Chapter 99

Mum and Dad had asked Jen and I to both come home for Remembrance Sunday, 9^th November, because our grandparents wanted to go to the parade and church service in town, and hoped that we would join them.

Naturally we were very willing to do something that meant so much to them; Grandpa Shaw had never missed Armistice Sunday since it was first started in 1919; he had been at the War Memorial Dedication Service on 7^th June 1922, and Grandma still had the programme from that day. There are 237 Great War names on Stamford’s War Memorial, in raised lettering on nine bronze tablets, and Grandpa had known, or known of, most of them. He couldn’t be there in person any more, but his memory and his medals would be present with Grandma, and I was pretty sure that his spirit would be looking down on us from his cloud.

It had been a quiet week at work; I was finally getting the hang of what was required from me, and I reckoned that I was finally beginning to make a contribution – ICI was such a big firm, and the range of activities at Wilton so broad, that even with an excellent induction process it had taken almost two months to get into the swing of things. With the duty officer shifts, the figure on the bottom of my October pay slip had been better than September’s, so I’d thought about opening a deposit account at the bank for my savings.

Even paying full price for my return rail ticket home didn’t cost me my net extra pay after tax for one duty, so I was most definitely ahead! I had instinctively reached for my Students’ Railcard when I got to the counter, and then remembered that it had expired. I did wonder if I would be entitled to another railcard when I started my PhD; half price travel had become a habit!

At quarter to nine in the evening of Friday the 7^th, after a three-hour journey, I got to Stamford station from Middlesbrough to find Mum waiting outside in her Mini. I passed my suit bag into the back and climbed in beside her, exchanging a greeting kiss on the cheek.

I learned that my sister had beaten me home by a couple of hours, having sloped off from Reading immediately after her last lecture of the day. Hamish had gone down to Bristol to see his folks, and I told Mum that Julie was staying at college, devoting her weekend to the advance preparation of yet more lesson plans to try and stay ahead of the game. The trip home only took a couple of minutes, and we were soon back in the kitchen, where my sister greeted me first.

I hugged Jen hello; as always we avoided kissing in front of our parents and only did what we’d always done as kids, which was hug. There was no sense in risking raising suspicions – Mum hadn’t been born yesterday, and she knew us far too well for us to get away with lying if challenged. I was reasonably sure that I could no longer kiss Jen just as a sister, and I’d never kissed her on the cheek like I did Mum and my grandmothers.

Dad said hello and chatted briefly before he and Mum headed back to the living room to watch the Nine O’Clock News on the television; there was trouble between Morocco and Spain over the Spanish Sahara, but not much else was happening in the world. They always watched the news, but I didn’t bother with it if I had something else to do.

There was some home-made soup warming in a saucepan on the hob, and some cold sausages in the fridge to go with the fried potatoes that Jen was now keeping an eye on.

“Have you eaten yet, Sis?”

“Yes, Dad had to wait a few minutes for his supper until I arrived, but I’m going to have another mug of this soup, Mum’s excelled herself this time. I’m fed up with the packet stuff they serve up in the Hall dining room; it’s never as good, always tastes of flour and far too much salt.”

She checked that the soup had heated up enough and ladled out two mugs full. It was a chicken-and-anything-else-that-was-left-over soup, and as usual with Mum’s cooking, it was hearty and warming. Jen was correct – it was a particularly good one, with just a hint of the parsley and thyme stuffing which had also been added. We stood by the cooker to drink it, talking quietly while she continued to turn the potatoes.

“So, how’s your love life?”

I grunted in response, and got a sympathetic facial expression back from my sister.

Jen knew perfectly well that Julie and I had only managed to get together once so far, that weekend at Reading, and that then I’d had to be at work the weekend that had been supposed to be our second meeting – and the two weekends after that. It couldn’t be helped, but we weren’t happy about it.

Here was I, in the prime of my sexual prowess, and I’d had just two nights with my girlfriend in the last nine weeks. Yeah, and I really missed being with her; it wasn’t just the sex.

“It’s going to be a bloody long year until Julie is finished at college!”

She nodded in compassionate understanding.

“Well, you’re almost a quarter of the way there. Anyway, I talked to Sheila first thing this morning, we’re all invited to Caledonia Place next weekend. Can you make it this time?”

I grinned. My spending the past four Friday nights in a sleeping bag in the Wilton Duty Officer’s room, when I could instead have been in Reading, Stamford or Bristol with a warm and willing girl beside me, was still a sore point, but at least now I knew where I stood. And the extra pay was handy.

“That’s very kind of them – yeah, I’ll be there. Promise.”

“So will Julie. I phoned her on spec at lunchtime and got lucky, she was having her coffee in the lounge so heard her name being called.”

“That’s good, I was kind of hoping she would be. We could do with another dirty weekend!”

My sister giggled.

“That will make it what, six weeks since you’ve seen her? You’ll have to give Gustav a refresher course in what to do!”

I nodded and made a quip.

