It is one of those golden days when all seems to move in slow motion. Sunlight takes on an unnatural glow. Passing traffic noises outside seem deadened, more distant than they really are. Words bounce off walls and then hang in the air like ancient insects trapped in amber.
Is this the most logical place to begin this confession?
I have moved all the furniture and rugs out while I redecorate. We sit opposite each other, the girl and I, cross-legged on the bare-boarded floor munching the sandwiches her mother has sent her over to me with. In spite of the wide-open windows, the room reeks of fresh paint and mineral turpentine. Today I am putting the first coat on the architrave, baseboards, windows and doorframes in my parents' old bedroom, on the way to banishing nearly fifty years of their existence in this house.
The girl is called Dolly. She is six years younger than I am. When she was still a toddler, she and her parents moved into the house next door to my parents and me. She is called Dolly because her father, Derek, is an avid country music follower with a fixation on Dolly Parton. The Dolly sat in front of me must be a terrible disappointment to him. Not only is she medium-tall, dark-haired and small-breasted, although her mother once told me that Dolly was born a blonde, the girl also favours pop music by manufactured groups like Boyz II Men and Presidents of the USA.
Why do I want to paint away the memories of my parents from this place? I am an only child. I loved them, but they are gone. I cannot live in the past. I want to erase the long slow agony of my father's emphysema induced death. Dad was never a cigarette smoker, but he worked as an engineer in an aluminium plant in his younger days when the unventilated, volatile fumes from the process came with the job. I need to erase the memory of my mother's desperate nursing my father through his decline and her quick, heartbroken following him when his lungs finally collapsed. This house and their genes are my heritage, but I must exorcise their ghosts.
The girl rummages in the canvas bag she has brought with her. "Don't tell," she grins conspiratorially, "I pinched some of Mum's chocolate for our afters." She breaks off a piece and holds it out in my direction.
"Wow! You'll be deep in the poo when she finds out!" I laugh, reaching out to take the dark, bittersweet morsel from her.
Dolly leans further forward, holding the chocolate up. "No! Open your mouth!"
I bend forward with my mouth open to receive her gift. Her soft, pink lips are slightly parted also and the tip of her tongue licks the lower one in concentration. She closes her mouth in concert with mine when I take the hard little bar from her fingertips.
"Thank you." I tell her.
When she resumes her former position, Dolly's short skirt, which was tucked modestly between her spread legs while she ate, has ridden up her thighs. I can see her panties; pale yellow cotton with white lace trim around the leg holes.
Dolly breaks a piece of chocolate off the slab for herself. She seems not to notice how much she is revealing or its effect on me. She has an irregular shaped birthmark high up on her right thigh, about an inch from the lacy rim, a tiny light-brown imperfection on her otherwise flawless skin. I feel the familiar tingle in my loins and the heat rising in my cheeks. I want to kiss it.
I clear my throat, "Errrrrrahem!" I have no wish to embarrass her but…"Dolly, would you mind doing something with your skirt…"
Her face flushes also, "Oh…sorry Uncle Clive…I didn't realise…" She hurriedly hides her secrets from me again.
We munch our chocolate in silence, lost in our own thoughts. A dark smear has appeared at the corner of her mouth. What would she do if I tried to lick it off? My mind is racing, pleading that she has not noticed the sudden erection that has sprung up from my groin.
Dolly's voice breaks the stillness, "Uncle Clive…oh, this is silly…can I just call you Clive? You aren't that much older than me, and you're not my proper uncle are you?"
She has always called me 'Uncle Clive', but we are not related in any way. I suppose Dolly's parents started it off.
"Of course you can. I've always thought it a bit daft myself."
"Ok…Clive…can I ask you something?"
"Fire away."
Dolly sucks in a deep breath; she always does when she sets out to ask me a deeply personal question. Anticipation hangs pregnant in the air like an invisible balloon between us. She comes to a decision and lets the air out in a rush.
"How long have you known you're gay?"
I reel backwards with shock. I don't know whether to laugh uproariously or respond with anger.
"Dolly! What on earth makes you think I'm gay?"
"Well, you've never had a girlfriend, not to my knowledge and I know all there is to know about you. And you blushed like anything when you saw my knickers just now."
She thinks she knows 'all there is to know' about me? Wrong! But, Dolly is right about me never having had a girlfriend; well, almost right. I tell her, "Girls never liked me very much when I was at school, so I guess I never had much opportunity to take any of them out. And then other things got in the way."
"Your Dad's illness?"
"No, other, bigger things."
"But, why didn't they like you? You're good-looking, and a really nice guy…"
"Perhaps my being a 'nice guy' wasn't enough for them. Girls always seem to go for a hint of danger…violence, maybe. They found me very dull and uninteresting."
"I find that hard to believe…"
I close my eyes. Oh God! Do I tell her the truth? Do I destroy the safe, comfortable world of this lovely young person, who I have wanted to distraction from the moment I first realised she was changing into a woman?
Do I tell Dolly that eight years before, her husband's continual country music driven absences from home made her mother Maureen desperately lonely? Do I say that Maureen's distress reached such a fever pitch that one day she took the hand of the tall, skinny, introverted fifteen-year-old who was mowing their grass for pocket money, and led him to her marital bed?
