By Una
Ann was folding her things into the drawers of the ancient dressing table when I came into the bedroom. She was fourteen, two years older, and the care with which she was unpacking showed she thought of herself as a sophisticated young lady now, no longer the giddy girl who was here last summer.
There was an air of unspoken excitement in the room. We had finally arrived at the beachside bungalow Father rented each July for our family holiday. Everyone was busy, anticipation was all around in the warm sun — and there were butterflies in my tummy as I thought of the month-long holiday ahead. Four weeks of bliss away from school, a month of freedom — a month when Ann and I would share a room together for the first time in ages.
I plopped my case on the little bed opposite and pulled out clothes, packing them into the small drawers in the tallboy that was allocated to me. I wondered if Ann was sharing my thoughts, or had the same sense of anticipation.
Probably not. She was too grown up now. We had drifted apart. She’d become more religious, joining a pious society, The Legion of Mary, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and purity. The various nurses-and-nurses games we’d played down the years belonged in the past.
I had tried to exorcise the memories of how Ann and I had cuddled when we last shared a bedroom; how, clinging like two spoons in a drawer, we’d been overcome by feelings we didn’t understand. Some seismic eruption had overwhelmed first me, and then Ann as I hugged her tightly, pressing hard and squirming my mound against her buttocks.
Thoughts of that incredible experience were still there — sometimes vague, sometimes vivid, but always drifting, day and night, somewhere in the spaces of my mind. When alone, thinking of nothing special, a vision of Ann would appear. I would indulge myself for a few minutes, chasing the apparition this way and that. I would see us alone, somewhere splendidly isolated, marooned on a desert island, fending for ourselves — and spending long, balmy nights, naked under a moonlit sky with my sister.
I’d smell her personal fragrance, a hint of scented soap on her neck, stroke her luxuriant hair, taste the moistness of her soft lips as our mouths met.
And then, more often than not, the daydream would disintegrate. As my thoughts wandered into the byways of passion, our naked skins touching, Catholic guilt would rise up on the road ahead and block my progress.
I knew it was wrong to peer down these forbidden paths: wrong to recall glimpses of my sister’s willowy form as I wandered into her room, seeing her turn to face me, hands clutching a snow-white bra that was about to encase her new-found, perfect breasts.
I knew it was wrong to relish these secret mind-pictures. My God-conditioned brain told me as much. And so did my body. Always, when I reached a certain point, my body temperature would rise. I’d feel my cheeks flush and smouldering heat would flood my hidden parts. Beyond that was the ache — the hunger of sin, the point of no return — the pleasure place where I knew I could find that mysterious, sweeping release of tension.
I knew it was a sin. In confession, I had told the priest a diluted version of how Ann and I had touched. In this version, we had merely hugged, both frightened as a storm thundered outside.
There was no mention of how my mound had pressed so firmly against her bum that I gushed in blissful ecstasy. No mention of the thrills which returned as I lay exhausted beside her and felt the bed move, knowing Ann’s hand, hidden by a raised knee, was between her legs, speeding to a frantic finish as I softly tugged her hardened nipple with finger and thumb.
The priest didn’t seem to understand. How could he? I thought, as he mumbled questions through the grill in the pitch-dark cubicle at the back of the church. He was a man; he could never understand the feelings which led to Ann and me cuddling. He could never have such intensity of sensation and affection as Ann and I had experienced on that one, never-to-be-forgotten night.
The priest had warned of the pain of damnation for all eternity. It was a threat that worked. Ann and I were sent to confession each Saturday morning. I wondered if she had gotten the same message. But we couldn’t talk about that. Confession was secret.
Without discussing it, my sister and I avoided situations where we would be tempted. When Ann moved into her own room after the start of her visitor nearly a year ago, I assumed that there would never be a repeat of that wonderful night. It belonged in our childish past.
