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Chapter 20 – Musical Revelations
Mr Campbell was sitting in his chair sipping his drink when Charlotte reappeared from behind the dressing screen. He looked her over. She had changed out of her tights and into the white frilly ankle socks he had provided her with. She stood before him as a picture of anguished childlike beauty. The contrast was poetic – the pretty blue dress with its exposed peek-a-boo hem of lace and the frolicking Pooh Bear characters were matched with a picture of tortured misery on Charlotte's face as she shuffled delicately toward him. Each step provoked new and intense pain. Besides the bristles rasping against her naked flesh, the spring mounted clamps continued their relentless strain on her outer labia. She finally reached Mr Campbell's chair as a tear rolled off her cheek and splashed onto the cartoon motif on her ruffled bodice.
"Turn around please."
She turned about slowly, facing away from his chair.
"Bend over and raise your skirts Charlotte. I have to check that you have put everything on correctly." With that she gradually bent over, the clamps protested against this movement, stretching even further against part of her captured skin, while the panties continued their wicked work and sent fresh waves of pain through Charlotte's already tender and brutalised crotch. Bending at an almost ninety degree angle she raised her skirts to present Mr Campbell with an unimpeded view of his handiwork. He examined with reserved interest the mixture of satin and lace together with the sadistic clamps biting into her plump flesh. The visible flesh indicated that her fragile womanly lips were dramatically pulled away from her sex; the rest of her flesh remained hidden by her blue satin panties. Checking to make sure she had properly pulled the panties all the way up to bring the bristles to rest on their intended target, he delicately touched her crotch.
Charlotte screamed as even the most delicate of touches sent the bristles grinding into her virgin hole. "Please don't touch me there! No please!"
Mr Campbell removed his hand. "Very good Charlotte, I can see you followed my instructions perfectly. Now you can take a seat. Shall we spend some time talking?"
Grateful that this humiliating show had finished, she dropped her skirts and gingerly made her way to the sheep skin. Lowering herself down was even more painful than bending over as the springed clamps readjusted themselves, again triggering off the complex interplay between tortured girl-flesh, clamps, springs and bristles.
"Now Charlotte, these panties are designed to to hurt you, yet they are also designed to teach you a lesson. I hope by the end of this evening you will have learnt it."
"They just hurt, oh they hurt so much! Please Mr Campbell: I made a mistake, can't I please take them off?"
"I am afraid not. You earned those seven black spots, and you have ruined one pair of panties and some pyjamas already, you must pay your for your mistakes."
"But please - my pussy will be ruined!"
Mr Campbell responded immediately, sternly reprimanding her: "Charlotte! I will not hear that disgusting word from your mouth ever again!"
He continued on: "I can reassure you that though while sharp and harsh; those bristles will not do any permanent damage. You may be sore for a few days, but you will not be 'ruined' as you so eloquently put it. They are merely scouring away your perverse thoughts and training you to consider carefully how you should use your body. This is nothing compared with dying from some insidious sexually transmitted disease you may pick up if you don't change your ways."
"You try wearing them then!" She started sobbing loudly, a long heaving cry that threatened to become something even deeper.
Mr Campbell leaned forward, considered the sobbing girl on the brink of breaking down. Seeing that the ordeal he had imposed on her was maybe harsher than he had intended, he slid down the edge of his seat, and gently crawled across the floor, coming to kneel next to the blubbing girl.
"Charlotte my darling, come-on honey, take deep breaths. I'm sorry you have to undergo this, but it really is for your benefit." He patted her on the knee as he uttered the reassuring words.
Charlotte looked up at Mr Campbell as she sat wracked with the most unbearable pain she had ever encountered. In his eyes she saw compassion and sympathy. "Please Mr Campbell, it hurts so much, even if I don't move they grind. Please my pus… my cunny - is in so much pain. Please can't I take them off – please?"
He sat there next to her on the floor and considered her request seriously – agonising moments passed; yet for Charlotte the seconds seemed like hours. "No – I'm sorry; you have a lesson to learn Charlotte. But here - I'll try to help you through it. They say that music soothes the savage beast…" He rose to his knees and proceeded to shuffle around her, making his way toward the stereo. "That's not to say you are a beast or an animal – no, not at all. What I meant was that music has the power to heal - it is such a restorative… a cure-all if you like."
