They were garish, yet at the same time skilfully executed, and, despite myself – despite the stomach churning it induced – I sometimes couldn’t stop myself staring at them.
Yet even though it was a hideous place, I grew quite fond of the old Mission. It’s impossible, I think, to spend as much time patching and mending as I did, without developing some affection for the object of your labours. And it’s strange to reflect that without the deaths of Aunt Jacqueline and Aunt Peggy, I’d never have been there to fix it, and one night the wind would have blown a little too hard, bringing the whole edifice crashing down.
God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.
6
My reader may have noticed that thus far in my narrative of my life with Aunt Catherine, I have not mentioned my twin obsessions – bridge and sex. The reason for this is very simple – I was not getting much of either of them!
My aunt was, of course, the obstacle in both cases.
‘Cards were your Aunt Jacqueline’s downfall,’ she told me, more than once. ‘Had it not been for cards, she would have been alive today.’
‘Yes, auntie, you’re right,’ I agreed – because, after all, what she’d said was quite true.
‘They are truly the Devil’s instrument,’ my aunt would continue. ‘I’d sooner give up my Flash and use an ordinary liquid cleaner than harbour a card player under my roof.’
Thus, although there was a bridge club in town, I never dared to cross its threshold. True, I did manage the occasional guilty game at school, but it was poor stuff, giving me the kick of rot-gut cider when what I really needed was the headiness of champagne.
And sex? From my Auntie Catherine’s perspective, sex was even worse than cards.
‘I once gave in to your Uncle Reginald’s filthy demands,’ she confided in me. ‘But never again! And he was a better man for my refusal.’
Yes, Auntie, I thought – so much a better man that he ended up hanging himself in the outside privy on his allotment.
What I needed, I decided, was safe sex, by which I meant sex my aunt didn’t find out about – because if there was even a hint that I was immersing myself in that particular pit of slime, I’d be out of the house before I could say coitus interruptus. Yet safe sex was not an easy thing to find in Llawesuohtihs, and after the unfortunate incident with Glynis and Elaine, I pretty much gave up looking.
****
Elaine was a pretty little redhead, a year above me in school. I first noticed her one lunchtime, when I was playing bridge. And what I noticed about her was that she was watching me, not the game. So it came as no surprise to me when she approached me the next day.
‘Daddy’s always going on at me to learn to play bridge,’ she told me. ‘He says it’s such a useful social skill. Will you teach me?’
Most kids in Llawesuohtihs would have died rather than call their fathers “Daddy”, and as for social skills, wasn’t that some way of fiddling money out of the Social Security?
But Elaine’s background was different to that of most of the rest of pupils. Her family lived on a small private housing estate, well out of town, where the men drove Range Rovers and wore chunky sweaters when they went out for “a quick half of bitter” at Sunday lunchtime.
‘Will you?’ Elaine asked me. ‘Will you teach me?’
I could tell from the way she was looking at me that bridge was the last thing on her mind, but I smiled warmly, and said that, of course, I’d give her all the lessons she needed.
The pretence broke down during our first session. Soon we were into heavy kissing behind the bike sheds, and hurried fondling in empty classrooms. I couldn’t really say it was satisfactory. Like the lunchtime bridge, it was better than nothing, but nowhere near enough.
‘I want to go further,’ I told Elaine during a quick mutual grope in the deserted Biology Lab, three weeks after our affair had begun.
‘Me, too,’ she said, gazing down at the bench. ‘But where could we do it?’
‘Your house?’
She looked embarrassed. ‘You’d be seen,’ she said. ‘Our neighbours always notice when people from the town come onto the estate.’
I didn’t quite like the way she said “people from the town”, but when you’re as close to the object of your desires as I was, you don’t take offence easily.
‘Well, maybe we could do it at my house,’ I suggested.
‘When?’
Yes, when?
The short answer was when I could be absolutely sure that my evil-doings would not be detected by Aunt Catherine’s finely-tuned sin-antennae – and I didn’t have a clue if such an opportunity would ever arise.
