Chapter 1
Wilfred boarded the eight fifteen to London just as he had done every workday for the last thirty years. He was almost indistinguishable from the rest of the fellow travellers, even the female ones.
He was far from handsome. Wilfred’s hair was receding slightly, but it still held colour in it, fighting off the grey. His pot-belly was slowly growing, due more to the calorie rich lunches than his wife’s sparse cooking. His grey pinstriped suit was five years old and straining at the buttons. It was one of two and he wore them on alternate days. He sat in the same seat as he had done for thirty years and he read the same newspaper he read for thirty years, but today he was thinking brand new thoughts. Tonight, he was finally going to do it with Dorothy.
It had all started innocently, as these things do. Wilfred was enjoying his calorie rich lunch at the same cafe he had eaten at for the last thirty years. It had changed management recently and so was even more calorie rich. He was reading the personnel advert section of his newspaper, a favourite pastime of his, when he came across an advertisement for a pen pal.
‘Unmarried forty-one-year-old lady wishes to correspond with like-minded gentlemen for the mutual appreciation of the arts,’ it said.
Wiping the remains of the rich chocolate cake from his lips, Wilfred thought about this advertisement for some time, then tore it out of his newspaper and put it in his wallet. Over the next few days, he would study this advert on his train journeys to and from work and in private on the weekend. Something was stirring in his soul and he didn’t understand what it was, but he felt this advertisement was part of it. He decided. He wrote to the lady informing her of a desire to create a conversation about the arts. Some instinct caused him to put at the end of the letter a request for the lady to send it to his work address in a plain white envelope and mark it:-
Personnel and private for the attention of :
The reply was remarkably swift with the lady, Dorothy, opening with a discussion of classical artists versus modern artists and what was Wilfred’s opinion. Wilfred replied that while he thought the classicals had better techniques, modernists were more adventurous and expressive.
So the discussion went on through the rest of the artists and into music. It reached a crescendo over a debate on Elvis Presley’s status as an artist and if he was of the same rank as Mozart and Bach. Wilfred never felt more alive in his life.
However, the conversation turned to the theatre and took on a gentler and intimate tone. To their surprise, they discovered neither liked opera. Both considered it too boring and hard to understand. Both liked a good Gilbert and Sullivan musical with lots of music, romance and comedy, then one day Dorothy took Wilfred by surprise and suggested they go to see a musical together.
Wilfred’s first thought was to reject this idea. He was a married man, but the stirring in his soul became a vigorous shaking and Wilfred decided it would be quite harmless. After all, it was only a theatre show and possibly dinner.
When the date was settled, Wilfred told his wife he would work late that night. The fact that Wilfred had not stayed late at the office once in thirty years did not raise her curiosity one little bit. She simply said, “OK dear,” and went back to reading her Woman’s Weekly and wishing she had listened to her mother.
On the appointed evening, for the first time in thirty years, Wilfred did not catch the train home instead caught a taxi to the restaurant with the butterflies chewing up his stomach. He had heard that it was better to get there before the lady, so he was half an hour early.
That half hour seemed like a lifetime to Wilfred and he refused the wine, as he was afraid his anxiety would cause him to drink to excess. Eventually, his attention was caught by a commotion in the doorway. A tiny woman had somehow knocked over the maitre-de’s reservation table and was valiantly trying to help him pick it up and only adding to the confusion. The poor woman was taken by a kindly waitress who escorted her to Wilfred’s table.
She was forty something with bright red hair, blue eyes and freckles and despite her years, she had an innocent, virtuous look about her that seemed to enhance her good looks. She was an only daughter of a controlling, dominating woman who saw the value of having a personal slave she could use at will. Dorothy was there to serve her mother and only her mother. So deep were her hooks into Dorothy’s mind that even when the mother developed dementia, she did not let her go. Her freedom came when the mother died, but by then her best years had gone.
Wilfred, in a burst of excitement, stood up and knocked his chair over into the path of the wine waiter, carrying some drinks. Completely ignoring the chaos behind him, he said, “Dorothy?”
Dorothy replied, “Wilfred.”
The couple stood gazing at each other completely oblivious to the chaos around them till two very experienced waiters guided them into their chairs and the maitre-de, who was a romantic at heart, supplied two glasses of champagne on the house to soothe their nerves.
Once over the initial awkwardness of meeting for the first time, the pair soon immersed themselves about the arts, especially the opening of the new art gallery in Main Street. So engrossed were they that Wilfred suddenly realised that they were in danger of missing the opening of the musical, and they rushed off.
They reached their seats just in time and sat enthralled at the performance of the “Pirates of Penzance”. In fact, so enthralled were they, they did not realise they had been holding hands for the last five minutes. Wilfred broke off when he realised this, and the pair sat in an awkward but congenial silence for the remaining fifteen minutes of the musical.
