Banging Cousin Becky in Blackpool

Between my cousin's bras and her knickers were things even more private - a white sanitary belt and a packet of sanitary pads which was open, me able to see the white rectangular feminine napkins within. Again I felt that strange feeling of disbelief that Becky actually got her period, although I shouldn't have. I had overheard Becky and Jenny and their friends discussing menstruation plenty of times in the past, talking about 'girls' problems' or 'the curse' and I was very glad boys didn't have this every four weeks.

Yet for some reason the thought of Becky menstruating and putting on this sanitary belt and attaching her period pads to it before pulling up her knickers when it was her time of the month turned me on, probably it was the private feminine mystique of the whole thing. Thinking about Becky's periods made me think of my cousin's vagina, and closing Becky's underwear drawer I went to another place I wasn't supposed to go - Becky's dirty clothes hamper.

Extricating three pairs of Becky's cotton full brief knickers from the hamper - two pairs white and one pair pink - I sniffed the double cotton panty saddle of each, and every time I was rewarded with a musty, alluring and feminine smell from Becky's vagina, me observing the creamy colored girly stains from between my cousin's legs as well as sniffing them.

Eventually though I had to reluctantly return Becky's knickers back to the hamper where they belonged and go back to working on the shelves. It was certainly distracting, and I missed hitting my thumb with my hammer by less than half an inch. That probably would have fixed the problem in the front of my trousers though!

I could hear in my mind Becky calling my name, "Ian, Ian!" and my vivid imagination allowed me to see Becky in one of my most common fantasy images of her, barefoot and in a long white flowing gown, a halo on her head and a harp in her hands, perfect for a girl who looked like an angel. It was only when I heard Becky say, "Ian, hello Ian, wake up Ian!" that I realized Becky was actually talking to me, rather than me hearing her voice in my imagination and I snapped awake and back to reality.

I looked over at Becky. With her pretty face with big blue eyes, her long blonde hair and nice blue frock and matching hat, Becky could easily be taken for the teenage daughter of a wealthy man or an aristocratic. A young lady who attended one of Britain's finest girls' schools followed by finishing school, and who would fit right in at polo matches, afternoon teas at country houses and society events. However, as soon as Becky opened her mouth to speak it was obvious that Becky was not from the upper echelons of British society, she was very much working class.

Being from Liverpool, all of us possessed the 'scouse' accent of that city. Becky however, with a louder and higher pitched voice than the rest of us, had one of the strongest Liverpool accents imaginable. Even we could detect it, which was unusual given we had the same dialect. Her voice carried, and while some may have found this annoying, given I had a crush on Becky I found her strong scouse accent attractive, again which might have seemed unusual given I obviously was from Liverpool too so heard everyone speak like this every day.

"Sorry Becky?" I asked.

Becky laughed her high pitched laugh. "Thought you'd fallen asleep there Ian, or you were off with the bloody fairies again. I was asking if you'd like a cigarette?" Becky offered the packet towards me, Becky already having a cigarette in her fingers, Jenny likewise having taken a smoke.

"Oh yeah, thanks Becky," I said. I took a cigarette from the packet, before Becky struck a match and passed it around, Jenny, Becky and I all lighting up.

I watched as Becky put her cigarette to her lips and inhaled a big puff of smoke before blowing a smoke ring as she expelled it from her mouth. She looked so sexy doing this and obviously I was not the only one who thought so. The train carriage was absolutely packed with passengers headed for their summer holidays, and quite a few boys and men of various ages looked over towards the pretty blonde in the blue frock and hat blowing a smoke ring.

Soon after finishing our smokes, the train began to slow down as we reached our destination, Blackpool Central Station. The poor conductor was nearly bowled off his feet by some kids who were eager to get out and into the sea air of Blackpool. Other boys and men of various ages were clearly admiring the pretty blonde in the blue frock and hat and the pretty brunette in the green frock and hat - my cousin and sister - and while it felt a bit weird to see men checking out my sister, I found myself hoping that they would think that Becky and I were not cousins but a young married couple.

