top

Taking a deep breath, for the air was fragrant and heavy with catkin pollen drifting quietly from a stand of ancient hazel trees, I stepped briskly into the state where places, times and valleys merge, where the trackway crosses the ley and the stream’s many meanders trickle and tickle, ‘cross gravely rill and smooth bedded clay, down towards the greenwood, dark and distant, beyond Wake’s meadow.

Frivolity danced apace around me, like gnats swarming, sensing springtime far off, scorning old leaves in the gateway, hinting at new buds beneath the dross, nudging me, fooling, foolishly taunting me as if I’d never known aught of them.

There had been a footbridge there once, long ago as I recall, but a grey concreted ford now takes it’s place. “Drovers Road” the words on the map told me. “Ford” “Monks Crossing” So I looked ahead, north westwards to where the stonework of the abbey gleamed greyly, a mile away, starkly ruined these several centuries as I knew them, through mists and mallows as I step’t out.

Then the water’s two inches swirled and glittered, slipping smoothly over and around my waxen boots while a heron rose, disturbed, disjointed, flapping hugely, formed in prehistory, gaunt grey blue and silver.

There had been more fish here once, bigger ones than the stickleback or the minnow that that bird had caught. Brown trout, dappled motionless and silver carp, bright as mirrors darting, before the clever elmwood sluices of the abbots fishponds were opened; larger birds too, untidy brown cranes in brown and pink by all accounts.

I gained the far side in half a stride, scenting water mint and pursed lipped weed seeds along the margins and saw the smooth stones of the way, timeworn, embedded quietly, unregarded, waiting like sentinels at the bank where rosebay willowherb grew and the path narrowed, curving twixt verdant green herbage almost as high as me.

……………

Surprisingly, Jenny the land agents secretary had written to me. There was a chance to extend the length of the lease on the lockup, she said. For another nine months, did I want it? As it was my year was almost up and I was sorely tempted to extend. If only to have more opportunities to fuck her. But you know, one can easily have too much of a good thing.

Still I agreed to meet her down there anyway, at the place where my craft was kept, eleven months and a few thin days after the time when I’d first met and made love to her so casually in the back of it.

Oh the innocence of her and oh yes, innocence was by far the best way for her to be. What could I tell her, discuss with her, talk over, debate or relate? We’d nothing in common that I could think of, save for one basic thing.

……………

“Oh, I……I hardly recognised you!” she said startled “How did you get here. Did you walk?”

“I……I got a lift!” I said.

She’d a little sports car, Japanese, in a girly colour with a contrastingly bright top.

“Suits you!” I said.

Jenny beamed.

“John said it was about time he treated me!” she said, patting the steering wheel.

“And what does your husband think about it?” I asked.

Only just in time had I remembered him.

“I told him it went with the job” she pouted “But he knows John screws me I think!”

Hell she was eager for it, throwing herself at me and kissing me full on the lips.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day!” she told me.

“Have you? Why?” I asked, genuinely interested.

“Because……” she said suggestively.

“I suppose you want your knickers back?”

Jenny giggled and tried to blush, unsuccessfully.

“More than that! But I will swap an old smelly pair for a new smelly pair if you like” she said evenly.

“It’s deal!” I said “If I can find them”

……………

Intending to open the garage and get her into the van I began to walk to the doors but she stopped me.

“Lets do it in my car first!” Jenny demanded. “With the doors wide open like we did with your van”

“What if” I asked “the farmer comes in.

“I wouldn’t mind” Jenny said “but I don’t think he will ’cos I’ve put the chain back on the gate”

She let me pull the new smelly pair off her, which I did straight away most successfully, while she stood there. Her pussy, when I glimpsed it again, was exactly as I remembered, same curls, same pink bits, and she, as ordinary and as forgettable as ever, was eager, unabashed and only too willing to please.

“Dunno what it is about you……” she murmured thoughtfully, her legs around my neck “……but I like you anyway!”

I didn’t want to tell her that I’d left, only that morning, a bed full of sexuality which said, repeatedly, much the same sort of thing. The difference was they knew the reason whereas Jenny didn’t, and wouldn’t and couldn’t. She’d never believe it anyway even if I tried to tell her.

“I like you too!” I told her sincerely. It was no lie; I did like her right then.

She slipped slowly down the bonnet on her bottom disgracefully, gigging and leaving wet marks so I lifted her and carried her, still attached, with her arms tightly around my waist and sat her down sideways in the passenger seat……

……and found myself having to kneel on cold gritty concrete in order to reach her, which was to say the least, bloody uncomfortable.

I tried squatting but that was damned awkward, then sitting which was too low, made my back ache and was cold on my bum.

There was a tartan travelling rug neatly folded into a pad between the seats so I dragged it out to kneel on. Things went along much better after that.

“I’ve wanted to have it in my own car ever since we did it in yours” she told me banally.

“I could give myself a hernia screwing you in this!” I said and she laughed.

