Chapter 21 - 1980: The Sisters: Part 3

“Do you mind me on top again?” asked J, opening the Durex packet, the next morning.  I said no, that would be lovely.  It was lovely as she settled over me, especially as there was now light in the room and I could appreciate her splendid body and her bouncing tits as she worked herself up.  I grabbed them and squeezed them gently as she alternated bouncing and rotating. I let her do all the work as I thought that if I started to thrust I would go off early.  She leant down on me and squirmed about on me rather than sitting on me.  She stopped moving.  Had she come?  I couldn’t tell.

“I shouldn’t have done that!” she said.  Oh no.  A bit late for second thoughts. 

“Done what?” I asked, slightly fearfully.

“Let H get into bed naked with us last night.”

“Are you thinking about your sister while having sex with me?” I asked in mock indignation.

“Very funny!” she said and thankfully started to rotate her hips again. She stopped again after a time, kissed me on the lips and rested her head on my shoulder. “Did you come!” she asked, anxiously.

“I’m coming now!” I said and I was, spurting into the Durex inside her.  I pushed her onto her back next to me so I could pull the horrid thing off as quickly as possible, as I was worried about leaks. I wrapped it in some loo paper which I had put on the floor next to the bed. I rolled over and cuddled up close to her.

“You’re going to have her aren’t you?  My poor baby sister.”

“It’s up to her not me,” I said.  “Anyway it’s the holidays coming up.  I won’t see her for four months.  I don’t know where you live.”

“Gloucestershire.”

“I have no idea where that even is,” I said.  Was it on the way to Wales?  “It sounds like a long way away!”

“Not that far. About an hour and a half from here,” she said.  

"I am about an hour and a half in the other direction, though," I said.  We lay there is silence for a while.  I idly stroked her tummy and her soft fluff.

“You’ve given me a very special few days!” she said, after a while, kissing me softly.  “I’m very grateful.  I’d been feeling shitty and rejected.  You have been really lovely.”  Oh no.  I could see the signs.  Rambling, post-coital, female monologue syndrome coming.  I looked at the ceiling and used her pigtail to tickle her tits which made her giggle. There was a knock on the door.  We froze; looking at each other.

“I know you are in there.  Open up!  It’s me!” It was H, J’s sister.  J told me to put something on.  She  jumped out of bed, opened my wardrobe and took out my dressing gown which she threw to me.  She grabbed one of my white shirts and put it on.  “Are you doing it?” asked H, from outside the door.

“Shut up!  Everyone will hear!” said J letting her sister in.

“I’ve brought croissants for breakfast!” she held up a bag from the bakery in the market.

“In that case you are very welcome!” said J, giving her a kiss.  H suggested we eat them naked in bed.  She went over to my kettle and shook it gently and said she would go and fill it in the scout’s pantry downstairs.

“There will be no more naked anything!” said J.  H disappeared to go downstairs.  “Get dressed.  Quickly!” she said to me.  She pulled her dress on. I got dressed as quickly as I could.  H returned from the scout’s pantry with my carton of milk too and expressed her disappointment that we were both fully clothed. She looked at her sister. 

“You can’t wear that dress again!  How many days has it been?  It stinks!” said H.

"He likes me stinky!  Don't you?" she said, giving me a kiss.  H screwed up her face.  J said she would have a shower and get changed after breakfast.  H had put the kettle on and was getting some clean mugs out. She asked if I had any coffee but I admitted I only had tea. She said that tea and croissants weren’t quite right but would have to do, as she poured milk into the mugs.  I looked at her bustling about in my room and thought how comfortable she looked. I imagined her in my room the following year, perhaps on a Sunday morning after a night of passion; my resolution to not have any relationships with girls in College already slipping away.  H would make an excellent girlfriend, I thought.  J jabbed me in the side, obviously reading my mind or, more likely, registering that I was staring at H as she spooned tea into the tea pot.  She looked up at me as I was looking at her and gave me a beaming smile.  So lovely. J poked me again and mouthed 'no' at me.

The croissants were still, just, warm and the two girls sat cross-legged on my rug eating them and drinking tea.  I had one too but never really liked them.  I thought that they were hugely overrated as food.  They were greasy, flaky, insubstantial things.  Just the sort of food you would expect the French to create.  Except of course, they were invented by the Austrians but I didn’t know that at the time.  I had always had to endure them on our annual holidays in the South of France. We used to stay in hotels, on the way down to our house, where we had to have croissants or baguettes with jam for breakfast, as the uncivilised French had no concept of marmalade.  Jam was for tea (and I never much liked it, especially the execrable Blackcurrant my mother enjoyed), not breakfast.  Even the jam the French had was weird, especially apricot.  Ugh.  At least, when we arrived, we took Kelloggs variety packs of cereal for breakfast, for me.  My sister liked croissants and more exotic food, at that time, in general.  She would happily scoff calamari, snails (she really liked snails), frogs legs, kidneys and all the other stuff, even as a five or six year old.   We only took two variety packs down though, which gave sixteen boxes and by the end of the holiday I was left with the boring cornflakes, having eaten the more interesting flavours.  I knew that if I didn't eat the horrid cornflakes, though, my mother would never buy another variety pack for me, so I suffered over the last two days, munching through this tasteless excuse for a cereal. I was not at all surprised, many years later, to discover that they were actually invented to be so bland that it would make children so leaden and unresponsive to life that they would stop masturbating.  

“How many did you get?  Enough for a rugby team!” said J, looking inside the bag of Croissants and taking another one out.

