Standard disclaimer. None of the characters or events depicted here are based on real people or situations. The author will not accept any claims or suits based on the recognition or identification of any character or events howsoever portrayed. So ner nerney ner ner. nickwyatt42@gmail.com
Sorry that this part has taken so long for me to post. I promise the next one will be posted much quicker.
The dress rehearsal wasn't bad at all. I didn't forget any lines, but it was all a bit stilted though. I felt I was reciting lines; not actually acting. I knew I needed to do some serious `cramming' over the weekend.
This was a proper dress rehearsal, and we lined up across the stage for the (hoped for) applause at the end of the performance, with Mr Gibson clapping and shouting instructions to us.
"When I go like this," he tucked his right forearm across his middle, "you will all bow or curtsey. So I'm going to count you in --one, two, three -- bow!" I curtseyed.
"Good, timing's good. Juliet, not so low please unless Her Majesty the Queen is actually in the audience! And Nurse! Will you stop that please!" I wasn't able to see what the Nurse, alias Dickie had been doing, but I bet it was disgusting.
We dispersed, chattering and congratulating each other. Waiting for me in the wings was Mrs French's companion, whoever she was.
"If you've got five minutes, let's do a bit of body training, shall we? Let's go through here."
And she led me into one of the study rooms behind the stage. Plonking her large bag down, she introduced herself.
"I'm Maggie Fenton, by the way, Nicky. I'm Mrs French's friend." I said hello back to her and just wondered why Mrs French had told her that I was Nicky' rather than Wyatt'. In our school, which may have been awfully old fashioned, the convention was that teachers called pupils by their surnames and they were addressed by us as Sir' or Miss'. No one had dared call Mrs French Miss' because she was Head of Department, so we all called her Ma'am', to rhyme with `jam' just like royalty.
"Now, men and women are built differently and therefore they move differently. Watch."
And she walked across the room, turned neatly and walked back. I didn't really understand what she did it for.
"I'm wearing heels -- not desperately high -- but heels nonetheless. They make my leg muscles taught and my pelvis tilts forward, too -- make my bottom stick out! My feet stay in a narrow track, and my stride is quite short as well. When I turn, I swivel my hips first and my shoulders follow." And as she spoke, she re-enacted the walk across the room and back. I began to understand.
"Men walk like this." She kicked off her heels and walked with exaggeratedly long stride, wide stance and thumping steps across the room, and I laughed out loud. She pulled her shoulders round and the rest of her turned beneath them-- it was absurdly exaggerated, but I got the message.
"So I want you to think about how you walk across the stage; I want you to walk `woman'!"
I did so, or at least I tried to do so.
"Okay. Not bad. You could swivel the hips a bit more and wiggle a bit less. You're placing your feet on one painted line, which is fine when you're wearing a tight, short skirt and high heels. But it's a bit naughty for thirteen year old Juliet."
I tried to think of Juliet and tried the walk again.
"Better, much better! Now. What size shoe are you?"
"Seven and a half, Miss."
"Not sure, these might still be too small. Try them on." And she fished a pair of strappy sandals out of her bag and passed them to me. I eased the ballet pumps off my feet and knelt down to put the sandals on.
"Not like that! Sit down on the chair, knees together and work to the outside of your foot. Like this!" She sat and stretched around to the outside of her right foot as though buckling up a sandal. I instantly understood and did so.
"Better. Now the other one."
I had to think for a second how to swing my legs over to the right while keeping my knees together and bending to fasten the other shoe.
"Good! Now stand up for me." I did and I suddenly understood about the tightening affect. My calves felt stretched and tightened, even by these low heels and my bottom was thrust upwards, tightened and clenched. It felt lovely.
"Try a few steps" I did, and nearly fell over. She laughed.
"No. Okay, it wouldn't be such a good idea for Juliet to appear with a broken ankle, so I think you'd better take the shoes off. But can you feel how the heels make your legs more toned?"
"Very much so, Miss."
