	The Silent Tutsi
	================

It was only natural that Linda should be apprehensive when 
she met Laurent and Pauline Duquesne for the first time at 
the airport. What had she let herself in for? 

It was a necessary part of her university degree, of course: 
a summer in France spent with a French family where she'd 
have to speak French all the time. She wasn't sure whether 
it was the fact she'd have to rely on her knowledge of the 
belle langue or her anxieties about submitting herself to the 
kindness of these strangers that troubled her most, but her 
first impressions were positive.

Linda's worries slipped away as Laurent drove them 
through the Picardy landscape, past the quaint cafes and 
rows of trees. She was gradually acclimatising to the 
French language, although she struggled to express herself 
with quite the fluency she hoped to eventually master. The 
couple was as fascinated about life in rural Suffolk as she 
was about life in small-town France. Although everything 
was still foreign to her, she looked forward to being as 
much at home here as she was to the thatched cottages and 
village greens of East Anglia.

The couple had two young children at home waiting for 
them who, as soon as they saw Linda, rushed about her and 
plied her with questions about English roast beef and 
English pop music. She was overwhelmed by the 
whirlwind of attention that contrasted so much with the 
relative solitariness of her short flight from Luton Airport. 
There was a lot that was new and much of this Linda only 
knew about from the French films she'd watched. And 
every now and then, one of the parents or, even more so, 
the children used a vernacular expression Linda wasn't sure 
she really understood. 

She unpacked and organised her possessions in the small 
bedroom she was given and already thought of as her own. 
Then she joined Laurent and Pauline, and the two children, 
for the evening meal. She knew food was an important 
ritual in French life and looked forward to the new routine. 
It would be so different from watching television with a 
tray on her lap.

The family sat down together while Pauline placed the 
dishes on the table to appreciative grunts from her husband 
and children. A bottle of red wine was uncorked and Linda 
had a glass in front of her, as did the two children. There 
was a sixth glass and plate laid out and Linda wondered 
who this could be for. Was there a third child in the 
family?

She was rather surprised when this sixth person appeared. 
She was only a couple of years younger than Linda and 
young enough to be one of Pauline's children. But clearly, 
she was not. Her skin was black and her curly hair was cut 
very short. She walked into the room and was greeted with 
"Bonjour, Gabrielle," by the family. Without responding 
with even a smile she sat down in the vacant seat.

The meal was delicious. Pauline was a very good cook and 
had obviously made an extra effort for her new au pair. 
She'd remembered that Linda didn't like broccoli and so 
none was placed on her plate although everyone else was 
offered some. Throughout the meal, Laurent and Pauline 
chatted to Linda, with the occasional polite interjection 
from Dominique and Pierre, the two children, and Linda 
became steadily more confident in her grasp of the French 
language. But during the whole meal, Gabrielle didn't say a 
single word nor was it apparent that one was expected of 
her.

When the family had finished the gateau and very strong 
coffee that made up the dessert, Gabrielle stood up without 
a word and walked out of the room as silently as she came 
in despite the kind words of "Au revoir" that accompanied 
her departure.

Linda looked at Laurent. "Is Gabrielle very shy?" she 
asked, hoping that the word she chose had the same 
meaning in French as in English.

"Shy?" replied Laurent. "Not shy so much. She's severely 
traumatized. She hasn't said a word in all the years since 
we first chose to adopt her when she was a much younger 
girl."

"Is that because she doesn't speak French?"

"Well, she certainly understands French. She reads enough 
books. But it isn't just French she won't speak. She won't 
say a word even in her own Tutsi language."

"Tutsi?" wondered Linda, who was reminded of a 
Hollywood film with a similar sounding name.

"Yes. She comes from Rwanda. In Africa. There are two 
tribes there: the Tutsi and the Hutu. You might be too 
young to remember, but a few years ago there was a 
horrendous massacre. Something like a million Tutsi were 
slaughtered by the Hutu. Many of them were neighbours 
who'd lived next door to them all their lives."

"I've heard of that, I think," said Linda. 

"Gabrielle was one of those who survived. It's a wonder 
she wasn't mutilated with a machete like so many others. 
Her parents were killed and all her family and friends. 
There's even medical evidence she was raped, which, 
considering how very young she was, must have been 
trauma enough in itself. A lot of Tutsi children came up for 
adoption and, although we had no pressing need to adopt a 
daughter, we volunteered to do so. But ever since her 
ordeal, she's not said a word. Of course, we don't know 
what she was like before then. No one alive knows her 
from before that time or even knows her real name, but the 
doctors believe that it's because of her traumatic experience 
she never speaks."

