The Great Man is Dead

" 'I need strength,' she sobbed, 'give me strength Charles, please.'"

I had no idea what to do...how I could give her strength, but my hand touched her bare flesh – I don't know which bit it was because it was too dark to see – and she was freezing cold."

"So what did you do?"

" I said, you're freezing Mrs. Menis and you'll get ill yourself, you should go back to bed."

"So what happened. Did she go back to bed?"

"Yes and no."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"She got into bed beside me and pulled the covers over us."

"You're not kidding?"

"No, I swear it. She got in beside me and pressed close to me. I felt her body against mine, her magnificent breasts against my chest, and she placed one of her legs over my thighs, and oh, that female fragrance."

" 'Give me some of your strength, Charles,' she whispered, 'I need your strength.'"

"My God John, if hell fires exist they certainly raged inside the virgin boy that night. I was almost beside myself. All the years I had kept myself pure, "Unsullied by things of the flesh," as father used to say in his sermons."

"So what happened?" I almost pleaded as the vision of Charles in bed with his goddess rose up before me; "What did you do?"

"Me? I didn't do anything, but she did. I was fighting against the lust that had arisen in me, but she put her hand through the slot in my pyjamas and took hold of my cock and started to play with it; all the time saying, "Please, Charles...please..."

"She undid the cord of my pyjamas and pulled them down, and then I felt her sit astride me, and the next moment I felt my cock engulfed in something warm and wet that seemed to suck me into it."

"It was no use John, the devil had to have his due that night. She drove me beyond resistance. She rode me as if she was bouncing up and down on a horse. Then she started to cry out, "Oh no...oh no...oh no..."

"Next thing she screamed and then started to gasp, "Oh yes...oh yes...oh yes my darling...give it to me now...I need it...now..."

"Well, the devil or nature had its way and I started to ejaculate into her. My God, John, I'd never even masturbated before because that would, so I was told, drive me mad. All that had ever happened was dreams, wet dreams that made me ejaculate in my sleep. You've not idea the trouble I had to go to so as to hide it from my mother when she made the bed."

He grinned and went on, "In the end I used to take a towel to bed and sneak it into the wash next morning. But that night with Zena..."

"Zena?"

"Yes, that was her name, I hadn't dared call her anything other than Mrs. Menis up to that point, but after, well...As I was going to say, I think I shot more sperm that night that in ten wet dreams put together. It was an education for me and I thought 'Never mind about heaven and hell, I'll have my paradise now and pay later."

"But you know, I got more than educated about sex, I learned quite a bit more than I'd bargained for."

"Like what?"

"Afterwards we talked and – you may not believe this – but that old goat used to fuck her every night but since he'd got sick all that had stopped, and she'd been going out of her mind. No wonder he looked so pale, fucking every night at his age."

"After a while we stopped talking. I'd got an erection again so she sort of tutored me about getting on top of her and I shot another load into her."

"A very satisfying night's work."

"Yes and no."

"Oh not again Charles, you philosophers never seem to be able to make a definite statement."

"Yes and no because although the sins of the flesh had been delightful, I had lost my pure spiritual goddess. She was now very definitely flesh and blood and no longer qualified as a deity."

"Not a bad exchange," I commented.

"No, I suppose not. After the second round she left me and do you know what she said?"

"Thank you?"

He looked at me sharply, "How do you know?"

"Just guessing...just guessing." "Well you guessed right. She said, 'Thank you Charles, you're a darling.'"

"One night of love," I said.

"Not exactly."

"There you go again Charles, prevaricating."

"No I'm not; you see she used to slip into my bed every night after that and I continued my education in the flesh pots. But here's the weird thing, after that first night the old boy started to recover. He actually got better, and that turned out to be a minus for me because once he got back into his stride she didn't come to me any more."

"Bad luck Charles."

"Yes and...all right I won't say it. You see a few nights after she stopped coming to my bed she came back, or I thought she did. She just clambered into bed beside me, and the moment I felt her and smelt her, I knew it wasn't her."

"Who the hell was it?"

"I thought it was Rachel because she'd been writing the love poems aimed at me, but it wasn't, it was Barbara. I started to protest that she shouldn't be in bed with me, but she said, 'I know what you've been doing with mummy and I also know she's stopped now that daddy is better, so you've got me instead, and if you don't fuck me nicely I shall tell daddy what you've been doing with mummy."

He laughed and said, "What was I supposed to do? I had found paradise, or it had found me, and then it had become a case of paradise lost. I decided I'd make it paradise regained. And is was paradise...different of course because Barbara had much smaller breasts, but her vagina was tighter."

"And I suppose the next thing was, you had Rachel in your bed?"

He took a pull at his whisky and asked, "Want another?"

"Just a splash," I replied.

He refilled the glasses and sat down again, then as if there had been no break in the talk he went on, "Rachel didn't come into it then. Barbara arrived every night until..."

"Until?"

He paused for a long time, his throat working, andI thought for a moment he was going to cry, but he took a deep breath and said, "Zena and Barbara both got pregnant. Of course in Zena's case it might have been the old goat, but as for Barbara...well..."

This time I did see tears in his eyes. "They both got killed in a car accident...Zena, Barbara and...and the babies...and, oh my God John, it still hurts after all these years."

After a while he smiled grimly and said, "Do you know old Menis got married again about six months after Zena died. A big busty blonde, a sort of caricature of Zena. She left him after a couple of years and he married another woman; one who was almost the opposite of Zena. A thin mousy creature. I only saw her once because I left the house after Zena and Barbara died, and then a while after I took up an appointment at another university and so I moved on."

"And now the Great Man is dead."

"Yes, and he's outlived so many others. Another few years and he'd have outlived us. I'll bet he's up there now putting God right on some factual matters."

We sat gazing into the now dying fire. The door opened behind us and a voice said, "I'm home darling, and what have you two boys been doing?"

I turned to see her; tall and although in her sixties still beautiful – beautiful in the way I think Zena must have been.

"Hello Rachel," I said, "a good meeting?"

"Not bad, but what have you been doing?"

"Oh just reminiscing darling," Charles said, smiling at her, "like old fogies do."

"Well you stop reminiscing now Charles and come to bed, you've got that lecture on the philosophy of the twentieth century to give at ten tomorrow."

"All right my love, I'll be right there."

She left and we lingered on for a while.

"You know John; she's one of the best things that ever happened to me." He gave a gentle laugh and went on, "I suppose that love poetry must have had some effect after all."

"Yes," I thought, "and his love for her had been something less than the spiritual love he'd felt for her mother. He has four children and eight grandchildren to prove that."

We stared into the dead fire for a few more minutes, and then made our way to bed.