I live and work in New Caledonia, in the South Pacific, having departed France in my early twenties. I met Martine for the first time when, after being away for five years, I went home on holiday to the villa my elderly parents own in the countryside south of Toulon.
"Pierre, this is Martine," my mother introduced the teenager who was living with them. The girl had a haunted, uneasy demeanour, and shyly let me greet her with a kiss on both cheeks.
Later, I found out that Martine's mother, a cousin of my father, had committed suicide, and that her father had abandoned her shortly after I left home. She was thirteen then, and my parents had taken her in not just because she was useful to them around the villa, but out of charity. My being their only child, my parents had in my absence come to love her like the daughter they never had, though, now eighteen, it seemed she still suffered the effects of the double tragedy in her life.
In fact, Martine's sad face kind of made it difficult to notice anything else about her, as if it would be embarrassing to take an interest in any other part of her anatomy. Luckily she did not have the coarse features of some of the country girls of the district but was fine-boned. Her eyes and hair were brown, the latter often beguiling tucked at the sides behind her small ears. The top of her head rose to the level of my chin.
As the days passed, and when she wasn't looking at me, I noticed more about her, like the simple cotton frocks she always wore during the day. They invariably had a high neckline and a hem that brushed the tops of her shapely knees. To hide the swell of her breasts she tended to hunch when I was about, and the dresses, apart from flaring over her hips, looked shapeless unless blown against her legs by the wind.
The villa, which Martine kept cleaned, was the heart of the small vineyard from which my parents earned a living. They employed staff (both men and women) to do the harvesting and help make the wine. Martine also cooked for the family, with my mother contributing when she was well enough.
The first two mornings of my holiday I slept in late but on the third, now rested from my long journey home, the dawn chorus of birds woke me. The Mediterranean sun was streaming into my upstairs room.
Naked, I got up and went over to the open window to look out at the familiar view of the countryside, spotting Martine walking down one of the lanes between the grapevines, moving away from the villa. She was wearing a frock, and was barefoot. A white towel hung over shoulder, and I assumed she was heading towards the river that fringed the vineyard. It usually ran shallow but there was a waterhole that, after a hot day, I'd swum in myself as a child then a teenager, sometimes with members of the vineyard staff or their children.
Seen from the rear, Martine had a very feminine silhouette, and the erection I'd woken with stayed up, tightening delightfully as I watched her. Encouraged, I let the fingers of my right hand drift to the sensitive flesh. I had been without a girlfriend in Noumea for three months, after splitting up with Simone and, in the intervening period, masturbation had become as necessary again as it had seemed when I was a boy at home.
My penis thrilling to the self-stimulation, I wished Martine would turn round, look up, and see me in the window with my manhood standing proud.
In that hope, my knob jutting out of my hand, I started jerking off in full view.
But Martine didn't look my way. Her figure got smaller and smaller in the distance until it was no longer providing any stimulus for what the priests at Confession used to call my 'self-abuse'. In response to the loss of incentive my penis drooped then, after I released it, started shrivelling. I could have closed my eyes and recalled any number of sexual episodes with women, to reach a climax, but I was fixated on Martine.
I guess I wanted to be with her rather than gratify myself with a self-induced orgasm. I suppose, in my subconscious, I lusted to make love to her, but I did not consciously think about it in those terms, simply feeling a desire for her company and to find out more about her.
Acting on that impulse I searched for a pair of swimming shorts, pulled them over the remnant of my erection and, leaving my parents likely still asleep in their bed, I went outside.
The sun was low on the horizon, but its warmth reached my bare skin and heated the air around me. As I headed quickly down the row next to the one Martine had taken I could smell the earth and the vines, and the sweet smell of ripe grapes. Soon the vineyard would fill with workers for a new day.
The riverbank was lined with a dense band of native trees and shrubs, and a short path led through it to the waterhole. Birds were singing in the trees and I could hear the gurgling rush of the water running over the stony bed further downstream. I slowed, not wanting my arrival to startle Martine.
With her back towards the path, she was sitting on a tree stump that had washed up on the bank. The white towel was placed beside her, and she was still wearing her plain frock. She was motionless, looking out across the river, perhaps staring into space and waiting for the sun to warm the water as it chased back the shadows of the overhanging trees.
I stopped and stayed still, staring at her back, undressing her with my eyes and visualising the firm curves of her sides, waist, hips and flanks. Then, like a schoolboy who had never seen a naked woman before and foresaw an opportunity, I gave in to the whim to hide in the vegetation rather than go up and greet Martine as I should have.
Sexual impulses often seem to bypass the reasoning centres of the brain, yet I knew I wasn't acting my age. I guess her youth made me feel like a boy again, perhaps subconsciously figuring that she would not be interested in a man ten years her senior.
I knelt on the ground and peeped at her through the shrubbery, knowing it was wrong but feeling too expectant and excited to stop myself. The idea of watching her undress unawares was irresistible, even if she turned out to be wearing a bathing costume under her frock. My erection had come back, elongating down the leg of my shorts, a good excuse to stay concealed, though my desire to see her body had overcome my shame.
Minutes passed and nothing happened. I thought that maybe she had changed her mind about swimming. Perhaps she had left it too late and expected the workers to arrive in the vines behind us. I wasn't wearing my watch, so I couldn't check the time.
If such an expectation had put her off then, I speculated, perhaps she had been planning to swim nude. The thought sent a thrill to my genitals, already stimulated by my hand toying with the lump under the thin fabric of my shorts.
The heat of the early morning sun, even in the shade of the trees, was getting uncomfortable and I began to regret my choice of hiding. I could have been swimming instead of sweating and skulking in the bushes like a pervert. Then again, I reconsidered, if I got to see her nude, the sacrifice would not be too great. After all (having only just turned eighteen, and being painfully shy) there was no way she would show herself to me if she knew I was there.
