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  • Elizabeth 07: Before the Storm

Elizabeth 07: Before the Storm

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Hindsight is such a very queer mistress. Of this I am reminded again and again in recounting the escapades of my youth and my dear friends in Westfordshire City. Time and again in those wonderful days, I feared a lovely era in my life was over, only to grow stronger and happier in the long term. Had I only known when the era truly was to come to a traumatic, irreversible end, I'd have spent far less of my precious time worrying about such things, and more of it enjoying the precious days we did have to share!

When I lost Edward to his realization that he preferred men to women, I feared I would never love again. Instead, I embarked upon a wonderful era of self-exploration and tasted the pleasures of men and women alike who appreciated my woman's breasts and thighs. When I stumbled into my affair with Irene, I feared it would put a fast end to our friendship. Instead, it only strengthened our bond (and also led directly to the most erotic afternoon of my life!). When Elizabeth and Jonathan were married, I feared it would change or even end the strong intimate bonds all our gang shared as friends. Instead, there continued to be countless evenings in the baths and the natural intimacy that setting always inspired, with the added spice of her many tales of married life. Even the birth of their first daughter, Catherine, did not dampen the fire of our friendship. It did mean Elizabeth had less time for the baths and other such fun; but that only made the times we did enjoy that much more intense.

No, as with many generations before ours and, regrettably, since ours, it was war that destroyed our innocence. Long rumoured in the newspapers, my generation's war was an unavoidable glint on the horizon when Elizabeth gave birth to her second daughter, Margaret, on a misty April afternoon. On that happy and hopeful note began what proved to be, ever and always, the last summer of its kind.

I have ever since been grateful for the memory of Margaret's coos and cries that rang out through the summer. If such an idyllic interlude as we had shared throughout our time in Westfordshire City had to come to an end, I am most thankful that its final days were marked by the hope and joy that only a baby can bring.

The cries of three babies were ringing out in Uncle and Aunt's sitting room on the afternoon that summer truly began. Little Joy - now fourteen years old and unusually mature for a youngest child of that age, but still very young at heart in her own way - had been all but begging me to have Elizabeth over for tea with Margaret in tow; and at last my work schedule and her domestic one offered a free Saturday afternoon in common. Irene, now happily married to Gregory for two years, brought her six month old son Frank along as well.

"I say, Auntie Agnes," Joy asked me while adoring all the little ones from a comfortable vantage point on the rug, "Why haven't you written about the babies in any of your columns? They'd make for so many adorable stories!"

"I've often been tempted," I confessed. "But I do my best to leave my friends out of my writing." I had, for nearly a year by then, been the proud author of a weekly column in the Westfordshire City Herald, entitled "Girl About Town" and focusing on the challenges and joys of being a young professional woman in the city. From the day I was first approached about writing, by an editor who was impressed with a legal brief I had written for the paper, I had promised all my friends that I would not air their personal business in my column. In the case of Elizabeth and Irene, of course, that was an easy promise to keep, for even a fairly average afternoon together was likely to inspire some racy conversation at the least.

"We appreciate that, Agnes," Elizabeth said. "But you know, I think a column about life as both a mother and a professional would be most timely. There are more of us all the time who can identify."

"Amen!" Irene added. "And Joy is right, a baby story now and then would be adorable. In fact, it would be perfect for lightening the mood when we could all use a bit of that."

"Whatever do you mean, Irene?" Elizabeth asked. "I've been sensing something in the air with you this afternoon, as a matter of fact. Is all well?"

It was then we learned Irene had some news that might have been welcome under other circumstances, but was most bittersweet on this occasion. "I received a letter from Benjamin yesterday," she confessed.

"Benjamin?" I asked a bit too cheerfully, never knowing just how to broach the subject of the love I had had a hand in destroying, despite Irene's frequent rejoinders that she did not blame me for anything. "How has he been?"

"Quite well, I gather," Irene said. "But I'm afraid he's coming back to Westfordshire."

"Oh, dear," Elizabeth said. "And now you and Gregory..."

"Oh, that is no concern!" Irene said, I thought a bit too shrilly. "He knows all about Gregory and I believe he's been settled with someone else over there as well. No, it's the reason why he's coming back here." She looked wistfully down at Frank, and back up at us. "To join up."

