I feel thoroughly embarrassed... and somewhat uncomfortable, and I notice my hand is trembling as I carefully place the cup and saucer on the bedside table. I know ought to get up but I don't want to confront him in the bathroom, the faint strains of his singing filter into the hotel bedroom through the bathroom door; I imagine he's happy with his nights work. Why doesn't he have the good manners to leave, give me some breathing space, we can sort out this mess later. It occurs to me I could do just that, quickly dress and leave, and I've half a mind to leap from the bed, but then again this is my room and I'm damned if I'm going to be driven out because of last nights indiscretions, and in any case I'd promised myself a 'pampering day', a session in the hotel spa and a massage, some shopping, a personal reward for all of my hard work. He's bound to be leaving soon, he'll need to go to work. I pull the duvet tightly under my chin and sit up in the bed surveying the room, wishing he'd get a move on with whatever it is he's doing in there.
The room offers evidence of the duplicity of our supposed professional relationship, clothes left where they fell, a half full bottle of champagne, two scarcely touched glasses shimmering golden in the sunlight streaming through the window... and the damned flowers, a bouquet of
Stretlizia,
commonly called Bird of Paradise for the erect and obvious brightly coloured bloom resembling the crest feathers of the exotic bird. The bouquet is unceremoniously standing on the side table in the sanitary waste bin from the bathroom; it was the only 'vase' to hand. The flowers had been a very clever choice, flattering to a degree, and a display of intelligence stirred with guile marking his obvious intent and impossible to ignore if one has knowledge of my work and the motivating forces in my life. Daffodils would have missed the mark by a country mile. It bothered me that he clearly understood this... and it irritated me that I, just as clearly, fell for his cheap trick.
I listen to the faint sounds of other people's lives, of people moving in the hotel corridor outside my room and their passage alerts in me another disturbing thought, how long before our escapade becomes common knowledge to our work and professional colleagues. I usually have no interest in other people's lives or in the gossip, rumour and intrigue of relationships and courtships and lovers that seem to fill the daily hours of my co-workers. I can but imagine the glee with which this 'news' will be received and my memory jumps almost thirty years to the undying shame and betrayal as the tale of the taking of my virginity spread across the university campus like a hot summer breeze. It was easy for me to imagine the expressions of my work colleagues, feigned shock hastily followed by mirth. It would be news enough that I'd even slept with a man, let alone a colleague... a colleague fifteen years the junior to me.
The ramification of the difference in our ages and the now obvious silence from the bathroom herald renewed anxiety; he'll open the bathroom door momentarily and walk into this room. I pull the duvet tighter hiding the sun freckled wrinkles on my upper chest, my weatherworn skin, a chimera rendered real with the dawn. My confidence ebbs to join our clothes unceremoniously pooled upon the floor; it is far too late to realise I should have dressed.
- - - - - - - - - -
I'd given my lecture yesterday to the Royal Horticultural Society and received the acclaim of my peers for the long awaited re-creation of the
Kewensis
hybrid of
Stretlizia;
though in truth none of us really know if the
Kewensis
I've re-created is identical to the one last seen almost a century ago, but it has been my life work and the plaudits were both deserved and welcomed. Only a fool or someone with deep understanding would give me Bird of Paradise as a gift. The flowers were on the bed when I returned to my room, pinned with a simple note, 'Congratulations! You are triumphant. Dinner?' They were not the finest of specimens,
Reginae,
a common species typically sold by florists, and these were distinctly past their best. My initial irritation became replaced by curiosity in the elation of my success. The gesture intrigued me and I called the room number on the card foolishly intent on making amends for the summary rejection I'd given him three years previously.
Last evening his eyes stripped away my legendary inhibition, overwhelming me, shedding the nagging doubts instilled from childhood and puberty, revealing my desire. His hot breath inflaming my skin, lips plumped bruised from kissing, my heart wildly beating, pumping blood, engorging tissue. My nipples rigid snagged, suckled, sending lightning bolts through my body, blanking out all reason other than the need to be touched. I felt the cold wall against my back, I'd retreated until I could only surrender... wanted to surrender; I remember twisting his hair in my fingers, looking down on the top of his head as he pried with lips and tongue and opened me, separating the petals of my sex. And when he'd wetted me and entered me I could taste myself on his lips, smell my sex on his breath and I shuddered uncontrollably, legs gripping his hips, biting his shoulder to stifle my pleasure, my bottom pounding the wall with each impaling thrust. My eyes had been fixed on the
Stretlizia,
petals sprung back; we are both opened to the core, willing to receive. His timing was perfect.
I don't know how it started... we were talking, then he kissed me. We missed dinner. And now? All of the old and familiar doubts cloud my thinking. Was I simply a conquest, a canteen wager between the lads? He could surely not be seriously interested in me, not at my age.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Puritanism was drummed into me through childhood and adolescence. My parents, Catholic with a large 'C', never discussed sex other than in cautionary tales of shame and dishonour. My father and brothers did their best to dissuade boyfriends, I stopped dating once it became obvious I was to be 'chaperoned' on every occasion and bided my time until university when I at last was able to give free reign to my curiosity only to have it dispelled by a wholly unsatisfactory and distasteful single sexual encounter; I had no desire to repeat the experience. Work beckoned, I became a plant geneticist and have spent the last twenty odd years mating plants, creating new and stronger species through a process of cross fertilisation.