****
Glynis was, as Aunt Catherine might have said, an entirely different kettle of golden-battered cod fillets to Elaine. She worked in Visconti’s Ice Cream Parlour, Llawesuohtihs’ excuse for a social centre. She was a big girl – in all the best possible ways – with wild eyes and a wide, inviting mouth.
She was good for trade, the manager said, because the customers enjoyed her banter.
Like hell they did! It was not her banter but her boobs that the lads who crowded into Visconti’s came for. Every time she bent over to place a fudge sundae on one of the tables, the place would go quiet. One day, we all knew, her low-cut blouse would give up the struggle and set those gorgeous breasts free. One day, some lucky lad would find himself being served a knockerbocker glory.
Glynis did not resent all the attention. On the contrary, she seemed to revel in it, and it was rumoured that she could be generous – very generous – if she took a liking to you.
I was no more impervious to Glynis’ charms than the rest of the boys, but my relationship with Elaine was still developing, so while I might look, I had no intention of touching. But it was Glynis who made the running – Glynis who ambushed me in the alley outside Visconti’s one night, pushed me up against the wall next to the dustbins, and pressed her body against mine.
‘I’s fancied you for a bit, hasn’t I?’ she said throatily.
‘Has you?’ I asked, in a state of shock.
‘Yes, and you fancies me, doesn’t you, boyo? I feels it in your trousers.’
I glanced nervously up and down the alley. We were on our own for the moment – but how long would that last?
‘I really don’t think we should …’ I began.
But actions speak louder than words, and Glynis’ action was to reach down for the zip in my trousers.
‘Glynis …’ I gasped.
Getting a hardened penis through the fly hole of a pair of underpants can be quite a tricky business, but she seemed to manage it with ease.
‘There’s better, isn’t it?’ she asked.
Better – but crazy. We couldn’t do this – not in a bloody alley.
Her experienced hand moved up and down my shaft – stroke … stroke … stroke – a fingernail now and again pricking me lightly for the sake of variety.
‘Glynis …’ I said again, since this was, apparently, the only word I had left in my vocabulary.
I should have walked away. I knew back then that I should. But it’s very hard to walk away when some nymphomaniac has your knob in her hand.
Stroke … stroke … stroke … stroke … stroke.
‘Where does you live?’ Glynis asked.
‘Pardon?’
‘Your address, like?’
Where did I live? Come to that, who was I? I was experiencing some difficulty in relating my normal life to what was happening just then.
‘Well?’ Glynis demanded.
‘159 Gregynog Road,’ some tiny, sane corner of my mind instructed my mouth to say.
‘That’s down from the Post Office, isn’t it?’
Stroke … stroke … stroke … stroke … stroke.
‘Yes,’ I gurgled. ‘Down from the Post Office.’
Stroke … stroke … stroke … stroke … stroke …
Ahh
hhhhhh!
With practiced efficiency, Glynis returned the lion to his cage, and zipped up again.
‘That was just a taster, like,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you the full Banana Split some other time, but right now, I’s got to get back to work.’
I watched her walking down the alley, swaying her hips in a way she must have copied from a vamp in some old silent film. I’d just had a very pleasant – but somewhat shattering – experience, and for the sake of the lads inside the ice cream parlour, I could only hope she’d wash her hands before she served any more Raspberry Surprises.
****
Only a few days after Elaine and I had decided to consummate our relationship – and even a shorter time since Glynis had spilled my seed in the alley next to Visconti’s – my aunt announced both that she was giving a lecture in Abernuffa the following Saturday, and that my presence would not be required. As is often the case when the reverse is about to happen, it looked as if luck was running my way.
‘Come round about half past two,’ I said to Elaine during the school break the next day.
‘Shall I use the back door?’ she asked conspiratorially.
‘There isn’t one,’ I told her. ‘Or, at least, there is, but it only opens onto the garden.’