“Thought you’d be hungry!” said her sister, “Thought you might have worked up an appetite!”

“Not this morning!  I did but he just lay there like an Ottoman pasha and made me do all the work!” said J.

“Really?  You did the work?  How does that go?” said H.  There was another knock at the door.

“Is it C?” hissed J.

“No!” I knew the knock. “Morning K!” I said.  K came in.  She had a jar of apricot jam.  Horrors! It is one of those girls' foods; like yoghurt, smoothies, poached salmon or fruit.  She and H had met earlier and H had told her she was going for croissants. H had invited her up to my room. 

“At least you are both dressed!” said K.  “H has told me everything about last night!  Which I didn't really want to know!”  K gave me a mock ( I hoped) disapproving look.

It was lovely to have the three girls chatting away in my room that morning; nattering about the ball and their clothes.  J said that she needed to go out and get some new tights.  K said that she should really wear stockings for a ball.  Neither H nor J ever had, so K said she would take them shopping, after I had reinforced K’s view that stockings were superior. H declared that she didn’t know why men found them so sexy but K told her that once she had worn them she would see.  J said that she was going to take me shopping to buy me some black nail varnish.  K said that I couldn’t come on their shopping expedition and despite J’s pleas, held firm.  She said I would get too excited on a lingerie shopping trip and she didn't want inappropriate things happening in any changing rooms.

They disappeared, leaving me in a room full of dirty mugs and plates and with flakes of pastry all over the rug. I tidied up and then had to empty the chamber pot, which I had forgotten about and was starting to smell.  Given it had a lot of paper in too, from J and H’s donations, it was a fiddly and not very pleasant job to get everything into the piss flask and then cleaned up.  I must remember to get it back to C before the end of term, I thought. I wondered if she was about at that moment, so put it in one of the cardboard boxes I used for taking books home and carried it across to her room.

“Who is it?” she called when I knocked on her door.

“Your ex-boyfriend!” I said.  She opened the door.  She was wearing her silk dressing gown.

“You’re not my ex-boyfriend.  Your role has just...changed, slightly!” she said, mysteriously.  She asked what was in the box.   I told her.  She took the chamber pot out of the box, put it on the floor and pissed into it.   I couldn’t tell her that I had just cleaned it, of course. She looked up at me all the way during the process. “You like watching me, don’t you!” I shook my head, slightly.  “Yes you do!”  She lay on her back on the bed and parted her dressing gown, revealing her pussy.  She spread her legs.  “Lick me clean!” she demanded.

“No thanks!” I replied.  She ran a finger through her folds and licked it.

“Lovely and salty!  Just as you like it!”

“I’m leaving.  What time shall I pick you up for the ball?” I said.

“Don’t go!   Don’t be cross!” she sat up but kept everything on display.  She stood up and shrugged out of her dressing gown, coming over to me and putting her arms around me.  She stood on tip toe and offered her lips.  She couldn’t reach me unless I bent forward.  I left her hanging for a few seconds but gave in, to my later regret.  I kissed her and she was all over me, pushing me towards the bed and unzipping my jeans.  I tried to resist getting erect but she knew just what to do.  She knelt down on the floor and started to fellate me.

“C...Isn’t this all over?” I said, totally conflicted.

“You love it!  You love me!” she said, pulling at my belt. “I’m irresistible!”

“I...I’ve had sex with H’s sister!” I mumbled.  She pulled off me and looked up at me.

“When?” she said, still gently rubbing me with her hand.

“The last few days...”

“Have you had H?”

“No.”

“Wish I’d been there!  You should have invited me!  That’s why H was looking for her sister!  You do know that she is at Cambridge!” she said, as if it was similar to being a member of the KGB. I reminded her that she had been having sex with the creep from Magdalen before I had even met H’s sister. I tried not to sound too bitter. “We didn’t have sex.  We had a semi-naked cuddle and I tossed him off.  Uncircumcised penises are very neat!” The creep was Jewish which was odd as C was mildly anti-Semitic, despite her friendship with K. She said we had agreed we could look for other partners and congratulated me for getting one so quickly.  “Didn’t know you are a big tits man, though!”  I didn’t think we had agreed to look for new partners at all.  She might have suggested it. 

“It’s about the person not their body!”  I said.  She said it was about both and told me to lie on the bed so we could have a quickie.  I asked her what the creep would think of that. She said he wasn’t a creep but was very charming.  Obviously, she suggested, like H’s sister, and her charming tits. She said he had gone home for the summer, anyway, and she needed sex now.

“We’ve broken up!” I said.

“We haven’t broken up!  I think we weren't ever really together! Now, get on the fucking bed!” I should have just walked out.  If I had, our relationship going forward would have been very different.  As it was, it became very complex and she became a complication in my love life going forward for the next two years. She shoved me in the chest and I dropped onto her bed.  She pulled my trousers and pants down to my knees, pushed me onto my back, sucked me for a bit again and then mounted me.  She began bouncing away as I lay there in shock.  What on earth was going on between C and I?  I felt sort of disembodied as she ground away. Disembodied and shocked.  But my body was aroused.  I felt her come but she kept going.  She leaned down to kiss me, scraping my teeth with hers. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” I gave in and put my hands on her bottom and stroked her anus.  “Up me!” she grunted.  I penetrated her arsehole. “Yes! Yes!”  There was a knock at the door.  She ignored it.  The knock came again.  “Go away!” cried C.  I was reminded of Mandy the hairdresser in the bathroom. An identical scenario.  Her internal muscles gripped me and I think she came again. “That’s it! she cried and collapsed on top of me, breathing hard.  “That was terrific!” I pulled my finger out of her arsehole and wiped it on her sheet, which was rather ungentlemanly of me.  “Bet I’m better than H’s sister!” she said after a while.  Always craving validation.

