Snow Mesmerism
By Maximilian Cummings
He switched on the radio to hear an old ‘Black Sabbath’ song:
‘What you get and what you seeThings that don’t come easilyFeeling happy in my veinIcicles within my brain.’
“Good ol’ Ozzie. But it’s not drugs I need,” he thought to himself.
There was a flurry of snow across the road. Once more the snow seemed to float up to the Land Rover.
“The snow did me proud,” he mused, “things like that don’t come easily to me these days but the snow certainly brought me something this year.”
He sung on with the record:
Don’t you think I know what I’m doingDon’t tell me that its doing me wrongYou’re the one who’s really a loserThis is where I feel I belong.’
A laugh, perhaps a little forced, “well it’s not been me that’s a loser. No, that was something special”. His face became serious, sad and wistful, “Shame it couldn’t last though.” It was a blow, her going like that, more than he realised.
‘Crystal world with winter flowersTurns my day to frozen hoursLying snowblind in the sunWill my ice age ever come?’
His thoughts went back, remembering.
He had been coming up the pass, miles already from the town by the lake, when he had seen her. The windscreen wipers of his battered old Land Rover had been working hard trying to keep the snow from obscuring his vision—not that it was easy to see beyond the Land Rover anyway. The snow was falling thick and fast. As yet he was not concerned but even a Land Rover can have difficulty in too much snow. It was a relief to crest the summit. There would be no going back that day and the worst of the inclines was over. It was a fairly straight couple of miles to the farm now.
A warm kitchen and a cup of tea—‘Scordy,’ in the local dialect. He would have to prepare it himself, there was no one waiting for him back at the farm.
Willet Dodd, 33 year old Cumbrian farmer, was not a bachelor but a divorcee. He still did not know quite what had gone wrong all those years ago. It hurt, it still hurt. Since school he had loved that girl and then one day he had come home to find her gone. It was not that she was an outsider. True, she had not been brought up on a hill farm, rather in the town, yet she should have known the score. Perhaps it was the loneliness, perhaps it was the emptiness all around, perhaps it had just been him. She had gone and her note had said how much she hated it all.
He had never understood what she meant by ‘it all.’ Had never seen her again. One morning she had been there, central to his life: the next gone.
She was not Mrs. Dodd anymore, was not even down in the town but the other side of the world apparently remarried and with kids. It still hurt and Willet was still alone. How he had wanted the old farm, where generations of Dodds had come and gone farming the land, alive with the sound of children, laughter and... Mary.
That had been years before and he had just kept on farming. Sheep, his dogs and him. And he had made a living, a lonely living but a living nonetheless and it was not as if he was exactly friendless. Other farmers, friends from school. Good friends whom he saw now and then. Perhaps down at the pub for an evening. Good to meet up at the Kirkstile, Britannia or down in the town.
The Land Rover purred and it was warm enough inside. The path of the road was still clear enough in his headlights, though the tarmac had long disappeared under cover of white snow. The wind that had been blowing as he had climbed the pass had dropped and the snow eased so it was just slowly falling, a little hypnotic in the myriad floating specks of white gently making their way to the ground in the light of his headlights.
And then he saw her. Willet braked, carefully though, so not to slide. It would neither do to skid off the road or into her. She looked a poor little thing, right done in. Willet surmised she had come out and up onto the fells for a run, a long run perhaps up ____ and along the Edge and then back down the pass or perhaps even further.
The girl had stopped in the glare of the headlights and Willet had jumped out into the snow with his dogs leaping from the back as if to round up the stray female. The girl looked frozen. Running shoes, singlet and little thin running shorts—not the clothing for a blizzard even with the inner warmth of the runner. Her fair hair was tied back in a ponytail. Her skin had that tight look from being really cold. Willet was pretty sure if he touched her thigh or arm they would be cold to the touch. And they were worth touching. Even with her face pinched from the cold, and she not exactly looking her best, he could see she was an attractive lass. An attractive lass in next to nothing. Good for a farmer to see but not like that, not half frozen. It was not safe for her to be out, not one little bit—dangerous in fact still miles from anywhere.
“Hop in,” he said, opening the passenger door. It was not an offer or a request but a command. Willet was not going to debate the issue and the girl was too tired, too exhausted by the cold to do anything but obey. The wet noses of the dogs, their breath showing in the cold air pushed her towards the Land Rover.
“You shouldn’t be out in this,” he said climbing back into the warm cab. It was rather stating the obvious. The girl sat, hunched up, holding her legs. He could see her running things were soaked, a mixture of sweat and fallen snow warmed by her body to liquid and then considering returning to ice. She needed to get those wet things off and be wrapped in a towel. Even with her clearly in distress Willet could not help wondering what she would look like with those wet scraps of clothing removed before the towel came. He could see her nipples were like peas with the cold. Despite her predicament he felt a familiar hardening in his trousers. He smiled at her. The smile was meant to be encouraging and reassuring. In part it was him smiling at himself, at his typically male reaction.
Her teeth were chattering and her words were none too clear, “I’m staying on a farm by the lake. I came out for a run and the weather changed.”
“Does that up here, just like that.”
It did, but even Willet, Cumbrian farmer of several generations as he was, had been surprised at the change and the speed of it. One moment warm and sunny, the next the clouds rushing in dark and heavy with snow. It had looked all wrong and he had started out from the town with foreboding.
“Can’t take you back. Won’t get through. I’ll take you to my farm. Hot fire and tea. I’ll telephone the farm. Say you’re OK.”
The girl had nodded, finding talking difficult. She was shivering. The sooner he got her back the better. He had not mentioned her changing from her wet things or a hot bath. They would have to happen.
The warm engine started easily, Willet switched the radio off and the Land Rover headed back the way the girl had come. Probably she had run past the entrance to his farm, seen the wooden gate and the old sign. Perhaps she had not paid it a glance, perhaps, seeing no light, had not thought it worth heading down the track to see if she could find shelter and warmth.
The Land Rover moved on through the gently falling snow. Willet shook his head finding it difficult not to focus on the falling flakes of snow rather than the road. Gently, and but for the throb of the engine it would have been silently, the snow fell. Millions of flakes of snow just slowly coming down from the sky picked out by the headlights against the blackness of the early night. The regularity and leisurely speed of the fall had a hypnotic effect, made worse by the steady swing of the windscreen wipers and the ‘whirr whirr’ as the motors moved them back and forth. Willet shook his head again and tried to focus on the road. He glanced beside him. The girl was still holding her legs as she stared out into the night. ‘Whir, whir’ went the motors, back and forth went the wipers and outside the snow floated down. He took a good deeks at her.
