Cliff O'Shea retired from his lecturer position at Ruxton Technical College at sixty. He was fit and healthy, only marginally overweight, and with his full head of steel-grey hair a still presentable man. Nevertheless, after his divorce ten years ago he stayed happily single. He had shared his house with his son while the latter was a student and for two years longer after he graduated.
With Mat gone, the house felt too large and empty. Therefore, Cliff used his now free time and the payout for accumulated long service leave to convert his four-bedroom house into two apartments. Situated close to a university and other colleges, Cliff's first brief ad on the internet attracted dozens of students as potential renters.
Cliff, as a keen photographer, had always had an eye for female beauty. Unsurprisingly, therefore, he offered the vacant apartment to two well-dressed female students. They happened to be Chinese and one of the two was strikingly attractive. She appeared to be older and more confident than her shorter, comparatively almost childlike friend. Both loved the apartment and paid Cliff immediately one month's rent and two months' bond and moved in. From the rental agreement, Cliff learned their names and that both women came from Georgetown in Malaysia.
Cliff's friendliness and unfussed helpfulness put the women at ease, and a more familiar relationship than usual between landlords and tenants developed between them over the following month. In this Leisha, the older of the two took more of the lead than Cliff, as a landlord, would have done. Leisha had spent already four years in Melbourne and was in her final year of an Economics/Law degree. For her, the newly found living arrangements with Cliff was so much better than what she could find and afford in previous years.
Viv, the younger of the two, was in her first year of a degree in nursing. She had completed her final two years of schooling as a border in one of Melbourne's Ladies' colleges, spending her holidays back home. She was Leisha's cousin. Their families in Georgetown had decided to place her in her older cousin's care during Viv's first year at university. For Leisha, it made Cliff's age and fatherly manners doubly attractive. He would be, she hoped, an additional guardian of Viv's assumed innocence.
Regarding the latter, both Leisha and Cliff learned quickly that Viv was certainly in need of protection. Innocent or not, she was a flirt. The women had moved in at Cliff's in high summer. While Leisha spent sunny afternoons lightly dressed in the shared garden, Viv preferred a brief bikini that highlighted her nicely proportioned assets. When she noticed Cliff looking at her, she smiled while quite deliberately posing. It amused him but he was much more captivated by the sinuous grace of Leisha's body under the light, close-fitting shifts she preferred.
Cliff's focus on his tenants' physical appearance was, at this stage, more professional than sexual. From his teens until his early forties, Cliff had been an enthusiastic amateur photographer. After completing a six months part-time photography course, he joined a prestigious Camera Club. Over the following years, he took part in competitions and exhibited his work. In his later years, Cliff's photography concentrated on portraiture and character studies. It included some figure work but as Cliff was not interested in using professional models, it remained a minor part of his output.
The emergence and impact of digital photography killed Cliff's interest. It was no longer the craft he had practised and enjoyed. Although he kept his darkroom and cameras, he had not used them in twenty years. Neither had he printed any of the snapshots he had on his phone. But now, all of a sudden, his photographic interest had been pricked by Leisha and Viv. They would, Cliff imagined, be two interestingly contrasting models for a folio of nude studies. But as with other women he had known, Cliff would not risk asking them to pose.
In May, for a coming Chinese holiday, Leisha and Viv wanted to invite Cliff to a traditional feast. When they apologised for not yet having bought a large enough table and chairs, Cliff suggested the use of his dining room. The cousins happily accepted. On the set day they decorated the room traditionally Chinese and set up the table with the brought-over feast. Cliff kept out of their way but on completion contributed the wine and champagne. Being an epicurean, he greatly enjoyed the lovingly prepared, quite elaborate meal. Afterwards, it turned for the three into a pleasantly relaxed evening. For Cliff, however, as the evening progressed, some tempting and partially worrying ideas arose.
Viv and Leisha had during the afternoon spent some time unobserved in Cliff's part of the house. They could not have missed the dozen or so carefully framed prints of nudes that Cliff, in male-bachelor vanity, displayed on his walls.
Eventually - they were on their third glass of champagne - Leisha asked, "Cliff, have you taken all these photographs?"
"Yes, and I printed them too. It was my hobby many years ago. Do you like them?"
"I love your black-and-white studies," said Leisha, avoiding Cliff's eyes.
"These two are my favourites!" piped in Viv, pointing at two large colour prints.
Cliff almost blushed. Although he loved them for a different reason, they came for his taste too close to the eroticism of professional glamour. But it was what Elisa, the wife of a colleague, the statuesque blonde almost stepping out of the pictures to fuck, had wanted; and secrecy, both about the pictures and their following short-term affair. Cliff had only hung these pictures post-retirement, twenty-five years after their creation. But now - having drunk more wine than Viv -- it intrigued him if she saw and sensed what was hidden in these, for him, so evocative pictures.
Smiling at Viv, he asked, "Why do you like them? This woman is rather different from you?"
"Yes, she is so honest," Viv blushed and stammered, "and beautiful and sexy! My photos on my phone, the ones taken by my girlfriend and selfies are rubbish! They are not what I want to be." Then, Viv suddenly giggled, "I'll show you my snapshots. You must tell me, Cliff, why they are so bad."
As Viv scrabbled for her phone, Cliff saw that Leisha had left the table. Champagne glass in hand she stood in the hallway. She faced six black-and-white prints of his classical nudes mounted in a row on the wall. He would have loved to stand behind her to kiss her neck and tell her how much he wished to take such photos of her.