I looked at the blue skies as all eight of us disembarked carrying our suitcases, feeling very happy. It always felt so great to be back in Blackpool, a place I loved so much and which was always a break with the reality of ordinary life. When I was a kid at school I would sit in the boring lessons in class counting down the months, weeks and days until school finished for the summer and our family would be on their way to the seaside and our Blackpool holiday.

For some reason even though Blackpool was in the same county as Liverpool and could easily be reached as part of a day trip - my two Nans and Granddads sometimes went on coach tours with the pensioners and we had driven up overnight plenty of times in the autumn to see the illuminations - it seemed as though it was very far away. Not London, Essex or Devon far away, or even Europe far away, but even further, like cities of Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, the latter of these which would be hosting the Olympic Games next year.

And given that whenever we returned home from Blackpool by the next day the holiday always seemed years in the past and in many ways like a dream, sometimes Blackpool took on a mythical quality in my mind. It was almost like it didn't exist in reality, like it was a fantasy world similar to Neverland, Oz or Narnia from the popular children's fantasy books.

For the moment though I was fully awake, very much in reality and looking forward to two weeks of fun and relaxation by the seaside in Blackpool. The engines of the train made a hissing noise as they cooled down after the journey and we exited Blackpool Central to catch our tram to our next destination, me eagerly taking in the sights of the promenades and beaches.

The tram as to be expected was very crowded, and while Mum, Dad, Uncle Larry and Aunt Maggie took seats, Becky, Jenny, Danny and I stood up for the journey. Becky opened up her bag, taking out her cigarettes. Jenny and I this time declined a cigarette but Becky, always a heavier smoker than us, lit up and inhaled it deep into her lungs.

Aunt Maggie said to her daughter, "Becky, remember not to do that in public areas of the hotel? Your Aunt Agatha doesn't approve of you smoking."

"Definitely know that Mam," responded Becky, a smart tone just evident in her voice. She then spoke under her breath so that Jenny, Danny and I could hear but not our parents. "Like I could bloody forget with that bloody witch on her broomstick always yelling at me."

Danny, Jenny and I smiled but did not laugh aloud. I wondered if Becky would do anything to annoy Aunt Agatha this summer, then immediately rephrased the question in my head. It wouldn't be a question of if Becky would annoy Aunt Agatha, it was more a question of when she would annoy Aunt Agatha.

*

Our destination - and where we would find Aunt Agatha - was a seaside hotel where we always stayed, and which was owned and managed by Aunt Agatha and her husband Uncle Herbert, and Herbert's older brother Stan. Aunt Agatha was Dad and Uncle Herbert's older sister, and their two children Sam and Katie now also grown up like us were our only other cousins. Stan and his wife Doris had two daughters Pam and Angie, but while they of course were Sam and Katie's cousins, they were not blood related to us. Mum and Aunt Maggie did have an older brother but he was married to a woman who actively disliked children and they obviously had none of their own and we rarely if ever saw them.

Despite having a son and daughter, two nephews and four nieces, Aunt Agatha seemed to have little tolerance for children, and even less tolerance for one child in particular in the form of her niece Becky, and this continued now even though Becky had grown into a young woman. You would think that Becky was her favorite among the kids in the family perhaps even over her own children given how much attention she paid Becky when we visited for holidays. However, it was the complete opposite and Becky could do nothing right.

Did it bother Becky? Not at all, in fact she seemed to revel in it. Growing up Becky was always a pretty tomboy, a girl who wore skirts and dresses and ribbons and bows in her hair and looked like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, sugar and spice and all things nice. However, Becky was always very stubborn, strong-willed and determined and at times tended to favor masculine pastimes over feminine ones.

Becky demonstrated her tough edge from early in her childhood when some fat bully at school pulled her plaits and teased her for her accent, the boy no doubt hoping she would cry. Did Becky cry? No, her response was to turn around and punch him in the face, knee him in the groin and kick him in the shins. When we returned to Liverpool after the war we would play cricket and football in the street, and young Becky always had a very impressive batting average and a natural ability with the football. If she had been born a boy and officials from Liverpool or Everton saw her in action, they would probably have thought they were looking at a future star for the Reds or the Toffees. Although as a staunch fan of Liverpool, I think Becky wouldn't have been caught dead in a blue Everton jumper.

