After my blissful encounter with Mum’s friend Dorothy (see the story of that name), I still had a week to go in my little Norfolk hometown, staying in the family home and bored out of my skull most of the time. It was a seaside resort in the days when British people mainly took their holidays in Britain and all you did was take the train or jump into the car and a few hours later you were by the sea. It might be cold, it might be windy, but that didn’t matter. It was a different environment and it felt healthy and relaxing. You knew the sea was going to be freezing, but that was just a challenge. And on the east coast, there was almost always an icy breeze blowing off the North Sea. You didn’t complain (much); you just hoped for at least a few sunny days and if you got them, all was right with the world and that world didn’t have to extend any further than the shores of our island.
Now I wandered around town, trying to revive that lucky feeling, but it occurred to me how much the place had changed since I was growing up, when it seemed to be the centre of the world. Now it was dying that sad, slow death that the changing world inflicts on places that have done nothing wrong. It was like being dumped by a girlfriend because she fancied someone else: not your fault, nothing you could have done about it and nothing you can do now.
I was looking for some of the girls I used to know, but in their place, I found mothers and wives, all seeming disappointed, let down by life. The happy, carefree girls had either left the area or mutated into these drab, spiritless specimens. I hung around in the cafe we used to use, which itself had changed: different owners, different furniture, different menu, different cups and plates.
Eventually I despaired of the search for lost youth and headed to the cemetery for some poignant peace and quiet. Some people find such places spooky, creepy, but I find tranquility. The modern world is put in perspective by the knowledge that it has always been the modern world to somebody and eventually they fell off it and lived happily ever after, dead.
As I wandered the narrow paths, amused by some of the old names and startled by a new grave here and there, I saw Grace standing, staring at an old tomb – not just a stone but a stone box that probably housed several generations of a family. I moved over to that area and hung around, waiting for her to notice me. Eventually she did. She looked up and smiled.
“The boy who came home,” she mused. “Sorry, you’ll always be a boy to me. A young man. Not so young now, I know, but younger than me.”
“I like it here,” I said quietly.
“Me too,” she said. “I’m not just here to see Edward. Just gives me a feeling like it’s all right, it’s going to be all right in the end.
“Exactly,” I agreed. We wandered together, aimless and carefree, feeling strangely at home in each other’s company, so it wasn’t a surprise when she invited me to her place for a cup of tea. I accepted gratefully and soon we were in her large, dilapidated house.
Grace was a slightly chubby and stilted grande dame who had never done a day’s work in her life because her parents had money and then she had married a well-to-do businessman with fingers in a lot of pies, including a Ford car dealership. Grace wore too much makeup in an effort to add something to the perfectly good face, which she spent too much time looking at in the mirror. She had big pouty lips and baggy eyes and was one of those over-managed women who made me want to pin her down and wank onto her chest.
Today she was wearing a lilac woolen sweater and a biscuit-coloured pleated skirt.
“Needs fixing, I know,” she said. “The house. But I like it like this. I’m afraid if I ask somebody to tidy it up they’re going to tell me it needs more than that, needs ripping apart. Not just replace the wooden windows with plastic ones but rip all the plaster off. Throw this out, replace it with that.”
The house had that sweet smell which is quite charming until you realise it’s because something is rotting.
Grace made green tea and brought out some ginger nuts. It was 3:30. She reached into a sideboard and fished out a bottle of sweet sherry – Harvey’s Bristol Cream, naturally.
“Go on,” she said, “Why not?” But as she finished pouring us a glass each she dropped the cork, which rolled under a chair.
“I’ll get it,” I said, and sprang down, fishing for it. It had gone further than I thought. I rummaged for it, stretched and found it. I twisted onto my side and found myself boxed between her feet. I turned onto my back and looked up. She was standing with one foot on either side and I could see right up between her legs and into the dark valley with her big, sensible white knickers. I didn’t know what to say, so I averted my eyes for a second, then without meaning to, I looked again. She allowed me to do it before stepping away and into a different stance. I lifted my arm to give her the cork.
We sat in armchairs by the coffee table and I sensed that something had changed.
“So,” she said with something like irritation. “You’ve come back to check on the old folks, have you?” I teetered on the edge of correcting her, but she wasn’t having it. This was her conversation and she had only just begun. “Well as you see, we’re perfectly all right—even your mother. You think you’ve got all the answers, just because you’re the next generation. Well let me tell you, young man, we know a thing or two ourselves.”
She stared at me with an intensity that couldn’t make up its mind if it was friendly or hostile. I still couldn’t decide how best to play it, but I thought I had better do as children do when they’re being told off – and that was what it felt like. I should just sit there and let the storm blow itself out.
“Not married yet, then?” she said rhetorically. “Well, why should you? The world is your oyster in this day and age. Isn’t it?” I was supposed to react in some way, so I grunted. “A girl in every port,” Grace continued, wandering off the point but staying in the general area of scolding a man for being a man.
