Hoff and Hols, a Romance Ch. 11

It would be no understatement to assert that my second year at Oxford was a watershed - from it all rivers ran in a different direction. I had come up as a callow Fresher, cosseted by my School, naive, somewhat introverted. I had clung onto AK as my lifeline to everything outside my work - which was the only area in which I felt confident. I started year two as the centrepiece to what was effectively an all-female commune.

Lady F loved having AK there almost as much as I did. She had never been able to have children and took a great interest in the whole process of pregnancy. Emma spent as much time in North Parade as she did in her college suite. Footy was in and out, as was my friend Lisa, while Chloe grew ever closer to AK as they reminisced about their lost Cris. When AK's scan confirmed she was having a girl, we decided that we were, indeed, our own female commune, going from Lady F in her eighties, through to baby Issy (as we called her long before she was born). Issy had been conceived in love, and her gestation could not have been more surrounded by a great cloud of it. AK, who had given cause for concern to the medics in the immediate aftermath of Cris's tragic death, gradually found in our love, the support, and the medicine she needed. Her mum, Shirley, was brilliant, phoning regularly and coming up to see her frequently; it was a joy to see the two of them bond over Issy. Nor was Cris' mother, Isabella, left out. She and Chloe would also visit. North Parade was always full. As Lady F said, happily: "And there we were Pixie, thinking I might be lonely on the evenings you were out!" But the twinkle in her eye told its own story of her joy. It was as though she had a new lease of life.

Over it all, in a way hard to describe, was my Emma. Turning to her in bed one morning, I said I was thinking of calling her the "Abbess."

"Why is that darling?" She said, sleepily reaching out to stroke my hair.

"Well, you are like some medieval Abbess presiding over our little community of women. You know that you are rather wonderful, don't you?"

"How so?"

"Well, a lesser woman might not have welcomed my former lover as a live-in house guest, or the time I give her."

"Silly goose," she chided me. "She is a wonderful woman, and love comes in many forms, Pixie. In my own way I love AK, and I adore seeing the two of you together - I swear I can see the healing she gets from you - and the confidence her love gives to you. Just don't go getting any ideas about extending that!"

"In her condition?" I joked.

"Oh, my darling Pixie, you have so much to learn. Talk to AK. If you think pregnant women have no need for sex, you have never spent time as a priest talking with one!"

Duly corrected, I did raise it with AK a day or two later.

"Clever Emma! Yes, my darling, I get incredibly horny, but there is not much, apart from the obvious, I can do about it. Anyway, I am hardly wanting a man. But yes, I bloody well miss Cris."

One thing the "commune" did was to allow me to get on with my academic work, as well as to have a social life. Gradually I stopped doing the Saturday night mission runs in town - I wanted to be with AK as she got closer to term. But there was more to it. As I told my friend Lisa, it was as though I had moved so far away from the ordinary student experience that I no longer felt qualified to help. Church became my focus.

The academic work went well. I had elected to do two terms with the formidable Footy on Church history, and thoroughly enjoyed the intellectual rough and tumble. Where she intimidated most, not deliberately, but just because she knew so much and could bring arguments to bear with such force, I thrived on it. The climax was the tutorial just before the end of Michaelmas term where I finally read through a whole essay without her interrupting. Folding her long fingers together, she looked at me over the rim of her orange specs:

"I must say, Pixie, you have skated over every knotty problem with exquisite elegance."

I looked back at her, knowing somehow, that this was the decisive moment:

"Well, Footy, if it was not for synthesisers like me, what would nit-pickers like you have to live off!"

She gave a huge hearty laugh.

"Time for a sherry! Will you join me at High Table for lunch?"

I think that was her way of saying that I was meeting the standard she required of her students. To be fair, Footy was an equal opportunities inquisitor. I would eventually see her do the same at Research Seminars to distinguished scholars in our field. No quarter was ever given by her. I don't think she knew what tact or diplomacy were. But I could not have had a tutor who suited me better, and she agreed to supervise my final year thesis on women and the church.

Christmas was a magical time.

North Parade was lit up from the start of Advent. Lady F was, it turned out, a great one for Christmas lights, holly and the ivy and just about any other manifestation of the season.

AK, who was looking more and more like she could pop at any moment, became the centre of attention from all of us. Some women, I came to note, bloomed during pregnancy, and there was no doubt that AK was one of them.

Emma and I were busy with Chapel, and we prepared for the great day itself.

As the shortest day of the year approached, I decided, for once, to leave the Bodleian early, walking through the late afternoon gloom back to North Parade. I knew Lady F would be having her afternoon nap, so entered quietly.

Shucking my coat off, I went upstairs to change. AK's door was closed. 'Bless", I thought, she must be sleeping.

Stripping my dress off to get into a more comfortable one, I heard noises. I froze. Could someone have been in the house?

I put my ear to the wall.

