The Long Vacation

I had come home for the university long vacation. This covered the period November, December, January and February, and therefore included Christmas, which in our southern clime comes in the middle of summer.

I did not want to come home. Instead, I would much preferred to have gone backpacking round the country and doing a bit of fruit picking, and perhaps pick up a girl or two to have sex with, since my university regulars were no longer available.

The reason for my going home was my mother. She was alone so much of the time, and by that I mean, my father might be around, but to be with him was really to be alone. He led a life of his own and had almost nothing in common with mother.

At times, he would be away for weeks on end, claiming either work or some leisure activity with “the boys,” as the reason for his absence.

He is a barrister mainly working mainly for large corporations; his task being to bully little people in courtrooms who could not afford to hire a loud mouthed, cynical intimidator of their own to defend them. For this he received fees that stagger the imagination and he knew how to string a case out so as to receive the maximum amount of money, and wear out those with limited means.

One of the results was that we lived, as they say, “High on the hog.” The one virtue I can claim for him is that he did not keep my sister and I short of money, or at least, my sister had been included in his beneficence until she departed from home, apparently for good.

Why she left home permanently has never been properly explained to me. I have my suspicions but have never been able to bring myself to ask mother. I have a further suspicion that my mother sent Barbara money until a few years after her departure, when she married.

Mother and I went to her wedding, but father did not. He declared that he would have nothing to do with “that ungrateful slut.” My sister, Barbara, on the other hand, swore she would never come near our house as long as that “lecherous pig” was there.

When I was about seventeen, and my father had been more than usually obnoxious both to mother and I, I was bold enough to ask her why she had ever married him. It was after all, a question I had asked myself ever since I was about six. In those childhood days, my way of approaching the matter was to inform my mother that when I grew up I would marry her. She would reply with something like, “That will be lovely, darling,” clearly not wishing to delve into the intricacies of such a union with one so young.

Perhaps some description of my mother and father is in order.

Mother’s name is Cleo. Cleopatra really, but she finds that embarrassing. She is tall – about five feet ten inches – slim with long slender legs. She is, perhaps, a little top heavy in the sense that she has a very full bosom. I can recall as a very small chap, snuggling into her cleavage, perhaps as an expression of regret at being weaned from those fountains of nourishment.

Facially she has ageless classical features, with clear creamy skin. Her neck is long and slender, and her hair is a sort of red-gold colour, worn at shoulder length.

I have heard people describe her as “a beauty,” and when, during my high school years I happened to bring some friends home, I noticed how struck they were by her, and one or two became positively horny over her. I made sure that these more enamoured boys were not invited home again.

Mother is a very dignified person; some might call her austere or remote. This was never the case with my sister and I, and we could not have wished for a more loving mother. With others, it was as if she wanted to maintain a wide private space.

Her interests included music, theatre, books and a number of charities to which she not only gave money, but also worked for in a volunteer capacity. All of these, when mentioned in my father’s presence, provoked jeers and sneers on his part.

This brings me to a description of my father. I have already mentioned his profession and his manner of conducting himself in it. This leaves his physical appearance and leisure interests.

Father’s name is Dennis. He is about two inches shorter than mother. He is also ten years older than she is. At one time, so I am told, he presented a fine, athletic figure. Now he has a paunch, and a face flushed and blotched with over indulgence in red wine. He has a receding hairline, and always seems to have a sheen of perspiration over his face.

His general manner is one of cynical disregard of other people’s feelings, and he always strives to put others down, except when he is with “the boys,” in other words, colleagues of similar disposition. When they are together, they engage in a general denigration of all apart from themselves.

As for his interests outside work; he is president of a football club; he has an expensive cabin cruiser in which he and the boys frequently go “fishing”. I put the word fishing in quotations because we never see any fish when he returns from one of these trips, often lasting up to a month. Clearly, he also has had a longstanding love affair with money.

I have my own idea about what “fishing” means in the father’s vocabulary. He also has a serious interest in wine – mainly the consumption of it.

