Venus in Her Prime

Age cannot wither her,

Nor custom stale her infinite variety ...

Shakespeare Antony & Cleopatra.

It was her husband Seth who first brought the young man to her home. Or rather it was the young man first brought Seth, drunk to the front door.

'I could do with some air,' Seth muttered. 'Stuffy in here?'

'Sure you feel all right?' the youth asked.

He belched. His whisky breath. 'Quite all right. Why?'

He did not notice the chair his wife placed before him.

The young man urged. 'Sit down Seth.'

Seth was determined not to sit down. 'Bugger it all,' he grunted. 'Why did this have to happen?'

'Too many shots of whisky.' his wife said. 'Drinking yourself stupid.' She shrank from him with a look of undisguised dislike.

'Been hitting the piss pretty hard,' the young man answered.

The mask-like expression on Seth's face did not alter. Brown eyes heavy, bloodshot, whisky-flushed, his face smiled. 'My life, isn't it feller.'

He staggered like a lame Vulcan across the room, collapsed and stretched himself out full-length on the couch.

'It's humiliating!' His wife placing a rug over the prostrate form.

A smile slid along the man's lips. 'I could do with a drink,' he quipped. Then passed out. His mouth hung open.

Fixing her gold-flecked eyes on his face, the woman paused. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'I've no idea what your name is. Please sit down.'

'Sean Radford. I live not far from here,' he said. 'Down by the beach.' He was tall with a mop of unruly red hair and eyes of the bluest blue. 'And you?'

'Deborah - Deborah Bassett.' They shook hands. A pulse throbbing in her throat.

By her calculations Sean was at least fifteen years younger. She felt his difference from herself.

'I ran into your husband in the Star and Garter. Got talking. And got drinking.'

'And drove him home.' An uneven edge affected her voice,

'It's on my way. Seth left his car in the car park at the hotel.'

'I know,' she said ruefully, 'I've often had to collect it.'

She looked at the man sitting opposite. 'Can I offer you something? Coffee perhaps?'

;No, I'd better be heading off. Thanks all the same.'

Their glances clung for a moment.

She saw him to the door, watched him make his way to his car in the driveway.

She turned, stood for a moment, looking down at the man sprawled before her. Seth was often drunk nowadays. 'Need to unwind after a day's work,' he always said. 'Can't just come straight home.' When she tried to reason with him, he became abusive. He'd struck her on more than one occasion.

Deborah eyed her husband with contempt. The illusion of him had long ago broken into fragments. God, how I want to smash it all, sometimes, she felt, and rush at him screaming. She turned her discontent over in her mind for the millionth time, asking where it had gone wrong?

At forty-three Seth Bassett was a workaholic and an alcoholic.

In spite of the fact that he had been thinking of her, Sean gave a start at seeing Deborah sitting at a table by herself in a coffee-shop in Clarendon Street a few days later. All the other tables being occupied, he made his way across the crowded room.

'Mrs Bassett!' he greeted. 'Anyone sitting here?'

'Oh, hi. No, go ahead.' Deborah looked up, smiled.

'Thanks.'

He took in the raven-black hair, the dark eyes with gold flecks. She's cool, elegant, he thought.

'So ...' he realized he had little to say. She rescued him apologizing again for her husband. 'Seth has a high-powered job. This has aggravated his drinking problem.'

Sean made no comment but regarded her intently.

'I have a daughter about your age,' she said after a pause.

'I find that hard to believe.'

'Thank you.' She looked at him slantwise.

A shaft of sunlight shone in from the shop-window across the tables. Sean's red hair flared in the glow.

'He's quite an Adonis,' she thought. An upright flame.

They talked awhile about innocuous subjects, she telling of her job at the library while he spoke of his studio across the road, just getting the feel of each other, he thought.

She told him about how she and her husband had come to Melbourne from swan Hill four years ago when Seth applied for and obtained a senior management position in an insurance company. He spoke of his parents who were living in Warrnambool and how he was working as an architect.

How easy the flow of conversation had now become.

'Hi Blue Boy,' a girl called across the room to Sean as she collected a coke from the machine, then making her way to their table.

'Dee Dee, this is Mrs Bassett,' Sean said by way of introduction.

'Hi!' Dee Dee raised her penciled eyebrows as if she knew a secret. No doubt she thinks I'm having if off with Deborah, thought Sean. Dee Dee was a beautician who wore layers of make-up and a nose stud.