“It’s a different experience, indeed!” I said, non committally.  Actually, of course, J had taken me in an almost identical way only a couple of hours previously.

“You can’t fuck tits!” she said.  I thought of Finnish J and knew you could.  She climbed off and wiped herself.  She bent down and licked my cock.  “What a delicious girl I am.  You won’t be able to resist me tonight!”  She flicked my erection with her fingers.  I hadn’t come.  “Drained your balls has she?  Miss Big Tits.” I pulled myself back together, my mind still reeling from what she had done and what I had done.

“When you aren’t around I think I better get a vibrator.  From one of those adverts in the back of Men Only!  It’s a bit weird having adverts for vibrators in a wank mag isn’t it?” she mused.  “Inflatable dolls, yes!  Can I come and stay over the summer and we can do it on your orange carpet?  As long as you aren’t thinking about K.”  She laughed.  I wondered what had put her in such a good mood.  I later learned from K that it had been the creep from Magdalen, as she realised other men found her attractive and she now thought she would be able to have any man she liked. She really did think she was irresistible.

I asked her where her ball dress was, as she put on one of her summer dresses.  She didn’t bother with any underwear. She said it was in F’s room as her wardrobe wasn’t big enough and she didn’t want to put it out in case I  saw it.  I was surprised she cared.  There was a knock on the door.  The same knock as earlier. C opened the door

“Are you,,,?” It was E, the student who had caught C and I coming down from the nice bathroom once.  Her boyfriend, F, was the one who had also caught C and I in mid fuck in the College laundry.

“Finished?  Yes!” said C. 

“Oh!” said E. I could see E looking at C’s chamber pot.  This would be all around college by tea time.  I tried to steer E away from it, as it still had C’s piss in it.  E, it turned out, had swapped their two places at another table with the two people we didn’t really know on H’s table.  C was delighted as she got on well with E and her boyfriend F but I didn’t think it was a good idea to have them on the same table. We knew too many people in common and I never knew what C would say or do.  C was very bouncy over lunch and almost like her old self.  I started to feel guilty about what I had done with J but then I thought about her and the creep from Magdalen and decided not to.  She went first, after all. I then felt guilty about what I had just done with C.  I couldn’t tell J but we were on the same table at dinner.  What would C say?  Since the Principal’s collection had mentioned our relationship C had decided that as everyone knew about it there was no point hiding it any more.  C chattered away at lunch but it was like I was underwater.  I heard noises but didn’t really hear any words.

To make things worse K, J and H came into hall carrying shopping bags.  C waved them over.  The three girls looked at each other but came to join us.  It was the end of lunchtime and there were a lot of free places on the benches.

“I hear that you have been having sex with my lover!” said C.  J’s face blanched.  She actually went white.  I had heard the phrase but never seen it happen before.

“I, I, I...” she stammered.

“I don’t mind.  We have agreed we’re not exclusive any more!” said C, poking her fruit salad with her spoon. “I’ve been with another man!  Separating the physical from the emotional is good, I think!  We are just friends now.”

“I broke up with my older boyfriend.  he was a tutor.  He left the country and went off with another man!” said J, the words tumbling out but the colour returning to her cheeks.

“That’s tough!  You needed a rebound one!  Maybe I have a chance with my tutor, then!”  C actually patted J’s hand and looked sympathetic.  Actually, I knew her well enough to know that she was acting sympathetic.  She had developed a character that she used increasingly in public, given her private persona was so miserable and unpredictable.  K looked at me with an expression that said ‘I can’t believe that you got away with that one'.  I couldn’t either. 

C asked them what was in the bags and J pulled out a black suspender belt.  K told C that she had informed the girls that they needed to wear stockings for the ball. C admired the suspender belt and J had bought new lacy knickers and a bra too.  They chattered away about lingerie.  I felt a foot rubbing my leg under the table.  I looked across at where H was sitting next to C and she raised one eyebrow at me. C told them that E and F would be on our table instead, which H was very pleased about as they were an engaging couple.  The girls all agreed to get ready for the ball in H’s room as it was the biggest and was just across the corridor from the nice bathroom. They told me I could come up and see them just before the official start time and K would do my bow tie. I was panic stricken as I was worried that C would tell J we had had sex that morning.  There was nothing I could do.  C was in one of her bright, optimistic moods, the sort that had attracted me to her in the first place.

I left the girls to it and went off to my room. I reckoned it would take me about five minutes to get ready for the ball, not the six hours the girls had set aside.  I did a bit of packing and went out to the shops.  I ran into Dobs in Smiths and we went to have a cup of tea at The Nosebag. He listened to my story in disbelief.

“You had both girls in the same morning and they didn’t mind?  My girlfriend would have killed me!” I pointed out that J didn’t actually know about C and I that morning, yet.  I hoped.  Dobs shook his head and said it was like juggling with hand grenades.  I said that the stupid thing was that the girl I really liked was H not her sister and I had now blown it with her.  “A bird in the hand...” said Dobs, pointing out that perhaps only the competitive situation with her sister had made H so assertive towards me.  It was true.  When H and I had first kissed on the river bank it was her that had stopped it going any further because I ‘had a girlfriend’.  She really did seem to be trying to keep up with her sister.  Dobs wished me good luck, as I left to go back to college.  I hoped my luck would hold but I fully expected a furious J to come up to my room that afternoon.

