Inflatable Hugh Read online

  The first appointment was secured, a Mr Stokes of Hampstead. In what he imagined to be a stroke of genius Pugh had kept the outside of the van exactly as it was, with the words Derbyshire County Council Public Library Service in large letters on both sides. His reasoning was that a client’s wife, on seeing a van with Mobile Massage Parlour emblazoned on it when it drew up outside the family home, might view such a vehicle with suspicion. Especially if shortly after its arrival her husband disappeared inside it for half-an-hour and came out of it not refreshed and raring to go but absolutely knackered and fit for nothing. Even if the van were plain it still might be regarded by a wife as being more than a little unusual on observing her spouse clamber eagerly into the back of it with an expectant look on his face. However it was unlikely in the extreme that it would be looked upon as suspicious if a client happened to look out of his front window, nodded towards the van and told his wife he was just popping out to the library to change his book.

  Unfortunately the scheme had hit a major hitch at the very first hurdle when Mrs Frost, the Stokes’s next-door-neighbour, saw the van parked outside and went in to change her library books at the same time Lucy Lambert was giving Mr Stokes a blow job.

  Naturally not wishing another such occurrence Pugh had put on his thinking cap and come up with the idea of disguising the true purpose of the massage parlour by painting out the words ‘Derbyshire County Council Public Library Service’ and substituting them with the words ‘Mobile Garden Centre’. Underneath he had added ‘By Appointment Only’, in order to keep out anyone who failed to make the necessary booking. This had worked well for a couple of days and might still be doing well today had not the Deputy Head of the Scotland Yard Vice Squad called in to make an appointment to purchase a selection of wallflowers and wisteria and discovered that the only things on offer that night were a tone-up and a wank.

  A quiet but firm word of warning from the senior police officer sadly put an end to Pugh’s ambitions in the mobile massage parlour business.

  Myra now came in with the information on all things Sierra Leone. Apparently it was definitely in Africa so he decided that the fact-finding mission would be to the Maldives. Africans were all right, especially when it came to grabbing himself a piece of black velvet, but one could have too much of them, and there was certainly too much of them in Africa; he’d found that out on a fact-finding mission to Kenya, you couldn’t move for the buggers, and if they weren’t singing and dancing they were banging a drum.

  Myra also brought in the morning’s external mail with her. Apart from one letter marked ‘Private and Confidential’ all the letters had been opened and relevant parts of the text highlighted by Pugh’s Parliamentary Under Secretary for the Minister’s information.

  Having delivered the mail Myra left Pugh to his deliberations, the first of which was to ogle her bottom on her way out, something he found quite impossible to resist. It was quite natural for him, almost a reflex action. He did the same when any young woman presented him with a view of her bottom, he couldn’t help himself.

  He would have loved to have propositioned Myra, an attractive-looking thirty-year-old with a good figure that was never completely disguised by the severely tailored business suits she always wore to the office, would have loved to take her to bed. But he never had and never would as he made a point of never sleeping with a woman who was more intelligent than he was, a constraint that limited the supply of possible conquests far more than he imagined.

  Pugh’s appetite for what women could provide him with was as healthy as his appetite for food and drink. He had once wondered whether he was over-sexed compared to other men but after due consideration had decided he wasn’t. Leastways not when compared to his fellow Members of Parliament, the majority of whom would shag a kangaroo if they could stop it hopping. He conceded however that he might be over-sexed when compared to ordinary men.

  He now applied himself to the task of dealing with the external mail. He’d dealt with the pile of internal mail dumped unceremoniously on his desk by Myra an hour earlier by gazing at it disinterestedly for a couple of minutes before throwing the lot in the bin. None of the letters would have contained anything he needed to know. There hadn’t been a question on transport tabled for that day, which he would have had to answer in the Commons, so it would all be shite, and he had enough shite to deal with as it was.

  He now gave the same treatment to the pile of external mail as he’d given to the internal mail. But fortunately not before removing the unopened letter marked ‘Private and Confidential’. For it was the contents of this letter that indirectly led to Pugh having the good idea for which he craved. And possibly his salvation.

  ****

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “When did you first decide to have sex with an inflatable rubber woman?”

  “When I realised I was never going to get sex with a real woman.”

  “You weren’t prepared to wait any longer?”

  “How long am I supposed to wait? I’m nearly forty for Christ’s sake.”

  “You never had a girlfriend?”

  “Not one who would let me have it off with her.”

  “You could have paid for sex. You could have gone to a prostitute.”

  “I don’t pay for sex.”

  “You paid for the inflatable rubber woman.”

  “That’s different.”

  “I don’t see the distinction; money left your pocket in exchange for sex.”

  “Oh fuck this for a game of soldiers!”

  Arbuckle got up from the only chair in his student flat and stopped the tape on the mobile recorder. Not much he could use there. Nothing in fact. Just the usual stuff from yet another sad bastard who did it with inflatable rubber women because he couldn’t find a woman who would accommodate him. Precisely the same reason given by eighty two per cent of all the other men he’d interviewed.

