WATERING THE FLOWERS (CHAPTER 1) In our community there are few permanent residents like ourselves. Most of the English-speaking population is expatriate, staying for contracts lasting between one and three years, and only occasionally longer. As we have permanent residence in this country, we have to get used to temporary friendships on the one hand, but on the other we get to meet a great many more people over the years than do others who live in a more settled society. My eleven-year-old sister Jenny and I have very few friends whom we also had five years ago, but we do find that when we lose friends, which happens every year, it does not take long to replace them. Our parents find the same thing. My dad, for example, is now head of the training side of his business, and a great deal of his time is spent simply in helping newcomers, expatriates on short-term contracts, to learn the ropes and settle in. As we are a sociable family, he usually invites them round to our house early on, and if they have children we soon get to know them as well. Most of these expatriates are other Westerners, many from Britain as we were originally. Some come from North America and some from other Mediterranean lands, but they are almost all from the white race. It is unusual for other racial groups to take up contracts here. It was a novelty, then, when an Indian family took up residence here recently, the father being on contract to my dad’s firm. As usual, though, my dad had no hesitation in inviting them round for afternoon tea and dinner at our house one Saturday afternoon. Mr Gupta has four children. As usual Jenny and I were given the job of entertaining them, but I must confess we were a little apprehensive about how to deal with children from a different race. For all we knew, they might not speak English. In fact, they spoke English very well, as Mr Gupta had been educated in an English public school. His English was perfect, and he had sent all his children to English schools in India. Probably only finances prevented him from sending them to England too, as he was immensely proud of his education there. He was a portly, talkative man with a big laugh who was always talking. His wife spoke English quite well, but not as capably as the rest of the family. She seemed very shy, but she had a pleasant smile and was very pretty. Her good looks seemed to have been passed on to the children. They had two girls and then two boys. The second girl, Sandya by name, was a year older than Jenny, and they soon hit it off together. Sandya was quite a beauty, slim, tall and graceful, with a lovely smile like her mother’s. She had big dark eyes and straight black hair that came down the side of her face almost to her shoulders. The older girl, Surita, was fourteen and quite good-looking, but not as much as her sister. She came with an Indian friend in her class at school, an unusual piece of good fortune for her as we only had about three or four Indians there altogether. These two sat side by side on our veranda, quietly at first, and then began to whisper and giggle together. Surita, I noticed when sitting opposite her, was quite careless with her skirt, a black one with flowery patterns on it. It came down to her knees, but she seemed unable to keep her legs still, forever opening and crossing them, and often revealing flashes of bulky-looking white panties within. Her friend kept her legs still and knees together, but her skirt was tighter, and as she took her hand away as she often did when whispering to Surita, shiny white panties were revealed in the triangle formed by her skirt and her two thighs. There were two younger boys. Sanjay was ten, wearing glasses, and not interested when I tried to talk to him. He had a little computer game that he was constantly playing with, and he only had this because he could not bring the computer in his room with him. Too much computer work had damaged his eyesight somewhat, but he was not about to give it up. The youngest was Vijay, aged seven and small for it. Presumably his parents had finally tired of names beginning with S. Vijay was the sort of cherubic little boy with wide innocent eyes that seem to make all adults adore him. He seemed very shy, but he sat there with his hands in his lap like a little girl, gazing about him with his big black eyes and causing my mother to gush over how sweet he looked. I soon found I didn’t have much work to do. Surita had her friend, Sandya and Jenny were fast making friends, Sanjay was interested only in his computer game, and Vijay appeared too shy to talk. We had gathered on the veranda with masses of cold drinks on a hot day just for a preliminary meeting before, after twenty minutes or so, our parents would as usual suggest we showed the visitors’ children the garden or have a swim. This time we could not swim as the Guptas had not brought their swimming costumes. According to one of our naturist magazines, Indians do not tend to swim a great deal and nudity is frowned on quite strongly in their culture. So Jenny and I did not anticipate a close friendship with them. In some ways the Guptas were quite westernized. They wore Western clothes, although rather formal ones, Mr Gupta a light suit and Mrs Gupta a long dress, while my parents were dressed very casually. The girls wore dresses down to the knees, long for our mini-skirted culture, and the boys long trousers instead of the shorts I am used to. At least they didn’t wear ties as well. They were quite happy with the Western-type food we would serve for dinner, as my mother had checked beforehand. I was glad to find out, though, that they did eat curry, and I enjoyed the visits we later made to their house, where we were treated to some excellent curries. The girls were already attending the same high school as myself, and I had noticed them before because their brown skins were so unusual. Sandya was in her first year there and Jenny in her last at the junior school, so they hadn’t met before. The two boys also went to the junior section, of course. After a while, my parents made the usual suggestion that we show the Gupta children round the garden. Sanjay for a start didn’t want to go. His world was his computer game and he resented being interrupted. The two older girls, Surita and friend, stood up and wandered off together, still whispering and giggling to each other, and they clearly did not want our guidance. Jenny and Sandya were quite happy to go off together, and Vijay tagged along behind them. Unwanted by the others, I joined these three. Jenny took charge as she showed her new friend around our garden. All the time little Vijay toddled along behind, looking like a lost angel and saying nothing. After about ten minutes, I suddenly noticed that Vijay was not with us. I looked around for him and saw that he was not far away. He was over by the fishpond. Hoping to make meaningful contact with him, I wandered over to join him. At one end of the pond we have a life-size statue of Cupid, with his bow and arrow, leaning forward over the pond. He is naked, and a stream of water flows through his penis into the pond, keeping the water level high. It was actually a gift of some friends of my parents, expatriates who left some years back and left us the statue as a token of their friendship. It seems to amuse my parents to hear visitors make silly, supposedly humorous, comments about it. Vijay was standing there staring at Cupid, quite fascinated. Or, to be more precise, one particular part of Cupid’s anatomy was fascinating him. “Hello, Vijay,” I greeted him. “What are you looking at?” Vijay never took his eyes off Cupid’s plaster penis with its spray of water. I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he finally said, in a mildly shocked voice, “He’s naked.” “Yes, that’s right,” I agreed. “He doesn’t wear clothes in the stories about him. He’s called Cupid.” “Stupid?” repeated Vijay, not familiar with the name. “Is that because he’s naked?” “No,” I replied, and repeated it for him. “He’s called Cupid.” There was another long silence, with Vijay’s eyes seemingly glued to Cupid’s appendage with fascination. Then he said, “He’s doing a wee.” “That’s all right, everybody does,” I answered. “It’s only pretend, but it doesn’t matter.” “He’s doing it in the garden,” protested Vijay. “Don’t you ever do it outside if you don’t have time to go to the real toilet?” I asked him. At last Vijay tore his eyes away from the statue. He turned and stared at me, as if I were suggesting he kill his grandmother. His mouth formed the word, “No,” but no sound came out. Then he blinked and looked suddenly very thoughtful. “Do you?” he asked. “Yes, quite often,” I answered casually. “So does Jenny. It doesn’t matter if you’re a long way from a toilet. Sometimes you can’t do anything else.” Vijay looked suitably shocked. Then he asked, “Is that why he’s doing a wee?” “Well, it’s just a pretend statue that somebody thought would be fun,” I answered. “He’s actually just filling up the pond with ordinary water.” Vijay turned and stared at the statue again. I waited, but with nothing else forthcoming I wandered away to join Jenny and Sandya, but kept an eye on him, just in case he decided to fall in the pond. After a minute or two I saw him move closer to Cupid. He took a very close look at the white plaster penis and put his finger quickly in front, maybe just to make sure it really was only water. Then he glanced furtively around him. I pretended to be looking elsewhere. Then he turned back and very quickly touched the penis with his finger. He looked around again, and then touched it a second time. A third time, and this time he took hold of it in his hands and gave it a good feel, wetting his hands in the process. I watched him as he carefully ran his fingers over it and under it. Then suddenly he wriggled and prodded himself between his own legs as if there had been a transfer of thought from the statue to himself. He hesitated for a moment, as if to consider whether he should emulate Cupid in contributing to the fishpond, and then ran off back to the house. A minute or two later, before Vijay came out again, Jenny brought Sandya in that direction to look at the fishpond. But as soon as the Indian girl saw the statue, she turned away, clearly embarrassed by it. After that the two girls spend most of their time sitting cross-legged on the grass, facing each other and talking and laughing together. I was used to Jenny, as a lifelong naturist, sitting cross-legged without pushing her skirt down in the middle, but most other girls that age are rather panty-conscious and try to keep their underwear hidden, when there are boys present at any rate. I was surprised to find that Sandya generally seemed quite unconcerned. That afternoon as she sat cross-legged opposite Jenny, the skirt of her light green-and-white dress was spread fairly tightly over her knees, revealing soft pale blue panties beneath. I was to discover that, although she often wore plain white, she had a collection of panties in all sorts of quite attractive pastel colours. Vijay joined them when he re-emerged from the house, sitting silently to one side as the two girls chatted and laughed together and ignored him. I was also being ignored, so I wandered off and left them to it. Although I liked the family, I didn’t expect my future involvement with them to be of any consequence as none of the children connected with me in any way. By the end of the afternoon Jenny and Sandya were great friends. The fact that they went to different schools increased their desire to get together outside school. In our city there is a small cinema that often shows English films, and the following Saturday, in the evening, there was a cartoon festival. Jenny and I both enjoy cartoons, and I was keen to go. It was Jenny’s idea that we should go to watch and invite Sandya to join us. My parents gently persuaded her that we should invite all the Guptas, just for the sake of politeness. The parents, naturally, were not interested, and neither were Surita and Sanjay, who never did want to come anywhere with us. Sandya was very enthusiastic, and Vijay wanted to tag along again. I was quite happy with that arrangement, but Jenny wanted us to leave a couple of hours early so she could show Sandya some of the sights of the capital city. I was not interested in that, but dropped a hint that I might agree if we could stop off at the Guptas’ house for a curry when we returned their children after the show. Jenny made the appropriate arrangements, so we picked them up at about four o’clock for the six o’clock show. I parked the car near the cinema and then Jenny took over, leading Sandya around to show her the shops, the parliament building, the shops, the law courts, the park, the shops, the library and the shops, together with anything else that was of particular interest, such as the shops. Jenny’s future husband should be a wary man. We did spend a while in the park, where there were swings and slides that Vijay enjoyed, for one. The girls considered themselves too old for this, and sat cross-legged on the grass talking for a while. Sandya, it was not difficult to see, was wearing soft white panties on this occasion. After about an hour, when Jenny and Sandya were eagerly discussing dresses in front of another shop window, Vijay began to show signs of distress. He had been his usual silent self up to that point, looking angelic, passively enduring all the shop windows and too shy to speak when I tried to engage him in conversation. But now, behind the backs of the two girls, his occasional wriggles became more frequent and every now and then a little brown hand would clutch between its owner’s legs. I knew I should have tried to help him as soon as I noticed, but I was rather annoyed by his silence when I had tried to talk to him, and so decided the onus was on him to speak out for a change. Besides, I didn’t know of any toilets nearby – a common problem in our modern city - and wasn’t sure what we could do about it. Finally the strain was too much. Bent forward with both hands modestly inside his trouser pockets to hide where he was clutching, Vijay finally burst out, “Sandya, I gotta go!” The girls turned round in surprise. “Go where?” Jenny was saying, unused