We were watching the ten o’clock news, Vee beside me on the sofa, when I thought I saw him. Just a group shot on the red carpet at the Cannes Festival. The camera didn’t linger and in a few seconds the image had disappeared. Vee, aware that something had caught my attention, raised an eyebrow.
I said, “Ntombe. There was a suggestion about the south of France, wasn’t there? When he went into exile.”
“I think so,” she said, “but it was a long time ago. Why?”
“I thought I saw him. Even after these years, he’s not easy to forget.”
“ Would you expect him to resurface at Cannes?”
“With his attributes, yes. Could make him very popular.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Vee said.
“King Dong.” It was what they called him behind his back. If he knew, he didn’t mind.
“Yes. King Dong.” A memory had obviously sprung into her mind, too, for she allowed her hand to descend into my lap. Her fingers began to explore. I felt myself begin to respond. You should understand that this wasn’t usual behaviour for us. We are, after all, both in our sixties. Not that we’ve given up on sex, but it’s become a less passionate pastime than it once was. Yet here was Vee, in our drawing room sharing a whisky and soda before bed time, unexpectedly taking the initiative.
“Bed?” I asked.
“No. Let’s do it here. Now. You’re ready, aren’t you?” Her fingers tightened their grip slightly.
I was. More than ready, aroused, excited even. Ntombe was Vee’s first – and only, she claimed – black cock. Remembering how it happened was something we had used in the past, although not for some time now. It worked then and it was working now. Vee had already dropped her knickers on the carpet and was bending over the arm of the sofa, skirt up round her waist. I opened my zip and moved behind her.
These days we were inclined to start with oral. Fellatio had always been one of Vee’s exceptional skills, even back when we were on our honeymoon. I enjoyed reciprocating, especially nowadays when it helped her lubricate. But not this time. I slid two fingers between her legs and encountered wetness and warmth.
“It’s all right, dear,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder. “I”m ready. Put it in. Do it like we used to.”
How long was since I had seen Vee on heat like this? A long time, I thought. Remembering Ntombe had certainly removed any inhibitions there might have been about sex in the drawing room with the lights on and the weather forecast on the television. I took my member in my hand, grateful that it had never been too bad in comparison with my wife’s recollection of Ntombe’s, and guided it into her. Deep penetration proved to be easy. It was greeted with a little grunt of pleasure from Vee.
When I began to move, she spoke again over her shoulder. “It doesn’t have to be a marathon, darling. It doesn’t matter if I don’t come. I just want to feel you doing it the way we used to. Hard and fast. Do me now.”
It was more encouragement than I needed. Vee had always been blessed with a trim figure; to her credit, she had looked after it well. The bottom cheeks that parted to facilitate my entry were firm and round, the skin still smooth and unflawed. I took a firm hold on her hips and began to give her the repeated benefit of the full length of my shaft.
No doubt we would have made a somewhat comic spectacle, both still half dressed, Vee’s thighs white above her stockings, my trousers round my ankles, her knickers in a pool on the floor. I closed my eyes and concentrated all my thoughts on the exquisite sensation building within me, preparing to erupt into Vee, reasserting the love that had been the foundation of our marriage.
“Yes. Yes. Yes, darling!” she was exclaiming as every thrust ploughed into her.
“ Yes, now!” I heard myself cry out as the orgasm overtook me in one long draining spasm. As it dwindled, I stayed inside her, my groin pressed against her buttocks, savouring her luscious suction, never wanting it to end. When at last I had to withdraw, I asked her if she needed me to complete her pleasure.
“No,” she said, kissing me lightly on the cheek. “I know you would, and I love you for it. But you gave me what I wanted.” As she gathered up her knickers and headed for the bathroom, she said, “I hope we’ll both want it again soon.”
Alone in the drawing room, turning off the television, gathering up the whisky tumblers, switching off the lights, closing the house down for the night, I pondered on the fleeting image on the screen that had triggered such animated and rewarding sex.
Ntombe. Patrice Aumond St Pierre Ntombe. Much of what I now know derives from a variety of sources: personal experience during part of his two-and-half-year ‘reign’; Foreign Office briefings which tend to be mostly but not totally accurate; and press reports which tend to be mostly but not totally inaccurate. Inevitably, there are a number of obscure areas. Rumours, many of them wild, many of them believable, but few of them substantiated.
