Monitors Duty

From Uniform Girls 20

The long summer day, humid and sticky, has at last begun to lose its heat as twilight settles over the grounds and uneven rooflines of The Grange. At the foot of the main staircase, in what is known as the ‘front building’, a clock, high up on the wall opposite the stairs, stands at twenty-seven minutes past nine. From the direction of the darkening east wing, comes the thin sound of sporadic whistling, tuneless for the most part, and drawing slowly nearer; and now, from the first floor, the patter of hurrying feet echoes softly around the lofty entrance hall.

A girl appears suddenly at the top of the stairs and comes skittering rapidly down them, her blonde hair bouncing, and she scampers across the black and white marble tiles which pave the hall, to a cupboard which is set back into an alcove. She stops in a fluster before the cupboard, her hands at the waistband of her skirt, unclipping and unzipping, with time clearly pressing; she turns her head, her hands stilled, as the whistling begins again, now much nearer. Her eyes, blue in a pale, pretty face, do not leave the gloomy corridor that leads to the east wing, but her fingers find her skirt’s zip again, then she stoops and the skirt slips down her legs, together with her knickers.

She straightens up with the two garments in her hand; she yanks open the cupboard door and bundles them inside. She stands on tip-toe, trying to see onto the high top shelf, her bare legs firm and muscle-taut, one black-shoed foot lifting as she strains upward, her blouse pulling up, tight across her breasts, her navel just exposed.

The whistling again, very close, and then the scuff of shoes against the marble tiles as Briggs catches sight of the half-naked girl and stops in his tracks.

The girl comes down off her toes, pulling a small white bundle from the shelf, and she turns, wide-eyed, towards the portly, heavy-jowelled figure standing no more than five yards from her.

‘Well, well —’ the words ring gently in the hallway; the girl’s hands drift automatically across to hide the plump swell of her pubes behind the white bundle; one knee turns in and she presses her thighs close together; she bites her lower lip in anguish at being discovered so.

‘What’s this then, eh? Shouldn’t you be at the side door by now, young lady?’ Briggs takes a pace towards her, then another, a grin spreading across his unshaven face, his whole posture full of menace. The girl gulps quietly.

‘Yes — I — I’m a bit late, actually —’ Her hands twist at the bundle and her knee slides a fraction further across its neighbour.

‘I should think you was, my girl —’ Briggs stares lewdly at her nakedness, up, down, down again. He rubs the back of his hand across his chin with a faint rasp of stubble. His eyes brighten. ‘Well —’ he says, at length, ‘— you better get on with it, ‘adn’t you.’

Cheeks pinkening, the girl stands on tip-toe again, her eyes leaving Briggs for no longer than absolutely necessary as her hand scrabbles about on the top shelf. At last she gives up her search and turns warily towards the watcher, her little bundle carefully interposed between his gaze and what he would like to catch a glimpse of. Briggs stares at her with an enquiring expression on his round face, until she seems to feel obliged to offer an explanation.

‘They — don’t seem to be there,’ she says, her voice small, her pink cheeks clearly to be seen now, even in the gathering gloom.

‘What ain’t there?’ says Briggs, still staring.

‘The — the — bottoms’ Neither knickers nor shorts, really. ‘Bottoms’. Briggs steps forward, grinning again. Taller, he can just reach what the girl has been looking for, right at the back of the shelf. He contrives to keep it hidden behind his back as he shakes his head.

‘Nope — don’t seem to be here.’ He shrugs, still grinning. ‘You’ll just ‘ave to do as you are, won’t you.’ He glances up at the clock. ‘And you’d better be quick about it.’ The girl, too, looks at the clock; nine thirty; already she is fifteen minutes late! She looks at Briggs, then again at the clock. The hands holding the white bundle protectively in front of her move reluctantly. She turns sideways and puts the bundle quickly on to a shelf in the cupboard, then, with an embarrassed glance at the amused Briggs, she begins to unbutton her blouse.

The blouse joins her skirt and knickers in the cupboard. Hot-cheeked, she elects to turn away from the staring eyes, bare bottom being marginally less humiliating to leave open to Briggs’ lascivious gaze than tits and pubic hair. The white bundle is snatched up and shaken out, all in one panic-stricken movement, then she tugs it over her head, struggling into it, breasts bobbing and swinging. She wriggles it down over her breasts as far as it will go — which is not very far. Indeed, it is cut so high that the soft under-fullness of each breast can still be seen when she turns to close the cupboard door, avoiding Briggs’ piercing glance, red-faced and trembly-lipped. She hides her pubes again as she turns to Briggs; she has to ask, though she hates asking anything of him.

‘You — you won’t tell, will you? Please — if he doesn’t already know, you won’t say I was late — will you?’ Briggs grins again.

‘I might — or I might not. We’ll ‘ave to see.’ He stares fixedly at the single word printed across the girl’s chest, ‘Monitor’, in capital letters, and in particular at the little holes rough-cut in the centres of the ‘O’s’. ‘And ain’t you forgotten something, by the way?’

