104 (1) End of Innocence.
Unaided by Jos I expand my mackintosh interest.
Jos claimed to have outgrown that childish phase. Fortunately, I discovered that I hadn’t. Thanks to our secretive pastimes under Jos’s enthusiastic guidance, I had developed quite a liking for wearing mackintoshes and I had now finally recognised that there was a sexual aspect to it. However, I liked, and still do, rainwear for itself. It gave me a feeling of being hidden away, almost restrained, which seemed to counter my self-consciousness over my size and unattractiveness. Like Jos, I could wear rubberised mackintoshes, especially hooded ones, quite happily for hours on end, perhaps even longer than Jos, since I liked such things just for themselves and actually felt surge of disappointment when the time came to take them off. I was a large awkward girl, and subsequently quite self-conscious. I didn’t have much in the way of boy-friends, spending too much time travelling back and forwards to school. I was also a bossy younger sister and I knew the local boys found me perhaps a little daunting. Jos said from time to time that I simply frightened them off but then he would, wouldn’t he, under the circumstances.
In all the remaining years at school, I never had any hint of a response to my occasional raising of the subject: ‘boys who liked girls in mackintoshes’. Except once! Not a school friend at all, but a girl who came to an evening dancing class in Lynn and wore a lovely black satin rubberised mack. “Oh yes,” she said to my guarded enquiry as we left together one evening. “This is the way to catch those nice quiet ones!” as she swirled off to catch her bus back to Wisbech, a town thankfully in the opposite direction from home and my nice quiet brother. She had also added that it was a ‘male thing’. That worried me briefly. I considered that perhaps I had more of the male hormones than I should have, and which was perhaps also reflected in my bossy nature and lack of feminine looks to speak of. But then I consoled myself with the thought that I had acquired the taste, not been born to it and, you never knew…….other girls, perhaps!?
My old blue mack was eventually discarded as I grew out of it. My boring school raincoat was grey gabardine, as I’ve said, and certainly hadn’t given the impression of attracting any interest from Jos.
However there appeared to be the option at school of ‘economy style’ grey rubber-lined mackintoshes being accepted as school uniform and even capes of the same material.
Jos had pointed it out to me before he 'lost interest in such things’ and now with casual interest, I looked at one or two and found that they were not all that cheap, being made of quite decent quality material.
We day-girls shared a large cloakroom next to the Gymnasium. It happened that I missed odd lessons for piano tuition and I discovered I could wander around the school whilst other girls were in class, either on the way to or from my piano lessons. One rainy day, heart beating frantically at what I was going to do, I slipped into the cloakroom during morning lessons, took one of the other girl's grey rubber-lined macks at random off its hook and a cape off another and quickly shut myself into a toilet cubicle. Within seconds, I was down to my underwear and slipped into the mack, back to front, with the cape over it, buttoned up the right way around – both slightly damp and smelling of rain. Then, taking a deep breath, I secured the two hoods, both self-lined but no matter, over my head and tried to capture whatever it was that Jos liked about this.
That was not too hard and I found myself experiencing for a few moments that nice tingling sensation. Exciting breathlessness as the material ballooned and collapsed around my features as I stroked the supple rubberlined material against myself, my hands straying downwards. Then a noise outside and my daring evaporated and I quickly replaced the macks and fled back to my class.
When I had taken my ‘O’ levels and entered the sixth form, I felt a new-found sense of freedom, a year with no exams.
That year Jos had left school and was training to enter the building industry and was away from home a lot. I also had inherited a little money of my own and I determined to acquire my own mackintosh (or two) and I knew how to set about it.
The school ran a uniform exchange at the end of each term. My very first visit to this was a success. I took along an out-grown blazer and skirt and came away with exactly what I wanted, a grey hooded mackintosh of the lightweight type I’ve already described, presumably a cast-off by a leaving sixth former, fortunately another generously built girl like myself. I put it on when I got to the station and wore it home on the train but once off the train, I secreted it into my case and then hid it in the summer-house, alongside Jos’s mack, now lying undisturbed between the rafters.
Shortly after that, more success. I just happened to see in the local paper an advert:
-For Sale. High School Uniform Cape, Suit Tall Girl-
I rang the telephone number given and made arrangements with the woman who answered, to see the cape. It meant getting off the train at East Winch, a station on the way home, and accounting to my mother for my consequent lateness. That was no problem.
I found the address and the lady who opened the door invited me into the hall and fetched the cape from the hall cupboard. I tried it on and it was just fine, being a cape, my size was not such a problem and it was not too short, regulation grey, rubber lined except for the attached hood which, like the ones the other girls wore and like my very recently acquired mackintosh in the same material, was made of two layers of the same rubberised material but the inner layer reversed so that the rubber lining was not exposed.
I bought it, handing over my precious cash, and was entertained to a cup of tea whilst I waited the half hour remaining until the next train on to home.
Just a photo from PtheP's collection.
Not me, but a lovely mackintosh
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