“Yes, Adam,” I say. “Thank you for rescuing me.”
“Stop snivelling. I can’t stand women who snivel.”
Oh dear. He is such a difficult man. So strong minded and sure of himself. Fancy him bothering to come and look for me. I should be very flattered.
“You should be bloody flattered that I bothered to find you,” rasps the hero of Queen Adelaide’s. “Don’t spoil everything by becoming a sniveller.”
The celebration party is at the medical school and by the time I have got on to the dance floor I am very grateful for my plastic mac. I have never seen so much booze flowing in my life and it is quite obvious that while I was kidnapped everybody else in the hospital, not on duty, was getting smashed out of their minds.
“Where have you been, darling?” shrieks Labby, coming apart from Tom like a sticky sweet in a toddler’s pocket. “You’ve missed so much fun!”
She is wearing shortie pyjamas so I don’t feel too under-dressed—especially as the top half is being worn on her head. She disappears into the crowd before I can say anything and I have a chance to see Nurse Martin wearing a scrum cap. I don’t think it suits her and I am surprised she can get her legs through the slits.
“I’d like you to dance with my stomach,” says Adam. “The rest of me will follow a respectful distance behind.”
He is not kidding, but after a few steps I begin to like the feeling of his great hairy gut against my body. “It’s nature’s contraceptive measure,” breathes Quint. “The men in my family have got flat feet through walking the world looking for women with concave bellies.”
I think he must be joking because my pelvis is being propped up by something that feels like a raised drawbridge. Maybe it is the drink. I don’t usually notice things like that.
I think I must have fallen asleep because, suddenly, there are far fewer people about and I become conscious that soft fingers are gently massaging my reception area as if it is a piece of dough.
“I want you,” breathes Quint.
Fortunately the real me has passed out hours before and is being spared the wild permissive sensations that now invade my body.
“Not here,” says a voice which, I suppose, could belong to me.
“I know the place.” Adam’s fingers suggest that his lips do not lie. “In the attic.”
“But I must get back to the nurses home.” That sounded more like the real me.
“That presents no problem. The attic stretches over the nurses home as well. I think there’s a trap door in the ceiling of the television room.”
“You’ve taken other girls up there, you brute.”
“Hundreds of years ago when I was a student. They used to give anaesthetics with hammers in those days.”
“How are we going to see?” It must be the champagne. This forward behaviour is so unlike me.
“I’ve got some matches.”
We take a lift to the top floor and walk down a corridor.
“This is it. Stand on my stomach.”
Above us is a trapdoor and Adam picks me up like a packet of cornflakes. He is so strong. I am tingling like a bruised funny bone—or humerus as we call it in the business. If I was not too drunk to know what I was doing I might be on the brink of losing my virginity.
“It’s so dark,” I say.
“Of course it’s dark, you stupid bitch. What do you expect—floodlights? Take these matches and start striking them.”
He pushes me through the opening and heaves himself up beside me. “I’m getting too old for this caper. Damn you for being irresistible.”
“Adam, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Stop snivelling. I can’t stand it! And mind where you’re walking. I don’t want to go through the ceiling.”
He takes me by the arm and guides me into the enveloping darkness. “Are there rats up here?” I ask.
“Millions of ’em. They’d have your leg off if you gave them half a chance.”
“Adam. Don’t!”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“I mean, don’t go on like that about the rats.”
“All right. There aren’t any rats up here. The spiders have seen off most of them.”
“Why are you such a cruel, crude bastard?”
“Because I wouldn’t appeal to you if I was anything else.” Quint’s arms encircle my body and his very personal smell—like a compost heap in spring time—sweeps over me. I had imagined that to kiss him would be like kissing the inside of a sheep shearer’s dust bin but his lips come through with the minimum of tickle.
“You’re so hairy,” I murmur.
“I am a foreSt” Adam’s hands disappear inside my plastic mac and slip under the elastic of my panties. I should cry out but how can I with his mouth firmly wedged against mine? He presses me to him and I feel something large and firm like a nuclear submarine breaking the surface. I know things feel bigger in the dark when you can’t see them but this is ridiculous. “Oh Adam, you mustn’t,” I murmur.
“If that’s all you’ve got to say you might as well keep your mouth shut. Come over here. Where are those matches?”
“I’ve dropped them.”
“Typical. You’d lose your fanny if it wasn’t fastened to the rest of your body.”
“You’re so crude,” I whisper enthusiastically. It must be the champagne.
Adam leads me across the attic and pushes me against something that rings out in the darkness.
“What is it?” I say anxiously.
“It’s the cistern. Attics are full of them—and you, my ravishing Florence Nightingale, are soon going to be full of me, Adam Quint.”
“Oh, Adam—”
“Don’t start any snivelling, wailing or whining or I may think better of my generous offer.”
Adam Quint hurls his mouth against mine and his brutal hands rip off my panties like they are a strip of ElastoplaSt Almost in the same moment he explodes the front of his trousers and I feel a rush of hot air like an oven door opening. He plucks me against his body and I come into the presence of the terrifying beast lurking against his great hairy belly. Thank goodness I am not fully in command of my senses. Surely Monster Quint cannot expect my delicate female mechanism to absorb his enormous piston? Has he no pity?
“Aaaaarrgh!!!”
The answer is no as I realise when I have first hand experience of what a sausage skin must feel like at the moment of truth. Quint’s battering ram body belabours me from belly to knee and the cistern rings out like the gong at the start of an old J. Arthur Rank movie.
My body cries out in ecstasy—and, of course, revulsion at the terrible things that are happening to it. Will I ever be able to look our vicar in the surplice again?
Quint is bellowing at the top of his voice and the noise must be enough to raise the roof.
“Ooh Adam, please!”
Whether he hears me or not I never know. He changes his position and there is a crack like a pistol shot. Light floods up through the floor and Quint drops as if into a hole. In fact it is not a hole. It is Sister Belter’s bedroom. I discover this when I plummet past him and land on the bed midst a shower of plaster. Above us Quint dangles