Lady On The Corner

I live in a very respectable street. The inhabitants, if they are male, tend to be accountants, middle managers, draughtsmen and things like that. If they are female they either do not go to work at all, or they are receptionists for doctors, dentists or they work in such highly regarded places as pharmacies.

They have the appropriate number of children and in some cases grandchildren. Their houses are neat with well cared for gardens and Ford or GM vehicles residing in tidy garages. It is a very peaceful and neighbourly street and, from the point of view of a nineteen year old university student, bloody boring.

I think that anaemic word “nice,” describes the street and its people.

As for my own family, my father works in a television station. Some people seem to think that it must be exciting, but he works in the pay office and this tends to be like any other pay office, rather colourless.

Mother sneaks off to do some house cleaning for better off people in the next suburb. I say “sneaks off” because she never lets any one know where she is going when she departs a couple of times a week in her aging Datsun. It would definitely be looked down upon if it was known she went cleaning.

My brother and sister are older than me. My sister works in a bank as a teller and is married to a tedious bank manager. My brother has gone away for a very long holiday, or that’s the story we tell. In fact he resides in prison after some problem over drug dealing.

There is one exception in our street, and that is the lady in the corner house. She arrived about eight years ago and lives on her own most of the time. She was something of a mystery lady since no one even knew her name for a long time. I was the one who first found out her name and I told my parents.

Within a week everyone in the street knew she was called “Errol.” That caused some amusement among the locals who made what they thought were amusing quips like, “Her other name isn’t Flynn, is it?”

Errol was thought to be well heeled financially since on her purchasing the corner house there was a frenzied remodelling of the rather ordinary looking villa. When finished the place looked vaguely like a Swiss Chalet.

It was during the time of the remodelling that I first saw Errol. She was standing facing the house with her back to me as I passed by. What I saw was a trim little figure with long blonde hair wearing tight shorts a skimpy top and giving the general appearance of being in her early twenties. The vision set up a tingling sensation in my groin. I was later to discover that the rearward view did not tell the whole story.

One of the criticisms of Errol was what was called “Her pretending she’s a teenager.” This arose mainly from the somewhat revealing clothing she was inclined to wear. For example, in warm weather she might be seen pottering in her front garden in a bikini notable, not for what it was, but for what it was not.

The criticism came mainly from the rather frumpy wives of the residents and their husbands who tried to pretend they didn’t fancy Errol. Other criticism arose from her sin of owning a rather expensive motor car and the other signs of affluence she displayed.

My first actual meeting with Errol took place via the agency of her dog. Returning home after a hard day’s slavery over books in the University Library, I was passing her house when out of the open front door there hurtled a barking snarling medium sized dog of uncertain breed.

The black and grey bundle of fury rushed towards me seemingly intent upon my destruction. On reaching me it rolled over on its back kicking its legs in the air, indicating that I should tickle and pat her. This I proceeded to do and the creature snuggled up to me with the clear indications that it wanted more.

While engaged in this interchange I knelt down and got a lick on the nose. A voice above me said, “She loves to be made a fuss of.” Looking up, there was mystery woman Errol standing over me.

It was then I discovered that her back view had not told the truth. I judged her to be a well preserved fifty to fifty five. The long blonde hair was obviously dyed and there were little lines round her soulful blue eyes. Her face tended to be long and narrow with a pert little nose and bow shaped mouth with full lips.

A slender neck descended to a trim figure with impudent breasts of modest size that in turn displayed, what looked like, succulent nipples as they pressed against her tight fitting top.

She was wearing tight shorts, and having her legs right in front of my eyes, I observed that they were slender and shapely.

“Not bad for her age; in fact a neat package,” I thought, as I rose from my kneeling position. Once standing upright I could see that she was no more than five feet one inch tall. I felt as if I was towering over her.

“Yes,” I said, picking up the doggie theme, “She certainly seems affectionate; what’s her name?”

“Cake.”

“Cake?” I repeated, a trifle amazed.

