Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2012 23:25:53 +0100 From: MICHAEL SOROS Subject: Breda's Little Helper Disclaimer: This story is the fruit of my imagination and none of the characters who shall appear have ever existed to my knowledge. The shop will be found on no map. If you find stories of a teenage boy's sexual curiosity distasteful it is best you finish reading now and try something to your taste. This opening chapter sets the scene only. Each chapter should introduce a new character and a new experience for our hero. To keep this website free of annoying commercials please consider donating to Nifty no matter how small. Breda's Little Helper Part 1 Back in the 1970's it wasn't unusual to find a general grocery shop and petrol pump in some of the most obscure places in the Irish countryside. To the casual observer they would seem to make no sense at all as there were no houses anyway near the place to supply customers. They were generally situated at a crossroads of some sorts with two intersecting roads - unsignposted- leading from nowhere to somewhere equally obscure. They were rarely found on any map. Breda's place was one such commercial enterprise having been founded by one of her relatives way back in the mists of time. She had grown up, wise and venerable in the place and was now 70 years old that she would admit to. She had also spent the last 50 of those years saving for her old age which - in her mind at least - was still many years in the future. 'A penny tricked from a customer is a penny earned' her beloved mother would say to the young girl while she was fixing the counter on the petrol pump to give out less than a gallon while charging for a gallon. As can be surmised from the few lines about the owner above, morals sat loosely on Breda McGovern's conscience. She couldn't afford morals. They cost either money or time, neither of which she had on her side. The grocery store was small and doubled (or trebled really) as an informal bar on the one side and a store selling the basics of life on the other. Most of the money came from the petrol pump on the forecourt just out of her sight on the right. She sold petrol, kerosene and diesel all at next year's prices but she had a monopoly and supplied the farmers' needs for 5 miles in any direction you cared to throw a stone. The interior was dark and in the hands of a more liberally minded person would have had the light on during the day but these were tough times for the tight fisted and Breda didn't believe in wasting electricity. It also made checking your change difficult and induced a nice warm atmosphere conducive to drinking which filled up the till in the damp winter, spring, autumn and summer months. Apart from location, a ready wit and the inability to stop selling alcohol to the grossly inebriated, Breda had no other advantages that she could exploit to boost her fund in old age. She had tried every scam in the book but the takings were never much improved. Until that is - the advantage came to her in the form of a 14 year old boy named Paddy McGinty responding to a much used piece of old cardboard which made regular appearances in Old Breda's shop window looking for 'a willing assistant' to help out. It used to read 'willing boy' but they were few and far between around here and they had all been warned off by anyone that knew the old miser. She had once made 4 scouts shift a piano up a flight of stairs for 'a bob' or ten pence - between them. Boys were preferred to girls or women as they were always looking for lifts home after 11 pm as the pitch dark lanes were dangerous at night and a few had stumbled into ditches or been terrified out of their wits by a lose cow walking behind them. No. Females were just trouble and quick to complain about the cold and often lacked the small talk necessary to separate a lonely bachelor farmer from his cash. Boys were preferred for many reasons. They were small and didn't take up much room. They didn't talk back, ate little and were glad of it and - due to the large classroom sizes in the local town 5 miles away - found it difficult to add up so they could never work out how much of a weekly wage they were supposed to be bringing home. It was never in the boys favour anyway. Breda needed someone for the weekends and two evenings a week. The dumber the better as they wouldn't mind missing school if her rheumatism was playing up and she needed someone to work the pumps for her. If - and this was a large IF - the prospective employee seemed up to scratch in her service he would have the use of a bicycle to get home. Not any old bicycle but a battered old bicycle with a flat tyre she had inherited from her mother. She wasn't in the taxiing business. One day, following one of her frequent postings for suitable help, Paddy McGinty had appeared on the other side of her shop counter. She could only see his head above the edge as he was quite short and he looked like he was floating without a body. The head however wasn't without its attractions. A beautiful mop of thick red hair, two red cheeks, a nice dainty nose with a sprinkling of freckles all on top of two lips you could have suck started a truck with. That was quite a full mouth he was carrying and the thought ran briefly across her mind that she should keep track of the sweets when he was around as that mouth looked like it could give a chipmunk a run for its money. From her position behind the counter she couldn't make out the rest of him but he didn't look like he'd eat her out of house and home by the slight frame on him. She always sent the fat ones running home claiming she wasn't in the catering business either. Paddy McGinty was looking promising. "And who do you belong to then?" she