  It was the other eighteen per cent he was interested in. The ones who had sex solely with inflatable rubber women. The ones who still had sex with inflatable rubber women even though they could get it with a real woman. The ones who expressed a definite preference for having it with inflatable rubber women; who would rather have it with an inflatable rubber woman than with a real woman. The ones who didn’t even like inflatable rubber women but absolutely loved rubber. The one’s who liked to have it with inflatable rubber women while their wives were watching. (How the wives felt about this, whether they were offended or whether they were just thankful it wasn’t their husband banging away brainlessly and breathlessly at them yet again, he couldn’t guess and they couldn’t say.)

  He would soon be finding out how one such woman felt about it, however. The Sex and Inflatable Rubber Woman Studies Department had learned via the ‘Loose Women’ television show’s publicity department that one of the subjects up for discussion on the day’s agenda would be about inflatable rubber women. Apparently a distressed female viewer had written in to say she was forced to share the marital bed with one. Arbuckle and his co-students had been advised by their tutor that in being questioned about this unhappy state of affairs the woman might reveal something which may help them with the Inflatable Rubber Woman (Opposition and Objections to) module of their coursework.

  As he stopped the tape he wondered how many interviews he had done thus far? How many would he need? You could go on indefinitely but after a while you kept getting the same answers, you reached saturation point. He hadn’t had a new answer for a fortnight so what was the point in doing any more? Maybe he’d give it another ten interviews or so and then see. In the meantime it was about time he himself had sex with an inflatable rubber woman, he’d been putting it off for long enough. He’d have a cup of tea first though, take a break.

  Ten minutes later he drained his cup of Earl Grey (a tea blend with a distinctive flavour and aroma derived from the addition of oil extracted from the rind of the bergamot orange, named after the 2nd Earl Grey, British Prime Minister in the 1830s, eat your he
arts out Mastermind contestants) and glanced at his watch. Almost one-o-clock. He switched on his TV set for ‘Loose Women’ and turned his attention to the inflatable rubber woman from An Hour In Bed which had arrived by post that morning.

  Unfortunately the university did not stretch to providing sex dolls with which their students might enjoy intercourse so Arbuckle had been forced to provide his own. When he’d logged on to the internet to browse through the vast selection available he had found many examples that were more attractive than Bouncy Beyonce, the one he had finally plumped for. In fact some of those on offer were more attractive-looking than some of the female students at Cleek, especially the ones with underarm hair who were studying to be social workers. But he had felt duty bound to purchase one from An Hour In Bed as the company had been generous enough to agree to take him on for a month’s work experience, in order to study the manufacture of the subject of his thesis. He would be starting his labours with them tomorrow, but in the meantime there was some labouring to be done with one of their products.

  Bouncy Beyonce was now in repose on Arbuckle’s bed, where she had been since he’d removed her from her plain brown paper packaging. He now regarded her again, in the hope that in the meantime her appearance might have improved a little. It hadn’t. She still looked quite hideous, quite revolting, and how a man could gain pleasure by having sexual intercourse with such a thing was quite beyond him. He certainly didn’t think he’d be going back for seconds.

  His intentions had been to have sex with a real woman first, then compare it with sex with its rubber equivalent. However as it appeared he might not be getting sex with a real woman for a while, if ever, he thought he might just as well tackle the inflatable rubber woman first. He could of course have gone to a prostitute for sex - in fact there was a small grant for that very purpose which could be claimed from the university - but his objections to that way round the problem was that the prostitute would probably make him wear a condom and therefore it would not be a true comparison. (Arbuckle had once heard someone say that having sex whilst wearing a condom was like washing your feet with your socks on and could see why this might be so.)

  Bouncy Beyonce, his new rubber playmate, was about five feet six inches tall. It was the only way in which she remotely resembled a real woman. She had a disproportionately large head in relation to her body and a disproportionately large pair of breasts in relation to her disproportionately large head. The head, onto which a crudely painted one-dimensional face had been stuck - the mouth represented by a crimson red gash of the same hue as the large, round dollop of rouge on each of her cheeks - was framed by a long, platinum blonde, curly wig that looked as though it had seen previous service as settee stuffing. The breasts, pointed and perfectly conical and encased in a gigantic black lace bra, reminded Arbuckle of two traffic cones or a larger version of Madonna’s breasts in her Material Girl phase. From there it was all downhill. Thankfully the ‘realistic real vagina’ promised on the cover of the box was for the moment hidden from view by a tiny red satin thong. However the tiny red thong failed dismally to hide the pubic hair bursting from either side of it like an errant gorse bush. Arbuckle couldn’t look at it without wincing as it reminded him of something that had stung him the time he’d been scuba diving in Ibiza.

  Bouncy Beyonce had arrived in a flat pack, a consideration for which Arbuckle had been truly thankful to An Hour In Bed. He was less thankful to them when it came to inflating her. The only things he had ever inflated before were the tyres on his bike and he imagined he would have to do something similar in order to make the inflatable rubber woman suitable for purpose. However there was no pump in the box. Neither were there instructions. He was about to abandon the exercise when he spotted a small valve with a plastic stopper on her back. That must be it, she must inflate like an airbed. He tugged on the stopper. Nothing happened. He tugged again. This time it came out with a satisfyingly loud ‘pop’. However the inflatable rubber woman failed to inflate.

