Memories by Anonymous

Seated on a footstool that her niece dragged up into the attic, the woman sifts through the memories of a well-lived life. They've been at it hours, tagging things to be donated, sent on to loved ones, or finally discarded. In the inevitable slow wind-down we all face, she's decided to simplify. A bungalow awaits with hanging baskets and white roses grown on the doorstep to remind her of this old town house.

The younger woman opens an old suitcase, the initials P&C  stamped on the canvas body, leather handle burnished by the hands that carried it. It's generations old, recalling an era of travel by train, with white gloves and this tiny case resting near stockinged legs. Inside...a silk scarf, a handful of cards tied in a pale satin ribbon, a journal, and a tiny silver key suspended from a necklace, a stone of some kind, maybe an olive. Faded tickets to a club in London, seems to say pedestal but it is crumpled and she cannot be sure.
She raises the scarf to her cheek, catching a trace of the perfume that triggers memories of the hugs that always greeted her when she visited this house.

Setting each item aside on the wooden floor, she finds a sheaf of photographs spilling from an envelope. As she flips through them, the story they tell begins to gradually take shape, her aunt, as a younger woman, laughing into the lens of the camera as she walks along a beach, the wind dancing in her hair, the outline of her body showing through the sheer linen of a tunic. Sitting at a kitchen table, her hand pushed into her blond hair as she reads the morning paper, a steaming mug of tea close at hand. Photographs trying to capture the sun kissed beauty of a  midlands  town in autumn, a couple bundled up on an ice skating pond in the winter. She almost misses the first photograph of a man's hands, a close-up of fingers laced together. A house that she doesn't recognise. Then a black and white photograph capturing a curve, a bicep? cheek? bottom? She isn't sure. There is an eroticism here that takes her by surprise. She glances up at her aunt, feeling that she is trespassing, but drawn back to the photos by their beauty.

The slope of a back, lightly muscled. The edge of t-shirt being lifted from a pair of jeans. A belly button. The hands again, loosening a belt. A man, naked and photographed through the glass door of a shower, his eyes closed and water falling across his chest. The man's face, eyes blindfolded by the scarf, expression intent. Bending over to tie a trainer. No pants on and definitely a reddened bottom. Same man again sleeping, the bed sheets rumpled, sprawled on his stomach, a knee extended while nearby a cane lingers in the picture. Enthralled, she misses the silence that steals across the room.

In the next photograph, the same man has rolled over and lies there, one hand touching his chest, left leg bent. The sheets twisted across his thighs and resting on a hip bone. The other hand grasping himself... by his expression, caught just in the moment of ecstasy. Head falling back on the pillow, mouth open. Startled, she hears her breath catch in the suddenly loud silence. Looking up to catch the familiar blue eyes watching her.

She blushes, to be caught looking at these private things, but also because her aunt has seen her excitement.

The older woman, still moving with a soft grace, rises and walks over. She takes the photographs and flips through them,  a knowing smile on her lips. Returns each item to the suitcase, caressing each one, secret memories evident on her face. Snapping the case shut, she lifts it from her niece's lap. Chuckling, she touches the younger woman's cheek.

"You didn't think you knew everything about me, did you?," she asks. "I hope you love as well as I did."