Yes, I remember Honeyfold; the country station where I once sunbathed; the air heavy with the scents of blossom, field and farm, spiced with the lingering tang of the slow steam train I’d just missed. But I was content to bask in my summer dress for two hours till the next slow train. It was a God-given opportunity for a musician with thoughts enough to fill her mind.
The music in my head resonated with the external world; sultry, languorous and somnolent. I closed my eyes and imagined the sun stimulating the scent of the printed violets on my dress as the warmth played over my body.
I remember the chance moment when the express unexpectedly halted; the impetuous masculinity of its steam engine subdued, incongruous in the rural peace, as if the sultry silence had stilled the surge of smoke and the pulse of pistons, like a headstrong boy suddenly embarrassed in the society of elegant women. Over the dying hiss of steam the song birds echoed across the fields towards a horizon hidden in heat haze.
The train stood. The guard leant his head out of the window, drank me with greedy eyes, but wouldn’t let me mount.
“Not a scheduled stop. More than my job’s worth,” he grumbled, cross-faced but still not taking his eyes off me.
The express stirred, arrogant in its arousal of steam and thrusting of coupling rods. I was left alone, with only the bird songs and my own thoughts.
I relaxed back onto a long, comfortable bench, happy with the promise of a long sun-worship. My eyes closed, I savoured the happy conjunction of scents, the feminine summer flowers, spiked with the lingering pungency of oil and steam.
Half asleep I became intensely aware of my body, warmed by the ministrations of the sun, my loose cotton dress occasionally ruffled by a light breeze. I straightened out the dress, gently as though caressing myself. With a stroking movement I brought the hem of the dress up over my thighs, to feel the sun’s warmth as intimately as decency permitted. After all there was no one here, nor would be for at least an hour and a half.
Perhaps it was the suggestion of masculinity that the train had aroused which so intensified my sensuous feelings. Lying in the sunshine on this solitary station bench was like sinking into a bath, pampered by warmth, enveloped in a melange of fragrances. Missing only was the luxury of a toy—my little pink rabbit. Secure in the solitude I drew my dress further, to allow the sun to warm where my rabbit would go. The memory of it inside me slowly made it impossible to resist clasping with my hand.
This wouldn’t do—sensations were becoming unmanageable. To take my mind off them I reached out for the score I was learning, but the flood of feeling was already too full. The score meant nothing to me at all.
This moment was too precious for score-reading.
There was no-one to see me, except the sun. And the sun was telling me with insistent warmth that my body was special. I undid the top of my dress, as though plucking the printed violets. The scent of the wild flowers was so strong in the air I might just as well have been. Languorously—nothing was quick in this heat—I obeyed the sun’s request to warm my breasts. The sun rewarded me. I didn’t need my fingers’ caress to know my nipples were rising to the warmth and the unaccustomed exposure. I offered each in turn, relishing the sun’s approval.
My finger traced gentle patterns over them. Fortunately my long hair is dark, and I tan easily rather than burn. The skin between my breasts is soft and I enjoyed the whisper of my fingers over it, around each breast, and up to my collar bone. I desperately strove to keep my hands from straying down towards the flagrant self-pleasuring that my body was beginning to crave.
But there was surely no harm in loosening the rest of my dress—for the sake of coolness. I let the violets flutter to the ground, leaving only my panties’ protection should anybody appear.
But it didn’t cool me. The sun watched, and warmed me. My senses followed, hot beneath my one piece of thin underwear. Too moist now to comfortably keep it on. The panties had to go.
Immediately the sun’s warmth poured over my vulva. The wetness in my vagina responded. I opened my thighs, maximising the exposure of my pussy to this heavenly heat. Like there was nothing between the sun’s fire, and my own intimate sex. I don’t need my rabbit, I thought, as the living heat penetrated me. I still longed to plunge my hand into my depth, seeking out my magic place. But for the moment I just let the sun do its miraculous work. I closed my eyes, living for the spells the heat was weaving between my thighs. I opened them wider. Wow, if a man—or even another woman—could gaze on me with a warmth like that… Maybe they would—maybe one day…?
I dozed, naked and safe on this remote railway station. Hardly caring now if anyone should approach. My thoughts dreamt of a man, strong but elegant, muscular but gentle, desirous to penetrate where the sun was penetrating—eager but not greedy. Unable to resist me, but chivalrous in holding back. Waiting till I was ready to show his cock where to go.
I turned over and continued my daydreams while the sun massaged my ass. If a man should appreciate me as much as this summer day was doing, I would be satisfied for life. I thought of the firm, but claspable ass my dream man would have. Perhaps he would let me clasp it as we walked together down the street, declaring my possession of him.
It was no good. I could no longer lie passive. I turned on my back. Slowly, with exquisite anticipation I yielded my self to the first movement of my hand, down my tummy, into the opening of my lips. I longed to thrust straightaway deep into the vagina—to still and yet excite, to soothe and to stimulate.
But savouring every sensation I sank slowly, appreciating the transforming effect of the juices the sunlight had drawn out. Fingers discovered lips swollen with love; love of the summer, of what the sun was doing, of their own responses.