Other times along with our friends we would explore and play on bomb sites, and Becky would always do dares to impress the other kids, such as walking along beams of damaged buildings as though balancing on a tight rope. One time she fell but luckily not too far and into a pile of sand, the only damage was to her pride when some asbestos rained down on her, so no harm done.

In the classroom, Becky always had problems with authority figures, especially female authority figures. She would often find herself in detention, beating out blackboard dusters, writing lines or sometimes in the headmaster's office for transgressions such as talking in class, answering back, not being able to sit still, throwing objects around the classroom, amusing the class by deliberately reading badly when asked by the teacher to read aloud and various other misbehaviors. Jenny and I were not angels either and often found mischief, but given Becky's reputation we were given little chance to get into trouble. Obviously in the same year group, the three of us were always put at the front of the class with other naughty kids so the teacher could keep an eye on us.

And when Danny came through school a few years afterwards, his teachers would always ask with a dismayed expression, "Are you related to Becky Chapman?" After affirming that she was his older sister, young Danny would also be assigned a spot closest to the front should he emulate Becky's bad behavior. On his first day of high school, Danny was called to the headmaster's office, where the headmaster informed him that he was watching him at all times, and that any transgressions like those of his older sister would lead to six of the best. Danny sensibly kept his head down and stayed out of trouble.

I think the headmaster and teachers were very glad to see the back of Becky and to a lesser degree Jenny and myself when at age 15 we left school me to take up an apprenticeship and Becky and Jenny to a business course to learn typing, shorthand and other office skills. I often wondered how Becky got on at the telephone exchange given the strict rules and adherence to protocols and punctuality, not to mention working with so many other women in a confined area.

I had seen the manageress of the exchange and the two supervisors when I visited my sister and cousin one lunch break, and I was dead scared of these three women at sight alone, and I didn't even work there. Perhaps even Becky was too afraid of them to step so much as an inch out of line at work? She and Jenny and their friends often referred to their superiors as 'cows' but I don't think that they used that phrase and other unflattering descriptions at the exchange itself.

Alighting the tram, we walked through the bustling Blackpool streets carrying our suitcases, me looking at the hotel where we stayed every summer, and would be this time. It was a nice white three story building, bushes of red roses in full bloom planted in neat rows at the front entrance, signifying the red roses of Lancashire. My Dad pushed open the door and all eight of us went inside to the lobby, where we immediately were greeted by three people who looked like they did not belong together at all, but obviously were together.

In the center was a small, skinny and clean-shaven man with a nervous demeanor, Uncle Herbert. He pushed his thinning light brown hair back from his forehead, and smoked his pipe as was often the case, our uncle attired in beige trousers, a beige shirt with a matching tie and pullover.

To Uncle Herbert's left was a second man, a dark-haired man with a moustache much taller in stature and portly to put it most politely, his enormous girth clad in a suit. He also smoked, but a cigar rather than a pipe. Unbelievably, the tall and overweight man was Uncle Herbert's older brother Stan, despite the two men looking nothing alike. When we were kids Becky had dubbed them 'Laurel and Hardy', something I wished she hadn't said as since then I had not been able to look at the brothers without seeing the famed comic duo, a staple of many Saturday morning outings to the pictures as children.

Standing at Uncle Herbert's right shoulder was a very tall woman, big boned but not overweight, her grey hair immaculately set and attired in a very old-fashioned plum colored dress - our Aunt Agatha. Aunt Agatha, who towered over her husband, looked at us through her glasses, her stern expression casting over Jenny, Danny and I before focusing on Becky, before she turned to our parents and spoke to greet us.

Despite being from Liverpool originally, Aunt Agatha had no trace of any Merseyside accent, or indeed even any regional English dialect. She had apparently taken elocution lessons many years ago and successfully eliminated any traces of a Northern accent. She now spoke with a perfect received-pronunciation English accent. If she went for a job at the BBC, she would need no training to speak to the standard of Britain's national broadcaster.

"Good morning children," Aunt Agatha said to Jenny, Danny, Becky and I, sounding like a school teacher addressing her class. None of us were children and resented being addressed like that, but I think the tactic was to get on Becky's nerves. Looking at the sour expression on my cousin's pretty face, Aunt Agatha seemed to have achieved that goal pretty easily.

