The New Bride

By Cate.




" Do it yourself," I said when my aunt asked me to re-pin the flowers in the buttonhole of her jacket.   I could see my mother's startled look.   Though she disliked my aunt and knew I was difficult to control at times, she had thought that on Aunt Kitty's wedding day, which at last looked like passing off without too many recriminations, I might have behaved myself. But I had been awkward at the church, difficult at the meal and had refused to dance with the groom's brother afterwards.  The groom was in his sixties, pale and ill-looking after my aunt had nearly danced him off his feet to the guitar, bass guitar and saxophone trio hired for the evening.    My father had originally refused to accept the idea of this marriage, because of the groom's advanced age.    Only relentless pestering by my mother had caused him to submit and turn up to give his sister away. As her eighteen-year-old bridesmaid, I was being much too obvious about being angry with my aunt Kitty and the funny thing was that I wasn't quite sure why I was angry now. 

I had been sent down from Dublin a couple of days early to help my aunt get ready.  It was hot Indian Summer weather nearing the end of August and we were sitting on deck-chairs in the garden of her cottage just two days before the wedding.   I was wearing shorts and a light top and Kitty had on the old print dress she used for working in the garden.
She was a short, stocky woman with a rather masculine face, a square jaw and strong, straw-coloured hair.  She must have been nearly forty and I didn't see her as particularly feminine or attractive.   I had never stayed with her on my own before and normally my sister Jennifer would be there too, and Kitty ruled us strictly and made us mind our manners.   I felt maybe in the last few days she and I were a bit closer that we had been before.   That particular day we had been to Dublin in her car, visiting an expensive lingerie shop called "Madame  Claire's" although I had been made wait outside while Kitty made her purchases.
"You've never been a bridesmaid before," she said now, "but I'm sure you know the procedure."
I nodded wisely.
"The bridesmaid has to do everything the bride wants.   It's not lucky otherwise."
"Of course," I said. "That's what I'm here for."
"Good," Kitty said, smiling and patting my knee.   She had strong but quite pretty hands with short, square-cut nails.
The sun was still high enough and she took up her straw hat from the grass and put it on, casting her face in heavy shadow.
"I'll want you to help me dress, of course, on the big day," she said.
"I'd love to do that, Kitty," I said.
I was dying to see her new outfit.   Because of her age she wasn't having a white wedding and would be getting married in a jacket and skirt she had already shown me in her bedroom wardrobe.
"I never showed you the stuff I got today," she remarked.  " Some of it's for the honeymoon, of course, but I need to check nothing shows through the suit."
"Yes, I know," I said, pretending I had a certain amount of experience in these matters. 

In her bedroom she opened the expensive blue and purple bags from the lingerie shop, pouring out on the bed four stunningly beautiful white bras, two black ones and a couple more that were still in their boxes.   She then produced half a dozen packets of expensive stockings and a blue silk garter.  There  were also  a dozen pairs of panties, both plain and lace and a sort of light corset or basque in an exquisite black lace. "I put on a couple of pounds since I bought my suit," she said, "that's why I think I'm going to need this."
She held up the garment by the narrow shoulder-straps.   It had high-cut legs and four dainty elastic and lace garter straps with delicate pink lace roses where the garters snapped shut.  
"It's called a merry widow," she said and laughed,  "Maybe that's what I'll be soon - he'll probably have a heart attack when he sees it.""
I couldn't imagine Aunt Kitty in these pretty things, but I said, "They're  so,...adorable."
"I knew you'd love them," she said,"Mmmmmm" bending down and kissing me on the cheek.   She'd never done that before and, without thinking, I gave her an answering peck on the side of her rough, tanned face.
"Before I try everything on," she said. "I'm going to get in the bath for a good soak."
"Okay," I said.
" Like to give me a hand?"
"What?" I gulped.
"Help to soap me?"
"No, Aunt Kitty, I couldn't," I said.
"You ARE my bridesmaid," she said. "wouldn't you like to wash me completely from head to toe?"
I was stunned.
"Please, Aunt Kitty," I said, "I'm VERY grateful to you for asking me, really I am..."
She reached out to me, smiling.
"Come on then."
"No," I said, panicking, "I mean, grateful to be your bridesmaid, but..."
Call it my background, if you like. Nuns had educated me. I had never seen a naked adult before, and I hoped I wasn't going to start now.   I sometimes had fantasies about my brother and had spied on him a few times and he didn't know I'd seen him masturbating naked once.   Sometimes, in my most secret thoughts,  I'd thought I'd like to see my friend Edna naked, or Siobhan, the Head Girl we'd all had a pash on at school, but NOT Kitty.
Kitty looked a bit annoyed as if I was stupid or something, but she made a face and just grinned.
"All right, come back to me in half an hour,"  she said, pulling a towelling robe from the wardrobe. "I want you to check my seams for me and also that my hem is right at the back."
She collected  some cream and a shampoo from her dressing-table and went out to check the water was hot enough in the tank in the airing cupboard.

