Who’s Who
Jenny McEwan : a doctorate student at a University in the English Midlands, studying psychology with a research focus on adult play and the role of BDSM.
Joe McEwan: her husband, a man less than comfortable with his wife’s sexual interests and where they have led her.
Professor Angela Dawney: Jenny’s research supervisor and erstwhile lover.
Cathy Corbin: Jenny’s best friend and college companion
Charlotte, Corinne, Gerry, & Ylena: staff at the BDSM experience centre, “Inward Bound”
Freddie, Larry, Connie, Pam, Ellie : principals in the highly illegal slaving organisation Freddie Clegg Enterprises, part owners of Inward Bound.
What’s What
This story is a sequel to the story “Thesis” and follows some of the same characters. If you haven’t read “Thesis”, the following summary may help:
Freddie Clegg Enterprises decide to invest in the Inward Bound organisation as a way of diversifying their abduction and slavery business. Independently of Clegg, Jenny McEwan decides that Inward Bound will be an ideal vehicle for her planned research into BDSM and adult play. Hoping to learn more of her own inner submissive drives and encouraged by her supervisor, Angela, (who harbours hopes that Jenny’s research will drive a wedge between herself and her husband) Jenny joins one of the Inward Bound consensual slave training experiences.
Here she gains her slave identity, “Fifty” and by the end of her experiences she has been tattooed, shaved, pierced, and has become infatuated with her trainers, particularly the Russian Mistress Ylena Zukhova.
In the intervening period, Angela, anxious to use Jenny’s experiences for her own benefit, almost sabotages Jenny’s participation at Inward Bound. The effect of this is to disturb the ever paranoid Clegg organisation which leads to Jenny and Angela experiencing what they imagine to be a CIA inspired “rendition” which purports to be an investigation into Internet Crime but is in fact an attempt to discover if they are actually in the pay of some of Clegg’s competitors (by an innocent but most unfortunate coincidence, a friend of Professor Dawney).
In the end Jenny completes her course at Inward bound and returns home marked emotionally, physically and psychologically by her experiences. She realises that she cannot suppress her desires, and wishes more than ever to share her lifestyle preferences with her husband.
Now read on…. (Or go back & read “Thesis”!)
CHAPTER 1 : UNFINISHED BUSINESS: AUGUST
THE GENTLE WHISPERS OF A GATHERING STORM
I’m at home with Jenny, my wife. I’m on the couch, watching the television. A rugby match is winding towards its conclusion. The scores are still close enough to offer both teams the chance of winning. My hand is stroking the nape of Jenny’s neck as she sits at my feet.
I run the knuckle of my forefinger up towards the crown of her shaven head. Jenny arches her head back in response. “Mmm,” she says, “that’s nice.”
“Good,” I reply, as I cup my palm on her head. Jenny pushes against it. I press her head gently so that she bends forward at the waist. I move my hand and trace the edge of the dragon design tattoo which sprawls across Jenny’s back. “Is it finished?” I ask her.
“Not quite,” she says. She’s had a few sessions with Jonathan, her tattooist. The last was quite recently. “It’s still quite tender at the moment but soon it will start to itch as the scab starts to lift. Remember! You have got to make sure I don’t scratch it. It’s almost a shame - I mean it’s good that it’s nearly done but I’ll miss …. well I’ll miss the sensation, the prick of the needles, the buzzing noise, the sort of drifting off feeling that you get when it goes on for a time. And Jonathan is sweet, too.”
I let my finger explore further down the length of her spine and suddenly I stop. “I hadn’t noticed that before. There’s an odd bit of design down here. It looks just like a barcode,” I tell her.
“It is a barcode,” Jenny says. She sounds hesitant, unsure, as if I have uncovered something she was going to leave quietly unsaid. “It’s my slave number. You can look me up on the Slave Register. I’m 836-906-368.”
I put my hand under her chin and lift her head to look at me. “Well,” I say, “I hope you’ve got me down as your owner.” She returns my smile. All the same, I find it hard to credit what Jenny has just told me. For goodness sake, there can’t be 836 million slaves, can there? This one remark speaks volumes for the fissure which seems to have opened up between us. If this “fissure” was something at work, I would walk right up to the edge and peer in, trying to understand what it was and how it had come about. But here at home, with the two of us sitting together, the remark just makes me frightened, for her – for us. Where is this all going to lead?
Jenny just smiles. Then she looks at me and says, “You know, I couldn’t have imagined you saying that a few days ago! Thank you for being so patient.”
Patient? No, I am just covering up my real feelings. I am hoping that this is a phase that Jenny will go through and then we can be, well, normal, once more. However, I will try to be patient, try to give her space to tell me more about what happened to her and why she went through with it. I know it’s supposed to be part of a research project but there seems to be much more to it than that.
I sit up suddenly and look at the TV. “Hey will you look at that! I missed the end of the match. You’re a serious distraction Jenny McEwan.” I laugh. I want to dispel the tension I can feel between us – or is it just me? “Come on, I’m taking you to bed. But it’s going to be for some old fashioned, no nonsense, sex. Understand?”
She’s willing. She gets to her feet and almost skips upstairs.
Meanwhile I am trying really hard to get my head around what I have learnt about Jenny – and, come to that, what she has learnt about herself – over the last few months. I still find it hard to understand Jenny’s sado-masochistic fantasies; harder still to feel comfortable with her desire for me to put them in to practice with Jenny as the victim. The whole episode at Inward Bound, a sort of holiday adventure playground for slaves – although it didn’t sound like a holiday to me – was seriously weird as far I am concerned. It is strange enough when you hear of men paying for that sort of thing for an evening. But for women to want to have those things done to them? For Jenny to want those things done to her? And for months at a time? I shake my head as I turn off the television and the lights in the living room before I follow her upstairs.
Jenny is already in bed when I get to our bedroom. I can tell by the playful look on her face that she’s naked under the covers. There’s no time wasted in joining her, laying down by her side.
She cuddles up to me, wrapping her arms around my chest, straddling my thigh with hers as she turns towards me. He turns towards her, pressing my thigh into her groin. She pushes back against me; the press of our two bodies, each on the other, driving our pleasure. She is a delight. The feeling of her, sexually aroused beside me is a powerful driver for my own arousal. My cock stiffens and the feel of that accelerates her response to me.
I reach towards her and take her breasts, one in each hand. I stroke her nipples, teasing them by gently tapping at the tiny dumb-bells that she wears through the piercings. Jenny gives an involuntary “Ahh!” as I touch them. She smiles at me as I move across to straddle her. I run my hands down her sides and she gives an involuntary shiver as my palms slide down past her waist.
She’s already wet between her legs. As my fingers probe her sex, she pushes her hips forward against my touch. She’s moaning quietly now. I lean forward to kiss and nuzzle at her neck. “This is good,” I tell her huskily as I slide my cock inside her.
“Mmm,” she responds, flexing herself as she feels me pressing inside her.
When the two of us join, we move with one another as my cock becomes yet stiffer and Jenny’s skin and nipples become more sensitive. Physically we are one but, are we still united in … in our souls? In her mind, it seems to me that Jenny is somewhere else.
In the privacy of her inner most thoughts, Jenny is somewhere else: she is back at Inward Bound, naked as she is now but held tight in a harness of straps and padlocks. Her arms are locked tight against her sides. Her legs are strapped tightly one to the other. She’s standing upright. There’s a heavy harness around her head that holds a rubber ball in place filling her mouth. She’s wearing blinkers, so she can only see straight in front of her. She can feel her cunt filled by something solid and rigid. It seems to be fixed to the wall. She can’t move, skewered on whatever it is that penetrates her.
She can’t move her head at all; her head harness is clamped to the wall behind her forcing her to face the front. As she stands there, immobile and penetrated, someone comes into the room. A man and a slave girl. The man is hooded; the slave girl is too. The man bends the slave across a whipping bench. He unzips the fly of his leather trousers and pulls out his cock. He’s about to take the slave when another girl appears holding a cane out towards him. He looks at her and the cane, looks at Jenny, looks at the girl whose buttocks are presented so invitingly, and then shakes his head. The second girl goes away as the man plunges his cock between the buttocks of the girl spread across the bench. Jenny can only watch as he pushes hard against her.
The man climaxes, Jenny feels as though the plug inside her has climaxed somehow too but she still can’t move and can’t stop watching the man from between her blinkers. As he stands up and pulls off his mask. It’s Joe. She cries out into her gag, “Ohh!”
Without warning, Jenny cries out!
“It’s all right, Jenny, it’s all right,” I tell her, trying to keep my voice warm and reassuring. “Are you OK?”
“Mmm, yes, yes of course.” She replies but she seems to be returning from “somewhere else”. I am still inside her, no longer as hard as I was but it still feels nice and I hope its nice for her, too.
“You seemed miles away and then I thought I’d hurt you, somehow. Are you sure you’re all right?”
She nuzzles up against my shoulder. “Of course,” she says, “everything’s fine.”
But I don’t think that everything really is ‘fine’. I don’t think it’s fine for Jenny. It seems now as if she can’t share her feelings with me, like she used to and it’s not fine for me, either. I just can’t handle the thought of any sort of cruelty involving women, even in fantasy or sexual fore-play.
It raises bad memories for me from my childhood.
And I’d rather keep them where they lay; deep in memory, undisturbed, un-visited.
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Footnotes:
1. www.slaveregister.com Thanks to Tanos at the Slave Register (yes, it’s real) for allowing us to quote a genuine slave number, we’ll let you guess whose it is.
CHAPTER 2 : A RETURN TO EARTH? : AUGUST
Cathy Corbin reaches the Café Nero in Brook Street at just after a quarter past twelve. She is out of breath and anxious. She said she would meet her friend Jenny half an hour ago and she hates being late.
It’s a bright day. As she enters the café, it takes a moment or two for her eye to adjust to the dimmer light. She glances round and her heart sinks. No Jenny. She knows that Jenny had to see her research supervisor. It looks as if she had to leave and get ready for the meeting.
Cathy looks around one more time for Jenny’s spiky dark drown bobbed hair but all she can see is a young man with a shaven head. Or at least she thinks it’s a young man. She looks closer, puzzled by the androgynous figure and sees that it’s not a man, it’s a girl? The more she looks, the more familiar the figure seems. Cathy approaches her as the woman turns her head. It is Jenny!
“Jenny! Is this actually you?” Cathy laughs: in relief that she has still managed to keep her appointment and in disbelief. What has her friend been up to?
“Cathy! Yes, it’s me!” Jenny gets up to hug her friend. “I organised my own coffee. Can I get you something?’
“No, no look. I’ll just go to the bar and get something for myself but … Jenny! Just look at you! I like it!”
Cathy soon returns. She sits, smiles and gazes once more at her friend; at her face (happy); her head (gleaming) and the ring through her nasal septum (cheeky)!
“Surprised?” asks Jenny
“Stunned!”
“Stunned?”
“Well, OK surprised. Actually, you look bloody brilliant it’s just ... just…”
“A radical make-over?”
“You could say that!”
“Well, research can change lives.”
“Yes, I know but the sort of stuff we do, well it usually is not quite so visible and err, I would have to say, dramatic.”
“So do you like it?”
“Er, yes – yes I do. It really does suit you. Your head is just bloody brilliant. I am jealous”
“What of? Hair or nose?”
“Both! I just wish I could get away with it. Maybe when George and I go away on holiday, I could try it out? So did you do this after you got back?”
“No, I got back looking like this.”
“Wow. Scars of battle or right of passage?”
“Well - bit of both really.”
“Active or passive? I mean did they just do it to you, or did you ask for it to be done?”
“Well – oh, it’s a bit embarrassing really.”
“Embarrassing? Now I am really interested. This sounds as if it could be fun. Tell me more.”
“The instructions they sent me for the course said much of it would be about learning to follow orders... ”
“Uh-oh! This is not your strong suit. For goodness sake Jenny: you went on a course which was about following orders? You could have been in real trouble in no time at all.”
“Yes, well exactly. Anyway the idea was that you would receive rewards if you succeeded; encouragement if you tried but did not quite make it and you would have to pay some sort of forfeit if you did not try hard enough.”
“Go on …” Cathy is beginning to smile very broadly. She knows her friend and knows that Jenny has a very independent state of mind. Perhaps it’s something to do with her being half Swedish …
“Anyway as a preliminary challenge, I was supposed to get a crew cut hair-do and have an additional ear piercing, but I interpreted the instructions a bit too liberally.”
“Aha. So in fact you …”
“Just had a trim and passed on the ear piercing”
“Ha!” Cathy throws her head back and laughs. Jenny clearly deserved what she got but in the nicest possible way.
“So your forfeit was to get your head shaved and to have a more radical piercing. That is brilliant! Serves you right.”
“Yes, I was an awful warning to the others.”
“I bet you were. A very attractive and sexy warning though.”
However, Jenny does not confess that her failure to observe the dress code was also punished and that her punishment was to spend the entire two months naked. There is a limit after all, to what friends can disclose to each other on a single occasion, in public.
“Well, Jenny I have got to say, that I really like you just as you are. I do hope you are now under strict orders to maintain your present appearance? What does Joe think? I mean he’s a bit conservative, really – isn’t he?”
“Taken aback – but accepting. At least, I think so.”
Time has passed quickly and by the time the two friends have finished their lunch, it’s time to go back to work.
“My guess is that you have had a lot to cope with?”
“You could say!” For a moment, Jenny thinks about telling Cathy all about her arrest and interrogation. About seeing Angela. About the threats made to her. But some memories are very painful, even dangerous. She thinks again and decides against it. There will be other times and the less she thinks about the incident right now, the safer she feels. Going over it again will conjure up devils from the past where, at present, they seem to lay silent and sleeping.
As they leave the café, Cathy continues her gentle interrogation. “So what happens now?”
Jenny assumes Cathy is talking about her research. She’s only partly right. “The first move is to diary the events. I was supposed to be under cover and so I couldn’t just write everything down. I will use this to identify the research questions I will be able to investigate and then I have to get Inward Bound to agree to let me go back and do the data collection.”
“Do they spank you if the stats don’t come out right?”
Jenny laughs at Cathy’s teasing remark and replies “Better them than Prof”
“Prof? Angela? You are right about that. Ewwww!” replies Cathy who does not have much time for Professor Dawney. She glances again at Jenny. She is as effervescent and happy as always, but there seems to be a note of desperation somewhere. Cathy begins to feel a certain sadness for her friend and Joe. Is this project an example of Professor Dawney’s manipulating and controlling ways? Cathy suspects that it could be and whilst Jenny seems to have enjoyed herself, enjoyed thoroughly exploring part of her personality which perhaps she had not known much about, Cathy still feels anxious about where this might take Jenny and Joe.
Jenny knocks on the door to Professor Angela Dawney’s room.
She waits, thinking of other doors she has waited outside. She remembers Ylena’s door. The memory is warm, spicy and sexy. She finds herself smiling. She has Gaspazha Ylena’s email and website address. She could call. Make an appointment. Oh, to feel her paddling my bum again, and then ….
Mmmm. Gaspazha Ylena. Jenny is proud to know her title. She can’t imagine she will ever be just “Ylena” to her; it will always be Gaspazha Ylena.
“Come!” Angela’s voice drags Jenny back to reality. She sighs, almost audibly and goes inside.
Jenny gazes across the office at Angela. She looks just as she did the last time Jenny was here, but that was before. Before she went to Inward Bound and before Angela found herself in Connie’s hands.
Jenny is disappointed. There seems to be nothing different about Angela, at least nothing for Jenny to see. Here is Jenny, shaved, pierced, tattooed and with a host of experiences, sensations, feelings from her stay. And there is the professor; sitting just as she was when Jenny went away. Jenny wonders what “fond” memories Angela has of her experience? She accepts that she shall never know. What a pity!
“Jenny! So nice to see you again. It is Jenny, isn’t it?”
It’s exactly the sort of jokey remark that Jenny expects from Angela. It’s a poor joke but a joke just waiting to be made.
“Yes, Prof, it’s Jenny. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, well er I, well – new hairstyle I suppose.”
“Hmmm, well Prof I recommend it. I really do. Have you ever - ”
“No!”
“Ah, pity. I think you have missed out.” Jenny’s experiences have given her confidence in herself. She determined not to be intimidated by Angela, determined to make her squirm if she can.
“Well, Jenny, why don’t we get down to business? How was your stay?”
Jenny spends the next several minutes outlining the main events of her stay at Inward Bound, with one exception. She makes no reference to the rendition incident. It is not relevant to the project and most of it remains a disturbing memory.
She goes over how many other girls there were; the number of trainers; the things the she did and the things that they did to the trainees. She censors some of the details. She explains her shaven head but fails to mention her pierced nipples. For her own amusement she does at least stick out her newly pierced tongue which makes Angela wince!
To her credit, Angela listens quietly, seriously, giving Jenny her full attention.
“So what will you do first to try to make sense of your … ah … expedition?”
“First, I will try to construct a diary of what happened to me. Second, that will suggest what the main research questions should be. Third, that leads on to much more precise ideas about data collection. Fourth, there will be the definitive data collection. Fifth, the analysis”
“Control groups?”
“Will be identified after the definitive research questions have been agreed.”
“Research Governance?”
“I will have to write a protocol, and tackle the appropriate ethical questions to do with informed consent, confidentiality of data, data security and make an application to the research ethics committee before I can proceed in earnest.”
“You will have to approach the Inward Bound people and confess the ulterior motive for your last visit.”
Jenny looks critically at Angela. “I have to?” she’s thinking. “What about you, Prof? You are supposed to be my research supervisor. You are the internationally celebrated Professor!” She says none of these things out loud, though, but takes control of the situation again and merely replies, “Yes, Prof. As long as you are in agreement, I would be happy to go back to the people at Inward Bound. After all, it’s me they know. Would you be - ?”
“Happy? Yes absolutely. Yes, I think that is exactly the right thing to do.”
Angela is rather brisk and definite, so much so that Jenny starts to wonder if something else has happened, something which makes her wary of speaking to Inward Bound herself? Or maybe she suspects that her own “rendition” had something to do with the Inward Bound project in some way. Angela resumes her brisk tone. “Well, Jenny I think you have made an excellent start, an heroic start, if I may say.”
“Thanks Prof”, is all that Jenny says; but she’s happy to bring the discussion to a close.
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Footnotes:
1. www.cafenero.com There is a real Cafe Nero here. We’ve no reason to suppose that anything other than vanilla coffee is served. (Well perhaps some caramel syrup occasionally.....)
© Freddie Clegg & Phil Lane 2010
All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or reposted without permission
All characters fictitious
E-mail: freddie_clegg@yahoo.com
Web Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
CHAPTER 3 : DEBTS INCURRED. DEBTS REPAID: SEPTEMBER
Corinne Aimes, founder, director and part owner of Inward Bound, is at her desk, dealing with emails, when her telephone rings.
“Corinne?” the voice at the other end of the line says.
“Charlotte!” Corinne replies, as she recognises her friend.
“I just had a follow up telephone call with Fifty. Well, yesterday evening actually.”
“How’d it go?”
“She seems to be settling back in to her home and work routine.”
“Good. It could have been difficult, after what she went through. How did her husband take to her adventure?”
“She says he is coping reasonably well. It’s funny; normally I am concerned about how effectively our clients re-socialise but in Fifty’s case, it’s her husband I am more concerned about! I know she was at greater risk than usual because of the ‘rendition’ incident but with her husband ... Well, I think we both had the same concerns. Anyway, there’s one other thing.”
“Yes?”
“She wants to speak to us about her research project.”
Corinne snorts. “Ha! So she has learned to get things right way round at last?”
“Well to be fair, I think she was under the cosh from her director of studies.”
“Oh yes: the Professor”
“Anyway, what do you think?”
“It depends a bit on the direction that she’s planning to take the research in. I suppose it could provide some valuable information to us, about our clients. You and I have both had psychological training so we are in a good position to assess the value of the information she is proposing to collect. If you ask me, I think we’d be more effective as research directors than her professor because we actually have a personal interest in getting the research done and getting it carried out to a high standard.”
“So shall I call her back and arrange a meeting – I thought London might be the most convenient place for all of us?”
“No, let’s have her come up here. This is where she’ll be doing her data collection, I suppose? In any case, Fifty had better find out which is the most practical way for her to make her trips here. If this project goes ahead, she will be up and down quite often. Besides, I feel less than inclined to bend over backwards for her. In fact, she should be bending over backwards for us.”
Charlotte can imagine the glint in Corinne’s eye. “Umm, fair enough and you know something?”
“What?”
“I think you’re right about her bending over. Don’t you feel that she owes us a small forfeit for her initial dishonesty? A little restitution, as the price for our cooperation.”
“Now that’s a good idea. I’m not sure its ethical, but it’s good! What do you have in mind?”
“Well, I haven’t thought this through. It only occurred to me just now, but isn’t Twenty One going to be at the Centre again shortly? It would be so nice if they could meet up again....”
“Charlotte, you can be a very devious girl sometimes, do you know that?”
“Yes, Corinne I think I do.” Charlotte has a self satisfied grin as she puts the phone down and checks her laptop to see just when Twenty One is going to be around.
While Corinne and Charlotte are speaking to one another over the telephone, Larry Ross is at the London headquarters of Freddie Clegg Enterprises. It’s the regular senior management team meeting. They’re reviewing the progress of the business and their current projects, almost all of them illegal, not to mention immoral. Pam Jordan the Group’s Medical Advisor - an important role given that the Group’s primary interest is in human trafficking in one form or other - has been speaking about the value of understanding – but not necessarily being sympathetic to - the emotions of abductees as they try to come to terms with what has happened to them.
Connie butts in, “You know Pam that’s very interesting. Now take Larry here. He is running a consensual slavery adventure experience and I’ll bet you one hundred pounds that he has never had any slave experiences in his life. I think he would run a much more effective programme if he had a taste of what his ‘guests’ are being put through. What do you think Mr Clegg?”
Larry is lost for words. What the hell is Connie playing at?
Clegg smiles broadly. He’s sometimes inclined to enjoy a joke at other’s expense and he’s noticed Connie’s occasional sniping at Larry. “That’s a perceptive observation, Connie, especially as we all have such high hope for Larry’s project. Pam?”
Pam Jordan is perfectly aware of what’s going on but she’s happy to indulge Connie and Freddie’s teasing. “I am inclined to agree with Connie,” she says. “Larry, when are you planning to go on holiday? Perhaps you should be aiming to mix some business with pleasure?”
Larry feels he is rapidly losing control of the situation. He is never sure about how serious some of these suggestions are. He can’t think of any reason why Connie should want to get her hands on him – her professional hands – and he has absolutely no wish to spend any of his holiday allocation in her dungeon. And why are Pam Jordan and Freddie pouring petrol on the flames? They don’t think it’s his birthday do they? An opportunity to play some ‘amusing’ prank? On the other hand Connie usually doesn’t do pranks ….
Just then Larry’s mobile rings. Mercifully, it stops the flow of the conversation.
Larry picks it up and answers. He turns to the others in the room. “Er, this is Corinne – do you mind if I take this – I’ll just go into the outer office,” says Larry.
Freddie nods. “Sure, no problem. We need to press on though.”
As he gets up Connie smiles at Larry. She slightly narrows one eye as she inclines her head towards him. She knows her prey has escaped. So does Larry. It occurs to him that maybe Connie is keen for more involvement at Inward Bound, after her involvement with the ‘rendition’ project. That can only cause problems, Larry thinks.
When Larry returns to the table, the agenda has moved on and Larry finds that “Progress Report. IWB Project” is the next item. At least he will now be leading the discussion and in a position to deal with any more interference from Connie.
“Larry; your report.” Clegg is happy to play the chairman today. He’s looking forward to a few weeks in Greece and he’s prepared to make the effort to ensure things are on an even keel before he heads off.
“Thank you Freddie. There’s quite a lot to cover, so it’s probably best if I give you an overview and I can invite comments, questions and suggestions from the rest of you.” Freddie nods. The others do too. Connie looks Larry straight in the eye as she does so. Larry feels like a rat in the gaze of a cobra.
He tries to forget Connie as he starts his report. “First, the performance of the business itself. I am pleased to say that all courses are fully booked, nine months ahead. The business operations are cash positive – although that wasn’t really the point as we know. All the indicators for customer satisfaction,” Connie snorts, “are higher than when we started our relationship with IWB. I am also very pleased with the level of new enquires which should see future courses also well subscribed.
“Secondly, Corinne Aimes and I have given quite a lot of thought about creating more places on each course. However, there is a limit to the number of ‘adventurers’ we can deal with on each course whilst keeping a high level of intimacy and control. Our part time staff such as Ylena and Celia are having to make a bigger commitment and that isn’t sustainable in the longer term. Celia’s time is not her own because she in a full time NHS post and Ylena has her own practice. I can foresee Celia asking to go full time with us and take on some of the work being done by Ylena. Corinne is very conscious of the need for capacity planning and succession management so I believe that we will be able to work our way through it.
“Third, I have had a careful look at the enquiries and a significant number are from Alumni who would like to do a second course. That gives us another opportunity. I propose we look seriously at creating another Centre to handle the returnees, to give them a tougher trip, a more stretching second experience. The ideal would be somewhere abroad: warm, dry, sunny ...”
“I can see now why you don’t fancy my ‘holiday’, Larry,” Connie cuts in. “You’ve got one of your own planned.”
Freddie glances at Connie to signal that this line of banter has gone far enough.
Larry continues. “... and of course private which would also give a more profound sense of separation from the vanilla world. A soon as Guests arrive, we take their passports from them along with all their clothes, so they know at once that they are very securely trapped.
“Fourth, graduates from the second course are likely to include people who are looking for a much longer and more profound slavery experience and these are the people we can approach for contracted slavery – the consensual non-consensuals as you might put it. Here are some draft Contracts and Slave Management Protocols I have put together.” Larry passes folders around the table. “Freddie, here is yours, Ellie, Pam and – Connie. Now this is where I think your input would be very valuable, Connie but we have to handle this with some care, some diplomacy.” It’s obvious to the meeting that Larry doesn’t think this is one of the organisation’s key competencies. “I don’t know if Corinne Aimes and her team will see this as part of their brand so to speak or whether she will feel happier to keep it well off limits. I am hoping so, but let me develop this slowly - ” Larry looks directly at Clegg, he knows that patience is not Freddie’s long suit, “ - with her and I will report back.
“Finally,” Larry can almost sense the relief. The rest of the team are anxious to get on with things closer to their core business. That’s fine by him – with any luck they’ll have forgotten Connie’s mischievous proposal. “Finally, you will all remember the Jennifer McEwan business? Well, according to Corinne – that was the reason for her call by the way - McEwan has asked if she can discuss her research with Corinne and explore it further. It seems she is still keen to go ahead with her project. Corinne and Charlotte are happy to cooperate with McEwan but I just wanted to run this past you all. My personal opinion is that the more we know about our clients, the better we can tailor their experience to what they are looking for and most important, the easier it will be to spot the people who are after Slavery Contracts which,” Larry scans around the room making sure he has everyone’s attention, “was of course our principle reason for getting involved with Inward Bound in the first place.”
“Research?” muses Freddie. “That will mean publication eventually, I suppose. Publication is publicity and it’s not really something I’ve gone after in the past.”
Larry can understand. Publicity is something that few criminal enterprises seek. “Agreed, Freddie but we run the risk of that already, every time someone books themselves on to a course. For all we know it could be a reporter from one of the tabloids looking for a story. At least this will be publication is a sober academic journal. In fact, from what I’ve seen of this academic stuff, it will be so sober that whatever is being described will read like the telephone directory!”
Clegg looks long and hard at Larry. Ellie gives Clegg a nod. “OK Larry,” says Clegg, summarising the discussion. “I am happy to leave this with you, but just keep us in the loop as ever. Any dissenters? No? Now, next item: Ah, cooperation with the Glennis Organisation ….”
Corinne looks steadily across her desk at Jenny McEwan, who still sports a shaven head and a septum ring. Corinne is pleased. Charlotte encouraged her to stay that way when she left and she obviously took it seriously.
Yes, thinks, Corinne to herself. She does look very sexy and yet also very elegant in a hip sort of way. I am glad she decided to keep to the look we chose for her. Still if she had reverted to her former appearance, we would be the first to notice and perhaps McEwan wants to make sure she does not antagonise us, by giving us a reason not to cooperate with her. So who has the upper hand here? Her or us?
Jenny is the first to speak. “First of all, I feel this sounds silly but I have to ask, what should I call you?” Jenny’s memories of this place, of the way she was trained, of the sanctions for failing to use the words “Mistress” or “Gazpazha”, are still sufficient to leave her uncertain of the protocol, in the current situation.
“Jenny, please call me Corinne. At least for now” There is a twinkle in Corinne’s eyes which Jenny finds slightly disturbing. “I hope me calling you Jenny is OK?”
Jenny blushes. “Yes of course. I am very grateful to you for agreeing to see me!”
“So you came by car?”
“Yes. When I knew where you were, I had a look on the map and thought I could manage a return trip in one day, if I started early. My husband is away for a few days and so it does not matter when I get home. I mean won’t be disturbing him, if I get home late tonight.”
If you get home tonight, muses Corinne, thinking about how she hopes the day will turn out. She merely says, though, “Let’s just see how we get on. I expect we will have a lot to talk about.”
Jenny clears her throat and begins a description of her project. “You’ll remember that I was looking at aspects of adult play and in particular, play behaviours in relation to BDSM. What I hope to do, as part of this next phase, is to try to find out if people who come on a course here, are significantly different in psycho-sexual attitudes from the average population …”
“ a normal population controlled for age, sex and education, social class but not selected with respect to sexual fantasies?”
“Err, yes.” For a moment Jenny is surprised by Corinne’s intuitive grasp of the nuts and bolts of her project, “… and then to see if people change as a result of their time here.”
“Change how?”
“In a nutshell, are their psychological outlooks confirmed, emphasised or altered? In particular are they altered with reference to their sexual fantasies and in particular again, to any BDSM fantasies.”
“And your data collection?”
“Will be by questionnaires and interviews at base line and after the experience has ended. I would also very much like to compare what the subjects tell me with what they tell you, in your application questionnaires.”
“Informed consent?”
“Yes: that’s essential. I must inform the subjects that an investigation is on-going and to have their permission to access their answers. I remember filling in my own forms and feeling very glad that only your staff would have access to my answers!”
“I bet you were! Data security?”
“I think it would be best if I can leave all the questionnaires here and only take away anonymous data for analysis. So for example, the questionnaire data filled in by Jennifer McEwan would stay here but I would take away a string of numbers corresponding to the questions and answers given by ‘subject number 001’”
“And the code key which translates ‘subject 001’ into Jenny McEwan?”
“Would stay here and be in your possession because they are your clients and they put their trust in you and your colleagues, to keep their information confidential.”
“You know, Jenny, that your local Ethics Committee will take a very close interest in this. Your - our - arrangements must be really watertight otherwise the project will not be considered past first base?”
“That’s absolutely right.” Jenny pauses. “You seem to have a very clear grasp of the technicalities of this. I’m feeling I am talking to my research supervisor.” She adds with a grin.
Corinne smiles in response. “Ah, yes. You won’t know this but I am a psychologist too. My other business is Huntington Management Sciences which runs management courses. The IWB course content is heavily influenced by management and workplace psychology.”
“Ah. Perhaps you should have been the supervisor on this project?”
Corinne smiles and Jenny laughs. Many a true word is spoken in jest!
The interview lasts throughout the afternoon. By four thirty, Corinne has heard enough to feel confident that Jenny has a viable project on her hands; that she is capable of carrying it out and that Corinne’s business could benefit from the data that the study will generate.
As she rounds off her presentation, Jenny says, “Corinne, I am very much in your debt for giving me access to Inward Bound and for agreeing to host the project. I know Professor D…”
Corinne holds up her hand. Her limited dealings with Professor Dawney have been enough to convince her that any gratitude felt by the professor, will be in strict proportion to how far the project will further the professor’s own career. Corinne continues, “That’s all right, Jenny. I think you will more than repay any future debts of obligation to us if you can successfully complete your project and the information you collect and the analysis you undertake helps us to provide a better service to our clients. However there is the matter of past debts …”
Jenny blushes deeply. She knows at once where this is going. Corinne is going to ask why this interview did not precede Jenny’s original adventure at Inward Bound? Jenny, wreathed in embarrassment, looks down at her feet.
Corinne continues: “… so I thought you might like the opportunity to repay some past debts and start again with a clean sheet. What do you say to that?”
Jenny says nothing but in particular, she does not argue with Corinne. Jenny feels her mouth dry and she swallows hard, wondering what is coming next.
“Take off all of your clothes!”
Corinne speaks softly. Conversationally. She gives the order as easily as she might ask for a sheet of paper.
It’s not the sort of request one expects, at the end of a meeting to do with research data collection. Jenny understands the incongruity of it but Corinne is a Mistress - the Senior Mistress at Inward Bound. Inward Bound, where Jenny was trained as a slave, so she at once accepts the instruction and obeys.
Presently Jenny stands naked. Her hands are behind her back, clothes carefully folded on the chair where she sat a few minutes ago in her other life as a PhD research student. Now, in an instant, she has reverted to her role as slave. Which one does she really prefer she asks herself ?
“Well done, Fifty”
Jenny feels her stomach muscles tighten and a stab of adrenalin as Corinne uses her Inward Bound slave name.
Corinne stands and walks around her desk. She places a hand on Fifty’s shoulder. “Here,” says Corinne as she draws a leather collar around Fifty’s neck and snaps it shut. It bears a tag that says “This Slave is Property of IWB.”
“Better” comments Corinne, “and now I am going to hood you.”
She takes a black leather bag hood and drops it over Fifty’s head, pulling the drawstring closure snugly tight. Jenny stands passively, accepting; transformed from her assertive, confident, intellectual self to an obedient slave by the simple use of words. Now Fifty is alone in a black, musky, pungent, world where she depends completely on her Mistress but Fifty trusts Corinne and sighs with contentment and anticipation born from her surrender to her situation.
“Come with me:” Corinne clips a leash to Fifty’s collar and guides her, a hand on her shoulder, out of the office. “We are going to meet an old friend of yours!”
Fifty tries to chart her direction of travel in her mind, using her memories of the IWB centre.l They walk along the upstairs landing, down the main stairs through the hall and out of the main building. Her feet feel the smooth clean cold of the courtyard path – are they going to the Gym? Who will they meet? Ylena perhaps? The anticipation and uncertainty dry her mouth even more, as much as the stifling enclosing of the hood.
Corinne pauses. A door is opened. Fifty feels a gentle pressure on her shoulder. She moves forward in to – where? There is laughter – but whose?
“Hush!” says Corinne. “Is everything ready as I asked? Good. Fifty? This way ... turn … stop.”
Fifty feels her arms taken and bent forwards and strapped above her.
Then her legs are spread and her ankles secured. Something is pressing on her chest and belly.
Corinne leans towards her, loosens the draw string and lifts off the hood. Fifty blinks in the light and quickly glances left and right.
She has been strapped so she embraces a giant “Swiss Ball”: it is squashy but also firm beneath her. In front of her Corinne is standing and smiling and beside her stands someone she recognises from her first visit to Inward Bound; another slave she knew as Twenty One; Judy.
“Fifty,”says Corinne making the introductions, “this is Judy and Judy? This is Fifty. I think you might have met before?” she asks, smirking.
“Thank you Mistress,” laughs Judy. “I was so looking forward to seeing Fifty again and here she is!” Judy emphasises Fifty’s slave name. The last time Jenny and Judy met they were both under slave training. Judy was known as Twenty One. Now Jenny is still Fifty but Judy is no longer Twenty one. She has become Judy.
“Well, I will leave you two to enjoy some quality time together,” says Corinne. “Judy? You know what to do?”
“Yes Mistress,” replies Judy simply.
After Corinne leaves the gym, Judy walks slowly across to Fifty. She is carrying a flogger in her left hand, its tails spilling over her right hand.
She walks up behind Fifty and kisses her on the shoulder – and licks and kisses again, this time on the back of her neck. “I have heard”, says Judy conspiratorially, “that you were a very naughty girl, when we were slaves here together and now here you are, still a slave and I have been given the job of punishing you. I think that’s neat, don’t you?” Fifty turns her head to see the wicked grin on Judy’s face. “I am to warm you up with this flogger, then I am going to whip you.” Judy pronounces the word ‘whip’ very carefully letting it slither from her lips. “How many strokes should I give you? One lick of the whip for every day you were here? Well, let’s just see. Oh, I am going to enjoy this, Fifty!”
Judy begins carefully spraying the tails of the flogger all across Fifty’s back and buttocks, thighs and calves and up between her legs.
Fifty tugs and squeals but she has to hold her position to prevent the ball rolling backwards on top of her. She is perfectly presented for punishment and each soft blow of the flogger seems to sensitise her skin more and more, readying it for the beating to come.
The heat builds up in her skin. The sensation is well within what she can cope with and in fact she is beginning to enjoy the experience, enjoy this slight suffering at the hands of a fellow slave. But Judy is not quite a slave anymore, is she?
The flogging stops. Jenny is breathing deeply, rhythmically; the flogger encourages that. Judy says “and now for your whipping, Fifty. This is going to sting. Look at this; isn’t it attractive? Such a wonderful sexy red colour? ”
Fifty can see Judy reflected in the mirrors which line the wall of the gym. She can see Judy uncoil a thin red whip. Judy takes her stance, her hands held wide and straight above her head, one hand holding the whip handle, the other holding the tail. She languidly sends the tail of the whip sailing out towards Fifty’s back. It lands and lays a fiery stripe across her right shoulder. Another lick follows. Then there’s another to the left shoulder; then another, lower, to impact on her left buttock and down her thigh. Another snakes around her calf. Fifty can see that Judy has to make very little effort to land the whip on her skin but how bright and hot and stinging are the impacts. She can also see that Judy is smiling. She is in no hurry to finish Fifty’s punishment. Judy pauses and carefully coils up her whip – and picks up another. She comes over to Fifty and carefully kisses her back running her tongue along the raised welts. She makes her way down Fifty’s spine to the level of her pelvis, drinking in Jenny’s response to the soft touch of her mouth after the sharp cutting of the whip.
“Mmmm, you do like pain, don’t you?” Judy’s tone is mischievous. “I am learning to whip. Then today, you turned up with debts to pay. Corinne was very keen for me to help you pay. This is going to be your last instalment – a bit more expensive, I’m afraid but I think it’s an expense you will enjoy!”
Judy now picks up a thicker whip. It’s light brown; its handle is decorated with gold bands. Once more Judy takes her stance. She flicks the handle and a fiery kiss appears on Fifty’s right buttock another on her left. Pause – a pause to recover before her buttocks are kissed again: right and left. And again; left and right. Jenny has problem keeping her feet now as the combination of the ball, her awkward stance and the way her mind has become completely focused on the each stroke of the whip all combine to make her unsteady.
“Now Fifty, your last two. Oh, you are going to look magnificent when you get back home. By tomorrow your whip marks will be fully developed. I think nothing looks more erotic than a freshly whipped slave. What will your husband say?”
Fifty is also trying to think what she can say to Joe when Judy lands her whip twice more, one left, one right. By now Fifty is squealing, and writhing. If only she could rub where the whip has landed but the restraints hold her hands firmly in their place and she can only gasp and sigh and squeeze her buttocks until the pain begins to fade.
“Very well done Fifty! I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did! Now I am going to turn you over.” Judy snaps a handcuff onto Fifty’s right wrist before releasing the strap and taking the limb to the anchor point on the left. She snaps the cuff closed. Fifty is still trapped.
Judy repeats the manoeuvre with Fifty’s left arm: left arm to right anchor. Judy, one at a time, re-straps Fifty’s wrists and removes the cuffs. Then she releases Fifty’s ankles. “Now, Fifty. Turn Around!”
Fifty obeys, her arms un-cross as she turns and Judy rewards her obedience by re-securing her ankles which now presents Fifty’s front to Judy.
