outrageous bras and nothing else.
Between the two models, a woman's head appeared, Cheshire Cat-like, peering through a curtain. Then it disappeared for several seconds, before reappearing, complete with body this time, through the door behind the glass display cabinet which also served as a counter.
"Good mourning, modom." The accent was Belgravia.
"Maisie Chadwick?"
"Who wants 'er?" The accent had changed to something rather more local.
"Cheryl Lincoln. The receptionist at the Hughton told me to ask for her. For you?"
"You mean Martine? Dark-haired girl?" The woman stuck her hands out a foot or so in front of her chest.
"That'll be her. The one who isn't related to Sandy the waitress."
"She's a good customer. How can I help you?"
Cheryl hadn't really thought it through. She hadn't worked out what she was going to say. How did one ask a complete stranger why there seemed to be so many big breasted women all in this same village? "I need a new bra," she found herself saying. "I'm an unusual size, really..."
"No problem. I'm Maisie, by the way. Chadwick, that is. Maisie Chadwick, not Maisie Bytheway." She emerged from behind the counter, taller than she had at first appeared, rather gaunt and spare-looking. Not quite the sort of woman you expected to find managing a specialist foundation garment store. "You look a pretty regular size, by Splatwick standards. Come on through the back and we'll probably find you something from stock."
"From stock? I don't think..."
"Come on!" Maisie had already gone. She came back and poked her head into the shop. "Walk this way, please."
The back room was a workshop and a showroom at the same time. By the time Cheryl had followed Maisie, the woman was already coming down a ladder with six long boxes balanced precariously in one hand. She dumped them on the work bench and they all fell over. She opened one apparently at random.
"This one's nice, in black. I wish more of my clients would choose black. It's so adult, somehow. We're a bit short of more mature customers in Splatwick. You're the oldest woman I've served for months."
"I beg your..."
"I don't mean old. Not old old. You're in your thirties, aren't you? Mostly, my customers come in with their mothers." She held up the bra by its broad shoulder straps. "Try it on. You're a thirty-eight, right?"
"Yes, but..."
"Good. Try this one, it's a J-cup. Although that doesn't really mean a lot. You can use the changing room, if you're..."
Cheryl decided to take the offer of privacy. It would give her a chance to collect her thoughts. What was the woman going on about? She certainly knew her stuff, though. The bra had little or no size information on the label, yet it fitted almost magically. She'd never felt anything quite like it. It supported her like a pair of cool, loving hands in silk mittens. Large hands, of course.
"Looks good! Come on out and try a few more." Maisie had shoved her head through the curtain of the changing cubicle. There didn't seem to be much point in hiding any longer. Cheryl dropped her dress down over her hips and stepped out into the room, wearing only pants and this new bra. She floated across the floor, her feet not quite touching the ground. She could get to quite enjoy this bra, she thought.
"What else have you got, same size?"
"They're still growing, aren't they?"
"Errrm. Well, it's strange you should mention..."
"Thought so. I know these things. You'd better try this one, in that case. Come on! Off with it!" Maisie snapped her fingers impatiently. Cheryl shrugged out of the black bra and stood there, her breasts swaying heavily. "Your nips are a bit big, now I come to look at them." Maisie chose another of the boxes. "Try this little bugger! The Splatwick High School Special, we call it. Bloody headmistress hates nipples."
The woman seemed perfectly serious, that was what made it all seem so bizarre. She never stopped talking, rapping out her short sentences like a machine gun. Cheryl was beginning to feel shell-shocked by it all.