to such ‘refined’ language. Jenny, Shelley and I use the word `toilet’ completely without embarrassment and we were never able to understand why some people always use euphemisms like `bathroom’ for Americans and `loo’ for English, or ask to ‘be excused’. Sandya knew immediately what he meant, and she looked most uncomfortable. I learned later that Vijay actually has a bladder problem which means he has to urinate more often than most people. But nobody had told us then, so Jenny and I never anticipated a problem and Sandya had obviously forgotten. Vijay, of course, should have spoken out much earlier. Anxiously Sandya turned to my sister and said nervously, “Jenny, Vijay, he . . . he needs to go.” Jenny had by then realized what Vijay had meant and answered, “Gee, I don’t know of any toilets near here. Do you, Roy?” Sandya was clearly embarrassed even more by having me included in such a delicate matter. All I could say was, “The nearest toilet I know is at the cinema, but that’s over half a kilometre away.” “I can’t wait!” wailed Vijay, his face screwed up, his hands tight in his pockets, his body bent almost double at the waist now and his thighs thrust together down to the knees, while his calves splayed out on either side. I had to try hard to keep myself from laughing. “Vijay, stand straight, you can’t stand like that,” Sandya hissed at him urgently. “I can’t, I’m going to burst,” he wailed, writhing in agony. There was only one thing to do, as this was an absolute emergency. I picked Vijay up in my arms and hurried off down the street, with Sandya trotting after me, calling out in bewilderment. About thirty metres down the street I had seen a narrow lane for tradesmen’s entrances to the shops and for deliveries, as city blocks sometimes have. I remember using them more than once in an emergency or two of my own when I was younger. Despite the Guptas’ embarrassment, I could see no alternative for Vijay. I carried him about five metres round the corner into the dark lane between two tall buildings. I put him down just as Sandya, followed by Jenny, rounded the corner. “Roy, he can’t do it here!” wailed Sandya in horror. “What else can he do? He’s going to burst,” I replied. “In our culture, it doesn’t matter.” That was true, perhaps more so in the local culture than the expatriate culture, though. It was quite a common sight to see local people, even occasional adults although mostly male at that age, lubricating trees by the side of the road. The more refined residents were constantly bombarding the lethargic city council with requests for more public toilets. One friend of ours with a sense of humour wrote a letter to the newspaper, berating the council for the shortage of trees, lampposts and fire hydrants in one area of town, and signed it ‘Rover’. There was a faint smell in this lane to show that it was not unknown for people to make deposits here. Sandya clapped her hands over her nose. Vijay was still standing there, groaning and crouching in his agonised posture, so I said to him, “Come on, Vijay, do you want us to leave you while you do it?” “No, I can’t,” he groaned. “Sandya, help me!” “What shall I do?” she responded, worried and perplexed. “There’s nowhere else to go, so you’ll have to do it here, I’m afraid,” I told him, trying to sound gentle and casual. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve done it here myself before today.” Sandya shot me a look of shock and flinched as if I had just told her I was a serial rapist and she was next on my list. “So have I,” Jenny backed me up, and Sandya turned her horrified gaze on her. “Sandya, we – just live that way here sometimes,” she added, taken aback by her friend’s consternation. “It doesn’t really matter.” I knelt down beside Vijay and told him quietly, “It’s all right. We’ll go round the corner and you can come out when you’ve done it.” “Don’t leave me,” wailed Vijay. “I can’t do it by myself. Sandya, help me.” “How?” she asked helplessly. “Please do it with me,” Vijay begged her. “I need somebody to do it with me.” “No!” squealed Sandya in absolute horror, backing right away. “I could *never* do that!” “Come on, Vijay, I’ll do it with you,” I volunteered, reaching inside my shorts. “Let’s water those flowers over there.” Amazingly, in a large crack between the tar and the wall of one of the buildings, there were three or four bright orange flowers growing on thin stems. “Sandya, please!” begged Vijay, but by now Sandya’s back was quickly retreating round the corner on to the main street, with Jenny following her friend. “Let’s water the flowers, Vijay,” I said, aiming my penis at them and pushing hard for a couple of seconds before I finally got the urine to flow, as I was not really ready to go myself. The flowers bent over almost to ground level as my spray hit them. There was silence from Vijay, and then suddenly he gave what sounded like a stifled giggle, pulled his hands out of his pockets, tore down the zip on his long trousers and fidgeted in great agitation for a second or two. His little penis was already spurting before he even had it out of his underpants. It came up at first in a thin high spray that almost landed on his shoes, and then wobbled about before settling rather unevenly on the flowers. Not knowing about his bladder problem, I was surprised when his flow of urine dried up before mine did. It was obvious, though, that quite a portion had not been able to escape in time, and there was a large dark patch on the front of his trousers. I could not see too clearly in the dim light, but his dark-coloured underpants had no doubt soaked up some too. “The flowers are standing up again,” Vijay commented, giving the first big cherubic grin I had ever seen from him as he pointed at them. He was right. They had now recovered from their battering and were standing up, if looking rather frail, amid a pool of liquid that was still running in little streams out on the tar. “It makes them grow well,” I smiled at him, clapping him on the shoulder. “If you come back next week, you’ll see they’re as big as this.” I jokingly held my hand out at waist level, palm downwards, and his eyes boggled at me. That joke of mine was to have a far-reaching effect on his future activities. Suddenly he stared into the distance and froze for a moment, as if expecting some massive thunderbolt to flash down from the sky and burn him to a cinder. Visibly I could then see him relax, and he turned and looked up at me with a tremulous smile. “It’s – all right?” he asked hopefully. “Quite all right,” I grinned. “Lots of people do that in this country.” We went back on to the street, where Jenny was trying to talk some sense into a rather tense and agitated Sandya. Vijay gave her a big beaming grin. “I did it, Sandya, and it was all right!” he burst out. “You should have seen those flowers bend over when we did it on them! Roy says they’ll be this big next week,” and he demonstrated. “Roy, may we come back next week and see them?” “Stop it, Vijay,” Sandya broke in, more upset than angry. “It’s all your fault because you should have said before so you could go – in the proper place. And you’ve wet your trousers.” She wrinkled up her nose, and I too could catch a whiff of urine. “And it made a big puddle on the ground, like this,” Vijay continued, waving his arms around to demonstrate again. “And . . .” “You’re going to be in such big trouble with Father,” Sandya scolded him. That took Vijay aback. “Sandya, I couldn’t help it,” he protested. “Please don’t tell him. I didn’t know there wasn’t – anywhere proper.” “Sandya won’t tell your father as long as you don’t talk about it to her any more,” I broke in, hoping to persuade her that way. “So we forget about it now, all right?” “All right,” muttered Vijay, looking anxiously at Sandya. I looked at her too, and after a brief inward struggle she nodded. Jenny led us around for a little longer before we departed for the cinema. The incident seemed to have broken the ice for Vijay, who every now and then would chat to me, sometimes with a big grin. We couldn’t help getting a whiff of his wet clothes at times, though, and Sandya was very perturbed. She wanted to go back home and get him changed, but her parents had told us they were going out between about five and seven, so it wouldn’t be possible. There were a few problems along the way. Vijay, at his young age, was always expected to hold Sandya’s hand when we crossed the road, but now, knowing where that hand had been, Sandya refused to touch it. There was quite a grabbing contest as we came to the first road as he reached out for her hand, which she held above her head and refused to let him touch her. She tried to persuade him to let her hold him by the shoulder, but he didn’t like that. Instead, he stepped back and, before I could stop him, grabbed my hand. I wasn’t all that keen on holding it either, but I had once been used to changing Jenny’s nappies, so I decided I could handle it if I had to, rather than add to the problem. So I reluctantly let Vijay hold on to me with a rather sticky hand as we made our way towards the cinema. I must say at this point that the narrative does give rather a wrong impression of Sandya. Although she had her hang-up about nudity and urinating, she was actually a lovely girl, rather shy, but with the sweetest of smiles and always very full of respect towards me. She was very health-conscious, though, I found, keeping herself spotlessly clean and with almost a phobia about dirt and germs. I can’t say I actually fell in love with her, but I developed a very deep big-brother type fondness for her. I often longed to put my arms around her and show my affection, but I gathered that this was also considered inappropriate in Indian culture. (To be continued) WATERING THE FLOWERS (CHAPTER 2) When we arrived at the cinema, we went straight in, as Mr Gupta, a man of lavish generosity, had actually booked us a box, so we would get the best view in the house. Once inside, Sandya turned to Vijay and insisted that he wash his hands straight away. I was on the point of suggesting the same thing, and I certainly wanted my hands washed, so the two of us made our way to the toilets. I had a closer look there at Vijay’s trousers, which certainly had a large damp patch at the front and gave off a faint but pervading smell. Vijay was quite afraid about the patch at first, but I didn’t want to lose any progress that I had made in curing his hang-up, so I just assured him it didn’t matter and would dry before his parents saw it. We rejoined the girls, who had also decided to visit the toilet, bought some food and drinks with Mr Gupta’s lavish generosity and then made our way to our box. There were four very comfortable seats there for us, with a magnificent view of the screen. There was some argument about seating, as Vijay wanted to sit next to Sandya as he was still a little boy needing the security of his big sister, but she would have none of it. Clearly it was the smell that nauseated her, but she was too polite to say so. Vijay didn’t smell strongly to my nostrils, at least, but a gentle whiff was noticeable most of the time. So in the end Sandya sat on the extreme left, next to Jenny, and then came myself with a very hurt Vijay on my right. We dived into our food and were only mildly distracted when the show started. It was cartoons all the way through, and the girls had a great time, by the sound of their laughter. I was a little disappointed, finding these particular cartoons a little childish. Vijay stared at the screen and gave an occasional giggle, but nothing more. After about ten minutes a sudden stronger whiff of stale urine struck my nostrils. I glanced at Vijay again, to see that he was no longer watching the screen. It took me a few seconds to realise what he really was doing. His head was bent forward and down, and I was tempted to ask him if he was meditating on his navel, but knew he wouldn’t understand the attempted humour. Then I saw that his trousers were unzipped. The screen became brighter all of a sudden, and I could then see exactly what he was doing. His underpants were pulled down. Although Sandya had many different colours of underwear, as I was to discover, for some reason Vijay always wore maroon-coloured underpants. His penis was out and he was examining it, visually and manually. He was not masturbating as such, but looked rather like a scientist examining some new discovery that he had not been aware of before. I had not seen his penis properly in the lane, but expected it to be in line with his size, tiny, very much like my friend Scott, Marina’s brother, who even now at eleven has a penis that would fit inside a thimble and two testicles beneath like little peanuts. Vijay’s stringy little penis was actually a bit larger than that in comparison with his size, but it looked rather thin and malnourished. It had a distinct knob on the end where the foreskin tapered off. Vijay was pointing it upright and running his fingers all over it, feeling it with fascination as if he had never before been aware of its existence. He examined it from all different angles, and did the same to his little brown testicles underneath. I smiled to myself as I watched his exploration of self-awareness, and it must have been telepathic. His head jerked round and he caught me watching him before I could turn my eyes away. He gave a gasp of guilt and shock, pulling up his underpants in a flash and clapping a hand over them. All the while he was staring at me with guilt written all over his face in English, Hindu and Bengali. “Is that more fun than the film?” I whispered to him. He gave no reply but merely stared at me with big horrified eyes. I smiled at him and tried to think quickly how to proceed. I did not want to add to his phobia. “It’s all right,” I grinned at him. “You can see mine if you like, but we’d better not do it while Sandya’s here. She might not like it.” I winked at him. I could see my words and their implication spinning round in his mind. Then suddenly he broke into a wicked grin and said, “No,” looking at me as if we were sharing the same secret. Then he stretched up and whispered in my ear, “What’s it called?” “A penis,” I whispered back. “But a lot of people, like Sandya, are frightened