Dee Dee, drinking from the coke bottle was running her tongue over the mouth of the bottle as though fellating it. She was a blonde girl, with large aquamarine eyes.

'Dee Dee? An unusual name,' the older woman said.

'As in Deirdre,' Sean explained. 'Means sorrow and trouble.'

'Don't have any sorrow,' Dee Dee laughed.

The conversation became desultory. Deborah stood up. 'I must be off,' she said. 'Got to get back to work. I only get an hour for lunch.'

'What's on your mind, Boy Blue? You look spaced out.' Dee Dee said after Deborah had gone. 'You poking that old lady?'

'She's a friend. She's married.'

Inside herself Dee Dee was wondering. A displaced maternal love, perhaps, He's always been a bit queer where women are concerned, she thought. No doubt a complex, deep-rooted. He chills me out.

'Married? What of the deposed husband ...?

'Cut it out, will you. Its nothing like that.'

Dee Dee smiled slyly. 'Having it off with a woman old enough to be your ...'

'That's enough!'

'To say nothing of the husband repossessing his wife.'

Sean frowned but made no comment.

'I have your best interests at heart,' she said.

'That's what people generally say when they're thinking of themselves,' Sean replied

'I never wanted to break with you, Sean. You over-reacted.'

She cast him a sidelong badgirl grin.

'Any time you want to get together, give me a call.'

Sean ran into Deborah a second time. It wasn't accidental. In fact, he had been waiting for her outside the newsagency across the road from the coffee-shop.

As he crossed the road he could imagine her; stockings, suspenders, even a garter belt - instead of the usual pantyhose. You were fascinated by these relics of an older generation, you thought. The sort of women who were once called Ladies, in the days when women aspired to a bit of class.

He fantasized about older women, picturing thick stubbed nipples, large dark areoles. This was his locked-up self waiting to unfold, waiting to blossom out.

He stood in the cocoon of his imagination, stood outside the coffee-shop looking in through the window. Deborah was seated at the same table. It was not so crowded this time.

An older woman was supposed to be pretty loose, he thought, even desperate. And Deborah Bassett was well over that thirty year line, perhaps even forty.

He entered the shop and sat down opposite Deborah as the waitress approached their table.

'You don't mind my joining you?' His face was taut, enigmatic.

She touched him with a glance. But her voice had a metallic edge to it.

'No. But I'm not sure how far I want to take this.'

'Take what?'

'Meeting you regularly.'

'You afraid people might talk.'

His eyes flickered over her face.

'Not especially.' After a pause. 'You come here regularly?'

'I've a studio across the road. Architecture.'

'A bit young to be in your own business, aren't you?'

'Maybe I'm older than I look.'

'You design houses. Sean?'

'Among other things.'

There was a silence for a long moment. Then he asked. 'How's your husband?'

'Much the same. Someone brought him home last night. I thought for a moment it was you. But it turned out to be one of the men from his office.'

He was touched by the pain in her voice.

'I know it's none of my business,' said Sean. 'But why do you stay with him?'

'I told him I'd leave him when Jennifer left home, but he broke down, I couldn't do it.'

'Jennifer?'

'Our daughter. I also spoke to the priest and he insisted it was my duty to stay with my husband and get counseling, which we've tried. But Seth refuses to attend AA meetings.'

Like a bursting dam, Deborah was now letting it all flow out.

Seth has always been hungry for money and material success. In Swan Hill he had worked in his father's real-estate business, but he wanted the big money.'

'And he's making it no doubt.'

'Yes, but at a cost.'

That's where it had gone wrong, she thought. Seth's job in Melbourne was certainly part of it. She cursed the day she had encouraged him to take it. 'The insurance company's expectations are high,' she said, 'and my husband is determined to meet them.'

'And your daughter can't help?'

'Not really. Jennifer's living with a boy she met at Uni. She and her father often quarreled bitterly. There was always tension between them. Once when she was ten and I had the flu, Seth let her go to school on her own and she was hit by a car.'

'Was she hurt bad?'

'Jennifer was unconscious for five days. In a coma, the doctors said, and there was a possibility, they warned, that she might not come out of it. I prayed. I even made a bargain with God ...'

'You can't ...'

'I mad a bargain that if Jennifer recovered, I would attend Mass at least once a week for the rest of my life.'

'But you can't bargain with God!'