"Cup of tea!" It wasn't a question. Maisie filled the kettle and dragged out two chairs. "Sit down! I hardly get a moment: on me feet all day." She filled another kettle and switched that one on, too. Cheryl opened her mouth then closed it again as Maisie continued. "You wouldn't believe what it's like here. Three bra specialists in one little place the size of Splat. Of course, being modest, I have to admit that I gets the lion's share of the business. Probably eighty per cent of it. The other two are just part timers, really. More dressmakers who dabble in foundation work. I'm the other way round, although I do a few other bits and pieces. Bikinis, of course. Shirts. Blouses. I do blouses in larger sizes for the girls up at the High School. See, not full time work, but enough to keep me occupied when bras are slack. Not that bras are ever slack in Splat! You're not from round here?"
"No, I work in London. We live more over Watford direction. A bit further out."
"I'd considered moving a bit closer to London once or twice, but there just wouldn't be the business there is here. It's funny, really. Of course, there's a perfec'ly good explanation for it all, but far be it from me to complain. You don't look a gift horse in the hand that feeds you the icing on the cake, after all."
"Beware of Greeks bearing gifts," Cheryl contributed.
"Greeks? I dunno. Mostly locals, the girls. Course, it's been twenty years since he started. Twenty years! And he must have been busy pretty well the whole of that time, the number of kids he's spawned. And there's all the ones we don't know about. The boys, for instance..."
"Excuse me...?"
"Why, what've you done?" Maisie giggled, got up and busied herself with the teapot. "One for each person and one for the pot," she intoned. "Ten ought to be enough." The teapot was a huge blue enamel affair, and she filled it right to the top, using the contents of both kettles. "I'm expecting a few more customers in shortly," she explained. "Where was I?"
"You were saying about somebody doing something for twenty years."
"Was I? That won't do. Careless talk costs lives. I talks too much sometimes, Chadwick says. Tha's my hubby. He's in the Gas, of course. Drives around all day. I din' want him working at the airport. You never know, tha's what I always reckons. Help yourself to sugar. Milk's in the box. Can you open it, there's a love? I always breaks me nails..."
Cheryl sipped at her tea. What was the woman talking about? It had sounded, before Maisie had got herself involved with the teapot and clammed up, as if she were talking about one person � one man � who had been responsible for fathering a whole brigade of children over a period of twenty years or more. She tried again.
"I suppose he's stopped now?" It worked. Maisie's gossip mechanism was triggered into action again.
"Sir Arthur? You've got to be kidding! He'll still be rammin' away when they carry him off and put him in the family vault. He's working on the second generation now. He always did prefer them younger. And he preferred them with big tits, too! They reminded him of his mother, I suppose. She weren't a stock size, not her Ladyship! Now, with his own grand-daughters coming along, with their tits out to here, he's like a pig in shit. I s'pose it's in-breeding, but I daresay His Lordship's family 've always gone in for a bit of rumpy-pumpy round the village, when they wasn't fornicatin' with the servant girls. Not that we'd know, anyway. He just pays up and they keep quiet."
"They what?"
"Sir Arthur. He pays all his mistresses as soon as he beds them. Only the one payment, like. Until they've had the baby, of course. Then next time, he pays again. Enough to keep them quiet. Course, the old bugger's rolling in it."
"He must be getting on a bit now?"
"Only forty-two, forty-three. Looks about eighty. That's the fruits of a life of lechery and lust. Lechery and lust."
"Helloooo? Anyone at home?"
The voice rang through from the shop.
"Come on through, Jan. We're out the back. Half term holidays is always busy," she explained to Cheryl. "All the mums bring their girls in. It's all right. You don't have to go!"
Cheryl hadn't been thinking of leaving. What concerned her more immediately was the fact that she was still sitting there in nothing more decent than a pair of panties and a Splatwick High School Special bra.
A plump little blonde woman came in. "I brought Kelly. Oh, you shoulda said you'd got a customer in. Sorry, duck!"
"No trouble!" Maisie said grandly. "The lady's having a cup of tea. Cheryl's from London!"
