THIS STORY HAS ADULT CONTENT
In my late twenties and throughout my thirties I went around England, with excursions into Scotland and Wales, finding locations and getting permission to open sessional family planning and support clinics, after which colleagues would organise and staff them, but I was the one who made the first contacts with medical professionals, local politicians and the people who would make a clinic work: caretakers and local ward councillors were key contacts. Without their support you could usually say goodbye to a new sessional clinic. Back then £5 a week from the petty cash got the caretaker on board, because we usually took over a clinic at the end of a working day, which could be anytime between 1pm and 6pm, then spend an hour getting it ready for our sessional clinic to open with the aim of being out of the building by 9pm. This involved the caretaker in waiting for us to arrive, then coming back to lock up. We never paid rent of any kind because we were a charity, nor were we ever asked to contribute to heat and light. The seventies really was a different world.
I would look for locations well served by public transport, primarily buses. A railway station nearby was a real bonus, then use my being a Birmingham Labour Party city councillor as a way of making contacts with local council medical officers of health and the professionals who managed the clinic I wanted to use. I also worked with other voluntary sexual health and support charities in the area, plus women’s groups. I did have a role in developing free pregnancy testing services using free supplies from NHS hospital laboratories, thanks to my trade union contacts. Abortion was a sensitive issue despite its legalisation by the 1968 Abortion Act. Fortunately, pro-life groups rarely interfered directly with the work of the charity I was working for.
On one occasion I was introduced by Harold, a close friend and a hospital laboratory manager, to a colleague of his who oversaw the working of NHS clinics in a large northern town. We met in a hospital staff canteen and once we were seen to be getting on, my friend left us to it. The doctor was a handsome woman in her mid-fifties with a wonderful head of curly white hair and pale blue eyes. The only other thing I noticed about her face was the thread veins that ballooned when she smiled, something she frequently did. We got on well and she appealed to my vanity by taking an interest in the fact that I was such a young councillor and asking a lot of questions. She worked out that by the time I was her age my six year old daughter would be 36. Her daughter was just 18 and about to go off to medical school in Glasgow where, by coincidence, I was working with Jenny Lucas, the wife of a senior Labour MP, to set up a clinic. The doctor volunteered that her daughter, when she told her that she meeting me, said she would like to help in some way, to which I replied ‘I think we can go one better than that and find her a part-time paid job, perhaps helping with pregnancy testing’. She was the right age and could help put clients at their ease. It was always a traumatic time and we provided free tests while clients waited.
By the end of what turned out to be a long canteen lunch, followed by time in her office, she had arranged for us to visit several clinics the next day, which was great for me because it meant I could stay over and save myself extra travelling. She also invited me to go home with her and meet her daughter, which I did. After an hour or so, the daughter excused herself, explaining she was off to a ‘stay over’ with her boyfriend.
By this point the doctor and I were on first name terms, her explaining that she ‘Amelia’ professionally and ‘Milly’ to her family and friends, and I was ‘Bob’ because that it what my friend Harold had called me when he introduced us to one another.
Milly asked me where was I going to stay and I replied ‘Can you recommend a good hotel?’
‘You are welcome to stay here. There are three empty bedrooms, one en-suite. The other two share a bathroom. It will save you money and it will be nice to have some company. When Anne goes and what with local government reorganisation, I have decided to go back to Devon, where I grew up and met my husband Theo, and buy a smaller house.
It was then that I jokingly said ‘I am a Devonian. I was born in Teignmouth.’
‘I thought you were from Wembley’ Milly came back, which is how I ended up giving her a 30 minute potted history of my life, then she did the same back to me. Despite our 28 year age difference, we had lots of things in common.