of it and think it’s bad. So don’t use it with other people.” He nodded, and we swapped mouth and ears again. “Is it good or bad?” he asked. “It’s just as good as any other part of your body,” I whispered back. “Why are some people scared of it?” was his next question. “I don’t know,” I answered, pretty honestly. “Just because boys are different from girls, I guess.” “What does Sandya’s peeny look like?” he asked. “Girls don’t have peenies – penises,” I answered. “It’s just like two little lips in the skin between their legs. Very pretty.” I should perhaps have kept to the facts rather than add my opinion, as Vijay suddenly sounded more interested. “I want to see Sandya’s,” he told me. “She wouldn’t let you, and you’d get into trouble trying,” I breathed into his ear. “Don’t think about it. Let’s watch the film.” So we did for a short while, before he came back with another question. “Have you ever seen a girl’s peeny?” I still find it difficult to believe that there really are children who have never seen a member of the opposite sex naked. I tried to hide my bemusement and whispered back, “Yes, lots of times. But we’d better not talk about that here.” We had no further conversation until the interval. Vijay did not seem to concentrate much on the films, though, but he was more careful about airing his penis. I saw him sneak a few covert looks beneath his underpants at times, and occasionally slip a hand down. At the interval the girls disappeared immediately to buy some more food and drinks. Vijay sat there slumped in his seat, staring into the distance. Then suddenly he stood up and said to me, “Come.” I assumed he wanted to buy some more food or visit the toilets, but he led me through the crowded foyer and outside into the street. “Where do you want to go?” I asked him. He turned and flashed me a wicked grin again. “I want to water the flowers again,” he said. It took me a moment to realise what he was talking about. Then I said, “But that’s too far away and we don’t have time. Just use the toilets here,” “I want to water the flowers,” he repeated, and shot off down the street. I chased after him, and caught him as he turned into a lane on the block very similar to the one where he had enjoyed his life-changing experience. I saw I couldn’t stop him now, so I smilingly accepted the situation. It was almost dark now, so it was difficult to see, but surprisingly he didn’t seem to worry about the dark. He trotted gaily along, looking for flowers, until he had almost reached the far end without finding any. “Can’t find any flowers. Have to do it here then,” he informed me, standing in front of a row of overflowing dustbins surrounded by rubbish and a huge pile of rags. He unzipped his trousers, thrust his hips forward, pulled out his penis, except that I couldn’t see it in the dark, and sprayed on to the pile of rags. Seconds later we had a big shock. The pile of rags heaved and grunted, and a pair of shoulders and a grizzled head with black hair and shaggy beard emerged from it suddenly. A fist appeared and shook itself at us, while the head emitted outraged words in the local language. The rags were evidently still being worn by one of the local tramps who live on the streets of the city. Vijay gave a squeal and leapt back, the spray of urine coming to an abrupt end. Then he took off in full flight down the lane back towards the cinema, his trousers slipping down round his knees as his legs scuttled, exposing his little brown bottom above his half-lowered underpants. Still running, he tried to drag them up again. Half-killing myself with laughter, I staggered after him, with words that I was grateful Vijay could not understand being flung after us by the outraged tramp. I caught Vijay just inside the entrance to the lane, looking very guilty again. He was a hilarious sight, holding up his gaping trousers and with his penis still hanging over the elastic waistline of his little maroon underpants. I pointed back and tried to pretend I was laughing at the tramp. Vijay saw me laughing helplessly, and unexpectedly he burst into laughter as well. As he did so, he again lowered his trousers and finished the task he had come here to do, cackling so much that the urine came out in spurts and waves against the wall. We returned to the cinema, still laughing together, and I had to warn Vijay to stop when we rejoined Sandya, as there was just a chance she might not appreciate the joke. He saw the sense in that, and we watched the remainder of the show together without further incident. After the show, we came out of the cinema, Vijay without going to the toilet on the way. Sandya was obviously watching out this time, as she asked him as we reached the exit, “Vijay, don’t you need to go to the toilet?” “Soon, but I want to water the flowers again,” he grinned, with his usual beatific expression. “Roy, let’s go back the way we came so I can water the flowers and see if they’ve grown.” Sandya looked shocked, so I jumped in straight away before she had chance to protest. “No, Vijay, there’s a toilet here, so you must use it,” I told him. “You only watered the flowers because there was no proper toilet, so go and do it here.” Vijay pulled a face. “No, I want to water the flowers,” he demanded, rudely and crossly. I thought he was behaving like a spoiled brat, and with spoiled brats I’ve usually found that the best thing to do is to frighten them while you still can, before they gain full confidence with you. So I bent my head down, grabbed Vijay firmly by the shoulder and spoke very strongly right into his face. “Do as you’re told and go now!” He still frightened very easily. His bottom lip trembled, he gave a strangled sort of sob, he turned on his heel and scuttled over to the toilets. Sandya gave a squeal and headed right after him, dodging people coming out after us, as in his state of shock he tried to open the wrong door. Fortunately he stumbled and Sandya managed to catch him and redirected him to the appropriate door before any ladies inside were treated to his method of watering the flowers. We returned to the car, with Vijay very subdued. I tried to cheer him up, but he was acting as if I had betrayed him. I only had success just as we were about to leave his parents’ house, my stomach gratifyingly swollen with curry, and I managed to whisper in his ear, “I’ll look at that tramp next week and see how big he’s grown.” He looked at me nervously to make sure he could trust me, and then broke into a big grin. As I left, I felt I had made very good progress with him. I soon discovered that I had made perhaps too much progress for his own good. On Monday evening, Jenny told me what Sandya had told her at school that morning. On Sunday afternoon, she had been playing with Vijay in their garden when he suddenly went over to a flowerbed, opened his trousers and began urinating on the flowers. Shocked, she told him to stop and he refused. She then shouted at him, and that brought their mother out to see what was happening. She too was shocked, and marched Vijay off angrily to Mr Gupta. When his father confronted him sternly, Vijay burst into tears and blurted out, “I was only watering the flowers. I want to see how big they’ll grow.” Unexpectedly Mr Gupta roared with laughter. He thought this was absolutely hilarious. When his wife urged him to punish Vijay, he more or less told her to leave his son alone and let him water the flowers if he thought they needed it. Indian fathers are apparently God in their own homes, and as a result Vijay felt free to water the flowers with complete impunity. Half an hour later he called his father, “Father, come and see. I want to water the flowers again.” And, much to the consternation of Sandya and their mother, he proceeded to give a demonstration, causing their father great amusement. Vijay also told his father with great glee a story that Sandya didn’t believe for one moment. He came up with some fantastic tale about how he had gone out of the cinema during the interval with Roy, to water the flowers, and had urinated on a pile of rags next to a dustbin, only to find that some tramp was wearing them. The tramp then chased him all the way back to the cinema and would have caught him, except that Roy came to his rescue and beat up the tramp in a big fight. It was nice to be a hero rather than blamed for the problem, as I might have been, but I’m sure not even his father believed his story. After that, there was no stopping him. He took great pleasure in provocatively watering the flowers in the presence of his mother and Sandya, knowing they were quite powerless to stop him. Later in the week, I heard from Jenny on Friday, he went too far. During morning break at school, one of the prefects caught him watering the flowers in one of the school beds. She reported him to the head girl, who in turn marched Vijay to the head teacher. Jenny as a prefect herself saw him being marched in and managed to attach herself to the party out of curiosity. As soon as he was in the head teacher’s office, Vijay apparently burst into floods of tears and claimed that he couldn’t help it, because he was desperate and on the point of bursting and he had a medical problem anyway. The head teacher checked the records and found that it was true, and probably Vijay’s cherubic innocence came to his rescue again and made everyone feel sorry for him. Jenny asked my advice on whether to tell Sandya and I suggested it might be better not to. As we later found out, though, Vijay himself had told her, boasting and gloating about it, and she contacted Jenny to find out if it was true. No doubt Vijay rejoiced in the knowledge that he was under his father’s patronage for his new lifestyle and neither his mother nor his sister could do anything about it. I thought I had better do something about this problem myself, as I felt partly responsible, before Vijay started advertising his services under ‘Gardening’ in the classified section of the national newspaper. Organic watering, I suppose he might have called it. So the next time Sandya was due to visit Jenny at our house, the following weekend as we spent this particular weekend at our naturist club with Aunt Sue and Shelley, I made sure I was there. Sure enough, Vijay came too. Sandya hadn’t minded in the past too much when her little brother wanted to tag along with her, but this new little eccentricity of Vijay’s had made him a serious embarrassment to her. She refused at first to take him and was supported by her mother. Then Vijay appealed to the supreme court, and their father insisted that he should go along if he wanted to. I soon found out how Vijay’s new interest in horticulture had developed over the past fortnight. No sooner had we gone out into the back garden together than, as I had suspected he might, he went over to the nearest flowerbed and started unzipping his shorts. “Let’s see how much your flowers will grow now, Roy,” he called out. “Don’t you dare!” I thundered at him, causing him to let go of his trousers in shock. They promptly sagged halfway down his thighs. “Like I told you at the cinema – you use the proper toilet,” I told him more quietly. “Now come with me.” I marched Vijay inside, with that look of betrayed trust all over his face. Even though I knew him, I could understand why adults thought him so sweet and found it so hard to do anything but spoil him. Even my own parents were leaning rather that way. I took Vijay into our toilet, away from the girls, and had a serious talk with him. “Vijay, it doesn’t matter if you water the flowers by yourself,” I told him. “As long as you don’t do it in places where it will cause problems, like in the house or on somebody’s car. Or even on a tramp. Not deliberately – it was an accident that time.” I could see Vijay wondering whether to giggle at the memory. “Or in a swimming pool,” I added hastily, suddenly having a vision of what he might do to our pool. “But it does matter if there are other people around who don’t like it,” I continued. “Because that’s very bad manners. Do you have good manners?” He nodded vigorously and rather insincerely. “Well, it’s very bad manners to Sandya and your mother to do it while they’re there,” I told him, but I could see he didn’t buy that argument. “It’s bad manners to the people at your school if you do it while they’re there. I don’t mind, but other people do. So I will not allow you to water any flowers when there are girls around. They don’t like it.” “Tell me again what girls’ peenies are like, Roy,” Vijay demanded. “We can talk about that when I know you have good manners,” I told him, ignoring the red herring. “That would be private talk, and I don’t think your manners are good enough to keep it secret. You’d go and tell Sandya and other people all the secrets I tell you.” “No, I wouldn’t!” protested Vijay, but I demanded a bit more proof before I would discuss anything with him. Unless I could trust him to keep his mouth shut, he might blabber all sorts of things about any conversation we had, and I could get accused of some rather unpleasant things. Vijay behaved himself that afternoon, spending a great deal of time examining Cupid again. Cupid gave him ideas, because once I saw his hand go to his zip before he glanced in my direction. I stared at him, and he slunk off quickly into the house. Out of my presence, though, he took advantage. I soon heard via Jenny another story of how the Gupta family had gone visiting the other Indians they knew, Surita’s friend and her family, and Vijay had started watering the flowers there in full view of everybody. Sandya said the other family was disgusted, but their own father just laughed at it as usual. Surita’s friend apparently told Surita later that her father was not going to invite the Guptas to come again. The next day I gather he had gone with his mother to the shops and urinated into a potted plant at the hardware store. So when Sandya and Vijay came round that Friday afternoon after school, I refused to see Vijay. “I’m not going to play with you at all today,” I told him. “You’ve been watering the flowers in front of your family and in front of their friends.” “My father didn’t mind,” protested Vijay. “He laughed.” “You can do it in front of your father, then, if there are no girls there,” I