Chapter 78

Despite cuddling up close under our quilt, Julie and I were both uncomfortably cold when we woke up on Monday morning.

Two and a half weeks without human occupation or heating had left our Richmond Road top flat the kind of temperature you expect of your garage or garden shed, not your bedroom. It was the raw kind of cold that seeps into your bones, and our single-bar electric 'fire' hadn't got the capacity (nor had we the money to feed the meter that much) to replace the missing warmth in the couple of hours we'd had it on before we went to bed. The hot water bottle that we'd shared had gone cold in the early hours and been ejected, and the only warm bit was the quilt immediately around us. When I stretched out my toes, they hit cold material, which is probably what had woken me up. But we couldn't keep lying there; we were hungry and thirsty, and both needed a trip down the draughty corridor to the loo.

Chuntering as we climbed into chilly clothes, we nipped round to the corner shop for the essentials like bread, milk, butter and eggs. I cursed myself for not thinking of getting a carton of milk to bring back with us the previous evening; our late Sunday return had meant that we hadn't passed any shops that were open. Perhaps if we'd come the longer route via Salisbury Road, rather than cutting past the prison and Windsor Road, we might have found one of the small shops still serving.

As we stood in the porch and Julie unlocked the front door, I shook my head ruefully.

"We were a right pair of idiots! We only came home last night because the twins had lectures today; we could have spent the night and come back first thing this morning."

My beloved grinned at me as she pushed the door open and retrieved the Yale key.

"I know! But we didn't want them to have a disturbed night, so we left them to catch up on their kip in their nice warm bed. We didn't think that we could have easily had the other bed, 'cos I bet they cuddled up together!"

"I bet they did! And then you'd have been able to have a cuppa last night and this morning, and not got so cold. God, I'm so sorry, darling!"

"Never mind, what's done is done, as the actress said to the bishop. You put the kettle on and make some toast, and I'll scramble us some eggs."

We quickly made ourselves a cuppa and some much-needed breakfast, which cheered us up no end.

It was still pretty damn chilly in the kitchen with its two outside walls, big north-facing window and poorly-insulated roof, so we kept our anoraks on while we cooked, but at least some hot food helped warm us up. Julie had some really good striped multi-coloured fingerless gloves that Jen had sent her for Christmas, and they kept her hands much warmer than mine were – I almost wished I had a pair myself. I contented myself with wrapping my paws around a third mug of tea; I'd made a full pot just for the two of us, and we drained it.

After washing up, we returned to our room and switched the electric fire on for a bit as we made the bed and tidied up. Julie refilled the hot water bottle and we put that back in to help air the quilt and mattress a little bit. We decided to get our 'thank-you' letters to Mr & Mrs Carter written and posted, and once they were completed and we'd checked each other's spelling, I dashed out, turned left and popped them in the nearest pillar box, at the junction with Richmond Crescent.

My 'thank you' letter to the Carters was a great deal more genuine and heartfelt than the rather perfunctory 'duty' one I had sent to Julie's parents, Mr & Mrs Hall, after Christmas in Exeter. We'd both thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Sussex, and had felt most welcome, even if we'd had to obey the rules of the house as regards physical displays of affection. The Carters hadn't seemed quite as old-fashioned or suspicious of us as when we'd first met them, and we had found that we actually quite liked them, and wanted them to like us. It was a real shame that at the moment I couldn't say that about the Halls, but maybe they too would thaw as I saw them again. I certainly didn't want Julie to have to make a choice between them or me, but at the moment, I couldn't see myself wanting to have much to do with my future in-laws. Mind you, although I hadn't yet dared ask, their daughter didn't have a great deal of contact either – I rang my Mum about twice as much as she phoned hers.

Sarah and Monica, the two girls in the first-floor rooms below us, came back during the morning and popped up to say hello (and exclaim how cold it was!), and Sian and Malcolm turned up late in the afternoon, just after dark. They'd had a great time over the holiday, Christmas at her parents and New Year at his, but were happy to be back. Their room too was cold, but with better-fitting curtains, one-quarter of the window surface and one-third the volume and ceiling area, it was a sight easier to warm up than our living-room-become-bedroom.

Over a pot of tea, Sian asked how we'd got on with her Uncle Kenneth and Aunt Pamela – the twins' parents – and laughingly admitted that she'd given us a really good verbal reference when she'd been chatting to them on the phone the day before Christmas Eve.

"So that's why they were quite so friendly?"

She giggled.

