Seasons of the Mind Ch. 04

"I don't know that one."

"That's Longfellow—The Song of Hiawatha."

Harris put her down but his penis was betraying him again. Almost an erection. They walked.

In places the field undulated and dipped—not a simple flat meadow—and there were also oaks giving shade.

"What a place for a picnic," the woman cried dropping down into a perfectly round and deep indentation, the meadow seamlessly flowing down into it. "Why, it's a veritable sun trap and," she flopped down at its bottom, "you can neither see in nor out—what a place for lovers."

It was clear that as soon as she said it she realised just what she had said.

"Oh, I did not mean."

"It was a lover and his lass,

With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

That o'er the green corn-field did pass,

In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;

Sweet lovers love the spring."

"'Hey nonino'—whatever that means—must be Shakespeare," she said.

"It must indeed!"

"There's never anyone else. There's evidence of people, yes—a cottage, a candle..." There was a pause. "... goose fat even—I cannot forget that—a path to the wonderful sea or into the high mountains, stone walls, fields, cattle, horses—but never anyone else. Why?"

Harris smiled his thin smile but said nothing.

"Why?" She repeated looking up at him. A naked man standing above her.

"Do you want others?"

She looked down at her nakedness. "Well, not at this precise moment. I would not feel right. And..." again the significant look at his penis, "you certainly are not decent for company!"

It was still not an erection but the thing hanging over her was not the docile little thing of the Grecian statue. Somewhat uplifted and swollen, it would not take very much more to reach that particular classification. Harris settled himself down beside her.

The hot sun was lifting the essential oils and bringing a fresh herb smell to the couple. The bees too were happy with the flowers and flew this way and that completely disinterested in the naked people, the woman lying down arms stretched above her, the man sitting.

"Oh. this is simply glorious; I could not be more relaxed."

Perhaps forgetting herself—perhaps not—her thighs drifted apart. Perhaps it was the pleasing warmth of the sun; perhaps it was just relaxation; legs drawn a little up so her knees were bent with one knee rather falling away from the other. The man looked at the chestnut curls, a little darker than the colour of her hair; looked at the pretty way they made their way from the lush mounded triangle down and between her legs. Perhaps it was what they were framing; perhaps it was the little hints of pinkness poking through the curls. It was obvious what he was thinking—the movement a betrayal.

The girl saw the more than burgeoning erection—it was now the real thing, its earlier cold distorted shape gone—and she smiled. It was a welcoming smile. The man lent a little forward; looking a little closer. The sight of the exposed sex clearly of interest—clearly pleasing.

His hand moved like a bee drifting from flower to flower but, instead, moving over her body; she watched him, clearly amused to see where next it would fall. He recited:

"The bee buzz'd up in the heat,

"I am faint for your honey, my sweet."

The flower said, "Take it, my dear,

For now is the Spring of the year.

So come, come!"

"Hum!"

And the bee buzz'd down from the heat."

And with the final line down came his hand, his fingers landing right between her legs; lightly on her furry sex.

"Oh," she said, "oh."

"Tennyson," he said, "again."

"What a silly poem." But her eyes were on his hand. It had not moved and was perched right there on her warm sexual hair.

"Go on," she said, "do it!"

Harris fingers delved, his fingers moving, slipping into the sexual hair, his fingers disappearing into her body.

"Oh, that is so nice." Her legs opened wider and she lay back fully relaxed and let him do what he wished. "So nice, so nice to be touched like that; so lovely to be naked and petted in the sunshine. Oh yes, all those fingers!"

A happy smile on her face, her eyes closed as Harris kissed her breasts. The nipples hard now with sexual excitement instead of the cold; they were ready to be sucked.

"Lie on me."

An invitation from a woman to a man. Harris did just that and he lay on the girl, lay with his erection pointing up between her thighs, naked breast to naked breast and face to face.

"Kiss me."

And as they kissed the woman moved. It was not he who entered the woman but she who pushed him into her. Just a movement of her hips. The woman taking, accepting the man. Their bodies joining, the male within the female. For a time just stillness and then there was movement, the man's buttocks rising and falling as he gently pushed at the girl.

Spring is a time for intercourse and a time for new life. Around them, above and below and in the fields sexual intercourse went on. In the hedgerows the hedgehogs squealed; in his field the white bull once more mounted one of his cows, his thick pizzle entering and squirting; the proud stallion too reared up and his long, long penis thrust into the mare and there in the fold in the land, in a warm hidden place, the man was joined with the woman.

A clear cry across the green meadows; a woman taken to the peak of excitement; an orgasm par excellence. But she was not alone in coming—the man was to follow; the thrusting of the penis did not stop, neither with her cry nor the wash of her orgasm instead on it went, sliding within her; it did not stop its movement until Harris too reached his climax and once more the woman felt the hot spurting of the man's semen—not in her bottom, not in her mouth, not on her face but in the proper place—it was the time. In the light and on a bright, warm spring day it was the time for that proper intercourse between man and woman.

Two bodies lying entwined, two bodies intimately connected, two bodies as one. The man within the woman.

"It's been so lovely here." The woman looked from side to side, as she lay beneath Harris, and beyond him up at the sky, a woman lying with a man atop her—indeed within her. His pleasant weight on her, strong and masculine. "Such soft grass; such a bed to be taken in. A green bower indeed! Such an Arcadia; I feel like a Shakespearian shepherdess taken by her swain. Do you have to take it out? Can't we just stay and swim and run and fuck again?"

Harris smiled his thin smile but slowly shook his head.

"There is a time; time comes, time goes."

"Oh no, don't, please... leave it be."

His buttocks moved above her and gently, so gently, the now flaccid penis that had entered so strongly, had pushed in so firmly, full and potent, slipped out from the warm, wet sheath leaving a vagina not empty but filled with the man's semen. The liquid transfer from him to her.

It was totally the wrong time of the month to have sexual intercourse or, rather, totally the right time: it all depended upon how you looked at the matter. She had felt it that very morning, knew the ovum had been released. The sharp sudden pain. Had felt fecund.

Standing in the railway carriage as it rattled out of the tunnel; standing modestly dressed in a cornflower blue skirt, white linen shirt and blue jacket the women was looking at Harris. They were not even touching. "It's not real is it? It wasn't real. It can't be. Surely it is—was—all in your mind?" It was not a whisper.

Harris smiled softly, a thin smile giving nothing away. The other passengers looked at her. What was she saying to a seeming stranger? She had not been sitting with him. What was not real?

As she always did, the woman got off the train, automatically really, otherwise she would have found herself at the wrong station but it left the question—questions—unanswered. Her walk was unhurried, her face pensive. She turned at the sound of movement and watched as the train pulled out of the platform, gathering speed.

She knew she was pregnant even before she left the station.

Did it matter? Did it matter!

Benjamin and she had been trying for almost a year and a half with no success. Did it really matter? Did it matter at all? Did it really matter who had made her pregnant? She had, after all wanted that special thing, wanted it desperately. But was it to be Ben's child from their sweet lovemaking the night before or from this man—this stranger? A child conceived in a green bower on a warm spring day along with the birds and the bees; who knew where? Surely not, surely it had only been in the mind—his and hers? Who was the man, the man on the train, the man she had lain with, the man with whom she had done many different things—she did not even know his name—and where had she been time and time again in all the different seasons?