"Please don't call me that, it feels distinctly awkward. You're wearing stockings, aren't you? Ooh, and you're wearing my girdle too, I'd forgotten!" Then she clapped her hand over her mouth and stared wide-eyed in horror at the open door beyond us, horrified in case anyone had overheard her indiscretion. I just stared at her in complete shock. It was her girdle? But Mrs French gave it to me.
"Sorry! It just slipped out! No one heard." Now she came closer and dropped her voice to a confidential whisper.
"Angie asked me for a girdle because she said you needed to be sort of, controlled a bit down there. Was that right?" She grinned conspiratorially, and wrinkled her nose. "How's it feel?"
"Rather uncomfortable to be honest, Mi-" -- "Maggie!"She corrected me.
"Maggie." I confirmed. "It's very tight across my stomach when I sit down, and it cuts a bit on my thighs."
"Probably a bit small for you then, but if it keeps the naughty boy in check, it's done its job." She stood back a bit and looked down at my hips. "No, can't be too small, You're tiny down there. I could have given you a full corset, but you'd die in this heat and your dress keeps you trussed up like a chicken anyway! Now, I wanted to show you how to turn with your hips first. So slip off those sandals and we'll do a few turns." I did as bidden, and Maggie showed me how to turn using my hips to `steer' the rest of me around. Walk narrow and swing wide!
"Now sit down." She commanded. Thinking carefully, I approached chair obliquely, rotated my hips around, swept my dress under my legs and bottom and sat on the front part of the chair, keeping my knees together and then sliding them away to the side, with my ankles crossed beneath my skirts. I remained upright with my back straight as I couldn't have relaxed because my dress was so tightly laced.
"Not bad. Actually, very nice. If you can remember to do that on stage as well as remember your lines and cues, you'll be absolutely--"
"There you are!" Mrs French appeared at the door. "Been lookin' all over for you."
"Sorry Angie, just been doing some posture and movement work with Juliet here."
Mrs French winced slightly at Maggie's use of her first name, and glanced at me.
"Do you feel ready, Wyatt?"
"Not really ma'am, I need to study my cues a lot more."
"Yes, it's actually quite a high tempo play, and it needs the rhythm to be kept up otherwise it all gets bogged down, turgid and rather pathetic. Anyway," she now addressed Maggie. "Are you ready to leave?"
"Yes, think so. Let's go home."
Mrs French winced again, and I think I gained a little more insight into their relationship than Mrs French intended.
I followed them out of the auditorium, intending to go down the back stairs into the costume store to get changed, but I encountered Mrs Trellis with her clipboard. "Now, Nicky; we've got you down as available for all matinees and evening performances. That is right, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir" I replied in a rather surprised tone.
"Only we've had a bit of a flurry with people taking S level exams as well." I was taking S level Art, but it wasn't an exam with fixed start or finish times so there wasn't a problem.
"I'm only doing Art sir."
"Right, I know." He leaned away to Mr Gibson to his right.
Up ahead, Mrs French paused slightly to listen to the arrangements being made, and then walked on with the lady I now knew as Maggie.
"Nicky's doing art of course. But I can rearrange if needs be."
Unknown to me Hugh arrived in the queue behind me. There was a hand suddenly sneaking its way around my waist and up onto my left breast, and there was another hand pressing its way forward onto my bottom. Involuntarily, I squealed loudly and bucked away from the hand on my bottom right into Mrs Trellis' arms.
"Ooh! I say. No, stop it Hugh! Hands off!"
Hugh started laughing uncontrollably as I rounded on him keen to defend my honour, but Mrs Trellis had got there first.
"Montague, that was extremely naughty! And I think you deserve a damn good punishing! No. Not what I meant or said . . . "
As Mrs Trellis floundered in response to this positively naughty display from the deputy head boy, we all guffawed in indecent laughter. Mr Gibson had to intervene
"Right, that's definitely enough of that!" He raised his head up to command authority.
"No more silliness, please. Montague, don't know what you're thinking of. Wyatt, don't be so pathetic; you're not Juliet now." He looked sideways just a bit, meaning control yourself Trelawny.
