Chapter 42

We had a quiet weekend in Cardiff; Julie and I had several more discussions about how we were going to behave when we met the twins' parents. I was especially mindful of one of Dad's favourite sayings - 'before putting mouth in gear, ensure brain is engaged' - in other words, think about what you are saying before you actually do say it out loud.

I can't help it; like all my family, I have a keen sense of humour. Julie was only too well aware of its ability to run away with me.

"You'll have to watch it with them, Jon, no making jokes or winding them up the first time we meet them!"

"Yeah, I know. But I don't want to seem too quiet and boring either. You'll have to remember to kick me under the table if I'm getting too noisy."

"Me too! My parents say that when I'm nervous, I talk too much to try to fill any awkward silences."

"Yeah, Jen used to do that as well - but I think both of you have grown out of it. I certainly haven't noticed you doing it. Or perhaps you're not shy or nervous around me?"

She giggled at that comment - we were now far too familiar with each other's 'private' parts to have the slightest trace of self-consciousness left!

"Well, we'll have to watch out for each other then!"

She was quite right; we were far more likely to get something wrong if we were nervous, and talking about what might go wrong was just getting us more and more wound up.

Surely it couldn't really be that bad? Okay, Sheila had clearly been close to tears with worry over whether their parents would find us good enough for their children, but it was 1974, not 1874!

I resolved to have another quiet word with Sian about her aunt and uncle.

Mum and Dad had warned me when I applied for University that the English class system was still very much in operation, despite the progress that had been made in recent years. As the first person in our family to get into University, I would meet people that I wouldn't have come into contact with had I stayed at home and got a job straight from school.

"I met a lot of officers on National Service. The real toffs, the Honourables and the Lords, were nice as pie. Nothing to prove, you see. They knew that they would be okay, and were just doing their time before they went into the City or took over their father's estates. The sons of professionals were all pretty much okay too, keen to get their time over so that they could get on with their careers. The nasty blighters were the ones who had been to grammar school and felt themselves better educated than their parents, and trying to jump up a class. They were very conscious of their status, and all too quick to put you on a fizzer if you didn't salute them fast enough. They're the ones you want to watch out for, the ones trying to claw their way up, because they don't care whose necks they stand on to get there."

Dad had also given me lots of advice about money - in particular, how to cope with having much less of it than some fellow students.

"You will find that some people have more money than is good for them, and others have less sense than they should. One of our subalterns got cashiered for bouncing cheques - he was trying to keep up with the people who had private incomes, and of course he couldn't do that on a Second Lieutenant's pay. He should have learned to say 'no' instead of playing cards with people who could easily afford to lose a month's pay in an evening."

I hadn't met anyone like that; the type who played cards for money didn't go to Cardiff University. I had seen a couple of students with sports cars, but very few of us could afford to run a car of any description - besides, what was the point of having a car when you lived in a compact city with great rail links?

I got Sian alone in the kitchen while we were making a cuppa, and asked her if her aunt and uncle were that class-conscious. She thought for a moment before replying.

"You might have a point. My great-grandparents were in service before the Great War, although they started a small shop together in the Twenties. Mum's mother apparently 'married well' because Grandad was an insurance agent with the Prudential, and it's possible that now that the twins are lined up for a 'profession' that they want them to achieve it. But you and Julie are both going to be professionals, so don't let that bother you. Stand up to them, they'll be impressed by that."

xxxxxxx

Sian and Malcolm went out to the cinema on the Saturday evening, to watch a repeat showing of 'Live and Let Die', which the rest of us had seen when it first came out the previous summer. I was slightly tempted to go and letch over Jane Seymour again, but the sensible part of my brain won out.

Vee took advantage of their absence to persuade me to fuck her over the back of the sofa; luckily the girls downstairs had their record player on loudly enough to cover the noises we made. We hadn't done it in that position for a while; and Vee rapidly rediscovered just how good it felt to be bent over the furniture and taken from behind.

Gustav lasted well, and had Vee howling twice before he shot my seed deep inside her. It was pretty good for me too, and I was well out of breath from the delight of being between Vee's thighs and holding her hips as I thrust into her eager and welcoming body, my abdomen bouncing off her soft white buttocks at each stroke.

Julie cleaned us both up afterwards, and by the time our flatmates got back from the cinema, we were all safely back in the kitchen fully dressed having a cuppa.

They had very much enjoyed Roger Moore's first outing as James Bond, and also the experience of going out together to the cinema as confirmed boyfriend and girlfriend, with no pressure on them to impress the other. Sian had of course insisted that Malcolm buy her a tub of ice-cream from the girl at the interval; it wouldn't have been going to the pictures without that!

We all chatted for a while, and then wandered off to bed.

Actually, I almost got dragged into our room, having completely failed to notice my girlfriend's more subtle hints that it was well past our bed-time.

