Chapter 73

After our return from the sensual pleasures of our weekend visit to Reading, which had almost been an early half-term holiday for us, Julie and I were both suddenly hit by deadlines for submission of written assignments, and had a couple of very late nights working at the kitchen table while we caught up. We realised that we needed to take stock of how our studies were doing; the pace of our third and final year had certainly hotted up a bit, but we weren't sure that we had been doing quite enough.

After chatting to a couple of other fellow-students about their work-loads, our niggling feeling that we'd been taking it a little too easy was confirmed as true. We'd obviously spent a few too many evenings in our first month back chatting with our flatmates, in the pub, or otherwise enjoying each others' company. Our original good habits of starting the work as soon as we received the assignment had seriously slipped; we were both now guilty of leaving things until the last minute, and our sins had found us out. It's a teensy bit tricky to write a concise and thorough report of an experiment if you haven't finished (or, being brutally honest, even started) transferring the various scribbles on rough scraps of paper into your notebook...

We reluctantly agreed that we needed to spend the first weekend of November catching up on our somewhat-neglected coursework if we were going to get the first-class degrees we wanted. The many potential distractions of the flat meant that we needed the peace and quiet of a library, somewhere where we couldn't be tempted to have 'a quick cup of tea' that then somehow always turned into an hour and a half of enjoyable but pointless nattering with Vee!

We did join the other four for the usual Friday night Student Special Curry at six o'clock, but we didn't accompany Vee and Fred as they went off to the Jazz club just before nine, in what was becoming a regular routine for them. A late night of drinking, dancing and listening to music would indeed have been great fun, but would have reduced our effectiveness the next day.

I hoped that Julie hadn't noticed me looking rather wistfully at Vee wearing the wonderfully close-fitting teal green jumper that showed off her petite and curvy figure (and auburn hair) beautifully; she certainly didn't mention it, or seem surprised at my eagerness once we were in bed half an hour later, so I didn't let on that Gustav had been attempting to lead me astray with his fond memories of plundering Vee's eager body the previous year!

Mind you, we knew that Julie's period was due, so we were intending to make the most of our early night. Once her mouth had taken the edge off Gustav's over-eagerness and I had got her juices flowing, she straddled me and rode him while I held her slender waist in my hands and gently nuzzled her nipples as they swayed in front of my face. She gave herself several climaxes as she rotated her hips and moved slowly up and down his length, and when she got her big come, I'm afraid that Sian and Malcolm can have been in no doubt as to what we were doing – if Monica and Sarah were in their rooms on the floor below us, they'd probably have known all about it as well!

I wasn't all that keen to leave our nice warm bed first thing on the Saturday morning, but needs must. I did take everybody a cup of tea before we left; they were all vaguely awake even if they didn't have to get up quite so early. The Chemistry building was surprisingly busy for a weekend; I wasted some time chatting in the tea-room with a couple of mates when I went in to make myself a coffee and put 10p into the honesty box, but otherwise I knuckled down to my research in the departmental library. I briefly nipped out to buy a cheese roll for my lunch, and didn't get back to the flat until gone five, not long after my girlfriend's return.

Julie too was pleased with how much work she'd got done in the main library without any temptations or distractions. She was less pleased when she got undressed for bed and discovered that she was already off games; she spooned up to my back all night to keep her tummy warm. I have to admit that we were as snug as two bugs in a rug.

With the clocks having gone back an hour to Greenwich Mean Time the previous weekend, it was daylight again as we had our breakfast early on Sunday before heading off for another three hours in the library. As it was a dry day with the sun peeping out, after lunch we decided to go for a long walk across the river, going North up Bute Park almost to Llandaff, then back down across Pontcanna Fields until we got to Sophia Gardens, and then cutting through the gates at Dyfrig Street onto Cathedral Road, and then we turned left and strolled back home along leaf-strewn pavements, pausing as we crossed the Taff to watch the cold coal-dark waters flow under the bridge.

