When Jenny and Allen moved in next door I thought they were the ideal couple. They at 32 were about 25 years younger than I, he tall, about 6ft 2in, blonde good looking, she around 5ft 5in slim, a tumble of soft brown curly hair, a face that lit up when she smiled and an effervescent personality; a typical Australian couple.
But over the next year I watched helplessly as their relationship deteriorated. I honestly believe that it was mostly Allen's fault because as his farm machinery business went down hill, so did his attitude to his wife. .
I'd been away for a month holidaying with my daughter. When I returned it was to find Allen gone and Jenny with a black eye.
When I questioned her about the eye, at first she started to tell me the old, "I walked into a door" story, but Jenny is totally incapable of lying and in a flood of tears the story came rushing out. It transpired that Allen had been having an affair with his secretary and when Jenny confronted him about it he turned violent knocking her to the floor, and then used it as an excuse to move out and live with his girlfriend.
Jenny was distraught, tears streamed down her face as she sobbed helplessly. We were standing in her kitchen; I drew her to me, holding her close to my chest, instinctively feeling that this is what she needed.
It had been over 10 years since my wife had passed away, and that long since I'd held a woman so intimately close. I could feel her small firm breasts heaving against my chest as she sobbed. Although there was nothing sexual in this embrace I could not help reacting to her as I felt a stirring in my jeans. Before I could embarrass us both I moved away and seated her at the kitchen table as I busied myself making her a cup of tea.
Poor Jenny, she had been bottling all of this up inside herself for two weeks. The only person she felt she could talk to, her brother, lived over two thousand miles away in Sydney. I was her only neighbour, so that when I returned, her floodgates burst and all of her grievances came tumbling out.
We sat talking till 3 in the morning; she told me how Allen's business was just about on the rocks. Instead of placing the responsibility where it so firmly belonged, Allen chose to blame Jenny, accusing her of being demanding of his time and wasteful of his money. Neither of which was true. Worse still, when Jenny had finally found out about his affair, he had accused her of being useless in bed. I found this hard to believe of a woman as warm and attractive as Jenny.
When I left Jenny at her front door, she looked up at me and said "Thanks Will, I needed to talk this thing through and you've been so kind and patient"
"No need to thank me Jen. Now please don't go thinking that because you've had a chance to talk about it the pain will just go away, because it won't. The kind of healing that you'll need may take a long time. Remember I'm just over the fence whenever you need someone."
"Will you're a darling." Jenny replied. Then leaned forward and gently kissed me. Her kiss was still warm on my lips when I fell asleep.
Over the next few months Jenny and I became closer. Much work needed to be done around her place. Allen had been neglecting things for a long time. During the early spring we re-painted the interior of her home. Jen was a good worker doing at least her fair share, and somehow finding time to prepare our lunch. We often got together for our evening meal. I found her to be easy to get along with and discovered that it was easy to make her laugh. However I couldn't help but notice the way that her breasts strained against her shirt as she reached with her brush to paint the higher parts of a wall, or the way her butt swelled from her lower back as she climbed a ladder to work on the ceiling. There was no doubt that I was finding Jenny to be more and more desirable but it never occurred to me to believe that she had similar feelings toward me. After all, I would always be 25 years older than she would.
Come summer we worked together in both of our yards, while I was good at doing the physical work of digging, concreting and building, Jenny turned out to have green fingers and an excellent grasp of garden design. As a result things really improved in both of our gardens.
With the coming of the hot Australian summer, came a disconcerting change in Jenny's attire. Gone were the jeans and long sleeved shirts to be replaced with cut-offs, revealing that Jenny had a really nice butt and legs that were slightly thick at the top, which was just fine by me because I never was fond of skinny legs. Her Tee shirts also made it clear that she seldom wore a bra, and didn't need one. On more than one occasion she noticed me looking at her, it never seemed to bother her; she just gave a little smile and carried on with what she was doing.
There was one time on a really hot day that her shirt was sticking to her; her breasts were outlined as if she were topless. I couldn't help looking at the way they moved as she knelt working in a flowerbed. I had come to a complete halt when she looked up and caught me watching her I was very embarrassed.
"Sorry Jen." I stuttered. "I didn't mean to stare."
"That's OK Will, I'm just glad that someone still finds me worth looking at."
"Any man with red blood in his veins would find you worth looking at Jen." I replied then felt even more embarrassed at my statement
"You are just being kind Will."
"No I'm just being honest."
During the course of the many evening meals we shared we became ever closer, even able to discuss personal things that I would never have considered possible with a woman with whom I had never been intimate. She told me that Allen had been the only man in her life. She had met him at high school, dated, fallen in love and married him, so since being a teenager her world had revolved around him.
I could see that this was a situation that needed changing so over the next few weeks started encouraging her to socialize, believing that meeting more men, or better still having a love affair would help her to get over Allen and move on with her life. She told me that she could not see herself with another man and was not yet ready to go down the road of having an affair. She was quite shocked when I suggested that an affair did not have to be an all-consuming passion, it could be as simple as fulfilling a basic human need for sex. Even a one night stand was OK in the right circumstances, and if such a thing were to happen there would be no need to beat herself up over it.
At that she went quiet; a troubled look came over her face
I asked her "What's the problem Jen?"
"Nothing."
Now I was troubled, we had long since reached the stage of freely discussing whatever was on our minds, so her refusal to answer indicated a severe problem. I probed deeper.
"Don't give me that 'Nothing' shit Jen. Talk about it."
She remained quiet for a while then without looking up at me gave a sigh then began speaking
"Will, you know that I've only ever had one man in my life, nobody else ever got as far as first base with me. I honestly thought that I was keeping Allen happy in bed, at least he had no problems in having an orgasm."