For a few moments I fingered the exquisite undergarments, feeling a surge of envy that Kitty, normally a wearer of dowdy dresses and the cotton Aertex "unmentionables" I'd seen on the washing line, would wear these next to her skin.   For half an hour I dozed in the armchair, watching the wisps of steam flick out thorough the half-open bathroom window.   Last time I had been here on a day like this was in May and the Mayfly had been hatching on the lake half a mile away.   They only lived for one day, mated and died, Kitty told me - the males anyway.   That day they'd clung to the walls of the house in a black mass of wings and spidery legs and sometimes they lay in the yard where we crushed them accidentally underfoot.   I remembered the strong, fishy smell they gave off, particularly because Kitty had said it was like the smell of sex.    Kitty generally maintained the prudish demeanour of women of our culture, but I had begun to guess there was a more earthly side to her.  I could hear her singing now in the bathroom.   She had a good, rather masculine voice.

"Whiskey you're the divil,
You're leadin me astray,
Over hills and mountains
And to Americay"

Then I heard her calling me.

She was in the bedroom when I stepped into the dark kitchen, almost blinded after the sun.

"You're stronger, sweeter decenter,
You're spunkier than tay.....

Suddenly I was feeling happier than I had for months.   I fancied myself as having a sweet voice and I joined in,  an octave above Kitty's rough contralto.

"Oh, Whiskey you're my darlin'...." We warbled together and I walked into the bedroom.

"Drunk or so...oo.. ber," I faltered.    Her stocky white body, in the blinding sunlight through the window,  was stark naked except for a tiny pair of black lace panties.   I bolted.

"Kitty, please," I begged, my voice trembling as I stood leaning against the dining-room table.   I was shocked and could hardly catch my breath.   But it was not simply at having seen her almost naked.   I now knew beyond a doubt that I would have given anything to have been able to stare  unashamedly at her, but I knew I would only dare to do so in anonymity or  from a place of hiding.  I felt I could not face the frank, challenging eyes of a naked woman, and I knew that Kitty's look  WOULD be frank and challenging.  I could only  dare to ogle her in secret and desperately hoped I could retain the vision of magnificence I had seen.. All beautiful bodies were  slender and tall, I had thought.      I had a promising figure myself and had often studied it for ages in my mirror at home.   I was slender, with tiny breasts and long straight limbs.   But compared to Kitty I was a completely anonymous stick figure.   She had stocky, short legs and I thought of de Maupassant's description of one of his solidly-built Normandy prostitutes, lifting up her skirt to show her "sturdy Norman legs."   Kitty's waist was uncompromisingly thick with a gourd-like swelling of the belly and a heavily indented muscular area around the navel.   I was aching to enter the room again and gaze on the extraordinary sweetness and heavenly femininity of her large white breasts with their swollen nipples and dimpled, purple-pink  surrounding areas and her heavy thighs, solid as a man's but with those matchless feminine curves.    In retrospect I was furiously angry with myself.   I had been invited to pamper and minister to that magnificent body and had  declined.  
"This thing is murder"   I heard her cursing from the bedroom and then the sound of her staggering against the rickety old wardrobe.   Then things got calmer and I heard the crackle of a stocking packet being opened.
"Can I come in now, Auntie?" I called, in an agony of frustration.
I heard the creak of the bedsprings as she sat down and the clatter of her new shoes as she dropped them on the floor and I could imagine her pulling on and gartering her stockings.
"Auntie," I called, "please!"
She didn't answer me, kept me waiting.   Was she punishing me?   Kitty had a vindictive side, I knew that.   I was ready to cry with frustration.
"I'm decent," Kitty sang out.

