Skipping ahead a few months…

24/5/85

I spoke with my good friend, Clarisse today. I noticed her walking by herself with her hands clasped behind her back, so I started walking with her.

"Are you excited about your birthday?"

"No, not really."

"Oh why not? It's the big 5-0!"

"Yeah, it's something I don't want to be reminded about, actually."

"I know what you mean."

We continued walking, "Where's your husband?"

"Why do you care?"

"Security purposes of course."

"Of course," she smiled at me, briefly holding my hand and kissing my cheek.

"How have you been?"

"Oh you know, coping."

"With?"

"My age."

"Oh, what's wrong with it?"

"I came to the realisation that I'm already more than halfway through my life."

"Come on, you don't know that. You could live for another 70 years."

"Pfft, fat chance, how many 120 year olds do you know?"

"Well…there's uh…my great grandmother."

"I'm talking about people who are alive!"

"Oh none then."

She shook her head and stopped to sit down. I sat next to her and stared at her beauty – even though she was almost 50, she didn't look a day over 20. I started imagining myself holding her, kissing her and making love to her right there on the bench, but I felt that if I put my thoughts into actions, somebody would have complained. Instead, I moved a strand of hair from her face and she looked at me, smiling. I went to kiss her, but she turned away and all I got was a small brush of her cheek.

"Joseph, are you aware of our surroundings?"

"Yes, sorry."

"Good. Care to join me for a walk to the stables? I feel like going for a ride."

She gave me a seductive look and I asked, "What sort of a ride?"

"On a horse, of course. What were you thinking?"

We started laughing and walked to the stables.

It was quite smelly in there; it stank of hay and horse droppings. Clarisse walked in first and headed straight to the large horse at the back, I however stopped dead in my tracks when I saw what was hanging on the wall. I carefully removed it from the hook and snuck right up to Clarisse. She didn't notice me because of my great stealth, so she was quite surprised when she felt herself being lightly whacked across her behind by a leather whip. The expression she gave when she turned around was one of utter shock, she then understood the meaning behind it and grabbed another one off the wall for herself. We circled each other slowly and whipped the ground to show we meant business. She suddenly swang the whip, but I dodged it and I got her again. I chased her around for a few minutes whipping her every few seconds, then she stopped and turned around, "Drop it!"

"You drop yours first."

"No, you drop yours first, then I'll drop mine."

"I don't trust you."

"I don't trust you either."

I threw up my hands and dropped the thing, then she started chasing me. I managed to dodge all of her strikes but one. I fell onto a pile of hay, clutching the side of my face, as it hurt tremendously. She put her hand over her mouth and rushed over to me asking if I was okay. I watched her kneel down to my level, so I pulled her onto the pile. I then started kissing her, she was a bit reluctant at first because she was afraid that the horses were watching, but she soon got over that fear when I informed her that they were unable to register human activity. I ran my hands through her hair and gradually moved them down to her breasts. She pushed me away, then removed her blouse which came as a complete surprise to me because I thought I had frightened her. We resumed kissing and stroking each other in the hay for a few minutes, then we heard somebody rattling the lock on the door. I was literally thrown across the room by Clarisse when she heard the noise. She told me to hide while she put her top back on and attempted to remove all the hay that had gotten stuck in her hair. I chose the stupidest place to hide; I was in one of the stalls, right underneath a horse. I heard Clarisse talking to the man when he came in, he asked her what she was doing in the stables and she cleverly used the excuse, "I was going to go for a ride with Charley, but I felt too tired, so I thought I'd just hit the hay, haha."

I giggled to myself and then listened to the rest of the conversation. I heard the man excuse himself, so I waited for Clarisse to give me the sign that he'd gone.

I suddenly felt something very warm trickling down my back and onto the floor. I froze solid as I realised that choosing to hide under a horse was a very bad idea. A couple of seconds later, Clarisse quietly walked over and looked down at me, "Oh my word, what happened to you?"

She covered her mouth with her hand and started giggling.

"Are you laughing at me?"

She removed her hand and put on a stern face, "Of course not, I don't take joy in another's adversity."

Then she turned around and started laughing out aloud. I slowly stood up, opened the door of the stall and walked towards her, "You think this is funny?"

She shook her head and snorted out laughing again, "No."

"You think the fact that I'm covered from head to toe in horse urine is funny?"

She laughed even louder, I was sure the man would hear, but he didn't.

"Well I suppose you'd think it mighty hilarious if I did this!"

I tackled her to the ground and we started rolling on top of each other around the dirty floor, we didn't even care what was on it.

I gave her one last kiss and got up to walk to the door, she then got up and started dusting herself off.

She caught up to me and held my hand as we walked back towards the palace. She called me a naughty boy and we reminisced about our tussle in the stables. We also laughed about it over a cup of tea and some biscuits, that is after we went back to our separate rooms and had a long bath first.

Later on, she came into my room when I was about to take another bath and she immediately started fingering the buttonholes of my shirt. I asked her if she wanted to take a bath with me because even though I had spent one hour in it earlier, I was still convinced that I smelt bad. She thought it was an excellent idea so we undressed and went to the bathroom.

I lit a few candles along the bathtub and selected a wine from my liquor cabinet, not the wine she gave me all those years ago, a different one. I poured two glasses and lay in the warm water with her head arched back against my chest. I lifted her hands out of the water and folded them with mine, I then kissed her neck. She held my hands in mid air and started to speak, "My hands look so..."

"Beautiful."

She giggled slightly, "My feet…"

"Beautiful."

"My…"

"Beautiful."

She turned to look at me, "I'm so old."

"You don't look a day over 20."

"You deceive me."

"I only tell it like it is."

I received a kiss on my cheek.

"I'm going to be 50."

"I know."

"Do you know how scary that is?"

"I do, I'm also turning fifty."

"And what are you doing for your fiftieth birthday?"

"Exactly what I'm doing now."

"Oh? With who?"

"I don't know, what are you doing next November?"

"I may be indulging myself in sweet pleasures with a certain younger man in a tub not so far away."

"May be?"

"I might have other plans."

"Do you plan to have other plans?"

"Not at the moment."

She paused for a moment and softly kissed the tips of my fingers, "I'm scared, Joseph, I really am. I have two fully grown sons, a granddaughter on the way, the whole country observing my every move, soon I'm going to go through menopause."

"Don't worry about the future, live for the moment."

She relaxed into my chest and drifted off into sleep. We lay there until the water went cold, then I reluctantly woke her up and dried her off. She dressed herself and went back to her own suite because she was tired. I decided to do a bit of reading and writing my journal before going to bed, which is what I'm doing now. Think I might have another glass of wine.

There ya go, not as short as last time and not what I was originally going to make this chapter into either. Next chapter will have what I was going to make this one into.

FYI: Their birthdays are different from the actual actors' birthday in this. That is because everyone makes their b'days the same as they really are and I like to be different.