| It's market day and I'm on my way home. All around barrowboys are shouting "Ninepintsachunkachukin f'fourpence!" or something that sounds so much like it that it may as well be. I hear them but I'm barely listening. I pass one guy who still has a lot of fruit left on the stall and for no reason really I stop when he says, "Sevenpunnetsabeeyootifulstrawww-berries for a pand!" The fruit actually looks really good so I give him a pound and he fills up two bags for me. They are perfect specimens � bright red, shiny and plump. I try one and the man wasn't kidding, it's delicious. It's as if they were created just to define the word strawberry. There is no way I'm going to eat them all. Seven punnets! What am I thinking? But they were a bargain. On my way up to my flat I have the bright idea of calling on my neighbour Susan. Susan is a beautiful early-thirty-something professional who is every man's dream, and as she opens her door her golden hair falls down across one shoulder to form careless waves breaking over a divine curve of firm feminity. Would that I were shipwrecked on that shore. I smile and explain about the strawberry madness that has gripped me and she laughs, flicking that sea of blonde hair around, inviting me in. Susan moves with a lithe dancer's grace and balance. She isn't a big muscular person but she's wonderfully put together and what I can see is nicely toned and built for athletics. She's wearing a short-sleeved knee-length red dress the same colour as the strawberries I've just bought and it seems to almost float on the curve of her hips and the swell of her breasts. The length of leg showing is enough to make me forget where I am for a moment then I pull myself together. The sun shines in warmly through the large bay window and we chatter in our casual way, the way of old friends, as she makes us tea. This is home to me. Home being in the company of this person. Home where I can be myself and I like who I am when I'm here. No pretensions. No illusions. Just centred, confident, relaxed. At home with someone who I like being with a great deal and who feels that too, the quiet calm pleasure in the companionship of equals. I relax on to a large cushion on Susan's polished wooden floor as she curls herself on to the end of the couch, tucking her feet under her in a timelessly feline female way. I pull out one of the boxes of those superlative strawberries and open it up for us to share as we sit there drinking tea, talking about everything and nothing. From my position down by the coffee table, I can't help looking at Susan's extremely sexy legs, my eyes flirting with the indescretion of looking, almost seeing, up her red dress. Her legs are chastely together one on top of the other preventing any immodesty although I fancy that I catch a glimpse of white panties in that hot darkness as she casually shifts position. Then equally casually she turns the conversation around to the subject of her architect boyfriend, Steve. Ah. Yes. She has a boyfriend. There's the turn off. Noble gentleman that I am there is no way I have ever suggested transgressing the unwritten rule that while there is a Steve there is no one else. Steve is nearly 38 and hasn't made partner yet because he's changed firms so many times. Susan says in so many words that this is the reason they haven't settled down. She means marriage and kids, of course. They don't live together either and Susan's space is all her own. Steve wants to feel he's made a success of his career before he feels he can make a success of his relationship with her. I can understand this. Really I can. God, no I can't . He sounds like a right doofus, although I've met him a few times and he's always seemed okay. Well, a doofus sort-of-verging-on-successful-architect kind of okay. I reflect inwardly on the great injustice that has somehow resulted in a Steve ending up with Susan as I open another punnet of sweet strawberries. The first carton is barely finished and I'm not sure I want any more so I start placing the soft yet firm fruit one by one to form an abstract pattern on the table next to me. Susan continues to talk about her hopes, her ambitions, and the day to day little things that make up a life while I place each perfectly formed ripe redness within her reach. Succulent morsels there to tempt her as the sunlight sparkles off dust particles dancing over our heads. Next time I look up at her we are laughing about something and as if by accident, as if by destiny we catch each other's eyes. Susan's eyes are a smiling cornflower blue with a hint of a question under the long lashes. I look back with the same shared unspoken thought from my own dark gray windows on the world. Nothing is said for a few precious seconds that seem to stretch into a timeless infinity as we look into each other's souls, each of us silently wondering the same thing. And then the hands on the clock move again. Nearly every strawberry is perfect as I create what is becoming an aesthetic masterpiece of fruit artistically arranged around me and gradually further around the living room. The table is full now so I am adding these blushing tender beauties to the floor and a few on the sofa too. I notice one or two are a little misshapen but in a way that seems consistently natural with the idea of living growing things. The clock is ticking and from somewhere comes the courage I need to break the spell. I bite the nipple-like end off a large ripe specimen of seed-speckled fruit, chew it a little, then swallow and ask Susan to forget Steve, to be with me. Both of us know this would be the best thing in the whole world. I can actually feel her awareness of this radiating out in the warmth of her blue blue eyes and the relaxed set of her body as she begins to reach out towards me. Then she hesitates and drops her eyes a fraction, looking at me through those golden lashes painted black, reflecting on what I've just said. Her whole body shouts at me, Oh Yes. Why on earth has it taken you so long to ask? Nothing would give me greater pleasure. Her chest rises and falls with deep breaths of longing and her hips shuffle restlessly under the strawberry red dress. One leg slides across the other creating a parting and she runs a hand slowly up her smooth supple thigh, unconsciously seductive, lips half open somewhere between a smile, yearning and a question as she continues to regard me. Yet when she speaks, her lips give the lie to these messages, denying everything her body is so silently hungrily calling out as she explains her loyalty to Steve cannot permit it, cannot even entertain such a thought. Where would he be without her? So she looks up and smiles her beautiful smile and gently laughs it off, not unkindly but enough that neither of us should feel awkward about my 'kidding her like that'. And as always, it is oh so easy to laugh with Susan, and so I do and we move on to talk of other things as she sits there comfortably curled on the end of her sofa. I talk and listen from my place down by her knees and around us the strawberries have taken over. Seven punnets, all opened, their crimson contents decorating Susan's flat, juicy red lures to tempt a secret scarlet smiling desire with their tantalising proximity. And outside the large windows the world moves on. I am happy being here, at home with my friend, seeing the shape of her, looking sometimes at her beautiful eyes, watching her move so gracefully to reach out for a single ripe piece of perfection. I am happy and at peace with the world within me, inside this room and beyond the window too. But we both know something is missing and although my mind and body is at rest, my spirit has stirred and my heart has awakened. So I take another strawberry and I suck on it a little before nibbling and I listen. I listen without really hearing any more. � Keith Jefferies 2001 |
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| Strawberries by Keith Jefferies |