“You’ll have to have a bath when we get home, get those wet things off. Don’t have a bathroom but I can make you up a bath in front of the fire. You’ll find that cosy, if you’ve never done that afore.” He didn’t like to mention how much he would enjoy seeing the girl taking a bath. He used to take pleasure in seeing Mary... Bad thoughts. Enjoy the moment. Don’t think back.
The girl had simply answered, ‘yes.’ Of course she was done in and exhausted but even so it seemed a bit monotone. Willet glanced again at her. She had not moved her head, had not turned to answer him but was staring out at the falling snow.
The snow kept on coming, down and down, the myriad flecks coming towards him in the headlights or, rather, they appeared to be coming towards him, it was he, of course, in the Land Rover who was moving towards and through them. Yet, it was so like, he thought, the image on the View Screen in Star Trek of stars passing the USS Enterprise as it speeded at warp drive through the galaxy. His eyes being drawn to a single flake and watching it come towards the moving car. Willet shook his head. It was dangerous. So dangerous. The falling snow kept distracting him from watching the road—or where he thought it was under its mantle of snow. The falling snow was just so hypnotic.
“You with friends?”
“Yes, three girlfriends. Lisa, Jane and Lou.”
“Don’t they jog?”
“No, they do not jog.”
“They’ll be worried about you.”
“Yes, they will be worried about me.”
“You look done in and so cold. Sooner we have you in that bath the better.”
“Yes.”
To Willet there now seemed something not quite right about the girl’s answers. They were definitely monotone, giving an impression of being a little detached from reality as if she was in a dream. He wondered if that was the onset of hypothermia. The sooner she was out of those wet things and into a bath raising her body temperature the better. He glanced at her still wet thighs. He was concerned for her but just that thought of raising her body temperature—her really good looking body temperature—raised emotions other than concern in him. She was really nice—smart to look at.
The Land Rover swung into the farm entrance and Willet got down to open the gate. Normally he would have asked or expected the passenger to hop down and do the job. The girl, was in no state to hop anywhere. Willet drove through and, again, got out to close the gate. He swung the car around in front of the stone house and turned off the engine. The girl sat there still staring out of the windscreen. She had not volunteered one word since they started driving. She had just answered questions.
“What’s your name,” he asked.
“Eleanor Ann Mavis Summers,” she replied.
Willet was surprised. He had not exactly expected her to give her full name. He walked around and opened her door. The girl, Eleanor, looked so cold despite the car’s heating. Her flimsy running things were still sodden. She did not make to move but just kept staring. Willet reached, worried she had lost the ability to move. He needed to get her inside. His hand slipped under a cold, wet thigh close to where the thin shorts started and he put his other arm under and around her back clasping her shoulder and pulling her to him. She was unresisting as he carried her into the house. A man used to manhandling sheep and much else on a farm did not have much difficulty carrying a slight girl.
Inside, the kitchen was warm from the Aga. Willet plonked the girl down in an arm chair and filled and put a kettle on to boil. From its accustomed hook, a hook probably placed on the wall by his grandfather, Willet took down the old galvanised bath. It had seen some service. He could remember how big it had seemed as a little boy when he had sat in it in front of the fire in the sitting room as his mother had fussed around him. The yellow plastic duck which had accompanied him for many years in that bath, finding the open water less and less each year, was around the house, somewhere.
The girl was still sitting looking ahead when he came back with a couple of big bath towels.. He draped them over the Aga and turned to the girl.
“Let’s get those wet things off.”
The girl did not move.
“Stand up, come on now.” And she did which was promising.
But she did nothing more. She was a bit waffey on her feet, swaying as if her knees were not quite up to the job. Willet thought she must be really beat.
“Look I’ll help you. You don’t mind.”
“No, I don’t mind.” Again such a monotone. Was the girl OK?
And then it came to Willet. Surely not, but... It was not hypothermia, rather something quite different. He had felt it in the Land Rover and had fought against the seductive, hypnotic effect of the falling snow flying so steadily towards him. He had definitely not wanted to end up smashed against a dry stone wall! The girl, exhausted, cold and tired had just stared and stared and been drawn into the ever moving snowflakes.
The surge of lust took him aback. Inside his old brown corduroys, shapeless and dirty, his chull—his penis—filled and made itself felt. It was not a feeling that had come much in recent years.
The girl just stood there, literally dripping on the stone flags from her wet clothing.
“Hands up,” he said.
It was like undressing a child—‘hands up for marmalade’—only Eleanor was not a child. Far from it! Willet reached and tugged her singlet upwards and off over her head and ponytail. There was no reaction as the girl stood there in her sports bra. White and wet.
A married man for quite a few years, Willet had no difficulty with the clasp of the bra.
Eleanor’s breasts needed the sports bra. There was a pleasant fullness and topped, he could see because of the cold, by really hard nipples. Her coldness was even more obvious with her top and bra removed. Hard peas of coldness, the little bumps around her areolae standing in support. As hard, indeed, as Willet’s penis in his trousers—though that was very much warmer.
It was not time to stand and admire the half naked girl, hands still raised and naked from the waist upwards. Willet knelt and unlaced her running shoes, got her, one by one, to raise a foot and removed them and her soaked socks. He then reached upwards, put his fingers to her waist band and pulled. The wet scraps of material came down her hips and legs as one. Kneeling he had an almost straight on view of her suddenly revealed fair pubic hair. Slicked with moisture—not sexual moisture, obviously, but melted snow. Her plump mons veneris looked cold, her thighs not only looked cold but, where his fingers touched them, as he pulled her shorts and knickers down, were cold. Really cold.
Paul did not waste any time gawping. He could do that later as she sat in the bath. He tossed her clothes and running shoes to one side and went for one of the now warm towels on the Aga. Turning back, Eleanor still had not moved. She was standing on the stone flags completely naked and with her arms upraised. Completely defenceless, so vulnerable and so cold. Willet felt he wanted to hold the poor thing in his arms and warm her though it was very obvious to himself that warming and comforting Eleanor was not the only thing he wished to do. His hard penis knew exactly what it wanted to do. It wanted to do the age old thing that men and women did. It wanted to be inside the girl and inseminating.
“Put your arms down.” Willet enfolded the girl in the towel, arms and old and picked her up, indeed holding her in his arms, wrapped completely, and plonked her down in an armchair near the Aga. On the stone flag, where she had been standing, were the shape of naked wet feet.
Willet made the tea and then began the process of filling the bath. The boiler beside the Aga had plentiful hot water produced from pipes circulating inside the Aga but was not connected to a proper bathroom or even wash hand basin elsewhere in the house. Perhaps that was what Mary had been most fed up about. Not having proper washing facilities. Willet had never got around to it, after all, to him, the old farmhouse had always been like that and it was home.
