That spring it was quite warm and there were scads of people walking down the Ferry Road to the bathing beach a few streets south of my home; they were mostly town people so I didn’t mind as they passed, some calling ‘hallo Pen!’ My washerwoman had been in that morning and the clothesline in the back garden was full and I was just putting a few additional odds and ends out to dry on the umbrella in the side yard when Em’s unmistakable soprano cried out to me and I dropped my clothes pins and ran over to the hedge and we embraced across it.

“Oh my god, it's been two years at least, Em!”

“Pen, it’s been five.”

I saw now she had a young man with her.

“This isn’t Brian, surely?”

“It bloody is,” Em asserted, “Give your Auntie Pen a kiss, Brian.”

He did and I held him at arm's length and looked him over as he grinned shyly. He was ten or eleven the last time I had babysat him and now he was six inches taller than me with an adult’s voice, but still a soft, sweet tone. He’d been a lovely little boy, never gave trouble, I remembered. Em was wearing a straw hat and Brian was dressed for a dip in a singlet and those black trunks the blokes all wear (trapeze trunks I always called them), brown sandals and he had his towel draped over his neck.

I shook my head, “I can’t believe I once changed your nappies! How old are you now?”

“He’ll be nineteen in a month,” Em said proudly. 

Brian grinned.

“He’s in the army you know,” Em went on, “has been for six months. We’re lucky though, his camp’s just up the road in Kingsbridge, so I see him most weekends.”

“Oh, that’s nice for you both!”

Em and I exchanged telephone numbers and otherwise got reacquainted, nattering happily when I noticed Brian’s expression had changed. He blinked in disbelief or fascination as he stared over my right shoulder.

In an instant I knew what he was looking at; drying on my washing umbrella among the dish towels and hankies were a brassiere and knickers. A very special matching set in pale lavender gingham and delicate white lace.

In a kind of shock, we both looked at each other and it seemed to me our pupils dilated synchronously. It happened in less time than it takes to tell it.

With a dry mouth, I coughed, “Well, Em, I don’t want to keep a soldier from his swim and I’ve got to bring in the washing, but you have my number now so let’s have tea. It was wonderful to see you too, Brian,”

“You too, Auntie Em,” he was just as hoarse! They went off to the river and I saw that Brian was holding his towel protectively draped over his forearms dangling in front of his lap. 

I tore the lingerie off the umbrella and took them through the front door. I couldn’t believe I had been so indiscreet. In the lavatory, I erected my wooden drying rack in the bathtub and draped the far too pretty and far too suggestive items over the slats.

That poor boy, barely old enough to buy a drink, and I exposed him to something he might glimpse in a leg-show magazine sold under the counter at a news agent’s! He must be suffering a mortifying erection and in a bathing suit!

I brought in the washing that was dry from the back garden. There was a lot of it and it distracted me for a while.

 But I soon found myself picturing Brian at the beach.  It is a new riverside park built-up with tons of dredged sand from downstream where our river meets the sea. It’s very popular on warm days.

I imagined Brian in the cool water up to his hips and I saw myself in a slinky bathing costume lying there propped on my elbows looking down the length of my body at him out there staring back at me. I had a lewd smile on my lips as I moved my legs lasciviously, enjoying the thought that he was cooling his arousal in the gently flowing gray stream.

And then I snapped to; what in god’s name made me place myself in that perverse, imaginary diorama? But he wasn’t a boy but a young man, a soldier who had been schooled in discipline and obedience, ready to serve his country, by force of arms if necessary.

And he wasn’t my nephew. Em and I had grown up and gone to school together - born days apart we looked superficially similar and as school girls dressed our hair the same.

I was an inch taller and some mistook me for Em’s older sister. She’d tell Brian, “here’s your AuntIe Pen,” when I’d come to her house.

Mulling all this as I folded laundry I heard a tentative rapping at the door, when I opened it there stood Brian, appearing much as he had in my imagings.

He said: “May I come in?” He did so and continued: “They’ve closed the public loo for repairs. Mom thought you wouldn’t mind if…”

“No, of course,” I ushered him to my bathroom and had no sooner closed the door than I remembered the accursed twin set displayed on the drying rack in there and I almost went in to explain or pull him out. But I was being ridiculous. I paced and rubbed my palms together in great distress. 

“Auntie Pen,” he cried out plaintively.

Without hesitation, I threw open the door and was almost relieved to see his damp circus trunks around his ankles and his cock becoming erect before my eyes. It was intoxicating.

“Oh, Auntie, I didn’t need your loo! I’m sorry I…”

“No, no, no,” I assured him and knelt beside him and grasped his erection in my right hand while my left pushed against his bare bottom which was as cold, wet, and clammy as the river.

I was tender with his cock and it seemed to be warming itself wonderfully.

“Oh, Auntie,” he murmured.

“Darling, my baby, oh yes,” I whispered back and kissed the damp flesh of his pelvis which still bore the impression left by his swim trunks’ cord.

I let my stroking hand slip down his rigid shaft so my palm caressed his scrotum as my gentle wanking continued.

“Oh, Auntie Pen, oh, god, that’s lovely!”

Brian was trembling now, his legs starting to shudder with the unbearable pleasure he was taking from my attention.

I obeyed nature’s prompt to facilitate Brian’s climax by shifting the action again; my right hand moved to the swollen corona near the end of his shaft while my left advanced from his buttocks and between the smooth columns of his quivering thighs and took up his testicles, rolling them in my fingers tenderly.

Now Brian started to grind his hips rhythmically.

“Yes, Brian,” I whispered, “show me.”

“Oh, Auntie!”

It was his last coherent utterance before his breath was reduced to gasps and pants. The first spasm of his orgasm shot off and I never found its target, the next three arching comets landed in or on the sink leaving champagne-colored tails across the alpine white porcelain.

His cock continued, with coaxing, to pump the remainder of his burthen in a thick dribble that mortared the space between my fingers and the web of my thumb.

When the final drops had been dotted onto the terrazzo floor, I wet a flannel under the warm tap and cleaned us both. 

I asked him if he’d like to come by again, “There’s a dance at the Palais tonight, lots of young people, tell your mum you want to go, she’ll like that. “

“I’d love to, Auntie, if you really want to see me so soon.”

“Of course I do, Silly! And I want to hear about the army,” I replied. And I did; I had some important questions about camp life.

I tucked Brian into his damp swim trunks and sent him back to his mum with a light smack on the bum. Then I made myself a cup of tea. 

And so it was arranged. I could expect Brian to come back shortly after nine o’clock. I returned to the bathroom with cleaning cloths and expunged the evidence.

The bra and panties that caused it all and were mute witness to it all were bone dry and I put them away. All the while my mind was whirling.

My preoccupation was not the Private’s private life but his professional one. I was seeing someone at that camp, a major, and he had left my breakfast table not six hours before Brian and Em strolled innocently back into my life. Still, a camp the size of Kingsbridge would have several majors, surely.

I put these thoughts aside as I started preparing for Brian’s visit later - I expected him just after nine that evening. I had met him both times today in the casual, if not dowdy attire of a woman going about her domestic chores, in a loose patterned house dress of brown and cream, with little makeup and my hair done up hastily with pins, now I would make some changes.