'Well, she recovered. She regained consciousness the very next morning. My faith was greatly strengthened by this.'

'I suppose I can't argue with that.'

Deborah was silent, having turned in on herself.

'How's Dee Dee?' she asked after a space.

'Fine.'

'She's your girlfriend?'

'I did date her for a short time, but we broke three months ago.'

'I'm sorry.'

'I'm not. She likes to play around. Not only with men. She goes with girls too. She's a two-way switch.

'You could do a lot better.'

'Maybe.'

'You're cynical of women?'

'Depends on the woman.'

Sean realized that he wanted this woman seated opposite him, far more urgently than any girl his own age. But he knew that he would have to play it cool. The tempting thought of a swift fleeting conquest. The age difference between them would act as a shield. Prevent things becoming too involved.

'You've built up a hard shell so as not to be hurt. You have to learn to trust again, Sean.'

'Yes,' he said, but his voice was uncertain.

'I have to get back,' she said rising. 'I'm at the library till late.'

At night she haunted his sleep. He couldn't remember the last time he'd lain awake thinking of someone. Just talking with Deborah would mean more than sleeping with Dee Dee, he felt.

When Deborah left the library late one afternoon, she saw Sean standing in the doorway of the dry-cleaner's shop. Impossible to believe he wasn't waiting for her, she felt.

Yet, he expressed surprise at seeing her. 'I've left my car at the garage,' he explained as he fell in beside her. 'Engine's being reconditioned. Won't be ready for a couple of days.'

It had been raining that day but it had stopped and the sun had come out briefly. Now the sky looked threatening and there were a few drops of rain.

'I'm going for a quick meal at the Imperial. Why don't you join me?' she suggested

'Oh yes,' he said.

They had stopped at the corner waiting for the lights to change.

'Come on, I'm starved.'

She walked on, increasing her pace. But he was close, his body touching hers as they edged through the pub crowd. She wondered if he was as vitally conscious of the contact as she.

During the meal his eyes held hers for a long moment and had power over her.

He liked her for what she wasn't, he thought. She wasn't flirty, she wasn't garrulous, she wasn't pushy.

When they came out of the pub an hour later it was raining heavily.

'How are you getting home,' she asked.

'I can get a tram.'

'You'll be soaked. I'd better drive you.'

'You look beautiful today, Mrs Bassett,' Sean said as he slid into the car beside her.

Deborah had to smile. 'Thanks Sean,' she answered. She took a long look at him, then looked quickly away.

She had noticed the moment Sean sat down in the BMW. Thin cotton trousers moulded - the whole compact maleness of him visible.

She felt far from comfortable as she swung the car out into the traffic.

'Where about are you in Albert Park?'

'Down near the beach. Off Victoria Street.'

The rain was less heavy when they reached Park Street. Each was busy with their own thoughts, neither speaking while they waited for the lights to change.

.

'What are you thinking about? she asked at length,

'You.'

'Me? What about me?'

'Dee Dee thinks I've got something going for you.'

She laughed. 'Have you told her my age?'

'Dee Dee notices things. She knows me all too well, she says.'

Deborah made no reply but moved the car out to make a right hand turn.

The moments stretched between them.

Soon they were turning into Graham Street and pulled up to outside a block of flats.

She noticed that Sean looked uncomfortable. His gaze on her was bold and intimate. He made no move to leave the car.

For a moment she panicked, thinking that he was going to annoy her. But her heart fluttered like a caged bird.

'Everything's fine,' Sean said.

'Fine?'

'Yes.' The merest pause. 'Are you coming in with me?'

At first Deborah wasn't sure she heard right.

Sean sat there wanting to put his hands on her breasts and bring her body closer to his. And then he realized that he had. She was in his embrace before she knew it.

Pitting her strength against his she was pushing him away.

'I'm sorry,' Sean said. 'I couldn't help myself.'

Her black eyes flashed fire. 'I'm married, you know. And I'm nearly twice your age.'

'I know,' he said. 'And I also know that you and Seth don't have anything going any more.'

She was a deeply religious woman, she was saying. And for her marriage really did mean let no man put asunder.

Sean's words fell upon the silence between them. 'I guess I've got a crush on you.'

'You've got a crush on me?'

They looked at each other without saying anything. She did not protest, neither did she respond. She put her hand on his.

'Look,' she said. 'I'm flattered that you're interested in me in that way. But nothing can happen between us. I don't want to end up in the divorce court.'

