Chronicle 7 - 1977: Foreign Bodies - Water baby 1

Although I pretended to my mother that I was fine about A moving to Scotland I was bereft.  I missed her little face and her bouncy, optimistic demeanour.  Most of all I missed her taut body, her passion and willingness to take part in sexual activity. Indeed, to initiate it; something I had believed women did not do.  Worst still, my friends at school kept asking after her.

"Did she dump you?" I was asked repeatedly.

"No, her family moved to Scotland," I replied. Again and again.

The letters became much less frequent. One a day to start with, then one every three days then one a week. They were very sweet and some were very sexy.

"I wish we had done it, now," she wrote on July 10th. "I wish I could have felt your cock inside me, making me wet and making me come!" Yes, I wished that too. We were so close to It but it didn't happen.  Partly, the drop off in letters was my fault because I found writing back painful. I was probably the one who slowed on the letter writing front. Initially, we had been full of optimism about trying to meet up but soon realised that it wasn't going to happen,

"You can't go to Glasgow. It's a terrible place!" said my mother. She did not approve of Scotland. A wrote that her mother had started to realise how close we had got and decided that any further meetings were out of the question without a chaperone. Not what we wanted. "There are lots more girls," my mother said.

Yes, but where? Nowhere at school, that was for sure. Dobs thought I should join the volunteers organisation we shared with the girl's school next door.  I asked if there were any nice girls in it.

"Not really," he admitted. Other than his girl, S, I assumed but I didn't know that their relationship had cooled. Fortunately, other boys were starting to get girlfriends in the sixth form, so you were of less and less interest if you had one. Or used to have one. JM, was reputed to have done It with a girl. It was widely accepted that he was the first in the year. Part of the reason for Dobs eventually breaking up with S was that she didn't want to do It.  I was starting to realise that A had been a very singular girl. What if A was the only girl who would ever like me?  I was not very interesting. I didn't like sports or pop music. I didn't go to the cinema or to parties. Other boys were staring to have birthday parties where some girls were invited but I lived a lot further away from school than most. Dobs was the only one I knew who lived further away than I did.

One incident perked me up during that time, though. Towards the end of the summer term, we had an English department trip to London to see Dorothy Tutin and Alec McCowen in Antony and Cleopatra, which we were studying for A-level. We were quite excited, as I, Claudius' Derek Jacobi was in it (as was an unknown actor, playing second soldier, called Alan Rickman). We had all enjoyed I, Claudius on the BBC, which ran in the Autumn of 1976, as it was full of debauchery and nudity. I watched it with my mother quite happily as she was very liberal as regards sex and nudity, thank goodness. We were all brought up to wander around the house naked at bath times and such like. Tutin, who was in her late forties at the time, gave a surprisingly sexual performance to the delight of the school group, I can still remember her grinding on a couch, to the delight of my classmates. Unfortunately, some of our party got so excited that they had to stop the play at one point and tell us to be quiet and behave or we would be ejected from the Old Vic. Of course, the teachers in charge gave us a good talking to during the interval.

Even more exciting was the presence of a girls' school group during the same matinee performance. Much eyeing up ensued. As we went back into the auditorium one of the girls came up to me and said: "You can be my Antony," before slipping off with her giggling friends. No doubt it was some sort of dare. But, she had chosen me to show off to her friends with. Needless to say, I was ribbed about it ,mercilessly on the minibus back to school. One of our number, M, was going on about my "new girlfriend" and being generally irritating, as he usually was.  One of the teachers snapped at him along the lines of 'you should be so lucky to have a pretty girl come up to you like that, That is why he can get girls to pose naked for him and you can't!' Oh dear, the dreaded nude pictures of A surfaced again. It shut M up, though. He was a pompous little squit and had ridiculously long hair, even for 1977. One of the other boys, H, who was very grown up for his age, ventured that being admired by women was a great life asset. He was shouted down because he was short and intellectual. His father was a sculptor which everyone laughed at, imagining some sad person making ugly things from clay, while, we assumed, his mother had to work to bring in the cash. Years later, I found out that he was a really famous sculptor, a Royal Academician and his bronzes were in galleries all over the world. If you want to buy one these days you will have to pay around £45,000 for a big one. He did a lot of sculptures of naked women; one of his models for these being his wife, H's mother. H, never mentioned any of this and just ignored the baiters,