"Oh, no," Elizabeth said. "What is it about men, just having to be heroes!"

"Don't I know it!" Irene did her best not to look angry, but she did not quite succeed. "Gregory has been on a tear about how he'll have to do his part, and nothing I've been able to say has dissuaded him. And now this as well - worrying myself about two men I love!"

"Jonathan as well," Elizabeth said. "I'm absolutely terrified, to be frank."

"In any event, Benjamin wants to see us all while he's here - especially me, he said, and Frank, too. He only wrote 'the baby', of course, as I haven't had a chance to write to him since Frank arrived." Seeing Elizabeth's sceptical look, she continued, "The point is, he knows I have a family now! He only wants to see me!"

"Yes, but do you want that?" Elizabeth asked. "That is what I am wondering about."

I wanted to concur with Elizabeth, but as was usually the case when the topic of Benjamin came up, I thought it best to keep my mouth shut.

"I don't know what I want," Irene admitted. On that note, she squeezed Frank a bit too hard, and he let out a shriek on which Catherine and Margaret promptly joined in.

For all the competing cries and shrieks, Joy was in heaven. She was especially smitten with Frank, having lately grown out of her boys-are-icky stage at last; when Irene needed to change his diaper a few minutes later, Joy looked on in shameless fascination. "Do you think little Frankie minds being the only boy among us?" she asked.

"I rather doubt he has any idea of it all, dear," Irene said.

"Wait a few years and he will," Elizabeth predicted. "And a few years after that he'll love being the only boy in the room if he has anything to say about it. Isn't that right, Joy?"

Joy looked shyly at the floor and laughed. "I guess you remember when I hated boys, Auntie Elizabeth - except for Uncle Jonathan, of course - but now..."

"What's his name, dear?" I asked.

Joy blushed and sighed. "Robert," she confessed. "I met him at the church picnic in April, and he's going to Yarmouth Boys' in the autumn, so..."

"Dear God, are you going to Yarmouth Girls'?" Elizabeth asked, trying in vain to disguise her disdain for her own alma mater.

Joy nodded. "I wanted to be like Alex and go a nice long way away, but Mother wasn't happy with her experience. So for now at least, they're keeping me close to home. I know better than to complain, though."

"I...hope you shall like it, Joy," Elizabeth said.

"It has changed since you were a student, Elizabeth" said Irene, who was herself a teacher there. "We are far more conscientious about ensuring that the students treat one another with respect. I've told you that before, you know."

"I certainly hope so," Elizabeth said drily. It would not, of course, do to discuss her own nightmarish experiences there in Joy's presence; the cause of her troubles was far too intimate, and in any event she did not wish to frighten Joy.

"I'll simply think of it as the first step of my great adventure," Joy mused as she handed Catherine the rattle she had just thrown down for the third time. "I'll study so hard it will impress even Mother, and then she'll let me go my own way."

"Excellent attitude, Joy," Elizabeth said. "Always keep that in mind if you find you're not happy at Yarmouth, will you promise us that?"

"Of course I do promise, Auntie Elizabeth!"

"Good for you. Now, tell us about Robert."

"Well..." Suddenly Joy was uncharacteristically shy. "He's tall. Tall and thin as a rail, really, and he has yellow hair like Uncle Jonathan, and he plays the trombone in the church band. And I think...Oh! Sorry, Auntie Elizabeth!" Having looked up absentmindedly from Catherine to her mother, now Joy whipped her head away, drawing Irene's and my attention to Elizabeth, who had bared her left breast to feed Margaret.

"Joy, darling, it's perfectly all right!" Elizabeth reassured her. "It's what breasts are for, after all."

"You're sure you don't mind?" Joy asked, still staring out the window.

"I would have left the room if I did," Elizabeth told her. In the event, Margaret had latched on most hungrily and Elizabeth was once again decent, having draped a corner of a stray afghan over herself.

"It...is beautiful, Auntie Elizabeth," Joy allowed in an uncertain tone, turning back most gingerly as if she feared she might go blind. "Thank you for trusting me so."

A moment later, Joy was saved from any further awkwardness when the front door opened. Amidst a bustle with trunks and suitcases that we could hear but not see from our vantage point, a poised young woman in a fairly garish hat appeared in the sitting room doorway and greeted us with an agreeable smile.

