SEDUCTION

 

   It is a strange thing to plan the seduction of a woman one has never met, and to whom one has barely spoken. But it is something that I am doing, and I am excited. I am English, and she is an American, and I met her a couple of months ago on the Internet. This is a fashion of the moment, and we have exchanged a whole stream of emails, together with a couple of pictures from each side. She seems both a very pleasant woman, and perhaps in need of me. I have wooed her in prose and poesy, because I am a writer, and she is plainly attracted, and I am really most flattered. But I have a strangely nervous feeling, as though I am a teenager about to embark on a blind date.

   She is due to arrive at Heathrow airport in a couple of hours, and I have prepared my ground carefully. I have hoovered my Queen Anne cottage some six miles north-west of the airport until it is spotless, and I have dusted every last particle of dust away, because it is a known thing that American women are fussy about such things. My sheets are snowy-white, and I have a surprise in my spare bedroom, because I am a man with tastes that veer towards the deviant. Well, they are impulses to me, but to some others they are deviant. I have been to France to buy food and wine, both sweet and dry, because I want her to enjoy her stay – we have tentatively agreed that she will be with me for a week, or perhaps ten days. I have French beer in the refrigerator, and smoked ham, and hard sausages, together with several varieties of sheep and goat cheeses, because these chime nicely with my my home-baked rye bread. I also have some cans of salsify, and there are duck  breasts in the freezer. A guest must always be regaled.

   But how will I win her? (I must win her, because otherwise I risk being lumbered with a chubby but chilly little American, plus lending her my spare car so that I can send her off on on missions here and there: The Tower, and Stratford on Avon, and places like that, not to mention no end of embarrassment. I am not a man to court failure).

   So I get up at crack of dawn on the crucial morning, and head for the Western International Market. The WIM is a fruit and vegetable wholesale market just north of Heathrow, off the Hayes bypass. But it also sells cut flowers at very much lower cost than florists. A man seeking to impress can fill a car with blooms, and it is a place for negotating: market traders always like to haggle.

   I amble around and choose yellow roses. I have sent Helen, my American, a green macintosh because she has green eyes, and golden roses will tone with her nicely. (The macintosh is something of my own choosing. My deviation focuses on satin macintoshes with rubber linings, and winter is coming, so damp weather fabrics should be in fashion). I buy six dozen roses, all still in bud, because they make a really good armful. Women are often won by first impressions, and a big armful of roses should make a really brilliant show on an airport concourse.

   Then I drive down to Heathrow, park, arrange my roses artistically in my arms, lock my car and set off. People stare at me curiously as I walk briskly along the passage towards the terminal building. Men wonder what I am about, and perhaps feel they should be doing something similar. Women makes eyes at me, because they wish their men would fill their arms with roses. I look straight ahead, neither to left nor right, because I only want to charm and convince one person.

   Meeting a stranger is always an embarrassing moment. I watch the passengers coming out of the Customs area, and I can see that most are Americans – it is something about the way they dress, and walk. Then I see this woman in a green macintosh. She is fair, and tubby, carrying a small holdall, and she looks tired, and a little nervous. But I can see that I will like her, and I hope she will like me.

   I position myself in her path, hiding in my blooms, and she slows uncertainly. Then she stops, and she is smiling a little shyly, with the kind of smile that a woman reserves for a well-meaning stranger, and then she must realise that the roses are real, and not plastic buds, for she looks completely taken aback.

   ‘Are you Nicolas?’ Her voice is small and uncertain.

    I smile: I need do no more.

   Suddenly her face puckers, and she looks as though she is on the point of bursting into tears. I have the feeling that she may have imagined almost any welcome but this, and I quickly hold the roses out to her, to prevent her going to pieces. ‘You better carry them, so I can carry your bag.’

   It is a banal thing to say. But one is always banal at difficult moments. She nods, and gathers the roses together a little awkwardly. But she starts to smile as she buries her face in their gold, and I know everything is going to work out. I even think of kissing her, but I think it better that she has a chance to compose herself.

   We talk a little on the way back to my cottage. We have spoken on the telephone a couple of times, and we know something of each other from our correspondence. But it is plain that she is very tired, and only talking out of courtesy. At one point on the motorway I could swear that her eyes close and head falls forward into the golden mass in her arms, but she straightens quickly, and I admire her courage.