answered. “But I told you it was very bad manners in front of women and girls.” “Sandya’s a telltale!” Vijay spat out. “I hate her.” “Sandya didn’t tell me, Jenny did,” I replied. “So you can take it out of Jenny if you like.” I knew Jenny could handle him. “I’ll play with you next time as long as I hear no more bad stories about your bad manners.” Part of the reason why I was so harsh about this was that I did not want to be blamed for starting all this, even though I had. I supposed most other people would have allowed Vijay to urinate up an alley, especially when there was no alternative apart from bursting inside his clothes. But I had particularly tried to show him that it didn’t matter, and that had backfired. Probably Vijay had already told his father, at least, a lot of what I had said, and perhaps his mother as well, although she would keep quiet about it because of her husband’s attitude. He may well have told others. Sandya, it seemed, had not implicated me at all, although she might well have been tempted to blame it all on me. I heard no more tales about Vijay, although I probed Jenny gently to see if she had, so I played with Vijay when we next saw them. They often visited us, especially on Friday afternoon, when all our parents were working. If Jenny had not liked Sandya so much, I think we would both have found it rather a nuisance, as their presence meant that we had to wear our clothes all the time, or swimming costumes when we swam. Sandya could swim but not well, and Vijay hardly at all. In fact, they did not enjoy swimming very much. Again, swimming does not seem to be part of the Indian culture. But they did want to cool down at times, and insisted on changing into their school swimming costumes in private when this happened. I found it quite tiresome, but knew my responsibilities. I got on better with Vijay all the time, but brushed aside his requests for sex education, preferring to make sure I was safe. I didn’t want to start any more bad habits on his part. One Friday afternoon, just after Jenny’s birthday, she decided to go to the shops with Sandya. I knew they would be there all afternoon, so I decided to stay at home. It was a hot day and at the end of the week I just wanted a good long swim, in a situation where a swimming costume was not necessary. Vijay, for the first time, decided he did not need Sandya to look after him and he would stay with me. I agreed with rather mixed feelings. I was sure he would not object to my swimming naked, and would probably do the same himself. I was just worried about what he might report to others, or that he might decide not only to water the flowers at inappropriate times but also to walk round stark naked at inappropriate times. I had visions of Vijay walking round his house naked, or trying to swim naked at school, or undressing at the shops, pretending to be Cupid. So it was with some fear of the unknown that I watched Jenny and Sandya go off to the shops, certain they would not return for several hours – if not days. Vijay was bursting for education, but how much should I give him? (To be continued) WATERING THE FLOWERS (CHAPTER 3) Vijay seemed rather silent as the girls departed. He was obviously not used to being left alone without an older member of his family to look after him, even though adults generally seemed to say, “What a lovely little boy,” and fall all over themselves to look after him on first sight. “Well, I’m going to have a swim,” I announced immediately, longing to get into the cold water on a hot day. “Will you join me?” “I didn’t bring my swimming costume,” replied Vijay in a small voice as I led the way upstairs to my bedroom. My parents always insisted that Jenny and I put our clothes in our bedroom whenever we took them off. “You don’t need one here,” I told him casually. “I like swimming with nothing on. You feel so free. But it would be bad manners to do that with Sandhya here, since she doesn’t like it.” “What about Jenny?” asked Vijay, sounding bemused. “Jenny likes it too,” I assured him. Vijay’s face revealed deep shock at the violation of Indian culture as he had been taught. “It’s all right,” I told him, starting to undress. “It’s just like you watering the flowers. Now there’s nobody else here, you can water the flowers as much as you like. And we can swim naked as much as we like.” Vijay still looked shocked. Apparently, in his mind, watering the flowers was fine and great fun, but actually going naked in public was quite shocking. I couldn’t understand this, as his penis was always clearly visible when he performed his irrigation, and he never seemed to mind then. Anyway, he stared at my penis in great fascination as I finished undressing. “How did you get hairs down there?” he asked as I picked up a towel and started off down the stairs. “Everyone grows hair there when they get to about twelve or thirteen,” I said. I wasn’t at all sure about my friend Scott when he reached twenty or thirty, mind you, or Vijay either for that matter. “Has Surita got hair there?” he asked, wrinkling up his whole face and looking incredulous. “Yes, probably,” I replied. “Has Sandhya got hair there?” he asked next. “I don’t know, but she will have soon,” I answered. “Girls usually have their breasts start growing first, and a bit later on they grow some hairs down there.” Sandhya’s figure seemed to indicate that her breasts were just beginning to bud, whereas Jenny was still almost flat. “What breasts?” asked Vijay, genuinely puzzled. As I questioned him, I realised that he had probably not noticed that women tend to bulge at the front, and had no idea whatever that there could be anything sexual about it. I found that my younger friends at the naturist club who had grown up with naturist families and had been to the club all their lives were often completely unaware that some people found breasts sexually exciting. I had to do a bit of basic sexual education with Vijay, but I did not give any hint that girls did not want their breasts seen, or he would no doubt have wanted desperately to see them. Such is human nature. “Has Jenny got hair there?” was Vijay’s next question. “Not yet,” I answered. “But you and Jenny – swim together naked?” he asked, still incredulous. “Yes, often,” I answered. “We don’t think being naked is anything to be ashamed of. It’s fun, just like watering the flowers, but it would be rude to do it with people who don’t like it, like Sandhya.” “What does Jenny look like?” Vijay wanted to know. I misunderstood him and was puzzled. “What do you mean, look like?” I asked him. “You just saw her, in her yellow dress . . .” “No, I mean – what does she look like . . . down there?” Vijay explained himself. We had stopped by the open French windows of our lounge before going on down to the pool. “Well, like I told you, it’s like a little pair of lips . . .” I began, then thought of something. “Well, I can show you a photograph,” I said. “Do you want to see one? Jenny won’t mind.” “Oh, yes!” exclaimed Vijay, almost jumping up and down with excitement. “Show me, show me.” Having been brought up as a textile until the age of eight, I can still understand the interest and excitement of some boys at seeing a naked girl, any girl, for the first time. I would have loved to see Sandhya naked, for example, but not for the sake of curiosity, rather as an act of intimacy. Perhaps you could call it visual sex! It’s an emotional thing, not a sexual one, but young boys like Vijay who become curious about the opposite sex find sexual feelings overwhelming them for the first time, even if it is just a drawing. I pulled my personal private photo album out of my drawer, with Vijay bouncing up and down, not even trying to contain his excitement. I have this album with pictures in of myself and friends naked, but I always take care only to photograph those people who don’t mind it. I opened it to a large, recent photo of Jenny and myself at the naturist club. We were lying on our backs on two sun loungers and the photo was taken from beyond our feet. We were both smiling lazily, with my penis flopping to one side and Jenny’s vagina brilliantly clear all the way from between her legs to the top, even the gentle curves of the skin as it sloped down the slit clearly visible. Vijay breathed out something that sounded like, “Wow!” With eyes as big as saucers, he stared at it. He seemed frozen like a statue for about half a minute. Then he reached out a hand and tentatively touched the vagina in the photo, running his finger up and down as if he could feel it. “Does the pee come out from the middle?” he asked finally, still staring at the photo. I replied in the affirmative, so he asked, “What’s inside?” “Just like a boy’s, there’s a little pipe down from the tummy, to let the wee through,” I answered, deciding that was all he needed to know. “Will Jenny let me touch hers?” he asked. “No, it’s bad manners to touch people between their legs, or ask them to do it,” I answered. Well, not always, but I didn’t want to attract Vijay’s curiosity any more. He gave a kind of groan, reverted to staring, and then asked, “Have you any more photos?” “Yes, you can look through the album,” I told him. “Most of the photos are of us when we’re naked, because that’s how we live at the club.” I stopped myself too late, because Vijay wanted to know all about the club. “Are there lots of naked girls there?” he asked. “Some,” I said, not wanting to arouse too much excitement. “But you won’t be able to go because your parents won’t let you.” He thought hard as he stared at one photo after another. I sat down in a chair and prepared for a long wait. I daren’t leave him alone in case he decided to ransack the house to look for more. Then he said, “You could sneak me into the car next time you go and my parents wouldn’t find out.” “We can’t do that,” I answered. “The club always makes sure the parents agree before they allow any children there.” Vijay looked bitterly disappointed. Then he asked, “Does Sandhya look like this?” “I’m sure she does,” I answered. “All girls look just the same, so they’re not very interesting once you’ve seen one of them.” Not quite true, and as far as I was concerned the lack of interest did not apply when the emotions were stimulated. “I want to see her!” Vijay burst out, looking at me appealingly as if I had the power to produce a naked sister for him. “And Surita too!” “No, that won’t be possible,” I told him sadly. “They would never let you see them, so don’t think about it.” I had no real hope of ever seeing Sandhya naked myself, so I stopped trying to think about it as well. She was too far gone, too deeply immersed in her culture ever to let me or any other male, I’m sure, ever see her naked until she was married. And no doubt then it would be a real trauma. Vijay looked bitterly disappointed. I tried to think of ways in which he might legitimately see a girl naked, most likely Jenny, but could think of none. By our parents’ instructions, we had both been brought up to stay clothed in the presence of `textiles’ of the opposite sex. Jenny would never have minded Vijay seeing her naked, but Vijay was never there without Sandhya, who would have been offended. Perhaps I could work something out somehow, but at the moment I had no ideas. Vijay ploughed laboriously through the album, making crooning noises at times, running his fingers over the pictures and at times asking questions about female anatomy or making ridiculous suggestions as to how I might help him to see a real vagina. Most of them involved spying, which I would never agree to. He was astounded by the pictures of my parents in the album, but it was Jenny and her naturist friends that thrilled him the most. After the best part of a very boring hour for me, he finally reached the end of the book and asked, “Are there any more?” “No,” I replied, lying but out of sheer desperation. “I want to go for a swim now.” “So do I,” he said, following me out the back. “May I swim in my underpants?” “No, you can’t do that,” I told him. “You’ll get into big trouble at home when your parents see they’re wet.” He wanted to borrow some of my clothes, but I told him bluntly that if he didn’t have anything of his own, he would have to swim naked. “Someone might see me,” he wailed. I invited him to show me how that was possible in our hedged-in pool area, with a gate I could lock for extra privacy. He kept trying to argue, so I left him and leapt into the pool. The sight of me enjoying myself in the cool water was just too much for him, as I hoped it might. “I want to swim,” he finally blurted out, and I guessed that finally nakedness was implied. “That’s all right,” I told him, shooting down the slide, which was always his favourite activity. “Come with me,” he begged. Reluctantly I dragged myself out of the pool and we walked back to the house together. When we arrived, he suddenly grew shy again and told me to wait for him. He slipped inside and upstairs. I almost reminded him that he had no need to be shy of me and that I had already seen his penis, but didn’t think that would help. I must have waited for about ten minutes, calling up the stairs once. His frightened voice assured me that he was coming, but he didn’t materialise. Then finally, just as I was deciding that I had no choice but to go up and fetch him, I saw his fearful little face peeping round the lounge door. “Is there anyone else there?” he asked. “No, there’s nobody else but me,” I assured him. “Let’s go.” I held out a hand to him. With little toddling steps he tottered into the lounge, clearly naked but with both hands clutched protectively over his groin. I had to try hard to stop myself from laughing, he looked so ridiculous. He removed one hand to clutch mine, and I led him gently to the pool area. He was actually trembling as he looked around fearfully to check that nobody could see him. The dog appeared from among the trees and Vijay shot behind me and stayed hidden there. “Dogs are naturists, too,” I told him, again finding it difficult not to laugh. “He’s seen all of us and it doesn’t bother him at all.” We reached the pool area and I locked ourselves in. I dived into the pool and came to the surface, waiting for Vijay. He stood on the edge of the pool, clutching his genitals as if they were about to