This is not a stroke story. It's a love story featuring older people. I hope it moves you, but I doubt if it will stir your loins, or whatever you like to call your reproductive organs. It has exactly the amount of erotic content it deserves. The protagonists are in their late fifties, and they're (very) British, so don't expect fireworks during the love scenes.
Fiona Birchwood sat on a green cushion in the dappled sunlight, leaning against an ash tree, sketching in oil-based ink. The restless subjects of her art, then as always, were the woodland flora and fauna.
She used no easel, preferring to rest her pad against her bent knees, with the palette by her side on the ground. That way, she felt at one with her subject. It was a little bit of an uncomfortable position for her, sitting in the damp cool shade, with her arthritis, but this was the way she liked to paint; and besides, so intent was she on seeing, so unaware of her own presence, that she felt no pain.
A nuthatch marched purposefully down the trunk of a birch, head-first, seeking ants. Fiona quickly and smoothly sketched its outline, in a single flowing line. She glanced down to see what she'd rendered. She gasped, and tears welled in her eye at the beauty of it. She silently mouthed "thank you" to the oblivious bird. She decided not to add colour to the work.
Stiffly, she rose and gathered her things into her bag and started back to the cottage. She couldn't wait to show Harry the sketch.
She entered her garden through the little back gate that led into the woods and passed by her wood and stone sculptures on the lawn. She smiled at the radiant marigolds adorning the borders of the flowerbed; they seemed to be laughing with joy in the April sun.
Fiona noticed Harry watching her from the kitchen window. She guessed that he was waiting for her to help him with his shoes so he could join her for elevenses in the garden. She returned his smile but felt the weight of her satchel and the soreness in her knees as she anticipated the renewed burden of tending to him, after her brief respite alone in the woods.
Harry was also an artist, but since his stroke, had all but given up. He was still quite capable of holding a paintbrush, although woodcarving was no longer possible for him. But he'd become too morose to paint. He was drinking a bottle of wine a day again, after being on the wagon for thirty years.
Their life was simple. Although they didn't have a lot of savings left, they didn't need much. They had no children to put through university; they didn't take or need holidays; they had their lovely cottage, with its beautiful garden. They had their artist friends, and the local pub. And Fiona's work was selling quite well. She'd started using Facebook to promote her work, and rather enjoyed seeing the encouraging feedback that she received -- admittedly, mostly from her artist friends.
Fiona knelt and pushed Harry's worn, comfortable trainers firmly but gently onto his inert feet, as he sat patiently on the wooden kitchen chair.
"I've made tea, Fi. If you could just carry the tray".
"I'll help you outside first, and then I'll bring it. Here's your cane." He gripped the handle of the cane and tapped its rubber ferrule against the floor tiles to check that it wouldn't slip.
Fiona guided Harry to the garden table, barely touching his elbow; she gave as little assistance as she dared: It was vital to him, she knew, that he maintained what remained of his pride.
Once they were seated, she showed him the sketch.
"Darling, that's gorgeous!"
"Yes." She laughed. "I agree!"
She rose suddenly and ran into the cottage.
Harry called after her, agitated. "Where are you going, darling?"
"To get the camera. I'm going to upload it."
She returned with a camera and her laptop. Harry watched her as she propped up the sketchpad against a tree stump, which she'd decided would make a nice backdrop.
When she resumed her place at the table, Harry sighed.
"Darling, I think..."
Fiona flicked through the photos she'd just taken, peering down at the back of the camera.
"What do you think, Harry?"
"What do I think? I think, darling, you might be becoming one of those Internet addicts."
Fiona opened her laptop, laughing. "I know, it's awful isn't it! But it really does seem to be the way everyone's going now. Malcolm and Sheila, Bill Grainger, they all post their art on Facebook too you know. You would too if..." she trailed off.
"...If I still painted."
"Harry, I..."
"No, you're right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry darling. But surely it can wait till we've had tea."
Fiona closed the laptop. "Of course. It's just, that I'm so
happy
. About Nigel the nuthatch."
"'Nigel the nuthatch'?"
She laughed. "Yes, I had to give him a name, darling."
Fiona waited until that evening to upload the photo. She had lit the fire earlier and it was now blazing merrily. Harry was seated in his armchair, reading. With a sigh, she closed the laptop and rolled herself her "nightcap", a marijuana and tobacco mix; the marijuana was very weak, grown in their garden.
She seated herself in her own armchair, opened up the laptop again and checked for comments and likes on Facebook. There were already four 'likes'! One of them was from somebody she didn't know: He'd also written a comment:
"Love this! Are you the Fiona Birchwood who used to be friends with Pippa and Emma in London in the 70s? Not sure if you remember me, I'm Nathan Brown, a friend of Jeremy Cooper, from Hampstead."
Fiona thought for a moment. She'd known Pippa Clarkson since they were teenagers, and still chatted to her on the phone every so often. But she couldn't recall a 'Nathan Brown'.
She found his Facebook profile. He was about her age, in his mid-fifties. A slim, grey-haired man, rather good-looking. Intrigued, she looked through his photos. Unlike Fiona herself, whose pictures were all photographs of her garden and the surrounding countryside, or of her paintings and sculptures, he'd posted mostly photos of himself. There was one old photo of himself playing the piano when he was a young man. And then she remembered: He was Jeremy's skinny friend 'Nat'. They'd had a single encounter after Jeremy's party, when they were both eighteen.
