103 Early ’teens.

 

School raincoats and mackintoshes. Jocelyn, usually known as Jos, admits to what has become a lifelong obsession.

 Dressing up in the summerhouse. Childish games involving blindfolds and hoods.

 

                     (Our Wordprocessor is programmed so that when 'mack' is typed, it automatically fills 'intosh' at the end - clever, isn,t it!)

 

When I was twelve, I won a scholarship to the smart school in a bigger town, about half an hour away on the train. It was principally a boarding school with some day-girls and I was to be one of the latter, which meant travelling daily by train whilst most of my girl friends also caught the train, but to another town about the same distance off in the opposite direction. There was no senior girl’s school in our own small town. This meant I didn’t have many travelling companions and there was some talk about being a weekly boarder but, as the travelling didn’t worry me, that option was soon dropped.

 

Apart from all the other excitement, there was the question of school uniform and we went to the appointed school outfitters. The school colours were grey and red –grey blazer, red hat, red and grey scarf, etc and for rainy days, a grey gabardine raincoat with an attached hood. My parents brought one of this, two of that, all as listed and, as my mother pointed out, a “proper” raincoat.

 

A little later on, under some questioning from Jos, I said that “proper” or not, I preferred my old rubber-lined raincoat, not a great surprise to either of us – We had mentioned this in a roundabout way before, especially after the raspberry bush episode.

 

Jos explained that, if made of a rubberised material, with the rubber either inside, as most of ours had been, or alternatively with the rubber outside like the one black one we had both worn for a time, then they should really be called mackintosh and the term raincoat reserved for such as my new school one. I unquestioningly absorbed this in the same way as anything else he told me, although he did seem to get a little aggravated when I first said I particularly liked the sound of ‘rubberised raincoats’ and then inadvertently started using the term ‘rain-mack’ for a time. I had grown out of the ‘rubberised rain-mack’ in which I had then been immobilised in the raspberry bushes. It had been replaced, not that long ago, by another light blue, rubberised cotton material one. This was similar in many ways, even with an attached hood but I recollect, the hood lined with contrasting white material. The new rain-mack itself, of course, was lined with rubber, slightly darker blue in colour.

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On this occasion, our parents again safely out of the way for the rest of the evening, Jos somehow or other managed to persuade me to go and put this 'preferred' mackintosh on and to then describe what it was I preferred about it. I, all too willingly, did so and after we had sat for some time at the table in the kitchen whilst I said that I liked its nice feel and other un-exciting things about it just to keep Jos interested, I thought.

 

Neither was I disinclined to comply with his next suggestion. This was to take the mackintosh off, then to take off my jumper and skirt and then to put the mackintosh back on, over bare shoulders and underclothes, just my vest and panties.

As I’ve said before, I’d do almost anything for my esteemed brother!    Around that age, I was a bit of a tomboy, my current hero had been George in Enid Blyton’s stories of the ‘Five’ and I probably thought that this was one of the things boys did and not girls. I was correct, wasn’t I?

 

Anyway, my esteemed brother was apparently so overcome when I then added that it was now even nicer and allowed him to stroke the mack against my now bare shoulders, that he admitted that he felt just the same and wasn’t it a shame that boys didn’t wear those sort of mackintoshes. However, it was me who, a little embarrassed and wondering what I was supposed to do next, came up with the suggestion that, if that was what he thought, then why didn't he take off some of his clothes like me and go and put on our mother’s mackintosh, which of course was made of the same sort of material. Little did I know at that moment!

 

Mother had a smart new bottle-green rubberised raincoat with a detachable hood. I was just a little hurt when Josappeared to avoid carrying out my suggestion, but, as we sat there, out came the whole story. 

Mother had recently discarded her old mackintosh, a navy blue polka-dot one, and had given it to Jos, along with some other cast-offs, to take to a Boy Scout’s jumble sale. Jos had taken the mackintosh out and hidden it in the roof of the summerhouse in the garden. Nobody knew, not even me – to my disgust, who thought I knew everything. He’d show me that mackintosh instead but only if I promised that all this was a secret between him and me, certainly not to be mentioned to our parents.

I readily agreed, after all a secret shared with Jos was a great privilege.

 

Anyway, that fateful evening, we went down to the summerhouse, me still wearing my mackintosh over just my underwear partly because I couldn't be bothered to dress again and as we knew our parents wouldn’t be back until after ten. He got down from the roof and showed me, perhaps a little bashfully, this elderly mackintosh – navy blue glazed cotton with a polka-dot pattern, black rubber lining and an attached hood from which he had even unstitched the lining to expose more black rubber. Now, I even had to persuade him to put it on which he did, in an embarrassed fashion. There he stood, with it buttoned up, belted and then, again on my suggestion, with the hood over his head and said he liked it very much indeed. Did I consider it odd? Strangely, I didn’t think so, in fact I even liked the look of him in it, although I did get an initial anxious pang when he turned his back to me and for a moment I thought he looked just like our Mother had done in it. I remember that I was more concerned that Jos had been a little deceitful in obtaining the mackintosh than any concern that what we were doing was in any way odd.

