Chronicle 19 -1980: The Sisters: Part 1

C had her summer dress up around her hips and I was banging her up against a door. I was trying to be as quick as possible as the door was the one between the two different rooms in the College law library. We were in the smaller inner room and had been playing with each other's genitals under the desk for some time. C had wanted "a proper fuck" so I suggested going back to my room but she said that we had to do it in the library. The library was much quieter in ninth week, even though most people seemed to be staying up for the College ball. However, with no essays to be written, the library was now deserted after dinner, compared with the half a dozen or so always in there during term time. C had persuaded me that taking her up against the door meant no one could surprise us, although I was not convinced of this at all. In order to deal with the height difference she was standing on two small stacks of the All England Law Reports. I couldn't have taken her on the desks (which later became something of a favourite) as they had wooden dividers between each place and fitted lamps in the way. I drove into her as hard as I could, desperate for her to come so we could avoid the ignominy of being caught in flagrante delicto again. although I was starting to wonder if she actually enjoyed the prospect of being caught. 

"The tutors will have a fit!" I said. I thought we might actually get sent down if we were caught but this just seemed to excite her even more. 

"That's it!" she gasped at last, thankfully. I pulled out, not having come myself, due, mainly, to anxiety about the whole situation. She said she would 'dick me', grasping my wet cock. I was covered in her creamy juices. I told her I was fine but she was already on her knees and licking my shaft. I said I really was fine and she could do it back in my room. We weren't against the door any more and I expected it to open any second and have all three of my tutors charge in behind the principal. She was already sucking, though, but it was no use. I couldn't come and so she gave up after a while. "Shit! she said grumpily, pulling her temporarily discarded knickers back on. "Useless! I bet B from Magdalen wouldn't be so timid. I bet he'd let me suck him off in the library!" 

She had been to dinner at Magdalen as his guest at the end of eighth week. I had sat in my room and sulked; my imagination running wild at what they might get up to. At least she didn't come up to my room immediately afterwards telling me how how wonderful it had been. She did at least wait until the following lunchtime to regale K and I about it over lunch. Dinner was wonderful. His room was wonderful. His conversation was wonderful. What I didn't know, at that point, was that she and B had had some sort of intimate episode. Not full sex but not far off. 

We put the All England Law Reports back on the shelves. At least we did after I had had to go to the gents next door and get some toilet paper to wipe the mid-blue covers, as C had dripped on them. She had used her last tissue to wipe her pussy. She dropped both lots of paper into the library bin, typically. 

I hadn't stayed up for the whole of ninth week before and the ninth week of Trinity term was particularly odd. I had been out in Radcliffe Square and seen a very formal procession of dons coming from the Sheldonian Theatre along Catte Street. They were in full academic dress and were led by the Chancellor of the university who was a former Prime Minister of Britain, Harold MacMillan. A figure from history walking in front of me, the back of his long black and gold robe supported by a small boy dressed in black with black tights and a white ruffled shirt, in the manner of a bridal train.  Behind him, dressed predominantly in red, came the dons and those who had just been granted honorary degrees by the university. It was another of those distinctive 'Oxford moments'. Encaenia, it was called. There had been another one a month before with the ceremony of beating the bounds, on Ascension Day in the middle of May. This used to be a common ceremony to mark parish boundaries in Britain but has largely died out. Except in Oxford, or course, where a parade of clerics, dignitaries and hangers on trace the boundaries of two adjoining parishes and stop at key points to cry "Mark! Mark! Mark!" and hit the point with long white sticks. One of these points was in our main quad. C and I watched it in disbelief. 

The next day C and I were down at the pigeonholes in the porter's lodge and she had a handwritten note in an envelope from someone which she got very secretive about. I didn't want to push her but she was distant and critical of me for the rest of the morning. She told me that there was a jazz band at the ball and I was expected to dance the Charleston with her. I said that this was ridiculous. Informal dancing was bad enough but that sort of dance had to be learned. There was a very popular ballroom dancing society at Oxford which was, I gathered, a complete pick-up market. Men who could dance ballroom could basically, according to my friend Dobs, have any girls there they liked. I ventured that any man who could do ballroom dancing probably wasn't interested in girls anyway. 

"Where are we with our relationship?" asked C completely out of the blue as we walked back to her room after lunch. I asked whether it was, in fact, a relationship at all, rankled by the fact that despite everyone up to and including the Principal knowing about it she still wouldn't show any affection towards me in College. I didn't want to snog her in the quad, or anything, but the occasional hand holding or hug might be nice. She looked at me. appalled. 

"I'm not a teenager!" she said, although, of course she was. She was still eighteen. She identified with her sister who was in her thirties and I sometimes thought that she thought she was in her thirties too, emotionally. C said that that was what she was thinking, that we didn't have a relationship at all, as we went up the wooden stairs to her room. She said we had sex but did we have anything else in common? She said that all the things she liked doing l didn't. I said that wasn't true and pointed out some of the things we did have in common like art appreciation and music. She said that a relationship was about doing things you didn't want to do but did anyway to please your partner. I thought about all the times I had trudged around dress and fabric shops. She said I wouldn't dance, I wouldn't go punting. and I wouldn't play croquet. This latter one was another point of recent contention. A croquet pitch had been set up in the quad and people played every afternoon in the summer. I had no hand to eye co-ordination, so didn't want to try and learn the game in front of everyone else sitting on the benches or around the edge of the grass. Most of the men who played croquet were the public school types C lusted after, not coincidentally. 

"I hope we are more than friends," I said, wishing the conversation would end. She said we could be friends without having sex. She said I was very lucky to have had a girl like her. I didn't like the use of the past tense at all. 

