A Very Flirtatious Neighbour
alphabet-anecdotesWhen I was growing up, we had a retired couple living next door to us. They were a lovely pair, always happy to have a chat. They maintained a beautiful garden with a cherry blossom tree, and had some uproariously funny stories to tell. The husband (let’s call him Tom) died very recently, and in reminiscing with my family about them I was reminded of this outstanding interaction with Tom’s wife (let’s call her Emma).
About ten years and exactly one transition ago, I was visiting my parents at home for the weekend. We had no specific plans and were just casually going about a lazy Saturday afternoon when my Dad received a phone call from Emma next door. By this time, Emma was well into her late 80s and deaf as the proverbial post. The sound of her voice (which for as long as I’d known her made a shrill whistling sound whenever she pronounced an ‘s’) was audible through the phone’s speaker from my position across the room, and also through the wall separating our houses. In muffled stereo, I heard Emma yell “‘ere, J— [my dad’s name], there’s summat up with my TV, can you come and fix it?” As tech support for the whole family, the task of going around to investigate and fix the problem was quickly delegated to me, and I popped around to Emma’s.
The thing you have to know about Emma is that she was an absolutely outrageous flirt. From the moment I entered the house she turned on the charm, simply for the fun of it. I was complimented on my height, my looks, my outfit, my youth. Apparently I was just what her type had been once. There was a wicked look in her eye as she barrelled over my discomfort at this barrage. At one stage she showed me an old black and white photo of herself, looking about my age or a little older, and declared “I bet ye’d like to have a go at her, wun’t ye?” The picture was indeed of a gorgeous woman with movie-star good looks, but the sheer embarrassment of having it brandished at me by an octogenarian version of the pictured beauty meant that I could do little else than stammer.
Flirting all the way, we proceeded into the living room, a mirror image of my parents’ lounge, but with decidedly dated decor in the way that all pensioners’ homes seem to be. Emma directed me toward her television set (Bang and Olufsen, wouldn’t you know), and explained that she couldn’t get Sky to work. The tech support stage of this job is dull and uninteresting, save for the fact that when I bent to the floor to look I swear I could feel Emma’s eyes trained on my behind, and I don’t think I misheard a smutty remark about having a feel.
Once Sky was restored to full functionality, Emma gratefully offered me a bottle of wine from the under-stairs cupboard. I found a very expensive selection, and Emma said to take a second bottle for my parents as well. My polite protestations were waved away; “Nonsense, I’m a very wealthy woman,” and I made to leave with two fancy-looking bottles of red in hand. “Ohhh,” said Emma, as I entered the kitchen to retrieve my shoes, “if I were forty years younger, I’d know just how to thank you.” With this, she gave a very meaningful look toward the stairs, while I blushed furiously. I couldn’t think to say anything other than “thanks for the wine” and hurried out of the door.
I began recounting the story as soon as I got home, to fits of laughter from my parents who looked beyond delighted at the tale. When I’d finished telling the story, Dad offered up a brief anecdote of his own, about her 80th (I think) birthday party. All details of that story are gone from my mind except for this: the cake had been made in the shape of an enormous pair of breasts, with the caption “still the best tits in town.” What a woman.
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