“We’re hoping that it’s just like learning to ride a bicycle – once you’ve done it, you never forget how!”

I got a grin of acknowledgement.

She did have a definite point, though.

Sunday 5^th October to Friday 14^th November was six working weeks, and yes, I was indeed counting ALL the days. Ten weeks gone so far, something like thirty-two to go. I really missed my girlfriend. Not anywhere near enough to do something rash like chuck in the job or persuade her to jack in her course, but we’d been together for so long that it felt a little bit as if one of my arms or legs had been chopped off.

Gustav, after enjoying two and a half years of frequent use, was as unhappy as I was about the infrequency of our time with Julie – actually, probably more so, but he couldn’t vocalise his complaints. It couldn’t be helped; we always knew that we’d have to endure a long period of separation until she had her teaching qualification, but that didn’t mean we had to be content with it.

“Or I could give him a few remedial exercises tonight, if you wanted me to?”

She giggled again before continuing, speaking even more softly.

“Now that I’ve got used to having my itch scratched whenever I need it, there’s absolutely no bloody way that I could manage five weeks without it, so the very least I can do is help you out in your hour of need!”

I thought about her offer for a few seconds before responding; while I was delighted with the idea of ending my current sexual drought, it did have some major risks attached.

I hid a smile at her understatement of her sexual appetite as merely being an ‘itch’; my sister did rather like her orgasms, and always thoroughly enjoyed the process of achieving them. Like Julie and I, she’d got used to having them often and at her convenience, and I could well believe that she would hate a prolonged interruption. I too further lowered my voice; with the television going next door it was unlikely that we’d be overheard, but not impossible.

“With Mum and Dad at home? How on earth are we going to do that?”

“I’ll nip up and have a quick shower now, and come back down in my nightie, and then you go and have one, so we’re both ready for bed, and we’ll have a cup of tea with them. When they go up to bed we’ll go and chat in my room until they go to sleep, and with a bit of luck we can get up to something?”

It was as good a scheme as any, so of course I agreed. She turned off the hob and tipped the fried potatoes onto the plate with the cold sausages. I thanked her, grabbed some Branston Pickle out of the fridge and sat at the table to eat. I heard Jen tell Mum that she was going up for a shower, and when I had finished eating, I quickly washed up my plate and cutlery and went to sit with my parents through the end of the News and the weather forecast.

Sure enough, ten minutes later Jen came down with her hair in a towel and her dressing gown wrapped round her, bare legs exposed to the knees.

“Have you left me any hot water, Sis?”

“Yes, loads. Do you want a cuppa when you come back down?”

“Please! I’ll be as quick as I can!”

It didn’t take me very long to shower; there was no point in hanging around, and I was in my clean jim-jams and downstairs again before the tea had cooled. I too was rubbing my hair on a towel to dry it off; Dad commented.

“You look like you’ve had a proper haircut since we last saw you?”

I laughed ruefully.

“Yes, although they said that they had no problem with the current fashions, in practice it’s too much trouble to have it very long; I have to wear safety helmets or visors, and bend over machinery and naked flames, and the final straw came when I had to go into a clean environment and they made me wear a hair net! So on the second Saturday I went down to the barbers and got a short back and sides, and I’ve had another trim since then!”

“Well, in my opinion, you look a lot better!”

“Thanks, I think! I’ll admit that it’s a sight easier to look after, and I don’t look too out of place up in Middlesbrough, because most working men have to keep their hair under control. Now I would look noticeable back at University amongst the other long haired layabouts!”

Jen grinned and stuck out her tongue.

“I’ll have you know that Hamish has also had a hair cut because he got fed up of washing the chlorine out of it, and he wouldn’t wear a hat like I do when we go swimming.”

“Does that make him not a layabout then?”

She waved her hands in the ‘maybe, maybe not’ gesture before laughing.

“Well, I don’t know about you two young layabouts, but I’ve had a long week at work, and I’m ready for bed. Coming, Maggie?”

Mum also got up from her chair, and carried their tea cups into the kitchen. Jen volunteered us to wash them up.

“Okay, but don’t you two stay up too late gossiping!”

“No, we’ve got all weekend to chat. Night night!”

We washed and dried the tea cups, turned out the kitchen lights, and spent a few minutes snogging in the half darkness to give our parents time to finish in the bathroom. God, I’d missed the feeling of a soft female body against mine. With both our dressing gowns open at the front, it didn’t take very long for a snog to turn into a mutual grope and then into foreplay. Her nightie rode up to her neck, and my pyjama bottoms had a long open flap. Luckily we also had our lips plastered together, because otherwise the gasp Jen gave as I rubbed her rapidly-stiffening nipple between my thumb and forefinger would probably have been audible upstairs.