"Wow! Fancy! The lady's from London, Kell," the blonde woman said, dragging a girl into the workshop by her hand. The girl stood pouting sullenly, her toes turned inwards. She was even shorter than her mother, and had surprisingly dark hair tumbling around her shoulders. Her jeans hung limply around her non-existent hips. Her T-shirt, by contrast, was almost creaking under the load of a remarkably large bust for such an apparently young girl. There was clear evidence that she wasn't wearing anything underneath.
"Say good morning to Mrs Chadwick," her mother prompted her.
"Good morning."
"Hello, Kelly! I've got your bra all ready, so you'll soon be off playing with your friends."
"She's a right misery-guts this morning. She's always like this when she's due."
"Oh, Mum!"
"That's good! This bra will fit her for an extra month or two if she's at her biggest now. It's one of our special Specials, a 28Q. Shirt off, Kelly! Come on! There's a good girl. Wow, girl! What you been eatin'?"
Kelly blushed scarlet, still with her toes pointing inwards. Her nipples had an unhappy look to them, aiming at the floor, protruding from their engorged areolae like embarrassed chipolata sausages. She bent over obediently when Mrs Chadwick flapped an enormous pink Splatwick High School Special at her, snaring her immense, dangling breasts in the cavernous cups and briskly hooking the broad band across the prominent bones down her narrow white back.
"Straighten up, Kelly."
The girl looked so incredible that Cheryl almost gasped.
"She'll never get that T-shirt on now," her mother protested. "I told you to wear summat sensible sized. You never listens. You'll 'ave to get into it somehow. S'yer own stupid fault if you look like a sack of spuds on legs."
It wasn't a bad description, Cheryl thought. When Kelly had wrestled herself into her T-shirt, she looked so impossibly top-heavy it was a wonder she didn't topple over.
"How's it feel, Kelly?" Mrs Chadwick fussed around her, prodding here and there with a finger.
"Okay." Kelly cupped her breasts through the T-shirt from underneath and hefted them two or three times. "Yeah, they feel okay."
"They look all right. She don't look too bad, does she, Cheryl?"
Cheryl had to clear her throat. Kelly looked at her anxiously. "She looks great." The girl looked pleased. Sad, but pleased.
"Is cash all right?" Her mother was fishing around in her purse and came up with several tightly folded notes. Maisie took them without a word, and to Cheryl's astonishment immediately laid them on the table and flattened them with an iron. They curled up slightly at the edges.
"The iron's too hot," she observed. "Always happens."
"We'll be goin' then." Kelly's mother drained her teacup. "Kelly's got a date, ain't you, Kell?"
"Mum!"
"She's seein' this boy. I could fancy 'im meself, only he's got spots."
"Mum!" Kelly dragged her mother out of the door.
"Say thank you and goodbye to Mrs Chadwick, dear." Their footsteps died away and the doorbell tinkled as the now well-supported girl closed it behind them with some finality.
"Wow!" Cheryl shook her head. "One of Sir Arthur's?"
"Of course! Can't you tell?"
"Are they all like that?"
"Dark hair, huge tits. Kelly's about average."
"Ye gods! Where's he live, this Sir Arthur?"
"Up at the big house on the hill. Whassup, you feeling horny, or summat?"
"Of course not!" Cheryl was feeling unaccountably horny.
"You wanna watch out if you goes up there! They always reckons it's safer to let him come to you..."
There wasn't time. There was a story here, although Cheryl seriously doubted whether it was publishable. It was almost medieval: the noble whatsisname up at the big house, shafting all the nubile girls and women in the village. The crazily unbelievable detail was that all the children he fathered � at least, all the female children � were so instantly recognisable. Even the younger ones who hadn't yet developed breasts shared the same lustrous almost-black hair. No doubt the boys were recognisable, too, although their characteristics weren't so readily noticed by the casual observer. Not that it was at all easy to be casual when observing the girls. Staring at them was the only option. Young Kelly had been gigantically endowed, yet according to her bra-maker, she was no more than average!