"Oh dear!" said Linda in English. She wasn't at all sure 
what else she should say. There was a silence around the 
table. Even Dominique and Pierre looked uncomfortable. 

"Anyway," said Pauline, breaking the silence, "we hope 
very much that you and Gabrielle get to know each other a 
lot better. It's to help Gabrielle that we really wanted you to 
stay here. She's a good girl, but because of her muteness 
she's mostly had to be taught at home. A home tutor 
normally looks after her education, but that's during term-
time. We thought that you could perhaps teach her English 
and anything else that you'd like just to keep up her 
education. There are a few other au pair duties, but they're 
fairly light."

"You want me to teach Gabrielle?" asked Linda who'd 
never thought of teaching as a career when she completed 
her degree. Her ambitions were to work as a translator, 
perhaps for the European Parliament.

"It's more to keep her company than anything else, ma 
petite. She's very bright: at least a year in advance of her 
actual age. It's quite possible that when she gets her 
baccalaureat, she'll be able to go to university.  Maybe even 
in Paris. I hope you don't mind, ma cherie?"

 Linda shook her head. "I'd be pleased to," she replied, 
already regretting that she'd brought so few English books 
with her.

Fortunately, Laurent and Pauline had anticipated this and 
had bought some English language text books, all with 
plenty of pictures of strangely gauche English people with 
names like Mary, John, Malcolm and Diane. As she was 
studying a foreign language herself, Linda was sure she 
knew what she ought to do, though she groaned at some of 
the rather odd cultural references in the books. Why was 
everyone so keen on the Beatles? And what was this 
obsession with English meal-times? And why did everyone 
have to speak in such a stilted, awkward manner?

Gabrielle's room was totally unlike that of any teenage 
girl's bedroom Linda had ever seen before. There were no 
posters on the wall?just a framed French landscape by 
Corot. The room was mostly bare of anything but books, 
and those were the peculiar paperbacks the French liked, 
with boring line drawings on the cover. There were no 
CDs, no DVDs, no stereo system, and only a hardly-used 
desktop PC. Gabrielle sat stiff and expressionless on a hard 
chair wearing a white blouse and blue jeans, the former 
contrasting dramatically with the darkness of her skin.

Linda drew in her breath as Pauline closed the door behind 
her. This was going to be more of an ordeal than she 
expected. How do you teach someone who won't say a 
word to you? Even her smile was curiously lacking in 
meaning. It just flashed into life for the shortest time before 
vanishing behind an expression of intimidating 
seriousness.

"My name is Linda. I come from Dumbleford, a small 
village in Suffolk, er, England," said Linda nervously in 
French. "I am here to teach you English and I shall speak to 
you in English rather than French."

Gabrielle nodded.

Linda squeezed her eyes shut. Shit! This wasn't going to be 
easy at all.

She opened the first page of the English text book.

"This is Mary" Linda said in English, reading from the 
book and pointing at a line drawing of a girl dressed in a 
tartan skirt and polo-neck jumper. "She lives in London. 
She is a student."

Gabrielle said nothing, but nodded her head. 

"Mary speaks English," continued Linda, not sure whether 
she was understood. "She comes from England."

Gabrielle nodded again, with an earnest face and no 
apparent evidence of having understood. Linda sighed, but 
she persisted. She continued to read out phrases from the 
English language text book while Gabrielle watched and 
nodded with no discernible facial expression. Her eyes 
were the liveliest part of her, perhaps because their 
whiteness contrasted so much with the blackness of her 
skin. She looked at the pictures, read the text and returned 
her gaze to Linda's face. Her novice teacher, however, was 
not feeling that a great career in pedagogy was opening up 
in front of her. It was very hard work to teach, or to try to 
teach, with such a blank response.

