8 Bamboo and flowers
"It looks set in for the day." Benjamin was standing at the window looking out.
She looked out of the window at the steady rain. Maisie really could not go and play in the garden, even in her Wellington boots and raincoat. Far too wet. It was a day for board games and cooking.
The rain carried on all through the morning and afternoon. It was still steadily falling when she went to bed. How she longed for sunshine and clear blue skies.
"It's not going to stay like this."
She blinked and found herself not fast asleep in bed. Far from it, instead sitting on the verandah of a house on the shady side, very clearly not in England. Across the lawn stretching out from the verandah, the trees were anything but sturdy oaks and ashes; the trees were tropical, big leaved and lush. Upon the verandah's rail a gecko looked at her. The sky was as blue as she had wished and the sunshine as bright: the contrast with the day at home could not have been greater. Before her, upon a rattan table a large glass of gently bubbling liquid, masses of ice and a large slice of lime. Gin and tonic?
Seated next to her, cool and collected as always, in a slightly crumpled, but linen always is, cream suit with open necked white shirt, sat Harris looking at her over his glass.
Such a delightful scene. Even when you have gone to bed and were looking forward to a good night's sleep tucked up and warm out of the rain; it was simply marvellous to find yourself in such a perfect place. A drink, a view, a comfortable chair, and a pleasing warmth. Would there be sex? Sex with Harris perhaps upon the white sheets of a bamboo bed beneath the mosquito net, naked bodies entwined in the tropical heat; perhaps a fan lazily turning upon the ceiling and clothes discarded on a chair. She had not had sexual intercourse with Benjamin before sleep. He had not seemed in the mood.
"What's not going to stay like this?" There was little point expressing surprise at the translocation. It had happened too often for that.
His hand was expansive taking in the view:
"Why, now, blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark!
The storm is up, and all is on the hazard."
"Storm? You mentioned storm before..."
And, indeed, she noticed a sudden quietness, the birds in the trees beyond the lawn had quietened; beyond the trees, beyond the distant hills, a line of clouds upon the horizon suggesting change. By the wooden house, on the verandah it was all much as before, if anything more serene, more lovely. Bamboo poles, thicker than her thighs supporting the roof. She sipped her drink.
"Where are we?"
Harris smiled his thin smile. The clouds were more noticeable, dark and perhaps ominous. She crossed one leg over her knee, pleased with the light white cotton dress draped over her body.
"It's lovely here, perhaps the clouds won't come for a little while." It did seem a shame to have the scene spoilt, just as she was settling into her chair. There was, though, a change in the air, an increasing heaviness. She looked at Harris, "the calm before the storm then?"
The man nodded and at that moment the first drops fell; fat and heavy upon the ground. A light pattering. They bounced upon the hard earth, not yet moistening it. The tranquillity of the late afternoon was lost.
"I wish we could just sit here. How do you bring me to these places? I don't understand. Why me? And who are you anyway?"
All at once the rain really started, the sun disappeared and down came the water from the sky. From a few first splashes of rain to a torrent of water. Stair rods indeed!
"We should go inside." He did not answer her questions. He picked up her drink together with her own and made his way through the door into the building. Harris settled himself in an armchair, her drink and his own upon a low table. She stood looking out of a window across the lawn at the rain. It was so very different from how it had been at home that morning. The rain was not.
A drumming of rain upon the roof, an incessant noise. It annoyed.
"It feels so hot and oppressive inside. You would have thought it would have been cleared by the rain." It was heavy and humid within the house. The warmth that had been so pleasant outside, felt sticky within. She wanted to be outside in the cool. "Do you think... you wouldn't mind if I went outside, be like taking a shower wouldn't it?"
"Naked outside in the rain?"
"Would it matter? You could come too."
Harris smiled at her, an indulgent smile, "You'll get very wet."
It came to her she was already very wet, beneath her cotton dress, inside her knickers -- whatsoever knickers she was wearing; she had, after all, not dressed herself in this dream, this place, this translocation. She looked at Harris. She wanted sex, lots of it; Benjamin had not provided; Harris could. He always could.
"Feel me," she said.
How often had that happened out in colonial stations: just a few white men and women at the station; the arousing heat and perhaps boredom; how much 'hanky panky' had gone on? The bored wife with husband 'up country', seeking excitement with the handsome Englishmen fresh out from the home country; how often had men in linen lifted cotton dresses and slipped their hands within the elastic of loose knickers and slid fingers through ample curls? Not then the fashion for shaving their sex bare, the regular scrape of sharp steel upon soon to be smooth Mounds of Venus.
Harris obliged. So good to feel his strong fingers lift her dress and touch; letting his hands roam free as she had wanted Benjamin to do; strong hands being gentle; she lent in, resting her head at his shoulder as fingers rifled through her chestnut hair.
"I want sex -- lots of it," she breathed. It was fascinating, her animal desire to copulate so very much bound up with her wanting to be pregnant; her usual sexual desires leavened by the desire to be fertilised. Wonderful to be scooped up and carried, hands under her dress and upon her bare thigh, supporting her; taken to the bedroom complete with mosquito net, just as she had imagined. Crisp white sheets but nothing more. Too hot for blankets, eiderdown, or anything; too hot for clothes as she was unbuttoned; and no need for undergarments, not with what was in prospect; there was no need for anything in the way.
Placed naked on the bed, lying there with thighs apart to be cooler and, she knew, to look the sexier, to attract the male. She lay and watched Harris undress and that was itself arousing. The tall man removing his jacket, laying it carefully upon the back of a chair, turning to smile down at her as one by one he undid the buttons of his shirt.
Harris neither young nor old, his strong torso revealed, not a body builder by any means but muscular, nonetheless, a flat stomach and male hair to his chest. She watched him as a man might watch a stripper in a club, savouring the reveal. Shoes untied and socks carefully removed before he turned and undid his belt. Her eyes focused in, just below it. Awful really, but it was very much that man organ which was dominating her mind. It was about to be revealed, stiff and purposeful. A tug to the waist band, a slow unbuttoning of fly. Was he teasing her, or did men just find the act of revealing their penises to women exciting? She bit her lip -- it was exciting to her.
He did not let it spring out and up, rather he pulled trouser and pants in one from his body and slowly lowered, letting inch by inch of his upright penis become visible, as trouser was lowered so the erection came into sight. So strong, so manly -- yes, so virile!
A clap of thunder and she watched him walk to the window, naked and perfectly erect to pull the shutters to; shutting out some of the now subdued light. The sky was dark.