We then greeted Uncle Herbert and Uncle Stan, who called as Jenny, Ian, Becky and Danny. With Aunt Agatha however, it was a different matter. "Jennifer, Ian, Rebecca and Daniel, did you have a pleasant train journey this morning?" our aunt asked us.

This was nothing new. Aunt Agatha would always call everyone by their proper legal name, never a nickname. So her two brothers were always Albert and Lawrence, never Bert and Larry. Of her in-laws, her sister-in-law's were always Elizabeth and Margaret, never Liz and Maggie, while her brother-in-law was Stanley not Stan, and his two daughters Pamela and Angela, not Pam and Angie. Of course Jenny was Jennifer, Becky Rebecca and Danny Daniel. There was never any such problem for me. How do you shorten the name Ian?

This extended to Aunt Agatha's two own children, Sam and Katie, who she now called. "Katherine and Samuel, come along and say hello to your aunts, uncles and cousins."

While Katie never minded being called Katherine, it was a different story for Sam. He hated to be called Samuel, but his mother insisted upon it. At present Sam was doing his National Service in the Army but was on leave this summer for several weeks and helping out in the hotel during the busy season. However, he probably wished he was back in the Barracks, which probably was more like a holiday camp than working for his mother.

Not surprisingly, Sam wore a sour expression on his face as he emerged from the office with his sister. Sam wore a shirt, tie and trousers, while Katie wore the lilac colored dress and white apron that was the hotel uniform of all female employees save of course for the owner/manageress Aunt Agatha, and which made them look like maids from a manor house.

Aunt Agatha looked at her son with a stern expression. "Samuel, your tie," she said, indicating that it was loose and crooked around his neck.

"Mum," Sam protested while glowering at his mother, but Aunt Agatha was having none of it.

"Straighten your tie this instant Samuel," she ordered before turning to her brother-in-law, noticing that his tie was also crooked. "Stanley, your tie is also crooked, straighten it this instant, little wonder Samuel allows himself to become so tardy when his uncle sets such a bad example."

"Agatha," Stan protested in his strong Manchester accent that gave away his origins, but like with Sam one of Aunt Agatha's sternest glares through her glasses put him in his place and he did as he was in told. Aunt Agatha, Uncle Herbert and Uncle Stan were equal partners in the hotel, but Aunt Agatha clearly was in charge here.

"Well at least you are wearing ties, not like Ian and Daniel," Aunt Agatha said, indicating us and making us feel like we were back in school.

Dad spoke out. "Come on Agatha, lots of young men don't wear ties nowadays when they go on holidays."

Aunt Agatha regarded her younger brother sternly. "Well Albert, if you, Lawrence, Margaret and Elizabeth think it is appropriate for your sons to go around improperly undressed like they are Americans, that is entirely your decision but no good can ever come of it, you mark my words. Next summer, will Ian and Daniel be arriving here with open shirts like they are Europeans?"

Aunt Agatha had a thing about Americans. She disliked them intensely. During the war her hotel had been home to American servicemen stationed in England, and ten years later she was still moaning and complaining about them. That American TV programs were starting to appear on British TV were causing her even more angst. I quite liked American TV, it was better than some of the weird TV programs produced in Britain, especially kids' shows. Television had been a novelty when we purchased our first set for the Coronation in 1953, but two years on this had worn off for me.

Uncle Herbert turned to Jenny. "So Jenny, are you looking forward to your summer vacation?" His accent like that of his brother was Mancunian, but he was much more softly spoken than Stan.

My sister nodded. "Yeah Uncle Herbert. Me boyfriend Phil's coming up tomorrow with his family, and I'm real looking forward to it."

Aunt Agatha reprimanded her niece and husband in equal measures, Jenny for not using poor grammar and her husband for using an American term. "Jennifer, I think what you meant to say is 'My boyfriend Phillip is coming to Blackpool with his family tomorrow and I am eagerly anticipating it.' And Herbert, since when do we ever say 'vacation'? Do you choose to speak and act like an American just to annoy me?"