He began rifling through his record collection, looking for something in particular. Charlotte swivelled sensitively around on her sheepskin, encountering the unremittent agony imposed by her panties as she did so. Eventually she came around to face him while he sought and found the record he was seeking. "This is it. One of my favourite pieces."
He removed the vinyl record from its sleeve and blew across its surface to remove the tiny pieces of dust that had accumulated. Charlotte, with tears stalled on her cheeks, watched him as he awkwardly hurried to put the record on – it was an uncharacteristic and hasty set of movements, completely at odds with his normal precise motions.
Finally the turntable's arm was lowered and a heavy tenor began to emit from the speakers in a language that Charlotte didn't understand.
"I've never liked opera much…" Mr Campbell faced the stereo – away from her - talking gently, "until I heard this… Pavarotti, he's a very famous opera singer. This is called 'Nessun Dorma'." The deep penetrating voice of the veteran tenor rose and swelled with the music.
Charlotte listened to the gentle and yet powerful undercurrents of the composition, and for a moment her mind was partly dragged away from the painful nightmare she was undergoing.
"It's in Italian, but the translated story is almost as beautiful as the music itself." He turned back toward Charlotte and sat at her feet, staring her in the eyes as he recounted the tale: "The beautiful, yet cold and heartless Princess Turando lures countless young princes to her with the prospect of her hand in marriage. Yet to win her, they must answer three riddles. If they answer incorrectly, they die..."
The score began to intensify and the rich voice of Pavarotti underscored the deep emotive sentiment of the song. Mr Campbell took a moderate sip of his drink before he continued.
"An unknown Prince, Calaf, answers the questions successfully – but having won the beautiful Princess he asks a riddle of his own: 'Tell me my name by morning and at dawn I will die.'"
Mr Campbell let that utterance hang in the air as the intense voice gained further power and passion, "The Princess, unwilling to marry Calaf, decrees that until someone learns his name, no-one in the city shall go to sleep. Hence the name of the song: Nessun Dorma – 'None shall sleep tonight'." Pavarotti's voice trailed away temporarily and the chorus came to the fore.
"This is what the Prince sings as he waits for the dawn; wondering if the cold hearted princess will find out his name and have him killed, or whether she will become his."
The chorus retreated and Pavarotti's tenor returned with a vengeance approaching the inevitable crescendo: "Yet many people in the town know the Prince's name, so it becomes clear that the prince has set an intricate test of his own for the Princess. He refuses to take Turando unwillingly because he wants her to love him in return. So knowing full well that she will discover his name, he waits to see whether she will have him killed or marry him out of true love."
Charlotte listened intently to Mr Campbell, the pain in her crotch temporarily diminished as she fixated herself on the churning feelings that the music aroused in her.
Finally the song faded away after reaching its powerful conclusion. Charlotte had never been touched by a piece of music so powerful, so sorrowful and so complete. Her own worldly pain mingled with the grief and angst of the singer. She remained sitting in quiet contemplation on the sheepskin as the orchestra faded.
"What did you think?" He asked sensitively.
"You can hear his pain – you can hear the doubt he feels, will she love him or not? You feel as if you're there, sharing in his wait. Will she take him or not? It's so sad, and yet hopeful."
"Yes it is – have you never heard it before?" He inquired. Charlotte's pain had become a shadow of its former self – the music had swept her up in its emotion, carrying her along and taking her on a profound journey.
"No not all of it, but I think I've heard that last part in a television ad before." He drank a further slug of the brandy whilst she answered him.
"I sometimes wonder at your generation – I try to listen to the music you follow and really wonder where the passion is." He had lifted the turntable's arm and began rummaging back through his record collection. "All I hear is aggression, or hate, or the crudest expressions of lust. There's no romance, no mystery in it – no beauty.
"And in contrast…" he placed a new record on the turntable, and a melodic rhythm and blues track started.
Charlotte noticed that Mr Campbell was quickly working his way to the bottom of his brandy glass. Thinking about supplementing the meagre supply she had already skimmed from the decanter, she offered to fetch him a drink.
"Actually, that would be very nice, thankyou Charlotte."
Charlotte took his glass from him while he remained settled next to the sheepskin. She slowly took to her feet as she attempted to minimize the renewed and excruciating pain inflicted on her by the panties.