My idle thoughts — as the nuns called our pensive moods looking out the window during maths lessons — were taken up with Hillary. She was a fifth year school prefect who was beyond divine. Her hair, her nails, her figure, her voice, the way she wore her uniform, how she walked and her radiant smile compensated for my loss of Ann.
But while Hillary was a distraction, thoughts of Ann were always there. Sisterly thoughts, but sometimes more lustful thoughts as well. I guessed from occasional smiles and glances that Ann shared my feelings.
But God was watching. There was nothing we could do. My lust for my sister occasionally threatened to overwhelm, but a muttered prayer would send my thoughts back to Hillary, the object of my teenage crush.
The nuns, without any obvious sense of irony, had taught us what they called ejaculations. These were short pious phrases, to be mouthed silently in moments of temptation. “Jesus and Mary help me,” was typical. Thoughts of Mary in her blue-robed purity in Heaven were enough to trigger such a wave of guilt as to drive away the memories of that night — when Ann and I spooned in bed, my palm brushing her nipple, electric currents flowing from her hard, pink nub into my soul. But they always came back.
Now, remembrances of Ann’s warm body beside mine as she convulsed in pleasure were here again. The July morning sun had already made our holiday bedroom hot. I turned away from unpacking to see Ann changing into her swimsuit: she was going into a rocky pool to cool off, she said.
I gazed, dry-mouthed, as she got naked. Lifting the one-piece bathing costume, she turned. I saw her in all her natural beauty for the first time since we’d moved to separate rooms. The fluffy tuft of her womanhood was more obvious. It seemed to draw my eyes like a magnet. Before now, it had been a bare slit like mine. Now, it was though a painter had finished the picture.
Then the enticing triangle was gone as she wriggled the one-piece suit above her widened hips, stretching the emerald fabric over those peaches-and-cream contours as she slowly lifted one strap, then the other. She smoothed out the boned bust and ran her hands lightly over the bottom, tugging the swimsuit out so the shape of her mound was hidden. I continued to stare.
The silence was palpable. We, who had chattered like magpies for most of our lives, had nothing to say. We were lost in our own worlds. Ann gave me an enigmatic smile. The room had become stifling. I held my burning cheeks, as though cool hands on my face would douse the molten fire between my legs. Oh, my God!
The door opened and Ann was gone, calling out that she’d see me on the beach, which was literally on our doorstep. I was mesmerised: unable to move. My mind and body were overwhelmed with thoughts of my sister; of how I wanted to touch her beautiful body, to feel her against me, to push my sinful parts against hers until I was overcome by pleasure.
Moving to the window, I drew the curtains, a precaution against being seen by someone walking around the back of the single-storey house.
Ann had left her underclothes on the bed. Bringing it to my face with trembling hands, I smelled the small, white cotton bra, bought for the holiday. The fragrant signature of my sister’s body flooded my nostrils. Oh God! A flood of desire met a tidal wave of guilt.
The alluring scent of talc, a hint of perspiration mixed with a familiar aroma of the virgin, unwashed cotton of a new bra. It was overwhelming. Here was a proxy version of my sister. I gasped at my audacity, at the unstoppable urge which had me in its grip. Beyond the guilt zone now, beyond any help from the Blessed Virgin in response to a frantic ejaculation, I raised Ann’s knickers to my nose.
It must have been imagination, wishful thinking perhaps, but that heady perfume that clung to my gusset after my own sinful flushes was there. Faint, amid the blend of expected scents on Ann’s undies — but it was there. What if… what if she had been having thoughts like mine as we stood earlier for that few minutes in silence?
Impossible, I thought. No one but me has ever been this sinful, has ever been tortured by such thoughts, has ever felt their temperature soar to fever level at the sight of another girl’s nakedness. No one has ever had this kind of deep-down hunger for her own sister. Surely not.
I stood in the centre of the room, skirt around my waist, daring my hand not to go where it wanted. Ann was there in front of me — a vision of perfection, the most adorable creature in the world. Her image was huge, like Elvis Presley filling a giant cinema screen. I tried to think of Elvis, to remember the words of his songs, to distract myself. But Ann’s voice was haunting. I could see that dark, perfect triangle of soft, shining hair, the pinkness of her nipples.