As he had done countless times before, and his father and mother before him, and his grandfather and grandmother, Willet filled a pot from the hot tap and carried it to the bath. Lovely to smell the steam rising in the old kitchen. The familiar scent of galvanised bath and hot water. He could smell the brewing tea too. Strong and dark—Farmer’s Tea or ‘Scordy’—in big mugs. He set one beside Eleanor.
“Drink yer scordy—tea—but mind it’s hot, Don’t you go scalding yourself.” Willet was being careful, he was worried a simple command to drink might be obeyed to the letter by the seemingly obedient and seemingly hypnotised girl. He watched as she pulled a hand and arm free of the encircling towel.
The bath was not actually half full but the girl’s bottom would displace the water upwards. Archimedes’ Principle, as he had learnt at school.
“Come on, Eleanor, into your bath.”
Lovely to unwrap her. Winding the warm towel back off her naked body.
“The water’s not too hot?”
“No, it is not.”
She had not touched it. It had been meant as a question and she had merely accepted his word. It was all rather uncanny. Again he put his hand in, wondering if he should test it with his elbow like you would a baby’s bath.
“Stand in the water. How does that feel?”
“Mmmm. Bliss.”
“Now get down slowly, Eleanor, only get into the water when it feels comfortable. You are not to burn yourself.” Was the instruction clear?
Slow was probably good for Eleanor. It was certainly good for Willet. Eleanor eased herself downwards and as she did so her thighs slowly parted and there, steadily widening as a view, as she settled herself lower, was a view between her thighs, a view of hair fringed, crinkly pink female sex. Willet’s erection had not subsided. It was not going to with such a view of where men wish to go—and he could see exactly where, nothing was at all hidden as her bottom touched the water.
“I’d better ring down to the farm. Which one? Let them know you’re safe here with me.”
He knew the Thwaites. There were relieved female voices in the background on the line as he spoke. Evidently Eleanor’s friends had already raised the alarm but now they knew all was well. He assured Mrs Thwaite that Eleanor was “OK, and warming up in front of the fire.” What Willet did say was she was sitting in a tin bath in his kitchen with her sweet little boobies on show and him with a real raging erection in his trousers. Too much information did not need to be imparted. Eleanor Summers was safe and getting warm. Yes, of course he would feed her. “Get something hot inside her.”
Willet swallowed. The import of the phrase hit him as it would not have hit Mrs Thwaite on the ’phone. Could he, should he? Could he take advantage of her in her rather obedient state? It would be sort of consensual and she did look so lovely in her bath... and he had seen exactly where he would like to get something hot inside her.
In the bath Eleanor sat. There was a smile on her face. Willet could imagine the sheer pleasure of changing from shivering, wet cold back to being a normal warm pink girl.
“Would you like some more scordy?”
“Please.”
The girl sat in her bath with a recovering pinkness, knees drawn up to her chin and her mug held in both hands resting on her right knee. It was a sweet picture. Willet poured more hot water in behind her back, admiring the regular bumps of her vertebrae all the way down to the just seen crack of her naked bottom. He was careful to avoid the hot water touching her. It would have made her jump, perhaps jump out of her semi trance. Willet did not want that. And it would have burnt.
Willet sat watching her as he sipped his tea. He began asking questions about her and received increasingly coherent answers as the girl recovered from the cold. Coherent but completely honest. If he asked, she answered. It was as if the usual tinted glass through which one person saw another, or the distortion of the telephone had been removed and he saw the girl with complete clarity and heard her as if in clear mountain air on a sunny, still, winter’s day. There was no pretence, no modifying of the reality. She told it as it really was. The effect of the snow falling had not worn off, not one bit.
She told him about her friends—and her boyfriend. She was completely open about him and her feelings. He asked intimate details of their sex life finding her words stimulating. Not a blush, not a circumlocution. No vagueness or evasion. He learnt what she liked and exactly what they did and had done together. It was almost as if he was seeing them ‘at it.’
“I am sure you are missing the sex.”
“Am I? Yes, I think I am.”
He had not quite phrased it as a question, he realised. And the temptation was to push it further.
“You are, you are certainly feeling that!”
To see the girl’s knees rub together was a delight. Willet stood, putting the mug to one side. Had he too been naked his erection would have been so there in the room, so showing just how much he appreciated what he was seeing and hearing.
Remarkable to be arousing a girl simply by telling her to be aroused!
“I’ll get you some soap.” Willet walked stiffly to fetch the carbolic. His penis felt iron like in his trousers.
“Sorry, it’s not really a woman’s soap.”
It was not, not at all. Willet liked the clean smell but it was hardly rose or lavender. Nice, though, to see the girl washing her body with the big green bar, wonderful to see her unconcernedly putting her hand between her legs to wash her ‘bits.’ He had thought of doing the washing himself. Perhaps stripping to the waist so as not to get his sleeves wet. But he had thought that perhaps a bit too much. She was not a little girl—hardly. Not that his thoughts were not increasingly going to the idea of touching her, touching her intimately later.
“Come on let’s get you dry.”
The water cascaded from the naked girl, running as she stood up in the tin bath waiting for Willet to bring the towel. He reached and wrapped it around her, even rubbing her a little through it, even daring to rub her breasts through the towelling.
He took a deep breath—he was almost coming in his pants—and let Eleanor finish the drying.
Wonderful to see the revealed naked young woman as she towelled herself. He wrapped her in the second and dry towel from the top of the Aga. What a thing to have in his kitchen, a girl naked but for a towel wrapped around her.
“More scordy?”
The girl sat in the armchair again.
“I’m not going to waste the water. I’ll take a bath now. You won’t mind.”
It was not a question. He was telling her she would not mind.
“And, and I have an erection. You won’t mind that either. I cannot of course help that.”
“I don’t mind! Show me.”
Willet was going to—and he was going to enjoy being naked and like that with the girl watching. He also was going to enjoy the bath and emptied boiling water from the kettle into the bath, He liked it to be hot. Then Willet undressed.
It had been years since he had been naked with a woman, still less showed his erection but there it certainly was, not hanging there but pointing upwards with peeled knob.
“It’s quite big,” said the girl.
Volunteered information and, given her earlier honesty, presumably her real thought. It was rather gratifying!
It was no less prominent when Willet rose from his bath. He had not hurried over that. Just sitting, luxuriating in the hot water had been no less a pleasure than exposing himself sexually to the girl. Tempting, as he dried himself, to invite—not tell—the girl to hold it. But he did not rush things. He very much hoped she would be warming his bed that night.
