I have spent most of the last week wondering when it’s alright to do things: driving, exercise, alcohol, and of course, dear old sex. I don’t want to undo my gynaecologist’s good work, nor to make myself keel over, and I absolutely want to avoid either of these things while driving. In any case, I have learned that general anaesthetics make you feel very odd indeed for quite some time, and it is hard to even contemplate doing anything much for at least a working week.
However, by Sunday I begin to feel like a normal human being again. Actually, I am quite rabidly desperate to leave the house. We head out to the location of Seduction #19 for their splendid roast lunch, and then H suggests we drive out to the woods for a walk through the bluebells.
Bluebells rank alongside some of my favourite things (alongside the sea, swallows, snow, and lots of other non-natural phenomena such as Stevie Wonder, gin martinis and salted almonds, preferably served together). Today, I wonder if they will have wilted in the heat, but we can see them from the car park: an almost supernatural blue crowding the spaces between the trees.
It is shady in the woods but the air is still surprisingly warm and full of the heady bluebell smell, like honey and hyacinths. As we stroll along we barely see another soul. There are a few squirrels and the odd pigeon, but humanity appears, quite ungratefully, to be staying away from the woods on a sunny day.
I’m not really sure who has the idea first. Maybe it’s simultaneous. I find myself stroking H’s back as we walk along. He stops and kisses me. Then we come to a gate, and as I pause to open it, H presses himself up against me and nuzzles into the back of my neck. We cross an open field and reach another section of woodland, this one even quieter than before. I stop to kiss H, and he reaches into the front of my blouse and kisses my breast. I shriek with laughter. He unzips my skirt.
‘We can’t do this standing in the middle of the path,’ I say.
‘We’d see anyone coming.’
‘Only once they’d seen us first!’
I carry on down the path, and then head off between the trees. There’s not much cover here either, but at least it would take a while to spot us. I lean against a tree and H catches up with me. ‘I thought you were turning me down altogether,’ he says. He kisses me.
He’s not wasting any time. He undoes his jeans and hitches up my skirt. Am I allowed to have sex yet? I’m not sure. Perhaps I should say something…ah, but no; H has already thought of that. He carefully puts his penis between my thighs, and we proceed like that. Actually, this is a much better way to have sex standing up – so much easier than the constant angling and balance-shifting required to have proper standing-up sex.
And from my point of view, really quite lovely. I keep forgetting to stay on the lookout, although I do conscientiously appoint myself to the role of not letting H’s trousers fall down altogether. Even so, every now and then I come to my senses and scan the horizon for other human beings. No one comes. Except both of us. Sorry, cheap joke.
The only pigsty in my rural idyll is the moment I realise I have been sharing my tree-trunk with a rather large millipede the whole time. Oh, and the slightly soggy walk back to the car.
The 52 Seductions 