A bottle of Krug.

Sexual content

‘Rubbish! What planet are you on, Connie? It means pregnant, or full or a container which is full, I think.’

‘And “accouchment”?’ I enquired, as her French was better than mine.

‘Delivery, as in a birth.’

She read the text again. '

And I think the pelling msitake is yours.'

‘Oh my God, Connie. Where are you going to do this? You can’t be in your flat on your own, with a man – you don’t even know his name,’ she squeaked.

‘I was thinking of a hotel. I’d leave details in case I was never seen again.’

She fumbled at her computer and then announced, ‘I’ve booked the sound-proof conference room for Friday, seven o’clock. The place will be empty. We can lock ourselves in.’

‘We, Dianne? Who is we?’

‘If John is out Saturday, he can babysit Friday for me. You’ll need someone for security.’

‘Where will you be sitting or will this be a threesome? I hadn’t planned on sharing, before I even know his proper name.’

‘I’ll be in the control room, working the video, so I can see what is happening and that you are safe.’

She announced her plan as though it were the most natural thing in a boss/PA relationship. I suspected her motives.

‘Or are you uncomfortable about the video bit?’ she continued. ‘I’ll delete it afterwards, when I know it was non-violent.’

‘That’s okay. It’ll be dark and I want to preserve the anonymity a bit longer so we will be wearing masks.’

'Excellent. I’ve entered our names and a conference with Mr Florizel of ABSF of Baltimore.’

‘Do they exist?’

‘Doubt it.’

‘What happens if we get caught?’

She paused.

‘It depends what you are doing. If we were to get caught drinking champagne? That’s okay. Being intimate with a champagne bottle – that would be a sacking matter. No dubiety! The head of HR is a bit of a stickler and sacked a pair a few years ago for doing it on the roof over lunch.’

‘This time of year?’

‘No, you dope. Hot summer’s day.’

‘How did she find out? Does she do roof inspections on the off chance someone is fooling around?’

‘Possible. But on that occasion a crane driver from across the way spotted them beneath him and grassed them up.’

‘Christ! I’m glad he didn’t do a career change and become a tube guard.’

‘Explain!’

‘Just after Tannhäuser had spilled his seed over my rump, there was a bomb scare, train emptied and left we two, me skirt round my waist and him with his member unruly, in an empty carriage. A guard saw us but walked away laughing.’

‘I love it,’ she squealed. ‘How can you involve me?’

How shall I reciprocate? I have rejected Dianne’s idea and told her to cancel the conference room. We came too close on the train. No more unnecessary risk-taking. We are consenting adults with our own privacy.

I would like to send him something as personal to my body as the dance shoe became to his. I keep the idea of champagne in my mind but have scrapped the plan to use a bottle of Krug. It is a bit expensive to fool around with and the wired cork could cause injury.

I decide to do a virtual gift to him. The point is, it is so easy for blokes. Need a pee? Just point Percy at the porcelain. Need manual relief? Take a scarf or a ballet shoe. It’s not like that for us.

I’ll describe to him what I would have done had I had the physique and gymnastic skills to execute the plan – and preserve a reasonable level of hygiene.

What about a twenty-centilitre bottle of Moët & Chandon? That sounds about right for a workout with a bottle. The wired top on the Krug looks awesome. I’ve seen packs of Moët in the supermarket. I realise I have no idea how big the vagina is. During childbirth enormous, but I don’t have to do everything Sophie got up to. Did Beardsley imagine her with the blunt end of a champagne bottle inside? If so, then only a man, and a nasty one, could find that erotic.

The point is, would twenty centilitres be enough? I try to find out how big the average vagina is. I’m staggered to discover on my way through internet sites two things. There is no average. Birth canal is the other name and it is an accommodating organ, size wise. 

It is also a party entertainment. I could well believe that the following advert didn’t remain long on an internet site, but believe me, when I looked, it was there, using these words. I’m sure sales were zero. Who would want to? I think the second paragraph should go down in the Guinness Book of Records under – words fail me!

<Vagina volume measuring kit!

One more dimension than men!

Women are probably sad and a little jealous that they can’t partake in penis-related competitions such as wang measuring. Well, fear not, ladies. Now you can measure the volume of your vaginas at your next sex-specific social gathering.

The vagina volume measuring kit comes with 100 oz of sterile saline solution and 8 sterile funnels. Simply yank off the pants of your mates and have them do a handstand against a wall. Next, insert the funnel, pour, and measure. Laughs all around! Who has the biggest vagina? Whose future husband might feel inadequate? The fun never ends with the Vagina Volume Measuring Kit.>

Until that point, I assumed I knew something of life. My daftest imagination had never stretched to Vagina Volume parties.

Until that point I assumed Sophie would limit her caprices to a bottle neck. Now I realise there are much greater opportunities here. How about a bottle of vagina-flavoured champers? This could make me a million, although I’m not sure how one could market it as clean fun, and the advertisement for the measuring kit clears up one question. It’s a two-person job.

Next website looks a bit more serious. Researchers have looked at average sizes for a number of women. Variations, for women at rest, and of a narrow age range, are smaller than expected. I take the averages, assume the vagina is a cylinder and apply πr²h. I get the answer – wow, wait for it. Two mini-bottles of bubbly. This I have to tell Florizel.

