THE WEEKLY LESSON

I had just removed her brassiere and was in the preliminary stages of fondling her quite copious breasts when, to my profound consternation, the damn telephone rang. "Now who-the-devil can that be?" I asked myself as, reluctantly extricating myself from Sharla's grip, I hurried out into the hall, snatched up the receiver, and straightaway heard a gruff voice asking: "Hello, is my daughter there?"

"She is indeed!" I impulsively replied.

"Ah, could I speak to her a moment?"

"Er, certainly. Just a sec." I turned towards the piano room, the door to which was still slightly ajar. "Sharla!" I called.

"Yes?"

"Your, er, father wants to speak to you."

"Oh, damn him!" she groaned, automatically putting on her vest. "What-on-earth can he want?"

It wasn't a question I could answer there and then, so I patiently held the receiver to my chest until, arriving breathlessly in the hall, she was able to take it from me and say: "Hi dad!"

Fearing that my presence beside her wouldn't help any, I ambled back into the piano room, where her bag, coat, shoes, miniskirt and underclothes lay strewn across the floor, and her perfume permeated the air with its delightfully sweet scent. Indeed, everything about her was delightfully sweet. Even the room itself, ordinarily so drab and formal, seemed to have taken on a romantic dimension which lent the furniture a mysterious poignancy, as though it had acquired the semblance of life and was now a silent witness to this evening's amorous events. Fortunately for me, however, Sharla's high intelligence permitted her the equivalent of two lessons in the space of one, so I never had to fear that her musical education would lag behind or be seriously undermined in consequence of my weekly devotions to her sexuality. In my view she was potentially a distinction candidate, the next and final examination grade almost bound to lead her to studying piano at one of the country's principal music colleges.

"Okay," her voice came from the hall, "but I won't be late home in any case. Yes, thanks for letting me know. Okay, bye then." She replaced the receiver with a peremptory slam and swiftly tiptoed back to where I lay, ruminating on the couch.

"Well, is anything amiss?" I tersely asked while fixing her with a searching look.

"He wanted to know if everything's okay,” she drawled, still a little under the influence of our bottle of medium-sweet wine.

"What a silly question!" I asseverated, my hands instinctively groping under her vest for the milk-laden globes which were now generously advancing towards me, compliments of Sharla's graceful return to the couch. "What did he really say?"

Her long spidery fingers crawled nimbly over my stomach and up my chest. "A friend of the family has invited my parents over to dinner at the last moment, so they'll be out when I get back. Which means that my father has hidden the front-door key in one of the two small lanterns affixed to the wall either side of our front door."

"But don't you have a key of your own?" I asked, astounded.

"They still won't entrust me with one," she sighed.

"How silly!" I exclaimed. "Why, you're almost eighteen."

"And old enough to be my piano teacher's favourite pupil," she enthused.

I smiled impulsively, as much from relief as from genuine amusement. "Yes, but at least I'm a private teacher and not a schoolmaster."

"What difference does that make?" she cried.

"Less scandalous, of course."

"The hell it is!"

I had to smile in spite of my attempt at seriousness. "Look, this is a perfectly natural state-of-affairs actually. Let's just say that both of us are pupils in the art of making love."

"But you're always teaching me," Sharla protested, clearly no easy girl to convince.

I sighed faintly and said: "Not as much as you may imagine, sweetie."

"Well, that's not the impression I get," she smilingly retorted.

"Frankly, you're a very precocious young lady who knows, as well as anybody, that the recently-perfected transition from the keyboard to the couch considerably enhances your enjoyment of these piano lessons," I averred, "particularly when you can spend part of your fees on the quiet and boast to various classmates at school of having intimate connections with a handsome music teacher nearly ten years your senior."

"I don't boast!" Sharla retorted incredulously. "Whoever told you that?"

"Now, now, don't blush, baby!"

"I'm not b-blushing," she stammered. "I never tell other girls anything about you."

"Ah, but they tell me," I smiled, teasing her.

"What d'you mean?" she exclaimed. "No other girls ..."

"Alright, I was only joking," I admitted, the back of my hand caressing her cheek in a pacificatory manner. "But you do tell a few friends."

She lowered her large plum-like eyes in apparent shame. "Okay, only my closest friends," she confessed blushingly.

I smiled but said nothing as we lay motionless together on the couch, basking in the gentle warmth of each other's bodies. I ran a hand through her black wiry hair and then ever so tenderly kissed her on the lips a few times. Eventually she responded in kind and our kissing became more intense.

"The time always goes too quickly when I come here," she at length sighed, coming-up for air.

"Indeed it does," I agreed sympathetically. "It's a pity you don't come here more often."

"Humph! I might be able to if you weren't always so busy giving piano lessons to other girls every night," she complained. "Don't you ever take an evening off?"

"I don't teach at the weekend," I replied obliquely.

"Then why can't we arrange to see each other on Saturdays or Sundays as well?" she asked a touch petulantly.

"That might be possible," I conceded.

Smiling, she drew herself up closer to my face and brought her big dark eyes directly into focus with mine, or so it appeared from the way I saw her pupils contract so rapidly. "Do you have other girls like me?" she asked with a directness that momentarily embarrassed me.

"Unfortunately not, Sharla," I confessed in what was probably an overly frank sort of way. "The others are mostly too young, too plain, or too thin. Besides, I couldn't afford to let that many people keep a part of their piano fees in recompense, since I'm not exactly rolling in money, you know."

"But you do have a girlfriend besides me, don't you?" she asked in a tone of voice and with a facial expression which suggested she already knew the answer. So, to save myself extra complications, I gently replied in the affirmative. "And you see her at the weekends?" she went on. Again I replied in the affirmative. "Humph! That explains it," she solemnly concluded.

"Explains what, Sharla?"

"Why you won't see me then."

"Not entirely," I responded half-smilingly.

"Then what?" - She seemed on the verge of tears.

"Don't upset yourself," I gently chided her and, sliding my hands down her back and over her rump, proceeded to comfort her as best I could.

"What time is it?" she at length wanted to know, looking a trifle concerned.

"My goodness, it's nearly 8.50!" I exclaimed, glancing at the watch and scrambling to my feet. "I've another pupil at nine."

"What a drag," she drawled.

"What, having another pupil?"

"No, getting dressed!"

I smiled as, reaching for our respective clothes, the pair of us sought to cover our nakedness as quickly as possible.

That done, we briefly returned to the piano and to the Schumann piece which still stood, as though to attention, on the stand where it had been abandoned some time before. If it had presented her with a few minor problems it was mainly because her legato technique was still insufficiently pianistic, depending too much on the sustain pedal. I therefore suggested that she spend some of the following week practising scales in order to make her fingers work harder, since they were still rather too lazy and stiff for comfort (in marked contrast, I reflected, to the way they behaved on the couch). "In actual fact it would be better if, for the time being, you ignored the pedal markings altogether," I continued, growing in confidence. "For the pedal is fast becoming a crutch, and not exactly the most helpful one either!"

Thus after a few amendments to her Schumann technique, a brief display of scales, and a couple of aural tests, I set her free, saying: "And don't be late next week!" as a final piece of advice which, however innocently intended, was bound to sound ironic to Sharla.

"Oh, don't you worry about that!" she smilingly retorted and, much to my delight, planted a firm farewell kiss on my lips before regretfully taking her leave of me.