The Summer of '76

The long hot summer of '76. Despite everything we hear about the swinging sixties, sexual liberation didn't even reach the end of the drive up to the door of Loxford Hall, the not quite posh establishment to which my parents had sent me.

Loxford Hall: a big Victorian redbrick building, set in its own grounds, or demesne, in the middle of the Derbyshire hills. Cold, isolated, perhaps romantic in a strange Gothic Horror way.

The establishment was a so called finishing school. A place where young ladies who were not suitable for university were sent to learn deportment, manners and how to be... well... young ladies.

I was sent there at the start of the summer holidays when it would have been expected that we young ladies would be spending a few happy weeks with their families.

But my family was no ordinary family, my parents were separated and my mother had gone to live with 'Uncle' Emile on the Riviera. Father was in the diplomatic posted to Africa, where he had deemed it unsafe for me to go.

It had ever been thus. I had always had the feeling that I was an unfortunate mistake. That my parents felt that I had been sent to get in the way of their, to them, perfect lives. Father devoted to his career, and mother devoted to a string of unsuitable gigolos and paramours.

It was not as if I was unattractive: short perhaps, and slightly too heavily built, but with big bosoms, an attractive face and straight hair of a colour usually described as 'chestnut'.

I was not particularly sociable though. I tried to work hard and keep out of trouble. Not like Lulu.

I had no other relatives, except for a dotty old grandmother living in the Wilds of Woolly, and not even my parents would send an eighteen year old girl to live with somebody like that.

That is probably why I ended up in Loxford - sent there at the start of the summer holidays. Myself and a few other girls abandoned by their families. Among these was my room mate Lulu.

We didn't mix much with the other girls, Lulu seemed to want my companionship and I was strangely attracted to her.

When I think about Lulu, I think about a girl seeming old for her nineteen years: a beauty, a romantic, a girl who not only looked romantic but seemed to embody the essence of romanticism. What dark events in her life had bereft her of friends and relatives I never knew, but it had left her with a depth of soul which I could never hope to match.

That sultry August evening the sun was just coming down towards the horizon. It must have been sometime between eight and nine, as the school had a strict curfew and we had to be in our rooms by eight thirty engaged in improving activities.

Lulu sat at the open window reading Byron. She was on the fourth canto of Don Juan (a book expressly forbidden as likely to bring salacious thoughts to the minds of young ladies), alternately reading and looking out over the wild hills of the Dark Peak.

It must be explained that salacious thoughts and methods for their prevention were a constant preoccupation of the staff at Loxford Hall, who knew only too well the effect of burgeoning sexuality on young ladies with time on their hands.

She looked lovely, dressed only in her pyjamas, her copper coloured hair let down, her long slim legs, tucked up, her small breasts just visible where she had left the top button of her pyjama jacket undone. She was an extraordinary beauty. Imagine Lizzie Siddall as painted by Rosetti and you get the idea.

She seemed deep in thought, frowning constantly as if something preyed on her mind, possessed her, blotting out the book, the room, me. Suddenly she put the book down and turned to me with those extraordinary green eyes of hers. The eyes that gave her that bewitching romantic look.

"Coming?" she asked.

"What do you mean 'Coming', you idiot? We're on curfew remember."

"Curfew. Who cares about that."

She was off on another of her trips. She hadn't really wanted me along I felt. And I knew what she had in mind. She did this some times; climbed down the wisteria that clung to the old stone walls and set off across the peak in search of...? In search of what I was not to discover until much later.

Without another word, she shrugged again and swung herself out onto the sill and then down the wall of the house and onto the gravel drive that led down to the lodge and freedom. I let her go. She'd be back by midnight.

She wasn't.

The night was light, with a full moon and I stayed up hoping to see her slight figure striding back up the drive. But she didn't come.

By six in the morning I was frantic. Should I wake Miss Trevelyan pronounced Trevillion, the iron willed and iron haired house mistress in charge of the school in the absence of Miss Dodds, the headmistress. She would have the police out. There would be a frightful fuss and Lulu would probably be sacked (that is expelled).

I couldn't bear that. Surely she must get back soon. I could think of only one thing to do. I swung out onto the Wisteria myself and, terrified, clumsily clambered down, falling the last few feet into a flower bed and shattering a cucumber frame.