When it came to the end, Wilfred offered to escort Dorothy home but Dorothy said that was unnecessary, but she would appreciate it if he summoned a taxi, which he duly did. By now, Wilfred was feeling uncomfortable about hiding his marital status, so just before Dorothy got in the taxi, he confessed to being married.
Dorothy smiled and said,” I guessed that was the case. Why else would you want our private mail sent to your work address? It doesn’t matter, does it? We are only friends sharing a common interest, aren’t we? ”
Just to show that he agreed that was indeed the case, he kissed her gently and quickly on the lips and closed the taxi door.
Wilfred himself took the train home. He was in such a state of ecstatic joy he was afraid his wife would question him, but he need not have worried as she was sound asleep.
After that evening their “friendship” blossomed and they met many times to go to art galleries, museums, theatres and symphonies, a particular favourite of Dorothy’s and at no time did they act as anything more than friends, close friends and at no time did Wilfred’s wife question, or show any interest in his activities except to complain endlessly to her mother that Wilfred paid no attention to her. Her mother’s reply was, “I told you this would happen.”
Wilfred and Dorothy’s friendship developed until the pair sat in the park, having lunch. Dorothy was sitting with her back against a tree and Wilfred was lying with his head on her lap. Dorothy was feeding Wilfred grapes and as she did so, she said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to spend an afternoon at the beach?”
Wilfred replied they lived a bit too far away to spend an afternoon at the beach.
Dorothy countered by saying that she could borrow a friend’s beach side cottage for the weekend.
Wilfred’s soul shook like a magnitude seven earthquake.
Again, a date was set and again Wilfred’s wife showed no curiosity that her husband was going on a weekend work related trip for the first time in thirty years, though she invited her mother to come and stay that weekend.
Wilfred had stored a carry bag in a locker at the train station, which he collected on the way to meet Dorothy on the train platform. They reached the little village by early evening and had dinner in one of the many restaurants. They were both nervous with excitement and apprehension, so the conversation was rather stilted and they both drank a little too much.
When they eventually lay together on the lovely, luxurious bed, Dorothy confessed to Wilfred that she had never been with a man before and didn’t know quite what to do. This prompted Wilfred to confess that he was not a very good lover. At least that is what his wife said for the last thirty years, but they would manage somehow.
To their amazement, they had a wonderful, passionate, exciting and adventure-filled night and were only forced out of bed at lunchtime due to a severe lack of food.
They spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the many cafes and wine bars in this amazing little village before retiring for a repeat performance from the night before. On the following day, Sunday, Wilfred convinced Dorothy to wear her bikini. Dorothy had never worn a bikini before, as most of her life had been spent indoors, thoroughly covered up. She edged out onto the beach, encouraged by Wilfred, tightly wrapped in a large beach towel amongst the dozens of other beach lovers. She had never seen so much bare flesh.
Wilfred carefully unwrapped Dorothy till she stood there in her modest bikini, convinced everyone was staring at her nakedness and laughing at her. Of course no one was, and she slowly found she rather enjoyed the feeling the bikini gave her. My, she realised, I’m a bit of an exhibitionist.
All day the two lovers played about in the surf and even experienced one or two passionate moments until two exhausted, happy, sunburnt people retired for the night too tired to do anything but sleep in each other’s arms.
The next morning they caught the train back to Dorothy’s cold empty flat and Wilfred’s cold empty marriage. It was Dorothy who brought the subject up.
“What will we do, Wilfred?” she asked.
“I’ll divorce her,” he replied.
She smiled happily and snuggled up beside him on the train seat
What one says in the safety of your lover’s arms and what you say sitting across from your wife are two very different things, but Wilfred now was not the same man as the one that had caught the eight fifteen for thirty years. As Wilfred and his wife sat across from each other over a meal of chops and six chips, he gathered his courage and said, ” Mildred, I want a divorce.”
Mildred daintily putting one of the tiny chips in her mouth said, “That’s very considerate of you Wilfred, thank you. I accept”
A speechless Wilfred played with his chips, totally at a loss for words.
“Mother is getting old and needs much more care. I don’t think I can look after her and you at the same time so your request comes at a wonderful time. Now I can move in with her.”
Completely bewildered, Wilfred went to bed, in a separate room, of course.
While Dorothy and Wilfred were looking for an apartment together, Dorothy asked, “Do you think she knew about us? ”
Wilfred replied, “I just don’t know, but if she did, I don’t think she cared.”
When they found their apartment, they put a mattress on the floor and slept there the first night. Lying there, Wilfred said, “Let’s not get married, ever. I don’t want to become a bored and boring husband.”
Dorothy replied, “That sounds a delightfully wicked idea.”
And so they lived in delicious sin for the rest of their unmarried lives.