"Alex!" Joy exclaimed as her sister blossomed forth. Leaving little Catherine to her rattle, Joy jumped up and greeted her with a fierce hug that Alexandria returned more gently.

"That's 'Alexandria' now, Joy," Alex - Alexandria - corrected her. "I'm nineteen years old; it is high time I put away the childish nicknames." After extricating herself diplomatically from her sister's embrace, she greeted each of us in turn with polite but formal greetings that recalled the fact that she had never enjoyed the bond with us that Joy had. Her regal blonde locks sported stylish curls where visible under her hat, and she was dressed in a long plaid skirt and a boyish blazer, each of the type that was so popular with university girls just before the war and that later became a symbol of lost innocence that lingered ever after with our generation.

Alexandria, though, looked anything but innocent as she admired Frank, Catherine and Margaret. A flower of poised youth herself, she adored the babies from a polite distance and feigned ignorance of what Elizabeth was up to. "They are beautiful!" she allowed. "I have wanted so to see how little Catherine and Frank are growing this term, and to meet Margaret!"

"I was unaware you even knew of Margaret, Alexandria," Elizabeth said.

"I'm afraid I told her all about it in my last letter," Joy confessed. "Sorry, Auntie Elizabeth." To me she added, "I have also sent her a few of your columns, clipped from the paper, just not the ones I wanted to save for myself."

"Yes, I loved your piece on men who 'forget' to invite the token woman in the office to a business meeting," Alexandria told me. "I hope that caused a round of awareness among the men who do that!"

"Thank you," I said.

"There is nothing to be sorry for, dear," Elizabeth reassured Joy. "It is only that I had not anticipated such interest from your sister." Looking back to Alexandria, she added, "No offense intended, of course."

"And none taken," Alexandria replied. Allowing at last for a bit of a laugh, she added, "Although it does look like Margaret is too hungry to welcome visitors just now."

"Thank heavens," Elizabeth said, deftly switching Margaret to her other breast with only a brief interlude of howls.

"What do you mean?" Alexandria asked.

"You shall understand when you are nursing one of your own," Irene advised her. "Your breasts get most uncomfortable when full. Feeding is always a blessed relief for you as well as the baby."

"Oh, Irene," I interjected. "We all know Alexandria has no interest in children. Is that not correct?"

"I...don't know," Alexandria said, still adoring Elizabeth and her bond with Margaret. "I am too young to concern myself with such things just now, of course, but you both make it look ever so beautiful!"

"It is beautiful," Irene concurred, "but I should have to agree, you are too young. I cannot imagine living this way myself at nineteen."

"If there is one thing I learned in my first year at university, it is that nineteen is not as mature as I always used to imagine it would be," Alexandria said. By then she had settled herself in a chair and was letting Catherine whack her palms again and again with her rattle. "For one thing, I never imagined I would be so happy to come back here at the end of the term! There's been so very much talk of war and how it can no longer be avoided, and it always leaves me wishing I could take to my bed and imagine I'm a little girl again!"

"Are they really ever so sure it is inevitable?" I asked. "Hasn't anyone in the government got a son they don't want to end up as cannon fodder?"

"It won't be their sons who fight," Elizabeth pointed out.

"No, it shall be fools like my husband," Irene continued. "Men and their silly childish games." To Alexandria, she added, "I know all too well how you feel about wanting to bury your head under your blankets, my friend. But it shan't make the nightmare go away, I'm afraid."

"I'm...sorry, Irene," Alexandria said. "That was a foolish thing to say in the presence of anyone with a husband, I confess."

"We know you meant no harm," Elizabeth reassured her.

"Life must go on for us ladies, in any event," I added. "I am sure you will find ways to busy yourself this summer regardless of what is to come."

"And you are welcome to join us on our outings if you can tolerate the company of the babies," Elizabeth added. "An evening on the town can work wonders when one is feeling maudlin."

Alexandria bit her lip and looked at all three of us in turn, shy but determined. "About that..."

"Yes?"

"Well, Elizabeth - and all of you, really - do you ever visit the baths anymore?"

Of a sudden, I knew just what Alexandria was about to ask, and my initial inclination was to refuse. I did not care to acknowledge that my cousin, whom I had known as a child scarcely older than Elizabeth and Irene's babies, was an adult woman of the sort who would visit the baths. But then, I was the very epitome of that sort myself!

