Chapter 23: More on the Morrow - May, 1962

Grandma Henley demanded a full account of our hunt, and was very pleased to have venison in the freezer again. I wondered why Bruce or Robert hadn’t kept her supplied.

“Bruce and Robert aren’t interested in hunting. They won’t even shoot the rabbits. Bruce says we pay a levy for the Rabbit Board to poison them, and doesn’t see why he should spend time and money to go after them.”

I was pretty keen to get back to the Morrow’s, and Grandma had my number in that respect. “You don’t need an excuse to go and see Sandra, she’s a nice girl, and they’re a good family.”

I pushed my luck “You think I could offer Johnny fifty camels for her?”

Grandma surprised me with a wicked grin. “You could just knock her up!” I must have looked horrified, ‘cos she hastened to reassure me. “Just joking. I heard Frank has you pretty well sorted with contraception, and they say you have lotsa young women keen on you.” I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut, and went to put a second coat on the shearer’s quarters kitchen.

Sandra rang on the Friday afternoon and caught me still at the house after lunch. It was very cold and wet anyway, and I was hoping to beat Grandma at Euchre. She was a little tentative about taking the initiative by asking, but she was clear and direct about wanting to spend an evening with me before we both had to go back to school on the Sunday. We agreed to go to Otorohanga and eat and then see where the evening went. I also had a program to buy some condoms and spermicide. I hoped we’d get a chance to use them.

Sandra looked even nicer in ‘town clothes’ than she did in hunting gear, and she liked the way I had cleaned up too, not that my cords and windcheater jacket were anything special. We smooched a bit as a hello, and I was hard before we settled ourselves in Harriet.

“Let’s got to the chemist as first stop, and get condoms and Gynomin.”

“What’s Gynomin?”

“Foaming spermicide. We put a tablet in your vagina. Your juices dissolve it and make it foam. The spermicide in the foam kills any sperm that get past the condom.”

“Oh. Belt and braces!”

“We’re too young to be parents.”

“Sure are.” Sandra leaned across the central console and put her hand on my arm. “I’m not a virgin, but I haven’t had a lot of experience and I don’t know very much. The guy I fucked just used a condom.”

“I’m pretty happy with how things have gone so far. There’s a real buzz when we have ‘full on’ contact.”

“My pants have got wet every time it’s happened, up on the ridge, when we packed up the meat, and in the shower!”

I chuckled. “You weren’t wearing pants in the shower, but you were sure wet.”

“That was amazing. I can’t wait to get you inside me!”

In those days, shops shut at five from Mondays to Thursdays and in the weekend, but stayed open for various periods on Friday night. Sandra stayed in the car when I went in to the pharmacy in Otorohanga. Contraception in 1960s NZ was fraught, and contraceptives were kept behind the counter and out of sight in the Chemists that sold them. Not all of them did, and the only way to find out was to ask.

I did, and the young female assistant called the chemist to deal with me. He did so by asking me to specify exactly what I wanted, and seemed slightly surprised when I was able to tell him precisely and without hesitation. He responded, not by getting the items, but by insisting I must provide documentary proof of my age before he would sell me contraceptives. He grudgingly accepted my Drivers License and bagged a dozen Durex Fetherlite and a tube of Gynomin.

‘Eating out’ in Otorohanga was newspaper parcels from the Fish and Chip shop. Friday night was their busiest time, since ‘No Meat on Friday’ was part of Catholic doctrine and fish on Fridays was standard for a significant proportion of the population. I splurged on a big parcel to share, with half a dozen oysters, a couple of hot dogs, mussel fritters, paua fritters, four pieces of fish, and a jumbo scoop of chips. We got a big bottle of Coke to wash them down.

It was still too wet and cold to eat outside, so we unwrapped our meal in the car, parked in a park on the edge of town. That was actually really nice. Cramped, and pretty chilly with the arrival of more subantarctic air from a southerly front, but nice. We ran the engine to keep the heater going from time to time, and ate more food than we needed, but we were snug, and the fogged-up windows and the sound of rain on the roof reinforced the illusion that we were safe and separate from the world.

Sandra quizzed me about my romantic history, and she was frankly envious of the opportunities I had had to learn about sex and relationships. She had had sex when she was fifteen, while staying with a school friend over a long weekend. The friend’s very much older brother had come on to her and she had thought ‘What the Hell!’, and they had ‘done it’ a couple of times She said she had really enjoyed the experience, but he was ten years older and she had understood that it was a ‘oncer’ and that there was no possibility of a continuing relationship. She volunteered the belief that what we were having was ‘probably also a ‘oncer’.

I wasn’t sure about that – and said so. “I’m a ‘fucking friend’ with Pauline, and I’ll certainly bed my two flatmates if they’re ever willing, but I have no idea how that amazing energy we have between us will develop, and where our relationship will ultimately go. For now, and until we go back to school, I’d like to have as much closeness as we can.”

Sandra giggled. “Close enough to get lots of you right inside me!” She leaned across the fish ‘n chip papers on the console. “Are you hard now?”

