Chapter 102

As re-scheduled, rather than originally planned, I stayed in Middlesbrough on the Friday night after work, rather than joining the mad rush to the station. With Julie intending to be in Reading that night, rather than sharing my bed in Stamford, there was no longer any great incentive for me to stand in an overcrowded train full of grumpy people all the way from Darlington to Peterborough.

It actually turned out to be a good thing on another front, as it was the Wilton works Christmas Party that evening, and although I had intended to miss it, to my surprise I quite enjoyed myself.

We pretty much knocked off serious work at lunchtime; Anita and a couple of the other ladies rounded up the youngsters amongst the staff and marched us down to the canteen to help with the decorating. Several tea chests stiffed with tinsel, garlands, chinese lanterns and baubles appeared on trolleys from the stores, and the stationery cupboard had yielded more than enough sellotape and drawing pins to put it all up, with the help of half-a-dozen of Maintenance’s stepladders. We were all willing and it was quickly done; the catering staff kindly provided tea and mince pies once we were finished, and it all looked very Christmassy. The Christmas tree which had been there all week actually looked a little overwhelmed with the rest of the decorations, although it still had pride of place.

Over the mince pies I got talking to a couple of colleagues who told me that this was nothing – at the Billingham site they held a massive primary-school-age children’s party on the Saturday afternoon, with Santa giving every child a present. Apparently the previous year more than 600 children had been signed up for it.

“Crikey! How ever long does that take?”

“Oh, the party runs from four until seven, which is about as much as anyone can take, but it’s all extremely well organised, with lots of helpers, so the presents get handed out pretty quickly. They do them by age and sex, so if you’re a seven year old boy you get the same present as all the others – for my lad it was an Airfix model last year. Just a small thing, ten bob maximum, but it’s lots of fun. The big attraction for the nippers is the party food, of course. It’s the real start of Christmas for most of the kids, even more so than the nativity play at school!”

“Do they do any entertainment?”

“They started off with a magician one year, but realised that most of the kids were either eating or running about playing with their friends, so they didn’t need to bother. There’s been talk about having a disco for the ones who are twelve or older, but most of them aren’t too fussed as they’ve got enough going on already with their mates.”

I nodded. It had been so long since I had been to a childrens’ party (and never on that scale) that I couldn’t fairly comment. I did remember going to friends parties and being annoyed because we kept being organised by the adults when all we wanted to do was mess around and tuck into the party food – so I could understand why the magician had been ignored.

The tea finished, people took their cups back to the counter and wandered off. I checked with Anita that everything was finished, and then took off myself. I went back to the office for a few minutes to check that I’d put everything away tidily in my desk and to grab my coat. The place was deserted, and the man on the security desk laughed when I commented on the fact.

“Most of them have gone home to get cleaned up for the party, and the rest have sloped off early while they’ve got the chance!”

“Me too! Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas to you too!”

Despite it not yet being four o’clock, the bus was crowded. There were a lot of car headlights on the road as well, so it looked as if nobody was staying at work to the bitter end that week.

I did get cleaned up a little bit; I shaved again, polished my shoes, and put on a clean shirt and fresh tie. Mrs Loftus was more than happy to give me two slices of toast and a mug of tea to keep me going, and I headed back to the bus stop.

The shindig was supposed to start at seven; I got there at quarter to and found quite a few early arrivals. The disco was just setting up, and I went to the bar and, remembering Dad’s advice to avoid getting pie-eyed at a company do, got myself a half of shandy to be going on with.

There was a small knot of men at the end of the bar already getting a warmer into the bank; I knew a couple of them, so joined them and was introduced to the others. One of the people I hadn’t met before was from British Steel at Redcar; he’d come as a guest as a ‘thank you’ for previous hospitality. He had been asked what British Steel did in the way of works parties, and had just embarked on a story about the Scunthorpe site, which he restarted for my benefit.

