"Let's go to Pirates Cove," Helen said, "it may be the last time the three of us can be together."
Her husband, Alistair, rolled his eyes heavenward in exasperation and said, "You know I can't, not while the company is trying to cope with a massive new order."
The reference to Pirates Cove really meant the cove where their family seaside shack was located; an old fisherman's cottage they had bought and renovated during the early days of their marriage about twenty three years ago. In those heady days Helen had looked forward to what she saw as a real family, three, perhaps four, children, but that was not to be.
The only child she had was Brenton, and as she was to discover, Brenton was the reason, and perhaps the only reason, why Alistair had married her; she had given birth six months into their marriage. In a sort of reverse order, after she had given birth Alistair had insisted on wearing a condom when they had sex, something he should have done before they got married, but it wasn't only the condoms.
The first flush of marriage passed and the Company came to dominate their lives, or at least Alistair's life. With it there was a progression from condoms to Helen being on the pill which had a bad affect on her, and then a vasectomy for Alistair.
Helen of course got the message, no more children. Along with that message went a steady decline in their sex life, and if Helen complained Alistair's standard avoidance response was that she was not to worry, he would always "do his duty."
"Doing his duty" meant providing his wife and son with adequate financial support, which, to be fair, he did very well, but it did not include the sort of affection that Helen, like a lot of women, needed. Specifically it did not include the meeting of her needs in bed, and in fact they had long ceased to share a bed.
Helen had come to accept that this was the natural progression of marriage, and given the number of women who seem to endure this sort of deprivation Helen may well have been right in her view.
In her more intimate talks with female friends suffering from this marriage aridity syndrome, Helen had noted their responses both physical and psychological.
For some it was endless visits to their doctor with aches and pains, especially in the lower stomach, for which no cause could be found. If the cause was found doctors had difficulty in announcing the diagnoses, since they hesitated to say, "What you need is a good fucking."
For others it was depression or anxiety for which medication was prescribed that suppressed the symptoms but did not touch the cause. For yet others, facing up to their true situation, there was masturbation or lovers, the first of which gave partial relief and the second endangering their otherwise comfortable life style because of possible discovery.
Some resorted to lesbian activity with friends, but for this to succeed they needed to have the natural inclination that Helen did not have, and there still remained the danger of discovery
There were of course some whose husbands continued to willingly, even enthusiastically, service their wives. This was rarely stated openly and it was only by implication that their situation was revealed. There were, however, those few who happily and boastfully proclaimed, "He can't leave me alone," "He wants me all the time," "He's always touching me," "We had a table ender yesterday," "Every day we..." And so it went much to the annoyance and envy of their sexually deprived sisters.
Helen, once she realised how the future of her marriage would be sexually, and taking into account her otherwise comfortable material circumstances, opted for what she hoped was a safe if not altogether satisfactory outlet, masturbation, mainly with a vibrator and very much in private.
If masturbation eased the physical symptoms she suffered, there remained those psychological, or shall we say emotional needs. In dealing with this Helen went down a path followed by many women, displacement. She transferred the love and affection she did not receive, and eventually was unable to give to Alistair, to her son Brenton.
This of course had its own dangers. Kept within the bounds befitting a mother and son relationship as prescribed by society, all was well, but should those bounds be overstepped disaster could loom.
It must be said that Helen had a genuine mother's love for her son, and as someone once said, "In giving we receive," so Helen received because Brenton reciprocated the love she gave him. This was fine until that crucial time in a boy's life when he becomes aware of his sexuality and he begins to seek an outlet for his sexual needs.
Even then all might have been fine, and Brenton would have passed along the well worn track of youth: masturbation; high school girls, or if he was lucky an older woman who would introduce him to the finer points of pleasing a woman, and incidentally himself. Such might have been Brenton's sexual path in life if chance had not intervened.