You know that bit of Kipling, 'the Elephant's Child' I think it is, where he talks about going down to 'the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River'? I finally understood what he meant about greasy – there was no foam or energetic turbulence, just a sluggish, almost slow-motion, surface movement as the water from the Valleys headed slowly but unstoppably to the sea. Mind you, I've also watched the Taff in spate, very close to flooding over the football pitches and parkland, and that is quite a different animal, with whorls of foam, white water and flotsam making it intensely alive.

We were more than ready for a cup of tea when we got home; we'd picked up some crumpets and butter at the corner shop and toasted them under the gas grill, treating our flatmates to a proper autumnal tea. Malcolm coated his with Marmite, which I thought was overkill – the generous pat of melting butter was enough for the rest of us. The pork chops with sliced apple and baked potato that Fred cooked for supper also went down very well. I scored major brownie points by making Julie a hot water bottle when it was time for bed.

There was a great deal of condensation on our windows on Monday morning, and many more leaves down on the pavement – it looked as if there had been an overnight frost, although in the middle of the city it was quite hard to tell. Cardiff is normally pretty mild, protected from the frosts by the same mild south-westerly winds up the Bristol Channel which bring all the rain, but it doesn't take much calm or easterly weather to bring the cold air down from the Black Mountains or the Brecon Beacons. During the winter of my first year, when I had quite a walk into college, there was a frost on the grass most fine mornings. Since I'd moved into the Richmond Road flat, though, I had to rely more on seeing ice on car windscreens to tell me quite how cold it had been overnight.

I had a tutorial on the Tuesday; we reviewed my coursework and laboratory grades, and he reckoned that I was still on track for a First. That was a huge relief; I knew that the big chemical industry players set great store on the potential to undertake a Ph.D., and my tutor told me that his reference would include that possibility.

He also made me laugh as he told me that I most certainly wasn't the first student to come back from the second year long vacation suddenly realising that I needed a job at the end of the year, and I wouldn't be the last either.

"Rather a lot of your colleagues haven't made that important mental step yet, and they've got a shock coming. They're okay until about February, and then the job-finding process takes off pretty fast. Don't worry, we'll help you all. Prof takes it badly if any of our students don't find jobs as soon as they graduate; he reckons it reflects poorly on our course, so we work hard to maintain Cardiff's good reputation for the milk round."

Julie was less happy that evening; she'd just been set another essay, some sort of critical commentary which meant that not only did she have to read the book, but she also had to find out what others had said about it, and critique their work. She said that it was mainly an exercise in academic referencing, and that it was therefore going to take several rewrites before she could produce a fair copy to submit. Long gone were the days of being able to leave it until the last minute and then write it straight off the cuff; this one would take quite a lot of research, and some careful editing. She'd already started reading the book again; she brought it with us when we went down to the laundrette that evening to do our washing, and we both sat there in the warmth of the big machines with our pads and biros, instead of nipping over to the pub for a swift half or two as we normally did.

I did persuade her to come for a quick swim the next afternoon on the grounds that we needed a bit of fresh air and exercise, but after tea she went back to the library and stayed there until they kicked her out at ten o'clock. Yep, the pace of life in the third and final year was definitely faster than the previous years!

There was another IRA pub bomb, this time in Woolwich, in south-east London, the next day, Thursday 7^th November. A soldier and a civilian were killed. The news on the radio was full of it, and more warnings to be security conscious and watch out for suspicious packages.

That was not good news, because Jen and I had both promised Grandma that we would go home for the weekend, for Remembrance Sunday. It would be the first time she had gone back to the British Legion Club since the day of my grandfather's funeral, way back in March.

As soon as I heard the news on the radio that evening, I nipped down to the public telephone box on the corner and phoned home. I discovered that my sister had already called.

Mum was very concerned about the risk we were running travelling on the railways, and I had to reassure her that strict security measures were in place. Jen and I both repeated that we were more than happy to be with our grandmother and that we'd be really careful while travelling; though I'm pretty sure that Mum didn't stop worrying about us until we were both safely back at University on Sunday evening, and had duly phoned her to report our safe arrival.

