The House on Viking Point

PART ONE OF THREE*My mother Muriel and I lived at the coast on the outskirts of a small village. Our house with grounds within a ten-foot high wall, and known as Viking Point,*was perched on a rugged cliff*overlooking the North Sea. To reach it from the village one walked the length of a steep, long winding lane. Since we both had to walk to the village and back at least twice daily, and were forced by circumstances to survive on a diet of fish and new potatoes, we were both as thin as a garden rake but immensely healthy.My mother at age 37 was of very slender build and average height. She wore her chestnut-brown hair parted slightly off-centre, the tresses tumbling to the top of her cleavage. She had retained her girlish looks, although she had deep laugh-lines and her eyes wrinkled at the corners when she laughed or smiled. Her chatter was the most soothing thing conceivable, and I could listen to her talk for hours. To the world she was shy and unsociable, and I was the only person*to whom she would bare her soul. She dressed invariably in blouse and skirt or short summer dresses. She never wore stockings, tights or trousers nor much make-up, but she liked jingly bracelets and dangly gold earrings. I suppose I was 17 or so when I began to wonder what it would be like to have sex with my mother. It was amusing to imagine Yakacık escort bayan how she would react in this or that situation. Would I get my face slapped or would she resign herself to it and say, "Oh, go on, do it if you must"? My schoolfriends who had seen her assured me that they "definitely wouldn't say no if ever they had the chance" and I gathered that she was one of the top mothers on their "wouldn't mind" sex list.Muriel my mother had been brought up within a puritanical family environment, and as a result of all the taboos she was frigid sexually. Thus nothing she ever said contained a double-meaning, or was capable of having anything sexual read into it. Around my 18th birthday when she was 37 a change seemed to come over her. She began to see the world differently as if her mind was beginning to untwist. "I've lived the best of my life and now there's nothing for me to look forward to," she told me once.In her diary which I read years later she explained: "I am haunted by the vision of myself at age 18, with such hopes and dreams for the future, a girl who never met the young prince she wanted. And now I never shall." At her family's urging she had married a gentleman over twenty years her senior and for no better reason than that he owned this large house and grounds Escort Atalar on the Viking Point promontory. When she took up married life she "left her soul behind her."By reason of her frigidity, on*the rare occasions when my father enjoyed sex with her, if it could be called that,*she*was unable to*respond. Sex was dirty, and the female resigned herself to it, closed her eyes and thought of England. My father died after two years of this*marriage leaving her an expectant mother with hardly a penny in the world and Viking Point to manage. It was a deplorable stroke of back luck especially since she had been peculiarly friendless and far from home. Being of a proud disposition she would not ask help of the few acquaintances she had. What the loneliness of her life must have been, shut up in this big house so battered by North Sea gales all year round, with a little child, she young and beautiful, is difficult to conceive.Thus she suffered, cultivated the garden for food and eked out an existence for us both in those hard times just after the war. My mother lavished her strength and centred her life on me to such an extent that once I attained my majority she was unable to break away into an independent life of her own. She tried not to let it show that she wanted me to find work locally Kadıköy escort and stay on at Viking Point with her. On my 18th birthday she asked me in a heartily cheerful way if I had anybody in mind "now that you are free to look for a wife." I replied in all seriousness, "Why do I need to look when I have you, mother? I think I could do no better than marry you." Her laughter rang out and her dark eyes shone with delight in her thin, sun-tanned face. "Remember darling, not only am I old enough to be your mother, but I actually am your mother, and secondly, be careful what you wish for, it might come true."*I discovered from her diaries years later that a few weeks*after this*she had had a chat with a friend, Vivienne, at the tea shop in the village. Vivienne had asked her if she ever had a sexual relationship after my father's death - in those days nothing like as common an occurrence as it would be now. When my mother said No, she had never even considered such a thing, Vivienne asked if there was a film star or suchlike who took her fancy. "If you must know I wouldn't mind an affair with my son," she replied, at which they both burst into peals of laughter, but in a footnote to her diary entry my mother added, "And Vivienne thought I was joking."It was not long after this that matters came to a head. It was a Sunday morning. The wind was high and still rising, only slackening occasionally when storms of drenching rain swept in from the sea. It promised to be the worst gale in years. The tumult of it, the rattling of the windows, beat on your nerves. Mother called me into the garden to help her protect the plants.