Calcutta

“What a fascinating collection,” said Fiona, strolling through the corridors of the Indian Museum in Calcutta. She and her companion were surrounded by erotic Mughal paintings, bas-reliefs of women bathing, statues of dancing nymphs. “Did you find these all yourself, Edmund?”

“Not all,” said Edmund, a handsome young chap in a top hat, who happened to be the Special Collections curator. “But some. As you’ll recall from school, I was always very interested in comparative mythology.”

“I do remember that.”

“The concept of vastraharan, or the removal of clothing for spiritual purposes, is very important in certain branches of the Hindu faith. I’ve been studying it for some time,” explained Edmund, waving his hand around the gallery. “Hence all these.”

“I say,” said Fiona, innocently. “Didn’t we happen to remove your clothes once or twice?”

She had the pleasure of watching Edmund blush. By a strange bureaucratic accident, the shy young man had found himself the only male student at St. Whimsical’s Academy for the Production of Gallant Females, obliged to sleep in the girls’ dormitories and shower with them and so forth.

“Do you recall the day we measured your penis?” said Fiona, smiling sweetly as the charming, sensitive young man attempted to compose himself. “It was a group effort, I seem to recall. Susie pulled your trousers down, and Rosie and Bella grabbed your arms while I wielded the ruler. Right in the middle of biology class! Six inches, I believe.”

“I’ve endeavoured to put all that behind me.”

“But you haven’t quite succeeded, have you, you naughty boy? Miss Bellamy was fascinated. She wanted to see if its size changed with the seasons. So every Thursday morning, you had to stand with your trousers around your ankles in front of the whole class while she measured and weighed you. How funny it was!”

“I don’t remember it being particularly funny.”

“It must have been, since all the girls laughed. And remember when Miss Beaubois caught you playing with yourself in her office? We’d tied you to the bed the night before and spent the evening tickling your willy with feathers while we took turns to sit on your face. But we hadn’t let you cum. And there was nowhere else private for you to do it.”

“I’m afraid I can’t recall the incident you mentioned.”

“The next day,” said Fiona, grinning wickedly, “she made you do it on stage at morning assembly in front of the whole school. Actually, that became a bit of a recurring theme, didn’t it? Us teasing you, you hunting for a concealed place to relieve some tension, the teachers catching you with your cock in your hand and punishing you. They all thought you were such a dirty pervert.”

“You must have confused me with someone else.”

“No, it was definitely you. Anyway, what have you been doing with yourself since you left school?”

“Oh, I’ve been seeking ****,” said Edmund, carelessly, pulling open the drawer of a nearby cabinet and taking out a small wooden pipe. “Took this from a snake charmer who was using it to play tricks on lady tourists in Madras. Loveable little scamp. What do you think it does?”

“Plays pipe music?” suggested Fiona.

“Among other things,” said Edmund, leading her through a door and into a small storeroom laden high with mysterious Oriental artefacts. “Now, Fiona, on the other side of the door is the largest lecture hall in this museum. Sitting in that lecture hall is the Viceroy of India, every halfway important person in the British Raj, journalists from every major newspaper, two regiments of soldiers, and the entire Calcutta branch of the Ladies’ Moral Decency League. Oh, and I’ve assembled a number of our old school chums for a grand reunion.”

“Really? What’s the occasion?”

“****, I’m afraid.”

“I thought you were joking about that. Who on?”

Edmund put the snake charmer’s flute to his lips, and blew a short, practised burst.

A few moments later, the hundreds of respectable citizens in the Indian Museum Lecture Hall watched, a little puzzled, as a lovely young English rose in a modest travelling dress came trotting out from behind the stage curtain. Curiously, she appeared to be performing some kind of dance, the eerie music of Indian pipes filling the theatre from some unknown source. Without a word of explanation, she shimmied her hips towards the middle of the stage, her blue eyes wide and her lips parted with shock.

“I say,” said the Viceroy, nudging his wife. “What’s she saying?”

“No you don’t.”

“What?”

“You don’t say what she’s saying. You say other things.”

“I say, that’s not what I said.”

“If it’s not what you said, then why did you say it?”

“But what’s she saying?”

“Looks like, stop the music, please, no, I beg you, don’t make me, not in front of all these people, no, stop.”

“Ah,” said the Viceroy. “That’s the same thing that Bellamy woman said last week.”

Fiona had shimmied out of her dress by now, and a ragged cheer went up from the soldiers as she began to unlace her corset. The Ladies’ Moral Decency League shook their fists and cried “SHAME!”, which was rapidly taken up by the soldiers, so that practically the whole lecture theatre was crying “SHAME!” lustily by the time she’d peeled off her bloomers. Her face was a brilliant red as she gave the whole crowd a full-body nude wiggle, shaking her plump pink-nippled breasts for everyone to see, before sitting down on a conveniently central chair, under a spotlight. And spreading her legs.

Utter horror and indignity engulfed her as she looked out onto a sea of laughing faces, one hand fondling her breasts as the other slipped between her thighs, parted her pussy lips and began to gently stroke her clit. The cries of “SHAME!” came through loud and clear, a percussive beat behind the tinkling pipes.