Carmel's Unsent Letter to Alfred

Letters of Love 2022 Story Event was created by Literotica Author SisterJezabel, where authors are invited to use a character from one of their published stories to write a love letter. A simple proposition where several of my characters put their case forward as candidates, but one special lady stood out among the crowd, planting an idea in my mind. Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to Carmel McCotter. For those of you in reader land who aren't familiar with Carmel, she starred as the main female character inArmistice Day.

Carmel probably won't appreciate me revealing the following information, but in late 1918 when Armistice Day takes place, she's forty-eight, and has turned forty-nine before the earliest day of spring 1919 when she writes her letter. But hey, like they say, you're only as young as the man you feel. And young Alfie Graham was that lucky man, and he was twenty-two years old when Carmel was feeling him. Yes, you read me right, in modern times Carmel would be considered a cougar! Consequently, you'll find Armistice Day in the Mature category.

Alfred moved on to a second story, Prussian Blue, which you can find in the Romance category. However, apparently Alfred wrote to Carmel many months after the events of Armistice Day and Prussian Blue, and as a consequence, Carmel felt compelled write back to Alfred. She wrote one letter to send and another to get a number of things off her ample chest and put them onto paper, for her own sake rather than anyone else's. All will soon become apparent, so Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado, here it is, Carmel's Unsent Letter to Alfred.

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© 2022 Thefireflies, for Literotica

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1st September, 1919

My dearest Alfie,

Today I am writing two letters to you, where this is my first and most honest. I can never send this letter, but I feel a great need to write it. My heart and soul insists I write it, where after I have poured my feelings onto these very pages, I will seal this letter in an envelope and hide it. Under my bed there is a loose floorboard covering a hidey-hole which is a royal pain in the you-know-what to get to, but this letter will live there with a few pieces of jewellery from my mother and a little gold my late husband found when he was surveying for the railways. I think I will remove the gold and give it to Henry and George when they return from Europe, but the letter will stay while this house stands.

I will write a second letter which I shall send to you. Of course you will read my sent letter which will tell you of the most mundane goings on around here because there is not really all that much to tell you. Perhaps you will think there is more, but I will say nothing between the lines, even if I am tempted. I may write how I wish you could see my garden, where before winter I planted garlic, potato, carrot and beetroot, and how my bare rose bushes are developing fat buds that threaten to sprout despite the cold, but there is no hidden message there. Only the odd caterpillar and snail.

I will congratulate you on your marriage to Gisela. On that particular point, your letter I recently received was most unexpected, however I wasn't surprised by the news of your marriage and impending fatherhood, because Peter told me you already wrote to him. However I truly am happy for you and your new wife. I genuinely believe you are infatuated with her, because you write so highly of her, where your exuberant love bounced from the page. Gisela sounds truly vivacious and I know you and she will have a very happy marriage.

And this is partly why I need to write this first letter which I cannot send, my dear Alfie, because I know your Gisela is a very lucky woman. With a tall and handsome husband on whose arm she rests her hand when you walk the streets of your town, I can imagine how she will smile, knowing things other women do not know. However, if I were to see you two, and see your wife's smile, I would smile too, knowing what she knows. Knowing the pleasures she experiences, knowing she is pleasured like a woman should be pleasured when she and you slip between the sheets each night, because I know you love to pleasure a woman. For I was pleasured greatly by you. And perhaps loved.

I certainly fell in love with you, my handsome Alfie, even though I could never tell you. Since you left Melbourne late last November I have thought of you every day. Winter has been cold at my house, not like the warmth of late spring when you shared my roof, my food, and occasionally my bed and body. Even now as write on this cool evening I can't help but wish you were here to sit with me on the chaise, where we could snuggle into the evening staring into the fire, perhaps drinking a dram of scotch.

Since your letter arrived I have thought of you and your lovely wife snuggling by a fire, where though I am not jealous, I think about what it would be like to be her. I often wonder if it's cold in your valley in Queensland and if your damaged lungs are faring well. I do hope it is much warmer in your part of the country and also that you are managing to avoid the dreaded so-called Spanish Influenza overtaking the world. I can't bear to think what such a dreaded disease would do to your health because I recall your terrible cough when your lungs were irritated by even the slightest chill in the air.

