Chapter two
John’s mother had indeed changed but she was neither sick nor was she
the bullied and dispirited woman he’d left behind all those years ago.
Just as against all the odds she’d managed to stay young at heart
throughout her miserable marriage, so when her husband died she’d been
determined not to become a drab, unattractive, old-before-her-time
crone.
Instead she’d accepted her husband’s death as a blessing and decided
to make the most of her unexpected freedom. She had been left
comfortably off owning a large, detached home in a fashionable area of
Bristol and she had one close friend, someone who would help her
change her life for the better – Margaret Thomas. Only one real
disappointment blighted her life and that was the absence of her son
John and there her pain was cruel and deep.
From his birth she’d nursed her only boy through asthma and the usual
crop of childhood illnesses, watched him thrive at school and loved
him with an uncomplicated, matronly devotion. But as her son had moved
towards manhood she’d realized that her feelings towards the boy were
starting to change. For years her husband had ignored her as a woman
and a wife but as John grew stronger, taller, more interesting, so she
found her natural hunger for love and attention being satisfied by her
son’s increasing tenderness and devotion. It had been wonderful to
find that this young male was the very opposite of his father and that
suddenly she had a loving and caring companion beside her in her own
home. So it was for the first time in years she found herself enjoying
the company of someone who WANTED to help, WANTED to show affection
and sometimes wanted to comfort her when her spirits were low.
But ever fearful that her husband would notice this new found
happiness and go out of his way to spoil it John’s mother sometimes
had to hide the true measure of her pleasure when John paid her
attention or offered companionship. It went against all her natural
inclinations but she only dared encourage her son’s displays of
affection when the father was absent and though she knew the boy was
sometimes confused and perplexed by her inconsistent behavior she had
no alternative.
Slowly but surely however, a new and much closer relationship
developed between mother and son until one evening she realised that
John did not find her ‘interesting’ just because she was his ‘Mum’ and
that was when the penny dropped. Suddenly she realised that her Johnny
was becoming interested in her and attracted to her because he was
beginning to see her as – a WOMAN!
The signs were all there and they became more and more obvious as John
began to take a personal interest in what she wore, in her make-up and
in her likes and dislikes until she began to find that the motherly
love in her heart was slowly but surely turning into a passionate,
secret, hungry lust for the boy! And no matter how hard she tried to
suppress and inwardly struggled to ignore these unnatural yearnings
the moment came when she had to admit to herself that although she
loved her hansom, intelligent, caring son as any mother would, she
WANTED him too……..as any passionate, frustrated woman might!
Alone in her bed in the dark, desperate for some measure of relief
from the pangs of sexual hunger that now tormented her, John’s mother
caressed herself to sleep and dreamed of what couldn’t be and then
during the waking hours buried her desires deep so as not to burden
her son with a dilemma no one could resolve but herself. And so the
months and then the lonely years passed and she lived her secret,
double life on the threshold of dementia until John left home for
university and later, as a research scientist, obtained a position in
Australia and left the UK for good.
And this was when, emotionally devastated, she finally had to accept
that her beloved son was going beyond her reach and wasn’t coming home
again – not even for his father’s funeral. The truth was a brutal blow
but being a practical woman John’s mother decided there and then that
she must bury her thwarted, inappropriate desires for ever. So out
went the boring routines, dismissed was her life of house bound
drudgery and after a period of adjustment and to the amazement of
those who knew her, she was leaving the house at 8.00 every morning to
become personal secretary to a local solicitor, a family friend she
had known and admired for years.
Slowly but surely time passed until she’d entered middle age full of
confidence and thriving on her new found freedom. Gradually she had
buried her incestuous lust under a blanket of self denial that was
more fragile than she realized and had become a woman whose attitude
to life and living was relaxed. And with these changes came a liking
for fashion, good clothes, quality make-up and the best hair dresser
in town until in all respects she became ‘a lady’ and a very
attractive one at that.
In time she began to go out for the evening, choosing her partners
carefully from amongst a small group of close friends and business
contacts but she never considered accepting any of the occasional
offers to ‘go out on the town’ which she received from certain
eligible men. This did not mean, however, that she denied herself the
chance to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh from time to time. Indeed
not. With help from her closest woman friend she learned how to invite
a man she ‘fancied’ into her bed on a one-off basis but always chose a
much younger man to service her needs. It was a measure of her
emancipation and ability to command loyalty and discretion that a
paramour, before he was allowed through the door of her bedroom, had
to agree that she would always call him ‘John’. The first time she had
nervously made this renaming a condition of climbing into bed with her
the young stud concerned had happily agreed without asking for a
reason – although later in the throes of passion she had unwittingly
revealed that ‘John’ was in fact her absent son. Frightened at first
that her secret foible might drive a lover away she had been agreeably
surprised to find that the ‘Come and fuck Mummy’ game’ was one that
certain young men were very happy to play with an older woman, given
the chance. Indeed they played it with an enthusiasm that not only
satisfied her deepest, secret needs but made her wonder if many
growing boys might, at some time, dream of getting into bed with their
mothers for a lusty fuck but just never got the chance?