Lovely to see her watching him. He did not hide his manliness as he rubbed the towel over himself. In a way all so normal. A man and a woman bathing in a warm kitchen and a manly erection on display ready to do those things men and women do. Lovely to walk across to his clothes like that, across the flags, with the girl watching, naked and with his penis hard and standing.
Fresh underclothing but otherwise Willet redressed. He could not, alas, stay wrapped in a towel or dressing gown. He would need to be out later. Instead, dressed, Willet cooked supper as the girl sat warmly wrapped in her towel and talked. It was somewhat a picture of domestic ordinariness and comfort. A warm kitchen, the smell of frying onions and two people, a man and woman, talking. Willet was happier than he had been for years.
Eleanor seemed as relaxed as anything over supper. Happy to settle back in her chair afterwards whilst Willet went out to the farm. There had been no let up in the snow. It was falling steadily and getting deeper. The Land Rover was already piled high on its roof with the stuff and, as he looked up towards the lane, he could see the depth of snow in the short track to the gate meant, if there was more snow and drifting in the night, the road itself would be impassable but for a snow plough. The council would not be sending one of those up onto the fells, not with the town and the ‘A’ road to clear. He could have done something with the tractor but he had better things to do and not the time to spend days on that. They were snowed in. Willet smiled as his breath froze in front of him. Snowed in with a very attractive, rather sweet girl for quite a few days—things could be a lot worse!
Willet stirred and made to get out of bed. It was dark as it always was when he arose in winter but finding a warm naked body in his way was just not usual at all. He was tempted to try and repeat the performance of the night before there and then, but the farmer in him took priority and he carried on out of the bed. He might well come back for that before breakfast.
It was cold—freezing—outside. The snow had ceased and the skies cleared. The moon was up and gave a ghostly look to the farmyard. Away he could see the fells gleaming monochrome white with the snow. Before him his own breath and immediately beside him came his dogs, tails wagging and pleased to see him. Good things dogs. Faithful and trusting. Always almost ecstatic with pleasure at seeing him. Pack animals. They liked being with the pack and especially the pack leader—Willet. It was good to be ever welcomed like that. They trusted him implicitly. It had been good coming back to Mary at first and to see her pleasure at his appearance. That had changed.
The night before, Eleanor had been trusting but that was a product of the falling snow. A misguided trust... though he had looked after her and seen her safe. Made her warm and, he smiled ruefully at the memory, ensured there was something hot inside her.
It was cold, very cold but Willet was used to that. He worked steadily wrapped in his old clothes. There was nothing modern about them. The old overcoat, so thick as to almost stand on its own without a body within it. The coat had been another thing handed down. Its wool had kept more than one Dodd not just warm but alive when stuck out on the fells. It could do with a brush, though.
Pulling his boots off in the kitchen and leaving puddles on the floor, Willet put the kettle on and made tea. He could hear nothing from the bedroom. Perhaps Eleanor was still asleep. Should he undress and get back into bed with her or simply bring her some tea? The man in him won and, naked, he carried the tea, one mug in each hand. He was erecting as he reached the bedroom door.
And how he had erected the night before! He had come back into the kitchen though the back door stamping the snow from his boots. It had been lovely and warm in there: such a contrast with the cold outside. And there had been Eleanor sitting where he had left her, wrapped in her towel. He had smiled. “Time for bed, I think.” He had already placed a couple of water bottles in his bed, even changed the sheets before doing so. Not quite something he did as part of a spring clean but certainly they were not changed as often as when Mary had been there.
“You’ll be warmer in my bed. That’ll be OK.” It wasn’t a question.
“Warmer, yes.”
“Best to cuddle up, keep each other warm.”
“Cosy and snug.”
“You would like that.”
“Yes, yes, I would.”
He recalled not quite believing his luck. That the scene was real and not simply some idle day dream—or wet night dream. Not only had he an almost naked young girl in his kitchen but it seemed the snow had taken her unknowingly into a hypnotic trance where she was amenable—pliable—to suggestions. There had been guilt at what he was doing: but not a lot.
“You’ve told me you like to make love before sleep.” And she had, she had been candid in response to his questions about her and her boyfriend back in Canterbury. He had enjoyed asking the questions earlier in the kitchen and her candid answers. It had been sexually stimulating.
“Yes, I do.”
“We’d better do that then too. Make you comfortable and sleepy.”
“Please. I’m, I’m already... I’m ready for that.”
And Willet remembered how he had told her she was feeling sexual in the bath. She must have stayed like that all through the evening. Nicely wet and ready—ready to admit a man.
She had stood and Willet had lead her to his bed. So lovely unwrapping her and helping her into the bed and see her naked body slide between the sheets—his sheets. Her pleasure at finding the bed already warmed with the hot water bottles. She had watched him undress and seen his manhood already extended.
“It is big,” she said again, “I like that.” Her eyes had been on it.
Willet had got onto the bed with her and turned to reach for the switch to the bedside light. As he plunged the room into darkness he felt wet lips engulfing his knob. He froze, half in the bed and still half out. Caught between the warmth of the bed and the chill of the bedroom by the feel of soft, wet, feminine lips stroking gently over his penis head. Such a feeling! One he had not experienced for many a year. That thing women do to a man. Tender and lovely—taking his sexual organ in their mouths.
He had held still for a couple of minutes whilst Eleanor had slowly fellated him and then he had slipped down into the warm bed and drawn her to him. A soft and warm female body in his arms, her breasts against his and his erection pushed against her stomach. It was wet from her mouth. They kissed. It was lovely just lying there, naked, with his penis pressed against the girl and just to kiss. Mouths open and tongues together. Straightforward, simple kissing like young lovers might do. Only their nakedness and the feel of a mouth wetted penis against flesh reminded Willet this was something more than just kissing.
Willet had not hurried and nor had Eleanor. So nice to be tucked up in a warm bed, safe from the snow and cold outside. Out beyond the darkened farmhouse was not another soul for miles. Sheep on the fells had taken shelter as they might. Some slowly being buried in the snow, though safe for a time in their woolly coats. And still the snow fell, but down in the farmhouse, in the old bedroom two people lay warm and entwined moving closer and closer to when the man would enter the woman’s body, enter far inside it, his blood engorged penis inside her wet, slippery vagina.
Up on the fells the ewes had been put to the tups back in November—they had been served—down in the farmhouse it was Willet’s turn to play the ram. There had been fondling and sucking of breasts, his fingers had roamed and Eleanor had held him whilst they kissed but now Willet moved onto Eleanor’s body and her thighs opened to receive him. Such a feeling as he slipped inside: like they had slipped into the warm bed so Willet slipped into Eleanor and began to move.