 

It was with some reluctance on both our parts when we eventually decided we had better put the mackintoshes back where they belonged before our parents returned.

 

It was about this time that I learnt that I was adopted and I suppose I realised at the same time that I was not therefore Jos’s sister, not even his ‘step-sister’ but it made little difference to our relationship. In any case, as I will recount, within a few years Jos was pretending to have grown out of his ‘childish’ attraction to mackintoshes, although not before quite a few other such episodes had occurred down in the summer-house, discretely hidden from the view both from our house and from curious neighbours.

 

After that, we occasionally took similar opportunities to dress up, always down in the summerhouse and always when our parents were out. I sometimes tried on his mackintosh and he sometimes tried on our mother’s new mackintosh, although for some reason, I daren’t wear hers and wasn’t really comfortable when he was wearing it. That didn’t happen so often, indeed each of these events that I describe, although it sounds as if they were frequent occurrences, they took place over several years and often months went by between each. We obviously had many other interests, other boys and girls included.

But when these occasions did occur, there was always some circuitous stratagem initiated by Jos, often involving a simple game with forfeits, which resulted in me wearing my blue mackintosh, sometimes with only my one-piece ‘regulation’ style swimming costume underneath, while Jos wore his polka-dot with only shorts, or perhaps sometimes only swimming trunks underneath ‘to keep me company’ - as if it was all for my benefit! However, I happily played along. We would then sit quietly side-by-side in the summerhouse, just talking or sometimes playing Scrabble, a favourite ‘grown-up’ game of ours. Jos even persuaded me that it was relaxing to dress like this and just sit quietly and it would do me good, so I sometimes sat there and allowed myself to be blindfolded, an essential part of relaxing, he said, and quite liked that too. Most of the time though, we were far from relaxed on these occasions and, instinctively, desperate to ensure that our parents didn’t discover what we were up to.

 

Sometimes we played more ‘childish’, and therefore more exciting, games, always when our paents were out visiting, often for a whole evening. . Needless to say, blindmans-buff was suggested by Jos and, instead of having to find and eat raspberries as on that previous occasion, now, with my eyes bandaged, I had to grope my way round inside the summer-house trying to find Jos himself who although he sat or moved very quietly was given away by the rustling of his mackintosh. I had to ‘capture’ him, then blindfold him, and play another round. Once in a while, we played it outside the summerhouse, groping around the shrubbery even.

 

On one occasion that I suggested blindmans-buff, there was no blindfold to hand, so Jos suggested that I wear my mackintosh back-to-front with the hood right up so that my eyes were covered – and thus over my face as a whole. No, I protested, I wasn’t keen on that. He might well like it and, curiously, it so happened that I liked to see him like that especially, I remember saying, if the hood was tightly fixed so that the material ballooned and deflated as he breathed. I thought that was fascinating to see, I didn’t know why but I remembered how I liked the hot water bottle game with David from next-door. 

I was let off the back-to-front hood, but only on that occasion.

 

Then finally, one summers evening, once I had been coaxed in the usual manner into nothing but my swimsuit and my blue mackintosh, Jos, as was becoming usual for these games, wearing just his swimming trunks, next persuaded me to help him into the polka-dot mackintosh back-to-front and then, a new idea, to help him next into mother’s nice green mackintosh, the right way round over the top of the other. This I did and was not surprised when he put up both hoods, enclosing his head totally and started that same fascinating breathing act. Heedless of the likely consequences, I whipped my mackintosh off, put it likewise on back to front and demanded that my rubbery encased brother should button me up behind and, albeit reluctantly, I even asked him to tie my hood right over my face as I guessed he wanted me to do.

As he willingly stood behind me and fumblingly carried out my urgings, something happened to him. He seemed to go rigid and shudder in a most curious manner.

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I stood there, all innocent and with the hood now fastened quite tightly over my face, waiting for something else to happen. Nothing did, of course, except that even as I stood there, Jos stripped off his mackintoshes and shot up to the house, presumably in only his swimming trunks, leaving me confused and feeling a little foolish to release myself and follow in his wake.

It was only on my later persistent questioning that Jos explained to me this particular slant on the ‘facts of life’ and then announced that he had grown out of that particular phase of puberty, as he called it.

 

Of course, I just found it that much more interesting, especially as it didn’t reconcile at all with those ‘facts of life ‘ that I had picked up from my school friends.