Perhaps it had been an illusion, I thought.   Mind you, for a short, stocky woman, she still looked wonderful in the suit, with black stockings and those expensive Italian shoes.   She usually wore heavy,  masculine footwear, but these black T-strapped shoes with four inch heels set off to perfection her long, narrow, elegant feet which in turn made her legs look voluptuously longer.   But, still, now that the white, fleshly vision had gone, was she not just a small expensively-dressed woman in a black suit?   No, she would never be entirely dressed for me again - the stunning sight of her nakedness, the sheer arrogance with which she stood there, waiting for me, would never leave me.   But what a surprise she was either way!
She sat down at her dressing table and touched up her lips.   I had never seen her wearing lipstick before.   Then she stood up and turned to face me.    My heart nearly turned over when she extended one knee daintily, so that I could see her kneecap glow faintly through the dark nylon, then she flipped up the hem of her skirt and began to adjust her garter strap and stocking, her hands turned demurely under the hem so that there was no vulgar display of thigh above the stocking-top
"It doesn't matter now," she said, "but, on the big day you'll have to check my seams for me."
"I'll do it now, Auntie," I said desperately.
"No need," she said dismissively, "Well, just a quick look."
She turned and I admired her shapely calves and the incredibly seductive shadows at the creases at the backs of her knees.   I thought I was going mad.   I had never felt this way before.   What was she doing to me?
"Well?" she demanded.
"What?" I asked stupidly.
"Have you gone asleep.   My seams - are they straight.?"
"They...they're both a little to...towards the outside of your..your" I faltered.
I felt I couldn't mention anything to do with her body - that my voice would betray me.
"My what?" she snapped
"Your...your legs," I stammered  
"Damned garters," she grumbled, bending down and massaging her seams inwards over her calves
"I'll be helping you to dress, won't I, auntie?" I said.
"Hmmm," she said, looking at me quizzically and, no doubt, seeing the confusion in my eyes.
She stood, one foot in front of her, elegantly, hands on hips.
"Do you think it fits all right here."
"Y..yes, beautifully, Auntie."
"At the waist?"
"Yes, Auntie."
"Say it."
"It fits ...beautifully at the waist."
"And the other places?"
"Where, Auntie?" I prevaricated.
"Where else is there?" she snapped, irritated. "Well?"
"The b...bust and the hips, Auntie," I stammered.   
I was in agony.   What did I want to do?   What the hell WERE the bridesmaid's duties anyway?   Maybe dressing the bride WAS acceptable behaviour?   I guessed I'd have to ask Edna later.

We were climbing at dusk through the larches and pines.  Edna was older than me and a Protestant.   With her I had visited her little church under the rook-infested trees at the edge of the village and gazed at the brass eagle on the lectern, the tattered regimental flags on the wall and the ancient pews, some reserved for the members of long dead gentry families.   It seemed empty and desolate, lacking the welcoming red sanctuary lamp I was accustomed to.  In those days we Catholics weren't supposed to visit Protestant churches but I was rebellious and listened to nobody.   This was the last day of the moon, the Lugnasa festival.   In our church they had condemned it again last week at the mass in Gaelic "Se an scleap sin obair an deabhail."  But Edna had sworn I should see it, the old Pagan Celtic Festival that still survived in isolated pockets of the country.

In the last shaving of the moon the sparks were rising from the fire.   Some of the dancers were masked.   A fiddle and an accordeon were playing, the squeeze-box making an eerie sound, gulping and gasping for air.   The straw woman ran and jumped over the fire, landing in a shower of sparks.
I had seen the straw man with the wren-boys that visited homes with a dead wren hanging from a branch, singing

"The wren, the wren
 the king of all birds"

on the day after Christmas.   Edna told me that, in the few places where the Festival of Lugnasa was still celebrated, there was a straw man, but here it was still the  original straw woman.   There were bottles being passed around and Edna told me it was poteen, a colourless spirit made illegally that could blind you.   Many of the people around the fire, cavorting, were beyond middle age, but in the ditches and under the trees young couples were entwined and even in the open I saw a woman in the flickering light, lying on top of a man having intercourse with him.   The straw woman jumped the fire again and the fire whooshed and sparked skywards.
"A few years ago," Edna said, "the straw woman went on fire.   Two other women had to piss on her to put her out.   Luckily they'd had plenty to drink."
Edna's church took no position on this festival.   Our church had always  either take pagan festivals over for their own, like Saturnalia for Christmas, or else condemned them like they did this one.   The work of the Devil, they called it.
"Your Aunt Kitty was the straw woman once," Edna said .
Somehow this didn't surprise me. Someone gave me a drink.   It was cold and clear and a bit like vodka.  Then we linked arms and danced around the fire.   I saw a boy called Peter I'd seen at the Protestant dances I went to with Edna.   He'd never taken any notice of me, but tonight he came up to me and said hello and smiled and put his hand on my cheek.   He looked beautiful.   I'd never been happier.   I don't know what came over me, but I stepped forward and put my arms around his waist.    We kissed and I began to feel aroused.   Twenty minutes later I was being pressed against a hollowed out oak tree, you could smell the charred interior where lightning had struck it, and, though I still had my panties on, my dress was up around my waist and I could feel his erect penis pressing between my legs.   The music was louder, the fiddle faster and the fire reached higher shooting its sparks towards the night sky.   This was the first time I'd ever let a boy go this far with me and I told myself that if I managed to keep my panties on I'd be all right but suddenly he shuddered and I could feel the wetness between my legs and I knew it wasn't only me that had made it wet there.   His tongue filled my mouth and my head was pressing painfully against the bark of the tree and, on the backs of my hands, grasped around him, I could feel, faintly, the heat of the fire.   My womb stirred and melted and I knew I would have given myself completely.

