Paul Biggerstaff and Liz Bradshaw were staying on a camp site in the Finchbottom Vale
that was once a working railway station before it fell afoul of Dr Beeching and
his cuts, in a place called Sharpinghead.
The two of them were
staying in the converted railway station, as part of a family gathering, as
they did for a month every summer.
Among those drawn back to Sharpinghead each year were the four Walker
girls, sister’s Jane, Kathy, Margaret and the baby of the family, Liz.
And over the years the numbers grew with the addition of boyfriends,
husbands and then for the older two girls, children.
And it was on the whole a very loving family and among their number
were Paul Biggerstaff and Liz Bradshaw but they
felt love of a very different kind.
The problem was they
were not a couple, they were married however, just not to each other, and they
were in fact brother and sister in law.
Paul had been married
to Liz’s sister Margaret for over four years and they had been in love with
each other for all of those and their mutual attraction was obvious to them
both from the first moment they were introduced, but they knew instinctively that
they could never act on it.
And for over four
years they kept their feelings in check, at least until Christmas in 1970 when with the aid of mulled wine and mistletoe they
kissed.
When they reflected on
it later the nature of the kiss had surprised them both, once they started they
didn’t want to stop, but stop they did, it was not just a perfect Christmas
kiss, it was perfect on every level, and having broken the ice with a kiss,
they wanted to repeat it.
But the next morning
in the cold, sober, light of day, they felt guilty, really, really guilty, but
not just for weakening, the guilt came because the kiss revealed that they were
not just attracted by naked lust, after the kiss they realised it was love, so
they avoided each other for the rest of the week.
They had both decided
they would not get drunk in case they let their guard down on New Year’s Eve
and kissed again.
In the New Year being
in close proximity to each other was torture being close enough that they could
smell each other was both a blessing and a curse, and being so close to one
another that they could touch was agony, but there were occasional
opportunities when they succumbed to the temptation.
But they had mixed
feelings when the time came around again to go to Sharpinghead for the summer
family gathering.
It was always fun at
Sharpinghead and there was always plenty to do,
The campsite was
attached to Maxlin’s Holiday Camp and although the campgrounds and the old
railway buildings were nothing to do with Maxlin’s, all those who stayed there
automatically qualified for day passes to use some of the amenities.
Unfortunately doing
family stuff together brought them into each other’s orbits time after time
every single day and it was driving them to distraction.
After that first
surrender to their love at Christmas Liz felt alive and tingling all over and
she wanted more of the same.
There had been the
occasional repeat of their perfect kissing but they were few and far between
and relied mainly on chance.
Paul for one was
desperate to try and engineer something a little more prolonged.
So Paul separated
himself and Liz from the group and took her over to Mornington where they spent
a very pleasant afternoon together and enjoyed it so much so that they felt
like a couple and they both wanted more of that and over the next couple of
weeks there was more but it was on their last weekend at Sharpinghead when
things came to a head.
Paul woke up on Sunday
morning in an empty bed and he noticed that Margaret’s clothes were not strewn
all over the bedroom floor as was her habit and shoes were not standing sentry
by the door as they would have been had she been in.
He got up and walked
bleary eyed down the hall to the bathroom to relieve himself and when he
returned, equally bleary eyed he opened the bedroom door and climbed back into
bed and was delighted to discover there was a warm body beneath the duvet and he
guessed that Margaret must have got back into bed while he was in the bathroom.
Paul snuggled up to
her and she murmured softly in her sleep but as he kissed the skin of her
shoulder, she woke up and rolled onto her back, but it wasn’t Margaret he was looking
at but the smiling face of her younger
sister Liz and then he kissed her smiling mouth.
“I’d better go” he
said
“No don’t” she
implored
“Where’s Bob?” he
asked
“Fishing” she replied
and he rose up on one elbow and looked through a gap in the bedroom curtain where
he could see his wife, Margaret, through the window talking to Auntie Vi.
“Which one of us is in
the wrong bed?” he asked
“Do you care?” Liz
replied
“No not really” he
answered and kissed her and after a few minutes he paused to look through the
window again and could see Margaret and Aunty Vi disappearing in the distance.
So they did what they
had been longing to do for five years and made love.
That sultry Sunday
morning marked a turning point in their lives as it brought their relationship
to a head and by Christmas they had separated from the respective partners and
the following summer they were starting a new life together in Australia and
they never saw the family again, but they were truly happy for the first time
in their lives.
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