Chapter 41

We phoned the twins on Sunday night from the box on the corner of our road, to thank them again for Friday night.

Their parents had just left for the long journey home, and they were free to talk.

Sheila sounded a little distracted, although pleased to speak to us. She too had thoroughly enjoyed seeing us, even for such a short time. She did admit that she would never see, or taste, chocolate again without thinking of the use to which we had put it!

Adrian came to the point when he got on the phone.

"Jon, our parents were full of Sian taking Malcolm to meet her parents over Easter, and Mum and Aunt Patricia seem to have been talking wedding bells. We got quite a lot of grief for not yet having a boyfriend or girlfriend ourselves, and we finally had to admit that we had both found someone. So of course they now want to meet you!"

"Oh bugger!"

"Precisely! We didn't mind asking you to stand in while we were at Uni to keep the Medical School happy, but this is getting a bit too serious. Can we meet up and talk?"

"Yes, I think we'll have to! We've got a similar problem that we didn't want to worry you with; my parents have invited both Hamish and Julie for the Whit weekend!"

"Oh hell! When would suit you to meet?"

"We have a sports afternoon on Wednesdays; we could grab a sandwich to eat on the train, and be with you by about three?"

"Are you sure? We could come to you?"

"Nah, we've got more privacy in your flat, and no distractions."

"Great, okay, we'll see you then!"

Julie and I had a long and serious talk in bed that night, and the next evening we borrowed Sian for a while, to ask her some questions about her aunt and uncle.

"I think both Auntie Judith and Uncle Colin are a rather old-fashioned; they mean well but they really have no idea about relationships; Mum says that they sort of drifted into getting married because they liked having someone to go out and about with, and were worried about being 'left on the shelf'. Our mutual grandmother was apparently really Victorian, the type who put a bolster down the middle of the bed if Mum and Auntie Judith ever had to share, and who covered up the piano legs, just in case any male visitor got any naughty thoughts about seeing a well-turned ankle."

"Oh dear! That doesn't seem a real reason to get married and commit to each other for the rest of your life. Are they happy together?"

"Oh, they're fond enough of each other, but I reckon they wouldn't know what passion was if it came and slapped them across the chops with a wet fish. I've overheard Dad say that he has no idea how the twins were conceived, but I wasn't supposed to be listening to that conversation! But they're good friends, and I've never heard a cross word spoken between them, although they both have set ways of doing things."

"How are they going to react to their kids having serious relationships then?"

"I don't really know. Sheila said that Mum and Auntie Judith were talking wedding bells for me, which was a bit surprising - but then I suppose that in their day, when you did take your young man home to meet your parents, it was a serious step. Just because Malcolm and I have stayed in each others houses doesn't mean that we'll end up being married, but my Mum got married fairly young, so probably expects me to as well!"

This seemed a common problem - we were the first generation of our families to go to University, the first to have a freely-available and reliable method of contraception, and the first to have no personal memory of the War, so there was no incentive for us to get married as early as our parents had; we were able to have our cake and eat it!

"We don't like deceiving your aunt and uncle, but your cousins need us to meet them, so please for heavens sake try to tell your Mum that it's not wedding bells, and hope that she passes on the message. We're very fond of them, but actually I want to marry Julie when we're both ready to tie the knot, not Sheila."

"I'll try and tell them that you're just good friends, but you'll have to remember that they are new to this, and compare their reaction to your parents when they first found out that you both had significant others."

"Oh god - that's another problem coming up!"

I explained to Sian that our parents wanted Jen to bring Hamish, and me Julie, up for the Whitsun Bank Holiday weekend.

"We're going to have to come clean with Hamish; he thinks that I'm Adrian's girlfriend, and Jen is getting a bit worried about how much to tell him."

"Oh dear! What's the saying - 'o what a tangled web we weave, when first we purpose to deceive?' You'll have to get him on your side, or it will get really confusing when he meets Jon's parents and says something that doesn't quite fit in with what they know."

"Tell me about it!"

xxxxxxx

Julie and I arranged to meet at the station at half past twelve on the Wednesday; she had picked up a couple of egg & cheese cobs and a bottle of Dandelion & Burdock on the way, and we had our lunch on the train.

"Sheila sounded really worried! I hope that she's not getting herself into a state about this?"

"Adrian seemed okay; but more concerned about us not getting our story straight. That's why he wanted to see us face to face."

"So what IS our story?"

"I'm not sure. I think our starting point has to be Sian inviting them up to Cardiff at the end of last summer term, which is when we met them. I suppose that we got on very well; you spent some time with them at Sian's during the summer holidays and became very good friends, and then when they needed a bit of help sorting out the flat before the start of term, you volunteered?"

"All true so far. But why did you get involved?"

"You needed a bit of muscle to do the hard work?"

She giggled. Six months before, I had not been what you might describe as a 'muscle man' by any stretch of the imagination. I still wasn't. Adrian, and indeed Hamish (and now Malcolm) were in better physical shape than I was, though I was certainly filling out, and judging by recent attempts to get into old shirts, my chest, neck and arm measurements had increased by at least two inches.

"Okay, Adrian asked if you would help as he didn't want Sheila or I hurting ourselves lifting heavy things, and he didn't know any other lads?"

"That seems okay. And then they invited us over for that dinner, as they felt they owed us a treat?"

"We'll have to get them to explain that they both needed a partner to take to the dinner, and didn't want a blind date?"

