Spending Time with Grandmother

When the television news reader began reading the item about the aircraft crashing in the Amazon jungle, nothing in particular registered with Sally Miles. The reader went on to say that the aircraft had not been located, and the crew and passengers must be presumed to have died in the crash.

It was only when the reader said that it was believed some Australians, yet to be identified, had been on the plane that she took a little more interest.

When next morning she picked up her copy of a tabloid newspaper her interest in the plane crash sharpened.

"Young Man Mourns Parents' Tragic Death," the front page screamed, then the names of the Australians presumed dead were given; Harrison and Angel Harvey.

A picture of a tragic looking young man accompanied the article, and in the top right hand corner a circular black and white photograph of a man and woman had been inserted.

There was no doubt; they were Sally's son-in-law and daughter.

The young man pictured, whose name was given as Ethan Harvey, was there son, and therefore her grandson.

After twenty years of rejection it was hard for Sally to feel much grief for her dead relatives, but her thoughts were for her grandson. She had not seen him since soon after his birth. Now she wondered if she should contact him.

She thought about it for a while, and then went to her writing desk and taking out an address book hunted through it until she found her daughters address. Of course there had been no contact for so many years that they might no longer be at that address.

That morning she went to the Post Office and looked though the telephone directory of the state and city where they had lived. They were still listed at the address she had.

Returning home she sat at the desk thinking for a while. She could telephone, but she decided against this. A letter would keep a little distance between her and Ethan, which she felt appropriate at that stage.

She settled down to write:

Dear Grandson,

This letter may come as a surprise to you but on hearing about the death of your parents I thought it appropriate to write to you.

I do not know what your parents have told you about me, perhaps nothing, but I wondered if you would like some contact with me.

Recently bereaved myself I understand how you must be feeling, and so if, even at this long distance, you think I can do anything to help at this time, please let me know.

If you choose not to respond to this letter, I shall be sorry, but will understand.

Your Grandmother Sally Miles.

Several days later Sally received a reply from Ethan.

Dear Grandmother,

I was delighted to receive your letter.

I knew that you existed and lived in Queensland, but mother and father would never tell me anything about you or the reason for the long standing rift in your relationship with them.

I wonder if you would be prepared to explain the reason for this rift. Of course if you choose not to tell me, then I must respect your decision, but I hope that this will not mean that any further contact between us will cease.

It seems that I have few relatives apart from yourself, and what there are have moved overseas, and so I would welcome continuing contact with you.

Your Grandson Ethan Harvey.

Sally waited a few days before replying to Ethan's letter. She looked several times at his picture in the newspaper and decided that, despite his tragic appearance he was a nice looking and well set up young man.

Like Ethan she had found herself to be without close relatives and what there were had rejected her long ago.

She wrote:

Dear Ethan,

It has made me very happy that you wish to remain in contact with me.

I do not know what your situation is, but I wonder if you would like to spend a little time with me so we can get to know each other.

If you wish to know what caused the break between myself and the rest of the family, I will tell you as truthfully as I can.

You will be very welcome to come and stay with me at Dolphin Heads. If this suits you, please write and tell me.

If you are in need of money I am prepared to pay your air fare.

Let me know how you feel about us meeting.

Your Grandmother Sally Miles.

Almost by return post Sally received Ethan's reply:

Dear Grandmother,

I would certainly like to meet you very much.

There is no need to pay my air fare because I have been left comfortably well off.

I can arrive on the twenty fourth if that is agreeable, and shall travel by car, since I have now inherited my father's car.

Please let me know if this suits.

Your Grandson Ethan.

After sending a letter confirming the date of his arrival Sally began to wonder if she had made the right move.

Since Ethan was sure to ask her about the family rift, and she had said she would tell him about it, she knew she would be risking the loss of yet another relationship before it had really begun.

"I must tell him the truth," she told herself, "because if I don't and he finds out later, it will only be worse. If we are to begin a relationship it must be on an honest basis."

* * * * * * * *

Ethan wondered what his grandmother would look like. No photographs of her, not even old ones, had been kept by his mother.