Apparently, and he swore blind that every bit of what he was telling us was absolutely true, the previous year for the employee-only night in the social club they had procured (probably an unfortunate choice of word but let’s not go there) the services of a young and attractive lady who had substantial attributes, and was more than willing to let them be seen by the paying public. What had made her act very different from other striptease artistes was the presence of her pet snake, a four-foot long boa constrictor. Initially, nobody had noticed it among the several brightly coloured feather boas that also adorned her neck and shoulders, but as they started to pile up on the stage it became obvious that there was a snake curled over her shoulders. This was new, even to case-hardened steelworkers, and there was a distinct push to get closer to the stage. The striptease continued with the snake being used to conceal and tease, until the moment when the bra came off, to a chorus of wolf-whistles. To general disappointment, her nipples were covered by small tassels, but the cheering restarted when she put the snake down for a moment and gyrated her body so that the tassels first rotated clockwise, then anti-clockwise, and then – and our narrator admitted that he still had no idea how she did it – she got one tassel going in each direction at the same time!

I briefly tried to picture this – Sian was the only girl I knew whose boobs were of that kind of dimension – and failed miserably. It appeared to be beyond the laws of physics for one boob to rotate in a different direction from the other, but I knew from the old trick of trying to pat my head with one hand while rubbing my tummy with the other that things could be done for a short period. I supposed that if the momentum behind the tassel was great enough...

Anyway, I shook that thought out of my mind and got back to listening to the story. The tassels weren’t the only original part to her act – she picked up the snake again and wound it round one thigh before slowly pulling down her very brief panties, which of course got held up on one side. She solved this problem by feeding the snake through the leg hole and up to her crotch, and then put the snake where most of the men in the audience most wanted it to go. The teasing and the exaggerated movement of the snake through her not-so-private parts continued for a while, until with a final shout she pulled off the tassels to reveal her nipples and left the stage, reportedly to huge applause. There had been immediate demands to the committee that she be booked again for the next year.

While we’d been distracted by the story of the Scunthorpe Steel Works Stripper, the canteen had filled up. I looked around and saw a few of my daily colleagues, so I dutifully went up to be introduced to their wives and make polite conversation.

The evening quickly passed with chat, a great buffet, a few more glasses of shandy, and some disco dancing, mainly with colleagues’ wives. There were few single girls present; the unmarried female staff had mostly either brought boyfriends or were sitting in a noisy gaggle which none of us bachelors dared approach. It was clear that a considerable time had been spent on hair-dos; there was a mix of headband styles, a few trying the ‘big loosely curled hair’ look so recently popularised by Olivia Newton-John in the final part of ‘Grease’, and one or two still doing the Liza Minelli short feathered look. Naturally there was still the odd beehive, but flicks and wings were also becoming popular again. I had to admit to myself that I preferred the long straight hair that Julie, Jen and Sheila all sported; although it was clear that these girls had made an effort to look their very best and be bang up to date with the latest fashions, I (as a mere man) just couldn’t see the point of spending all that time and money.

I made my farewells to the people I was with at a quarter to ten, found my coat in the pile on some tables, and headed home. My suit reeked of cigarette smoke when I came to hang it up, and the shirt was definitely headed for the laundry basket. Yeah, I’d had a rather pleasant evening, but without Julie present, it was lacking the essential ingredient. I dozed off to sleep with the happy thought that the next night I’d have Julie in my bed again. I deliberately didn’t try to imagine what she might be getting up to in Jen and Hamish’s bed at that moment – that wouldn’t have been conducive to getting to sleep.

As it was, with my excitement about being back with Julie for the Christmas holidays, I was awake from about five a.m. and raring to get going. I managed to keep quiet until half past six when I heard Mrs Loftus moving about, and then I got washed and dressed.

After breakfast I brought my things downstairs and wished the Loftus’s a Merry Christmas before heading to the station. Despite the fairly early hour, the train south was quite crowded, and got no better when we stopped at York, but at least it was on time to Peterborough. I risked 2p on phoning home to see if Dad was willing to come over and get me, but there was no answer, so I headed for the Stamford platform.

