Heading Inland Read Free

dare inform her that material was the whole point of a pantie. Wasn’t it?
    Oh hell, Gillian thought, shifting on Mr Kip’s Aston Martin’s leather seats, maybe I should’ve worn it in for a few days first. It felt like her G-string was making headway from between her buttocks up into her throat. She felt like a leg of lamb, trussed up with cheese wire. Now she knew how a horse felt when offered a new bit and bridle for the first time.
    ‘Wearing hairspray?’ Mr Kip asked, out of the blue.
    ‘What?’
    ‘If you are,’ he said, ever careful, ‘then don’t lean your head back on to the seat. It’s real leather and you may leave a stain.’
    Gillian bit her lip and stopped wriggling.
    ‘Hope it doesn’t rain,’ Mr Kip added, keeping his hand on the gearstick in a very male way, ‘the wipers aren’t quite one hundred per cent.’
    Oh, the G-string was a modern thing, but it looked so horrid! Gillian wanted to be a modern girl but when she espied her rear-end engulfing the slither of string like a piece of dental floss entering the gap between two great white molars, her heart sank down into her strappy sandals. It tormented her. Like the pain of an old bunion, it quite took off her social edge.
    When Mr Kip didn’t remark favourably on her new dress; when, in fact, he drew a comparison between Gillian and the cone-shaped upstanding white napkins on the fancily made-up Rotary tables, she almost didn’t try to smile. He drank claret. He smoked a cigar and tipped ash on her. He didn’t introduce her to any of his Rotary friends. Normally, Gillian might have grimaced on through. But tonight she was a modern girl in torment and this kind of behaviour quite simply would not do.
    Of course she didn’t actually say anything. Mr Kip finally noticed Gillian’s distress during liqueurs.
    ‘What’s got into you?’
    ‘Headache,’ Gillian grumbled, fighting to keep her hands on her lap.
    Two hours later, Mr Kip deigned to drive them home. It was raining. Gillian fastened her seatbelt. Mr Kip switched on the windscreen wipers. They drove in silence. Then all of a sudden, wheeeuwoing ! One of the wipers flew off the windscreen and into a ditch. Mr Kip stopped the car. He reversed. He clambered out to look for the wiper, but because he wore glasses, drops of rain impaired his vision.
    It was a quiet road. What the hell. Mr Kip told Gillian to get out and look for it.
    ‘In my white dress?’ Gillian asked, quite taken aback.
    Fifteen minutes later, damp, mussed, muddy, Gillian finally located the wiper. Mr Kip fixed it back on, but when he turned the relevant switch on the dash, neither of the wipers moved. He cursed like crazy.
    ‘Well, that’s that,’ he said, and glared at Gillian like it was her fault completely. They sat and sat. It kept right on raining.
    Finally Gillian couldn’t stand it a minute longer. ‘Give me your tie,’ she ordered. Mr Kip grumbled but did as she’d asked. Gillian clambered out of the car and attached the tie to one of the wipers.
    ‘OK,’ she said, trailing the rest of the tie in through Mr Kip’s window. ‘Now we need something else. Are you wearing a belt?’
    Mr Kip shook his head.
    ‘Something long and thin,’ Gillian said, ‘like a rope.’
    Mr Kip couldn’t think of anything.
    ‘Shut your eyes,’ Gillian said. Mr Kip shut his eyes, but after a moment, naturally, he peeped.
    And what a sight! Gillian laboriously freeing herself from some panties which looked as bare and sparse and confoundedly stringy as a pirate’s eye patch.
    ‘Good gracious!’ Mr Kip exclaimed. ‘You could at least have worn some French knickers or cami-knickers or something proper. Those are preposterous!’
    Gillian turned on him. ‘I’ve really had it with you, Colin,’ she snarled, ‘with your silly, affected, old-fashioned car and clothes and everything .’
    From her bag Gillian drew out her Swiss Army Knife and applied it with gusto to the plentiful elastic on her G-string. Then she