I was having a drink the other day with a friend who knows about my writing; indeed, I suppose I should really call him a fan. He was taking me to task for not writing anything recently.
"Oh! That's easy to explain," I said. "New job, a partner who knows about and doesn't like my 'hobby'... oh, and a lack of new plots."
"Jeez!" he said, "You'll have me in tears next." Then he followed it up by saying, "Go on, what about that truism we were talking about a minute ago?"
"Which one?" I countered.
"Oh, Gawd," he said, "you really do have a bad memory! The one where you told me that these days you've given up fancying the younger women; you prefer their mothers."
Actually, inside I was still thinking of the remark. Alan had commented that at least older women possessed two things their younger counterparts didn't: patience and gratitude -- sexist remarks, ones which I took great pains to dissociate myself from, I might add.
The conversation in the pub went on to higher planes after that, but I have to admit I wasn't really paying too much attention. My thoughts had slipped back quite a time ago and were on a girl that the circle of folks at the club -- the Flying Club, that is -- called "the man-eater".
It's funny how some places seem to attract women of that ilk, and Maggie was certainly "of that ilk". She was nothing to look at: about five foot six with a slim build, nicely proportioned, almost demure. She was nothing special. I was eighteen, and she was somewhere about thirty-one or -two.
I was a late starter and had just lost my virginity a few months earlier. Very proud of that fact I was. Even though no one else knew, I felt they did. I might as well have been wearing a fluorescent flashing badge saying "I've been screwed". But then young men are like that, or they seemed to be in those days, thirty- five years ago. Perhaps they 're still the same now.
I was out with the crowd on a Friday night. We often left the rather staid scene of the club bar and walked across the road down to the pub about a quarter of a mile away. Maggie wasn't sitting with us; she was at another table a little ways away. I said something about not fancying older women. Hell, what eighteen year old does?
My companions were a married couple.
She turned to me and said, "Maggie's after you, you know..."
I can remember choking on my beer and turning a brilliant shade of red, much to their amusement. All I could manage was, "What?"
"Oh, she's been telling folks that you're going to be the next notch on her bedpost."
"Not bloody likely!" I said, and I then avoided Maggie like the plague.
But she kept popping up in unlikely places, at unlikely times. It was fast becoming unnerving. I had taken to glancing over my shoulder. I felt that the next thing would be the development of a twitch.
The married friends thought it was all hilarious.
"You may as well give up and just sleep with her. You know you'll enjoy it."
That made me dig my heels in even more. I realised afterwards they thought I needed a good seeing too, and that Maggie was just the person to do it. In retrospect I suppose I didn't really have a chance.
Inevitably matters came to a head. We had all been out to the pictures together -- I can't even remember what the movie was called. I ended up arriving late and had driving down on my own to meet the others at the cinema. Somehow, when it all ended, Maggie was the one who didn't have a lift, and yes: Sven, ever the gentleman, was coerced into giving her a lift. This was about six weeks after the initial gibes and comments, and I must have relaxed a bit.
By the time we had walked to the car park some distance away where, being late, I had had to park, the others had gone on ahead. I opened the door of my little saloon and Maggie hopped in and we started back to the Flying Club, where we both intended to stay the night. The club/'s sleeping arrangements were spartan, but OK. There were two old huts for the single folks: one for the guys, one for the girls. The married folks had some other rooms available to them. We called them "The Nesting boxes" -- can't think why. So I still felt quite safe.
Halfway back and into open countryside, Maggie began to fidget.
"Sorry, Sven, I can't wait. I have to go to the loo; you'll have to find somewhere to stop."
We were on a fairly busy main road, a four-lane, so it wasn't going to be there.
"Look there's a turn-off," she said, "Take that. I'll find somewhere down there."
