Our heroine has her first orgasm at the age of sixty-three.
The latest issue and the letter arrived three days after Kevin turned sixty-one. Her name was Blue-eyed Lucy Jane. Enclosed was a picture of the aforesaid blue eyes and a charming note explaining how her Bill had died in the bleak days of the gas strike and how his life insurance paid for the bathroom renovations. Thus her ad among the pen pals. "Kind, compassionate, fun-to-be-with, with a great sense of humour," it said. "Love to have a final fling. Exclamation mark. Exclamation mark. Seeks same." That was Kevin to a tee. Cheeky. His Jill had died of steady pressure on the brain-cells, a condition blamed on dairy foods. He blew her pension cheque on milk liquers, a secret passion harboured for forty years. "She's gone," he had to say to himself, but in the letter in his hand the words "Love me to death!" rang across the page, implicit like a watermark. Mr Hodkins, walking by the letterbox, said hello but Kevin was in a reverie. He knew she could be the one. He had always thought to never mind the long goodbyes, while on the other hand he was, after all, a man, flesh and blood, and bone, and you cannot escape the frisky teenhoods if that's the way that God foresaw it should be done. Lucy Jane explained that things get pretty lonely on the far side of menopause, from a woman's point of view. She was sixty-three and thought she should be described as "spritely". Three letters later they met and hit it off.
As mentioned in her writing Lucy Jane had dreamed to see the Gypsy Islands; beautiful vistas of red gano trees against a backdrop of heavy lakes and volcano rims marked with tour-ropes and shacks for nervous honeymooners. Her Bill had taken her to Possum Bridge. She made sandwiches. He went fishing. There were other disappointments on Kevin's mind, too, when he suggested they book a ticket - damn it all! - and catch the hovercraft to the big resort that May.
"But I hardly know you," she said.
"You wouldn't think," he said, "That pressure on the braincells would throttle your libido, but its been a long, long time."
Lucy Jane could barely remember to what he was alluding.
"We could take the boat out to the waterfalls, and see the gummy sharks along the fringes of the reef," she said, flicking through the leaflet with its panoramic views and slogans vowing golden sunsets and, if you're lucky, turtles nesting in the soggy dunes. In fact, her Bill had been a sturdy man, although he rarely felt the inclination. Towards the end he lost a lot of weight and pleasuring him became like playing on the bagpipes.
Kevin decided to be up-front.
"Look, I'II level with you," he said. "Trust is so important. I... I... I dye my pubic hair."
She blushed. Had it been twenty years since any man had been so forthright?
"For an extra twenty dollars," she read quickly, "you get the deluxe package and free bingo thrown in."
Kevin grabbed her by the shoulders and made those blue gems glisten in his eyes. One eye was on the clock; he had to meet an early appointment with a specialist.
"I worked for fifteen years in hardware accounts," he said, his voice now mellowed with an earnest wish, "I worked my way up from nails and adhesives. I was the only one in the office that didn't own a caravan. Don't we owe it to ourselves?"
This rendered Lucy genuinely fond. "I know you're right," she said, "I know you're right."
Deep down she wondered what had gone wrong? One day, in the primes, she was a smashing ball of not-too-bad and had to fight them off with sticks. Then one day she wakes up and the bed is cold; her hips have grown unshapely among the ruins of time. Years go by and the very threads of time grow slack.
But Kevin here was the perfect gentleman.
"Allow me to open your door..." he says "...After you... Ladies first... Beware the steep curbside... Here, I brought you flowers... May I ... may I kiss you..."
Might he? Had the tiny muscles in her lips all given way? His lips were pocked with the discolourations of the sun. He moved closer. He made her feel that old, bold attraction. So she kissed him and her blue eyes clouded over and inside came the long-lost fertile rains moistening the dust.
Most people in such situations resent the implications of the word "mature". It conjures retirement homes and fenced valleys. Lucy prefered to think of a mild autumn. Kevin just laughed it off and insisted that next September he'd be turning 21. Taking him by the hand she led him to the bedroom.
"I like the look of the log cabins," she said, still awkward, "but I wouldn't care to be without a heater, even if they say the days are warm."
She proposed they catch a train to the city and her brother Ron might drive them to the hoverport. And they could save money, she said, if they only ate breakfast in the Lodge. She turned to him suddenly.
"You're not a keen angler are you?"
"I haven't angled since I went out with my Uncle Joe, nearly fifty years ago," he said, struggling with her bra strap. "We used to float off in the bay and throw bait out for the garfish. His friend Noel Berger was there. Drinking beer.... Damn strap! ... With florid cheeks. He had just got over the flu."
The thought went through his mind that, though he had seen great progress, technology had done nothing to ease the burden of a stubborn bra.
"The boat was bright orange," he continued. "Uncle Joe said we'd never get stranded, except in the fogs. I caught a 30 lb red turgler once. With nasty hooks. Uncle Joe helped me reel it in..... But I haven't landed a fish since then."
The strap snapped in two and slipped down her white shoulders.
"Good," said Lucy Jane, "just checking."
