'My daughter has a crush on you,' the large lady who sat opposite Matthew told him. 'That is why her work has not been so good as usual.'
'I had wondered,' Matthew said.
Matthew was a history teacher at a girl's school. He was thirty one, single and presently unattached, and he was handsome. He was the favourite teacher among the girls in the sixth form and the one whose class everyone wanted to be in. And some of those girls were very pretty indeed, but Matthew took pride in being professional, and he valued his career. He desired some of those young girls, and some of them he desired a very great deal, but he was certain that none of those girls that he desired so much could ever detect what he felt and what he would have liked to do with them.
The large woman who was sitting opposite him, on the other side of the desk in his office, was Mrs Allen, or Maria, as she told him he could call her, who was the mother of Sarah Allen, who was the good pupil whose work had gone to pot, because she had fallen for her teacher. Other girls in the class had fallen for him too, but they were a little more worldly and tougher perhaps, and although they flirted with him sometimes, in the gauche and amusing way that young girls flirt, they never expected him to respond. An indulgent smile was enough.
She wore a little more make up than most women would wear, for the time of day, and to meet their daughter's history teacher. Her clothes were stylish and expensive looking, but also hinted a little towards the sexy. Matthew noticed; maybe it's compensatory, he thought, or maybe she just didn't care. He was an amateur psychologist as well as a professional history teacher.
Maria Allen was a large lady, a fat lady, a big beautiful woman, as the euphemism goes. She was big, and she was most definitely a woman, and she was, to a man who understands these things, beautiful. Matthew was such a man. He was not exclusively a big girl man, but he did not exclude the heavy, the shapely, the voluptuous and the fat from the range of women that could fascinate him erotically. But Maria Allen could not have known that; not yet anyway.
'Sarah is not the first girl to have got a crush on her teacher, and she won't be the last, but she is one who is taking it hard. Sarah and I are very close. Her father left us when she was only five, and since then it has been just the two of us. I was young when she was born, only nineteen, and in many ways we are as much like sisters as mother and daughter.'
Matthew did the sums as she spoke. Sarah is eighteen and mum was nineteen when Sarah was born. Mum, then, is thirty seven.
He had not been overly friendly or flirtatious with Maria since this interview had begun; a liaison with a pupil's mother would be as tricky as one with a pupil, even if less ethically wrong. He was surprised though, that she had not noticed the little sparkle in his eyes in some moments, as they had been talking. Yes, he was talking about a problem of misplaced attraction with the mother of the girl in his class who was suffering from that attraction; and at the same time he was talking to a woman he found highly attractive. It might be another case of misplaced attraction, but one that he would be able to handle. She had not noticed though.
'I can assure you,' he said, 'I am not the kind of man to take advantage of a situation like this.'
Maria looked a little awkward and quickly told him that she had not been worried about that, and then went on to say
'No, I'm worried about her school work suffering. She wants to go to university and she is bright, but this could ruin everything. I'm also worried about her, though. She has not had a boyfriend at all and I think that she believes that no boys will ever be interested in her. She thinks that her size puts them off.'
Sarah was the best pupil in the class. She always got the highest grades. She was popular with her classmates, but it was true that she was not popular with the boys from the nearby boys' school. She was the only girl in the class who had not had a boyfriend; not even one. Like her mother, she was big.
Knowing what Maria meant, and wanting to make the necessary and reassuring remarks, and wanting also to indicate that not all men were adverse to larger women, Matthew said
'She will find someone, probably when she gets to university, which will be better, because she will be busy with her exams in the next few months. A boyfriend would be a distraction that she is better off without for now.'
'And her crush on her history teacher?'
She will get over that too, in time, just as she will discover that not all men find larger women unattractive.'
He looked at Maria for a long moment as he said that. That she did notice. The ghost of a blush came to her cheeks.
Maria rose to leave and thanked him for his time and understanding. As she turned to go, Matthew said
'Let me know how she is when the exams are coming up. I'd like to talk to you again.'
It was subtle enough not to jar, and direct enough for Maria to have understood.
Matthew knew that the problem with Sarah would solve itself; at least the part of it that concerned him. His mind did not dwell on her. His thoughts were on her mother. He thought that he would like to get to know this woman more. She had struck him as intelligent as well as nice. He thought that the story of her life would be an interesting one and that she would tell it well. He desired her and his thoughts wandered to imagined images of her naked and lying on a bed as he knelt over her, ready to make love to her. He felt the twinge of movement in his loins and then remembered that he had to go to class in a few minutes, so he thought about the shopping he had to do on the way home that afternoon instead.
Maria thought of him as she drove home. That young man likes me. And he is very good looking. If I put myself in his way, and he invited me to, with what he said as I was leaving. And we might go out. And eventually it would lead to my bedroom or his. I wonder. She felt a mixture of excitement and dread. But then he would see me naked, and my horrible stomach, and that would be the end of that. And I must think of Sarah. I have no time for men.
She described Matthew as 'that young man.' He was only six years younger than her.
Two months passed and exam time approached. Maria had not been obsessed by the idea, but she still would have liked to put herself in Matthew's way. Matthew had not been thinking about her the whole time either. Sarah's school work had picked up again, but there was more to it, as her mother had told him. He was still hoping that she would come and tell him how Sarah was getting along.