Marietta, Part One

Did I dare to talk to Marietta? She was so far above me, and not just because of her delicate beauty. One day I happened to be in the neighbourhood where she lived, and saw her strolling ahead of me down a lane lined on either side by high green hedges. Above these, the gables and spires of old red-brick mansions rose into a stately blue sky. I had to say, Marietta fitted right in.

The breeze bloomed the full flaring folds of her white dress, and my heartbeat skipped as it did so too to the silken petticoat beneath. Both swirled and rode up high...

Oh! Just like Nanine! She didn't even have any knickers on underneath! My head was spinning, how could girls get away with that?

She had the most perfect little bare bum, smaller than Nanine's just as she herself was, and the sight of something so secret almost made me swoon.

"A lot of girls do," replied the one I sat next to in class, when I finally got round to asking her about this tendency I'd noted.

"Well, you don't!" I pointed out.

"How would you know?" she demanded, and I flushed. I could have just said I'd seen her adjust her knickers through her skirt, which would have been true, but she'd made me too flustered.

"I, um, saw them once, but didn't tell you," I stammered truthfully.

"I try to tease you by not letting you see," pouted my friend. "So what colour were they, then, if you know so much?"

"Um, little black ones," I told her, embarrassed. "So, anyway, why do some girls not wear any at all?" I then added quickly, keen to change the subject back to our original one.

"Sometimes we just don't feel like unpicking and untucking all day long," was her reply, and fair enough, because as I say she did do that a lot. "Anyway, seeing a girl's bare bum's no different to seeing her knicks. Both are pretty and make your cheeks pink!"

This conversation was certainly keeping mine that way! In fact I wished I hadn't started it.

"Don't expect me to start doing it though," she warned me. "Stick to looking up your little pretties' skirts in the swanky bits of town, if you're that desperate for a roll in the hay with Marietta Chatterley. And don't go looking at my knickers again either!"

I couldn't resist going uptown again to try for another glimpse of Marietta. This time however she was coming the other way, so our paths crossed! Plucking up my courage I shyly curtsied, and received such a pretty one in return that I almost went limp.

Finding my tongue, which wasn't easy, I stammered that yesterday the breeze had blown her skirts and I'd seen. It was an excruciating sentence to get out, but quite exciting too!

The blush started on Marietta's perfect little nose, but steadily pinked and redded-up the whole of her lovely features.

"So why did you look?" she inquired, a little pouty and indignant.

"How was I to know you didn't have knickers on?" I cried in response. "If you don't wear any, your bum might get seen!"

In reply she bumped one hip out and parked her hand on it, then flicked her little nose away from me as haughty girls do. Well, if she was going to be that stuck-up, I'd just show her what a boy from the wrong side of the tracks was really like!

"And I saw your petticoat too," I continued nastily. "So I guess it's not only sweet boys from your fancy school who you allow near your precious hem!"

I was almost too embarrassed to say "petticoat" out loud, but it was worth it, because Marietta burst into tears.

"When I saw you knew how to curtsey I thought you must be a nice boy!" sobbed the girl.

END OF PART ONE