It was a very warm summer, seemingly warmer than in 
England. Linda was feeling the heat acutely, especially so 
as a result of her frustrations in teaching. She was wearing 
little enough as it was, just a tee-shirt and a pair of shorts, 
and she envied Gabrielle who didn't seem to feel the heat at 
all. Perspiration dripped down her skin making her tee-
shirt damp and cling to her skin. She pulled it forward from 
her chest to let some air through and, as she did so, she 
noticed that Gabrielle's eyes were closely watching her and 
seemed to peek down at her nipples that were unprotected 
by a bra. The tee-shirt snapped back on Linda's bosom and 
she was aware that her nipples were clearly visible through 
the cotton fabric. She blushed, but then reminded herself 
that she was in France. They didn't worry so much about 
such modesty here, did they?

Although there had been so little response while Linda 
spoke, she was very gratified to see that when Gabrielle did 
the written exercise afterwards she got every single answer 
absolutely right. Maybe Gabrielle already knew a bit of 
English, although Laurent had said that she'd not been 
taught it formally. Linda left the text books with Gabrielle 
and said she'd continue with more lessons in the afternoon.

This same pattern was repeated in the following lessons 
and, indeed, in all those that came after in the next few 
days. Linda conducted her lesson by reading aloud from 
the set text book and when she finished each section, 
Gabrielle would do the written exercises and each time she 
would do so faultlessly. It was frustrating, however, that 
there were no spoken exercises she could do, and Linda 
knew she couldn't expect Gabrielle to do these, even 
though they were clearly marked out in the text she was 
following. So, even these exercises were done by Gabrielle 
writing down the answers to Linda's spoken prompts.

When Linda wasn't reading aloud from the book?a task 
she was beginning to feel was fairly superfluous since 
Gabrielle had no difficulty in reading?she had plenty of 
opportunity to study her student. The black girl leaned 
forward heavily on the desk and pushed the pen hard 
against the paper. It was a good thing she used a rollerball 
pen, as a nib on an ink pen would soon have broken under 
the pressure. As she wrote, her brow furrowed with 
concentration and she occasionally licked her lips with her 
tongue.

Linda tried to while away the time when Gabrielle was 
writing by looking around her room, but soon she had seen 
everything in Gabrielle's room and returned her gaze to her 
student. Gabrielle had a long smooth neck that was 
displayed to good advantage when she leant forward. The 
knobbled spine followed her neck like a sinuous serpent 
dipping beneath the white collar of her blouse. Her arms 
were bare to the shoulder and Linda noticed a scar on her 
left arm that was long and deep. She wondered at first 
whether it was caused by a bicycle accident or the like, 
before reminding herself that it was more than likely a 
machete wound. As was, no doubt, another scar on her left 
leg that was longer but less deep.

Gabrielle must have also noticed the summer heat, because 
she took to wearing a skirt rather than jeans, but it reached 
to below her knees and was made of quite heavy linen, so it 
was probably not much cooler. It showed legs that were 
long and slim and led to a pair of flat-soled feet tucked into 
her espadrilles.

Every now and then, Gabrielle looked up at Linda with her 
penetrating white eyes and they seemed to rest on her 
rather longer than was absolutely necessary. They followed 
Linda from her face and her long hair over her tee-shirt, 
each one of which celebrated a different commercial 
product or holiday destination, past her bare navel to her 
legs and ankles. Linda wasn't sure what she should think 
confronted with such a long steady stare, but she reasoned 
that the cultural differences between France and England 
must be nothing compared to those between England and 
Rwanda, and there was probably no meaning attached to 
such long and intense gazes. She did think it strange that 
Gabrielle's eyes so often focused on her bosom, but it 
didn't bother her enough that she should put on a bra.

"Mary walks into the Bakery," Linda read aloud, thinking 
that in real life this Mary was far more likely to drive to the 
supermarket. "She wants to buy some bread and rolls. 
What does she say?"

Gabrielle scribbled on her note book and handed it over to 
Linda to read. The black girl's writing was very precise and 
small, but totally legible. The letters were as reticent as the 
rest of her, with no unnecessary flourishes and no 
identifiable idiosyncrasies. 

"Please may I have some bread and rolls, madam," Linda 
read aloud. "Well, we probably wouldn't say 'madam', 
though. The English aren't as polite as the French. No 
'messieurs-dames' in English."

Gabrielle nodded, as she usually did, but Linda she wasn't 
at all sure she understood what she'd said. Linda wondered 
whether she could broach, in English, the concern that was 
uppermost in her mind. 

"If you went to England, Gabrielle," she asked, "would you 
communicate by handing people notes like you do with 
me?"

