The alley is surprisingly clean. Though, possibly not so surprising, this is the very heart of Gown territory, and the University is dreadfully house proud, even where it won't, or is that shouldn't, be seen. It's mostly dark, too. Ragged clouds scud across the face of the waning moon, swift and smooth as the sculls over the nearby river during the day, and only an intermittent shaft of light reaches the damp stone flags of the pavement. Where it touches, though, the remains of the earlier rain glitter like diamonds on velvet.
The walls that enclose this short passage are tall and blank. The ends of two rows of college-owned housing, built like armour around the back of the Master's house. The walk between the Town outside and the walls of the inner sanctum just beyond where I stand, smoking nervously in the cool, dark of a late November evening, may be physically short, but the distance is almost astronomical. This little postern gate is unknown to most and I was lucky to find it at all. While I've been waiting, I've been speculating that some randy Master in the early nineteenth century caused it to be built, so his nocturnal comings and goings were less observed by the keen eyes of the college porters. Theoretically, it should be useless to me as a student. My only way back to my room is through the imposing gate nearly half a mile's walk around the walls, and if I'm not mistaken that will be locked firmly for the night, soon.
I light another cigarette while the bells of the town ring out the hour. Closing time. Not long now.
My breath catches and my heart hammers as I hear the sound of the low heels of her court shoes ringing off the pavement in a steady beat. As she turns the corner into the stone and cobbled alley, it is joined by the sound of jangling keys. The three glasses of wine I watched her drink from my corner of the pub don't appear to have impaired her at all.
Deep breath, straighten up, half step forward. Pray she doesn't scream.
She's still several paces away from me. I've given her the space, deliberately. But she keeps walking without even the slightest hitch, only a small nod and a slight smile to acknowledge that she's not as perfectly alone as she had the right to expect. She only stops when we're low pitched conversational distance apart, as if we'd simply moved into each other's sphere of existence at a party. But she says nothing, only looks me up and down. I wait as motionlessly as I can while she takes in my outfit. Broken down, poorly laced bovver boots, faded black drainpipe jeans, loose white dress shirt untucked over a man's undershirt – a concession to the weather – and the thin tie knotted slackly around the shirt's open collar. My short, dark hair was slicked and spiked hard with gel, but I fear the dampness of the evening has wilted the sharpness of the look. She stops at my face and her gaze hardens.
“No,” she says.
My heart hammers harder, but now it feels like it is in my stomach. It is the rejection that I feared most.
She must read the small change in my expression, however.
“Oh, no. Nonono,” she croons. “You'll do. You'll do very well. But that has to go.”
Before I can fully take in her meaning, she has reached into her bag and her keys are replaced in her hand by a handkerchief. Despite my advantage in height, I suddenly feel five years old again, as she steps forward into my personal space and efficiently removes all trace of the inexpertly applied bright red lipstick from my mouth.
“There now,” she says, finished, but not removing her presence. “That's much better. So much more you.”
A small part of my brain is suddenly much less certain of who has been seducing whom in those bi-weekly evening tutorials. She has brought us tea in the parlour, each week, accompanied by a small smile, that seemed just a little warmer for me when I returned it. Somehow, she has also managed to maintain an apparent oblivion to her husband's earnest, but ultimately hopeless, efforts to conceal his panting lust for Geoff, a burly, bearded, rugby player, from somewhere in the industrial North, who at first glance seemed so out of place on my abstract algebra course. I also realise abruptly that in the past few weeks, she has made a point of touching me – a brush of the hand, or a clasp of the shoulder.
All this flashes through my mind before she pushes me, not roughly, but not gently, back against the stone gatepost, where we are suddenly bathed in the spotlight of almost unreal silver, as the final cloud blows away.
“Your move,” she says, teasingly.
My breath is ragged and the night air feels cool and sensual as it passes over the warm, damp crotch of my jeans, but these sensations fall away from me, when I lean in and capture her soft mouth with my already slightly bruised one.
She tastes of ashes. But not, I think, from the two cigarettes she smoked in the pub. There's an astringent, medicinal flavour too, mixed with rich caramel sweetness and an edge of salt. A strange, detached part of my brain notes that the whisky chaser she was ordering when I slipped out of the pub was of considerably better quality than the Bell's that I usually knocked back.
And, I realise, she is squirming against my thigh, where new, tightly bunched muscle has formed since September from my constant bicycle trips between lectures and tutorials and the pub. She is, however, somewhat hampered by her demure knee length tweed skirt. While I am still contemplating whether to move one hand from where it's tangled in her hair and help slide it up her thigh, she breaks the kiss.
