Chapter 1
Margaret Peterson walked slowly along the leafy Sussex lane, her dark hair a prey to errant winds that filtered through the hedges that lined the lane with the glorious greens of early summer.
She was a beautiful woman, was Margaret Petersondark and with that faintly olive complexion that told of a trace of Latin blood far back in her ancestry. She was of medium height with a flat, strong back and a well poised head and a full hard figure that thrust out her jumper and tweed jacket delightfully Her face was beautifull with the fine regularity that marks the gentlewomen and the poise and expression that comes with the tranquility of adjustment to one life. Her lips were full and, perhaps, just a trifle too sensual to quite fit the calm brown and large, wide hazel eyes above them. Her lips were the only feature of the lovely face that didn't tell the same story as the rest of her features. Here the discerning observer might have seen hints of smouldering pas sioen and wilfulness that needed but a touch of the right match to set into a blazing riot of abandon and disregard for the life she had made for herself and the society in which she lived.
But the match had never been touched to her life. She had done all the normal, expected things-all the things an English girl does when the primaries of her life are over. She had been educated at a fine school, achieved just about as much academically as had been expected of her. She had been a noticed-but not flamboyantly so--debutante and when she was eighteen her mother had died. In the best traditions of the English upper class she had grieved for her loss precisely the correct length of time and got back into the business of living neither a moment too soon or a moment too late.
Her father, retiring more and more into himself after the death of his wife, had let his beautiful daughter have her head. And it had not been a difficult decision to make for Margaret was a nice girl-a girl who could always be trusted to do the right thing at the right time, and in general, behave as a well educated, principled, honourable daughter should.
She had run through the usual gamut of adolescent emotion At fourteen she had conceived a crush for a school teacher and as this had been entirely unreciprocated, it bad died a natural death. Everyone who knew about it, believed it. That is wasn't true, is, for the moment, neither here nor there, but it was believed and no less by Margaret herself. That it wasn't true is the subject of this story. After leaving her school and being "finished" in Switzerland and making her debut she fell violently in love with an American singer that she had met at Ascot. Here she was again fortunate. He turned out to be a queer and when his opportunity for her seduction was wilfully thrown ot him by the adoring Margaret he transferred his passion to an hotel porter and his affections were lost to her for ever! Almost destroyed by this encounter for the better part of a month, she rallied, however, to fall in love with a man of almost sixty, a friend of her father who was neither queer or, in the final analysis, a friend of her father.
In justice to him it must be said that she pursued him with vigour and determination and laid a siege to his honour that many a greater man in character might have succumbed to with less resistance.
He succumbed gracefully and with pride one fine evening in June on the lawn of her father's house, beneath a rhododendron bush, and left Margaret with very bloody thighs, torn knickers, a neatly ruptured hymen and a feeling of disappointment.
Having been devirginated she was therafter a little more circumspect in her dealings with love. She had been eighteen and a half when she had first heaved to the thrust of a man and she was nearly twenty before another man fumbled for knickers down her glorious thighs and pushed his grimly searching fingers deep into the softness of her warm cunt. She had tolerated this attention before with equanimity, always insisting on calling a halt when an attempt was made to actually mount her-in effect, a prickteaser without knowing it. But on this occasion she met her match. Perhaps she let him toy just a few seconds too long with her quivering clitorus perhaps she let him slip his deft fingers just that little too deep into her straining quim-be it as it may, when she felt the burning touch of his prick against her cool thighs and felt his nob nuzzle aside the crisp curls that shielded the entrance to her pube, her push at his hips was only perfunctory-a relic of her education-a gesture of dying honour-a flourish of the flag of rectitude! For as his throbbing penis dipped into the soft moistness of her writhing love nest she grabbed his straining buttocks with both feverish hands and pulled him deep into her.
This was the first time that a man had ejaculated into her and while he (his name is of no importance) had gone to get her a calming, restoring, drink she put the heel of her hand hard against her fanny and let his hot sperm fill her palm while she ruminated on the strange and somehow peculiar differences between men and women. On hearing him return she had wiped her burning fanny with her silk knickers and stored them in her handbag for future examination and reflection. Again this pleasant interlude had been conducted under the clean skies and on the soft grass of Sussex.
Her lover of that night had tried to make a fullblooded affair of the matter, but she had resisted him, not so much with skill as with indifference and through his gossip had acquired a local fame as "a funny girl".
Her next affair had been less romantic in setting but infinitely more so in situation and likelihood.
Her father had been abroad and an engineer-a very ordinary sort of fellow-had called to repair the television set. They had talked and he had offered to look at her bedside portable radio, which he had done-but not before he had looked at her lovely breasts and kissed them when, after the briefest of struggles, he had managed to extract them from her dress. Before she had really known quite what was happening he had thrust her across the bed, removed her drawers (with his teeth, his hands being otherwise occupied in holding her down) and neatly and expertly ravaged her. She had thought of screaming until she actually felt his vital brutishness plunging deep into her ravenous cunt and compromised by calling to him to go faster.