"I am very attractive and could have any man I like!" Until they got to know you, I thought. "You, however. are far too timid to get another girl! You take me for granted. I think we can carry on being friends but be free to look elsewhere!"  I thought about the creep from Magdalen and thought she already seemed to be doing that. I decided against arguing with her and decided to leave her to it. 

C told me that I wouldn't be seeing much of her over the next few days as she was in a desperate rush to finish her ball dress. I said I could sit with her while she sewed but she said that would be distracting. She suggested I take some pencils and paper and go out in the sunshine and do some drawing that afternoon. Having done really well on the holiday reading list I thought this actually might be quite fun. You would see a number of people drawing and painting around Oxford, mainly to sell to tourists, so I wouldn't feel odd. I went back to my room and picked up a small A4 pad and some very soft pencils and set out for Christchurch Meadows. 

I had just crossed the High and turned to look at an impressive Aston Martin convertible rolling down the street. It was then I caught sight of C emerging from Catte Street. the far side of St Mary's Church. She was heading towards Magdalen. Slightly surprised, given she said she was going to be sewing all afternoon, I followed her down the High, on the other side of the road, and saw that she did, in fact, go into Magdalen. Even worse she had her little overnight bag with her. I thought about the note she had received which she was so secretive about. My heart was pounding. Was she going to see that odious creep at the college? Had that whole conversation after lunch been about the fact that she had already moved on to someone else? I stomped off to Christ Church Meadows, my mind in turmoil. Had she just been staying with me until the next, more socially appealing man came along and was he it? 

I sat down on the grass and started to draw a view of the colleges. I hoped the technical challenge might take my mind off C's behaviour and, indeed, I calmed down gradually. Perhaps there was a perfectly innocent explanation for going to Magdalen, although I couldn't for the life of me think of one. I wished I hadn't taken her to see my school friend there, as then she wouldn't have met the odious creep.  I sat for about an hour and came up with what I thought was a nice drawing. The bright sunlight was providing lots of shadow which helped give form to the mass of buildings of the different adjoining colleges. 

"That's really good!" said a female voice behind me. 

"He's the person who drew the picture in my room! The College artist!" It was H, the pretty linguist with another attractive girl who looked very similar. H was in sub fusc, having just finished her prelims. I stood up. H introduced her sister, who was at Cambridge. She was going to the ball and would be on our table for dinner. Well, how very nice, I thought. She was quite a bit taller than her sister but just as curvy. Her light brown hair was much longer, though, down to her tailbone, almost. She was wearing a sleeveless sundress and a straw hat. They both looked gorgeous: one formally dressed, one informal. I thought about what C had said about not being able to attract women and being timid, so took a risk. 

"I'll buy you both a Pimm's at the Head of the River," I offered, thinking how annoyed C would be, as she didn't like H and her 'ridiculous tits'. I was feeling quite well off as I had sold quite a few drawings and hadn't spent so much on books that term.

"Oh!" said H, looking slightly uncomfortable. We weren't that far along the bank from where we had had our tentative kisses.

"Thank you! How lovely!" said her sister, J.  It wasn't far along the bank to the pub and just as we arrived some people vacated a table by the river, luckily, as it was always difficult to get an outside table there in the summer. The girls sat under the shade of the red and white umbrella while I went inside to get some Pimm's. They had a special offer on a jug so I bought that, even though it looked like a lot more than three half pints. H was a bit shocked by the size of the jug but J seemed delighted.  She took a proper swig of hers after I had poured it and told me that H couldn't hold her drink and got all giggly and flirty.  I looked at the table and could feel myself blush. H looked at the table too. J could read her sister like a book and started questioning her as to whether anything was going on between us. J was obviously finding the situation very amusing. H and I said no but then H added 'not really' at which point her older sister pointed out that 'no' and 'not really' were rather different. H confessed that she and I had had 'a moment' by the river after 'too much Pimm's' but that I had a girlfriend who J would meet at the ball.

"I think she might be an ex-girlfriend," I said,  bitterly. J wanted to know all about it and because I had had over half a pint of Pimm's by then and was feeling sorry for myself I told J the whole complex, frustrating story. This would not be the last time I regaled women with my sorry story, as I saw it.

"She sounds like a right cunt!" said J.  Her sister was appalled by her language.  "Well she does!" said J.  "Blows hot and cold and expects you to jump at every command while keeping you on a leash and trying to find someone new!" J seemed to have encapsulated the essence of the situation in one depressing sentence.

We sat there in somewhat uncomfortable silence for a few minutes and pretended to look at the boats on the river.  J and I finished the jug of Pimm's between us.  I asked them who they were going to the ball with. H said she was going with another first year from College as she didn't have a partner. J said her sister had set her up with someone from another college. They joked that they were two unloved spinsters and I replied that they were both eminently lovable. They both have me a spookily identical smile. I was making a bit of a play for them, goaded, I admit, by C's comments about not being able to attract women and her slinking off to Magdalen without telling me, The problem was I didn't know which one to concentrate my efforts on. I didn't want to make a move on H (well I did but I knew I shouldn't) but J was in Cambridge, which was hours away by bus. She was just here for a few days. But what if C was off on some innocent visit? If she was still my girlfriend, and I wasn't at all sure now, then I shouldn't be even thinking about trying it on with H or J. I decided to back off with the flirting and just enjoy being with two lovely girls in the summer sunshine.

J said she needed the loo and disappeared inside. I told H how nice I thought her sister was.

"Watch it with my sister!" said H.

"Don't worry I won't do anything untoward!" I said.

