The Long Vacation

Now we had become lovers, I found I was relating to a woman who, when we made love, was very different. She was passionate, open to every sexual act and abandoned. At times she seemed insatiable and in her sexual frenzy could become violent, tearing my back with her fingernails.

It was as if that which had restrained her for so many years, had suddenly broken down, igniting a blistering sensual conflagration. As well as her unexpected tempestuousness, and while she had always looked younger than her years, she seemed to lose the air of strain that had so often been part of her, making her look even younger.

On my side, I could now see that all the girls, and most especially the two older women I had engaged in sex with, had been substitutes for mother. I had been seeking her in them.

Both of us now had to relearn our relationship. We could not go back to being simply mother and son. A powerful new energy had entered into our lives and would now lead us into the unknown.

That night, and in the following weeks of our trip, we made love at every opportunity. In our hotel or motel rooms, on isolated beaches where we swam naked. Once, just for the fun of it, we had sex on the back seat of our car. Not caring much for the discomfort, we did not repeat that experiment.

As our trip drew to an end, our lovemaking became increasingly intense, even desperate. We had to decide what the future would be for us. The decision was made a little easier because money was not a problem, but something happened that finally determined the matter.

At breakfast one morning during our last week, Cleo looked very solemn, more like mother than the Cleo of the past three weeks.

“Alex, I have to tell you something.”

“Mmm?”

“I was due to menstruate over a week ago, but I haven’t. I think I’m pregnant.”

“Ah!” I stopped chewing on a piece of bacon and stared at her across the table. I was stunned.

Looking back now I can see how ridiculous this shock on my part was. I had taken no precautions by using a condom, and if I’d thought about it at all, I suppose I assumed mother was on the pill, or she was beyond getting pregnant. I had not even bothered to ask.

As I sat looking at her, I felt a sense of shame and guilt. I had just taken what I wanted without thought of what might happen to mother. I began to stutter out a ridiculous apology.

“Mother, I’m so sorry…I…didn’t think…what…” I had reverted to calling her “mother” in this crisis.

“What am I going to do?” she asked, completing my sentence.

“What…what are…are we going to do, you mean, mother.”

She gave a slow smile and said, “I may still be mistaken, Alex, and of course there will need to be medical confirmation, but I hope I’m right.”

“You mean, you don’t mind being pregnant?”

“Of course not, darling, I counted on it.”

“You what?”

“Alex, if you’d tried to use a condom I would have torn it off you. I wanted you make me pregnant.”

“I don’t understand. Why?”

“Darling, can’t you understand that women often want to have a child with the man they love.”

She laughed aloud, then went on, “We couldn’t waste all of that lovely semen you’ve pumped into me, could we? At least one little spermatozoa had to reach its goal, and that is just what it seems has happened.”

She appeared to be treating her potential pregnancy almost blithely. I had avoided getting my past sex partners pregnant, but on a couple of occasions there had been what turned out to be false alarms. On those occasions, the women were far from happy about the situation. Yet, here was my current partner, my own mother, happy because I had impregnated her. I just did not know what to make of her.

“Mother, please, tell me plainly, do you really want this baby?”

“Of course I do.”

“But what about…what… about your health? I mean, you are, well…”

“So you’ve now noticed I’m somewhat older than you, have you?”

“It’s not that…I mean…you could…could have a bad time…”

“Alex, do stop stuttering and stammering. I want to have the baby, and I’m a strong girl, and I’m not asking you to accept any responsibility. I told you what I suspect because if I were pregnant, you would have to know some time, and better sooner than later. All right, darling?”

“No…no, its not all right,” I yelled.

“Don’t shout, darling it makes you sound like your father.”

That brought my volume down quickly. “Mother, didn’t you always teach me to be responsible for my actions?” I said in a modified tone.

“Yes.”

“So if I’m the father, I’ll act responsibly.”

“What do you mean, ‘if’ you’re the father. Are you suggesting I’ve been having sex with someone else over the past two or three weeks?”

“No of course not. All I’m trying to say is, if…er…as the child is mine…”

There was a fierce feminist glance from mother.

“As the child is ours…I’m the father…you’re the…Oh hell, I don’t know what I mean…Yes I do. I shall be responsible,” I said somewhat smugly.

“Alex, please don’t get pompous, it makes you sound like your father, again. I do understand what you are trying to say, and I love you even more for it, but you don’t have to be ‘responsible’. I can take care of myself.”

“Damn it, Cleo, I don’t want you to take care of yourself. If you think I’d just go off as if nothing had happened, like you getting pregnant, then you must have a poor opinion of me. I don’t understand why you wanted me as a lover if that’s how you think of me.”

She was laughing again, between gasping breaths she said, “All right, all right, Alex. Of course I don’t think of you like that, but I wanted you to have every chance to be free from the responsibility. If you were going to take me and the baby on, I wanted it to be a completely free choice.”

Mollified, I calmed down a bit. “You’re not absolutely sure your are pregnant?”

“No. I can’t be sure until the doctor confirms it, and we’ll need to wait a bit for that. But we might make some preliminary plans.”

“Ah, yes.” I would have liked to act the strong male, making decisions, setting something in motion, but I hadn’t any idea what to do, and I told Cleo so.

“No, you men usually don’t know what to do. Well, I won’t beat about the bush. Pregnant or not, I had plans for you and I. As I said the time we saw your father with that girl, I’ve had enough of him. That being so, I think I shall set up house near the university and take a live in lover, namely, you.

“Mother will keep house for her bachelor son. It’s a pity her marriage broke up just as she got pregnant, but that’s life for you.” She laughed again, then went on, “I’ve got my man, I’ve got money, and above all, I’ve hopefully got the pregnancy I wanted with my man. Now what do you think of that for a plan."

She had rattled all this off with great aplomb, leaving me mentally breathless. I struggled to find an appropriate response. She was so happy and self-assured and I so bewildered, words would not come.

“Alex,” she almost sang, “Do you want me or not?”

“Of course I bloody well want you, you silly woman,” I finally came out with.

“Darling, there’s no need to swear. Can I assume it’s settled, then? We’ll live together?”

“As lovers?”

“How else? But we don’t have to tell those who don’t need to know, do we, darling?”

I could scarcely believe my good fortune. I was being offered a beautiful woman as a lover, a caring mother, and someone with plenty of money, and all wrapped up in one parcel.

I laughed, “I’d have to be a fool to refuse and offer like yours, wouldn’t I?”

“Even if you’ve got to be a daddy as well?”

“Even if I’ve got to be a daddy as well, Cleo.”

She laughed, and I thought I detected a note of relief in her laughter. She wasn’t quite as self-assured as she had tried to pretend. I think I loved her even for that little bit of doubt in her.

It was two days after we arrived home that father turned up. He was all noise and bluster, but mother was putting up with no nonsense from him.

She refused to let me be present when she told him she was leaving him, but I gathered that he made no fuss - perhaps he even welcomed Cleo’s departure from his life.

I learned a couple of years after Cleo and I moved in together that he had married some young girl, who was leading him a dogs life with her constant demands on his finances.

By that time, Julie had been born and Neil was on his way. After the birth of Neil Cleo was unable to have any more children.

Cleo and I played around with ideas about what my relationship to the children was to be. We thought about, “older bother,” but decided that it would not work, so I ended up as “daddy.”

After university we had to move several times as I took up jobs as an engineer, so we were saved the embarrassment of trying to explain things to friends. If and when the children know the truth of our relationship, we shall have to deal with it at that time.