The girl bites her lip again, embarrassment heightening the blush in her cheeks. With fumbling fingers she wangles one pert, traitorously-erecting nipple into each of the holes; they stick out, seemingly proud to have been included in the conversation, and Briggs’ grin widens.

‘Ere —’ He produces the ‘bottoms’ from behind his back. ‘P’raps you’d better ‘ave these after all.’ He laughs at the frustrated look in her eyes; she snatches the bottoms, forgetting for a moment to hide behind her hands, and she wangles one foot then the other into them, yanking them up then turning to flee down the corridor of the west wing, her shoes ‘shushing’ against the tiles and the bottoms’ tapes clutched in her hand.

Push bar to open. The door clatters aside; outside she shoves it almost shut and stands on the top step of four; the air, fresher now, is cool on her body as she looks frantically into the gloom in case he should have come along already, and have noticed that she was not at her post on time. She can see nothing of him; she pulls the waist tapes tight and ties them in a neat bow just under her belly-button, looking away along the path in the direction from which he will probably come, then she reaches behind her and passes a third tape forward between her legs, then up over the plump mound at the apex of her thighs, up under the waist tape and then back down again. Back between her legs, then up to loop over the waist tape. A sound along the path! The girl freezes, her face catching the light from the simple naked lamp above her head as she listens, and looks. But it seems to be nothing.

The ‘bottoms’ are already tight around her bum, the worn material stretched taut across her bottom-cheeks; she pulls up on the tape and it slips snugly between her firm, round buttocks, pulling the ‘bottoms’ even more closely across the shape of her bum. At the front, the up-and-down tape has cinched in either side of her plump pubic swell. She ties the tape off around the waist-tape at the back and then stands up straight, hands by her sides, her eyes seeking nervously along the path.

She waits. Then, unlikely after so hot and sunny a day, a faint drizzle of rain begins, dampening the bare skin of her arms and legs and spangling her hair, the reflection of the overhead lamp catching the rain-drops and making them sparkle. It is almost dark now.

Still she waits. She slips a finger under one of the tapes and eases it a fraction to one side, from where it has trespassed into the cleft of her pubes. Either side of where the ‘bottoms’ dive down and tuck in between her thighs at her pubes, the crease-line of the tops of her legs is just visible, the ‘legs’ having been cut so as to emphasise the brevity of fit. The material sits fairly close to her hips, yet a two-inch slit at the side of either leg gives the ‘bottoms’ a slight suggestion of looseness that delineates the form beneath even more sharply than would have been the case had they been tight against the girl’s skin. Behind, the cheeky under-curves of her buttocks are half-naked where the ‘bottoms’ cut up diagonally across her bum-cheeks either side of the tight-tape-emphasised bum-crease.

Still she waits. Her nipples stiffen to prominent rigidity as the night air wafts over them, their pushy impudence adding misplaced punctuation to the lettering which swells gently across the upper roundnesses of each of her breasts and swoops into the dip between.

She stares out into the darkness, into the thin drizzle, and she begins to cry, quietly, snottily, miserably. Her head droops forward — she sees her pink, defiantly erect nipples poking lewdly through the holes; she feels the tapes up between her bottom-cheeks, dividing, plumping her bum out, presenting it as an object of lasciviousness, as a full, round handful on either side, as a target. A target for a swishy, squeal-making cane or a tear-starting strap. And in front, white tape-outlined, swelling softly, ripely, that other place to which attention will inevitably be drawn by the very nature of her dress. Attention drawn, and intention directed; that, though, for later — after ‘Monitoring Duty’ has been done, and her bottom has been caned and she has been sent to stand beside her bed in her little room on the top floor until after lights out.

She cries because she is nineteen and in her first year at University, and she shouldn’t be here at all, save for force of implacable circumstances. She weeps because her pert, out-thrust bottom has only twice in her life felt, and flinched under, the smarting stimulus of a smooth-soled gym slipper, and has only once been made to squirm, and then with frantic energy, in response to the more chastening lick of a purpose-designed strap, an inch and a half wide and perfectly suited to its task, that of leaving plump, late-teenage bottoms rosily-striped and hot and tender and trembly-stinging, as a lesson in humility to their youthful owners. Two slipperings, then, and one admittedly sound strapping; hardly sufficient, some might have thought, fully to have exploited the pleasure-potential to those appreciative of such things, of a bottom so delightfully saucy and full-cheeked and very provocatively-proportioned; not enough, perhaps, except that Rachel’s two slipperings and one strapping have been recent experiences — indeed, have occurred only since she has been here, and she has been here only two days.

And two days ago, Rachel had been a virtual innocent in the yielding up of that other potential for pleasure-giving that attractive girls of her age inevitably possess: but that was two days ago. In two days, she, and the other girls here, have learned much.

Rachel stands under the lamp in the rain and thinks of all that has happened, to her and to others, in two days; she thinks, and she weeps some more.