“Did you enjoy looking up my skirt?” she said with a flash of self-consciousness that made her toss her head. She stared at me. “I saw you,” she said. “Looking up the skirt of a woman old enough to be your mother. Is that how you think of me? And Edna? And Dorothy? I’ve seen you looking. Thinking. Wondering. What’s it like with an older woman, that’s what men are wondering these days. You’ve had all the younger ones. What if their Mums are interested? And of course you think we are. We must be. How did our generation produce yours if we didn’t allow things to happen?” Now she stopped and sat forward. “Are you going to do it again?” she mocked, parting her legs slightly. “Shall I let you? Do I want you to? You don’t know, do you? No, the mad old bitch, you’d be asking for trouble, wouldn’t you? Well here…”
She parted her legs wide just for a second, to show me her white knickers.
“Sensible, decent white knickers from M&S,” she said. “It’s just an article of clothing. Why are you getting so excited? You can’t see anything. It’s just cotton. 100% cotton to provide optimum conditions for whatever’s inside. Would you like to see what’s inside? Yes, I think we’re getting to it now, Philip. This is a summit, and we have to get to the point of the meeting sooner or later. So here…” she spread her legs and kept them wide, but pushed the skirt down between them. “Come over here,” she said with a certain nervousness overlaying the brazenness.
“It’s all right,” she said. I’m not going to scream the place down. I’m asking you nicely. It’s my idea. I want you to come over here and kiss me. Come on.”
The fact that her voice settled over the last few sentences convinced me that it might be safe. I would kiss her and she could decide what happened next. She probably had decided already, anyway.
I walked the few steps to Grace’s chair and knelt in front of her. Her eyes had a crazy gleam as she brought her face to mine, and she kissed me with an odd, slow-motion tongue that didn’t know where to go. I licked her tongue with mine and ploughed her entire mouth, trying to find nerve endings that would kick her into action. Then I felt her hands on my cock and balls and I heard her whimpering with desire, out of control and realising she was out of her depth. She was handing the reins to me.
I kissed Grace tenderly, all over her face, her ears and down to her neck. She was caked with makeup and I felt sorry for her. She didn’t know how to be a naked woman. For so many years she had hidden behind her forbidding demeanour and her layers of skin enhancers and disguisers.
“I think we should go to your bedroom,” I suggested.
“Spare room. Through there,” she said, leading the way. With all the preamble out of the way, all the bluster expended, she was palpably relieved and refreshed in her role as co-conspirator against her stuffy older self. She had given me a lecture, a dressing-down, and now she was free. She seemed thirty years younger.
Grace’s outfit, tame and plain as it was, could not have been easier to dispense with. The little fine-wool sweater was over her head in a trice, a waft of underarm scent leaving her body as she completed the move. I reached behind her and unhooked the bra. She let it fall where it fell. I gathered up her pleated skirt, which came in loose bunches until I had enough to hold in my left hand while my right delved into her knickers. She was smiling as I unzipped the skirt, let it drop and I went up to kiss her again.
“Inside,’ she whispered, bending slightly to enable me to perform that high-jump manoeuvre with which a man lifts a hand over the waistband and plunges it into that wonderful space. Grace obviously enjoyed this; it took her back to the days of fumbling with boys – or in her case probably only one boy, ever – in their private location round the back of her parents’ house.
She gasped as my finger entered her slit and changed from descent to take-off, powering up her vagina until my knuckles got in the way. I extricated my finger and put it into my mouth.
“God you’re naughty,” she whispered. “Give me some.” I put it in her mouth and she sighed. She sat on the bed and pulled me on top of her, sliding the duvet aside and covering us for warmth and decency.
“Are you thinking of precautions?’ she asked. I smiled yes. “No need,” she said happily. “Not necessary in this old body.” I didn’t like this self-deprecation, however much it might have been based in fact. I kissed her slowly and thoughtfully on the rose of her puckered lips, then moved down and kissed her nipples and headed down to repeat the benediction on her belly and pubic mound, then stole a quick peck on her labia.
“More of that,” she said. “If you please.” Her legs parted as if by remote control and she wriggled and tittered as I got my face into her woman’s parts, which had been off-limits for years if not forever. I gently chewed her lips and sucked her juice. I desperately wanted to lick her arse, but was afraid that would freak her out at this early stage. Better wait for another day. All the same, I flicked my tongue in that direction and she jerked automatically.
I climbed back up and lay between Grace’s legs. She looked deep into my eyes, waiting for penetration, and when that came, it was as if the whole of me was penetrating the whole of her, as if I was a whole piston and she a complete cylinder. She alternated between gazing into my eyes and staring into space while wrapping her legs around me. She moved smoothly, rhythmically and her hands danced along my back, over my buttocks and a finger popped cheekily between, into a sinful area which she couldn’t resist. Then she began to narrow her eyes and breathe through pursed lips like a woman giving birth. A look of mild panic came over her face and finally, she hissed and threw her arms to the sides.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve finished.” I translated this as “I’ve come and I want you to come too,” and to that end, I gripped her tightly by the shoulders and concentrated all my energy into my cock ramming her. In seconds I was lurching and convulsing and Grace was stroking me and squeezing my back to welcome my deluge into her jungle.
We lay together for half an hour, adjusting to the new intimacy that had taken us both by surprise. To my relief, the madwoman of earlier on was nowhere to be seen, swept away by good loving and the thousand little unspoken deeds, promises and favours we had exchanged in that entirely natural process. When we did get up, shower and get dressed again, it was as if we were now something like partners. She didn’t feel, look or act like any girlfriend I had ever had, and I’m sure she felt the same way, but there was a respect and a veneer of love over us.