Gabrielle became suddenly flustered and alarmed. Perhaps 
she already understood more than Linda credited her. She 
looked at her hands and held the pen impotently in her 
fingers, letting it hover over the notebook. She looked back 
at Linda with a startled expression on her face and then 
back at the notebook, and then she stared at a point in 
space that Linda identified as being somewhere between 
her and the wall.

Linda sighed. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean... Shall 
we continue?"

Gabrielle returned her gaze to Linda and nodded. 

"Mary then walks to the Butcher's," continued Linda. "She 
wants to buy some sausages and roast beef. What does she 
ask the butcher?"

Naturally, Gabrielle's written answer was totally correct. 
Linda's mind wandered away from the task at hand, though 
she hoped it wasn't too obvious. How much did Gabrielle 
suffer from her condition and how could she realistically 
survive in the world if she couldn't speak to anyone?

When it was not spent with Gabrielle, Linda's time was far 
more like a holiday than a job. The au pair duties she was 
given were basically trivial and usually just meant 
accompanying Pauline to the shops and help her carry her 
bags to the car. Disappointingly, Pauline spent very little 
time in boulangeries or boucheries, any more than the 
fictitious Mary would, and instead went to a vast 
supermarket, Hypermarche Carrefour.  

"We're very pleased with your progress with Gabrielle," 
said Pauline, as she weighed some asparagus spears in a 
plastic bag. "She seems happier, I think. I do believe she 
smiled for more than two seconds when I greeted her this 
morning."

"Is that unusual?" wondered Linda, who'd also noticed that 
Gabrielle was smiling more, but still returning all too soon 
to her expressionless natural state of repose.

"I think so," said Pauline. "The psychiatrist has said that it 
is very difficult for her to engage with other people. It's not 
that she doesn't want to?she somehow just can't do it 
physically. You seem to have somehow awoken something 
in her where Laurent and I have been rather less 
successful."

Linda wondered about this when she was next teaching 
Gabrielle. The young black girl seemed genuinely pleased 
to see her, even though her smile lasted only a couple of 
seconds, and she pulled out her notebook as if to say she 
was ready to start the lesson. 

As always, it was very hot in Gabrielle's room, even though 
the window was wide open onto the Duquesne's very pretty 
garden with its cherry trees and roses. Linda's perspiration 
again caused her tee-shirt to cling to the contours of her 
bosom. Gabrielle's eyes hovered rather too long on the 
outlines of Linda's nipples protruding under the cotton and 
she caught sight of Linda's eyes watching her. She smiled 
very briefly, clearly embarrassed, and turned her gaze 
away. Linda smiled at Gabrielle encouragingly, but not at 
all sure what it was she was supposed to be encouraging.

When Linda returned to her bedroom, which was right next 
to Gabrielle's and separated by only a party wall, she 
considered what Pauline had said about her ward, but she 
wondered also about Gabrielle's errant gaze and that 
peculiar smile on her face. What did it signify? Although it 
was so brief and fleeting, Linda carried a memory of it and 
its wealth of potential meaning that made those couple of 
seconds seem to have lasted much longer.

There was a mirror on the wardrobe in her bedroom 
positioned between the open window to the garden and an 
armchair. Linda stood in front of it and studied her 
reflection. The girl she saw was just over a year out of 
secondary school with a bush of frizzy brown hair that 
never did what she wanted it to, however much it was 
brushed and combed. She was a girl already blessed with a 
bosom growing disproportionately large that might one day 
become as monstrous as her mother's. Certainly, it was a 
bosom ill-concealed by the Coldplay tee-shirt she was 
wearing.  Despite the attention her breasts attracted, 
particularly from men, was she an attractive girl? 

Sometimes Linda was sure the answer was yes. At other 
times, she was convinced it was no. She was below 
average height and, although not fat or plump, not exactly 
thin. There was always a slight, but not obvious, overhang 
over her shorts from the flesh of her bared midriff. Her 
face was pretty, she was certain of that, even though her 
eyebrows were bushy and her nose a little broad. At least 
the freckles that covered her face were rather less 
prominent now.

And Gabrielle? What about her? Was she pretty?

