His name was Mr Keitel, he was the general science teacher, one of the stock teachers who could be found in every school staffroom throughout the United Kingdom; solid and dependable, dressed in his tweed jacket with the leather elbows, chalk in one pocket and a pipe and a pouch of tobacco in the other.
Because of his unusual name the school legend told that he was German; and he could have passed for the archetypal German although in our uninformed state just the name was enough for us to build a web of intrigue and stories around him. He was tall and fair, a high angular face with a pale moustache and pale blue piercing eyes; reminiscent of an old Teutonic knight from the colour plates in our history books, he had the caste of the duelling Junker about him.
He was a good teacher, disciplined and respected. He would take the time out for us kids and he knew how to make us laugh in class. He treated us with respect and in the main it was appreciated and returned. I don't think he turned out any rocket scientists, not from my year at least, but he did give us a reasonable grounding in the intricacies of things scientific from biology to chemistry and back through a little physics.
We learned how to master the small Bunsen burners connected through little rubber hoses to gas taps on our desks; and the workings of the human eye from a rough mock up of a 'camera obscura' made with a hole pierced through the science lab blackout curtains; we also got stiff necks from spending many a lesson looking up at the ceiling and the rough and ready images he projected there. But he got his message across, often battering it into even the roughest set of kids, bound for a life of manual work hewing coal or pouring molten steel. Kids who could see no connection between the science that Mr. Keitel had promulgated and the fossils that they often found buried deep in the layers of coal and picked up, briefly wondered about, before tossing them back onto the conveyor belt and turning back to the job in hand.
He wasn't old, although to us kids he was already as ancient as all teachers are and he had been married; it was common knowledge that his wife had died some years before. He was always active in the school, not a 'nine to five' teacher. He ran the science club, the photography club and the chess club; all afterschool or lunchtime activities. He was one of the more popular teachers.
Gwen had joined the photographic club a year or so earlier. She was averagely talented as photographer but it was the developing and printing where she excelled. She had real feel for the darkroom work and quickly became the club's technical wiz. She and Mr Keitel would work together side by side in the darkroom; consulting on problems but often working together in comfortable silence. They developed a mutual respect for each other's expertise, Mr Keitel for his experience and Gwen for her talent. It was a partnership that worked well.
It was the height of summer and the school had already broken up for the holidays but the school summer activities continued as they did every summer; summer fayres to raise money, school trips, open days, etc. And all these events created a huge amount of work for the photographic club and in particular for Gwen and Mr Keitel. The club would take hundreds of photos at these events and it was Gwen and Mr Keitel who developed and printed them. Once printed the photos were then sold to raise additional funds for the school and the club.
Like all darkrooms the school darkroom was small and hot and the while the small extractor fan struggled to take away the smell of the chemicals it did nothing to dispel the heat; and the summer was a hot one. By agreement and by necessity Mr Keital took to working in shorts and T shirt while Gwen wore her gym skirt and either her polo or an old school shirt; and they still sweated.
They had a routine, she handled the printing and he developed and washed the exposed papers. A simple routine in a confined space and they worked shoulder to shoulder, close, arms and shoulders touching. They worked quickly and efficiently, often without speaking, a good team and the prints quickly rolled off the production line to be hung up to dry.
For some time now Mr Keitel had slowly become increasingly aware of Gwen as a young woman. The proximity of working together, the young girl smell of her, the casual contact, arm against arm, hip against hip, had, on a growing number of occasions, left him excited and semi erect. He was not particularly worried by this, in his years of teaching he had never been particularly troubled by the presence of young girls and if he had he had controlled it without too much difficulty. Being surrounded by growing, nubile young girls was part of the job and as part of the job he had always refused to let it affect him.
Part of him recognised that since his wife had died in an accident three years ago he had not had a sexual partner and still being a relatively young man he was feeling the loss of sex more keenly as time went by; but finding a suitable willing girl as a schoolmaster in a small village in Yorkshire was not easy. He was well known and respected in the surrounding areas and was expected to retain a staid and demur lifestyle. The growing cult of free love and the swinging sixties had not yet reached this small and isolated part of Yorkshire; and so he learned to button down his libido and simply got on with the job of teaching.
He had done well in ignoring her womanhood, right up until she climbed up on the stool to get some more photographic papers down from the top shelf in the darkroom. In the red glare of the developing light he had watched her stretch to get the boxes of papers and chemicals down from the shelves and he had felt himself stir. She stretched and the material of her shirt had tightened across her breasts, emphasising their shape, her nipples becoming clearly discernable in the hard red light. A sliver of skin had appeared above the waist of her skirt, soft, smooth and untouched. Even then he had not recognised the danger signs and when she appeared unsteady, standing on the stool, he had reached out and put his hands on her waist to hold her.
When the casual touch had happened Gwen was already hot and bothered, the darkroom was stifling and she was tired. She had climbed up on a small stool to get the photographic papers from a top shelf the same way as she had done a hundred times before. She had not long ago restocked the shelves and the so the boxes were higher than usual and she had to go full stretch to reach the top ones. The old wooden stool, although not very high, was rickety and wobbled as she had began to pull the boxes down and she was forced to steady herself against the shelves to avoid letting the boxes fall.
She was suddenly aware of Mr Keitel turning and putting his hands to her waist in an attempt to help her keep her balance. She felt his hands rest on the bared skin at her waist as she stretched to steady the boxes above her head. He held her firmly. When she has stopped wobbling she had expected him to let go of her quickly as teachers always did, they did not touch you unnecessarily; but this time he hadn't let go, he had simply stood there, his hands on her waist, his thumbs almost imperceptibly moving gently back and forth on the bare patch of her exposed skin.
She was in an awkward position, standing on tip toe, her arms above her head, still supporting the boxes which were hanging half off the shelf. With an effort she pushed the boxes back up onto the shelf and she stood there, her hands still above her head gripping the shelf, waiting for him to move, unsure what to do. After a moment she strained her head around to look over her shoulder, Mr Keitel was standing behind her, perfectly still, his eyes closed; his only movement was the soft motion of his thumbs against her skin.
She waited, her arms beginning to tremble with the pressure of keeping them above her head; and then suddenly, as if on autopilot, his hands began to move, slowly feeling their way around the soft skin of her waist. His hands were large and surprisingly gentle, rubbing in small circles as they moved, making her skin tingle, and her legs to feel surprisingly weak. He moved carefully, with the slow deliberation of a blind man in a half forgotten room, hesitant but captivated by every newly remembered sensation.
His hands moved slowly up beneath her school shirt, soft, slow, movements, moving tentatively in the darkness under her clothes. At first caressing her waist but slowly moving around, inch by inch, to smooth and caress her stomach. Set free by the motion of his hands sudden butterflies fluttered in the pit of her belly, the sensation quickly settling lower in her groin and she tried to press her legs together to contain the sudden and confusing tingling which had started deep in her sex .