"I'm not worried about her, I'm worried about you!" she said. "She can be a bit predatory!" I liked the sound of that. She took her black tie off and unbuttoned a couple of buttons on her white blouse; enough to reveal a hint of cleavage. I tried to keep my eyes on her face. "I'm going inside too!" she stood up and left me there thinking, in a slightly Pimm's befuddled state, about where I was as regards a girlfriend and whether I should be preparing the ground, as it were, for another one. 

H returned first, with three pint glasses of water, to 'cool ourselves down'. I actually welcomed the water and knocked back half of the glass in one go. I then needed the loo too and went inside. I could see J over at the bar and wondered what she was ordering. When I went back outside again there was a fresh jug of Pimm's on the table. H was sticking to water, I noticed. There were some bags of crisps on the table. J opened her pack of smokey bacon crisps and crunched on one. She asked me if I wanted one and offered it to me with her fingers. H shot me a warning look. I thought about C calling me timid, yet again and took the crisp from her fingers with my mouth. Her fingertips just touched my lips. J gave me a smile. H, not to be outdone, did the same with one of her ready salted crisps. We all started feeding each other crisps and H gave in and had another Pimm's

"I think I'm on the wrong table!" said a voice. It was my old friend from school, Dobs. He indicated his girlfriend and some other friends of theirs from their college, on a table away from the riverside where we were sitting. I waved at them, as I knew them all, vaguely, and introduced the sisters. "What are you both doing?" Dobs asked the girls. The first thing you tended to ask other students was what subject they were doing.

"Competing!" answered J. H frowned and glared at her sister. I thought I better go over and say hello to his girlfriend. Like me he had hooked up with her in the first term of university. Unlike me he went on to marry her. I glanced back at the sisters and could see them having an animated discussion before both looking at me.

"Where's your redhead?" asked Dobs' girlfriend.

"We're having a break," I said.

"Consoling yourself?" she asked, nodding at the sisters.

"Perhaps," I said.

"I would," said Dobs. His girlfriend scolded him. He mouthed 'knockers like watermelons' silently to me when she wasn't looking. I went back to the table and H asked me what was it about watermelons? My eyes flicked to her cleavage. I asked her how she had worked out the word as Dobs hadn't spoken out loud. J told me that H could lip read and do deaf sign language, as they had a deaf aunt. I was impressed. H was interested in how languages were constructed and spoke five. I was even more impressed. Although they had been born in England and sounded completely English their parents were from Scandinavia. I explained, embarrassed, the measure of a woman's worth at my school. The girls said that they were more a curse than a blessing, unless they were 'trying to pick up men', as J added, winking at me. J told me that when H first got hers, about five years ago ('they appeared almost overnight', said H, which I was sure they didn't), they used to stand naked in the bathroom, sometimes, and rub them against each other and giggle at the ridiculousness of them. I said I couldn't imagine it, imagining it. J said that they would have to show me as it was quite funny. They grinned at me and J just put her hands underneath her bust and lifted them, as if rearranging herself. It was patently obvious she was not wearing a bra.

"There's flirting and there's making an exhibition of yourself!" said H. They had moved around the table so the sun wasn't in their eyes. "You both look a picture!" I said. H said I should draw them right there, then. I explained that I wasn't really a portraitist and that the hardest thing in the world to draw was a beautiful girl. Or a horse, I added, which made them laugh. Nevertheless, I picked up my pad and dashed off a quick sketch of them sitting at the table with Folly Bridge in the background. They were pleased with it and argued about which one of them would keep it. I said I would have to do some more drawings of them.

"K says you do nude drawing," said H.

"Sometimes, although mostly I am dressed when drawing," I answered, grinning. This conversation was progressing in a very promising way. J was very interested and said she had posed naked for a (woman) photographer but had always wanted to pose for an artist. At this point H said that they had to leave as they had to get some makeup for the ball before the shops shut.

"We could do that tomorrow!" said J, squeezing my thigh under the table.

"We could but we are not going to!" said H. obviously deciding her sister was getting too friendly. We all walked, arm in arm, back up the Abingdon Road, past Christ Church, towards the centre of town. I left them at the end of Cornmarket and got two very satisfactory kisses. J patted my bottom. I said they could come up for tea any time, It was half past three when I went back to College, grinning to myself, like an idiot. I knocked on C's door but there was no answer. I went up to K who invited me in for tea.

"You've been drinking Pimm's!" said K, after giving me a kiss. "Not with H again, I hope!" She wagged her finger at me. I didn't answer but asked her if she had seen C. K confirmed that C had gone to see 'a friend' at Magdalen. I knew now who that was. I told her that I thought she was sewing that afternoon. K caught on straight away and said that she was sure it was quite innocent. We looked at each other and she gave me a wry smile. I knew that C would tell K everything about some man she fancied. K knew something but wasn't saying. K said that she didn't want to get caught between C and I again in some big bust up. This was sounding worse and worse.

I went back to my room and put the kettle on. There was a knock on the door and I leapt up, hoping it was C although the knock was different.

"I've come for my cup of tea!" It was J, resplendent in ornate eye makeup. She looked like a woman not a girl. I asked her where her sister was and she replied that she had gone for a lie down. "She's quite pissed. She can't handle her drink at all." I made her some tea while she looked around my rooms and at my books and cassette collection. She said I had good taste in music but not so in books. She held up a novel I had been reading called 'Slave Girls of Gor'.  One of the other first year lawyers had caught me reading it in the laundry room and seemed most amused by it. I was not a fan of great literature, then as now.  I told J to put some music on and she chose, rather to my surprise, my Glen Miller tape. She said it would get us in the mood for the ball but I said that it wouldn't be that sort of music.  I told her how much I hated dancing and said that C had told me that I had to do the Charleston. She said she could teach me the Charleston as it was easy. "Like exaggerated walking. Now we just need the right music!" She found a piece called Johnson Rag which she said was not quite right but would make a good start. She fast forwarded the cassette until she found the beginning. I said that we didn't have a lot of space but she said we didn't need it as you could do the steps on the spot. She stood next to me and told me to step back on my right leg and swing my right arm up and forward.