I pulled my underwear aside and did what we’d been warned not to do. I touched. I’d taken a large step towards Hell, to eternal damnation. I was on the slippery slope, literally sliding into sin as my finger soothed the aching need.
Oh, my God. The pleasure, the delight, the guilt. All were mixed in confusion. I’d touched myself there before, at night in bed, and in the bath, I’d used fingers to familiarise myself with hidden body parts. But I’d quickly turned away when God had sent a warning deluge that I was heading into sinful territory.
I’d learned to cope with bath-time and bedtime temptations. To avoid touching, I’d cuddle Charlie. He was the almost life-sized stuffed panda cub who had been my bed companion since my sixth birthday. I glanced to where he was lying near my suitcase. God was offering a chance to deal with my ache, without committing the sin of touching.
Charlie had been my crutch since Ann had moved out of our shared room at home. I would cuddle and snuggle him and fall asleep, our arms wrapped around each other. Over time, Charlie met my need to keep from sinning with my fingers. I’d roll on top of him in the warm darkness and allow the knee of his almost threadbare body to rest between my legs.
Innocently, slowly, like a sailing boat drifting out of harbour on a windless day, my legs as well as my arms would encompass Charlie. And slowly, the desire to put a hand between my legs, to allow my fingers to intrude there, would dissipate — as the comfort of rotating my Mound of Venus on his leg took over.
I’d drift into a world of half-sleep, luxuriating in the sensation of Charlie’s knee on my most sensitive place. I became expert at finding the precise way in which the stuffed panda doll could maximise my secret pleasure. Often, I’d think of Ann as I moved into the world of dreamy unreality. And in my moment of ecstasy, I’d hold Charlie’s knee in a manic grip and thrust it hard between my legs, imagining Ann’s hand there as my back arched sending rivulets of pleasure flowing to every part.
Now, Charlie was looking at me with the same enigmatic stare I’d seen from Ann minutes earlier. Pushing off my pants, I lifted him onto the bed. Raising my dress to my chest, I threw a leg across him.
God gave me one more chance. Despite my hazy-eyed absorption with the awful ache and the burning heat between my legs, I remembered the bedroom door. It was unlocked. I staggered to my feet and locked it. In the distance there were sounds of Mother in the kitchen.
While I listened, the sinful finger found what it had lusted for. Leaning against the door, dress still above my waist, I parted my legs and bent my knees, astonished at how slippery it was down there.
Oh, how I craved Ann. I wanted her to touch me: I wanted to discover if she was the same, if I could bring her to the state of bliss I was in. I pulled upwards, drawing back the hood which sheltered the little man in the boat. He was sailing on a full tide. I’d never experienced such floods of excitement. My mind was filled with longing for Ann, but my body needed something more immediate.
I was still leaning awkwardly against the door, one foot raised as my finger caressed my secret parts over and over. The liquid excitement was flowing so copiously that it was wetting the palm of my hand.
This was wonderful, but I needed the familiarity of Charlie as I moved towards a state of nirvana. I pushed myself away from the door and hobbled towards the bed. As I flung myself face down, and reached for Charlie. I thrust my crotch hard into his knee. My eyes were tightly shut. Tingles rushed everywhere. Like a tidal surge on a flat beach, little eddies pulsed and flowed before sliding back to the main flow as slow rivulets of pleasure.
In my mind, Ann danced naked. I needed her as desperately as she needed me. Why should we deny each other the secret, forbidden delights that only two sisters could share? Her body and mine were so much alike. Surely we were as one in our desire, our love, our special need.
I slumped on top of Charlie, exhausted more in mind than in the body. A wonderful sense of satisfaction was everywhere. Colours were different, the air was fragrant — that enchanting perfume of my ecstasy seemed to fill the room. I rolled on my back, thinking of Ann.
Continue on to Chapter 3