This had been her most interesting experience to date. The coarseness of her ravager had interested her quite as much as his technique and she allowed him to repeat his performance some half dozen more times. But he in the end he palled-or perhaps it is nearer the I ruth to say that she palled on him, for they parted when she refused him access to her anus and, when he had accepted this restriction, to her mouth.
It was shortly after this that she had met Gerald Peterson and it had been, on his side, love at first sight. He was a barrister with a rising practice and with a falther who had been a judge--an attractive love at first sight with Margaret. They had gone enough background for any man. It had not been about a lot together before he had even kissed her and it had most certainly puzzled her when one night when after he had managed to take one of her breast out of her evening gown while in his car he had returned it quickly, kissed her forehead and driven br-r straight home. She was later to learn that this resolve not to pursue his advantage was because of the respect her calm dignity and beauty had had upon his worser instincts!
That was possibly her first serious disappointment in men!
On the forty-third time of his asking her to marry him she had accepted and instead of kissing her he bad leaped up and telephoned his father the glad news.
The wedding had been a quiet one-two hundred quests invited, three hundred attending and the honeymoon had been spent in Jersey, the bridegroom having a professional interest in some obscure peculiarity of the tax law there.
But with marriage there had not come the match to ignite her life. It wasn't that she was unhappy; far from it. They liked the same things in life. They agreed on where to live-Sussex. They agreed on the shows they wanted to see-mainly Noel Coward. They agreed on the type of house to live in-het father's. They agreed even on their favourite dishboiled chicken. In fact, they agreed on everything. They agreed even on the frequency with which to indulge in sex once a week, usually on a Saturday, but this varied.
As she walked down the lane, now and again brushing the hair from her eyes, her sensible brogues striking smartly on the tarred surface of the narrow way, Margaret was reflecting on the news that she had received from Gerald that morning.
He was going to Jamaica to defend a man on a fraud charge and would be away six weeks. He had not told her the night before because it had been a Saturday-and well, it might have spoiled things. She smiled to herself as she recalled his opening remark.
"It'll be terrible being parted for six weeks-the first time in the two years we've been married."
This was the first she had heard of the impending parting and her smile was because he had looked rather sweet and eager and really desolate at the thought of their being parted. But she was not smiling now. Her beautiful face was set in thought as she pondered what his abscence would really mean to her. Would she really care as much as he obviously did? She forced herself to try and be objective. What was it that was missing from their relationship. He was an adequate lover. He was kind, he was-wait a minute. What was it she had said of him? He was an adequate lover. She stopped stock-still as an overwhelming wash of memory and wonder flushed her mind. Gerald was a wonderful lover-tender, careful-everthing. Not very frequent, not very expert, not very detailed in his attentions, not a man who could set a woman on fire, not-Nothing but "not's.u Not this-not that. Was it that that was wrong? She shook her head in perplexity and walked on. What was wrong with her? Why didn't she care that he was going away, thousands of miles, for six weeks, She stopped again. Face it! Why was she even glad that he was going?
Her answer came without her ever really realising it.
"Excuse me, is this right for Hinton?"
"Hinton?" she said, "Hinton? Oh, oh, yes." She turned and looked at her questioner. He sat there astride a cycle, rucksack on back and wide, engaging smile on his freckled face. He was a boy... a boy of perhaps seventeen years of age, fair handsome in a puckish way with rather large, protuding ears and thickish red lips that hinted at a developing sensual ity. But he was a boy! Strange, she reflected that she should feel some vague feeling of disappointment about this. It was almost as if... she shrugged the feeling away.
"Yes, Hinton, is about a mile down the road, take the first cross-roads and it's a quarter of a mile on from there."
"Thank you," said the boy. "We're going camping there."
"We?" asked Margaret, looking around.
"Wei, I'm a sort of advance guard. I'm down here a day early to get things arranged. You know, where we get water. Where we can get oil for the Primus's... well, I expect you know what camping is."
"I live in Hinton," said Margaret, "What part are you camping in?"
"It's called Long Wood. We've never been there before. It was offered us by a gentleman. I think..."
"The gentleman," interupted Margaret, laughing. "Is my husband."
"Then you must be Mrs Peterson," ejaculated the boy.
"That's right," said Margaret.
"Well, what a coincidence! This is jolly lucky for me... I mean, to meet you like this."
"I should have realised, or at least remembered what my husband told me a week or so ago," said Margaret. "He mentioned that he'd given some club camping rights in Long Wood. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the club, though."
The boy grinned. 'The club is the Kensington Youth Club... I'm the secretary of it. My name is Tony Deveraux... spelt with an X at the end!"
They both laughed.
"That's it," laughed Margaret. "Gerald... that's my husband... was telling me. Isn't it some kind of a musical club?"
"Well, not exactly," said Tony. "Most of us are very interested in music but we do other things."
Margaret had to really struggle to resist the absurd temptation to ask...
"Such as?"
Instead she asked. "It isn't really a musical club, then?"
"Well, some people don't call what we like music," replied Tony. "My father, for instance! We're mostly jazz fiends."
Margaret smiled. "I see," she said.
Covertly she let her eyes wander over the boy.
He was a well muscled, clean-limbed white-skinned specimen. He wore khaki shorts and a striped T-shirt. A very ordinary, clean-cut English boy. And he was a jazz fiend! Ah, well!