Theo, Milly’s husband had died six months before. She described it as ‘a good marriage’. By this point we were in her large living room sitting on our own sofas, across from one another, drinking tea and eating homemade lemon drizzle cake . It was all very cosy, with a large log gas fire keeping the room warm, and we were deep into conversation about contraception, unwanted pregnancy and vasectomy, still illegal, the law yet to be changed. Milly was also fascinated by my work as the charity’s record officer and a pregnancy counsellor, as well as being the charity’s development officer.
I had taken off my shoes when I entered Milly’s house and padded around in my socks whilst Milly had put on a pair of felt clogs. At some point she had tucked her feet under herself as she sat on the sofa and told me I could do the same. She was wearing a kilt and a v-neck wool jumper, and the kilt was gradually climbing up her legs, eventually revealing a glimpse of the top of her thighs and what appeared to be lace trimmed knickers. She was also wearing a suspender belt to hold up her stockings. It was impossible not to look and I could hear Frank Sinatra in my head singing…
In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
Now heaven knows, anything goes.
Milly saw me looking and said ‘Would you like to see more?’
My reply made her laugh. ‘Frank Sinatra is singing in my head’ followed by a bad misquote about a glimpse of stocking and what follows.’
‘What are you really thinking? Just you and me and anything can happen if you want it to.’
I just remember wanting to know if she had a bush and if it was white like her hair? ‘I’d like to see your bush’.
She didn’t say a word, she put her feet onto thecarpet and raised her bottom so she could slide her silk panties off. She raised her legs in the air, revealing her plump genitalia, which was surrounded by the thickest bush I had ever seen. That it wasn’t white was a disappointment, but I had never had such a front row seat before. She threw her panties to me, which I caught and held to my face and took several deep breaths. Her scent was intoxicating. It was enough to kick start me and to feel uncomfortable in my trousers. I wanted to unzip myself but I was not that liberated. If I was lucky I was about to make love to only the third woman ever in my life (Jean, the butcher’s wife, on my 15th birthday, never counts). Before Milly only my first wife and a colleague 12 years older than me. The latter had been a disaster of sorts because I couldn’t relax and I went on forever and in the end gave up exhausted. She told me I was a first man not to unload in her company. More than once she told me to ‘relax’. ‘Relax Robert, relax'.’
Milly then put her heels on the edge of the sofa and parted her legs. ‘Would you like to see more.’ It was an invitation I wasn’t going to refuse, so I fell on my knees in front of her and placed my hands behind her knees and lifted them as high as I could to keep her legs apart. It was a first for me. That I knew of it at all was thanks to counsellor training and having been given a copy of ‘The Joy of Sex’ by the work colleague I disappointed. Sadly the first English edition was not explicit, with added brush work in places, but my first wife still thought it ‘dirty’.
Milly turned out to be a good tutor and I spent the rest of day and evening doing things as instructed. Even she told me to ‘relax’ a few times. She volunteered that I was her first fuck since her husband Theo’s funeral, when her brother-in-law had stayed the night. He had promised to come back, but he never had. She thought he was ashamed of himself . She told me that when her husband was alive it was ‘sex on demand’ and as an arrangement it worked. I remember her describing sex as a ‘great stress buster.’
By the next morning I felt like we were an old married couple. Being with her was as natural as life could be and it would be another two years before I met the love of my life and I was to share all those experiences again and more.
By the end of that second day I had found a clinic and tied up all the loose ends and we went our separate ways, sharing an affectionate kiss in her car when she dropped me off at the town’s railway station. She took advantage of local government reorganisation to get a good redundancy package and headed off to Carisle instead of Devon, to be nearer her daughter.
We exchanged Christmas cards for a few years. Then I got a printed card from her daughter telling me that her mother had died and that was that. No address. I could have tracked her daughter down I’m sure, but I had left the charity by then. I have never recalled the two days we as good as spent together on paper or told anyone about her but my second wife in passing. All our lives I’m sure are full of ‘hidden moments’ like this. The intimacy matters. Thanks to her I knew what was possible and meeting the love of my life I knew within minutes where the future was taking me.
O L O Bunny🐰