Linda shook her head with alarm. That was not a question 
she should ask herself, though she knew the answer was 
very much in the affirmative. The more she saw of the 
black girl, the more she appreciated her beauty. And she 
knew it was more, much more, than just her exotic allure. 
Gabrielle was a very pretty girl and one who would have 
the pick of partners if only... if only...

Linda didn't like the direction her thoughts were taking her 
and was pleased when her reverie was broken by the 
ringing of the bell that signalled it was time for dinner. 
This was the only occasion when she sat with Gabrielle 
and never felt she had to say anything to her. Nevertheless, 
her eyes wandered towards her student to meet Gabrielle's 
steady gaze from a serious face that might be appraising 
her or might just have been looking in her vague direction.

Gabrielle appeared to be fascinated by Linda's tee-shirts 
and not just by what was underneath. On those occasions 
when Gabrielle's gaze rested on her chest, which seemed to 
be more frequent now, they lingered over the printed 
words. Sometimes they were simply declamatory like 
'Glastonbury Festival' or 'University of East Anglia'. 
Sometimes they had text that described a product or carried 
a humorous message. Linda had acquired her tee-shirts 
from many different sources. Most often she was given 
them, but sometimes she bought one at a concert or on 
holiday. There was no consistent theme amongst them, 
unless it was the fact she preferred ones that revealed a fair 
amount of midriff.

It was a particularly hot day when Gabrielle pulled at the 
seam of the tee-shirt Linda was wearing and stroked a 
finger over it. She gazed up at her teacher, who wasn't sure 
she knew what to do, and her face expressed the promise of 
an inquisitive smile.

"Do you want to borrow one of my tee-shirts?" asked 
Linda, thinking this was probably the safest question to 
ask.

Astonishingly, Gabrielle nodded with a smile that wasn't 
exactly broad but lasted an uncharacteristically long time.

Linda was sure she shouldn't just take off her tee-shirt and 
give it to Gabrielle. After all, she had nothing underneath. 
But her bedroom was just next door.

"Come on," she said. "Come and choose a couple to 
borrow."

Gabrielle was escorted into Linda's bedroom for the first 
time. Linda pulled out her collection of tee-shirts from a 
drawer and laid them on the bed.

"Take whichever ones you fancy."

Gabrielle spent a long time standing by the bed looking at 
the tee-shirts. She didn't touch them. She didn't lean 
forward. She just stood there in her blouse and skirt, with 
her hands clasped in front of her. Then, with no warning, 
she undid her blouse and slipped it off to reveal that she 
also wore no bra under her top, although so thick was the 
linen it upheld her modesty rather better than did Linda's 
tee-shirts.

The time it took for Gabrielle to pick up one of Linda's tee-
shirts?one celebrating Dumbleford's Annual May Fair?
and to slip it on over her shoulders was probably rather less 
than a minute, but it etched itself into Linda's memory as 
much longer. Gabrielle was very slender and the scar on 
her left arm was accompanied by a similar scar on the left 
side of her chest below her ribs. And the bared breasts, 
which Linda later studied over and over again in her 
memory, were full?not so much spherical but tipped by 
broad puffy areolae a lighter colour than the rest of her 
skin. The tee-shirt hid her breasts, but not her slender waist 
and slightly protruding navel.

The truncated tee-shirt looked rather odd in contrast to the 
prim skirt. It didn't quite match. "Do you want to borrow 
one of my pairs of shorts?" asked Linda, who wasn't 
absolutely sure that her English lessons had yet covered 
this item of clothing and tweaked her own to indicate what 
she meant.

Gabrielle nodded and with no ceremony undid her skirt and 
stepped out of it. And here was a surprise that Linda most 
definitely didn't expect. The girl was wearing no knickers 
under her skirt. Not wearing a bra was one thing. Linda 
wasn't wearing one either. But no knickers! Then she stood 
with her hands over her crotch while Linda with a blush 
pulled some shorts out of a drawer. Gabrielle chose a blue 
pair and while she picked them up and pulled them on, 
Linda with embarrassment studied her slender thighs and 
the dark bush of black curly hair that obscured her vulva.

It was this memory and of Gabrielle's breasts that Linda 
rehearsed in her mind and to which she found herself 
masturbating in bed that night. It was a guilty 
masturbation, even more so than usual. She didn't want to 
make a noise that might alert the Duquesne family to what 
she was doing and she also hoped that no one might guess 
what it was that excited her.