“The great thing about this ball is that you can roll the victim around. Over you go!”
There is nothing Fifty can do to prevent the Judy pushing the ball over backwards until she is balanced looking upwards at the ceiling. Judy pauses to strip herself naked and Fifty finds that her mouth has been nicely positioned directly opposite Judy’s crotch. She is aroused, Fifty can see her labia glistening and smell her arousal.
“Now Fifty, business is over. I am sure you know what to do?”
Fifty does know. This is one order her Mistress doesn’t need to give her.
“Oh, Oh, Oh that tongue of yours! That stud feels wonderful. I wonder if Corinne will have you pierced again so you have two studs to pleasure your Mistresses with? I think … you are … Oh! … you are going to have to stay the night ….”
I’m is sitting in my hotel room. We’ve wound up the meetings for the day. I half expected that two or three of us would hook up for dinner but it turned out that everybody had other plans. I’m feeling a bit bored, a bit dissatisfied as a result of the outcome of the day’s discussions, a bit disappointed at spending an evening on my own, and, if I’m honest, a bit lonely.
I wonder what Jenny is up to. She was supposed to be going to see the people in Suffolk today. She’s probably driving back about now. I don’t like to call. Jenny hasn’t got a hands free kit for her mobile in the car or a sat-nav. She’ll be concentrating on where she’s going and some of those Suffolk roads are narrow. I wonder what she’s up to, now? Maybe she’s stopped off for a break. I think again about calling her. Then my own mobile rings.
“Jenny?” I say, expecting it to be her on the call.
It isn’t. It’s one of my colleagues from the meeting. Plans have changed. Do I fancy dinner? They’re meeting up for a couple of beers first in a bar not far from the main station but they’ve got a table booked for eight, so if I’m coming...
I look at my watch. A beer and a meal with colleagues sounds like a better evening than playing guess the hooker in the hotel bar. I tell him I’ll be there shortly. I grab a sweater and a jacket and head for the lobby. “Maybe it won’t be such a dull evening after all,” I think, “I just hope Jenny is finding something to keep her amused, too.”
.....................................................................................................................................
Footnotes:
1. NHS: the United Kingdom’s state - funded National Health Service.
2. Swiss Balls – Not a new name for Ferro Rocher but actually....
http://www.dietandfitnessresources.co.uk/home_gym/fitball_swiss_exercise_ball.htm
CHAPTER 4 : THE OBSERVER: OCTOBER
It’s two months later.
Jenny feels really strange driving herself to the Inward Bound centre in Suffolk, to meet the whole “Faculty” again. She’s beginning the next part of her research project. It’s worse for her than the last time when she came just to see Corinne – then, she kept telling herself it was just another research agenda discussion, even if it was going to turn out to be a bit more than that! This time, she feels as though she’s going back into a Lion’s den.
She plans to sit in on the first few days of the programme, then she’ll come back again for a day or two each week. Finally she plans to undertake follow-up interviews with the participants, after they complete their course. Charlotte has spoken to the all participants and asked if they would be prepared to sign consent forms for the study. Jenny is pleased. She guesses that there’s a bit of the exhibitionist in most subs, because they all agreed.
Jenny stops at the gate, announces herself and the gate swings open. The mini-bus that brought her here on her first visit is parked outside the front of the house. There’s a group of girls standing around looking nervous – the newest intake. Jenny’s research subjects.
She stops her car and gets out. Charlotte breaks off a conversation with the others and comes straight across to greet her. Jenny feels glad that Charlotte is pleased to see her but Jenny also knows that this is an opportunity for Charlotte to remind the newcomers of their place in the pecking order.
Charlotte and Jenny embrace like old friends, which of course, they are. The two of them walk into the house together, Charlotte’s hand on Jenny’s shoulder while the others are herded forward by Gerry. Jenny imagines them, going through the same admissions process that she did. It seems odd not to be joining them!
“You look terrific,” Charlotte says with approval. “Really well. I’m glad you are still shaving your head. It really suits you. Your initial disobedience has paid some rather nice dividends! Do you keep your head shaven, or was this a compliment to us?”
Jenny laughs. “Thanks,” she says. “I feel great and it’s nice to be back. And no, the head shaving isn’t a compliment. I keep it that way. It seems right, somehow and even Joe’s got used to it! My mum thinks it’s strange though….”
“Well, it’s good to have you back even if it’s only for the week-end. We’ve got a room for you. I’ll show you. I’ll get your bag brought up from the car if you like. Charlotte shows Jenny upstairs to a comfortably furnished suite of rooms with a small lounge, a bigger bedroom and an en-suite. She looks out over the grounds and across the lawn where she and her colleagues were harnessed together, to pull the mower like a pony team. Her new room is such a contrast from the cell she had when she was first here with its bars, hard mattress and squatting toilet!
Jenny is pondering her new found luxury when there’s a knock at the door. She calls out. “Come on in, it’s open.”
The door opens. It’s a woman; naked, shackled, ball-gagged, carrying Jenny’s bag.
Jenny knows that she shouldn’t be shocked, but she is. It’s a real surprise for her.
The woman puts the bag down on a small stand, bows silently, steals a brief look at Jenny and backs out of the room, closing the door behind her.
The effect on Jenny is profound. She’s left speechless and rooted to the spot. The girl’s wordless obedience to an order given her (presumably) by Charlotte, her nakedness and the fact that she has obviously decided that Jenny is one of the staff (and thus someone to be submitted to) disturbs her. Jenny wants to call her back, to tell her that she is just like her; that Jenny has done what she is doing but Jenny knows that she must not interfere.
Jenny stands in the middle of the bedroom asking herself how on earth she is going to cope with the study programme if such an incidental encounter drags back the memories of submitting to Celia and Ylena and Jo and Jonathan.
Everyone is in the dining room. Charlotte, Jo, Gerry, Celia and Jenny share a table. The food is delightful, accompanied by a couple of bottles of good wine. As Jenny takes a sip she looks across to where the newcomers are sitting down to their first meal. They’re working out what the numbers on the place cards mean, realising that no one is going to tell them to take the strip of tape from their lips, looking enviously at the food on the Faculty’s table and then tucking-in hungrily to the oat cakes, muesli and fruit which has been provided for them. Jenny knows how they feel; she has been there herself, before.
“You look as if you envy the new arrivals,” Josephine says.
“Well, I think I envy them the discoveries they’re all going to make, that’s for sure. If they are like I was when I came first time, they’ll be finding out an awful lot about themselves.”
“And you’re going to be finding out a lot about them too, if you get through the research agenda.” Charlotte adds, running her hand across the folder that I sent her with the plan for the investigation. “We’ve set things up so that you can connect your lap top to the video feeds for observations. You can do it from your room upstairs. We thought that would be best. We have also made the arrangements for the initial interviews, as you asked. Why not frame them as a form of interrogation, just to keep in line with the “new arrivals” expectations? You said you wanted to collect some data on physiological changes. We thought the best opportunity would be during the initial physical exam sessions so we will include you in the team when that is carried out.”
“Thanks, Charlotte but I was always a bit envious of Celia’s blue scrubs and white clogs” Jenny replies, not entirely joking!
Charlotte’s remarks and Jenny’s jokey reply brings Jenny to a sharp moment of self-understanding. She really hasn’t prepared herself emotionally in the way she should have. She had almost expected that the data collection would be incidental to her own participation but of course, she now realises, what an idiotic idea that was! How on earth could she have given it space in her brain, to lay there festering, seducing her from the serious purpose of her visits? This time, its business, not pleasure. This time, she has to be detached, objective, in-charge of the situation. The observations and data collection have been cleverly integrated into the programme, thanks to the ingenuity of Charlotte and her colleagues. The process might even might provide some additional amusement for the participants. Jenny does not want to let them down, not the Faculty, nor the participants. It is going to be hard emotional work, to do her job properly.
But from somewhere deeper in her mind, a small voice whispers. It tells her that she will look like one of the staff. And that would make her a domme. And she’s not….
Jenny makes her excuses and returns to her room. “I’m tired,” she tells them (which is a lie) and “I’m feeling a rush of familiarity, a reminder of when I first got here.” (which is the truth)
She sits, silent and uneasy for a minute or two. She can’t let things get away from her at “first base”, she tells herself. She’s got a job to do now, otherwise the whole research project falls apart, almost before it has begun.
Jenny turns on her laptop to look at the video feeds, gazing down on the participants, just as others had watched over her, when she had come to IWB as a participant.
Start with the facts, she says to herself. The secret of successful ethnography is a dispassionate assessment of the subjects in their situation.
“Participants = 6,” Jenny writes in her notes, “all females. The six are confined in individual ‘rooms’ for their first evening.” She describes the cells that the girls have been locked in; the sparse furnishings, the bars and shutters.
She describe each of the girls, referring to them using their course numbers – their slave numbers - in preference to using their real names, to protect their anonymity. Jenny wonders if that makes her complicit in their dehumanisation? Is it any worse than referring to them as ‘Subject A’, ‘Subject B’, ‘Subject C’ as so many studies would? But surely, they are not being dehumanised. It is merely their status which has been changed and changed with their full knowledge and consent.
She notes the extent to which they have followed their joining instructions – Charlotte has let her have a copy - the ones who have cropped their hair, the ones who have the bright red mark of a new piercing and the ones who haven’t and don’t. She makes a note to explore whether these disobediences are the result of studied defiance, naivety, or a lack of understanding (as it was with Jenny when she came here) or an intent to taunt.
Jenny studies the girls in their cells. No. 101 is already asleep. Naked on her couch, her collar and cuffs locked around her neck, wrists and ankles. No. 105 is sitting on the floor against the back wall, hugging her knees to herself, staring fixedly at the back of the shutter that closes off her cell. It’s not surprising, because this is her first time. She must be scared witless, much as Jenny had been. Her next door neighbour, No. 106, is quite the opposite. She’s evidently aroused. She has taken her red cellular blanket, the one piece of bedding in her cell, and pulled it up between her legs, dragging it across her labia. She’s sprawled on her couch, sweating, touching her own nipples, unaware or completely unconcerned about the presence of the video cameras. The next is more of a puzzle. No. 22, according to the notes. It must be her second visit, at least. So why is she so panicked? She is laying on her couch, her knees drawn up to her chest, clutching her blanket around her with one hand, the thumb of her other pressed into her mouth where she is sucking it and whimpers softly. The next participant, No. 89, paces her cell, he arms folded as she walks back and forward. Finally, No. 68. She lays on her bed, looking up at the ceiling, apparently calm but Jenny notices her fists. They are clenched tight on top of her blanket.
The more Jenny watches and notes the actions and responses of the girls the more uncomfortable she feels. She tries to think when she’s felt this disturbed before and it comes flooding back to her. It was after she came back from the ‘interrogation’ or whatever it was. When Ylena had ordered her to beat Judy. It’s remarkable how each individual scene is etched into her memory. They say a good ethnographer has to observe and recall. Jenny applies it to herself.
Jenny is staring at the laptop screen, flipping from cell to cell, making occasional notes, often without thinking – the ideal, innocent, dispassionate observer - when there’s a knock at the door.
Jenny doesn’t say anything but the door opens anyway.
She looks up and sees Ylena framed in the doorway and begins to chew her lip with anxiety – or is it in anticipation?
She’s wearing leather as she so often does; a dark brown waistcoat worn without a shirt and tightly fitting leather trousers pushed in to short cowboy boots. “It is difficult, moya sluzhanka?” she says, but it is more of a statement than a question.
Moya sluzhanka! My slave. Jenny thinks for a moment that she will melt! She wants to tumble off of the chair and kneel at her feet, throwing her arms around her calves, pushing her face into her boots. But she doesn’t do that. She tells herself that she has to be strong.
“Oh, Gaspazha!” Jenny replies and smiles:, “how can vasha sluzhanka do this?” Ylena walks across, places one arm around Jenny and one hand on her scalp. Jenny finds it absurdly comforting. “Spaseeba, Gazpazha,” she says, “Spaseeba.”
“You remember your Russian,” she says. “That is good. You will find a way through. You know you will.”
Jenny feels as though Ylena can read her mind. She’s grateful for her confidence.
Ylena pulls up a chair and sits down beside Jenny.
“I would still like to be one of them,” Jenny says wistfully, nodding at the screen, at the girls in their cells. “To have my number again, to be Fifty.”
Ylena shakes her head. The ‘Faculty’ have thought this through and are very well aware of Jenny’s innermost desires, to be one of the slaves once more. . “You know you cannot be one of them and observe them, as you need to this time. You must be one of us.”
“It feels very odd to be one of you,” Jenny says. “I’m sluzhanka, I was your sluzhanka – vasha sluzhanka.”
Ylena raises an eyebrow at me. “Ah, Fifty!” she says and slowly adds ... “Perhaps I have an idea. Look at you! A Spaniel or a Labrador could not be more attentive and loyal. Or impose herself so much, I think. You know that for your studies you cannot mix work and play. But that does not mean that there cannot be any play.” There is a mischievous twinkle in Ylena’s eye.
Suddenly Jenny is worried that Ylena’s idea of a solution might be worse than Jenny’s idea of the problem! “Spaseeba Gaspazha” she says once more. She understands now that they – the Faculty - understand her only too well and in return for their understanding, patience and cooperation, it is her duty to do all in her power, to complete her investigation properly.
“Now, listen to me, Fifty,” Ylena’s tone is stern but there is warmth behind it. “You will do your work. You will do it for your Gazpazha, if you like, but you will do it. And then, well maybe then,...”
Jenny smiles at her. “Oh no, Fifty,” she says. “Not me.” She peers down, wagging a finger at my whimper of disappointment. “I shan’t always be here when you are. Nor Jo or Gerry or Jonathan or Charlotte, I think, they will all be busy with the course.”
Jenny is puzzled. That’s all of the Faculty.
Ylena sees Jenny’s confusion. “No,” she says, “I’ll talk to Corinne. I think she’ll be happy to look after a teacher’s pet.”
I know that it’s part of the deal. I told Jenny I wouldn’t worry but it’s hard not to. Before, when she was away, I was also away. This time, I’m at home, in familiar surroundings and Jenny is not with me. I guess I am feeling lonely. Wondering what she us up to? Wondering what she is getting involved with? Missing her! Conscious all the time (or so it seems) that I’m here and Jenny isn’t with me.
I can’t help but speculate on what she’s up to. She told me what her work plan would be: that she was going to observe. I’m pretty sure that it will be difficult for her to maintain as much distance between herself and her subject as she would ideally, intellectually, academically, wish.
I get a beer from the fridge. I put on some jazz. Lee Konitz. I want abstract music; something to concentrate on, something I have engage with, use my mind on. Yet the sensuality of the music just reminds me of her. But that’s fine. Maybe that’s something we can share. I’ve always found that my biggest turn-on, was her being turned on. I catch myself smiling. I’m hoping, genuinely hoping that she’s enjoying herself as well as enjoying her work.
© Freddie Clegg & Phil Lane 2010
All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or reposted without permission
All characters fictitious
E-mail: freddie_clegg@yahoo.com
Web Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
CHAPTER 5 : ANGELA’S GNASHES: OCTOBER
“Well, Angela, how are things going?” the Dean of Faculty hails Professor Dawney enthusiastically, as he emerges from a meeting with the Vice-Chancellor and sees her passing the VC’s office, on her way to the library.
Angela knows that he’s not interested in her health and well being. What he wants to know about, is Jennifer McEwan’s project. What he really wants is to be reassured of its potential 4 Star rating. Actually what he really, really wants is for Angela to take full ownership of this particular project which he has been steadily promoting with the Vice-Chancellor. To put her head on the block, so to speak.
For her own part, Angela has been careful to make sure that nothing she says can be misinterpreted. Quite apart from the usual problems of assessing the significance of research in its early stages, she knows enough about Jenny to realise that something could spook her and damage the whole project before she’s published anything at all. The outline that she has given the Dean before his meeting was worded as obliquely as she dared. Unsurprisingly, the Dean has recognised that Angela is holding back.
“Sherry?” he says. It’s not so much an invitation as an instruction to join him. “I’m sure the library can wait.”
As Angela sits down and the Dean simpers through the pleasantries. His smug self satisfaction is increasing Angela’s annoyance. She allows herself a few moments to consider the prospect of the Dean at the hands of one of the staff at Inward Bound. Ylena, she thinks, might have an improving influence on him, if Jenny’s account is anything to go by.
“So,” says the Dean, bringing Angela back to earth, “how are things with that doctoral student of yours. What’s her name? McEwan?”
“Working hard, Dean,” Angela responds, “busy on some further data collection. Still trying to see some sense in the data, I expect.”
Angela has noticed is that this latest project does seem to have caused a few upsets around the McEwan household. It wasn’t what she had intended, you understand? Not at all! But she has overheard some tense telephone calls going on when she’s walked in on Jenny. That, and the occasional, exasperated, “Oh, Joe!”
Angela is rather hoping that at some point Jenny is going to want to discuss the problem with her, which will give her the chance to have a chat with Jenny about the impossible nature of men in general and their unreliability as sexual partners in particular.
“I’m very glad that things seem to be progressing. The VC is very interested. I know we were worried about possible sensationalism in any coverage but we mustn’t let that interfere with the academic thrust.”
Angela is astonished by this. When Jenny’s research proposal had first been discussed, the nervousness over the subject matter had been palpable. Obviously the Vice-Chancellor and the Dean have either rediscovered academic principles, become desperate to show something interesting in the next round of the Research Assessment Exercise or been overwhelmed by prurient interest. She’s not sure which of the last two it actually is. She’s suddenly aware that she’s chewing her lip in irritation. She takes a deep breath, exhales slowly, sips her sherry and starts again.
“Well, Dean, I’ll be in a better position to assess the international position after my meetings In Moscow next week. There are a few papers tabled that seem to be touching on similar areas so we might find ourselves overtaken just as we are about to pass the winning post .”
“Surely, others working in the field means greater opportunity for international recognition? My own work only really got the recognition it deserved once the Americans started their work in the field.”
“It can help, Dean, but there’s always the risk of our studies being pre-empted or worse still having contradictory findings manifest themselves. You know how difficult it is for us to attract doctorate students, and manage to sustain the consistent support that’s needed to build a genuinely world class programme. I can just imagine the sort of support that McEwan would be getting if she was at Yale or Lomonosov.”
“Well, we must see that she gets the resources she needs,” the Dean replies, adding. “Within the bounds of the budget, of course.”
Angela purses her lips in annoyance. “I’m sure the Department will get very good value from this programme Dean.”
To herself she says, “I wonder how the little bitch is getting on?”
A NEW APPROACH TO DATA COLLECTION
Jenny is sitting at her laptop in her room at Inward Bound. She’s just had a shower; she’s wearing the towelling robe from the bathroom. She’s finishing off some of her notes on the behaviour and responses of two of the trainees who have just encountered Ylena for the first time. She’s feeling jealous, remembering the eager submission of one of the girls, and Ylena’s evident appreciation.
Gerry and Corinne come in to the room without knocking. Jenny looks up. They are deep in conversation; it’s almost as though they don’t realise she is there. “I think it’s a very good idea,” Corinne says to Gerry. “It will be nice to have one.”
“That’s what Ylena thought,” Gerry responds. “It’s just lucky that there’s one on-site.” He puts down the bag he’s carrying.
“Excuse me,” says Jenny, a little irritated. “I’m trying to do some work here.” Having decided to get to grips with her work, she wants to get on with it.
Corinne and Gerry take no notice. Instead Gerry reaches into the bag and pulls out a collection of straps and what looks like a pink rubber bone. Without a word to Jenny he has the straps around her head in a moment, the ‘bone’ pulled across her mouth like a bit. “Haarng!” Jenny protests but somehow she isn’t moved to put up more than a token struggle as Gerry tightens the buckles. Jenny tastes the rubber of the bone. The scent of the leather straps fills her nostrils. “There we go, pooch,” says Gerry. He pulls off her bathrobe with little effort, moving her from hand to hand as he untwines the towelling from her arms, leaving her naked. He traps her arms. Corinne takes each of her hands in turn and slips on a leather mitten. The end of each mitten is pulled back and fastened to the wrist cuff, forcing her hands into a fist and robbing her of the use of her fingers. Another broad belt is fastened around her waist. The two of them force Jenny down on to all fours, straps and short chains link her elbows and knees to the belt. Then there’s something else, more leather, clipped to the leather harness around her head, across her nose in front of her face and on the top of her head. She shakes her head to try to prevent them fitting it but she can’t stop them. Corinne and Gerry stand back.
Jenny shakes her head and gives another “Haarng!” through her rubber bone bit.
“Don’t fret, pooch,” Gerry says. Jenny realises that she can’t stand. The chains from the belt to her knees and elbows are so short that she’ll have to stay on all fours.
“Look what I’ve got for you,” Corinne says. She’s holding a collar but it’s not one of the heavy rubber and stainless steel collars that Jenny wore when she was first here; this one is pink leather, decorated with bright silver studs. Corinne buckles it around Jenny’s neck and fastens a leash to a ring on the collar. “There,” she says “isn’t that fine? Now be a good dog and come with me.” She jerks Jenny around until she is kneeling beside her.
Jenny looks up from the floor at Corinne staring down at her.
“Haarng?” she says.
“Good dog,” says Corinne, “Good dog.” She pulls on the lead sets off. Jenny unable to do anything else without being choked by the pull of the leash, shuffles along beside her.
Jenny falls quickly onto the new role that Corinne and Gerry have assigned to her. She tries to keep up as Corinne leads her down the corridor. Other submissives stop and wait quietly with bowed heads as Corinne passes. They don’t seem to notice what has been done to Jenny. They seem just to take it for granted, Jenny thinks to herself, that another woman here is being treated as they are. And that is a relief.
In Corinne’s room, Jenny is introduced to a large wicker basket on the floor near to the foot of Corinne’s bed. “You’ll sleep here,” Corinne explains, “You’ll go back to work tomorrow but if you’re a very good dog, we might let you have some more time like this. Is that good?”
Jenny knows that this is the only opportunity that she will have to object, but she doesn’t want to object. If she can undertake her work and at the same time, let it be clear that she is not part of the Faculty, she will be happy. In reply, she ‘mews’ over her rubber bone gag.
Corinne laughs. “Good puppy!” She turns to Gerry. “You’ll swear she understood every word. We can leave her here to sleep for a bit. I’ll bring her some food up later.” Corinne pats Jenny on the head and loops her leash around the bed post. Jenny knows that with her hands helpless in their mittens she won’t be able to release the leash from the bed post or her collar. She curls up in the basket and watches Corinne and Gerry as they leave. It’s only as the door closes with a click and she turns back that she sees a reflection of herself in Corinne’s wardrobe mirror. The leather pieces that Gerry clipped to her harness have given her a long snout and two floppy ears. With her hands formed into paws by the mittens and the pink rubber bone strapped across her mouth as well, there’s no risk of her being mistaken for a dominant, that’s for sure.
It’s an hour or more before Corinne comes back. Jenny has actually fallen asleep and the first she knows of Corinne’s return is when she awakes to Corinne, crouched by her side, stroking Jenny’s head. Corinne unfastens Jenny’s leash from the bed and leads her across the room to where two metal bowls have been put down on a plastic mat. Corinne unfastens the rubber bone and tosses it back onto Jenny’s basket.
“There you are. Eat up, puppy,” she says.
Jenny looks down at the food in the dish and then up at Corinne. A moment’s defiance wells up in her, “I can’t eat this,” she says.
Corinne looks at her in irritation. It’s not clear if this is because of Jenny’s objection or the fact that she said it. Whichever is the case, Corinne is very quick to respond. She runs her hand down the leash, swings it and slaps Jenny on her buttocks with the leash end. It’s made of thick, stiff leather and stings painfully. “Ow!” Jenny yelps.
“Bad dog!” Corinne scolds, “bad dog!” She continues to spank Jenny vigorously with the leash and to stop the beating, Jenny submits and pushes her mouth into the bowl, as best she can. It’s almost impossible to eat with her leather muzzle getting in the way but she manages a few mouthfuls of the mix of meat gravy and biscuits. It seems to satisfy Corinne and, Jenny reflects, it doesn’t taste too bad. Jenny takes a lap or two of water in the same way.
“Now, back in your basket,” Corinne orders with a pointed finger.
Jenny does as she’s told and curls up on the blanket. She looks up at Corinne who’s smiling with approval. With her leather mittened ‘paws’, Jenny picks up the pink bone and wedges it in her mouth. The taste of the rubber mingles with the flavours of the food. She lays down and is asleep in moments.
Jenny wakes up. She’s feeling incredibly stiff - she’s been sleeping, curled up in a basket. She aches all over. Her mouth is full of the taste of the rubber bone; she fell asleep with it still in her mouth. Her face feels sore where the stiff leather edge of the muzzle has pressed against her cheek.
She can’t believe how easily she has accepted what has been done to her, although she has never fantasised about animal play before. As she thinks about the events of the past few hours, she feels nothing except gratitude for the way Ylena, Corinne and Gerry have responded to her needs.
She can hear Corinne in the bathroom. She’s desperate for a pee. After last night’s beating with the end of the leash she knows that asking to use the loo won’t be welcomed. She knows that she’ll just have to make herself understood without speaking. If I go along with this puppy play, she thinks, I’ll have to get used to just barking, whining or growling. She’s not at all sure how she can make it work but she has no alternative but to try and her full bladder is providing all the encouragement she needs to play her new part as well as she can!
Corinne emerges from the bathroom, wrapped in towels. She looks down at Jenny as she scampers by, heading for the loo. Jenny practically chokes as Corinne reaches down and grabs her by the collar.
“No, no, no!” she exclaims. “Not in there!”
Jenny can’t believe that Corrine will make her go outside, but she does. She slips the lead on Jenny’s collar and guides her to the French windows, out onto the terrace in the cold morning air and over the lawn with the cold grass damp against her knees across towards one of the flower beds. Jenny knows what she has to do. It’s even more humiliating than when she first had to pee in front of Jo in her cell on her very first night at Inward Bound.
Jenny stays down on all fours and spreads her legs as wide as she can, letting a stream of pee fall to the ground. It feels wonderful in spite of the humiliation. “Good dog,” says Corinne leading her back to the terrace. “You only have to scratch at the door if you want to go, you know.”
Before she lets Jenny back into the bedroom she wipes her off with some toilet paper. That at least is an acknowledgement of the difficulties which come with this sort of game. Much though Jenny might like to be able to, she can’t lick herself clean.
“Now,” says Corinne, “Stay there. Stay!”
Jenny manages to manoeuvre herself into an approximation of a dog’s sitting position, kneeling with her front paws between her knees.
Corinne pats her on the head, says “Stay!” and starts to get dressed.
She throws on some clothes in the most casual manner but at the end of it looks just like she’s stepped out of a magazine. She’s one of those women who looks cool and efficient without any effort. She crouches down beside Jenny. “Are you happy with this?” she asks. “Does this help?”
Jenny nods and then barks an accepting response, “Rowf!”
“Good,” says Corinne. “Well, we’ll keep things like this between you and the staff but I guess you’ll need to be able to stand up and use your hands if you’re going to do any work, won’t you?”
Jenny is almost disappointed. She drops her head to one side.
“Don’t be cheeky!” Corinne warns. Jenny knows that she is just as resistant to pushy subs, as Josephine had been when she’d warned her against ‘topping from the bottom’. Corinne reaches down and releases Jenny’s elbows and knees from the belt so that she can stand up. She unfastens the mittens, freeing her hands and takes off the muzzle. “You’ll keep the collar,” Corinne says. “I quite liking having a pet around, but you need to get on with your work. All right?”
Jenny nods. She knows this is going to be a workable approach.
Corinne smiles. “All right then,” she says, picking up the end of the leash. “You’d better follow me. Oh, and put your hands behind your back until you need them.”
Jenny does as she is told. Corinne leads the way out of the room and into the corridor. Jenny smiles. If she had still been wearing her leather muzzle and could prick up her leather ears, they’d be standing proud.
Jenny spends most of her time observing, naked and wearing her collar. It doesn’t matter; the place is warm and she’s used to being without clothes, especially here.
The faculty take no more notice of her than they do any of the participants and the participants take no notice of her at all. That’s hardly surprising; they are all in the early stages of learning how to cope with their surroundings, learning to obey, learning to accept and endure punishment, learning to cope with a reality that is almost certainly well beyond their fantasy.
Jenny makes a note to herself that this is an area which needs exploration; the effect of expectations on the perception of reality.
Much of what the participants are put through corresponds exactly to the experiences Jenny originally endured. She hadn’t thought that it would be so easy to draw parallels between her own experiences and those of the participants but Corinne and Charlotte have worked out an effective regime and they seem to carry it out with great consistency.
Jenny does her initial interviews. She thought it was going to be more difficult than it turned out to be. Charlotte suggests that they make it seem like some sort of interrogation as but at least Jenny gets to play “Good Cop” to Jo’s “Bad Cop”. And, once she gets started, she finds it easy to sink herself in the process.
Just go through the sequence, she tells herself. Ask the questions. Collect the data. Make the observations. There’s time enough afterwards for thinking about what it all means.
So that’s how she spends the whole week. Day time observations, interviews and recording. Night time curled up at the foot of Corinne’s bed. It’s actually working out surprisingly well, thinks Jenny.
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Footnotes.
1. The VC: A “Vice-Chancellor” is the chief executive of a British university
2. A method of rating the significance of research. “4*” implies work of international significance. http://www.rae.ac.uk/results/intro.aspx has further information.
3. Lomonsov : Moscow State University
JOE REFLECTS ON THE EXPLORER’S RETURN
Jenny is back after her first week. She seems very happy and relaxed and - fulfilled. She was really keen to talk about her week. That surprised me, but I am glad that she feels she can. Actually, I am relieved that she feels she can share this with me. She was full of how much she learned and how the data was really what she hoped for and how well, what she had recorded this time corresponded to her own experience, last time. Her enthusiasm for the project was infectious - and she was really keen to make love when she got back, too! She’d barely got through the door before she had her arms around my neck and was leading me upstairs. I guess watching people in an erotic situation for a week gets your juices flowing, no matter how good an academic you are!
The down side is that the Inward Bound experiences seem to cast a very long shadow over us and that disturbs me. After all she’s been through, I'd have thought she'd have had enough of them, apart from collecting the data for her research. I can’t tell if it is the people there or the experiences which have become addictive.
She received an email this morning. Now she's thinking about nothing else again.
Apparently, she says, her tattoo isn't finished. I know she said that when she came back first of all but – jeez – there's hardly a part of her back that isn't covered with ink. Sure, it looks good – actually better than I thought was possible – and she's really proud of it – but more? Sometimes, I just wish she could get over the whole experience and the two of us could get back to normal.
Anyway she had this email from, what's his name? – Jonathan - saying it's time for some more work. I can't say I'm happy about it, especially since most of the places I've seen doing tattoos seem pretty sleazy. And, like I said, it just seems as though Inward Bound are trying to keep their hands on to her.
But one thing's for sure. If she's going down to see him, I'm going too.
Ink Inc is a surprise. It's the studio where Jonathan works; between Regent’s Park and Camden Town. I'd expected a sort of shop, I suppose, maybe under a railway arch somewhere, pictures in the window of bare backs with blue red and black designs across them but this is as different from my expectations as it could possibly be.
I’m ready to tell Jenny that this isn't a good idea; that I’m not letting her go in. (I'm not sure what she’ll say to that. I mean, she says she's a submissive but she still seems to have a mind of her own.)
The studio looks more like the offices of an advertising agency than a tattoo parlour. It’s in a 1930's style building that wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of “Poirot”. The waiting room is clean and bright, lots of Art Deco style and a friendly receptionist who offers us tea while we wait - a bit like going to see a private doctor or dentist.
Jonathan appears after about fifteen minutes – we'd been early anyway, Jenny had been so keen to get there that she'd insisted on us leaving plenty of time spare at every step of the journey. Jonathan turns out to be Chinese, from London (as far as I can tell): very sparky and self assured.
“Hi,” he says, “Jonathan Tan. You must be Joseph?”
Jenny looks surprised. I wonder why. It’s only later that I find out she never knew his surname. He'd just been 'Jonathan'.
There's something very likeable about him. He seems to have a very open, pleasant personality that makes it easy to be comfortable with him. He’s definitely not what I was expecting, when I think about how Jenny fell into his hands.
I tell him how much I like the work he's done on Jenny's back.
“Mmm,” he says. “She is a good canvas.”
Now that sounds a bit strange to me. As if she is an object rather than a person. But Jenny doesn't seem bothered. She just blushes and lowers her eyes. Somehow, I feel like I’m intruding.
Jonathan senses my discomfort. “Look, you're welcome to watch while I do this,” he says. “It will take a bit of time, but you're welcome to come into the studio, really.”
I’m about to say, “I'm coming in to look after Jenny, no matter how long it takes” when a stunning looking girl appears.
“Hi, Ros,” Jonathan says. “This is Joseph and Jenny.” Ros nods and grins, friendly. “Ros and I set this up together when we decided that we wanted to make our lives in London.”
I’m a bit surprised. I assumed Jonathan wasn't in a relationship, for some reason
“Hi,” she says. “I hope you like the studio.” Her accent is American. She sounds a bit like a Californian girl I used to know. She's tall, taller than Jonathan, with pronounced Chinese features apart from her black hair which is really curly. Jenny doesn't say anything. Perhaps I stared too hard at her, trying to work her out.
“Well,” I say, “it’s not what I expected.” Maybe I sound a bit sharp. I’m still not completely happy about the whole enterprise. No one says anything about Inward Bound but I’m wondering if Jonathan emailed on his own initiative?
“I guess I’d have to say that it's what our sort of clients look for.” She turns to Jonathan. “I'm taking a break for a while,” she says. “My next appointment isn't for another half hour. Are you starting with Jenny now?”
Jonathan nods.
Ros turns to me. “Well why don't you and I share a coffee. It's hard work waiting around in the studio while one of us is working.”
All right. I know. One minute, I'm one hundred percent protective and consumed with worry on Jenny’s behalf and the next moment, my tongue's hanging out thanks to a stunning looking woman who wants to take me away, to have coffee with me. I am going to have to confess to inconsistency – and to being a man!
“Thanks very much, Mrs Tan, I'd like that,” I say, politely. Now Jenny is looking a bit concerned. Well it won't hurt if she has something to be just a little concerned about, I think. It introduces a little symmetry into the situation!
“Great,” says Ros, “but it's Ms Buchanan. I haven't married him.”
Jenny looks even more worried as Jonathan leads her out of the waiting room. I wonder for a moment if I should stop them but Ros says, “Let's have that coffee,” and by the time I look back Jenny and Jonathan had gone.
“So is it just you and Jonathan here?” I ask. Ros is on the far side of the room, fixing coffee with a precision that made me think she takes more pleasure in coffee than I ever do.
“No,” she looks back at me over her shoulder and shakes her head. The curls of her hair bounce in response. “There's four of us in the team - another tattooist, Andy, and Nicola, who does the piercing.” She picks up the two cups of coffee, brings them across to the low table I’m sitting beside and puts them down.
As she does so, the door opens and a young, slim, smartly dressed man with a neatly trimmed goatee beard comes in together with an elfin girl in her early twenties. “And this is they!” Ros waves as the two of them reply with 'good mornings' and disappear into one of the rooms that opened off reception.
“Did she do Jenny's piercings?”
Ros thinks for a moment. “No. Jenny got hers at Inward Bound didn't she? Nicola's not really done anything with them. Not really her thing.”
“I know how she feels,” I say with a sigh.
“Really? I assumed you were quite keen – for Jenny, I mean.”
“Sorry, did I say that out loud? Well, to be honest I'm confused by it all.”
I find it easy to talk to Ros, I don't know why. Jenny and I have not always it easy to talk about some things in our relationship. I would hate to do anything to hurt or upset her. I've seen too much of all that. But perhaps, you can be too close to someone to talk with complete freedom about everything? When you are close enough to understand that careless words can wound and the deeper and more intimate is the issue of the moment, the more careful you have to be, so that your words build the relationship and not build obstacles between you?
“You should try it. A tattoo or piercing. You don't have any do you?”
“No, I don't. And I'm not planning to get any either.”
“That sounds very definite. Maybe you should be a bit more open to things.”
Ros's bluntness is a bit disconcerting and I guess I snap back in response. “Hey, I think I've been pretty 'open' to what she's been up to so far.”
Ros looks apologetic. “Sorry,” she says. “I was out of line. I hadn't realised it was such a touchy subject. Look, Jonathan and I are pretty open with each other about our turn-ons. I forget sometimes other people don't do that. You’re not really a 'scene' person at all are you?”
“Scene?”
“The whole SM thing. Doms & subs. Bondage. Submission. The Kink Community.”
“You make it sound like a movement. Like some sort of big club?”
She smiles and nods. “It seems like that to us but I'm not trying to make you feel like an outsider.”
Outsider is certainly the right word. I guess I’ve felt like that since Jenny began to tell me about her experiences. I feel I should have been there, to make sure she was safe and deep down, I’m disappointed, if I am absolutely honest. I am disappointed that there is an important part of her life that doesn't include me. That did not grow from our relationship together.
Ros goes on. “Look I don't want to evangelise this or anything, but you're going to have to at least make sure that you and Jenny think about this the same way. I can see how she feels . You must know it's important to her? If it was not, she would not have gone through the Inward Bound experience. That's pretty heavy stuff by anyone's opinion. You could see it when she went off with Jonathan just now. The look on her face - anticipation and anxiety – says it all. I've seen it lots of times.” Ros smiled briefly and shook her head. “Sometimes, ... poor Jonathan....”
As Ros talks I realise that she has more than an observer's interest …
“But seriously. You should think about it – if nothing else it might let you feel something that Jenny feels.”
That last remark makes some sort of sense, perhaps the only thing that has made complete sense this morning. But surely I know how Jenny feels, or do I?
Ros looks steadily across at me. She is faintly intimidating. It feels uncomfortable, but not disturbing. There is something compelling about the combination of her oriental features and her American directness and bounce. I could – just – imagine letting her near me with a tattoo needle. And actually, the elfin Nicola could have attractions as well. Whoa! Now just wait a minute! Is this mindset infectious?
I bring myself back to the discussion. “Well, there's something in that,” is all I say.
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Footnotes.
1. “Poirot”. Celebrated British TV adventures of the famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. Created by the crime novelist Agatha Christie and set largely in the 1930’s
© Freddie Clegg & Phil Lane 2010
All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or reposted without permission
All characters fictitious
E-mail: freddie_clegg@yahoo.com
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CHAPTER 7: MOSCOW NIGHTS: FEBRUARY
Professor Angela Dawney is in Moscow. She is walking from the Hotel Tatiana, along Stremyanniy Pereulok towards the Paveletskaya Metro Station. It’s cold and grey - minus 5 degrees, Angela guesses - but at least there is no wind chill - and besides, she’s wrapped up warm. In her heavy coat and fur hat, she’s indistinguishable from any of the Russians sharing the street with her.
Angela is in the city to attend an academic conference. It’s on something she knows a lot about. She’s not presenting a paper this time but it’s a chance to meet up with colleagues and to find out a bit about what happening in other universities. “New Approaches to Statistical Analysis and Inference in Psychology” is being held at Moscow Old University. The University is a gracious classical building standing on Mokhovaya Ulitsa, six stops away along Line One. For Angela, the journey is an opportunity for one of her favourite indulgences; a ride on the Moscow Metro.
In most cities, the Metro merely takes commuters and tourists to their destinations but in Moscow, the Metro is a destination. It was an integral part of Stalin’s grand plan for the rebuilding of Moscow and the platforms and concourses were constructed with extraordinary imagination and built with infinite care. Stations are lit with chandeliers, floored with mosaics and decorated with gold - it is a collection of subterranean palaces. At Paveletskaya, as she joins the escalator, Angela looks up at Pavel Korin’s mosaic of Red Square, Lenin’s mausoleum and St Basil’s. It’s a feast for the eyes.
