Chapter 28

The third Friday of January was our first outing as the twins' 'official' partners.

The occasion was the first of their Bristol Medical School formal dinners.

They had warned us before Christmas that the dress code was posh, and Julie had brought back one of her best dresses from home to wear.

As I wasn't sure that I had quite finished growing - after all, my chest size had increased by more than two inches since I started at University - I had elected to hire a dinner jacket from Moss Bros for the occasion, rather than buy one just yet. We picked it up from the shop on the Thursday, and I tried it on that evening to check that it was the right size. At least it didn't smell of mothballs, as my father's did...

Julie had a pretty necklace of cultured pearls that she had been given as an eighteenth birthday present by her godmother; she showed it to me and I remembered that I had been intending to ask her about her charm bracelet.

"Yes, darling, I've got a gold charm bracelet, but it's at home. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, I just thought that I should give you a charm to mark your time in Cardiff, perhaps a rugby ball or something?"

She could tell from my grin that I was teasing about the rugby ball; she knew I didn't even understand the names of the positions in rugby, let alone the offside rule.

"Perhaps not that one! So what is the real choice?"

"There seem to be about half a dozen; a Welsh Dragon, a welsh lady with a hat, a tiny spinning wheel, Prince of Wales feathers, a little Davy Lamp for the coal mining, a leek, or the rugby ball."

"Thank you, my darling, I'd love one. But it will have to wait until I've been home and collected my bracelet. And then we'll go and choose one we both like."

She gave me a thank-you kiss on account, and then turned to put her necklace back in its case.

We went over to Clifton on the Friday evening after lectures, travelling in the dark all the way. It was a bitterly cold winters night, and we invested in a taxi, rather than risk getting frostbite waiting for a bus outside the station. And of course, we had rather more baggage than usual with our glad-rags, so the bus would have been a bit of a palaver.

Frankly, we weren't even sure that there WAS a regular bus service from Parkway yet. There was a temporary sign for a bus stop stuck in the mud on the side of the road, but no sign yet of a bus shelter.

We were lucky that there were a couple of taxis waiting on the off-chance of some business; the new station hadn't really got itself on the map yet as far as local people were concerned.

The twins made us most welcome, and gave us a cup of tea and some cake to keep us going, before we separated to get changed. They told us that they had enjoyed seeing Sian over Christmas, and were delighted that she and Malcolm were getting on so well.

The dinner was 'seven thirty for eight', so there wasn't a lot of time to spare. Adrian and I helped each other with our unfamiliar dinner jackets and our bow ties, and then waited in the sitting room for the girls to be ready.

Julie came out first, looking absolutely stunning in a long dark blue evening dress, which suited her blonde hair to a tee. The pearl necklace managed to make her look both demure and more grown-up, but then I wasn't used to any of the girls wearing jewellery or make-up.

"Oh wow, darling, you look amazing! That really suits you."

She beamed at my compliment.

"Thank you! You two clean up quite well too! Very handsome. We should do this more often!"

Sheila too looked utterly gorgeous in a simple little black dress.

"Adrian, do we really have to go to this dinner? Why can't we just stay here and make mad passionate love to these two beautiful girls?"

"Nice idea, mate, but we've paid for the tickets already!"

"And if you think we are going to stay here when we've got a chance to wear our evening dresses and strut our stuff in public, you've got another think coming, my darling!"

I took that as a 'NO!'. Oh well, I hadn't expected them to agree. I was looking forward to my evening out, and I knew that the girls were even more excited than I was.

As it was a special occasion, I had brought my little Kodak Instamatic with the 126 cartridge film, and fortunately Sheila also had a 'point and press' camera. We took turns posing as couples for photographs; we didn't have the self-timer technology to get either of the cameras to take one of all four of us, but we got some good pictures of us looking very posh and grown-up. We still have the photos, proudly displayed in the first of our family photo albums.

It was only a short walk from Caledonia Place to the University campus, which was just as well, as there was a bitterly cold wind coming in over the Clifton Downs.

It seemed a little incongruous as we took off our woolly bobble hats, our scarves and our duffel coats to reveal our splendid evening dress underneath, but as everyone else was also well wrapped up against the cold, there were no comments.

Julie and Sheila tidied up each other's hair now that it was released from the hats, and then tried to flatten our hair. I couldn't see mine, but Julie wasn't completely successful with Adrian, who had a tuft sticking up at the back which refused to be tamed. Sheila told me that my bow tie was a little crooked, and she had a go at fixing it for me.

Once the girls were satisfied that we weren't going to disgrace them, we moved on to the hall where people were being offered drinks and beginning to gather.

As we entered the hall, we saw Dr Baxter off to the side. He spotted our arrival, and made a beeline for us. His dinner jacket was augmented by a tartan cummerbund around his waist, and I chuckled a little as I saw how he had managed to stick to the official dress rules, yet still express his own identity.

He beamed at us.