  He examined the valve. Would his bike pump fit it? He tried it. No, too big. What to do? Maybe he could blow her up by mouth? He tried. Nothing. Two minutes hard blowing had left the inflatable woman as flat as when he’d started and himself gasping for breath. He made a note to mention to the powers-that-be at An Hour In Bed that perhaps their quality control wasn’t all it should be, and was about to put Bouncy Beyonce back in her box, re-parcel her and send her back with a letter of complaint when she suddenly started inflating.

  Arbuckle sat back to watch the transformation from flat Bouncy Beyonce to bouncy Bouncy Beyonce with a mixture of joy and dread; joy that he would now be able to get on with this vital part of his studies, dread for the same reason.

  After about thirty seconds she had reached what Arbuckle considered to be woman-like proportions. However she was still inflating. He wasn’t too worried, surmising that she was perhaps meant to be a little larger than average; after all she wouldn’t be called Bouncy Beyonce for nothing. Besides, he liked his women a little on the plump side, he preferred them to have something a man could get hold of.

  After another twenty seconds had elapsed there was substantially more than something a man could get hold of as Bouncy Beyonce was still inflating and by now had reached almost Rubens-like proportions. Ten seconds later she was way past Rubens-like proportions and approaching Goodyear Blimp proportions. Arbuckle, realising something would have to be done about it before she filled the entire room, was looking for something sharp to stick in her in order to arrest her development when she suddenly stopped inflating.

  Now, she was hovering over his bed at a height of about six inches, a height which she attained each time he let go of her after laying her down. He had tried placing weights on her to hold her down on the bed - two bags of sugar and a pan of water, no proper weights being to hand - but they had fallen off and all he had achieved was a bag of wet sugar and a sex doll with a sticky stomach. He had thought to tie her down to the bed but hadn’t any string or rope. With no other ideas forthcoming he had decided to go ahead with the intercourse as things stood, or perhaps hovered.

  He now prepared to make love. He had never made love before but thanks to what he had learned on his coursework and hundreds of porn movies he knew how to go about it, although he thought that on this occasion he’d skip the foreplay. He removed all his clothes, self-consciously glancing at Bouncy Beyonce just as he might have on undressing in front of a real woman, although not to make the act as realistic as possible, as advised by his tutor, but because he could have sworn she was watching him.

  About three-quarters of the way through her over-inflation Bouncy Beyonce’s bra had snapped, departed her breasts, and landed on the television set, where it was now half covering Loose Women. In an ideal world Arbuckle would have liked the same thing to have happened to her little red thong, but unfortunately it had remained securely in place. Unlike Tom Hanks’ underpants in the film ‘Big’, as Bouncy Beyonce’s body had got bigger her thong had remained the same size. Consequently it had almost disappeared between her huge thighs and Arbuckle suspected removing it might be a bit tricky. He wasn’t wrong.

  Ten minutes and twenty attempts later he was no nearer to removing the thong than when he started. He had set about the task by kneeling between Bouncy Beyonce’s legs, then, taking hold of the thin string-like tape at each side of the thong, attempting to pull it down. However as she was floating there was no resistance and when the thong moved down Bouncy Beyonce moved down with her.

  He then adopted the strategy of sitting on her legs, thus mooring her, and going through the same procedure. He had more success with this, inasmuch as the thong started to come down leaving Bouncy Beyonce where she was, but after he’d pulled it down about six inches he made the mistake of letting it go to have a rest and it had twanged back from whence it came. Resolving to hang on to it the next time he had to stop for a breather, he tried again. But six inches, seven at the most, appeared to be the limit, no matter how much
he tugged and how much he rested and hung on to it between tugs. Finally he abandoned the exercise, got a pair of scissors and cut off the thong.

  Now unfettered Bouncy Beyonce’s genital area looked to Arbuckle to be less like the sea creature that had once stung him in Ibiza and more like the Black Forest in Bavaria. Providing a background, and complementing the geographic analogy, her breasts looked like a small mountain range. Feeling much as he imagined Bear Grylls felt whenever he ventured into uncharted territory, Arbuckle now prepared to set out on his expedition into the unknown.

  Before receiving the inflatable rubber woman Arbuckle had considered by what method he might have sex with one. From his studies and diligent reading of the Kama Sutra (one of the set books in his coursework), he had already learned the forty most popular positions in which the act can be performed. He had thought that maybe he’d go for ‘girl on top’ or possibly ‘doggy fashion’, having formed the opinion that several of the other positions, although they might prove to be more pleasurable, could only be achieved at the risk of throwing at least one of his limbs out of joint or doing his back in.

  He viewed the task ahead with trepidation. He didn’t envisage any difficulties in being able to achieve penetration with the ‘girl on top’ method, but felt that once penetration had been achieved problems might have to be faced in ‘hanging on to the girl on top to stop her floating away’ method. ‘Doggy fashion’ brought with it the same problem of there being no resistance to his thrusts, as if he were to attempt it he could see nothing ahead of him but the frustration of continually moving up the bed and having to go back and start again.