There was nothing to be done about my qualms, though, as Elizabeth and Irene both allowed that, yes, they did still go to the baths when Jonathan and Gregory were free to watch the children. The ice now being broken, Alexandria blurted out, "Could I join you some evening?"

"We couldn't very well forbid her, I suppose," Elizabeth acknowledged to Jonathan later that evening, after they had put Margaret down for the night. "She's nineteen years old, after all."

"Indeed," Jonathan agreed. "If you had expressed any reservations, that likely would only have encouraged her all the more, knowing little Alex."

"It's 'Alexandria' now, Jonathan; she really has grown up somewhat. But you are correct, and the three of us all knew it. I could tell by the way Agnes and Irene looked at me and one another just after she asked; we could either say yes, or she would find someone else to invite her and 'accidentally' turn up while we were there." Elizabeth set down her water glass and sighed. "I don't suppose there is any harm in it, really. She has grown, and she clearly wants to be the adult she nearly is, and the baths do have a way of teaching one to embrace differences and all that."

Jonathan gave her a knowing look from the foot of their bed as he unbuttoned his shirt. "Yes, and perhaps having her morbid curiosity about you satisfied at last will be for the best. But it is only fair to ask if you are comfortable with that, Elizabeth."

Elizabeth allowed a nervous laugh. "You know, I don't know that I am. Isn't that horrible, after all these years, the belle of the baths, the hairy and horny one, and I can still let the memory of the little brat she used to be make me feel so very shy?"

"I think it's perfectly understandable," Jonathan reassured her. "For quite some time, she was just like the little monsters you knew back at school, and she even made you think she knew your secret that one time, at an age when that would have been completely inappropriate. Now that secret will unavoidably be revealed to her. But then, Elizabeth, will the other ladies at the baths tolerate any impolite response to that, from her or from anyone else?"

Elizabeth nodded, deep in thought. "Quite right," she said after a few moments. "If she expresses revulsion at my body, she will learn very quickly that such things are frowned upon." At last she smiled. "I must confess, in a way I have morbid curiosity of my own as to just how she will react to learning my secret at last. If she never wishes to see me in the nude again, that is hardly a bad thing, I suppose."

"There are others among us who will always be more than happy to see you that way," Jonathan quipped. Elizabeth looked up at him for the first time in a minute or two and was delighted to see that he had undressed completely and was standing nude and eager at the foot of the bed, his hard cock at attention.

"Well, this is a pleasant surprise!" Elizabeth said. Although motherhood had cooled her fires a bit - if only due to frequent exhaustion - she still smouldered rather more than Jonathan did and an overture from him remained something of an exception.

"Only if you are up to it, of course, darling," Jonathan said. But he began stroking himself as he said it, a display that never failed to work Elizabeth into an enthusiastic lather.

"Very funny!" Elizabeth stood up and all but tore her dress off in one inelegant but eager motion. "Now, bring that over here!" The all-important six-week mark since Margaret's birth having passed nearly two weeks before, they had made love only once in the interim, and Elizabeth had come to worry that the tales of parenthood and its effects on relations were true after all. It was all too likely that Margaret or Catherine would cry out from the next room before their encounter could be completed; but that only strengthened her resolve to enjoy the intimacy while they could.

Jonathan followed her order and swept her up in an embrace no less passionate than their very first had been. If the lingering effects of two pregnancies had changed Elizabeth's body since then, those changes had only further endeared Jonathan to his beloved. One change in particular had been especially effective to that end: Elizabeth's already-vast pubic hair triangle had grown yet wider and thicker with the hormonal fluctuations that had come with her pregnancies. Jonathan, of course, had always been perfectly delighted with that development, and in turn Elizabeth was more than content with it as well. She was reminded of as much now as Jonathan lost no time in teasing and pulling lightly at the trail of dark hair that now emerged upwards from her panties to her navel, as she had known he would. "Yee, that tickles!" she exclaimed.

"Well, if you'd rather I not do it..." Jonathan teased, pulling his hand away.

"I didn't say that!" Elizabeth pushed her panties down. Her massive bush now being quite matted from its confinement, she took both of Jonathan's hands and placed them in the hair. "I command you, fluff it out, darling!"

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