fall off and looking too afraid to jump in. Suddenly I remembered something. “Hadn’t you better water the flowers fisrt?” I asked. “Yes,” he muttered, turning his back on me and heading for the nearest flowerbed. I watched as he thrust his hips and his little bare bottom forward, and could see the spurt of urine disappearing into the flowers on the far side. Then suddenly he screamed and spun around, urine spraying in all directions until the valve stopped. He danced and jiggled, screaming all the time, his emaciated little penis bouncing up and down in a frenzy. “A bee! A bee!” he screamed, trying to back away. I could now see the bee buzzing around him, directly in front of his penis. He clutched his genitals again to protect them physically this time, still screaming. “Quick! Jump in the pool!” I urged him. I was in the shallow end, the only part he used as a non-swimmer. He aimed a desperate swat at the bee and raced towards me. But after a couple of paces he gave a hideous scream and clutched his bottom. He took a flying leap at me and almost landed in my arms, howling with pain. I almost fell over backwards and pushed him up to keep his head out of water. I could feel his penis brushing my neck as I did so. He kept howling and trying to clutch his bottom. I put his light body over my shoulder to have a closer look, feeling his penis against my shoulder this time. It took quite a while to find the sting because he was struggling so hard. In the end I was able to assure him that the bee had gone and would never be able to sting him again anyway. Gradually his crying and kicking lessened. I was finally able to lay him on his front on the side of the pool and remove the sting from the middle on one of the cheeks of his bottom. “Bees don’t usually like being watered,” I explained to him. “It’s a good thing it didn’t sting your penis.” He looked at me in horror. “Then it would get all swollen and end up this size,” I continued, putting my hands about thirty centimetres apart. Finally he began to giggle. He turned over and sat up, completely forgetting how shy he had been of letting me see his penis on his naked body. For some reason, it didn’t seem to matter if it was only coming out of his trousers while he watered the flowers. He scrambled to his feet and turned round to investigate his stung bottom. His stringy little penis stuck out, with the little knob on the end where his foreskin covered his prepuce. Wet, it gleamed brightly in the sunlight. Then, seemingly satisfied with his rear, he turned back to me and said, “Catch me!” Without any warning, he jumped. It was always one of Vijay’s favourite games to jump from the side of the pool for me to catch him, but this time he gave me no warning. I overbalanced and we both went under. He came up spluttering and howling, having swallowed a good portion of the water in the pool. We had a lot of fun for an hour before I heard the alarm for the gate ring. That was the signal I had arranged with Jenny for when we came back, in case we had to scramble into our clothes in a hurry. We raced upstairs, dripping water, Vijay giggling in naughty excitement, and did just that. By now he had lost all shyness about his penis. He sat on the floor, penis sticking out and tiny brown testicles bobbing underneath, as he put on his maroon underpants, and said, “That was fun. We must do that again.” “Would your parents let you do it again if they knew?” I asked him. He shook his head and grunted very definitely. “What would Sandhya do if she found out?” I asked. “She’d tell them,” replied Vijay, very definitely. “Well, we’d better keep it a secret, then,” I suggested. “Or we never will be able to do it again.” Unfortunately Vijay did not have the sense to do that. According to Jenny, as reported to her by Sandhya, she found Vijay running around naked in the garden spray at home that weekend. As he refused to obey her, she reported it to her mother, who passed it on to her father. This time Vijay didn’t have an amusing retort, such as watering the flowers, and his father forbade him to do it. I gather he was not very angry with his favourite son, but he did order him not to do that again. So that, I expected, was as far as things would go with the Guptas. I had a real liking for the pretty Sandhya, with her lovely manners and her wide smile and her flashing dark eyes that showed she had rather a crush on me, so I was often there when she was, and of course Vijay was there too. Jenny sometimes tried to persuade Sandhya to allow us to swim naked together, but to Sandhya that was taboo. She smilingly shook her head whenever Jenny said, “Please, just once, let’s swim with nothing on. I promise you, you’ll love it.” Besides, I suspected her body was beginning to develop and she would no doubt be embarrassed by it. But I always hoped for it, to the extent of lowering my standards one day and telling Jenny to pretend I wasn’t at home, and then try persuading Sandhya to swim naked, in case my presence was inhibiting her. I watched with a thumping heart from behind the curtains, but Sandhya still would not agree. I often saw those lovely gently-coloured panties of hers, but longed and fantasised about what lay beneath. I sometimes got an erection as I longed for the greater intimacy of swimming naked with Sandhya, sharing our naked bodies with each other without fear or shame. Then one day, when we were all round at our house and taking a mid-afternoon drink, Vijay grinned at me and said, “Come, Roy, I’ve got something to tell you.” I had noticed he had a certain excited glow about him that day, so I was curious as I followed him down to the bottom of the garden. The first thing he wanted to do was water the flowers, as Sandhya could no longer see him. Then he gave me a huge wicked grin and whispered to me, his trousers still open all the way down the front, “I saw Sandhya’s wee-wee yesterday.” My heart gave a lurch and protested it couldn’t be true. “You didn’t,” I burst out, feeling insanely jealous. If I couldn’t see Sandhya naked, I certainly didn’t want anybody else to. “I did,” he grinned. “It was just like those pictures of Jenny. She isn’t hairy yet. And she looks – funny – up here. She has funny lumps.” He indicated the chest area. I restrained my desire to drag off his testicles and feed them to the dog in a fit of rage. It sounded genuine enough. “How did you do that?” I choked, hoping that it either wasn’t true or that it was something I could have a share in. Even if it meant spying. I was that desperate. “You know how she has her shower early in the morning,” Vijay grinned wickedly, still whispering. “She goes into the bathroom in her pyjamas and starts the water so it gets hot. Then she comes back into her room and shuts the door and takes her pyjamas off. Then she takes out her school clothes and puts on her bath robe and goes and has her shower.” I listened, my heart feeling like lead. Vijay continued. “So this morning when she went into the bathroom, I sneaked into her room and hid under her bed. When she came in and took her pyjamas off I saw her. She was all bare, everywhere. I could see her wee-wee. And when she went to the bathroom I sneaked out again.” I felt sick with envy. Vijay didn’t notice, as he was too proud of himself for achieving his life’s ambition. Obviously I would never get a chance to do the same thing. “Vijay, it’s wrong to go spying on people like that,” I scolded him, knowing full well I would have done the same on this occasion if I had the chance. “It’s very bad manners.” “Nobody knew,” he grinned happily, impervious to my rebuke for once. “I saw it. It was like this.” He pulled down his underpants, dragged his penis to one side and tried to demonstrate with his fingers what his sister looked like. “But, Roy, she has lumps on her tummy, up here.” He indicated his chest and his tiny nipples. “Like these, only they’re lots bigger. What are those? Is she sick?” “No, she’s not sick,” I said, feeling very sick myself. “I’ll tell you some other time. But we must get back to the others or they’ll come and look for us.” Without more ado, I turned and marched back to the girls, leaving Vijay wondering why I did not congratulate him on his cleverness. He ran after me, and Sandhya immediately called out to him to zip up his trousers. She was not looking at me, so I tried to visualise her through her clothes. I could indeed make out bulges under her dress, but it was rather loose round the front and I couldn’t tell how big they were. And between her legs . . . I felt almost physically sick. Vijay had seen, and I hadn’t. I was insanely jealous. The Guptas were only there on a one-year contract, and during the weeks that followed I struggled to come to terms with the frustration I felt, especially when Vijay boasted to me every now and then that he had done it again. After the second repeat, I shouted at him, telling him I didn’t want to hear any more of it. I couldn’t bear it. I told myself I was ridiculous, getting so obsessed about seeing a twelve-year-old girl naked, but I couldn’t help it. The thoughts pursued me in every idle moment. Nowadays I hardly ever get turned on sexually by a preteen girl, although I still admire their naked beauty, but inexplicably this sweet little Indian girl was different. I knew that if Jenny couldn’t persuade her, I certainly couldn’t. This, I guess, is how some rapes start, with an unsatisfied male obsession and an uncooperative female. But my passion was born out of love, as it always is, and I could never bring myself to do anything that would harm the girl I loved. I would have to use guile, but I could never come up with a workable idea. She always changed for swimming in Jenny’s bedroom and I heard her lock the door each time – to keep out Vijay rather than me, Jenny assured me - just as I was desperate enough to think about barging in on a pretext. There was nowhere I could spy on her, were I to stoop so low – and I was indeed desperate to stoop that low. It was Sandhya’s very shyness that aroused such a desire in me, I think. One night I actually dreamed I was having sex with her and awoke to find my rock-hard penis jerking wildly and pumping all over my sheets. I felt ashamed of the dream and the ‘accident’, especially because I had never consciously imagined going so far as to have sex with her. Less than a month was left before the Guptas’ departure, and I was trying in vain to come to terms with the fact that I never would see Sandhya’s beautiful naked body. I had visualised every centimetre of it by now, many times over. It was harder than ever when Vijay whispered gleefully in my ear again one day, “I saw Sandhya again this morning!” I told him fiercely I would hit him if he ever mentioned that again. One day Jenny said wistfully, “I wish Sandhya would swim naked with us, just once before she leaves. It’s hard to think of her as a real friend. Do you think we could take her to Santo Boladora?” I had actually thought of taking Sandhya and Vijay to Santo Boladora, the place with the streams and pool and waterfall where we had gone on the day I first met my girlfriend Marina and her brother Scott – many, many times. (By the way, I did introduce Scott and Vijay, who shared rather the same fascinations with their own penises, but Scott was now far more interested in girls than in small boys.) “Wish we could, but she’d never swim naked out in the open,” I told her, gloomily realistic. I didn’t think I could stand the idea of taking her to a place like that and having her refuse to perform. We had been on one previous picnic with them, to a place where there was a small stream, but Sandhya wasn’t interested in any swimming and she stopped Vijay before he even thought about it. My devious mind wondered what she would do when she needed to go to the toilet, but she quietly disappeared somewhere so private I had no chance of seeing her. And all the time I was deeply ashamed of my uncharacteristic infatuation. It was just the love I had for her, combined with the lure of the forbidden. Other girls I had loved in the past I had always managed to lead to nudity sooner or later, bit by bit. But I couldn’t even get Sandhya to take the tiniest step. “Let’s try asking her on a picnic there, anyway, if you’ll drive us?” Jenny suggested. “I bet I could get her to swim naked when we got her there.” I never believed it for a moment. “I bet you can’t,” I countered. “How much?” Jenny wanted to know, no doubt wondering if I meant it. “Ten thousand,” I offered. That was quite a lot, and Jenny’s eyes grew wide. “Do you mean it?” she asked. “Sure, if you don’t tell anyone about it,” I grinned at her. “I’ll do it!” she promised, slapping my hand. It was a lot of money for me, too, but it would be worth it many times over, I thought, if she could arrange it and take responsibility for it. I was in a win-win situation. I would either get my hearts’ desire or a lot of money. Then she made the mistake of telling my parents that we wanted a picnic with Sandhya (Vijay went without saying) at Santo Boladora. I realised straight away I should have anticipated that and stopped her. They immediately forbade her to take Sandhya there, as Sandhya was not a naturist and my parents knew very well that we swam naked there. They didn’t want any trouble with the Guptas, who had already associated me with Vijay’s sudden mad desires to water the flowers and run around naked, although the Gupta parents had never spoken to me personally about it but my parents had warned me to leave that sort of thing well alone with them. “Well, you won’t be getting your money, then,” I teased Jenny, trying to persuade her to come up with another plan. “Yes, I will,” she said, although she sounded doubtful. But next day she came to me to tell me she had a plan. “Will you drive us to the big game farm on Saturday?” she asked. “All right, but have you given up on your bet?” I asked her. “No,” she grinned. “I’ve got a plan. I won’t tell Mum and Dad, and I won’t tell you either, so you won’t get blamed. But just do what I tell you on Saturday, will you?” I agreed, and tried in vain to persuade her to reveal her plan. Needless to say, I was in a rare state of tension until Saturday. We set off at about half-past nine on Saturday. Vijay for once was wearing shorts, a