SCENE IN AN ALLEY

copyright: Lesley Tara, 2011


Oh, heavens, I knew I shouldn’t have taken this short cut! Ironically, I did so in order to avoid exactly this kind of trouble. I am walking on my own along this back street, past some small factories and occasional houses, and it is quite deserted – or it was, until a few seconds ago. I had just come level with the entrance of a side-turning, an alley wide enough for a delivery truck to go down, when you stepped out of it to confront me. There are two other girls with you, looking equally menacing, and the three of you surround me in an instant. You hem me in, and as I step backwards uncertainly I am being unavoidably herded into the entrance of the alley.

I can see from your uniforms that you go to the other school – the one that hates the well-off kids at my school. I attend a rather exclusive private girls-only school on the other side of town from where I live, but my parents are not wealthy at all – I won a scholarship there on my academic ability. I have to travel back across town each day, and can’t avoid going near to the large state co-ed comprehensive. I used to go by bus, but I had such nastiness and bullying when it went by your school and the pupils from there got on – the girls were much meaner than the boys, and I was all alone and defenceless, as no one else from my school comes back this way. So recently I have been getting off the bus a couple of stops before your school, cutting across through these quiet backstreets, and walking the rest of the way home. It takes half an hour longer but I don’t mind, because until now it has worked fine and I’ve avoided all the hassles. But now I fear it was a mistake – this is an isolated spot, there is no one in sight and even if I screamed for help, I don’t think anyone in any of these buildings would hear me.

I gulp and swallow, feeling queasy in my stomach. This looks like it might be trouble – perhaps bad trouble. You and your two companions seem to be my age – I’m sixteen – or maybe a little more, but I am shorter and lighter, and all of you look quite tough, I’m sure any one of you alone could overpower me quite easily. Standing in the centre, quite tall and well-built, you look imposing and intimidating, and you have a tight smile on your face that alarms me – whatever it is that you are looking forward to with such relish, I don’t think it’s going to be good for me.

I panic, turn and bolt away in the only direction that I can go – I have no idea where this alley leads to, but it is my only option. Alarmingly, none of you try to grab me or to chase after me – and you just give a rich, satisfied laugh and, accompanied by the two members of your little girl-gang, you stroll into the alley behind me. I run as fast as I can, though keeping my leather school satchel with me – it has all my homework books, I can’t afford to lose that. Down the alley I fly, about forty yards to where it turns a right-angle to the left, and then along that – but after only a few steps, I stop with a groan, nearly bursting into tears in my frustration and fear. Now I know why there is no haste in your pursuit, for there is nowhere for me to go – it is a dead end!

You have chosen your place of ambush with care: after it turns the corner, the alley only continues for another twenty yards before ending at the rear wall of a factory which closed down about six months ago. The high solid wood gate is padlocked shut; on either side, the brick walls of the alley also rise sheer for at least twelve feet, and both walls and gate are topped by rolls of rusty barbed wire. Even if there was anywhere to get a handhold, I could never climb that – the only possible exit is back the way that I came, along which you and your companions are approaching, spread out so that I cannot dodge past you. Hidden around this corner, we are now completely out of sight from the street, and it is clear from the weeds around the base of the factory gate that no one comes down this way any more.

I back slowly away from the three of you, fear making my muscles weak, my eyes wide and frightened. Oh, what a fool I have been, to let you trap me in this way, running right to where you want me to be – a place where you can do anything to me and no one will see, no one will hear my yells for help or screams of pain, no one will interrupt or stop you. My throat is dry, and I try to swallow as my back bumps into the brick wall and I have nowhere further to retreat to.

‘Please, please … don’t …’ I manage to stutter in a hopeless attempt to avoid the inevitable.

You come forward to stand right in front of me, one of your girls on each side. I look very vulnerable, a picture of pretty and quite naive girlhood. I am just over sixteen, but because of my youthful face and lack of height (I am only five feet three inches), in many ways I look younger than that. However, in one crucial respect this isn’t true – I have a very well-developed bust, which like the other females in my family grew early, and my chest now fills out a 28D bra. I don’t actually like the size of my breasts: the looks I get from men make me very uncomfortable (sometimes more than just looks, too), and I try to keep them out of view and minimise their outline with the clothes that I wear. Usually I keep to loose jumpers and sweatshirts together with baggy trousers, which also cover up my other physical asset – as if to balance the jutting twin peaks on my chest, I have quite a flare to my hips and a tightly-rounded butt.

However, I can’t hide my figure so much in my school uniform, as the regulations at my school are quite specific and (unlike at yours) strictly enforced. So here I am, in sensible black shoes, white knee-high socks and a pleated grey school skirt which comes down to my knees. Above this I have to wear a plain white shirt which is quite tight-fitting and made from a thin fabric, so the shape of my bust and the outline of my bra are quite detectable. I am also wearing our school tie and distinctive red blazer, plus the old-fashioned round straw hat with its band of ribbon in the school colours which is a compulsory part of the uniform. I look quite demure, and the effect is like someone who has just stepped through a time-warp from the 1930s or 1950s. This is further enhanced by my rather girlish looks – everyone says I look sweet and cute – and my natural blonde hair, which I keep about a foot long and usually, as now, tidied away in a pony-tail.