   My cottage is in the country, set back from a rural lane behind a stream and surrounded by farmland where horses graze. I swing across the road to cross my bridge, and I can see that she is impressed: winter is fast coming on, and the garden is pretty much dead, but I have a rose over my porch entwined in clematis, and it is all very much what a transatlantic visitor might dream.

   I park, and she gets out of the car, still holding her roses, and I fetch her holdall. I look down at her, because she is perhaps six inches shorter than I am, and now I know that this is a moment for kissing, because I am welcoming her to my home. I take her face in my hands, cupping her face in my two hands, and touch my lips very gently to hers. I can feel her lips part, but I only brush my lips against hers. I can see that her flight has drained her completely, and it is not a time for demanding.

   Then I open my front door. I had planned any number of welcome scenarios, whilst preparing for her visit, but none can fit the moment. I have a very tired and bewildered woman on my hands, and she must sleep.

   Helen looks around her as she enters my house, and she is plainly impressed, because I have an interesting collection of watercolours painted by my father and grandfather, some good pieces of furniture, and a nice Turkish carpet, but she moves with the dullness of fatigue, and there is only one route.

   I look down on her benignly. ‘You are going to bed.’

   Her green eyes fire up a little. I can see that her first reaction is one of disappointment – she thinks I am going to strip her, and have my way with her, without any preamble, and then her disappointment colours with a fleeting touch of passion, because she is a woman in need of affection, and it is plain that she has lived in a world where men have expressed their desires all too selfishly. But she is too exhausted to complain, and she lowers her eyes. She will do what has to be done, and she can only hope that it will not be too unpleasant.

   I carry her bag upstairs and turn back the duvet. ‘Lie down, and sleep for as long as long as you like.’ I smile at her reassuringly. ‘I will be working on my computer downstairs. I’ll make you coffee when you wake’.

   I am waiting for my computer to power up when I hear a small sound. Helen is standing in the doorway, naked but for the macintosh, and she is smiling a little shyly.

   I look at her and shake my head. ‘No, sweetheart. You are going to bed.’ I take her by the hand and lead her upstairs, help her take off the macintosh, and am momentarily caught up by desire, but it is not the right time. I find her a pair of my pyjamas, though she looks a little comical in them, and then bend over her and stroke her cheek as she closes her eyes, and kiss her gently on each of her eyelids.

   The rest of the morning passes, and most of the afternoon. I arrange the roses in several vases, and work at my screen, and make myself a small salad for lunch, but moving softly in the kitchen, so as not to wake my guest.

   It is already growing mid-afternoon as I hear a small sound again. Now Helen has the macintosh on again, with the belt roughly knotted, and she is awake. I stand up, and look down on her, and she has a small fire in her eyes. It is a questioning fire, perhaps even only a flicker, because she is still not really sure of where she is, or what is happening to her. But she looks refreshed, and perhaps she is no longer wary.

   I cup my hands around her face again, and I kiss her on her lips, and I feel them part, and our tongues touch each the other. I pull back a little, and I can see her watching me questioningly, and I kiss her on her eyelids again, and along the line of her eyebrows, stroking the sides of her face down to her neck and on to her shoulders with my hands, and she is motionless, but I can sense that excitement is building within her. Then I push the macintosh off her shoulders, so that it drops to the floor, and I kiss her neck and her shoulderblades, and cup my hands under her breasts, stroking her nipples very gently from side to side with my thumbs to make them stand out from her breasts, and I kiss each nipple in turn.

   She shivers, and looks down at the macintosh. ‘I thought you wanted this.’ Suddenly her voice is hoarse, and no longer the voice of a respectable American matron. It is the voice of a woman meeting a man.

   I smile at her. ‘There will be time, when we know each other better.’

   I take her by the hand and draw her towards the stairs, and she turns. ‘Please kiss me again.’

   I kiss her, and now she puts her arms around my neck and is pressing herself against me, but I smile again. ‘We’ll be more comfortable in bed.’

   Helen stands in my bedroom now, and I start to undress. She wants to undress me, but I gently push her hands away. ‘You’re my guest.’

   She watches me as I stand naked in front her of her, and she comes to me again to kiss me. Then I push her gently down onto the bed, rolling her over onto her stomach, so that I can massage the back of her neck, and her back, and her buttocks and her thighs with a long gentle stroking touch, and roll her over on to her back, and massage her breasts, and her stomach, and the insides of her thighs, and now she is making the sound that a cat makes when it is most contented.

