The old man, whose name was Calvin, woke up startled. He had been having a dream. Vague images lingered in his mind, but nothing clear. There had been pain in his dream, there had been laughter, there had been grief in his dream, and there had been lust. Oh, always there was lust. So many women had passed through his long life, many of them naked and voluptuous. There was no surprise in that, he had been an artist most of his life.
He lay now, wide awake, in his massive bed, in this large house, which, in reality, was too large for his needs now. Just as the bed was too large for a single body. But he would never voluntarily leave this house. Too much of Laura still lived with him in this house. So much of it displayed on the wall in front of him.
Three years since the pneumonia had taken her from him, and he would go on seeing her in every room, at every table, in every stage of undress. Quite apart from all his depictions of her around the house, she was locked firmly inside him.
He knew too that before long he would not be leaving. This very bed would claim him. At present his two faithful assistants, (he refused to call them servants) served him breakfast, and then they would bathe and dress him. After that they would ask which view he wanted to paint that day, and he would tell them.
If it was a clear day, it would be the upstairs gallery, where many of his unsold paintings were kept, and from the window there he could paint the green and purples of the distant hills. He knew well that his assistants secretly visited this gallery to ogle some of his more erotic works. Those of women offering themselves in the throes of passion. Calvin was pleased that they could take some pleasure from that, just as he had when he was young and producing them.
On a sunny day, they might place him under a parasol on the patio, from where he could paint chosen aspects of the garden, the garden that charged his memory of Laura even more. She loved that garden, and had supervised much of how it was arranged, from the bubbling water course, to the galaxy of flowering shrubs, which she had cleverly selected so that a display of colour was on show all summer long.
He lay and tried to dredge up the dream again. Nothing remained. He couldn't even recover the lust. Ah, sweet desire. All such thoughts had died with Laura, it seemed. He allowed himself a sorrowful smile, as his hands searched under the covers and touched his shrunken little penis. What times they'd shared, and there was always memory.
And memory inevitably took him back to that circumstance when, as a young man, for a while, he had been unable to distinguish a dream from reality. No problem recalling that .
He had been twenty years old, and should have still been attending university. But having already sold two or three of his paintings, all the signs were he would have a lucrative career ahead of him. All his tutors had encouraged him with high praise, and had, naturally, been highly disappointed when he told them he was bored with university and was dropping out to pursue his art more thoroughly on his own. Their warnings of hard times ahead fell on deaf ears, and apart from one brief fallow spell he had never regretted his decision.
He rented himself a small flat in the city where he could wander out to paint landscapes, or, by curtaining off part of the large bedroom, he made a studio where he could do still life, portraits, or the ever popular nude studies of the female form. Searching out models to pose nude had not been as difficult as he had feared, and the nearness of the bedroom, had been very convenient when the occasional model welcomed his attentions.
Detecting such amorous availability became quite a skill for him. Best done, while handling a nude model into a required pose, he would ensure that one hand somehow slid along an inner thigh. At that same moment he would glance up into the model's eyes, and from what he saw there he would know that follow up was on the cards when painting was done. So his artistic ability increased along with his sensual experience.
In the summer of '47 he rented a seaside cottage, newly refurbished, since the coastline had opened up after the war. His main intention in the two weeks he was there was to try his hand at coastal scenes, but he also intended to continue his experience with painting naked ladies. Two of his most recent sales had been to gentlemen who appreciated the way he caught the lascivious qualities of a naked woman.
A castle over the dunes, a fishing boat returning to harbour, sea birds rising in a flock from a rocky shore, were all pleasing, and, more importantly for a relatively poor young man, likely to sell. However, although he had much satisfaction working on such coastal pictures, he had no response to an advert he'd placed in two local shops for female models. In consequence he was carrying a degree of sexual frustration after a blank fortnight.
However, on the morning of his last day in the cottage, a rather buxom young lady, twenty two years of age, turned up at his door. Looking her full figure over, under her clothing, he had visions of the lady being the very type of model Rubens might have used. She was dubious, at first, about doing naked posing, but when she was made a generous monetary offer, she agreed.