You and your two friends are also in a kind of school uniform, but scruffier, more up-to-date and more individualised. You are wearing a quite short and tight black skirt – something that length at my school would get you sent home at once – with what looks like black tights underneath. You have a white shirt as well, but with the sleeves casually rolled up; if you had a tie it has been removed, and the top two or three buttons on your shirt are undone so that I catch glimpses of what looks like a very non-regulation black bra underneath (at my school, all underwear must be plain and white). You do have the navy blue jacket of your school, but it is unbuttoned, crumpled and has various badges pinned to the lapel.

Your two companions have variants on this uniform. The tough-looking girl on the right with brunette hair which has been streaked with blonde highlights is also wearing a black skirt, but fuller and longer than your derisorily short one. She has a pair of Nike trainers and black socks, and is wearing a kind of sweatshirt top with your school’s name and logo across her chest – she is lean and well-muscled, and looks like a sporty type who plays hard and mean in some physical team game, perhaps soccer or hockey. The two of you are white, but the third girl on your left is black, and holds my eyes with a hard aggressive glare in her deep brown eyes. She is wearing black trousers with a slight flare, and I think it looks like some sort of ankle boots underneath them. The rest of her outfit is a white short-sleeve shirt, most of which is covered by a sleeveless wool slipover in light grey – she actually has a school tie, but the knot is loosened and her top shirt-button is undone. She also has a kind of light rainproof casual jacket, surely not a part of the regulation dress code.

You put your hands on your hips and regard me sardonically, your lips curling.

‘Well, well, if it isn’t the little lady from St. Juliet’s, you think you’re better than us, dontcha?’ you sneer, savouring my trembling anxiety.

‘No – no!’ I feebly deny it, attempt to explain: ‘I don’t think that at all, really, I’m not a rich kid – I’m just on a scholarship … you can see that I come from around here, like you do!’ It did not seem to strike much of a chord of fellowship with you, however, and your response frightened me in a new way:

‘Oh, yeah, for sure! We know all about you Joooley-ettes, lezzie sluts, the fucking lot of you! With your tits, I bet you go down on the prefects and the teachers every day!’

I am shocked and disoriented. No, of course not, I’m not like that at all! Where can you have got such a bizarre and unpleasant idea? Nothing like that happens – at least, I amend mentally, not to me. It’s true that I’ve noticed Miss Edgerton looking at my chest quite a lot, but I sit in the first row in her history class and she can hardly avoid it, can she, it doesn’t mean anything (though I am uneasily aware that I first noticed this on a hot day a few weeks ago, when she gave us permission to take off our ties and undo the top three shirt buttons, and she did stand by my desk, looking over my shoulder at my work, for longer than she did for any of the other girls; it made me feel quite strange and uncomfortable down below, kind of itchy-like). Miss Edgerton is one of the youngest and prettiest of our teachers, she looks so smart in her tight pencil skirts and especially when she wears black boots as well; I do admire her a lot, I suppose even have a bit of a crush on her – but not in that way, not like that!

The truth is that I am completely inexperienced sexually – in fact, I am still a virgin, and in no hurry to lose it either. I am an only child and go to an all-girls school, so I meet hardly any boys – and I am quite happy with that, and glad not to be pestered. I am studious and very determined to do well; I am aiming to get a place at Cambridge university to study sciences, which are my favourite subjects. In fact, I’m really quite a geek and rather shy, so I don’t have many friends amongst the girls at school either, most of whom are snotty rich kids just like you think (though, from their conversations that I overhear, they’re very much into boys and not girls!).

What is going to happen here? Are you going to do something mean like tear up my homework books or throw my satchel over the wall, so that it will take me hours to find someone to unlock the gate and get it back? Or will it be worse, are the three of you going to hurt me and beat me? My heart is thudding in my chest, my knees feel weak and wobbly, and I feel a cold sweat on my back under my shirt even though this is a lovely mild spring day. I must look like a frightened rabbit – certainly, I have no more will to resist, I must just accept my fate and hope that my meekness will make it less bad, get it over sooner. I feel like I might burst into tears, but I try to be brave and somehow hold them back.

The black girl easily prizes the leather satchel from my nerveless fingers, but she puts it down a few feet away quite gently and I feel a ludicrous pang of gratitude when none of you seem to take any further interest in it – recovering from bruises would be a small matter compared to losing all my course notes. Now your two accomplices take my upper arms and hold me against the wall, standing at either side of me and smiling with eager anticipation. But there is no doubt that you are the leader of this gang, that they are here to help you do whatever you want, that you have set this up and will dictate what happens.

I give a little shudder as you reach forward and undo the three brass buttons of my red blazer, pulling it open to either side. I taste the acid of fear in my throat – I am helpless, defenceless with my arms pinioned like this, so vulnerable. You do not hit me in the stomach as I dread, but instead do something unexpected – but in its way, almost worse and more alarming. You reach forward to grasp my prominent breasts, cupping them in your hands and squeezing them quite firmly.