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Copyright Oggbashan July 2015
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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I walked into the crowded room wondering whether it had been a good idea to come. After all, it had been thirty years ago that the contractors building a new office block found significant archaeological remains. Now some of them were covered with a modern building with interactive displays and were visited by almost every school pupil from fifty miles around. It had been so different back then.
I couldn't stop thinking about that first summer thirty years ago. That wasn't surprising. That summer was the reason I was attending this event and wishing that Elaine would be here. She could have been mine, if only...
I had been a postgraduate student when the university's archaeological society appealed for unskilled volunteers to help them each weekend with the emergency dig. It was a hot dry summer and the idea of spending at least some of my time out of doors appealed. The management course wasn't stretching me. I thought I could pass it easily with minimal effort. I was right. I did.
The dig was certainly not minimal effort. It was hard, dirty and hot. The postgraduate students were living close to the dig while the undergraduate helpers were bussed back to the campus. I suppose they trusted us more.
There were only three men, two of them married, and a dozen or so women. I thought that the possibilities were interesting and I wasn't disappointed. I didn't know any of the women before the archaeological dig started because it was a large campus and I hadn't graduated there.
Apart from the management course, my bosses had insisted that I qualify in First Aid and also in Lifesaving. Why? I didn't know at the time. The First Aid had been easy. The lifesaving had been more difficult and I had failed the first examination on the recovery of a person from deep water. All I needed was practice before the repeat examination in two weeks time.
There was a river close to the barn that spread into an artificially dammed lake. Morning and evening, in that summer's hot weather, it would be great to swim in the lake. All I needed was a volunteer to help me practise lifesaving. That evening I asked the married men. They pleaded that their wives needed them. In desperation I asked the assembled group of women as we were sitting around the cooking fire after the evening meal.
"Why not?" replied Elaine.
"Because we haven't brought our swimming costumes," another woman replied.
"The lake water is fairly opaque and anyway, who would see? Apart from Ian there would only be us women..." Elaine continued.
"If he doesn't mind, I don't," someone else added. "A swim in the lake sounds wonderful. I would like to cool off."
That was it. Simple. I had asked and they had responded with a group of willing volunteers. None had been more willing than Elaine. Later that evening, in the twilight, she was the first to let me try tow her across the lake.
My first attempt was a disaster. I had been too diffident and too shy to grab her firmly. My legs tangled with hers. I sank, let go and surfaced spluttering.
"You have to hold my head close to yours," she said, "and hold me as if you meant it. Try again."
Elaine didn't tell me until weeks later that she had passed the lifesaving examination. For my second attempt she directed me firmly.
"Hold my arms. Pull my body against yours. Further up!"
Her wet hair was against my cheek. As I began to kick my legs her body floated upward. Her erect nipples cut through the murky water and I couldn't keep my eyes off her breasts gleaming whitely just under the surface. I swam hard until I hit the bottom at the lake's edge.
Elaine sat up, laughing at me. Her bare bottom was resting on my insistent erection. She pressed down on it with one hand as she levered herself up out of the water. She looked down at me, her breasts standing out proudly as the water streamed off her. She shook her long wet hair, spraying droplets over her watching friends who shrieked and shrank away.
I towed almost every woman from the middle of the lake during the next two weekends. The first weekend I had to restrain my natural urges at handing all the naked bodies. The second weekend wasn't so much fun because most of the women brought swimwear. I particularly remembered Helen who didn't have a costume for the second week. Her nipples were even more prominent than Elaine's as I towed her backwards.
I passed my Lifesaving certificate with ease.
Every weekend that summer started and ended with a swim in the lake with what was being called 'Ian's harem'. I started to pair up with Elaine and the rest of the women gave us a clear field. I had hoped...
My employers stopped our romance dead. They sent me to Sydney, Australia as a junior manager almost as soon as I had finished the summer school.
Elaine and I corresponded by snail-mail and e-mail but the feelings between us gradually cooled. It is difficult to maintain a relationship over such a distance for an indefinite time. After four years and eight months, when I finally announced that I was returning to England, she admitted that she was engaged to be married to Henry and had been for nearly a year. Would I like to come to her wedding?
I didn't know Henry, her husband-to-be, but Elaine told me that a few of 'Ian's harem' would be there and would like to meet me again. That decided me. I would go to the wedding and enjoy myself. I booked myself into the hotel where the reception was to be held for a couple of nights.
The wedding was on a Friday in the early afternoon. I had driven to the hotel that morning, booked in, and would stay Friday, Saturday and possibly Sunday night.
I sat close to the back of the church being anonymous. I was at a table some way from the bride and groom during the reception. Ex-boyfriends don't get priority treatment.
I thought that Elaine and I were probably different people five years on from that summer. I was surprised how little she had actually changed. She was slightly more serious but otherwise the woman I had known, and, I have to admit, loved years ago.
I jpined the queue to offer my congratulations to the bride and groom.
"Henry, this is Ian," Elaine said.
"Pleased to meet you, Ian," Henry said, "but you have set me a hard task. Elaine thinks you are a perfect gentleman. Whenever I am tactless, your name comes up as an example of what I should be like..."
"But I've married you, Henry," Elaine interrupted. "Ian is a friend and always was, but you're the one I love. Tact you can learn. Love is what matters."
"And I went to Australia, Henry," I replied. "If I had seriously loved Elaine, or she had loved me, I would have changed my job. We were friends, no more."
"See, Henry? Ian's still tactful."
Elaine turned back to me.
"Ian? Please stay around when we've left. Some people want to meet you."
"I'm staying here overnight," I said.
"I know you are. Just stay here, in this room, please, when my husband and I have left. Promise?"