The Metro is one of two experiences Angela always enjoys in Moscow. The other – and more important – is her friend Anatoly Kustensky. Anatoly will meet her after the afternoon seminars close and the two of the will go to dinner and afterwards? Who knows? Anatoly is the only man that Angela has ever let inside her knickers. Angela has hopes for what might take place, at the end of the evening.
Angela has known Anatoly for many years now, ever since they first met at the Greenham Women’s Peace Camp in the late 1980’s. Angela was a young idealist then, about to go to University. She was, with the many others, protesting at the installation of Cruise Missiles by the United States Air Force at the Greenham Common Air Base. Anatoly, dashing and handsome, in his late twenties, had been keeping an eye on “developments” at Greenham, on behalf of the Soviet Government. His position as a KGB officer was something he kept to himself, something he did not share with any of his lovers. Not in England at least.
Over the intervening years, Angela kept her links with the peace movement. She felt it was almost a matter of professional pride, as someone concerned with madness, to be naturally opposed to war. And she kept her links with Anatoly, too.
Anatoly also kept in touch with his former colleagues, though some of those weren’t as peaceably minded as Angela’s friends. He became a very successful entrepreneur with interests in oil, gas, minerals, engineering and security. And then there was his other business; a very special employment agency. You only have the opportunity to recruit from the Agency if you have been recommended to Anatoly and you only get on the books of the Agency after Anatoly has come looking for you!
Angela’s afternoon session at the University is over and she packs away “A New Evaluation of Mood’s Median Test for Small Sample Analysis” in the back of her mind. Ahead, in the entrance foyer stands Anatoly. Tall and muscular, he has lost none of his vitality, charm nor his looks with the passing of years. Angela was attracted to him at Greenham eighteen years ago and she is still attracted to him now.
They embrace. It’s as if the years fall away. The desire re-awakens. Angela can feel her own pulse quicken. He suggests dinner. She agrees. They take Anatoly’s BMW to the Central House of Writers in Povarskaya Ulitsa. In Soviet times, this establishment was the exclusive preserve of the Writers Union and boasts music, carved wood interior decoration and excellent cuisine. Over the meal, the two friends catch up. Angela talks and talks; the talk a substitute for touching. It’s too public for intimate discussion but she feels she can unburden herself about her recent adventures.
“Anatoly, I want to ask you about something strange. What do you think of this? Last year, an American phoned me to arrange an interview.”
“Well, they do get everywhere, Americans …..”
“Sure.” She looks around, anxious to be sure they are not being overheard. Anatoly smiles encouragingly. He knows that the best way to avoid being listened to is not to look as though you are saying anything of consequence. “But eventually the man I had spoken to stopped me in the street quite unexpectedly. I was bundled into a car with some other men. They told me I was being arrested and took me away ….”
“What??”
“Absolutely!”
“But why? It’s a long time since your cruise missile protests. I mean, sure you’ll still be on their lists, of course... But, was that what they were interested in?”
“Well, no. I don’t know. I mean, that would at least make the sort of stupid sense that these people believe in. But it wasn’t that, at all. They were interested in one of my postgrads, and interested in my visits here. And they were interested in you.”
“Me? And one of your students?” Anatoly is busy trying to recollect if there is anyone from Angela’s university that he has been involved with, either professionally or personally. He is having no success. “Who is she, anyway?”
“She’s called Jennifer McEwan.”
The name means nothing to Anatoly. He shrugs and says so. “I don’t know her. What did these policemen think I was doing with your student ? ”
“Well they didn’t say. They just kept going round and round about you and the Russians and her research and how you were supposed to have put me up to sending her….”
“Angela, this is completely crazy. Even for security services. What had you got this student – McEwan - doing for goodness sake?”
Angela tries to gather herself. She’s conscious she’s been gabbling. It’s not her usual style. “Well she was - is - studying the effects of stress and BDSM play.” Anatoly looks quizzical. “There is this organisation in the UK which offers what you might call BDSM adventure holidays. They put the participants through some consensual slave training routines, that sort of thing and I thought it would be an ideal experimental situation.”
“And you weren’t playing any games at all with your student were you, Angela?”
Angela blushes but presses on. “Anyway these people seemed to think that you were interested in Inward Bound - that’s the company – or were somehow involved.”
“Well, I’m not and for goodness sake, just who was this postgraduate of yours? Someone from your Royal Family?”
“I know, it’s completely ridiculous. The student is a nobody, in that sense, and I mean I couldn’t see how you could be involved but, nevertheless they kept me locked up for several days before taking me back home and dumping me on my front door step in the middle of the night, I might add.”
“Look, Angela, I’m so sorry but really I had, I mean I can’t think what they were thinking of. After all, I’m just a businessman now ….”
“Yes I know but I thought I should speak to you in person when I saw you next. In case you had any trouble from them. If you travelled to the US or the UK …..”
“Hmmm, well, thanks for warning me. I’ll maybe have a word with some friends in our Foreign Ministry, just to be sure.”
“Yes, please do that because I would hate it for you to fall into their hands” – Angela stretches across the table and squeezes Anatoly’s hand to reassure him, to let him know that she is on his side.
Anatoly’s face shows complete surprise at Angela’s fantastic tale. It’s like a cold war fossil come to life. Anatoly’s mind seizes on the information and works very quickly indeed as he remembers another meal, this time in London, with a man called Clegg who was very anxious to know if Anatoly was interested in an organisation called Inward Bound.
Dinner over, they return to the Hotel Tatiana.
Angela, filled with anticipation of Anatoly’s body, invites him to her room for coffee. It’s soon ignored in favour of an exercise in animal passion, as they fall upon each other.
Tearing each other’s clothes off, Angela can feel how wet she is and Anatoly can smell her arousal: Angela is soon on her back and Anatoly’s penis is driving into her, sending her to the heights of orgasm. She comes. He comes. They relax in post coital bliss. Why, thinks Angela, just why am I so randy? He’s only a man for goodness sake.
Then her rational mind points out that it’s that time of the month. She is ovulating! That’s why she is so randy. And she is lesbian and lesbians don’t need contraceptive precautions, unless they are being fucked by a man of course! But lesbians don’t fuck men, do they?
She is about to speak when Anatoly’s tongue fills her mouth. He rolls her onto her back once more and spreads her legs. Angela’s rational mind engages with the situation and cries out weakly in protest, but her instincts are too strong. She feels his penis once more advancing down her vagina. She feels him bottom out at the entrance to her cervix. She feels him beginning to fuck her again. Slowly. Strongly. He is going to take his pleasure inside her again. There is nothing she can do to stop him. She responds, rocking her hips towards him in delicious harmony. She might as well. There will be no stopping until orgasm – untill they each orgasm! Presently, during the throes of her next orgasm, she feels his ejaculation. The injection of hot, potent sperm right into her womb. What if she comes back from Moscow pregnant? Oh! Oh! Oh! “Fuck!” she yelps.
“Mmmmm, Fuck!” replies Anatoly, wonderfully misunderstanding her response.
Anatoly returns to his flat next morning. He expects his wife and daughter, Sveta and Alana, back from St Petersburg in the evening.
He’s sitting on the balcony, looking out across the garden square at the rear of his building, thinking about what he learned from Angela.
He thinks back over the meal with Clegg and how Clegg seemed to be warning him away from interfering in the UK. Maybe what he was really saying was to stay away from this Inward Bound business? Anatoly didn’t pay much attention at the time. Freddie always seemed to be worried that folk were trying to fish in his pond but Anatoly always felt that English girls (with the possible exception of Angela) weren’t really worth the trouble. At the time, he’d put the whole thing down to Freddie’s usual paranoia. Now, he thinks, there could be more to it.
If Freddie has gone to this much effort, then he really must see some potential in then Inward Bound operation. And that is not going to be for consensual BDSM holidays if Anatoly knows anything at all about Clegg.
So, Anatoly thinks, the people who lifted Angela were Clegg’s and Clegg is very keen to detect any penetration of Inward Bound. Therefore he, Anatoly, needs to know a lot more about it.
Anatoly and Sveta Kustensky are a striking couple.
Anatoly is in terrific shape. He has a bodybuilder’s physique, with not one ounce of surplus fat on him. He is very good company, he has a ready smile that reveals even white teeth but he also has a quiet and unmistakeably authoritative presence. You straighten yourself up and measure your words more carefully, when you met him.
He is an interesting mixture of attitudes. He is traditional and loves his country. He has travelled widely for the government. He’s “at home” when he’s abroad but he will always be a Russian. He will never think of himself as “mid-Atlantic” or “pan-European.” On the other hand, he is progressive. He breathed a sigh of relief when the old Soviet State collapsed; seizing the opportunities to carve out a business empire for himself.
Business in Russia can be tough but you don’t cross Anatoly. He is strictly honest and upright in his dealings – and you had better be, too. He remains very well connected to the people who matter, when the chips are down.
Then again, while he is strictly honest, not all his enterprises are strictly legal. He has indulged some of his fantasies to good business effect. His “special employment agency” – most people would call it slave trading - is a good example.
For a slave trader, he is very anxious about the way his boys and girls are used. He provides a full after sales service and expects them to be well cared for. He ran into problems with a client once, who thought that purchase bought rights without responsibilities. Shortly after this came to Anatoly’s attention, the client had his tax papers called in and he is now in prison serving a long stretch. He was guilty, of course. It’s just that his behaviour with Anatoly’s protégés brought matters to a head very quickly indeed.
He served as a salutary example to others. Anatoly has had no cause for concern ever since.
He regards the Clegg Organisation as old fashioned and casual. Classic English amateurs! He doesn’t really understand how they go on getting away with the things that they do. A bit like those other amateurs in the Circus. He finds himself increasingly, almost irrationally, irritated when they bumble across his path, as he sees it.
Anatoly and Sveta met like many couples do, at work. In their case, they were both working for the KGB. Her special talent was “interviews” although her interviewees would describe it as interrogation. She is tough, sexy, terrifying, subtle and intuitive. She is also very beautiful; tall athletic and with the grace of a gymnast. She has a swarthy complexion and dark hair. She has high cheek bones and her black hair is free from grey – a sure sign of some Mongolian blood, somewhere in her family past, they say.
Sveta is happy for Anatoly to take centre stage but she is always there, just a step behind him. Sveta is very loyal to Anatoly and he to her in his own fashion, as the song goes. Sveta knows that loyalty doesn’t always mean exclusivity, but she demands complete honesty about any “physical adventures” he might have – and Anatoly has to accept that there will always be a price to be paid.
Several months ago, Anatoly “tried out” a beautiful black girl at the end of her training. She had carefully braided hair with silver beads at the end. Sveta’s price was characteristically ingenious and memorable: she had the girl’s head shaven and then had her roots lasered – so she is now permanently smooth. And Anatoly? He had his head shaven too. Sveta has not given him permission to grow his hair again and he had been wise enough not to ask: after all, he does not want to get a life sentence, as a reward for impatience. After all it was bad enough being beaten with the whip Sveta had made of the girl’s braids.
UNEXPECTED EVENING ENTERTAINMENT
That evening, Anatoly and Sveta retire early. Sveta has a surprise for Anatoly – two actually.
“So, tell me Anatoly,” she begins with a casual aside, “how was Angela?”
“Angela?” Anatoly is never sure how much his wife knows and how much she guesses.
“Tolya!”
“Yes, well she was fine. Yes, fine. You know how things are with Angela.”
“Sure, I know how things are with Angela,” repeats Sveta. “A lesbian who lets my husband screw her! That’s how things are, aren’t they? Right Tolya?”
Anatloy decides honesty is the best policy. He’s normally honest and he is absolutely honest with his wife. Especially when, as now, he is strapped down across their bed with his backside nicely elevated over a pile of cushions. “Sure,” he says.
“Hmmmm,” muses Sveta. “Good. I wanted an excuse. I have brought something just for you.”
Anatoly tenses, expecting pain but relaxes when Sveta rubs his bottom with a warm damp cloth. He relaxes and is taken completely off guard when Sveta lands a birch switch across both his buttocks at once! For several minutes she plays the fiery, stinging twigs over his thighs, his back, his bum.
The heat builds. Sveta pauses and wipes his skin once more but this time the warm damp cloth bights, too. It’s been soaked in brine and instantly, the stinging Anatloy feels is increased to a maddening degree. He squeezes his buttocks together and strains at the straps but He is held just where he is. Panting. Squirming.
Sveta’s lips are at his ear; “Do you know what Tolya?”
“No ….” Anatoly gasps and draws his breath in the respite. “What?”
“Alana is trying to start a family. They have been trying for several months, in fact over a year but nothing is happening so I have arranged for them to see a specialist. To give nature a helping hand!” Sveta sees nothing odd about discussing family business with her husband strapped over their bed with a birch striped arse. “And do you know something else?”
“But that’s wonderf …” Anatoly starts. “No what?”
“Alana will need help in the house. But I’m not leaving my career to be a babushka. Alana will need someone to stay home one hundred percent of the time, with her and the baby but it’s not going to be me. She needs a nanny. Reliable. Strong. Fit. Intelligent. Someone who will stay the course, Anatoly!” Sveta senses that Anatoly’s attention is wavering. She deals another couple of stripes to his backside. “I also want someone who will be with the growing family long term. Someone who won’t go away. Go find someone!”
Anatoly grunts. Sveta’s not sure if it’s a grunt of agreement, discomfort or irritation. She doesn’t care.
“Now, I’m going to bed in the guest room,” she announces. “You can stay here and make plans. Here is something to help.”
Sveta picks up the switch once more and slowly paints ten more fiery lines across his skin, from Anatoly’s knees up to his lower back.”
“AHHHHH! That stings!” Anatoly complains.
“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” Sveta agrees. She takes the warm brine cloth and lays it carefully across his bum. However Anatoly wriggles he can’t dislodge it. It stays there, burning. “Goodnight, Tolya sleep well!” Sveta kisses him softly on the crown of his shaven head and then leaves the room, gently closing the door on her restrained, sweating, writhing husband.
In the small hours of the morning, Anatoly’s torment eases sufficiently for him to think about something other than the results of his beating.
First there’s the problem that Sveta wants him to consider; help for Alana. That’s only half of it though. The other problem is Clegg and whatever he’s up to.
Somehow Clegg’s organisation and Anatoly’s keep crossing paths. There was the business when they mistakenly abducted Alana. There’s whatever Clegg is up to in Kushtia. And now this business with Angela. It’s pretty obvious that Clegg is behind it. “And while I’m thinking about it – damn my arse hurts,” Anatoly thinks, “ - while I‘m thinking about it I’m still not convinced Clegg wasn’t the cause of that girl Trish being rescued. It would be just like him to look after his own. I never got her back. Clegg didn’t find a replacement for her either, There wasn’t anything to make up for the mistaken kidnapping of his daughter. Clegg really ought to answer some questions. Or somebody else ought to answer some questions on his behalf.”
Maybe just maybe there was a way to solve the two problems with one answer …
CLEGG’S CONCERNS
Freddie Clegg is deep in thought. He’s still not happy with what’s going on at Inward Bound. Larry gave him an update earlier in the day. Larry seemed pretty upbeat about progress but, for Freddie, there are still big questions about the McEwan girl in his mind. The “interrogation” that Connie had insisted on didn’t prove anything and he still isn’t sure about the role of that Professor. What was her name? Oh, yes, Dawney.
They could try having another chat, Freddie supposes, but would that help?
He stares out across the office. It’s empty now but perhaps he’ll talk to a few people in the morning. It’s still possible that there is more to the McEwan thing than meets the eye. The whole affair still has the distinctive paw marks of the Russian bear all over it. He wouldn’t be surprised if Anatoly was trying something to get his own back over the Trish debacle. Put McEwan into Inward Bound, and have her fuck up that relationship plus feed back to Anatoly some juicy titbits on Clegg’s operations as useful intelligence. That sounded just like the devious Russian. It wasn’t hard to imagine him coming up with a plant like McEwan. A handler like Dawney would be classic KGB operations too.
They’d kept quiet during their interrogation and McEwan had certainly convinced Connie that she didn’t know what was going on. Of course that doesn’t mean she wasn’t involved, did it? Clegg grunts and scowls. Double bluff, double cross, double back. He doesn’t like this at all.
However, he can understand Anatoly still being pissed about Tricia. Anger, a sense of betrayal, a desire for revenge; he understands all of those. Any one of them would prompt Anatoly to cause problems. Slipping McEwan under the radar as a sleeper that doesn’t even know she’s sleeping, run by Dawney who thinks she’s working for Mother Russia, is grade A Kushtensky as far as Freddie is concerned.
Freddie doesn’t like sitting back quietly and waiting to see what happens. Maybe a little, say, intervention is required; something that will keep the Russians off his back.
...........................................................................................................................
Footnotes.
1. Hotel Tatiana: www.hotel-tatiana.ru
2. Mood’s Median Test: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_test
3. Greenham Common: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenham_Common_Women's_Peace_Camp
4. The Circus : the headquarters of the British secret intelligence services in the 1960’s
5. Babushka is the Russian name for a grandmother who, traditionally, would stay at home to help look after her grandchildren
6. The misadventures of Trish. See Market Forces by Freddie Clegg. Chapters 68 and 73
CHAPTER 8: THE UNEXPLAINED: MAY
“Did you get that phone call?” I call out to Jenny, as she gets in from the University.
Jenny stows her bag under the table in the hall. “What call? I don’t think so.” She picks up the envelopes from that morning’s post. I went through it when I came back from work. She will find it’s the usual stuff: a couple of bills, junk mail, yet another letter from the bank saying that they’ve adjusted their interest rates.
“Someone was trying to reach you. Called here just before lunch. I told them you were at work. Gave them your mobile and the office number. Thought it might have been one of your friends from Suffolk.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth I realise I have used the wrong tone. It will sound unkind and dismissive. Jenny patiently ignores my barbed remarks. Things have been getting difficult again lately. It’s partly what’s been going on at Inward Bound. That and my next trip abroad which is only a few weeks away. I will be away in June and then again in November. Things always get a bit strained between us when I have to go away. “No, nothing.” Jenny puts her head around the lounge door and finds me sprawled on the couch, beer in hand, flicking through the channels on the TV. She comes across and sits on the floor beside me. “Tough day?”
I toss the remote down on the coffee table, leaving the TV tuned to News24. I feel guilty because I have not made any attempt to prepare a meal for us. “No, not really; I was able to finish my report and distribute it on email. It should keep the office happy for a bit. How about you?”
“OK. Angela’s fussing but that’s normal. Quiet day really. I had the mobile on all the time though. No one called.”
“They’ll find you if it was important, I guess.” I think back to the call. It had been a woman, foreign. She’d almost seemed surprised that anyone had answered the phone. I was left feeling uneasy but I could not explain to myself why I should feel that way. “Oh, and I picked up your parcel from the Post Office when I went down into town this afternoon. It’s in the spare room. More books?”
Jenny nods. She had ordered an odd collection of psychological papers and back numbers of Second Skin and she had been anxious to get her hands on them so she could press on with her research. I reach down and stroke her neck. It’s a placatory gesture. I know the “Suffolk” remark was off side. She arches her head back. “Mmm,” she says. “That’s nice,” and I feel I have been forgiven, once again.
“Good. Now, you go check your parcel and I’ll fix you a drink. Then you can cook.”
Jenny seems to like it when I tell her what to do, but I still find it difficult to take a “dominant” role. On the occasions when I can overcome my reticence, Jenny always seems to finds it a real turn on. “Yes, sir,” she says with a smile. She kisses me on the cheek and heads upstairs and I feel another pang of guilt for being so conventional, so un-adventurous.
In the room Jenny uses for her study, she finds the parcel sitting on her desk and opens it. It’s just what she expected. She adds the articles and magazines to the pile. As she does so, she stops and thinks. She was sure there had been a copy of Second Skin on top of the pile. She remembered the cover photograph on the magazine: a girl wearing a scarlet and black corset. So! Joe has been having a quick look while she’s been out. Ah well, that’s a good sign, she thinks. That is progress! She wants to jot herself a note, just a reminder to check the new articles against the list of items she still has to read, but where is her pen? Jenny is certain that she left it on the desk but finds it only after a search on the floor. It doesn’t matter; it’s only an old ballpoint but it’s annoying, to have to look for it. And where are the post-its? They turn up in the desk drawer.
“I think my brain’s seizing up,” Jenny says as she sits down beside me and accepts the gin and tonic I have poured for her; it could be early onset Alzheimer’s!”
“Gin should help that,” I reply, teasing her. “You won’t forget any less but it won’t worry you so much. What have you lost now?”
“Oh, it’s all right. Just my pen and some other things turned up in the wrong places, I am sure I did not leave them, in the places where I found them. You didn’t move anything, when you put that parcel up there?”
“No, not at all. Actually I looked for your pen when I took the parcel up. I was going to write you a note but I couldn’t see it on the desk. Then the phone went and…”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Jenny replies. “I expect I just knocked it down.”
Privately, Jenny is hoping that her husband’s curiosity has been aroused and that this is evidence of his furtive exploration of the world she is researching, the worlds where she is most at home. If true, this would be progress, she thinks. Jenny takes a sip of gin and soon the problem is forgotten. Neither Jenny nor Joe imagine that someone else may have been in the house; someone interested in Jenny and the work she is doing; someone who should really have been more careful not to leave traces of their visit.
It’s Friday. Jenny McEwan calls to see Professor Dawney, her research supervisor. Because of what has happened in the past, there is a tension which neither of them is prepared to acknowledge. Each blames the other for things that happened, but neither wants to let the other know that is the case.
“Well, Jenny, how are you getting along?” Professor Dawney exudes uncomplicated, professional, coolness.
“I’m quite pleased with progress.” Jenny replies brightly. She is also keeping her true feelings in check, submerging them under the minutiae of her project activities and the politeness of professionalism. “Data collection is complete and I have been able to send the data capture forms to Data Prep, to be coded, cleaned and entered into the statistical analysis programme. Once that’s done, it won’t be long before I have my hands on the descriptive statistics and we will then get some idea of what analytical work we can do …..”
“Jenny, that’s excellent. You are using SPSS? ” Dawney is also perfectly happy to focus on the project and to ignore what has gone before. “I’m pleased. This project is really beginning to gather some momentum.”
“I think so. It certainly seems that way.” Jenny is keen to take advantage of the Professor’s apparent approval. “Er, next week Joe is going abroad: would it be OK with you if I had an away-day in London to see him off? Andy says he can cover my undergraduate tutorials and there are some references I would like to follow up at the Royal Society of Medicine. They have some hard copy journals that our library does not take. I think it will be quicker to take advantage of Joe’s trip than arranging an inter-library loan or asking the RSM to send photocopies.”
Dawney is happy to have the chance to grant Jenny a favour. She likes to build up credits with her students. “Jenny, of course. That would be just fine. Enjoy the trip – let’s get together again after the weekend and when you’ve got the first results back from the data.”
Jenny nods, “Sure. Thanks. Oh, by the way how was your Russian trip?”
“Oh, fine. Chance to meet some old friends. That seems so long ago now! I’ve had a lot on my mind for the past few months ...” Angela looks a little wistful, Jenny thinks. This is very uncharacteristic but she’s soon back to the one thing she talks about best: work. “Some interesting new research is going on too. I’ll let you see if you read the proceedings. Some of the methods being discussed might be relevant, when you come to work up your data.”
Jenny is happy. She has the chance to have a last day out with Joe. That will be a good way to send him off.
On Tuesday morning, Jenny and I leave home for London. I have a meeting with the consulting engineers working with my employers on a new project in Cambodia. The project Team (including me) will then travelling on to link up with our Korean partners in Seoul. The London engineers maintain a smart office in Fitzroy Square and it’s not too far from the Royal Society of Medicine where Jenny is going after we have to say goodbye each other.
We catch the 9.49 from Warwick and arrive in London for 11.30. I hail a taxi and ask the driver to take us to a very nice Venetian restaurant I know, on Wigmore Street and then take my luggage on to the engineer’s office in Fitzroy Square where I will catch up with it later, when I meet the rest of the team.
We have time to enjoy a leisurely lunch together before its time for me to go to the meeting. It is a beautiful cloudless day and we walk slowly along, enjoying the closeness of each other’s body and the warm reassurance of holding each other’s hands.
All too soon we are standing in Fitzroy Square.
“I do hate it when you have to go Joe”
“Yes, I know you do. Me too,” I reply.
We are alone in the Square. The rest of my colleagues must have arrived and I am grateful for that. I do not want to indulge in breezy conviviality with the boys and try to enjoy my last moments with Jenny at one and the same time. Be thankful for small mercies!
We embrace tightly ….
“Just four weeks,” I say.
“I know,” she says. “I’ll make sure I get ahead of schedule so there’s plenty of time for us when you get back.”
“OH, I do hate going.”
“Yes, I hate you going too...”
“Look it’s time.”
“I know.”
We hug tight once more, kiss and part. I turn one last time on the threshold of the office door. Jenny waves one last time and blows me a kiss.
I smile and turn away.
Inside the Reception Area I find my bags and also find, to my great surprise that I am first to arrive.
The Receptionist shows me to the meeting room where I spend several minutes alone.
Suddenly I hear the commotion of people arriving and follow the noise out to Reception where I find the rest of the boys, who have been held up in traffic. Whilst they haul their bags out from the taxi and collect their papers for the meeting, I take the chance to make a final call to Jenny.
“Joe? Hi!” she says. I can hear the delight in her voice.
“The boys were held up in traffic! They are just arriving, so I thought I’d snatch a final call.”
“That’s nice.”
“Did you get to the library yet?”
“Aha, well I’m afraid I’m being just a little bit naughty ….”
“Oh? That sounds as if it could be interesting. Tell me more!”
At which point, my call to Jenny breaks up in a fizz and crackle of static.
“Jenny? Jenny?” is all I can say before someone is talking to me over my shoulder:
“Hi, Joe, sorry we are late.”
“Bloody mobiles,” I say as I close the call. Technology is all very well when it works, and it works much less often than the electronics people are prepared to admit.
The meeting has been convened to reviewing the project outline and to confirm our understanding about exactly what each of the team will be responsible for and our aims for the forthcoming meetings in Seoul and the field trip to Cambodia, afterwards.
The meeting goes smoothly, surprisingly smoothly; smoothly enough to give me time to text Jenny to see if she is OK, after the interrupted call.
One of the team calls me out to the office vestibule, saying that their taxi to Heathrow is due. I check my mobile. There is no reply from Jenny. Small talk flows as we stand around in the lobby, ready now to be on our way. I excuse myself and call Jenny. Once again, there is no reply, so I leave her a voice mail.
The taxi arrives. We clamber aboard and begin our journey to Heathrow. It’s late afternoon but traffic is flowing smoothly.
“You OK Joe?” Craig Evans, sitting alongside me, has noticed that I seem a bit abstracted.
“Yes, sorry Craig, I’ve been trying to call Jenny but I can’t get through.”
“She came to see you off?”
“She did. I think she told her Boss that she had work to do down here, though!”
“Bright girl! She’s going to go places.”
I laugh out loud. Yes, Jenny will go places but it’s the actual places that I still worry about!,
“Ladies and Gentlemen. We are now on our final descent to Incheon International Airport. Please return to your seat and fasted your seat belts. Your tray tables should be stowed and your seats in the upright position ……”
One of my companions nudges me in the ribs, as I wake reluctantly from sleep to the bustle of the cabin and the cabin crew carrying out their final checks, before landing.
Arriving? Thank goodness. Just why do you get so tired, just sitting, eating and drinking?
I fill in the immigration paperwork as the Boeing makes its final approach. I glance out of the cabin window. There’s a shifting panorama of clouds, hills, the sea and a distant cityscape.
Flight KE204 touches down with the usual comforting thump of the 747’s sixteen wheel main undercart. The aircraft threads its way through the other ground traffic to its assigned gate. Soon enough we dock with the airbridge, the engines start to wind down and a “bong” on the PA announces the usual dash for the exit.
The journey has taken almost eleven hours. For me, it’s nearly five o’clock in the afternoon of the following day, Wednesday. I never find it easy know which day is, which on these trips!
We file from the aircraft into what is Asia’s most modern airport. For several years in succession it’s won awards as the world’s most efficient terminal; a breathtaking symphony of steel, glass concrete and technology. Although we all flow effortlessly through baggage reclaim, immigration and passport control, the official checks and monitoring is meticulous.
I glance at my phone; the strength of the mobile signal is excellent. I turn the phone from “flight mode” to “active” and open the desktop to see if there are any messages or emails but there is nothing from Jenny. It’s odd; she normally emails to say she hopes I had a good flight and a safe arrival. I think about texting her but as I emerge from the arrivals channel I see the driver who been sent to collect us. I’ll wait until we reach the hotel before trying again.
At the monolithic Marriott Hotel in the city centre a smiling concierge in traditional Korean dress greets us. After the usual hotel formalities, she sees to it that we are ushered to our rooms.
I take immediate advantage of the internet connection and check my e-mail. There is no message from Jenny. No message at Reception. No text on my phone. No voicemail. I’m beginning to feeling quite anxious. Jenny usually keeps in contact when I’m away. Since her stint at Inward Bound she has been really conscientious …
At least, I can send an email: ‘Hi, Jenny it’s me. We arrived OK. But what about you? Your call broke up and I wasn’t able to reach you again? R U OK?
Love, Joe.”
I check the time, trying to get my mind to comprehend what time it is here, what time it is back home and what time my body thinks it is. It’s now 7pm local time but Seoul is 9 hours ahead of the UK, so 7pm in Seoul here is 10 am in the UK. Better not ‘phone now; Jenny will probably be at work. I will leave it till tomorrow, when I’m less tired. Perhaps 6pm tomorrow evening? That will be 9am in the UK. Yes, that will be much better.
Flying eastwards scrambles my body rhythms very effectively. I slept on the flight and now my body is becoming more alert even though here, in Seoul, night is drawing on.
As result I spend a fitful night. I wake only partially refreshed. Sleep has been constantly disturbed by worries about Jenny. Still perhaps it’s not her mobile that’s at fault. Maybe it’s mine? There were no messages on my phone from anyone. Aha! So that’s it. Yes. Must be a fault on the ‘phone. I’ll use the hotel telephone in the morning.
Unfortunately, my good intentions are ignored, because I finally fall asleep. I awake only just before I’m due to meet the others.
Thursday starts early and finishes late. We meet with our South Korean partners to review development opportunities in what used to be called IndoChina. The Koreans are very interested in Cambodia and proudly describe the humiliation of the quaint French colonial cityscape in Phnom Penh by a multi story gold coloured tower block. It would be at home in any city anywhere around the world and has nothing to indicate that it is a Cambodian building. But it is very cleverly engineered.
We discuss the hydrology of the Mekong river system and the potential for hydro-electric power generation or rather the lack of potent, as a consequence of the management of the river by the Chinese within their territory. We look at proposals for wind farms and solar power generation schemes - and much else besides.
The pace of the day does not slacken as evening draws on. Our hosts are welcoming. Lavish hospitality is provided. Protocol and the desire for future cooperation between companies, ensure that the hospitality is accepted and enjoyed by us all.
Thursday becomes Friday which merges into Saturday and suddenly I realise with a start, that I haven’t tried to contact Jenny or checked to see if she has tried to contact me. But that’s what weekends are for. Sightseeing and families. I’ll touch base with Jenny after breakfast.
During breakfast on Saturday, I get my mobile out and go to call Jenny. Then I remember, maybe it’s my phone that has the fault. I get half way to one of the hotel lobby phones when I realise that it’s now 11pm on Friday, in the UK.
If Jenny has stuck to her plans to get well ahead of her research schedule, she will have been working very intensively and may be fast asleep in bed. I decide to try my phone again with a text: “Hi, Jenny. It’s me. Got to the hotel safely. It’s Saturday here. Got the chance to do some sightseeing today. I’ll call later. Love Joe”
I’ve only just pressed “send” when the phone rings. I pick up the call immediately, expecting to hear Jenny at last. I’m disappointed. It isn’t her. It’s Chris Parker, saying that the guys are heading off sight-seeing soon and do I want to come?
Well, why not I think. I look across the hotel lobby and there they all are. We head off to see what Seoul has to offer.
It’s 6pm when we return to the hotel. I go up to my room to phone Jenny. It’s 9am in the UK on Saturday morning. The call connects without problems. There’s the comforting ring of our home phone. It rings …… and rings …….. and rings …… Then there’s an answer. It’s her voice but it’s not her. “Hi, thanks for calling. Jenny and Joe can’t take your call just now but leave a message and we will get back to you. Leave your message after the beep ……..”
I’m left feeling disappointed, irritated - and anxious. Perhaps Jenny has gone shopping? The local Tesco is open 24 hours and on a Saturday it would make sense to get there early before the crowds of other Saturday shoppers arrive. Why am I getting so uneasy?
My day ends. Before dinner I check my phone. There’s still no reply from Jenny. I check my e-mail; no message from Jenny there either.
My unease is getting worse. The strands are beginning to mass together into thick dark clouds of real anxiety. I join the rest of the team for dinner but my mind is thousands of miles away, in the English midlands.
I try to think through the possibilities. It’s obvious that it’s not a problem with my own phone; Chris called me this morning. Jenny’s phone could be broken, I guess, but then why hasn’t she e-mailed or responded to the message I left on our home phone? So, maybe Jenny’s phone broke down but when she got home she had to deal with something urgent which took her away. That’s possible, but what?
A deadline from Angela? It wouldn’t be the first time but these day’s I can’t imagine her jumping to keep Angela happy. Perhaps one of Jenny’s parents has been taken ill or there’s some other family crisis? That’s possible, although from the time I’ve spent together with them, I don’t think Jenny’s parents do crises any more than she does!
It could be something to do with Inward Bound, I suppose. She didn’t say she was planning to go there but perhaps something has come up with her research programme. Maybe she needed to go back to Suffolk? That would certainly put her out of contact.
I chew over the possibilities once more. It’s impossible, from this distance to guess.
“Parent problems” are the most likely possibility. But perhaps Jenny has been taken ill? Could she be in hospital in London? Was that why her call broke off?
“Hey! You still suffering from jet lag?” It’s Chris. I’m miles away, not paying any attention to what’s going on around me. I make some apologies, as the meal ends. All I can think of is trying to lose my worries in sleep. I excuse myself and head for bed. It doesn’t do me much good. Sleep eludes me for most of the night.
*********
I’m surprisingly alert when I wake. It’s often that way. It seems as if I am not sleeping but then I wake up. A plan was formed, overnight, in my mind. I guess it comes with the job. I’m an engineer and, like any engineer, I’m always happier with a plan.
First: I’m going to call Cath. She’s Jenny’s best friend and colleague in the Department of Psychology. We’re good friends with Cath and George, her husband. If Jenny is at work, Cath will know and everything will be all right. She will almost certainly know what the problem has been, too.
Second, if Cath has no news; I’ll call Jenny’s parents and ask after them. When I know the lie of the land, I can bring the conversation round to mention Jenny. If there is a serious parent problem, I’ll find out.
Third: the worst-case scenario: no one has seen Jenny and so by a process of elimination the next possibility is that she has been taken ill and is in hospital in London. I’ll ask our Human Resources people at Head Office for their help. I’m sure they can make some general enquiries for me. They’re supposed to look after staff welfare, after all, aren’t they?
It’s 8:00 am here. I’ll wait till 6pm before I call Cathy and George Corbin. Then it’ll be, what, Sunday morning in the UK?
When I call, Cath is cheerful and her voice carries no hint of bad news as she greets me. Just for a moment, it is a relief. “Hi, Joe!” she says. “So are you two having a sly few days away?”
“Huh? Sorry?” I’m wrong-footed by Cathy’s unexpected question.
“You and Jenny! When she didn’t show on Wednesday I knew she must have arranged to skip off for a few days. Tell her the best thing is Prof: she is furious! So where are you two??”
The longer Cath keeps up her breezy patter the sicker I feel. Eventually I interrupt. “Cath, look it’s not like that. I was just calling to ask if you have seen Jenny at all. I was on the phone to her shortly before I left - I’m in South Korea by the way. We were cut off and I haven’t been able to reach her since last Tuesday. She usually leaves me an e-mail or something but this time there’s no e-mails, she is not answering her mobile and there is no reply at home. So I’m a bit concerned really …..”
I can tell that my words have wiped the smile from Cath’s face. I can hear it straightaway in her voice. “Oh, Joe …. look I’m so sorry … I didn’t mean to go on like that. You must be worried sick. Well, I don’t know what to suggest. She has not been in work at all …. Look I’ll go round to your place and see if can see any sign of her.”
“Thanks Cath.” I’m still really worried but at least I feel I’m getting something done. “I’d really appreciate that. Why don’t you call me when you get there? You’ve still got our spare key haven’t you? Use our phone. It’s expensive to call my mobile right out here.”
“Joe, don’t worry about the expense. I’ll call you back as soon as I can. Right?”
“Thanks, Cath. Thanks.”
I wonder whether to phone Jenny’s parents, the Palmers, right away. I bring up their number on my phone and - hesitate. I’m not sure about pressing “call”. In the end I don’t. I decide to wait for Cath. To see what she has to say.
In the event I only have to wait another hour until Cath returns my call. “Joe?”
“Yes. Cath?”
“Mmm. Look I’m so sorry. There’s no sign of Jenny at all. There’s mail behind the front door and the house is cold. I don’t think anyone has been here since last week.”
I’m not really surprised but it’s still a shock. “OK Cath,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm so that I don’t worry Cath more than I have already. “Thanks so much for going round. I’m sure she’s all right really. Maybe one of Jenny’s parents has been taken ill and she has had to go there? I’ll call their number and see what’s up. I’ll let you know what’s going on. Thanks for going round.”
“No, look that’s fine. Is there anything else I can do?”
“Well, you could let Angela know? She seems able to sniff Jenny out from wherever she is.”
Cath laughs. So do I. The barbed remark at Professor Dawney’s expense has broken the tension because we both know I am probably quite right.
I call the Palmers. I’ve carefully rehearsed how to play the conversation, picking my words carefully according to what they say, giving them the space to tell me any news of their troubles before launching in to mine. Perhaps the search for Jenny will end here?
“Hey, Inga Palmer!” Jenny’s mother sounds very bright – as she always does. Even after thirty years in the UK her voice has Swedish accents. She says “Hej” not “Hello” and says her name as “Ee-ing- ga”.
“Hi, Inga, it’s Joe!”
“Ah, Zhoe! Andrew and I were just talking about you. Isn’t it time you came for a weekend? After you get back from your next trip. Zhenny said you would be away soon? Oh and Zhenny – I have been trying to reach her. Where have you put her, Zhoe?”
Where have you put her? Inga’s question is an answer in itself. Jenny is not with her parents and they do not know where she is.
“Erm, er well it’s Jenny I’m calling about.”
“Ah, Zhoe, what’s wrong? I know she’s not pregnant because I know she would tell me first!”
“No, look, er it’s just that I can’t find her.”
There is a moment of silence before Inga says, “Zhoe, you had better tell me all about it.”
“Well, I’m in South Korea right now. When I made a last call to Jenny, just before I went to the airport, we were cut off. She usually leaves me an e-mail to pick up when I arrive but she didn’t this time and I haven’t been able to reach her since. I thought, well, maybe one of you had been taken ill and she had gone to help look after you.”
Inga cuts in, “No, we are both very well. Have you thought about your phone at home? A fault on the line?”
“No. Our own phone is OK because I left a message on the answer machine. She is not answering her mobile and her colleagues at work have not seen her. One of them went round to our place but there was no sign..”
“Ah. Ett orgonblick …..”
In rather more than “an eye blink” Jenny’s dad comes on the line.
“Look Joe, where are you now?”
“South Korea.”
“Bloody South Korea???”
“Yes. I’m going to come back early. I was thinking that perhaps Jenny was taken ill in London and is in hospital or something.”
“That’s probably what it is. I’m sure she’s all right. If you give me some details, I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Well I was going to get our Personnel Department to see if they could help with hospital enquires.”
“Yes, I’m sure they would but why don’t I see if I can make a start?”