However, someone else in the house was rather less careful 
than she in hiding her nocturnal habits. The sounds of the 
rustle of sheets, a rhythmic pumping of the bedstead 
against the wall and what sounded like small gasps were 
coming from Gabrielle's room. This astonished Linda, not 
only because it was the first time she'd heard any utterance 
from Gabrielle's mouth, but also because it told her two 
things she'd never really considered before. One was that 
the young black girl was also someone who might have 
sexual urges. And the other was that the short ceremony of 
changing clothes might have aroused her as much as it had 
Linda?though clearly not so much from what she saw but 
from what she exhibited.

Laurent and Pauline Duquesne were also very surprised 
when Gabrielle appeared at the dinner table in Linda's 
clothes, though they made no comment while she sat there. 
After Gabrielle left, Pauline smiled at Linda. 

"We're happy to see Gabrielle coming out of her shell," she 
said in French. "However, I don't think your clothes are a 
very good fit for her. The tee-shirt and shorts are rather 
loose. Next time I'm in the shops I must get some clothes 
that are more her size."

Linda nodded. She knew there was a difference in their 
sizes, which meant that Gabrielle looked almost ridiculous 
in a tee-shirt that was somewhat baggy and shorts that only 
stayed up because she pulled her belt tight, but even so 
slipped down enough for Linda to see the crack of 
Gabrielle's buttocks whenever she leaned forward. But if 
Gabrielle felt embarrassed by the poor fit, she didn't show 
it. Although she let a smile pass her face more often than 
before, she still had a very earnest expression in repose that 
was somewhat at odds with a tee-shirt celebrating 
Theakston's Special Bitter and a pair of shorts that showed 
off most of her hips.

The tutorials Linda conducted with Gabrielle now had a 
very peculiar flavour to them. How long could this tangible 
state of tension last? When Linda leaned forward to show 
her student the illustrations in the English language books 
that accompanied the text, Gabrielle leaned forward too, so 
that their bare arms pressed against each other. When 
Gabrielle scribbled her written answers to the exercises, 
Linda sat back and studied the black girl's legs, thighs, 
shoulders and, most of all, the arch of her bent-over neck. 
She both hoped that Gabrielle didn't notice the intensity of 
her gaze and also that she did and understood, perhaps 
better than Linda did herself, what her scrutiny signified. 
And when Linda read aloud from the text about Malcolm's 
adventures in London, Kevin's shopping expeditions or 
Susan's interest in cooking, she was now sure that 
Gabrielle's gaze wasn't really inscrutable at all.

And after these lessons, there was an awkwardness about 
closing the proceedings that were not at all helped by 
Gabrielle's silence, filled in with rather too many words by 
Linda's account of what the lesson was meant to achieve 
and what the next one would be about. And each night 
Linda found it difficult to get to sleep as her mind whirred 
with thoughts of Gabrielle, while she could hear the bed 
sheets rustle and the mattress shudder in the adjacent 
bedroom.

It was fortunate indeed that Laurent, Pauline and their two 
children were more often out of the house than indoors 
when the tension finally broke. The way it happened wasn't 
totally an accident, of course, but neither Gabrielle nor 
Linda knew how else the barrier could be broken without 
some semblance of happenchance.

Linda was sitting next to Gabrielle, their thighs touching, 
and Gabrielle now wearing one of the tee-shirts Pauline 
had bought her that fit rather better than any of Linda's 
although it showed rather less of her midriff. Although she 
had a choice of new shorts as well, she had decided to wear 
one of Linda's that slipped provocatively down over her 
hips. 

Linda glanced at the shorts that had fallen low enough for 
her to see the upper reaches of Gabrielle's pubic hairs 
emerging from under the waistband.

"You really must tighten the belt more," said Linda, putting 
her hands around Gabrielle's waist to pull the belt together. 
Gabrielle stood up to let Linda do the task with more ease 
and as she did so, she deliberately undid the belt so that the 
oversize shorts dropped down to her ankles. As Linda 
suspected was usual for her, she wore no knickers 
underneath. 

For a moment, the two girls were frozen as if in a tableau. 
Gabrielle standing with just a tee-shirt celebrating a 
Picardy summer fete and a pair of shorts bunched about her 
ankles. Linda crouched beside her with her arms around 
the girl's totally bare hips and felt the black girl's flesh 
burning on her fingers. She was reluctant to break the 
impasse, but eventually did so, frightened that the moment 
would pass forever, by kissing Gabrielle tenderly on her 
taut stomach.

