Helena (2 page)

We went to a
local French restaurant; our sporadic conversation was mutually
embarrassing, the huge pregnant pauses punctuated by the dismal
clatter of our knives and forks. Terrence, even though I had
insisted on paying, worried about the expense of the meal, the
extravagance going against his Christian humility.

I had decided
to drink, if only to alleviate something of the boredom of the
evening. Terrence indulged me a little, probably putting my
drinking down to my recent marital distress. In his rather
predictable mind, I was taking refuge in the bottle after suffering
so much humiliation because of the desertion of my spouse. How
wrong could he have been!

We talked
about my family, my mother's recent illness, my father ageing well,
as I primed open another mussel and saucily sucked on the moist
inner flesh. He talked at length, thinking, I suppose, that I was
interested in such things, about the various debates of the synod
and some esoteric biography he was about to write about an early
father of the church. This was the stuff that always left me cold,
even when Gregory had been there; Gregory was always riveted by the
detail and depth of Terrence's knowledge.

I wasn't
drunk, but alcohol made me look at him differently, not as the
family friend, or the middle-aged cleric, but as a sexual man, a
real sexual man as opposed to the perverted figure from my naive,
childhood fantasies. He was still handsome. I wondered what his
sexual life was like, if he masturbated, and if he did, did all
that dread guilt and remorse descend upon him afterwards as it had
done with me. I didn't think he was gay. I had noticed the way he
had cast sly glances at my fulsome breasts through the black velvet
of my dress, his eyes quickly averting once I had caught him, his
mind searching for some inane topic to diffuse his
embarrassment.

As his coffee
came and I ordered another demijohn of ruby wine, I decided,
cruelly maybe, that I would interrogate him.

"Terrence,
have you never thought of marrying?" I said sipping on a
wonderfully fruity bottle of claret under his disapproving
gaze.

"Oh, I've
thought about it, but you know it takes two to tango, and I'm
always so busy." The answer was too pat, too well rehearsed, the
glib response he must have offered whenever he had been pressed on
the matter. He must have been mildly irritated too as I had
interrupted him as he was making some crucial point about
Tertullian or Ireneaus or whoever.

"But don't you
miss not having a woman?" It is you Freddie who brought all this
out in me. Before I met you, I would never have played such games.
You turned an earnest girl into a mischievous imp.

"I'm with
women all the time." This was still all too trite. He took a
dilatory sip of his coffee. For a clumsy man he ate and drank
precisely, used mastication and potation almost like a shield to
hide his nervousness.

"What women?"
I asked, turning up the corners of my mouth into a provocatively,
teasing smile.

"Oh, you know,
my parishioners, there's the women's league and..."

"No I mean a
relationship." When I had been a child and occasionally had asked
intrusive questions he had always been able to shrug them off, to
deflect his embarrassment by utilizing his adult superiority, but
now he was confronted with a grown woman.

"No, I
haven't," he said rather curtly.

"But have you
missed it?" He was rattled now, a man slow to anger, confused by
it, I could sense his indignation at my brazenness, his pale cheeks
perceptibly flushing red, even under the subdued light of the
restaurant.

"Yes, I might
have liked to share my life with a woman." The triteness was all
gone now. I had managed to break through a little of his
reserve.

"What do you
think you have missed?" I had never talked to Terrence like this
before. When I was a child, because of his friendship with my
father, I had always seen Terrence as a much older man, having that
accoutrement of power that we bestow on adults when we are
children, but he was barely twenty years older than me, and, in
this moment it was me who had all the power.

I sensed that
I had touched a raw nerve. I had mentioned that which I should have
not. I slowly repeated the question.

"Oh I don't
know, having somebody close, you know, the intimacy, that kind of
thing," he replied, wistfulness seeming to have momentarily
tempered his displeasure.

"What about
sex?" You can't get much blunter than that, talking to a
fifty-year-old virgin vicar who also happened to be your father's
best friend. He was taken aback by the question. He must have
thought that I was drunk. He cast a glance down at the half full
carafe of plonk.