“Andrew: thanks. I’ll be back as soon as I can get a flight. You’ve got my number if you find anything.”
Footnotes.
1. SPSS. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. www.spss.com
2. The Royal Society of Medicine has the best medical library in the United Kingdom. www.rsm.ac.uk
3. Gold Tower 42. http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=573861
4. Tesco. A famous and all pervasive supermarket chain in the UK
.......................................................................................................
© Freddie Clegg & Phil Lane 2010
All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or reposted without permission
All characters fictitious
E-mail: freddie_clegg@yahoo.com
Web Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
CHAPTER 9 UNHAPPY RETURNS : NOVEMBER
It’s 8 Days After Jenny’s Disappearance
I get back to London – at last.
In the past 48 hours I’ve explained the position to Chris Parker, with a mixture of embarrassment and dismay, and then taken the first available flight home.
Chris was very sympathetic, agreed that I should come back to the UK at once and arranged for the firm to book me a business class return flight. The journey back was a trial: the aircraft seemed to crawl across the world map on the TV screen by my seat, none of the in-flight movies held any attraction and sleep completely deserted me.
Then there was the moment of return, the moment when I emerged into the Arrivals Hall in Terminal 4. Last time, Jenny ambushed me unexpectedly, scooped me up and carried me off to that hotel, with all the strangeness that followed. This time there is no Jenny. I’m all alone and there are only the other jostling passengers to keep me company.
But now, at least, I am back. Back and able to take charge of the situation.
Andrew Palmer, Jenny’s dad, has booked me into the Paddington Hilton. I walk off the Heathrow Airport Shuttle train and straight into the hotel. As I check in, the Receptionist hands me a package, from Andrew. The contents of the package and the accompanying note, show why Andrew had a successful career in the Army.
Andrew does not waste words, his note is brusque and completely to the point.
“Joe: Please find -
1. A map of Central London, marked.
2. A list of Central London hospitals, visited
3. The address of Marylebone Police Station and your appointment.
4. A note of the Missing Persons website.
“The Map - I have estimated Jenny could cover two miles after she left you, maximum. I have assumed she was on foot.” (A two mile circle centred on Fitzroy Square is drawn on the map.)
“The Hospitals - Inga has visited them all asking if Jenny had been admitted. Actually she told them she received a message from a friend to say Jenny had been admitted. Unfortunately, no success at all.
“The Police – I reported Jenny’s disappearance. Marylebone Police Station covers the area. They need to speak to you urgently. I made you an appointment for 09.30. Ask for Sergeant Borland.”
I smile. Andrew is not going to give his daughter up easily. And, neither am I. I strip and shower and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
It’s already 8.00 when I wake. I haven’t time to waste. By 8.45 am I’m dressed, and breakfasted. I’ve arranged to keep the room for another 24 hours.
I walk out onto Praed Street and into a bright crisp morning. The sunshine lifts my spirits. This is the day, I feel, that I begin to get my wife back!
...................................................................................................................................
Marylebone Police Station stands at the end of Seymour Street near Wigmore Street, not very far from the Venetian Restaurant. The last place Jenny and I shared a meal together. The last time we were happily in each other’s company. Now I’m here again, but this time, I’m all alone.
The anxiety begins to rise as soon as the building comes into view. Will they take Jenny’s disappearance seriously? Will I be able to answer their questions? Will they think I’m responsible in some way? That I’ve driven Jenny away?
The police station is guarded by an incongruous Victorian blue police lantern - and by several sets of security cameras. The entrance smells of disinfectant. There’s a sense of the dreariness and unhappiness that life can bring. After the sunshine outside, the gloom simply deepens around me.
I approach the receptionist– a uniformed officer – safe behind a plate glass screen. He could be a constable. I’m not sure. I clear my throat.
“Yes sir?”
“My name is Joseph McEwan,” (it feels strange to use my full name but surely this is the occasion for it?). “I have an appointment to see Sergeant Borland at 9.30. It’s about my wife. She has ... has disappeared.” I can hear my voice trailing off as I get to the end of my little speech.
The official narrows his eyes and inclines his head slightly as he listens to me. He looks sceptical about what I’m saying; an automatic reaction, I suppose.
“Just take a seat, Sir, I will see about it.” It takes several minutes before he returns. “Just follow me Sir,” he says. “Sergeant Borland can see you now.”
I allow myself a momentary smile. It sounds like being shown in to see the dentist but my smile dies rapidly; I don’t want to make light of this.
At the end of a corridor I’m shown into a room. There’s an overpowering sense of déjà vu as I sit on a hard chair in front of a plain desk, my feet on the linoleum floor, waiting. It’s a scene from countless police movies.
There is a movement behind me. A young woman enters in a sergeant’s uniform. She’s an attractive woman. How unexpected.
“Mr McEwan?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“I’m Sergeant Borland. I spoke to your father in law, …er … Mr Palmer, when he came to report the disappearance of your wife.”
“Yes.”
“Mr McEwan, I am very sorry about what has happened. I want you to know that my colleagues and I will do all we can to find Mrs McEwan. There is a lot of work to do and we have to start with quite a lot of questions.”
“Thank you but please let’s get on. I , I mean anything I er can do ……” My voice just seems to trail away once more. How unconvincing I must sound. Or do I? How do you sound when your wife has vanished?
Borland opens a file and shuffles paper. She begins. Her questions come thick and fast. She’s reaching into every nook and cranny. It’s like I’m in some detective drama. But then, I suppose I am …
Jenny’s name, address, age, nationality, date of birth, age, height, religion? What was her native language, which languages did she speak? What’s her accent? Her email address, phone numbers, mobile number, mobile network provider? What circumstances lead to her disappearance? Had this happened before?
“Yes, I think I you could say so.”
The Sergeant looks up, her brow wrinkled: “Pardon?” It’s obvious she wasn’t expecting me to say that.
“I said it had happened before in a sort of a way.”
“In a sort of a way? Can you be more specific?”
I feel myself start to blush. This part of Jenny’s story will sound so ridiculous. They will show me straight out of the building. Accuse me of wasting police time. I stumble on; “Jenny – that’s Mrs McEwan - was doing research last year at an organisation called Inward Bound. One evening some men came and took her into custody for interrogation. They brought her back, er, a couple of days after.”
“A couple?” The Sergeant picks up on Joe’s vague turn of phrase.
“Two – or maybe it was three.”
“And these men were from the Police?”
“No, they said, – look this all sounds silly I know - they said they were from the CIA.”
Sergeant Borland stops writing. She leans back in her chair and looks steadily at me across the table. She’s wondering what to make of this fantastical revelation. However, I’m not just a man walking in off the street; I’m here in the wake of the very-down-to-earth Mr Palmer, Jenny’s father, who first made the missing person report. The Sergeant begins again more slowly. “Have you any corroboration for this,” she pauses, “– event?”
“Yes,” I say, feeling almost desperate and only too aware of how unlikely it all sounds, “two people actually.”
“First, you could speak to Ms Corinne Aimes who is the Chief Executive of Inward Bound. Second, speak to Professor Angela Dawney who was also taken and interrogated. Professor Dawney is Jenny’s boss. Here: I will write down their addresses.”
The Sergeant watches carefully as I write.
“The CIA … ? What did they want? Do you know?”
“Well, they were interested in someone known to Professor Dawney. They wanted to know if Jenny knew anything about him and especially if the man had been in contact with her about the research she was doing.”
‘What research was your wife engaged on?”
Why is she talking about Jenny in the past tense? As if she is not just absent, but not even existing anymore? “Well it is basically about the psychology of stress and play. I’m sorry I’m an engineer. I am not good with psychology.”
Borland smiles broadly, as if I’ve made a joke. Who would expect engineers to be good with psychology?
She carries on, taking more details. Perhaps she doesn’t think I’m delusional after all.
“So thinking about your wife’s latest disappearance …” I frown. It’s not like she made a habit of it. “ … when did she go missing, where from, the last sighting, any corroboration? What was her colour, ethnic appearance, complexion build, eye colour? What about her hair style and colour? Any distinctive piercings or tattoos or scars?”
“Her head was shaven,” I reply. “She has a large Chinese dragon tattoo on her back and she has her tongue and nipples pierced.”
The sergeant’s writing slows. She glances up.
No, I think. Not the sort of girl you would expect to be with me, was she?
“Do you have …”
“A photograph? Yes: here on my mobile.” I show her Jenny’s picture. It’s hard for me to look at it steadily without tears beginning to form in his eyes. “Here is Jenny when … when she left and here is an older picture …. her hair is brown really but she had bleached it when this was taken”
The Sergeant gazes at the two images of Jenny. She sees a young, attractive, happy, fresh faced girl who has a wide face and wide smile showing even teeth and sparkling eyes. The older image has Jenny with short blonde spiky hair which makes her look very Nordic. The last view shows her equally attractive but of course more edgy.
Sergeant Borland studies the pictures. I can’t really tell what she’s thinking.
The sergeant gets back into her stride.
“What is your wife’s sexuality?”
Isn’t that obvious, I think? But perhaps not. Not these days. Mind you, after Jenny and Angela’s relationship before we met, maybe Jenny decided that she preferred girls, to me.
“Mr McEwan?”
“Oh, I’m sorry: please - go on.”
“Do you need a break, I can get tea sent up?”
“No let’s, let’s just get on.”
“Well, what about the clothes Mrs McEwan was wearing when you saw her last? Jacket? Top? Trousers or skirt? Shoes? Hat?”
I can’t remember! All I can see in my mind is her face. All I remember is Jenny. She was dressed in the comfortable, easy stylish way she preferred. Anyway, after she left me – suddenly those four words feel terribly heavy: after she left me – I pause to draw breath. Eventually I continue: “after we … er, parted she, Jenny that is, was going to a medical library to do her research so she was dressed for work. Erm, she had … jeans, trainers well running shoes …”
“Do you know which?” She presses on, asking for ever more detail. I find it harder and harder to answer. How can I have forgotten these things? How can I not remember every detail about her?
The questions seem to come in waves; small at first then larger and larger. I feel like I’m being drenched.
The sergeant winds up the interview. “Mr McEwan, I have to arrange for a search of your home. This will help us to form a more detailed picture of the sort of person your wife was – I’m sorry – your wife is and issues like that but I will have to ask you to sign a consent form for us.”
“Consent form? I thought you would just go and do it?”
“No, we can’t search premises without a warrant and of course in serious circumstances like these, I could easily obtain a warrant but it’s easier if you sign your consent”.
“Yes , of course. Of course, I am glad to sign. I’m anxious to sign.”
I sign and say:” I was planning to go home today. When will you be able to …”
The Sergeant interrupts me. “No : Mr McEwan you cannot go back home until a proper search has been conducted. Have you a hotel in London?”
“Yes, of course. I can stay as long as I need.”
“You will need to give me the details ….”
The sergeant continues: “Now: because Mrs McEwan has disappeared in London and she actually lived in Warwick” - I realise with a start that the policewoman has begun to talk about us as if they were separate, disconnected, entities - “We shall have to ask for cooperation from our colleagues in the Warwickshire Police Force and I expect they will want to interview you themselves.”
By the time the sergeant has finished with me, I am beginning to feel that I’ve slipped sideways. From a worried husband to a potential witness in a police investigation; even the secondary focus of the investigation. Where will this all end?
After Joe leaves, Borland write up her notes and reviews the “Risk Classification Decision Making Guide” in the police missing persons investigation guidelines. There are twenty factors which have been identified from previous cases to help investigating officers select the correct priority for the investigation.
As far as Borland is concerned, there are 4 issues which mark Mrs McEwan’s case out as potentially High Risk. Her disappearance is out of character. The circumstances are different from her normal behaviour pattern. There were no apparent reasons for her to go missing. She apparently did not complete her intentions on the day she was last seen.
Perhaps there’s a fifth reason, although it doesn’t appear in any of the guidelines. She may have been abducted before. The whole “CIA” thing seems incredible but it could just be possible. If it really was an intervention by bone fide security forces, it hardly counts as abduction.
..................................................................................................................................
Footnotes.
1. This website has been set up to help the families of those who have gone missing to find their loved ones.
http://www.missingpeople.org.uk/friendsfamily/reporting-a-case/
2. Marks and Spencer. Another revered British shopping chain
3. The UK does not have one national police force, rather a mosaic of individual forces in order to preserve some local accountability.
4. http://www.npia.police.uk/en/10237.htm
CHAPTER 10 : VIOLATION : NOVEMBER
It’s 11 days since Jenny’s disappearance.
I’m standing outside our home, with officers from the Warwickshire Police Force. Detective Inspector Ackroyd is in charge and from his manner, he has seen this sort of thing plenty of times before. He has a young WPC with him and several other officers to help conduct the search.
“So is this the first time you have been back Mr McEwan?” Ackroyd’s trying to be friendly, keen to get me to talk.
“Yes, first time.”
“Quite a while since your wife went missing?”
“Well, yes. 11 days. I was in South Korea, it took a while before I realised what had happened and then it took me time to get back.”
It’s as though I can see the cogs turning in Ackroyd’s mind. He’s thinking it seems odd that I left the country on the very day that Jenny went missing. And Korea? “Ah well,” he says, “as you know Constable Evans, my colleagues and I have been asked to conduct a search of the premises, I’m sorry – your home - to see if we can find anything which may assist us in locating Mrs McEwan.”
‘Locating Mrs McEwan.’ If the circumstances were not so serious, I’d be laughing out loud at the stereotypical language. Still, police officers enjoy their own special jargon like many professions; even engineers have been known to do it.
Ackroyd is peering at the outside of the house, the window frames and the door. “So if we may now go inside … ?”
We go in. The house feels cold and empty.
Ackroyd looks down at the door mat and then across at the hall table. “Aha, the post: it’s been tidied up”.
“Yes,” I reply. “In the statement I gave to your colleagues in London, I said that Cathy Corbin – she is Jenny’s workmate - came to the house after Jenny failed to turn up at work, to see if she was OK. It must have been Cathy who tidied up.”
Ackroyd scratches his ear. “Ah, yes, well we shall be speaking to Ms Corbin in due course. Do you know if she has left everything else as she found it?”
“Well, I suppose so. You will have to ask her. I don’t think there was anything to find.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, I phoned Cathy from Seoul, to see if she had seen Jenny and she came round afterwards …”
“I see. Well if you can just wait here a moment. We’ll just have a look around.”
I nod. I’m not sure what there might be to find, but I have nothing to hide. I watch the WPC, the detective and the other officers as they begin to search our house. It seems almost comical, as they look in cupboards, behind doors, and out into the back garden.
Yes, I think, I must get around to building that deck so Jenny and I can sit out there on summer evenings. Immediately I feel a wave of grief coming towards me across a flat sea. There is no avoiding it. In a moment the wave has built, crashed against me and ebbed away, leaving me in tears.
“Are you all right?” asks the WPC.
“Yes, sure.” I breathe in and out heavily. “I was going to build a deck out in the back garden and she’d have liked it but I had not got around to it and……” My throat tightens again and my eyes prick with tears. I cannot finish the sentence.
The WPC pats my back and rubs my shoulder. It’s a comforting but it’s also a bleak gesture.
“I wonder if we could have your help Mr Mc Ewan.” Ackroyd is back. “We’d like to make a list of anything that is missing. Anything that your wife might have taken with her if she came back here perhaps?”
“Why would she have done that? She was in London when we spoke, I told....” I am conscious that my voice is rising in pitch.
Constable Evans can see I’m getting upset again. “I’m sorry if this is distressing Mr McEwan but we really do need to go through this. All right?”
I try to calm myself. “Yes,” I agree. “Sure. It’s OK.”
The three of us go up stairs and go from room to room. I’m surprised to see that there are things missing. Why would Jenny have come back and taken these things ? Where can she have gone? It’s difficult remembering what was where. You take so much for granted. I’m conscious of Ackroyd watching me closely as we go around the rooms. I suppose the police might think that I have something to do with Jenny’s disappearance. And me? I just want to be as helpful as possible. I’m trying to recognise what is missing: clothes, shoes, a waterproof jacket, socks, bras. All the necessary, familiar things of everyday life. You wouldn’t normally pay attention to them but now they have a strange power to burn and tear at the soul. A toothbrush. A diary. The T shirt she often wore to go to the gym.
As the day wears on a voice nags inside my mind. There’s a slowly growing realisation. The voice seems to say “She has left you Joe. You weren’t enough for her anymore, were you? You did not try hard enough, did you? You couldn’t be bothered, could you? Now look. Now look what you have done. Forced her away. Gone. She is not coming back, is she?”
“Mr McEwan? Could you come in her please?” Ackroyd’s voice whines from the study. “Can you just check this other computer, the one that’s not missing.”
I boot up the PC and find – nothing. A completely blank screen. The cursor flashes in the top left but there are no programmes, no data, nothing.
“I … I … I’m not sure what’s wrong. There should be piles of stuff here. There’s all Jenny’s research data for a start. She used to back up on to this computer from her laptop. Now there is nothing. And the address book and calendar. It’s all gone!”
“This ever happened before, has it?”
“No, the computer is only a year old.”
“Under warranty?”
“No, er, well, I can’t remember maybe it’s a bit older than a year.”
“Well, you won’t mind if we take it with us and have a closer look will you?”
“No, of course not. Take what you like.”
WPC Evans appears at the door. “Excuse me,” she says, “I’ve made some tea. Would you like some? “
“Mr McEwan?” Ackroyd put his head on one side, looking at me. “I wouldn’t mind a cup, and I am sure the team too would appreciate that. We brought the kit with us so we are not being presumptuous, but with your permission of course.”
I nod. This is almost comical: the police arrive with all their search equipment and in particular, supplies of tea, milk and sugar …
We sit in the kitchen. The police are all silent at first, but then Ackroyd begins, “Now I realise that this is probably not easy, Mr McEwan, but you’ve had a good look at the house and contents. Is there anything which strikes you as odd?”
I don’t really know how to answer. Jenny isn’t here: that’s what is odd. How could anything else be more odd than that?
“You might need a little while to think things through, so take your time. On the other hand it would be helpful to know sooner rather that later and the sooner the better.
Ackroyd begins to read a list from his notebook. He announces each item slowly, as if reading a litany, “Passport – well that’s gone” he pauses, “Shoes,” another pause, “Jacket,” another pause, “Trousers, socks and tights.”
“Wait.”
“Mr McEwan?”
“Socks and tights. Jenny did not often wear socks or tights. Unless it was very cold or unless we were going to some ultra formal do. Also all her bras are gone but she didn’t often wear those either.”
“I see ….. Anything else at this stage?”
“Well, there’s her journal.”
“Yes?”
“It’s still here. She got one for Christmas last year and had been filling it in every day. Other things have gone; her address book is gone and so is her filofax but the journal is still on the shelf.”
“Ah.” Ackroyd purses his lips, uncertain of whether any of this is likely to be significant. “Well that’s the sort of detail which can often turn out quite helpful; not least because there will be her finger and palm prints to be found there and samples of her handwriting. Now I should also point out that there are quite a few things we will need for forensic examination and to help us further.
“Your computer, I have mentioned, but I also need your phone bills for as long as you have them. I expect you get an itemised bill? – we are looking for unusual numbers. Actually the protocol says I have got to ‘seize’ them which makes it sound as if we are fighting over them.” Ackroyd gives a small smile. He seems to have a sense of humour – somewhere.
“So I will need to take the computer. You had better give me the passwords and the passwords to your email accounts. Just write them here. That’s right, and the, er, journal for copying? I can let you have it back shortly, if that will be acceptable, Mr McEwan, though the computer may take longer.”
I’m starting to feel violated. Perhaps like a woman who has been raped – no that’s an exaggeration of course – but I do feel the intrusion. The investigation is becoming as painful and humiliating as the original events.
Ackroyd has not finished. “We also need some of your dirty washing and especially your wife’s. Toothbrushes. Hair brushes. I’m sorry it’s so intimate.”
“Why?”
“It’s to collect DNA samples from clothes, places like collars and cuffs are good for this and of course hair and fibres. Especially from your bedroom. In case we need to make an identification …. I’m sorry to be so blunt but we are looking specifically for blood, semen, vaginal fluids, skin and hair samples. I wouldn’t normally say, but you did ask.”
“But Jenny is alive ….”
“Yes Mr McEwan. I hope she is and these samples will help us to eliminate other remains we might find during our enquiries. Further to this, if you can give me the address of your wife’s dentist so we can copy her dental records. Once again, I am sorry about the technicalities and I do hope we locate Mrs McEwan soon.”
Locate? Locate means telling me Jenny has been found. They are not promising to re-unite us. They are keeping things open, in case she does not want me anymore …..
“We will send you a copy of the list and if there is anything else, you will let us know? Here’s my card. Is there anyone you can stay with up here, in case we have to conduct a second sweep of the premises? I think I’d prefer if you could leave your house vacant for a day or two longer”
I nod in resignation. As the police officers leave, the house seems unbearably empty. I don’t want to stay anymore. They didn’t seem to be really puzzled by any of what they found. They became more sympathetic as the search went on. They think she’s left me. They started off by thinking that I had something to do with her disappearance but now they just think she’s gone of her own accord.
I spend the next two nights at a hotel. It’s not a happy experience. Even with the central heating turned on, the room stays cold – or perhaps it’s me.
Eventually the police tell me I can return home. I go to a supermarket to buy food. I keep picking things “Jenny would like” – only there is no Jenny anymore and as the realisation taps me on the shoulder, I put each item back on the shelf.
By the time I get to the checkout, I’ve bought little more than ready meals, a few bottles of beer and dreary routine staples such as bread, milk, and butter.
The following morning, my mobile rings.
“Mr McEwan? Detective Inspector Ackroyd here. Have you a moment?”
“Yes, of course. I am on leave from work at the moment but .. yes .. how can I help?”
“I will just come round to the house if I may?”
“Yes, please just do that.”
As he rings off I realise that we didn’t not fix a time but, moments later, the door bell rings. Ackroyd must have been just outside in his car
When I open the door, I can see Ackroyd reading in my face the unhappiness and depression that I’m feeling. I expect it’s reinforcing his theory that the Police are dealing with a simple domestic run-away, but he presses on with his errand anyway.
“Ah, Mr McEwan. I hope I haven’t disturbed you too early?”
“No, of course, come in.”
“Well, I have been reading through Mrs McEwan’s journal”
My heart begins to sink at once. What has she said? About me? About the two of us?
“… and I just wondered if you knew anything about MLCO?”
“What?”
“MLCO. It was written in your wife’s journal. It said ML Co 2/30 and then the date of her disappearance. I just wondered if you knew what ML Co was.”
“Erm, erm well er ML Co? Er, Jenny was going to a library after she left me.”
“Oh yes?”
“It was a medical library. She was doing research …”
“Yes I know”
“It was … at …at the Royal Society of Medicine …..” my voice trails off
“So could that be Medical Library and then a note of the section?”
“Well, yes I suppose it could.”
“Ah, I see. I see. Well thank you, Mr McEwan. I‘ll check with them of course, but you have been very helpful.”
After Ackroyd leaves, I go to make myself coffee. I think back over the last words I heard Jenny say: “ …well I have been a bit naughty ….”
I think again about ML Co. Surely Jenny would have written RSM ML if she meant the Royal Society of Medicine medical library?
I boot up my laptop, connect to the internet and Google “ML Co”. There’s never any shortage of results. 22,400,000 matches! I try “ML Co London”: this time only 1,100,000 matches of which the first 10 are Estate Agents, Electrical Company, and a television company.
Jenny … Jenny … what did you do? Where were you going?
“I have been a bit naughty …..”
I suddenly have an idea about what she may have been up to. I change the search to M Leather Company and get companies supplying accessories, wallets, gun leathers, furniture, luggage … furniture?
“I have been a bit naughty …..”
What about M Leather Clothing Company London? I search again. 155,000 matches. In the first 10 I see Marylebone Leather Company, Baker Street. I catch my breath, my lips tingling. At the top of the Google list, there is a small map. A little balloon is pointing to The Marylebone Leather Company in Marylebone High Street. It’s within the 2 mile radius circle Andrew Palmer drew on the street map of London, within the maximum distance Jenny could have walked by the time her call was interrupted.
“I have been a bit naughty ….”
How have you been naughty, Jenny? Buying some leather clothes?
I’m hit with a surge of elation. I have caught you, Jenny! And maybe that will help find you.
I waste no time. By mid day, I am standing outside The Marylebone Leather Company. The frontage is discrete but it’s clearly a leather tailors. I press the entry buzzer. I’m let in to be confronted by one of the staff. He is a smart middle aged man, shirt sleeves, silver hair bright eyes with the confident air of the owner.
“I wonder if you can help me?”
“I’m sure we can. What were you interested in?”
“Well, look I’m sorry but it’s not clothes …”
The man raises an eyebrow quizzically
“It’s, well, my wife has gone missing and I think she might have had an appointment at your shop on the day she disappeared …. I wonder if you can check your diary.”
The man clears his throat and frowns: “You have reported this to the police?”
“Yes of course”
“You would be best to deal with them?”
“Yes I know, it’s just, well there was this entry in her Journal. At first, I thought it was a note about her work. Jenny was going to a medical library near here, but then I was not so sure and I found you on Google.”
“So what was the note?”
“It said ML Co, 2:30 and the date she disappeared …..” My throat tightens up again with grief. I can’t say any more just yet.
The man looks sympathetically.” Let me check” he says, opening the shop diary.
“What did you say your wife was called?”
“Jenny McEwan.”
The man raises his eyebrows. He shows me the page. It says
Jennifer McEwan. 2:30 and beside it CDNA
“CDNA?”
“Client Did Not Attend.”
“Ah”
“I’m sorry. Erm,” the man glances back at the diary and raises his eyebrows again, “actually I made this appointment and I was a bit surprised, really.”
“Oh?”
“Sometimes when you make appointments it’s pretty clear you are dealing with time wasters but she – I’m sorry, your wife - sounded pretty definite. She had been on our website. Chosen something from the collection and wanted to know what choice of leathers we had, colour and a definite price, delivery. Time wasters don’t often have all that sort of thing to hand, as you might say. When did she …. ?”
“It was some time after 2PM. I was speaking to her on her mobile and the signal was lost and then ….” (it’s hard for me to get the words out) “then … then nothing.”
“I’m sorry Mr McEwan. There is nothing else I can tell you, but you should tell all this to the police.”
“Yes I am going there now. I have seen them before. Expect they will be cross I did not go to them first.”
“Well,” says the man,” I’m sure you’re not the first anxious husband they have encountered,” and then he adds, “– you might want to check out the newsagents down the street. He gets more people just popping in and out than we do – and all the best.”
I leave the shop and turn left down the street, sure enough close by, there is a newsagent’s shop. The shop is empty. I’m grateful my conversation will not be overheard by a shop full of people.
“Excuse me” (I’m feeling much more confident now)” but I’m making some enquires about a missing person”
“Oh yes? Police?” Asks the newsagent, guardedly
‘No, actually I’m her husband. Look I’m sorry but I think my wife disappeared around here. It was a Tuesday. The 10th November… Probably sometime around two in the afternoon. You have people in and out all the time. I just wondered if anything unusual happened?”
“You from round here then?”
“No: Warwick.”
“Warwick? In the sticks then?” The newsagent smiles at his own joke and continues, “No, mate sorry but this is London. There’s people up and down the street all the time. Police, sirens all that stuff. It would have to be pretty special to stand out.”
Un-noticed by either of us an old lady has entered the shop. Suddenly we hear her say: “Well there was that girl who was taken ill in the street.”
I turn round in surprise: “What?”
The newsagent creases his brow and peers over his counter.
“There was this young girl who nearly knocked me down. She came over to another peculiar looking girl and started saying something about being diabetic and could the funny looking other girl give her a hand, with her things. A couple of weeks ago, must have been.”
“The girls: what did they look like? “
My heart is in his mouth as I wait for the old lady to reply. She furrows her brow, trying to remember.
“Well one of them was blond, I remember that. Attractive looking girl she was. She was the one who was not feeling well.”
“What about the other one?”
“Which? Oh, the funny looking one?”
“Yes ….”
“Oh, her. The poor little thing had no hair. Looked ridiculous if you ask me, going about looking like that, and on a cold afternoon in November! I thought, why doesn’t she wear some sort of hat, if she’s got no hair?”
a question of responsibilities
“Mr McEwan: asking questions in a missing persons enquiry is a very technical business. If we are going to be successful at finding Mrs McEwan you have to let us do our job.”
Sergeant Borland looks steadily at me from across the desk.
“Yes. I agree. I am sorry. It’s just that I had told your colleague …”
“ Inspector Ackroyd ?”
“Yes: he came to see me this morning. There was an entry in Jenny’s journal and he wanted to know if I knew what it was.”
“Why didn’t you tell him?”
“Well I thought it was something to do with Jenny going to a medical library the day she disappeared. But after he had gone, I had second thoughts.”
The sergeant smiles. “Well, congratulations on your second thoughts, Mr McEwan Next time you remember something which might be helpful, though, just give us a ring first?”
After Joe has left, the sergeant sighs. Well, full marks for enthusiasm, she thinks, but more important, Mr McEwan’s energetic actions suggest that he is not responsible for his wife’s disappearance. However, they are also evidence in favour of Mrs McEwan running away from him. Perhaps he is a possessive, obsessional, character and this is a good example of the sort of behaviour, which drove her away?
But what of the blond girl apparently seen asking Mrs McEwan for help?
Random co-incidence?
A friend? Yet Mr Mcewan said his wife had no friends in London?
What about friends he did not know about? Someone she had met during the course of her work? Or through the Internet?
At least Mr McEwan had the presence of mind to ask for the name and address of the old lady…….
........................................................................................................................................
Footnotes:
1. WPC. Woman Police Constable. The slightly quaint name for a female police officer in the UK
2. “In the sticks.” Teasing London expression for anywhere not in London, particularly in the countryside
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© Freddie Clegg & Phil Lane 2010
All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or reposted without permission
All characters fictitious
E-mail: freddie_clegg@yahoo.com
Web Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
CHAPTER 11 : JOE’s EVENING OUT : MARCH
4 Months, 141 Days After Jenny’s Disappearance
I am just back from another trip to Korea. Me and the other boys in the team. There was a lot of work to do and we spent our free time on the town, doing all the usual sorts of things blokes get up to, when they’re far from home. It was not until I got back that I realised that I’d done things I would not have done normally, when Jenny was at home with me
It would have been disloyal. Cheating. I mean, this was not serious Class A debauchery, but we went to a – well several really – topless bars to drink. In fact, I do not think we went to any other sort of bar the whole time we were away. If we were drinking, that’s where we went. There were plenty of other nice places to go but we were high on hard work and we just all piled in, to enjoy the girls and the drink and it was really good fun. A change. An anaesthetic. Well, that’s my excuse.
I wondered afterwards, if the boys had done it for my benefit. Trying to move me along a bit, helping me forget, encouraging me to start over again. I suppose it was … I can’t find the right word … thoughtful, kind, understanding, comradely? A bit of each of those things.
But you can’t paper over the cracks when something like this happens, when your wife vanishes. When you don’t have closure. When you just don’t know what’s happened. It’s just like in engineering. If you see cracks in a large concrete casting, you can’t just pour more concrete in and expect it to be OK, just like that. Cracks usually mean you have a serious problem. So I can’t “just move on”, as though Jenny never happened.
Anniversaries are the worst and birthdays. If was mine last week. I caught myself wondering what she might buy me, where she might have arranged to take me out. Then I remembered, she is not there anymore. It was hers a month ago. I found myself thinking what we might do together. What she might like and then I remembered – there is no Jenny any more.
Our wedding anniversary hurt most. But then we are still married. She might not be there, but it is still the anniversary of the day we did get married. But of course, it’s not the same because there is no one to share with.
Anyway, when I finally returned to Warwick. Our home is dark and cold and so silent. I go in, drop my bag and sit. In the dark. Listening. Hoping I might hear her. But of course, there’s nothing. Well, how could there be? There’s just the buzz of the fridge motor and the central heating pipes clicking as they warmed up.
So I have a whiskey and go to bed. The bed. Our bed. It’s cold now. I have to put Jenny’s pillows down the middle to keep the warmth on my side but in the morning, I find a message from Cathy and George Corbyn inviting me round on Saturday evening.
Now that really is thoughtful, because Saturdays are the worst evenings when you are alone. It shows understanding. Empathy. On Friday you can think about going to the supermarket and doing the washing. On Sunday you can think about going to work on Monday but on Saturday, it’s a sort of oasis between one week and the next. Saturday evening lasts a long time when you are alone. If you go out to eat or if you go out to the pictures, you are still alone. What you are doing, is like taking an aspirin. The pain dulls but it never goes away because you are alone. Everything reminds you that you are alone. Alone. That’s the pain. The pain of being alone.
So I go to George and Cathy’s. Cathy used to work with Jenny, so she knows the background. It was Cathy who went round to the house to see what was matter with Jenny, when I first realised that something was wrong. I suppose you could say that it was Cathy who first found out that Jenny had gone. George and Cathy both work at the University. Cathy is in Psychology and George is a Mathematician.
Cathy is a good cook. Simple but clever. She’s made a pasta bolognaise but instead of mince she’s used diced venison. You can get it from the supermarket. Browned it in butter and simmered in one of the prepared sauces you can buy, she says. I think she is worried about me. What I am eating? Actually the issue is what I should be eating, so I suppose this was partly to give me some ideas. Keeping me in shape for when Jenny gets back. If the day should ever come.
“So how’s things, Joe?” She asks. George leans back and sips his wine. We had a merlot. I suppose it might have been a bit too powerful for the meat but it was really good.
“Well, I’m just back. I guess I’ll have to catch up with washing. Put some food in the cupboards, give the house a clean. It’s amazing how dusty it gets just standing there.”
“Yes, sure, but that’s not what I meant”
“You meant how am I?” I’m like most blokes; not good at talking about myself, but I’m still tired from the trip. Maybe I have had too much to drink and for a man, I’m being uncharacteristically frank and open about how I feel, ‘driving with the brakes off’ as you might say.
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not very good, really. When I was away, there was plenty to do and there were the others around and we all had a really good time. For me, this means having a really busy time. Sleep; work; eat; drink; sleep; a whole month of it. So now I’m back I can sleep it off but I don’t sleep very well at home.”
“Hmm?”
“Too many reminders. Look, do you really want to hear this? I mean isn’t it a bit self indulgent?”
“No. You need space to say where you are.”
“You think?”
“Yes, I think.”
“Well, why is being at home bad? Because Jenny is there and she is not there. Every time I see her clothes in the wardrobe or cupboard or smell her perfume, it’s a reminder that she is not there. Like her tooth-brush in the bathroom. Well, the police took that.”
“Took her toothbrush? I knew things were financially tight but didn’t think the police were down to begging second hand tooth brushes,” offers George.
“Well done George, but they were after DNA samples. They are supposed to give it me back but they haven’t and I haven’t asked.”
“Sure, I can see that.”
“You don’t feel you want to dispose of her things then?”
“No, I …. No I’m hoping for … well you know the rest.”
“Yes. You should start saving”
“Saving?”
“Sure. No girl wants to try and doll herself up in clothes a season out of date!”
“You think I should have a word with my bank manager? Arrange an overdraft facility, pending …. pending…” I want to say “pending Jenny coming back” but I just can’t say that bit. Normally I work hard to keep my feelings in control. Like riding your bike fast over cobbles. You have to hold on very tight to stop yourself getting thrown off. But now, I have relaxed. My guard is down. My real feelings are seeping out. “She is always there. It’s like - she is like an unquiet ghost”
“That rings true.”
“Why?”
“Jenny: if she was a ghost, she would have to be an unquiet ghost.”
For some reason I find myself laughing. I don’t laugh much since she went, but this time I do. “Yes,” I say, “that’s exactly right.”
“I’m sorry Joe. We have not had to face anything like this. It must be like bereavement.”
“Yes, it’s like bereavement, but it’s worse. There is no closure. I can’t move on. I can’t leave Jenny in the past, like I would if she had died. I want to stay ready for her, if she comes back. If she wants me again.”
“Wants you?”
“Yes: I keep thinking she has gone because she just got tired of me. You know you can’t have everything in life. Probably not everything in marriage either. There are lots of things we did pretty well together. Comfortable with each other. Trusting. It was easy to trust her. Trust her with my secrets. And me, with hers. Sex was was OK but she was always more adventurous than me – look I’m sorry, I should not be talking to you about this.”
“Yes, you should. You absolutely should. Maybe this is you getting ready for the day she comes back?”
“So what was the sex hang up thing? Don’t feel you have to give us the blow by blow details.”
“No. Er, well I just couldn’t follow her into this BDSM thing. Maybe it was hard wired into her. Always there, just waiting to activate, when circumstances were right.”
“So why couldn’t you support her with it? After all, it’s just a game? Like a new sauce on your food. You don’t have it all the time, but it’s really nice from time to time.”
“Well, I suppose I kept thinking about Mum and Dad. Dad was very overbearing with Mum. As I grew up I began to notice. It always had to be his way. His opinions.”
“Did he …”
“Beat her up?”
“No, well not physically. Maybe emotionally. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t just stand up to him. Tell him to let her have her own space. Tell him it was her turn to make the decision about where we went on holiday or something. The older I got, the more it hurt me. He hurt her, he hurt me.”
“That’s often the case in abusive relationships. You don’t have to get beaten up all the time to be in an abusive relationship. Most often it’s emotional bullying. If you have got a rather aggressive personality to start with, aggression and bullying can grow in a relationship like a weed. Weeds are hard to get rid of.”
“Yes, well that sounds very much like the long and short of it. Anyway, when Jenny and I got married, I said to myself that, no matter what, I was not going to behave anything like the way Dad did.”
“So you were going to be strong, reliable, considerate, courteous, patient, gentle, kind?”
“Yes, that’s about the size of it.”
“Look, Joe, I’m sure, in fact I know because Jenny told me: she noticed. She noticed all of those things and she loved you for it. She was not bored with you. And then she started to get a bit wild and you thought if you responded, played the game, you would become your Dad, your Dad inside you, waiting to get out and you would start to hurt Jenny just like your Dad used to hurt your Mum?”
“Yes. I guess that’s it. That, or something like it. I’ve never thought about it so sharply but that’s it.”
“Did you talk about it together?”
“Well, ‘talk’ is not really the right word. I would ask. She would try to explain and I would reply that there was no way I was going to get involved in anything like that.”
“Anything like that? Let me see: ‘that’ coming from you means being a boring, bullying, arrogant, rude, clumsy, sod?”
“Yes, I suppose that’s right.”
“And Jenny hearing you say ‘that’ thinks you mean doing a bit of play acting, a bit of elaborate fore-play which might include a bit of bondage and spanking and then when you have worked her up into a frenzy you make love?”
“Yes, you are right.”
“Did you get the opportunity to talk?”
“Talk?? Well, I guess we were often too tired to talk. Too wrapped up in what we had to do. I suppose there were times when we were not all that close really. I was thinking recently that you can’t have everything. You look at the ‘perfect married couples’ in ads and on the media, the people who have everything: wonderful exciting jobs, fabulous house, great city to live in, fantastic friends, beautiful children, earthquake sex life - it’s a fairy story and yet we believe it! It’s held up to us, to try and persuade us that this is what we should all aspire to, what we can all reach but there’s probably about zero percent of people who ever reached the fulfilment of it. If there is a single thing I wish I could do again, its to take more time to be quiet together, to understand each other, to deliberately choose each other instead of all the other “things” the world wants to force on you.”
“Well done Joe,” says George. “I agree. In fact I agree absolutely. Not just for you and Jenny but for all of us.”
“So what are you going to do now?” asks Cathy. “You have Jenny’s ghost following you around the house, tapping you on the shoulder all the time. As you say: we don’t know what’s around the corner, but if you can’t let her go, you are going to have to get ready for when she comes back.”
“So I need to understand the person she was.”
“Is: the person she is.”
“Is. I’m going to have to find out more about who she really is, and try to figure how I can respond, how I can fit around her. To get ready for her.”