Elaine sniffed. ‘You don’t live in a back-to-back terraced house, do you?’ she asked.
‘As a matter of fact, yes.’
She sniffed again. ‘Oh well, I suppose it’s not your fault,’ she conceded graciously.
7
Though it seemed to take forever, the great day finally arrived. At twelve o’clock my aunt left the house, and at two-thirty there was a knock on the front door, and I opened it to find Elaine standing there.
‘Would you like a drink of something?’ I asked as we grappled with each other in the hallway, ‘or would you like to go straight upstairs?’
‘We could just go straight upstairs,’ Elaine said breathlessly.
God, but we were eager to get at it.
If only we’d been a little less eager, one of us might have noticed that we’d neglected to close the front door properly.
****
Stage One, the kissing and cuddling, was rushed through at breakneck speed, and it was only a few minutes before we were taking each other’s clothes off.
What cute little breasts she’d got, I thought as I carelessly threw her bra over my shoulder.
How great it was going to feel to have those slim legs wrapped around me, I told myself as I lowered her onto the bed.
I’d waited a long time for this. Now it was finally going to happen – and nothing could go wrong.
‘So this is what you gets up to behind my back, boyo,’ said an amused voice from the doorway.
I turned round fast enough to give myself a whiplash fracture.
‘Glynis!’ I spluttered.
‘The front door was open,’ she said, starting to unbutton her blouse. ‘I’s not on duty until six, see, so we’s got plenty of time.’
I glanced frantically at Elaine, and then back at Glynis.
‘But I … we … that is …’ I protested.
‘I’s done threesomes before,’ Glynis said, dropping her skirt carelessly to the floor. ‘They’s good fun. An’ from the look of your John Thomas, he’s well up to the job.’
Elaine, her face turned bright red, had climbed into bed and pulled the sheet protectively up to her chin. If she thought threesomes were good fun, she was doing a good job of hiding it.
‘You’ll enjoy it once we gets started, girl,’ Glynis said, removing her bra. ‘I can do some lovely things with my tongue, I can.’
The colour drained from Elaine’s face.
‘Oh, my God,’ she said faintly.
This was positively the worst day of my life, I thought. If I lived to be a hundred, nothing more horrendous than this could possibly happen.
Something more horrendous was about to happen. From downstairs came the sound of the front door opening.
‘Why didn’t you shut it properly?’ I hissed at Glynis. ‘That could be anybody coming in.’
‘I did shut it properly,’ she said huffily – though the attack of huffiness didn’t stop her stripping her panties off.
If she’d closed it behind her, then it must have been opened with a key, and the only people who had keys were me and …
‘Robert?’ a voice called from the hallway.
‘My auntie!’ I said frantically. ‘Get dressed! Get dressed!’
The girls stayed exactly where they were, Glynis through indifference, Elaine because of a temporary attack of paralysis.
‘Please!’ I begged, as I attempted to cram both my legs into the left leg of my jeans.
‘Fancy bein’ frightened of your auntie,’ Glynis said scornfully. ‘My mam don’t care what I do, as long as I doesn’t leave a stain on the carpet.’
I was having as much trouble getting both my legs into the right leg of my jeans as I’d encountered when I’d tried it with the left.
‘Put your bloody clothes back on,’ I pleaded.
‘You oughts to be ashamed of yourself, actin’ like this at your age,’ Glynis told me. ‘How old is you, anyway. Eighteen? Nineteen?’
‘Fifteen,’ I said, finally succeeding in getting one of my legs in the right hole.
‘Fifteen! You can’t be. You looks a lot older than that.’
‘He is, honestly,’ Elaine contributed from the bed. ‘He’s only in the Fifth Form. I’m in the Lower Sixth.’
‘I’m sure she really wanted to know what year you were in,’ I told Elaine as I made a hysterical grab for my shirt. ‘Why don’t you tell her about your hobbies, as well? I bet she’ll be fascinated. And it’s not as if we’re in a hurry, is it?’