Unhurried but purposeful and Willet had felt—and heard—Eleanor come before he did. Only when he had fully subsided did he roll from her.
They lay close, side by side and soon Willet heard Eleanor’s breathing soften to that regularity of sleep. He lay there as content as he had been for years. He had hardly expected that outcome from the day when he had awoken that morning but, there again, he had not expected the change in weather, even if dramatic changes were a Cumbrian norm. There was no way the girl could get back to the valley and the campsite the next day. He had her to himself for a few days he was sure. How long her perhaps mesmerised state might last he did not know. Perhaps her sleep would end it. Still it would be good to have her around. He lay there thinking of his farm and what he needed to do the next day; he lay there on his back, listening to the sleeping girl. In her hand his still wet, now shrivelled penis—in her body his semen.
That had been the night before. Standing naked and with two mugs of steaming tea at the bedroom door in the early morning, Willet wondered what his reception would be when the girl awoke. He could not help the erection. Well, he could have not undressed and displayed it but... to do all that again like the night before... if only!
The electric light from the passage illuminated the sleeping girl. Willet stepped to the bed watching the girl’s face in repose, seeing the gentle rise and fall of the blankets as she breathed. He put down a mug by her side of the bed and smiled down at the girl. The end of his erection, his knob end, was inches from her face, her mouth even—the mouth that had so wonderfully sucked upon his penis the night before. It was so sexual to see his knob and her lips in juxtaposition, even if they were not at all touching.
It was not, though, perhaps the thing for her to see as she opened her eyes—his erection looming over her. Willet went around the bed, put his mug down on his bedside table and got into bed. The girl stirred,
“Morning Eleanor.”
How would she be?
“I’ve brought you some scordy.”
“Where? Oh, yes, thanks.” She sat up a bit revealing her a naked breast. She turned, reached and drank, put the mug down and flopped down on the pillow.
“I slept like a log.”
It was not the sort of words a girl disorientated and frightened about where she was might have spoken.
“Brrrr! It’s cold.”
“Colder outside.”
“How’d you... you’ve been up and outside already?”
“I’m a farmer.”
It said it all. Certainly Willet’s friends scattered about the isolated farmhouses would have known just what he meant.
“But you’ve come back to bed?”
He drank from his mug and as he did so he felt a hand. Warm and soft, not like his calloused hand, on his thigh and then holding his cock. The hand squeezed around his hardness.
“Farmers have needs,” he answered. “Let me drink me scordy first.”
It was lovely. Coming in from the cold for a fuck before breakfast. Lovely to repeat the act of the night that had passed, kissing and exploring and finding things were just as they had been the night before—in exactly the same places. Again Willet got on top of the girl, again his penis poked at her and slipped easily into her wet sex and moved in and out. This time her feet came up and she locked her ankles over his back, pulling him into her. A second spurting of semen joined the first of the night before inside her.
Dressed in just his old woollen dressing gown Eleanor sat by the Aga in the kitchen as Willet made breakfast. A farmer’s breakfast for a working man. Not cornflakes or Rice Krispies but a proper breakfast of fried bacon and eggs to keep out the cold and give the working man energy for the morning.
Again, there was more than enough to do in the farmyard after breakfast and when Willet returned for coffee and a biscuit or two he found the girl had not only washed up but had been tidying as well. Perhaps her feminine sensibilities were offended by the state of the place: perhaps she just wanted to be busy.
“I’m going up the fields to the low fell to see how the sheep are faring.”
“Can I come?”
“It’s no job for a...” Willet stopped in his tracks. Mary had never asked to come and help, had never wanted to see the stark winter beauty of the fells. Her eyes were always set on the bright, gay lights of the town. A little unfair perhaps as Penrith, Keswick or Kendal were not exactly the sort of town to have many bright, coloured lights. That was more Londontown: perhaps Mary would have been happiest there.
“Yeah, all right but...” He looked at her. What could he dress her in against the cold?
Eleanor looked a picture when he was done—though quite what sort of picture was another matter. It certainly was not a sight for the catwalk! No high heels for one thing. Willet had found an old pair of Mary’s Wellingtons. Still too big for Eleanor but better than his own and, with three pairs of woollen socks, just the job. Otherwise she was dressed in some of his working clothes. He had washed her things the night before so she at least had bra and panties but, beyond that, an old checked shirt, brown, baggy corduroys, two jumpers, an old coat which was really too big and too long for her, gloves (woollen and rubber), scarf and woollen hat. She looked completely without shape, a blob of clothing, only her eyes peering over the scarf and the green woollen bobble hat gave her a certain charm—to Willet anyway. The eyes were certainly pretty.
Well wrapped they crossed the farmyard and Willet opened the gate. The snow had drifted and the going was not easy. Eleanor followed Willet as they climbed. A winter wonderland of snow, perhaps, and with the sun up the land looked magnificent but could be deadly. It would not be good if some ill prepared walkers—or joggers—had been caught on the fells the day before by the snow. Not good for humans but it might not be good for sheep either. Their woolly coats would keep them warm but Willet was worried that pregnant ewes might have been covered by the drifting snow. He well knew they could survive for days under the snow by creating air pockets and staying alive through body heat within their insulating covering of wool, but it was not the same for new born lambs and it was coming on lambing time.
The dogs ran ahead. They would search out sheep under the snow.
Willet was happy. Not just with finding his sheep but in Eleanor. She did not just stand around saying she was getting cold and asking when they were going back to the farm. She too worked with a real will. It was teamwork and Willet was happier than he had been for years. A snatched lunch from his pocket and then they went back to work. The landscape was beautiful enough for a picnic: the temperature was not. Keeping moving was good: standing or sitting still was not.
By the late afternoon the clouds were massing and looked heavy and pregnant with snow. They both looked and were, and it hit them as they made their way downwards. A sudden flurry with the wind rising and then ‘whiteout.’ It was not the gentle falling like it had been when they had been driving the day before: it was a blizzard with a biting wind. But Willet knew the way, knew the way back down to the farm even if he could not see far in front of his face. He held tightly to Eleanor. It would not have done to have been parted and they made their way safely back, through the last gate and into the farmyard and thence into the warm kitchen.
The cessation of wind and snow was sudden as Willet closed the door on the outside world. He looked at the shapeless blob beside him, covered in white snow.
“Scordy?”
“Oh, bliss—yes, please!”
Coats removed and puddles forming on the floor from their now discarded Wellingtons, Willet and Eleanor sat in the warmth drinking tea from large mugs.