An hour later, I walked up to our house to find everyone back home. Mum and Dad had been out shopping most of the morning, and the other three had beaten me by just under an hour, having woken up early and wisely decided to get ahead of the rush. It was hugs all round and then soup, cold sausages and fried potatoes for me, the others having been fed not long after they arrived.

Dad mentioned that town had been absolutely crazy with Christmas shoppers; he said that there had been a long tailback on East Street with cars trying to get in and out of Peatling and Cawdron’s car park, and they’d been very glad they had walked! Mum laughingly said that they’d been in and out of the town centre before some cars had travelled the length of East Street, and I suspected that wasn’t an exaggeration. I’d seen enough on the walk up from the station to realise that the pre-Christmas shopping panic had set in. Just because the shops would all be closed for two whole days, people were stocking up for a siege.

The inner man satisfied, the first task was the Christmas tree. Dad had already brought in the small barrel and the bricks that were used to balance the stem; the tree itself was in the garage. Jen and Hamish carefully carried it in, I got the job of being underneath it to wedge in the bricks, and then Hamish helped me to turn it to and fro until the panel of judges had finally decided which was its very best face.

Then Dad and I played the traditional Christmas game of ‘Hunt the blown lightbulb’ which as usual provided frustration and entertainment in equal measure – the frustration to us, the entertainment to the others as we got the bulbs tangled in the loops in the wire and cursed – until we could show that the whole string was working. Jen had brought in the stepladder; she stood on top and hooked the far end of the cable over the tip of the tree, and then she and Julie, under Mum’s supervision, looped the lights artistically around the tree. I have to admit that it looked very good. We left the girls doing the tinsel and baubles while Hamish and I went out in the garage and chopped some sticks for kindling wood.

Dad had of course booked a trip to the steak house that evening (sadly there was no “Doctor Who” over the Christmas period); I rather think they stretched a point because he and Mum were regular customers, but officially they had been fully booked for the Saturday before Christmas since late October. Anyway, they somehow found us a table for six, and we had another great meal. It was a happy but tired group who walked home afterwards.

Julie and I had undressed and got into bed when the bedroom door opened silently and Jen came in, wearing just her nightie, and holding her finger to her lips to warn us to keep quiet. She pulled her nightie over her head and climbed under the quilt with us. It was a very tight fit with three of us in my childhood single bed! I put my mouth close to her ear and whispered.

“It’s lovely to have you with us, but are you quite sure about this? Mum and Dad can’t be asleep yet!”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to stay long, just wanted to say hello. You’re not getting short changed, though – this is just a little something on account. The threesome Julie and I owe you will have to wait until you come down to Reading next.”

I smiled.

“You don’t owe me anything, but yes, I’d very much like to make love to both of you again.”

“Okay, that’s a promise. Now, for the moment, if you’ll just lie still so that we can both hop on, we’ll sort you out – you’ve got a fortnight to catch up on, after all.”

I didn’t last very long; with the excitement of my sister squatting over my mouth and my girlfriend moving her hips around Gustav, all too soon it was all too much for my autonomic reflexes and the ejaculate surged out of Gustav before I knew it was happening. I apologised to Julie as soon as Jen had climbed off and I could speak; she just kissed me on my Jen-wet lips and said that I could make it up to her in a few minutes. Jen kissed us both, pulled on her nightie, and slipped out of my bedroom door. I hoped Hamish was ready for her; in the few minutes I had been licking her, the juices had started to flow and her clitoris was poking out of its little fold of skin, so she would certainly need finishing off.

I did indeed have a fortnight’s abstinence to make up for; Julie whispered that although Jen and Hamish had both taken advantage of her the previous night, she was more than willing to allow me to do the same. So, after a few minutes of mutual caresses, a resurgent Gustav and I took advantage of having a naked girl in our bed; after another short pause she took advantage of something firm that she’d just discovered was sticking into her hip, and then, both happy, we finally snuggled down for the night. My word, her head fitted on my shoulder as if it had never been away.