"Let's all calm down a get a grip." In the background, Dickie Bennet gave his best Kenneth Williams snigger.
"Oh for heaven's sake! Bennet you are positively disgusting!"
At the other end of the corridor, Maggie was laughing.
Down the back stairs and into the `undercroft' to get changed. I reached around as far as I was able, but couldn't quite reach the top lacing of my dress. I tried again and wrestled my gown around, but without success. I was trapped in my dress! As there was no one around in the wardrobe, I retraced my steps back up the stairs to where Mr Gibson and Mrs Trellis were deep in conversation, comparing notes on their clipboards.
"Sir, could you undo my dress?"
They both started and looked at each other in surprise.
"Well Derek, there's an offer you don't get every day!"
Mr Gibson sniggered and then tried to look earnestly at his notes as Mrs Trellis leapt forwards towards me.
"Let's do it down below, Nicky" and I heard Mr Gibson guffaw as we descended the stairs.
Alone in the wardrobe store, Mrs Trellis stood behind me and unlaced my bodice slowly and carefully.
"I have to tell you that all the staff have tremendous enthusiasm for the production. We all think you have the makings of a fine Juliet." He prattled away as he released the gown from my midriff and ran his hands up and over my shoulders, allowing the dress to sag around my middle.
"It's not every year that we feel. . ."
His hands drifted lower on my shift, onto the top of my girdle and around my buttocks, pushing the dress down.
". . . that we have attained a truly professional standard . . ."
With one hand, he scrambled my shift upwards, while feeling my bottom with the other. When the shift was high enough, he fondled my upper thighs and fumbled against my girdle and panties.
"Mr Trelany!" Mr Gibson called down the stairs.
"We are required to speak with Mrs French. Immediately and urgently."
Mrs Trellis sprang away, looked at me guiltily and scurried out.
It didn't really feel like abuse, and I wouldn't have described him as a p*phile. It was just that Mrs Trellis was a bit odd and liked boys.
Mum and Dad picked me up at the school gate as arranged at four thirty. I'd left Juliet's dress and shift in the under stage wardrobe of course. But what my parents didn't realise was that I was still wearing the pair of pretty, brief white panties that Adrian had given to me that morning. The stockings and girdle were packed away in my satchel. Exciting as they were, the weather was just too warm.
And off we went to darling Chelmsford and we stayed the night in a hideous B&B somewhere in the town. My single bedroom was actually a sort of space stolen from the top floor landing. It was just big enough for a bed and an overnight bag. It had a skylight, not a window. I was not impressed.
Dull wedding. Long Catholic Mass. At the lunchtime reception afterwards I had plenty of gin and wine to drink and promptly fell asleep in the car on the way home.
I awoke, bleary and dreary on Saturday afternoon as my father parked the Humber in the home yard again.
I stumbled up the stairs and into my bedroom and hauled out my copy of the script that I had resolved to learn. But my earnest intentions drained away as I lay there on my bed, and instead I masturbated thinking of Hugh and his hand on my bottom.
Hearing Mum's call, I slid down the stairs again for supper. It was Coronation Chicken, green salad and slices of bread. My Mum wasn't the greatest cook; in fact, she was one of the worst. And a quick trip to the Home & Colonial was about as much as she could manage that Saturday. I'm not telling tales about her cooking; she knew and accepted that her attempts were pretty awful, I had told her several times. But she would reply that she was an artist, a sculptor, not a bloody kitchen maid.
Mum and Dad shared a bottle of Blue Nun after their customary gin and tonics, and I wondered how I could ask for a glass of cider or something without seeming to be a complete drunk. In the end, I didn't dare as Dad made it very clear that he disapproved of my drinking at the wedding and my amateur dramatics.
"Why did you have to be bloody Juliet? Why couldn't you have been Romeo -- Antonio, or Hamlet or someone like that?" Dad had his plays mixed up, but it didn't matter because I wasn't going to correct him and I knew what he was on about.
"Nicholas was selected; he was chosen. Out of all the others, the teachers picked him." My mother said this quietly, but most forcefully and very directly at my father. She bowed her head slightly and looked straight into his face as she spoke. Dad grunted in disappointed defeat. "That bloody school."