A struggled to my feet and limped down the drive. I was still twenty yards from the end when she came into view, rounding the wall of the demesne and entering the drive.

She was riding a milk white pony, no saddle, no bridle; her long auburn hair hung down her back almost to her waist, and she was stark naked except for a black velvet collar and one black velvet garter round her left thigh. Each bore a single ruby red gemstone.

"Lulu!" I shrieked, "what are you doing!" but she just smiled back at me with a strange seraphic smile.

"Girls!" What are you doing, "My office at once!"

I turned to see Miss Trevelyan. The martinet, wakened by my clumsy crash into the frame, was dressed in her dressing gown and looked as furious as I'd ever seen her.

How can I describe Miss Trevelyan, who plays such an important part in this strange tale: on the tall side, short cropped grey hair, deep piggy eyes, her mouth a gash of ruby red lipstick. Every school seems blessed with at least on sadistic martinet, and Miss Trevelyan was Loxford Hall's.

We were in for it now. We'd be sacked, both of us, sure thing. But we weren't. I thought perhaps Miss Trevelyan didn't want to lose the business, or didn't want the publicity, I didn't know.

We stood in front of her while she railed at us for our wilful disobedience.

"What were you doing girl? Dressed like that. Out in the middle of the night? You could have been... Could have been...ravished"

Ravished! The word, redolent more of Bram Stoker than modern Britain, brought a fleeting wry smile to Lulu's lips, and I wondered for a moment...

But not a word would Lulu say.

"Unless there is to be a thrashing you will tell me girl. Right now. What were you doing dressed like that and where did you get those!"

Still she remained silent.

"Where did you get those?" She pointed at the black velvet bands with the ruby like stones. She was red in the face with fury. For some reason the stones held a particular fascination for her.

She took out the leather strap or tawse that was used to administer punishments in the strict discipline ethos that prevailed back in those less enlightened days. Which wasn't as horrific as it sounds. Administered more for the humiliation than the discomfort, it was a common punishment for even trivial offences and I only say because it seemed to point out Lulu's strength of will.

For Miss Trevelyan was pointing at me to receive the punishment. I could see the psychology you see. It would take a much greater strength of purpose to see me thrashed and say nothing. We both knew that Miss Trevelyan knew that the unfairness would test her more than any punishment for herself.

It was only four strokes and I gritted my teeth. I didn't want her to have the satisfaction either. Lulu said not a word and Miss Trevelyan, her ace card played, could do no more to drag the story from her.

We were returned to our room gated for a month till the end of the holidays.

"Lulu," I gasped, "what on earth happened! I was beside myself."

She shook her head.

"You owe me," I said.

So she sat beside the open window, still naked, watched the sun rise, and told me the extraordinary tale.

"I was barefoot," said Lulu, and it was something, I must admit, I hadn't thought of, "...but I'm used to that. I walked out through the gate and into the lane. The night was bright and clear with a full moon high in the sky. I left the lane on the path that leads through Lakey Woods and left my clothes about four hundred yards into the trees."

"You did what!" she had said it in that steady rather mature slightly upper class voice of hers, more as if she were reading a short story by Somerset Maugham than recounting her own adventure.

"I took my clothes off and left them. I always do that. There is nothing quite like strolling naked through the woods on a fine summer's night completely naked, feeling the cool breeze on your bare skin. It's addictive. And you feel so much at one with nature, so free, so liberated. I must have walked miles. The night was so clear, the feel of the beaten earth on my feet so sensual, it is so important to be barefoot, to be completely nude."

She said it in a totally matter of fact way, as if it were the most natural thing.

"The next thing I knew I was completely lost. Things look so different in the dark. It was strange. So exhilarating and so scary. I was going to have to seek help. I was going to have to go up to somebody's door in the middle of the night, stark naked, knock them up and ask them to help me get back to the school. What sort of reception would I get?"

She paused for a second contemplating.

"Then I heard it. The sound of music coming from over the brow of a small hill in a wooden dell. Mozart perhaps. Some eighteenth century composer anyway. Somebody cultured playing a record of Mozart. Somebody unlikely to, what did the old harridan say, 'ravish' me.

