Chapter 63

I had thought that a lot of other students would be heading for home as soon as term finished, but our early afternoon train from Cardiff Central wasn't very busy at all; people going away for the weekend tended to travel on the Friday and Sunday evenings, it was the wrong time of year for football fans going to away matches, and so we easily found a couple of adjoining seats on the Intercity 125 headed for Paddington.

I even managed to stash our bags in the small luggage area next to the automatic carriage door, rather than us having to lug them to the overhead luggage racks or between the seat backs, so our exit from the London train at Bristol would be quicker and less awkward than manoeuvring our belongings down the narrow central aisle.

Changing at Temple Meads, we waited a few minutes for the direct service to Birmingham, and changed again at New Street, the underground concrete concourse being as dingy and unwelcoming as ever. Our new train was a relatively modern corridor and compartment one; Julie and I were easily able to find an empty compartment so we could sit on the dusty bench seat with its striped British Rail fabric, our legs and hips touching, and hold hands as we talked.

We had a long kiss as the train slowly rattled off through a dingy tunnel towards Nuneaton, and for a moment I wished that we were on some of the old Southern Region commuter rolling stock, where there was no corridor and you were completely private in your compartment while the train was moving – apart from the incurious livestock in the fields along the line, most of the time you couldn't be seen.

You know, like the old-fashioned steam-engine hauled trains in Agatha Christie or Enid Blyton stories, where the station porter unlocked your compartment door when you waved out of the window, and actually carried your luggage for you for a thrupenny tip. Private compartments for quiet murders, Famous Five picnic lunches with lashings of ginger beer, or some other activity where it was useful not to be disturbed. Unfortunately, with the rise of the motor car, and the Beeching Axe falling on so many of the old branch lines, those days were pretty much gone. I was old enough to remember the last days of the steam trains, and now there was nothing but diesel – unless you went to one of the preserved railways like the Festiniog, Talylyn or Bluebell, all recently popularised as a side-effect of the Rev. W. Awdry's 'Thomas The Tank Engine' series of books.

(Mind you, my grandparents had no such fond nostalgia for the age of steam. They had often described the down-side - getting smuts in your eyes when you stuck your head out of the window, your clothes smelling of coal smoke, the delays while the engine took on water or coal, and the danger in summer of trackside vegetation catching fire from cinders, despite all the expensive labouring to keep the railway land free of brushwood.)

However, it was now 1974, on British Rail. There sadly being no opportunity for uninterruptable intimacy, even with us having dropped the blinds on the corridor windows and door, we contented ourselves with talking, holding hands, and the odd kiss and caress. I asked Julie again if she was happy with the proposed sleeping arrangements, and told her again how much I would miss having her next to me all night and every night.

"Yeah, I'm not looking forward to that either. I've got used to you in bed beside me, and I sleep very well touching you, knowing that you're there. Adrian's a bit of a restless sleeper, which is fine when I'm feeling horny and want to wake up in the middle of the night for some loving, but not so good when I want my beauty sleep. I just hope that I learn to sleep through!"

I considered the wording of her rather doubtful response. She had a point. Our weekends with the twins were normally pretty lusty occasions, with the excitement of swapping partners leading to much more frequent and adventurous love-making than on a normal week-night with lectures the next morning. Restful, they were not. Sometimes we returned knackered and sore, needing a couple of days to recover from our 'relaxing' weekend, and catch up on lost sleep!

"I suppose it will be quite different, being with them every night rather than just visiting. Mind you, darling, actually sleeping instead of being at it all night will knock your orgasm average right down!"

My beloved swatted me on the arm with her free hand.

"Ow!"

"And yours! If the work is as physically hard as you say it will be, you'll be far too tired to want rumpy-pumpy yourself, and Sheila won't be in the mood for wake-up nookie either!"

She was silent for a moment after saying that, her mouth took on a more serious expression, and she looked me in the eye before speaking again.

"Jon, being with her every night for the next three months, you won't go and fall in love with Sheila, will you?"

There was a real concern in her expression. I took a deep breath. For some unexplained reason, even after a year together my girlfriend still lacked confidence in her attractiveness to me, and I had so far failed to convince her that she had nothing to worry about.

"Julie, my darling, I'm head over heels in love with you, and I can't see that changing, ever. YOU are the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. Yeah, I'm very fond of the twins, we both are; they're really nice people, and Sheila is great fun to be with, but we're doing this out of friendship, not love. We don't want them to feel left out. Okay, I admit that it's going to be no hardship to be sleeping with Sheila, much like you're going to have a good time sharing a bed with Adrian, but I'd rather be with you, much rather!"

The look on her face was still uncertain. I tried another tack.

"Are you still upset about last weekend, my darling?"