"Oh, I think they realised from hearing your names being mentioned so much that the twins were pretty keen on you, and of course they were really chuffed that we all managed to earn so much money over the summer thanks to you, so all I did was build on the favourable impression that you managed to give them when they first met you."

I smiled at that. It was still a moot point as to who had been most nervous when we'd agreed to meet the twins' parents for the first time – Sian was probably in the top half, given that she was the one who'd introduced us to her innocent cousins in the first place, and would therefore be blamed if it all went to ratshit.

"So it was worth having my hair specially cut, and nicking those flowers from the cemetery to give to their Mum?"

Julie elbowed me in the side. I'd only been teasing her about taking a bunch of cut flowers where someone had left them on a grave, rather than buying them from the van in the layby, but she thought that the joke was in poor taste.

"I reckon that they felt that if you were willing to sacrifice your long flowing golden locks for their daughter, then you couldn't be as terrible as your first impression."

Julie giggled as Sian neatly turned the joke onto me. I hadn't been that upset over having a haircut; really long hair is not a great idea when you are dealing with Bunsen burners, and it also took a hell of a long time to dry after a shower or swim. Yeah, we all had the fashionable long hair of the time, but believe me, most of us scientists were a helluva lot neater than the non-scientists. You should have seen some of the would-be hippies who were reading Sociology or some other arty-farty subject – the odd one could still be seen wearing a kaftan, and those had gone out of style years ago!

"Anyway, they told me that they were more than happy for the twins to have you as their friends, and they hoped you'd all continue to get on so well."

(That was both a relief and a worry. We were both very fond of the twins – as good friends as well as lovers – and didn't want to lose contact, but we were also fully conscious that in six or eight months we'd have finished at Cardiff and be somewhere else in the country, embarking on our careers. Quite how we'd then keep up the relationships from a distance was hard to visualise, and we really didn't want the Carters to see us as the bad guys who had dumped their kids at the end of our University years. We didn't want to dump the twins either, but we had to face facts – at some stage we were intending to get married, and we hoped that by then the twins would have found serious relationships of their own, or at least be looking for partners once they'd finished medical school. Anyway, we still had those few months to enjoy. Okay, we also had our Finals to endure, and the twins had their own studies to keep them busy. Hopefully we'd manage to get together a few more times for some fun together. Who knows, we might finally get to see the elusive Johnny Morris of 'Animal Magic' fame during one of our visits to Bristol Zoo.)

Malcolm finished his mug of tea and picked up all the empties to rinse them under the tap. At least the North Sea Gas powered geyser on the wall above the sink gave pretty instantaneous hot water, even if it then did its bit towards steaming up the kitchen window.

"So what's for tea tonight?"

"The cupboard's pretty empty; we haven't done a proper shop, but there's more than there was last night. Small portion of scrambled egg on toast?"

"No, I need much more than that! The buffet car had sold out of sandwiches, and lunch was a long time ago."

Sian giggled.

"Yeah, he's a growing lad, and needs his three square meals a day and eight hours beauty sleep every night!"

"I didn't notice you refusing second helpings of turkey?"

"It would have been rude not to, after all the trouble Mum went to get up in the middle of the night to put it in the oven. Besides, I didn't want my guest to feel embarrassed about being the only one asking for more!"

Malcolm threw his hands up in surrender.

"I know, and my Mum was delighted how well we both tucked in to her turkey curry. But even with one of her best cooked breakfasts this morning, and that tongue and fried potatoes for lunch, I'm still starving!"

After a short discussion, the four of us decided to have fish and chips for supper; we didn't really have enough for us all in the fridge or store cupboard. The house was still mostly cold after the break, so we needed something hot, filling, and preferably pretty damn instant. Fish and Chips was about as far from cold turkey as you could get, and none of us had eaten it over the break.

Malcolm and I volunteered to fetch it, and were just about to open the front door when we saw Vee and Fred coming up the path, so we let them in and followed them back up the two and a half flights of stairs.

Vee was clearly delighted to be back with us. She was all grins, and kissed all four of us 'Happy New Year'.

"We were about to go and get fish and chips."

"Oh my, what a great idea. Yes please!"

So Malcolm and I went back down the stairs and off to the chippie to collect six 'large' portions. All with salt and vinegar, but no peas or curry sauce – the girls did not appreciate it when we suffered from flatulence, and in this weather there was no attraction in opening a window to let the stink out and the freezing outside air back in.