Shortly after A had gone to Scotland, I did my mock A -levels and my Religious Studies O-level. My mock results were very good indeed. I was called in to see the Deputy Head (Conk-corde, as he was known because of his prodigious nose) who said he was going to put me down for the Oxbridge group. This meant staying on for an extra term and doing seventh term entry to university. It meant that you had already got your A-level results when you applied, instead of being made offers and then trying to achieve them. You spent the term preparing for the entrance exam and the interview. It also meant that unlike everyone else who applied for University in the first term of the Upper Sixth, you had to take a year off (actually ten months) between school and university. My mother thought this was brilliant but it meant I had to be on top of my game with every essay. It became a three way battle in English and History between Dobs, Mutt and I to see who could get the best mark every week. There was, therefore, little time to think about girls, except at night when I thought about A and her delicious, prawn cocktail flavoured pussy.

Just after we broke up for the summer holiday, we went down to see my uncle and aunt in Hampshire. They weren't my real uncle and aunt but they were our closest family friends. They used to live in the house next door when we lived in our previous home. They now had a big house a few miles away (which my father had designed, as he was an architect). But they also had a house down in Christchurch, where they had a motor cruiser. We were going to have a long weekend with them, which I was looking forward to, as I would get to steer the boat. 

My mother worked Tuesday to Friday but took a day off so we could drive down Thursday evening. They had an unusual house, built into the side of a hill,with a double garage and their master bedroom suite on the ground floor while upstairs was an open plan living and dining room, a connected kitchen and three other bedrooms, where we would be staying. What I liked most about their house, though, was the picture they had in their living room. It was a huge print, about 4' by 3', of a drawing of a naked woman, her back arched, her breasts and erect nipples thrusting upwards, one leg raised to reveal her pubis. She was seemingly supported on her back by random swirling lines, as if she was weightless. She looked, frankly, like she was in the throes of a massive orgasm. The picture was called Ecstasy and I loved it. I wished I had drawn A like that. I could have draped her across my chair but I had forgotten about the picture until I saw it again.

Uncle L's boat was moored down in the river at Christchurch and it was very tidal dependent as to when you could get out to the open sea. So we had to get up early the next day and get down to the boat so we could have a day out on the Isle of Wight.  Behind my Uncle L's boat was moored the boat of his best friend, Mr B, who was a very amusing, quick witted man with a German wife. He had met her in Germany at the end of WW2. She was not attractive and was always moaning in her appalling German come cockney accent. ‘It's cowld,’ she would winge, ‘I vont to go back to Vindsor!’

We always went out in the boats together. We all said hello, as B's wife moaned about the early start. I helped Mr B get the cover off the boat as she refused to do anything like that. Just as I had finished and hopped back onto the bank a girl appeared weighed down with bags of stuff.  Mr B introduced her as Mrs B's niece from Germany, P.

"You can look after her this weekend as she is about your age. Oh, but she doesn't speak any English" said Mr B. Great, I thought. Then I looked at her and thought, could be worse. Rather surprisingly, she reminded me of A. She had similar coloured, light brown hair and it was in an identical shoulder length style. She was slim, as well, and had a nice smile. Yes, I thought, I don't mind looking after you at all. I helped pass her various items across to her on the boat.  She fumbled the binoculars and they dropped towards the river but I managed to grab the neck strap and catch them. "Well held!" said Mr B.

"Dank you!" said P, smiling at me. What a nice smile! I am hopeless for a girl with a nice smile.

It was decided that P should go on our boat as she could be with my sister and me. P endeared herself to my sister by admiring her charm bracelet and they sat and looked at each charm while my sister gave the English word: hat, bell etc and P gave the German word. The last charm was a gold clarinet, the instrument my sister played.

"Klarinette!" said P, laughing. It was a shame, as my sister had chosen to do German for O-level but wouldn't start until that September.

We took the long trip down the river out to the river mouth at Mudeford, where the sand bar was, which restricted your ability to get in and out at low tide. P spotted a cormorant sitting on top of a wooden post at the edge of the channel.

"Wie heißt es?"

"Das ist ein Kormoran!" said my mother, following it up with a sentence or two in German.