"You have to
make sacrifices for what you believe in. I have offered up my life
to God. I have done it joyfully. I have no regrets." I could hear a
quaver in his voice as he spoke. Now we had moved from the
territory of rehearsed explanation to prideful
self-justification.

"God gave you
a good body. Why do you think he doesn't want you to use it?" Maybe
my voice had risen slightly, I don't know, but the conversation had
begun to take a confrontational edge.

"No reason,
but there are choices! I made my choices..." I could see that he
was absolutely astounded to hear the little girl who used to
innocently sit on his knee talk in such a way, about subjects once
removed from bland generality to the personally specific, he found
so embarrassingly distressing.

"I think you
were frightened. I think that you are still frightened," I pursued
him relentlessly.

"Frightened of
what?"

"Frightened of
women, frightened of living your life, frightened of sex!"

I had crossed
the last remaining boundary of civility. As I had made no attempt
to lower my voice, people were beginning to look around at the
spectacle of an insolent woman insulting a man of the cloth. Old
fashioned as he was, he wore his dog-collar around the neck, even
when he was off duty.

"I think we
should go." He said it as kindly as he could, as charitably. I was
obviously drunk and upset and confused. A dismissive charity was
the only thing he had to offer.

Freddie, all
this may sound unnecessarily cruel, but you have to realize all the
stuff that I needed to get rid off. You were not totally innocent
that evening; you were an invisible third party, you egged me on,
as I remembered all the things that you had said about my
childhood. This was exorcism. I had to have this conversation. I
had to go as far as I did because, and I am not joking, I needed to
cleanse my soul, to smash the old in order to establish the
new.

We both sat in
stony silence while Terrence paid the bill. I did not argue. He was
sulking. I was laughing inside like the evil witch that you made
me. After all these years, I had found his true Achilles heel. It
had obviously bothered him not having sex. It was, I believed, his
excruciating, personal truth, the underscore that nulled and voided
all other aspects of his life.

After we left
the restaurant, he walked me to a taxi rank close to the
restaurant. His idea was to let me go first and then take a taxi to
the university where he was staying.

"Terrence,
would you take me home, please? I'm a little frightened of going
back alone," I asked him as he awkwardly stood by the kerb, still
vexed by my insolent behavior. He obviously didn't want to return
to my flat, but being chivalrous to a fault, and as a country boy
believing in all the tales of metropolitan violence and vice, he
knew that he couldn't refuse my request.

A taxi came.
We went back to the flat, neither of us speaking on the journey. A
plan was already shaping in my mind: I had decided that I was going
to have him. I knew that I had to be devious. He would never
willingly comply in his own seduction, even with all the
temptations of my womanly attributes. I decided I would have to
present him with a fait accompli.

I offered him
a glass of wine. He didn't want it of course, but I was quite
adamant. It was not his chivalry now so much as his inbred English
politeness that made him assent, that and a fear of having a
further altercation with me. As he sat uncomfortably on the sofa,
his back leaning forward as if he was about to leave at any moment,
I went to fetch the wine.

I knew what to
do. I have been such a good student. The right amount, just the
right amount was essential, enough to make him sleepy, to get him
to stay. I didn't want him to sleep through what I had planned. And
then the ampoule of powder, a stronger dose of aphrodisiac that
would not wear off until well after his slumber, so when he awoke
still drowsy, the keenness of his lust would make my ministrations
to the minister as irresistible as they could possibly be.

He sipped
slowly, not making any comments on the tampered wine. We talked
more amiably, our previous conversation never mentioned. He
commented on the Modigliani print that I still had above the
fireplace, but made no mention of either of the erotic prints of
nudes I had placed over the sofa. Do you remember, the ones you
brought me before you went away.

I could see
that the powder was starting to have its effect. His eyes had
already begun to glaze over. His head momentarily drooped as if he
was about to fall asleep.

