Linda

(sexual references)

I was nineteen, going on twelve in terms of relational nous.

It’s not that I was unwilling to enter into a relationship – in fact, it was my wildest dream – but from an early age, I’d been chronically shy. Put a goose in front of me and the very last thing I’d have said to it would have been boo. I’m better now, but that doesn’t negate the frustrated yearning I went through as a teenager.

This shyness didn’t extend to male relationships, however; I made friends easily at school, in the football team, and at the summer holiday camp where our family went for a dozen years running.

On our first day at the camp, and as soon as we’d unpacked, my parents would say: “Off you go then. Make friends.” And I did, by maybe beginning a splash fight in the pool, or leaning over a pinball machine and complimenting a boy of roughly my age on his flipper technique, or just diving into conversation over a milkshake in the on-site café. They were good, albeit brief friendships, lasting for the week of the holiday and the time it took to send two or three letters after we all went home to our respective routines and real friends.

But on these same summer holidays, I’d fall in love every time – a love based entirely on one-way attraction. Only once did I dare approach a girl, and I really can’t remember what came over me to pluck up the courage. We exchanged a few words, she was interested enough to want my address, and tentative correspondence ensued later, petering out, like the letters to my holiday mates, when we discovered that we were in effect two strangers trying – unsuccessfully – to make a largely incoherent connection across the miles. In short, entirely unsatisfactory and unsatisfying.

In my seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth years, possibly prompted by my eye-rolling whenever the holiday camp was mentioned, my parents released me from the familial duty of accompanying them on those holidays, which I’d more than grown out of, and I started going away with my closest friends, John and Colin.

Camping was our thing – because we liked it, yes, but also because it was all we could afford on money saved from badly-paid jobs in my friends’ case, and weekend jobs in mine. They left school as soon as they could, but I stuck it out and got a place at university. When I came back home every month or so we’d meet up for pub-crawling and tapping off – meeting women for quick, semi-drunken thrills. But even with the alcohol, I couldn’t get to first base; the shyness was stronger.

So we’d go camping in the summer, and just for a change, they’d tap off and I wouldn’t. Many a time I’d be reduced to sleeping in the bath-house of the campsite while they ‘entertained’ the women they’d met that night in the two tents we always took. Occasionally, John and Colin would ask their partners if they had a friend for me, and sometimes they did, but they’d soon get bored with my conversation, or lack of it, and flee. Even if the ultimate goal for all parties involved was a roll in the sleeping bags, tradition and etiquette dictated that some pre-snogging chat was required. And mine was – I’m not embarrassed to say it – either non-existent or paint-dryingly dull, which, I insist, was mainly down to nerves and shyness around people of the female variety.

Then in my nineteenth year, we took advantage of an invitation from a couple of cousins of mine to visit them. Valerie and Alison lived near the South Coast, a bus-ride away from beaches and funfairs. There was no room in their house for us, but the family let us set up our tents in the back garden. It meant that we could use proper, comfortable ablution facilities, we had our meals prepared (my Aunt Phyllis was a terrific cook), and of course, it was free.

We spent the first part of the fortnight-long holiday lazing around in the garden, bussing off to the beach, and going for long walks in the countryside; I loved this latter activity, but John and Colin were bored out of their skulls because we met not a single woman along the leafy lanes and on the pathways through the fields. (They confessed to me that Valerie and Alison left them cold, though my cousins didn’t seem particularly interested in them either.)

One night in the second week, we went to the cinema in the nearby town. Raiders of the Lost Ark was playing, and we’d all heard great things about it so were pretty excited. Valerie, who was older than us, stayed at home. Alison came with us on the bus and told us that she’d invited some of her friends.

We got to the cinema and began queuing, then her friends turned up. In retrospect, it seemed planned – the friends were three women. One of them, who looked older than the others, was absolutely stunning. Linda was tall and slim with long dark hair and green eyes and was wearing a sheer, blue-cotton dress; she looked like a model off the cover of a glossy mag.

John and Colin, in their inimitable style, were all over the three friends, focussing especially on Linda. She seemed immune to their overtures, however, and I thought I caught her glancing at me once or twice. Of course, I dismissed that idea out of hand as being absurd.

We finally reached the ticket office. As the film was so popular – it was the first week in the cinemas – we couldn’t buy seats all together; there was a block of five and a pair. Before we’d even begun discussing who should sit where, Linda piped up.

“I’ll sit with you,” she said, pointing at me. I turned theatrically to look behind me and check that she wasn’t speaking about somebody else, but John and Colin confirmed the news.

“Oooh!” they said grinning, John nudging me in the ribs.

I wasn’t going to argue or complain, naturally, but I was already feeling mighty anxious. We all filed into the foyer, bought our popcorn and Cokes, and made our way to our seats, John and Colin giving me meaningful winks as we parted ways.