Footnotes.
1. Cathy’s recipe really does work but be careful with the venison, which is quite delicate so be gentle with it.
CHAPTER 12 : A GLACIER THAWS : MARCH
It’s 4 Months -142 Days After Jenny’s Disappearance
After dinner at George and Cathy’s I sleep late. A combination of food and a lot to drink, I expect. That and perhaps too much self revelation.
It’s well after 10 I the morning when I drag myself out of bed and look at myself in the mirror. Who is this man who looking back at me? His face is puffy, and his skin is dull and waxy and his hair is too long and straggly. Lower down, there is the unmistakable sign of a growing gut.
I think about what Cathy said, about getting myself ready, for the time when Jenny comes back. Will she come back? And if she does come back, do I want her to see the man I am looking at now? I’d be a terrible disappointment! So, here and now, I decide I have to start getting myself ready. It’s almost as if doing this, will bring Jenny back to me.
I remember when Jenny returned from Inward Bound, the first time. One of the things she did was to join a local gym. She took it very seriously, running, general fitness, weights. It made a difference surprisingly quickly. I certainly enjoyed the way it made her look! We took out a “couple’s membership” except she went much more often than I did. Now it’s time for me to follow where she has led. That will be a start, at least.
As I walk back out of the showers, after my workout, I notice the guy who was on the treadmill next to me. He had been working with one of the Trainers. Between them, they were trying to figure out the maximum speed he could run, while keeping inside his anaerobic threshold, whatever that is.
As he takes his gym vest off I see he has a large tattoo swirling across his back. It sets me thinking about Jenny’s tattoo. It’s rather like the one she had – I mean the one she has.
“Hi,” I say, “I’m Joseph”
“John,” he replies
“Look I’m sorry in case I should mind my own business, but your tattoo is fantastic.”
“Thanks”, says John. “It took a bit of doing!”
“How’s that?”
“Sore!”
“Oh.”
“I had the outline drawn in one go, but the infill took a while, three or four appointments in fact. A couple of hours was all I could manage.”
“Sounds tough.”
“Yes, but it helps if you like the tattooist and I think they look better if you can be brave enough to be bold with the design idea.”
“Well, I will remember that,” I say and leave him to go for his shower.
In the gym reception later, I have a glass of orange and find myself thinking about John’s tattoo and what he said about having it drawn: “It’s easier if you like the tattooist”
Then I think of Jenny and Jonathan and finally about Ros Buchanan at Ink Inc. In particular, what she had said, on the day I had accompanied Jenny to Ink Inc, before Jenny disappeared. “You should maybe try some of the things Jenny is into. Maybe get a tattoo for yourself.”
At the time I’d dismissed the whole idea but now I’m looking from a different angle. Maybe I should get myself tattooed?
Two weeks later I am standing on the pavement outside Ink Inc, wondering if I am brave enough keep my appointment with Ros Buchanan, or phone to say I could not make it after all? It’s just the initial consultation, I tell myself. I’m not having anything done today. They were quite clear about that. Yes, replies the other half of my brain, but the further you go down this road, the more difficult it will be to stop. For a second or two I am held with indecision when there is a hand on my shoulder. “Hi. It’s Joseph isn’t it?”
I turn round to see Ros Buchanan herself, obviously just arriving for work.
“Hi, Ros. Er, yes it’s me. I was, I mean I didn’t want to be too early”
“Nonsense, come on it and let’s do coffee”
She gently leads me in, or maybe she pushes me off down a slippery slope to goodness knows where?
“C’mon thru to the office and we can talk while I fix coffee”
I follow Ros through the reception and waiting area to their office. There are easy chairs in one part of the room and a desk cum work top along the opposite wall.
There is an I-Mac computer, scanner, printer, discs, lots of books on tattoos and designs and photographs of – well clients I suppose they must be. I scan them quickly to see if there is anyone I recognise. Well, why should there be? But then I see her. She stands with her back to me but her head is turned, looking over her shoulder at me. The face is alight with a smile and one eye is just closed a fraction, winking as if she has been laying in wait for me.
Ros reappears from the adjoining kitchen: here eyes follow mine to the image on the wall.
“Oh, gee I’m so sorry. I forgot. We should have had that photograph down before you came.”
“No, please don’t apologise. I am glad to see her. I am glad when people talk about Jenny because it means that I can talk about her as well. It makes the burden easier to carry …. So you knew?”
“Yeah, we knew. Jonathan heard from Corrine at …”
“Inward Bound”
“Right, Inward Bound, and then almost right after the police showed up. So we found out. Joe, I’m real sorry. Jenny was such a great girl.”
“You are using the past tense. I am hoping she is still a great girl.”
“Look I’m sorry, I’m not doing well just now. Here. Try this. Maybe I’m better with coffee.”
“Ros - please do not feel awkward. It’s one of those ‘elephant in the room’ situations. Everyone knows it’s there but nobody talks about it. But I like to talk about it. So this is where you get your design ideas?”
“Ah, some of them. Mostly this is where we run the business and work on the graphics for tattoos and draw up our designs.”
“Sounds like an advertising office?”
“Yeah, well the days when you just took a transfer from a book are over. I mean, that’s still done and lots of commercial artists will do tattoo design work but we try to ‘roll our own’ where we can. The inspirations can come from anywhere. That’s why it’s called inspiration!”
I laugh and she laughs. The tension which has wound up in the room is gone.
“So what were you thinking of, but first why were you thinking of getting inked?”
“Why?”
“It’s not a question I always ask but this time I thought it might - that’s to say, maybe I should give you the space to say a bit more”
“OK, well when we first met, you told me I should perhaps try to get into the things Jenny was into and I think you are right. So here I am.”
“OK but what sort of thing?”
“Ah, well I’m a complete blank page.”
Ros laughs and I realise what I have said.
“Yes, I am a complete blank – canvas – at the moment, and I’m coming to see what you have done and to hear how you would approach the project.”
“OK, well let me see. There are several styles of tattooing. We can do just about anything but here let me take you through this introduction on the computer ….”
“Well. Let me help there. The thing which non-tattooed people worry about is getting tired of the design and what do you do then? You are stuck with it.”
“Agreed. You have gotta realise that this really is a one-way-street. Tiny tattoos can often be removed but if it’s been an ambitious design or if it’s been very colourful, it’s not coming off, ever.”
“Absolutely, so I was thinking about an abstract design of something … ancient. Something that has stood the test of time.”
“OK, so now I’m thinking Maori or Celtic or maybe Scandinavian. Jenny was half Swedish, right? “
“Right.”
“So have a look at this. There were done by an artist in Copenhagen. He is really into Scandinavian dragons. It would be a good complement to Jenny’s Chinese dragon.”
I gaze at the picture of a naked young woman on the computer screen. Two snake-like dragons winds their way from her ankle, up her leg, across her bum, to end on her back. It’s magnificent! But for me? Would I ever want to have something like that?
“Big huh?”
“ Definitely big!”
“Well, frankly, in my opinion, the very best work is bold; often quite simple, but bold. Be brave, is the motto. But think carefully first. Like I said, we aren’t going to do anything today. I would like to take some shots of your body, though. You will have to get your kit off. Will you be OK with that? I will work up some designs on the computer and I will email them to you. If I have hit home, come in again, and I will draw the actual design on your body and you can go away and live with it and tell me it that’s it and if it is, we can make a start. Are you thinking about piercing too?”
“Piercing?”
“Hmm, Jenny has her nipples ringed.”
Ros has used the present tense. I’m grateful for that and her reminder about Jenny’s nipples makes my prick stir. I start to smile; smile at the memory and smile at Ros’s wonderful up front way of speaking.
Ros continues.” Yeah, I’m gonna hand you over to Emma when I’ve drawn the design on you, next time!”
Next time? Yes, there is going to be a next time.
After coffee, Ros takes me through to her studio. It's very clean and clinical apart from some pictures on the wall opposite the window. They are landscapes, impressionist and pre-raphaelites. They are a big contrast to the pictures she draws herself.
“OK Joe, time to strip!”
Ros is self-assured and positive that I find myself giggling and doing what I am told. It’s a bit like encountering a bossy nurse at the doctor’s.
She photographs me from behind, left and right profile and frontal. It’s only then that I notice what she is wearing: white T shirt, black leather jeans and Doc Martens. The longish curly hair, swept back and tied in a scrunchy, frames her tanned Eurasian face beautifully. She is casual and reassuring but very sexy. I’m glad she is finished because my prick has started to respond!
So here I am sliding down the slippery slope and I am glad to be doing it. Glad to be sliding. It’s something I really want to do and I’m sure Jenny, wherever she is, will want me to do it too.
Footnotes.
1. Ros may be thinking of Erik Rieme; www.tattoo.dk - but you can read his site in English!
CHAPTER 13 : A THREE PIPE PROBLEM : MAY
It’s 6 Months; 202 Days After Jenny’s Disappearance
Detective Chief Inspector Grantby stands at lectern at the front of the room. To his right a computer projector displays a slide show, summarising the essentials of the case, the web of personal relationships, photographs of the missing woman and her associates and a map of Central London annotated with the limited number of things that they knew about her whereabouts on the afternoon she disappeared. It’s the fourth unsolved missing person case he’s reviewed today. It’s not unusual in London, sometimes it seems people come there to disappear.
He opens a folder and turns to the group of police officers variously standing, sitting or perched on desks around the room. “OK,” he says, “Mrs Jennifer McEwan. Just before we begin, let me introduce for those of you who do not know, our colleague from the Warwickshire Force, Detective Inspector Ackroyd who has been in charge of the enquiry in Warwick, where Mrs McEwan lived.”
The uncomfortable shuffling in the room has nothing to do with their visitor and tells him all he needs to know ……
Grantby sits down and Ackroyd takes Grantby’s place at the lectern to address the meeting
He runs through the facts of the case in a laconic style, his midlands accent standing out amongst the Londoners. “The facts are fairly straight forward,” he says. “Mrs McEwan parts company from her husband in Fitzroy Square at 13.45 on Tuesday 10th November 2009. They talk on the phone about five minutes later and sometime after that, she was seen at the west end on New Cavendish Street talking to another woman. Since then we haven’t found anyone that has spoken to or seen her.”
“Her husband says she intended to visit the library at the Royal Society of Medicine but there’s no evidence of her going there. She also had an appointment at The Marylebone Leather Company in Marylebone High Street at 2:30pm, but never arrived. All the locations are in reasonably easy walking distance of Fitzroy Square. Her last contact was a mobile phone call to her husband a few minutes after they had parted, which was cut off abruptly. According to mobile phone records, she was crossing Portland Place, consistent with McEwan walking along New Cavendish Street, where she was sighted speaking to another young woman.”
“Since then her husband, family, friends or colleagues at work have had no further messages from her. No phone calls, letters, texts or emails. Mr McEwan left the country for the Far East later the same day. He was a member of a team of engineers travelling to a project in South East Asia. Mrs McEwan had a return rail ticket to Warwick but she did not appear on the station CCTV recordings at Warwick or Marylebone.”
“Nothing on CCTV around Fitzroy Square, or any of the locations where she had appointments?” asks Grantby.
“Not on CCTV, but two women were seen by a Metropolitan police patrol walking down Cleveland Street shortly after Mrs McEwan left Fitzroy Square. One of the women answers Mrs McEwan’s description but unfortunately we do not have a clear description of the second woman and so we do not know if she is the same woman who spoke to Mrs McEwan in New Cavendish Street.
Akroyd continues. “Various items were missing from her house, suggesting she had returned later and removed them as a preparation for going away, but she wasn’t seen doing so by neighbours, or friends or colleagues.”
Grantby listens as Ackroyd goes on.
“The McEwans are to all appearances a happily married young couple with rewarding jobs and under no particular financial pressures - in short, no debts they could not manage. Her husband was a civil engineer with a job which often took him away for a month or two at a time”
That, as far as Grantby is concerned, can be a problem in a marriage if it goes on too long. His own wife... Well, that’s another matter.
Ackroyd has paused. Grantby looks up.
“There’s nothing to suggest there were any marital difficulties,” Ackroyd says carefully. He has been warned by his London colleagues. He doesn’t want to say anything that might allude to the DCI’s own unhappiness.
“Her job was pretty demanding too. It looks like they had to manage their time together carefully. She worked at home when her husband was back in the country; things like that. No suspicions amongst close friends of serious domestic unhappiness. Absolutely no suspicion of physical or psychological domestic violence: no tearful episodes at the office, no occasions when Mrs McEwan came to work with injuries caused by ‘walking into doors’ or other such nonsense.”
“Tell us about her job?” Grantby asks.
“Mrs McEwan was working towards a PhD and making good progress according to her friends although her boss, Professor Dawney rather damned Mrs McEwan’s efforts with faint praise.” Grantby looks across to the projector screen to refresh his mind. Oh yes, the “bluestocking”. “There’s a personal history there but nothing recent. McEwan’s research was into the psychology of adult play behaviour.” Grantby’s eyebrows go up. Had these academics really nothing better to do with their time?
“The next bit is a bit sensitive. The main focus of the research was aspects of BDSM play. You can imagine the fun that the tabloids would have with that.”
Grantby nodded. Maybe this had the sniff of something that might lead to a motive? He was pleased and surprised too. Ackroyd obviously ran a tight ship in Warwick. It wouldn’t have helped if this had been all over the “News of the World”.
“You’ve decided not to brief the press?”
“That’s right. Frankly we thought the fuss would outweigh the opportunity. And none of us,” he looked around at the group of men and women supporting him, “were keen to waste time fielding the more excitable members of the third estate.”
Ackroyd goes on. “There’s nothing to suggest that she had any other partner. She was not, for example, a member of any BDSM clubs in the West Midlands and had only made regular contact with managerial team at Inward Bound, according to the statements made by interviewees there. Inward Bound is an organization which provides what you might call ‘adventure holidays’ for people into BDSM.”
Ackroyd’s description provokes more chuckles.
“According to Mr McEwan,” Ackroyd pauses to regain the attention of his audience before he reviews the most startling findings of the investigation, “whilst Mrs McEwan was conducting her initial research at Inward Bound, she was arrested by a group of men who claimed to be representing the US Govermnent. Corrine Aimes the CEO at Inward Bound confirmed the story of the arrest and Mrs McEwan’s return after questioning a couple of days later. Mr McEwan claims his wife told him the American agents were mainly interested in someone known to Professor Dawney. Professor Dawney also admitted, somewhat reluctantly, that she had also been arrested and interrogated about a Russian known to her, called Anatoly Kustensky.”
Grantby already knows about the CIA business. The story of her arrest and interrogation by the ‘CIA’, provided by Mr McEwan repeating, he said, what his wife had told him was quite simply astonishing. Grantby hoped at first that it was pure fantasy, but perhaps not entirely …..
“Special Branch were asked to take this further. They received ‘complete and unequivocal denials of any CIA operations in the UK at that time’, they said.”
“So if the CIA are actually being reasonably open on this occasion, what do we think was going on?”
“I think they were being ‘economical with the truth’ and trying to have us believe that questioning someone was not the same as an ‘operation’.”
“An Operation. That’s shooting people is it?” offered Grantby, his joke greeted by sniggers from the rest of his colleagues
“Yes” continued Ackroyd” I’d say that was about it”
“However, Special Branch did turn up a couple of things. When she was younger, Professor Dawney had been involved with the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp so they had a file on her and especially because she had become the companion of a KGB agent who was there keeping an eye on the protesters. The KGB man – Mr Kustensky - is now a very rich and successful businessman and is still in touch with the Professor.
“We think that the CIA probably did have Mrs McEwan in for questioning because they have become more interested in Mr Kustensky once more and wanted to find out as much about him as they could. Perhaps he has significant business interests in the United States now?”
“Bit heavy handed wasn’t it?” Asks Grantby
“Well, it was during the Old Administration. The Americans have changed their tune a bit now, what with the new president and all” adds Ackroyd. He continues, “Anyway, we think it’s actually a red herring for our own investigation.”
Ackroyd ploughs on. “Turning to her personal circumstances, Mrs McEwan had no medical history of physical or psychiatric illness which could explain her disappearance as due to physical collapse of some sort of psychological crisis. There were some inconsistencies concerning the items removed from the McEwan’s home if they had been taken by Mrs McEwan herself and as I said, the girl had a return rail ticket home, but there’s nothing to show her returning to Warwick.
“No calls were made from her phone after the one that was cut off and no money taken from the couple’s account. She had been writing a journal for since last Christmas which was left, but her diary and address book were missing. Her laptop was missing and the hard disc of the desktop computer had been completely erased.”
“That’s a bit odd?”
“Yes. The University’s got a Department of Computer Science. We’re guessing there are plenty of people on campus that could do it.” Grantby leans forward about to ask a question. Ackroyd anticipates. “But there’s no one there that McEwan has had any contact with as far as we can see. Finally, there was no evidence of forced entry to the premises so whoever had paid a visit had a key - which points to Mrs McEwan - or had a copy, which points to someone known to the McEwans, or someone was an expert in getting into and out of buildings undetected, which suggests professional criminals or members of the security services, if we really do want to go down the ‘CIA’ track.”
Grantby narrows his eyes and shakes his head. “And that’s it?” he asks.
DI Ackroyd nods. He was hoping he would have a clearer picture to draw, but he has what he has and there’s no point in trying to make more of it. “Yes, sir, that’s it. Here’s our take on it. Accident of some sort or an acute illness? No. We’ve checked hospitals and none report admitting anyone of Mrs McEwan’s description at the relevant time. She was hard to miss; an attractive woman with a shaven head, a tongue piercing and a large tattoo on her back. Most doctors would spot that, for sure!”
“A lonely girl leaving home? Perhaps. A girl unhappy in work and love? Possibly. Murder? No obvious motive or reason to suspect domestic tensions high enough to precipitate homicide. No massive life insurance policies or substantial beneficiaries of her estate. Murder or abduction in a random attack? No, because items had been removed from the McEwan home suggesting she had left of her own accord. Abduction as part of a people trafficking racket? Unlikely - there’s nothing to support that. Abduction and murder by someone known to her? Possible, but the person responsible would seem to be unknown to her circle of friends and then again, there was no evidence of her being currently involved with anyone else.
“Which leaves two possibilities, both unsatisfactory. First; completely out of character, she left home and all her friends. Second; she has been abducted and the abduction is in some way connected with her research work although we cannot see how her rather peculiar research project could possibly justify an abduction – I mean it’s not as if she was an atom scientist.
“In a nutshell: the most plausible explanation is that she had finally got tired of the conflicting demands of husband and ex-lover (that’s the Professor, by the way) and jumped ship, possibly with the help of an accomplice amongst her friends at University or Inward Bound, who may be the woman seen talking to Mrs McEwan in New Cavendish Street. She’ll either turn up in few months or she’ll keep herself hidden.”
DCI Grantby isn’t sure whether or not to accept Ackroyd’s pragmatic conclusions and he feels a lingering unease. He thinks about the “Risk Classification Decision Making Guide” in the police missing persons investigation guidelines. There are four issues which mark Mrs McEwan’s case out as potentially High Risk. Her disappearance is out of character. The circumstances are different from her normal behaviour pattern. There were no apparent reasons for her to go missing. She apparently did not complete her intentions on the day she was last seen, even though she was within yards of doing so.
In addition, he does not like the tidy way all lines of enquiry have been so neatly closed off. It suggests planning and planning would be consistent with something security services would be responsible for. It’s almost as if someone was “making a point” to someone else, using Mrs McEwan to do it.
McEwan was on her way to keep her appointment at the shop in Marylebone High Street when she met someone else – or someone met her – and that changed her intentions. The answer must be lay with the unknown woman. For a moment, Grantby thinks about the great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and how he classified his cases according to the number of pipes of tobacco he had to smoke until he saw the answer, in the evidence in front of him. This was definitely a three pipe problem.
However, Grantby has to be practical and concentrate his resources on investigations which are likely to come to a proper conclusion. He makes his decision, but it leaves a bad taste in his mouth.
“Thank you Ackroyd. In the light of your summary, I think we shall have to reduce the level of active investigation until more evidence comes to light and review the case in due course. Any dissenters?” he asks.
It’s Monday. I get a call from Inspector Ackroyd, asking to meet me, to update me on the “progress of enquires.” I am at work. The situation with Jenny and the Police – it’s always going to be difficult so I ask if the Inspector can see me later in the afternoon. Ackroyd suggests a meeting at our home. Our home. That’s Jenny and me.
At 4:45 the door bell rings and when I open the door the very first thing I see is Ackroyd accompanied by a WPC. As soon as I see both of them, it is as though time has stopped. I register the presence of Ackroyd and the WPC. If the Police were planning to arrest me, they would have sent two male officers. If they have sent a man and a woman, it is to break bad news. The moment seems to last hours.
“Please come in – come through to the lounge.”
“Thank you, Mr McEwan. You will remember WPC Evans? Of course you do.” Ackroyd’s voice is soft, modulated to sound gentle. I know before Ackroyd begins that there is absolutely no good news to be had
“ Mr McEwan. The Police like to keep relatives of missing persons up to date with enquires and this is why I - we - have come to see you this afternoon.”
“Yes, I understand. Please carry on.”
Ackroyd clears his throat. “Last Friday I attended a case conference at Scotland Yard in London to review all the evidence we and our colleagues in the Metropolitan Police have gathered about the disappearance of Mrs McEwan. I want you to know that there has been a very energetic enquiry indeed, but so far I am sorry to say, we have failed to locate Mrs McEwan …”
Ackroyd ploughs on, now trying to spread soothing ointment on the raw wound in my mind,
“ … quite often it takes time for the truth of these events to come out into the light of day and your wife’s case will remain open until there is some satisfactory resolution and it will be kept under regular review. Sometimes a fresh look at a case, prompts a new line of enquiry. If new evidence is found, the full investigation may be reactivated but for the present, I’m sorry MrMcEwan but for the present time, we think we have gone as far with the investigation as we can.”
The atmosphere in the room is heavy. The seconds tick by. I feel tears begin to prick at my eyes. What should I say? Is there anything to say? Should I shout at Ackroyd, demand to know why they have come to this conclusion, demand further action. But this is not a film on TV. This is real life. I have no reason to think Ackroyd and his colleagues have not done all they possibly could do, in the circumstances. I clear my throat again. My voice sounds small and it’s almost as if it is someone else speaking, instead of me. I hear myself saying, “Thank you. Yes I thought that you had, er, difficult things to say. I am very grateful for all the trouble you have taken.” As I am speaking I can hear the whisperings of my worst fears. Their opinions snap at my ankles: ‘There, Joe! You knew didn’t you? You knew all the time, didn’t you? Jenny has left you. You were too slow, too dull, too timid to embrace your lovely wife. You did not want her to be the person she was. You wanted her as the person you wanted her to be, not the person she wanted to be. She has left. Left you! Serves you right, Joe McEwan!’
But then my more rational mind replies: ‘But when we last spoke to one another, that’s Jenny and me, there was laughter in her voice. She was laughing because she was pleased. She was pleased to be speaking to me.’
From ever so far away, I can hear Ackroyd again; “so I will keep you in touch with any new developments right away and I’m sure I do not have to remind you to let us have any further information you come across. However trivial it might seem to you …”
.....................................................................................................................
Footnotes.
1. Bluestocking. Rather old fashioned and somewhat patronizing way of referring to female academics.
2. Popular, perhaps less serious and certainly more sensationalist newspapers in the UK. The adjective “tabloid” comes from the technical description of their page size which is 17 by 11 inches.
3. Famous and racy British sunday newspaper
4. Special Branch. Apart of the police force which investigates subversion, terrorism and as necessary, criminal activity of a sensitive nature, for example involving government and politicians. Special Branch also acts as the point of liason between the police force and the security services.
CHAPTER 14 : INWARD BOUND : JULY
8 Months, 263 Days After Jenny’s Disappearance
When I got back from Korea, amongst all the bills and circulars, there was one letter which was different. The envelope was handwritten, in blue ink on warm cream-coloured paper. I opened the letter and read:
“Dear Mr McEwan,
I have just heard the distressing news about Jenny. My colleagues and I want you to know that you are very much in our thoughts and also how shocked we were, when we heard what had happened. When Jenny stayed with us, she was quite simply a delight: great fun and such good company. We are very glad we had the opportunity to meet her and to get to know her. On behalf of all us all, I do hope she is found soon.
With kind regards,
Corinne Aimes”
I spent several minutes reading and re-reading the letter. It was so unexpected, so thoughtful. Those few words ‘When Jenny stayed with us, she was quite simply a delight: great fun and such good company. We are very glad we had the opportunity to meet her and to get to know her’ were a real comfort. I was glad to know she had the same effect on others, as she had on me.
At first, I did not know what to do, but now I have decided to reply. I wonder if I am doing the right thing? After all, this is the woman who runs Inward Bound. Perhaps they are in some way to blame for what has happened? How much of what Jenny wanted was their fault? In spite of these worries, the tone of Corinne Aimes’s letter spurs me on, so I reply:
“Dear Corinne.
Thank you for your thoughtful and unexpected letter and for the kind things you said about Jenny. I am sorry I have taken a while to reply to you. It’s actually a great comfort to be able to talk about her. You might also know that she was exploring a part of her personality which was rather new to me and (as far as I was concerned) very foreign but now I would like to learn more about this aspect of Jenny. I wonder if we could meet you, or perhaps I could even come to visit you? Thanking you once more for taking the trouble to write.
With kind regards,
Joseph McEwan”
When she receives the letter several days later, Corinne pauses to reflect. During her stay at IWB, it became quite clear that Jennifer McEwan was a sexual submissive aching for fulfilment. Joseph McEwan’s letter makes it clear that he was completely at sea with this aspect of his wife’s personality.
“Should I see him?” Corinne ponders, “Still, why not take his statement at face value? Why not try to help him discover more about the girl he married?”
I take a day off from the job and, on a clear bright Friday, set off across the English midlands, heading south east towards Suffolk and Inward Bound.
In England, most major roads point towards London so journeys across the country always take more time than perhaps they ought, if distance were the only issue.
I finally reach Inward Bound just over three hours later. It’s deep in the country; not somewhere many people would pass “by accident”. It nestles in the fold between low hills and is surrounded by deciduous woodland. The sat nav brings me down a country lane with trees on each side up to an old high wall of crumbling bricks, overgrown by ivy.
I pass between two high gate posts but the walls follow the drive on either side forming a recess about twenty yards long. At the end stands another gate with an illuminated call button to one side. I leave the car and press the button:
“Hello: Is that Mr McEwan?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Hello, I’m Corinne. I’ll open the gate for you.”
The inner gate opens and I drive forwards down the winding main drive. I look up and glance in the rear view mirror. I can see that there is a thick hedge planted on the inside of the boundary wall, creating a double barrier. The garden is large. It looks almost rather like a municipal park, with banks of rhododendrons and other large flowering shrubs.
Finally the House comes into view. It’s bigger than I expected and could have been built for a successful Victorian businessman, but there is an oddly ‘institutional’ air about it, too. I park at the front door, alongside a black Jaguar and get out.
As I approach the main door, it opens and a youngish woman, in her thirties I think, comes forward to greet me.
“Mr McEwan? Hello. I’m Corinne Aimes.” She extends a hand.
Her voice is quite soft and reassuring, friendly. Somewhere, there is a trace of Irish in it.
“I’ve organised some tea upstairs. Come on in.”
I follow her into a large reception hall which has an elegant Victorian tiled floor, pale walls and smells of polish.
We seem to be the only people here. I am glad about that; I do not know how I would have coped if I had been confronted by “masters” and “slaves”.
Corinne’s office is on the first floor with a view out onto the garden. We sit round a small table set with a tea pot, milk, biscuits and four cups.
“I have asked Charlotte and Josephine to join us. They’ll be here in a minute or two”
“Ah. I’ve heard those names before,” I say, “from Jenny.”
“Yes, I am sure you would. Nothing bad I hope?”
“Not from Jenny’s point of view. Mine, I’m not sure.” Corinne lets the remark pass. I don’t pursue it. I’m more interested in learning what I came here to discover, than in worrying about what anyone thinks of me. “So how long have you been here?”
“Five years now. We run two businesses; Huntingdon Management Training and Inward Bound.”
“Hmm. The house is interesting ….”
“Yes it is, and we were lucky to get our hands on it. You might remember in the 1990’s that there was a move to get psychiatric patients out of institutions and into ‘the community’ and as a result many of the old ‘asylums’ were sold off.”
“Mental asylums. That always had a sinister ring to it.”
“I agree, but the original idea was very liberal and progressive: to provide a place of peace and safety – after all that’s what ‘asylum’ really means - for people with mental illness. The problem was that it was too easy to just tidy people away and forget about them.”
“And this is …?”
“Yes, this is an old country asylum.”
I chuckle. So have the original lunatics gone and been replaced with modern ones, I wonder? Looking at Corinne, though, that seems unfair and Jenny was nothing other than completely sane. What I actually say is: “Well, that’s funny, because I thought this place had something of the institution about it, but I just could not put my finger on what it was. Now I know.”
Two other women come and join us. Corinne introduces then as Charlotte (the taller one) and Josephine.
“So pleased to meet you at last,” says Charlotte, smiling broadly.
“Yes, continues Josephine: Jenny was such a wonderful client, she was one of the people I hoped we could keep contact with.”
“That’s very generous,” I respond. “Thank you for letting me come and speak with you.”
“So how can we help?” asks Corinne, taking ownership of the conversation.
“Well, I am trying to learn some more about Jenny, and I hope that if she ever comes back, I can be ready for her, I mean I can be a better partner for her. Be more the person I think she wants.”
“You don’t think you were what she was looking for?”
“I thought I was, but since she came here, she has been different.”
“In what way?”
“She has been like herself only much more so and she has been, oh how can I say it? Servile is the wrong word ... er, she was such a “good wife” all the time and it made me feel that I was taking too much from her.”
“So how was she before?”
“Well, she was positive, fun, energetic, unexpected, surprising, sexy but, but conventional? No. Normal? Not quite. A bit of both really.”
“And her Inward Bound experience changed her for the better or worse?”
“Well, neither. She was just different. It was as if the more edgy parts of her personality had grown, as if a two dimensional drawing had become 3-D”
“How did you feel about that?”
“I was frightened of the difference. I just did not know where it was going to end.”
I pause. This is all very emotional. I’m not used to it. I’m not even sure why I am telling these strangers all this personal stuff. The three of them sit quietly, just looking.
Presently, I carry on. There’s something about the three of them that seems to draw me out. “My dad was very traditional. He was a farmer. He worked very hard and seemed always to have such high expectations of my mum. As I grew older I began to notice. Sometimes, I thought he could be quite cruel. Unnecessarily cruel. Always demanding. Never satisfied. I decided that I was never going to be like that with my wife, if I ever got married. Then, when Jenny came home from here, the way she was behaving to me, just reminded me of the way the way Mum was with Dad. How he had beaten her into submission or into the person he wanted. It brought back bad memories. I felt really sad and anxious. I really didn’t want things to be like that, between Jenny and me. Specifically, I don’t want to be like him …..”
“Did you say this to Jenny?” Corinne’s question is delivered quietly. She is obviously concerned, but I think she knows the answer.
I shake my head. “No I kept it to myself. I just hoped that things would get back to what they were before, I suppose.”
“And did they?”
“No. Jenny just got better, at being different. At first I’m ashamed to say I found it all a bit embarrassing. The shaven head. The nose ring. It was just, well, not what you expect.”
“Very sexy though, don’t you think?” asks Josephine.
“Ah, yes, in my dreams they are very wild and sexy things for some people to do.”
“But not for Jenny?”
“Not for my Jenny. It was so up front and blatant.”
“Would you say you were quite shy, yourself?”
“I think so, at least until I know where I am with people.”
“So with Jenny being so – what might it seem like? – brazen? I guess you must have felt even more shy, wondering what people might think of you?”
“Yes, that’s about it. There was all that, as well as the reminder of my parent’s relationship. Actually, I’m ashamed of feeling the way I did.”
“Would it matter if Jenny was enjoying herself?”
“Yes, it would matter very much because I want Jenny to enjoy herself. To be fulfilled. I want her to be able to spread her wings and fly! I don’t want to force her to be the person I want her to be.”
“But you said that when Jenny began to fly - if we stay with that picture - you were .. let’s say dismayed?”
“Yes. I know it’s really a double standard but I guess most of us manage to have some things like that. And anyway, they say you should be careful what you wish for.” Corinne looks sympathetic. “What’s worse though is that I’m heartbroken by the thought that maybe Jenny went away of her own accord. To get away from me. Because I was not what she wanted anymore.”
“Do you think that’s what happened?”
“No, not really.”
“Why?”
“Because the last time I spoke to her was just a few minutes after we had parted. It was on the ‘phone. She was saying she had done something naughty and then the connection broke and … and then there was nothing. Before though, before we were cut off, there was laughter in her voice. I don’t think that’s what you do, if you are talking to your spouse and you are in the middle of running away from them.”
“No. I’m sure you’re right. That’s not what people do. Jenny was a bit naughty when she first came here, did you know?”
“Oh?”
“Yes. At first she told us that she was, if I can quote her, ‘trying to find out if BDSM experience was as good in reality as it was in her imagination.’ That wasn’t really why she came. Or rather it wasn’t all of why she came. Can I ask if this is something you both played with when you were together?”
“Absolutely not. Sorry, that sounded a bit aggressive. No, we didn’t. Well, not till after Jenny came back from here. It had made a deep impression on her. I guess she was even more anxious to get me involved.”
“To get you to share?”
I hadn’t really thought about it like that before but yes, I suppose she did just want me to share. I nod.
“Ah. Did you enjoy it? Were you giving or receiving?”
“Jenny wanted me to be the giver, if that’s the word.”
“Top: that’s the word. Jenny wanted you to be the Top or the Dom. Anyway, it came out that Jenny came here to collect data for her PhD and she had not told us first.”
“I am sorry about that.”
“Don’t apologise. We devised a very suitable punishment for her. Did she tell you?” Corinne chuckles. For the first time I realise that she gets as much fun out of this as, Jenny evidently did.
“I’m not sure. I suppose I didn’t really listen when she was telling me about it all. Frightened at the thought of what I might hear.”
“Yes you have said.”
“Also, I suppose that I thought that this would all be down to the involvement of Angela.”
“Angela?”
“Professor Dawney, Jenny’s boss. Well, I say ‘boss’; it’s a bit more complicated than that. You know that Jenny was doing research? Her PhD project was being supervised by Professor Dawney – Angela. She had Jenny do this project on adult play and stress. I think she thought you were a ‘good laboratory model’. But Angela and Jenny had an affair together before Jenny and I got married and I suppose I have always been a bit suspicious of the Professor. When I got back to the UK and found out what Jenny had been up to, it all sounded like just the sort of thing Angela would do. Trying to manipulate Jenny away from me and back into her own arms.”
“Ah …. and was Jenny still …. interested in Angela?”
“No. Not at all. At least that’s what I thought. What I still think.”
Ah, thinks Corinne. Now this could explain quite a lot. Specifically, it could explain why the Professor tried to cut short Jenny’s time at IWB. Maybe, as Joseph fears, she was trying to get Jenny under her control again and using us to encourage her to become more compliant by the consensual slave training Jenny was receiving? That would make Professor Dawney one devious bitch!
“So why are you here now?” asks Charlotte.
“That’s the $64,000 question. I’ve thought a lot about the answer. Let me tell you something about my job,” I say. “I’m an engineer and I work a lot with large concrete castings. Sometimes we make these on site and sometimes they arrive pre-cast. Either way, you start with an empty mould, pour the concrete in and when it sets, that’s your bridge parapet or bridge pier or whatever. On their own, the moulds just look like empty boxes or rings or whatever, but they contain all the details that the casting has to have. It’s almost like a photographic negative. I suppose that I think of you, of Inward Bound, as the mould that Jenny was trying to pour herself into. I can’t talk to Jenny herself anymore, but I can look at the moulds and I can try to understand the person she was becoming, by looking at the shapes which she was using to build herself.”
“That is the most poetic way I have ever heard anyone talk about concrete!” says Josephine.
Her comment defuses the anxiety I have been feeling. I laugh. She laughs. We all laugh.
Corinne gets up: “Come on Joseph. Let’s show you around; show you how we cast concrete.”
In many ways, I am glad to get out of her office. It seems to draw a line under the rather introspective conversation we had been having. On the other hand, I’m a bit worried about what I’m going to see. It’s a bit like stepping on to a ride at a theme park.
“So this is the upper floor of the original main building. We have room for guests to stay, offices to run the business and one or two rooms for the guests.”
“You mean people like Jenny?”
“No, I mean guests in the conventional sense of the word. I will show you where Jenny stayed, when she was having her adventure, later on. It’s in another part of the house. When they are here for as long as Jenny was, the challenge is keeping them occupied. We like to set exercises for them every day and the trick is to maintain their interest throughout the course, by giving them new challenges each day. We have designed what you might call a syllabus, but for people who come back for more, it’s a constant challenge.”
“People come back for more?”
“They certainly do.”
“Well, that’s a sign you are living up to expectations.”
“We like to think so, but we really want to exceed expectations!”
We tour the dining room, kitchens and go outside to see some more modern buildings containing a gym and even a swimming pool.
“You’ve put a lot of investment into this.”
“Yes, but don’t forget this didn’t happen overnight. We were able to take advantage of various business start up grants and then there is the management training company which has also provided a very steady background income. Also, one of our team is an architect. That gives us very good contacts in the building world, so we’ve spent rather less than we might have done, if we were without the benefit of his inside knowledge. Finally, we were lucky enough to attract some significant investment from another company who were impressed by the way we had developed our niche in the market.”
“I hadn’t realised this was all run on such commercial lines.”
“It’s a business, like any other. We have customers, we employ people we have expenses, we pay taxes. Our cash flow problems are no different from anyone else’s.”
“I can see. Now sorry, I interrupted you. I think you were going to talk about your clients, or whatever it is you call them and anyway I’d like - I think I am now brave enough - to hear what Jenny went through.”
“Of course. One of the first things we do is help the – and yes, we call them the ‘slaves’ – help the slaves get themselves into the right mood. We try to start things off so they realise that this might be a slightly edgy experience. One of the first exercises we do is to give them a opportunity to take simple instructions and obey.”
“OK. Well I guess that’s what they come for, what Jenny came for.”
“I’m afraid Jenny fell at the first fence!”
“How?”
“Well in their joining instructions we asked then all to wear particular clothes, to have their hair crew cut and to have an ear piercing done. It’s all reversible over the time they are with us. Hair grows so they are not going to be short for a long time and if you take the piercing out it will heal without a scar.”
“Sounds like you throw them in at the deep end.”
“Yes, it’s deliberate. As I say, we want them to get in the mood quickly. Anyway, Jenny arrived with the wrong clothes, with no piercing and hair very much on the long side of short.”
“So, then what happened?”
“First, you need to know that she was not the only one who slipped up but anyway, Jenny arrived having already ignored directions even though they were all things that she had consented to.”
“Sounds like Jenny. Very independent.”
“You’re right, but this course teaches you to take and obey orders and accept the punishment if you do not.”
“Oh, I see. So the tongue and nose piercings were punishments for not doing what she was told and shaving her head was because she had not had her hair cut in the way she had been told?”
“Exactly. A bit tough, I will admit but it made the point that we were serious and the slaves have to be serious too. Actually they wouldn’t want it any other way.” We stop outside another room. “Ah, here’s where Ylena teaches.”
“Ylena?”
“Jenny has not mentioned her?”
“Not that I remember. I didn’t really give myself the chance to get that much in the way of details at the time.”
“Well from what you said earlier I can understand why. And she probably thought it might be a bit painful for you just at that moment.”
“Painful: that’s a good word. Beating people up, isn’t that what this is, beneath it all? That’s the thing - one of the things, that makes me very uneasy. I hate to think of Jenny going through that.”