The gates stood open, and a gravel driveway wound itself out of sight between the trees. Still without any sort of game-plan, Cheryl set off, plodding up the slight hill. Before she had gone a hundred yards, her calves were protesting and the house was still a distant occasional shape through the foliage. She rounded a bend and stepped off the gravel road just in time as a gleaming dark maroon Bentley swished and crunched past her at sixty miles an hour, heading out towards the gates. Was that Sir Arthur, by any chance? The windows of the car were dark tinted glass, she saw as she looked back, just before it swung out of sight. Its horns blasted and it accelerated away down the hill towards Splatwick.
The woman was tall and angular, her fair hair in a bun. "Super Woman magazine, you said? I don't think Sir Arthur reads that."
"It's a magazine for the modern woman," said Cheryl, accepting a seat.
"He'll be gone for the rest of the morning. I'm the housekeeper. Mrs Thewliss. Oh, dear, he's even taken his secretary with him. What kind of article were you thinking of writing?"
Cheryl thought quickly. "Originally, it was going to be a straightforward piece about life in a village under the take-off path of a major airport. How women cope with the noise, the danger, that sort of thing."
"The noise? We hardly notice it now." Mrs Thewliss paused while an aircraft roared overhead and the windows rattled in their ancient frames. "You get used to it. Originally, you say?"
"Well, yes. Once I'd taken a look around, I noticed something fairly unusual..."
"Ah. I see. Of course. Yes. We hardly notice that either, now."
"You mean you get used to it?"
"That's right!" Mrs Thewliss seemed to think this was a surprisingly original idea. "But what brings you up here?"
"I thought, with it like being sort of the manor house and everything. Get the woman's point of view. All the strata of society, that sort of thing..." Cheryl began to wish she had planned her day a little more thoroughly.
"In fact, it's perhaps as well Sir Arthur isn't at home. I don't mean he wouldn't see you. Gosh, no! Just that you could take a look around the house first. Come and meet the staff. All the strata of society and everything. There's always a pot of coffee on in the kitchen."
Cheryl followed Mrs Thewliss along a corridor and down some stairs. "How many staff does it take to run a place this size?"
The woman continued walking, looking over her shoulder and counting on her fingers. "There's Louise, Sir Arthur's secretary � she's his driver, too � myself; then there's Mrs Ugg, the cook; Robin, the gardener; Donna's the scullery maid and there's a new chambermaid just started. Six of us. All women, of course. Sir Arthur only employs women. Through here. Follow your nose."
The kitchen looked about a mile square, with a huge scrubbed table in the middle of the floor. A woman was busily stirring with a vast pot on top of a long black kitchen range, two dark-haired teenage girls were giggling as they chopped a small mountain of vegetables at the table. They looked up as Cheryl followed Mrs Thewliss into the kitchen.
"This is Ms Lincoln, from Super Woman. Miss? Mrs? Mizz?"
"Cheryl."
"Mrs Ugglestone, the cook. Donna and Ginny, the girls."
Mrs Ugglestone wiped her forehead with a cloth. "Pleased to meet you. Coffee for the lady, Donna."
One of the girls scrambled to her feet and grabbed the coffee pot. Cheryl noticed her immediately. One of Sir Arthur's. Not as big as Sandy the waitress, not quite as big as the average Kelly, but extremely full-bosomed. Her lacy blouse was deeply low-cut, displaying about nine inches of cleavage. The other girl, still giggling, pulled a carrot towards her and chopped the ends off.
"Oooh!" she simpered. "Sorry, Sir Arthur!" Ginny must have been the chambermaid, helping out in the kitchen. Although she was still sitting down, her blouse seemed to be even lower-cut and even fuller than Donna's. She attacked another carrot, dreamily caressing its length with stubby little fingers. Her almost black hair hung across her eyes and she swept it back over one shoulder without thinking.
"Get the mugs, Gin," Donna told her. "On the 'ooks on the dresser. Mrs Thewliss's is the Union Jack."
