Brief Encounter in Budapest Pt. 02

How do you spend a day when you are waiting impatiently for the evening? When you cannot forget the night before? The only way to do it is to find something completely absorbing and let it take over for as long as you can. Normally work achieves it, but in my case I needed somewhere to go. So I turned to the Romans: I took the suburban railway out to the ruins of Aquincum, the ancient Roman capital of Pannonia, as the Romans called Hungary. It's like Pompeii, though not quite on the same scale. But here are the traces of shops and streets and a rather magnificent arena. I paid to join a guided tour of the Hercules Villa and I wandered through the high-walled baths. Roman sites have a way of taking me back to ancient times: there's always something about the Romans that gets the blood racing. I managed to put Frijda out of my mind for the morning, and I got lunch at a small cafe near the ruins. But after lunch I knew I wanted to head back into the city.

I strolled down Andrassy Avenue, looking in at the very chic and expensive shops, wondering as I always do who can afford the prices and why they should choose to. I headed to the river and stood for a while at the Shoes on the Danube memorial, a poignant collection of shoes sculpted in metal, a reminder of the tragic fate of Budapest's Jewish population during the Holocaust. So I was in reflective mood as I strolled back towards the cafe. I stopped at a stall along the way and bought a bunch of flowers and I got there with a good hour to spare. I sat at the same table as before and found the volume of Maupassant stories. A woman came over to the table, blonde hair and a black blouse with jeans and an apron: presumably Frijda's schoolfriend. I nearly ordered tea, but something told me it wouldn't do, so I asked for the same coffee I had had last time. She seemed to understand. I picked up the book and allowed the time to pass.

You can do that for a while, but once you pass the half past mark you start looking at your watch every couple of minutes or so. I kept looking up from the book towards the door. A few people came in, ordered coffees and sandwiches and Frijda's friend was always coming and going from the counter. Quarter to six: no sign of Frijda. Ten to: no sign, and I began to worry - had I remembered the instructions correctly? I took out her note - of course I had it on me - and checked. Yes, six o'clock. Seven minutes to. Five minutes to. Did she mean six? Or about six? Or half past six?

"Don't worry; she will come."

Surprised, I looked up. It was Frijda's friend, the cafe owner.

"Yes", I said. "I know."

"I am Kristina."

"John."

We shook hands.

"You know, you are very lucky," she said. "Frijda is a good friend."

"You've known her some time?"

"We were at school together. But that's not what I mean. I mean she is a good friend to whoever is her friend. Very loyal, very loving."

"That's good to hear. And am I -?"

"Oh yes", she said. "You are definitely her friend."

I was about to say something about how we had only known each other a couple of days, but Kristina held up her hand to stop me.

"She's here. I told you."

And she came in.

She was in a very smart light grey business suit with a beautifully cut white blouse. It was unbuttoned to reveal a bit of cleavage and I realised that her suit included a waistcoat - is there anything more sexy than a waistcoat on a beautiful woman? She came straight over to me and kissed me on the cheek, then she turned and said something to Kristina and sat down opposite me.

"So," she said, "what have you done today? I want to hear all about it."

"First things first," I said, handing her the flowers. She was delighted. She smelt them and admired them and kissed me again, and then she demanded to know about my day.

So I told her. I told her about the Roman ruins and immediately she started to quiz me. She wanted to know about the Romans, what they were doing in Hungary, what happened to them when they were here - I had to drag a lot of information back from the far reaches of my memory of schooldays. She seemed to love hearing it, though, and when I said I hoped I wasn't boring her, she let out a little cry.

"Oh, John, you cannot know how much I love hearing this. All day long I have to deal with stupid people wanting stupid things - I have forgotten this world exists. This world of knowledge and ideas and history - and - Maupassant ..."

I touched her hand.

"Frijda, darling," I said, "all that is still there if you look for it."

"You have to make time for it," she said. "That's the problem. I have so little time. But now I have you. Tell me about it, John. Tell me all about it."

And so we talked as we finished the coffees, said goodbye to Kristina and strolled through the streets. Frijda asked me endless questions: "What happened when the Romans left?" "What did I know about the Turks?" "Poor Maria Theresa - why would they not allow her to be Empress?" and so on. It was as if the questions that had been in her head for years were suddenly all coming out at once. I answered as best as could, though my own knowledge was patchy, and suddenly we were at her car.