That sign of readiness made us stop what we were doing and creep upstairs; there was enough light from the streetlamps showing round the landing window curtain that we could switch off the landing light as we tiptoed into my sisters bedroom. There was no light showing under our parents door, so the chances were they had gone straight to sleep; they weren’t believers in reading or talking at bedtime. We still kept quiet as Jen carefully closed the door behind us, holding the handle so that the latch didn’t click too loudly. Again, the orange light from the sodium streetlights gave us enough light to see each other in form if not in detail. I stood with my back to the door; if by chance either of our parents suddenly remembered something and came to talk to Jen, I could say that I was sitting against it chatting to her, which would give us time for my sister to get to her bed and me to make myself decent. Jen knelt in front of me and freed Gustav from the loose confinement of my pyjama flies and the dressing gown; he was clearly very pleased to see her. She proceeded to give him a real humdinger of a deep throat blow job while I caressed her hair; it didn’t take very long at all before I had warned her and she was swallowing. That’s what being done by an expert after five weeks of abstinence does for you!

I pulled her up and kissed her, tasting my spend on her tongue.

“Now I’ll return the favour!”

I got her to lay down across her bed, with the dressing gown open and her nightie pulled up so that I could kneel beside her and get at her goodies. We shuffled her bottom up a little bit so she was just in the right place, and I went to town. Her Jen Juice tasted just as good as always, like nectar of the gods. She pulled her pillow over her face as she got close; as I felt her about to come, I squeezed her clitoris between my lips, and that triggered her climax and almost cost me my head as her legs lurched back together. I let her decide when to uncover her mouth; I confined myself to licking up the additional drops of moisture as they emerged from her puffy red lower lips – we didn’t want any unexplainable stains on her bed linen or on the carpet! A few minutes later, she moved her arms off her pillow and tapped me on the head to tell me that I’d done quite enough damage to her nervous system for the moment. I let her legs go, and stood up to help her into a sitting position with her feet on the floor. The huge smile on her face was all the reward that I needed; I loved it whenever I was able to make her feel so good.

“Better?”

She giggled, softly so as not to alert our parents.

“Yes and no!”

I knew from experience exactly what she was telling me, without her needing to say the words. That orgasm had been very pleasant, but it hadn’t quite hit the required spot, and she wanted another one or two, but by being fucked rather than sucked. I thought about it for a moment and weighed up the risks of discovery. She was a great deal lighter on her feet than I was, so she was safer stealing down the landing to listen at their door.

“You go and check they’re asleep, and I’ll sort out the room.”

She returned quickly, closed the door softly with only the tiniest click of the latch, and moved over to whisper to me.

“Yeah, they’re both snoring!”

While she was away, I had pulled her quilt off her bed, positioned one pillow underneath it half way down, and covered that spot with the towel that she had used for drying her hair. I took off my dressing gown and pyjamas before whispering to her.

“I know it’s much riskier being undressed, but I want to feel the whole of you, Sis!”

She nodded in the near-darkness, slipped off her dressing gown, and I helped her pull her nightie over her head. I clutched her to me, pulling her lovely firm boobs against my chest, and kissed her.

“We’re dead if they catch us now!”

“But what a way to go!”

We placed her bottom on the towel-covered pillow part, arranged ourselves for comfort, and then I swabbed Gustav’s head in her juices and pushed him all the way home. She sighed with pleasure as she was filled. It took a little bit more wriggling to ensure that the maximum surface area was connected, and then we started moving together. Her nipples got stiffer and stiffer as they were rubbed against my chest, and I took most of my weight on my knees and elbows and used my hands to caress her flanks and shoulders.

The pillow did as I intended, deadening any thumps that we might have made on the floorboards as we coupled. What I hadn’t made any allowance for was the sound of our juices slopping together if we went too fast, so we had to confine ourselves to a moderate rate. It wasn’t quite as erotic as the full pounding I had hoped for, nor as loving as a slower pace would have been, but it was a more than acceptable compromise. Gustav thought he was in paradise, surrounded by her wet, warm and slippery clutching internal muscles, and the angle that her hips were at made it good and easy for him. It was most enjoyable for both of us, and we locked our lips as we got there, so as not to wake our parents with cries and grunts of passion.

We lay together for a few minutes; it was now pretty chilly in the room several hours after the boiler and radiators had gone off and I started shivering, so we reluctantly parted, Jen wrapped her nether regions in the towel and donned her nightie, I stepped into my pyjama bottoms, pulled on my dressing gown, and we remade her bed. I kissed her goodnight and very quietly returned to my own room. I slept like a log, but I still reckon that I’d have slept even better with a soft warm naked female body cuddled up next to me!

I looked in on her when I went to the bathroom in the morning, she gave me a huge smile, which mirrored mine. It had been good to renew our love, and we both felt better for it. Part of the joy was of course relief that we hadn’t been caught at it by our parents...

We had to be careful at breakfast; with both our parents there it would have been a bad idea to let slip any hint of our being more pleased to be back together than we should be. At least we’d both had the sense to get fully dressed before emerging from our bedrooms; if we’d followed Mum’s example and come down in our dressing gowns, it would have been a lot more difficult. Anyway, Mum and Dad were very pleased to have both of us home at the same time, and we all caught up with the news.