To my youthful question as to why my mother had married my father, she gave in substance the following reply. Father had indeed been a dashing figure when she first met him. He had come to work in her father’s legal practice. In those days he was described as “a brilliant up coming young fellow.”

Mother was in her late teens at the time and he in his late twenties. She became completely captivated by him, and apparently, this lovely young girl enraptured him in turn. Mother did not use the term “lovely” of herself, that is my interpretation.

He quickly asked her to marry him and she accepted just as quickly. What they did not take account of, was the opposition of my late grandparents. They were adamant that their young daughter would not marry my father. Perhaps they saw more deeply and further than my love mesmerized mother.

Grandfather had the whip hand in the sense that my father was then his employee and only in the early stages of his climb to “fame.” To be dismissed from the practice would be a serious set back.

Father, as crafty then as he is now, saw a way round the problem. Being totally enchanted by him, my mother fell in with his plan. She became pregnant with my sister. Mother was eighteen that meant that they could get married without parental approval. This they did, thus presenting my grandparents with a fait accompli.

Grandfather was trapped. If he dismissed father, he put at risk his daughter’s future life, and that of his unborn grandchild. So, he and my grandmother had to accept the situation.

That explained how mother had come to marry father, but there were other questions I longed to ask like, why did my mother and father sleep in separate rooms? That had been the situation ever since I could remember. Why did mother continue to be married to father, especially after the death of her parents that gave her a large amount of money of her own? Did mother and father still make love? Why was father so often away from home? Above all, why was he so nasty to mother? What had happened between father and my sister to provoke such animosity?

Answers to these questions had to wait for several years, and even then, I didn’t get, and don’t think I ever will get, all the answers.

During my rather gross teenage years, I used to think, “If I had a wife like mother, I wouldn’t sleep apart from her, and I’d make love with her all the time (I did not actually think the words, “make love,” but something less delicate).

So there I was, home for the sake of my beloved mother, and as dearly as I loved her, I anticipated a rather boring, and with my father present, unpleasant time.

It was on Christmas Day that father announced that he would be off on a fishing trip with the boys. “Could be away as much as a month.”

Neither mother nor I commented. This was partly because any comment was likely to give rise to a scene, and also because we would be glad to see the back of him.

Saying that, I feel one tiny corner of pity for him. I think he is going to be a very lonely old man who had destroyed the love of a beautiful woman, and failed to enjoy his children.

Almost as soon as he had left the next day, mother became more animated.

“What shall we do, Alex?”

Not understanding the full implication of her question, I made a desultory reply. “We could go for a walk.”

“No, no, darling. I mean, let’s pack up and go away somewhere.”

“Where?”

“I haven’t been to The Peninsular for years, let’s go there.”

The Peninsular begins about four hundred kilometres from where we live. It’s coast runs for about three hundred kilometres and then melts into the enormous arid central plain stretching for over a thousand kilometres across the Island Continent.

There are industrial centres, a fishing and oyster industry. Wheat and barley are grown there and the coast has huge sand dunes, craggy cliffs, seal colonies, penguin rookeries and a very welcoming population.

I had not been there since childhood and responded enthusiastically to mother’s suggestion, but pointed out that being summer, every bit of accommodation would probably be taken up.

“Don’t be so pessimistic,” she laughed, “I’ll get on with telephoning around and see what I can find.”

“How long are we going for?”

“Your father said he’d be away for a month, so let’s also be away for a month. Now, you get the car serviced and I’ll start telephoning.”

Father had gone off in his fancy Land Rover, leaving behind a Mercedes Benz and an all wheel drive Subaru. I chose the latter as the better option for our purpose because of its four-wheel drive, and also because if we took the Mercedes and got a scratch on it, we should never hear the last of it.

Mother seemed to break out of her quiet reserve. It was like a personality change, becoming almost like a young girl in her excitement. This seemed strange for one who had traveled quite extensively around the world at one time.