He was, she decided, worthy shelter. Might he make those blue eyes yearn again? And the Gypsy Islands called. No one dwells on their mortality, but it gets harder to pretend the longer one looks into the mirror. All you can do is dismiss it as a completely unhelpful fact. When she was young she might have left the light on, but she dimmed the bulbs and set the mood with candles.
What is it about a man's touch? It might once have been a signal to souls in heaven that a child is soon to be conceived. That theory died when her son Franky turned 18. A panel of experts reported that, once beyond its useful years, a uterus is a cancer-laden thing and should be removed at once. The women's movement fought back, outraged. And yet, she said of herself, she still believes in magic, leaps of electricity between lovers, unmotivated by any means to reproduce. "Purple nature!" she declared. "Solid penetrations! I'm an independent woman!"
And what is it about rough stubble nibbling the napes of your neck? Several times, making pikelets, she'd break down into teardrops knowing it would take her twice as long to eat a batch than when her Bill was there. Her best friend Gracie had met a man. Her aunty Celia, in the days when milk was carted out in wagons, had run off with a farrier, and she was sixty-four! The Italian at the grocer's had told her to see the world. What was it about the way that boy from Norwood made love to her one night that kept him in her lockets every day for the following forty years? His name was Tonkin. An athlete. He knew the roads behind the old potato farm. Lucy Jane fell into his arms. Late in the nights she could still smell his perspiration. Whatever became of him?
Several nights later Kevin stayed again. More relaxed, she told him how she looked like a damaged rag-doll and wondered how anyone could love her. Kevin nibbled at her hairline. She curled her head as if to let the pheromones settle among the lobes. Her spare hand likewise struggled with his fly. Undressing, she remarked upon his golden watch.
Then, for a moment, there was on him the unmistakeable scent of death, the smell of mice in their time-ridden certainty. It lingered until his fingers dropped onto her inner thigh and she winced with appreciation. Once, she remembered, there was a young man named Jon without the "h". In their reckless abandon how they played gymnastics without their lips ever parting! Was she twenty five or twenty six? Jon rolled her over. There were head-stands. Sidewindings. Wild belly flops! Perspiration mingled where her Adam's apple should have been! He rented a bungalow where they'd never be disturbed. Without checking she was fairly sure this behaviour was no longer recommended, so she lay on her back desperate not to be the forlorn maid.
"How do you like it?" Kevin whispered in her ear. "Tell me all, so I can turn you on."
This, from a grandfather of three, she thought.
Her locks of grey were loosely bundled into a ponytail along her side. His hands were like cream caramels stroking at her body.
"Just deliver," she whispered. "Quickly!"
Then, for some reason, as he took her, or she took him, a flood of strange thoughts entered upon her mind. She could see a cemetry in the mist. The more exquisite the delivery, the closer on she drew. It was a whirlwind, but within it was a serene vision. From a cold tomb arose her grandmother, Mrs Pilkington, who lived to 93.
Lucy pulled Kevin to her even tighter, her fingers saying "Give me all!"
He responded.
"Ah," she cried, the gasp of experience!
Mrs Pilkington stepped foward, a lifeless parody of the person of that name.
"Ruffle me up!" cried Blue-eyed Lucy Jane. ("Shameless wrinkles," she was thinking, "You're never too old to love.")
"It was always unsatisfying for me," said Mrs Pilkington, sadly. Lucy expected she would be Victorian but instead she spoke the candid way and without a hesitation. "My Bob was a heavy man. He took me every Saturday night for 47 years."
"I can never forget," said Lucy Jane, "the feel of a man in me. My whole body lingers."
Kevin grabbed her face and thrust his lips to hers among delicious organs of the night.
Mrs Pilkington smiled and handed her a penny.
"Take this," she said,"And throw it in the wishing well."
At the far end of the cemetry, shaded by a tall cypress, and overgrown with weeds, was a stone well. Mrs Pilkington pointed.
"Honeyhoneyhoney!" cried Kevin gasping for air.
In her vision Blue-eyed Lucy walked slowly over and without looking back threw the coin into the dark pit. The well faded. The cemetry disappeared. Mrs Pilkington's gorgon went back within its tomb. But there came a sudden moment when, somehow, deep within her being, the penny splashed into the black water, and when it did she jerked against her lover's thrashing frame.
Fantastic energy!
Tremulous wonder!
Heaves of long-lost happiness!
Shaggy ripples of animal joy!
Nebulous aftermath!
(She later surmised that the long interval had made her predisposed.)
They were like a firecracker, a red banger, going off where her womb used to be, amid the tangled dans macabre.
He rolled off her, slid his teeth into a glass of water at the bedside, and collapsed into a metaphysical sleep.
Seasons of lust followed. Two splendid weeks in the Gyspy Isles, and the shortening days of autumn rarely leaving their bed. He said he was actually excited by her sagging breasts. She said she had surrendered to his portion and he didn't need to dye his pubic hair for her. It turned out that they shared a love of white, white wine and the movies of Jimmy Stewart. They held hands in the sunset. They related their adventures. Franky didn't like him much but respected that his mother has her twilight life to live. "I just don't want to hear the details," he explained. The grandaughter Chrissy was incredulous as sixteen year olds often are. "My grandma," she exclaimed, "is having a relationship entirely based on sex!"
A beautiful tale...very touching.
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