I told him he
wasn't looking well. He said he just felt suddenly woozy, but he
would be okay. I protested that he stay, that it would be dangerous
for him to leave in his present condition, but managing his famous
lopsided smile he told me that he would be fine.

Fortunately,
as he made his way to the small table to phone for a cab, he
stumbled a little, almost knocking over the telephone table.
Although Terrence was no foreigner to the casual slip or trip, the
stumble was decisive. Even he realized that he couldn't leave in
such a condition.

I led him up
to the small room he was already familiar with from the days when
he used to stay with myself and Gregory, and then I left him,
retreating to my own room, to anticipate what I was about to
do.

It was the
middle of summer. One of those hot, muggy, London nights, that
makes one toss and turn restlessly. I opened the window and tried
to breathe in the damp air. I was so hot, but this had as much to
do with the excitement that whirled within me. How aroused I was! I
could feel the wetness slicking the gusset of my black, lace
panties. How wonderful such a thing is as a male virgin! I was sure
that this is exactly what Terrence was. A fifty-year-old male
virgin, a sexually frightened adolescent trapped inside a lean
middle-aged body.

Time passed
slowly. I wanted to touch myself, but I resisted, frightened that
the slightest caress would spark me to orgasm, my excitement being
so intense. I lay down on the bed and dreamed of the next stage of
my plan, imagining what Terrence's body would be like, if his tool
would be as big and thick as I hoped it would be.

Forty minutes,
fifty minutes, I waited, hoping that I would not make any mistakes.
I slipped out of my dress, pulled off my bra and panties, but for
effect, left on my black, seamed stockings.

Sixty minutes!
I had been counting down the minutes and then the seconds on the
brass ornamental clock on my bedside table. I am sure you remember
it, Freddie.

I crept into
his room. He lay supine on the bed. He had managed to undress
himself before collapsing onto the mattress. The only item of
clothing that remained were a pair of burgundy boxer shorts. I had
never imagined Terrence wearing anything as sexy as boxer
shorts.

The window was
wide open; a street light illuminated his surprisingly muscular
torso. I thought I was going to come just by looking at him, the
natural bulge of his briefs showed that he was at least pleasantly
proportioned.

I could wait
no longer for my prize. I had to be careful. I did not want to wake
him before the correct time. I slipped onto the bed without jolting
him, checking to see that there was no interruption to the pattern
of his light breathing.

He lay there
before me, as vulnerable as the sleeping child he was. I sneaked my
hand into the fly of his boxer shorts, felt the warm flaccid flesh
of his penis, and slowly and gently eased it out through the flap.
Again, I checked the face to see if I had disturbed him. No
change.

His penis was
gorgeous, as fat and as thick as I had hoped it would be. When I
had sucked him to erection, it would be enormous. Noticing that on
the waistband of his boxers there was a little button, I undid it,
so my hand had as much access to his long shaft and his heavy balls
as I desired.

I pulled the
foreskin over the helmet of his member, flicked my tongue onto the
top slit and then rolled the tip all around the underside of the
dome, before I took the whole of him into my mouth. Terrence tasted
delicious, salty and fresh, exactly as you would imagine a virgin
cock would taste. I felt like a Magellan or a Marco Polo relishing
the joy a great discoverer feels when alighting on undiscovered, or
more appositely, virgin territory. Nobody had been there before,
and what a great shame that had been.

Soon his rod
began to grow in my mouth, stiffen, and thicken as I slid as far
down onto him as I could, impaling my mouth on his steely shaft. He
was still asleep but his cock was throbbing and twitching in my
mouth. I reached as far down his shaft as I could, until the
slicked tip touched my raw throat, just as you had taught me to do,
Freddie, before withdrawing my mouth slowly, grazing the skin of
his pole lightly with my teeth, until I reached the thickened
dome.

He woke with a
start, his body jerking up, the weight of his upper torso rested on
his elbows, as my teeth scraped the sensitive flesh of his
twitching dome.