The Girl with the Creel by Doris Davidson

arms and kissed her hungrily. ‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ he muttered in a few minutes.
    Thrusting aside the thought that she shouldn’t be letting him, she whispered, ‘I like it, George,’ a gross understatement, for every inch of her was responding to the stimulus – responding in a way that, in her naivety, she did not understand could have only one possible outcome.
    George, however, was cautious. ‘But what about Peter, and Katie?’
    Propelled on to find out what Peter had always held back from, she looked at George now and said, ‘They’ll never know,’ adding with an embarrassed half-smile, ‘… whatever we do.’
    Straightaway, it came to her that saying this might put him off her, make him think she was cheap, and she wished she hadn’t been so bold, but when George murmured, ‘Do you mean what I think you mean?’, she didn’t correct him.
    Obviously taking her silence as agreement, he pulled her to the ground. She had been afraid that the reality wouldn’t measure up to her dreams, but, carried away with the rapture of it, she lost track of everything except a mounting, spiralling need. Being so innocent, it did not dawn on her that she was being guided by an expert, an expert who had gentled her past the initial pain and soothed her with kisses before taking her on a soaring flight which came to the wildest, most wonderful conclusion. Only then did she become conscious that the wetness from the soggy grass was seeping right into her clothes, that a dense fog which had descended unnoticed was lying over them like a blanket.
    Silently, George helped her up and turned his back so that she could make herself presentable. She was quite relieved that he kept quiet, but disappointed when he took her to her lodgings and left her still without saying a word. When she went upstairs, she excused her flushed face and damp clothing to Peggy May by saying that he had lain on the grass with her and kissed her an awful lot, and if her friend suspected he’d done more than that, she didn’t say so.
    Lizann’s dreams were predictable that night, but in the morning she wondered if George had been disgusted when she offered herself to him, for that’s what it had amounted to. She was thankful, therefore, when he appeared on the Denes in the forenoon, and there was no hesitation in the nod she gave in answer to the question in his eyes. Time couldn’t pass quickly enough for her now, and when work was finished for the day she set off for their digs at a pace that had Peggy May complaining, ‘Slow down, Lizann, for ony sake. I ken you’re desperate for his kisses, but there’s nae need to rush me off my feet.’
    Unhappily for Lizann, George did not kiss her once that night, nor the following night. She couldn’t understand it. Why was he acting as if nothing had happened between them? But when he said, at Mrs Marks’s door, that tomorrow would be their last night together, she still agreed to meet him.
    Her thoughts were confused when she went inside. She’d been attracted to him the first time she saw him, but her feelings for him went much deeper now. She should really steer clear of him tomorrow, for they were both committed, almost, to somebody else, but …
    She met him as promised, praying that he would stop being so distant, but again he talked only about trivialities. Lapsing into a dejected silence, she wished he would speak about things that mattered. If he didn’t want to see her again, why didn’t he just tell her, bid her goodbye and leave her? Short and sharp, it would still be better than dragging it out like this.
    Hearing a change in the tone of his voice, she turned to look at him. ‘Lizann,’ he said, ‘are you angry about what I did the other night?’
    â€˜No, I’m not angry,’ she replied, honestly, ‘and I’m not sorry we did it.’ She