The pair of seats were in the back row on the aisle. Being the gentleman I was and have always been, I stood aside to let Linda in first, but she guided me gently with a hand on my arm, so that I took the second seat, with her on the end of the row.

“This is nice, isn’t it?” she whispered, her face uncomfortably, wonderfully close to mine. She had a sightly husky voice which was the topping on the cake of her magnificence.

“Uh-huh,” was all I could manage, my own voice a feeble croak.

The film started and I was immediately distracted from the real world by that brilliant opening. As Harrison Ford tumbled down the hill, chased by furious natives, I felt a hand on mine, gripping it. I turned and in the half-light, I could see Linda’s exquisite profile, transfixed by the flickering images on the screen. I was engulfed by a wave of emotions: the adrenalin of the film, wonder at the closeness of such beauty, the tingling of arousal. The scene ended, a couple of hundred people breathed sighs of relief, but the hand didn’t move.

And so we remained, until the scene where Harrison Ford and Karen Allen spend the night together on the steamer, a racy scene for those days. I felt Linda’s grip on my hand tighten. Then she lifted it and placed it on her thigh. After a while, she slid it up, inside her dress, but only as far as the suspenders she was wearing. I think I must have gasped. My reflex action was to pull my hand away, but she had a good hold on it. So I spent several confused, wondrous minutes feeling the silkiness of her stocking, the softness of her skin, the slightly raised suspender strap and clip.

Then she released me – I was able to bring my hand back to my lap. But I could still feel the ghost of the sensations from moments earlier on my fingertips. I was sure the people around me would complain about the noise of my heart thumping. I turned to look at her again. She seemed still to be concentrating on the film, but I could swear there was a faint smile on those fine lips.

The rest of the film passed in a blur. In fact it was only years later, when I rented the VHS, that I would find out how it ended. When the lights came on, we got up straight away so that people in the row could get out. As we walked down the aisle towards the exit, Linda linked her arm in mine.

“That was good, wasn’t it?” she said.

“Er … yeah,” I replied, ever the bright conversationalist.

We met up with the others. John and Colin were openly smirking, obviously eager to get feedback. I made a mental promise to myself not to spill the beans about what had happened, but I felt that something had changed in our dynamic: a certain sense of superiority on my part. I’d touched Linda’s thigh and they hadn’t, and the fact that it would be my secret filled me with a strange and welcome confidence.

We all went to the pub and chatted until it was time for the last bus. I noticed that John and Colin were relatively cool in their farewells to Alison’s two other friends. They must have been shocked and not a little jealous, I imagine, when Linda leaned in and gave me a gentle but sustained kiss on my cheek. At the same time, I felt her put something in my hand.

When we were on the bus and heading back to Alison’s house, I opened my fist and took a peek. It was a phone number.

The remaining days were taken up with me going off ‘on my own’ for walks, while my friends and cousins went to the beach, to the funfair, to the centre for shopping. Of course, I was meeting up with Linda – I think that Valerie and Alison probably knew, while John and Colin will have thought it was just me being me.

Those were halcyon days, albeit cruelly brief. I’d go to her flat and we’d make love. Then we’d go out for something to eat – Linda knew where to go so as not to bump into the others – before going back and making love some more. I got better at conversations; it helped that Linda seemed interested in me and my life. I was very happy, and hopelessly in love.

But eventually it was time for me, John, and Colin to go back to our lives. My goodbye to Linda was full of tears – mine. I gave her an open invitation to come and stay with me at university, and I was already planning my next trip to visit her. We exchanged addresses and agreed to write.

The first of our letters had quite graphic references to our time together. Then we wrote of our respective routines, films we’d seen, music we were listening to. I soon realized that rather like my girlfriend from holiday camp, we were in effect two virtual strangers trying – unsuccessfully – to maintain a largely incoherent connection across the miles. In my final letter to her, I suggested that I visit her one weekend. Her reply left me in no doubt as to her feelings.

I really like you, and I value the brief time we spent together, but I don’t think we should continue with this as I don’t think it can work. I’m much older than you, and I believe that you and I should both find someone of our own age to go steady with, perhaps to settle down – at least, that’s what I want to do. You’re a lovely bloke and I’m sure you’ll make some lucky girl very happy. Take care. Linda. X

I was devastated initially, and I’m afraid there were more tears. But when I’d recovered and could think straight, I knew that she was right. I found out from Alison that Linda was in fact thirty-five, and while that wasn’t a deal-breaker in itself, it did change the way I saw her.

And I agreed with her one hundred percent when she said she valued the time we’d spent together.

I caught Raiders of the Lost Ark on cable last week. When that scene came around, I swear I could still feel her skin under my fingertips, but not in a sordid way – rather as a reminder of a prelude to a handful of days that changed me forever. Never again did I have any trouble forming relationships with women; it was as if a block had been lifted. And for that I was, am, and will forever be grateful to Linda.