She spent the next hour reading his posts and looking at his photos, learning about what had happened to 'Nat' in the intervening forty or so years since they'd last met. This was a completely new experience for Fiona, to investigate someone through their Facebook posts, and she found it exciting.
He was divorced, with two grown-up sons. His ex-wife, whose Facebook profile Fiona managed to find too, was a beautiful woman of Indian or middle eastern descent. She was a photographer. Nat himself seemed to be some kind of scientist now, but also still played piano. His sons were both musicians. Fiona recalled Nat playing the piano at Pippa's party.
He now lived on a narrowboat on a canal in London. It looked lovely.
"What are you doing, darling?" Harry's voice startled her.
"I'm just looking at some photos."
"Ah. Well, I think I'll go up to bed." That was Harry's way of asking Fiona to help him up the stairs.
Trying not to show her impatience to get back to her laptop, she put Harry to bed.
"Thank you darling. Are you coming soon?"
"In a bit."
"Well, goodnight, Fi Darling."
Fiona returned to the living room. Finally left to herself, she opened her laptop and replied to Nat's Facebook post:
"Yes I am that Fiona! and I DO remember you! I still see Pippa often. Are you and Jeremy still in touch?"
By midnight, her mind was full of memories of her eighteen-year-old self: A big-eyed, dark-haired young beauty, with a passion for nature. A virgin, keeping herself for "The One": He'd be an artist, like herself, with a love of nature and the countryside. Wealthy but not materialistic, Oxbridge educated, intellectual but not an academic. That was Harry, to a T.
She recalled more of her and Nat's mutual friend Jeremy: A Cambridge undergraduate, a mathematician. His parents were professionals. He wasn't upper-class, like Fiona and Pippa. But he was fun, and provided a good introduction to London life, which was new to Fiona, having just finished her education in France.
Pippa had invited her along to Jeremy's party. Fiona had heard reggae music there for the first time. All the boys danced rather grotesquely to it.
She remembered that she'd worn a tight black dress to the party, which hugged her petite figure. And then she recalled that just before leaving for the party, she had panicked about looking too formal, so she had changed her heels for Doctor Marten's boots and hung Indian beads around her neck, creating an absurd mishmash of hippy and punk cultures, and it would have given her away as the ingénue she had been.
At the party, she had received lots of attention from boys. Then, as now, she often laughed and smiled, showing off her wide lips and big black eyes. But whenever she had started talking, the boys would slowly lose interest. She hadn't known how to flirt; she would be too intense. But she'd known that that The One would understand;
he
wouldn't show off how smart he was or ask her to dance: He would talk about Art, Nature and Beauty as she did, as one enamoured. As Harry had done when they'd met.
One boy at the party caught her eye. He'd noticed her looking at him. Then he'd approached her, and they'd started talking. He was a little different from the others. He was a misfit, like her, which had made him easy to talk to. He was startlingly skinny, with a big shock of black curly hair. He wore a tight striped sweater and a big army coat bought from a surplus store. He wore big clumpy Frye's cowboy boots which looked to be two sizes too big for his feet. That was Nat.
When there was a break in the music, Nat had gone over and played the upright piano in the corner of the room. His playing was improvised, but didn't sound like jazz, it was more like what they would later call trance music. He was quite talented, Fiona had thought.
He wanted to leave the party with her. She'd told him she was going to walk home to Chelsea. She remembered his reply clearly: "I
love
walking, it's my favourite thing after music!"
When he said that, she laughed, and decided that she'd let this funny skinny piano boy walk her home. It was five miles from Hampstead to Chelsea. But he walked with her, all the way, clumping beside her in his too-big boots.
When they finally got to her place, she began to feel awkward: He might want sex. She didn't want sex.
"Can I lie with you?" he had asked. He asked so politely, so shyly, that she had smiled, and said yes.
They lay together on her bed. She lay on her back, he on his side. He was clearly terrified, and unsure what to do.
Eventually he rested his hand on her belly. Slowly his fingers moved down. She felt that if she so much as twitched a toe his hand would scurry away like a frightened cat.
Then she felt his hand slip under her panties. He stroked her pubic hair. Fiona stared up at the ceiling in fear. Recalling it now, she felt almost sorry for Nat, getting neither encouragement nor resistance from her. He'd have had no way of determining whether she was liking what he was doing or not. But then again, Fiona herself hadn't known at the time whether she was liking it or not.
Eventually the tip of his middle finger rested on her clitoris. Then, like a lugworm at low tide, the finger suddenly dived and pushed deep inside her. It felt alien, cold and invasive, and it frightened her. She asked him to stop, which he did, instantly. She heard him quietly rubbing his finger against the carpet, in order to wipe off her juice, she supposed, which added to her embarrassment.
He lay beside her for the rest of the night, clutching her shoulder gently. She didn't remember sleeping, but she must have done, because she remembered waking up to find him gone.
That had been Fiona's first sexual encounter, and, naïve as she was then, it had taken her until now to realise that it must have been his too. They'd never seen each other since that night.