As the rhythm and blues tune continued, Mr Campbell continued is critique of modern youth culture. "Your generation is blunt and unsophisticated, it seems almost a reversion to barbarism." He looked despairingly toward the closed window as Charlotte struggled to reach the small table, hobbled as she was by the effort to curtail the incredible pain that had been newly set off.
She interposed herself in front of the decanter and managed to refill his glass while adding a bit more brandy to her toddler-style safety cup. 'At this rate I'm going to need a week of nights like these to collect enough of the stuff – there has to be a better way to do this.'
Finished with her clandestine siphoning operation, the brutalised girl returned to the sheepskin and handed Mr Campbell his glass before gradually lowering herself back to the floor. Despite her careful and delicate descent, the bristles viciously stabbed into her unprotected groin. Further tears welled in her eyes as she gasped in discomfort.
Having resumed her seat on the sheepskin Mr Campbell resumed sipping his drink. His eyes had begun to glaze over and Charlotte realised that he was beginning to exhibit signs of tipsiness. 'Well after three glasses of straight brandy, I'm not surprised.' She thought to herself.
"You're being very brave you know." Mr Campbell expressed in a most sympathetic tone.
"Thankyou sir, I'm trying very hard."
"Does it hurt much?"
"It hurts very much Mr Campbell. But your music helps me take my mind of the pain." She told the truth to him at this moment; focussing on the rising and undulating melody of the music did help her ignore the worst excesses of the clamps and bristles.
"I think you're very brave Charlotte."
"Yes Mr Campbell, thankyou." She deliberately ignored the fact he had repeated himself only moments earlier, perhaps he really was starting to feel the effects of the brandy. In that case, it would be much easier to steal more of the spirit from the decanter. An alternate thought process also suggested that maybe she should explore his relationship with her long dead mother.
"Mr Campbell? Why did Janine leave you?" She referred to her mother by her first name, hoping that it might evoke a more meaningful response than her previous attempts. She had also taken a guess in assuming that Mr Campbell and her mother had been together. It wasn't a huge guess, the mere existence of the portrait, the maid's comments and his limited answers to her questioning all indicated that at some point in his past he and her mother had been an item.
"Well, that was a long time ago – she was beautiful, the best looking lass in college. Impeccable dress sense, confident, lovely. She was the pinnacle of everything great and beautiful about womanhood…
"Don't know why she liked me. I was a bit shy you know, I used to get nervous in crowds and at parties, certainly doesn't make it easy to meet people. But she liked me. We dated, went to movies, parties together, even arranged our lecture timetables so that we could spend more time together.
"But it ended, it all ended… eventually…" He looked down into his glass, clearly 'tired and emotional'. Charlotte decided that she'd pried enough for one night and sat quietly on her sheepskin waiting for him to speak again.
He didn't. Minutes passed and he merely listened to the music with his eyes closed, occasionally opening them to take another sip of his drink. Charlotte watched with interest as he further worked his way down to the bottom of the glass, at which time she offered to refill it for him.
He considered her for a few moments, as if he'd forgotten she was even in the room, eventually he proffered the empty glass. Charlotte slowly and painfully made her way to the decanter where she decided to take a chance and completely fill her fairy cup. With him in this state he was unlikely to notice her taking the brandy, more importantly she thought to herself, he was unlikely to question how much was gone when he woke up with a massive hangover tomorrow.
Just as midnight approached Mr Campbell decided that it was time 'to retire'. He staggered to his feet before offering Charlotte a rubbery hand up off the floor. Despite his obvious inebriation he remembered to show Charlotte back to her suite. Charlotte was grateful that his drunken state prevented him from walking too quickly toward their destination. Effectively hobbled by the insidious pain that resulted each time she took too large a step, she was forced to slowly sidle after the intoxicated tailor.
When they reached her rooms, he stood outside her door swaying gently, his words slightly slurred. "Good night Charlotte, sleep well my darling." With that he leant in toward her and kissed her gently on the forehead. She stepped back, partly shocked at his behaviour, but thinking that she was a little closer to understanding this complex and multi faceted man. Gripping tightly to her little fairy cup that currently smelt similar to Mr Campbell's breath, she ventured into her room to find a hiding place for the highly flammable brandy. But first, she would take off the gruesome clamps and panties…
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