It is at least clear that the name Ntombe is one he adopted. The family name is St Pierre. Patrice was a bright youngster who found his way to St Cyr, France’s élite military academy in Brittany. There is no explanation of why he didn’t complete the third and final year of his course, though some disciplinary scandal has been suggested. Most of a decade is then unaccounted for until he turns up in Africa, styling himself not merely Ntombe but President Ntombe. In passing, it can be noted that among former St Cyr cadets were Charles de Gaulle; Louis II, Prince of Monaco; Peter I of Serbia; Haj Ali Razmara, one-time Prime Minister of Iran; and Felipe Angeles, a noted Mexican revolutionary. Patrice may have felt he was following worthy predecessors.
The brief existence of the state of Orintombe made little splash in the European press, and has been easily forgotten. It was a few barren square miles of central African hill country that seceded from its larger neighbour and wasn’t missed. Patrice probably instigated the process. Certainly it was he who named it Orintombe and called the capital Ntombeville – what else? One of his first acts as President was to hold a referendum on his own title. So keen was he to demonstrate the value of numeracy to his impoverished subjects, he counted the votes himself. Thereafter he became President-for-Life Ntombe.
It wasn’t the most prestigious first posting for a young, newly-married diplomat but I had to start somewhere. Vee wanted to know why we bothered to recognise Orintombe at all. I could only compare it to the way children collect stamps, wanting to have the full set and hoping that even the least promising might turn out to be valuable one day. Remarkably, some six months after our arrival, it seemed that the FO’s optimism might not be misplaced. Whispers began to circulate in Europe that beneath Orintombe’s stony hills lay precious mineral ore.
Looking back, there seems little doubt that the source of the whispers was the President-for-Life himself. At the time, such was the fear in London that we might be missing something, hasty decisions were made on the flimsiest of suppositions. I was informed that a party of mineralogists and surveyors would be leaving London the following month. It would not be an easy journey. Orintombe’s nearest airport was in an adjoining nation with whom Ntombe’s relations were fragile. If the survey party made it through customs and immigration, which wasn’t guaranteed, they faced a journey of 573 miles over bad roads. Once arrived, they were to be given every assistance but on no account should the reason for their visit be disclosed. How this was to be achieved was left to me. The first test of my future prospects as a manipulator of diplomatic strings.
In the interim, Ntombe invited us both to dinner at the Presidential Palace (a large but nondescript edifice which I understand has since been refurbished as a Holiday Inn). The invitation was unprecedented. Previously my only contact had been at fortnightly formal meetings in the President-for-Life’s office. Vee had met him only once – at a garden party he gave to celebrate his birthday. She told me afterwards that he had taken advantage of her curtsey to look down her cleavage. The hand that later briefly caressed her bottom may or may not have been his.
The dinner was about as informal as Ntombe’s sense of his own importance would allow. We were eight. Ntombe, wearing a full-length black robe with gold trimmings, sat on a slightly raised dais with his own table. The rest of us – Vee, me and Ntombe’s five wives – faced him from the opposite side of a long table set with expensive porcelain and crystal.
(I should explain that polygamy was a privilege Ntombe had conferred upon himself. It did not extend to his subjects.)
The wine was better than the food. Ntombe had imported a cellar and a chef from his homeland. The chef lasted less than a month before he fled. So we ate abominably but drank unexpectedly well. Until, that is, Ntombe proposed a toast. “Let us drink,” he said, raising his glass towards me with a smirk, “to the hope that your survey group arrives before the Belgians.”
So much for London’s confidential arrangements. Not only were they known to Ntombe, there was a rival operation also on the way. I thought it best not to respond beyond draining my glass with a greater air of insouciance than I actually felt. But the President-for-Life was a man of surprises.
“Come,” he said. “This is no time for business. We should relax.” He rose and led the way to an adjoining room where there was a long, low sofa and a number of large cushions scattered around the floor.
Ntombe took the sofa, indicating that we and the wives should relax as best we could on the cushions. Once we were all seated he spoke to two of the wives in their African language – something I had not mastered at that time and later gave up trying.