 
Five minutes later I was being marched down the hill by a furious Aunt Kitty.   The boy had looked ridiculous, pushed to the ground, with his shocked pale face, his limp penis dangling between his legs.   Kitty was shrieking at him that she'd cut it of if he went near me again.   Edna ran over and put her arms around me.   I was trembling, but Kitty turned back and pushed Edna away.
"Slut," she screamed, "take your hands off her.   What did you bring her here for?"
"I...I'm just trying to comfort her," Edna stammered.
"I'll comfort her - if it's not too late for that," Kitty cried dramatically.   The music had faltered for a moment, but picked up again.   I was horrified to find my dress was still up around my waist and hoped that, in the flickering light nobody could see the shame between my legs.
"Cover yourself up," Kitty hissed, pulling me roughly against her as I adjusted my clothes.   I had on only a light cardigan over my dress and I was beginning to shiver, but I knew it was mainly with fright.
"Oh God, I hope there hasn't been permanent damage done tonight," Kitty moaned as she pulled me down along the path, the lights of the village  winking below, my wrist gripped painfully in her powerful grasp, making me stumble as I couldn't keep my balance with one arm imprisoned.   Edna was  scurrying behind us, begging Kitty to listen to her.
"Leave us alone," Kitty bellowed, then growled to me, "I told you to stay away from that Protestant bitch."

At the road, where the lane ended at a broken stone wall, a man and a woman loomed out of the darkness.
"Oh, you found her, then, Kitty," the man said and the woman piped up "I knew you were very worried there, Kitty," her voice full of spiteful inquisitiveness.
"Ah no, she only went up to have a quick look at that ould nonsense up there," Kitty boomed in her most domineering voice.
"Queer goings on, I'll be bound," the woman quavered excitedly.
"Ah, sure it's nothing these days," Kitty said dismissively.
Edna caught up with me.
"Gotta go," she said. "I love you."  She kissed me on the cheek.
"And listen," she added, flicking her red hair back, her face pale and spiteful,  "if Kitty gives you a hard time, just remember she's been ridden by half the men in the parish."
"You're crazy," I said. "Then why was she never...?"
Edna smiled sarcastically.
"The married half," she said. "Bye..."
It was incredible, to look at Kitty in her old gabardine raincoat with the greasy collar, her dress with the fallen hem and the men's socks and shoes, the straw coloured hair all over the place.   I tried to imagine her in a context that would do her justice, say nineteenth century Moscow, in a great house with troikas pulling up in the snow outside, seeing her in a low cut evening dress, her hair up, her powdered breasts catching the ballroom lights, signalling with her fan, glancing sideways at a lover.   Because I could see her like this in my mind I knew I had been given a tremendous gift when it was just too late, that I was perhaps the one person that had been able to see her truly for the goddess she was.   If it was true she had had many men, had they ever really seen her body?  Or were they just sordid couplings, with Kitty on her back with her skirt up in a field after a dance, or in a barn somewhere?,   Surely anyone with eyes in his head, who had possessed her with full carnal knowledge, could not have given her up?
But then my own troubles engulfed me again.
"Kitty," I said, as she dragged me up the garden path, "please don't tell Daddy,"
"Supposing I don't tell him and then we discover in a couple of months time that you're up the pole" Kitty said crudely.
I went completely hysterical in the little front porch and Kitty slapped my face hard.
"Stop it!" she said. "Stop it."
She slapped me again.  And again.   Then I was sobbing, and in deep shock.