My repeating the name brought on another storm of affection seeking by Cake.

“Yes, when she was a puppy I thought her good enough to eat.”

I laughed and said, “Well, my name is Dane but I don’t think I’ve got a drop of Danish blood in me.”

It was her turn to laugh and she said, “It’s better than being called Swede because then you really would be eatable – by cattle. By the way, I’m Errol.”

“At last,” I thought, “the name is revealed,” and wondered how she came to have what I’d always thought to be a man’s name. But come to think of it, I know a guy called “Grace.”

She extended a little hand to be shaken and I engulfed the morsal in mine.

Saying something like, “See you again,” we parted company; I to hasten home in order to reveal the name, and Errol to do I knew not what.

Thereafter I saw quite a lot of Errol. I suppose that can be taken in two senses. The first because of the minimal clothing she wore on warm days, the other because she always seemed to be pottering in her front garden when I walked by, or Cake would come rushing out to greet me and Errol would follow.

Our conversation extended to me parting with the information that I was studying chemistry at university, and she revealing that she came from a city over in the east and had come to live here because her mother was in a nursing home in our city. Beyond that our talk concerned the weather, her house and garden and the odd bit of local news.

She was still the mystery lady in the corner house, and one other intriguing matter was the arrival every couple of months of a tall grey haired man. He drove an even more expensive car than Errol that bore the number plates of the State from which Errol said she had come. He seemed to stay only three or four days and then was absent for another couple of months.

Rumour delighted in his coming and going. He was her lover who, being married, couldn’t get away very often; he was her father, but my close contact with Errol suggested he would have had to be a very enterprising boy about ten to have fathered her, since he looked to be in his sixties. Yet another guess was that he was her brother.

Again it was me who finally got the truth, but that was some time down the track.

Where others were suspicious of Errol and her apparent affluence, I liked her. I enjoyed our small talk and her slightly cynical humour, and listening to her bright voice and tinkling laughter. In fact, I found her quite sexy in a mature way; not that this intruded much into my thoughts, since I was engaged in some recreational sex with a couple of girls on a fairly regular basis.

The next stage in our relationship came about because one day I passed Errol’s house while she was mowing her front lawn with a motor mower. It was quite a hot day and perspiration beaded her brow.

On seeing me she turned off the motor and I said, “You shouldn’t be doing that on a hot day like this.”

“Yes, silly of me, isn’t it? It was just that it looked so terrible and I felt I had to do it.”

She looked at me appraisingly for a moment then asked, “Would you like to earn a bit of money? I’d pay you to mow the lawn regularly.”

I had been on the verge of offering to do the job free, but since my student allowance was a trifle meagre, I was not averse to topping it up.

“Sure,” I said, “I’ll just go home, drop my things and change and I’ll be right back.”

That began my role as Errol’s grass cutter, and I must say she was very liberal in her payments.

From cutting her grass I went on to do other odd jobs for her, mending this and that, changing tap washers, gluing broken ornaments…and talking of ornaments, that activity got me inside her amazing house.

The remarkable part was the large number of ornaments, bowls of artificial flowers and sundry other items that my mother would have called “folderols”. There was also the huge array of pictures festooning the walls and the colours of the walls themselves such, that had my mother seen them, I think she would have got colour stroke.

The whole place had an air of organised chaos, and it was from my taking an interest in this domestic confusion that I learned that Errol was an interior decorator. As much as I had come to like Errol I certainly wouldn’t let her decorate my interior.

Cake and I had become fast friends, in fact, almost lovers, since every time I appeared on the scene there had to be an extended session of patting, stroking, tickling and licking and much throwing of balls. I think it was this relationship with Cake that inspired affection for me in Errol.

This affection led on to further exposure of Errol’s background. The tall grey haired visitor was her husband; a medical man from whom she was separated and who was the real fount of Errol’s affluence.

As she put it to me in a moment of confidence, “He keeps me well supplied to shut me up.”