queried Paddy. He looked at her blankly. This was a point in his favour with Breda. "Who are your parents boy?" she asked getting irritated a bit too quickly. Breda was a great believer in seed, breed and generation and was convinced the bloodline told you more about the person than anything they would ever admit to. "My father's a sailor sailing round the world and will be back sometime soon and my mother is Magdalene McGinty of the Ballykillferrit McGintys" the boy replied with pride. If he had known as much about the Ballykellferrit McGintys as Breda did he would have kept his big round mouth shut. "So Maggie is back then?" she said out loudly to herself. "Where are you living then? There's nowhere out round here." "Mam has taken the old McMurrough's cottage about a mile up the road over there" said the boy pointing to the lane across the road. Breda was a bit surprised that anyone would live in that battered old cottage. Very small she heard. If you talked to yourself you'd have to go outside to reply and you wouldn't put the key in too quickly in case you smashed a window. However Breda remembered Maggie from well before this boy was born. Not wishing to judge the boy's mother - she was a slut, the town bicycle in her day but left under suspicious circumstances about 15 years ago. The reason why would seem to be standing in front of her. Half the town had red hair so that didn't narrow it down. Obviously she was back in business hence the cottage out of sight of the moral majority who believed sex was for special occasions or at least had to be rationed out over the course of the marriage. The sailor was still scrubbing decks somewhere in the Pacific no doubt. Breda decided immediately that she was going to take the boy on as she knew his mother had the attention span of a goldfish and wouldn't annoy her with wanting the boy back home for homework and the like, especially in the evenings as she would be busy with her 'new friends'. She was considering herself practically a charity - giving this poor unfortunate boy a bit of a job in her old age even if it was for peanuts. If he was anything like his mother he'd be willing alright. She could never say no either. "Well stand back so I can see you son. I'm not taking on invalids. I'm not a hospital. Walk over to the other side of the shop and stand at the bar". And he did. She liked what she saw. Short but well enough proportioned. He'd only be lifting the nozzle at the petrol pumps and the odd bucket to wash the muck off the windows of the tractors. He looked nimble enough as he'd have a lot of climbing about to do and his legs looked sturdy. She could see they were completely smooth but showed that he played some sort of sport. It had crossed her mind to ask why he was wearing football shorts instead of trousers. He had a neat trim waist leading up to a narrow chest covered by a thin tee shirt which had seen better days. Apart from that he didn't seem to have anything else on apart from a pair of dirty shoes. "A bit chilly for just shorts and a top isn't it Paddy?" she enquired leaning forward on the counter wondering what the reply would be. "I'm very hot blooded Miss McGovern. Boil up in a minute if I have too many clothes on me. Can't wear jackets or sweaters and trousers scratch my skin something rotten. Like the air at my legs. Is that a problem Miss McGovern?" Like his mother so, she thought. She couldn't keep her clothes on either. "Turn round and let me have a good look at you. The work here is very physical and I don't want lads collapsing on me and me having to call out doctors on my income." Paddy turned round and faced the bar and looked at all the bottles on the shelves. He'd never seen so many bottles of alcohol in one place and he didn't recognise any of them. He could hardly read any of the labels anyway as schooling had never got in the way of a good game of football on the street and his mother moved about a lot. Breda's eyes found a nice slim waist nestling above a very full pair of shorts. He had quite a nice bottom she noticed. Full and quite rounded. It reminded her of a plum pudding - or rather two plum puddings. It didn't displease her. She had no interest in the physical side of life herself having read an article about sex in a woman's magazine at the doctors years ago and had been quite put off deciding it was never going to happen to her. And it never did. She never regretted it but found that this complete lack of interest in sex could be used to her advantage as her customers in the evening were nearly all men. Bachelor men. Crusty farmers who lived either on their own, with a mother or a brother and could never find a wife willing to live in poverty up to her armpits in cow shit. The poverty of the times meant that any young marriageable girl got out of the country as soon as she had the boat fare and never came back. Horny men were generous with their cash and a little bit of dirty talk could get one of her farmers to linger perhaps for an extra drink - thus boosting her profits. It had dawned on her that not all of the men seemed distressed with not having a woman about and she wondered if some of them weren't of the persuasion she read about in the Sunday newspapers she sold. The scandals following a raid on a public toilet in England where professional men were caught 'in shameful positions' with other men. She had no idea what that meant but it did mean there was another world out there from which she could derive a profit if she could only figure out how to tap into it. Looking at Paddy McGinty's full rounded bottom was beginning to put ideas into her miserly head. She wondered...... exactly how many of her farmer friends would like her new employee serving them petrol and alcohol?