The knock on the door came at about four thirty.  I opened the door expecting a massive argument in the doorway.  But it was H, not her sister.  She told me J was having a bath and she had been sent to do my nails. She brandished the bottle of black nail varnish. She also said that C had asked J if they could share a bath, which J very quickly turned down. I wasn't surprised that C had made a pass at J.  I told H that C would probably try and kiss them during the ball.

“We’re not into girls!  At all!” said H, firmly.  “So you can forget any dreams about lesbian incest!  Why would any girl want to go with another girl?  Very strange!”  I told H that C had already had a couple of experiences.  “Shudder!” said H.  I nodded understandingly, while being very disappointed. 

I sat on the armchair and H pulled up my desk chair and painted my fingernails with the black varnish they had got at Selfridge’s that morning.  I started to have second thoughts about it but it was too late as H had now done one hand.  I expressed my concern but she said it would look great with a dinner suit.  She also said she had nail varnish remover and so could take it off tomorrow. She said that they had brought me a present which turned out to be a jar of silver eye makeup.  I thought that this was a step too far, although in 1980 it was not that way out.  She put some on just on my eyelids and pointed out that you could only see it when I blinked.

“I really don’t know!” I said.

“Imagine how surprised C will be!” she said. I gave in, mainly because she gave me a kiss and stroked my leg. I kissed her back and she kissed me back.  “I have to go and do my hair and make-up!” she said. “Unfortunately!” She left me feeling stiff and slightly weird.

There was another knock on the door, shortly afterwards.  It was E again, who was now going to be on our table. She admired my nails.  I felt a bit better about them.  She had been trying to find H to tell her about the seating swap but I said that I had already told her and her sister and they were delighted.

I looked at my watch but it was still two hours until I was supposed to go to H’s room to get my tie done.  I thought about reading a novel but I had packed them all and they were in a box under my law books. I put some music on and tried to put all the stress caused by women out of my mind.  Dobs was happy.  He seemed to have found ‘the one’ and wasn’t having to deal with all the stresses I did.  He is still married to her. I didn’t know what ‘the one’ would be like and, anyway didn’t think that men worried about that.  I knew it wasn’t C, however.

I walked up the big, ornate staircase to H’s room about ten minutes late, assuming that the girls would not be ready on time.  Quite a few couples in evening dress were milling about around the tented quad by now.  I knocked on the door.

“Wait!” I heard K cry.

 “Come in!” called either J or H.  Their voices were similar.

“Oh my God!” I said.  K was dressed in a black silk dress which left her toned arms bare. H and J were still in their underwear. The full on, lacy boudoir style lingerie with suspender belts and stockings they had bought earlier.  J was in black and H in cream.  They looked utterly magnificent.  “What a stunning dress!” I said to K, not wanting her to feel overshadowed, although, in truth, she really was.  K looked pleased.  She did look lovely but in a much more subtle way.  H and J helped each other on with their ball dresses while K tied my bow tie. As C had suspected, both the sisters’ dresses made the most of their magnificent cleavages.  H’s, if anything, was even more daring than her sister’s.

“Is it too low cut?” she asked, looking at herself in the full length mirror which she had dragged out from her bedroom.

“No!” I said.

“Men cannot be trusted to give a neutral opinion on this area!” said K.

J said it was a ball and that you were supposed to display yourselves to maximum effect. H tried to hitch up the front of her dress, nevertheless. There was another knock at the door and C appeared, dressed in her deep, coppery-bronze, off the shoulder dress.  It had a big skirt but she looked sensational in it.  I had never seen her wear so much make-up before but she obviously had some skill at it, as it looked immaculate.  Her ivory shoulders and neck were shown off to great effect.  All the girls admired each other for some time while I stood there.  The key thing was that I sensed no negativity from J, which I expected if C had told her about us that morning. C spotted my black nail varnish and ‘loved it’. 

We descended the stairs, as the other girls had agreed to meet their ball partners at the lodge.  At the bottom of the stairs we ran into T, one of the other lawyers who was coming out of the law library.  He was also in his dinner suit.

“Now that is just not fair!” he said, looking at me and the four girls.

C teased T for still being in the law library as we made our way to the lodge.  The girls quizzed him on his date for the evening and he admitted he had invited a girl he had met working in the perfume section of Selfridge’s, so was ribbed on why he was in the perfume section in the first place.  So he could talk to the girl, he admitted.

Unfortunately, nearly everyone had agreed to meet up in the lodge and there were dozens of people looking for each other. T’s girl appeared and really was stunning but he didn’t seem too keen on the rest of us speaking to her and whisked her away quickly.  She was 'town' not 'gown' and there were some who didn't approve of fraternisation between the two.  K’s partner was some sort of cousin who was at another college.  They had known each other since they were about six. J’s partner was a language student friend of her sister’s from another college.  He was not very tall and not very attractive, I was delighted to see. H was with another first year who I really only knew by sight.  K’s man, her cousin, appeared and K went into conversation overdrive as they caught up with each other about various friends and relations before they went off with some others who were on their table for dinner. 

“You are the nicest looking man!” said C, giving me an unexpected compliment.  I told her that she looked completely gorgeous in her ball gown, which she actually did.  She glowed with pleasure. 