Surely this was what was meant by ‘self-love’.
The discovery deepened. I’d thought I knew my clitoris, its complexity, its exquisite sensitivity. But this was new. Was it the sun, was it the summer scents, the freedom of the open air, or was it just the opportunity to linger and take time?
I’d been lying on my back with my thighs wide apart, but now I turned onto my side. One hand was deep inside me, the other began to clutch and grasp my ass. As though the sun was encouraging my two hands to press as close as possible, back and front, with all the fountains of life-giving, wondrous responses enclosed between them.
There was still plenty of time before even the likelihood of anyone appearing. I felt I could continue my ecstatic journey forever and take all the time in the world. But my body felt otherwise. The restraint I’d felt as the sun was beginning its ministrations was long gone. On my back again, my body was involuntarily humping on the bench. I let it. I let my body rise and fall against my fingers. The palm of my hand clasped my mound. The fingers themselves began to lose control. They played with the nub of my clitoris. They pressed to my pelvis, they reached to the length of my vagina—snaking back and forth They found out that ecstatic nub again. And again. I could feel them bathed in my own honey-musk oil.
One day I would share all this with someone else. Maybe another girl, whose hands I would invite. Maybe we would play together with toys like my rabbit. Or perhaps I would open up to a man’s hard penis. In my delirious ecstasy I was imagining each in turn. The woman. The toys. The cock.
Then all thought fled. Only my clitoris mattered now. Faster and faster my fingers. How did they know what to do? But they did. My body replied in the only way it knew. My muscles squeezed, relaxed, squeezed again. My vagina was devouring my fingers. I cried out. Thank God there was no audience. These sounds were fit for none to hear. I thought I’d reached the ultimate climax. But it grew. Such happiness. Such beauty. I couldn’t hold it. I didn’t deserve it. Now. Now it was real. It happened. This was climax. This was climax.
I fell back. Lay back on the bench. Hot, happy, exhausted. If anyone had appeared in those last moments there’s no way I could have stopped. God, how had I dared risk it? The answer I knew was that nature had done this, not me.
I looked along the small platform There was still no-one even approaching the station. All was almost uncannily still, except for something glinting across the tracks a couple of fields away—maybe a bird-scarer, something metal glinting in a bush.
The train arrived. I looked again across the field. The glint had disappeared, but in the fraction of a moment I was sure I’d glimpsed a quick movement, as though someone had been there and was just leaving.
It wasn’t till several weeks later that a girl friend sent me a steamy poetry magazine she subscribes to. “I know,” she wrote, “you’ve been to Honeyfold. There’s a poem here I thought might amuse you. I bet you didn’t know things like this went on there.”
At first I was horrified, but when I’d calmed down couldn’t help finding it rather flattering. Here it is.
Honeyfold, by Tristram Halcyon
Yes, I remember Honeyfold.
Amidst field and farmland a hidden, country station
Serving who knows what tiny community.
Undisturbed, two fields away, I train keen eyeglass on a singing whitethroat.
The summer mid-day sun weighs heavy over the fields
Blurring vacant daydream with reality.
The only cloud the white puffs
Heralding the slow train,
Like a child’s picture.
Across the field from me it halts but no-one boards or lights.
It leaves, the whitethroat sings again
The blackbird answers, vying for solo spot.
Now, powerful, the express approaches,
Indomitable in its steamy machismo
Yet something has stopped it.
The impetus of pumping pistons is thwarted.
A hiss of steam, then
Silence.
Till, excitedly the engine throbs back into life
Greedy for new adventure.
The express gone, the station stills in the heavy heat.
Over the wooden, aptly named sleepers, the rails
Stretch away in the heat;
Shimmering silver parallels,
Toward their proverbial meeting place
‘At infinity’;
To an eternal ‘vanishing point’.
But as my eyeglass scans the platform
It catches a vision far more real, far more eternal,
Immortal
A goddess.
A goddess half-draped in summer flowers.
Bared breast turned toward the sun,
Offering itself in return for warmth and life.
Her hand traces its soft femininity
Calling out response from the sunlight
And from my rising masculinity.
I pray that this is real
That she doesn’t vanish.
Humbly I watch her summer violets float to the floor.
The miracle of her nakedness sings out to me.
Soon I am naked too.
I adore through the eyeglass
And from time to time free my hands
To copy her movements
Over my own aroused maleness.
And in imagination experience her mysteries as she must.
If only I dared approach her
But I know she would vanish
Back into eternity.
She must not know I am here.
She will never know that she teaches me
How a male body can feel.
Nor what her vision grants me
Of the gentle touch of inspired hands
Over mysteries risen like fountains
Sprung to new life;
Of the sun’s radiance on unaccustomed nakedness.
The train comes to carry her away;
We will surely not meet this side of that eternal vanishing point.
But meanwhile I must seek true partners,
Share with them the beauties and ecstasies she has taught me,
Loving the bodies we have been given,
Sharing the inspiration, the joy,
The oneness and the difference.