But she came anyway, a moment or two before I did and in spite of the discomfort, gently and gratefully with many a little aaaah and ummm. She even had a box of tissues, man sized, thoughtfully to hand.

We sat there for a while afterwards without bothering to get dressed. Looking back on it now I suppose we might have got into the van together and had a bit of a sleep. I even considered it briefly but worried too much about her old man.

“What now?” Jenny asked me eventually.

“Now we get dressed and go our separate ways”

“I’d like to……to see you again” Jenny said.

Dangerous ground Sweethearts! Heed the warnings!

“What would your husband and your boss think if you did?”

“John wouldn’t mind so long as there was some left for him and he, hubby that is, sometimes I think he’d be glad to be rid of me”

Dangerous, very dangerous ground, as I said.

“I can’t take sides” I said.

“Why not?” Jenny asked “Don’t you have……any feelings for me?”

“I’ve enjoyed what we have done together” I told her sincerely.

“I have as well” she replied quietly. “That’s why I want to see you again”

“Well you know where I am living!” I said.

Jenny smiled at me thoughtfully. I could see what she was getting at and became ever more wary. I could ill afford yet another attachment and certainly not one with someone who knew nothing of the Lady.

That was a shame in a way I suppose. Jenny’s life would probably never come to much. A couple of kids a nice house, a divorce, another man, perhaps again. Whereas if……

Lovingly I touched the Lady’s cowrie shell I carried in my pocket. Yes it was a shame in many ways!

“And you have my number……the one at work that is”

“Yes I do!” I said.

“So……do you want to see me again?”

“I’ll telephone you!” I said.

I could see she was disappointed but there was little I could do. If I agreed to see her again what then? Separation from her husband and all that would entail perhaps. Arguments and discord with me in the middle. New expectations and a reliance on me, and that would only be the start of it. Making love to her was enjoyable, of course it was. For me it was casual and all too free and easy but for her, for Jenny, I knew instinctively it meant something more.

“I aren’t the marrying kind” I suggested cautiously.

“And I’m already married!” Jenny reminded me, with a grin.

Then in a typical example of role reversal I accepted the offer of a lift home in her little car. She even kissed me goodbye, openly and lovingly, at my gate.

……………

That moment passed and that year ended. As casually as I could for I remained deep in thought, I walked by routes only half remembered back to my van, seeing it there, in its secret place, long before I reached it in reality.

Foolishly I half expected, half hoped that Jenny might be there when I turned the corner. She was not, there was no-one there, except that she’d let a note for me, a torn half of an A4 in a square pink envelope which she’d slipped under the lockup door.

I tore it open clumsily while I fumbled in my bag for the van keys.

“For the good times, always remembered, an’ the bad ones better forgot” her neat hand had written. Then she’d drawn a very good likeness of her little car with exaggeratedly angular wheels and a couple of sharp lines projecting to indicate speed. The heads and shoulders of two people could be seen through the screen.

She’d signed it in an identical script “all my love. Jenny. XXX”

Underneath, added almost as an afterthought it seemed: “I know who you are an what you are don’t matter to me”

A small, explicit photograph of her accompanied the card and brought, momentarily, fond memories of her back to me. But it was her afterthought which both puzzled and worried me. Unless she meant something else entirely how, I wondered, could she possibly know anything at all about me?

I took a brown envelope out of an inner pocket with, carefully folded Jenny’s pastel coloured little knickers in it. Holding it an inch from my nose was enough to catch her scent unmistakeably. And enough to get me into a melancholy mood all over again. Another departure, another leaving and always, always, the same sadnesses for me.

No one bade me farewell this time as some had done some times before. No one cried or cursed or tried to hinder, to delay or impede me in any way. A tiny part of me wished but briefly, that someone might have. It was an ego thing, tenuously passing and I ignored it. I’d left property, land and lives, loves and lovers, so many times before, taking nothing that I did not already own, sweeping misgivings and regrets into a box and hiding them forever. My lives were already full enough of such clutter, ill feelings and recriminations and the results of natural progression without weighing myself down with any more of it unnecessarily. As unnecessary as any continued liaison with poor Jenny would certainly bring.

I’d never be invited to Ireland again, I knew, musing as I stood there, never see again, first hand the mounds of the Boyne or walk, in hushed silences the black stone floor in the halls of Tara. Oh I’d crawled Newgrange’s passageway when it was still only a grassy hill, before some professor in his wisdom had dug in the dirt and discovered a way to rebuild it to his own specification. Now it glowed and gleamed, quartz and crystal, glittering like a landed spacecraft, one of three, the largest of the fleet, and who was to say that wasn’t what they really were. The Boyne still flowed around them for all that.