I further learned that they had got fed up with each other, and that her husband was under the impression that if Errol departed from his life, there would be younger blondes and sexy times for him. “None of it’s happened for him,” she confided, “so he comes trotting back to me every now and then for a bit of…you know…and I feel sorry for him so I let him.”

It sounded a bit odd to me, but I made no comment and the only disclosure I made to my mother was the fact that the man was Errol’s husband. The rest of the street had that information within a couple of days.

Summer passed, then autumn and winter. By the spring Errol and I were fast friends and trusting confidants. Whenever I did any work for her I got tea, coffee, wine or beer. Our time spent together seemed to extend up to a couple of hours as she regaled me with the latest doings of her husband, her sister with whom she was always having telephonic arguments and the declining state of her mother’s health.

I riposted with tales of my academic triumphs and failures and my successes with the girls, of whom there was a considerable turnover.

Then in late spring Errol announced that she and her husband were thinking of “getting back together again.” This would mean her returning to his bosom for a trial period.

I felt somewhat upset about this. I had come to value my relationship with Errol and her departure would put a bit of a dent in my life. Still, if she could make a satisfactory life with her husband, then all to the good.

She duly departed, but did not give up her house on the corner. I undertook to keep the garden tidy, and in addition I became foster dad to Cake, who was to be left behind until “things got settled.” Mother didn’t like this very much at first, but after a few days acquaintance she relented since Cake had decided to accept her as foster mum, with all the affection that went with that status.

Nothing was heard from Errol for almost six weeks, and then one day there she was in her garden with Cake whom she had retrieved from mother.

After a cheek pecking greeting I asked, “Come to wind things up?”

Her eyes flared, red patches appeared on her cheeks; “No I bloody haven’t. The bastard’s got himself another woman…had her before I ever went over there…what the sod really wanted was to persuade me to divorce him and not dig too deep into his pocket.”

“But couldn’t he have done all that without you going over there?”

“Not him, the crafty sod. He thought if he could get me over there he could turn on the charm…he’s got plenty of that…and I’d be a good girl and not make any fuss. Well he’s going to get more fuss than he’s ever known in his life before.”

With that she burst into tears and fled into the house. Given our relationship I felt free to follow her to try and administer comfort. She was stretched on the sofa sobbing, and she wailed, “Cuddle me Dane, hold me for a while, I feel so humiliated.”

I duly cuddled her; I was on one side of her and Cake on the other, both of us trying to console the shamed Errol.

Eventually she calmed down, but only to the point where she was able to hurl further imprecations and abuse in the direction of her husband. I wondered if his ears were burning.

Once she had recovered to the point where I could leave her, promising to call in on my way home from university the next day, I took my leave.

Now I must admit that despite the distress that had been involved, I had enjoyed cuddling Errol. I had never actually embraced an older woman for any length of time, and the softness of Errol’s body against mine had a definitely salacious effect on me. To tell the truth, I actually got a bit horny.

I kept my promise about dropping in to see Errol next day, and she seemed to have recovered somewhat. I felt a bit disappointed by this since the situation did not call for another cuddle.

Errol was now working out the legal processes by which she would make her erstwhile husband pay up for the privilege of getting rid of her. Her dissertation on this subject took over an hour by which time I had to leave, having some study to do.

As the spring passed into summer, and with the hot weather Errol’s garments came off in unison with the rise in temperature, things seemed to return to normal. Her husband’s car appeared no more outside her house, and the legal processes were taking their endless course.

Errol and I seemed to grow more intimate as she spoke of life with her husband; how they met; what he had been like as a lover; the decline in his sexual performance with her and hers with him. I responded by telling of my own erratic sex life. In fact our conversations seemed to dwell more and more on sexual matters.

Errol’s minimalist summer house and garden wear had me getting increasingly horny as I went about my jobs for her. The jobs seemed to increase, although at times I could not see the point in some of the jobs she gave me, such as repairing things that did not need repairing.

Even my parents who normally did not comment or interfere with my comings and goings, said, “You seem to be spending a lot of time doing jobs for that woman.” They always referred to her as, “That woman.”

