I woke early the next morning and lay for a long while studying Kathleen who lay beside me. Her face was covered by the duvet but her shoulder and one breast were exposed. I could see the traces of a red rash over her chest and throat; the remains of her orgasm. I had caused that. But had I been too rough with her?
I covered her gently with the duvet and rolled out of bed on my way to the bathroom. I wasn't sure how she would greet me after the violence of my incest roleplay last night. I stopped by the door and looked back at her. Had I raped her? Had I assaulted her with my sperm when she begged me, or at least begged the role-play character I was attempting to portray, begged him not to come inside her, begged him not to make her pregnant again.
There came a muffled voice from under the covers;
"Tea."
So she was awake; what was she thinking?
I looked carefully and I could see she was there under the duvet, studying me from behind the tangle of her hair. She cleared her throat and I prepared myself for a crushing rebuke or at least some tearful accusation.
"Tea." She said.
"And toast."
And I felt a bit better. Tea and toast in bed was Kathleen's solution to all situations and I felt more confident.
She had showered and was half way dressed when I came with her breakfast so she put on a dressing gown; arranging the pillows against the headboard and sat herself up in bed. She grinned and I felt the relief wash over me;
"I cannot believe where you took me last night!"
I didn't know what to say and felt very much like a tongue-tied idiot.
"I just cannot believe how you manipulated my senses. The whole thing was surreal; the dialog between my twin brothers and their hands sneaking over me, and the blinding light! It was like a near death experience; mentally I was completely disorientated,"
She giggled at the thought before saying dirtily;
"I may have been disorientated but my body knew the way."
She laughed spilling some tea and made hopeless attempts to mop it up before continuing
"Where on earth you got the idea....."
She shook her head in amazement;
"And the gloves! What were you thinking?"
I shrugged and couldn't answer but I could see her genuine enthusiasm and could relax; I hadn't abused her.
"You are not just a delightfully dirty young man but you have a potent imagination and I realise I have to confide in you yet again."
She signalled that she was through with the tea tray and I took I from her.
"Don't go; put it down and come here."
She held up the edge of the duvet and I crept in and she pulled me closer.
"You must be wondering about Liam and my first pregnancy."
I kept quiet and as usual she opened her innermost feelings to me.
"I am sorry I lied to you darling but I couldn't admit it; even after all these years. I knew that Liam wasn't an innocent young boy, he was a horny young man who wouldn't take no for an answer. He would stick it in me unless I stopped him but I liked being fucked. I guess I am subconsciously trying to maintain my innocence."
"Liam was more demanding than Rory and he began entering me almost from the first time they began visiting me at night. He got me pregnant. It was a complete crisis and the priest was called in. He told my mother that there was a lady we could visit to make it all go away."
She paused as if rearranging the thoughts in her head before continuing.
"It was a tough experience. My mother disowned me and it ruined my relationship with my father; he was torn between his care for me and his love for my mother. Not a word was said about Liam and his part in it all. I was given a piece of paper with an address and told to get on with it. I found the way to an older lady; she was a midwife, she had taken some equipment from the hospital and had a bench in her front room."
She paused again and asked me,
"Are you ok with this?"
I just hugged her and she continued.
"I was on the bench with my legs in the stirrups and the midwife left the room. She was gone for a while and a tall thin man with a white coat came in. He greeted me and said that he wouldn't take a minute. He took a chair and placed it at the foot of the bench between my legs and as he sat down he disappeared from sight behind the white sheets over my knees. I felt him parting the lips of my fanny and his fingers moving around, he was inspecting me down there and inserted his fingers in my vagina. I didn't like it but just accepted that it was how it should be."
She paused again, for much longer this time and I glanced to see if she was crying. I wondered how this account would end when she suddenly blurted out;
"He stood up again and I caught his eye and I asked if it was all over; how naïve I was!