In the quiet cul-de-sacs of my mind I liken my career to 'fucking with plants', you see, I'm not entirely without a sense of humour despite external appearances. I grew to be tall for a girl, willowy, short chestnut hair and no breasts to speak of, the effect renders me slightly androgynous to strangers particularly if they are approaching me from behind. I've lost count of the times when a visitor seeking information has come up behind me in the greenhouse at the Gardens with the phrase 'excuse me Sir'. It is not that I'm unfeminine, I deliberately 'dress down' more comfortable in jeans and tee shirt than a skirt and blouse, wearing a dress for yesterday's presentation was very definitely an exception. I know they have nicknames for me at work, 'coir' is one, it's a planting medium - one part grit and one part bark – an in-house joke, it's more or less in character, at least the one that I choose to reveal. I prefer not to become embroiled in the familiarity of friendship, my loving is restricted to my plants; my babies in the propagation room receive all of my attention.
We have worked as colleagues for five years, different departments, his research field is
nymphaea
– Water Lily's – he's developing, with some success, commercial strains for Northern European latitudes. We've been out socially on a couple of occasions, mostly on work-orientated junkets, celebrating someone's success, or a baby, or promotion, the form of occasion where failing to attend would be regarded as out-and-out rude. He once clumsily attempted to ask me to dinner, it was three years ago; he came into the greenhouse and asked me what I was doing that night, could he buy me dinner. He chose a bad day. My longed for
Kewensis
had flowered with flawed coloring. My mood was like thunder, I told him where he could take himself. When he left I sat at my bench and cried, partly frustration with the plant and the remainder anger at myself for dismissing him so contemptibly. That is why he raised my curiosity last night, he'd waited three years, waited until I'd proven my ambition, he'd understood what was important to me.
I'd started over with the failed plant, it was one of many raised from seed, the first to flower and I hoped some of the others might yet reveal what I sought, but starting over would occupy my mind, keep me busy and away from prying eyes and the canteen gossip of my latest failure. Plants were safer, they might fail you, you might fail them, but they couldn't talk about it.
It was weeks before he visited me again though we saw one another in the normal course of the day and on my occasional brief forays to the canteen. I'm not sure how I might have reacted if he'd pressed his case, but he didn't, and he left me idly speculating. He'd stirred notions long since buried. Sex. What was that about? Ridiculous! My working life revolved around sex – plant reproduction – yet my personal life was a sex free zone. It was as if my body and mind had long since mutually agreed to coexist without sex. My body performed the only function I required of it, that is to get me to work and back home, and in return I kept it clean, fed it and exercised it. Even my periods virtually stopped in my mid-thirties, I can only imagine my body decided periods were simply not worth the effort or diversion of resources. That one violent encounter at university laid the foundation for a wall constructed to avoid further sexual humiliation. I share no intimacy with my body; I scarcely look at myself, and never 'touch' myself. I have no desire... and yet, when I see him taking his long strides across the lawn toward the Water Lily House I can't avoid thinking what harm it would do to have supper with him. I lacked the courage then to make amends and whilst part of me wanted to be taken out, wanted to be treated as a woman, the greater part counseled caution, he was a boy compared with me, someone who could stoke the fires of my discontent and snatch away the dreams I scarcely care to acknowledge; infinitely safer to bury myself in my work.
Genus
Stretlizia
is one of a handful of plant species fertilized by birds, Sunbirds in their native Australia. The
Stretlizia
is protandrous, it cannot self-propagate, the Sunbird performs the task with the minimum of fuss alighting on the bract and hopping onto the blue arrowhead where two lateral petals enclose five pollen-laden stamen. The Sunbird holds the arrowhead against the bract and opens the petal sheath with his beak, stepping inside to reach nectar that flows from a vulva like gland at the base of the arrowhead. The stamen release their pollen coating the bird's breast and feet and when the bird moves to the next flower his pollen-dusted breast brushes and fertilizes the style - a central stamen blocking access to the nectar - and the pollination cycle is complete. I do the trick using a sable haired artists paintbrush. The fertilized plant develops a bright orange head the size of a small hen's egg, not a small hen, a small egg, each seed head can hold sixty or more seeds, when the case splits the seeds are revealed covered in oil the perfume of which attracts a different bird from the Finch family whose digestive tract fails to consume anything but the oil. The seed is defecated and new plants eventually grow. They can take anything up to seven years to flower in the wild; in our controlled climate propagation room we can coax them to flower in the second or third year. I suppose I know more about the technicalities of sex than most people but my field of reference is too small to be of any consequence outside of a few professional colleagues. Twenty-four hours ago I'd never have dreamed of having my knowledge drawn so explicitly into focus.