And that brief moment of physical contact became rather 
longer and more intense as Gabrielle impulsively tugged 
off her tee-shirt so that she was totally naked and pulled 
Linda up so that they were face-to-face. For a few seconds, 
the two girls faced one another, one black and naked, the 
other white and not naked. And then with a strangled gasp 
they pushed their faces, mouths and bodies together in a 
passionate, carnal embrace. And this embrace became 
more urgent and more physical, as Linda divested herself 
of her clothes as rapidly as she could. Their two bodies 
staggered backwards and clumsily, like an uncoordinated 
quadruped, and collapsed lengthwise, both now naked, 
onto Gabrielle's bed that, in all these weeks, had been there 
unnoticed, not considered, but at last inviting and 
inevitable.

Linda was not totally innocent, but her fumblings in the 
past had always been with boys and beyond a cursory 
probing of the genitals had not really lingered long in the 
more intimate territory she would later be intent on 
exploring to the full with Gabrielle. There was so much to 
explore. The long thin fingers. The slightly small ears. The 
long arching neck. Those beautiful breasts that were so 
unlike her own which, in turn, so evidently fascinated 
Gabrielle. Although their mutual groping was intimate, 
passionate and sensual, there was a further degree of sexual 
license that Linda was reluctant to initiate. As so too was 
Gabrielle?although she nibbled and licked her nipples 
with such ferocity and desire that Linda wasn't certain that 
they might not exercise some appeal other than the 
obviously sexual. 

There was so much else to get to know without  venturing 
into the region between the legs that she was content to 
alternate her kisses and cuddles from the mouth to the body 
and back again. It was when the two met mouth to mouth 
that she could be most certain that Gabrielle's passion and 
desire equalled her own. This in itself was a novel 
experience and not one she'd experienced during her 
previous gropings at university or school. On those 
occasions she was uncertain whether the boys' lust focused 
on Linda as a person or just as the nearest available 
woman.

The passion that was so furious to start with began to ease, 
and the two girls stretched out languidly on the bed 
together as they took stock of their abruptly changed 
relationship. They were panting heavily, perhaps less with 
exhaustion than with excitement. Linda gazed lovingly at 
Gabrielle and was delighted to see that her lover's face had 
not settled into a state of serious impassivity. Instead, like 
Linda's, it was flushed with excitement and pasted with 
perspiration. Most of all, she sported a huge smile that did 
not vanish after only the briefest glimpse.

"Oh, I love you!" said Linda with fondness, her voice 
somehow catching in her throat. "I love you, Gabrielle." 
Then, to ensure that the message was not lost in translation, 
she said: "Je t'aime. Je t'aime." 

Words didn't seem enough, but clearly their lovemaking 
demanded something more. Linda had seen a few 
pornographic images on the internet and was sure she had a 
vague idea of what should happen next. However, she had 
on hand none of the kit of sexual aids that lesbian porn 
stars always had available however much they appeared to 
be taken by surprise, but she knew the general area where 
she should go.

Linda slid down to Gabrielle's thighs, lifted them up and 
gazed at her huge white eyes questioningly. 

"Shall I?" she asked. 

Gabrielle nodded.

Linda then parted the black bush of pubic hair that 
obscured Gabrielle's vulva, hunched forward and pushed 
her tongue onto the long, thankfully uncircumcised, 
clitoris. She knew what a vagina looked like. After all, 
she'd explored her own often enough. But it was curious 
how different Gabrielle's was to any she'd seen before. And 
even more peculiar still, she discovered when she parted it 
slightly to reveal the strangely pink interior. 

It was while she was engrossed in the business of chewing 
and munching Gabrielle's crotch that Linda heard a voice. 
At first she thought it was Gabrielle's grunts and pants, 
which were occasionally articulated in her passion but they 
would have no diction or syntax. Then she realised that 
these were words. An entire phrase.

Linda lifted up her head and body by her shoulders and 
looked directly into Gabrielle's face. She was smiling. And 
more than that, not just smiling, she was saying something. 
The first words since her horrific trauma in Rwanda all 
those years ago. 

And what were these words? 

They were exactly what Linda most wanted to hear.

"Je t'aime. Je t'aime." 