She didn’t wait for an answer, but reached for my crotch. That was awkward, since my junk was under the steering wheel, but I tipped my seat right back and scootched up to give her access. Good Idea! Sandra quickly unbuckled and unbuttoned me, and flipped down the elastic waistband of my jockeys to free my cock and balls.

“Jesus! You’re huge! That’s much bigger than it was in the shower!”

“Probably just looks that way, but it’s always a good thing to say to a man!”

“Would you teach me to suck you?” Tough decision!

“For now, how about the abbreviated version – fellatio one?”

Sandra didn’t answer but nodded and leaned towards my middle, so I continued. “One hand round the base of my cock, the other under my balls. You can jack me as you work on my knob and the couple of inches behind it.” She started to move her hand. “Hold me a bit tighter, and start licking me like an icecream.” Sandra did that too. It didn’t take too long to bring me to the edge.

She must have been aware of my rising excitement. I certainly was. “Just doing that will bring me off. If you want to try the taste, you can suck on my knob and the shaft just behind it until I spurt. No teeth!”

Sandra enfolded me with her slippery lips. Her mouth was a lot warmer than Harriet’s interior, and she used her tongue on my frenulum without being asked. That was enough, and I erupted very quickly. Some girls swallow; some don’t. Sandra did, and she kept jacking me all the way through my spasms, then giggled as I panted.

“Do I pass?”

“An A plus for that, and you can take the honours exam as soon as we can go somewhere more comfortable. Would you like to see if I can get you off with my fingers?”

“Let’s go back to the shearer’s quarters. I made up one of the beds. It’ll be freezing cold, but we can snuggle.”

“What about your parents?”

“I think they won’t see anything they don’t have to. Mum went out of her way to quiz me about what I know about contraception when she knew we were going hunting together, and they didn’t have a problem about us showering together.”

The Morrow’s shearers quarters are about fifty yards from the farmhouse, and there was space to park Harriet alongside the Morrow’s old Plymouth behind the woolshed and kennels another twenty yards nearer the road. We held hands as we started up the gentle slope towards the bed we both believed was waiting for us. As things turned out, we were wrong about that.

The dogs knew Sandra, but didn’t know me. As we came round the end of the woolshed and walked past the kennels, one of them gave a single tentative bark before Sandra snarled “Lie down you dogs!” There were lights already on in the house, but now the back porch light came on as well and Della Morrow appeared and called us into the house. It was much nicer and warmer in there than it had been outside.

Johnny was reading in the kitchen a comfortable distance from the big Aga woodstove that was cranked up high enough to warm the whole house. He kept his nose in his book and it was clear that he wasn’t going to be part of the conversation we were about to have with Della. She kept standing just inside the kitchen door, and it was clear that her invitation to ‘come in to the house’ had also been an instruction. I tried really hard to recall and believe what Sandra had said about her mum not seeing anything she didn’t have to.

Della didn’t beat about the bush. “I found the bed you made up in the shearer’s quarters. It’s freezing out there. You should take David to your room.” She eyeballed me. “You’ve got condoms?”

I was relieved, but I reassured myself further by patting the bag in my windcheater pocket. “Yes, and spermicide.”

Della nodded. “Good. June’s not expecting you home tonight. See you at breakfast.” She smiled at us. That felt really nice.

While I was musing that I had never heard anyone call Grandma ‘June’, Sandra moved very quickly to hug Della. “Thanks Mum!”

We tossed a ‘goodnight’ in Johnny’s general direction as Della moved to stroke his cheek and whisper. “Our little girl’s growing up.”

I hadn’t been in Sandra’s bedroom before. Truth be told, I hadn’t been in all that many girl’s bedrooms, and in Jax’s, my visit had been brief and I hadn’t been looking at anything much but her crotch. Sandra’s room wasn’t particularly ‘girly’. Or particularly tidy. There were discarded clothes on the floor, but the bed had been made, and the reading lamp beside it turned on to cast a soft glow on the purple flower lying on the pillow.

I was surprised, but Sandra was obviously gobsmacked and also sounded slightly embarrassed. “Didn’t expect to have you in here, but at least Mum’s been in and made the bed.”

“Warmer than out there – and you can have me anywhere you want!”

We moved into a clinch. Many years later, Dire Straits would capture the image ‘Your hands are cold but your lips are warm’. They nailed it.

Sandra’s lips were hot, and we were both panting within seconds. We started to take off each other’s clothes, and as we moved toward the newish single bed, I got my first good look at her body. I had enjoyed the spectacle of her buttocks and thighs as she moved up the ridge in front of me during our hunt, but then they were denim clad and Swandri draped.

Now I was able to enjoy her without clothes. Her legs were long and lean and muscular, her buttocks well fleshed with the only pair of sacral dimples I had ever seen at that stage, and her belly was flat with a small ‘outie’. Eighteen months before, she had been coltish, with long legs and small breasts. Her legs were still long, but her breasts had grown. Now they were almost grapefruit sized, and she seemed to carry them very high on her chest. Her nipples were small, crinkled, and dark brown, making quite a contrast with the much paler skin of her areolas and breasts.