"We'll pick up your bag at the hotel and then the evening is mine," she said, as we climbed in and she drove off.

(Note to self: Add "Hungarians" alongside "the French" and "Italians" in your list of Craziest Drivers in the World.)

We collected my bags from the hotel and then she drove us to an area outside the centre, with old, nineteenth century residence buildings and stepped streets - it reminded me a bit of Montmartre.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"You'll see."

She took me past small shops open at the front, selling fruit and vegetables, and past the inevitable cafes and bars, to an ordinary doorway, no different from any others except for a small neon sign above it and, as we drew nearer, the sound of lively dixieland jazz. She led me inside and down a staircase and suddenly, like some American speakeasy from the twenties, it opened out into a nightclub. It was dimly lit, with small tables with lamps on them, and there was a small stage where the band sat in front of an equally small dance floor where a couple were dancing: they danced very well and obviously came regularly. Frijda sat down and immediately a waiter came over. She ordered two glasses of sparkling wine and we sat down to watch the show. It was a singer, rather good, with a Marlene Dietrich-style voice and a sternly sexy look to go with it. She sang a couple of romantic songs and then the band struck up another lively number. Frijda leapt to her feet.

"Come and dance."

"You don't want to dance with me. I'm a hopeless dancer."

"It doesn't matter. Come and dance."

So we did. And she was right - it didn't matter. I tried to follow her pattern of moves, and if it went wrong, which it quite often did, we just laughed. Some other couples joined us, and when the number ended we clapped and stayed on the floor for the next dance. And the next. And the one after that. And then the band played a slow tune. We could have resumed our seats, left the slow dance to lovers, but we didn't. We stayed on the dance floor and I took Frijda in my arms. And we let the music do the rest.

We danced slowly, holding each other tightly, swaying slightly to the rhythm, deliberately, sensuously. And at the end of the number, Frijda stretched up and kissed me on the cheek.

"Time to go", she said.

We went to her car and she drove to her flat. It was in an old block built around a central courtyard, of the sort you find in Paris and Rome and St Petersburg and so many European cities.

"I'm afraid the lift is out of order", she said, apologetically. "It's on the third floor." So we climbed the stairs, me carrying my bags, and we reached her door, she unlocked it and we walked in. She switched on the light and I got a brief impression of a corridor of books and bookshelves and suddenly her arms were around my neck and we were kissing. We kissed deeply, longingly, as if we had been waiting for this moment all our lives. Our kiss reached a natural pause, we broke off and she led me into the living room. It was small and cosy, with a sofa and a television and shelves of books, of all sizes and on all subjects, as far as I could tell with a brief glance. I noticed, though, that there were some large gaps on the shelves which she had tried to fill by placing some books on their sides.

Frijda went into the small kitchen and brought out two glasses and a bottle. She gave it to me to open - a rather good German wine, I noted - I poured, and we chinked glasses and drank. I looked round the room.

"You do love reading, don't you?"

"Oh, yes. But you know that."

"I'd guessed. What sort of thing do you read?"

"See for yourself. I must leave you for a moment: supper is in the oven and I need to get changed."

So I looked along her bookshelves. She had all the classic authors - Hugo, Tolstoy, Dickens - and quite a collection of French writers, Balzac, Colette, George Sand. I flicked through some large format illustrated books: there were travel books on Indonesia and Peru, a large book of photos of Paris seen from the sky, and a number of books on fashion. I looked through these - she obviously liked elegant styles in black and white. I smiled as I found exactly what I expected - a little collection of books of the designs of Coco Chanel. By now the delicious smell of meat was coming through from the kitchen, and suddenly, quite without warning, the lights dimmed. I looked round and gasped.

She was wearing a corset. A dark, richly patterned corset in burgundy and black. She wore a silk dressing gown over it, with stockings and heels, and round her neck she wore a black velvet choker. It could have looked like something rather cheap and tawdry from Moulin Rouge; instead it looked almost impossibly beautiful, elegant and erotic.

"Do you like it?"