J soon discovered what she was taking on and I felt like a right idiot, as I couldn't coordinate my legs and arms at all. I told her I couldn't even do the breaststroke because I couldn't co-ordinate my arms and legs. The first swimming stroke everyone learns and I couldn't manage it (I still can't do the breaststroke). She told me it would take time, winding the tape back. We started again. I messed it up again. She played the piece about five times and by the end I seemed to have cracked it. I still felt like an idiot, though. I suggested we have more tea. She said I was doing very well although I knew I wasn't. She gave me a hug which was a lovely, squashy experience. She patted my bottom again. She told me to imagine how shocked C would be when I knew the steps. I asked her not to tell her so she would be surprised when she failed to humiliate me again. She said she hadn't met C (she had met K) but said that it sounded like C wasn't very good for me at all. I decided she deserved a chocolate biscuit. "After tea we can do the next bit of the Charleston!"

"I thought that was it!" I said. She explained that that was just the basic steps and we had to learn some 'decorations'. Why did anyone bother, I wondered? We kept practising until it was time for dinner. I took out the cassette and tapped it so it didn't get jammed with all the constant rewinding.

"We'll do some more after dinner. I'll see you in Hall but I have to get back to my dozy sister!" I went to see if C was back before dinner but she wasn't. I went upstairs and collected K. We went and sat down and H and J came and joined us. They both had eye makeup on and discussed what they had been trying on with K. There was lots of girly nonsense about lipstick and such like. J, who was sat opposite me caught my eye at one point and winked at me. Then I felt her leg brush mine under the table, just once. They carried on nattering about nail varnish. It became apparent that we had spent the afternoon together and I felt K poke me in the side. We went back to K's and all had tea. I excused myself and went to the loo downstairs. On the way I knocked on C's door again. No answer. It was now nearly eight. K threw us out as she had to write a letter to her stepmother about when to collect her at the weekend.  We walked past C's door but I didn't stop. When we got to the bottom of the staircase I looked back at her window but there were no lights on, although it was still quite light, being mid-June.

J invited me back to H's room for a drink, as the 'Pimm's had worn off'. H said she didn't have any drink so J and I set off for Oddbins, the off licence. She and I went through the square to Oddbins while H went back to her room, which overlooked the High. As we walked along the pavement J pointed out H's windows. She was looking out at us. I gave her a wave and then J grabbed me around the waist and gave me a big wet kiss. I looked back at H's window. She was shaking her head. They had some Rosé d'Anjou in the fridge and H insisted we get two bottles. I paid for them despite her protests. As we walked back into Radlciffe Square J turned to me and asked if I was up for more dancing. I groaned. She poked me in the stomach,

"Do you want to see if your wayward girlfriend is there yet?" she asked.  K must have said something, I thought. I looked at her and said I really didn't. and she said that was absolutely the right answer. She stopped in the quad and sat down on one of the benches. "I need to ask you something before we get back."

"Alright," I said, slightly nervously.

"Don't take it the wrong way," she began. Now, I was really nervous. "But what are your intentions towards my sister?"

"That's all a bit Jane Austen," I said. J explained that H had told her about our kissing and that she really liked me and hoped that I had broken up with C as she wanted to get to know me better.

"She fancies you like mad. Understandably!" she said. "But she is only eighteen, still a virgin and hasn't even had a proper boyfriend yet. I don't want her first time to be as some sort of rebound consolation which will leave her all upset. You are older and a lot more experienced, I would guess."  I didn't feel very experienced. I felt totally adrift as regards the emotional parts of .a relationship. I said I found H very attractive but I had decided that I was not going to have any sort of relationship with anyone in College ever again. I wasn't sure that I wanted any kind of relationship for a while, as it was just too much. J nodded, obviously satisfied. "Don't cut her dead though. A bit of flirting would be OK. Just nothing heavy or serious!"

We climbed up the large wooden staircase to where H's room was. It was the grandest staircase in College; the same one, near the law library, where the nice bathroom was, where C and I sometimes shared a bath. Walking up it with another girl felt odd. When we went inside H's room I was surprised to see she had turned out the lights and lit candles. Really quite a lot of candles. I said it looked very romantic.

"I'm a romantic girl," she said.

"So am I!" added J.

"Or something rather earthier," noted H. "Shall we have some music?" I nodded and she went to look at the line of cassettes on her shelf. H's room was the most impressive I had seen in College. She had a separate bedroom and a large sitting room with two bay windows overlooking the High, with window seats in them. J told her to put on 'romantic' music.

"Not your weird folk music!" she added.

"Steeleye Span!" said H, holding up a cassette. I noticed that all hers were prerecorded ones not put together from records like mine. I said that I had some Steeleye Span too. My aunt had given me an album for Christmas a few years before (like me, she had very eclectic taste) and I wondered what on earth it was at the time but I ended up really liking it.

"No! No! No!" said J, throwing a cushion at her. Her floor was always covered in all different sizes of cushions and beanbags as she preferred to sit on the floor rather than in chairs. In fact all the chairs in the room, other than the one at her desk, had piles of books on them, so you couldn't sit in one even if you wanted to. H put the cassette back and resumed looking. J asked her sister where the corkscrew was. C always got me to open the wine but J handled it very capably. She poured the wine out. H put a cassette in and dropped down onto one of her big cushions. J brought the wine over. Dark and mysterious music flowed from the speakers (she had a proper stereo set up, not a ghetto blaster like I did). I cocked my head and listened to it and J asked if I knew it.