* * * * * * * *
Ironically it was in the cottage at Pirates Cove when Brenton was thirteen that Helen's relationship with her son took on a new direction. As so often is the case they did not at first realize the significance of the incident that brought about this change, and it seemed like a small cloud on the horizon of their lives, a small cloud that was to grow until over time it seemed to consume their lives.
The incident in itself might be considered insignificant; something that might happen to anyone in any family, in fact as an incident it is almost a commonplace.
Alistair and Helen had decided they would go for a swim. Alistair had changed quickly into his swim shorts and gone ahead to the beach. Helen had started to change at a more leisurely pace and had reached the point of being naked when Brenton had burst into the room.
Normally Brenton would have knocked before entering, but on this occasion he had been fishing off the rocks and caught an exceptionally large fish that he was eager to show his mother.
As he burst into the room he was saying "Look what I've..." but he got no farther. He stood staring at his naked mother. He had seen her wearing her rather modest bikinis before and had vaguely been aware of her physical attractions, and not knowing at that time of the barrenness of his parents sex lives, he had been mildly jealous of his father's access to his mother's body.
Now, in her nakedness, he saw her breasts, not large but with cute upturned pink nipples and the vee of silky pubic hair that ran from her mons to a hint of a firmly cleft vulva, and in his imagination the gateway to paradise that lay beyond, and her long, slender but shapely legs, and she seemed to Brenton the fantasy woman of every pubescent boy's dreams.
Helen, startled by this sudden intrusion stood momentarily motionless, staring at her son. If at first she was unaware of his eyes sweeping over her body it quickly became obvious to her how he was responding to what he saw. Brenton, in the fashion of youth, was wearing only minuscule swim shorts and the head of his penis emerged from what passed for the waistband, a pale purple head and Helen believed she could see precum oozing from his urethra.
Helen's own body began to respond to what she was seeing. Her vagina began to engorge and flood, her clitoris throbbed almost painfully and her nipples extended and hardened.
It was for no more than ten seconds that mother and son stood immobile, and then Helen, trembling with her arousal said, "Yes darling, is there...was there something you wanted?"
The mundane words hung in the air between them, each knowing what they wanted but unable to give voice or action to it.
Brenton, backing out of the room, managed to say, "A fish, I caught a...I'll show it to you later."
Helen understood. She had heard of boys who were sexually attracted to their mothers. She had also heard that this attraction passed with time, but she wondered if a mother's attraction to her son also passed with time. She didn't know, and what she also did not fully understand, was that a change had taken place in her relationship with her son, and that it would remain as an indelible mark over the following years.
That evening they ate the fish.
Mother and son did not speak of the bedroom incident, but that incident condemned them to years of painful and growing frustration. During this time Brenton had many of the sexual experiences of youth, but with little joy. He was focused on the one woman he truly wanted but couldn't have, and sadly this left him vaguely dissatisfied with any sex partner he did have; it was merely a case of emptying overburdened testes.
As for Helen, however much she tried to eliminate them, her fantasies when she masturbated were of her son and time did not weaken these fantasies, but intensified them.
Another sad aspect was that the relationship between mother and son became ambivalent; at one time they would seek each other out and engage in eager embraces and kisses that swung between the affection of a mother and son, and that of lovers. At other times one or the other of them would avoid contact, no doubt fearing that they would one day give way and turn their fantasies into reality.
* * * * * * * *
Another pivotal time in Brenton's life arrived; a critical point that affected his parents as well; his eighteenth birthday and coincidentally his graduation from high school.
With his focus on the Company the impact on Alistair was slight, but for Helen it was considerable. She foresaw, as many mothers do, that her beloved son had reached the point in his life when he would consider, sooner of later, leaving home to strike out on his own.
This of course is the whole point of rearing children; that one day they would fly the family nest and soar on their own account. What Helen foresaw was that she would be left in a sterile marriage without the outlet Brenton had provided by way of love and affection, however limited and erratic.
Despite knowing what Alistair's response was likely to be, Helen made the attempt to bring them together as a family, and Alistair's response was as she expected; as usual the Company prevailed over family.