“Now,” he went on, “for entertainment I can offer you something you would not find easily in London and would cost you dearly in Paris. Here, it is free. These are naturally sensual women.”
The two Ntombe had selected rose and stepped easily out of the patterned shift-style dresses they had worn at dinner. Underneath, both were naked. They arranged cushions and then arranged themselves, one on her back with spread thighs, the other on top of her, head to toe in the classic sixty-nine position. I glanced at Vee, hoping that she wouldn’t take offence and cause a diplomatic rift. To my surprise, she caught my look and raised what seemed to be an appreciative eyebrow. I learned a lot about Vee that night.
Apparently, Ntombe’s wives needed no preliminaries. Caressing each other with exploring hands, they began lapping at each other’s intimate parts. They communicated in grunts which seemed to indicate on the one hand pleasure and on the other a desire for further gratification. After a while, they parted, sat on their haunches facing each other and masturbated. The mere word cannot nearly convey the lascivious intensity with which they applied themselves, fingers circling in each case a prominent pink clitoris that gleamed beneath its dark hood.
Ntombe watched with apparent approval for some while. The self-stimulation in the space between us continued, mounting arousal evinced only by a kind of rocking motion as the women pushed themselves back and forth while throwing their heads upwards and occasionally emitting a weird keening cry.
Then, on a signal from their master, the other three wives rose to take their part. One knelt on the floor beside Ntombe. In single bold gesture she threw back his ceremonial robe to disclose a black phallus, huge and erect. Her head descended and the distended member was drawn inch by rigid inch into her mouth.
While my attention was riveted upon this extraordinary display, I was aware that another of the wives had crouched beside me and was gently but firmly removing my clothes. Across the room, Vee was receiving the same treatment from the fifth woman. It was as if my wife read my thoughts, for she smiled at me and nodded, wanting me to know (as she told me afterwards) that she could not have staged a diplomatic scene of refusal if the thought had crossed her mind, which it hadn’t. Only innate British reticence can account for the fact that Vee and I had never discussed sex between women, otherwise I would have known that it had long germinated in her imagination as an experience worth trying.
I had hardly had a moment to observe the astonishing sight of my wife eagerly opening her thighs to her companions’ tongue before my thoughts were concentrated nearer at hand. The woman assigned to me pressed me gently on to my back before leaning over me to let her breasts enfold my penis. Her skin, naturally oily, massaged me to full erection in seconds. She sat back to examine the success of this manoeuvre, grunted in apparent satisfaction, and reversed her position. Now she was kneeling astride my face, her own head down in my groin where her hands subtly guided me into her mouth.
Nothing in my Foreign Office training had remotely prepared me for this, but my masculine instincts simply took over. Should a junior diplomat insert his tongue into the vagina of one of the wives of a Prseident-for-Life? Probably not, but I was past caring. Sex with Vee, although somewhat conventional, had never been less than enjoyable; when aroused I could always play my part to the full. And so I did now.
In the early stages we were four pairs all coupling – with varying degrees of vigour and nuance – more or less side by side. When my partner turned on to her knees with a plain invitation to mount her from behind, I didn’t hesitate to accept. I saw that Vee had reversed positions with her server. The masturbating couple had resumed in sixty-nine. Ntombe’s wife was astride across his lap. facing us, riding him with practised skill, breasts luridly swaying.
The ringmaster, though, was Ntombe. He spoke to the women in two sharp sentences. Immediately, they disengaged themselves from their present activity before realigning with a fresh partner. Musical laps with no empty lap. I welcomed the opportunity to allow my personal excitement to subside a little, having begun to have doubts about the diplomatic protocol when one neared the point of no return. Fortunately, my member had lost none of its fortitude. I was able to participate fully when my new partner threw her ankles on to my shoulders and parted her vaginal lips with her fingers.
The merry-go-round continued but gradually lost its strict coherence. Eventually we were all, including Ntombe and his chosen wife, in a writhing mass on the cushions. Of course, with only two men and six women the President-for-Life and I were seldom at rest, necessary though the occasional pause was in my case.
