I once heard someone say, “We marry the person who is most available when we are most vulnerable.”
I suppose that describes me when, at the age of thirty two I seemed well set in my career as a consulting engineer, was fed up with one night stands, and felt it was time to settle down and have a family.
The family aspect had increasingly absorbed my thinking since both my parents had been killed in a car crash when I was twenty two; both my paternal and maternal grandparents were dead, and my sister, some uncles, aunts and cousins, all live far away.
Looking back I suppose I had an idealised view of marriage and family – the sort of image one gets from Christmas advertising on television – the children opening presents on Christmas Day and smiles all round. Then there are walks along the beach, hiking in the hills, the companionship and intimacy, not to say the availability of regular sexual intercourse. These were the things I thought I wanted; it was just a question of with whom?
The answer came in the shape of Judith. We met at a dinner party at the house of mutual friends; a husband and wife who had long been plotting to get me married. To this day I am not sure whether they had set the situation up deliberately, but if they did, at first glance you might say it was an unlikely piece of matchmaking.
For a start Judith was only eighteen; fourteen years younger than me. In addition she was very attractive in the fantasy manner many men have about their ideal woman. Tall, slender, with long shapely legs and clearly full breasted – “clearly” because her dress was cut to expose her bosom almost to the nipples. Her long slender neck was surmounted by a face of classical beauty – the sort of face that you see on the statues of Greek goddesses.
I was instantly smitten and couldn’t keep my eyes off her the entire evening. She spoke quietly, and to make the situation more enticing, she had an air of remoteness, of unattainability.
My goddess had me spending most of the evening trying to hide a throbbing erection.
Before the evening was over I gathered up my courage and asked her to have dinner with me one night. To my amazement she agreed without demur. The arrangement was made; I took her home, and went to bed that night to masturbate, with my fantasy woman hovering over me.
And so the courtship began. It was indeed a really old fashioned courtship with flowers and gifts, all received by Judith with calm, not to say cool, thanks. It was her apparent inaccessibility that proved a challenge to me. I felt as if I were trying to storm an impregnable tower. That in the end proved to be an incorrect assumption in the sense that, when having asked her to marry me and received the answer, “Yes,” Judith proved to be very pregnable in that she must have got pregnant the first time we copulated or soon after.
Judith came with a bonus in the form of her mother and father. On meeting them I was made very welcome and as time passed there grew up a bond of affection between us. I came to feel that I belonged.
On first meeting Ken and Hannah I was struck by their age difference. Ken, as I learned, was in his mid fifties and Hannah was thirty seven. It seemed that age disparity ran in the family when it came to marriage.
Ken was “Something in the city”; precisely what he was in the city I have never been clear about, but something to do with investments. Like Judith he had a slight air of remoteness about him; not unfriendly, but not inviting personal questions.
Physically Judith resembled her father more than her mother. Ken was tall and handsome in that greying at the temples manner. Hannah, on the other hand, was shorter than Judith, and where Judith was fair complexioned with the light brown hair that must have once been Ken’s colouring, Hannah was dark complexioned, with almost black hair and with what used to be called an “hour glass figure.”
I am no expert of women’s bra sizes, so let it be sufficient to say that Hannah was well and firmly endowed. She had a narrow waist that flowed down to swelling hips and strong but shapely legs of the sort one could imagine winding round you at the moment of orgasm.
Facially Judith to some extent resembled Hannah in that Hannah had that same classical cast of features, but where Judith had light blue eyes, Hannah’s were a darker blue, in fact they were quite startling.
I remember there was once a song called, “The Sailor with the Navy Blue Eyes.” I had always thought this to be a piece of fanciful imagery on the composer’s part, until I saw Hannah. She had the deepest blue eyes I had ever seen, and when she focused them on you, you felt as if they penetrated your very soul.
Another difference between Judith and her mother was Hannah’s vivacity. She was clearly an intelligent woman, well educated and with multiple interests. I frequently found myself engaged in animated conversation with Hannah on the most rarefied subjects, and enjoying myself hugely.
To put it bluntly if she had been available and Judith not on the scene I might have let myself fall for Hannah.
At the mention of “marriage” Hannah went in to top gear. As I was to discover, Hannah was not the interfering type, but the wedding of Judith and I was like putting Hannah into overdrive. All was arranged by her, and Ken did all the paying.
At one point prior to the day of the wedding Hannah took me aside and said, “I’m glad Judith is marrying a mature man, I think it makes for a more stable relationship. And by the way, I want to be a grandmother before I’m forty.”
Under the influence of those penetrating eyes I felt impelled to tell her the truth. “You’re going to be a grandmother sooner than you think,” I said.
There was a pause as she continued to look at me, then she chuckled and said, “A bit careless were you? I thought Judith was looking a bit chubbier than usual.” That was her only comment.
The wedding and honeymoon over, Judith and I settled down to married life. I copulated enthusiastically and frequently with her, but there was something about Judith during our love making that was not easy to interpret.
Even now I find it difficult to describe how it was, but it was as if she was enjoying what we did, but somehow did not connect with me. It was as if she was in the bed alone masturbating and I was some sort of dildo or vibrator.
For some time the delights of exploring her body prevented my recognising this seeming distance from me, and she did little for me in response to my stimulation of her. She orgasmed easily, but again, it was something that seemed to happen apart from me.
As the time for the birth drew near Judith asked me not to have sex with her, and I accepted that it would be too uncomfortable or even dangerous for her.
We had a daughter whom we called Bernadette; a beautiful child who oddly seemed to resemble her grandmother in complexion and hair colouring. One aspect troubled me a little. I had read that breast feeding a child was the best thing for its early development, but Judith resolutely refused to do this, claiming it would spoil her breasts.
Once Judith had recovered from the birth I approached her for a continuation of our sex life, but for some time she kept putting me off. When she finally relented she was if possible, even more distant.
I had led a fairly promiscuous sex life before meeting Judith, but when we married I took the vows seriously. I would remain faithful to her and so the infrequency of our love making and the rather detached manner in which Judith engaged in sex with me, began to give rise to frustration. I confess that I did begin to think of seeking my satisfaction elsewhere, but thinking was as far as it went.
I kept telling myself that things would eventually improve; thus does hope spring eternal, but unfortunately this particular spring seemed to have lost its resilience.
It was when Bernadette was about a year old that Judith spoke to me about returning to work. She had worked in a junior clerical position in a solicitor’s office and had continued there for the first few months of our marriage.