"Fuck, Chloe, that's it, yes, just there. God, I know I must look like a whale, but ignore it - I'm still the same horny girl you love to lick!"

I stifled a giggle. 'OMG," I thought - her and Chloe.

I could hear Chloe say something, but between the wall and the fact she was probably between AK's thighs, I could not hear what was said. Then I heard AK's familiar moan.

I caught myself and, consumed with guilt, went quietly to the kitchen to make myself a coffee and listen to Radio 3.

I was still there when, half an hour later Chloe and AK came down. They looked as surprised to see me as I had been to have heard them.

"Didn't know you were about Squirt? Any chance of a coffee? I know it is bad for Issy, but I need one."

"Of course, Chloe?"

"Please. You, erm didn't?"

"Didn't what?" I teased, "hear you and AK hard at it?"

"Oh God!" Chloe was even prettier when she blushed.

"You are such a perv, Squirt! Bet you came too?"

It was my turn to blush.

"Well, actually, no, I didn't!"

The arrival of Lady F after her nap put an end to that line of chat, but AK continued to look like the cat who had been at the proverbial cream all evening. Emma commented on it, but I said we would discuss later.

As it was Friday, that meant Footy and others would join us after supper, so it was a long wait before I was able to spill the beans to Emma as we undressed for bed.

She looked suddenly so vulnerable as she sat there on the bed, and it was not just the fact that she was almost naked which gave her that air. The guilt mounted.

"Pixie, I know you and AK are special, and, well," she said, biting her bottom lip, "if you want to be with her, in, erm, the way she needs, I wouldn't want to stand in the way. I have sown what wild oats I ever wanted, you have not. This was one reason I hesitated; you know that."

The catch in her voice, that slightly tremulous tone to it, cut me to the quick. It was, again, a Rubicon moment, not one for my usual Hamlet-like equivocations. Yes, parts of me, large and important parts of me wanted to accept. It was kind of Emma, and what she said was correct. AK and I had been lovers for years, and it was not like I intended to cheat on Emma. Indeed, I could just do as I had done before, and watch AK and Chloe. It was not as though I needed to join in. I could, I reasoned, even deny myself an orgasm - I had done earlier. As that train of thought pulled out of the station and made its inevitable stops, I saw clearly that it could work. That was the route for AK and me. It made perfect sense. Emma saw it; I saw it; I guessed Chloe and AK would.

But even as that train gathered steam, my doubts about its destination multiplied; or rather my fear about what that destination might be grew exponentially. I was not an idiot. I knew what the catch in the voice meant and what the tremulous tone signified. Where would that branch-line leave Emma at journey's end? Feeling second-best and hurt, at best; feeling abandoned and heartsick at worst. And what about AK?

Even assuming she wanted to go on that train - and it was only the shared memories of the past that made me think she might - what lay at the end for her? She could get, indeed was getting, the stimulation she needed from Chloe; what would adding me to the equation achieve? Like the Skype sex, it might even detract from what we had with each other; did our love for each other have to involve sex? And what, if as the train reached the final stops, one of them was Emma and I parting? Would it be fair to put that on her? Then there was the undeniable fact that she liked men. Another Cris might appear; what then for Hoff and Hols?

Was it a train I should even board? The fun things came at the start of the journey, before reaching the stations marked "guilt" and even "regret". Could I live with myself as the woman who, for the satisfaction of the moment, put at risk so much else? It wasn't as though sex with Emma was not satisfying; it was. So why was I even thinking about what Emma had proposed?

All of this takes longer to write than it did for my brain to process at the time; in truth, I must have been subconsciously processing it since at least the Skype sex.

Stepping out of my knickers and moving towards the bed, I looked at Emma.

"Don't talk nonsense, darling. I am your woman, and AK is special. But whatever we have shared and will share, you are the woman I want to be with - and down the track that polyamory would lead to, for me and you, at least, lies danger."

Emma looked at me. I could see the relief in her eyes. She had made the offer. She had done what she thought she had to do. Now, I thought, as I kissed her, for her reward - and mine.

"Come here, you!" Emma said, pulling me to the bed and, unusually for us, getting on top of me. Her breasts hung temptingly above my face. She knew what I would do; I did it. My lips took in her nipples, one by one, and as she pressed her breasts into my face, her scent enveloped me.

"Not this time, Pixie!"

Emma giggled as she parted my thighs and gripped my bottom, pulling my pussy onto her mouth. Her tongue pressed between my thin labia until I could feel her just inside me. One hand reached for my nipples, the other for her head. Her tongue moved swiftly, up, up, and then pressed against my clit, making my back arch. The feelings threatened to overwhelm me, my senses were heightened to the point at which I felt I had to... and then she stopped.

Crawling up, she kissed me. My scent and taste on her lips made me shiver with an urgent desire for her.

"I love you, Pixie!"