So I made my way towards it. Over the brow of the hill and then I saw it. The sight that has changed my life."

I wriggled a bit on my seat. Lulu looked across at me and smiled. "Let's have a look at your bum," she said.

Rather embarrassed I pulled up my nightie and turned to look at my bottom in the mirror. It was adorned with four large red stripes.

"Come on," said Lulu,"take it off and lie down on the bed on your tummy."

I did as I was told and she started to rub cream into each cheek.

"Sorry," she said.

"What for?"

"For everything. Giving you this."

"Oh that's nothing," I said. The circular motion of her hand was strangely erotic, "I'm used to it."

And indeed I was. My father had taken the belt to me ever since I was little. Whenever mother got a new boyfriend, or ran off, or embarrassed him in some other way. It was the affront to his dignity, the fact that other people would sneer or laugh at him or think him a cuckold. Even at that age I understood. He needed to vent his rage on something and I was available. A younger version of my mother.

"Still, I owe you," she said.

"Nonsense, go on, what happened next."

I closed my eyes and listened, both of us naked, and me feeling her soft hand caressing each cheek in turn. My desire for Lulu had grown so much that I'd have taken all the belts in the world for that.

"There it was," she said, "It was built like an ancient Greek temple. I suppose. A large hunting lodge perhaps, a folly on a ferme ornée, I don't know. I could hear the music clearly now, and make out the people inside. It was lit, not brightly like electric lighting, but a flickering glow as if illuminated by a thousand candles. Outside the front door stood two flaming torches to mark the entrance."

She stopped a moment to think.

"I suppose if I'd been sensible I would have tried somewhere else. It was hardly the thing to go peering in through the window with no clothes on, but some strange attraction drew me towards it. There were large casement windows on the side wall, and although the curtains were drawn there was enough of a gap for me to see the sight within. I looked through and gasped. The room was lit by a myriad of lighted candles. Guests mingled dressed, as if for the carnival in Don Giovanni, in capes and domino masks. It was like an extraordinary mystic dream, I stood there entranced, as the couples whirled and danced around the room.

I don't know how long I stood there entranced by the music, the costumes, the flickering candlelight, when suddenly I became aware of a sound behind me. I turned and suppressed a gasped and there standing a few feet off were two masked figures dressed in multi-coloured Harlequin costumes. Their masks were not the domino masks worn by the guests but grotesque animal faces. I shrieked, suddenly aware of my nakedness and instinctively trying to hide my breasts and my vagina with my hands, the way you do you know, when someone sees you naked..."

To be honest I didn't know, but I nodded my head spellbound. She'd said 'vagina'. Girls from Finishing Schools don't use words like that. They say 'you know where' or 'down below' or such silly euphemism. It made her seem so mature. It made my 'you know where' tingle. She carried on, speaking in a strange level voice as if reading from a script.

"...well I do anyway. I just stood frozen to the spot. I'd been seen. Whatever was going to happen! I was scared. I didn't like the look of them. They looked almost evil in an odd way. Then one of them gestured to me. 'Follow us'. That was all, just 'Follow us'. So I did. Maybe I shouldn't have, but I did, still covering my privates with my hands, horribly aware that I was otherwise completely nude..."

I gasped. The thought of being completely nude and totally vulnerable in a strangers house, was at the same time both frightening and strangely and erotically exciting. Lulu continued.

"I was led in through a side door, and up some dark stairs at the back of the house, lit only by the candle that one of the Harlequins was carrying, and into a small dressing room. It was full of costumes and on one wall was a full length looking glass. 'Look at yourself', grunted one Harlequin, more a barked order than a request. I put down my hands and looked myself in the long glass. You know, it was extraodinarily, I don't know how to put it, sort of tingle making, to see myself like that, nude in the flickering candlelight, in the power of these menacing creatures. Then I saw behind me one of the Harlequins had picked out a costume, a beautiful Regency gown, the sort you see in illustrations of Jane Austen; it was virgin white, and pure silk and adorned with a scarlet sash. It was perfect, and it was for me to wear. Nothing else you understand, no knickers or anything..."

She broke off from her discourse to giggle a bit and blush. It was strange, she hadn't blushed at 'vagina' but she did at 'knickers'.