"Well, if there's any way in which I can help, please let me know," she said. "My husband goes away tomorrow so I'm afraid he can't be any help to you. But if you want anything just come up to the house and let me know. By the way, how long are you staying and how many are there of you?"
"We stay three weeks and there are twenty-two us.
"Twenty-two of you!" gasped Margaret. "Why, that's almost a jamboree!"
"I'm afraid it is, rather!" grinned Tony.
"Twenty two boys in Long Wood. My goodness!"
"Eleven boys," corrected Tony.
"Eleven boys? Then... then you mean that there are eleven girls?" gasped Margaret.
"That's about it," nodded Tony.
"All about... about your age?"
"Most of them are a bit older than me. In fact, I'm next to youngest in the group."
"But you're secretary?"
Tony grinned attractively. "I don't mind the writing jobs!"
"How old are you?" asked Margaret, curiosly. "Sixteen. Well, almost sixteen." "Fifteen!"
"More or less," assented Tony.
"And your parents... your's and the girl's parents... they don't mind you all camping mixed?"
Tony stared. "No. Why should they?"
"Oh, no reason at all... no reason at all," replied Margaret, hastily.
Tony grinned again. "Between you and me," he confided, "I don't think they care much as long as they see the back of us for three weeks."
"It was different in my day," commented Margaret. "I can't even imagine my mother and father dreaming of letting me go camping with boys. In fact, I think they'd have had a fit at the very idea. But there, times change..."
"And we must change with them," concluded the boy. "Yes, well, in your day it was different."
"In what way?" asked Margaret, pretending to bridle.
"Oh, nothing," evaded Tony, stirring uneasily on his cycle as if the conversation had taken a turn not quite to his liking. As he shifted Margaret, with the clearest conscience in the world and with a mind quite free of any consciousness of his opposite sex, couldn't help momentarily noticing the slight bulge of his sex as it bulged his shorts as he shifted his thighs that were astride the cross-bar of the cycle.
Margaret's eyes flickered back to Tony's face. She felt a most peculiar feeling... that the conversation could never be quite the same now... freee, unencumbered by recognition that, disparity in ages ignored, he was male and she was female. Strange... disturbing... perhaps even frightening. She heard herself saying: "So it was different in my day?"
"I didn't mean that... I didn't quite mean that?"
"What did you mean?" she pursued, ruthlessly.
"I... well... young people can look after themselves better these days."
"You mean they're brighter?" she asked, and really thought that that was what he had meant.
"No. No, I didn't mean that. Oh, I suppose it's just a matter of science!"
For a long moment Margaret regarded Tony while the import of his remark sank in. Then, despite herself, she felt an unusual glow sweep into her cheeks. He did mean that! The conclusion was inescapable. The child was chiding her with the advances wrought by science in the development of contraceptives since her day! That was what he clearly meant and she decided to drop the subject before she got out of her depth.
When she again loocked at him his face was quite clear of guile and for a moment she doubted her interpretation.
His next words dispelled any doubts she might have had.
"I've read about how mothers used to worry about their daughters in your day," he said, his voice tinged with wonder at such silly maternalism.
"They don't worry now?" choked Margaret.
"Good Heavens no!" chuckled the boy. "Mind you, it'd be a jolly bad show if a girl... well... you know... these days."
Margaret looked him in the eye. "Is the word you can want 'clicked'?" she asked, stiffly.
"Clicked! No, never heard that word used for this. We always say 'podded'."
"Podded?" gasped Margaret. "Podded!" nodded Tony.
"Well," said Margaret, slowly. "I must admit that what you have told me has shocked me. Pm quite certain that my husband would never have given permission for your club to camp on our ground if he had the faintest conception of... of.." she broke off, suddenly aware that she was, after all, talking to a boy of fifteen.
Tony threw his leg across the cycle cross-bar in alarm. "Mrs Peterson," he gasped. "Please don't make things bad for us. After all, it was you who started talking like this... I mean, about it being a mixed camp."
Margaret stared, and then nodded bitterly.
" I suppose it was," the said. "Mind you, I little dreamt what I was going to learn."
"This sort of thing doesn't go on all the time," protested Tony.
"I should hope not."
"In fact, it's rather that the fellows go... go..." "The whole hog," supplied Margaret, wearily.
"Yes."
"I'm glad to hear that. Well, as you seem to think that I wormed my way into your confidence. I shall say nothing of this to my husband. But I warn you, part of my reason for not telling him is also that I do not want to shock him. I do not want to destroy his faith in the youngers generation. I really must be going. Goodbye, Tony."
"Goodbye, Mrs Peterson. I say, there's nothing really wrong with us teen-agers. It's just that we grow to be natural... quicker. That's all."
He leaped astride his cycle and drove fiercely at the pedals. She watched him streak off down the lane. His khaki shorts bit into the cleft between his buttocks and his white legs... his long white legs... flashed in the afternoon sun.
Margaret Peterson bit her lips and for a reason that was to take her long to explain, averted her eyes and deliberately didn't watch him cycle out of sight.