Don’t bother, Connie. The researchers have made one or more mistakes. I notice the width is twice the length and the length is not credible. More likely, I don’t understand their anatomical definitions. It seems clear that we girls have the ability to expand and contract to meet demand.

I do a check. While there is limited information about our tubes, penises have been more rigorously researched.

Average dick is 12.5cm long. Thickness is 4.5cm.

πr²h gives me just over 200 cm³ and that sounds more like things, allowing for guys exaggerating. That means the mini-bottle is about right to replace a penis. I wonder if Napoleon’s scientists defined the centilitre as half a pussy? I mean they had to start somewhere. Possible for a Frenchman. Every other nation would have defined it as half a dick.

That’s silly. I am feeling silly. They sensibly used a gram of water as a cubic centimetre of substance. Thank goodness, What a pickle otherwise.

Time to mail Tannhäuser. I decide to write it out and send as an attachment. I decide to write a Beardsley pastiche. Here goes.

<Dearest Tannhäuser,

I want to send you the something equal to the precious gift of a besmirched shoe you gave me. It is not so easy for a woman, so I’ll describe what I think Sophie would have done, had she been required to provide evidence of her devotion. Thanks for the slipper. This is how I think Sophie might have returned the compliment.

Sophie says, ‘I take the champagne bottle, admire its girth and length, turning it wistfully in my hands. I catch your grin, reciprocate, and open it. We drink a glass each. Then you ask me to stand. You pull me to you and whisper sweet nothings in my ear, and tell me you want to take evidence of my devotion with you. My knickers you gently pull to my ankles, realise that it is insufficient and help me step out of them, and, because you are now on your knees, you gently blow at my vulva, my sex.

I gladly open my legs to you for kisses, and after you have tasted me sufficiently, the long neck of the bottle of Krug, you gently, gently insert. You listen for my groans of pleasure and take them as encouragement, for that is what they are.

With the neck still in me, you lean the bottle backwards and swirl it gently, encouraging the gas to escape. I feel some of the liquid leave the bottle and rise into me, then ebb back. You hold the bottle still, until the precious liquid has returned to it. Your ear you press to my clitoris and I think you are listening for any little farting noises as you break the seal around my flesh, allowing my body to expel the froth. I can’t tell if you are rewarded.

The neck of the bottle is now wet and surely some of my juice has found its way into the champagne, but you are not satisfied with this. The bottle you remove and tell me to make a handstand. You place a luxurious cushion of eiderdown covered in delicate embroidered cotton on the floor to spare my head. I need help to get my ample bottom into the air and other nymphs and satyrs gather round. But of course, they start to fiddle with things and you have none of it. You chase them away, leaving me on my head, my legs pointing at the sky. Another cushion you place between my butt and the bark of the tree I lean against. You splay my legs, but hold my buttocks, so tilting me into a stable position against the supporting trunk.

You take a delicate silver funnel with a rounded spout and this you insert in my hungry orifice. Slowly, so slowly, you pour the champagne. It bubbles furiously as it touches the sensitive folds inside me, and foams over the top. I shudder with pleasure, and no longer try to hide my pants of desire.

You pour and pour, until I am quite full and the bubbles have spent their first energy. You remove the funnel and stir your concoction, allowing it to spill down my front. You take many samples of the nectar to your tongue.

I thought you would hold my lips closed and tell me to stand up. We would attempt to catch as much as possible in a long-fluted glass. No! You are a perfectionist. Instead, you insert a delicate tube of gold, of such purity that it easily bends into an n-shape. You tell me to call out when I think you have plumbed my depths. This I do. You place a piece of swan gut on the exterior end and suck on it. The tube becomes a siphon and you deliver the valuable liquid back into the champagne bottle.

The clamour from the onlookers is deafening. They want to drink some, but you are resolute. You cork the bottle, place it in a zipped poacher’s pocket in your jerkin, help me to my feet, kiss me tenderly and then ride off to consume your ill-gotten gift, alone. But you do leave me with the long-necked Krug bottle, to which I immediately apply my energies. The applause is thunderous.

XX

Sighing Sophie

1. I fear this pleasure, out of anatomical and hygiene reasons, must remain virtual. Please forgive.>

I think of e-mailing the attachment, but stop myself. Instead, I e-mail a demand for Tannhäuser’s address. That will allow me to post my letter without leaving a trail. I wonder why that is important.

Minutes later his address arrives, but with no name. It is somewhere in Collier’s Wood, a stone’s throw from here. I find an envelope and scent it with some fine musk – a Christmas present from a disappointed admirer – which, hitherto, I hadn’t opened. In goes the letter, sealed, addressed to my knight, clutched close to my body, delivered a few minutes later once I had identified the letter box for Flat 4.

I walked home via the off-licence and bought a little strengthener for the evening. Once home I saw my computer’s flashing symbol that a mail awaits me. Who could that be? As if ....

If I had made a list of a hundred possible Tannhäuser responses, his actual reply would not have been among them. This man is something else.