Recently on the suggestion of her friend Maggie she’d considered
begging John to come home for an occasional holiday just to have him
physically near her once in a while but he’d made it clear that
Australia and his medical career were the centre of his world and she
wouldn’t beg. Eventually however her friend Maggie pursuaded her to
use her womanly wiles and trick John into coming back to give comfort
to ‘a sick old woman’ before it was too late.
And so it was that John was standing on Temple Meads platform looking
around as the throng cleared searching for a glimpse of small, sad old
woman – his mother. The crowd thinned gradually until, through a gap,
he saw a small, smart woman in a business suit standing alone. At
first he couldn’t be sure but then the woman turned in his direction
and he felt confused. Could this really be his mother? She wasn’t old
and decrepit but the moment the woman started to move towards him he
KNEW it was her for her walk hadn’t changed one bit. After all these
years she still swung her hips in that special way, placing one foot
elegantly in front of the other.
‘My God!’ he thought, ‘How well dressed…..and curvaceous and elegant
she is!’ but then he had to bring himself back to earth and watch as
she approached, high heels clicking along the platform, one gloved
hand held at just the right angle as she touched her tip-tilted hat
and smiled up at him.
“Welcome home, Johnny,” his mother said in a soft, confident voice and
offered her powdered cheek to him to kiss. John took her dutifully by
the elbows and bending down kissed her gently and in doing so breathed
in a deliciously subtle perfume that immediately sparked awake old,
savage and familiar urges and this startled him. He had been prepared
to meet and comfort a sick old lady but here was someone for whom the
title ‘woman of the world’ seemed much more appropriate.
The e two exchanged greetings with a certain reserve as was only to be
expected having spent so many years apart and as John escorted his
mother to the taxi rank he struggled to come to terms with the fact
that she was neither old nor sick and most certainly not at deaths
door. On the contrary she seemed in excellent health, appeared
prosperous, self confident and obviously had a hair dresser who
charged a bomb for his services.
Once they were in a taxi John reminded himself that first and foremost
the small, elegant, attractive woman sitting beside him was the woman
he’d abandoned so selfishly and it was at her request he’d come home;
ostensibly to reconcile their differences. Not having seen his mother
for so long John had been prepared to be saddened by his first sight
of her and had been ready to show her the filial love she had been
denied for years. Being a realist he had expected their first meeting
to be strained and to help ease the way forward he’d come armed with a
short list of mundane questions which would help ‘break the ice’. No
doubt there would be a great deal of soul searching and catching up to
do later but initially he’d wanted to keep the atmosphere calm and
uncomplicated.
As the taxi eased out into the evening rush hour traffic John wondered
where to begin. He knew his mother worked for an old family friend,
Charles Williams, a solicitor with offices in the city centre, so
perhaps he’d ask, ‘Are you happy working under Charlie?’ It seemed an
innocent enough question until he imagined this new style mother of
his replying in a cheerful voice, ‘Oh, I’m very happy! Dear old
Charles – he loves having his cock sucked during his coffee break so
sometimes he tells me to lock his office door and get down on my……!’
John’s brain almost blew a fuse as his conscience shrieked, ‘No, no!
You stupid bastard!!’ over and over again. This was NOT the sort of
dirty trick he wanted his mind to start playing! Not at this or any
other time during his visit home!
Desperate to break what was becoming an awkward silence John was about
to ask, ‘How’s your health these days?’ when once again his inner
thoughts took over and urged him to ask if his mother still wore those
deliciously sexy lace trimmed silk directoire knickers? And how about
finding out if she was wearing stockings and suspenders and if that
pretty little mole on her bottom had got any bigger since he’d last
seen it? Immediately he imagined his mother asking, “And how do YOU
know I’ve got a mole – THERE?’ before visualising the look on her
face if he were to admit, ’Remember our picnics? How I kept a ‘look
out’ while you had a pee in the woods? Well….I used to follow and
watch you drop your knickers!’