"No!" I said frowning. "Rachmaninov?"

"Very good!" said H. It was the second symphony which J called the world's most romantic piece of music. It really was, I thought. I only knew Rachmaninov's piano concertos and the Isle of the Dead. This was the first of his symphonies I had ever heard. "Sit here!" said H, patting the cushion next to her. I gingerly sat down, carefully, holding my full glass of wine. J pulled up another of the large cushions and dropped down on the other side of me. She held her glass up and we all touched glasses. "What shall we drink to?" asked H.

"A terrible day that turned into a lovely one!" I said.

"Don't fret about her. She may be off with some idiot but that means we have you instead!" said J.

"And how lovely that is!" I said, meaning it. "Drinking Rosé d'Anjou and listening to Rachmaninov with two beautiful women!" H patted my leg and then kissed me. J said that they had to share, so kissed me as well. I wondered what C would think if she could see me now. Neither kisses were particularly passionate but they were on the lips and a fraction longer than a quick, friendly peck.

"I like artistic men. Romantic men!" added H. snuggling up to me. J caught my eye so I didn't put my arm around her sister, which I certainly would have done if J hadn't been there. We talked about what other music we liked and what painters. I tried to explain Piranesi but they didn't know him and preferred paintings. I said that I did a lot of pen and ink drawing and tried to make some of them look like an engraved print. H nodded at my drawing which now looked resplendent on her wall as she had had it properly mounted and framed. J asked when I was going to draw her properly. H said that she hoped that by 'properly' she didn't mean nude. J shrugged and said it depended on how she felt, before adding that she could visit my room tomorrow afternoon for a session. H did not think that this was a good idea at all and said something to her in what I took to be the family language. We agreed that I would draw J and probably H the following afternoon in H's room, which was where J was staying, sleeping on the cushions from the window seats. H said she would turn her room into a proper artist's studio and we had a slightly drunken discussion as to what that entailed. J thought that the presence of peacock feathers in a jug was a key element, for some reason.

We drank both bottles of wine and J told H that she had been teaching me to dance the Charleston, H then wanted to see it, so changed the music for some Bix Beiderbecke she had. This was a lot faster than what I had learned the dance to but we all jumped around like idiots. I said I needed a rest (in fact I wanted to stop looking stupid) and dropped into one of their beanbags while I watched them bouncing around. Bouncing being the operative word as I tried not to get hypnotised by the movement of their breasts under their sundresses, especially J as she had, what I knew from C, was called a sweetheart neckline on her sundress, which showed a lot of cleavage.

"What bouncy girls you are!" I said.

"What a naughty boy you are!" laughed H. She looked absolutely gorgeous and if her sister hadn't been there I would have grabbed her and thrown her onto one of her cushions. Instead she knelt down in front of me and took my face in her hands to give me a proper, wine flavoured kiss. I kept my hands well away from her body, though, sensing J's disapproval.

"That's enough!" said J, as H put her hands on my thighs.

"I think I better leave!" I said.

"Have I done anything wrong? I was too pushy wasn't I?" said H.

"Not at all but I am quite tired! It's been a lovely day. You have both cheered me up a lot!"  Maybe, C was right and I was too timid.

"What a gentleman!" said J.

"Tomorrow C will be back, she will have a perfectly reasonable explanation for her absence and you can go back to being the mysterious couple of College," said H, squeezing my hand as I left. "Unfortunately!" I set off down the ornate staircase. "Tomorrow, for lunch! Here in my artist's studio!" called out H.  I slipped back to my room,feeling virtuous and frustrated at the same time.

Next morning, after lying in bed, gently playing with myself and thinking about the previous day. I got up in time for breakfast. I knocked on C's door. No answer. I went up to K's room. No answer there either. I assumed they were both in breakfast, K was there but C was not. She was sat with H and J who both gave me a perky 'good morning' I grinned at them. H winked at me.

"Don't you all look lovely this morning!" I said, sitting down with my cornflakes. K was on it like a shot.

"What did you three get up to last night?" she said.

"We drank Rosé d'Anjou and listened to Rachmaninov," said H.

"And danced the Charleston. But don't tell C!" said J.

"Is that all?" said K, suspiciously.

"It is a precise account!" I said.

"Today, he is going to draw me, though," said J. "Probably naked!"

"Remember what I said about C actually killing you!" warned K.

"It's just art!" I said.

"Art for art's sake!" said H. "A phrase invented in this very college!"  I knew about Walter Pater, an art critic who was one of the College dons in the nineteenth century.

"Bet that's what all artists say!" said K. K suggested she should chaperone me and J said she could pose with her and her sister, like the three graces. "Hardly!" said K. I asked K if she had seen C and she admitted she hadn't. J said that was not very nice behaviour on C's part and not very faithful. I caught K glaring at her.

"I don't want to talk about it," I said, concentrating on trying to pick up the last few cornflakes floating in the milk.

"Alright! Enough!" said H to her sister. She patted my hand and looked sympathetic. Was C making me a laughing stock? Would I become a pitiable creature lurking around College while C paraded a string of upper class men? I remembered some Shakespeare I had done at school where men whose wives went off with other men were supposed to grow horns. Cuckolded, was the word. The bitch. The sisters told me to come to H's room at one o'clock for lunch. They had things to do that morning but told me I needed to think artistic thoughts in the meantime.

"Not too artistic!" warned K. The two left and persuaded K to come for lunch too, which she agreed to, mainly to keep an eye on me, as she later admitted. She asked me if anything had happened last night and I told her nothing much, just innocent fun. She put her arm through mine and marched me out of college to look for something to take to the sisters as a present. "Your idea of innocent fun and mine are rather different!" she said, as we endured the boiled cabbage stink of Brasenose Lane.