Ginny lovingly put down her carrot, stroked it tenderly, and stood up. Cheryl swallowed. The chambermaid was indeed gigantically developed. She was rather chubby and broad-hipped, but her bust was astoundingly large. She had to stand sideways and reach round it to get the mugs down. A similar manoeuvre was necessary to hand the coffee mugs to Cheryl and Mrs Thewliss.
Cheryl had to say something. "You're new here, Ginny?"
"Yes, Miss. I come straight from school, Miss. I was gonna stay on at school till Christmas, only they slung me out. I'm a distrumptious influence with the boys."
"That's the comprehensive school down in Cranley," Mrs Thewliss explained. "The High School is girls only."
"I went there," Donna murmured proudly. "Till they chucked me out for fucking."
"It's against the school rules, apparently," said Mrs Thewliss faintly.
"Everybody does it," Donna complained. "Only I smuggled my boyfriend in and we done it in the loo. Somebody blew the whistle on us." Donna seemed quite cheerful about the whole business. Other girls might have been angry at the injustice of being expelled for a perfectly natural and legal activity.
"At least, you found a job straight away," said Cheryl, offering a crumb of comfort. "I suppose Sir Arthur pays well?"
"Depends what you mean by pay," said Donna. She offered no further enlightenment.
"Donna got the job when Mrs Ugg's daughter left," said Mrs Thewliss.
"She was a model," said Mrs Ugglestone grimly, stirring her saucepan into submission.
Cheryl stared at the dumpy cook. "A model? Fashion, you mean?"
The kitchen girls tittered, their hands over their mouths. They had returned to their vegetables.
"Fashion? Nah. That wouldn't have been so bad. She was one of them sort of models."
"Oh. One of them sort?"
"Yeah. They took her to America. Lars time she wrote she said as 'ow they was making her into a film star. On a boat in the West Indies."
"Gosh," said Cheryl, impressed. "You mean like a James Bond film?"
The girls giggled again, and Ginny made a rude gesture at Donna with her carrot.
Mrs Thewliss explained. "I think what Mrs Ugglestone means is that Brenda was making rude videos. She's a very big girl."
"Big?"
"Even bigger than Ginny, only Ginny's still got a couple of years to catch up."
"Brenda's eighteen," Ginny sniggered. "Nearly, anyway. They have to be eighteen in America. The photographer said he couldn't get away with forging my birth certificate, cos they'd string him up and throw away the key. He gave me a card and told me to come back when I'm legal." She puffed out her chest and aimed it at Cheryl, sweeping a jug of water off the table on to the stone floor.
"Look what you're doin', you big-titted moo!" the cook advised her.
"I look legal, don't I?" Ginny wiped her hair out of her eyes and allowed her breasts to wobble at Cheryl. She looked a number of things, but 'legal' wasn't one that immediately sprang to mind.
"Let's take a walk in the gardens," said Mrs Thewliss desperately. "Meet the gardener."
"Tell her I need a couple of large courgettes," said the cook, holding her hands about a foot apart. Ginny sighed deeply and licked her full lips.
"The kitchen girls are a bit excessive sometimes," Mrs Thewliss apologised, leading the way into the kitchen garden. A woman in tweeds and green wellingtons was kneeling next to a glass frame, poking at the ground with a trowel. "Robin's got the twins with her this morning. It's half term, of course. I forgot. Morning, Robin."
The gardener looked up. The brim of her tweed hat fell down over a friendly rosy-cheeked face. Mrs Thewliss made the introductions.
"I won't shake hands, I'm covered in horse shit."
"Cookie wants two big courgettes if you've got them."
Robin rolled her eyes. "Anything to keep those kitchen maids quiet and satisfied? It would take a vegetable marrow to satisfy young Ginnie. I'll get the kids to find a couple in the greenhouse. Twins! Come here!"