‘I’s eighteen,’ Glynis mused, as if that fact alone was enough to stop me being my real age.
‘Wonderful,’ I said, fumbling with my shirt buttons. ‘Glynis is eighteen. That’s the best news I’ve heard today. Now, for Christ’s sake, get dressed.’
‘I certainly will,’ Glynis said, reaching for her bra. ‘I’s no cradle-snatcher. Never was, and never will be.’
‘Robert!’ my aunt called again.
‘I won’t be a minute, Auntie,’ I called from the top of the stairs. ‘I’m just tidying my room.’
‘Well, hurry up,’ Aunt Catherine said impatiently.
Back in the bedroom, Glynis was almost dressed, and even Elaine was making some effort.
But did that really improve my situation?
From my aunt’s perspective, weren’t two clothed girls in my room nearly as bad as two naked ones?
I looked around for a hiding place. The wardrobe was big enough for one of them. The other would have to crawl under the bed. But how the hell was I going to talk them into it? I imagined myself trying.
‘You’ll find it quite comfortable in the cupboard, Glynis. And Elaine, I’m sorry you have to be the one who goes under the bed, but with boobs like hers, Glynis simply wouldn’t fit. How long will you have to stay there? Not that long. I know for a fact my aunt’s going to the early service tomorrow morning.’
No, that wouldn’t work. I walked over to the window in search of inspiration, and found it in the shape of the coalhouse roof.
‘I’ve got a way out,’ I said excitedly.
‘A way out?’ Glynis repeated, sounding distinctly unenthusiastic.
‘Yes. You could climb down the drainpipe onto the coalhouse. From there, it’s only a short drop to the ground.’
‘You must be bloody mad,’ Glynis said.
‘And what do we do once we’re there?’ Elaine asked. ‘I mean, it is the garden of a back-to-back terraced house, isn’t it?’
‘This is no time for snobbishness,’ I snapped. ‘We’ll work out what you do next once you’re in the garden.’
‘No chance,’ Glynis said.
‘I agree,’ Elaine chipped in.
‘Be reasonable,’ I pleaded. ‘Elaine, you’ll probably be in as much trouble as me if this comes out. And as for you, Glynis,’ I added with a touch of cunning brought about by fear, ‘do you want it to get all around the town that you’ve been cradle-snatching?’
‘Jesus Christ, no!’ Glynis said.
‘You’ve got a point,’ Elaine concurred.
8
Aunt Catherine was sitting at the kitchen table.
‘The meeting hall was double-booked,’ she complained.
‘Was it another church which wanted to use it?’ I asked.
‘No, it was not another church,’ my aunt replied. ‘It was the Licensed Victuallers Association! And the manageress – like the handmaiden of Satan that she is – let those purveyors of evil have it in preference to us.’
‘Bad luck, Auntie,’ I said. ‘Would you like a nice cup of tea?’
‘Of course I would like a nice cup of tea,’ Aunt Catherine said irritably. ‘I have been wanting a nice cup of tea since I first stepped through the door. And you have kept me waiting.’
From overhead came the sound of feet scraping against tiles.
‘What was that?’ my aunt asked.
‘Birds,’ I said hastily. ‘Seagulls. There have been hundreds of them hanging about all day.’ I needed to distract her. ‘So tell me, Auntie,’ I continued, ‘what was your talk going to be about?’
‘I was going to talk about raising funds for Africa,’ my aunt said. ‘You don’t realise how lucky you are, living here. In many parts of the Dark Continent, there are no Kwik Saves or Safeways, as we know them.’
‘Aren’t there, Auntie?’ I said. ‘Tell me more.’
I needed to keep her talking, you see, because although she couldn’t see it from where she was sitting, Elaine and Glynis had arrived in the garden. They’d obviously decided to take matters into their own hands, and instead of staying hidden they were heading for the back wall.
A Conspiracy of Aunts Page 11