"Are they?" I asked her. She stopped and looked at me. I nearly kissed her. She nearly kissed me, I think. But we didn't. 

"Maybe not." she said, "but I exercise control!"

"I did too!" I said.

"No! No! I don't want icky details!" she said.

"There was nothing like that!" I said.

"I hope so. Maybe C has gone to see her mother. Maybe she has taken her dress home so she can use her sewing machine."

"Via Magdalen? She could have left a note!" I said.  "Anyway she didn't have her dress with her!"

"Maybe she went back to college while you were drinking with H and J!" That was a point, I thought, But then I remembered C's overnight bag. "You know what she is like!" I wondered if I did any more.

We went to Selfridges food hall and bought some hideously expensive marrons glacés. As the time approached to go up to H's room I got more and more nervous. Partly it was about the challenge of drawing J. People always expected a true likeness. This was a problem because most people only saw themselves from the front, in the mirror. I actually found profiles of faces much easier. This was less of a problem with someone you knew well who knew you were just doing a life study, for example, but I hardly knew J at all. I had only met her less than twenty four hours ago. She was a beauty but I was right when I said that beautiful girls were the hardest to draw. I was also still worried about C. She really seemed to have, as they would have said at school, 'chucked' me in favour of the creep from Magdalen. But what if there was a perfectly innocent explanation? I hoped for one but was not optimistic. H and, especially, J were sending out strong signals towards me. But the ball was in a couple of days and I would be expected to accompany C. I was in a complete emotional knot when K and I arrived at H's room.

H opened the door wearing a floaty, low-cut sundress, not the skirt and blouse she had been wearing at breakfast. Talk about displaying herself. The spaghetti straps showed she was not wearing a bra which became patently obvious when she moved. I could sense K's disapproval right away and, much as I liked her, I wished she hadn't come along. The sisters had rearranged the room. The cushions were piled in the middle of the floor, the desk had been dragged to one side and covered with a red and white check tablecloth. On it were plates of French bread, Camembert, pate and grapes. There were bottles of red wine and a bottle of Champagne in an ice bucket (a College one I noted from the coat of arms engraved on it); the first time I had seen someone use one outside of a restaurant. Also on the table was a vase with some long peacock feathers in it! Several large Renoir nudes and a Toulouse Lautrec poster had been stuck to the walls.  A long piece of patterned fabric had been draped across one of the rather masculine wood panelled walls. There was even a large potted plant in the corner.

"Is that...?" I asked,

"The one from the JCR? They won't miss it for an afternoon!" laughed H. The Junior Common Room was directly below the room.

"You've done all this in a morning?" I asked,

"We are resourceful women!" said J. There was even a little plaster sculpture of The Three Graces, on the shelves. French music was playing from the stereo; Songs of the Auvergne. They said that they wanted me to be artistically inspired. I said I certainly was. J said she was famished as they had been back and forth to college so many times. Had they done all this just for me? I supposed not. We sat on the cushions and had an indoor picnic, as they put it. J opened the Champagne. She had actual ice in the ice bucket. There were no facilities for making ice that I knew of in College. It turned out she had bought it in Sainsbury's and lugged it all the way back. They must have spent quite a lot of money. J later revealed that she was earning quite good money teaching undergraduates at Cambridge. I hadn't realised that she was a graduate student. I wondered how old she was. Older than me, that was certain.

After our picnic J said that it was now time for me to earn my lunch and Champagne and get drawing. She asked if she should take her clothes off now.

"Oh dear! Is this the naked bit?" asked K, swigging some claret. She had had quite a lot to drink, out of nervousness, she later admitted.

"Nothing embarrassing about naked bodies. If they are good ones anyway! And ours are excellent! said J.  "His is nice too, I would imagine!" she said, pointing at me as I got my Conté crayons out and tried to focus.

"Yes, I know. I've seen it!" said K, smirking slightly.

"Really?" asked H. "All of it??"

"All of it!" said K. I looked at her and tried to indicate she should shut up. J started to undo the buttons at the front of her dress. I told her that the tradition in art schools was that the model undresses in private and then comes out naked, so the undressing doesn't arouse the artists

"What happen if the model wants to arouse the artist?" asked J.

"Well, that doesn't sound very academic!" I said. Despite my cool demeanour my heart was pounding. Was J really going to strip naked in front of, not only me, but her sister and K too?  She had had quite a lot to drink I noted. I briefly wondered if the whole thing had been a plot by C to catch me out and that she would burst in with one of my tutors. "I will just draw you with clothes on," I said. "To get a feel for my subject!"

"Feel away! she giggled. Her sister gave her a look. I said that I would draw both sisters and I got them to sit themselves in the pile of cushions. They wriggled about trying to get into position. I suspected they were not going to be good models. They fussed about and arranged their hemlines. J arranged hers so it was well above her knees. H 'accidentally' let a spaghetti strap fall off one shoulder, which I found surprisingly erotic. They both had lovely, long legs. I told them to bend their knees and how to drape their arms so it was comfortable but added interest to the composition. They tried to get K to sit with them but K said she wanted to watch me draw, which added extra stress to the situation. I didn't like people watching me when I drew.

I had a pad of coloured paper and some pastels as well as the crayons. C had bought me the pastels and I felt a twinge of guilt. I set to work and took about fifteen minutes. They came over and had a look. They were pleased and I was relieved, as ever, when a model approved of my work. I did another half dozen or so sketches of them sat, kneeling or lying in the cushions. K even posed while the others watched me draw her.