Cheryl found herself staring hard at the two identical ten-year-old girls in scarlet bobble hats. Long blonde hair tumbled down their backs as they scampered off to the greenhouse. She decided they were probably not the fruit of Sir Arthur's loins. It made a pleasant change, at least.
"Sweet girls," she said.
Robin laughed. "You wouldn't say that if you had to look after them. Still, Sir Arthur paid for them, so I mustn't grumble, I suppose."
"Sir Arthur paid?"
"Old local custom. Mrs Thewliss will explain. Anyway, soon as I fell pregnant, the randy old bugger paid up, good as gold. By the time they'd been born with blonde hair an' all, it was too late for him to demand his money back. It didn't stop my husband running off, though, strangely enough. Most husbands run off round here. Once Sir Arthur's been around, husbands tend to feel inadequate, for some reason. You met him yet?"
"Not yet. I don't know if..."
"Oh, you must! He's not bad for his age. And he's not as old as he looks. And as for performance..."
The children returned with a couple of courgettes that looked capable of pleasing even the bottomless Ginny.
"Excellent, girls. Take them carefully to the kitchen and give them to Mrs Ugg. Not to Ginny and Donna, understand? Sir Arthur's got to eat those for his dinner..."
Mrs Thewliss turned another page of the album. "That's his mother. You can see where they get it from, can't you?"
Cheryl could see where they got it from. Sir Arthur's mother was a formidable woman. From pictures taken in her youth, she was also a rare beauty. But there was no disguising her most prominent feature. In the fashions of the 1950's, she looked wholly improbable. Cheryl had seen those pictures of Jayne Mansfield and Sabrina in tight sweaters. Her Ladyship's bust was of a similar shape, but on an entirely different scale. She made the sirens of the Fifties look like undernourished schoolboys.
"Is she still alive?"
"No, she fell ill and died back in the late 1980's, some time. Here's the last picture of her."
"She didn't stop growing, then?"
"Not so's you'd notice. Amazing figure. And that gene seems to be dominant. Every one of Sir Arthur's daughters has got the Family Bust, to a greater or lesser extent. And now that he's started work on the second generation, it's anyone's guess how big the girls are going to get. Selective breeding, you could call it. God knows what young Ginnie's kids will look like."
"She's not...?"
"Not yet. But it's certainly not for want of trying. Ginnie doesn't do things quietly. She can wake the dead when she's in full cry."
"So how many daughters are there?"
"We've lost count. Enough to be a serious drain on His Lordship's fortune, for sure. Sir Arthur makes a payment to each woman he's put in the club. Not an exclusive club at all. Enough for the mothers to buy a shiny new car, or a brand spanking new fitted kitchen, carpets throughout the house, that sort of thing. In a way, you could think of it as redistribution of wealth. But there's probably enough left to keep him going until he drops dead between the shafts, to coin a phrase."
"Even so, you can't lose count, surely? Someone must know how many kids he's got?"
"Look. Every class at the local High School has at least four of them: and he's been at it for at least twenty years, so there are several dozen who have left school already to seek their fortune in the wide wide world. Then there are all those who aren't old enough to show the family characteristics yet. Although, having said that, Sir Arthur's daughters do seem to develop good and early. Then there are all the boys. The only way to identify the boys would be to line them up and tell them to drop their trousers. From what I hear, though, it's more of a problem getting them to keep their trousers on. When Sir Arthur finally pops his clogs, I think we're going to find the next generation already breeding like rats. Give it twenty years, and the countryside around Splatwick will be overrun with giant-breasted teens and boys hung like stallions. They'll be mating in the streets like dogs. It worries me sometimes. All that sex going on, and me not getting any of it!"
Sir Arthur wasn't very tall. Nobody had really mentioned that until now. Now that she came to think of it, Cheryl supposed that with all these daughters of his being less than five feet tall, their daddy was probably going to be a shrimpy little thing as well.
"Sit down, m'dear, sit down."