I quickly realised that Julie was really fired up by my having fucked Vee earlier, and I was soon flat on my back as she mounted me without any foreplay or use of the KY jelly. She was sopping wet, and sank herself onto Gustav's entire length without any hesitation or sign of discomfort.

As they were dangling temptingly in front of me, I took the opportunity to thoroughly caress her breasts, paying particular attention to her erect nipples and rolling them with my thumbs. She gasped with pleasure as I touched them, and when I suckled them, almost instantaneously I felt her convulse around my cock.

She panted, and struggled to get the words out, stuttering as a few connections in her brain shorted out.

"Oh gggod - ttthat set me off fffar too sssoon!"

"Don't worry, darling, you know you can go again!"

And, after a short pause to let things settle down in orgasm central, she did.

She was getting an unusual amount of stimulation this time; normally I didn't rub her nipples when we were making love, as my hands were too busy holding me in position or taking my weight, but with Julie doing all the work, I was able to keep up the pressure on her central nervous system.

She had several more orgasms as she rubbed her clitoris on my pubic bone, and a fairly devastating final climax, the muscle contractions of which forced Gustav to shoot his bolt deep inside her. She collapsed on my chest and I held her with both arms as we got our breath back before falling asleep, still in the same position.

Julie's weight on my bladder woke me at around six o'clock. I quickly made the very painful discovery that our ejected fluids had ended up matting our pubic hair and sticking our lower stomachs together, and our separation resulted in the loss of some hair for both of us. This time the wet patch was between us, and it had dried in a crusty mess that looked like it required a bath to soak off.

You will recall that the cast iron radiator in the half landing bathroom was positioned at a convenient height, and naturally we hopped out of the bath to use it when Gustav suggested that he was ready to play again. This time was much more about us both making love together than about giving Julie's body the orgasms it craved, and it was slow, peaceful and thoroughly enjoyable - a great way to start a Sunday morning.

Vee gave us a very wide smile when she brought us a cup of tea a little later - perhaps we hadn't been as quiet in the bathroom as we had thought.

Julie said that she was going to have a lie-in; Malcolm and I spent most of the day studying, reading the recent journals in the Chemistry Department Library, although I have to confess that my thoughts were elsewhere. I had fucked Vee for mutual sexual gratification - and enjoyed it - but my emotions had been far more involved in making love to Julie, and I wished that I had stayed in bed to hold her as she slept.

We went to bed fairly soon after supper, and I did hold her close all night. Breathing in her scent more than made up for the ticklishness of her soft hair on my face, and the dead arm in the morning, where she had been sleeping on it.

(Even re-reading this in her diary, almost forty years later, makes us both excited again. I'll write some more later; we're just off upstairs for a wee while... )

xxxxxxx

Early the next week, Dad forwarded to me, at Malcolm's address, the expected letter from Mr Johnston at the vegetable factory, offering us the use of a static caravan for the summer and jobs for up ten people for ten weeks if we could recommend them.

I had already sounded out most people on my list; once I told them that Jen and I had both earned over £450 the previous summer, even my graphic description of the sorry state of my hands after a day spent in cold water failed to make them reject the offer.

The twins were very keen indeed to earn some money of their own (assuming that they didn't get too much grief from their parents), Sian and Malcolm also really wanted the work, Julie and I made six, and Jen and Hamish were obvious shoe-ins. Two more names were needed to make up the ten.

However, I couldn't get a straight answer from Vee; I think the fact that we were four couples made her feel a bit insecure on her own. I knew that she wanted to work during the holidays and earn plenty of money; I also knew that she dreaded the thought of being at home for three months with her brothers and parents whining all the time about her dumping Jeff, and trying to get her to beg him to take her back.

The challenge was therefore to get Vee fixed up with someone nice; with only six weeks to do it, and the whole summer to regret it if we made the wrong decision. No pressure, then!

Julie and I took Sian and Malcolm out for a walk in the park on the Wednesday afternoon to discuss our problem.

There was also the teensy weensy little matter of telling Malcolm that when we were all living in the caravan, I would be sharing a room with Sheila, and Julie would be with Adrian.

Addressing Vee's presence or absence was the first topic.

Julie and I explained our predicament. Put brutally, bringing Vee on her own was not a good idea, not having Vee there would probably be a worse one.

We quickly agreed that we all wanted Vee to come with us - mainly because we liked her and we wanted her to be amongst friends for the summer, but also because life in the flat for our last year would become decidedly tricky if Vee had not been with us, and we therefore had too many 'in' jokes and stories from which Vee would feel excluded.

Then we all sat in quiet thought, trying to work out a solution.

Having been in the flat at the time, Malcolm was obviously fully aware that Vee had split up with Jeff, and the reasons behind it, which meant that Jeff's presence most definitely wasn't an option. He could presumably also see the dangers of Vee feeling left out as the rest of us would be in couples, and realised that having an 'odd one out' would be a potential cause of friction.