On the basis of other peoples' grandmothers that he had met he put together what might be called a mental identikit. This was of an elderly lady, probably suffering from arthritis, slightly deaf, wearing thick glasses and having false teeth and a squeaky voice; the sort of caricature that every young person seems to have of grandmothers, even thought the reality is often quite contrary to this.

He did not even know how old she was, and trying to work it out from his mother's age didn't seem to help. He ended up with an age range from early fifties to mid seventies.

It would take him two days to complete the long drive to Dolphin Heads with a night stopover at Goondiwindi just over the Queensland border.

He left his house early on the 23rd and began the drive in his late father's Jaguar, a considerable advance on the Toyota he had been given for his eighteenth birthday.

Leaving Goondiwindi the next day his excitement mounted. His paternal grandparents were both dead, and even while alive he had seen little of them, because like his maternal grandmother they lived a long way from Adelaide.

His maternal grandfather he had never met, and from the little his parents told him, he had been divorced from his grandmother and gone overseas to live, and he had died there.

Ethan traveled east until he met the coast road and then turned north. Late afternoon on the 24th he entered Dolphin Heads, and after making a few enquiries he found the street in which his grandmother lived.

Her house was his first surprise. For no particular reason he had imagined her living in, not poverty, but in modest circumstances.

The house was single storied and stretched out laterally over a wide block. Appropriately it was named, "Long House." Ethan was no judge of architecture but he thought place looked as if is had been built some time in the late nineteenth century, it's wide verandah being something of a give away in this respect.

He hesitated for a moment at the front gate, and then opening it, made his way to the front door. It had an old fashioned bell pull and a brass lion headed knocker. He chose the bell because he had never used or even come across one like this before.

There was a distant clang, a pause, and then footsteps approached. The door was opened and Ethan got his second surprise; the woman who stood before him in no way fitted his arthritic little granny image.

To begin with she was fairly tall for a woman - about three inches shorter than him so he judged her to be around five feet nine. She was dressed in cream slacks that indicated that she had long legs, but how shapely he could obviously not see. She wore a matching cream shirt and its buttons were undone to show just a little of her cleavage.

He was unable to determine her age but she certainly had silver hair that was parted in the middle and then flowed down the sides of her face like a curtain, to spill out over he shoulders.

Confused Ethan said, "Er... I...I've come see my grandmother...er... Sally Miles."

"That's me," Sally said brightly, "and you must be Ethan, I can recognise you from your photo in the news paper."

"Er...yes...I'm...er..."

There was a pause as they seemed to be having difficulty in knowing how to greet each other. Were they supposed to hug and kiss?

Sally dealt with the matter as she extended her hand and said, "Welcome to Dolphin Heads."

As he took her hand in his Ethan noticed her long fingers.

"Yes I...er...thank you."

He had made up so many speeches he'd intended to make when meeting Sally, but they seemed to have got lost irretrievably in some corner of his brain, and so somewhat lamely he said, "I'm...ah...pleased to meet you."

"Come in...come in," Sally said.

She ushered him along a passage and into a gleaming kitchen and indicated for him to sit down.

Ethan had been sitting down in the car for hours, but he was glad to sit now as he tried to come to terms with the now revised image of his grandmother.

"Have you eaten?" Sally asked.

"Not since I stopped for lunch at...at...er...some place."

"Would you like to eat now or would you like to see your room first?"

"Oh, well...er...whatever's convenient for you," Ethan replied.

"In that case, I'll show you your room first."

Ethan wished he'd said he'd eat first because he was starving.

The bedroom matched Ethan's confused state. At first glance it looked rather masculine, with its dark wood furniture that stood out against the beige walls; but looking at the bed he was struck by its odd shape.

It had the ordinary straight head board but the rest of it was semi-circular, rather like a half moon and it had pale green covers. The curtains matched the bed covers and between them these two seemed to give the room a feminine touch.

Then he noticed that in the ceiling above the bed was a mirror.