new venture to him that was not altogether approved by his mother. Sandhya was wearing a pink sundress that emphasised her slim figure, and came down almost to her knees. Jenny had been trying to get her to wear her dresses shorter, and this was one of the shortest I had seen her wear. Again, her mother did not approve, but her father seemed to like it and that was what counted. I had my own car by now, rather battered but mechanically reliable. Like almost all cars in this country, it was required to have a rear-view mirror on both wings, and also one inside the car. As I had done with the mirror inside my parents’ car on that day I first met Marina and Scott, I bent it downwards the night before so I could keep an eye on what was going on in the back seat. Jenny, by the way, was not actually aware of this. It was well worth it. We started off with the other three in the back, as Jenny and Sandhya wanted to talk and Vijay was too young legally to sit in the front. Sandhya sat in the middle, as Vijay wanted to sit next to her rather than Jenny. My car has a hump down the floor in the middle for all the wiring, and the person sitting in the middle has to sit with legs slightly apart, one on each side of the hump. It was perfect for me. Sandhya sat there with her legs apart and my mirror trained there. She was wearing a delicate pale lilac colour of panties this day, and they were very easily visible all the time, a lovely sight. We had just started off and were on the road when Jenny suddenly said to me, “Oh, Roy, I forgot to tell you, we’re taking Melanie as well. I invited her yesterday. Sandhya, you’ll like Melanie, she’s a friend of mine from class.” And a friend from our naturist club, I was very well aware. So Jenny had decided to bring in some reinforcements. I was very happy to agree and, as I suspected, Jenny had forgotten to tell our parents as well, in case they suspected what we were up to. Melanie was a rather plump, jolly girl with untidy blonde hair falling down almost to her shoulders. She was wearing a short flowery dress and her white panties, full and rounded, were easily visible as she scrambled into the car. She sat in the front next to me. She had evidently been primed by Jenny. On our journey out of town, she chattered away to me happily, and at one point started talking about the naturist club. Then almost immediately she stopped, drew a breath and changed the subject. Jenny had clearly told her what was going on, but I wasn’t sure yet. There wasn’t much naturism possible at the game farm. We drove out into the countryside, with a fifty-kilometre trip before us. Melanie, with her round happy face and blue eyes, kept chatting to me in the front while Jenny and Sandhya talked in the back. Vijay as usual said nothing. He was nowadays very chatty with me, but usually only when we were by ourselves. About twenty kilometres out of town, we drove through a large and quite thick wood, in a hilly area. Not far into it we crossed a small bridge with a busy stream rushing under it, over a rocky bed. Jenny and I both knew this area well, because whenever we were passing this way we would stop the car and go into the wood to play in the stream – naked, of course. As we crossed the bridge, I saw Jenny, who was on the right-hand side of the car, point deliberately to the stream on the left-hand side and say, “Look, Sandhya, look at that stream!” As Sandhya turned to look, Jenny, sitting behind Melanie who was in the middle of talking to me, poked her urgently in the back. I immediately had an idea of Jenny’s plan, given away as Melanie had clearly forgotten her cue. Melanie suddenly broke off what she was saying and blurted out rather too quickly, “Ooh, Roy, I’m sorry, please stop the car here. I – I need to go to the toilet. Badly.” Realising that Jenny had plans for us at the stream, I stopped the car immediately, without question. Sandhya looked rather surprised at the suddenness of it all as I pulled on to the grassy verge by the side of the road. “I’ll come with you, Melanie. I also need to go,” put in Jenny. “Me too,” put in Vijay. “I want to water the flowers!” Sandhya immediately responded with, “No, Vijay, you don’t,” but that excuse from Vijay was always believable. Vijay opened the door and burst out, just as the other two car doors opened. Rather taken aback by the speed of things that left within five seconds only herself and me in the car, Sandhya was slow in reacting. Then she made a late grab at Vijay but he had already gone. The other three marched off among the trees together, heading back towards the stream, without a word to Sandhya. It was clearly part of the plan that she shouldn’t go with them then. I had no idea what the next part would be. Sandhya had a quick dither about whether to stay in the car or go chasing after them. Then she appealed to me. “Roy, they shouldn’t do it – together,” she said. “Not the girls with Vijay. It’s bad enough doing it – outside!” “It doesn’t matter, Jenny can handle it all right,” I replied, turning round and smiling into her tense face. “At least Vijay isn’t watering the flowers beside the road.” She didn’t think it was funny, staring after the three of them as they gradually disappeared from view. It was very silent out there, with only bird noises to break the silence. Then Sandhya said, “I think he – may want to do it with them.” “Jenny can handle it, but I don’t think the girls will mind,” I said, causing her to look shocked at the thought of boys and girls actually urinating together. I smiled gently at her. “Why are you so bothered about it?” I asked her. “People in India often have to go to the toilet out in the open, don’t they?” Sandhya’s face reflected some inner turmoil. Then she said, “It’s just – in our culture boys and girls don’t do it in public. Or together.” “Well, in our culture we don’t really worry about it too much,” I replied. “Besides, they’re going somewhere private. When you’re living in a different culture, wouldn’t it be a good thing to accept what people in that culture do?” Sandhya was silent for a few seconds, and then shuddered and said, “It seems so rude – to me.” “Haven’t you ever needed to go to the toilet when you’re outside and you don’t have a proper toilet?” I asked her, thinking of the previous picnic when she quietly disappeared for a while. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she murmured, looking quite embarrassed. I waited a few seconds and then said, “Different cultures can be a problem, I know. I’m not trying to change your mind, but everybody needs to think about whether every part of their own culture suits them, or whether there are things in another culture that might be better. I think our culture is a lot freer than yours. There seem to be a lot of things in your culture that you can’t do and we can. So I can see it must be difficult for you when you see how free we are, and you feel happier with all your sets of rules.” “We don’t really have so many rules,” Sandhya whispered, looking at me with a rather troubled expression in her deep brown eyes. I thought of something. “Will you let me give you a hug?” I asked her with a smile. Sandhya leaned back hard in her seat and opened her eyes wide with shock. I wasn’t sure that Indians could blush, but her lovely smooth light-brown skin on her cheeks did look much brighter than usual. Very shyly she shook her head and said, “We – can’t.” “Well, our culture is freer than yours there as well,” I smiled at her. “Don’t worry, I promise I’ll never do anything to you that you don’t want me to. And I’ll never make you do anything you don’t want to. We don’t mind hugging and kissing people we like, our friends and so on. It’s a way we often show we like somebody very much.” I grinned at her still shocked face. “So if you change your mind about that part of your culture, please let me know, because I like you very much.” She blushed again, looking quite startled at my confession, and sat still, staring at me while I smiled back. I could tell this sort of talk wasn’t what she considered part of her culture either, so I said nothing more. Again I could sense her inner turmoil. I had known for some time that she had quite a crush on me, but didn’t know how to express it. We sat in silence for a couple of minutes before Jenny, by herself, appeared among the trees. “Here comes the next part of the plan,” I said to myself. I hoped it would not be anything that offended Sandhya. Jenny came up to the car and asked me, “Roy, could we stay here a little while, please? We want to explore the stream.” “Where’s Vijay?” asked Sandhya, but Jenny pretended not to hear. “That should be fine,” I agreed, as Jenny had earlier instructed me. “It’s always exciting to explore. Sandhya, let’s go and have a look at it.” I noticed that Jenny had not spoken to Sandhya ever since Melanie had asked me to stop the car, which Sandhya might have found rather strange or even upsetting. “Vijay’s with Melanie at the stream. It’s not far,” Jenny answered her friend at last, obviously feeling that now she could communicate with her again. “Come and I’ll show you. It’s great!” “All right,” Sandhya whispered, and climbed out of the car as I locked the doors. Jenny affectionately linked arms with Sandhya as she led us through the trees. At least linking arms with another girl did not seem to be offensive in Sandhya’s culture. Almost immediately we could hear happy shouts from Melanie and Vijay above the running water of the stream. I had a suspicion as to what we might find, and I had to think of Sandhya’s most likely reaction and how I could counter it. I was right. Just ahead of me Jenny and Sandhya turned a corner round some bushes and the stream was in view ahead of us. It was about three or four metres wide, running rapidly through a rocky bed. About ten metres further along was a little pool, with the water still flowing rapidly through it. In that pool, chasing and splashing each other, were two naked children. Sandhya gave a gasp of shock. She broke free from Jenny and scrambled quickly down towards the pool. She stood on a rock next to the pool and shouted above the noise of the water and the children. “Vijay! Get out and put your clothes on! You mustn’t!” Vijay was about two metres away from her, in the water and out of her reach unless she waded in. “Go away!” he shouted rudely at her, his little brown penis sticking out diagonally and the water on it gleaming in the sun. “I’m just having fun! Go away!” Sandhya reached out for him, but couldn’t make contact. She slapped her knees in anguish. “We’ll get into such trouble!” she cried out. “You must stop it and get out!” I came over and tried to take charge of the situation. “Don’t worry, Sandhya,” I said quietly, standing next to her. As I was not on a rock, our heads were about level. “We’ve just been talking about different cultures. When Vijay is with the rest of you, he must obey your rules, but he wants to join in when he’s with us. But he should have asked permission first.” “We’ll get into such trouble from our parents,” said an agonised Sandhya, unshed tears in her eyes. “No, we won’t, because I won’t tell,” Vijay shouted at her. “You must come out, Vijay. You can’t do this,” Sandhya pleaded. She reached out for him but Vijay backed away. He splashed some water in her direction and she would have fallen off the rock if I hadn’t caught her as she tried to avoid it. “I’ll splash you if you try and stop it!” he threatened. Behind us, Jenny had been taking her clothes off. Now wearing only her brief white panties, she turned on Sandhya, frustrated that her plan apparently was not working out as she had hoped. “Oh, Sandhya, you’re such a spoilsport!” she accused her crossly. “You never want to join in our fun! Just leave Vijay alone, because he knows how to have fun and you don’t. I want to be your friend but you won’t share our fun.” She turned away, pulled off her panties and leapt into pool. Melanie fell on her and they rolled over into the shallow water together, shrieking with laughter. Sandhya looked appalled, helpless and distressed, and my heart went out to her. I reached out to put an arm round her, and then remembered it might offend her. Vijay was still glaring at her, so I told him off. “Don’t you be rude to Sandhya or splash water,” I ordered him, and he cringed. “You shouldn’t have gone in there naked without asking permission.” “Come and sit down here, Sandhya,” I said gently, taking up half of a large rock halfway up the bank. Her eyes brimming with tears, she obeyed, turning her head away from the three naked infidels in the pool. “Sorry, I didn’t know they were going to do this,” I told her. “But do remember, it’s our culture, so the girls can if they want. But Vijay shouldn’t have done something that offended you. And Jenny shouldn’t have shouted at you.” “Can’t you stop them?” she asked me, pleadingly. “Well, with something like this, you’re living among our culture, so sometimes you have to put up with the things we do here,” I told her. “But they should have thought more about your feelings first. I want to swim too, because I’m hot.” She stared at me with big eyes, clearly wondering if I too would be naked. We had never told her, on instructions from our parents, that we were naturists. “But I don’t want you to feel bad,” I continued. “You can go back to the car so you won’t see us if you prefer. But I hope you’ll stay with us, even if you’re too scared to join in.” Sandhya looked rather frightened and bewildered. She clearly didn’t know how to answer. Then she said, “I don’t want to watch.” “That’s all right, I understand,” I replied, smiling at her and taking a gamble. “Come with me and we’ll go back to the car together. Then I’ll lock you inside so you’ll be safe, and we’ll come back to you when we finish.” I stood up and started off slowly in the direction of the car. Sandhya followed me reluctantly, looking anxious about something else now. “How long will you be?” she asked me. “Oh, only about an hour or two,” I replied cunningly. “Don’t worry, you’ll be quite safe in the car.” Faced with the devil or the deep blue sea, Sandhya didn’t know what to do. I called out to Jenny to tell her I was taking Sandhya to the car. Jenny glowered at Sandhya, frustrated that her plan had