"You speak German?" I asked her, amazed.

"My grandfather was Austrian," she said. I sort of knew this but I had never heard my mother use any German, ever. She spoke good French but German?  Anyway, it made P relax a lot, knowing there was someone on board who could translate. P and I sat on the bow of the boat as we made our way through the lake-like Christchurch Harbour, towards the narrow exit to the sea, I found that, actually, P did have some English as she was learning it at school. She also had some French so we managed to communicate quite well using a horrible combination of three languages. Although I admit my German was limited to phrases like hände hoch and schnell, schnell, which were not much use.

We had to get into the stern of the boat, once we got onto the open sea and went up on the plane. With my Uncle L steering and five of us in the stern it got quite cosy and I was pleased that P sat next to me, our legs touching. My sister caught my eye and nodded at our touching thighs as if to say, get out of contact, but I ignored her. I steered the boat for part of the way and then P and my sister had a turn. We were back sat in the stern when the boat hit some chop coming up to Hurst Castle and we bounced around a bit. P fell onto my lap and pushed herself back up by placing her hands all over my legs. My sister shook her head in despair.

We arrived in Yarmouth and went into a pub we always visited, the King's Head, where they did a very good lunch. I always had scampi and chips. My uncle asked if I was eighteen yet and I told him not for six months. He said I looked eighteen and asked if I wanted a cider. This I shared with P. She hadn't had it before but liked it.

"It's made with apfel, I said, deploying one of my few non World War 2 film German words.

"Must!" said my mother. P nodded in comprehension.

On the very short walk back to the harbour, where we had to catch the harbour ferry to the boat (there were no pontoons just standing piles to moor against), P, who had got quite tiddly on a third of a pint of cider held my hand.

"I don't know what girls see in you," muttered my sister. I didn't either but I wasn't going to complain about it.

The following day I helped Uncle L, refuel the boat, while the others went off, with Mrs B, to buy things for a picnic which we had decided, given the good weather forecast, that we would have at Newtown Harbour on the Isle of Wight. This was a really beautiful natural harbour where you could get to a beach. Later that morning Mr B turned up with P in tow. He had to replace some part on his engine and Uncle L was going to help. He suggested I take P off in the dinghy to look at the river. Two rivers meet in Christchurch so there was lots to explore. I knew how to operate the outboard, so we chugged off together. Despite the good forecast for the next day it was a bit chilly on the river so we both put on lightweight kagoules. I got mine knotted somehow and was struggling to get my second arm into the sleeve. P helped me into it, and I got an unexpected frisson from her touch on my arm.

"Danke schön!" I said.

"You are velcome!" she replied. We both laughed at each other's language attempt.

We had a nice chug up and down for an hour and only returned as we were getting low on petrol. She chattered away, incomprehensibly, so I did the same. She kept asking what things were called in English. For the first time since A had left, I felt a bit happier.

I did see P again that night as we all went for dinner at the King's Arms Hotel in Christchurch.  Uncle L had owned his own firm and had retired at fifty, He had lots of money and was very generous in spending it. Aunt J didn't like cooking so we went out most of the time when we were down there. P was wearing a flowery sun dress, rather than the jeans and baggy shirt she had worn earlier and looked pretty and feminine. The first thing I noted, however, was her unexpectedly prominent bust. It wasn't huge but it was significantly larger than A's. Not that I was particularly a bust man at that point; it was just that that was the agreed measure of feminine worth at school.

P was sat between me and my mother and as I sat down next to her she squeezed my thigh. My sister was glaring at us from the other side of the table. We had wine at dinner and P had a couple of glasses. Mrs B said that she shouldn't have any as she was only fifteen but her husband told her that a bit of wine was fine. She did not get noticeably intoxicated but did give me a shy kiss in the street outside when we left. Fortunately, my sister didn't see us. My mother did and gave me an encouraging nod. I had been quite morose since A had left for Scotland so she obviously thought that something that would cheer me up would be a good thing. I was inclined to agree with her.

The kiss from P certainly did cheer me up. I had despaired of meeting another girl after A left and yet here, only a month or so later, was a girl who liked me enough to kiss me. Even if she was, perhaps, a bit drunk. It was just a shame that she lived in Bavaria.