In the bathroom, with the hot tap running noisily into the old-fashioned iron bath, she roughly stripped my dress off, then grabbed the sides of the waistband of my sodden panties and bobbed down, making me step out of them.   "Yuk," she said, tossing them into the soiled linen basket.   She let me take off my own tiny bra and I stood, ashamed, in front of her, not only because of my conduct, but with my meagre breasts, skinny flanks and total absence of hips, no trace of that full,  fleshy magnificence that I now regarded as the very epitome of womanhood..   Aunt Kitty sat down on the side of the bath and tested the water, turning on the cold tap as she turned off the hot one.   She turned to look at me.
"It's hard to be angry with you," she said, "Or to blame that boy.   You're so sweet."
It was only two steps into her arms.
"Oh, Kitty," I sobbed, "I'm so sorry."
I nuzzled her neck, my face buried in her hair, the dense steam from the water surrounding us
"Get in the bath," she soothed me, her hands caressing me at the waist. "As hot as you can take it." 
She checked my panties again as I climbed over the bath and lowered myself gingerly into the water which still felt scalding hot.
"No blood anyway," she said. "Looks like you've kept your hymen.   But maybe you'd lost it already?"
"What do you mean?" I asked, settling down in the sudsy water.
"Have you ever gone farther than that?" Kitty demanded. "You haven't done any riding, have you?"
" What?" I asked, startled.
"Horses," she said, laughing.
"Just relax," she said, I'll be back.
She returned with her cigarettes and a bottle of red wine and glasses.
She lit a cigarette and then pulled the cork from the bottle and poured out two glasses, handing me one.   There was a chair, missing its back, beside the bath and she sat down and drew on her cigarette.   The wine was rich and delicious to my inexperienced taste and even the smell of Kitty's cigarette was deeply comfortable in the small, cosy bathroom with the soothing heavy steam rising from the water.
"That pair tonight," Kitty said. "There's a lot of jealousy over me getting married, you know.    A lot of people say I'm only marrying Twomey for his money."
She drew again on her cigarette and signed with satisfaction
"Well, what's wrong with that?   I don't think he can get it up any more so maybe it's a nurse he's looking for."
"Is he nice?" I asked, for I had never met him.
"He's all right," kitty said dismissively.    "He thinks it's the blood-pressure pills he's taking are causing the problem and he's talking about going off them."
"Is it safe to do that?" I asked.
"It's his funeral," Kitty snorted. "His family are raging, of course.   To hell with them - it's not as if he hasn't given them all a good education"
"Are you glad to be getting married, Kitty?" I asked.
"Dunno," she said. "Mind you I like men.   Always did.    Anyway, he has this nice  house in Clontarf.   He had a big job in the Civil Service and has a good pension."  She sighed. "He's not a bad old bollocks.  And I'm not getting any younger, am I?"
She lifted up the wine bottle and poured herself another glass.
"You've already been drinking tonight, Miss," she said. "I could smell it off your breath up there.   You've had enough."
There was a distant rumble of thunder.
"That's the end of the good weather," Kitty said.
She stood up and opened the window.   
"It's still warm out," she said, "there's a storm forecast." and with that there was a flicker of lightening in the part of the sky I could see.
"Some people think I killed my aunt," Kitty said. "I was driving and she didn't have a seat-belt on.   But I loved her.   I adored her."
"You lived with her here, didn't you?"
"That's right.   She was a widow, childless, so my mother, sent me to stay with her.   They used to do that sort of thing then.   I don't agree with it - it's not a good idea." She stood up. "Still, I was happy enough in the end."
She then knelt down by the side of the bath.
"Let's just check this, then," she said.
She put her left hand behind my neck to steady me and plunged her other arm underneath the water, coming up, ticklish, between my legs.   I felt two fingers probing, then gently opening me and I in turn opened my legs to her nervously.   She was very tender with me, feeling around as if she knew her way in there better than I did.
"Okay, you're still virgo intacta," she said, bending to kiss me on the cheek.
I turned to kiss her back so she missed my cheek and her lips brushed mine.   We kept them pressed deliciously together for long moments.   I was waiting,  hoping now she would open my lips with her tongue and enter me.   But she didn't.

I wasn't frightened by the storm, which had now broken in earnest with heavy rain rattling the windowpanes and the thunder following only seconds after the lightning flashes.   But I pretended to be. When Kitty asked if I wanted her to sleep with me I nodded, mutely.   I was already in bed in my nightdress and the room was almost in darkness, just the light from the narrow hall through the half-opened door.   I watched Kitty undress, trying to pretend I wasn't really looking.    She was only a vague white blur when she removed her dowdy old dress and then a brilliant flash of lightning lit the room and her body glowed like fire and I was able to stare greedily at her for two or three seconds while her head was enveloped in her dress.   There was  heavy shadow below her breasts and between her legs.   She must have been raiding her trousseau, because she was wearing a minuscule pair of brilliant white silk panties which didn't even cover her pubic hair, so stiff and golden that it made me think of the straw woman, the Goddess of the harvest.   Then she pushed in beside me and put her arm around me.