apparently failed and she would therefore have to pay me a large sum of money, and then turned away. I set off back towards the car, with Sandhya trailing unhappily behind me. (To be continued) WATERING THE FLOWERS (CHAPTER 4) I thought out my next move as we walked. We weren’t far from the road when I reached a decision. I turned and asked her, knowing the answer very well, “Has Jenny ever asked you to swim naked with her before?” Sandhya nodded, and then said, “A few times. But I always said no.” “I think that’s why she’s so cross with you,” I answered. “She doesn’t understand. You see, in our family, it’s a bit like hugging. Somebody’s naked body is very private to you.” I could sense her shudder. “But in our family, it’s part of the love and trust we have for each other, and our friends.” Mentally I classed Aunt Sue and Shelley as the `family’ I was talking about. “It’s just a way, really, of showing we’re giving everything we have to somebody else in love and trust and friendship. So when you refuse to swim naked with Jenny, she thinks you’re refusing to be really close friends like she wants with you, that you’re rejecting her.” Sandhya didn’t reply, and I tried to read her thoughts as we reached the car. I unlocked it, but she was reluctant to enter. “It feels so hot!” she exclaimed, and it did seem like a furnace inside. Being an old car, there was no air conditioning. “You can wind the windows down,” I told her. “But you have to watch out for insects flying in.” She looked unhappier than ever, and I felt rather a heel. Then she said, “Would it be all right if – I came near the stream, but just stayed where I couldn’t see – you all?” I looked thoughtful. Then I said, “That should be fine, but we’d have to be very careful. There are a few snakes in these woods” – she gasped – “but they run away from people when we move about. But if you’re sitting still somewhere, it might be a bit dangerous.” Sandhya looked quite hopeless, as if she was going to be hanged whatever she did. I waited. Then she said, “I don’t want Jenny to be cross with me. I do really want to be very good friends with her.” “She just doesn’t understand how scared you are of being naked,” I answered, trying to toss a little bait every time I spoke. “Melanie is another girl who just likes playing naked when she can, like many other people in our culture. But we don’t do it in public. Just with our families and close friends, and then it’s something very special. But Jenny doesn’t understand you don’t want to be friendly that way.” “I do want to be friendly,” she murmured, her mind still in turmoil. I could sense part of her was willing to make the effort, but her cultural upbringing was standing there sternly with a whip and telling her “Never!” I waited. All was silent, except for the birds and just very faintly intermittent shrieks of laughter from the stream. Then Sandhya said, dragging the words out with great reluctance, “I – think – I mean, this car – it’s so hot I’d die. Might I just sit - near the pool while you all swim? But – I don’t want *you* to swim.” “Why not?” I asked her, knowing the reason. She didn’t know how to answer at first. Then she said, “I don’t want to – don’t – don’t you – feel bad about girls seeing you?” “Seeing me naked, do you mean?” I replied with gentle bluntness. “Not at all, when it’s you. I feel like Jenny does about you. I really want to share everything I have with you, and have you swim with us. But I know how you feel, so I don’t want you to feel bad. I’d love to have us all swim and share together, you and me and the others, just as the closest friends do in our way of life. I’m very sorry you can’t share it, but I understand.” Confusion still registered all over her face. She stood for quite a long time by the car, with the occasional other vehicle roaring past us. I waited patiently, sensing her inner battle and longing for the right side to win. In the end she looked up at me timidly and asked, in a very small voice, “Do you think it will be all right – if I just swam in my panties?” I have a stock answer to that question that I pull out now and then. I try to mix acceptance and thoughtfulness in my response. “Yes, you’re certainly free to do that,” I answered hesitantly. “But it does make people know you’re shy, and that’s always a bad thing to give away. And you know it isn’t healthy to wear wet panties afterwards. It’s actually much healthier to swim naked than to wear swimming costumes.” I was adapting my usual reply a little to cater for her fetish about health. “So you’d need to take off your panties afterwards until they were dry before wearing them again. Is that all right? They dry quite quickly in this heat.” Sandhya nodded immediately, I think more grateful for my acceptance of her way of escape than anything else. “I’ll talk to Jenny and try to get her to understand,” I answered. “She really wants you and her to give everything to each other, but I’m sure she’ll understand why you’re scared to go that far.” “Well, I – I’d just feel so awful to be outside without my clothes,” she murmured. “And Vijay – may tease me.” “I’ll deal with him if he tries that,” I promised. “But you know, when you feel scared, the best thing to do is to act as if you didn’t mind at all. I know some girls try to hide themselves and they giggle because they feel embarrassed, but that shows everyone you’re scared and silly people may try to tease you. So can you handle that?” “I think so,” she whispered, not sounding at all sure. She looked most uncomfortable and I felt really guilty about having played a part in putting her in that position. I looked down at her and imagined what she looked like under those clothes, but then these feelings were swept away with a great feeling of love for this poor lovely vulnerable girl who was trying so hard not to be vulnerable. She looked up at me suddenly, catching me standing there adoring her. She flushed and looked away, and it was my turn to feel embarrassed, as I was sure she realised how I felt about her. “Tell me when you’re ready to go back,” I whispered to her. She gave a sort of shudder and looked down at herself as if she too was imagining what she would look like without her clothes. She paused for about five seconds, and then looked shyly up at me, tried to smile and said, “I’m ready.” We walked back towards the stream, and Sandhya clearly preferred me to walk in front of her. We had gone about thirty metres into one of the most overgrown parts of the path, when she suddenly said to me in her gentle voice, “Roy, please wait.” I turned to look at her, about five metres behind me. Her cheeks were flushed, and she gulped and said to me, “Roy – if you want to – to hug me, it’s all right. But – please – not hard.” I beamed at her. “I’d love to,” I whispered. I walked gently back to her and knelt down, which made her rather taller than I. I held out my arms, put them round her back and gently drew her to me. She leaned against me and put her arms round my shoulder, stiffly and awkwardly, as she was obviously quite unused to this. I was tempted to kiss her, but decided I had better not, and would wait until next time before asking permission. “That’s lovely,” I smiled at her as I stood up. She didn’t reply, but she had an embarrassed smile on her face as she looked shyly away from me. We resumed our journey. We were almost there when I heard Sandhya asking me again to stop. She was looking really frightened, and again I felt guilty. “Roy, I – feel bad about – Vijay seeing me taking my dress off,” she whispered. “Hasn’t he ever seen you do that before?” I asked. When she shook her head, I thought, “Little does she know!” “Do you want to undress behind this rock?” I asked her, and again she nodded. “Shall I go and talk to Jenny, then, and tell you when I’ve finished?” I suggested. She thought, and then nodded again, head down. I looked at her long slender neck, so soft and attractive. I put the palm of my hand there and rubbed it gently. She jumped slightly, but then looked at me with a tremulous smile. “All right, I’ll do what I can,” I whispered. I walked round the rock and down to the pool. Vijay was trying to build a dam from large loose rocks while the girls were chasing and splashing each other gently. They stopped as they saw me, and Jenny asked rather contemptuously, “Has Sandhya gone back to the car?” “No,” I answered. “Listen a minute.” Talking quietly in case Sandhya was able to hear, I spoke to Jenny, which made Melanie and Vijay come over to eavesdrop. “Jenny, Sandhya really wants to join in, but she feels terrible about taking her clothes off outdoors, because she’s never done it before and it’s against her culture,” I whispered, while two other pairs of ears were flapping. “But she asks if she can try swimming in her panties to start with.” “She should stop being silly and be naked like the rest of us,” Melanie said, offhandedly rather than unpleasantly, and rather too loudly, so I was afraid Sandhya might hear. “You know, Melanie, you’ve been so wonderfully lucky, growing up so you can enjoy the freedom of being a naturist, haven’t you?” I told her, and she nodded reluctantly. “Sandhya’s been told all her life it’s wrong, so that’s why it’s so difficult for her. If you can help her, and accept her when she swims in her panties, she may feel brave enough to take them off later. Jenny, can we try that?” “All right, to start with,” Jenny agreed reluctantly. “But if she doesn’t take them off later, I’ll never speak to her again.” “Then it wouldn’t work next time,” I told her. I explained how, from my own experience, other girls would only go so far the first time, but after they had thought about it and come to terms with their fears, they were more likely to go further next time. “She shouldn’t be shy,” retorted Vijay. “I don’t mind people seeing my peeny, even girls.” He waggled it about, to prove his point. The naturist girls looked at him with a degree of contempt. That is considered unacceptable behaviour by us naturists. “I’ll laugh at her in her panties until she takes them off.” “Vijay, come over here. I want to talk to you,” I said firmly, gripping his shoulder quite tightly, enough for the fear to register on his face. I marched him a few metres down the stream and then turned to face him. “Vijay, when you see a girl in her panties or naked, it is very, very bad manners to laugh or to tease her or say anything at all about it,” I told him very sternly. “It makes the girl feel bad about your manners. It will also mean that she will make sure that you will never see her naked or in her panties again. So we must all pretend we don’t notice anything and not even look at her – or any other girl – when we don’t have to. If we say things, then it will never work with girls. Do you understand?” He nodded dumbly, and I was just turning back when suddenly a wicked grin flashed across his face. “Roy,” he said, with a teasing note in his voice for the first time. “Roy, you want to see Sandhya’s wee-wee too, don’t you?” He had a big gloating grin on his face now, and it took all my self-control not to slap it off. “Don’t be so rude!” I scolded him quietly but fiercely, unable to deny what had presumably been obvious to him when he had told me about how he had spied successfully on her. I shook his shoulders until he gave a sob of fear and his teeth rattled. “Don’t you dare say *anything* to Sandhya or I’ll belt you,” I threatened him, but was afraid I had made my desire even clearer. “No, no, I won’t, I promise,” he trembled. I left him and went back to find Sandhya. Anxious to make her feel as safe as possible, I called from behind the big rock, “Sandhya, may I come now?” “Yes,” came her voice feebly. My heart racing, although I did not expect to find her naked, I walked round. She was standing there, looking terrified, but she had taken off her dress and was now holding it down the front of her body. Down one side I could just see a line of brown skin, with pale lilac-covered panties around her waist. “Roy, I – I haven’t got anything on over – here,” she trembled, indicating her chest area. “Well, to us that doesn’t matter,” I assured her as casually as I could, but feeling pleased, having expected at least a vest there. I carried on talking as if that matter had been dealt with and she was now ready. “Do you want me to go first, or shall we go together?” “You go first,” she answered, trying to smile and lowering her dress a little, but without the courage yet to uncover her chest in my presence. “All right, come then,” I said, flashing her a final smile and walking back round the rock, hoping she was following. “Vijay, may I help you with your dam?” I asked loudly, trying to attract attention away from Sandhya. I saw the others’ eyes widen as they looked behind me, which told me Sandhya was following me. Jenny said in a rather unnatural voice, no doubt as a result of her harsh words the last time she had seen her friend, “Sandhya, come and join us.” I moved to one side and started undressing. Sandhya, forcing a game smile, walked in front of me and lowered herself warily into the pool. She had her back to me, and I admired her slim, shapely, smooth light-brown body, with her short black hair hanging down to her neck and her thin shoulder blades visible. Her soft lilac panties covered her bottom. I felt a strong urge to know what her chest looked like, but knew I would have to curb my impatience. Moments later, I was naked and joined Vijay. I went the far side so I was facing in the direction of the three girls, but Sandhya kept her back towards me, I am sure because she was too embarrassed to look at me when I was naked. The other two girls obviously felt a little awkward with her, but they did their best. Vijay behaved as well as I could have hoped, saying nothing and stealing only covert glances at his sister. Then, trying to glance at her again from behind, he put down a large rock on his finger and howled with pain. Instinct took over for Sandhya. She spun round and waded hurriedly over to see what had happened. As she massaged his fingers, with the other two girls staring over her shoulders, I greedily filled my eyes with her beauty. For her age, she was quite tall and shapely. Her little brown breasts emerged from her chest like two little