As John, in a state of utter mental confusion, struggled with his
conscience his mother gave a little cough and said in a sharp tone
that spoke of irritation and frustration, “Excuse me. I’m still here
you know.”
With a murmur of apology John came back to earth with a bump and saw
his mother lounging back against the leather upholstery, smoothing her
skirt with those small hands he had always admired. Her gaze was
direct and he saw that she was frowning at him.
“Sorry,” he muttered, adding, after a short pause, “I’m so sorry,
mother. My thoughts were miles away.”
His mother nodded but her frown told John she did not consider his
excuse good enough in the circumstances. For another few moments they
both stayed silent until out of the blue John’s mother leaned forward
and asked, “Did you WANT me to find those stories – the ones you’d
hidden in the tree house?”
Over a year ago the handyman had found a rusty tin box in the old tree
house in the back garden which when she opened it contained several
little books in which John as a school boy had recorded his lurid,
lecherous, incestuous dreams! Once the initial shock had eased his
mother had read them and learned the truth about her son’s teenage
obsession! Suddenly, after all those years, those boyhood stories
telling of his secret desires had revealed how furiously his fertile
imagination that boiled with an insatiable sexual hunger that had been
focused solely on HER! To have discovered after all the heart ache and
the lonely years apart that she and her Johnny had, at one and the
same time, harbored an incestuous lust for one another had been
shocking then exciting and finally unbearably painful.
It had taken some time for her emotions to calm and only then was she
able to reflect on the past and accept it for what it was – long gone
and dead forever. Then came the next step and it took all her courage
to decide that, somehow, she must see her son just once more so as to
find peace within herself by demonstrating that she was and always had
been his loving, caring mother – and nothing more – and to do this
before it was too late.
mother’s secret lust for HIM all those years ago and so had been
spared agonies of regret too awful to imagine.
Again that demanding voice, asking, “Those stories you hid in the tree
house, John! Was I meant to find them?
John had no idea what his mother was talking about. Bemused and wrong
footed he stared back at this self possessed, lovely woman whose
personality was so much more forceful than the one he remembered. Then
a wave of horror swept over him as he remembered the sexually explicit
stories he’d written as a gauche teenager all those years ago! Stories
that had revealed in graphic detail the sexual adventures he’d shared
night after night with his mother in the secret corners of his sex
obsessed teenage mind. GOOD GOD! He had even attempted to illustrate
them though he remembered the standard had not been good. He
remembered hating his cold, calculating, emotionless father but
adoring his unhappy, overworked mother almost to distraction and how
desperately he had wanted to help and comfort her, the woman who so
easily stirred his passions to boiling point! But such demonstrations
of love as he was able to offer his mother had only seemed to anger
his father and so cause his mother further distress. It had been the
classic ‘Catch 22’ situation and so, in the end, he had left home as
soon as he could to escape the torture. But away from home he’d found
it difficult to excuse or forgive himself for having cut himself off
so completely from the only woman he had ever truly loved.
“WELL? Are you going to tell me?”
Oh, God! Those little note books full of short, crudely illustrated
tales of imagined sexual excesses shared with his mother, produced in
the privacy of the tree house, the one place where he could revel in
his incestuous longings and wank himself to a standstill! In his rush
to escape the reality of his frustration at home he’d forgotten to
destroy them! BUT….HAD SHE REALLY FOUND THEM?
“Oh, good grief!” he exclaimed, thrown into a state of embarrassed
confusion and when his eyes refocused and he stared at his mother she
was staring back at him – waiting for an answer.
Her gaze was bold and questioning when she sat up straight and said,
“Those little books were full of……well….” His mother’s voice faltered
but the expression on her face gave no hint as to whether she had
brought him half way across the world to show her disgust and unload
her anger before…..befor what? Before she banished him forever from
her life?
John felt a hot flush sweep across his cheeks as he spread his hands
in a helpless gesture, half apology, half a plea for forgiveness. “I’m
so, SO sorry Mummy!” he said in a weak, tortured voice, suddenly a
little confused boy again! “I really am!” Covered in confusion he
shook his head and said, “Of course I didn’t want you to find them!”
but dared not say anything else for fear he might anger and hurt this
gentle, precious creature even more than he had already.
With a wave of a gloved hand his mother dismissed his apology and
said, “Well, in those days you certainly had a vivid imagination. I’ll
grant you that!” then added in a clipped tone, “I just thank God your
father never saw those pages, John!”
John shuddered as his mother’s words conjured up a vision of the
terrible indignities she would have had to suffer had his father
discovered that his wimp of a son was a pervert to boot! Tongue tied
John struggled to think of an avenue down…