"Do you always start at the top left and work down?" asked H, who seemed genuinely interested in the process. She was leaning on my shoulder; a soft breast pressed against my upper arm as she looked at the paper. I explained that otherwise, with pastels and charcoal, you risked smudging the picture with the side of your hand. I explained I would have to spray them with fixative later but it was too smelly to use in their room. We broke at about four and had some more wine. J asked if it was time to take her clothes off but I said that drawing for that long was tiring and maybe another day would be best. K nodded at me approvingly. The girls chose which pictures they wanted and I said I would fix them that evening and take them over the next day. I left, carrying my art folder and K and I went back to her room for some tea. I felt rather emotionally drained.

The two sisters were going to some choral concert that evening and invited K and I to go. I didn't really like choral music so declined but K went along. I wanted to be with the sisters but not with K watching me like a hawk. I was hoping C was back. She was. She knocked on K's door some time after five. She looked a bit shocked to see me and then cross.

"What a surprise to find you here!" she said sarcastically. I asked her where she had been and she said it was none of my business. "We're not married!" she said.

"I didn't think we were," I said.

"Good. Keep thinking that. Maybe you should go!" I did. I picked up my art folder, said goodbye to K and stomped off to my room in a sulk. I decided not to go to dinner and went to Burgerland to get a burger and fries which I took back to my room and ate, listening to Brahms 4th and feeling depressed. I replayed every second of the brief conversation in my mind. She hadn't looked pleased to see me. She certainly hadn't looked guilty. She almost looked straight through me as if I was now of no importance to her whatsoever. The prospect of the ball now seemed awful. What a waste of time and money. I could have gone home early. I never drank alone but I had a half bottle of the Sainsbury's 99p red wine and opened it and poured myself a glass. I sprayed fixative on the drawings and wished I had let J pose naked.

To cheer myself up I picked up and read a letter I had had from A, who was towards the end of her first year at Edinburgh University, as they started a year earlier than in England. We had been trying to arrange meeting up over the summer but it was just not working. My mother had booked a holiday in the Lake District and A was going to Italy with her parents. Edinburgh's autumn term started over a month before ours did. I thought how nice A was and how horrible C had become. I went down and had a shower before bed and was too upset to even get stiff and have a little play as I sometimes did in the summer (never in the winter!).

It was gone ten when there was a knock on the door. I wondered how I was going to deal with C. Be upset? Be forgiving? Ignore her? I took a deep breath and opened the door. It wasn't C. It hadn't been her distinctive knock, of course. It was J, holding a bottle of claret.

"Nightcap?" she said, hopefully. I was delighted to see her and invited her in straight away. She was wearing a different sundress and had her hair in a long pigtail, which made her look younger. K had told her all about the encounter with C. "Ignore the bitch," was her succinct advice. "Let's drink wine, listen to good music and light your candles." She indicated the ones on my desk.

"You can light my candle anytime!" I said.

 "Just what I was hoping!" she said. I got out some wine glasses and opened the bottle, while she lit the candles and turned the other lights out. At that point I didn't know much about wine. That would be something that I would learn in the next two years through my friends L and W. I knew it was claret from the shape of the bottle and I also knew it was a good one when I tasted it. I expected J to chose something classical but she put on the Glenn Miller tape again. I had recorded it so that there were quick numbers on one side and slow ones on the other side. She put on the slow ones. I sat on the chair and must have looked tense. She asked me to dance and I started on my usual anti-dancing speech. "Just shut up! Anyone can do slow dancing, even you!" I reluctantly stood up and we were in each other's arms and moving slowly around my small floor. She was tall, about five foot eight, I guess and she held me close, her bust pressed against me, her arm around my waist. We slowly circled to Moonlight Serenade. I relaxed and felt better. I still can't remember whether I kissed her, she kissed me or if we fell into it together but it was quite different from the kisses we had had before. Deep. slow intimate kisses. I put my hands on her cotton clad bottom. she did the same to me and her thighs straddled one of mine. She danced me towards my bedroom.

"Are you.." I began but she shushed me and started to undo my belt buckle. "Is this a good idea?" I managed as she unzipped me.

"Shut up. I'm going to make you feel a lot better. Just enjoy it!" My protestations became ever more feeble and stopped completely when she stood back and slowly unbuttoned the front of her dress. She shrugged it off her shoulders. She pushed her knickers over her hips and was soon completely naked, apart from a gold chain around her waist, the effect of which was far more erotic than complete nudity. She looked like a Playboy Playmate in the candlelight. Her bust was everything I had dreamed of and her nipples were large, about three inches in diameter I thought. "I don't do one night stands so you'd better be around tomorrow night!" she laughed. "Now, strip off!" I don't think I had ever removed my clothes so quickly. I thought if I hesitated she might change her mind. We embraced, my engorged cock pressing against her soft belly. She stroked my bottom. We kissed constantly. It was so much easier than with C, with her being so tall. "Let's go to bed," she purred.  I guided her gently towards my bedroom door. I didn't even think about the morality of it. In retrospect, I just wanted my desirability to women confirmed and this woman carried no baggage, unlike K, nor any future potential problems, like H. She was like a girl from the letters in Men Only or Penthouse, where the writer said he had met some gorgeous woman with big tits (they all had big tits) and they had sex almost immediately. Even when I was sixteen I thought they were nonsense. Male/female relationships didn't work like that. There was courtship, and tentativeness and maybe goading and begging. Real, busty women didn't appear in your bedroom and strip off less than thirty six hours after you had met them. Yet here she was. "Wait!" she said and bent down to get something from her handbag on the chair by the door. She waved a blue Durex packet at me. I was a bit shocked. Surely it was the job of the man to supply the condom? My face must have shown something. "This isn't spontaneous!" she said. "You've been seduced, my dear!" She grinned in the candlelight.