Jen brought us an early-morning mug of tea on Sunday; from her smile and the happy kiss she gave both of us, my suspicion that she hadn’t had to go to sleep worked-up and frustrated after leaving us was confirmed. She and Julie got first go in the bathroom, and Hamish and I took second turn. He was singing happily in the shower as I shaved, and then I got to shower, but without serenading him. He’s a great lad, and he didn’t deserve to be submitted to my croaky morning voice.

At breakfast, I suddenly realised that there was a turkey roasting in the oven. Mum laughed at my surprise and announced that we were going to have an early Christmas Dinner with our grandparents, as Dad had to work Monday 22^nd, and we four were heading off on the Tuesday. She handed out the tasks; Hamish and I got the potato and brussels sprout peeling, while the girls were helping her with making the stuffing, bread sauce and brandy butter. Dad got to do the fire before he quickly ran the Hoover over the carpets.

Then came traditional Christmas game number two – ‘fixing’ the tins of Quality Street that we were going to send home with our grandparents. None of them could manage the toffees because of their false teeth, Grandma Shaw wouldn’t eat the brown coconut ones, and Dad’s parents didn’t like the orange cremes, so they all had to come out, and be replaced by the red strawberry cremes and the purple hazelnut pralines from another tin. Of course, some of the rejected ones had to be tested, so we all got to chew a couple of the big toffee pennies while we were working. Hamish was chuckling as we worked; when Jen asked why, he said that Alastair complained every year that when the nurses offered him a sweet from one of their many tins, all the best ones were already gone.

Our grandparents were delighted to be sitting down to a Christmas dinner with all of us; even though Grandpa Shaw was no longer with us, it was a very merry meal. In the exchange of presents afterwards I gained a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, a Mars Selection Box, and two pairs of dark grey socks. We took the oldies home just before seven, and spent the rest of the evening lazing in front of the telly. Julie and I did phone the twins in Sussex to confirm the arrangements for Christmas, and Hamish phoned his Mum to confirm that he was still bringing Jen home for the festival.

Dad went off to work at seven on the Monday morning; Mum left at eight after telling Jen that the sausages were in the fridge, the washing in the machine, the list of chores to be done on the table, and that she’d be back around eleven – and we’d better be up and about!

Well, this was far too good a chance to miss. Jen looked at the list, grinned, and sent Hamish and Julie into the bathroom while we (still in our jimjams) cleaned out the fire grate (me) and set the table for breakfast and put the boiling sausages in the pan, but not yet on the heat (Jen).

Then my sister led me to the bathroom; her boyfriend and my girlfriend were just finishing wishing each other the compliments of the season, so we stripped off, wrapped ourselves around each other and snogged until the shower was vacant. The other two went off to get dressed, and, very carefully because the shower mat was wet and slippery, I got Jen perched up on the grab rail, and fifteen most enjoyable minutes later, Gustav wished her insides an extremely Merry Christmas, popping his cork and spraying her cervix with his festive cheer. A brief wash with the flexible shower hose cleaned us up in double-quick time, and I dashed downstairs clad in only a towel to start the sausages boiling.

I got back to my bedroom to find Julie still drying her hair; I took advantage of her concentration to give each of her nipples a prolonged kiss, which caused a gasp that I heard even above the roar of the hairdryer. Sadly, after spending almost half an hour in the bathroom, there was unlikely to be much time for anything else, so I quickly got dressed and went back down to cut eight slices from the loaf and put the kettle on.

Breakfast was quickly enjoyed and the dishes washed up; Hamish and I got the coal scuttle and log baskets filled up and the fire laid, while Julie and Jen put another load of dirty clothes in the twin-tub and the wet washing through the spin dryer. Then we made our beds, opened the curtains, hoovered the living room and dining room, and ticked off the last two items on Mum’s list – empty the compost bin down the garden, and make a cup of tea to have with mince pies. We were still sitting there chatting when the Mini drove into the drive, so Jen made another pot and Hamish and I helped Mum in with her shopping. Then I phoned Adrian to check on a few things that I’d forgotten to ask about.