"Will this do?" Sally asked. "There are a couple more bedrooms but they only have single beds and so I thought..."

"This will be fine, grandmother," Ethan replied.

"Good, I thought you might like it," Sally said, "Shall we bring your things in now?"

"Oh...er...yes...I suppose...yes..."

They went out to the car and Ethan said that she needn't help, but Sally laughed and said, "A first meeting with my only grandson, of course I must help."

They unloaded his things from the car and Sally said, "You'd better put the car in the garage and I'll go and get the meal ready -- by the way, I'm a vegetarian and I've made us Potatoes au Gratin for this evening, but if you like meat I can get some for you tomorrow."

"No...no," Ethan said, "Whatever you're having will be fine." He thought that this might oil the wheels of their relationship a little.

He went out to the car and drove it into the spacious garage, parking beside small Citroen. He noticed racks with tools hanging from them and a band saw at one end of the garage.

* * * * * * * *

Back in the kitchen Sally was ready to serve.

They ate in a small dining room. As they ate their talk was on safe subjects, like Ethan's drive from Adelaide, how long Sally had lived in the house, and was Ethan sure that he didn't want her to get some meat the next day.

They were rather like two boxers in the ring, sizing each other up and waiting for an opening.

Ethan surreptitiously took in more details of Sally as they ate and talked.

He found it hard to categorize her face. It was neither beautiful nor ugly and he settled for "striking."

Under her thick silver hair her forehead was almost as smooth as a child's; and child-like too was her short, slightly tilted nose. Between narrow lids her green eyes were alive with what might be construed as mischievousness, and at their corners were some fine lines, and these together with a two slight furrows between her eyebrows were the only real indications of age.

Her full lips were finely cut, even voluptuous with almost tremulously sensitive lips that looked naked in their brooding sensuality; without defence of their own and abandoned to their helplessness by the small unaggressive chin beneath, a chin with a small indent at its point.

She had a fine healthy complexion with a beautiful skin, and her silver hair seemed to enhance rather than detract from this.

Several times he addressed her as "grandmother," and so Sally said, "Calling me grandmother is a bit of a mouthful Ethan, and I don't like those other titles, 'Gran,' 'Nanna' or 'nan,' so how would it be if you called me Sally?"

Ethan, who had rather liked the idea of having a grandmother, wasn't sure about calling her Sally; on the other hand, she was so far from the image of a grandmother he had arrived with that it might be better to accept her suggestion.

"Okay Sally," he grinned.

Sally had also been taking her inventory of Ethan's looks.

"Yes, a good looking boy," she thought. "Thank God he doesn't take after his father in looks; more like Angel -- no, more like his grandfather, Michael."

For one moment she wondered if Angel and Michael had ever...but no, not after all the fuss they'd made about her. "Still, you never know," she thought, "But that would be too hypocritical even for them."

After they had washed up they retired to the lounge, which lived up to its name as being a place to lounge in.

It had two deep soft leather armchairs, and a large divan covered with velvety upholstery the same colour as the armchairs. The outside wall consisted of a window that spanned the width of the room.

It was dusk by then, but Ethan could see beyond the window a slightly sloping garden running down to a flat area that had a swimming pool and a summer house.

Beyond that was a brush fence over which he could see the bay with its two headlands stretching out to sea.

He realised that beyond the fence the land must drop away steeply to the beach.

The most striking feature of the room was the oil painting of a woman.

She was sitting in a high backed chair with her forearms resting along the arms of the chair. She was wearing a slightly mannish suit with the coat buttons undone, and her hair was cut short.

Her face was strong with well defined features and about the corners of her full lipped sensual mouth a smile seemed to hover. Ethan thought that she looked about thirty years of age, and there was something very seductive, almost challenging, about her.

"Who's that?" he asked.

"Oh, that's Claudia," and without explaining further Sally said quickly, "would you like to see the rest of the house?"

"Yes," Ethan replied, wondering why she hadn't said more about Claudia.

The passage ran laterally in keeping with the elongated shape of the house. The bedrooms were at the front of the house, other rooms at the rear.