As she looked into my eyes, I felt it deep inside myself.

My hand cupped her pussy, rubbing her with the urgency I was feeling myself. She responded by moving so that we could press against each other. As her hair and wetness squished against my own pussy, I knew only one thing. I loved Emma and, knowing that, I abandoned myself to the sensation. As I screamed her name, she groaned and, grinding hard, came with me. We were one, falling together in love.

As we cuddled in the deep after-glow, we looked at each other, and I was first to say it.

"This, you, us, is too special to lose Emma. I appreciate what you said. But any commitment means that - and there is the sacrifice of others. But AK is too precious to me to risk losing both her and you."

"So," she said to me smiling, "you will remain Galadriel and go into the West?"

I kissed her nose. She was right, like Galadriel in "Lord of the Rings" I had been tempted, powerfully so, but I had resisted - and would remain myself.

"As long as you are coming West, darling, that suits me!"

Emma was still smiling when we woke.

That paved the way to a very special Christmas.

AK and Chloe seemed happy together, and the latter was clear that for her it was separate from her commitment to her new boyfriend. It clearly did help AK's mood. She was sunnier and more cheerful than I had seen her since Cris had died.

It made the Christmas at North Parade a special one.

Somewhat to my surprise, but to my delight, AK had told me she wanted to get involved in the Church Nativity Play.

"I loved them when I was a kid, Squirt, and I might as well get used to them for when Issy grows."

It was a perfect joy to see her with the children. She brought an air of authority which I quite lacked, and Emma, who popped in from time to time to see how we were getting on, told us we were the Lloyd Webber and Rice of the Nativity Play!

It was performed in the Church on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. We were so packed that we overflowed into the aisles. The place was filled with love. AK and I watched our protégés as they did their stuff.

"Next year my love," I said, hugging her, "we will have the perfect baby for the creche."

Tearful, she kissed me

"Just wish Cris could see her."

"He will, darling," I reassured her.

Christmas Day, as ever for Emma, was busy, but the day was a huge success.

AK and I did the traditional roast turkey, and after the Christmas pudding, everyone pronounced themselves fully "stuffed", not that in her condition, AK could eat too much.

As we opened our presents, there was laugher and joy, of a sort that, back in September would have seemed impossible. We toasted Cris, and AK cried a little, But Lady F, myself and Emma, surrounded her with our love.

"Now, one last present," Lady F said, just as I was tidying away the wrapping paper.

She handed me a foolscap envelope. It looked very official.

I looked at Emma and AK, who looked back at me.

We had all chipped in to buy Lady F an exquisite silver necklace she had craved, and welcomed her presents to us, so what on earth was this.

As I opened out the paper inside, I gasped.

"Lady F, you can't!"

She smiled beatifically.

"Can't what, do what I want with my own? I have no children, my two nephews never see me, and it isn't as though my brother needs anything from me. Many charities will benefit from my will, but I want you to have this house and some money to help with the upkeep!"

Emma and AK looked as shocked as I had been when I had read what was in the letter.

"Now don't go making me have to pay the lawyers to rewrite it! The only verbal caveat I'd add is one I don't need to write, which is that AK and Issy should always be welcome here."

I hugged Lady F. AK demanded, selflessly as she could not partake, a bottle of champagne, which we duly opened.

It was a perfect Christmas - the perfect antidote to last year's, which had been marked by Papa's death. On Boxing Day, Emma drove me to his grave.

It was that sort of brisk, cold, sunny day which rarely comes in an English December, not so much a reminder that the sun existed, more a demonstration that winter too, could have its aesthetic charms. Huddled against the biting cold, I stood there and prayed for him. Hoping that he was not too disappointed in how I was doing. Emma had gone into the Church to light a candle.

I saw a shadow behind me, and turned, only to see an older lady there. Hesitating, she seemed to bite the bullet:

"You are Cynthia, aren't you? Pixie?"

"I am. And you?"

"Sorry to intrude, I just wanted to pay my respects to Hector. I hovered at the back last year and could hide. I didn't know anyone would be here."

"Emma and I just drove over from Oxford."

As I was floundering a little, Emma emerged:

"Pixie, are you coming inside? Hi there." she said to the woman, "I'm Emma."

"Oh, you are a Vicar!"

"Guilty as charged, as the dog-collar says!"

"It, it is just, oh, oh I don't know!"

With that she dissolved into tears.

Emma and I guided her into the Church where we sat at the back with her until she stopped crying.

"I have something I need to tell someone."

"Well," said Emma, "I do confessions, and we can go over there to be private."

She looked at me tearfully.

"It's not that sort of confession, Vicar, but as it concerns Pixie, if it is okay with you two, I will do it to you both."

Emma looked at me, and I nodded.

"Well, first things first, I am Sheila Barber, and I was Hector's lover."

I felt the floor open to swallow me.