She paused again as if asking herself yet again the question; "was I so dreadfully naïve," before continuing;
"I could see he looked sort of bothered and wondered if something was wrong. It was then I was aware of him fiddling around with something down there. I heard the sound of a zip as he opened his trousers and heard his gasp as he pushed his penis into me. I wasn't wet and it hurt. I lay on the bench unable to move! I tried to push him away but couldn't; I called out but no one came. Fortunately he wasn't very big and he was finished quite quickly. After he came inside me he wiped himself on the sheets, zipped up his trousers and left the room without saying a word."
"When the midwife returned she seemed very irritated and began inspecting me roughly. She wiped my crotch impatiently with a cloth and muttered something about some dirty young whore. I didn't realise until later it was me she was blaming for the mess the "doctor" had made in me. I found out years afterwards that it was her husband who had used me, It seems it was his habit to help himself to the young girls who came to their appointments alone; and so many did! In those days abortion was not only a terrible disgrace, it was illegal."
Kathleen paused and snuggled closer to me and was silent for a long while before suddenly continuing in a very matter of fact way as if wanting to finish her story and shut the door on the past.
"The midwife went to work with what equipment she had; knitting needles I think, and destroyed the foetus. I was pushed out onto the street with a Doctor Whites sanitary towel in my nickers and the message that I should treat it as if it was my monthly bleeding. The whole thing was very painful and the damage she did is probably the reason I never managed to get pregnant in the last twenty something years."
I held her close and tried to express my anger at the way life had treated her and she responded warmly as usual.
"Don't say sorry darling, it's not your fault. Men have a personal responsibility for their own actions not a collective responsibility for some rotten individual's misdoings."
And she folded me in her arms with a kiss that lasted a long while until she broke away.
"We need to get going if we are going to get back to your mums before dark."
So she packed, I got the baggage into the car and we closed and locked the house and began the trip home.
I never found out if it was an impulse or women's intuition that made Kathleen ask me to pull into the Gynaecologist's surgery; that question was forgotten in the hectic hours that followed. To summarise; Kathleen asked the gynaecologist to check that all was well with her and the baby. He did and to his shock found a 4 centimetre opening and rang the ambulance at once; the birth had begun.
Kathleen was wheeled into the ward at 10:00, I came shortly after. The birth was hectic, even frightening, for me at least and by 15:35 the baby, a girl, was delivered without complications.
That evening I drove back to Kathleen's house and let myself in. It was strange to be there without her so I sat by the telephone and rang my mother with the news. As I spoke I heard the front door opening; it was Lydia. She came in quietly and sat beside me as I explained everything that had happened and when I was finished and had hung up the phone she threw her arms around me in a tearful embrace.
Three days later Kathleen discharged herself and I took her and the baby back to my parents in Yorkshire. On a Sunday the family gathered and we had a quiet christening. Kathleen asked me to be Godfather to baby Elisabeth.
Kathleen and I were alone together several times in the 2 months that followed. There was no lovemaking; we were busy emptying her house in Bristol so it could be sold. When the furniture was gone and the house put on the market we camped out next door at Lydia's. The four of us got on well but all the while we were together the question of Kathleen's sexuality and her fear of being spoiled by giving birth hung over us like a dark cloud.
On the last evening of our last visit to Lydia's I could sense something was going on between those two and sure enough Lydia disappeared, supposedly called out to night duty. Elisabeth was well fed, changed and fast asleep and we were alone.
I was in the bath when Lydia left and soon after Kathleen came to see me. Carrying a candle she came in and switched off the light. I watched as she peeled off her dressing gown and showed herself to me. She had thrown herself into her training routine soon after the birth and, apart from her lactating breasts, she showed no sign of having been pregnant.
"It's time," she said simply.
"It's time to check if everything is as it should be."
She knelt beside the bath and reached for my penis. Taking him firmly she rolled the foreskin gently backwards and forwards. I hadn't had an orgasm in two months and she quickly provoked a throbbing erection.
"Everything is as it should be with him I see. Get out."
"Get out and lay on the floor."