C led me off to find where they were serving the Champagne and started trying to identify which men had 'cheated' by having ready-tied bow ties, although she said I had to learn to tie it myself, not rely on K all the time.  She was soon flirting and showing off to some of the other second and third year men.  A few had invited girlfriends from home but most people seemed to be with friends or fellow students from College.  Our college didn’t have the extensive grounds that some did and so we didn’t attract many out of College people, unlike places like Worcester, New College, St John’s and Christ Church.  I became aware that I was being paraded around, now that our relationship was rather more out in the open, like a poodle.  C would spot one of her target men, waft over and start being touchy feely, while I was expected to follow and ignore her flirting.  I wished some of my particular male friends had stayed for the ball but they hadn’t. 

The college had two adjoining quadrangles, connected by a tiny passageway and both quads were almost entirely filled with the two marquees pitched on the grass, with just the paved edges uncovered. There wasn’t really anywhere else to go. I was not a great one for small talk and I started to get bored quite quickly.  At one point I caught sight of H, at the far end of one of the quads and she gave me a friendly wave which cheered me up.  I also saw K but she was chatting with D, a man who was, like K, in the College choir and who she was developing a bit of a thing for.  This would go on for the next two years.  I didn't like him and found him smarmy and insincere.   Years later K discovered he was gay which shocked her but didn't surprise me at all.

There were two sittings for dinner and we were on the later sitting so this incessant chatting dragged on interminably. Down in the subterranean bar, somewhere I almost never went, they were selling half pints of Guinness in a special commemorative glass tankard.  I bought one for C and one for me and we carefully carried the drinks upstairs.  I had one sip of Guinness and promptly poured it into the flowerbed.  It was disgusting.  We were a wine drinking family and I had never had beer before.  I did not like it at all.  In retrospect, probably Guinness was not a good first introduction to beer.  I wouldn’t drink my first beer, a Peroni Nastro Azzurro, until nearly ten years later, in Rome.  C’s reaction was the same as mine.  At least it gave me something to do for a few minutes while she flirted with another man, as I went back to my staircase, rinsed the glasses and left them in my room.

When I got to the bottom of my staircase I ran into K, who had been on an identical mission.  She asked me if I was enjoying the ball and I said I wasn't really.  She asked whether it was because I was with the wrong person but I said that it just really seemed to be entirely about dancing.  They had already got a disco operating in the second marquee which, subsequently, made it almost impossible to hear anything in that quad.  She asked me if I wanted to dance and I said no.  She said her date for the ball didn’t dance either but she enjoyed it.  I suggested she dance with C which she thought might be amusing as long as her date wasn't there. We cut back through the passageway to the quad where the disco was and ran into some of K’s friends.  They all decided to go and dance together and invited me but I turned them down.  I just couldn’t understand the appeal of dancing at all.  

I looked at my watch but it was still half an hour until our scheduled dinner slot.  I went to the gents over by the law library.  Seeing the condom machine I wondered whether it might be best to avoid all sexual entanglements after the ball.  I sat at the bottom of the stairs which led up to the nice bathroom and H’s room.  I was very, very lucky that I had not been caught in a storm of either J going off at me if she had found out about C that morning or C going off at me when I told her about J or. Actually, I realised that would have been better, as at least it would have indicated that she cared but her indifference to my fling, and I realised that it was only that, with H’s sister showed that I really wasn’t important to her at all. I decided that after dinner I would just go to bed and let C get on with it.  I heard someone coming down the stairs but didn’t look up as I had decided to be miserable for the rest of the evening.

“Hey!” It was H, coming down from her room.  She sat down next to me. I said she would get her lovely dress dirty and she said I could brush any marks off her bottom. She asked if I was feeling guilty about everything and added that she had warned me about her sister’s predatory ways.  I said that I couldn’t feel anything bad about J whatsoever.  She had been nothing except a positive force. “Until she goes back to Cambridge and leaves you lonely and abandoned!” she said, putting her arm around me.

“I’ve got you!” I said, hopefully

“Maybe you have!” she beamed and I kissed her.  Someone came out from the JCR, which was the nominated ‘quiet room’ and grinned at us. I recognised him but didn’t know him, fortunately. A PPE person?  “Let’s go up to my room and have a cuddle!” H suggested.  I said that it was nearly time for dinner.  “Come on!  Just a quick one!”  Just what I shouldn’t do, I thought.  J would have a fit, as would C.  I suspected that while C could cope with me and J, the combination of me and H would be very different.

 “Another time,” I said as I guided her out towards the quad and the booming noise from the disco.

“I will hold you to that!” she laughed. “I better find my supposed date and you better find your supposed girlfriend!” she said.  We set off around opposite edges of the quad.  I looked into the disco marquee and it was packed, inexplicably.  I found C who hadn’t even noticed I was gone.  Someone had been plying her with Champagne and she was giggling. I told her it was nearly time for dinner and we set off for the marquee in the other quad.

Dinner was quite convivial, although the wine, paid for by the ball committee, wasn’t nearly as good as we got at College events.  C, flirted with F, E’s boyfriend, much to E’s obvious annoyance. I was sat between E and J who seemed to be deliberately ignoring me and was talking to her sister’s ball partner. Then the jazz band started to set up behind the small dance floor.

“Ready to dance?” asked C, spoiling the rest of my dinner for me.