Sure enough, when she had removed her clothing and lay on the cushions the artist had laid out for her, without too much coyness it has to be said, he could see that her large breasts, wide hips, heavy thighs, gave her that very look he had imagined. He knew, it being his last day, he would have to make a very quick outline so that he could complete it at his leisure when he got home.
By late evening, darkening outside, he felt he had gone as far as he could at that stage. Now after staring at her all day, even though she might not have been his ideal for for such ventures, Calvin could not resist moving in on her. At first she seemed rather flattered, that he wanted to kiss her, stroke and nuzzle her breasts and that she could produce that huge bulge in his pants. It was when his fingers had tried to slide between her thighs, and he had moved her hand towards his bulge that she objected.
"I never, ever, go that far," she had exclaimed, jumping to her feet.
Calvin was steaming with desire by this time, sure that the experience of spending himself inside a woman of this size and delicious softness would be most stimulating. The pressure in his penis was near agonising, as, despairingly, he watched the big lady pull on her clothes.
In bed by midnight Calvin just could not sleep. Too hot, too worked up, he rolled around in the bed, over onto his stomach, but the friction on his penis only increased the discomfort. Outside he could see bright moonlight, and he wondered if the cool night air might calm him down. It was turned two o'clock when he rolled out of bed, donned shirt and pants, before moving outside.
For that time in the morning the air was unusually warm. Calvin wandered past other cottages, all in darkness wondering whether a plunge in the sea might be his only chance of losing his tension.
Approaching the last cottage on the edge of the sand dunes, Calvin detected a faint light. Then came the sound. An unmistakable sound, a sound that Calvin was well familiar with. The grunts, groans and gasps of passion, were coming from around the side of the cottage.
Changing his direction slightly, so that his approach might be deeper in darkness, Calvin moved beyond the last corner of the cottage, and found that, over a very low wall, this cottage had a reasonable sized patio. What he saw there set his temperature up a further notch.
On cushions scattered liberally around, a naked man lay back with his legs spread. A woman , who he could only see from the back, her buttocks continually twitching, had her head down where the man's legs joined. The man's mouth gaped as Calvin watched what the woman was doing to him.
When the man put his hand on her head to drive her lower, she gave a laugh, and her whole body, raised up over him, and she was presenting her pubic area right in front of his face. Now Calvin could see the man's penis, recently released, pointing fiercely into the air, as his face disappeared into the offered womanhood. They remained in that position for a long time, as the woman squeaked and murmured incomprehensible words. Her large breasts appeared in profile, as she swung one way or the other.
Calvin's penis had gone as rigid as it had ever been, and if he had watched for any greater length of time he would have had to either try to join in, or take himself in hand. Agitated, more than ever, he moved away into the night and along the border between dunes and beach.
With the image he had just viewed still in his mind, he began walking along the beach. The dunes rose on his left, white hills in the moonlight. From his right came the gentle slapping of a quiet sea, like a muted slow handclap, as it touched the sandy beach.
Calvin, walking in moonlight, was just beginning to believe that this was perfect solitude, when a figure appeared on one of the higher sandbanks up in the dunes, walking in the same direction as he was. Just as quickly the figure disappeared. A dip in the dunes, Calvin presumed, as he quickened his pace. When the figure reappeared on another rise, Calvin noted, the lightness of foot, and the kimono style robe, which when the breeze pressed it to the body, emphasised a shape that could only be a woman.
After disappearing once more, she reappeared, moving swiftly, and steadily on a lower level, which kept her in continuous sight. Calvin realised he would need to increase his own pace if he wished to keep her in view. They walked for a long while, with Calvin staying just a reasonable distance behind her.
At a point where the dunes pushed further out into the beach, the woman stopped, looked out to where the sea glittered in the moonlight. Calvin was startled when the robe, kimono, whatever it was, suddenly dropped to the sand, and she stood there naked, pure white curves glowing in the moonlight. The artist in him longed to hold that image for reproduction on canvas.
