It was only a few days afterwards that I reflected that he had not once mentioned his wife or family in his conversation. We parted with a pleasant smile and I can remember his final words – “Thanks for walking round with me, it was a true pleasure”.
It was such a simple phrase, with its sincerity and honesty, but one that left me feeling so good about having been in his company. I drifted through that day, repeatedly coming back to the feeling I had had in his presence. When I got home after work it was almost a relief to be able to chat to my mother and casually drop into the conversation that I had walked with him earlier on. Her comment was that “Yes, he seems like a lovely bloke – always says hello and smiles”. It was a mundane comment, but I seemed to need that approval.
Still I wasn’t thinking of him in a sexual way. Not that I wasn’t tuned into sex at that stage of my life. Quite the contrary – I was really popular with the boys and wasn’t averse to stringing a couple along at once. I wasn’t sleeping around, but I had done it enough times to have long forgotten my virginal state. I was looking good and had blossomed nicely over the previous year or two. I could pass in clubs as twenty one without any trouble, and had even been photographed out on the town as one of the ‘in crowd’ that you see in the glossy lifestyle magazines.
As for him, well he was late thirties, still in reasonable shape, but no Adonis. I often saw him in sports kit going to play football or to the gym, so he clearly tried to look after himself. He sported the first signs of that well worn look that men develop at the same time women start to look creased, and it suited him. I rarely saw him smartly dressed as his work was outdoors, but he wore that rugged fashion that looked natural on him even in his scruff. As I said, he was no Adonis, but decent enough looking, probably with hindsight what I would call handsome, rather than beautiful.
A few days went by and I couldn’t seem to get him out of my mind. Every time I left the house I looked to see him. It was the same when I came in or was walking up the road. What seemed to be perpetuating it was that when I went out with my own dates and mates, the conversation seemed meaningless. Nobody ever seemed to get to the point, implicitly understand or make the acute observations that we had in our conversation that day. My dates seemed like little boys in men’s bodies. I had discovered the true difference between boys and men.
About ten days later on the Friday morning, I saw him leaving the house but walking rather than taking the car. It was like I needed to spend some time with him again, so unthinking, I darted out of the house and as casually as possible ‘bumped’ into him outside.
“How are you?” was the simple happy greeting that he gave. I smiled and blustered a slightly shy response, saved from any awkwardness by his next question “I’m just walking down to the bank in the village – are you heading that way?”
Okay, so it wasn’t planned but it had worked out. He seemed pretty contented just to stroll along with me and with my excuse that I just needed to stretch my legs, hence why I was happy to hang around while he did his banking then take the scenic and longer walk back through the park.