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Village Squire, 1979-08, Page 16The innocent A short story By G.P. Here I am sitting in the small park opposite my highrise. It's June and as a June day should be. crowned with a cloud splashed sky of blue. In the air there is still the faint lingering odour of awakening earth. I'm here because any apartment, however cosy, is no place for a lone senior citizen on such a day. People come and go giving one a chance to pass the time of day. June is a friendly month. There's a squirrel chattering on my right. and as I turn he sits up to beg, knowing full well that 1 always have peanuts with me for he and his mate. When I turn back the other way I find that the young man from the office across the park has finished his box lunch and gone off, leaving a magazine behind him on the bench. I reach for it and begin to thumb idly. It's an art publication containing some abstracts, a few landscapes and a number of life studies. I glance at the nudes and as I turn the pages. one study commands my instant attention. It's a study of a young woman with a most incredibly voluptuous body. I feel the stab of an old pain that I thought had healed and lay covered with the dust and cobwebs of time. The face before me, well that is something else. The eyes are downcast and the lids lowered, but I know they would be large and blue. A plain rather snub nose appears above an overly -wide sensuous mouth. A cascade of wavy honey -coloured ed hair flows down over the shoulders while one stray tress curls lovingly around the bold thrust of the left nipple. 1 don't suppose in forty years and more my mind has spun back far enough to embrace Mary Moor. See, I even recall her name after all those years. Was it '32 or '33 that was the year of that hit tune Fit As A Fiddle And Ready For Love? We used to go up to a quiet summer cottage in the Haliburton area. The lake was secluded and at that time had only six or seven cottages clustered together on a small bay. The only other young people were a bespectacled young man working on his Ph. D. two small children and Mary. At a time when the young seemed to mature more slowly than now, I was about to turn fifteen. Mary was seventeen, annoyingly taller than I was. Had I known then what I know now, there would have been no trace of exaggeration in nicknaming her, Juno. It is not easy to confess even at my age, but raised in town in the strictest of Baptist families I was arriving at my fifteenth birthday with no knowledge of human sexual relations. My mother, as I was one day to realize, was the most frightful of Victorian prudes. I had little communion with my father, a remote man who in those days spent six days a week at his downtown office and on the seventh emersed himself in church affairs. City born and raised, I had had no contact with the breeding of farm animals and for some inexplicable reason had never related the occasional glimpse of a dog mounting a bitch on the streets, with human relationships. If there were books at that time on sex education, they never fell into my hands. The two of us swam, canoed, and walked the two dusty miles to the little country store to pick up the mail and groceries. Inevitably as the summer moved on we became more companionable. I think all the mild scuffling in the water and on the beach must have been instigated by Mary as I was inclined to be shy and overawed by her height as well as her suberb body in contrast to my skinny one. When our bodies came in contact. I would have prickly sensations and surges of excitement that I could not explain. 14 Village Squire, August 1979 I can recall her speculative glances. One day when we had just emerged from the lake and were lying in the sun to dry off she turned and asked. "have you ever kissed a girl, G.P?" In those days I had not learned to tell lies, white or any other colour. In some embarrassment, 1 answered. "No". "Let me show you." She leaned over me so that 1 felt the full weight of her fine breasts on my chest as well as the strong beating of her heart. Then she sat up head tilted on one side blue eyes sparkling with mischief. "There, wasn't that nice? Come. now, I've given you a kiss and you must return it." My heart pounded. It had run in my mind that only married people and those who were. about to be partook of such action. Baptists did not go to movies and I had had no chance to get ideas from the silver screen. This was a dare. 1 rose rather awkwardly to my knees and put my arms around Mary while I returned the kiss. After that we used to indulge daily in a bit of mild petting. In bed at nights 1 would lie awake pondering the whole thing and go to sleep looking forward to the following day. arms encircling each other. lips pressed. The final week before Labour Day arrived. The two of us paddled to the head of the lake for a cookout. breaking stride along the way to watch a flock of merganzers and farther along a family of kingfishers working a shallow, alive with minnows. As I prepared the fire while Mary unpacked the hamper. she kept humming over and over a tune currently no 3. on the Hit Parade. There was the usual gay banter over the meal and after when our food had settled we swam before loading the gear into the canoe. I'd forgotten the binoculars and walked back from the boat to retrieve them. Turning around. I was surprised to find that Mary had followed me back to the dead fire. She put her hands on my shoulders as 1 faced her and asked lightly. "Georgie do you know the name of the tune I was humming while you set the fire?" "Sure, it was that song with the silly title, Fit As A Fiddle And Ready for Love." Her voice became a low caress as I looked up into the blue eyes that seemed to engulf me, "I am, Georgie--on both counts." In the past our lighthearted petting has brought only a warm but unexplained pleasure. Now my heart began to pound. I trembled and had to bite my lip to hold back unbidden tears. Mary pulled me close to her and in a confused way I realized that her body which should have been cool from the swim was perspiring as it would after a romp along the beach. Then she stepped back just holding one hand gently. "It's alright, Georgie. It's all right. One day your turn will come." I wanted to ask her what turn would be mine and could not. We paddled home in silence. I was suddenly aware the magic had gone from our summer. Next year I was sixteen and went to work. No more holidays at the lake. No more Mary. I sit here staring at this picture while every detail unfolds like the rerun of an old movie. Again I live through that pa.;t ache and puzzlement. One could not have asked for a better wife than my Madge or a more loyal one. but---- if I could relive but one moment from my past, I know that, knowing what I know now, I would return to that summer at the lake and discover the mystery of woman in Mary's arms.