Making Esme a Woman

I remember the day I first set eyes on Esme. I had gone as usual to the stable yard with my wife, and the yard was bustling with the youngsters who earned their weekend wage by mucking out and filling haynets and the like. Out of one of the stables came this statuesque figure of a young woman, difficult to say what age she was, wearing a lilac colour baggy fleece top and baggy pants, but pushing her wheelbarrow laden with straw with an intense look, really a frown, on her face. The overall first impression was of a Russian athlete about to throw the big hammer, concentration and fierceness written all over her face, and as she was not about to do any such thing, but was merely mucking out, the impression was that she was totally focused on her work. She looked neither to right nor left, acknowledged no-one, but went determinedly about her business.

Over the next couple of weekends I became fascinated by her aloofness and watched her avidly. There was some fascination about her constant frown, her furrowed brow drawn down to her eyebrows, her full lips pursed in concentration, her chin jutting. There was fascination too about her general height and build. In the baggy suit it was difficult to get a good idea of her figure, but she appeared to be curved in all the right places in proportion to her height, although perhaps a bit flabby and overweight. I felt she was strong and muscular, and would brook no nonsense from any unwanted admirer. It was an aspect of my curiosity that I could not tell whether she was a 15 year old big for her age, or in her early twenties or anywhere in between. Her general demeanour gave no clues as to her age.

At tea breaks she sat herself in the corner of the bothy and buried her head in horse magazines as she sipped her tea. Occasionally she exchanged a remark with one of the other young girls, but generally paid no attention to the conversation going on among the rest of us, stable owner and clients alike. I came in for a bit of good natured ribbing about something from my wife and the farm owner on one occasion, and I noticed she looked up and caught my eye as I joked it off, before looking quickly away.

Her general quietness and unwillingness to take part in conversation I began to think may be because she had come to work in Scotland from Eastern Europe as had so many others from the European Union Accession countries. She had a general Slavic look to her and as any conversation was generally monosyllabic, she could quite easily be an economic immigrant. There was already at the yard a very friendly Polish lad, who was learning English from my wife through a shared medium of German.

The next weekend I arrived in the stable yard just as Esme was coming out of one of the stables. I caught her eye and smiled and said “Good morning”. Her expression flickered from the frown to a smile and she replied “Good morning” before rushing off self-consciously with her wheelbarrow. I sensed from the smile that her face was not always so grim. At tea break she was again in the corner, but as conversation flowed she was less engrossed in her magazines and was quietly watching me as I took part in whatever was being discussed. I did not give her any further attention that day but I had the feeling I had triggered some sort of interest in her.

The next week, as soon as I saw Esme, I again said “Good morning”, and to my delight her whole face lit up, she smiled with her eyes as well as with her mouth, and returned my greeting. This then continued for a few weeks, nothing more being said, but she emerged from her shell, and the grimness seemed to disappear and she became more human, and very much more attractive. As spring turned into summer two things happened: she seemed to lose a significant amount of weight and her baggy clothes were replaced by more seasonal attire. From the chrysalis, a beautiful creature appeared. She became more animated, not just to me, but to others around the yard, including my wife. Her expression was now more one of joy, her face always smiling, her grim scowl banished, her demeanour more communicative. And she now wore skin hugging blue cotton trousers with a woollen v-neck jersey. The trousers clearly outlined long slim legs and fuller buttocks, and the jersey clung appealingly to her breasts. This alternated with a pair of jodhpurs, close fitting that displayed muscular thighs, and above a slim waist, her t-shirts showed a moderately well formed bust, a long swan-like neck, and long slim arms. From what had been curiosity and a challenge to see if this creature could relate to others, my interest now became one of sheer lustful infatuation.

We would now exchange conversation about the behaviour of the horses, or about the stable cat, or about anything else happening in the stables, and I could not keep my eyes off her as she worked around the yard. Not only could I observe this tall, now demonstrably slim, powerful figure going about her work, using her muscles to shovel and lift the straw, push the loaded wheelbarrow, carry filled haynets, and the filled water buckets, but as she moved, bent, straightened, I got forbidden glimpses of her flesh, her back as her t-shirt parted company from her jodhpurs, her neckline depending on how the t-shirt was buttoned, the movement of her breasts as she bent over, imagining from what I saw how her body might look if she were naked.

And of course Esme was not unaware of my attention. I could see the subtle shift of her eyes as she tried to see what I was doing without moving her head to actually look at me, though sometimes she would look directly at me and smile. That really warmed my heart. But she became much more bodily aware, and she would position herself in ways she had never done before, bending to lift something with her back directly to me, her legs slightly apart, and her buttocks emphasised in her movement. Or she would sometimes do the opposite, bending while directly facing my line of sight, and gradually I noticed that either she had somewhere undone an extra button at her shirt neck, or as the summer wore on, her necklines were deeper and she was flirting quite deliberately.

But with my wife being around most of the time there was little I could do and we enjoyed our innocent conversations and our joint awareness of each other. I had thought perhaps Esme was older than I had surmised, but when her mother and father started turning up in the yard I again began to wonder. But what happened then was a turning point. Their presence was related to the fact that Esme had saved up enough money to buy a horse of her own, which duly arrived. It was a big horse, about 18 hands, as befit the height of Esme. A little research told me that it was a retired racehorse. She got fully kitted out and astride the horse she was truly magnificent. I could imagine her in police uniform in the Mounted Branch carving her way through football crowds or demonstrators with no problem at all. And most importantly of all she became an owner, not just a weekend labourer, and that brought out a whole new turn in her confidence.

The next week my wife and I had been away at a competition, and returned in torrential rain. Esme was helping bring horses in from the field. She had on a waterproof jacket and a pair of waterproof gaiters, the kind that left the bottom of her jodhpurs and the crotch area at the front exposed. I was sheltering in our horse’s stable and beginning to imagine the erotic possibilities of this in different circumstances (after all the effect is the same as a suspender belt and stockings) and I think the thought process must have transferred to Esme. She laughed across to me and raised her eyes to heaven at the wet conditions. But then she went through a charade of trying to get the wet jodhpurs away from hugging her bottom, and she watched me as she did so, fully aware that this display was not lost on me. I continued to watch her and in turn raise my eyes to the heavens and I think we both knew what was going on.

Then, one day the next week, when I had a fortnight off work, my wife had gone off on a two hour hack with the horse as she was leaving the next day for a week in her native Germany. Esme was in the stable. We bumped into each other at the back of the stables, and I complimented her on how good she looked on her new steed. She gave me one of her gorgeous smiles, and said,

“Yes, I have been aware of your interest in me over the last few months. You can’t keep your eyes off me, can you? I’m really quite flattered that you find me so riveting. I’m sure I’m not really that attractive. But I’ve not got any experience of what turns men on, so maybe I’m a poor judge.”

For Esme that was quite a speech. I don’t know if it was spontaneous or if she had been rehearsing it for weeks, wondering if she would ever have a chance to deliver it. But it was clearly crafted to elicit a response from me.

“Esme, I find you very attractive indeed. I don’t know how old you are so maybe I shouldn’t be saying these things, but you and I, I think, have struck up a bit of a rapport these past months, and I think we understand each other quite well. I am fascinated by you, I admit I could watch you all day long, and I think of you constantly, wondering if you have a boyfriend, if you think I am impossibly old to be your friend, if you would like me to give you some experience and confidence to get a boyfriend your own age. “

This last was a shot in the dark, but it struck home with Esme.

“I am just 18, which is how I got my horse, partly as a birthday present from my family. My Mum and Dad have now gone off on a late holiday for a couple of weeks and for the first time they have left me at home on my own.