"Yes, I suppose I am, a little bit. I realised on the Saturday morning that you've been holding yourself back when you're with me, because when you were pounding Sheila into her mattress, you seemed to let yourself go completely, and have no inhibitions whatsoever. You've never been like that with me, even though you've done it to Vee as well. I worry that maybe you're just pretending with me, and because you're such a nice man, you won't tell me because you don't want to hurt my feelings. It seems like I don't quite get the real you."

Oh shit – this was worse than I had realised. Far worse.

"Darling, you couldn't be more wrong. Oh god, how can I describe it? You're the best thing that ever happened to me, and I don't want to make a mistake and bugger up our relationship. I wouldn't hurt you for the world! That's why, when I got so excited seeing you have your orgasm with Adrian, and needed to relieve Gustav, that I leapt onto Sheila, who was also desperate after watching something so loving and amazing. We just got carried away with lust, but when I'm with you, I'm much more concerned about you getting there than I am about myself, so I'm making love to you rather than just frantically copulating, as I was with Sheila. I'm so frightened that you'll come to your senses and find someone better that I'm terrified of getting it wrong. That's why I don't take any risks with you. Can you see that?"

I took both her hands in mine and gazed into her face. She looked to be on the verge of tears.

"Julie, my darling, my sweetheart, the love of my life, I swear to you that I love only you. If you want me to call this off and spend the summer alone with you, away from the rest of them, I'll do that. I promise."

She smiled weakly.

"Oh, I do believe you, darling. I'm sorry I'm so wobbly; I'm still a bit nervous about visiting your parents in case I do something silly, and I'm a little jealous of Sheila, because she's got the brains, the looks, the sporty body, and the confidence that I haven't."

"Oh you goose! My folks think that you are the best thing since sliced bread! I fell in love with you the moment I first saw you on that first floor landing, but I was with Sian then, and I thought that you were unobtainable! I've been a bit jealous of Adrian myself; he's rugged and handsome and athletic, and he's much more confident than I'll ever be. Okay, I think he's my best male friend, 'cos I can talk to him about anything without feeling stupid, but I wouldn't have met him if he hadn't been Sian's cousin. Oh, and judging by what I've seen and heard, he's pretty damn good in bed too!"

My girlfriend stuck her tongue out at me. That was a good sign, she was regaining her sense of humour.

"So what I'm saying is that I have had the same worries about you falling for Adrian, but I KNOW for a certainty that the two of us have got something special; I've seen your face light up when you've just caught sight of me whenever we meet for lunch in the Union, and I know I'm not mistaken."

"No, you're not wrong, and I believe you when you tell me that you feel the same. I just worry that you'll get bored with me!"

"You are a noodle, my darling, and I do love you so much. Never in a million billion trillion zillion years will I get bored with you; even when we're sitting next to each other in the Residents Lounge of the Bide-A-Wee Home for the Confused Elderly, and I'm deaf as a post, I'll still adore you!"

"Hmmm. I THINK that's a compliment?"

"Yes, it is! I'm saying that I want to spend the rest of my life with you! I want us to grow old together, surrounded by our children and grandchildren."

She beamed, a truly radiant smile on her face. I had finally said something that she wanted to hear from my lips.

"Mmmm. Me too!"

She kissed me fondly.

There was a companionable silence for a few minutes as we just held hands. Julie seemed to believe me when I said that she was in no danger of being displaced by Sheila, and I was fairly confident that she wasn't going to fall for Adrian.

She had changed her train of thought, and now asked me another tricky question.

"Jon, what are we going to do about the twins?"

"What exactly do you mean, my darling?"

"Well, they are a bit stuck. Even though they love each other, they can't ever get married, and we've only got another year left at Cardiff to pretend to be their other halves. By this time next year, they'll be on their own, so they really need to get themselves a genuine boyfriend and girlfriend. We're only a short term solution, in the greater scheme of things."

That was quite a change of subject; I had to gather my thoughts anew.

"I think I know what you mean. I reckon that it's a bit too easy for them; they're never going to be lonely while they've got each other, whenever they want a cuddle or a bit of passion, the other one is ready and willing. There is no incentive to go and find someone else, like Vee had to with Fred, or Sian with Malcolm. Do you think they were telling the truth about being in with a chance of a shag at their Summer Ball?"

"Oh yeah, I do think they were genuinely frustrated, and looking for someone that night. They're always very careful not to show any physical affection outside the flat, and as their Mum staying had stopped them getting their normal ration of loving, they were probably both very horny and sizing up the available talent. It's a real shame, I think it would have done them both a lot of good to have shagged someone new."

"You agree they've had it too easy?"

"Too right! Actually, we all have. Sian did the hard work for you, and she talked me into having sex with you, not that I needed that much persuading after catching you and Vee! And you arranged it for Jen, and we all set her up with Hamish. Apart from Vee at the Freshers' Ball, none of us have ever had to chat up a complete stranger. That's what I found so frightening about the whole idea of finding a boyfriend when I came to University, I was panicking about how many frogs I'd have to kiss before I found my Prince!"

