Uncanny Tales – (29) Just Being Neighbourly

My name is Leon Watson and when it all began, I lived in a detached house in Millmoor with my wife of 25 years Mary, well when I say we lived there it would be more accurately described as an existence.

Mary and I lived completely separate lives, we had separate bedrooms and totally different interests and by that stage we might just as well have been strangers.

In fact, I didn’t know why we stayed together, laziness perhaps.

We had no children, no pets and not even a single friend in common and we only had sex on special occasions which was the only special thing about it.

If we’d had an ounce of common sense between us, we’d have divorced long before, but Mary believed marriage was a lifetime commitment or more precisely a life sentence.

But even though I had long since stopped loving my wife I really loved the house.

 

It was just before Easter when our next-door neighbours moved to Cheltenham, he was something in the foreign office and got a two year secondment to GCHQ, so they decided to rent the house out in the short term and they’d sell it later should the secondment end up becoming a permanent position.

It was on a day in May that the new tenants moved in, it was taken by two old retired colonial missionary types returning after working for many years in China, the Miss Brackhampton-Finch’s.

However more interesting than the spinsters was the addition to the two old biddies household of a live in cook housekeeper who was a dowdy and frumpish looking woman of indeterminate age, who by all outward appearance could have been anything between 25 and 35 years old, with mousy hair and functional spectacles.

I noticed the new neighbours move in, as I work from home at least 3 days a week owing to the fact I’m a freelance architect.

It was due to my “working from home” that I got to know the frump, in truth, although I worked from home, I seldom spent more than a couple of hours a day working.

This less than productive work ethic enabled me to spend more time doing what I loved to do, reading, listening to music, watching films and making sure the gardeners did a proper job, in fact pretty much anything that wasn’t working.

I always cracked on with my work early doors and achieved my goal by about 11 o’clock, I always kept some in hand that I could do during the evening and therefore avoid having to speak to Mary any more than was necessary.

Finishing my work early also allowed me to make myself useful, in a small way, to the new neighbours, well to the frump to be more precise, which in truth involved me sitting in their kitchen drinking her excellent coffee.

Her name was Pauline Boyle and she was an Australian and had started working for the Brackhampton-Finch’s when they lived in China and as she was such a good housekeeper and such an excellent cook they had offered to pay her passage to the UK on the proviso that she remained with them for a minimum of two years.

 

It was well into the summer, when I looked over the fence one day, I saw Pauline dancing on the patio with a glass of wine in her hand.

“Are you having a party?” I shouted over the fence one hot June afternoon.

“Sort of” she replied “come and join me Leon”

“Ok” I said and walked around to the back gate

“So, what’s the occasion?” I asked as she poured me a glass of wine

“The Brackhampton-Finch’s have gone to Canterbury for an ecumenical council meeting” Pauline replied

She had clearly had more than the one glass of wine as she failed quite spectacularly to say ecumenical.

“And they’re clearly not coming back today” I said

“No” Pauline said “the day after tomorrow”

It was the first time I had seen Pauline so relaxed, but then an excess of alcohol will do that.

The Miss Brackhampton-Finch’s were very old fashioned, and Pauline always had to keep herself covered, with no hint of femininity visible or God forbid any sexuality.

But to counteract this Pauline had a unique way of levelling the playing field so to speak which I was to find out about in due course.

 

As the sisters were away normal rules didn’t apply, which was why that summer’s afternoon she was wearing a dress which showed off a figure that was hitherto unrecognised, unnoticed, or even hinted at.

By late afternoon, the combination of too much wine and too much sun found the two of us dancing on the patio to the dulcet tones of Barbara Streisand singing “The way we were”, however by the time Neil Diamond began to croon “Love on the rocks” Pauline was nibbling my ear.

My immediate reaction was that I should nip it in the bud, I was a married man after all, albeit unhappily, and she was very much the worse for drink.

So, I pulled my ear out of reach of her mouth and kissed her instead which she reciprocated immediately in a wet slavery drink induced snog, I knew it was wrong and I knew I should stop, but it was a hot day, I was merry and I was horny.

So, I started fondling her not insubstantial breasts through the fabric of her dress, and this made her kissing even more wet and slavery.

“Stop now” I said to myself “while you still can”

But I didn’t listen and instead I reached around her back and deftly pulled down the zipper.

In response she disengaged her mouth from mine and let the dress fall to the floor to reveal some very unchristian underwear in red satin with black lace trim, and then we kissed again and I immediately tried to undo her bra but she stopped me “No” she shouted and I cursed myself for going too far too quickly.

“Not here” she continued and then she took hold of my hand and led me through the French doors into the dining room.

Once inside she reached around and unhooked her bra herself and playfully threw it at my face.

“Now you can carry on” she said, and I dutifully complied, firstly by making love to her on the Brackhampton-Finch’s mahogany dining table and then, after further refreshments I made love to her a second time in her bedroom.

It was as we lay on her bed in the afterglow that she told me how, to make up for her drab and dreary exterior she chose to wear very exotic underwear, she also told me how, when an elderly Bishop friend of the sisters was invited for afternoon tea Pauline served it wearing stockings, suspenders and crotch less panties.

Extraordinary behaviour for someone in a Christian household although in her defence she was not a Christian herself.

 

That hot June afternoon was the first of many such sexual encounters with Pauline when the Brackhampton-Finch’s were out, and I was working at home or when she had her days off.

We discussed at length how to employ a simple signalling system, however after many and varied suggestions we settled for the one where she would hang her scarlet satin knickers on the line to show that the coast was clear and she was ready for action, but in the end we decided that a text would suffice.

 

I felt no guilt that day for what we did or any of the subsequent occasions, after all I was just being neighbourly.