The band started to play towards the end of dinner and I had to admit that they were pretty good; playing trad jazz. C kept pestering me to dance but no one else was dancing.  J and H tried to encourage their partners to dance but they weren’t keen either.  It just seemed to be the girls who wanted to dance which cheered me up a bit.  E and F did get up to dance which seemed to encourage some others but at no point were there more than about four couples on the dance floor.  C was getting very restless and kept glaring at me.  Nobody, I noticed, was doing proper nineteen twenties dancing and they seemed to be doing the same sort of dancing they had been doing in the disco. 

Then, the distinctive notes of the Charleston started and C stood up.

“Come ON!” she said, grabbing my arm.  I followed her onto the dance floor, believing that every single eye in the marquee was on me.

“Everyone’s looking at us!” I hissed.

“We are famous!” said C, which was not what I wanted to hear at all. C started dancing, waving her hands about and kicking one leg out to the side in an approximation of twenties style dancing. To be honest, her ballgown, which had a very full skirt, was not really appropriate for doing the Charleston but she didn’t care. She seemed very pleased with herself.  I looked back at our table and J was nodding at me, encouragingly.  I took a deep breath, was glad I had had two glasses of Champagne and three of wine and launched into the steps that J had taught me.  “Oh!” said C.  We kept going until the song finished and then I made a move to get off the dance floor but I wasn’t allowed to.  I had to do another dance which was in the same style.  Varsity Rag it was called, appropriately, as one of the band had started singing. Eventually she let me get off the floor and, fortunately, there were more people dancing now. “You did very well!” she said, condescendingly and then went off to try to find someone else to dance with; abandoning me at the table.

“Did you see her face?” asked J.  I hadn’t really.  J said that for a moment C looked completely shocked, which cheered me up a lot.

“Thank you!” I whispered to her and kissed her cheek.

“A pleasure!” she grinned.  I sat at the table while C danced with several other men, not feeling at all jealous. 

“Slow dance comes on. You’re mine!” said J.

“And mine!” added her sister.

K came over from her table and had a chat for a while and then C arrived and asked K if she wanted to dance. K said she would dance in the disco but not 'in each other's arms' and C, foiled, started to harangue her saying that they had danced together before. K pointed out that then a friend from home, who knew her parents, hadn’t been there.  C told her off for being boring and swept off out of the tent.  H and J looked at each other and raised their eyebrows.  H and J danced with their partners but I got the impression that it was more out of a sense of duty than anything else.  I sat there and drank some more horrible wine.  It was actually so horrible that at least it stopped me drinking too much. 

J did manage to persuade me onto the dance floor for a bit but then admitted that she could see that I really didn’t like dancing.  She just couldn’t understand it as, I find, most women can’t.  Given I didn’t dance I wondered what on earth I was going to do for the rest of the night.  J disappeared to the disco with her date but H’s date had left, temporarily, so I chatted to her for quite a while as, fortunately, the jazz band were taking a break and their music wasn’t that loud anyway.  The music in the disco marquee was just horribly loud and I didn’t know how anyone could stand it. 

Although I had some pop and rock music in my record collection I had never been to a pop concert or a disco of any sort.  I suppose they had them in Oxford but I had no idea where they were.  Today, if you look at a student guide to Oxford, they list many clubs for dancing.  In my Oxford handbook for 1979 there isn’t even a section for them.  It does say that Oxford lacked an appropriate venue for live bands and, therefore, they were not on the usual university circuit. Back at school I had made myself look very uncool (although there was really no tyranny of cool in operation then, as you find now) by trying to talk to Dobs’ girlfriend’s younger (and very attractive) sister at the bus stop, once.  She had been going on about having been to see some band play at the weekend and desperate for something to say, I asked her how many seats the venue had.  She looked at me in disbelief.  I had no idea that people at pop concerts stood up all the way through the show. I’d only ever been to classical concerts.  Who would want to go and listen to music and stand?  I also can’t understand people who go to places and drink standing up, either.  Oxford did get some bands at the New Theatre but, of course, it was all seated, so not that popular.

H, despite her liking for Steeleye Span, had views on music which were similar to mine and we were getting on very well. I apologised again about her sister but she genuinely didn’t seem to hold anything against me, thank goodness. We talked about where we were living in the second year and she was going to be over in the College annexe near the Oxford Union as well, as were K and C, although on different staircases.  She hoped that we would see a lot more of each other in the next year and then got the giggles, given we had both already seen each other naked. F and E returned to the table and asked what she was laughing about but her laughing got even worse.  F looked at me and I shrugged as if I had no idea what she was on about.

C returned, looking pink.  She had been in the disco again but said that the band was setting up and we would have to go back there in a bit.  She had found the steel band playing in the corner of the college where our staircases were located, so I was dragged off there.  At least their unamplified music wasn’t that loud and I thought that they were rather good.  C danced around again and I stood by the wall and watched her.  If people could see themselves dancing with no sound they would realise how stupid they looked, I thought.  

Eventually, we found our way back into the marquee for the major act.  The band were called New Muzik and had had a top twenty hit in Britain in January that year, with a song called Living by Numbers, which I had quite liked.  I liked synthesiser music but as soon as they started to play C said it was awful and we should leave.  I was enjoying it but was dragged off by C back to her room.  She had decided that her ballgown was two restrictive for dancing so wanted to change into one of her thirties style numbers, as the jazz band was due to play again.

