Sometimes, semi-retired, I contribute to short, intensive, language courses in Eastern Europe, where there is great demand, and little funding, for teaching English. My speciality is devising short plays through the acting of which participants learn and practice particular vocabularies and structures. With such events there may be opportunities for extra-mural activities.
One such course recently brought me, despite my advanced years, an especially intense, and unusual, encounter. A hotel in a tourist destination had made the accommodation available at cost, so long as its staff could take part. It was significant that this was a Slavonic language speaking country, because those languages do not use the articles, 'the,' 'a,' 'an,' and even the most advanced learners find mastering these very difficult.
The most striking student was a woman in her forties, fluent in several Slavonic languages, and progressing rapidly in English. But it was not her linguistic talent that was impressive: it was her physique. She was not especially tall, being about six feet or an inch more, but she was otherwise massive. Her shoulders and hips were broad, her upper arms as thick as most women's thighs and her thighs double the dimensions of most women's thighs. And this was not fat, for the flesh was firm, smooth, muscular. As for her bosom and bottom - they were spectacular, the more so because the intervening waist was contrastingly slim. Her measurements in inches were, I estimate, 48-36-48. It was rumoured among the instructors that she had been a wrestler or weight-lifter. Her close-cropped hair, in tight, almost white, curls, suggested some profession in which strength and fitness had been predominant, but she was now turning herself into an English teacher. I will call her Lidia.
She was certainly enthusiastic, unflagging after a twelve-hour day, including instruction, videos, exercises, acting, reading and writing, and sometimes continuing after the eight o'clock dinner, in impromptu tutorials. So, I was not surprised when there was a knock at my bedroom door on the third night. I suspected it was a colleague coming to discuss the next day or someone wanting help with a particular problem.
I had showered and was dressing again to prepare for possible visitors, so put on my robe before opening the door. I was confronted by Lidia, holding two glasses and a bottle of effervescent Bulgarian wine called Iskra, which, appropriately, means 'spark' in Slavonic. She was wearing her usual tight tee-shirt and short skirt, both stretched tight, and a little grin on her broad, light pink lips. She looked down into my eyes and her widely-spaced clear blue eyes closed and opened again in a kind of double wink. She said, 'You are free for the lesson?'
'Yes,' I said, 'I'm free for
a
lesson.'
'Yes,
a
lesson. But maybe
the
lesson, too.'
'Please come in. I'll just go in the bathroom and finish dressing,' I said.
'No need of putting on the clothes. That would be the waste of a time.'
'Just,
a waste of time
,' I corrected automatically.
'Maybe a waste of
the
time. You like the glass of a champagne?'
'A glass of champagne,' I said. 'Thank you. Do sit down.'
She sat on the bed, put the glasses on the bedside table, pulled the cork and poured. 'A good health,' she said, passing me a glass.
'Good health,' I said, sitting in the only chair and sipping.
She looked at me over the rim of her glass and again closed and opened her eyes. At the same time, I began to register a slight aroma. I thought for a moment it was the wine. Then I realised it was coming from her. A teasing, slightly aromatic, tingling sort of scent, salty and unmistakably female.
She drank off the Iskra, poured another. sank it in one gulp and stood up. 'Let us not make a waste of the time,' she said, and abruptly dragged off her tee-shirt, levering it over her huge breasts which shook with the movement within a capacious white bra.
Before I could speak, and I hadn't worked out what to say, she stepped forward, drew me to my feet and undid the cord round my robe. This was about the speediest sexual overture I had ever experienced and I was a little disconcerted, but at the same time excited. 'How did you know?' I asked as she lifted the garment off my shoulders and dropped it.
'You keep looking my boobies,' she said.
'Well, I might just have been noticing their size,' I said.
'No. You want to see them nudely, touch them. Have more champagne.'
'I don't need more drink,' I said. 'Of course, I do want to see your breasts.'
'I want to see your breasts also. They are pretty, I think,' and she took me by the shoulders, spun me round, undid my bra, dropped it, and spun me to face her. 'Yes, they are pretty,' she said, taking them in her huge hands gently and flicking her thumbs across the already erect nipples.
'Not as pretty as they were thirty years ago,' I said, 'But I'm glad you like them.'
She said, turning round, 'Now you take the bra.'
This was easier said than done. The item was probably hand-made and cleverly engineered. The shoulder-hawsers were not only wide but double, fixed not just to the apex of the garment above each breast but to two points, and there was not just one strap round the torso, fastening at the back, but three, broad, separate straps, so powerfully elasticated as to make unhooking hard work, especially as I was having to reach upwards. But I managed and she turned round again.