stately pillars, with small points on the end. The skin looked so soft and smooth and perfect. She looked like a statue of perfection – or would have done had her whole body been visible. “Has he got any fingers left?” I asked jokingly, trying to get Sandhya to face up to my naked body. Vijay had stopped wailing, and Sandhya half-glanced towards me and said, “I think he’ll be all right.” Clearly she was not yet ready to face me. We enjoyed ourselves in the pool for quite a while. Jenny soon decided that they should all have a water fight with me, four against one. I noticed Sandhya still kept in the background as we splashed furiously, laughing and shouting all the time. I took it as a matter of personal pride to put up a good fight, but I could not guard in all directions at the same time. When Jenny scrambled round behind me, and Vijay and Melanie charged at me from the front, I could not fend them all off. They dragged me on to me back in the pool, while Sandhya stayed on the outskirts, smiling and looking embarrassed at all those naked bodies writing together in the water. Since Melanie had been a member of our naturist club, along with her family, for about three years now, I had never noticed what she looked like naked before, but at this point, knowing that I would be writing about this adventure for my readers if it were to end successfully (I keep quiet about my failures!), I suddenly thought I had better be able to describe her for those who were interested. Melanie was a little on the plump side, but well padded rather than fat. Like most girls slightly plumper than average, her breasts seemed to appear earlier than the slimmer girls, but were just at the stage of looking fleshy and hanging down slightly. Her vagina, also well rounded and padded, was half-hidden between her legs, but the top was usually visible, well fleshed on either side. As we played, I noticed with a thrill of excitement now and again Sandhya would give her panties a little pull at the waist. I sensed she was feeling an urge, as I’ve known girls have at times, to pull them off, and in my experience in the end they usually do. I was sure Sandhya’s time was nearly ripe, however culture-bound she may have been. Then all was ruined. I heard a cheery shout from some rocks about twenty metres downstream. Looking up, I saw two of the local teenage boys, Mediterranean stock, hailing us cheerily. They were not surprised to see us playing naked, as that is quite common practice for them in their own rural streams. Those of us who were naked stood and stared at them, while Sandhya, in her panties, ducked down behind me and lowered as much of her body into the pool as she could. “May we join you?” one of them shouted, in the local language. “Please wait till we finish,” I asked them, to which they asked, “How long?” I looked round at the others. Sandhya was seriously embarrassed, and I knew straight away that whatever happened now, she would not be swimming naked this time. “Ten minutes,” I replied, trying not to make it sound too much like a groan. “All right,” they replied, sauntering off. I quickly explained to the Guptas what was happening, as they had not yet been in the country long enough to know much of the local language. Sandhya hardly listened. As soon as she was sure the boys were out of sight, she gazed around her desperately to make sure we were private again, and scuttled out of the pool, crouching low, and behind the rock to her clothes. The rest of us followed more slowly, myself bitterly disappointed. My only hope was that Sandhya would be removing her wet panties and be as careless about her skirt as usual. If she didn’t remove them, I would have to apply some subtle pressure. Jenny also looked very disappointed, as she would not now win her bet with me. As I was pulling up my shorts, Sandhya emerged from behind the rock, wearing her dress but carrying her soft lilac panties. My heart thumped wildly again in the knowledge that she was now naked under that dress, if I could only have a chance. “How shall I – dry these?” she asked, indicating her panties. “Oh, we can just put them in the car,” I answered, trying to sound casual. “They’ll dry, but it might be as well to leave them off for the rest of the day.” “I – don’t want to leave them off at the game farm,” murmured Sandhya uncomfortably. “You can put them on the back windowsill of the car so the sun will shine in and dry them,” piped up Melanie, helpfully but most annoyingly. Sandhya nodded more happily. “Come and sit down until we’re all ready,” I suggested hopefully, indicating a rock not far from my face. Sandhya edged over and sat, but to my disappointment she was all too conscious now of being naked underneath, pushing down her skirt hard with one hand as she sat. I kept an eye out for her as the rest of us finished dressing, ashamed of myself for being so obsessed by a younger girl. “Let’s go,” I said in the end, but again she rose with her skirt carefully clutched to her thighs. I was aware of Vijay contemplating me with interest, and I could tell he was reading my thoughts very clearly. I avoided his gaze, knowing he would give me a big wicked grin and I would then find it very difficult not to clout him. We walked back along the path towards the car, Jenny leading the way, and with Vijay and myself at the back. I was feeling bitterly sick inside to have those local boys ruin my chance and was desperately afraid that now I would carry my frustration to the grave with me. Then suddenly Vijay, next to me, gave a loud screech and tumbled to the ground, yelling, “My head, my head! Sandhya, my head! Something hit me!” I crouched down next to him, shocked and surprised, while he rolled around on his back, clutching his head. Sandhya turned back in an instant, crouching down the far side of him and exclaiming, “Vijay, what happened? Where does it hurt?” Vijay rolled over on the ground to face her, shouting out, “Here, on my head! It hurts, it hurts!” I stared at his head, trying to find some telltale mark where something had apparently struck him, but could see nothing as his fingers clasped the place apparently just above his ear. Then I noticed that he was not crying, and his eyes were in fact wide open and staring. In an instant I followed his gaze. Sandhya, in the excitement of the moment, had been caught quite off guard. She was kneeling opposite me, with one knee on the ground and the other raised. And in the middle I could see a large area of smooth light brown flesh. In the middle of that was a long black slit, with the flesh folding gently into it. At the bottom I could see a slight bulge as it met the loose skin between her legs, and then it ran smoothly upwards, with little sign of a mound on her smooth body. Just as the flesh folded into the sides of that exquisite vagina, I could see little soft downy black hairs just beginning to grow. It was every bit as beautiful as I had expected. I can see it now, the smoothness of that lovely skin, especially as it folded softly into her long slim vagina, and I just longed to reach out my hand and fondle it gently, lovingly. Instead I pushed my legs together and doubled over as I strove to control myself. Sandhya’s hands were gently probing the side of Vijay’s head, trying to find the spot of pain. “Vijay, what happened?” she repeated anxiously. Vijay’s little eyes were greedily feasting on the same vision of delight as mine. His mouth was open in an almost ecstatic type of grin and was virtually drooling. I had no doubt now that he was not hurt in the slightest. “I don’t know,” he almost chuckled. “Something hit my head.” Sandhya now squatted next to him, her hands still feeling tenderly, and she was clearly puzzled that she could find nothing. Down between her thighs I could see that loose feminine skin where it met her bottom, and the line of her vagina down the middle of it. Then she suddenly seemed to remember herself, and slammed her knees down sharply to the ground, instantly cutting off my view. She glanced sidelong at me, but I had already switched my eyes to Vijay. I must never let her know what I had seen. “I can’t feel anything,” she said, puzzled and apparently satisfied that her brief indiscretion had gone unnoticed. She did not seem to suspect that he might have seen up her skirt as well. “Does it still hurt?” she asked her brother. “I think it’s a bit better now,” replied Vijay, slowly sitting up and feeling the side of his head. He looked in his sister’s direction, but her skirt was now covering all areas she would have found embarrassing. Still keeping her legs together, Sandhya used one hand to push herself up so that she was standing. Vijay immediately tried to go too far, flopping back down again on his back, but when Sandhya bent over him again she had one hand tucked into her skirt between her knees. Vijay, realising the game was over, struggled to his feet with an artificial groan, while she helped him. “Do you need Roy to carry you?” Jenny asked him. “No, I think I’m all right now,” he groaned. Then, as Sandhya turned her head away, he flashed me his biggest, wickedest grin. He knew what was going on all right, the clever kid. He had set it up deliberately, and he obviously knew that I had shared the same vision as he had. Despite myself I grinned back at him, grateful to him for arranging what I had feared I would never see. I could not get the grin off my face as I followed the others back to the car. As it came in sight, I suddenly realised that I might have had the chance to see what I so desired even without Vijay, if Sandhya would again sit in the middle on the back seat – as long as she didn’t realise she was visually vulnerable there. But I would not have been able to see as clearly as I had with Vijay’s help. When we arrived at the car, Sandhya asked me if she could sit in the front this time. Thinking quickly, I replied, “Well, I think you should be next to Vijay, in case his head hurts again. If he’s all right, then you can sit in the front on the journey home.” Unseen by the others, Vijay flashed me another meaningful wicked grin, but I think it was just in memory of his trick back on the path rather than any suspicion that I had my own plans. She seemed satisfied by this, so we got into the car, Jenny in the front seat this time. My heart was still beating in anticipation, and sure enough it never occurred to Sandhya that anybody might be able to see up her skirt there. She sat again in the middle with her legs a little apart, and it was difficult to concentrate on my driving. The view was not very clear, with just a murky black line visible most of the time, but I eagerly lapped up all I could see. In half an hour or so we arrived at the game farm. The doors burst open and the others sped out towards the entrance, where there were glass cages containing snakes and other reptiles. Sandhya stayed in the car, while I waited to make sure the doors were all locked. “I – need to put on my panties now,” she explained to me with some embarrassment, looking at me out of the corner of her eye and taking her panties off the back windowsill. “They’re dry enough now.” “All right,” I agreed, and then added reluctantly, “I’ll wait for you.” I turned my back and began to saunter away, but with my heart still thumping. I had seen what I wanted, but such was the attraction I still felt, the desire for more intimacy I still needed, that I was still not satisfied. “Roy,” she called out after me in a moment. “I – I nearly swam without – my clothes, but then those boys came . . .” She trailed off. I turned back and faced the car. Sandhya appeared to be huddled up in the far corner of the back seat. I did not dare to bend over and look inside, but instead replied, “That’s all right. You’ve a right to – do things in private if you want to.” I waited, wondering if this was Sandhya’s way of showing trust in me. After a short pause, she spoke again. “Roy – please tell me about the game farm.” Cunningly I did not try to peer inside the car, but instead leaned my elbow on the roof and began to tell her about the place, deliberately keeping my voice low. “Sorry, Roy, I can’t hear,” I heard her say. This was what I wanted. I bent over and looked at her inside, continuing my answer as I did so. She was sitting in the far corner, looking very nervous. Her knees were on the seat and those soft lilac panties were around her ankles. As she listened, she continued to pull them up rather awkwardly. Then, as she reached her thighs, she lifted them, opened her legs, raised her bottom and pulled her panties up. As I had on the path, unknown to her, I had a magnificent view of that elegant long vagina and her smooth tender skin. This time she knew all about it and, as girls often do when they trust and love a boy, she was deliberately offering me her nakedness. With difficulty I kept talking, but we were both aware of what I had seen. Of course, according to the unspoken rules, I could not say anything. But I looked into her fearful brown eyes and smiled as warmly and lovingly as I could as she wriggled on the seat, adjusting her panties. She slid out of the car next to me and I smiled down at her. “Another hug for a lovely girl?” I suggested. Shyly she nodded. This time I felt her arms around my waist a bit more confidently as I hugged her gently but warmly, as rich a thanks for he trust as I could manage. “A kiss as well?” I breathed into her ear. She stiffened for a moment, paused, and then nodded with a little smile on her lips. I lowered my head and planted the tenderest of kisses on her cheek. I have a new photo in my private album. It shows the little Cupid in our back garden, with a spray of water erupting from its penis into our fishpond. Next to Cupid is a little boy with a brown skin and a wicked grin on his face. His trousers are down at the front, with a skinny little brown penis sticking out and a spray of urine erupting into our fishpond. I allowed him to do it just once in order to pose for the photo. I have no such photo of his sister, but those beautiful scenes, especially the one in the car where she finally yielded me her trust against all her cultural instincts, will remain imprinted in my mind for ever. The End ____________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html