The day we went to Newtown Harbour the weather was, indeed, lovely, in what was turning out not to be a brilliant summer. Although we had been to the Isle of Wight quite a few times in the past we always went to Yarmouth or Cowes. Newtown Harbour was invisible from the sea. There was just a narrow entrance which you went through into a large salt water lake with inlets and scattered islands. It is still one of my favourite places. More than twenty years later I would have sex in the dark on the foredeck of a sailing yacht anchored there and afterwards we would both lie on our backs staring up at the Milky Way. One of the few places I have seen it, in light polluted south east England.

After we had anchored, the girls went below to change into their swimsuits. P came back into the cockpit wearing a flowery bikini which confirmed her nicely shaped bust and also a trim waist, long legs and a golden tan. She looked lovely,

"You look lovely!" I said. My mother quickly translated but I think P knew what I had said, given her big smile. Fortunately, my sister hadn't come up yet, While Aunt J took my mother, sister, P and the picnic to the beach at the harbour entrance, in the boat's little tender, Uncle L and I locked up the boat and waited for Aunt J to return to pick us up.

"I know you have had a bit of a disappointment with a girl, lately," said Uncle L. "But the best thing is not to mope but to just jump back into the saddle!" He told me that Mr B had told him P really liked me and had asked if I had a girlfriend. He said he had told Mr B that a girl had just been horrible to me and I was feeling very upset. I protested that A hadn't been horrible to me but he said it would be best if P felt sorry for me. "I think if you made an overture she wouldn't resist!" he said.

When we arrived at the beach the others had spread out towels and blankets and were laying out quite an elaborate looking picnic. The main thing, from my point of view, was that it had pork pies and a tube of Colman's mustard. My sister, I was surprised to see, was paddling in the sea with P but I decided not to join them because they seemed to be getting on. My mother tried to encourage me to join them but I said, maybe after lunch. Uncle L had bought (quite a lot of) Champagne for lunch and P and I drank rather a lot. After lunch the adults sat and chatted about boring people they knew, my sister settled down with her Ursula K LeGuin book and so I took P for a walk along the beach, away from the harbour entrance.

We were not in a rush, as we had to wait for high tide before we could get back into Christchurch Harbour. The thing about this beach was that you could pretty much only get to it by boat. There was a footpath to it from inland but that would involve over a mile and a half walk from the nearest parking. As we walked further, there were trees coming right down to the beach on our left.  P said something to me and pointed at the sea. I wasn't very keen on swimming, especially in the chilly Solent and I shook my head. I told her to go ahead.  She pulled on my hand, gabbling away. I shook my head again. She grinned ,put her hands behind her back and whipped off her bikini top. I was completely shocked. I should have looked at her perky bust but instead I just looked up and down the beach, making sure no one was about. There wasn't but by the time I looked back at her she was pushing her bikini bottoms down too, revealing her dark brown fluff. She kicked off her plastic sandals and said something to me, pointing at my trunks. Did she really think I was going to take my clothes off and jump naked into the sea with her? For a start, it was illegal. I knew they had nudist beaches in Germany and Sweden but we wouldn't get one in Britain for another three years. It only became legal to be naked in public in Britain in 2003. I was so anxious about this I didn't really take in her body at all. It was only later that I realised that her tan was an all over one. She was wading into the sea, squealing at the cold. Or it could have been the pebbles on the beach.. If you are going to make an exhibition of yourself do it quietly, I thought. She got in up to her thighs and turned around and pointed at me, jeering. I assumed it was the German equivalent of 'cowardy, cowardy, custard'. Kowardy, Kowardy, Kustard. She was squawking away, still making far too much noise. Then she held her arms out to me.

"Kommen! Bitte!" She blew me a kiss. I remembered what Uncle L had said earlier and also something my grandmother once said to me when I was about ten. "You only regret the things you don't do!"

"Alright but be quiet!" I said, unknotting the cord of my swimming trunks and pushing them over my thighs, anxiously looking both ways up and down the beach as if I was about to cross a busy road. ‘Look right, look left, look right again. If all clear, quick march!’ as the road safety TV adverts used to say. In fact, thinking about marching and the appearance of the local constabulary shouting ‘now then now, then, what's going on 'ere!’ I decided to keep my canvas boating shoes on, in order to facilitate a quick escape. if necessary.