“That was a good day’s work. Thank you, Eleanor, thank you for your help.”
“I enjoyed it.”
It was simple but it was clear she meant it. Willet had not told her to enjoy it. It had not come from her seeming trance or hypnosis. It seemed she had, indeed, taken pleasure in the hard work and the wintery beauty of the fells. She was not minded about the cuddy splatter in the farmyard. So different from Mary.
“We’re not going to be taking you down to the valley tomorrow. Weather’s set in for worse.”
The girl shrugged her shoulders. It was clear to Willet she was not bothered—did not mind not going back to the valley and the farm below and, no doubt, then trying to get home. That pleased him—pleased him a great deal.
They talked as they drank, about the fells and the sheep, about Willet and his life and about the girl. Another pot of tea and still they talked.
“What I’d really like now is a bath. Would you mind, if it’s not too much bother?”
It was a bit of a business, not a simple matter of running a tap but Willet hardly minded that. The thought of having Eleanor once more naked in the kitchen made it anything but a chore. “No, of course not.”
He got down the old tin bath and placed it on the floor and began the process of filling it. It would have been pleasing to have had bubble bath for it, make it look all sudsy like similar baths in the ‘Westerns’ although that was partly to hide the naked actress’ breasts. It would have been quite nice to have seen Eleanor’s breasts and nipples poking through the bubbles of a foaming bath.
As strip teases went, Eleanor did not really have the right gear. Removing old baggy jumpers and corduroys was not quite the normal thing for the stage, but Willet was happy enough. She just began removing her clothing as he slowly filled the bath.
It was not quite a transformation scene in a pantomime but certainly there was quite a difference between the shapeless, baggy person of indeterminate sex and the young girl standing in just bra and panties. Inside his own clothes Willet felt the blood pumping into his sexual organ. Did she know the effect she was having upon him? The slightly coy, sidelong glance as she reached to undo her bra rather suggested she did!
Another sluice of water into the bath and Willet tested the temperature. “How’s that?”
The bare breasted girl bent to test, stretching the material of her panties over her buttocks. Female buttocks do something to a man, not least when the women is bending forward. They certainly stimulated Willet!
“That’s just divine.”
Willet stared as she straightened and then eased her panties down. First dimples and just a hint of a cleft and then the divide between fleshy, round buttocks slowly being revealed. Eleanor was not just tugging her panties down: she was slowly rolling them down. Deliberately provocative? Willet rather thought so!
Good to simply watch the girl put one feminine foot in the bath and then the other before slowly lowering herself as she got used to the hot water, her thighs opening a little and then showing rather more of her curls than if merely standing. It was a good sight.
“I’m sorry there’s not room for two.”
There was quite simply no space at all for another and Willet certainly regretted that! But, again, so good to hear her suggest such a thing. He sat watching the girl, after a time getting up and making more tea. They sat chatting, Willet on a chair, Eleanor in her bath.
“I’m being selfish. You’ll want your turn.”
He did, but watching the girl pick up the soap and lather herself was a pretty good alternative pleasure.
Eleanor rose and Willet wrapped her in a towel just as the day before and she stepped from the water. More hot water added and then it was Willet’s turn, his turn to strip and reveal his naked body—and erection. It was present, it had so made itself felt. He liked the way the girl was watching him, liked the way her eyes roved over his body as he moved to the bath. The water was, indeed, lovely. Hot and relaxing after the day’s work, relaxing to muscles—if not to that ‘muscle.’ His knob stuck up out of the bath water all on its own, clearly not minded to go down and hide under the water.
Still they talked but when it was time for Willet to rise from the water, Eleanor too stood and unwound her towel and gave it to him. The action had a strangely symbolic feel to it. Rather than retrieve the other towel from the Aga, Eleanor was sharing her towel with him and, at the same time, becoming fully naked with him. It suggested an interest which caused Willet’s erection to strengthen. It was not a misplaced impression, the girl’s further actions confirmed the thought. As he begun to dry himself, she walked naked across the flags to the old kitchen table, turned and hopped up upon it, bottom first to sit there looking at him as he rubbed himself down. As he stepped from the water and made to dry his lower legs and feet, she slowly opened her thighs showing him just where the fair curls ran. It was a very definite invitation, there was no question about that, a slow opening as an invitation to copulate.
Willet straightened, dropped the towel to the floor and walked across the kitchen to the girl. Mary had never done that for him. Never simply hopped up on the kitchen table and invited him to take her. It was so animal, so sexual, so erotic! Willet walked naked and with his penis, prong like, towards her. Such a few seconds of incredibly eroticism, the simple act of slowly walking naked towards a pretty girl who was open to him. Male spike approaching female socket. Willet simply came across the room, stepped between her thighs and, without touching her or indeed himself, literally walked into her—six inches into her! One moment two separate people across a room: the next mated.
A gasp from the girl and Willet as well. For the girl a sudden hard opening of her—though she was wet enough to receive: for Willet the sudden wet and hot embrace of a soft vagina. Not then a movement from either, just sudden heavy breathing and the blinking of eyes, each savouring the sudden feelings, the feelings of togetherness.
Willet did not disconnect again until he had come within the girl: not that that was immediate. The intercourse was alternately slow and furious.
At first, when they started moving, there was just the gentle sliding of penis in vagina but then Willet’s hands made contact with Eleanor’s breasts, squeezing and pulling at her nipples; they hugged, breast to breast, warm and slightly damp bodies so very much skin to skin—a tight embrace; then the girl gently eased herself back and lay upon the table whilst Willet ‘let her have it’ with strong thrusts whilst he held her thighs in his hands and stared down upon the girl, almost releasing into her.
There was a pause and then Willet reached so their hands met, allowing Willet to pull Eleanor back up to a sitting position once more; they cuddled without moving their sexual organs, an intimate embrace before Willet eased his fingers under Eleanor’s soft buttocks and lifted her right off the table so he was fucking her whilst holding her up in the air supported by his spread palms, her arms around his neck and, importantly, his erection inside her.
“Fuck me hard, make me come, I’m so nearly...”
Willet let the girl down onto the table and began slowly driving himself in and out again. He slipped his hand between them and found her little button. He was taking no chances, he wanted to ensure her orgasm. He did not fail, relishing the way her tongue pushed between his lips as she shuddered in climax.
And, with legs a little apart and his bath slackened scrotum swinging to and fro beneath him, he felt his balls pull up as he prepared to pump his stuff into the girl; he so felt the first spasm as the semen was forced up the long, fleshy tube, travelling within the confines of her body deep into her and then expelled out of the end of his penis to flood. Spasm after delicious spasm. Such an experience in his very own kitchen.