“Well I think you’re wrong,. To me ‘beating up’ sounds uncontrolled and that’s the exact opposite of what goes on here and the punishment games were the ones that Jenny liked best of all.”
“I would hardly think that being whipped, or caned, or whatever you do, could ever be a game?”
“I can see why you’d think that, but look; if you have a really good work out at the gym, you wake up the next day and you might feel quite stiff and sore, right?”
“Yes, sure.”
“So what comes next? Do you resign your gym membership? No! As soon as you are able, you are straight back there and do it all over again, knowing that the exercise class or the session with the weights or whatever will leave you sweating and maybe a bit sore. But you still go on and then come right back for more. Well, what’s the difference between that and someone you trust, or like or even love, giving you a spanking or a whipping of even a caning?”
“Because the feelings you get from spanking or whipping or caning are horrible from beginning to end.”
“No they are not; not if they are done properly. Not if you start slowly. Gently and work carefully on upwards. The crucial thing is the psychological context around how the sensation is delivered. That’s why I say things here are controlled.”
We enter ‘Ylena’s room’. It’s very comfortably furnished, but there is one thing that really stands out. It’s a leather padded gym horse, standing in the middle of the floor. As I look more closely, I can see that it’s not a piece of gymnastic equipment at all. It has been made for someone to lie along its top, bent at the hips with their legs supported lower down, presenting their bum to be beaten. The ‘horse’ has neatly coiled straps, ready to restrain the victim in position. Once strapped on, I don’t think they would have any chance of wriggling free.
I run my hand over where Jenny must have been restrained. Glancing at the wall, I can see various straps, riding crops, canes and even whips all hanging there neatly, waiting. My eyes start to water: why did she do this to herself?
Josephine notices my reaction. She puts a hand on my shoulder. It reminds me of the policewoman when our home was searched. “It’s all right,” I say. “Let’s carry on.”
Charlotte takes up the narrative: “BDSM and submissive / dominant relationships are very much about trust and care. It can’t be exploitative; that just doesn’t work. The sub puts their trust in the Dom and the Dom responds by respecting the trust which has been placed in them by the sub. The Dom has a very real responsibility not to harm the sub, physically or emotionally, but there’s much more than that. It’s the Dom’s job to build up the sub. If you think about the relationship between an athlete and their trainer, you are not far away. The Dom sets challenges. The sub responds and trusts that the outcome will be some kind of affirmation of the relationship; they trust that the Dom has their best interests at heart – it’s like marriage! Dom and subs don’t need to be married, but if they are, then there is already a basis of trust.”
“That seems pretty romanticised to me. What about all the punishments and canings and things like that? That all seems harsh and bleak.”
“Well, often what you would call punishment is meant to be a spur to help the sub. To encourage them to greater efforts and, yes, to make them pay some sort of forfeit if they have not achieved. What the Dom actually does depends mainly on the circumstances. Carelessness or laziness would earn something harsher than if the sub has failed after having made a really good effort. Then the punishment might be designed to encourage and get the sub to try again and to keep trying till they get it right. Punishment does not have to involve pain or even anything particularly kinky, but it does have to underline that the Dom has authority over the sub, even though that authority has been conceded by the sub in the first place.”
“But Jenny did get caned. She told me.”
“Yes she did and she enjoyed every minute of it, believe me. It’s a well- known ingredient of the BDSM cake. If the Dom is careful and skilled, they can gently escalate the physical and psychological experience whilst remaining just at the edge of what the sub can tolerate, and progressively push the boundary back. It’s like playing tennis with a coach. The coach pushes your game to the edge of your abilities bit by bit by bit by bit until you improve. The actual skin stimulation is nice for the sub and rewarding for the Dom because of the trust which has been placed in them and the opportunity they get to work on the sub’s body.”
“OK,” I reply. “I’m getting a strong message about trust and care but with a splash of danger and some unpredictability thrown in. And what you’re saying is nothing happens that the sub doesn’t want to happen.”
“Well, that may be over simplifying it. I’m sure there are some things that subs don’t enjoy at the time but I hope there are never situations in which the sub feels they have been pushed seriously further than they were prepared to go. They do sign off on the range of experiences they are prepared to undergo before the sessions start here and that’s pretty much the case everywhere in responsible BDSM. The whole thing requires the informed consent of all parties.”
“So the sub may not have control but they have at least defined the boundaries within which they give up control.”
“Precisely. Joseph, I think you are beginning to see how things are organised.”
By now we have reached a basement corridor. There is a line of rooms on one side that they look exactly like prison cells to me. The corridor wall formed is from bars and inside each is a bed and shower and not much else.
“Is this … ?”
“Yes,’ replies Charlotte. “This is where Jenny stayed.”
“Oh. It looks tough.”
“Well, yes it’s very different I agree but it’s just a room. It’s where our ‘adventurers’ stay and yes we do lock them in overnight but we keep an eye on them, to make sure they are coping with the experience of having some of their freedoms removed. You can see the CCTV camera? One of the staff is always on duty 24/7 when we have a course running so if there was a fire or if one of the slaves was having a particularly tough time or was taken ill, we would know about it immediately. It is a tough environment and you are to point that out, but it’s necessary if they are to start to learn humility.”
“Humiliation?
“No! Humiliation is breaking someone down. Forcing them to be or to think of themselves as less than they are. Humility is making an honest appraisal of who you are, being prepared to put the interests of other people before your own and doing your best in the circumstances you find yourself – and being content to be there.”
“This sounds almost religious.”
“Yes, it does rather, doesn’t it? Is that awkward for you?”
“No, just unexpected.”
“Life affirming?”
“Yes, life affirming.”
“So what did you do with her, when you found out she was conducting a field expedition for her thesis?”
“Well, we were pretty annoyed. It seemed like a betrayal of trust.”
“And trust is pretty important to you all...”
“Exactly. Anyway, we thought that she should be treated in the same way as any slave that had been found to have taken advantage of their Dom.”
“Some sort of punishment?”
“Yes. I can’t just exactly remember how the scene started out” replies Corinne, “but Jenny ended up filled with a butt plug and a dildo. We had strapped her down so she couldn’t get away from them. Every so often the dildo would vibrate and when she started to wriggle and moan, a microphone would pick up the noise and trigger the butt plug and dildo to give her a mild tingling shock. Took her quite a while to figure out how everything was working and the game kept her nicely occupied for most of the night. It certainly gave her something else to think of besides her studies!
I suppose I should have been appalled on Jenny’s behalf, but I could not help warming to the sexiness of her predicament and feeling somehow that it served her right for not being completely frank with Corinne and her colleagues, right at the beginning. That wasn’t like Jenny though and I wonder if Angela was influential in planning the deception?
“So can you think better of us now? Think better of Jenny?”
“Yes I can – and I want to apologise to Jenny for being so dull when she wanted to play these games and I’m also sorry I was so dismissive and irritated when I thought about you all.”
“It was understandable. But what about you? Are you going to continue your voyage of discovery? Looking for Jenny?”
“Yes. I have to do it but it looks as though it might not be as edgy and unpleasant as I first thought it would be”
“Well, that’s good to hear!” Corinne responds. “Joseph, look it’s getting rather late, if you were planning to drive all the way back to Warwick. It’s a tedious journey at the best of times and you have done it once today already. Do you want to stay the night?”
“Erm, well that’s very kind but I don’t want to put you out.”
“No really. We have some regular rooms for the people who come on the management courses. They are all made up ready. You don’t have to stay down here.”
“Unless you would like to? Just to feel a little bit how Jenny might have felt,” says Josephine and adds, “we wouldn’t lock you in – unless you wanted us to, honest!”
I’m not sure how much of what Josephine is saying should be taken as a joke but Corinne’s offer sounds attractive – at least one of the upstairs rooms does - and it’s been a long day already. “OK, yes. If I go now it is going to be a long haul to get back home so yes, I would like to stay. But I’ll take one of the regular rooms, thanks!”
“Are you handy in the kitchen?”
“Getting better”, I reply
“Let’s go upstairs and fix a meal together,” says Corinne. She continues, “What are you going to do next?”
“I really don’t know. Well, that’s not quite true. I have arranged to get myself tattooed. I think Jenny would like that.”
“Good! I am sure Jenny would like that very much. Who is looking after you?”
“Ros Buchannan at …”
“I know Ros. She will do very well for you. Anything else?”
“I don’t know. This world view, it’s so new – and still very strange.”
“May I make a suggestion?”
“Of course. I was hoping you would.”
“I think you should go see Ylena Zhukova. Arrange an appointment just to meet at first. Jenny really enjoyed her sessions with Ylena. I think you will find out more about Jenny if you can put yourself in Ylena’s hands.”
“That sounds like good advice – still, you know what Oscar Wilde said about advice?”
“I think so, but tell me all the same.”
“To give advice is always a bad thing but to give good advice is absolutely fatal!”
We all dissolve into laughter and go in search of our evening meal.
CHAPTER 15 : MARKED MAN : SEPTEMBER
10 Months, 384 Days After Jenny’s Disappearance
I am standing in the office at Ink Inc, looking over Ros Buchannan’s shoulder at an image of me on the computer screen. A complex Celtic pattern swirls up my right leg, across the top of my bum, up my back, over my left shoulder and onto my pec. It sends a spur down towards the crack between my buttocks and another towards my right scapula.
Ros is just as attractively dressed as she was last time. Today she wears a close fitting white tank top which ends in a black leather skirt. My eyes follow it down to see her bare brown legs emerging from beneath the hem. She is wearing some leather flip flop sandals on her bare feet which lets me see a shower of stars coursing around her ankle and up her calf to vanish beneath the skirt. A gold ring surrounds one of her toes.
“So what d’ya think?’
“Astonishing – and huge!”
“Yep; I thought bold is what you need”
“Why?”
“You are being heroic and this is heroic. Nice fit!”
“So take me through the thinking behind this.”
“First, you said you were anxious about tiring of the design. That’s a very real problem for some people, so I have chosen ancient symbols and patterns. These have already stood the test of time. I have chosen to work with Celtic images as these will be a nice complement to Jenny’s Chinese dragon.”
I am pleased she said that. It’s why I’m here, certainly, and I like her assumption that Jenny and I are going to be back together again sometime soon.
“The symbols all have a story to tell. Tattoos always say something. Maybe it’s a souvenir of a place you visited or a rite of passage in your life. It’s also possible to go to a deeper level and use images and symbols to tell a story.” She stops, conscious that she’s evangelising a little. I don’t mind: her enthusiasm is infectious. She smiles and points to the centre of the design. “Let’s start here.”
“That’s a cross?”
“Yes. In the Christian story God sends his Son to rescue his people and the Son is prepared to make any sacrifice in order to succeed and obey his Father, even unto death. You are looking for Jenny to rescue her and will go anywhere and do anything to find her and bring her home?”
“Yes, of course”
“So there you are: The Celtic Cross.”
“Around the cross I have placed the circle of eternity, to show your lifelong commitment to Jenny and your enduring love. You are not able to find her all on your own. You need the help and support of friends, so here is the Bird of Fellowship wrapped around the Cross and the Circle of Eternity. Then there are the last three creatures; the Serpent of Wisdom, the Hound of Faithfulness and the Lion of Courage. I thought you would need each and every one of those virtues and having them drawn on you – whatever the outcome of this, you are making a statement about the sort of person you are and the values you hold.”
I’m impressed. Of course I knew there was a lot of symbolism in these designs but I hadn’t thought it could be made to relevant to me and my situation. “Wow, Ros. That is astonishing. I thought you would just be talking about a design but this, this is an essay!”
“So you would like to take this forward?”
I have no difficulty in agreeing. I’d thought that I might lose my nerve at this point but it’s quite the reverse. Ros’s rationale for the design has made me feel enthusiastic about it; anxious, even, to get on with it.
“Definitely. I would be proud to have something like this.”
“Not too big?”
“Not now!”
“OK this is what we are going to do. I have a preliminary stencil made up. I will lay the design down on you and go over it with a permanent ink marker. That will give you several days to “try it out” before the ink starts to wash off. If you still feel the same, then I’ll make an appointment for you to draw the permanent out line – and that will be permanent. Absolutely permanent. Absolutely no going back from that point, ever.
That’s going to be the toughest session because I will be quite literally laying down the foundation for the whole design. When it comes to the detailing and the in-fill, I will break that up into several individual sessions. After all, I want you to look forward to coming to see me”
“Time scale?”
“Oh, this is going to take twelve to eighteen months. However, by the end of each step you will look ‘finished’. That’s why I do all of the foundation outline in one go. You will need to take a day off for that and you might want to stay in London that night rather than drive back to Warwick or grapple with the trains.”
“OK, Ros. What can I say? Thank you seems inadequate. Inadequate for all the ingenuity and effort you have put into this. I must confess that I’m sacred too, though!”
“Ha! Well, Joseph, it’s a pleasure. Yes, you should be a bit nervous; it’s a big step after all. Let’s go through to my studio. You can get your kit off in there and I will print off the stencils.”
So now I am standing naked in front of this delightful girl who is going to modify my body irrevocably and I am enjoying every moment of the attention I am getting.
Ros returns and sprays my body with some warm water to moisten the skin. She takes each part of the stencil and carefully lays it down, massaging the thin paper so the outline transfers on to my skin. The process takes quite a long time. Ros is exacting. I guess I expected that. I’m quite glad too. The last thing you’d want hear during a tattoo session is, “Whoops!” Finally she draws over the design with a soft tipped ink marker pan. It’s tickly and once more, the physical attention is – encouraging. There has been no-one to “play” with my body since Jenny disappeared and I realise now that it’s one of the things I have missed.
“You did not take the design across my bum?
“Right across your buttocks?”
“Yes, for some reason I thought you might”
“Well, I thought the tattoo would take a more interesting route if I went up and across the top. Besides, I wanted to leave your butt clear for Jenny to give you a good spanking when she gets back, without worrying about doing damage to the tattoo!”
“What about to me?”
“You? – men can take a good spanking or a caning or even better a spanking first to warm up and a caning or whipping after to finish off. It’s good for them. Keeps them in their place!”
“Are you joking?” (Agh! Ros’s banter is starting to make me hard; I’m quite glad I’m laying on my front.)
“Hmmm, maybe - and maybe not.”
Ros’s emphasis on not clearly means she believes what she says!
I have to concentrate hard to keep myself down. She laughs and I laugh too and after that I feel as if (somehow) I have accepted her point. As I lay on her “operating table” I can see through into the office, to the wall with its collection of pictures and drawings, to Jenny who keeps unending watch from her photograph that is still up there with the others. As I catch sight of her image, she seems to smile more broadly and although it is just a trick of my eyes and brain, it makes me feel especially glad, to be where I am and glad to be doing what I am doing.
When she has finished, Ros photographs me again and I get the opportunity to see the design on my skin for the first time as I stand in front of the mirror in her studio. `It now looks even better than it did on the computer image.
“You know, Ros, you should go ahead and tattoo this properly. Right now.”
“Yeah, well, maybe, but first I want this to be right and there might be a point or two you are not happy with. You’re more likely to see that if you have to live with it a while. Also, I can review the photographs, and think again about the way it looks on you, so there could be some modifications needed before we go ahead properly. Second, I have another client in fifteen minutes and finally you have an appointment with Emma! You did remember I said I was going to hand you over to her?”
I had remembered but I hadn’t taken Ros seriously. This is another hurdle. Would Jenny like me pierced? I think so, but it’s still a hurdle for me.
I laugh and say, “Of course, just testing.” Actually I’m not sure if I am. Really, I’m a bit squeamish. But the tide of events is running strongly.
“Emma? Joseph is ready for you,” calls Ros. Emma appears, small, bouncy, elfin. She smiles and says, “Come through …….”
Emma works in another part of the building. She takes me straight through to her – surgery – I suppose you would have to call it.
“So what am I going to do to you?”
“I dunno. I think this might be Ros’s idea more than mine.”
“Really? We don’t have to you know.”
“Yes, I know we don’t have to but, well – you know about Jenny?”
“Yes, I know and you are trying to go where she has been?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“OK, well what about these ?”
Emma has a picture book – it’s full of beautifully drawn sketches of men and women with all manner of body piercings: nipples, clits, labia, penis head, penis fraenum, noses, nasal septums, navel, ears lips, eyebrows. The drawings make them much less “pornographic” than they might have been if Emma showed photographs of clients and the simplicity of the black and white airbrushed drawings somehow increases the sexiness of the pictures.
“So what shall I do for you?” she asks brightly.
I stumble and stammer a reply, “I have never seen ... I mean I never knew you could …”
“Get pierced in so many places?”
“Yes, that’s it. Eww, that looks sore – “
“Ah, the ampallang. Yes can be. Needs me to keep a steady hand! Would you like one?”
“Erm …”
“What about one of these? Just as sexy and has other advantages?”
“How do you mean?” I am looking at a drawing of a prick with a shiny metal ring emerging from the meatus. “I mean, surely that would get in the way when you pee?”
“No, not really. Maybe deflects your aim a couple of degrees. Main advantages are, its simple to do, not too much of a leap of faith for the piercee, heals quite quickly and feels nice for the partner – and they can clip a lead onto the ring and really take charge of you!”
I have a vision of Jenny leading me up to our bedroom, a leather dog’s lead clipped to the ring in my penis head flashes across my mind. But Jenny is supposed to be the submissive, isn’t she and anyway she’d want me to take the dominant role, wouldn’t she?
“Erm,” is all I say, indecision written all over my face.
“Look, Joseph I’d say we should go for the PA.”
“The PA?”
“What you have been looking at. It’s called a Prince Albert because Prince Albert was supposed to have one. Think of all those kids Queen Victoria had. Obviously it had no bad effects, on any natural functions, except to maybe inflame them! It’s also called a TMR, or transmeatal ring, if you want to be “medical” about it.”
“Do you always bully your clients?”
“Always.”
“Ah.” I heave a deep sigh. “OK let’s go for it!”
“Good, but first: medical history form and consent form. You have to read them and fill them in. Whilst you are doing that, just put this on.”
“What’s this?”
“It’s a condom with some anaesthetic gel inside. It will have worked by the time you are through and if you can also squirt some of the gel down inside yourself from this little syringe.”
Emma produces a small syringe with some white cream inside it. There is no needle on the end, and the tiny “spout” on the end easily slips inside my urethra.
“Good. Trousers off. Climb up onto the couch.”
I follow orders and Emma dons a pair of rubber gloves and spreads a sheet of sterile paper drape over the counter next to me. Whilst she is getting ready, I’m conscious of conflicting emotions inside me. I’m nervous about what she is going to do, of course but I’m looking forward to having the ring in me. I’m surprised at myself; that I’m going ahead with it. I’m angry at Jenny for not being there anymore. I’m angry at the idea Jenny might be sitting comfortably in some Italian café somewhere, sipping an espresso. I’m frightened for her, thinking that she might just have been taken and wondering what on earth she is having to endure.
“Take a deep breath …”
Emma’s voice breaks into my thoughts. “What?”
“I said take a deep breath: in, out, in, out, till I tell you to stop.”
I can feel Emma holding my prick, manipulating the head in her fingers. For a moment I can’t figure out what is going on, I have been so wrapped up in thinking about Jenny. Then comes a sore-ish prodding feeling and as I breath out – Agh! Agh! Agh! – pain. Sharp, white, cutting pain but only for a few seconds and probably not even that. Emma’s voice comes again, soft and soothing this time.
“And you are done! That’s the introducer out, and here is the ring going in.” Tenderness again …“And that’s the cannula out and I have just got to insert the ball to close the ring and that’s you! Now I am going to wrap you up inside a rubber glove in case you get any bleeding. Make sure you have plenty to drink and when you need to pee, sit down and just let go. It probably will not even sting but there will be a bit of blood in your urine.”
I realise I am breathing rather fast and rather deeply. Emma puts a hand on my shoulder. “OK?” she says.
“OK” I reply.
“Just sit up when you are ready.”
When I am comfortably sitting up she looks towards me again and asks “What else shall we do?”
“Else?”
“Hm, you know you would look good with a small barbell in your tragus.”
“Tragus?”
“It’s the bit of your ear half way down on the inside. Here - this bit.”
“Oh, but I’m not sure they would be happy with that at the Office.”
“You could have clear balls on either end of the rod, much more difficult to see.”
Bugger the office, I think.
“OK Emma but this is the last.”
“Agreed, for now – here.”
Another form?”
“Consent form again.”
“What about a ‘consent to being bullied’ form?”
“Don’t have those,” she replies and laughs.
“Are you like this with all your clients?”
“Nope – just you! Right, this is it.”
“Ouch!”
There, easy. Oh yes! That will look nice when you wear an all-metal barbell. Now here are your after care instructions. Your PA will be better with a thicker ring but the first piercing needs to heal properly first and then I can stretch you up a bit when Ros is working on you.”
“From what to what?”
“You have a 1.5mm thick ring now. I could go to 2.5mm next time – give it four months or so, and then go to 3mm. Personally I like the thick chunky rings best. I’d like to see you wearing a 4 or even 5mm thick ring but it would take four stretches to get there over twelve months or so.”
“Look, I’ve had just plenty today thank you. Do you do coffee to revive your clients?”
“Not always but because it’s you, yes. Oh and you have to pay …..”
“Yes I thought, paying. Am I paying for more than the tattooing and piercing? Am I paying for Jenny’s disappearance? Would she still be here if I had done this before? Anyway, I am pierced now - and in the realisation of what I have done, I find myself grinning widely and enjoying the endorphin rush it has given me.
Emma returns: “here’s coffee and also Ros’s appointments diary. She can see you exactly one month from now. OK?”
“OK”
I’m feeling pleased with myself. Pleased with my decisions; pleased that I’ve actually done something about them. On the other hand, nothing I have done today, will bring Jenny back any sooner, but at least it feels like I am doing something!
CHAPTER 16 : VANILLA OR RASPBERRY : OCTOBER
11 MONTHS, 355 DAYS AFTER JENNY’S DISAPPEARANCE
“At the roundabout, take the second exit. Continue to follow the road.”
“This can’t be right,” I say to myself. I’m driving along what, at one time, must have the by-pass of a growing town to the north-east of London. Now it’s just a busy road like many others as the town has been absorbed by the steadily expanding suburbs. I’m coming here at Corinne’s suggestion. It was her idea for me to meet Ylena Zhukova and I’ve just realised that I’ve gone past the group of suburban houses ,where I was expecting to find her.
I’m also wondering whether it is really a good idea to be here at all? I’m beginning to wonder if this whole thing is a foolish exercise. If I was the man Jenny wants me to be, shouldn’t I be able to be her Dom all by myself? What would she think, if she knew I was here? Would she be pleased I was trying this, or upset that I couldn’t sort it out for myself? I’ve tried to read more about the BDSM world on some of the sites on the Internet. Some have been helpful and others less so, but at least I understand some of the “technicalities’ better than I did.
“Continue to follow the road.” The sat-nav is implacable. I may think that the meeting place is back behind me but her voice drives me onwards. I wonder if dominatrixes have seen a down turn in trade, since anyone can have a bossy woman in their car, all the time? Or do they record the voices tracks for sat navs in their spare time? I realise that I’m grinning. I’m almost surprised that I can make a joke of things. It’s probably just my anxiety.
“At the roundabout take the first exit and then take the first left.” In spite of the sat-nav’s insistence, I’m becoming increasingly sceptical. This is a trading estate. There’s just a collection of small factory units, warehouses and newly developed low rise office blocks. The road system is a maze but the sat-nav sends me along roads lined by anonymous looking, buildings with lorry cabs or empty trailers parked outside them. There are a few other cars. It’s not busy but it’s not quiet either. “Take the next left. ... You have reached your destination.”
I do as I’m told and I’m pleased to see that, in spite of my suspicions, I may be in the right place after all. There’s a sign on the wall of the single storey building in front of me that has the same symbol that was on the business card Corinne gave me; a pyramid inside a cube, inside a sphere. Beside the symbol it says, “Just Desserts”. The place looks like a small manufacturing unit. It’s freshly painted, white with panels of pale green and pale pink on the blank areas of wall. I go inside.
“Hi, how can I help?” a smiling faced woman asks, as I enter. She sits behind a reception desk in the simply furnished entrance area. There’s a model of the symbol from the business card on her desk on a base with the words “Just Desserts”
“Err, I was looking for Ms Zhukova.” I’m not absolutely certain that I’m where I should be.
“Of course. Do you have an appointment? Ah yes, you’ll be Mr McEwan. I’ll tell her you’re here.”
I nod in acknowledgement. If the truth is known, I’m feeling even less enthusiastic now than I was in the car.
The surroundings don’t strike me as being the dungeon of a professional dominatrix, and Ylena’s appearance, when she arrives a few moments later, is equally unconvincing. She’s an attractive woman but she hardly looks the part, wearing a loose cotton dress in a pale peasant print, bare legs and open strappy sandals. Not what I’m expecting at all. I ought to be reassured, because the whole place is free from all the popular Domme clichés
I’m feeling a bit confused: “I thought this was an ice cream factory,” I say, nodding at the model on the reception desk.
“Yes,” says Ylena. “Most people do. As a matter of fact I import Russian Ice Cream. It’s in demand from the Russian ex-patriate community in the UK” She waves me through to an adjoining room. Ylena’s office is modern, comfortable and you could almost say, cosy. There is a professionally tidy desk to one side sporting a computer, printer and PDA cradle. It puts mine to shame for neatness. There’s a rolodex with index cards and a three drawer filing cabinet.
“Have a seat, please.”
As we both sit down, I get the first sense that perhaps this woman is interested in having the upper hand. Looking across at her desk, Ylena’s chair is upright but the visitor’s chair, the chair I am sitting in, is lower and leans back slightly. Anyone sitting there would feel at a distinct psychological disadvantage – just as I do now.
She suggests we use a small sofa and an easy chair arranged around a coffee table on the far side of the office. A standard lamp throws a soft pool of light down.
Ylena waves me towards the sofa while she settles in the easy chair. It’s an efficient room but it’s a comfortable room too. I feel like it’s a room that encourages conversation and the spilling of confidences. It’s just as well; I haven’t really been looking forward to this discussion.
Even so I decide that I ought to begin the negotiations. “I guess Corinne let you know what this is about,” I say.
“Yes,” Ylena responds. “You must miss your wife terribly.”
I’m surprised by Ylena’s opening remarks because compassion wasn’t what I really expected and it’s nice of her to express concern. “Of course. But I hope she’ll be back one day, and I’m trying to get ready so that when she returns we’ll be able to share whatever it is she wants to share.”
“That’s an ambitious goal. Your wife was, sorry is, a very committed individual. She is determined to live out her fantasies to the full.”
“I thought the slave just had to put up with whatever the mistress wanted,” I say. I don’t really understand how Ylena’s assertions fit in with a sub-dom relationship.
“That’s another common misconception but you can learn a lot about this if you are prepared to open your mind. Now what did you have in mind?” Ylena looks across to me, as her desk as her intercom buzzes. “I’m sorry, excuse me a moment.” She gets up, walks over and presses a button on the intercom.
“Your 2 o’clock appointment has confirmed.” It’s the girl from reception on the other end.
“Fine, Judy. Make room three ready for him when he arrives.” She turns back to me. “I’m sorry about that. I expect clients with longer appointments to confirm twenty four hours ahead but this particular client was unable to confirm until today. You were saying.”
“Err, yes. Well, I’ve thought about this. It’s obvious that Jenny wants me to take a more dominant role; that she’d like me to take the lead in some of her BDSM interests and I suppose I wanted to get some ideas of how I might do that.”
“That’s really what I understood from what Corinne told me,” Ylena says. “Well, for a start, I should arrange an introductory session for you, something like the one I will start this afternoon. That’s probably as good a way as any to begin. This client is pretty much a beginner. I would think something like this would be the right thing for you to get started with.”
I’m a bit taken aback. Firstly, by the suddenness of it all and the matter of fact-ness too. Secondly, it she sounds to be suggesting that I get involved in a domination scene, with one of her other clients. I’m still wondering about how to respond when Judy appears at the door.
“Everything is ready now,” she says.
“Good,” Ylena responds. “Wait there for a moment, will you.”
“Yes, Mistress,” Judy responds and drops to her knees, bowing her head and placing her hands behind her back. I look on bemused by the sudden change of atmosphere from the conventional office, to something much stranger. On the other hand The involvement of the large breasted Judy, will certainly add interest to whatever will happen in ‘number 3’.
Ylena turns back to me. “So, would you like me to make arrangements for you?”
“Err, well,” I begin. Ylena looks steadily at me. She’s obviously had experience of clients who just cannot bring themselves to go ahead with their first session and she can obviously tell that there’s a distinct risk of me doing just that. “Look, I’m sorry. This may be all very straight-forward for you, but it’s pretty new for me and I’ve never been involved in dominating someone else. I am not sure I could go ahead with … with your colleague here or your other client.”
“ Ah, I’m sorry, of course,” Ylena nods. She obviously now understands my confusion. “Don’t worry it would not be at all like that. There’s no question of you being involved in dominating. I’ll take you through the same initial sessions that I do for any of my subs. You’ll just have to do as you’re told.”
“But I do not want to train as sub and I do not feel as though I am one. Jenny wants me to take a dominant role and I would like your advice on how I go about doing that with Jenny”
“Maybe she does and maybe you do but that’s not how it works. You can’t just leap in and it’s almost impossible to take the leading role without knowing what it’s like to be led. It’s how I started and how I have started all of the other dommes I have trained. It’s how I shall start with you, if you want to go through with learning more about this. Otherwise I think we have finished.”
I’m suddenly aware that whatever Ylena is wearing and whatever she may look like, she can certainly make her wishes crystal clear and she is obviously determined that things should be just as she wants. I’m feeling more uneasy than ever though. This isn’t turning out in the way I imagined and I’m not at all sure that I’m ready for what Ylena proposes.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I think I’ve wasted your time. I think I’ll just go now.”
“I understand,” says Ylena. She’s not annoyed. Maybe she’s disappointed, but she still sounds sympathetic. “I’m sorry if there was any confusion. Give me a call if you change your mind. I’d like to help make things better for Jenny.”
As Judy is showing me out, I’m thinking of Ylena’s words. Am I really running away from something that would make things better for Jenny? How does that square up with the promises I made to myself? By the time I get back into his car under the direction of my implacable “navigatrix”, I’m feeling that I have let Jenny down. It’s not what I intended.
“ Recalculating,” the sav nav dominatrix says, apparently with some exasperation: “Make a U turn as soon as possible.”
I’m back again at Just Desserts, sitting in the car park. Ylena was understanding when I called her back. It was probably one of the most difficult phone calls I have ever made but I really am determined to do what I can to be ready, ready for Jenny when she comes back and I think that Ylena sensed my commitment.
So here I am, not at all sure what to expect and more nervous than I could have imagined. My mouth is dry and my pulse is up. I’m feeling a strange mixture of trepidation, anticipation and curiosity. I can see now, how people could get hooked on this sensation.
I get out of the car and head in to reception. Judy is there again, sitting behind her desk and looking primly efficient. “Nice to see you back, Joseph,” she says with a genuine welcome in her voice. “I’ll let Ms Zukhova know that you’re here. Can you just read through this and let me know if there are any problems with it?”
She gives me a sheet of paper with the words, “Initial Sessions : Guidance for Visitors” printed on the top. I read it but there aren’t any real surprises.
“Your initial sessions are likely to involve some or all of the following physical activities. If you have any reservations about any of these activities or are suffering from any medical condition that might be exacerbated by them please make us aware. Please indicate your consent to participating in these activities by signing in the space provided below.”
The list that follows includes confinement in enclosed spaces, physical restraint, use of gags and blindfolds and mild physical punishment. An asterisk against the word “mild” is repeated with a note at the foot of the page saying “not severe enough to mark your skin.”
I suppose it’s what I expected. There is no reason to prevent me signing. I sign and date it. I leave a copy on the reception desk.
Judy exclaims, “Oh, thank you, that’s fine,” as she picks it up and reads it through on her return. “Just come on through. Ms Zukhova is in room two.”
Judy show me through into a room that looks a little like the room at Inward Bound, where Ylena and Jenny had their encounter. There’s the same comfortable furniture, the same padded leather horse or bench or whatever you call it. And, of course, there is Ylena. She is sitting in one of the armchairs, looking no more of a dominatrix than she did last time. On this occasion, her outfit is a little more severe; a dark trouser suit and a pale blue silk blouse, but she’s hardly the corset clad, stilt heeled, über-bitch. She is wearing leather gloves though, something that’s slightly out of place in this comfortable room. She doesn’t get up but she does look up as I enter. “Good,” she says, in a quiet but definite tone. “You’re on time. I like that.”
I feel a tingle inside me. That one statement fills me with contradictory responses. I find that I’m pleased to have pleased her but, the same time, I’m resistant to the idea that I have been unwittingly obedient. Her remark also carries an invitation to speculate on what she might have said or done, had I not been on time. I’m surprised by the way in which so many feelings can be conjured up so easily and the way that there is something curiously erotic about it; the combination of perfectly normal conversation and the context of sexual games. I don’t feel a reply is necessary or expected.
“Let me explain a few things,” she continues quietly. “While we are in here, I expect you to respond to my instructions without question and without objection. If, at any time, you wish the session to end simply say ‘Red’. Do you understand?”
“Yes, er, Mistress.” I respond. I suppose that’s appropriate from what I’ve read.
“Good,” she says, “but please use Gaspazha, not Mistress.”
“Gaspazha?” It’s not a word I’ve heard before.
She nods but doesn’t explain. “Now: please undress.”
I had expected this from what I had read but now I have to do it, the order seems sudden and unreasonable. Ylena see my hesitation but says nothing. It’s foolish really, I know she must have given this instruction many times before and seen bodies less attractive than mine and I’ve never worried about stripping off at home or at the gym. Of course it’s the context that makes the difference. That and the fact that Judy is standing watching with ill-disguised interest.
I do as Ylena instructs. She watches with an appraising intensity, as if she’s sizing up my physical condition. Judy is watching too but her gaze is less …professional. Almost against my expectations, I’m finding this arousing as a lengthening and thickening of my now bare prick confirms. Instinctively I drop my hands to cover my embarrassment but that’s not what Ylena wants. She shakes her head and I take my hands away. Judy responds with a beaming smile. I blush. All over. All that does is to make her giggle. Ylena frowns, but it’s at Judy, not me.
“Thank you,” says Ylena. The politeness is unexpected. In fact, the whole scenario is free from any sense of the violence or viciousness that I had imagined, when Jenny first spoke of her encounters. “Now come here and kneel down in front of me.”
It’s easy for me to do as she asks. I feel as though we are both conspirators in the situation.
“I’m going to collar you and cuff your wrists,” she tells me. “The collar is to remind you of your position, to mark you out as my property while you are with me. The cuffs are to restrain you, to remind you that even your freedom of movement, is in my gift.”
She doesn’t ask me, which is not unexpected. She nods to Judy who picks up a tray and brings it across. On the tray are three beautifully crafted leather items, each with a buckle and strap and d-rings. Another nod from Ylena to Judy and she takes the largest one and places it around my neck.
Ylena leans forwards, her face close to mine and her perfume filling my nostrils. She reaches behind my neck, drawing the collar tightly around it. The padded edge of the wide collar fits under my jaw and holds my head in a fixed position, it’s surprisingly restrictive. I don’t resist in any way. She fastens the buckle and turns her attentions to the wrist straps. As she moves back, her scent fades too. I’m intrigued by the intensity with which I’m sensing my surroundings. Everything is happening very slowly it seems and with an exquisite potency that amplifies everything. She takes each of the straps. They too are fitted snugly in place, not restrictive of themselves but powerfully symbolic.
“Please stand and turn around,” Ylena says. I do as she asks. It only seems right. As I stand there passively she draws my arms behind my back and uses some sort of clip to fasten the d-rings on my wrist cuffs together. Instinctively I go to pull my wrists apart but to no effect. Judy wags an admonishing finger at me with a smile.
I feel her hand reach out and cup my naked backside. I tense in response. “Don’t worry, slooga, I won’t hurt you but I do want you to experience what it means to receive. Judy, a paddle and ball, please.”
“Now Joseph, kneel down beside me,” Ylena says. “I have a word for you to learn, ‘slooga’. It means ‘servant’, my servant, my property, one of my belongings, while you are here.”
Judy nods in response to Ylena’s request and goes to a cupboard. She returns with what looks like a broad thick kitchen spatula but its made of leather and a large red rubber ball on a strap. It’s pretty obvious what they are for. Ylena picks up the ball gag, first of all.
“Do we need that, Gazpazha?” I ask.
My question earns a raised eyebrow from Ylena but she decides to indulge me. “That is an interesting question,” she says. “You are obviously a strong man, it will take a lot to make you cry out but that is not my aim, at least not this time. So, we do not ‘need’ it to prevent your cries. I do need to gag you because I wish to deprive you of speech. You have the ability to make the only communication you need, to stop the scene. For my slooga, speech is not often needed. So you wear this for me. Not because it is needed to keep you quiet but to remind you that your speech is not required, not needed.”
She doesn’t ask if I understand. She knows that her words have an incontrovertible logic given the circumstances. She turns towards me and lifts the gag. I turn my head to face her and open my mouth without a word. She smiles and I feel glad inside that I have pleased her.
It’s a peculiar sensation as she pushes the ball in, wedging it behind my teeth, pressing my tongue down and filling my mouth with the taste of the hard rubber. She fastens the strap. It’s not tight but it will stop me pushing the ball out of my mouth. Assuming I wanted to and then I realize that gagged as I am, I will not be able to use my “safe word” so I am now forced to trust Gaspazha to look after me and respect my lack of experience. Whilst I may be prepared to trust her, but it seems there are limits to how far she trusts me to manage my forthcoming experience: She takes a cat’s bell and ties it to thin red tape and then ties the tape to my right index finger. “Instead of your safe word”, she says.
She reaches across me and runs a gloved hand down my chest and stops with it over my nipple. She rubs. The nipple responds. It stiffens and becomes erect – as much as it can. The sensation is pleasant, tickly. A moment later a sharp pinch forces a cry from me. I’m surprised by the strange animal like nature of the noise that I make. She nods. That was why she did it. To let me know what she has done to me, to let me know what I have let her do to me.
Ylena uses a hand on my shoulder to encourage me to turn around and the same hand bends me forward across her lap. Before I couldn’t have imagined letting a woman – or anyone else for that matter – get ready to beat me but now it seems the most natural thing in the world. It’s something we are both going to get something from; she, the satisfaction of my obedience; me, the sense of moving closer to something Jenny found so important.
The first blow with the paddle lands across my buttocks. It’s quite light, little more than the weight of the paddle itself falling on me. There’s more of the same, the interval between each blow lessening steadily until the paddle is rapping against me every second or so. I feel my backside beginning to tingle independently of the blows. While she keeps up the beating with her right hand she uses her left to stroke my back between my restrained arms, running her fingers down to where the cuffs are joined together and up again towards my shoulders.
Ylena pauses. I grunt involuntarily through the gag surprised by the ceasing of the blows. She hasn’t finished though. I feel her lean forward across my back. I hadn’t realised how much I was sweating until I feel the cool silk of her blouse brush against my nakedness. Her move is explained by an increase in the intensity of the blows. They are still not hard but now there is more of her strength behind them. They fall steadily but slowly. I hadn’t realised how precise an art this was, but I am now aware that I am anticipating the next blow in just the same way you might anticipate the next note, in a song that you know. Occasionally she surprises me, varying the weight of the blow or changing where it lands. I realise that the intensity has increased to the point where the blows are now longer just tingling, now they are hurting. Each one sends a spike of pain through my buttocks and though I could, I suppose, break free from her grasp, I do no more than wriggle in her grip.
“Be still,” she admonishes, rewarding my struggles with two heavier blows, one to each buttock, both of which bring muffled cries from behind the gag.
The steady tattoo of blows on my backside continues until I am aware of nothing else but the slap of the leather and the spikes of pain. I realise that I’m not conscious of anything else, of Ylena, of Judy of where I am, of anything. I’m completely lost in the sensations of the beating and for the first time I believe I understand something of what Jenny must have been driven by.