Which was a bit rich, because it was the same school that he attended thirty something years before.
When I was eight, I had been sent me away to be a boarder at St XX's school in Sussex. Actually, it was my grandfather who paid for it, and although I made it clear that I hated it, I stayed there six years. When grandfather passed away, my grandmother announced to mum and dad, that as it was self-evident that I loathed the school and hated being away from home, she would not be prepared to sign the fee cheques. She exemplified the point by paying exactly the same amount as the fees into a savings fund for me instead. She also paid the fees for me to attend Bishop Long's which was the school she had sent my father to. To this day, I thank, venerate and thank my wonderful Grandma for not sending me back to that awful boarding school.
We watched telly in the drawing room afterwards. But when Match of the Day came on, I decided to go to bed. Some sports I can actually stand, but football is not one of them. I'm sure that disappointed my father even further; he was in the Kipling mode of `Play up, play up and play the game' whereas I couldn't be arsed to play most games in the first place -- apart from cricket, of course.
First thing on Sunday, as soon as it was judged decent to telephone anyone, I called AJ and most earnestly required him to come over to help me knuckle down and learn -- really learn -- Romeo and Juliet. It was another beautiful day and we read and rehearsed in the little garden behind the stables where I recited my lines out loud. AJ would feed' me my intros ( the last line of the previous character) and announce the stage directions in silly voices. It was all designed to put me off and make me fluff' my lines. Apparently, his elder brother used the technique for the Cambridge Footlights Revue. I thought it was hilarious to begin with, but soon accepted its anti-therapeutic value and worked along. The idea was to make the process of delivering one's lines automatic. Once you could achieve this one could work on one's characterisation -- and it made sure you wouldn't react to the other actor's cock-up!
Apparently Mum was listening to us from inside her studio and trying not to laugh. Dad was also listening from the study and trying not to laugh either. I must admit, it must have sounded completely stupid with AJ finishing the Friar's lines in a rich West Country voice for example, and then switching to a lisping falsetto for the stage directions as I entered as Juliet and spoke in the attempted tones of a pubescent girl. Apparently, as I minced about the garden as serious and dedicated as only a seventeen year-old queen could be, both my parents stifled laughter in their respective hidey-holes, and I was none the wiser. Hey ho.
Anyway, we got through it a couple of times in that lovely summer sunshine, collapsing faint and sun-crisped in the late afternoon. My father appeared with three large glasses of light coloured beer. It was his home brewed beer, and hitherto I had avoided it. But now-
"Well done, lads! That was sterling work from both of you. Here, you've earned this!" He passed out the glasses and we drank, desperate for any liquid . . . and it wasn't bad! Light and flavoursome, and not too bitter.
"It's a German lager recipe; bloody Krauts. Get everywhere. We'll all be driving Volkswagens and listening to sodding Wagner next, I wouldn't wonder. Wish I could afford a Mercedes! Anyway -- Cheers!"
And we drank, and after a while we realised that we were really jolly fine fellows after all.
AJ stayed for supper. Mum produced a proper Sunday roast leg of lamb that was neither burnt nor partly raw. AJ left us at around half past eight.
So, Monday and no rehearsal today. In fact, there was almost no reason for me to be in school today, apart that Adrian had invited me round after school, and a house cricket match.
We sort of met as arranged just after prayers.
"What are you doing today?"
"Trying to finish the book thingies in the Library" He answered. "Just don't understand how everything' got in such a mess there."
"It was Miss Wherris, wasn't it? The one who left pregnant at Easter."
"Oh yes, she was pretty useless. She knew absolutely nothing about anything in fact; I asked for Mahler and she gave me Marlowe!"
We shared the joke together. But now Adrian's voice dropped to little more than a whisper.
"Last week."
I knew what he was referring to.
"It was okay, wasn't it?"
"Yes. Oh crikey yes." I replied decisively. "And did you like it?" I asked, and he stifled a laugh.