'Fortunately, divorce is simple these days.'

'Not for me. My church doesn't recognize divorce. It's not simple for me.'

'Okay,' Sean said opening the door of the car. 'I'm sorry. Thanks for the ride.'

Deborah started the car, turned to head towards home. But home to what? she thought. Seth? He'd be still at the pub. And when he got home, if he got home, he'd pass out on the couch again. That she must endure the life-long martyrdom of an ill-mated marriage.

That night when Deborah got back home Seth was asleep, with a labored nasal breathing sharp and ragged, like some forest animal wounded.

She felt her mind drifting drifting like flotsam like froth on water didn't really know each other when we married did we who does for that matter but couldn't get Sean out of her dreaming she running through a tropical forest Seth angry and upset a streak of cruelty coming out flames searing a forest fire across her body chasing or being chased tight cotton trousers outlining his cock a fiery torture wanting nothing on her skin and taking off her clothes she woke in a sweat.

It came as a shock discovering her arousal, those mind-pictures rousing her sleeping womanhood the strength of her passion. A night filled with physical longing for Sean Radford racking her body an ever-deepening desire.

In the privacy of her mind she repeated to herself, my needs are as great as his. She lay in bed her eyes wide staring into darkness knowing she could never allow desire to take full possession.

The following morning a large bouquet of long-stemmed yellow roses was delivered to the library. There was no note. She felt suddenly touched. His consideration.

Inside herself she was wondering he's too young for me, impossible to tear her thoughts from him. People who must meet physically, she felt, because they have already met emotionally. Helpless to resist.

Over the next few days Dee Dee started calling Sean at all hours She said she missed him and couldn't they get together?

'I need to see you, Blue Boy,' she said.

She was waiting for him outside his studio one afternoon, then followed him to his car. Her dress tight to her thigh rode up as she climbed in beside him. It was as though she had violated the space between them, he felt.

'Leave me alone, Dee Dee,' Sean said.

'I haven't touched you yet.' She was surveying his lean muscular length.

He made no reply.

'I don't want to see you get hurt.'

'I don't expect to.'

'You having it off with that old lady?'

'It's none of your business.'

'You need to get it out of your system,' she smiled. Same as I did with Terri. Terri was just a one-night, curiosity on my part, wanting to see what the other side was like. But you and I Little Boy, Blue, were made for each other. I'll be there for you when this is all over.'

She got out of the car and Sean drove away.

Sean was not disappointed by Deborah Bassett's body when she undressed in his room late one afternoon. He delighted in her musky, womanly scent.

He had picked her up after she finished work and drove along the beach road. They pulled into a car park fronting the beach at St Kilda, a short distance from the pier. It was raining heavily.

'I love the sea when it rains,' she said.

She felt his lips brush her throat. For one moment she was still fighting him while yielding to him, knowing that if he touched her again she would be helpless - but gladly, she told herself. No doubt my world will fall to pieces. She lifted his hand and laid it against her cheek.

His hand was at the front of her blouse, undoing buttons. She felt the hardness of his body, sensed his passion becoming hers as his fingers explored caressed removed her bra.

'Not bad for an old lady, eh?'

'I don't see you as an old lady,' he said.

She found herself touching the hard outline of his manhood beneath the cotton trousers.

'I take it you approve?' he asked.

'Oh, yes. I need you, Sean. 'But be gentle with me,' she said as they drove to his apartment.

Deborah telephoned Sean one afternoon saying that her husband has received an anonymous letter saying his wife is having an affair, she said.

'Dee Dee probably,' Sean said. 'But it's better Seth knows.'

'No it isn't, she said bitterly. She went on, a passionate break in her voice. 'I must break with you, Sean - immediately. Seth threatens divorce if I don't. And I can't allow that to happen.'

The held-back passion burst. 'It's as though Seth's dropped an invisible net around us and there's no way out.'

She went on to say that she had been waiting for the time when she must face the issue of her own action. Waiting for the day when Seth would find out.

After she had rung off, Sean sat alone in his room, knowing he had lost her. She would do anything rather than divorce, he felt. He was very aware of an awakened depth of emotion within himself.

During the next few days Sean made several attempts to telephone Deborah, Then finally she rang him,

'Seth has made a bargain with me,' she said, 'which I have accepted; that if I give you up, he'll give up his job and go back to Swan Hill and we can start again.'

'And is this what you want?'