   I kiss her lips again, and her eyes, and her neck, and her nipples, and part her legs gently, kissing the small mound of her, and where she opens, because I am seeking a place where she might gain excitement. But she only writhes and murmurs a little, and I think she is probably still too tired from her flight. Yet there are still places to explore, and so I roll her onto her side, and lift her leg, so that I can lay a trail of small kisses between her legs, and I touch her second opening, but very gently, because it is a most sensitive place, and I am curious to know whether it can also be a place of pleasure. And now I am engorging, even though I am a man of sixty-five, and my engorging is far, far less than in the years of my youth, and I lay myself at her side, and she helps me enter from beneath, so that we are clasped tight, and my right leg is caught between her legs and I can hold myself hard against her, and I rock my body against hers in a slow steady motion.

   This is the best time of congress, the very best time, and it is a time that needs carefully managing, because I need to ignite a fire in her, and build it, and fan it to the point where it will encompass her most entirely. I can do this best by moving against her rhythmically, so that she can count on my movements, and build her own heating in unison. It does not matter if I exhaust myself whilst I am moving, because I am building heat in her by moving against her, rather than by moving in and out of her, and soon she will start moving of her own volition, and straining to complete her own pleasure, and when she achieves that I am fulfilled.

   It is a magic thing for a man to please a woman, and Helen moves, and strains, and cries out a little, and I know that I am, for a brief moment at least, making her happy.

   Afterwards we lie together, with our arms around each other, and we talk gently, because we are both now tired. But after a little she raises herself on my bed, and looks down at me.

   ‘I went next door.’

   I look at her, because I am a little uncertain. I have laid the bed in my spare bedroom with a pair of latex sheets, because they give me a strange pleasure. But they are not a thing to foist onto strangers.

   She gets off the bed, and gathers her green macintosh up, and puts it on, and looks down at me. ‘Now I will show you.’

   She takes my hand and leads me into the next room, and I am naked on the bed, and now she caresses me as I caressed her, and kneels with her knees either side of me, and I can feel her lips exploring my manhood, not taking it into her mouth, because that is only a simulation of real pleasure, but kissing it and stroking it, and the macintosh makes a cave around me as she sits on me, and I have her resting against my mouth, and I know how I can create pleasure in her. But there is only one real pleasure, and we must share it, and now the macintosh is an hindrance, and we are locked together again, and again, and again, and then we sleep, entwined together, and coffee is forgotten.

   It is dark when we wake again. I have put some pork filet in the refrigerator, and I rough out a menu in my mind in a desultory sort of way: I think I will fry a couple of onions and a bit of garlic, brown the pork, and stir in a sheep’s milk yoghurt when it is ready to serve, because that will give it a nice tangy flavour. Then I can serve it with rice, and a can of salsify turned in butter, and provide half a dozen different cheeses as a second course, with a bottle of wine from Alsace to wash it all down. It will be a tasty meal.

   But Helen stirs, and I look down at her fondly. There is something about the way in which a woman opens her eyes from sleep, and looks up into the eyes of a man, and smiles, that is very hard to resist. I bend over her and kiss her, and she rolls sleepily on the sticky sheet beneath her, and I kiss her breasts again very gently, and I can feel her hand stroking me, and we are together again, and we balance our movements together so that we are each straining to create pleasure, and she lets out her pent-in breath with a long exhalation of pleasure, and I smile at her as I fill my own desire, because this is the best enjoyment a man can have.

   Later I am busy with my stove. Helen has showered, and I perch her on a kitchen stool, because I only have a small kitchen, and there is little room for movement. She wants to help, but I place a full glass in her hand, and tell her just to smile from time to time. I am busy preparing a meal, and I do not want to fluff anything.

   The meal is good. The pork is nice and tender, and the rice just right, and Helen likes the salsify, a kind of white root that can be bought easily in France, but not quite so often in England. She finishes her glass, and I refill it, and she is like a flower opening and blossoming in the sunlight. We talk of England and America, and we are really singing to each other through our words. She blinks a little as she starts on her third glass, and I laugh at her, because I do not think she drinks wine so very often. But we are friends, and we are sharing a bottle, and there are plenty more bottles if need be, and it doesn’t matter whether she can negotiate the stairs, because I can put her to bed and kiss her good night, before I come back downstairs and clean up. She wants to help do the dishes, but I flatly refuse. Guests are guests.

