This tale is about a young man who discovers that his elderly female neighbour is, underneath her guise of middle-class respectability, an erotic and sexually active lady who likes to play a submissive role.
I hope you enjoy it and look forward to receiving readers' comments.
I bought the house in Edison Avenue for two reasons: firstly it was in the town where I worked so that, at a pinch, I could do without a car, and secondly it was cheap, because it was a wreck. Looking back, I'm surprised the bank agreed to a ninety percent mortgage. The roof had missing tiles, the brickwork needed repointing, the window frames were the original nineteen-thirties ones and were mostly rotten, the gardens were overgrown... I could go on but you get the picture.
On the plus side it was a decent sized three-bed semi and I knew I could do it up, given time and a bit of finance from my parents. Also it was in a good neighbourhood. Mostly older folk whose kids had left home or who had downsized in their retirement so that they could afford a Caribbean cruise every spring.
I moved in on the twentieth of July, a sweltering Monday. I'd taken the week off work and as soon as the removals team had finished and driven away I set to unpacking. It didn't take very long; this was my first house and I didn't have piles of stuff, so I was pretty much done by late afternoon. I made myself a mug of tea and went out back and sat in a crappy folding chair, that the previous owner had left in the garage, and surveyed the back garden.
It was pretty wild. The last owner had been a widow and she'd had to go into a home and the place had been empty for nearly six months. Tomorrow, I decided, I would at least mow the lawns. Show the neighbours that there was a new owner and he was going to set everything to rights.
Because looking around it was a bit embarrassing. All the neighbours' plots, so far as I could see, looked like Japanese formal gardens with everything pruned and trimmed to within an inch of its life. The garden next door, belonging to the other half of the semi, was perhaps the exception. The lawn wasn't quite so much like a putting green as the others and there were some weeds in the flower beds and a couple of shrubs that needed some attention.
I could see quite a lot of this garden as there was just a waist high panel fence separating us and, as I looked, the kitchen door opened and a lady in slacks and a short-sleeved blouse came out onto her patio with a glass of wine and a book. She put the wine down on a little table then pulled round a recliner so that it faced the late afternoon sun. In doing so she noticed me and smiled and came over to the dividing fence.
'I saw the removals van; you must be my new neighbour.' She spoke warmly and clearly, her voice a tiny bit deeper than my idea of normal for a lady; her accent screamed middle class. I stood up and went over to her and she held out her hand. 'I'm Joyce.' I took her hand, which was slim and long fingered with prominent veins and a few light brown spots on the back and felt the firmness of her grip.
'I'm Luke,' I replied, smiling back at her and taking in her figure and her face.
My neighbour was tall, at least five feet eight, and slim, although the years had widened her hips. Her blouse was loose and hinted at a small bosom; her bare arms were long and sinewy with wrinkles in the skin of the upper arm.
I guessed her age to be late-sixties and it was clear to me that she had once been an attractive lady. She had high cheekbones and full lips and beautiful light-blue eyes. But her face was lined: there were pronounced crow's feet at the corners of her eyes, lines on her forehead and down her cheeks and faint vertical lines on her upper lip. Her hair, which was thick and grey, was cut stylishly and short, just touching her collar and curling in under her chin. There was also evidence of aging at her throat and that part of her upper chest which was exposed by the open-neck blouse.
But that first meeting I merely took all this in. It had no impact on me. This was my new neighbour and she was an elderly lady, end of story. Not, I hasten to add, that I am adverse to the charms of an older lady, far from it. I'd been mooning over Kate, the Human Resources manager in my office, for about two years with zero progress to date. But Kate was in her forties, not her sixties. I'd never imagined a lady of Joyce's age, even in the small hours when I lay in bed and masturbated to images of Kate and the lady who served behind the counter in the Post Office. And a few others... It's safe to say that I was a fairly normal horny twenty-six-year-old, although a frustrated one; the position of Luke's girlfriend was currently vacant. It's not that I wasn't a decent looking lad with a body honed by miles of running every week, and a ready wit. It was mostly that I'd reached an age where most of my contemporaries were married or engaged. In ten years' time, if I were still single, I'd no doubt be picking up the separated and the divorced, but for the time being the landscape of my office and circle of friends was a bit barren. I'd told myself to go online, like everyone else did nowadays, but so far I hadn't done anything about it.
'Would you like to join me in a glass of wine?' asked my new neighbour, somewhat unexpectedly. She smiled. 'I'm not a big drinker but I do like a glass in the early evening, especially when it's so nice outdoors. And it would be nice to get to know a bit about my new neighbour.'
Put like that I could hardly refuse. 'There's a bit of a gap in the fence,' said Joyce, pointing up the garden. 'Saves you having to come all the way round.'
I found the gap and went through and onto my neighbour's patio and sat down on the other reclining chair. She came back through her patio doors with another glass and poured the deep red wine into it. We toasted briefly and I sat back on my recliner and looked at Joyce and Joyce looked at me.
'Tell me about yourself, Luke,' she began. 'I hardly ever get to talk to a young person nowadays.'
So I talked about myself and my job and my hopes and aspirations and the sun started to dip behind the big rowan tree at the end of her garden and the level in the bottle dipped correspondingly. As I talked, Joyce sat quietly, a small smile on her face, asking occasional questions and making me realise that she was actually listening to what I was saying and was interested in it.
'How about you?' I asked as I ended my life story.
'Oh pretty boring really. Married to the same man for forty years. Didn't have any children,' she looked momentarily sad. 'My husband died five years ago so it's just been Mavis and me, until six months ago.' Mavis was the lady from whom I'd bought the house. 'So it's been a bit lonely around here since then.'
About nine-thirty, and with the bottle empty, I rose and made my excuses. 'I've still got a lot of unpacking to do before I can make my bed up,' I explained. 'But it's been really good to meet you, Joyce.'
'Likewise,' she smiled. 'And if you need anything, just give me a call.'
I found the gap in the fence in the twilight and squeezed through and, with a final 'good night', went in and shut the door.
Later that week I started attacking the garden and so I saw quite a lot of Joyce. It was obvious she was grateful for the company but she didn't try to impose herself upon me. We would chat for five or ten minutes then she'd make an excuse and go indoors or potter in her garden. As a result of this I began to get quite fond of her; she was also, as I mentioned earlier, a striking lady, or had been in her prime. And the truth was that I found her attractive and I started looking at her with a different eye; noting her slender legs, when she wore a skirt, trying to unobtrusively peek down her open-necked blouse to estimate the size of her breasts. I don't think she noticed. If she did she gave no sign. I wasn't thrilled with myself that I seemed to be developing this fascination; Joyce was probably forty years older than me. It wasn't normal.
On Friday evening she invited me over for another glass of wine and I was glad to accept; I'd worked hard that week and made a lot of progress. 'My turn,' I called over to her and went in to get the bottle of Burgundy that I'd bought against just such an eventuality.
As luck would have it, it started to spatter with rain as soon as we'd settled in our recliners. 'We'll have to go in,' said Joyce and we picked up the bottle and glasses and went into her dining room.
There was a big, solid table against one wall and a small, two-seater settee facing the french windows. Next to the settee was an occasional table with a newspaper on it, folded to the cryptic crossword. We sat down on the small settee and I was at once aware of being closer to Joyce than I had been. I could smell her perfume. To distract myself I picked up the paper and looked at the crossword. There were three clues not yet solved.