"Frijda, you are unbelievably beautiful. Stunning."

She smiled.

"It's for you," she said, "but also for me. I love it. I feel so sexy in it."

"How did you lace it up?"

"I've had it on all day. Waiting for this moment."

And she came over to me and kissed me, running her tongue along my lips. Then she turned, looking at me coquetteishly.

"Dinner first."

In case you have not had the experience of dining with a beautiful woman dressed in corset and choker, let me tell you that it is every bit as arousing as it sounds. Far from being a distraction, the food becomes part of the increasingly erotic atmosphere, even if - as here - not a word is spoken about sex. We talked about Hungary, about Budapest, about London, about her dreams to visit England and how she had always wanted to see Oxford and Cambridge, and then I asked her what her favourite English books were. I was expecting her to say something like Wuthering Heights or Tess of the d'Urbervilles, so her answer surprised me.

"Sherlock Holmes. I love those stories. I love the atmosphere - how I would have loved to have seen Victorian London. But above all, I love his brain. How he thinks and how he works out the solution. So clever. So logical. So sexy."

It was the first time I had heard Sherlock Holmes called sexy.

"Sexy?"

"Oh yes. Clever men are very sexy." And she looked me in the eye.

I hoped that was a compliment.

She walked over and put some music on. I smiled: it was Rachmaninov's second piano concerto. The music they used for the soundtrack of Brief Encounter. Had she seen that film? I wondered. She must have done. But it hardly mattered: music doesn't come much more romantic than this. Sure enough, as soon as dinner was over - in fact, rather before it was properly over - we moved to the sofa and the moment had come. We kissed.

"This is your night", I murmured in her ear. "You can have whatever you want."

"Kiss my neck, darling," she said.

I kissed her smooth, beautiful neck. Small kisses. Down her neck and along her shoulder. Then down her front, down her chest, along her other shoulder and back to the beautiful cleavage created by her corset.

"Oh yes, John, kiss me there. Kiss me."

I kissed her cleavage, first one breast, then the other. Her chest heaved and her tits seemed to be straining to burst out of her corset. I kissed them in turn, now licking them, slowly, along the contours of her breasts, my tongue like a paintbrush along a wall . She held my head tight to her chest.

"Yes. Kiss them. Lick them. Lick them, John, lick them."

As I licked her tits I lay her back on the sofa and she pulled me down on top of her. I moved up to kiss her mouth and she held me to her as we kissed, deeply and sensually. Her tongue was licking along my lips, then in my mouth, exploring it, making me hers. I felt her teeth on my lip, as she gave me a little playful bite. Not enough to hurt; just enough to let me know - it was what she wanted. She held a finger towards me and slipped it in my mouth. I sucked it in and ran my tongue along it. She took my hand and guided it towards her mouth. I slipped a finger into her mouth and I watched as she closed her eyes with pleasure. She sucked it, licked it, sensually, as if her whole body was aroused. Very deliberately I slipped a second finger in. She gasped and started to suck my fingers more desperately. She held my hand with both of hers and started to move my fingers in and out of her mouth, licking them, kissing them, taking them in again. I put three fingers in, and she lay back, her mouth full of my hand, giving in, letting me have my way. I put all four fingers in; her eyes closed in ecstasy. She ran her tongue along them, she sucked them into her, as if she were gagging on a large cock. She opened her eyes and looked directly into mine, utterly dependent on me and loving it. I held my fingers there just long enough and then withdrew them. She sat up and threw her arms around me.

"What do you want to do to me?" she asked.

"I thought this was your night."

"It is. I want you to do to me whatever you want."

I smiled. "Stand up." She stood up. I parted her legs and then lay down on the floor underneath her. I leaned up and kissed her thighs. I heard her sigh with pleasure as I licked her thighs and kissed her cunt through her black lacy knickers.

"Wait," she said. She stood back and I watched as she slowly, deliberately, slid her knickers down her legs and stepped out of them. Then she stepped forward and stood with her legs apart.

"Now try".

And I sat up and licked her cunt. I licked deep inside her, savouring the taste, pushing my mouth up against her, licking, kissing... I felt her knees beginning to bend and buckle. She bent down and held my head tight against her. I found her clit and I twirled it with my tongue.

