By five that afternoon, when the bell rang, she was in a state of renewed indecision, although, if anything, she was now marginally more inclined to decline the invitation. She would tell Peter that she did not feel ready to go to a nudist picnic just yet. Though when would one be ready for such an event?
How did one prepare oneself ? Perhaps nudists had a coming-out process in which they gradually came to terms with the fact that they felt more comfortable without any clothes. Or it could be a road to Damascus conversion, when the restric-tiveness of clothes suddenly came home to one with blinding clarity.
She went to the door and was just about to open it when the thought occurred to her: would Peter be clad or unclad on the doorstep? It was an absurd thought, and she dismissed it immediately. And when she opened the door, there he was, dressed quite normally in a tee-shirt and jeans. But he was carrying a small bag with him, and that, she assumed, would be for the abandoned clothes.
He greeted her quite normally, as if he had come to collect her for the cinema or a restaurant rather than a nudist picnic.
“We should be getting along there soon,” he said, looking at his watch. “Things begin quite promptly.”
And what, she wondered, were these things?
“I’m not quite . . .” she began. But he did not seem to have heard her. He asked her instead whether she had a bag which A Great Sense of Purity
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she could bring. “Or you can share mine,” he said, pointing to his bag. “There’s enough room in there for both of us.”
“But . . .”
“No, that’s fine. This bag is big enough. You don’t have to bring anything else. That’s fine.”
“But I was . . .”
He tapped his watch. “Really, we must hurry. It’ll take us fifteen minutes to get there and I really don’t want to be late.”
She took the path of least resistance and left with him. After all, it was only a nudist picnic and everybody knew that nudists were harmless enough. So they walked back along Cumberland Street, Peter swinging the bag as he went, and Pat largely silent beside him.
“You’re quiet,” he said as they crossed Dundas Street. “You aren’t nervous, are you?”
She hesitated. “A bit, I suppose. I’ve never . . .”
He smiled and playfully put his arm about her shoulder. It was only there for a moment, and then he withdrew it. “There’s nothing to it. It’s very easy, you know. You won’t even notice it after a couple of minutes.”
“Did it take you long to get used to it?” she asked.
“I was born to it,” he said. “My parents were prominent nudists. Over in Helensburgh. We used to go on naturist holidays in Denmark each year. We had lots of Danish friends. I was brought up to accept it. I don’t even think about it now.”
“And how did you get involved with these people in Moray Place?” Pat asked.
“Through my parents,” Peter explained. “When I came to university in Edinburgh, friends of my parents got in touch and asked whether I would like to come to a dinner party. The dinner party was in Moray Place and I discovered that it was a nudist affair. These people had a very nice drawing-room flat with views over the Dean Valley. It was a pretty stylish affair – a typical Edinburgh dinner party, except for the fact that nobody had any clothes on.”
Pat tried to imagine it, but found it difficult. “But what did you talk about?” she asked.
272 In Moray Place Gardens
“The same things that they talk about at any Edinburgh dinner party,” said Peter. “House prices. Schools. So it was pretty boring for me, apart from one or two people of my own age who had been invited as well. They put us all together at one end of the table. The other end was full of lawyers and people like that.”
Pat was silent. “And then?”
Peter shrugged. “After dinner we went through to the drawing room for coffee,” he said. “We played charades for a while, and then we put on our clothes and went home. Pretty dull stuff.”
Pat thought for a moment. Charades: did they act out the story of Adam and Eve, or was that done so often at nudist dinner parties that nobody did it any more? Three words. From a book. First word . . . The whole idea seemed so completely absurd, and yet there must be a reason why people did it. She looked at Peter. What went on in his head when he went to these things? Did he feel any different without his clothes on?
“Why do you do it?” she asked. “Does it do something for you?”
Peter laughed. “It means nothing in that sense, if that’s what you’re asking. No, it gives you a feeling of complete natural-ness. All falseness, all pretence stripped away. You feel as if a great burden of restriction and secrecy is taken off your shoulders. It’s . . . Well, it’s completely liberating. And pure. You feel utterly pure.” He paused. “You do believe me, don’t you, Pat?
I really mean it. You’ll find out for yourself when you try it. I promise you.”
83. In Moray Place Gardens
When they arrived in Moray Place there was no sign, absolutely no sign, that a nudist picnic was about to take place. The great sweep of architecture, with its handsome facade and its high windows, was as dignified and discreet as ever. Those who were going about their business, walking on the pavement, parking In Moray Place Gardens
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their cars, or going in and out of their houses, were entirely clad.
“It’s not those gardens,” said Peter, pointing at the rather dull gardens in the middle of the circle. “We go round the back. The gate is at the very top of Doune Terrace.”
They walked round until they came to the point where Doune Terrace sloped off to the north. At the top of this road, a small gate, discreetly set in the iron railings, gave access to the gardens that stretched down the steep side of the hill to the Water of Leith below. It was a magnificent set of private gardens, reserved for those who held a key. But now no key was necessary, as the gate had been propped open and there was a bearded man standing just behind it.
Peter led the way, shaking hands with the man at the gate.
The man laughed and pointed up at the sky. There, rolling in from the north, were the rain clouds which had been nowhere in sight when they had left Scotland Street.
“The weather looks bad,” said Peter as he and Pat went into the gardens.
“Will they cancel it if there’s rain?” asked Pat. There was a note of hope in her voice, but this was soon dashed by Peter’s response.
“It’ll go ahead,” he said. “It’s just that it will be a bit different, that’s all.”
At that moment the rain started, not pelting down, but falling with insistence, blotting out the view of the town to the north, running in rivulets down the sharply dipping paths of the gardens. Peter looked at Pat and smiled. “Here’s your mac,” he said, taking two black plastic raincoats out of his bag and handing one to her.
Pat thanked him and began to put it on.
“Not yet,” he said, wagging an admonitory finger. “You have to take your clothes off first. There’ll be a couple of changing tents down there on the grass. Wait till then.”
Two small white tents now came into view behind a hedge.
And there, on the other side of the hedge, shielded from view until the barrier of the hedge was actually negotiated, was a 274 In Moray Place Gardens
group of about twenty people, all clad in voluminous mackintoshes. The mackintoshes were opaque, with the result that the only evidence that they were unclad underneath were the bare ankles sticking out below the lower skirts of the raincoats. The heads of the nudists were bare, though, and their hair was plas-tered to their skulls. They looked very wet and very uncomfortable.
“Welcome to the picnic,” said a tall man. “The ladies’