There was a frenzy of packing and telephoning, and finally mother, commenting on accommodation said, “I’ve got us fixed up for the first ten days. It’s arranged so that we have stopovers of two or three days. I think we should take our chances after that, and just telephone ahead when we decide where we want to go next. It’s a risk, but if worst comes to worst, we can always head back home.”

I accepted this, and after all, it would be better than mooching around home.

The next day was spent trying to think of all the things that we might have forgotten to pack. Mother continued in her enthusiastic mood, constantly assuring me that we would have “a wonderful time, darling”. I couldn’t recall ever seeing her so excited before.

The car was ready and the gear stowed, and we set off, driving first through the city suburban traffic then out onto the highway busy with trucks going back and forth to and from The Peninsular industrial cities.

After four hours driving we reached the first of these cities, stopped, bought a couple of pies and wandered around eating them like a couple of kids.

On the road again, we headed for our first stopover, a small fishing and oyster-farming town.

The motel was reasonable, and mother had been able to book one unit that had one room with a double bed, and another with a single bed. I believe it was what they called, “A family unit.”

By the time we arrived it was evening, so we had a meal in the motel restaurant, then retired to our unit, put our feet up, and watched television until bed time. After that we showered, and I retired to the single bedroom, leaving mother to luxuriate on the double bed.

I was tired, but not so tired that I didn’t get an erection. I had not had sex for some weeks, having failed to pick up any of the girls around our home area. I resorted to my only option, and masturbated.

Next day, in the morning, we wandered around the town, then had a look at some of the oyster farms. The afternoon found us out walking across some of the huge sand dunes, and watching the sea crashing in from the Southern Ocean.

We were in no hurry to get anywhere, and we wandered along, happy in each other’s company, admiring the beauty of the scene and talking about whatever came into our heads.

We had our evening meal in the motel restaurant again, and this time mother ordered a bottle of excellent Shiraz. The alcohol put me in a very convivial mood.

When we finished eating mother said, “Alex, I fancy some Scotch, get a bottle from the bar, would you?”

I was somewhat surprised at this request because mother was a very moderate drinker, and I had never known her to drink Scotch. Not for me to reason why, I obeyed her request.

Mother had gone ahead to the unit, and when I arrived, she was putting a cassette into the video machine.

“Something I brought with me that I thought would be nice to watch,” she commented. “Let’s get our showers over with and we can relax and make an evening of it.”

I was happy about that because I dislike bothering with a shower just before going to bed, I like to get it out of the way early.

Mother went first, and after about twenty minutes emerged wearing her bathrobe, and carrying the clothes she had been wearing.

I took my shower, had a shave and following mother’s example put on my bathrobe. “Might as well be comfortable,” I thought.

I went into the main room and found mother had poured two liberal glasses of whisky. Like mother, I am not really a whisky drinker, but still feeling the effects of the Shiraz I was ready for a follow up.

We settled side by side on the couch, and mother clicked on the video with the remote.

If I had been surprised at mother’s request for whisky, I was even more astonished and perplexed by her choice of film. It proved to be very sexually explicit, not mother’s sort of thing at all, and I found myself responding to it by getting an erection.

I kept sipping the whisky and I found myself in the situation where, knowing you are inebriated, you make efforts to not show it. Speech and movements become very deliberate, and it seems that you are somehow outside yourself watching yourself.

Although I kept sipping the whisky, my glass did not seem to get any emptier. The film, the room and mother became somehow remote, out there but distant.

Then it was as if I were drawn into the film, the salacious content not only gave me an erection, I felt as if I was part of the action we were viewing.

Precisely what happened next I have never been sure of. I felt someone snuggling up to me, and slowly turning my head, and making a desperate effort to focus, I saw it was mother.

I shook my head, because it was not mother as I had seen her just a little while ago, but a naked mother; a mother with large, firm beautiful breasts. It was a mother whose hand had crept under my bathrobe to gently stroke my penis.

She was saying something but I couldn’t distinguish the words. I struggled to concentrate on what she was saying but it was all jumbled.