It’s at that moment that Ylena stops. She sits up and places a hand under my chin to indicate I should kneel up. “That will do for now,” she announces: she smiles, “You are released!”
Judy comes forward, unfastens the gag and eases it from my mouth. As the ball is pulled clear, the corners of my mouth tingle from where the strap has cut into them.
“Thank you, Gaspazha,” I say; the formulaic response of a slave to a beating but, in my case, sincerely meant.
Judy releases the clasp that fixed my wrist cuffs together and I realise how unimportant the restraint has been except as a symbol of Ylena’s control. Ylena reaches up to the collar encircling my neck. “I think you understand a little more,” she says.
She’s right: it must be her experience speaking. “Yes,” I say in acknowledgement.
“That is enough for now. Think about what you have experienced. You can come again if you wish. Judy fetch moi slooga’s clothes, please. Perhaps we will meet again.” With that Ylena Zukhova gets to her feet and leaves the room, not waiting for any response from me. Judy looks disappointed as I dress, which is a compliment I suppose. I run my hands across my buttocks. They feel hot and sore but I’m surprised by how little I am concerned by this. I look at my watch. I have been with Ylena for just an hour. It’s only as I am about to leave that I realise that I am still wearing the collar that Ylena had placed around my neck. It almost seems an act of disobedience to remove it. Judy smiles understandingly as she takes it off.
I can still feel its stiff rigidity about my neck as if it was still there, while I am driving home.
“Keep straight on and you will reach your destination,” says my in-car domina.
© Phil Lane & Freddie Clegg 2010
All characters fictitious
No reposting without permission.
CHAPTER 17 : THE MUNCH : JANUARY
14 Months And 447 Days After Jenny’s Disappearance
It’s about three months after my adventure with Ylena; over a year now since Jenny disappeared. I can’t believe it’s so long. The anniversary was painful and of course the press were around again asking questions. After the initial ‘forensic’ part of their investigation, the Police contacted the media with the story and there was a wave of interest. Jenny’s parents were seen as tragic figures: a close family loosing a much loved child. And me? I felt I was treated with much more suspicion. The husband: was he instrumental in his wife’s disappearance? Did he drive her away? Did she run away from him? I began to feel more like a liability that an asset to the media campaign and so we agreed that Jenny’s parents would take centre stage and keep up the pressure on the media, trying to find their daughter whilst I should stay in the background. I suppose The Press want to tell a good story as well as report the news and the idea of a brutal – or boring – husband disposing of his wife or merely driving her away is an easier story to tell - an easier tale to believe - than the truth: a much loved wife and daughter who, without reason, disappears into thin air without warning, never to be seen again.
I’ve tried to convince myself that something happened to Jenny but the longer it goes without any word the more I’m convinced that she left me. It seems a terrible thing to say; as though I’ve given up on finding her. That’s not true of course but I suppose if I’m honest I’ve felt that was what happened all along. It was my fault that now she’s gone.
I’m checking my emails. There are two significant emails for me in my inbox.
The first comes from Missing People to update me about hits on the “Find Jenny” website they helped us to set up. There have been plenty of hits but no news. I stare at the email for several minutes – and then go to the site, to visit her once more. There she is, looking out at me from the screen, smiling, silent. I heave a sigh and stare back. It seems cruel to go too soon – as if she would know, in some odd way. I used to visit every day and speak regularly to the contacts at the Charity. I used to think it would all come right, if I could just be patient for a little while. After all, if I had almost found her, through my own efforts, surely the police would soon actually find her? Then weeks quickly became months and now more than a whole year has passed. The charity has been very supportive and at least they help Jenny’s parents and me to do things, so we are not just waiting, passively, for “developments” (as the police say) to take place. But there never are any developments and I am left to search for her in the places she seemed to be at home and always, she is never there ….
Which brings me to the second ‘significant’ email.
Corinne has proved as good as her word: an invitation to a munch has arrived. There’s an email from her in my in-box this morning, with a contact address and a copy of the note she’s sent introducing me. “Someone I know that is just starting to get into the scene, very much exploring how it might be for him,” the note says, which sounds like a pretty good summary, to me.
I email the contact. I’m not really sure how much detail to go into so I just say I’d like to come along and what are the arrangements for the next meeting?
The reply is a bit surprising. It’s not that different to some of the invitations I get to events connected with my work ,but I suppose I should stop being puzzled by how “normal” BDSM is to the people who are part of it. I’m also surprised by the venue. It’s a pub not far from Warwick, beside a canal. I know it. I’ve been there a few times and it never struck me as being “that sort of place”. What sort of place? Is it really any different from any other bunch of enthusiasts meeting one another in a pub? Before, I would have said definitely “yes”. Now, I’m not so sure.
The email comes with some notes which make up a set of terms and conditions. The whole thing is obviously highly organised and, as I read, I can see that each of the regulations makes a lot of sense. “The Munch is a casual get-together in a public but kink-friendly setting,” the email says. “The dress code is for casual everyday clothes – no kinky or fetish wear, please, it just upsets the other customers and makes life difficult for everyone. No toys allowed either and no selling or photography. Kinky conversation is more than welcome but remember folk are there for interaction not to listen to monologues. Fetish fascists are definitely not welcome. Please don’t indulge in ‘scene’ behaviour or play. It isn't a Play Party or a Fetish Night – but you could go on to the PER party later. Please be polite and discreet with the vanilla serving staff. Do NOT try to "convert" them, they are VANILLA and at work, so please pause the kinky talk when they are serving. Most of all though, enjoy the company and have fun.”
At the bottom of the note the organiser has added. “Corinne didn’t say if you were bringing anyone or not. It’s probably easier if you do but if not, don’t worry.”
I hadn’t thought about bringing a companion, but it makes sense: If people think I’m a Dom will they think I’m trying to recruit their subs? if they think I’m sub will they expect me to hit on the Doms? It’s like single people turning up at any other social gathering. The world isn’t really organised for singles.
Could I invite Cathy Corbin? I’m sure she’d come, if only to help me for Jenny’s sake but I’m not sure how I’d explain it to George:
“ I’d like to take your wife out on a date to meet a bunch of kinks and perverts.” Would that work? Possibly not! In the end I decide to go on my own and manage any misconceptions which arise.
I arrive just after the the start of the event. It’s never a good idea to be first but perhaps that may not be the case, for something like this. The curious feeling of being appraised by men and women as I come into the room is a strange and unfamiliar one. I suppose it’s something women have to put up with all the time, in the vanilla world, but I’ve never experienced it before. I’m not sure how, or even if, to introduce myself but decide just to be straightforward: “Hi,” I say, “I’m Joe.”
I almost add “and I’m interested in BDSM” but then I tell myself, they know that because why else would you be here?
One figure breaks away from the middle of the reassuringly ordinary crowd and comes over to me. It’s a big, balding man with a short beard and bare but heavily tattooed arms. He looks like a biker, although he’s wearing jeans instead of leathers. “Hullo Joe,” he says, “welcome. Glad you could come. I’m Zeph – in other words, zz604@hotmail.co.uk.”
This is the email address of the organiser and he shakes my hand warmly. “Well, thanks for letting me tag along,” I respond.
I know it’s a foolish stereotype but he looks just like I imagine a dominant man should look. Actually that’s not fair. I suppose I have two versions in my mind, this guy and a rather thin, effete man with carefully groomed hair and a thin moustache.
“You won’t know anyone, I guess?” Zeph asks.
I look around not expecting to recognise anyone but then I realise that there is at least one couple that I’ve seen around the university canteen when I’ve lunched there with Jenny. It’s a bit of a surprise. What if someone here knows me? I don’t know their names so I say, “No, I’m afraid not,” but I’m starting to feel uneasy.
“Well don’t worry, they won’t bite. Well, not the subs at any rate!” He laughs. A large warm confident laugh. “And don’t worry if you do see someone you know. They are here for the same reason you are, don’t forget. Look, I have to get a few things sorted. Harriet and Peter have been coming here for a while. They are good fun. Zeph places a large heavy arm across my shoulders and guides me towards them.”
The three of us talk for a while. It turns out that Harriet and Peter
have been into the scene “ forever”. They look like throwbacks to the nineteen sixties. When the rest of their friends were into the hippy scene, turning on and dropping out, they must have been discovering BDSM.
“It felt like we were inventing it,” Peter says.
“It was more underground than smoking dope, believe me!” Harriet agrees. “There wasn’t the network that exists today, the social groups.”
“No internet of course. Just a few magazines...”
“... That came out when they felt like it and you could only buy in very strange shops. Do you remember scouring ‘Forum’ for the occasional kinky article or letter?” Peter nods and Harriet continues. “Nobody you could get bondage toys from. We had a pair of police surplus handcuffs and that was our toybox.”
“We used to try to get hold of some of the American bondage magazine for ideas..”
“And those paperback books – in yellow bindings.”
“And there was ‘Atomage’... “
“And watching ‘The Avengers’ ...” Harriet is smiling, remembering. “I’m sorry. This is very rude. We get a bit caught up in the past sometimes. It’s just good to see people enjoying things much more openly. I think we’re all very lucky. How did you get into this?”
“Well my wife introduced me to it, I guess.”
“Is she here?”
“No.” The conversation is really not going in the direction I want it to. “We’re, well, she’s away at the moment.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Yes. I think she’d rather be here. In fact I’m sure of it. Everyone’s so friendly.”
Peter nods. “Yes, they’re a good bunch of people, mainly. There’s a couple of folk I wouldn’t want to get into a scene with – top or bottom – and some of the more extreme games that some people like aren’t our sort of thing but if that‘s what they like, then fair enough.”
“I suppose it’s a hang-over from our ‘whatever turns you on, man’ days,” says Harriet. It’s true they’re obviously a pair of old hippies at heart, kinky ones, but hippies nevertheless. I can imagine them enjoying themselves with a Hendrix CD. She pushes back a wayward strand of greying hair. As she does so, I see a small key tattooed on the back of her hand.
Zeph slides in beside me on the couch. “I see you are getting on famously.” I hadn’t noticed him come back and actually I’ve forgotten my reservations and concerns.
“He’s been very tolerant. We’ve been rambling on about the ‘good old – bad old days’ and he hasn’t looked bored once.” Harriet smiles.
“That’s because I wasn’t bored at all,” I reply. “Thanks. I mean that. I guess it’s reassuring to meet people on the scene who seem so normal.”
“Normal!” Peter throws his hands up in mock offence, “that is the worst thing anyone ever accused me of.” Harriet leans across and kisses him on the cheek. It’s one of the most tender things I’ve seen anyone ever do in public.
“Come on,” Zeph says getting up. “There’s someone else I’d like you to meet.”
I say my farewells to Harriet, Peter and Zeph.
There’s a woman making her way towards us. She’s about as wide as our host but good bit shorter. She’s wearing the same style of jeans and a sleeveless denim top. She’s got fewer (althoughnot too many fewer) tattoos. They look like a pair of book ends. She’s obviously his sub or slave or whatever he calls her.
“So is this the new visitor?” she asks, holding a hand out to great me in a way that seems very forward for a submissive. I shake it and nod.
“Joe McEwan,” I say.
“Mistress Esme,” says the woman. She turns to Zeph. “Run along,” she says, “and make sure someone is organising a drinks order.”
“Yes, Mistress,” Zeph says with a smile before turning to me, saying, “Excuse me,” and heading off to the crowd of folk slowly coalescing around the upstairs bar.
I have got completely the wrong end of the stick with Zeph! “I’m sorry,” I say to Esme, “I thought well, ... I didn’t realise that you were his... well, sorry. Should I have asked or something?”
Esme smiles. “That’s all right. There’s no way of telling. None of us have a big arrow pointing down at us.”
“Black for dom, red for sub?” I say.
“Exactly. It would make life easier - but not as much fun.”
I nod. What colour is my arrow, I wonder?
“Of course it would be a bit of problem with Zeph. Him being a switch.”
“Switch?”
“Someone that can take either role. He only bottoms with me but with others it’s a different matter.”
“Ah, I see,” I say. But I don’t see. Not at all.
Looking to change the subject, I point to a big green “PER” on the wall. “What’s that?” As far as I can see it’s some sort of poster but what for is not clear.
“They’re the play party organisers.” She sees my confusion. “Normally after the Munch those of us that want to play ……..” She looks at me to confirm that I understand what she’s getting at and I nod to confirm I am on her “wavelength” …… “Well we go on there. They always get a good venue and after we’ve spent an hour or two talking kinky, plenty of us want to do something kinky.”
“Understandable.”
“Especially because we don’t play at the munch. This is meant to be a non-threatening social event. Besides, the ceiling’s too low to swing a whip.”
I grin. “Well it is a non-threatening environment,” I say. And it is. I’m finding it easy to talk to her and it’s only after a few moments that I realise that Zeph is waiting quietly at her side having returned without a word.
“Excuse me a moment,” she says and turns to him.”Yes?”
“It’s all in hand. Can I get you something?” Zeph says, leaving the ‘Mistress’ unspoken.
“Mmm, please. A red wine. Something French. How about you?” she asks me. It’s obvious she’s not asking Zeph.
“The same. Thanks,” I respond and Zeph scuttles off. “I thought there was some sort of unspoken rule about no alcohol with play.”
“Normally I wouldn’t, but there’s no party tonight. It’s been put off until next week, so I’m going to indulge.”
“So what is PER?”
“That’s not how you say it. Look again.”
I look across at the poster again. I can’t see how else you could pronounce ‘PER’.
“Think about the colour,” she says.
Zeph returns. “I found you a glass of ‘something French’, as requested,” he says.
Suddenly I understand the trick. PER in green. The French word ‘vert’. PER-vert. “Pervert!” I exclaim.
Esme smiles, “Very good. Exactly right. Look, why don’t you come along next week? We’ll be there. I’ll look after you. You needn’t get involved in anything if you don’t want to, but if you are really interested in learning more about the scene, you’ll definitely have the chance.”
It seems like a chance which will be too good to miss. I tell her “yes”. Zeph gives me a flyer with the details on. I stuff it inside my jacket as she runs through a list of people for Zeph to introduce me to. I barely have time to thank her before she’s bustling away to welcome another newcomer. It’s a busy social event but she’s obviously on top of it. But then, that’s why they’re called ‘tops’, I suppose?
As I make my way home I begin to thinking about people in our office. Could I see any of they going to a Munch. Chris Parker? Absolutely not! Craig and Sylvie Evans? Could be. Who else?
What about Gwenda? Tall, black, muscular, witty – and a very good engineer. I have never thought of her sexually before but now her face - her voice - steals into my mind. Soft, warm, lilting, Carribean. I imagine her standing in leather jeans, tight white cotton blouse. She is holding a drink, talking to Harriet. As I look at her in my imagination, she turns and smiles ….
Footnotes.
1. Pub. Colloquial English for a “Public House”, in other words, a bar but more than that: somewhere you can go to enjoy company and food and spend a convivial evening. Interestingly ‘pubs’ are characteristically English whilst ‘bars’ are more common in other parts of the UK such as Scotland.
2. Forum. Styled as “the International Journal of Human Relationships”. Before the Internet was invented, Forum was probably the best source of information about sexuality and kink - and it was available in (most) mainstream newsagents. You can check it out at their web site.
3. Atomage. The legendary fetish magazine (in the UK) published by John Sutcliffe from the 1950’s to the 1980’s. There is a tribute site on the internet, just search for Atomage.
4. The Avengers. British TV “secret agent” series screened from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, memorable because the female lead was always a very strong, self-assurred, and tough individual (although sometimes with an unfortunate tendency to end up in the clutches of a ruthless adversary). The first actress to play the part was Honor Blackman, appearing as Cathy Gale who went “on mission” wearing a leather cat suit! Honor Blackman was in real life a Judo black belt and wrote “Honor Blackman’s Book of Self Defence”. She came to international attention when she played “Pussy Galore” in the third James Bond Film “Goldfinger”. The last actress who played the role, Joanna Lumley, has recently forced the British Government Policy to change its policy towards the care of retired Gurkah soldiers from the British Army. Clearly, the role still attracts females who can kick ass!
© Phil Lane & Freddie Clegg 2010
All characters fictitious
No reposting without permission.
E-mail: freddie_clegg@yahoo.com
Web Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
CHAPTER 18 : PARTY ANIMALS : FEBRUARY
15 Months, 454 Days After Jenny’s Disappearance
I’m looking at the PER flyer, standing outside the venue, feeling embarrassed and apprehensive. I should explain that there are two reasons for this. Firstly there’s the regular embarrassment of feeling as if I’m standing here shouting “I like kinky SEX!” at the top of my voice and secondly, the last time I was in a club it was with the guys out in Seoul at a venue I don’t think Jenny would have approved of, enjoying myself when who knows what was happening to her.
The flyer had said “Dress Code: Fetish or Black Tie” and I have gone for the easy option. I’m standing here in my dinner jacket, dress shirt and bow tie, felling a bit foolish and wondering whether turning up in leather trousers and nothing else would have been a better bet. I see another man, dressed as I am, go into the club. I take that as my cue.
The whole place is a huge contrast from the cosy surroundings of the munch. Instead of the rustic homely surroundings of the pub, this is a slick, modern, sophisticated, city club. The lights outside are pale blue neon. The door is guarded by a couple of immaculate bouncers. Inside it is sleek and cutting-edge, sharp lighting and shiny chrome. The bar and the food area are impressive. It is the sort of club for confident guests. Leading off the main floor area are several other rooms. One is quite large laid out with tables and chairs at one end and a small stage at the other. There’s a second room, more intimate with dimmer, more discrete lighting - a refuge form the techno music coming from the DJ in the central area dance floor. A few couples are already installed in there. There is ome more room and the last room is obviously the place to enjoy some kinky action: there is a St Andrew’s cross, a spanking horse and a pillory and some metal cages.
It has become quite crowded and those in black tie are definitely in the minority. In fact there’s me and the bloke I saw going in before me and that’s it so far. I’m feeling at a bit of a loose end.
Almost everyone appears to be arriving in couples or groups. Maybe I should have brought Cathy, but that would have been an even bigger challenge than the munch! I’m about to go and investigate the bar when I see Esme and, wearing a leather hood, someone I assume to be Zeph.
Their casual, friendly, air at the munch hasn’t prepared me for the full-on fetish style of their appearance at PER. Esme’s outfit leaves no doubt as to which side of the sub-dom fence she sits. She may not be naturally shapely but the corseted bodice of the short leather dress she is wearing does more than enough to emphasise her hips, and buttocks and her ample breasts. Actually, her dress doesn’t so much cover her breasts as hold them up on a shelf. Pale against the dark brown of the leather, they quiver as she walks. She’s wearing a spiked collar, elbow length gloves in a matching brown leather and high heeled – (what else?) – lace up shoes. Hanging from her belt is a neatly coiled whip. She is leading Zeph with a chain fastened to his collar with a padlock. He’s almost naked, his head is covered with the hood and his genitals are hidden behind a sort of leather jock strap which has also been locked in place.
The two of them reach me. “Joe!” Esme declares with evident delight. She presents a cheek for a greeting kiss. I get very close to the spikes of her collar before realising that I’m about to impale myself and pull back. She laughs and I join her. She offers a hand instead and I provide a gentlemanly kiss and a short bow. It seems appropriate.
“Can I buy you a drink?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes, of course. Thank you, I’d like a coke.” She doesn’t ask Zeph. He just bows his head.
I go the bar. There’s a group of men in similar outfits to Zeph’s. Hoods or masks seem commonplace, collars are evidently obligatory, and apart from that, there’s a lot of flesh, much of it sprinkled with tattoos, and body piercings. The girl behind the bar, “dressed” to match her clients on the other side of it, asks me what I want.
I remind her that there are others before, me but she points out that subs get served last. So here is one benefit to being a Dom: going straight to the head of the queue, at the bar!
By the time I get back to Esme and Zeph, Esme is stretched out on one of the couches and Zeph is kneeling by her side. He’s holding her whip in his outstretched hands. She takes the drink with a word of thanks and pats the seat beside her. I sit down.
“Quite a show isn’t it?” she says, raising her voice. The DJ has started up in the dance room and the music, coupled with the increasing hubbub in the room as more and more guests arrive, makes it difficult to hear.
I nod. Looking about me, I’ve never seen anything like it! Around the room there are people in every form of fetish clothing imaginable. Quite a lot of rubber, some leather, some lycra, some uniforms that look authentic and some less so. There are even a few people like me: turned out in full evening dress!I begin to feel less out-of-place, but only a little. I can only see one woman who is not in fetish gear. She’s the complete embodiment of 1950’s glamour, slinky gown, elaborate hair, wonderful immaculate make up and an outside bra that would bring joy to the heart of Madonna. She’s carrying a cigarette in a long cigarette holder. It’s not lit. It astonishing to think that that something so fashionable when the clothes she is wearing were in style – smoking - is now banned, while something that was frowned on in those days is seen as a normal party opportunity now.
Esme leans over towards me. “Don’t be fooled by the outfit,” she says, “that’s as hard a bitch as you’re likely to meet here tonight. Good if you’re looking for a very demanding time, not for a beginner though.”
I give a non-committal ‘Mmmmm’. I hadn’t thought about what I am looking for, but it’s reasonable for Esme to imagine that I am here for more than voyeurism.
“Ooo,” says Esme, I want to watch this.” She clicks her fingers at Zeph and he lays down the whip and kneels on all fours. Esme lifts her feet and places one leg across his back while perching the other foot upon it. I can see quite clearly how the heel of her shoe is digging into his soft flesh. I can imagine what it feels like. I don’t feel inclined to try it. On the stage someone has set up a series of five low cages. A kneeling slave is being herded into each of them: there are two women and three men.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, Good Evening!” A man wearing a rough approximation of my own outfit, but in electric blue rubber has come to the front of the stage. “Tonight we are very pleased, to present these five slaves who come here to be judged in the public court. Each one has been accused of crimes which warrant public examination and, if necessary, sentence. (cheers from the crowd) Sentence will be carried out for the approval of all owners and as a warning to all slaves. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Court of PER is now in session.”
A woman appears in judge’s robes and wig, although beneath her gown she is wearing only a basque and stockings. She makes her way to a table on a dais, bangs a gavel on the desk and orders the first of the accused to be brought before her. It’s a man. Naked, ball-gagged and in shackles he can do little else except to shuffle up to the front of the judge’s dais when he is summoned.
It’s a very short trial. The gag is removed and he confesses his slovenly approach to the house work his Mistress ordered him to do. There’s a chorus of tuts from the Dommes in the audience.
The judge passes sentence of an hour in the pillory which doesn’t sound too bad to me but causes a murmur of comment which suggests others think he’s not getting off lightly.
Esme leans across towards me. Zeph gives an, “Ah!” as Esme’s movement pushes her heel deeper into his back.
“It’s not the pillory,” she says, “it’s what he’ll suffer while he’s in there, isn’t it Zeph?”
“Yes Mistress,” comes the voice from the floor.
“Several different women reamed out your arse with strap-ons while you served your twenty minute sentence last time, didn’t they? In fact there might even have been one boy – but he was not wearing a strap-on!”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“So I guess you’re going to be more careful polishing my boots next time?” Esme smiles.
Meanwhile the convicted slave has been led off to the pillory at the side of the room and a woman has been brought from her cage to stand before the judge.
It’s an unexpected confession from Esme! I was not expecting such a frank account of their past history and I had not expected Zeph would have been subjected to that sort of treatment with such relish on the part of his wife. Despite my reservations, I feel a sexual thrill as my imagination reconstructs the scene.
There are more sentences, more slaves begging to be spared, more applause from the audience for the judge’s rulings, until all have been dealt with and the judge closes the session, leaving three victims shackled to whipping posts on the stage in preparation for their punishments, the unhappy slave in the pillory and a last slave ordered to spend the rest of the evening back in his cramped cage.
The ‘trial’ is the sort of thing I expected. What isn’t, is the dark haired, slim young woman that who comes up to me. “Esme suggested I could have a word with you. I hope you don’t mind?”
She’s dressed in a black rubber cat suit that seems to have been polished until it gleams. She’s quite short, only about five feet four tall, even with her heels. Beside her is another girl, much taller, bare breasted but otherwise immaculately dressed and presented. Tweezer clamps grip each nipple and a chain connects them. Her hands cuffed behind her, she is being led on a leash from a gleaning steel neck collar. “Could you hold my slave for me, please? Just for a few minutes. It’s just that I owe that one up there a little treatment,” she nods her head toward the pilloried slave who was already suffering at the hands of a woman taking advantage of his bent forward position to deliver a sound spanking. “Just between ourselves, his sentence is probably a bit severe, but he’s upset quite a few of the Dommes here at some point in the past so he’s probably going to get a bit more than he expects. For example he spent way too much time trying to inveigle me into punishing him just the way he wanted. I can’t stand subs topping from the bottom. This one’s much more pliant.” She holds out the girls leash towards me. “You don’t mind do you?”
“Not at all,” I say. And I don’t. Firstly, because both she and Esme have obviously decided that I’m a dominant and if that’s what Jenny wants, that’s what I’m going to be. (But is it something you decide? That doesn’t really seem right.) And secondly, in spite of the fact that I should be thinking about Jenny, it’s hard not to find the idea of holding a half naked, big breasted girl on a leash engaging - in one way or another.
“Thanks,” says the girl in rubber and without a word to her slave, heads off towards the pillory, selecting a thin whippy cane from a rack at the side of the stage, as she does so.
I sit down, the girl kneeling beside me. “Look at me,” I say and, for the first time, she lifts her head. There’s something curiously satisfying about the quietly spoken request, unthinkingly obeyed.
She’s a conventionally pretty girl with blonde hair greased and combed carefully back away from her slightly pale face with a pair of full, reddened lips. She looks a little nervous. Of course, as far as she knows, I could be a renowned slave trainer, not someone who’s little more than a convenient hitching post. I’m happy to maintain her uncertainty. Is that the behaviour of a top? I suppose it is. Maybe I’m getting the idea of this …
“A girl with nice tits nicely tormented,” Esme comments directly to me. My kneeling slave’s eyes flick towards her as though she isn’t used to being spoken of, rather than being spoken to. I wonder if she likes that; the objectification, the humiliation of being ignored.
“Yes,” I say, entering into the spirit of Esme’s teasing. “That’s why I agreed to look after her.” She looks up at me with an air of disappointment, as though she had thought better of me than to comment on her tits. I’m enjoying it though. I lean forward towards her:
“Kiss Mistress Esme’s feet – and ankles – and legs. The Mistress wishes to see your skills”
The girl gets to work on Esme. She is enthusiastic and very thorough!
“She’s such a slut!” The girl in the rubber cat suit has returned from the stage following a round of applause. “I hope she behaved herself.”
“Impeccably,” I say, passing her leash back to the owner.
“Oh yes. She’s always happy when I tell her to show off. Aren’t you?”
The girl nods, an embarrassed smile on her face.
“Well, thanks for looking after her. If you’ll excuse us. I may stop by later.” She takes the girl and leads her away towards the quiet room.
I’m feeling pleased with myself. My first little bit of topping. The feeling lasts about a minute.
It’s only after the girl in rubber has gone that it occurs to me that my main role in this little exercise has been to get her slave nicely warmed up for her. The girl in rubber has had the fun of thrashing the man in the pillory and her slave has been evidently excited by being required to make an exhibition of herself. Now the two of them have disappeared off, no doubt for some joint amusement.
I turn to Esme. “Have I just been taken advantage of?” I ask.
“It’s hard to say,” she answers with a laugh. “Only if you didn’t enjoy it. I must confess that we Dommes can be a little competitive. That probably wasn’t altogether fair of her, but on the other hand perhaps, you didn’t mind doing her a favour?”
There’s obviously more to this topping business than I thought.
It’s then that I realise that my the beer Ihas “made its way through”; I excuse myself and go in search of the gents.
On my way there I stop to look at the cages. I guess I’m always interested in the way things are put together – one of the consequences of my job, I suppose. Jenny spoke about being kept in a cage when she was taken for interrogation. I wonder if it was something like this? The Master of Ceremonies comes over, still resplendent in his electric blue rubber suit; he smiles:
“Nice work aren’t they?”
I nod. They’ve been put together well, a good solid frame and secure fixings for the bars. The entry with its padlocked grille is pretty solid too, welded steel or possibly something lighter, maybe.
“They can be taken apart for transport. They fold flat and fit in the back of a typical hatchback with the back seats folded.”
“You sound like a salesman.”
“Sorry,” the MC grins, “The makers lend them to us and we get a commission if anyone buys one after the show.”
“Don’t apologise. They’re well made. I can tell, I’m an engineer but that’s my only interest, I’m afraid. I can’t see one of these in the living room at home.”
“Well, what would you tell the neighbours, when they came around?”
“Something like that. Clever construction … my speciality is concrete castings for water management projects - canals, drainage, that sort of thing. Can’t really see an application for that here, though.”
“There are always the SM Dykes.”
I laugh. It’s a genuine BDSM joke. I hadn’t thought there were such things but actually, thinking about it people do seem to take it less seriously - and less ponderously - than I expected. “That’s good,” I tell him. “That’s very good. Still, if you’ll excuse me – I need ...”
The toilets are no less bizarre than the rest of the event. There’s queue outside the ladies, as there always is, except this queue is clad in leather, rubber and straps. Outside the gents a woman is waiting. She’s wearing a black halter neck outfit in vinyl. Its cut high on her hips, where a coiled dog whip hangs from her belt, and there’s a cut out at the front showing off a generous amount of cleavage. She wears a small septum ring in her nose and the piercings in her ear lobes have been enlarged: there is a blue metallic tunnel through each one and through the tunnel there is a thick blue metal ring which rolls as she moves her head. She’s wearing short black gloves and in one hand she’s holding a stop watch. I nod sociably as I pass her.
Inside a middle aged man (who is starting to show the beginnings of a belly and sandy hair that’s starting to recede) is wrestling with the set of straps and buckles that he’s wearing, trying to free his cock from its leather cage. There’s obvious relief as he succeeds and his cock springs into his hand so he can relieve himself into the urinal.
I have a lot less trouble in doing what I’ve come to do. He’s still trying to refasten his harness as I finish washing my hands. “Is that your Domme, with the stop watch?” I say.
He looks up, startled. Blokes don’t speak unbidden in a lavatory – usually grunts are all they exchange in here at the most – and I wonder if there’s some unwritten etiquette about speaking to other people’s slaves. He is obviously not offended. He merely nods and says, “Yes. There’ll be hell to pay if this takes much longer.”
I follow him out and almost trip over him as he drops to his knees immediately outside the door and presses his face to his Mistress’s feet. “Sorry,” I say instinctively.
The woman looks around incredulously. “Sorry?” she exclaims. “It’s his fault. You should be kicking him out of the way.” There’s something engaging in the way she smiles at me.
“Of course,” I say, “I can’t imagine what I was thinking.” Her slave looks up with an expression of relief on his face as though anything I said to contradict his Mistress would result in unpleasantness for him. “Is his clumsiness a big problem for you?”
What on earth am I doing, standing here discussing this man in the same way as you might talk to someone about their pet dog?
“Yes,” she says. “It’s taking a lot of effort to bring him up to a reasonable standard. His wife’s no better.”
“Really?” It’s one of those non-committal replies, but actually I‘m fascinated. This woman is probably fifteen years younger than the man, perhaps not long out of her teens, and yet she’s obviously got the two of them in her thrall. “Look, let me get you a drink and you can come to see her.”
The girl in vinyl seems genuinely friendly and another drink seems a good idea.
“Sure,” I say, “I would like that.”
She sends her slave scuttling off to the bar with an order for a beer for me and a J2O for her. As he goes, I wonder where he keeps the money in the harness he’s wearing?
She leads the way into the quiet room. From behind, I see her back has been tattooed. It looks like some sort of Viking design. But as I study the design I realise it also makes an intricate image of a pair of women’s high heeled shoes, seen from behind. “You do have some great body art,” I say, genuinely impressed.
“Thanks,” she says. “Not everyone appreciates it. Do you have any?”
“I’m having some done. Just started, just an outline so far.”
“So it must be quite big?”
I nod, “Pretty much the whole of my back and then some.”
It’s her turn to look impressed. “That’s brave for a beginner!” I feel pleased with myself. She points to a couch. “Let’s sit there.”
There’s a woman kneeling bound and hooded beside the couch. Her arms are locked behind her back in a sort of leather sleeve. “This is the other one I was telling you about,” she says. She pulls off the slave’s hood.
Beneath it, is the face of a forty year old woman, her face streaked with sweat and her dyed blonde hair is plastered to her scalp from being inside the hood. Her mouth is distended by a large ball gag. She’s evidently been inside the hood for quite a while.
She looks to be about the same age as her husband, but her outfit looks more suitable for a teen-ager; a very short kilt that barely covers her bum, a pair of white knee high socks and Mary-Jane shoes; a bra that pushes her tits up and looks like it’s two sizes too small and a pink t-shirt top with the legend “Right Little Princess,” cropped to reveal her bare midriff and pierced belly button.
Her mistress sees me studying her. “She’s a real slut. I thought she should keep in touch with her youth; in the vanilla world she tends to be rather uptight so hence the outfit,” she says. “You might enjoy her though.”
It seems as if everyone’s trying to give me their slaves tonight “Is that your thing?” I say evenly, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.
She looks back straight at me. “Oh, yes.” I don’t think it’s uncommon. Besides, you’ll know that keeping slaves is hard work. It needs a lot of attention, a lot of thought. Sometimes its nice to have some time off. Of course, this is where switches have the advantage, they can bottom out for a while. Doesn’t work for me though. You seemed to be here alone and I thought you might be interested - but it’s OK if you’re not.”
The husband returns with the drinks on a tray, he kneels silently beside his Mistress and holds the tray out. She passes the beer across to me and takes the orange juice for herself.
There’s something about her straightforwardness I find appealing and sexy. It reminds me of Jenny. I’m regretting being rude. “Sorry,” I say. I shake my head. “Sorry, that seems to be a bit of theme for me. Let’s start again. I’m Joe.”
“Vanessa,” the girl says. “That’s OK. This whole place can be a bit daunting if you’ve not been to something like this before.” I’m disappointed that I’m such an obvious newbie but I suppose it’s inevitable.
“You don’t mind if I ask you about these two?”
“I offered them. I can’t complain if you want to kick the tyres.” Her remark earns a scowl from the wife. “I’m a good friend of her daughter,” she nods to the wife. “Who let on about some of the things she’d found in their bedroom and I must confess that the idea of having a couple of slaves of my parent’s age to bully, was quite a turn on.”
As we’re talking, a tall man with a shaved head, wearing leather jeans and nothing else struts in and peers around, flexing a riding crop as he does so. “Vanessa,” he says loudly, ignoring me. “Still playing with your middle aged slaves?” He prods at the woman kneeling at Vanessa’s side with his crop.
Vanessa looks up. “Gerry,” she says, with a calm smile. “Still middle aged, yourself?”
Gerry grunts, looks around some more and disappears.
“My turn to be sorry,” Vanessa says. “There’s some rude people on the scene, the same as anywhere else. He’s actually less of a dork than he makes himself seem, but not much.”
I laugh. I know what she means.
“Look, I meant my offer,” Vanessa goes on. “This one,” she points to the wife, “is quite useful with her tongue. She’d give you a good blow job, believe me. It’ll turn her on to be told to do it, it’ll turn him on,” she nods at the husband, “to have to watch, and it would let me go and have a dance and see if there’s anyone here of my own age to play with. No offence.”
“None taken. I assumed you meant a sub anyway. Go on, I’ll mind the livestock, as long as you promise to come back for them.” I can hardly believe I’m saying this. Jenny would be proud of me, taking on a dom role like this.
“Thanks,” says Vanessa, hands me her whip, and disappears into the crowd.
I sit back on the couch, take a sip of my beer and contemplate my new acquisitions. What on earth should I do with them? The two of them are obviously enjoying themselves. The wife’s nipples are stiff and the man’s leather cod piece is straining against something that’s going on underneath it. I feel curiously detached from it all. I’m enjoying the sense of power but I can’t say that I’m feeling sexually aroused. There’s also a sense of responsibility.
The woman is an attractive proposition. She’s not young, but she obviously takes care of herself and she’s got a sparkle in her eyes that is something more than the sexual arousal of the moment. Even if her tits have been hoisted up by some aggressive under-wiring, they still look like they’d be fun to play with and there’s every suggestion that she’d enjoy both the humiliation of being offered without reference to her desires and the actual sensations. There’s nothing about the surroundings to discourage me either. It’s dark in the quiet room and from the sundry grunts, muffled cries, squeaks, and short slaps, there’s plenty of amusement being had, in the various corners around it.
The man is looking on expectantly. I find his voyeurism more uncomfortable than I find the wife’s evident enthusiasm.
It’s then that I start to have second thoughts. This is about Jenny after all, isn’t it? Would she do what the woman is doing? And I am doing anything more than the man? Is this all an exercise in voyeurism, justifying my behaviour in the past, by being a spectator at what Jenny wanted me to share? How would she feel if she was where the man is? Would she want to watch? It is as these thoughts and reflections run through my mind, that I realise how little of Jenny’s sexual responses I’ve understood. Yes, she’s submissive but what does that mean? Pain? Restraint? Humiliation? Whatever her partner desires?
The woman gives a whimper behind her gag, She’s looking directly at me, eyes wide open and pleading. She stretches, trying to earn some relief from the way that the arm binder pulls her elbows together and her shoulders back. It’s a sensuous, disturbingly arousing movement. Is that something I’m uncomfortable about too? The animal nature that’s being revealed here. On an impulse I reach forward and unbuckle her ball gag. Am I going to get her to suck me off? I don’t know. Is this being true to Jenny, by pursuing her interests, or betraying her, through sex with another woman? I don’t know and actually it’s becoming harder to make rational judgements. The man suspects this move is the precursor of some action. He looks up in anticipation. I tell him to bow his head. “Yes, Master,” he responds apologetically.
“Thank you,” the woman says working her jaw, stiff from the gag.
“Can I,” she nods towards my crotch, “please you?” There’s another animal like shrug of the shoulders. Her stiff nipples seeming to point at me through her pink top as she twists, her belly button ring glinting in a single shaft of light from somewhere.
At that moment, I know I’m not ready for this, yet. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it. I’m not ready for this woman going down on me in a public place, no matter what anyone else is doing, but I do have a responsibility for them. “Yes,” I say. “But as I wish, not as you wish. You will suck your husband. If you can make him come by the time your Mistress gets back, I will ask her to cane him.” I am astonished at myself, for putting this devious plan together but it seems to fit the mood of the evening perfectly.
There is a momentary flash of surprise on both of their faces but then the woman stares back at me, smiles broadly and says, “Yes, Master,” in a quiet tone before bending herself to the task. Her husband to unstraps himself and frees his erect prick. A moment later and they are both busy. He kneeling upright, his eyes closed in enjoyment (or is in anxiety?), she working on him carefully, thoroughly, enthusiastically. I get the definite impression that she is very keen to see him caned by Vanessa, and is going to do all she can to bring it about! I sit back and take another pull at my beer. For a moment I feel I can relax and I understand what Vanessa was talking about. It is a challenge keeping slaves, you have to think about them all the time. I let the tip of Vanessa’s whip trail across the backs of each of the two crouching figures, just to remind them to keep on with the task I have given them, but actually I’m a thousand miles away, wondering what Jenny and I might be doing now, if we’d got this sorted out between us and whether she might not have gone, if we had.
As my eye wanders out across the room I start in surprise: there is someone familiar on the dance floor! I can only see her from behind but there is no mistaking her tall muscular body. Her hair has been braided and at the end of the short plaits, there is a row of silver beads. Gwenda just looks fantastic! I have got to see her! I glance down at the two slaves engaged with each other – for goodness sake! Can I just leave them to their own devices, till Vanessa returns? How long is she going to be? I glance up again. Gwenda is turning towards me: will she see me? I get up and raise my arm to wave, a broad smile on my face – and it’s not Gwenda. The girl is a complete stranger. My arousal collapses as fast as it has risen. I feel … what? Relieved, disappointed, let down, angry and sad, all at once. I could almost weep with disappointment.