   She sways a little as she stands at the end of her meal, and giggles like a teenage girl. I shepherd her carefully up to my bedroom, because I fear that she might fall back and hurt herself, but she manages successfully to disentangle herself from my bathrobe, and stands by my bed smiling at me. She looks a little owlish, because now her wine is catching up with her fatigue, but her green eyes have a fire in them, and I can see that the fire is wholly demanding.  I take off my shirt, and put my arms around her, so that we are skin against skin, and I kiss her, running my tongue up the side of her nose and across her eyelids, and then kiss her again on her neck, just beneath her ears, and at the back of her ears, and around their lobes, and I stroke my palms down the curves of her shoulders, and bring them back so they are cupping her breasts again. Now I can feel myself growing, and Helen falls back on the edge of the bed, and her hands are matching my stroking, and I push her gently down on her back, because now we are both ready for each other again.

   There are times when man and woman are together, and both seek entertainment, and there are other times when they are both in need of each other. I enter Helen, and my entrance is a confirmation of  assurance and protection. I am entering her because I want her to know that I care for her, and will care for her, whilst she is with me, and that she can count herself safe with me. I think she also understands that, because her body relaxes as she moves against me. I have her in my arms, and we are kissing each other, and holding each other, and we have no need to play games or hasten our culmination, because our desire is taking its own course, and we are pleasing each other. And when we are spent we are still locked together, because this is how it should be: we are joined, and we should not be parting.

   However time moves on, and jetlag conquers. Soon Helen is breathing regularly. I disentangle myself very gently, because I do not want to wake her, and she stirs slightly, and smiles in her sleep, as though she has a pleasant thought in her dreaming.

   The kitchen does not take long to clean, and I suddenly realise that I am also tired. I have spent a day that does not come commonly to a man of my age. I glance in the kitchen window and can see my reflection smiling at me a little goofily. Helen has made a man of me, and it is a knowledge of joy.

   I tidy up, and close the house down, and stroke my Persian cat for a moment. My cat smiles at me, blinking her eyes, and I have a feeling that she approves of my visitor.

   Then I creep upstairs. Helen stirs in my bed, but I know my bedroom well enough to be able to undress in the dark. I think of pyjamas, but push the thought away as ignoble, Helen is naked under the duvet, and I will be her companion. I settle against her, and prepare to sleep.

   I do not know whether I sleep, but suddenly I realise that a hand is stroking my shoulder very gently. I blink into awareness, because I have a feeling that I am dreaming. Then I remember where I am and that Helen is with me. I turn, and I am turning in her arms, and she pulls me against her, and then she frees me, and sits at my side, and now she is kissing me, with small gentle kisses that barely touch my skin, and I can feel her breath against the side of my face, and on my lips, and against my chest and my stomach, and her breath runs down the length of my penis, and her fingers are curling under my testicles, working on me and willing me to grow. And I must grow, because it is the way I am fashioned, and Helen rises, and squats above me and facing me, so that she is looking down at me as she lowers herself onto me, and she is inviting me into herself, and encompassing me, and she smiles as she moves on me, because I am wholly within her, and I am totally within her command.

   But I cannot bear her to be so far from me, and I pull her towards me, and she loses her balance and collapses beside me, and now she is laughing like a teenage girl, and it is a wondrous sound, because I know that she is shedding in the laughter the cares of many years. We join together again, and in our moving we are pledging each to the other, and then we sleep. But we sleep entwined, each in the arms of the other, because we are in union, and we must not be parted.

   Morning comes, and I wake sleepily. It is a bright sunny day, and I slip quietly into my underpants and trousers, picking up a shirt in passing. I have an angel in my bed, and I would for nothing to wake her.

   I make fresh coffee, and toast a couple of slices of my bread, spreading it with butter and marmalade, as I eat my own breakfast. I am not sure if I am right in making her toast and marmalade, because I do not know whether Americans like it. But it is something to offer as a breakfast snack, and I will eat it myself if she frowns.

   Helen wakes sleepily. She blinks at me uncertainly, and it is plain that she expects herself to be in another place, somewhere else. I bend to kiss her gently, and understanding begins to dawn in her eyes, and then she smiles. It is a long smile, and a smile that is filled with pleasure, and it warms my heart. ‘Good morning.’