She was lying behind me and we were spooned together.   She didn't touch my breasts or anything really private, just held me around the middle of my tummy, her finger stroking up and down occasionally, but it was driving me wild.   
"It only happened over a long enough period of time," she said. "My aunt and me."
The finger, stroking, stroking, exploring my navel, then stroking again.
Again the thunder cracked;  it seemed almost directly overhead now.   It was warm in the bed and Kitty's body seemed to me to be giving off a fierce heat.   I was drowsy, but intensely alert at the same time, acutely conscious of her naked body behind me.   I longed to turn to her, but I knew this could be only at her invitation.   It would be much too easy for me to be mistaken or to do the wrong thing.
"Just kissing at first," Kitty said. "She was starved for affection and so was I.   Her husband had been a poor lover, a cold man."
Again her fingers explored my navel.   She sighed contentedly.
" We kissed on the lips at first," she continued.   "It was a long before we shared a bed.   And even then it was kissing, kissing all the time.   Incredibly sweet kissing, hours on end.    She was so gentle."
Kitty lifted up on one elbow and kissed my shoulder.  
 "My God," I thought," this is it!"
"You've a sweet little body," Kitty said. "Did you know, when you walk you lift your legs very high?   It's lovely.   Like a young filly does."
She lay down again, pulling me tighter to her.   I could feel the points of her breasts against my back and her thighs cupping my bottom.
"We became very passionate," Kitty said sleepily. "She turned out to be a very passionate woman.   And she'd never known it." She yawned. "I adored her."

I slept very badly, even when the storm had passed over.   I had a confused dream that I was in a bedroom with Kitty and she was at the open window, displaying something to a cheering crowd outside.   She was dressed as a straw woman, but her breasts were bare.   As she turned back into the room I woke up.   Kitty was turned away from me, breathing gently.    I waited another twenty minutes before I dared to masturbate.   I wouldn't even have tried it, with someone else in the bed, if I thought I was going to have any dificulty, but I knew, the way I was on fire, that just a touch would bring me off.   I had to bite my lips to stifle the desire to cry out.   Kitty turned over heavily, sleepily and her arm flopped over me again.
"Mmmm, bet that was nice, my little darling," she murmured.

The next day, the day before the wedding, we were full of affection for each other, kissing every time we met in a doorway or passed each other at the table or the sink.   Sweet kisses.    Kitty drove to Dublin in the afternoon to get her hair done and I had to go into the village to collect the flowers for the church and the hotel, and also to check on the cake which was being iced by a friend of Kitty's.   When Kitty came back she'd had her hair tinted a lighter colour, with blonde highlights and a sleek bobbed cut.   I was surprised how well it went with her square-cut ,masculine face, her lop-sided grin, but I  knew I was totally in love with her.    But that night, instead of coming to bed with me as I'd hoped,  Kitty got drunk and vindictive and started cutting her neighbours to pieces, talking about how annoyed they were that she'd finally "pulled it off" and was getting married.
"You wait," she said. "You'll hear the priest saying he's pleased I'm getting hitched at last.   I'll bet he is.   And they'll all be saying it."
She lit another cigarette.
"But they all think I should never have got this place.   Oh yes, they don't say it to my face...."
"Please Kitty, come to bed.." I said, taking her arm.
"Piss off," she said, shaking me off roughly.
"What's wrong, Kitty?" I asked.
"What's the point?" she said. "What's the fucking...fucking point of it all?"
"Can I undress you, Kitty?" I asked.
She glared at me suspiciously, then pointed at me with two fingers, a cigarette balanced between them.
"Piss off," she slurred.
An hour later, just as I was getting off to sleep she staggered into my bedroom and collapsed across the end of the bed.

In the morning I led her, hung over, to the bathroom and, with incredible excitement, began slowly and reverently to divest her of her dress and then, after staring wonderingly at her nearly nude body, her bra and panties.   I tied a scarf around her head.   I had the water already running and helped her flop heavily into the bath.   Reluctantly I left her soaking there and went back to the bedroom to lay out her clothes for her.   I hung her suit on the outside of the wardrobe door and put the basque and the black panties on the bed, the stockings beside them and her shoes, which I had given an extra polish last night, on the floor beside the bed.   When I returned she was lying  back in the bath, her head resting against the tiles, her beautiful arms spread along the sides and I lifted her head and put a dry towel behind it to prevent her hair getting wet.   Then I took up soap and a sponge and began  washing her body, taking advantage of her somnolent state to touch her far more than was necessary, soaping her breasts and washing her  back, then her belly and legs, then between her legs, excited, yet full of sadness that this was her wedding morning.   Then she pulled my hand away, threw the sponge into the water and pulled me to her naked breasts, her body shaking with sobbing.
"Please, Auntie, mind your hair," I said, struggling to keep her upright.
"Fuck my hair," she bawled, finding my mouth, pushing her tongue in to capture mine.
We ended up on her bed, wrestling, kissing,  frantically grappling with each other, first me on top, then Kitty while I tried desperately to encompass her sturdy waist with my legs.   I ended up flat on my back on the counterpane, sobbing with joy while Kitty rode me triumphantly to climax.