That all made sense so far. It even had the benefit that most of it was true. Sian's recommendation to stick to the truth as much as possible was sound advice, because it was the natural story. Any inventions would be dangerous, because they would have to fit into the picture or we risked being caught out.

The train rattled through the Severn Tunnel and a few minutes later deposited us at Bristol Parkway station. It was blowing a stiff and cold breeze, which also carried a few April showers along; we splashed out 55p on a taxi so as not to get wet.

xxxxxxx

It was a very sober Sheila who opened the door to us; not the hysterically-laughing, chocolate-covered girl of the previous Friday night.

She was, however, still very pleased to see us, and gave us both a big hug before leading the way back upstairs, where Adrian was just finishing pouring boiling water into the teapot, before greeting us.

We hung our anoraks up in the hall and sat down at the table, and the twins brought over the tea tray and a plate of Jammie Dodgers.

Julie had been studying our hostess.

"Is everything okay, Sheila? You really don't seem to be yourself?"

"I'm rather worried about Mum and Dad; they're being very protective of us at the moment, and if they don't think that you're right for us, they might make it very difficult."

"But you're adults, and they can't stop you doing what you want."

"No, they can't, BUT they are experts at making us feel guilty, and it would take all the fun out of being with you if they were constantly complaining. We're already getting some grief about planning to spend the summer holidays working, instead of being at home with them, and it's going to be really uncomfortable if they don't co-operate."

"Have they said anything yet?"

"No, not directly. But they spent most of last Saturday and Sunday asking questions as if we were children, and it's clear that they won't be happy until they have met you and checked for themselves that you are okay. We didn't dare mention that you'd been here on the Friday night; there would have been a real Spanish Inquisition!"

"Twin is right; and I'm afraid that you're going to get the worst of it, Jon. I told them that Julie was intending to train as a teacher, which to them is a respectable profession for a lady, but they didn't know what a chemical engineer does, and therefore don't know if you would be able to keep their precious daughter in the style to which she should be accustomed!"

Adrian's input made it sound even worse!

"Sorry, Jon, but Mum has never had to work for a living, apart from some secretarial work she did in London before she married Dad, and therefore she doesn't expect me to work once I'm married."

Julie asked the question before I could.

"But why on earth are they assuming that you are going to marry your first boyfriend and girlfriend?"

"Because that's what they did!"

"Oh bugger! So they're just making an automatic assumption?"

"Yup, and that means they aren't really listening to a word of what we are saying. There's no way we could get married while still studying medicine, and we'd be fools to get hitched before we were past the junior houseman stage and had decided what to specialise in - the hours are horrendous, and you can't start a proper relationship when you're doing alternate 24-hour duty shifts and actually working ninety hours a week."

"God - is it really as bad as that for junior doctors?"

"Yeah, but at least the Medical School is brutally honest about that. It's why we had such a stiff interview about our motivation, to try to put people off if they aren't going to be able to hack the workload."

"And do your parents realise that?"

"We've told them, but we're not sure it actually sunk in. They still think that life for a doctor is like Dr. Finlay's Casebook, with our gallant medic calmly saving lives in between posh social occasions, going hunting three days a week, and taking his proper place in the local gentry! It got quite embarrassing over Christmas with Mum trying to boast to everyone that we were Medical Students at Bristol. Once we're qualified, it won't be 'my son Adrian', it will be 'my son the Doctor with a capital D'!"

"If we're brutally honest, even though we love them dearly, Mum and Dad can be a bit on the snobby side. They only joined the squash club because it was the thing to do at the time, and I don't think they've actually played a game for months - they just like to go and socialise there. Their friends do a lot of boasting about how well their children are getting on, and they want to be able to do the same. Dad's colleagues at work knew that we'd got in to Bristol almost as soon as we did!"

"Is that why me wanting to be a chemical engineer might be a problem?"

"In our view, it shouldn't be an issue at all; it's a very well paid responsible professional job with letters after your name, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, hopefully!"

"The problem is that they've never met one; the chemicals industry isn't a big player in our part of Sussex, and they only know of big firms like ICI."

"That's who I'm hoping to work for."

"Oh good, make sure you tell them that, it will reassure them a bit."

"But why are they worried now about what your boyfriend is going to do to earn a living? You're only nineteen, and it's not as if you're going to qualify for at least another four years. Even if we were intending to get married, it wouldn't be for a long time yet."

"That's the bit they haven't actually talked to us about, because they're far too embarrassed to bring the subject up. They've read all these newspaper scare stories about free love at universities, and we're guessing that they are petrified that I'll get pregnant and have to give up studying. They would expect the father to marry me, and therefore they'll want to know that any boyfriend is in a position to look after me should the unthinkable happen."

I have to admit that I was gobsmacked by this statement of Sheila's; while I knew that my parents too would expect me to offer to marry any girl I got pregnant, we were careful about the girls remembering to take their Pills, and we also knew that abortion was an option if things went wrong. There was also the small matter of my not being Sheila's only lover, and of course her twin brother couldn't marry her in the event of pregnancy, even if he was the father.

Adrian went on.

"The other problem is that, because we weren't allowed to work last summer, we're pretty much reliant on Dad topping up our grants, and he can't afford to give us both the equivalent of maximum grant out of his salary. If he hadn't bought this flat, which saves us having to pay rent, we'd be permanently skint or having to beg for handouts. As it is, we're pretty comfortable, but if Dad started being difficult, life would be pretty tedious."