After lunch, we headed into the town centre for some last-minute purchases. Julie and I first went to Peatling and Cawdrons for a bottle of sherry for our hosts, and ended up buying three – another for Mum and Dad to enjoy while we were away, and one for the Baxters as a small Christmas present. Then we had the difficult task of finding something suitable for each of the twins – it couldn’t be too intimate as their parents would see it, but it needed to be something tangible and thoughtful – a record token wouldn’t fit the bill.

Neither of us really had an idea what we were looking for, so we window shopped around town, regretting having bought three heavy bottles of sherry. Julie spotted a pair of knitted woollen gloves with each finger in a different colour of the rainbow; she reckoned that Sheila would love them, so I bought two pairs and presented one to her – she giggled and sent me back for a third pair for Jen. A couple of shops later, I pointed out a wooden puzzle in the shape of a barrel, and she liked the idea, so she bought it for Adrian. Then we went home and scrounged some wrapping paper and sellotape from Mum. Dad came home at six, chuntering about all the goons who left their Christmas arrangements to the very last minute, and we all had tea and a couple of mince pies to keep us going while the potatoes slowly fried in the pan. There’s nothing like the first post-Christmas meal of cold turkey, cold bread sauce, cold chipolatas, hot frozen peas and fried potatoes. It’s the fifth, sixth and seventh that start getting tedious...

Mum started her Christmas jigsaw puzzle that evening after supper; it was a five hundred piece one of a thatched cottage surrounded by trees and a wheat field, and looked like a real stinker. I played my part by sorting out all the edge pieces for her and placing them on trays face up; I got a word of thanks and a knowing grin when I let out a deep breath when I finally reckoned I’d found them all, and went off to play sevens with the others.

I got another knowing grin from Mum when I volunteered to make a pot of tea at ten o’clock – she clearly realised exactly why I was suggesting that my lover and I had an ‘early’ night, but had the tact not to comment. I did compliment her on getting most of the edge of her jigsaw completed, which made her smile. I knew as well as she did that the edge was the easy part.

Once we were safely in my bed, Julie and I finished what I had started when she had been drying her hair that morning, and then we dozed off. I had been wondering if my sister might sneak in again, but she didn’t show up. It was probably just as well; she’d taken a bit of a risk coming in the first night. Not that Mum and Dad would have barged in to either of our rooms when we had others staying, but if they’d called at her door, or spotted her in transit, there would have been some tricky explaining to do. It had been a long day and we both slept well; rather too well as neither of us would have minded being awake and active for a short period during the night.

When we looked out of the landing window on the morning of the 23^rd it was already raining steadily, and it kept it up all day. Mum kindly drove Julie and I down to the station after breakfast; Hamish and Jen were leaving for Bristol after lunch. The trip down to Sussex was not one of our best train journeys ever; London was crowded with grumpy people, and Southern Region were not on the top of their game, so we were an hour and a half late getting to the twins. It could equally have been five hours, the way things were going at Victoria, with queues everywhere. It could have been worse – ASLEF might have decided to call another of their wildcat strikes in their latest trade union campaign to extort even more pay from British Rail. They didn’t have a lot of public sympathy – the news the year before that the British Rail Pension Fund would be investing millions in buying fine art paintings at Sotheby’s had made a lot of ordinary people wonder what the hell was happening to the world, and how train drivers had got into something that was more usually the preserve of the aristocracy and the seriously wealthy. (In fact is was a very shrewd move – I’m told that the pension fund made an annualised return of 10% on the dealing, which was a damn good investment at the time.)

We telephoned the Carters to say that we’d arrived at Brighton as soon as we got off the train and into the station; Julie said that she could hear the relief in Sheila’s voice. We agreed not to tell Mum that we had spent over an hour at Victoria waiting for our train to leave; she hadn’t been that keen about us crossing London with an IRA Active Service Unit apparently on the loose.