I chuckled appreciatively. It was nice to know I was currently highly rated.

"But what do we do? There will be some other people our age at the factory they could try to seduce, but that's risky because of all the gossip, and it's not as if we're going to have a spare room for them to have sex with other partners, even if they do manage to pull. I can't see any alternative to going ahead as we planned, but trying to hint that they need to start looking for people to replace us when they get back to Bristol."

She sighed.

"I just don't know, darling. I think we'll have to do exactly what we said and share rooms with the twins for the summer. Even though I'm enjoying my little forays with Adrian and Hamish, I always want to be back with you. I don't mind keeping the Six Musketeers going next year, just for the fun of it, but after that we'll graduate and have to find jobs, and then the only important thing to me will be being with you."

I leant back and caressed her shoulders while I mused on the problem. As a young man I was naturally more than happy to continue with the variety of having three willing partners for the coming year, but I knew that if push came to shove, Julie was the one I really wanted to be with.

Thinking back to the previous year, when I'd taken the three girls from the flat out for the evening in rotation, Julie was the one I always woke up beside in the morning.

The nights when Vee had dressed up in her glad rags and I'd taken her to the Jazz Club, before attempting to fuck her brains out, had always ended with me leaving Vee in her bed, picking up my clothes, creeping downstairs and crawling under the duvet with a sleeping Julie.

Although Sian had taken my virginity, our relationship had always been that of friends discovering sex together, and a good shag with Sian was much more about having some fun and healthy exercise than genuine love and passion. I was delighted that she had found love and a best friend in Malcolm. She had been a good friend to me, and it was at her insistence that I always crept in beside Julie for the remainder of the night.

Sian had been the one who suggested to her cousins that Julie and I could help them arrive at university with some sexual experience; crikey, that had been a long weekend and a half! With Vee and Sian deciding to join in, Adrian and I had been outnumbered four to two, and those four days had nearly killed me – but what a way to go!

We'd liked the twins from the start, there was no nonsense about them, and they were game to try anything. We had happily agreed to help them refurbish their flat, and as they were now so close by train, it was easy to nip over to see them for a weekend, and have fun as a foursome. We had no secrets from them, and we both felt at ease with them. I hoped that they would be our life-long friends, you know, the type of relationship where you are godparents to each others children, holiday together and take turns to host Christmas when the kids are young.

But, Julie was correct; there was probably no long-term future for our sexual relationship with the twins.

They were indeed good – probably our best – friends, but once we had moved away from Cardiff, it wouldn't be easy to get to see them in Bristol anything like as often. I'd heard of several people who had tried to maintain a long-distance relationship when one of the couple had to move away, and it hadn't worked out for any of them. If that was going to be the case, then the best thing we could probably do for the twins was to persuade them to look around to find someone else before they lost us. Yeah, it would be really difficult for them, and they'd have to find some foolproof way of hiding their incestuous relationship from their new partners, but if they didn't do that, then they'd be very alone when we moved away. If they just clung to each other, they'd merely be making it more difficult to find spouses as they started work.

God! Why was the world so complicated? In order to do what we thought was the best thing for our friends, we'd risk ending up not being the kind of friends they wanted! And how negative was it, Julie and I to be now seriously talking about no longer seeing the twins, just at the point when we were committing ourselves to sleeping with them for the next three months?

I tried to put these thoughts into words, to see what the love of my life thought of my logic.

"I'm so confused, Julie. Okay, I totally agree with you that the twins need to find somebody to replace us in a year's time. If I end up having to get a job in the North Sea Oil industry, which is quite possible, there's no way I'd get down to Bristol from Aberdeen or Shetland more than once or twice a year. What if I couldn't find anything in the UK, and we had to go off to some god-forsaken hole like Saudi Arabia for a few years? My problem is how and when we break it to the twins – I'm sure that they'll be really upset, as we've become such good friends. Even though you're the only one I make love to because I want to merge my soul with yours, I still try to give Sheila the real deal, and I'd hate to do the dirty on her by dumping her suddenly."

My sweetheart let out an explosive giggle.

"That's why I know that you are the nicest man I've ever met! You really do care about your friends. No, I don't want to just 'dump' Adrian either. He's always been really sweet to me, and we do genuinely make love, with kissing and cuddling afterwards. I know exactly what you mean about merging souls; although I'm very fond of him, whenever he shoots his stuff into me, I think about the soggy mess I'm going to be in when it starts dripping back out, but with you, I dream about the day when I'm off the Pill and you're going to make babies in me!"

She must have spotted me sitting up two inches taller at the thought of this wonderful girl being the mother of my children one day.