Chapter 5

“Thank you, Reg.” Freda kissed him again, and made a point of rubbing her breasts against him. He took the opportunity to put his arms round her upper torso, to hold her tight to him, and enjoyed the kissing session.

They were still in that position when Frances and Erika came into the room. Frances called softly, “Hello, you two. Can you spare us a minute?”

Reg was embarrassed. “Sorry, Frances, Freda insisted on apologising, in her own unique way.”

“Oh, yes. The other girls. We’ll talk about that later. Can you cope with pasta cheese for tea? Pretty basic, but we are going to add a bit extra to the dish, courtesy of Erika.”

“I have lived on pasta cheese at times, Frances. It is cheap and easy to make, so perfect for a meal for one impecunious boy.”

“Reg, tonight it is not to be cheap. It is to be quick and easy to make; nothing more. All we want to know is, will you be happy to eat the stuff?”

“Simple answer: yes.” That got him a kiss from Frances, while Freda sat back to allow that access. Erika looked him over, patted him on the knee and told him in a gruff voice, “Later, my boy.” He pretended to be terrified, and that got him a scowl before she grinned again at the by-play.

Later, they sat around the kitchen table with their bowls of pasta cheese garnished with cut tomatoes, some small pieces of lettuce, and tortilla chips. It was Frances who brought up the earlier confrontation at the university carpark entrance.

“Who were the girls who were bothering you, ladies?”

Erika answered, “Prudence Gower and Beth Templeton. Neither has much going for them, except a modicum of brains. Prudence is the tall one; Beth is the dumpy one.”

Reg was not for insults, “Not dumpy, Erika dear. Bigger curves than you or Freda, certainly, but don’t call her dumpy. Call it curvy. What do we know about them? I hardly got a decent look at them; I was so concerned for you two at the time.”

Erika smiled graciously at him. “How perfect of you, Reg. You know how to be nice to a girl!”

He swivelled his free hand to indicate uncertainty. “I know how to be nice to certain special girls, but not to girls in general, Erika. I have to get to know a girl before I can be nice. Mostly I steer clear of encounters with girls; or boys, for that matter. I tend to get tongue-tied around people.”

Frances contributed, “That’s why we are working with you, Reg darling. You need to be confident of speaking to girls in general, APART from your special friendship with us three. You are going to be very familiar with this trio, to the extent that you will engage with us socially automatically, without having to think about it at all.”

Freda leaned forward to lay her hand on his arm, “And when we say, ‘familiar’, Reg. we mean REALLY familiar. We girls need to learn about boys, and you are IT.”

He blushed, but it was a blush of pleasure, not embarrassment. He found he could say nothing by way of retort. And as he looked round at the three girls, he noticed that their rather ordinary-looking faces had a glow about them that enhanced them a great deal.

Or was it just him that was seeing them in that way, he wondered? Was he falling in love with these plain-featured girls? The prospect of that happening did not disturb him at all.

He had just got to know them as individuals a few days ago, and already he was feeling this way about them? What was happening to his isolationist world? The joy of discovering new facts, new concepts, new principles was no longer so all-encompassing in his life. As he discovered when he imagined Erika and Freda were in trouble, these three girls meant a lot to him now, in just a day or two. For the first time in his life, he had found people that he LIKED to interact with.

At home, he had been brought up with a lack of love, by parents who regarded him as an accident. They had not planned on having children originally, and when one appeared in their lives, they got on with it, but just as a responsibility, not because he was loved. He wasn’t; he was tolerated as an expense they could have done without. When his father was killed by a speeding drunk driver while he was crossing the road half a mile from home, things just got worse.

Money was tighter, and a growing schoolchild prevented his widowed mother getting a full-time job. Her part-time job had unpredictable hours of work, and he often got home from school to find a note on the door, sending him to a neighbour’s house until she got home. That meant he MIGHT get something to eat from the neighbour, but often not, for the whole neighbourhood was a district of poverty. Getting a sandwich of cheap white bread, margarine, and home-made jam made from garden rhubarb was often all the food he was offered there.

Going to school without any breakfast was normal, and he was ravenous by lunchtime and the free school meal the children got then. The dinner ladies soon learned to heap his plate higher than the plates of the better-off who did not really need the free lunch. It was national policy for every child to eat a nutritious lunch at school, so it applied no matter what your economic status. He had been astonished to discover that some better-off families failed to feed their children properly, allowing them to stuff themselves with beef burgers, fish and chips, and such fatty snacks, washed down with sugar-saturated fizzy drinks. The school meals offered were much healthier for them, he considered, so he approved of the policy.