Cheryl did. She was still taller than he was. She burrowed down into the chair.
He peered at her. Half blind, as well as stunted. "We haven't met before, have we? I'd have remembered if we had. I like a taller woman now and again."
By now, Cheryl was so far down in the chair, her knees were as high as her head. "Sir Arthur..."
"Forget the 'Sir', dear. Call me Arthur. Now, I can only guess why you're here. I am flattered. Of course, Mrs Thewliss told me the cock-and-bull story you gave her about being a reporter from some woman's magazine. But we're both adults. We know what you really want, don't we? I've got..." he glanced at the long case clock in the corner and it obligingly struck two. I can spare you an hour. Then I have to get down to the village in time for the High School girls to come out. I have to be available in case any of them are ready for breeding. Weekdays are always so dashed busy. Ready?" He straightened his tie. "Awfully rude, of course, but you don't mind if I keep me shirt on, do you? We can do it down here. Unless you'd prefer the billiards room? It's colder in there, but the table's a nice height for taller girls."
"Sir Arthur, please! This is a terrible mistake. You've got it all wrong. I am from Super Woman. I've probably got a card here somewhere..." She sat up, looking round for her purse.
"Show me afterwards, there's a good girl." Shockingly, he removed his jacket, slipped his striped braces off his shoulders and dropped his trousers, revealing a pair of pale blue matchsticks doing service as legs. His black socks were suspended by an elaborate harness arrangement that could well have been designed by Maisie Chadwick. But there was something far more shocking than his spindly legs and black socks. As Cheryl's eyes wandered upwards, she gulped and felt her cheeks beginning to catch fire. Two words sprang into her mind and wouldn't go away.
"Fucking hell!"
Sir Arthur chuckled. "God, I love it when girls talk dirty." He looked at the clock again and frowned. "Time's a-wasting, dear. Spread 'em!"
Cheryl didn't mean to, but in the face of such accomplished foreplay she couldn't help herself. Later, perhaps, she would analyse her actions, and decide that it was so out of character that she wouldn't do the same again in a thousand years. And then, she would tell herself not to be such a hypocrite. If the High School girls could manage it, so could she. Amazing how accommodating the human body can be, she thought...
"Oooh, Sir Arthur!"
Women and girls had been saying those same words for twenty-odd years. One thought flashed through her mind.
That's fucked up my article for Super Woman.
This will make a nice little piece for Super Woman, she thought as she gunned the MGF through the series of fast bends on the back road to Splatwick. So much more fun than taking the motorway. She'd never have believed that driving could be such fun. She'd had the new car six months now, ever since she'd spoken to Sir Arthur's secretary on the ex-directory number she had been given before she left Splatwick Hall that fateful afternoon.
Her hair streamed in the wind and the engine note echoed crisply off the banks along the roadside as she hummed a tune and mentally composed her magazine article.
'The new MG is a driver's car, all right, but it has an extra � undocumented � feature which will endear it to the woman driver. The suspension is beautifully controlled in fast curves, yet soft enough even for the most unusually well-endowed woman. And that's me! What is more, even with the seat far enough back to accommodate my prodigious bosom and my nine-month twins belly, the wheel and the gearshift always feel just right.'
Splatwick High Street was almost as she remembered it. There was Susan Shaw at Discoveries, now having moved down the street into larger and more imposing premises, but still with a mother lugging her unwilling offspring inside. Immense-bosomed women strolled up and down the street, extravagantly-endowed girls in school uniform rolled their eyes at the boys while giggling and jostling each other. Pity there was no time to stop, but Jack's plane was due in fifteen minutes, and she still had to park the car and waddle over to the terminal building.
She hadn't told him the results of the scan yet. Jack would be excited enough that he was going to be the father of twins. Let the rest of the news be a surprise to him in a few days' time.
He'd get used to the idea of having twin dark-haired daughters, soon enough.