I was lying back on the couch and mother was sitting over me. Something warm and moist engulfed my penis. I felt myself ejaculate, but it was as if it was someone else doing it.

I can recall no more. What I do know is, that I woke up next morning in the double bed with a naked mother and a splitting headache.

As far as I could see mother looked fine, even happy.

“How do you feel, darling?”

“Bloody awful. My head’s thumping and my mouth feels like the bottom of a parrot’s cage.”

She gave a soft laugh and said, “I’ll get you some aspirin, darling.”

She got out of bed and through the haze of my hangover, I saw her walk to a small case and open it. She took out some aspirin and then went to the tap over a small hand basin and filled a glass of water.

As she came back to me I could see the sensual movement of her breasts, and the little vee of pubic hair and above it her slightly swelling mons, and below that the firm cleft of her vulva.

I saw, but felt to ill to process that I was looking at mother and seeing a beautiful, sensuous woman.

I took the aspirins and swallowed them, drinking the whole glass of water in one great gulp.

“Just lie there for a while, darling. You’ll feel better soon. I’ve ordered some breakfast to be brought to us, and we do have to leave no later than ten o’clock.”

The mention of breakfast made my stomach churn, and with a groan I lay back and slipped into a doze.

Someone knocking at the door awakened me. Mother had not returned to the bed and I heard her thanking someone and bringing a tray to the table.

As I watched her put the tray down, I noticed with no special interest that there was a near empty bottle of Scotch, one empty glass, and one with whisky still in it. I smelt bacon and eggs, and had to rush to the bathroom to be sick.

Finishing my unpleasant emission, I went to the basin to wash my face and in the mirror above it saw a white apparition that was me. I washed and went back to the main room, still naked.

Mother was seated once more wrapped in her bathrobe, eating egg and bacon.

“I don’t want any breakfast I moaned.”

“Darling, you must have something.”

I managed a single slice of toast and a cup of strong coffee.

Mother laughed and said, “I think I’d better drive today, sweetheart.”

After my meagre repast I managed to get dressed, then flopped back onto the bed and went to sleep.

I came to with mother shaking me. She stood beside the bed with another glass of water and aspirin. I obediently swallowed, and she said, “Time to go, darling. You can sleep in the car if you want to.”

She had packed and loaded the car while I slept, and once on the road I followed her suggestion and went to sleep again.

I must have been asleep for a couple of hours when the cessation of the car’s motion woke me. We had stopped for petrol and as the garage had a restaurant, mother decided we should have lunch.

I had recovered from the worst of my hangover and was actually very hungry. I made short work of steak and vegetables and felt a whole lot better. I informed mother I was ready to take over the driving, if she wished me to.

“No, darling, we’ve only got about another hour and a half to go, so you relax and talk to me while I drive.”

I had a strong feeling there was something needing to be talked about, but could not workout what it was.

We set off, and it was mother who set the ball rolling.

“Do you remember what happened last night, Alex?”

“Not clearly. I know I must have been very drunk, and I’ve been trying to work out why. You know I don’t drink much, so why did I take so much on board last night?”

She gave another of her contralto laughs; “Perhaps you were tricked into it, sweetheart.”

“That’s silly. Who would want to do that? And anyway, who was there to do it? There was only you and…”

I paused. Things were starting to click into place. I recalled the glass that always seemed to be full, and mother naked, and how I had waked that morning in mother’s bed.

“Mother, how did I get into bed with you?”

“With difficulty, my love. I almost had to carry you.”

“But why your bed and not…”

“I thought I’d like to have you with me, darling.”

I knew but didn’t want to admit I knew. The distant memory of mother sitting over me as I lay on the couch. The warm moist feeling as something…”Oh my God”.

This last had come out aloud.

“What’s the matter, Alex?”

“Mother…last night…did we…did I have…?”

“Have sex? Yes, just a little bit, darling.”

“But mother you couldn’t…you wouldn’t…It’s er…er…”

“Incest? Yes I know, my love.”