Chapter 90

Being so early in the day, it was quiet out in the factory yard, with nobody about yet. In the shade of the caravan it was still quite cool and fresh, but there was already some real heat in the sun. It looked like it was going to be another lovely hot summer day; the sun was well up and there was hardly a cloud in the blue sky.

We were all awake, but the exertions of the night had slowed us down, and we shambled over to the rear door to the factory washrooms where we had lockers. I did have the presence of mind to pull Jen in for a ‘thank-you’ kiss before she went through the door to the ladies side; I’d had a great night and I wanted her to know that I appreciated it.

None of us lads were really moving normally until we’d let the hot shower water soothe our muscles, and then we dried our hair, shaved and did our teeth before leaving the changing rooms.

I was startled to be greeted by a wolf-whistle and looked up – Mavis was crossing the yard to the back door of the canteen and had obviously found the sight of our knobbly knees worth commenting on. In between her smiles and laughter she called ‘lovely morning’ and we responded with smiles and waves.

Back in the caravan, we had a light breakfast, still in our dressing gowns. The girls took time to kiss everybody, including each other, so it was a slow and affectionate start to the day; well, to the Six Musketeers working holiday together, now that I was with them. As Sheila said:

“It just didn’t feel right yesterday with only the five of us here!”

There was just enough milk (after reserving nearly a pint for twelve mugs of tea) for us to have cereal all round, and then we filled up on hot buttered toast.

There wasn’t a lot more conversation until the second mug of tea had gone down. There was too much munching going on; for some reason we’d all worked up an appetite for breakfast.

“I’ll deny that I ever said this, but it’s just a possibility that I may have slightly overdone it last night!”

We all turned to look at Julie in surprise.

“Sheila, darling, could I please have one of your magic pain pills? I’ve got tummy ache, and I think it’s due to too much exercise. That last bit of reverse cowgirl might have gone on too long, ‘cos I feel like I did two hundred sit-ups. It was worth it at the time, though!”

Now, that was news to me, but did make sense. I’d foolishly assumed that she and her lover had finished making love after their doggie session and gone to sleep; obviously that hadn’t been the case, and they’d decided to utilise Adrian’s third erection to the full. If Julie had enjoyed as many orgasms last night as Jen had – and I now rather suspected that she had – then it wasn’t unexpected for her tummy muscles to complain of over-use the next morning. Reverse cowgirl also made her work different muscle groups to the usual ones, so I could understand them complaining about suddenly being worked excessively.

“No problem! Anyone else? Oh, and I haven’t had my Pill yet, either. I certainly don’t want to get pregnant quite yet!”

There was a general nod of agreement all round. We all very much enjoyed making love as much as we possibly could, but we were keenly aware that all those millions of sperm being released deep inside the girls meant that there was a definite risk of pregnancy involved. Nothing like as much a risk as it would have been without the contraceptive Pill, but it was still there. It only needed one sperm to get through to the egg, and we would have a problem. The girl would of course suffer the most – Julie wouldn’t get to be a teacher, Sheila would have to drop out of medical school, and even if Jen did manage to get her degree, her immediate career prospects would be seriously damaged by having to look after a baby. The other ramifications if it was Sheila who got a bun in the oven were too horrible to contemplate – it’s not as if Adrian could marry her to give the baby a surname, so it would be hard decisions all round. We just had to do our best to ensure it didn’t happen. Even though Catriona Baxter would be able to advise on an abortion, we’d all much rather not go there.

My sister broke the silence.

“When I went to the clinic to collect my holiday prescription, the nurse warned me to be especially careful with the change of routine. I normally keep them in my spongebag so I take mine just before I clean my teeth in the morning, and she said that’s quite a good way to do it. It’s trickier when I’m at home because I don’t want to leave the packet out where Mum and Dad would see it – but then, I’m not at home much!”

I gave Jen a squeeze of the shoulder – Mum and Dad were actually being pretty good about letting us sleep with our other halves, but like her, I felt that it would be wrong to rub in the fact that we were sexually active. She was still, in my father’s eyes, his little girl, and although he had really taken to Hamish, he was still old-fashioned enough to not be especially keen on this sex-before-marriage lark, but he could turn a blind eye as long as we didn’t make it glaringly obvious. A packet of the Pill next to the toothpaste on the bathroom windowsill would probably have overstepped the mark, and upset him.