The slow disconnection, smiles and sighs.
“That was all a bit sudden, Eleanor.”
“Mmmmm, but nice.”
Nice indeed! Nice enough to do again after supper. It was not just tiredness which encouraged Willet to an early bed.
Another day and a second day of waking to find a warm body beside him. A body Willet had been intimate with the night before. Willet lay still for a few moments hearing and feeling the girl snuggled down in the bed beside him. He needed to be up and doing but for a few minutes he just lay there thinking—wishing it, her presence in his bed and house, could go on forever.
The weather was not good. Not good at all. Another day up on the fells but a day with Eleanor. She came too. There was not the same sunny prettiness of the day before but a certain stark beauty in the winter landscape when it could be seen between the snow flurries and showers. Again a bath on their return, again sex in the kitchen.
Willet had eaten at the old pine table since he was tiny, had eaten there countless times with Mary, had shared happy times with friends at that table but had never with Mary, or any other girl for that matter, ‘eaten’ quite like that. The bath time had been as the day before—certainly at first. Again Willet had walked across the stone flags naked and erect right into the girl. They had fucked but then Eleanor had whispered, breathily in his ear, “eat me.”
Again she had lain back on the old table but this time Willet had disconnected, pushed her hips a little further onto the table so she could bend her knees and place her feet on its surface and then he had bent to the task. It was not that he was a stranger to cunnilingus but certainly he had not done such a thing for quite a few years and then it had been ‘down the bed’ with Mary.
This was different. The girl was wonderfully exposed in the electric light, her curl framed sex, open, pink and moist, visible in all its oyster like detail. It was, indeed, what ‘little girls are made of’ and Willet liked what he both saw and tasted. Lovely simply to lick her smooth thighs at first before teasing her by moving slowly towards her labia. So pleasing to see how the girl pushed with her hips to encourage him to come closer and touch his tongue to her sex. A sexual thrusting of her hips and even an opening and closing of her vagina as she moved those mysterious kegel muscles. A woman in heat—definitely!
Was Eleanor’s sexual excitement simply a result of his command of two days before? There seemed no change in her. Still, he noticed, if he did tell her to do something she did it. It was, though, better, he had found, to phrase things he wanted as requests to see if she did them by her own volition. Was the sex partly at her own volition?
Lovely to bury his face in Eleanor’s hot wetness—and she was very wet! To stick his tongue into her body just as his penis had been stuck a little before. Wonderful to feel her little button hard under his tongue—two sensitive organs coming together. And lovely to feel the girl shudder and shake as she came whilst he ‘ate’ her.
“Stop, stop, stop!”
Willet rose to look down on the girl. Her eyes were closed and her body really was shaking with her orgasm. Such a beautiful, erotic sight—the girl with her hands stretched above her head, her breasts rather flattened by both being on her back and the stretching of her arms, her nipples taut and her sex so exposed and so visibly wet. Willet stepped forward, his penis looming over her rather damp mons veneris. It had not weakened the whole time he had been bent over her. There it was, her sexual entrance, so there, so available, so desirable, so wet. Willet moved his hips bringing himself into position, he touched and then pushed, his whole thought on insemination—entering and letting go, releasing his semen.
The girl’s eyes flashed open and she pulled away leaving his cock all wet but unsatisfied, “No, no, too sensitive! Let me, let me return the compliment. Let me suck you dry.”
Again, such a new and wonderful experience. Eleanor made him sit with his buttocks on the old pine table, made him spread his knees and she drew up a chair between them and sat down. It was as if she was sitting down to a meal at table: which, in a way, she sort of was doing, but not a meal needing knife and fork or even spoon! Such utensils were not needed, not needed at all, though perhaps she could have lifted a ball up in its fleshy, wrinkled sack with a dessert spoon: certainly not stabbed at it with a fork!
Not a plate of meat and two veg.—well perhaps sort of! Rather Willet’s penis sticking right up at her, its head peeled and the whole thing dressed in a sheen of Eleanor’s very own wetness. To Willet that sheen, and what it was, gave an added piquancy to the scene. Did it to the girl?
Eleanor looked up at him, their eyes meeting. There was a sparkle, a lovely liquidity to her hazel brown eyes. Her lips were smiling as she moistened them with her tongue. She seemed as happy as anything. Was it the snow induced hypnosis or was she as happy as she looked?
“Don’t come straightaway.” She said, “stop me if it’s too much.”
Her head bent and Willet felt his knob engulfed in her warm wet mouth. His head went back and he stared up at the ceiling. The sensation on his penis wonderful and moreover the thought, the thought of what was happening. Such an erotic scene. How was he not to come straightaway!
She was in fact careful—though he would not have described what she was doing as ‘cautious.’ She knew what she was doing and how to do it. She was careful to take him out of her mouth frequently and let him rest before licking or sucking again. He felt lips slide a really long way down his shaft, he felt her head bobbing up and down at speed before releasing, he felt her fondle his balls whilst she licked all the way up the shaft. And all through it he managed to hold back. Had he not already been fucking a lot the last couple of days he would have lost it.
The girl leant back in her chair with a big grin. “Shall I make you come now? Had enough?”
Such a pretty sudden raising of her shoulders in query. Willet though of telling her to swallow when he did come. Something Mary would never have done. He had not given Eleanor a command all day and hardly any the day before. He was not sure whether she was still mesmerised by the snow. He hoped she was not, loved the idea she might be just doing it all at her own volition. But before he said anything, Eleanor said:
“Go on, come in my mouth. I swallow.”
“Oh...” The thought exciting, “please.”
The girl was looking at his erection, there hard and standing between his spread thighs rising up from his curls.
“Mmmm, looks good enough to eat,” she looked up at him, “and that’s just what I’m going to do.”
Her hand slid between the table top and his balls and once again she bent her head. She used her mouth like a vagina, slipping up and down his shaft, her head bobbing as she fondled his balls. Willet was anything but in control. All he could do was hang on, not so much gripping the table edge with his hands—which he was doing—as hold off his orgasm as long as possible.
And that was not very long with Eleanor’s hot, wet mouth bobbing up and down over his knob and her fondling fingers working his balls, not long at all.
Head back, hands gripping the table. It was just not the time to have visitors come through the back door.
Nobody, though, was going to be out on a night like that, let alone interrupting that orgasm. Inside Eleanor’s mouth Willet spurted, the physical accompaniment to his orgasm pouring into Eleanor.
The girl settled back in her chair and licked a little stray semen from her chin.
“Will I need supper after that?”
