To understand this story you need to understand a little of the English class system, which is not understood at all outside Britain and is poorly understood even by many Brits. In the United States, old families trace their origins back to the revolutionary war, and very old families to the Mayflower. In England, old families trace their origins to the Norman Conquest, a thousand years earlier. These are the real upper class. They consider the Royal Family to be middle class arrivistes, not that they would ever say so. They will be in Debrett's but they would not care if they were not. They all know one another anyway. They display no grandness or ostentation. Their houses, like their clothes are old, comfortable, and understated. They understand breeding, the practice of which has resulted in the emergence of a kind of sub-species: good looking, straight hair, slightly taller than average, good bone structure, slim no matter what they eat, and often courageous to the point of recklessness.
Five people were finishing supper: two couples in their fifties and a girl, the daughter of one of the couples. They were dressed formally, sitting at one end of a large oak table in a room with an open fire, wood panelling and family portraits darkened by time.
"Lizzy, is that my dress you are wearing?" asked one of the older women of the girl.
"Yes, Ma, it is. I have never seen you wear it and it fits me perfectly. You don't mind do you?"
"No, of course I don't mind darling. It is just that...Oh, nothing. It looks splendid on you."
Lizzy was wearing a midnight blue, shot silk, taffeta dress with a narrow waist and a very full ballerina length skirt. The lightly boned, off the shoulder bodice would have stayed up without straps on a woman with bigger breasts but Lizzy needed to use the optional straps.
"Margaret is that-"Her father started to ask, "-the dress, that you-"
"Yes, it is," Margaret, the girl's mother, cut him off abruptly.
After a slight pause, her father turned to the girl and asked "Lizzy, have you been fucked?"
"Pa! Ma tell him he can't ask me that!" She looked around the table, hoping for some support, but all four diners were looking at her, apparently waiting for an answer.
"Yes, Lizzy he can," said her mother quietly.
"Well, girl?" pressed her father.
Overcoming her initial shock Lizzy replied "Well, there was a boy from the village, but he was, well, very timid."
"Lizzy, slip your right tit out of your dress for me" ordered her father quietly.
"What! Ma, James, Grace, did you hear that?" Lizzy looked pleadingly at each in turn.
"Do it, Lizzy," said her mother, quietly.
Lizzy lifted both her hands to her shoulders, pushed aside her hair, and hooked her thumbs under the straps of her dress ready to drop the front of the bodice.
"Stop" said her mother. "Your father said just the one tit. We are not after nakedness."
Lizzy dropped the right strap of her dress and arranged the fabric to uncover her right breast. While not large, it had some weight and roundness, but was pert enough for the nipple to point slightly upwards.
"Hmm" said her father, "she's not as titty as you were at her age Margaret. How old are you?" He asked.
"Arthur, don't try to appear stupider than you are. She is just eighteen and you know it."
Lizzy was sitting stock-still: slim, but with vestiges of juvenile plumpness, good looking but not stunning, completely without makeup and with a pale breast exposed against her contrasting dark blue dress. So far, James and Grace, the guests, had remained silent but now James turned to Arthur, Lizzy's father, and gestured towards Lizzy, "Arthur, may I?
Arthur nodded at James and said to Lizzy, "Lizzy, James is going to fondle your tit." The tone of Lizzy's father's voice made it clear this was not a request. Lizzy was rigid but said nothing. There was no point in opposing her father, when he clearly had her mother's support. At that moment, a noise from the darker end of the room broke the silence.
"May I clear now? Because Mr P and me was hoping to go to the vicar's Christmas party in the village"
"Of course, Mrs P, but before you leave would you fetch a ladies hunting whip from the tack room," replied Margaret, Lizzy's mother.
Mrs P, the live-in servant, looked around the room, taking it all in. She quickly cleared the table to a trolley, which she pushed to the door. No one moved, and no one spoke.