"...I don't think ladies wore such things in those days. No, just this beautiful silk dress, clinging to my figure, fastened tight beneath the bust and pushing them up and forwards..."

She blushed and giggled again...

"That was considered, you know, sexy in those days."

I smiled, "Well go on. I can't believe it!"

"Neither could I. I was led down into the ballroom where all the dancing was, and the music, and the champagne and the food, and I danced and drank and ate and it was the most wonderful mystical, magical experience of my life. But the strange thing. Nobody spoke. Not to me. Not to each other. A figure dressed in cape and pantaloon would take a lady by the hand and lead her out onto the dance floor and there we would waltz, that strange old fashioned waltz with the lady with her hand on the gentleman's shoulder and the gentleman with his hand behind his back, or dance a quadrille or cotillion, but no-one spoke, not a word.

Most of the guests looked mature, older, but there was one other girl."

Lulu stopped. She seemed to find it difficult to talk about this girl. A strange look of anxiety came into her face as she mentioned her and I wondered if they had somehow had a 'special' relationship.

"She was stunning, slightly taller than me, raven haired with extraordinary violet blue eyes and skin as pale and smooth as bleached velvet. She was so attractive and danced with such disdain and wore a green sash to her dress and a green jewel on a black velvet band round her neck.

And we danced and never stopped. Not until midnight...."

She suddenly stopped and turned to face away. The excitement had gone out of her face to be replaced by a strange look, a mixture of wonder and embarrassment. Something strange had happened at midnight and she was reluctant to talk about it.

"Well. What happened at midnight?" I asked, barely able to contain my excitement.

"I don't know. It was... It was..."

"Was what for goodness sake. You have to tell me now."

She seemed to make up her mind all of a sudden.

"The music stopped," she said. "Quite suddenly, as a clock chimed twelve, the music stopped. And everybody fell back, and they all looked at me and the other girl. I didn't know what to do. I looked round, and there were the two Harlequins. And they led me up to the end of the ballroom, where a figure stood, in mask and cape, a woman, tall and imposing, short cropped dark hair, wearing a grotesque mask. And I stood in front of her, and the two Harlequins stood behind, and then I felt a tug at the scarlet sash round my waist and..."

"And what!"

"It fell off. Quickly, smoothly, the silken material slipping over my bare skin. If I close my eyes I can almost feel it now, soft and sensuous as it dropped over my bosoms. And there I was standing there naked. With all those people gathered round. All of them looking at me. My naked body on view. And I didn't feel embarrassed. I didn't try to hide my breasts or my vagina. I just stood there and let them all look at me. And it was... I don't know quite how to put it. Enormously erotic, arousing, being the centre of attention, being seen naked by all those people. Then..."

I was staring at her wide eyed. What an extraordinary adventure. I couldn't believe it.

"Then?"

"Then..." her eyes misted over again, "she took out from a box the velvet bands with the ruby red jewels and placed one around my neck and one around my thigh. So that we each, the raven haired girl and I, both were adorned, she with the green jewels and I with the red. To show that I was initiated, she said. Then the Harlequins took us through a door and down to a private room and... And then... Well after... I fell asleep and when I woke I was outside in a small wooded dell, apart from the jewels I was naked and the white horse was beside me. And the sun was coming up and I knew it was morning. And I rode the horse back and well... You know the rest."

I might have known the rest, but I didn't know all.

"But what happened. Between midnight and waking up! What happened? Who is the other girl? Where is she now?"

I was wide eyed with curiosity.

"It was wonderful," she said, "and I have to go back. I have to find that house again! I have to find the other girl!"

We were gated. That is to say we were not let out of the school. We breakfasted together the next morning, sitting apart from the other few girls who had been abandoned for the holidays.

We were expected to sit in the school library and do improving things, read Latin or sew or something, but of course what we did was plan.

"We can't get out during the day," said Lulu.

"We?"

"You're coming with me. I can't tell you why, but I have to find it. I can't do this on my own. I need you. You must come with me."

"I can't Lulu," I said, "I couldn't do it. I don't know that I want to go wandering round the woods at night. It's too much, too scary. Anyway you can't get out; the dragon watches the door like a vulture."