That First Romance!

Hi everyone – got a tough weekend coming up. Being abandoned. Not to the Seychelles or the Maldives with two-grand spenders in my pocket; no sirree, just left at home, wifeless and clueless and there’s no way I’ll get out of it. Matters feminine have lassoed my life. Phones are ringing at funny hours, parcels are wrapped, stamped and posted and my wife is in a perpetual state of wide grins – she has just become an auntie! Anyway, I’m being left with the kids the dogs and relevant feeding instructions – cheese for me, health-giving pizzas and pasties for two teenage boys, biscuits and leftovers for the dogs, and nuts, seeds and scrubbled up toast for the birds. Don’t think I’ve left anyone out? Oh, our resident barn owl; forgot about him, keeps eying up our littlest dog, but he’ll have to pass on that – Jones, our Jack Russell has other ideas.

Two years later; deep inside the jungles of Rhodesia something stirred!

... The following two years flew by. They were sort of ‘settling in’ years and not a lot happened; then a girl came down to stay with her Gran for the school holidays. Gloria. I liked her, made me feel sort of hot all over, but she said that was okay because she felt the same. Gloria was nearly thirteen, so a bit older than me. Mother said she worried about me; heard her telling my Dad; said our relationship was ‘unhealthy’. Not really sure what she meant. Anyway, Gloria was still my friend and I saw her every night, under the infamous mango trees – next to the Wankie Club bowling green. Got a bit dark sometimes, before the moon came up, but Gloria had inquisitive hands and worked hard on distracting me. I soon forgot the dark.

Had to wait for mother to fall asleep in her chair with her third brandy and coke before I could sneak out. Once her eyes were closed I was over the fence and away across the Bowling Green; at this stage, totally besotted.

 Gloria always waved her arms about so I could find her in the dark. She always wore white and her hair was long, blonde and smelled of flowers. She went to boarding school in Bulawayo. When she stood up her head was higher than mine and the top of her dress was really tight at the front; sort of pushed out.

Mother scrutinised me from across the dinner table; ‘This Gloria girl, Jeffrey, she looks older than you?’

‘Just a bit. She’s really nice, though – I really like her.’

Mother huffed into her coffee cup and lit up another Matinee. I think she was angry about something because her eyes were thin.

‘She’s down from Bulawayo?’

I nodded. ‘Staying with her Gran; going back home tomorrow morning.’

Mother visibly relaxed and her eyes went back to normal; not like a lizard’s anymore. The matinee flared and her eyelids did their thing.

‘We’ll be going to the club tonight.’

It was Saturday. Movie night, or as everyone in Wankie Called it; bioscope night. Gloria’s Gran said she could go. Once the interval lights went down we would still have more than an hour before anyone missed us.

The moon was out that night. The buttons on Gloria’s blouse turned silver when the moonlight came through the mango trees. Her eyes were big – glittering – I could smell the sweet aroma of a Sunga Springs, cream soda on her breath.

‘You can touch them if you like...’

Sons of Africa; an extract:

... Catherine turned Magdel’s attention to fleeting glimpses of a young girl some sixty yards out from where they were sitting.

‘Your daughter moves so quickly.’

‘Like a klipspringer bokkie,’ Magdel agreed, ‘and always without shoes. One day that verdwaalde daughter of mine will tramp the back of a snake and that will be the end of her.’

Catherine watched the girl’s progress, mesmerised by her agility. The sun was to the girl’s side and sometimes threw her outline against the granite; catching up with her between the shadows, then, again she was away, jinking from rock to rock like a hyrax fleeing the attentions of a wild cat. The targets were of pale-coloured sapwood, Sannie positioned them with varying degrees of difficulty by her clever use of shadows and swaying grasses. She finished her task and in the winking of an eye was down on level ground, unashamedly barefooted and with a lightness of step that caught at Mathew’s breathing before he had chance to dismount.

Her hair though midnight black, flared with an aura of pure gold and held the light about her as though she were an angel and had just set foot upon the earth. She had seen the Englishman before, but only momentarily.  Now he was there in front of her, standing with one foot still in the stirrup and it was then Sannie knew that she had caught his eye – that he was watching her. With her head high and with that long, infective stride of the young lioness, she walked towards him. Mathew found himself staring. Like an emergent butterfly, Sannie’s youthful body strained to be free. A hundred washes had left her garment gossamer thin, so that now it clung to her skin, a fine mist shot through with sunlight. Mathew could not help dropping his eyes to the outline of her breasts, to her waist and beyond; down to the sway and roll of her hips.

‘Sannie.’ She smiled at Mathew and held out her hand for him; though out of kilter with the timbre of her own language, her voice was mellifluous, softer than a summer breeze.

‘My name, meneer, is Sannie Louisa Bowker...’