"Miss Carter, Mr Baker, how nice to see you! Mr Baker, your gift was most welcome although totally unnecessary; it was very kind of you. Mr Carter, would you be good enough to introduce me to your companion?"

"This is my girlfriend, Julie Hall, Doctor. Julie, this is Dr Baxter, who is our lecturer in Urology."

"Delighted to meet you, Miss Hall. You are all looking extremely smart; I hope our dinner is worthy of your efforts. Now, I have a great favour to ask of you all. My wife has unexpectedly had to go away tonight, and I have roped in my son Hamish to take her place. He has just started at Reading, and I'd be most grateful if you four would take him under your wing tonight. He's a very shy lad, so please try and draw him out. I've taken the liberty of manipulating the table plan, which may have been a mistake, because between two such charming roses as Miss Carter and Miss Hall, the poor lad may become utterly tongue-tied!"

Sheila and Julie glowed at the compliment. It was well-deserved; they both looked absolutely stunning. I thought that I'd have to take note of Dr Baxter's technique; he had managed to charm the girls without any apparent effort.

"Of course we'll look after him, Doctor, it will be a pleasure!"

A waiter came up with a tray full of glasses of sherry, and we chatted for a few minutes, until Dr Baxter excused himself, dashed off, and grabbed a tall young red-haired lad, who was looking around him as he came into the room. He brought him back to join us.

"Hamish, so glad you could make it! Was the journey alright?"

"Yes, Dad, but it's bitter out! Parkway was very bleak, and I was lucky to get a taxi."

"Well, you're here in time, and thank you again for coming down at such short notice. Now, I've found the youngsters you'll be dining with, so let me introduce you to them: This is my son and heir, Hamish. Miss Sheila Carter and her boyfriend Mr Jon Baker, and Mr Adrian Carter, and his girlfriend Miss Julie Hall."

Hamish looked confused.

"Don't worry about the surnames, Hamish, Sheila and I are twins, and we're both in your father's first-year class. He wouldn't let us save money by coming together as each other's guest, so we've dragged Jon and Julie out on the coldest night of the year!"

"Yes, it's certainly what Private Frazer would call a 'braw bricht moonlicht nicht', isn't it?"

We all recognised the 'Dad's Army' reference, and laughed.

"We're dooooomed!"

"No, Miss Carter, the food shouldn't be quite that bad! I'm teasing you, I'm as big a fan of 'Dad's Army' as Hamish is. I remember seeing John Laurie doing Shakespeare before the war when I was a lad myself, he's actually one of our most talented actors; he used to be a great favourite of Laurence Olivier. Have you ever seen Hitchcock's '39 Steps'? He was in that as well."

We discussed our favourite 'Dad's Army' characters; Julie gave me a warning nudge in case I decided to do my Corporal Jones impression of 'those fuzzy-wuzzies, they don't like it up 'em!'. She had heard it several times already.

Julie explained to Hamish that she and I were flatmates of the twins' cousin Sian at Cardiff, and that she had introduced us to the twins, and we had discovered that we got on really well with each other. That got the awkward explanation out of the way and established our credentials for Dr Baxter, although of course he already knew from Gustav's little operation before Christmas that Sheila and I were lovers.

"I've got to be careful what I tell Sian about this; if it sounds like I've enjoyed it too much, Sian will insist on accompanying her cousin to the next event. She likes an excuse to get her glad-rags out!"

"Well, Miss Hall, I couldn't possibly encourage you to tell an untruth to your friend, but I hope that you will have a very good time, and that we will still have the pleasure of your company in the future."

We all chuckled.

Dr Baxter suggested we have a look at the seating plan, so we would know where to go when we went into the dining room. He pointed out the easel against the wall, and we went over to study it.

It was quite a simple arrangement of one long table with shorter arms coming from it; we were at the end of one of the arms at the far end of the room. A quick name-count suggested that there were nearly a hundred and fifty people present.

We were all a little nervous, and he seemed to recognise this, and smiled at us.

"You'll be fine! These dinners are meant to help our students, not to torture them. We reserve the torture for the exams!"

A gong sounded, and we moved from the ante-room to the dining room. Dr Baxter left us and found his seat on the top table.

The tables were lit with candelabra, and there was a festive atmosphere with bright silver and crisp white linen napkins. We found our names on little pieces of folded card on our table mats, and stood behind our chairs while we waited for everyone else to find their places. Hamish had the chair at the end of the table, Julie and Sheila were each side of him, and Adrian and I were between our 'official' girlfriends and someone else's girlfriend. It was actually a very good arrangement for the five of us, and I mentally blessed Dr. Baxter.

There was a frightening array of cutlery around our mats. Hamish noticed me counting the knives and forks, and leant across the table to advise me.

"Dad says to always start at the outside and work inwards, and trust to good fortune that you'll end up with the right number left at the end!"

Someone at our end of the long table said a very short Grace in what sounded like Latin, and people started sitting down. I helped Sheila and pushed her chair closer in to the table; Hamish got in before Adrian, and assisted Julie.