Many times since you left I wondered if, as you look across the green hills and valleys you so lovingly described to me as your home, do you ever think of me? Now I know you do think of me, because you said so in your letter. But I wonder if you ever think of me in the way I think of you? I confess, sometimes when I think of you I rub my hands over my body, imagining you kissing me all over... oh, I am a naughty woman, aren't I! It was 10 months ago, yet, it feels like it was only yesterday, where my memories of you and your soft lips and firm hands on my skin, and your hard manhood...oh I daren't write it, my memories are much too wicked! And yet they're so vivid and beautiful when I recall our times together, which I often do.

One of my fondest memories of our short time together is the day the Armistice was declared in Europe. Monday the 11th of November, 1918. I shall never forget it. In the morning when we travelled into town we did not know the war would be over. You looked so handsome when you bought a new suit to wear instead of your ragged army uniform, and I must say, I was rather enamoured with you by then.

Late in the afternoon, once we discovered the wonderful news of the war's end, I secretly hoped you would kiss me like other men were kissing their sweethearts, but I knew you wouldn't. Indeed, there was a night where you did kiss me without asking, and at the time I'd felt so confused and even a little angered, where I think I told you to obtain a woman's permission before you kiss her. Yet, I did not ask for a kiss when I hoped you would kiss me again, though I did try to give you a hint, pulling you against me. But you were the perfect gentleman, for which I am also grateful.

It was indeed pleasant to pretend I was your girl on your arm, wishing I were a much younger woman during our walk home along the Yarra. Later, when it was time for bed, I knew you were going to be the perfect gentleman again and leave me for the night. I knew I needed to play my hand, inviting you to share my bed and my body. You were wonderful, Alfie, kissing me like you no doubt kissed many French and English girls, your tongue gently contacting mine. What a wonderful development, not to mention such a sensual technique!

And the way you handled my body, worshiping me, kissing my flesh, your lips all over me and causing me to tingle with delight. It was like a wonderful dream! When we came together I was overcome with the most amazingly wonderful feelings I've experienced in quite some time. Perhaps I am remembering our loving through the proverbial rose coloured glasses, where my memory has decided it was the most amazing wonderful experience of my life...but whatever the truth is, my memory of the evening was that you were simply quite divine.

Who'd believe it? You, the handsome young man with scars and demons from the war, and me, a plain and older widower. One could hardly believe such a story, however it wasn't a dream because I'll never forget the feelings of happiness I felt when you held me. When you touched me in the most intimate manner a man can touch a woman. Oh, Alfie, see, I am so very naughty, I shouldn't write of such things! I confess to you, I thought our loving would be a one off occasion because I always knew we'd not last for long. And let me say, even with rose coloured glasses on I recall that very first time we joined you certainly did not last very long at all!

I'm smiling when I just wrote those words, but I know you would laugh too, and it doesn't matter one iota because we lasted several more weeks. Every time we were together was better than the last, where you showed patience, kissing me better than any man ever kissed me, holding me tightly like I was all who mattered to you in the entire world, making me feel special. Our intimacy was heavenly, where not only did we share ourselves physically, but every time we joined I felt our souls merge and we became one.

A very big part of me wanted you to stay here in Melbourne forever. Alas, despite my feelings I knew you should never stay for me because of our difference in age. Even when you suggested you might like to stay with me, I knew it best for you to find a woman closer to your own age. When you told me I was beautiful, which despite my own feelings on the matter I believe you meant, I know you would eventually tire of looking at little old me. Even so, how I wish we could go back to late last spring if even for a short time and share those moments again and again. My cheeks flush at the memory and so does my heart flutter.

Love has blossomed elsewhere here. You may already know, but I will tell you all about it in my other letter, the one I shall send to you. I will tell you how Susannah is helping Peter with his rehabilitation, as he still helps her with the book she's writing about her late husband Cornelius' experiences in the Flying Corps. Over the course of many months Susannah and Peter have become inseparable and they plan to marry.