“Come on,” she mutters, managing to recover her bag from where it has fallen and open the gate before I can even still the quivering in my legs enough to stop using the gatepost to hold me up.
Motherly once more, she takes my hand and guides me through the garden beyond to a weather-beaten summerhouse that nestles in the angle of the wall, furthest from the house. Once inside, she moves efficiently, lighting church candles and moving old, but obviously serviceable, garden furniture cushions over the wooden floor.
“What,” she says, with an amused chuckle. “Were you expecting me to come back to your room?”
I say nothing. Any eloquence I had lost for the moment under the remaining shock that she has not sent me away in disgust and disgrace.
“You hadn't really planned any further, had you? Not like the boys. But then, they usually have their hands up my skirt before we're through the gate. I think most of them expect that we'll fuck in the alley like stray dogs, though. At least the first time.”
I watch her watching me through this speech. Appraising my reactions, trying to get a rise with the crude language. Seeing if the talk of others will upset me.
Pathetically, I'm still just glad she didn't say no.
“Good grief. You're still new at this, aren't you?”
I nod. Central London might be getting the hang of this stuff, but the high-rise estate where I grew up and the comprehensive where I fought to get enough education to escape with, were decidedly not places to be a lesbo. Not if you wanted to live.
“Me too,” she says with her back to me. I'm obviously not her first student, but perhaps one of a limited selection of women. I'm heartened and terrified at the same time.
When she turns back, a moment later, it's with two glasses in her hands. A shot's worth of pale amber liquid in each. We're sat on the floor of the summer house, she's demure with her knees tucked away under her, and I'm sprawled.
“Here. Calm and fire in a glass. Slowly though, it's cask strength. Needs a little water, really. But I seem to be out.”
She takes a sip from her glass and I follow suit. I'm understanding every word, but the sense of her comments is escaping me. The alcohol burns as it goes down, but the flavours that remain are those I tasted on her earlier.
“Single malt,” she says, turning her glass in the candlelight. “From Jura. Something of an acquired taste, but I think you're up to it. After all, I wasn't expecting to see you until after the Christmas break.”
Shit. She was expecting me. I cough as the smooth harshness of the liquor catches in my throat.
She waits for me to catch my breath before taking both glasses and putting them by one of the candles, out of harm's way.
Then she kisses me.
Softly at first, then hungrily. This time, I don't hesitate. My hands slide up her thighs, pushing the skirt before them, over the lacy tops of stockings and over the fine down of her mons. She might not have been expecting me for another month or more, but she went out hoping, I think.
“Better,” she gasps, and yields as I push her onto her back and unbutton her blouse. The lacy bra beneath is front opening and I lose no time in making her breasts available to my hungry mouth while my fingers are already tracing the folds of her, making a tactile topographical map in my brain marked with coloured flags which correspond to her each of her gasps and shivers and moans.
I can sense her disappointment when I pause to adjust my position, yet she manages to sneak a leg between mine and brush her fingers over my already sensitive clit drawing a moan of my own.
She giggles softly. “Did you think this would only go one way,” she asked, her voice smoky with alcohol and sex, pulling me closer with one hand on my tie, while the other scores indelible pattens on the skin of my torso through the cotton of my undershirt. She tweaks my braless nipple, roughly, and I whimper. More heat and dampness floods to my throbbing groin constrained in my tight jeans.
“Though, I do still need to work out how to deal with those terrible trousers of yours. Perhaps,” she says, punctuating her thought with another searing kiss, “I shall just peel you like a banana.”
Laughing at the chagrin evidently painted across my face, she pushes me down, and I take this as a hint to take her mind away from such calculations, with fingers and lips, tongue and teeth until the spring inside her can be wound no further and she explodes into a series of orgasms that are quietly loud, and which I ride with her until I teeter on the brink of joining her.
After, we lie sprawled on the cushions for an indeterminate time, a limp, damp mess of half-nakedness and tangled limbs.
“Yes,” she says, eventually, pushing herself up and reaching for the remains of the whisky, unashamed of her partial nudity. “Yes, indeed,” she confirms mostly to herself it seems, while passing my glass back to me. “Now, it'll still be strong,” she adds, seemingly unable to keep from tutoring despite having never taught. “But, the warmth will have changed it.”
Once more we drink, and I contemplate the added richness in flavour.
“Next time, I'll have water. That's a different change again.”
Next time, I think and smile inside.