   I smile back at her. I am a waiter, and I have brought her breakfast.

   She stretches herself with the grace of a cat, and I can see that she has no fear. She is at home with me, and it is a knowledge that fills me with joy. I am making her happy. She raises herself on her elbow, and her nose is questing, and she sees her breakfast tray. ‘Oh, my.’

   I watch her eating, and I can see that the marmalade is a new thing to her. But she munches contentedly, and I know that I have done a good deed.

   Then she looks at me, and now her eyes are no longer sleepy, and she is awake, and suddenly she searches me. ‘Why next door?’

   I stare back at her, and I am lost. This a question I have been fearing, because I do not know the answer. We have odd things buried in us, strange desires and problems, and we cannot always interpret them. We may have some inkling, some approximation, of the things that they are. But it is generally simpler to let them remain quiescent, rather than risk unleashing hidden demons.

   ‘You must know.’ Now her gaze is demanding.

   I shrug. Cowardice lies in its own betrayal. I fear to look within me, and in fearing, I cannot challenge myself.

   Helen rolls off my bed to stand. ‘We must both know.’ She does not say why she needs this knowledge, but I know that it will be my making, or my defeat. She holds out her hand, and now I am following her. She pushes open the door to my spare bedroom, and and I can see her green macintosh, where she has left it, strewn across my latex sheets. I follow her bereft of free will, because I know that another is exploring me, and may well discover me.

   Helen walks to the bed and shrugs herself into the green macintosh. It is nothing to her, for she is a priestess, robing herself into a vestment. She turns to inspect me. ‘Is it just this that turns you on?’

   I cannot say a word.

   She walks towards me, and my mind transforms her into an icon. But she is touching me, and is close against me, and I can smell the scent of the macintosh, and feel the smoothness of the fabric against me.

   ‘Is it this?’ She raises her arm, and draws it across my face, and the scent, and the feeling, of the fabric fill me with desire. But it is a a turned desire, one some way from the ordinary. I wish for something from this woman, and I am lost in my seeking.

   She presses against me, and she is insistent, and I am afraid. I have a choice: I can stand alone, as I have always stood alone, or I can seek my salvation within her. And gradually, as I hold her, I realise what she is offering. This woman wants to free me from my past, and ready me for my future. This woman seeks to join with in my destiny, and I must not gainsay her.

   She smiles at me, and it is a secret smile, something only between the two of us. ‘You must let me into yourself.’

   I am naked, and I am lying on my spare bed, on my latex sheets, and I have no knowledge of what may be coming. Helen sits at my side, and she is wearing her green macintosh, the gift that I gave her. She bends to kiss me, and she puts her arms around my neck, and I can feel the fabric against me. But now it is a comforting thing.

   ‘Perhaps, when you were a child, this thing came into your life.’ Now I can feel her breast brush against the side of my face, and I suckle on her, like an infant, and in my infancy I am seeking reassurance. My loins burn, and I know that she is caressing me, as I lie on my latex sheet, but it is not a caress that I am seeking. Helen is offering me a semblance of affection in her caressing, but I must have the whole of her nature. I reach out for her, and I am an infant reaching up to its mother. I reach out for her, and I am a man reaching up to his lover. For we are simply made. And Helen bends over me, and her mouth opens on my mouth, and I reach out for her, and my arms are around her, and I am within her, and it is my fulfilment.

   We move together, and we are making promises, each to the other. We move together, and we are binding ourselves.

   Afterwards, we lie together, each searching the eyes of the other. The latex sheets under us are hot and sticky with our sweat, but we do not mind them. I search her eyes with mine, for I have questions that need answers. ‘Is passion a bother?’

   Helen looks down at me, and she is thoughtful. It is as though we have travelled a million miles, a thousand years, from her arrival. She smiles down at me, and I am warmed to the very heart of my bone marrow, to the very core of me. ‘Sometimes. There are things one wants to do, and things one must do. The musts tend to over-ride the wants.’

   ‘And now?’

   She bends to kiss me. ‘And now? We are together.’

   It is a statement, and a judgement. We are as one, and we understand each other. No man, no woman, can ask for more. The future is in the making, and we have forgotten the past.

 

ends