Chapter 1

[1980]

Mary stared out through the window. The roses glistened from the recent shower. She sighed. The grass needs cutting, she thought. I’ll not do that again, though Terrence, my grandson, will be around to do it tomorrow. Now she was confined to her room. A fall had shattered her hip and the doctors had said it was impossible, given her age, to replace it. So now all she had were her memories as the nurse, paid for by her family, helped her settle on her bed.

She remembered vividly the times she had spent in that garden. Bill, her husband, had bought the house just over 61 years ago before they had got married and she’d fallen in love with it at first sight. She remembered bringing up her children there and then, when they married, their children came to visit often. They had all played in the garden – and enjoyed the sun there. Especially in the sun, for Mary was a closet naturist. She had loved the feel of the air and the sunshine on her skin and had encouraged her children, and, so far as she could, her grandchildren, to follow in her footsteps.

Finally, the painkillers began kicking in and she began to drift off, her thoughts returning as ever to the past and the treasure trove of memories buried there. Unbidden, the memory of young Sam’s visits just before the war came to her mind. He had just turned 14, same age as her youngest daughter Emily, and was very conscious of his newly developing body. Her daughter had told her that Sam had been reluctant to come over to visit and she had struggled to persuade him. Mary however knew why. She knew he would be embarrassed about his changing body. Possibly he was starting to grow body hair and probably he was starting to get involuntary erections. Events though, to her utter delight, had taken it further than she’d expected, sending her on a new path from the day of that visit.

[1938]

“Come on, Sam,” Emily encouraged, as her young beau (well hopefully soon) stood hesitantly at the gate of her parents’ house.

“Just nerves I guess,” he swallowed, giving the appearance of a deer in the headlights.

“Oh pooh!” Emily giggled, using what to her was the ultimate in risqué language. “Daddy’s home so we won’t be going ‘au naturel’ until he returns to work on Monday. That way you get to know us all better without the embarrassment.”

“I’m not sure I want to at all,” he demurred.

“Don’t be silly. Besides, you’ll get to see me as well as Amanda, oh, and Mummy too.”

“Yes, and George and Ricky will get to see me as well,” he stated nervously.

“Oh, we’ve all seen man-bits before. That’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Amanda’s boyfriend was here last year and he managed,” Emily said dismissively.

“I guess...” he began nervously as he felt another erection begin to rise, something he seemed to have no control over.

“So, let’s go meet the family.”

The introductions went swiftly and at least his loose clothing hid his embarrassment from Emily’s family. Most surprising of all was Mrs. Grainger ... no, Mary, she had insisted, who he could scarce believe was old enough to have produced four children as she looked closer to being Emily’s big sister. She, unlike Mr. Grainger ... definitely not Bill! gave him a warm welcome and squeezed his hand slightly as she looked him over with a warm smile and an appraising glance as Mr. Grainger observed him over a smoking pipe and an opened newspaper, clearly dismissing him as irrelevant ... save only as a possible threat to his daughter’s virtue at some future time.

“Emily, show Sam around the house and grounds,” Mary requested. “No lingering either,” she added a subtle warning.

“Yes, Mummy. Come along, Sam,” she replied with a grin that told Mary that the message had been heard.

To Sam’s working-class eyes the house was huge and had clearly been some sort of manor in the past, though now held seven bedrooms and any number of other rooms, including a piped hot water system and indoor plumbing.

“Gosh, it’s wonderful. Much bigger than my home, plus you don’t have to share,” he chuckled.

“Glad you like it, though your house and family are nice too,” Emily replied, before showing him the grounds, but not daring to linger alone with him longer to protect her reputation ... even if it was only from her brothers.