The twins erupted into the station about twenty minutes later, spotted us and ran over to hug us; then they led us out to the car park where their father was driving his big old Rover. We could have got all four of us in the back, but to preserve a little bit of dignity Adrian closed the back door after Julie and climbed into the front passenger seat. Sheila was sitting a lot closer to me than the space required; her thigh was warm against mine, and her hand stroked my knee. I put my arm around her back and kept an eye on the rearview mirror in case her father spotted our contact. In fifteen minutes we turned into their drive, and Mr Carter stopped the car as close to the front door as he could get. Being young we didn’t worry about being rained on over that short distance; our host kept his hat on until he was safely inside.

Mrs Carter welcomed us in the hall and asked if we’d eaten – although Mum had sent us off with the usual packed lunch in tin foil, that had gone before we reached St. Pancras a good two hours earlier, so our reply that we hadn’t had lunch was relatively truthful. She sent us to wash our hands and put our stuff in our rooms while she quickly produced something to eat.

It was no surprise that I was in with Adrian and Julie was with Sheila. Even though their parents must have realised, from the number of times we had stayed over at Caledonia Place and our working holidays together, that we had enjoyed carnal knowledge of each other, there was no acceptance that we might want to share beds in their house.

Adrian grinned as he reassured me that there were indeed some options we could consider, and when I raised an eyebrow in enquiry he chuckled before answering.

“Twin and I came home last Friday, and we really miss not being together, so she has sneaked in here most nights since. We just have to be very careful not to get noisy! Anyway, she’s very much looking forward to you visiting her tonight, and I’ll take good care of your beloved while you’re out.”

I smiled wryly. I had little doubt of Julie’s willingness to be taken care of by my best male friend, nor of his ability to do the business for her. The important question was whether she could keep sufficiently quiet – although she had muted her vocal responses while in my bed at Stamford, there had been a few loud gasps and shrieks which my parents might well have overheard. They of course didn’t mind that we were in the same bed and having sex; the Carters on the other hand were much more likely to investigate if they heard anything unusual, and that would almost certainly be a bad thing.

Okay, so I did have a major hand in the loss of their daughter’s innocence, but I didn’t want to be actually tasked with the crime by irate parents. Knowing my luck, I’d get caught sneaking into her bedroom and chucked out of their house late on Christmas Eve with no way of getting anywhere else for forty-eight hours, and end up sleeping in a bus shelter. Whether they would eject the strumpet having her wicked way with their ‘naïve and inexperienced’ son was an unknown point.

“I bet you will!”

He grinned. He was indeed looking forward to it. I knew that Julie was too – her beautiful innocent face belied her hidden desires, and she was always happy to have a tumble with Adrian or Hamish, for the sheer delight of it.

We nipped into Sheila’s room to pick the girls up on our way back downstairs; they were both giggling and looking guilty as we entered, so were presumably sharing secrets. If I’d had to guess, I would have said that my girlfriend was telling Sheila all about her Friday night with Jen and Hamish, sparing no detail, and that Sheila was eager to hear all about it. We took the opportunity of not having older and more censorious spectators to have a proper hello kiss, one that would have definitely exceeded the ‘just friends’ criteria. We were all just a little short of breath a few minutes later as we pounded down the staircase and into the kitchen.

Soup, cold ham and fried potatoes really hit the spot, and we insisted on helping with the washing up.

It had been five weeks since Sheila and I had last been together. I didn’t need to pretend that I was her boyfriend; after being apart it felt perfectly natural to sit next to her on the settee, or help her with the tea tray at five o’clock, or assist in setting the table for supper. Adrian was the same with Julie, and I caught his parents smiling indulgently as he gave her a swift peck under the mistletoe when they went out together to bring in another scuttle of coal for the fire.

The Radio Times had warned us that there was a half hour session of cartoons on the telly; two Tom & Jerry, two Bugs Bunny, a Tweetie Pie & Sylvester and a Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote, so all tastes were satisfied. Then the early evening news came on, so we got up off the floor and helped Sheila prepare the meal, while her parents watched the news.