I’d never be invited to Scotland again for I’d been outrageous, said things in jest which frayed and defrayed some poorly edged tartans. But the road across the highlands was a poor one anyway, rutted and wildly winding, windy and covered, almost all of it, in smelly sheep shit. They’d desecrated all that had been holy up there long ago, smashed it and buried it and built their churches from its already sacred stones, new gods replacing the old without being able to kill them. New god in fact, only one, they said, but Sweethearts he could only bury, not replace. Bury them safely into the few mounds that remained undesecrated. Bury them in the deepest thoughts and psyches of man where they’d itch and nag and drive some mad over the course of the next two millennia. But the Tay still flowed, carrying its dirt, with the Spey and the Clyde and all the others, heavy with peat. The lifeblood of Scotland flowing out of the country along with all the whisky it made.

Wales hated me, they’d laughed – in Welsh naturally, pissing into gateways and behind the heaped stone of old roadways while burned cottages, unwanted, smouldered spitefully. A dead people with a dead language in a dead country. Except that, here and there the red and the white still fought spitefully, in road signs and river crossings, knowing all the time, but never admitting it, that if it wasn’t for the English they’d be no Welsh. For what were they but the original Britons anyway, driven from these hills to those hills by an invader they had not the guts to fight. Symbiotic, but still the red dragon fought the white, as it always would and did you ever see an invention of any kind come out of Wales? You know they don’t even have a national drink? There were rumours once about some distillation or other, local products it was said, like leeks and coal. But nothing ever came of it. It was empty, just like so much of Wales, wet like the Dee which ran clear and clean from the mountains into England’s thirsty, wide open mouth.

So what was left. Who and where? Cumbria? Cornwall? The Marches? Anglia? East or west, north or south? I’d nowhere left to go. Yes it was a ridiculous situation, as I said and cowrie or no cowrie I must admit I was getting bored.

Colleen had loved me in the back of my van and cried when I left her at the gates of the university.

“Come and see me again?” she’d pleaded and I’d nodded, not in love with her, knowing I never would.

She was perfect in mind and body, a delightful doll who’d make some budding brain surgeon an undeserved good wife. Too good by far for the likes of me.

Mary at the gates of Wrexham, carrying her basket of wares to the fair. Her skirts bore evidence of the heathland we’d romped on that morning; cutting heather with scissors had been our original intention. Hell how many petticoats did you say she wore and how many had hoops and loops of stiff wire in them? White heather and little ribbons and a day in an attic with mice and no tea while her skirts stood upright on their own like a bell tent with nobody in it.

Oh the Scots lass had a dagger in her bag and ginger pubic hair so bright it dazzled me. She tasted of peat and smelled of the cottage where she lived all alone while her man was out on the rigs. He was some sort of specialist or so she told me. Muds and clays were his speciality apparently while hers was making love all day in the soft straw of a cow shed. She wanted me to watch her peeing, she said, on all fours like a animal with her arse in the air. It was something she’d always wanted to do, apparently and who was I to stop her?

Of the three she’d the palest skin, the most freckles and the middle sized breasts when Colleen’s were by far the smallest. Looking back poor Mary had so little actually going for her apart from her large Welsh rarebits and eyes which were much too good for the rest of her face. All three were watery in their wisdom and in the exuberance of their copious secretions, giving me everything and asking for everything in return. An everything I could not possibly ever hope to give.

In similar ways I left the men, David with his quick little squirts of stuff onto my belly, Pete and Dave and that other queer chap. Even Old Arthur with his Jag, pots of money and his please let me buy you yet another fine shirt attitude.

But I didn’t want his shirts or the jewellery he’d bought me. In a very short time I didn’t even want his cock. Jonno loved me, he really did he told me loads of times in between kissing me. Loved me, he told me so, as did his wife. I still have a picture of them both somewhere. Dave downloaded dirty pictures for me to look at, Orientals of peculiar design and mannerisms with curved carp and stylised waves tattooed all down their legs. He’d nothing to offer other than an eagerly receptive arse, not even nice hair, eyes or skin. As for the rest, they go without saying, go, gone, and forgotten, which was probably by far for the best.

……………

The engine started first time, amazingly, when I tried her, with a little cloud of blue smoke and a rattle of valves until the oil got properly through to them.

For long moments I sat there with the engine fast idling. It’d do no harm to take just a few more minutes to let her warm up. She’d need a service soon, poor old thing, and some air in her tyres too by the look of it. Diesel. And fresh water in her washers.

Sweethearts I am leaving now. I’ve some things to think about, some places to consider. States of mind really, I suppose. Enigmas if you like. Cowrie shells on strings, between breasts, dangling low down onto a dark fringed honeypot. Hidden things in meaty creases. Smoke and mirrors. Designs deliberately deceptive. So deceptive nobody could begin to guess even a half of it. Because spaceships do not have to look like shiny silver darts with fins and antennae sticking out of the ends of them. They might just as easily be a globule of orange plasma or a collection of different sized spheres caught up in a net.

Or an ordinary looking, off white, scruffy, Ford Escort van just like this one.



Introspections of a wanderer. Book One. The End.

© Aahlu. 101010.