As we sat around the kitchen table with the unwrapped newspaper parcels in front of us, Vee explained that she had taken Fred up to stay with her folks at the end of term, but they had ended up spending both Christmas and New Year with his parents, where they'd had a quiet but very enjoyable time.

Reading between the lines as they explained where they had been, I rather suspected that Fred had endured a similar reception to the one I had received from the Halls – he too was an outsider, and he was English to boot – and after a couple of days they had decided that they couldn't stand much more of her family's attempts to make Fred feel unwelcome. Fred's parents, on the other hand, had considered Vee as Fred's serious girlfriend and had made every effort to include her.

It was sad to hear that Vee's family were still so old-fashioned. By her own efforts, she had got herself to University, which was still no mean achievement for a girl from the Valleys in 1973, and she had had the strength of character to get out of her arranged 18^th-birthday engagement to Jeff, the son of a close family friend. Despite her evident wish to build her own life, her mother still hankered for her to get back with Jeff, and her brothers were still hanging around with Jeff whenever he was home. Now that she had tasted freedom, she clearly had no wish to return to captivity and live the same life as her mother and grandmother before her.

Julie told me that Vee had said a very bad word when she first went into her bedroom to put her bags down; before leaving for Christmas she had left the window very slightly open for ventilation while we were away, and it was absolutely arctic in there! She had quickly shut the window and closed the curtains, turning on the fan heater for a while before they went to bed – though I noted that they both got changed for bed in the slightly warmer bathroom. When I took them their cup of tea the next morning, it wasn't too chilly in there, but I did notice that they were both wearing woolly pullies and had spread their sleeping bags out on top of the quilt for extra insulation.

University work started again that Tuesday. After a hurried and meagre breakfast, Malcolm and I were up at the Chemistry building for eight thirty that morning, and had only just gone through the content of our pigeon holes by the time of our first lecture at nine. It was clear that someone had been in at work over the holiday to write a whole load of memos and slips to keep us on our toes. There were also a couple of editions of the Journal to go through; I was getting quite a respectable pile of them in my bedroom.

Our lecturers had clearly got bored over the two-and-a-half weeks holiday, and were raring to go. There was no slow acceleration; we were straight into high-speed learning. Suddenly we were hit with an awful lot of material to take in, read up later, submit a précis of, or just write up in our notebooks. Fred said that it was just as bad in Electrical Engineering.

(There's a wonderful 'Giles' cartoon of the period that I have in a book somewhere. It depicts a factory on the first day back after the Christmas break, with the reluctant workers being dragged in by their families, some still so drunk that they are in wheelbarrows. The foreman is standing on a stage showing them pictures of their tools, and the caption reads 'This is a SPANNER, and this is a NUT, but don't worry, you'll get the hang of it by Easter." That cartoon pretty much summed up the culture shock that we experienced as we went from lounging about at home all day to full speed learning again. I really ought to find it, and get it framed for my office wall!)

Thank goodness one of the girls had nipped to the shops during the day – the fridge was replenished, and the basics like eggs, bread, cornflakes, jam and potatoes were back in stock. We had sausages and mash for tea, and having the gas grill on warmed up the kitchen no end!

We spent the Wednesday sports afternoon sorting out our admin, like collecting our latest grant cheques and paying them in at the bank, a bit of shopping at the Indoor Market, and some cleaning of the flat. The issued Bex Bissell carpet cleaner didn't work quite as well as a proper vacuum cleaner, but it picked up crumbs perfectly well. Julie and I decided that Maindy Baths could do without our patronage for another week, and we volunteered to cook supper, a nice and easy Spag. Bol., with plenty of tinned tomatoes to make the mince go further.

On Thursday, Vee cooked us Faggots and onions with lots of gravy and boiled potatoes for tea. Noticing the name on the empty wrapper on the draining board, I reflected for a moment on the coincidence that the local brewery was owned by the Brains family, as was the factory that processed the offal to make faggots and meatballs. No, maybe I didn't want to go there. It was definitely just a coincidence. At least the faggots stayed in the digestive system longer than the beer did whenever we rented a pint or two – though it was still better than the over-cooled and over-fizzy Albright bitter which was the standard alternative at the Union bar, and made you want a pee before you'd finished your first pint.

Even counting Monday as a day off from studying, we were still shell-shocked by Friday, so we all went out for the Student Special curry, and then had a couple of pints of Brains at the Union to celebrate the end of the week. It was even warm enough in the flat for Julie and I to actually make love that evening, rather than just cuddle and shiver under the quilt.