Peter is currently undergoing new treatments on his wounds, techniques surgeons in Britain are developing to help badly burned men recover by taking skin from one part of their body and grafting it to where the burns are. He is one of the first to undergo such treatments here in Australia where he and Susannah hope his scars heal enough before they walk down the aisle. Perhaps you already know most of this from Peter and your previous correspondence. In which case it may or may not come as a shock to you to learn Susannah gave birth to a healthy baby boy less than a fortnight ago. She has named him Graham.

Consequently, there is another reason I write this letter I can never send, another thing you must never know but I wish you could know. Graham is not Peter's child and I believe Peter knows this to be true. Although Susannah befriended Peter the day you introduced them to one another, the very day before you left us, I do not believe Susannah was keen on him. Their friendship took time to grow, partly I suspect because his horrific burns initially repelled Susannah, however he is a delightfully fun and charismatically charming rogue who makes us laugh and he has won her over. Yet I know she was rather taken by you while you stayed here and Peter was not her first choice.

Susannah told me on the morning you caught your train back to Queensland how sad she was to see you leave and she hoped you'd return for her, where her feelings for you had grown. My daughter's happiness is paramount to me and I too hoped you could stay here in Melbourne for Susannah and become a part of our family. Yet, my Susannah is no fool and seemingly knew you'd not return, even when I attempted to comfort her with words to the contrary. Thankfully I believe Peter is the man to love Susannah and I believe their companionship has grown to make her genuinely happy.

You also must know that, like my daughter, I am no fool either. On the day before you left for your native Queensland I know you were in Susannah's childhood bedroom, and I know you and she lay together there. I'm neither deaf nor blind, where I arrived home to hear you and her deep in coitus, where the bed and floorboards upstairs were squeaking through the ceiling, and neither you nor her were attempting to make love in silence.

I saw Peter asleep on my chaise in the front room, so I quietly backed out the door and waited ten minutes on the front step before entering the house again. When I saw you a little later, a layer of dust coated the back of your shirt, confirming what I already knew, because Susannah's old room is dusty. And the following day I checked her room and saw her childhood doll had been moved from the pillow to the table, and the covers on her bed were pressed down in the centre and the dust disturbed. There were stains there and of course you know I am not naïve to the stains two people make when they come together. So I know, Alfie, how you and Susannah were intimate together, where your relations with her corresponds exactly nine months before Graham was born.

Susannah began to show, even before she and Peter decided they would marry. Thus, Susannah knows despite the fact we will never speak of it, that I know Graham is not Peter's. Even when Peter or I mention Graham in our correspondence with you, you will more than likely never know you are Graham's father. But I will always know my grandchild is your child, and therefore I know part of you will always be a part of my family here in Melbourne. For this reason I will always cherish your child with a particular fondness.

You mentioned in your letter how your wife is also pregnant, for which I congratulate you. The two of you were quickly into it, but who am I to talk? I am sure you will have many children together and while part of me is sad you did not come back for Susannah, it somewhat comforts me to know your children will have a half-sibling here in Melbourne. It's a great shame they are unlikely to find out about one another.

I think it unlikely we shall see one another again. I don't consider myself a selfish woman and I think you would agree with my assessment of myself, and I'm genuinely happy you have moved on, but I do miss you dearly and wish you knew how you touched my heart and soul. I fell deeply in love with you, Alfred Graham, where I have ached and yearned for you. Thus, perhaps it is for the best you left us and didn't stay for Susannah, for you may have caused me to act inappropriately with desire! Perhaps we will meet again one day, if not in this life, maybe in the next. No matter how we do meet, I know we will recognise one another and we will laugh and love and share our stories, and perhaps then I can tell you how dearly I love you.

For now I must bid you farewell, my love, and begin my other letter, the one I will send to you. However, before I do write again, I think I shall retire to bed first, to release some of the womanly tension I feel when I think of you, so I don't slip up and write my true feelings into my second letter!

All my love from the depths of my heart,

Carmel

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Dear reader, if you haven't read Armistice Day, do so, I recommend it, if only to give further context to this letter. And like I mentioned in the introduction, and hinted at by Carmel in her unsent letter, Alfred did move on, the story told in Prussian Blue, the sequel to Armistice Day. Lastly, in case you're wondering, I looked up the phrase "rose coloured glasses" and apparently there have been variations of this idiom since the mid 19th Century.