You may wonder why I, with my English public school, Cambridge University and Foreign Office background, did not feel revulsion at finding myself at the centre of what was an orgy, nothing less. I have often asked myself that question since. Vee and I have discussed it. We have wondered if some potion had been administered during the meal, but we think not. We can only conclude that sex, in a certain context, can be an overwhelming, all-consuming emotion. Inhibitions, far from being removed, simply cease to exist.
That is why I was able to look on with equanimity when Ntombe announced – in French this time – that for a finale he would take Vee. My wife was not given any choice but it would not have mattered. She was as caught up in the erotic atmosphere, the collective lust, as I. If asked, she would have accepted with alacrity.
To Ntombe’s credit, there was a brief interlude while one of the wives reached into a drawer to produce a packet of condoms. Seemingly, they taught him something other than military exercises at St Cyr. The woman opened the foil pack, moistened the President-for-Life’s penis with her mouth and then rolled the sheath down about three-quarters of its length.
Surprisingly, Ntombe suddenly laughed, a loud roar. Vee, he said, was English and the English were the pioneers of the missionary position. They brought it to Africa, and Africa knew its manners. Vee glanced at me, suddenly vulnerable. I raised my eyebrows: is this what you want? She understood and nodded. I gestured to Ntombe that he should proceed.
Two of the wives arranged cushions under Vee’s bottom, raising it so that her vagina protruded lewdly, an orifice ready to be filled. Ntombe knelt between my wife’s legs. The wives each rested a hand behind Vee’s knees, holding her open. Ntombe took his penis in his hand, steadied himself and made the insertion. The grunt that he gave left no doubt about the satisfaction he had experienced.
He began slowly, half penetration, full withdrawal. Vee closed her eyes and abandoned herself to her first sex with a vibrantly endowed black man. Ntombe gradually grew more forceful, the thrusts firmer and deeper. Each full penetration was accompanied by an approving grunt. Vee’s lubrication was such that even when his penis emerged completely, he was able to drive it back into her without hesitation.
It lasted much longer then I would have thought possible. Presumably the lengthy preliminaries had taken them both on to a plateau, that sublime balance where the physical sensations are exquisite but are not ready to demand the ultimate sacrifice. Vee began to match Ntombe’s grunts with ecstatic wordless cries, quietly at first but growing increasingly louder and uncontrolled.
There had to be an end, of course, and as that approached, visibly and audibly, one of the otherwise unoccupied wives squatted at my side and began to masturbate me. Her eyes swivelled repeatedly between my face and the couple rutting in front of us. Extraordinarily, she was able to sense the moment. As Vee lifted her body to absorb Ntombe’s final thrusts, the woman tightened her grip on my penis and matched the others’ momentum. Vee, Ntombe and I all came within seconds of each other.
********************
The aftermath can be briefly recounted (though I will pass over the embarrassment Vee and I felt in extricating ourselves from Ntombe’s party). The British survey group did arrive ahead of the Belgians. It was a hollow victory: they swiftly established that beneath Orintombe’s parched and hilly terrain lay earth total free of any useful mineral ore. British and Belgians drove away in convoy and shared a flight back to Europe. Shortly after I conveyed the disappointing news to London, I was transferred to a remote island in the Pacific ocean which the FO had just added to its collection. Ntombe’s abdication and disappearance back into the void from which he had surfaced was reported briefly, as was Orintombe’s recession into its geographical neighbour’s protection.
Over the years, I made modest progress up the FO’s promotion ladder, collected my CBE, and retired with Vee to our villa in Bexhill. Ntombe had figured less and less often in our conversation, until we spotted that fleeting image on the television news.
I turned off the lights, locked the doors and made my way to our bedroom where I found Vee naked on bed, limbs splayed. We resumed the business unfinished in the drawing room earlier with diminished gusto but infinitely loving invasion of each other’s bodies. This time, Vee came but I didn’t.
Nevertheless, we didn’t fall asleep without expressing our gratitude for the enhanced sexual activity Ntombe’s memory had aroused.
The following morning, I found a photograph in the Times of the group at Cannes we had seen on our television screen. There, half hidden in the background, was a large black man. It definitely wasn’t Ntombe.
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