Prologue.
In the beginning was the foot and the foot was the means of motion; next came the ox wagon, horse and camel; the river steamers arrived to carry people and goods along the great river; after that and before the motor car came the mighty railway, sweeping contemptuously aside all other means of transportation arrived. Thus it was in my country.
Along the railway line grew up townships to feed the fuel hungry and water thirsty locomotives, and to serve as places to which farmers and pastoralists could bring their products and receive supplies. These townships thrived for many years, but now alas, they blossom no more.
The motor car, the truck and the road now rule, and whilst the railway still passes, it is but a shadow of its former glory. The diesel engine has replaced the mighty steam hissing monsters of yesteryear; the fuel bunkers and water standpipes remain neglected bearing lonely witness to a glorious past.
Chapter 1. A Journey is Arranged.
To one of these railways towns I was now travelling by train; let us call it Jackborough. The passenger trains that run a couple of times each week between two metropolises hundreds of kilometres apart, no longer stop there unless a special request is made by someone wanting to alight from or get on the train. I had made my "special request. "
I was on my way to spend a week with Aunt Hannah. She was not really my aunt, but a woman who, newly wed, had moved into the house next door to us when I was about ten or eleven years old.
She was young, lively, very friendly, and she and my mother soon became bosom pals. No pun is intended, and although on first knowing her I did not appreciate it, Hannah really does have delightful mammary glands but, as I say, I was not fully aware of that that until I reached the years of the tumultuous hormones. During those years I came to appreciate a good deal more about Hannah's than her bosom. She was indeed, and still is, a very attractive woman, but my early interest in her focused on the birthday and Christmas presents I received from her.
I can recall the first time became aware of Hannah as a sexual being. It was a warm Saturday afternoon and I was about thirteen years of age. I had long made free of Hannah's house – oddly it had never been Ted her husband's house, but always Hannah's – and I "dropped in" to see my putative and beloved aunt.
I wandered round to the back of the house to first see Ted – who never became "Uncle Ted" – pottering in the garden. I think I existed only on the periphery of his consciousness; nevertheless I bade him "Hello," and he grunted something that sounded like, "Lo Jason," and continued pottering.
I then saw Hannah. She was lying on a sun lounge reading a book. I went to her and greeted her. She looked up and smiled, "Jason darling. " She put down her book, swung her legs off the sun lounge and stood.
Suddenly she seemed to be surrounded by light; she appeared to glow, no doubt because my attention was abruptly focused on her in a way I had never before experienced; I was seeing her anew.
She was wearing a two-piece something or the other and revealed was what I thought to be the most stunningly beautiful female physique I had ever seen. Not, I hasten to add, that I had up to that time had much experience with or interest in the female form.
I shall describe Hannah as Junoesque for that was the first thought that came to mind. In an encyclopaedia I had seen a picture of the goddess Juno, and apart from a few details that was how Hannah seemed to me, a goddess.
My newly emergent manhood – emergent in the sense that it was no longer the tiny appendage of childhood – grew firm and slightly uncomfortable. I wasn't quite sure what was happening to me except I couldn't take my eyes from Hannah.
She stands around five feet nine inches tall and at that time I still had to look up at her; her legs were long, strong looking, but very shapely. Her bosom I have already referred to but it was on that occasion I became fully aware of its fullness, my awareness no doubt assisted by the somewhat revealing nature of the upper part of the two piece.
Her face tending to the long rather than the broad was framed by chestnut coloured hair that seemed to tumble over her shoulders like the cascading waters of a waterfall. Her skin that was usually an ivory colour but in that summer season was lightly tanned, as was the rest of her; and to complete the ensemble, her nose inclined to the aquiline, though not excessively so, and her mouth – well, I once read the description of a woman who was said to be "ripe of lip. "
I stood there stunned by the revelation that was as much in my psyche as it was objectively before me. In that early stage of my puberty I had suddenly found my ideal woman
Two very dark eyes that for all their darkness always seemed to be shimmering with humour, looked at me a trifle quizzically. "Are you all right, Jason," she asked in a voice that for the first time sent a quivering sensation through me. My newly found goddess had addressed me, and for the first time I truly heard her melodious tone – those of a warm throbbing contralto.
I jerked out of the contemplation of my divinity with difficulty and spluttered, "Er... er... yes... why?"
"You were staring at me strangely, darling; come into the house and have a drink and I made a special cake for you this morning. "
"Drink," "Cake"? These were furthest from my thoughts and desires, but eat and drink I did, but all the time trying to furtively survey my Juno... I mean Hannah.
I had been initiated into the art of masturbation by a couple of older boys at school, and that night in bed I relieved myself of the delicious agony that the revelation of Hannah had inspired. When the climatic moment arrived and my warm young sperm was spouting from my urethra it was visions of Hannah that rose up, and not the previous images of naked women seen in surreptitiously scanned pornographic magazines.
Afterwards I lay for a while contemplating the strange ways of people. How was it that Ted could potter in the garden when only a few feet from him there lay all that manhood could desire? Had I been Ted I would... Then ghastly visions of Ted invading the body of my deity rose up, and with them envy and frustration.
It was not until I started to penetrate the living flesh of the girls at high school that fantasies of Hannah began to fade. After all, Hannah was the "Unattainable One;" the holy of holies beyond my reach, and as my father was wont to say, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. "
My high school career, apart from very satisfactory success with the girls, proved to be also a success academically. I went on to study a course in electronic communication; a course that began with sixty five students and four years later had only fifteen graduates, myself included.
I was part way into the second year of the course when our family was rocked by an event next door. Ted left Hannah and departed the State with, so I was given to understand, a buxom wench who had served as receptionist for his dental practice.
