PART ONE OF THREE

 My mother Muriel and I lived at the coast on the outskirts of a small village. Our house with grounds within a ten-foot high wall, and known as Viking Point, was perched on a rugged cliff overlooking the North Sea. To reach it from the village one walked the length of a steep, long winding lane. Since we both had to walk to the village and back at least twice daily, and were forced by circumstances to survive on a diet of fish and new potatoes, we were both as thin as a garden rake but immensely healthy.

My mother at age 37 was of very slender build and average height. She wore her chestnut-brown hair parted slightly off-centre, the tresses tumbling to the top of her cleavage. She had retained her girlish looks, although she had deep laugh-lines and her eyes wrinkled at the corners when she laughed or smiled. Her chatter was the most soothing thing conceivable, and I could listen to her talk for hours. To the world she was shy and unsociable, and I was the only person to whom she would bare her soul. She dressed invariably in blouse and skirt or short summer dresses. She never wore stockings, tights or trousers nor much make-up, but she liked jingly bracelets and dangly gold earrings.

I suppose I was 17 or so when I began to wonder what it would be like to have sex with my mother. It was amusing to imagine how she would react in this or that situation. Would I get my face slapped or would she resign herself to it and say, "Oh, go on, do it if you must"? My schoolfriends who had seen her assured me that they "definitely wouldn't say no if ever they had the chance" and I gathered that she was one of the top mothers on their "wouldn't mind" sex list.

Muriel my mother had been brought up within a puritanical family environment, and as a result of all the taboos she was frigid sexually. Thus nothing she ever said contained a double-meaning, or was capable of having anything sexual read into it. Around my 18th birthday when she was 37 a change seemed to come over her. She began to see the world differently as if her mind was beginning to untwist. "I've lived the best of my life and now there's nothing for me to look forward to," she told me once.

In her diary which I read years later she explained: "I am haunted by the vision of myself at age 18, with such hopes and dreams for the future, a girl who never met the young prince she wanted. And now I never shall." At her family's urging she had married a gentleman over twenty years her senior and for no better reason than that he owned this large house and grounds on the Viking Point promontory. When she took up married life she "left her soul behind her."

By reason of her frigidity, on the rare occasions when my father enjoyed sex with her, if it could be called that, she was unable to respond. Sex was dirty, and the female resigned herself to it, closed her eyes and thought of England. My father died after two years of this marriage leaving her an expectant mother with hardly a penny in the world and Viking Point to manage.

It was a deplorable stroke of back luck especially since she had been peculiarly friendless and far from home. Being of a proud disposition she would not ask help of the few acquaintances she had. What the loneliness of her life must have been, shut up in this big house so battered by North Sea gales all year round, with a little child, she young and beautiful, is difficult to conceive.

Thus she suffered, cultivated the garden for food and eked out an existence for us both in those hard times just after the war. My mother lavished her strength and centred her life on me to such an extent that once I attained my majority she was unable to break away into an independent life of her own.
She tried not to let it show that she wanted me to find work locally and stay on at Viking Point with her.

On my 18th birthday she asked me in a heartily cheerful way if I had anybody in mind "now that you are free to look for a wife."

I replied in all seriousness, "Why do I need to look when I have you, mother? I think I could do no better than marry you."

Her laughter rang out and her dark eyes shone with delight in her thin, sun-tanned face. "Remember darling, not only am I old enough to be your mother, but I actually am your mother, and secondly, be careful what you wish for, it might come true." 

I discovered from her diaries years later that a few weeks after this she had had a chat with a friend, Vivienne, at the tea shop in the village. Vivienne had asked her if she ever had a sexual relationship after my father's death - in those days nothing like as common an occurrence as it would be now. When my mother said No, she had never even considered such a thing, Vivienne asked if there was a film star or suchlike who took her fancy.

"If you must know I wouldn't mind an affair with my son," she replied, at which they both burst into peals of laughter, but in a footnote to her diary entry my mother added, "And Vivienne thought I was joking."

It was not long after this that matters came to a head. It was a Sunday morning. The wind was high and still rising, only slackening occasionally when storms of drenching rain swept in from the sea. It promised to be the worst gale in years. The tumult of it, the rattling of the windows, beat on your nerves. Mother called me into the garden to help her protect the plants.

