"You cannot understand how a woman feels about these things, dear Robin," Carenza said as she stroked my face. "When she trusts and loves a man and feels that her love and trust is returned, she will give herself to him, and that is how I feel with you. I have let you get to know me as I have never let anyone know me since the time of my pain."
We had just finished our first act of sexual love together and my penis was still in her vagina. She lay beneath me looking up at me with her disconcertingly grey eyes; eyes that I thought would detect any lack of sincerity in mine.
It had been an amazing and sometimes frustrating journey from the time I first came into close contact with Carenza, until the moment when I could no longer hold back my feelings for her and I summoned up the courage to tell her I loved her.
She had made no reference to our age difference or any other obstacle that might exist between us, she had simply said, "I know dear Robin, I have known for a long time, and if you wish to fulfil our love, then know that I love you and want to give myself to you."
All this may sound very stilted, but if you understand the circumstances, innocuous in themselves, that brought us together, you might better understand how we came make love.
* * * * * * * *
It all began when I was fifteen and we moved into Wattle Avenue in what might be designated as a "Leafy executive suburb." It was a suburb mostly populated by those described as "Upwardly mobile."
We moved there after many changes of houses in different towns and cities as my father did his upwardly mobile thing working for a large brick making firm that has plants all over Australia.
My mother and I had trekked around after him ever since I had become conscious of such things, and from what my mother told me it had been like that ever since they had got married. She, a nurse, had gone from hospital to hospital, but then, nurses were in great demand.
Arriving in Wattle Avenue my father had announced that there would be no more moves. I assumed that my father's upward mobility had finally reached its zenith and would now either flatten out or decline. In practical terms he had been made production manager of one of the larger of the firm's plants.
Most of the houses in Wattle Avenue had been built during the nineteen sixties by a speculative developer on land that until then had been market gardens. In the fashion of that time the houses had been advertised as "Luxury Executive Residences," and on resale were still advertised in similar terms.
Quite what the "luxury" consisted of I am not sure, unless it referred to the walnut veneer covered chip board used for the kitchen cupboards, and the blue coloured bath, hand basin, toilet pan and cistern, all of which were festooned with shiny fittings that were incredibly difficult to maintain when you needed to replace a washer.
There was one house in the avenue that was markedly different from the rest. It had once been the residence of a market gardener and had somehow escaped the depredations of the developer. In fact it would be better called a "Cottage," especially as it bore the name, "Willy Wagtail Cottage."
It was of late nineteenth or early twentieth century vintage and was the only place that had the wattle trees that the name Wattle Avenue implied. The rest, if they had ever existed, had been swept away by the developer's bulldozers during the housing construction of the sixties.
Residents in the avenue found "The Cottage," as they called it, mysterious on two counts. The first was the fact that the place seemed to be buried behind a screen of trees and bushes, making it almost invisible to anyone passing it. The second count was the person who now lived in it.
Since much of my story concerns the lady who lived in the cottage I shall now relate what was factually known about her at the time we first moved in next door to the cottage.
Her name was Carenza Kremko; she had moved in about three years before we arrived; she worked as a mathematics teacher at the "The Adult College," a place of second chance for those who had failed high school and adults who wished to improve their education.
Every weekday morning at 7 a.m. she was seen to leave the cottage wearing a track suit and set off running down the avenue and beyond. She returned at 7-30 a.m. At 8-30 a.m. her small blue car left the cottage driveway bearing her to the college. At 5-30 p.m. she returned.
The Avenue widow peepers also reported that she sometimes went out in the evening.
On Saturdays she emerged at 8 a.m. and must have taken a longer run because she did not return until 9-30 a.m. On Saturday and Sunday afternoons she was sometimes observed working in her front garden; at other times she worked in her back garden -- I had reason to know this because I could see her from my bedroom window.
It was known that she went to Lutheran Church on Sunday mornings. Mrs. Hodge was the first to announce this because she had seen Carenza's car in the church car park. This was later confirmed by Mrs. Gregs who actually saw Carenza leaving the church one Sunday morning.
That she was a "foreigner" was known, partly because one of the girls in the avenue, Pamela, attended Carenza's classes, and partly because some avenue residents had actually talked to Carenza, and all reported that she spoke very good but over-precise English with an accent.
That was about all that was factually known of Carenza around the time we moved in. It was said of her that she "Keeps herself to herself."
All that is left to do in describing Carenza is to relate the rumours, gossip and stories that were spun about her, most of which were subjective conjectures, even when they claimed to be factual. These I shall give in summary form.
It was conjectured that she was in her late twenties.
The people in the avenue, not being skilled at picking what accent came from where, or from where a name derived, she was said to be, "Polish, Hungarian, Rumanian, Czechoslovakian, from the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, the former German Democratic Republic.
She had fled from civil strife in her country of origin; she had escaped from a labour camp; she had fled from a husband who abused her; she was a spy for a sinister foreign power or alternatively the CIA, which was much the same thing.
Depending on your taste, she was extremely good to look at. Most of the men in the avenue seemed to be of that opinion; the women tended to be somewhat disparaging about her looks.
Pamela who had frequent contact with Carenza through the college said, "She's very sweet and a wonderful teacher." She added somewhat sourly that "All the boys in the class fancy her like mad."
The rumour had it that she'd been married to a man who had been executed by the state; he had committed suicide; he had died from AIDS; Carenza had murdered him; she had been married to a man to whom she had been devoted, but he had left her for another woman and this had made her bitter about men; and finally she had never been married.
On those evenings when the window peepers observed her leaving the cottage she was going to meet a lover.
Mr. Baillie swore that he had seen her at 1 a.m. in town soliciting in the High Street, approaching the kerbside crawlers, into one of whose car she got. One might wonder what Mr. Baillie was doing in High Street at 1 a.m., especially as he was an elder in the local Presbyterian Church.
Some modification of the conjectured Carenza evening activities was called for when, having received complimentary tickets for a performance of William Shakespeare's play, "Othello," Mr. and Mrs. Dogbed, saw her in the theatre stalls, apparently unescorted.
Rumour came alive when a plumber was seen to enter the cottage, not to re-appear until an hour and a half had passed. Sadly this rumour lost its effervescence when Pamela pointed out that Carenza had been plying her mathematical trade in the college at precisely the time the plumber was plying his trade in the cottage. Carenza must have given the plumber a key to the cottage so that he could do whatever he had come there to do.
Given the apparent absence of men in her life, it was suggested that Carenza was a lesbian. This rumour also failed to pass the winning post because no women had been seen to enter or leave the cottage apart from Carenza.
Some communication had passed between Carenza and avenue residents -- mainly women. They met her in the shopping mall and had passed the time of day with her. All reported, either willingly or reluctantly, that she was a pleasant sort of person, but one who was hard to get to know. It seemed that any attempts to probe the more personal aspects of her life were turned aside.
* * * * * * * *
Now I must relate something about myself. Being fifteen when we moved into the avenue I was on that pivotal point between childhood and maturity, masturbation and my first vaginal penetration, and the constraints of childhood and the alleged freedom of adulthood. One unpleasant aspect to this alleged freedom was the approach of the moment when you have to "Decide."
The frequent changes of location that had been my life up until then had meant frequent changes of school. These moves had a deleterious effect on my formal education, although I believe my father attributed my academic backwardness to my being a moron.
