When I was born, my cousin Pauline was 19 months old. When I was 18 months old, we moved from my Dad's home town -- London -- to my mother's in Yorkshire, and Pauline and I grew up together over the next few years, almost like brother and sister.
For several years, from me being quite young, the whole family, my parents, my younger brother and I, Pauline and her parents, and another Aunt and Uncle would go on holidays together to the Yorkshire coast. My brother, seven years younger than I, was spoiled rotten and so Pauline and I had a common cause -- a uniting point, so to speak. We bonded on these holidays like brother and sister in our feelings towards my brother.
I went to an all-boys grammar school, where I was in the "remove stream", which misses out a whole year of school, and got you to your "O" levels a year early. Being younger than most, I left school with my A levels just days after I turned 17 and joined an international company as a management trainee, on an exposure scheme where I worked in different cities for several months at a time, and did college for two terms a year.
I went home every few months, for fleeting visits, but for some reason never seemed to catch my cousin. We actually went two years without seeing each other, although I got regular reports from Mum.
The summer I was 19, and had lived away from home two years, the family invited me to join them on their usual vacation on the coast. So I went, kind of dreading two weeks with my younger brother and the parent generation - of which my own parents were the two youngest. What made it not so bad was that Pauline, now 20 and engaged to be married, was also going to be there.
What a transformation. Pauline had become a gorgeous young woman. in the two years I had not seen her. It was like like Hans Christian Anderson's Ugly Duckling. She had very womanly curves in all the right places, her hair was styled, and her make-up was always just right - never too much.
She was definitely no longer a girl - and I was smitten. I quickly developed a crush on her, and I really wanted to have a relationship with her. But despite dropping hints, she wasn't interested in looking at me that way - all she prattled on about was her fiancΓ©e , who I knew. He had been the lead singer in a local popular pop group before I left town, and of course, she was the one that landed him. Seeing her now, that was hardly surprising. But to her I was still the "little cousin'" - and so I began to plot ways of trying to get her to notice me...
We were all leaving the beach to go back to the bungalow for lunch. Mum asked me to go over to Pauline and tell her we were leaving. She was standing against the railings of the sea wall, on a corner, where the rails curved back because of a beach access slope. She had her hands on the railing, either side of the corner, and was wearing a sleeveless summer dress with thin straps. Under each armpit was a big triangular space.... If I could reach through and round, her breast would be right there....
I walked quietly behind her, reach under her arm, and put my hand on her breast. For a brief second I could feel its firmness, and its curve. And then she turned and slapped me!
"Don't ever do that again or you will really regret it!" she said vehemently, staring at me.
"I.....I...I just came to tell you we are all going back for lunch...." I stammered.
"Do that one more time, and you will never eat lunch again." was her response as she stormed off. She probably never heard my mumbled apology.
And I never did it again. Fortunately she didn't ignore me for the rest of the holiday, and I left to go back to the South and college afterwards, but the feel of that warm firm breast stayed with me, especially alone in my bed.
Years passed, and my grab of her was never mentioned. She married the lead singer, then divorced him, remarried, and had a son. And in that time, following college and my training, I too married and had two kids, and then moved my family to Canada. During the years before we left the country, Pauline and I visited each other's families, and my wife and I knew her second husband quite well before he acted like a fool and she divorced him. Just before she divorced him was when my family moved to Canada. She, of course, continued to have men in tow, some married, some not, according to my Mum. And through those years that clumsy grab of mine was never mentioned, but every time I saw her, the image of her up against that railing in the sun-dress came immediately to mind, and the crush continued.
A couple years after moving to Canada, when I was 38, my father died suddenly. Mum really wanted me to come home for the funeral and offered to pay my fare, so with the help of our corporate secretary a round-trip compassionate grounds ticket was acquired and off home I went. I took the underground from Heathrow to King's Cross and the train to Yorkshire. Pauline met me off it, with a hug and a chaste kiss, and drove me to my Mum's. That was Thursday afternoon, and the funeral was to be Tuesday, so I was actively involved in planning the service, making phone calls, and seeing Dad -- with Mum and my brother -- before they closed the coffin. Generously, my brother and his wife lent me her car, so at least I was mobile.
Funerals bring all sorts of people out of the past woodwork of your life, and Dad's was no different, but me having come back from Canada made me the focus of a lot of the conversation. The reception was held at home -- sandwiches courtesy of the ladies of the church, of course. Eventually everyone left and there was just Pauline, Mum and I. Because of the sandwiches, Mum didn't want any supper; Pauline had been too busy being the hostess to get much to eat, and I had talked to so many people I never got chance to put food in my mouth. Mum suggested Pauline and I should go out for dinner.
Pauline jumped at it, pointing out that what had been her elementary school, and our joint Sunday School, was now an Italian Restaurant, and of course she knew the owners! So we agreed to take a couple of hours break to freshen up and meet at the restaurant around 7.
When I got there, Pauline was already there. And how she looked immediately reignited the crush. Not only was her hair and make-up perfect, but her blouse nicely hugged her breasts, and as she stood up so I could see her, I could see she was wearing a skirt with five big buttons down the front. It kind of flared, like the skirts of her teens, when they were held out by petticoats, but it was obvious there were no petticoats under this skirt. She was a 40 year-old teenage-looking sex symbol, and she was my date. And I could see the admiring and attentive looks from several of the other male diners, and, seeing the women they were with, I could understand their jealousy.
We had a slow and pleasant meal (with no dessert), reminiscing on the days we were in Sunday school there, and later days when I played the piano for the hymns, until a little after 9, she invited me back to her house for a night-cap. Her son would be in bed asleep, but she didn't like to leave him too late into the evening on his own. So I followed her back, even though I knew the way.
She checked on her son and then went into the kitchen to get the drinks. Entering her front room, I took off my tie and put it in my jacket pocket, then slipped off my shoes and jacket and sat in an arm chair, facing the sofa she sat down on, but a good ten or twelve feet away. Sipping slowly, we reminisced about early days -- church picnics with fancy dress competitions, how she still had a picture of a 5-year-old me dressed as a cowboy and sitting on a pony, and her standing by dressed as an angel. The summers we had had at the coast bungalow, with Dad building fabulous sand castles. How, in grammar school days, she and a few of her friends talked my Mum into letting me be in the school Shakespeare play -- Macbeth. I could tell, 20 years later, that I was still in love with her.
I lit a cigarette, and as casually as I could, asked if she remembered me grabbing her breast some 20 years before. There was a long pause, and I drew hard on the cigarette. Finally, a one-word answer. "Yes."
Another long pause, then she asked "Why did you do it?" While I worked out how honest I wanted to be, or how brave, I took a draw on the cigarette, and then said "Do you really, honestly, truthfully, want to know?"
I looked across the room, right into her eyes, and after a moment, she said "Yes, but it must be honest and truthful."
The cigarette was half gone. I looked from it to her, and said "I could say it was just a prank, that I just wanted to feel your breasts. But really, it was because I fell for you. I fell in love with you, and I was jealous of Tony, that he was getting to marry you. And there you were, a 20 year-old drop-dead gorgeous young woman, and I fell for you, and you didn't seem to notice."
Another draw on the cigarette. I lowered my eyes, between embarrassment, guilt, and a touch of fear. After a final puff on the cigarette, I started to stub it out in the ashtray. Then she asked "Do you still feel like that about me?"
A pause.... "Yes".
"After all this time? Even though I am 40?"
"And for a lot longer yet" I replied.
"I see," she said, looking down at her own lap.