It was with little effect that I brought my spectacles out of my pressed suit pocket, and proceeded unsuccessfully to read the tiny rounded letters of sweet Isabella’s hand. Her careless and volatile manner seeped into her writings, where she haphazardly left splodges of black ink on the page like trails of spidery footprints.

Her scrawled name underneath the body of the letter called out to me with all the sweet notions of Isabella’s honey features, and the soft down of her young blonde skin. I folded the letter and nestled it into my chest pocket. The town plaza was full of market-goers, fattened children sucking on colourful lollipops and tugging on their mamas’ circular skirts. The browned schoolboys stole limes and melons from the fruit seller, and then presented them for presents to their school sweethearts, the little flirty golden-haired wonders.

A butcher’s shop caught my eye, and I admired the swift way in which the red-faced man slapped the steak and then performed with his knife like a high art. I saw no savagery in the act, just a certain marvellous dexterity.

My Isabella was nowhere in sight and it was not favourable for a man of my appearance to loiter for too long. Suspicions would be heightened, and eyes drawn. I was drawn to a little curtain theatre on the corner of West Street, in seconds of walking distance from Isabella’s proposed meeting place.  

Laughter drifted from the enclosed space, where jolty grained black and white film snippets were projected for the village children. I peered through a gap in the drawn curtains and imagined my Isabella, in her earlier childhood days, in straw hat and checked dress, her coral lips small and morose, slumping moodily in one of the wicker chairs, feigning boredom and making all the little dun-coloured boys from her classrooms drool. 

The mid-afternoon sun was the perfect backdrop for Isabella’s arrival. Late at all costs, stubborn with all certainty, making me wait, sweat in my boots and sigh in exasperation when she finally materialised. Oh, I could not stay irritated for long, not when her snugly fitted bodice clung to her like the salted green sea caressing wet brown sand.

I tapped my pocket as she strolled, all tediousness evident in her casual smile, her slackened shoulders and the nonchalant way her limbs moved.

“I think you have forgotten, that I don’t have all day to wait for you,” I scolded, watching her turn her mocking lips into a half-smile.

“Then next time I won’t turn up at all,” she mused. She commenced her thinking pose; one delicate eyebrow raised, her chin perked upwards, eyes cloudy blue and hands resting on the small area where her hips met the slope of her waist.

“You know you couldn’t resist,” I said, my eyes travelling down to her feet, where she wore her best canvas shoes, and white cotton socks, a stark contrast to the dark skin of her ankles, “Besides, you have too much affection for me.”

She waved away the remark, but I suspect I caught the curves of a secret smile. We slowly walked across the town square, Isabella turning me in the direction of the patisserie, eager to begin her exploration of my wallet. Such a young child she was, but so adored by myself, that I could do nothing more than satisfy her desires.

Fresh cream buns were devoured as the wonderful girl beside me swung her legs on the park bench. I pondered the absurdity of the situation. She assured me directly that she was in her late teen years, but something held me from accepting that; something deeper than curiosity.

There was nothing more to do than await the times when she would let me nuzzle her, when her hands would curl around my arms and giggles would escape her pretty throat when we played. Sweet divinity.

Oh, it was such that the fine details were all I asked for. An agreement we had. She never asked my age, and I, never directly, hers. I was, however, too old by sight for her to let her doll-faced friends catch a vision of us together. And it was so, that I spent my time, cavorting around in secret, with a dazzling young beauty, buying her trinkets and savouring each moment.

With the honeyed evening, came senses of her restlessness. The stubborn vision of loveliness, with all my efforts, would not allow me a simple stroke, none of her pretty kisses. A walk along the riverside ensued, Isabella talking at length, tormenting me with tales of her adolescent experiments with the young boys at her school. Her skin looked so smooth in the magnificence of moon’s embrace.

A sudden light entered her eyes; an idea in her pretty little head. We found a secluded space along the river, and she slipped into the water, leaving folds of clothing on the bank, her supple limbs glowing and dappled with shining droplets of water as she emerged from the river, hair wet and alluring. Naturally, I followed, with practised motions, the undressing in front of my beloved.

Strokes into the middle of the river, her giggles enlivened the calm waters. I took her soaking hair in my fingers and held her underneath the water, relishing the delicious way in which she struggled against my hold. Oh, Isabella, light of my summer, this was the tomorrow you worried about the day before. And now you know why.