[1980] Oh, he was so young, yet so handsome, she remembered. Slim, yet athletic, still to fully fill out, his voice deep and soft, yet occasionally wobbling into a falsetto if surprised. Truly a tempting young Adonis and that temptation had been building for several years as Mary’s libido remained high, whilst Bill’s began to wane. He’d been so much older than Mary when they married. Still, he had been a good man and yes, a good if unadventurous lover. Fortunately he was also unobservant and focussed merely upon his job, his newspaper and his foul smelling pipe with the family following behind in that order, though Mary did enjoy the aroma of the tobacco when he lit up. Of course he had no idea that the books Mary devoured at night under the fancy covers were not necessarily the books on the cover. Mary had been introduced to literature by her own mother and her selection came as a surprise to a young girl. John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and others, the works of Henry Miller as well as the more prosaic classics. Her mother explaining that both men and women had sexual desires and that meeting them and not being surprised by the act of carnal love would stand her daughter in good stead, something Mary was cautiously passing on successfully to her girls.

She had been a good wife, of that she was certain; faithful too, save in her mind. She remained a virgin until her wedding night and other than a clumsy and painful start had found she loved making love and climaxed easily and also that she enjoyed the closeness of the intimacy after the act, Bill not being a man who simply rolled off and went to sleep as she’d heard from other friends about their husbands. Four children, two girls, followed by two boys, and an idyllic life in their beautiful home had followed. She had also appreciated the seclusion of the large grounds; no peeping Tom neighbours could see through the dense foliage to the open and immaculate and enclosed spaces of her prized flower beds. She had soon taken to walking naked through the warmer days and sunbathing nude in the privacy of what she considered her Eden. However, Bill, she knew, would not approve. He would not even permit her to see him naked in their bedroom, with him changing into pyjamas in the adjoining bathroom before he joined her. Whilst their lovemaking remained intense in the bedroom, elsewhere, she sadly knew, her husband was a prude and lacking now in libido despite her attempts to ... encourage him, which he appreciated. Her children though ... well, they adored naturism too and were intelligent enough not to tell their father, nor their friends ... at least not until they reached their later teenage years when Amanda her eldest, now 16, had brought her first boyfriend, Jack, home to meet her parents.

That had been ... interesting; Mary and her children were used to each other so there were no sexual undertones. Yet Jack was a stranger and he had certainly been fascinated by the two girls (and vice versa), and yes, with Mary too, often struggling with an inadvertent erection and spending an inordinate amount of time lying on his stomach as both girls teased and tormented him by flaunting their young budding bodies until, when they pushed the boundaries a little too far, Mary intervened and she had mercy on the young man.

Although nothing had occurred between her and Jack, she had enjoyed the lurid fantasy of imagining a coupling with him as Bill mounted her during the nights after his visits, though that’s all it remained, a fantasy. Yet the seed had been planted and Mary knew, given the opportunity, she almost certainly would weaken if given the opportunity and begin to teach a young paramour how to satisfy a woman ... perhaps even her own daughters eventually. That was a titillating thought that occasionally drew her nimble fingers down to her centre of pleasure to comfort herself as she sunned herself in the garden. That, however, was as far as it went, so far and yet ... The thought niggled away at her conscience during the nights when Bill, despite her efforts, had failed to rise to the occasion. Plus she knew, being caught in an affair was a major social faux pas along with the risk of an unwanted pregnancy, though she believed she was now free of that risk as no more children had come along despite her and Bill’s efforts. She was also fairly certain her children ... well, the girls, would not approve of their mother ‘educating’ their young men ... at least not in that way. Yet Sam ... Sam was simply too tempting, both smart, funny and deliciously innocent in his naivety and had proved a major thorn in her side as her imagination ran rampant with forbidden desire. Yet it had all started innocently enough...

[1938] Lunch was, as ever, a lively affair with much to discuss given the recent news of events in Germany and the British response.

“Chamberlain is a good man, he will keep us out of any war in Europe,” Bill pontificated, believing that he was the fount of all knowledge in the family.

“And if Germany desires war?” Ricky, her youngest at only 10, asked, causing her to mask a smile as the young rascal appeared to be wise in ways way beyond his years as well as ready, willing and able to wind Bill up.

“Herr Hitler was also a soldier, he will not want war either,” Bill declared pompously.