All characters engaged in sexual activity are aged 18 or older
I write in English and not the Americanized version and hope things make sense to everyone
The Second World War had not long ended and rationing was still in force on various things. My family had all survived, at least physically. My dad had been in the Navy despite having lost an eye in the pit before I was born. He often told the story that there had only ever been two men enlisted in the Royal Navy who only had one eye. Him and Lord Nelson. He always put "Him" first. In truth there were others called up in a similar capacity such was the country's needs in wartime and also there was the small fact that Nelson had both eyes at the time of joining the Navy. Losing his eye had come later but why let facts get in the way of a good story and one that actually was repeated right up until his funeral service.
My mother's brother, Uncle Gordon, had also served in the Navy and spent time on various vessels out in the Far East keeping an eye on Japanese manoeuvres out there. He had not really seen too much action but his time out there had left him with flashbacks that would now probably be referred to as PTSD and as time went on he spent periods in a psychiatric hospital prior to his death at a fairly young age.
The area I grew up in had been quite badly bombed at various stages as it was a coal mining community and the enemy had attempted to reduce many of the coal mines to rubble to restrict the ability to produce iron and steel for the war effort. There was still evidence in the form of derelict buildings that had never been re-built for whatever reason and still air raid shelters that were no longer in use but had become a perfect playground for younger children and the ideal places after dark for a young teenage boy to take his first lessons in sex with local girls who were also keen to explore the sexuality starting to blossom in their knickers.
It felt like teenagers were anxious to make up for lost time and my first tentative fumblings with the underwear of girls took place in the hidden depths of a shelter in the next street to the one I lived in.
I had left school at 16 and taken up a job in the offices at the local pit. Both my father and grandfather had worked down that hole but from personal experience they knew "the price of coal was too dear" as the famous quotation went. They both determined that if I was to work for the newly created National Coal Board it would be behind a desk and not underground.
Mining communities are a bit of a law unto themselves. Probably a bit like the armed forces. When you go to work each day knowing your life and safety depend on the other men around you and in turn their's depends on you a bond develops. A kind of band of brothers type thing.
Almost everyone I knew owed something to someone else. Not in monetary terms but in gratitude for past behaviour. Loyalty was a massive thing. When you owed someone you owed them forever. At the time I took it for granted but looking back I count myself so lucky to have grown up in that environment.
The community produced hard men. But hard men with respect for their women and families. I never heard my dad or my granddad swear in front of a woman or child.
My grandfather was badly injured in a roof fall about the time I was born. He would have died under the rubble but five or six guys that he was working with dug him out with their bare hands and got him to the surface for hospitalisation. They all ended up bleeding and in pain but that didn't matter as long as they got him out alive. He was off work for a long time and the mine owners eventually found him work in the wage office as his disability restricted him from working underground again.
One of those guys was a Harry Jordan. He lived a few streets away with his wife and as the miners' code dictated my family took them under their wing as a way of thanking Harry.
As I grew up Harry and his wife, Sally, had a young son. Practice in the local area dictated that he was also named Harry after his dad but everyone called him Junior.
Harry senior was only in his thirties and joined the army during the war. One of the bravest of the brave he landed on the Normandy beaches on D Day 1944 only to be cut down by a German sniper before he made it off the beach.
That left Sally as a single mother bringing up Junior on a war widow's pension along with money from the bits of cleaning work she undertook to try to make ends meet. Again the miners' code swung into action and no-one allowed Junior to go short of anything wherever possible. My family more than others made sure we looked after the two of them. Any jobs that needed doing around the house were seen to by a mixture of myself, my dad and my granddad. Both my mother and grandmother were prodigious bakers and whenever pies or cakes were baked there was always an extra one that found its way to Sally and Junior. They almost became part of our family and I am sure that my granddad often helped out with money as he felt the most indebted of all. He owed his life to Harry senior and the other lads and he never forgot that until the day he died.
By now I had passed my eighteenth birthday, not that that was too significant as the coming of age in England was still twenty one. At least I could now officially go to the pub without word getting back to my dad. In all honesty I had been visiting one or two of the more out of the way pubs on the outskirts of town but now I didn't have to be so secretive about it.
Junior was at school and starting to show an aptitude for football. As both my dad and granddad had their own mining disabilities, I was volunteered to take him out onto the local fields for a kickabout. We had got to the point where several evenings each week Junior would call round asking me to spend some time helping him to hone his football skills. It brought me more and more in contact with Sally as I often dropped him round at her house after our football exertions.
Sally was in her late thirties, so about twenty years older than me. At that stage that meant she was far too old for my wandering eye and wandering hands although from time to time she did manage to find her way into my thoughts when I masturbated and imagined what it would be like to finally lose my virginity.
She was not unattractive in a plain kind of way. Long dark hair that had started to show hints of grey after the events of the last few years and a very engaging smile when she found an excuse to show a little happiness. Her clothes were fairly simple and functional. Nothing special at all and always loose enough that there was no indication of the body that lay beneath them. For a long while her eyes had seemed dead but there were signs that she was at last coming to terms with her husband's death.
Sally had taken note of the fact that I was now old enough to drink and from time to time invited me in and suggested we share a drink as a thank you for me starting to become a surrogate father to Junior. It was the days when the local pubs had off licence sections. You took a jug or other container and they filled it from their pumps and you carried it home to drink.
I started to look forward to spending an hour sharing a drink with Sally and it was clear she also enjoyed the company. She had moved to the area when she married Harry and had no nearby relations that I ever saw.