The three girls trooped off to Sheila’s room for a Phensic and to take their Pills; we lads were of course trying to be rugged, and refused to admit that our thighs and buttocks (as well as our arms and shoulders) were feeling a tad abused by all the thrusting they’d been doing. As far as we were concerned, a bit of work on the vegetable preparation line would soon sort out any kinks!

I went into the bedroom I was going to share with Julie for the next month or so, fished out some socks, teeshirt and shorts and got dressed for the day. She joined me as I was hanging up my dressing gown on the inadequate hook on the wall, and although I generously offered to hold her boobs while she was getting into her panties, she preferred to get dressed unaided. She did giggle, so I took it as a ‘maybe later if you’re good’ response.

We did have a very nice hug and kiss and a quiet chat; we’d both very much enjoyed the sexual frenzy of the night with other partners, but it was good to hold each other closely and just appreciate the other’s presence.

All too soon, it was eight o’clock and time to get started. The six of us pulled on our coveralls and headed off for the vegetable washing line; there was a pile of crates containing freshly-pulled baby carrots already waiting for us. Someone somewhere had been up very early!

The foreman shook my hand in welcome; the others had already explained why I had been absent the previous two days.

“Got yourself a proper job, then?”

“I reckon so. Fingers crossed that they feel the same!”

He nodded.

“Good luck! Anyway, as you can see, we’re on carrots today. Help yourself!”

I did. We lads picked up crates and carted them over to all our work stations; they weren’t all that heavy, but there must have been something in the male hunter-gatherer psyche that made us want to take them over to our women to deal with, and show off our manly strength while we were doing so.

There was no doubt that I was not nearly as productive as I might have been that morning; my muscles were still objecting to their abuse of the previous night, and it wasn’t until the ten o’clock tea break, when I was able to stand outside in the warm sunshine and soak up some infra-red rays that I finally loosened up a bit. I told myself that it was only because I was out of practice, nothing to do with being out of condition or the onset of old age!

I was surprised when a group of about a dozen youngish women walked into the canteen wearing coveralls; when I asked Julie she told me that in order to cover the time until the secondary school children finished school for the holidays, Mr Johnston had recruited a posse of mothers from one of the local primary schools. They could only work the hours that their children were at school, but it certainly helped out on the labour front. He’d arranged with the local bus company to pick them up in a school-run minibus from outside school in the morning and drop them off in the afternoon, and according to Julie he was kicking himself that he hadn’t thought of that years earlier. They wanted the chance to earn some extra cash and still be able to walk their kids to and from school, none of them had cars, and he needed casual labour at the start and finish of the harvest.

Mavis had used her early start in the kitchen to good advantage – the big electric Burco Boiler normally needed a couple of hours to heat a full quantity of water to boiling point for tea break, and she had also made some suet steak and kidney puddings for lunch that were busy steaming away in the big commercial cauldrons. The smell of onion gravy in the air made me feel hungry again!

The young mothers were a friendly if somewhat loud bunch; they all gathered in the yard to take their smoke breaks together, and we were sure that a lot of gossip was exchanged. Julie told me that she’d been interrogated the day before, and our story of four couples earning some holiday money had been accepted; there had been no need to actually identify the couples, though she had told them that her boyfriend wouldn’t be here until today, and our other friends not at work until tomorrow.

After lunch (and yes, the steak and kidney puddings were excellent, as was the treacle tart and custard) we did our daily swap round of the caravan crockery and cutlery, putting it in a square basket to run through Mavis’s canteen dishwasher, and pinching another basket to carry our clean replacements home. Then it was back to topping and tailing baby carrots. I did some humping of boxes and removal of waste bins for the school mums, who chatted happily, but realised that I didn’t know any of them; the youngest of them had probably been two or three years ahead of me at school. They all headed off back to school at 2.15; the minibus had tooted its horn to let them know it was waiting for them. I wondered what the kids going home from school would make of the thick cloud of cigarette smoke that would be filling their bus?

That first night I was there was destined to be by far the most energetic session we were to have for a while; as expected, Sian and Malcolm arrived later that day from her parents, and with Malcolm there we had to be on our best behaviour – well, not exactly, but our freedom to openly swap partners and indulge in loud uninhibited sex was pretty much curtailed.