I went up to her room and helped her out of her ballgown and into her black thirties (it was a genuine thirties) dress.  She wasn’t wearing a bra, as her ballgown was strapless but as soon as she put the thirties dress on she realised that it was rather see-through up top. She then agonised about wearing a bra or not and in the end settled on a lacy camisole which added some concealment but not very much.  In bright light, like in her room, you could see, especially when she moved, that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath but she decided that this was a positive and would ‘get men going’.  She said that it was a shame that her favourite tutor wasn’t at the ball.  A few of the younger tutors appeared on the sidelines during the evening but you always got the feeling that they were just there to keep an eye on things. C said that she would like a snog but didn’t want to mess up her makeup and lipstick. She stood in front of me and straddled my thigh with her crotch and had a little rub.  She got me erect, despite myself and, having ascertained this, squeezed and then patted my bulge before saying it was time to get back to the far marquee. 

As we were walking back past the marquee where New Musik were playing, they started performing Living by Numbers, their big hit.  I wanted to stop and listen to it but C wouldn’t let me.  Still, the brief, haunting synthesiser riff of the song still brings back memories of the ball to this day.

Inside the marquee in the main quad, the lights had been turned right down and, in fact, it was pretty much only lit by candles on each table, just as College formal dinners were for dessert.  Most people seemed to be listening to the band in the next quad but there were a few couples sitting around the tables and the jazz band was getting ready to play again. There was no one at our table.  I managed to flag down one of the waiters and ask them if any Champagne was left from earlier, as the wine was so horrible.  He didn’t think there was but C started flirting and thrusting her bust at him.  I spotted the exact moment when he realised that she wasn’t wearing a bra and he shot off to return with a bottle a few minutes later. 

C dragged me onto the dance floor again, even though we were the only people dancing.  I didn’t mind so much as it was now pretty dark.  I still didn’t enjoy it, though. Gradually, more people appeared and joined us on the floor.  New Musik must have finished, I thought, as the tables of the marquee started to fill again. C spotted one of her target men from the third year and abandoned me immediately, as she sought to get him on the dance floor and show off her Charleston moves, although I was starting to realise that I actually had more steps than she did, thanks to J.  Relieved and annoyed in equal measure I sat back at the table again, mainly to ensure no one else ran off with our Champagne.

H and J returned.  J’s partner had gone back to his college and she admitted that she was sort of relieved as he did nothing for her and was a bad dancer.  I then pointed out that this confirmed everything I thought about dancing, in that girls did judge you on it, even though you couldn’t help whether you were good at it or not.  We then had a discussion about why most girls could dance and most men couldn’t, as I saw it.  I wondered if girls were actually taught to dance in some mysterious way while boys weren’t.  By their mothers, perhaps.  In retrospect, of course, this is nonsense but I still cannot fathom why, in Britain at least, there is this thing called ‘dad dancing’, where older men are derided for their uncool dancing at events like weddings and Christmas parties.  There is no female equivalent; only men are made fun of.

“Anyway, you are an inexperienced dancer not a bad one.  It’s different!” said J. I was not convinced.

After a while, the jazz band started playing some slow music and E and F, who had stopped by again for a while, got up and smooched on the floor.  I looked around to see if there were any tutors there but there weren’t.  Their relationship seemed to be comparatively recent but I wondered if they were going to get pulled up by the tutors about it as C and I had.  K, who tracked these things, reckoned that there were at least ten College couples out of about three hundred and fifty students. Plus P and T, the College lesbians, who were considered very exotic and Bohemian. I hadn’t seen them at the ball.  C was disappointed about this as she wanted to see if one of them would wear a dress suit instead of a ballgown. 

“Come on!  Slow dance!” said H, standing up and holding her hand out to me, abandoning her poor partner, who was talking to another chap about the Fabian Society.  J said she should get the first dance.  H told her that she had already 'been first' and had to share.  J grinned, agreed and emptied the bottle of Champagne into her glass.

I was as worried about slow dancing with H as I had been about doing (an approximation of) the Charleston.  As I had with Debbie back in 1975, on New Year’s Eve, I was panic stricken about standing on H’s feet and wrecking her expensive looking shoes. I felt awkward and uncomfortable throughout, even though H was resting her head on my shoulder in a very close and intimate way.  When the dance finished H looked up at me and we had a rather soft and lovely kiss.  I looked over her shoulder to see E giving me a surprised look. Fortunately, there was no sign of C, probably as the disco had resumed in the next quad. J came up and replaced her sister so I could then worry about stepping on her feet instead.  J was ensuring her groin was pressed against my thigh throughout and started to kiss me.  I noticed several surprised and amused looks from some of the other law students. When we got back to the table H told her sister that she was making an exhibition of herself.

“Just as well you’re going tomorrow!” H added.  I didn’t know that.  H had said that, like me, she was being collected on the Saturday so I had assumed J would be as well.  J, it turned out, would have to travel back to Cambridge the next day where she was being picked up by her father, as he had to collect all her things from her room.  He would then drive J back home to Gloucester and then drive to Oxford to collect H the following day.  My first thought was that there would be one night when H was staying in College and J wasn’t.

“Don’t you dare!” hissed J to me, obviously reading my thoughts.

C returned from the disco marquee and insisted on slow dancing with me too, although she was not aware, I hoped, that I had been dancing with J and H.

“You will not paw me, attempt to kiss me, touch my bottom or do anything else over familiar!” she informed me, as we stepped onto the now rather crowded dance floor. I wondered what the point of doing slow dancing was if I wasn’t supposed to be over familiar. I did step on her foot once and she called me an idiot and stomped off, to my relief.

“You certainly don’t look like boy and girlfriend.  You just look really uncomfortable together,” said H.

“That’s because we are!” I said.  I told her what C had said and she said I could be as over familiar with her as I liked.