Another thing I noticed was that Errol appeared to become more and more restless in my presence, even to the point where she seemed to be trembling at times. Furthermore, she didn’t want me to go when departure time came, and she kept talking in an agitated way, almost pinning me down with her flow of words.

One evening after I had finished weeding the cracks in her patio I mentioned that my parents were going away on vacation for three weeks.

“You’ll be on your own?”

“Yes, and I’m a lousy cook.”

I saw her eyes light up, but in quite a casual manner she said, “Come over here for your evening meal. In fact, stay for the evening; you can do your studying here, I won’t disturb you, it’d be nice to have someone around the place for a change.”

The thought of not having to cook my own meals was sufficient enticement for me to accept the offer, and the idea of being with Errol was not abhorrent.

My parents left and I began my evenings with Errol. She was as good as her word, and did not interrupt me as I worked. At least, she didn’t disturb me by talking. She did, however, begin to have a very definite disturbing effect on me in another way.

During the course of the evenings she generally occupied the lounge, watching television or reading, while I used what was called, “The family room,” despite the absence of family.

As I have said, it was summer and the weather warm. Errol’s “around the house” clothing was agitatingly scanty at the best of times, but in general it covered the essentials. Her evening wear was something again.

She had the habit of taking an early shower, then clad in a diaphanous garment that I think is called a negligee, she would waft around, occasionally standing behind me briefly looking over my shoulder as if interest in what I was doing. She would not speak, but I breathed in a particularly sensuous fragrance. Sometimes a breast would briefly touch my bare shoulder - bare because in the hot weather I only wore shorts while studying.

For all my attempted concentration on my work, she had my head jangling and my penis rising.

I thought of trying to find some excuses for not staying after the meal. Perhaps I could say, “I really need to be near my books,” or something like that. It sounded pretty weak and I didn’t want to hurt her, so I said nothing.

It went on like that for four nights, but on the fifth night things changed. I had little work to do that particular night, so instead of going straight off home after the meal, I hung around with Errol.

We watched some television, or at least, the television was on, but I was too taken up with Errol and the sight of her body through the gossamer thinness of her negligee. I think seeing a woman’s body like that can be more arousing than seeing her naked. There is the tantalising sight of breasts revealed, yet not revealed; the half seen dark vee of pubic hair that leads one’s thought to what lies below it; legs exposed almost to the genitals, but not quite.

I tried to tell myself she was an old woman and of no interest to a young guy like me, but it didn’t work; in fact it seemed to make me hornier than ever. So I sat there hiding a pulsating erection trying to summon up the will to say goodnight and go home.

So what does a young guy do in these circumstances, sitting there, randy as hell with – I’ll be polite – a mature woman? Kiss her passionately? Grab a breast? Suppose she rejects the move?

That’s the problem, isn’t it? You’re with a woman who’s got you horny but you can’t be sure how she’s feeling. If you make a move you might bring an otherwise friendly relationship to an end. You guys know the line; “Stop it, I’m not that sort of girl you oversexed beast.” I’ve had that one a few times and of course it’s often a power play by the woman. She gets you worked up and then crushes your poor old male ego.

We were sitting side by side on the sofa, me staring unseeing and unhearing at the television and trying to cope with my sex problem. I kept glancing at Errol trying to work out how she was feeling, but I couldn’t read the signs.

Had it been left up to me we might have sat there all night with nothing happening. Luckily it wasn’t left up to me. Errol began to move closer to me until our bodies were touching. After a while she began to move her thigh against mine, then she said very quietly so I had to strain to hear, “What have I got to do, Dane, rape you?”

“Er…what?”

“Shut up Dane.” With those words she pulled my head down to hers and gave me the wettest tongue thrusting kiss I had ever experienced. I thought as she’d wanted to do when Cake was a puppy she was going to eat me. The kiss went on and on as she tried to get her tongue down my throat and bite my lips at the same time; I thought she’d never stop.