The water was freezing but I was in a dilemma as I thought I ought to get my genitals modestly under water but also wanted to accustom my legs to the chill slowly. P splashed water over me, twisted around and swam off away from me, her feet kicking up spray and her taut little bottom sometimes showing just above the surface. I took a deep breath and jumped forward to set off after her. Swimming in shoes was not easy and I wasn't a very strong swimmer anyway.  A powerboat had passed by several hundred yards out and eventually the wash hit me causing me to splutter and have to stand up. I tried to get the water out of my nose and blinked to clear my salty eyes. P appeared in front of me looking anxious and making solicitous sounding comments. I smiled and said I was OK. She put her hands on my hips and then slid up to me, standing about six inches away and raising her face, expectantly.

I initially thought that the last thing I needed was to get all emotional with a girl, especially another younger girl. But she looked so happy and cute and I liked kissing and she was a very pretty girl with a lovely figure, so I put my hands on her shoulders, dipped my head and kissed her. Just a soft kiss not much more than I'd give any girl. Not a sexual kiss. I pulled away after a second or so. But she put her hand behind my neck and pulled me in for another kiss. This time she started to work her lips on me and then I felt her tongue dart between my lips. Oh well, I thought, if she wants that. I slipped a hand down her back and it settled on her bottom. She moved in closer and somehow seemed to mould herself to my body. It was almost like some sort of alien plant that started to envelop me. I felt that she was melding into me. She lifted one leg and ran the inside of her knee against the side of my thigh. It occurred to me that she might be quite drunk on the Champagne and I was taking advantage of her. But now she was straddling my thigh as we kept kissing. I was quite stiff by now, not surprisingly, despite the cold water. The feel of her naked skin pressed against mine in water was just wonderful. Her hand closed on my erection and she kissed me harder. I started to edge her around, so I could look over her shoulder to the beach and check no on was coming. It was still all clear, miraculously.

Suddenly, she broke contact and waded off towards the beach. I set off after her, realising that I had actually enjoyed being naked in the sea. There was something elemental about it, I supposed. It being the Solent, the water was none too warm anyway, so I was glad to get out. Also, I couldn't believe our luck had held this long and nobody had appeared. With another look around, I followed her, only to see her pick up both of our swimming things and run into the trees.  I followed into the shade and found her standing, still naked, in front of me with our swimsuits held behind her back. Her skin was covered in goosebumps and her surprisingly dark nipples were erect. She pursed her lips in a kiss.

"One more," I said, stepping towards her, Her body was cold but it felt wonderful. She dropped our swimming things and we ran our hands over each other's wet backs and bottoms for several minutes. I didn't initiate anything more. She didn't touch my cock again so I kept my hands away from her breasts and pussy, although my erection was pressed up against her cold belly. Then she stepped back and put her sandals on. I was still very stiff but our interlude was obviously over, as she was putting her bikini top back on, rather disappointingly. I pulled my trunks on easily, as at least they were dry. Gradually, I subsided and we stepped out from the trees to walk back along the shingle beach. A yacht was anchoring only fifty yards out to sea from where we had been. We had been lucky.

But that was it for P and I. She went back to Windsor with Mr and Mrs B but flew back to Germany a few days later. I seemed to be doomed to meet nice girls who would then disappear to far flung places.

Just before we went home from Uncle L and Aunt J's they gave me a book. It was A5 sized with a hard cover but inside it was blank drawing paper. They knew I was good at art and asked if I would like to have it. Someone had given it to them but they had no use for it.  I was very pleased with it but rather than drawing I started to jot down notes in it. Too call it a journal would be giving it a rather grander title than it deserved but I did (occasionally) write down my thoughts and experiences. My first skinny dipping experience was the first thing I wrote down in it when I got home. ‘Had a lovely one last night, First time for ages not thinking about A. Wish P and I had had more time together!

But pretty P from Bavaria had helped me in a huge way. I now knew that A was not to be the only woman in my life. At least one other girl found me attractive. I just needed one who could be around a bit longer and one who could speak English.

I had something to tell O when I went back to school in September, anyway. What I wasn't to know was that my next girl would appear in just a few weeks, would also be foreign and our interaction would also involve swimming.