"Didn't I just!"
He still looked at me, head down, eyes large.
"So you're coming round later, aren't you?" There was a deep hope in his question, and I looked into his pretty eyes and nodded.
He must have been holding his breath as he quietly exclaimed "Oh good. There's lots to say and do."
I didn't understand, but we left it at that. I agreed that I'd be around as soon as I could get away, Adrian would be leaving School about lunchtime.
And today, as part of our Lower Sixth duties, I was required to stand as umpire in a fourth form house cricket match between Drake and Nelson houses. Clad in my white coat and Panama hat, I strode down towards the wicket. Seated on the banked lawn to my right were Dickie, Hugh and AJ.
"Nick! I need your help here" Hugh hissed as I passed and laughed conspiratorially.
Hugh was wearing running shorts and a sports singlet, his long, tanned arms and legs spread across the grass rather attractively.
"They've offered me a quid if I get it out and come off here and now!" AJ was grinning mischievously, Dickie pretended to be looking the other way; I knew whose pound it was.
That was not what I wanted to hear as I headed to the sacred wicket, and so I ignored Hugh and walked on.
But as I officiated in this depressingly one-sided match in favour of Drake, I couldn't help glance up towards them. Had Hugh earned his pound? Had he even got it out?
It was 84 for 3 in reply to 96 all out with seven overs remaining. Rolling towards victory, it was a complete `no contest'. Idly, I glanced up towards the spectator banking. Hugh was still there, but AJ and Dickie had gone.
At the end of the week Drake house would play either Raleigh or Shackleton house team. I fancied Drake for the win, but I was pleased that I wouldn't be standing for the final match at the end of the week. After all, Friday was our First Night Performance!
So off I went to Adrian's house. In many ways I was relieved to be away from school again, but a bit apprehensive about what Adrian had to `say and do' when I got there. His house was similar to all the others in the road; nondescript and semi-detached, with a solid front door dressed with ornamental coach bolts and a small, diamond-shaped window of wobbly glass in the middle.
As I approached number 37, I spotted a movement through the glass. As my foot hit the doorstep, the door opened as if by magic and Adrian poked his head around.
"Quick! Inside."
And I rushed across the threshold, unsure what the urgency was. I span round as Adrian closed the door behind me with indecent haste.
And I stopped. And stared.
This figure was part Adrian and part luscious, exotic stranger with gorgeous eye makeup, and pearl earrings. Adrian was wearing that same cream top as when I made the sketches. But now, there was a double strand of pearls around the neck, and a slight suggestion of boobies in that loose top. But that wasn't the real surprise, as my eyes drifted lower and as my jaw sagged open I realised that Adrian was wearing a skirt.
It was olive green with a pale salmon edging on the wrap-over effect at the front. I'm not very good at fabrics, but it looked and moved like satin. He took a step towards me and I realised that he was wearing tan brown court shoes that made him wiggle nicely.
I must have staggered back, because I remember the shock of realising that it wasn't just me who cross dressed, and the surprise of sitting down very suddenly on the stairs.
Adrian let out a pretty laugh and stretched out his hands towards me to help me up again. And when I struggled up, we stood toe to toe and we kissed. There was a new taste, a new texture and aroma. Lipstick and perfume. Adrian was beautifully made-up.
"What do you think? Do you mind?"
"No, I love it." Kiss "and I do it too"
"Change clothes?"
"Mmm." Kiss
"Were you really surprised?" Kiss
"Absolutely shocked." Kiss.
"Why?" Kiss
"Because you look so beautiful"
He let out an `Oomph' kissed me and almost knocked me backwards onto the stairs again.
"Nicky! Want you." Kiss.
"I hadn't thought -- couldn't believe -- that you -- and me . . ." My voice trailed away. It didn't matter what I thought or said. I was overcome to find that the prettiest boy I had ever known, cross-dressed as I did and was offering herself/himself to me . . .
In that perfect summer of make-up and make believe when nothing made any sense, Adrian in a skirt made perfect sense.
I look forward to reading what you think: nickwyatt42@gmail.com