"Oh John, fuck me! Fuck me now!"

She lay down on the carpet and pulled me onto her. I knelt above her, undid my belt and trousers.

"Let me see it. Show it to me," she gasped.

I pulled my pants down (ordinary underpants this time - this was her night, remember?) and let her see my cock. She reached up and stroked it, almost reverently. She kissed it, lovingly, kissed all along its length. Then she licked it, and then she took it into her mouth, in, out, in, out, getting it as wet as she could.

"Oh John, I want you. I want you in me."

She lay back and, pulling me down on top of her, guided me into her. And then we paused. We lay together, my cock inside her, joined, as if we were realising the full meaning of what we were doing. We weren't fucking; we were joined. We were one. She looked into my eyes, he eyes alight with questions.

"John - you're in me? Tell me - you're inside me?"

"I'm in you, Frijda, yes. I'm inside you."

"You're fucking me, John? You're really fucking me?"

"I'm fucking you, Frijda. Don't worry."

"Fuck me, John. Fuck me slowly, fuck me beautifully. Make me a queen."

So, very slowly to start with, I began to move. To move into her, then back a bit, then into her again. She started to move her body in response. It felt warm and safe inside her and as we moved, I had the impression not that we were two people fucking, but that we were one person, moving in harmony. We began to move faster, in perfect rhythm with each other, faster, as I thrust further into her, harder, deeper, and she gasped with each thrust.

"Yes, John, yes - fuck me, oh fuck me!"

Her eyes were fixed on mine, her arms round my neck, hugging me to her, I could feel my body beginning to twitch - at any moment I would cum.

So I stopped.

I kissed her tenderly and I withdrew.

"What's the matter?" she asked. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," I said. "But we have the whole night. Better to spread things out."

She smiled. "Yes," she said, "you're right. I'll make us some coffee."

"Where's the loo?" I asked.

"Second on the left."

But it wasn't. That was a child's bedroom, with pop star posters on the wall and toys and games all neatly arranged. The loo was in fact the first door on the left.

She brought the coffee through on a tray and set it on the small table. She curled herself up on the sofa and I sat on the floor at her feet.

"So," she said, "what do you make of me? What have you worked out?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I worked out about you and your marriage. What have you worked out about me?"

"Apart from the obvious, you mean?"

"What is obvious?"

"That the divorce was your idea, that your husband still loves you but you have moved on, and that you've just decided, literally in the last few minutes, that you want to keep me in your life somehow?"

She blinked.

"Is all that really obvious? How?"

"Observation, my dear Watson. You've obviously been in this flat some time. Your husband has taken his books off the shelves, but you haven't had time to fill the gaps. You both of you love books - those are big gaps on the shelves - and my guess is that he liked it here. Who wouldn't? But when you mentioned him to me, there was no bitterness in your voice, no anger. So he didn't run off with anyone; you just somehow fell out of love with him. And he isn't fighting you, either for the flat or for your little boy: if he were, you would have mentioned it by now. No man would let that be done to him without fighting back unless he was still in love with you. How am I doing?"

"You're doing very well. What about my decision about you?"

"You invited me to join you last night and then again tonight. You've had it all carefully planned - the concert, the nightclub; you even told Kristina - so you have put a lot of thought into it. Something spoke to you when we met in the restaurant and you got interested in me. My guess is that you are thinking about the possibility of coming to England, though you haven't decided yet. At any rate, you decided tonight that you I needed to know more about you, and particularly about your little boy. I'm assuming that he is with his father this week, by the way?"

Frijda nodded.

"Well, then", I continued, "at first you didn't want me to know about him, you wanted to keep this in a sort of unreal world, so you cleared all his things away, even from the bathroom. It's not natural for a child to be in a flat like this and not to leave things all over the place. You took it all into his room, tidied the place and shut the door. You didn't particularly want me to know you have a child. But something made you change your mind and you decided you did want me to know after all. But rather than tell me, which would have raised all sorts of questions, you made a little deliberate mistake in telling me the way to the toilet so I would find his room myself. Am I right?"

She paused a moment, to catch her breath. Then she looked at me and smiled.

"You really are Sherlock Holmes," she said.