Within the high walls there was some shelter and my mother, in mackintosh and gumboots, was staking them down firmly. She gave me a grim smile. The summer was over. Straightening herself, she pushed some wisps of untidy hair off her forehead and said, "I'm going in for a shower and to change, you finish off out here."

"Perhaps I shall see you in the shower afterwards?" I joked. She laughed, but made no reply. Now that was odd, for normally she would scold me for saying such a thing. I returned to my horticultural duties and worked on happily for half an hour. Wind and rain assailed me but I did not care, I loved working on the garden plot.

Having finished in the garden I went indoors. Extending from the kitchen was a long corridor with the downstairs bathroom to one side. Mother normally used the upstairs bathroom. While making my way along this hall, my mother stepped out, fresh from the shower, stark naked except for her slippers. We both froze in our tracks, gazing at each other wordless with surprise. My stare fell on the dark bush of pubic hair at the top of her thighs.

"Oh, for God's sake," she exclaimed, "haven't you ever seen a naked woman before?" Seizing my hand she led me upstairs to her bedroom. Pretty as she was dressed, my mother was glorious naked with her trim figure, full round hips, narrow waist and round breasts with dark brown nipples which even as I stared seem to harden seductively and protrude rudely.

She made me sit on the edge of the bed and then, falling back on her pillows, opened her thighs and guided my fingers over her vulva, mentioning the textbook name for each part of it as she did so. In the course of this tour of her sexual physiology she drew attention to her clitoris. She explained that it enlarged slightly when touched or caressed, and I was allowed to agitate it softly with a fingertip. Suddenly she seized my hand and, laughing hysterically, removed it. I had never seen her laugh like this before, it was a mixture of embarrassment and high excitement. Then I was dismissed.

When I went down to the drawing room half an hour later I found mother at her embroidery. As I came in she looked up and smiled, then dropped her eyes to her work again. It had been a strange look she had given me, almost full of pleading. I sat in an armchair with the morning paper and watched her quietly over the top of it. Though neither of us spoke of it, yet the bedroom event captured our thoughts and played on our nerves. Which way would things go now?

Suddenly she put down the embroidery. "I'll be in the kitchen if you want me," she said simply. I followed her a few minutes later and found her standing at the window looking out on the kitchen garden. I cuddled her from behind, slipping one hand inside her blouse to cup her left breast while with the other hand I raised her skirt, ran the fingers down her abdomen, inside the waistband of her panties and stroked her pubic hair. She giggled. "You bastard," she said, "I thought I brought you up to be decent." And then we both laughed.

She turned to face me and her mood changed. "There's such misery in the world, such storm and conflict, crying in the wind and rain. I wish I wasn't getting old. Look at me, already 37. How I wish I had a young lover like you. Oh my poor garden, how I hate these gales." She sighed and then went on: "Year after year living the life of a nun at Viking Point. It's like tearing your heart out. What a vile wind. I hate the noise of it."

I was erect and pushed my warm dull aching penis against her abdomen as I hugged her. Our eyes met. She knew what I was telling her. She wanted it. "Listen mother, I think on a night with a storm like this you should have me to keep you company in bed. Shall we try it?"

She looked up at me, her dark eyes large and tragic. "These are my terms. I dominate you. This is my house and I shall continue to run it. And I want a promise of your love until at least your 21st," she told me.

"OK, fair enough, it's a deal," I said, and with that our treaty was concluded with a handshake and the briefest kiss on the lips.

How had her frigidity melted? How had the twisted logic unravelled? A sex therapist explained it to me one day. My mother had been taught by the Christian elders of her family over and over again that to enjoy sex with her husband, or anybody else for that matter, was wrong. Therefore psychologically she could not, and must not, derive any pleasure from it. But to enjoy sex with her son was doubly wrong, because it fell outside all boundaries of respectability altogether, leaving her free to enjoy it.

By mutual consent we went to bed early. My mother was so weary emotionally that she asked me to help her undress and then got into bed naked. As I undressed, my mother Muriel, already enthroned amongst her pillows, raised herself a little and watched grinning. When bereft of any clothing I squeezed into her single bed, put out the bedside lamp and cuddled her. I put my knee between her thighs, the fingers of my right hand caressing her pubic mound, and rested her hand on my erect penis. "Oh this is so lovely," she said. My mother was in that state of exhaustion which is almost peace. She had united us, if not in a bond of marriage, then in something very close to it. Most unexpectedly she closed her eyes and slept. 

END OF PART ONE