The starter was an egg salad; the boiled eggs had been neatly halved and the yolks removed and mashed up with mayonnaise and paprika, a good spoonful of the resulting mix had been placed back on each half of the white. It was garnished with a slice of tomato and a lettuce leaf, with a small sprig of parsley across the two egg halves.

As soon as the starter was on our mats, the waiting staff came back round to offer us wine. Adrian was first to be approached, and he plumped for white, so we all followed his example.

The egg was tasty, but didn't do a lot to satisfy our hunger. There was a small roll on my side plate, and I followed everyone else's example, and ate that as well.

Hamish commented dryly that his mother had made the egg salad from one of her Robert Carrier cookery recipe cards, but had at least supplied a proper salad with it.

"Now in one important way this one is far better - Mum's jar of paprika had been in her store cupboard for a while; it was still priced at 1s 3d., and she had to break up the lumps before she could use it. There was no taste to it at all, and she had to use so much that it was all a very strange colour. Dad threw out the jar, and I'm not sure that she's bought a replacement yet."

I told him the gruesome tale of one of my Mum's unsuccessful bulk purchases from the Cash and Carry, and how my sister and still I couldn't stand tinned carrots.

"A seven-pound tin? I'm not surprised!"

The plates were removed, and next there was a fish course; a small heap of what tasted like smoked mackerel pate, with two slices of melba toast, a wedge of lemon and a pat of butter. It was actually very good, but again nothing like enough to keep a healthy teenager alive.

Sheila reached across me for the menu card.

"It's okay, gang, the roast beef is next!"

We all normally had our evening meal at around six o'clock, or maybe a high tea when we got back from lectures and a supper later on. We weren't used to waiting until gone eight o'clock before even beginning eating. Thank goodness Sheila had pressed a piece of cake and a cuppa on us!

While the people on the other tables finished their course, Julie told a story about fishing for mackerel when on holiday in Cornwall as a child; her mother had insisted that she left her catch outside the place they were renting so that the fishy smell didn't come in the house, and Julie had looked out the window a few minutes later to discover one of the local cats making off with her trophy.

"I was really upset at the time, but knowing Mum and Dad, they wouldn't have cleaned and cooked it, and it would have gone in the bin as soon as I'd gone to bed. At least someone benefited!"

The noise level in the hall was now really quite considerable; the alcohol content of the sherry had taken effect, and everybody seemed to be chattering away to their neighbours.

I noticed a chap about four places up from me who was wearing a salmon-pink frilled dress shirt and a large purple velvet bow tie. I supposed that it was fashionable a couple of years earlier, but I was glad that I had gone for the standard traditional white dress shirt when offered the choice by the assistant in Moss Bros. It had seemed a little extravagant to hire a shirt as well, but I had outgrown my old best white shirt, and was reluctant to invest in a new one until I was sure that I had finished growing.

Adrian and I had exchanged a few words with the girls seated next to us, just for the sake of politeness, but they were now gabbling away to their boyfriends, and we were able to turn back towards our girls and Hamish. Neither of us were especially social animals, not good at making small talk, and Adrian had never met these girls before and wasn't sure who their boyfriends were.

Hamish, on the other hand, seemed to have completely lost his initial shyness with Sheila and Julie, the three of them were nattering as if they were old friends. They were currently discussing the relative merits of 'The Clangers' and 'Noggin the Nog'. I'd always liked Nogbad the Bad, myself.

Oliver Postgate had the knack of creating childish characters that also appealed to older people; he wrote gentle stories that often had a moral tale. According to Hamish, he was about to broadcast a new series called 'Bagpuss'; although as none of us had access to a television, it was of only academic interest to us.

I looked at my watch. It was nearly nine o'clock already! I had lost track of the passing of time, which was a sure sign that I was enjoying myself, even if my teenage stomach thought that my throat had been cut.

A waiter's arm came over my shoulder and removed my empty plate, and my side plate with it.

Then came a really impressive flurry of activity. The waiting staff placed steel serving dishes of vegetables down on the mats in the middle of the table; roast potatoes, roast parsnips, cauliflower with a cheesy white sauce, peas and broccoli florets, and small jugs of gravy.

"Please watch out, the dishes and plates are VERY hot!"

Then we were each given a very hot dinner plate with three good-sized slices of roast beef and a small individual Yorkshire Pudding, and a pile of spherical objects which turned out to be potato balls sauteed in Marmite (and which were actually incredibly good).

"Thank goodness they didn't try Croquette Potatoes again! Dad hates them, and he'd be chuntering all night if they got served up again!"

"What has he got against them?"

"The hospital canteen manager reckoned he could save money by using frozen foods and either boiling or deep frying them, and although some things like green vegetables taste fresher cooked from frozen, cheap Croquette Potatoes don't. Especially if you've used that deep fat fryer for fish the day before."