"I surrender!" I said.

"Good! Now lie on your back!!" She pushed me through the bedroom door, into the dark, into the unknown. I got into bed and pushed my duvet down to the foot of the bed while she blew out the candles and switched the music off. She climbed on top of me, still holding the Durex packet in her left hand. Her soft lips worked their way down my body until she was kissing the shaft of my cock. She pretty much went straight to it and was soon sucking my knob. She then sat astride my thighs, ripped open the packet and put the condom on me with practiced ease, unlike C and my earlier attempts. I wanted to kiss and caress but she had an exciting urgency about her, lowering herself onto me, before pausing. I could only see her outline in the dark but I could sense her staring at me. Was she having second thoughts? "Go on then!" she said. "Touch them! You have been looking at them ever since we met!" I couldn't really see that well in the gloomy bedroom but I put my hands on her hips and slowly slid them up her body. She had sweat running down her sides from her armpits. I brought my hands round and gently clasped her breasts. They weren't as big as other J, the Finnish au pair, but they were still big and much firmer than Finnish J's. She began to move her hips slowly. A flood of conflicting emotions washed through me as she went to work. Firstly, and most cruelly, I wished C could see me fucking another girl, although, to be honest, J was really fucking me. I was barely moving, Then I felt guilty that we were having sex in the very bed where C and I had lost our virginity nine months previously. Mostly, however, I was worried that I wasn't going to last very long at all as the whole situation was so exciting and unexpected. We had only met yesterday. I did actually try and think of tedious things to distract myself and took my hands off her breasts to reduce the sensual experience somewhat but it was no good and I was spurting in no time. She kept going for a bit but then her movements slowed and stopped. I apologised. She can't have even got started. She laughed and she said we still had two more condoms. She climbed off me and I pulled off the condom and hopped out of bed to wrap it in a tissue. They really were revolting things.

I climbed back into bed and we embarked on some lovely kissing and caressing. I could now pay full attention to her breasts. They were so full and heavy as I gently squeezed and lifted them. I started to kiss and lick them. Her nipples weren't as prominent as C's or A's. I gradually worked my way down her body until I was licking up the inside of her thighs, which she spread, wantonly, for me. I set to work on her with my tongue. Her parts were less pronounced than C's or A's. Less fleshy but nicely slippery. She told me exactly what she wanted. She liked me to lick the inside of her entrance and stroke her small clitoris just occasionally. Her breathing got more rapid. She was not a moaner like C. There was a concept in law called 'quiet enjoyment' and this was what J was like. She came, which I could tell from her breathing alone, just as my tongue was running out of steam. There was no flood of wetness as I got from C. At least she didn't clamp my head but just grasped the back of my neck at the critical time, pulling my face into her wet vulva. She tasted different from C or A; a lighter, less fishy, more delicate muskiness that I really enjoyed. Afterwards, she lay on top of me and I could feel those big breasts covering my chest. I stroked her bottom and we didn't say anything, Just kissed and stroked.

"Can you stay the night?" I asked.

"H would have a fit!" she said.

"Shame!" I said, disappointed.

"She can just have a fit, then!" said J. "Where is your loo?" she said after a while. I was in the same state.

"In the basement," I said. 

"You are joking!" H's room, of course, had the nice bathroom directly across from her door.

"I have a chamber pot under the bed."

"You really are joking, now!" I got out of bed and showed her. She looked at it in disbelief. "I'm not going in that!" In the end she pulled on her dress and I put on my dressing gown and took her down to the loo on the floor below, on the next staircase. I waited outside for her, listening to her tinkle and keeping watch. It wasn't that late and someone I knew could appear at any second, as several of my fellow lawyers lived on the staircase. Ten per cent of the students at the college were lawyers. We were everywhere. Fortunately, no-one appeared and we made it back to my rooms undiscovered,

"Does H know you are with me?" I asked as we stripped and returned to bed.

"Not really. I just told her not to wait up. She told me not to wake her up at some unearthly hour because I haven't got a key." I thought about C again. What she would think. What had I just done? Had I ended our relationship? Was part of my behaviour down to the fact I wanted to end it or was it just revenge, perhaps? I reasoned that she had already ended our relationship by going off with the odious creep from Magdalen.

Having a petite 5' 2" girl in bed overnight was one thing. Having a strapping 5' 8" girl was something else. She took up a lot more space and her head was next to mine on the pillow not on my chest as it was with C, when she lay on top of me. We wriggled about trying to find a comfortable position.

"Thank you," I said as we found a position that worked for us both, back to back.

"Literally a pleasure. And we have two Durex left for tomorrow!" she laughed. She was silent for a while. "I don't usually do this." She patted my hip. "It's just because you are an artist and I am your model! Also," she hesitated, "I am afraid that you are rebound consolation boy for me. I have been going through the same thing, except my man went off with another man. You can imagine how that felt!" I thought about C's interest in other women and wondered if I would feel different if she had gone off with another girl.

"A naked model tomorrow!" I said, not feeling able to say anything else on the subject of breaking up. All my previous romantic encounters had been ended by external circumstances.

"Can't wait!" she laughed. I felt so strange, yet so comfortable, having this girl in my bed. I lay awake for some time, enjoying her naked back and bottom pressed against mine and the tickling of her pigtail when she moved. She was up against the wall where C slept, except she was facing the wall. I realised that C and my relationship was now at an end. But had I ended it or had she? Things would be tense, I knew, but at least it was the end of term. There would be a breathing space. Unfortunately, I still had the College ball to cope with. Two women I had had sex with sitting on the same table at dinner. Oh dear.