She was stunning in the silky black basque although, for me, nothing could equal Kitty in her pure unadulterated nakedness, but the "merry widow" gave her a waist and breasts a different glossy, sexy quality.   And for me there  would always be the exquisite body beneath the clothes.  I eased her stockings carefully up her legs, trying not to stare at her glossy straw-coloured bush, smoothing the tops evenly, snapping them with her garters and carefully checking her seams, then assisted her to pull on the dainty black panties.   I helped her into her blouse, which fastened with about twenty tiny buttons at the back, then she stepped into her skirt and I knelt at her feet to ease on her shoes.   I took one of her feet in my hands, looking at the narrow toes inside the sleek nylon covering and I was unable to resist taking her foot and kissing it.
When I straightened up my eyes were full of tears.
"Please, Auntie," I said. "Don't get married."
She didn't answer me and I sat watching her while she applied her makeup, taking a long time to colour her lips and then she let me help brush her hair. She took a hatbox from the bottom of the wardrobe and opened it, lifting out the broad-brimmed black hat with black silk roses above her head, lowering it slowly to rest on her hair.     She held me to her and it was curiously intimate there, under the broad-brimmed black hat, pressed against her bosom.
"Christ, I didn't mean it to go that far," she said. "Not yet.   I thought we'd just kiss.   I only meant us to kiss for a long time yet.   Kissing can be so sweet..."
"Mind your lipstick," I said, but she planted her lips on mine and I tasted the jammy, boiled-sweet taste of the lipstick as she forced her tongue into my mouth
"Christ," she moaned and for a moment I thought we were going to end up again, struggling on the bed, but we broke apart, panting heavily. 
"Please, Auntie..." I said, "do you mean...?"
"Get dressed," she said thickly, "The car'll be here soon."
"Auntie," I pleaded
 "Listen, just forget this ever happened," she said, dismissing me as she sat down crossly to repair her makeup.

Because it was such a small wedding party I was sitting beside the groom.   He tried to make conversation, telling me about his interest in sailing.
"Dinghies mostly, he said "I had an Enterprise," he said. "Then a Dragon." 
He looked as though it was a long time since he had had a sailor's tan, his face was  tired and grey "
"The tides in Dublin Bay can be tricky, though." he explained, "As much as   four knots in either direction."
"Yes," I said, as if I knew what he was talking about.
"That's right," Kitty said dryly, "You wouldn't want to be caught with your spinnaker out."
She was obviously tired of these reminiscences of an old salt and had been snappy with her new husband all day.   Twenty or thirty more people had joined us for the evening part of the reception and the band was playing a selection of jigs and reels.   There was a lot of changing partners and swinging around, but sometimes Kitty held on to me longer than she should have, causing confusion, before swinging away with her new husband who was doing his best to pretend he was enjoying himself.

The next afternoon, the last thing I could have expected,  Kitty and I were standing in the large front drawing room of the big house in Clontarf which stood well back from the busy road, facing the park and the bay beyond..   Although it was Saturday the traffic was still heavy on the Howth Road and sailboats were circling in the misty distance in the bay.  On the wall were paintings and black and white photographs of yachts, gaff-rigged and Bermuda-rigged, a younger Mr Twomey at the helm of one of them, another photograph of him with a pretty blonde-haired woman standing beside a dinghy on the slipway of Clontarf Yacht Club, another picture of sailboats on a sunlit sea at Skerries.   On the  huge marble mantlepiece were several large silver sailing cups.
"Even if Twomey doesn't have a second stroke and can come home,  I'll have to arrange a bedroom for him downstairs," Kitty said. "One thing's for sure,  we won't be sharing a bedroom." 
It had happened while he was watching her undress in the suite in the Gresham.  As if, I thought, the vision of the Goddess had been too much for him
"They said it was a direct result of going off those beta-blockers," Kitty said, "so he has only himself to blame"
I thought of the frenzied dancing Kitty had made him take part in towards the end of the wedding, everyone up on the floor, going mad like they did at country weddings.
"Listen," Kitty said, as we went into the hall and climbed the heavily carpeted stairs with the ornate banisters, "In a couple of  months you'll probably be going to Trinity," 
"If I get the points, I suppose," I said.
We went into the big main bedroom, with its heavy walnut bed, dressing table and wardrobe, its wonderful view over  Dublin Bay.
"This connecting room used to be a dressing-room," Kitty said, opening another door, but it's big enough for a bedroom and study.   It'd be yours.   Both rooms need doing up of course."
"Mine?" I said.
"It'd be much handier for Trinity than Glenageary is.   I'm sure your Mum and Dad would agree."
"You mean...?" I said delightedly. "Oh, Kitty...!"
"Pleased?"
"Oh, Yes, YES!"
"Show me how pleased."
I was instantly in her arms, and our lips collided hungrily, then became gentle as we sucked our sweetness from each other, our tongues exploring deeply, finding and learning each others bodies delightedly again.  Kitty gently but forcefully pressed her thigh between mine, lifting me so that I was riding her thigh, creating a delicious friction between my legs that made me almost faint with pleasure as I was pulled helplessly against her opulent breasts and belly which cushioned me with their sweetness.   We collapsed on the bed with Kitty on her hands and knees, kissing me while I tried to unbutton my dress and maintain the kiss at the same time, desperately trying not to withdraw my lips from hers, to hold the kiss as if my life depended on it.
"Oh, Kitty," I said, "Kitty, please..."
I didn't know if I could release her for long enough to give her enough space to undress.   Kitty took my face between her hands and started to give me dry pecking kisses on my lips and, in the chilly air of the bedroom, I could already smell her arousal.
"No, not here," she said. "Come on"