She reached for a big bath towel and spread it on the floor and motioned for me to lie down. As always she was brutally straightforward and to the point;
"Darling, you must tell the truth, I don't want you to do me any favours, just tell me if it is as good as before."
I searched for something to say but could only watch with growing desire as she knelt astride my body and reaching for my penis sat herself carefully down astride me. It was glorious!
I began to speak, I searched for superlatives but she hushed me.
"No platitudes now; we will do this scientifically."
She raised herself until my penis was almost falling out of her then lowered herself gently. She repeated the motion with a bit more confidence and I for one was carried away with lust. She continued moving, slowly gathering pace and I was aware that she was quietly counting. The feeling was extraordinarily good, it was too much, too intense; she hadn't repeated the movement more than fifteen times before I came with a heavy orgasm.
She quizzed me anxiously;
"Was that as good as before I gave birth?"
"Honestly Kathleen, it couldn't be better; It was so intense that I just couldn't last any longer!"
She wasn't fully convinced and quizzed me further;
"Was it good because you haven't had any sex these last two months?"
I answered that there was only one way to find out and she laughed again;
"That's a good idea darling; I have something more to show you."
That "something more" she had to show me was the most intense missionary position loving we had ever shared and in typical Kathleen style her loving was both intimate and instructive. Laying over her, held firmly between her lovely thighs as her heels beat in time against my back and showered with the warmest of French kisses I soon couldn't keep going much longer and came a second time.
"But Kathleen, was it as good for you as it was before?"
She actually blushed and looked away before answering quietly;
"I was more concerned about finding out how you felt but yes I think it was as good. Perhaps we'd better try again to make sure?"
She spread her thighs and pulled me impatiently to her;
"Lift me. Put your arms behind my knees and lift me. I am fully open to you then and my clitoris is fully exposed to your crotch rubbing me."
I lifted her carefully and watched as she reached with both hands to open her sex and guide me in. Her instruction continued in time with her increasing desire.
"That's good, bump me with your pubic bone every time you thrust. Faster now, keep going; and now short gentle strokes, just wait, gently now; I am almost there; are you ready? Then quickly now, bump me as fast as you can!"
Our lovemaking continued in bed and was tempered by regret and the pain of our impending farewell and at one point brought abruptly to a halt as Elisabeth woke for her midnight feed. I brought Kathleen tea as she nursed her and watched fascinated as she moved her from the one breast to the other until the baby couldn't take any more. She smiled as Elisabeth slept on her breast and grinning slyly asked me if I knew what we had forgotten. I puzzled for a while as she put Elisabeth back in her cot and had to admit that I couldn't remember what if anything I had forgotten.
She dimmed the lights and climbed back into bed beside me. Cuddling up to me she explained;
"We haven't used contraception! I should have bought condoms for you but it never crossed my mind. I wonder if you have made me pregnant?"
Kathleen wasn't pregnant though; of course she knew that; typically for her she was having fun at my expense.
Kathleen's flight to South Africa was the following day and Lydia would take them to the airport.
Our parting was intensely painful. When the time came and I had to leave her there at Lydia's house the shortfall of my eighteen years left me unable to cope with the sorrow. Kathleen couldn't bear to see my tears of grief and I was comforted by Lydia's embrace. With a tearful Kathleen waving from the window I finally left for the long trip home.
Footnote:
I never met my sister in law Kathleen again. However, we maintained a life-long correspondence and I treasure her hand written letters. She died in 2009 aged 79 having taken her Doctorate and achieving the title professor in English Literature at her university in South Africa.
Elisabeth, my goddaughter and now a successful author, found my letters to Kathleen as well as Kathleen's diaries when going through her things at the university after her death. Elisabeth asked if I could I let her have the letters I had received from Kathleen? I was reluctant to do that as my brother was still alive and we agreed she could have the originals when he died. After his death in 2012 I sent copies of all Kathleen's letters to Elisabeth as I couldn't bear to part with the originals that are the last tangible remains of her presence. Elisabeth has begun a book project based around our correspondence and was grateful for my assurance that she would receive the originals upon my death.