“No you can’t,” said J and whisked her off somewhere.  To give her a big sisterly talking to, I later learned.  I sat at the table and wondered what time I could go to bed without upsetting C any more.  E came and sat down next to me and asked if C and I had broken up, as I seemed to be getting on so well with H.  I confessed that I had no idea what was going on.

“H is a lovely girl!” said E.  “Always smiling and friendly. Such a nice figure too!”

“She is nice,” I said, trying to sound non committal.

“Did C do your nail varnish?” asked E.

“No, H,” I answered. E looked triumphant and then scooted over to an abandoned table and came back with an almost full bottle of red wine.

“Tell auntie E all about it!”  She poured me a big glass of wine.  I said I didn’t want stuff going all round college but I did tell her about what had happened at Principal’s collection.  She was appalled and wondered if the same would happen to her and F.  J returned and sat on my lap.  “What would your sister think?” asked E, to my annoyance.

“She knows when she is beaten!” said J, who was starting to sound a little worse for alcohol. I suggested that J come for a walk in the fresh air.  After a moment’s grumpiness she agreed.  I thought that I might take her outside College for a walk around the square but the main entrance to College was locked.  The porter was on duty to let anyone out but they weren’t letting people back in, to prevent gatecrashers. “Let’s go and have sex in my sister’s bed!” she said loudly.  Loud enough for the porter to hear anyway. We walked around the edge of the quad and found a bench to sit on.  She complained she was cold but did seem a bit less inebriated. “I’m leaving tomorrow!  Come on!” she said, groping at my crotch.

Fortunately (or perhaps not), her sister found us and between the two of us we walked her back to H’s room.  She seemed more tired than drunk, really, although H berated her, as J had told her not to get drunk at the ball.  I later found out that she had a bad headache that evening (probably the awful thumping music, I thought) and had taken pills which reacted badly with the alcohol. We got her into H’s room and onto her makeshift bed on the floor. H rolled her over and started to undo her dress.  I asked if she needed help but she said she could cope.  H said she wasn’t going back to the ball and would see me tomorrow to remove my nail varnish.  I looked at my black tipped fingers.  I had forgotten about that.  My mother wouldn’t be that impressed when she turned up to collect me if I still had it on. H said the main thing she had to do was ensure her sister got the bus to Cambridge the next morning. J rolled over, as H tried to remove her dress, and looked at me.

“Come to bed!” she said.  Her sister told her she needed to sleep as she had to get up early.  “I don’t need sleep, I need sex!” she pleaded.  H guided me towards her door. She told me to come and see her at midday.  I asked when J was leaving but H said she didn’t need distractions the next morning as she had to ensure J got the bus on time.

“Bye J!” I said, rather upset at what I thought was rather perfunctory treatment from H.  “See you soon!”  It looked like I was saying goodbye to J for the summer. I wanted her address so I could write to her.  I could ask H but what if she wouldn't give it to me?  I thought that K might have H's address, though.

I walked down the wide wooden stairs, silently cursing.  It would have been lovely to take J to bed one last time: a fitting ending to our passionate few days. There were still plenty of people around outside but the thumping music had stopped, thankfully.  I wandered around and eventually found K who gave me an unexpected but very welcome kiss on the lips.  Then another. Then we were snogging a bit until one of the first year physicists walked past and we broke apart, laughing. She told me that C was looking for me and if I had been with J or H I would be in big trouble.  I set off to the other quad and there was C sat on our table, chatting to several men I didn’t know.

“I hope no sisterly love has been going on!” she said, as I approached her.

“No, I’ve been kissing K!” I said.

“That’s acceptable!” said C.

“I can’t keep up!” I said.

“That’s your problem, entirely!” she said.

“Piss off, C!” I said, very uncharacteristically. She grinned and the other men retreated in embarrassment.

Eventually the ball wound down, rather than coming to any big finish.  Lots of people went down to the subterranean college bar but neither C or I liked it.  As we headed back to our neighbouring staircases C told me she was going to remove her makeup, get changed again and would see me in my room in fifteen minutes.  I was very surprised at this, as I expected her to sleep on her own.  For a few seconds I felt guilty about J, as I trudged up the stairs to my room, but then thought about how she had behaved and then didn’t.  Most of my stuff was packed now, apart from my clothes, which I would have to put into the suitcase under my bed. I filled the kettle in case C wanted a tea and made myself one anyway.  I had had quite a bit to drink but wasn’t in the sort of state J had been.

C arrived twenty five minutes later, at the point where I was starting to get annoyed, as I just wanted to get into bed.  She was wearing a skirt, blouse and jumper which she promptly removed before getting into my bed.  She wasn’t wearing underwear again.  Obviously she didn’t want any tea. I stripped off, a bit nervously, as I half expected her to tell me to sleep on the floor or something and got into bed next to her.  Her hand went straight to my cock and started caressing me and I got erect in no time.

“Do you want to make love?” asked C, stroking me.

“That would be lovely!” I said, turning on my side towards her.

“Tough! Should have gone to Miss Big Tits then!” She rolled over onto her side facing the wall, leaving me stiff and frustrated. I lay there, slowly deflating and even thought about going back to H’s room. I realised that C had come to my room solely to prevent anyone else being there. Like a cuckoo in a nest. Where on earth were C and I now? I didn’t realise at that time that she would continue to tease and taunt me for another two years. Tomorrow would be my last day as a fresher and the following day, the Saturday, my mother would come and collect me and I would have the nearly four month summer vacation to look forward to. But look forward to what?