After a hard day’s work they certainly needed a little more sustenance. Willet did not hurry to dress. The kitchen was warm enough and he bailed out the bath and began making supper naked. Eleanor chopped and prepared their meal with him, just as naked. So nice to work together like that, occasionally touching. A combination of togetherness and sex.
And after supper, more togetherness and sex in Willet’s bed. And then another day and another.
The sun rose and with it the weather and temperature changed. A dripping, bright but still white world as the streams began to move and then rush with the melt water. Willet and a, still well wrapped, Eleanor walked together up the hill, higher than they had been before to look out on the white world of mountainous Cumbria. In the distance the lake was blue with reflected sky. They stood looking, hand in hand.
“Roads will be passable tomorrow.”
And they were—in the Land Rover. It was time for Eleanor to go home. They drove down and picked up her things from the farm down by the lake. Her friends had long gone home. The main roads had been opened. And then they drove back up and across the fells heading for the railway station. Eleanor was now wearing her own clothes. Not her running clothes but things she had left at the farm when going for that unwise run across the fells.
Unwise? The result had been marvellous for Willet. Only that morning, in his bed, they had again joined and, as they drove Willet took a, perhaps, masculine pleasure in knowing his semen was inside the girl as she sat next to him.
The arrival of dark clouds was unexpected. The land darkened and Willet switched on the headlights. As they drove over the fells the snow came again, not blowing in but just gently falling. Myriads of snowflakes drifting down through the air. Once again it appeared as if little pinpoints of light, thousands or millions of them were rushing towards the Land Rover. It was mesmerising. Willet glanced at the girl. Once again she was staring blankly out through the windscreen.
“You OK.”
“Yes, I’m OK.” Her voice a monotone.
The effect was felt as well by Willet and his focus changed to stare at the snowflakes rather than the road. Only just in time did he see the sheep and its lambs on the road. He braked hard, jolting both himself and Eleanor.
“Oh,” she said, “Oh, I... oh.”
And she said not another word the whole journey. No longer was she staring out at the snow but seemed more to be looking down at her hands, occasionally she looked at Willet. There was something different about her, something not the same.
Eleanor said very little when he dropped her at the station. A rather formal ‘thank you for rescuing me,’ not even a kiss or a peck on the cheek. She had been out of the Land Rover, grabbing her possessions from the back and seeming, then, to be in a great hurry to buy her ticket and be on the platform and away. Willet had not followed her but had stood dejected and alone. The joy that had come into his life had walked away. She was not going to be his bewer, his girl.
It had ended, as he had always known it would. It had all been the falling snow and his words. It had not been real. That jolt in the Land Rover and the falling snow had brought her back to herself. She must have been so puzzled at both herself and what had happened.
The Land Rover seemed so empty as Willet started the engine and turned back to the fells and how empty, when he was back at the farm, had his kitchen felt when he walked into it... and his bed.
Spring came to the fells. The days longer, the sun brighter and down in the valley and around the lake, the daffodils were ablaze. Willet drove his old Land Rover along the tarmac road high up in the fells. On the radio, The Strawbs were playing a song so attune with what he was seeing and thinking:
The hillside was a patchwork quiltNeatly stitched with tidy hedgeAnd crumbling grey stone wallThe trees were bare, but Spring was nearTo conjure up its endless stringsOf green magic handkerchieves...New born lambs that sweetly playedSpeckled eggs all newly laidBut for you I would have stayedI think I must have caught a glimpse of heaven
“But for you I would have stayed... if only you had, if only you had stayed.” Willet spoke wistfully to himself. He had not forgotten—not one little bit. “I truly did catch a glimpse of heaven!” He had been smitten. The more he thought back the less the sex was important and the more the girl. He had really liked her... well, more than liked.
He had heard nothing, nothing since he had dropped her at Windermere Railway Station back when it was winter. He had watched her walk up the platform under the canopy with its cast iron pillars running alongside the single track as the snow gently fell.
When he had been a boy, there had been four tracks and four platforms to the station. He wondered how long what was left would stay. She had not looked back. He remembered the drive back to the farm, the suddenly so empty farmhouse with its tin bath hanging in the kitchen. The so empty bed.
She had not been a girl to mind the cuddy splatter or owt like that in the farmyard or at the gate. He thought she had taken to the fells like born to it: so different from Mary, all those years back.
Driving, Willet remembered the Black Sabbath track on the radio, ‘Lying snowblind in the sun, will my ice age ever come?’ He had felt so bad. Even now, even with spring... though the sun and the sight of flowers certainly lifted the heart somewhat, he still felt like that. He sang to himself,
The hillside was a patchwork quilt
Neatly stitched with tidy hedge
And crumbling grey stone wall
Yes, indeed, the hillside below him with its grey stone walls was a picture as the sun and shadow of clouds moved across the land. He was nearly home now. Nearly at his lonely farmhouse.
New born lambs that sweetly played
Speckled eggs all newly laid
But for you I would have stayed
I think I must have caught a glimpse of heaven
And there she was. There was no mistaking who. By the old wooden gate to his farm a girl was sitting next to a rucksack. Eleanor Ann Mavis Summers.
She had come back.
Willet stood high on the hillside watching the rockets soar into the black starlit sky above the town, watching a firework display from above, a display to celebrate the Millennium. The nineteen nineties were over. It was two thousand now! Beside him Eleanor, well wrapped as she had been all those years ago, and with her arm about him. Down at the town their children, well hardly children now, were with their friends out celebrating.
Eleanor had not come back because she was pregnant. It had crossed his mind as he had stepped from the Land Rover—the very same Land Rover still sitting in front of the farmhouse, albeit with a different engine—but that had not been the reason for her return. The reason had been him, the farm and the fells. She had come back for him.
As the days and weeks had passed, after she had returned home, Eleanor had found her life in the city to be less and less satisfying. She had split with her boyfriend and gradually realised where her thoughts were again and again taking her—northwards to a farm high in the Cumbrian fells and to a particular man.
She had come, back to the railway station, taken the bus from Windermere as far as she could and climbed the fells and waited.
Willet remembered how, of a moment, the old kitchen had become warmer and it was as if the old farmhouse had become alive again. Willet saw the girl look around and her eye fall on the old tin bath and stayed looking for a long moment. He turned to put the kettle on and knew things were, so out of the blue, going to be all right.
They had been ‘all right’ now for over two decades. It was likely they would be for many more. The couple turned and walked down the hillside.
“You know, Will, with the children out I, um, fancy a bath—in the kitchen.”
Willet smiled and squeezed her hand. The farmhouse might now have modern amenities including a proper bathroom but there was nothing quite like a bath in front of an open fire—or sex with Eleanor Ann Mavis Dodd.