On Saturday the 11^th January, the BBC broadcast a recording of the 'Pink Floyd' concert on the afternoon Alan Freeman Show on Radio One; it had been recorded in London the week before the Cardiff gig, and all six of us sat around the radio in our bedroom (with the electric fire on) and listened to it. It made up a little bit for four of us having been unable to see it live. We had all heard 'Dark Side of The Moon' countless times, but the live recording made it sound quite different.

We were quietly discussing the concert for a few minutes, when Malcolm glanced at his watch and luckily remembered that 'Doctor Who' was about to start, so we had to leg it like hell to get to the Union television lounge, which was packed out. We had to stand at the back, but it was worth it to keep up with the story. This episode was the third part of 'Robot', with Sarah Jane and the world's nuclear weapon release codes being taken hostage by a bunch of mad scientists and their giant metal robot, 'K .1.'. In a twenty-five minute episode, they certainly packed in a lot of action. And, like Topsy, 'K .1.' kept growing bigger and bigger!

Sunday wasn't a bad day weatherwise, cold but bright, so we all went for a brisk walk around Cathays Park before lunch. The afternoon was spent catching up on our reading, all wearing two pullovers and our woolly hats to save on the electricity. It was almost like it had been a year earlier, when we'd suffered regular power cuts because of the miners' strike and the Three Day Week, except this time we were choosing not to spend our money on heat that would have vanished through the poorly-insulated ceiling before the next morning.

In Monday's post, Julie and I had a very nice note back from Mrs Carter, saying how much they'd enjoyed having us to stay, and how pleased they were that the twins had found such good friends. I was just glad that they didn't realise quite what our relationship was; I suspected that the parents with their almost Victorian upbringing had only ever had sex partly clothed with the lights out, whereas their kids had become brazen exhibitionists. I would have laid a pound to a penny that the parents had both been virgins on their wedding night; they probably would have no concept of the joy that their children got from (and gave to) their sexual partners, and they would probably have died from shame if they had ever considered that the siblings might be closer than brother and sister should be ... Anyway, 'ignorance is bliss', as they say, so I was happy if the Carters were happy.

Julie and I did go swimming again on the Wednesday sport afternoon; although we both had strong calf muscles from climbing two and a half flights of stairs every time we came home, and were getting plenty of exercise walking everywhere, we realised that a bit of regular proper exercise to get us puffed was a good thing; it certainly seemed to be doing Jen and Hamish a lot of good. We came back from Maindy Baths just in time to catch a glimpse of Vee and Fred exiting the half-landing bathroom in their dressing gowns, having taken advantage of our absence to do a bit of joint cardio-vascular indoors exercise. We said nothing, but when Julie asked me to help her wash her hair after supper, the big old cast-iron bathroom radiator had a lovely girl perched on it for the second time that day.

Malcolm and I had another tricky distillation to do in the lab on the Thursday; this time there were a lot of impurities to be filtered off first, and we had to be pretty imaginative with setting up our glassware so that we could do it in the smallest number of steps. The whole sample had to sit in a luke-warm water bath for half an hour before we could start, it was that claggy. This procedure was a useful lesson; we hadn't had to tackle such a contaminated raw material before, and we were surprised to find that we'd extracted just over 1% sulphur from the crude hydrocarbon!

Friday was spent writing the experiment up, clearing and cleaning the glassware, and then, after lunch, discussing with our lecturer the economics of refining.

He explained that quite a lot of the world's supply of crude oil was classified as 'sour' – that is, containing more than 0.5% sulphur. That included much of the output from the Middle East, the Gulf of Mexico and South America. He told us that for safety reasons, the poisonous and explosive hydrogen sulphide gas with its characteristic 'rotten eggs' smell had to be removed before the crude oil could be transported by tanker, but that there was still more sulphur to be removed during the refining process, making 'sour' crude oil more expensive to process than 'sweet' crudes such as North Sea Oil.

"The other problem you've got to bear in mind is that 'sour' crude is actually corrosive. The sulphur dioxide that you get when you burn sulphur dissolves in water and creates?"

"Sulphuric acid?"

"Yup, our old friends sulphurous and sulphuric acid. Not something you want to have wandering along your expensive refinery pipework looking for a place to settle, is it?"

We shook our heads. None of us had ever visited an oil refinery, although we'd been told that Prof was trying to get an introduction to the one at Pembroke Dock, but we had seen a few films. The one striking feature was the miles and miles of pipework involved, and how the hell you regularly checked all of that for corrosion was a question that we hadn't seen an answer to.