The large bath room unexpectedly had two showers; in addition there was an ordinary bath, an in-ground spa bath and jutting from the wall was what looked vaguely like a toilet pan, but clearly wasn't.

"What's that?" he asked.

"That...oh...that's a bidet," Sally said without further explanation.

They inspected two small bedrooms with single beds in them, and then he was shown Sally's bedroom.

If his bedroom was ambivalent about its gender orientation, there was no doubt about Sally's room; it was undoubtedly feminine with its soft warm colours. It had a bed the same shape as his, and it also had a mirror in the ceiling, but not only in the ceiling, but on the wall opposite the bed was another large mirror.

They came to the end of the passage and entered a room whose function could not be doubted, it was an artist's studio.

"Are you an artist?" Ethan asked.

"Yes, I painted that portrait of Claudia, but I mostly do water colour landscapes and seascapes these days. They sell them in the tourist shop in town."

At one end of the room was a door, and given the size of the house there had to be a room behind the door, but Sally made no attempt to open the door to show him.

Returning to the lounge Ethan failed to stifle a yawn.

"You've had a long day," Sally said, "I expect you'll want to go to bed."

"Yes, a good idea," Ethan replied.

"By the way, I always go for a run along the beach in the morning, perhaps you'd like to join me."

Running had never been Ethan's first choice when it came to exercise. He held to the theory that the best form of exercise was sex, and he seemed to prove the theory by looking in good shape. However, he thought he'd better display a macho image, and so as casually as he could he asked, "How far do you run?"

"About six kilometres," Sally replied. "We're about equidistant between both headlands, and they're both around three kilometres from here."

Ethan was both appalled and amazed. He was appalled at the idea of anyone running that far, or more accurately, him running that far, and was amazed that a grandmother should even contemplate such strenuous activity.

Gathering together his badly shaken machismo he replied, "Yes, I'll join you."

It was a decision he was to later regret.

There was some hesitation when it came to saying goodnight. For a moment it looked as if they were going to kiss, but they veered away from this and simply said "Goodnight" to each other.

Ethan went straight off to sleep and dreamed of withered old ladies turning into bikini clad beach lovelies and then back to withered old ladies again.

* * * * * * * *

When he woke in the morning in a strange bed of peculiar shape, for a moment he wondered where he was. As the mists of sleep dissolved he realised where he was and that he was stopping with a rather unlikely grandmother.

Many grandsons would be pleased to have a well preserved grandmother, but Ethan felt a touch of resentment, as if Sally had no right to look so good at her age -- whatever that was.

He rose and tugging on his dressing gown he went to the bathroom. It seemed that Sally had been there before him as the mirror was still slightly steamy. He decided that the bath and the spa bath were not for the morning, and so he chose to shower.

He then shaved with some care, brushed his teeth, and then speculated about the thing Sally had called a "bidet."

It had two taps and a central spout. Experimentally he sat on it and then rather unwisely he toyed with one of the taps. He leapt from the bidet with a cry of pain as a jet of hot water nearly scalded his anus. Now at least he had some idea of the use the bidet was put to.

He returned to his bedroom and hopeful of maintaining the good image he was trying to create, he put on clean jeans and a white shirt.

Entering the kitchen Ethan had to further modify his grandmother image. Sally was wearing shorts, shirt, and was barefoot. There was nothing spectacularly sexy about the shorts, except that they revealed that her long legs were slender, and had rather long, strong looking thighs.

It was the shirt that caused him to get a tingling sensation in his groin. It displayed a little more cleavage than the shirt she had worn the previous day, and it moulded rather nicely to her breasts that were unfettered and covered though they were, gave the impression of being those of a well bosomed eighteen year old girl.

This racked up Ethan's mild resentment a notch. This was not grandmotherly and she had no right to give him an incipient erection. He ignored the fact that he was responding in an un-grandsonly way. Just like most men, he blamed the woman.

Sally was stirring something grey and sticky in a saucepan. On enquiring what it was Sally said it was porridge, and that she nearly always had it for breakfast.