I sloped off from my lectures after lunch, taking my one and only suit with me, and met Sis as arranged at Didcot station just before four, so we could do the second half of the journey together. We exchanged affectionate greetings behind a couple of mail trolleys; a long kiss with tongues and a close hug that was certainly not appropriate for siblings, but which we both enjoyed very much. Luckily, our connecting train to Birmingham came in before we could get too carried away and start anything that would be difficult to finish. We found an empty compartment fairly quickly, but there was a lot of traffic down the corridor, so any further physical expression of affection was out of the question. We sat next to each other on the bench seat, our hips and shoulders touching. I put my left arm round her waist to keep her close.

"So what's Hamish up to this weekend?"

"Hopefully resting and getting his strength up for Sunday night, so that he can show me just how much he missed me!"

I chuckled. I could easily imagine what she had in mind!

"I thought of sending Julie to stay with the twins, but she's got another big essay to finish, and she said she'd rather have peace and quiet to think it through."

"That's a shame; she'd have been very welcome. Sheila should hopefully be out of action this weekend."

I spotted the word.

"Hopefully?"

"Yep. If not, she's very pregnant indeed. We went down there last weekend to have Sunday lunch with his parents, but we stayed with the twins on Saturday night for a bit of fun. I wasn't feeling all that great with my period, so I only had one go with Adrian, in the shower. The two of them then decided to play tag with Sheila half the night, and she went a teensy little bit wild. God, her sheets were a mess in the morning! Heaven knows how much of their stuff dripped out of her; she's going to have to take the under-blanket to the dry cleaners – and that's with a towel below the sheet too!"

I laughed again. I decided not to tackle my sister on 'a teensy little bit wild'; she had previous convictions herself on that count.

"I'm not sure of the difference between being pregnant and very pregnant, but I hope very much it's neither. Julie would happily have played with both of them this weekend if she'd known – she's been off games all week, and we don't have the luxury of a shower, so she's been climbing the walls a bit. She told me to get lots of rest as well!"

"So, have you been climbing the walls too?"

"No, Julie has been very kindly helping me out, although she's been making very rude comments about how we men wouldn't put up with periods anything like as well!"

"Yeah, it's not the greatest fun in the world. But I try and look at it this way - when we do settle down and have kids, it should all be worth the disadvantages of being the female of the species."

"Just don't have them until you're ready!"

She smiled and looked at me.

"Nor you, either! I know you men are all the same, genetically programmed to fertilise the female and run away! Thank God for the Pill!"

I spluttered at this feminist attack on my morals. I ignored the peripheral fact that the Catholic Church was still firmly insisting that God had nothing to do with the Pill, and thought of it more as the work of Satan in destroying morals and the sanctity of marriage; and concentrated on the implied suggestion that I would run away from my responsibilities.

"Julie knows full well that I would marry her if she got pregnant!"

"Yeah, but what if it then turned out to Hamish's or Adrian's kid? What if she had to drop out before she got her degree? How would you support her and the child?"

Luckily, Julie and I had already had this conversation, way back in the Spring when Sheila had warned her that the Pill wasn't now considered one hundred per cent reliable, and we'd had to have a grown-up conversation about what we would do if disaster did strike.

"We've talked about this; she said that she'd probably go for an abortion, rather than screw up her chances at getting a good career, even though there's a small risk that they'd bugger up her insides and she wouldn't be able to get pregnant when she wanted to."

My sister smiled and hugged me with her right arm.

"Great! You have thought about it. I was only playing Devil's Advocate – Hamish and I came to the same conclusion some time ago, and the twins agree too. We're all the first generation of our families to get the chance of going to University, and it would be so silly to screw that up just because something went wrong with our contraception. There are so many women around who just never got the chance of an education because they were married with children at our age. Mum left school too early, and her family would never have afforded to send her, so I feel that I've been given an opportunity that she was denied, and I don't want to make a mess of it."