At this young age he was already looking at life from a rational standpoint. Science was his staple reading, but he was interested in everything from music to history. The only fiction he read was science fiction, for all the intriguing ideas and concepts that were flung around in the stories.

His deprived family life led to an inward-looking childhood. Instead of being out playing street games with other children, he would be stuck in a corner reading a book borrowed from the local library. He soon exhausted all the interesting works in the children’s section, and so with the connivance of the local library staff, he was allowed to borrow popular science books from the adult area of the library. That not only expanded his general knowledge, it gave him a wider vocabulary as well.

He found that even for adults, the popular reading level was aimed at interesting facts and figures. Textbooks seemed to be provided solely at school, so he went through the science books of the school library. Having exhausted these sources, he moved to history books, maths books, and anything that caught his eye.

While his education became broader and more intense, his connection with the world of people was reduced to the minimum required to function in classes, with teachers expecting him to be the first with the answers and the pupils regarding him as the class swot, to be sneered at as the brain that didn’t function on the social level.

He was not a joiner. He did not participate in team games if he could avoid it. If forced to take part in football, his favourite position was in goal, because there you were on your own. You didn’t have to work with other boys to do your job properly. The boys that wanted to practice shooting at the goal were his only fellow performers. Their need to learn to score provided him with practice at saving goals, so they both learned their craft. As long as he performed well in that slot, he was tolerated by his teammates. His practice at goalkeeping gave him some essential exercise, as otherwise his sedentary life would have made him pudgy, despite his limited calorie intake outside of school dinners.

He became taller, with a pleasant enough face, but remained skinny and morose, so girls paid him no attention. He was a non-person to most of his classmates for much of his school career. He was not invited to take part in drama classes or the annual school pantomime. The school sports day was another non-event for him. He had no interest in being there, and his mother had no interest in attending it, so he slunk off into a quiet corner with a book.

As a result, he became a star performer academically as he progressed up the school. He probably was not any cleverer than most other pupils, but he worked harder and absorbed more information and importantly, retained that knowledge. For this reason, the school wanted to see pupils like him go to university, and he was encouraged to think that way.

Now he was not only coping with the university classes, but providing tutoring to three girls, thanks to the prompting of Frances. Without her intervention, he would have remained a singleton, working on his own without any reference to the world around him.

He gazed over at Frances, coming to the conclusion that she had made him love her, just by treating him as a normal human being; a person worth talking with and learning from; not a loner to be ignored or sneered at.

She may have approached him from a similar viewpoint of herself, but her face’s plainness belied the interesting mind and personality clothed in a gorgeous body that he had at last seen for himself. Despite the money in her family, or perhaps to disguise it, she wore unprepossessing clothes that hid her attractive shape. She had never thought to enhance her fairly plain facial looks with eye-catching clothing to show off her bodily benefits; or even use a lot of make-up. He was glad she hadn’t, and had reserved that view for him.

“Reg? Are you with us? You seemed far away there.”

“Sorry, Frances. I was just musing about you and me; and now you, me, Erika and Freda. My life has gone from a lonely if interesting existence to a full, fascinating, and exciting time with you wonderful ladies.”

Frances was in tune with him. “Glad to know that my, and our, efforts are not wasted, Reg. You are a really nice guy to know, and I hope our relationship develops further; not just for you and I, but the others as well. We three need someone like you in our lives. You make our lives far more interesting and enjoyable, dear boy. You give our existence meaning, Reg, though you may not have realised it.”

Freda added, “You have added some romantic interest into our lives, Reg. You have helped us to view ourselves as interesting girls and not just a bunch of plain Janes. Thanks to you, Reg, I now enjoy being here at University.”

Erika added, “That is a profoundly true statement from Freda, Reg., and it goes for me too. You have helped us to be stronger individuals, and if we can do the same for you, then that is a great bonus for us.”

Reg was not sure what to say, but ventured, “Everything I have done for you girls, is as a result of Frances’ inviting me to join her study group, so she is the one to thank. She was the instigator. I went along with her because she promised to help me with my pathetic social skills. I am performing at a higher level already, and developing all the time, thanks to the welcome you three have given me. I love you for it.”

Frances intervened here. “As the L word has inconveniently raised its head, perhaps we should get down to our studies for a while, folks. It is time to love your studying, I think.”