The bridal suite in the Gresham was the sexiest room I had ever  entered.   The wallpaper was red and the sofa and chairs of soft white leather.   The bedroom was filled with flowers, not just the usual ones supplied with chocolates, fruit and champagne by the management, but the two hundred red roses that Kitty had bought in O'Connell Street earlier that afternoon and arranged at both sides of the canopied bed,  in silver champagne coolers and borrowed vases.   I sat on the bed and stared in disbelief as Kitty stepped out of her blue dress.   She was wearing pure white underwear, a skimpy push-up bra, a garterbelt with narrow lace straps supporting her shiny tan stockings and the smallest pair of panties I had ever seen in my life, a tiny triangle of white silk that barely pretended to cover her pubic area and left her blonde bush tantalisingly exposed above where the material was dimpled by the elastic.   She worked the panties down over her thighs and tossed them to me, then busied herself with her garter straps.  The panties were still warm from her body and I unashamedly pressed them to my nose, inhaling a deep draught of her Goddess scent.
She tossed her stockings to me then and reached back to unclip her bra,
letting it fall to the floor as she turned and bent over a side table to pick up a champagne bottle from its ice bucket.   I had never  looked at her in glorious nakedness from a rear view before and I could only gasp at the magnificence of her high, muscular buttocks set on those heavy thighs, the deep sway-in towards her solid waist and the rippling, glorious femininity of her upper back and shoulderblades, the swelling magnificence of her shoulders.

 I bent to pick up her bra from the carpet, but she caught me and began to undress  me and then sat down in one of the armchairs, pulling me onto her lap.   We kissed slowly, deeply and sweetly  and then drank some Champagne, then kissed again, sharing mouthfuls of Champagne with each other.  Kitty's lipstick was all over my face and our bodies were both giving off a strong smell of arousal.   Kitty's body was hot and she was sweating heavily under the arms and I kept kissing her under there, sucking her shaven armpits, licking up her sweat with my tongue.   She took the old ring she had always worn before she had become engaged to Mr Twomey  and she put it on my left hand, on my second finger which was the only one it would fit, then she reached towards the table and next thing she was pulling the blue garter up my thigh and I giggled to see it there among all the naked flesh.   We started kissing again, Kitty's tongue deep in my mouth and me caressing her nipples, feeling the wet, sweaty, pimpled beauty under my fingertips and then we got so worked up we couldn't make the bed and Kitty was on top of me, trying to possess me there and then on the floor.   I couldn't believe she could find someone like me attractive but she was nearly frantic  in her overwhelming need.     I felt I was almost about to pass out with desire when I was at last free to grasp and fondle her body at will in an almost mindless passion and at the same time possess her lips with mine.  Yet she matched me in my frantic scramble towards orgasm and we both wailed out our cry of climax together.

Then Kitty got a towel from the bathroom and dried under her arms and along her glistening breasts and across her engorged nipples.    I was lying now, exhausted,  on the towel and she was kneeling beside me, finger-fucking me gently.   I began to sigh as I felt a rising, gentle tide of excitement build again in my womb and vagina.   Kitty bent down and kissed me.   
"This might hurt a little bit, my sweet one," she said, "but I want to be the one to take your virginity."
I smiled and nodded.   She continued to finger-fuck me and then, just as I started to orgasm, she pressed harder, pushed two fingers deep into me and I felt a dull, tearing pain as she deflowered me.

Kitty was lying on the bed, smoking, an ashtray balanced between her breasts.   I was smoking too, sitting astride her belly, surrounded by all the vases of red roses which reflected a warm pink in the flesh of our naked bodies.   I had my hands on her breasts because I wanted to get her excited again.  There was a small amount of blood still oozing out between my legs and it stained the white skin of her belly.   She traced it with her finger.
"You know what this means?" she said.
"I think so," I said, staring down lovingly at the Goddess.
"I've made you my bride," she said.


The end.
     

