8. A Pretty Floral Minidress

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

A SUMMER UNDER THE SUN Part 6

“How could you, mum?” raged Darren, “Shouting like that when Jennifer could hear every word you said!”

“Well, the doctor said you shouldn’t get excited…” began Rona Bingley, “and that girl’s no better than she should be! I mean, kissing you! And on the mouth too! Your father would never have done that to me until after we’d been down the aisle!”

“Times have moved on, mum,” sighed Darren, “and anyway I wasn’t expecting her to kiss me! It’s just that she’s glad that what she overheard you bellowing at dad, that I was dying, wasn’t true.”

“Then she shouldn’t spend her time listening in to private conversations,” snapped Rona.

“Or you shouldn’t be doing your best to imitate a fishwife!” snapped Darren, “and I bet she won’t want to know me after you shrieking that I’m not good enough for her.”

“Have you ever wondered why their house has got five bedrooms while ours has got just the two?” grated Rona, her voice suddenly consumed by what could only be a deep-rooted jealousy.

Darren knew, of course, the house next door was the end one of a private development whereas their own was the first in a row of council houses.

“Oh, shut up, mum,” he hissed, and he ran upstairs to his room and flung himself onto his bed so that the mirror wouldn’t see that he was crying, which was something he just about never did.

Meanwhile, next door Mrs Ogilvy was dusting the window sills upstairs at precisely the same time as Jennifer kissed Darren, and she saw everything. And, because the window was open for cleaning, she heard everything too.

Mrs Ogilvy was the woman who “did” for the Sagebrushes once a week. It was a doddle of a job in her mind because when Mrs Sagebrush was home she spent most of her two agreed hours engaging the cleaning lady in gossip. Today, however, Mrs Sagebrush was at work in her office and would no doubt bring some fish and chips from the shop underneath her office at tea time. She did this every Thursday, which was her usual afternoon in the office. She only worked the one afternoon because she didn’t need to work too many hours. Her wages were entirely her own and were never required to supplement domestic expenses. Grant, her better half, even paid Mrs Ogilvy’s wages. He was a local bank manager and rolling in cash according to popular rumour.

And Mrs Ogilvy was witness to the big kiss.

In all truth there aren’t many people who would have deemed it a ‘big’ kiss, but to Darren it was a huge exercise in intimacy in which their tongues actually touched. They had to, because Jennifer forced hers between his lips unexpectedly, and to his wonderment and everlasting surprise she’d introduced something spectacular into his life, something that had a salutary effect on his school P.E. shorts.

And Mrs Ogilvy saw that, too, from her position at the window not far above their teenage heads.

“If I was younger I’d be snogging him too,” she whispered to herself, and saved the jewel of her day’s experiences to share with Jennifer’s mother over fish and chips later.

“You should have seen them,” she said with a suggestive smirk over a delicious portion of haddock, “It was real passion, that’s what it was!”

“Well,” conceded Mrs Sagebrush, “I’ve always said he’s a really nice boy, despite his mother’s mouth. Smart, he is, I heard that on parents’ day at school when I was behind his mother in the queue for the maths teacher, Mr Longpole.”

“He’s a dirty old man,” sniggered Mrs Ogilvy, “when our Greta was at school she said as much! Said you had to mind where you put your bum or he’d be finding a way of touching it!”

“Well I never!” exclaimed Mrs Sagebrush, “but no matter what his short comings might be, he’s a good teacher and knows his stuff all right.”

“I did hear he’d been warned,” nodded Mrs Ogilvy, “years ago now.”

“I should think so too! If he ever lays a finger near Rebecca’s bottom I’ll be up that school demanding my pound of flesh!”

“It’s kilograms these days,” cackled Mrs Ogilvy. “Anyway,” she carried on, “that woman next door, the boy’s mother, said as your Jennifer was too good for her lad, which made him blush scarlet, I can tell you, because have your heard her voice? Talk about a foghorn!”

“I don’t like that kind of inverted snobbery,” sighed Violet Sagebrush.

“Neither do I,” agreed Mrs Ogilvy, who had no idea what inverted snobbery might be.

Meanwhile, Jennifer was still in the garden. She’d changed out of her black mini-skirt into something brighter and more, as she thought it, her. But it was quite a short dress (not a skirt for a change) and a floral masterpiece of summer colours. The joy of it was, though, that she could still hitch it up provocatively.

And by the early evening as Mrs Ogilvy was enjoying her haddock and chips Darren returned to his garden and his favourite knot-hole in the belief that she might have no idea he was there. He was wrong, of course. It wasn’t that she could see his eyes peering at her through a tiny hole in the wood, but she could sense that they were there. It might have had something to do with the sound of his feet on the gravel path next door as he tried to silently find the right spot.

“Is that you, Darren?” she whispered in a low voice, but he heard it.

He stood on a low pile of bricks he’d arranged there weeks earlier lifted his head so that she could see it above the fence.

“I’m sorry about my mum,” he said, awkwardly. “Her head’s lost in the past, I’m afraid. She said she and my dad never kissed until after they were wed!”

“Not true, though,” smiled Jennifer, “I’ll bet they were snogging day and night! People haven’t changed, you know, and she’s not old enough to be called Victorian.”

“I should hope not!” grinned Darren, “all she really wanted to do was embarrass me.”

“Or look after what she thinks might be your best interests,” Jennifer told him, but them Jennifer usually only saw the best in people and anyway she hit the nail firmly on its head.

“Well, she missed the mark if what she was about,” he said sadly, “because when she said it my very best interest was being kissed by you!”

“Do you mean that?” asked Jennifer.

“I only say what I mean,” he replied devoutly, “and when you kissed me it was not just in my best interests, it was in my very best interest!”

“You’re such a nice boy,” sighed Jennifer, and she hitched up her floral frock so that he could see all of her thigh, and a little bit more.

Darren fell off his pile of bricks when he saw what he saw.

From his vantage point she didn’t seem to be wearing much in the way of underclothes at all.