“I see you’re keeping them busy.” My thoughts are interrupted by Vanessa’s return. She too has come back empty handed.
“No success?” I say.
She shakes her head. “I guess I’m getting too selective. Have they behaved themselves?”
“Yes,” I say, but I am anxious about continuing the conversation, for fear of where it might lead. “You’d better have them back though. I thought they could let us see how affectionate they could be to each other! I said you would spank them if Hercules here had come before you returned. Ariande has done her best to bring him to the point of no return but he has held out!” Vanessa smiles.
“Stop now,” I say to the pair and they kneel up.
I pass Vanessa the whip back. “Thank you,” I say, “for the use of your property.”
“That’s quite all right. Thank you for the chance of a few minutes to relax.” She takes the whip from me.
I get to my feet. “I have to go. It has been fun meeting you,” I say to Vanessa. The two slaves look as if they are expecting some acknowledgement. They’re disappointed.
“You too,” Vanessa responds. “I get along to this event quite often; perhaps we’ll meet up next time?”
“Yes,” I’m not sure whether to ask her for a phone number. She might be a useful person to call on but at the moment I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all. It’s certainly time to go.
It’s as I have turned to leave that I meet another couple. I’ve returned Vanessa’s two slaves and really, I think I’ve had more than enough experiences for one evening when I notice the MC pointing me out to a couple standing by the stage. She is quite short, corseted, in stockings and a leather mask; he tall, muscular, lean, good looking in leather trousers and an elaborate chest harness. There’s no mistaking the dominant one in this couple.
The man comes across to me, abandoning his sub to the MC.
“Excuse me, Sir,” he says in a diffident manner that makes me realise I am wrong again. “My name is Andrew. My mistress, Philippa has told me to approach you. I hope you don’t mind?”
I look across to where Philippa is standing with the MC. She’s evidently enjoying the discomfort of having her sub present himself in this way. I’m beginning to feeling a bit like a “resource” for the more experienced party goers.
Andrew goes on, “I hope this in not rude but I understand that you’re a civil engineer?”
I nod. I assume that’s the substance of the discussion between him and the MC. I can’t imagine where this is going.
“My Mistress and I are engaged in a project that would allow you to combine your knowledge with your interests in the Scene,
“How? I mean what is this project?”
“This is perhaps not the best place to discuss it now. But perhaps we could meet. At your convenience of course...”
Of course.
“Could I possibly give you a call?”
I think for a moment. There’s really nothing to lose, except maybe a bit of wasted time, and on the other hand perhaps I’ll get some more insights into this peculiar world.
“OK,” I say. “I don’t have any business cards with me though.”
“That’s all right, just tell me your number, I’ll remember it.”
“If you’re sure.” He nods and I recite my phone number, he calls it straight back to me.
“When you have a Mistress as exacting as Philippa you learn to remember things,” he says with a smile. “I’ll call you next week and perhaps we can have lunch?”
“Fine,” I say and watch the two of them leave. I’m no closer to knowing what it’s all about when I finally begin make my own way home.
The journey in the cold night air brings me back to full alert yet I still feel tired after a full day at work and the emotional effort of screwing up my courage to attend the Club.
I am not ready to sleep just yet, so I go on-line and check emails. There’s a note from Andrew, Jenny’s dad; the people from Missing People have been in touch to suggest refreshing the Find Jenny site once more. Can I send some more photographs? They have no leads to tell us about. Have I anything to tell them? No: apart from the chronic loneliness and ever - present anxiety of just not knowing what has happened to her. Once the site is back up and running, would we like them to approach the local paper to run the story of her disappearance again? Yes, I would, of course I would. I want to know that I am doing anything and everything I can to find her. So I can tell Inga and Andrew – and myself that I have done all in my power.
© Freddie Clegg & Phil Lane 2010
All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or reposted without permission
All characters fictitious
E-mail: freddie_clegg@yahoo.com
Web Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
CHAPTER 19 : CIVIL ENGINEERING : FEBRUARY
15 Months, 462 Days Since Jenny’s Disappearance
It’s rather too early in the morning when my mobile chimes to say I have a text. I grunt and turn over in bed. Who is texting me at ….. 6.30am? I grope for the handset and try to focus on the screen. I open the text. It says, “Joseph. Can you do lunch on Friday? I suggest The Cranford Wine Bar in Warwick about 12.00? Regards, Andrew Edwards.”
Andrew Edwards? Just who exactly is Andrew Edwards? I don’t know any Andrew Edwards, do I? Then with a start, I remember that I have met an Andrew Edwards. He was the guy at the PERvert Party, just as I was leaving. I thought he was a sub under the thumb of his wife/mistress, what was her name? – Philippa. He didn’t strike me as the sort of person who would send such a direct, straight-to-the-point text, first thing in the morning. I mean - that’s hardly sub behaviour, is it? Unless his mistress has got him up at his morning chores!
What should I do? Politeness says I should reply and if he is texting at this time in the morning, I don’t need to worry about sending an early reply, in fact, I do not need to worry about replying immediately. What am I doing on Friday? I haul myself out of bed, go downstairs, put the kettle on for tea and check my work diary. As it happens, Friday is going to be an easy day. No meetings, video-conferences or deadlines to meet by close of business, so I could meet someone for lunch.
What should I do? I really suffer from indecision over things like this, but I suppose it’s just another step on my journey. The Edwards seem to be an “interesting” couple and this is lunch in a public place, so I should emerge with my virtue in tact. They wanted to talk about civil engineering so perhaps their approach at PERvert was merely “ordinary”- no, what’s the word? Vanilla. Vanilla networking? Although they did say something about providing an opportunity to indulge my interests, so perhaps it is not quite so vanilla. I pick up my phone and text “Andrew. Thanks 4 txt. OK Friday. Your number on my mobile now. Will txt if problem crops up. C U . JMcE”
Crops up. I find myself sniggering and thinking about riding crops. All sorts of innocent normal phrases and everyday articles seem to carry kinky possibilities and innuendos nowadays. I am not sure whether I should be pleased or exasperated!
The Cranford is a new addition to the Warwick social scene. It opened about three months ago. Upstairs is an art gallery; downstairs is a wine bar that’s open from 10am through to 10 pm and serves breakfast, morning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea and light evening meals. The enterprise is owned by one of Warwickshire’s more successful hoteliers and extends his grip on good hotels and restaurants in the area. As soon as I am over the threshold, the maitre d’ approaches with a solicitous smile. “A table for one?”
“Well, I’m meeting someone, actually.”
“Ah,” he gives a nod of recognition. “Would you be Mr McEwan?”
“Yes, that’s me”
“Please follow me. Mr Edwards told me you would be coming. He is waiting for you.”
I get the distinct impression I am being introduced to someone important, someone known to head waiters, hotel commissionaires and the like, someone who is used to getting his own way - which is exactly the opposite impression you might have if I told you that you were meeting a sub! We walk through to the informal dining room and towards one of the tables. We are half way there as Andrew Edwards gets up to greet me. He is dressed in a very smart light grey pin-striped tailored suit, white shirt and yellow tie. He pockets a blackberry as he rises and extends a hand. “Joseph! Glad you could come. I have got us a table over here at the side. A little more privacy than a table in the centre of the room, eh? What will you have? I’m having a G and T. You?”
“Yes, that would be good.”
“Charles?”
“Yes, Mr Edwards?”
“Get someone to fetch us gin and tonic each please. Bombay Sapphire.”
“Certainly, Sir!”
The maitre d’ disappears in search of a waiter (providing drinks being far below his status) and leaves me with this curious individual, who seems able to combine alpha male and submissive characters, in the one person.
“So how can I help?” I ask.
“Just now, by ordering!” he grins, pushing a menu towards me. “I’m having mussels in white wine followed by the smoked venison salad, but it’s all pretty good.”
I scan down the menu. Andrew has made two choices on the expensive side. I suppose this is a signal for me not to worry about what to order.
I choose the prosciutto melon and wild rocket salad, followed by a poached salmon and green vegetables – I am supposed to be losing weight, after all. The Trainer at the gym wanted to reassess my weight loss progress at my next session ….. !
I’m struck by the strange contrast: I’m trying to be a Dom. Andrew is the sub. I’m nagged by all and sundry at work and by the gym trainer, to do what I’m told. Andrew is ordering the house staff around and hosting this small encounter as if entertaining clients is what he was born to. Maybe he was. There is absolutely no sign of him being “under orders” from Philippa in anything he has done or said so far.
“So. Wine? I think rosé, would be the thing to have. Is that all right with you?” He glances at me across the top of a pair of expensive designer frames. I notice he has chosen a £50 bottle. I have never spent £50 on a bottle of rosé for a dinner, never mind lunch. “Well, let’s talk,” he continues. “You’re in civil engineering?”
Straight to the point. It’s where our conversation left off at PERvert. The wine appears. Andrew tastes it and indicates that the waiter should pour us each a glass, all without ever giving me the impression that his attention has wandered from what I am about to say.
“Yes. Concrete castings mainly, but our firm is involved with irrigation projects in Cambodia so some of my castings have an heroic flavour about them.”
“ I’ve never heard anyone describe concrete as heroic before. You’re with New Horizons Civil Engineering?”
How he would have found out? “Yes, have you done business with us?”
“No, but I am well informed. Good firm. Progressive.”
A plate of mussels appears for him. The prosciutto and melon for me. “Lets start,” he says, gesturing to the food.
I nod, and reply to his previous remark. “Thank you, on behalf of the firm.”
“Mmmm,” Andrew gives a nod of acknowledgement. “Well, you might be able to help or not. If not, you might be able to point me in the right direction.”
Point me in the right direction. This is the only vaguely submissive thing Andrew has said so far.
“Philippa and I have bought a plantation in Leicestershire. It’s quite large – about five square miles. There’s three things I plan to do with it. (His plans? What about Phillippa? I don’t understand their relationship at all). First, to operate some of the site as a commercial forest but growing native hard woods. That’s a longer term investment than say the sicca spruce you see all over northern England and Scotland, but the returns will be better and the forest will be much more interesting. Secondly, part of the site will be an arboretum. Trees are an interest of mine. This will be a private area but open to the public at times. I really want the project to stand on its own feet financially and that will be an important contribution." I’m wondering where this conversation is going. I don’t know much about trees apart from having to clear some of the forests on the Cambodian project and I can’t see what it’s got to do with my BDSM interests as he suggested. Not unless he’s planning to grow bamboo canes!
Andrew pauses while the starter plates are cleared and the main course appears. The salmon and the venison have one thing in common. For both, the food has been fashionably gathered up into a small tower. I’m never sure if this is to tax the waiting staff, to see if they can get it to table without it toppling over, or the diners who have to eat it without the whole thing collapsing inelegantly across the plate.
Andrew continues: “Finally,” he says, “there’s the third part, and this is where I could use some help or some advice and where your own interests might be catered for. The third part is going to be a ‘play-space’. The idea is that PERvert and others can have outdoor meetings if they wish and of course there are things you can do outside which you can’t do inside.” He smiles, confidently, almost conspiratorially, and starts on his warm venison salad.
I follow his lead and take up cutlery against the salmon tower. It’s all delicious. The vegetables are crisp but cooked. I’m regretting not ordering potatoes but I suppose I should just enjoy feeling virtuous. The waiter fusses in to refill our wine glasses and issues the obligatory, “Is everything all right with your meal?”
As I put my knife and fork down I take up the thread again. “So how can I help you Andrew? Concrete and forestry doesn’t normally fit together, and I’ve yet to find any use for concrete in the BDSM world either.”
“No, true. It’s your more general civil engineering experience I’m after.”
He is after. Not Philippa is after. Not Philippa told me to ask you. Curious.
“I have a forestry consultant who has had the plantation mapped to assess the various soil conditions and moisture content. Some areas need some “goodness ploughed into the soil”. Some areas are too damp and need drainage. Some areas are on the dry side and could do with some water brought in and we need to be able to access all areas.”
“So,” I summarise: “drains, pipes, roads.”
“Exactly. Of course, I’m not expecting you to do it all yourself, but I would like someone on my side to prepare an engineering plan before I go out looking for contractors. You might even be able to help short listing the contractors I should approach.”
I’m not expecting you. I want someone on my side. Andrew’s speech is delivered in confident terse sharp sentences which leaves no doubt that he is a man who knows exactly what he wants and knows how to get it. Yet, at PERvert, he was a submissive: may I speak with you Sir. I have been told to approach you. May I contact you? Will it be convenient to you?
We both pass on dessert. We’re waiting for coffee before I manage to get possession of the ball.
“Well, Andrew. What you are after is not my main area of expertise, but it is basic civil engineering. Yes, I could have a good stab at creating a strategic plan and helping you to identify contractors. However I would like to see the site first.”
“Excellent, I knew you would be interested ….”
Did he? Am I?
“And then there is your fee ….”
Yes, my fee. Actually what I was going to get out of the project had not entered my head! I play for time …
“Yes. Fee. Let me see the site first. As this is not a formal approach to NHCE I will have reflect on it. Work done during the week all has to go through the firm, of course.”
“Of course. Look, Joseph I do not want to put you on the wrong side of your employers in any way so I recognise that this is going to have to be a weekend job for you. Private Practice, if your contract allows you to do that. I trust that’s OK?”
There he is again: he is giving me instructions. Well, if he is a sub in the kink world he is definitely a Dom in the real world. Perhaps that is the point? Being a sub is a complete change from the person he has to be in his business life.
“Yes,” I reply. “I can manage that.”
“Good. Are you free this weekend? There is a good weather forecast and we could all go out on a site visit. Philippa, you and me?”
“Erm, yes. I had nothing planned so yes, I would be interested to see what you have got your hands on.”
“Excellent! If you give me your address, we will come and get you. Our car. Eight AM?”
“Yes, I can be up for eight. I will look forward to it.”
Andrew and Philippa arrive on the dot of eight AM. Andrew is driving a new Range Rover, leather upholstery, sat nav, in-car hi fi and air con. Very nice. There are obviously a very successful couple.
Philippa starts the conversation and I sense we are not in “PERvert mode.”
However, one thing I notice: today, Andrew is wearing a metal collar around his neck. It’s stylish, understated and could be a hip modern piece of male jewellery, except I don’t think it is just a piece of jewellery.
“Joseph! It’s good to see you again. I’m sorry I was not able to join you both for lunch but thanks for agreeing to help Andrew and I with our little enterprise.”
“Well, it’s going to be an interesting change from the projects I am usually involved with.”
“Yes, Andrew filled me in on what you had said over lunch.”
“Have either of you two a background in forestry?”
“Absolutely not. We both come from the business world but forestry is a very green enterprise, so there are no shortage of people keen to give advice and support.”
“But that’s not really why you are involved?”
“Mmmm, well partly, but yes, it is a very good opportunity to mix business with pleasure, as they say.”
“So are you pioneering the outdoor play space concept?”
“No, certainly not! There is one up in Cheshire, there is a group who used to have grounds of their own in the west country. There is also one in north Kent. We thought Leicestershire would be a good location for people from London, Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield places like that.”
“And it was big enough and for sale!” adds Andrew, speaking over his shoulder.
“Also,” he continues, “the country is gently rolling so there is a variety of terrain but it’s not going to be overlooked from large adjacent hills and mountains, which helps with privacy.”
“Yes, clearly an important issue,” I add.
We are standing on a small track which leads into a forest of trees. It’s rather untidy. Brambles spill over the roadway from the sides and the interior seems dank and unwelcoming. I have come prepared with rubber boots and a heavy jacket. So have Andrew and Philippa. We press on forward. The track improves and presently we come to an opening. The forest here is more open. The clouds have cleared and the sky above is blue, streaked with white. Andrew gets out an Ordnance Survey map.
“So we are here. The plantation boundary will be from here, to here, to here, to here. Access from roads at this point and … and here. Well, that was where we came in. I have a photocopy with the plantation zoned as I explained the other day. Zone 1 is the commercial forest and that’s closest to the main road. Zone 2 is the Arboretum. Zone 3 will be the Play Space. That will be on the far side of the plantation, furthest from the access roads and villages and so on. I thought we could plant the boundary with birch because it’s fast growing, then gorse because it’s very dense and very spiny and rhododendron because they give good cover.”
“Andrew, you seem to have the whole project very well mapped out. Tell me again just what you want me to do?”
“Ah, coming to that. The civil engineering. First we will need to drain this area - here and bring water into this area – here. See?”
“Aha.”
“Second, we are going to need access and a sort of “contractor’s yard” in the commercial zone, so that means roads, parking, storage and some sort of administration building. That will all be over - here. Third, which is the interesting part …”
“You mean the kinky part?”
“Yes, exactly; the kinky part. The idea is that there should be opportunities for people to stay in the plantation for several days at a time, so we will need an accommodation block with bedrooms for the Owners and cells for their slaves which means more water, drains, septic tanks, electricity.”
“Have you thought of micro generation equipment and ground heat pumps? If you’re interested in keeping this as ‘green’ as possible they should be on the list for consideration.”
“Well not exactly. That’s your job. To tell us what we should be planning for.”
“Andrew, this is turning into a life’s work. Could be very expensive.”
“Well you say expensive. Contractors – professionals - will always expect to be paid the market rate, but it surprising who you can find in the kink community and slaves make for a good disciplined and cheap work force.”
“OK, I guess you’re right.” It hadn’t occurred to me before that you might actually use ‘slaves’ for useful work. “So tell me what I should expect to find in ten years time?”
“You will find buildings suitable for a quite discreet kinky weekend. You will have the opportunity to take your slave for a run naked under the trees. If you are into pony play, you will have stables for your human ponies, space to store buggies and hard surfaced tracks to exercise them on.”
“Hard surfaces: are you talking tarmac?”
“No, I was hoping for something more natural looking. Breedon self-compacting gravel, that sort of thing, and your slave will have opportunities for hard labour in the Plantation, opportunities to display and tether your slaves, opportunities to birch or whip them in the open if they have not behaved themselves.”
“In other words,” joins in Philippa, “a bloody good, exhausting, fulfilling never-to-be forgotten kinky weekend!”
“OK OK. I surrender. It’s the most, (I am searching for the right words but nothing seems to do justice to this amazing, sexy, unexpected, racy, exciting vision the two of them have arrived at) the most astonishing project anyone has yet given me. I’m certainly interested in doing what I can. But you are going to have to be patient with your time scale. This really is going to take several years unless you are planning to involve armies of professional contractors.”
We’re on the way home. I feel it’s my turn to ask some questions. “Can I ask you two something?”
“Sure”, replies Andrew.
“Well, as I said before, I’m still new at all this, so I hope I’m not being stupid or you won’t be offended, or think I’m being too personal. At PERvert, you were definitely sub, Andrew, but whenever we’ve encountered each other since, you have been completely, one hundred percent, alpha male.” Philippa smiles but she doesn’t interrupt me. “Now tell me I’m wrong, but I thought subs were subs and Doms were Doms, and that was that. If you were a sexual sub you would be a sub in all other parts of your life, but that’s clearly not how it is, at least with you two.”
“Well, I don’t know if you’re right or wrong about other people but it isn’t the way it works for me,” Andrew responds. “and, from what I see of other couples, it isn’t often the way it works for them either.”
“Yes, that’s about right, Joseph,” replies Philippa. “Sure, there are people who make it work 24/7 but I think they are unusual. For most people, their sub or Dom nature cannot have a free reign during the working day: you just have to get on with the rest of your life and do what you have to do. For example, I was stopped for speeding last week and you would have thought I was a good little subbie from the way I spoke to the police. ‘Yes officer, I’m sorry officer, three bags full officer as long as you don’t want to give me a ticket’.”
Andrew chips in, “And very amusing it was to listen to as well,”
Whilst they are speaking my mind starts to wander. I imagine I’m in the forest. I’m sitting in some sort of buggy behind Jenny. She is naked, arms strapped behind her. I flick a small whip across her bum, to keep her trotting forward. She gasps. A thin red line blooms. I feel warm inside. I realise I have enjoyed the flight of fancy but them the image becomes painful. Jenny always has the power to burn and sting my memory when I think of her.
Philippa is talking again. “Andrew here has to be pretty determined and forthright to be successful at business but you do not need to be like that all the time.”
“No, and I’m glad about that,” says Andrew, joining in the conversation.
The image in my mind changes. This time it’s me harnessed up and pulling the buggy. Someone is enjoying urging me on. The whip stings my bum. Again. Again. “Come on Joe, up this hill. Here let me help you along.” The whip lands. It stings again and again. It has the desired effect. I pull harder. Who is this behind me? I know the voice: Deep. Soft. Warm. Caribbean. With a start I realise the girl in my fantasy, the girl domming me is Gwenda. I am beginning to think of her sexually more and more. The scene changes. I am standing is a cell outdoors. Three sides are formed from rendered concrete blocks, one side is formed from bars. It’s a warm day but the wooden roof of the cell gives some shade from the sun. I am with Gwenda again. She has clothes. Here toned, powerful brown legs disappear into a pair of comfortable flat leather shoes. I am naked. She is smiling. I am chained, a steel collar around my neck, hands behind me, shackles on my feet. Gwenda has done this to be. She is holding the keys. She strokes my prick with a damp cloth. The cloth moves across my bum and between my legs. “I have been a bit naughty Joseph,” she purrs. “I have peed on this cloth! You smell of my pee now. The flies will like that. They will bite and the bites will itch. Pity you haven’t got a tail like a horse, isn’t it? You will not be able to swish them away! You are going to itch like crazy by the time the flies have finished with you. And look at your hands. Safely out of the game! I’ll be back for you later.” She closes the door and locks it shut. “I’m off for a swim and a drink, and then I’ll come back for you – tomorrow. Enjoy!”
Where on earth did all that come from?
Andrew continues and I snap myself back to listening. “It’s really therapeutic to have some area in my life where I do not have to be taking the lead all the time. Yes, I am a sexual submissive and I am happy to hand over control to Philippa because I trust her. Trust is the key. It would not work for me without that.”
“Tell me,” says Philippa. “How about you?”
Something about the way she asks tells me that she’s probably well able to read my nature, probably better able than I can myself. I say: “I guess there is something of both sides in me but I always had problems with it, when Jenny wanted to play, because of what I remember of my childhood. I suppose we are all shaped by out up-bringing. I didn’t like the way my Dad treated my Mum and I was determined that if I ever got into relationship of my own, I was not going to be like Dad. When Jenny got into the whole BDSM thing, it looked as if I was going to have to be the Dom and it just felt so like being Dad and I just couldn’t handle it. But after Jenny went, I felt I had to rethink it all.”
“After Jenny went?”
“Yes: she disappeared in London about, - well, almost a year and a half ago now. The Police launched a missing persons enquiry but - nothing.”
“Joseph I am so sorry. I did not know. I remember the story in the paper, now but I had not connected it with you.”
”
“There’s no reason why you should. Please do not feel awkward, Philippa. That’s just the way it happened. Anyway I have been trying to explore the world Jenny had found and where she was happy. I should have done it before.”
“So how are you now with the whole BDSM thing?” asks Philippa.
“Now I know a lot more about it and I can see that you don’t have to take it all so very seriously. Actually meeting you and Andrew has helped, because I can see now how I could be a Dom to Jenny sometimes and the loving, supportive husband I would like to be at others.”
“Hmmm,” replies Philippa. “I like that. I hope Jenny comes back to you, or you find her. I think you must be good for each other.”
Yes we are and I really ache for her. But I am also still enjoying my imaginary “encounter” with Gwenda. Should I feel guilty? What if she asked me out? Wanted to ‘round out our evening properly’; wanted to fuck me? But then, I want to fuck her, don’t I? Or do I?
I pass the remainder of the journey alternating feelings of guilt with sexual fantasies of Andrew, Philippa and Gwenda.
Footnotes.
1. Range Rover. See http://www.landrover.com/gb/en/rr/range-rover/
2. Andrew’s collar. Perhaps Andrew wore an Axsmar Talena collar which you can find at : http://www.axsmar.com/_english/index.htm
3. Some outdoor play spaces in the UK and elsewhere:
http://www.ndponyclub.co.uk/home.php
http://www.aussieslavefarm.com/
4. Ordnance Survey is Britain’s national mapping agency. The original Ordnance Survey was conducted to provide accurate maps for the defence of the country – hence the name “Ordnance”. http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/
5. Breedon Gravel.can be had from Ennstone special aggregates: http://www.ennstone.co.uk/ Actually, the description “self-compacting” is a little optimistic, but it’s an excellent material none the less.
CHAPTER 20 : SOME DOMESTIC SERVITUDE : MARCH
16 Months, 506 Days Since Jenny’s Disappearance
I have organised a couple of day’s annual leave, but I forgot to change my alarm. The alarm does not forget and erupts at 6.30 in the morning as it normally does. I look bleary eyed at the clock radio. I am about to get up. I have a hazy memory that I have a lot to do today but in the event, I switch the noise off, roll over and go back to sleep until 8am, when I am woken by the door bell. A messenger has a large letter for me, which has to be signed for. It’s from the office. I sign for it and plod into the kitchen, to make coffee.
What have I got to do this weekend? Suddenly I remember. George and Cathy Corbin are coming to dinner, there is the house to clean, food to buy, a meal to cook, clothes to wash, I’m supposed to go to the Gym for a reassessment with the trainer and now there is something from work! And tomorrow I have an appointment with Ylena …….
How on earth did Jenny cope with all this sort of thing? Well, if she could do it, so can I.
I tear open the envelope. It contains some concrete casting specifications. Can I comment on them? The client has changed their requirements and the shape of a concrete retaining wall. How will that affect the strength? Can the on-site team go ahead and cast anyway? Would it be better to get factory made pre-casts to be assembled on-site? How long would that be likely to take? What would the cost implications be? Can I let them know by Monday?
There are engineering drawings, specifications , various sets of calculations and the architect’s plans.
I cast it aside and quickly throw breakfast together and then go to get washed and dressed.
By 9 am, I am more ready to face the day: what should I do first? I decide to confirm the menu. I want things which are nice to eat but easy to make. There was a time when this would have been simple – I would have had Jenny. Now there is no Jenny and I’m supposed to be working on my diet. What about a seafood casserole with white fish, mussels and prawns and have … have … have a crème brulée to finish with? Jenny did it once. There is a recipe in Delia Smith’s book. The dessert might be rich but we don’t have to have much.
As fast as I can, I check the ingredients, make a more general shopping list and I am about to go to the supermarket when I remember about the washing. I head back inside, grab the dirty clothes (at least the washing machine is in the garage not the kitchen) separate “lights “ from “darks” and set the machine off – and then go shopping.
It is Thursday morning, but the shop is still busy. It takes much longer than I thought and its 11.45 before I get back. I dump the food in the kitchen and go to deal with the washing. The darks are done and I put a second load on for the lights. It’s a dry breezy day. Perhaps I should peg the damp washing outside? Everything has tangled itself up, so before pegging out, I have to carry it back into the kitchen and carefully untangle and separate the individual items before I can take them outside.
At last the job is done and I glance at the clock. Its 12.30pm. I had arranged to have a reassessment at the gym at 3pm. That is going to take a couple of hours by the time I have seen the trainer, worked through the programme and got changed, so I could be back at 5pm. Cathy and George are supposed to be coming round at 7.30 so that gives me a just couple of hours to tidy and clean the house, get myself ready and prepare the meal. Idiot! Why did I arrange to go to the gym?
As I start cleaning, I notice the concrete calculations on the dining room table. They peer reproachfully at me form the envelope. What’s the point of taking leave if you are sent urgent work to do when you are on holiday? Next time I will tell them I am going out of town and I will not take a mobile.
By 1.30, I am about to start on the meal again when I remember the washing. Blast! I go outside, collect the dry clothes and fold them prior to ironing before I return to the garage to collect the second load of washing. Once more, I have to untangle them and shake them out before I can hang them up. Should I be doing all this anyway? What if we had a tumble dryer? Couldn’t I just dump them all in a tumble-dryer and let it get on with its job? I once said this to Jenny but she was never in favour of them: first there is the cost, then it’s not “green” then not everything can be tumble-dried and finally, some things take much longer than others, she said and so I am now left with old traditional technology.
1.40 – there is just enough time to make the dessert before I have to get away to the gym. I need to set off at 2.30 to be sure of being on time for Greg, the trainer, at 3.
Feverishly I make preparations and by 2.20 it’s ready. At last!
Jenny seemed to be able to do all this sort of thing so effortlessly, but it must have taken a huge effort. Did I ever notice? Not really. Did I ever tell her how well she did? No. In retrospect, I feel ashamed and as always happens when I think of Jenny, I remember the aching void inside me.
It’s 5pm and I am back from the gym. Bad news. I have not lost as much weight as I had hoped for. I have been found out by the skin fold callipers. I suppose it’s the curse of being alone. I often eat easy, fast food, appetising and filling but not very good for me. I promised Greg I would try harder for our next meeting in six weeks. Six weeks. That sounds a long time but I am going to have to mend my ways quickly. Should I have made a fruit salad for George and Cathy, rather than the crème brulée? Probably, but now it’s too late to do anything about it.
Rain has begun to fall. There are still things on the washing line. I rush out to collect it before it gets wet again, then I finish preparing dinner and finally at 6.45 I go get washed and dressed to greet my guests. As I am getting changed I find myself thinking about the day I have spent. What if I had been entertaining my Domme? How would I have felt if all my work was to be inspected, marked, assessed – and then punishment meted out for every infraction or example of poor performance. The cane licking across my bum for unappetising vegetables or floors which were not clean enough ….
My alarm goes off. It is 7am. The room is still dark and the central heating pipes click as the heat comes through. It was a good evening. The food was OK. We did not drink too much. I was in bed before midnight. The conversation was - easy. Not having Jenny here, conversation can sometimes be difficult. People try not to rub salt in the wound, so we steer carefully around topics which might bring painful memories centre stage. The elephant in the room. It’s a good phrase. There it stands. Looming. Quiet. Unmistakeable, but no-one mentions it.
Now that Cathy and George have gone home I can spend a few moments with Jenny on the FindJenny website. Inga has posted another appeal for information. I think about trying myself and then remember the replies I got last time. I don’t need more people telling me what they think about what I should have done. There are more hits, but no news. News must come sometime, surely? The people from the Charity have put together a slide show of the photographs I sent them. As it plays, it almost seems like a video. It’s overlaid with a message string recalling who Jenny was, what she did, when she vanished, asking for information, encouraging site visitors to contact if they think she has seen her and finally a message from Andrew and Inga thanking visitors for their interest and asking Jenny to get in touch, in touch with them or in touch with the Charity if she would prefer. But she never does …
I take a deep breath. I would rather like to sink back to sleep but I can’t because today, today I have another appointment with Ylena. I feel a shower of adrenalin. What, exactly, is the day going to hold?
...... ...... .......
“Stand up!”
Ylena looks down at me, on my knees.
I stand.
She walks round me.
“What’s this?”
The tip of her riding crop gently rubs my tummy.
“It’s my stomach, Gaspazha.”
“Your stomach. How old are you?”
“Twenty eight.”
“Twenty eight and you are beginning to have a little stomach?” She rubs again. “I am not satisfied. You told me you were going to the Gym, going on a diet, going be careful about what you were eating.”
“Yes, Gaspazha.”
“Yes what? Yes, I said that, but I did not mean it? Yes I said that, but had no intention of doing as I said? Yes I said that, but I do not have the will power to do what I ought to do?”
“I am afraid I have been careless.”
“Good! Points in favour for honesty! Would you like me to help you?”
“Da, Gaspazha!”
“On your knees again!”
I kneel. She places a blindfold over my eyes and straps it on tight. I feel her clip something to my collar. “Come!” is all she says and I feel a tug at my collar. We walk through her establishment. I can’t see a thing. I have to trust her, as she pulls me left and right and forward and left.
“Step up!”
I step up onto some sort of platform. I can feel it beneath my bare feet, for I am completely naked, save for the collar and blindfold.
“Now what do we have here? A trans-meatal ring! How convenient.”
I feel her manipulating the ring through the head of my prick. She clips something through it and I can feel a gentle tug.
“Kneel!”
I kneel down. She strips the blindfold from me and I see I am on a treadmill, just like the ones at the gym but this time the control panel has been covered and my prick is tethered to a ring on the frame. Suddenly I am afraid.
“Now Joseph” (she pronounces my name Yosef) “it’s time for you to pay for your carelessness and this machine will help you to do it. You are going to run for the next hour. Some times on the flat, sometimes it will feel as if you are going up hill. Sometimes slow. Sometimes fast. You cannot see the controls and you will not know how much longer you will have to work or how hard you will have to work. It’s an exquisite torture and chaining you to the machine by your pick will provide all the encouragement you will need to keep going. Imagine what might happen if you fell, or stopped?”
Yes, I can imagine!
“… and I shall watch over you and give you more encouragement with my whip. In fact, I shall sit right here and read. Enjoy.”
Ylena starts the machine. The chain attached to my prick pulls taught immediately and I set off walking. Gradually the pace quickens until I am jogging, then running, then jogging, then running. The treadmill beeps a warning. The deck starts to elevate. Suddenly I have to work much harder and without warning I feel a hot bright sting on my left buttock - and then on my right. Thank goodness, because it spurs me on. To feel thankful for being spanked with a crop? But I have to be practical. Engineers are practical. I just have to keep up with the machine …
The machine is relentless. Soon my chest is heaving and my legs are getting really tired. Just how much more can I take? Without warning Gaspazha begins to beat me again. She is using some sort of whip on my back, then on my buttocks the on my legs then onto my shoulders.
“Thank you, thank you” I call out, and I am grateful because I could not have gone on much longer on my own.
“Five minutes,” Gaspazha calls out.
“Gaspazha?”
“What is it slave?”
“Can you carry on beating me please?”
“Why?”
“It helps me to run.”
‘Aha. Well slave, this is progress. Asking to be disciplined in order to comply with your Mistress’s demands. That is very good and do you know? I will accept your request!”
Gaspazha then begins to methodically paint the whip over my back, bum and legs. Each stroke stings and the stings take my mind off how tired I feel. The more it stings, the better I feel until the treadmill beeps a warning and begins to slow to “cool down” Its just too fast to walk. I am increasingly unsteady. The whip continues to lick over me. The machine beeps again and at last I can walk and after two minutes more, the torture stops. I stand, my chest still heaving. Gaspazha walks round to face me. She is smiling.
“Did you enjoy your run, slave?”
“No, Gaspazha. I am sorry.”
“How will you prepare for your next visit?”
“By loosing more weight.”
“Was this an appropriate punishment?”
“Yes, Gaspazha. Thank you.”
She frees me from the treadmill. “On the floor, slave. Kneel. Forehead on the ground.”
I obey.
She clips the leash back on my collar, wraps the blindfold over my eyes again, and leads me away.
I follow, meekly. I have to trust I will be safe if I follow her and I suppose this must be part of the training process: learning to trust. But then, if I want Jenny to trust me, when it’s my turn to be her Dom, I must be able to trust my own teacher?
“Halt!”
I stop.
“Lean forwards, grasp the horse and kneel upon it.”
I find myself feeling the leather shape of the spanking horse in my hands. Uh oh! I hoped I would be through with CP for today, and I am really not looking forward to taking more of it. I could stand straight up, flatly refuse and go home, but I do none of these things. I merely obey. Then again, I’m on a journey to find Jenny, to find the places she enjoyed. I suppose this must be one of them, so I press on.
By the time my musings are over, I have been strapped down. There are straps over my arms back, thighs and calves. I am almost completely immobile. Waiting. Gaspazha removes the blindfold and I can “enjoy” the sight of my predicament, reflected in mirrors which line one wall of the room.
“Open!”
I open my mouth and she slips a rubber bar between my teeth. It’s rather like an horse’s bit. It’s strapped firm behind my head. I can just about swallow, but can’t speak properly - can’t speak at all, really.
Gaspazha brings her face close to my ear. She whispers: “Now, slooga. How do you feel?”
I mew. She laughs. A gentle, satisfied laugh. She continues: “Is your skin burning?”
I nod.
“Itching?”
I nod again.
“Hmmm.” She runs her hand over my back, my bum and shoulders. “Hmmm, such nice welts! Yes, they will itch. I bet you would like to rub them, wouldn’t you? Run you hands over them, rub the itching away? Perhaps even scratch them? Mmmmm? Well, the answer is NO. I am going to leave you to itch and smoulder all strapped down and waiting. I am going to have tea. You are going to wait and then I will return and spank your bottom. I will strap you and when I think you are ready,” (her face is close to my ear again: she whispers …..) “I will finish you off with the cane!”
She lays the strap and the cane down on a table in front of me, where I cannot avoid seeing them, and then leaves the room.
The minutes pass. I feel a draft as the room door opens. She is in the room again. She picks up a paddle and begins. Gently at first but with exacting care and precision. Left buttock, right buttock, centre, upper, lower, inner, outer, upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right. She pauses, then selects a strap and repeats the whole pattern. I should be in agony but I am not. I realise that I am enjoying the sensation of being spanked.
Gaspazha selects another implement. Another paddle, stiffer that the last and with holes in its “tongue”. This paddle brings more pain, but in response, I push my bum out to meet it, all the more to enjoy my humiliation and my punishment. I drink the sensation greedily.
Gaspazha pauses: “how many? Ah, you cannot speak to me, can you?”
I may not be able to speak but I have been counting. We have got to forty five.
Gaspazha continues: “I was going to stop at thirty. Have we got to thirty?”
I mew furiously but she merely replies “No? Well perhaps I should finish with a cane? Yes, I think you will enjoy the cane. A light, whippy, stingy cane.”
I mew furiously but she ignores me, of course. I can hear her taking up her stance behind me. She begins immediately.
“One!” And a hot line is drawn across both my buttocks
“Two!” A second line above the first
“Three!” A third line below the first.
Half way. One and one and a final stroke
“Four!” It’s harder. I catch my breath and gasp. Even gagged, she must have heard because she waits …
“Five!” She lands the stroke diagonally across my right buttock catching all the previous four strokes. They all re-ignite, at once.
“Six!” The final stroke lands diagonally across my left buttock. Its really painful. I gasp and mew and screw my eyes up and mew and clench and unclench and clench my buttocks again, but at least I have arrived at six. Surely no more? Please no more?
Gaspazha unstraps the gag and I inhale deeply, gratefully.
“What are your plans this evening?”
“I … I … I was going straight home, Gaspazha.”
“All the way home?”
“Yes.”
“Were you indeed? Do you know what time it is?”
No, I don’t because she took my watch, when I stripped for her and there are no clocks to be seen. I have absolutely no idea how much time has passed.
“What are your commitments tomorrow?”
“Nothing special, Gaspazha’ - but I have a vague memory of calculations to do with concrete ……
“Come with me.”
She begins to release me from the spanking horse but straps wide leather belt around my middle and cuffs my hands to the sides of the belt, to keep me carefully under control. She blindfolds me again, clips the lead to my collar and leads me away once more.
“Step!”
I cross some sort of threshold.
“Stand!”
She unclips the leash.
“Walk!”
I begin to walk forward.
Clang!
I stop, surprised by the unexpected noise behind me.
“Come to me!” I turn and walk towards her voice.
“Stop!”
I stop and feel myself standing up against cold steel bars.
“Turn!”
I turn back around and Gaspazha removes my blindfold.
I blink: I am in a prison cell. In one corner, there is a toilet. In the middle of the floor is a drain grating. To one side is a mattress on the floor. Its plastic but there is a blanket folded on top. I turn round to face Gaspazha, who stands smiling on the other side of a bars of the cage door. In her hands she is holding the key.
“Slooga: you have had an exhausting day. You will spend the night as my guest. Here. In this cell. Judy will be on duty over night. Your food and water will be passed through this gap in the bars,” she indicates a small rectangular opening at the bottom of the cell door the size of a dog’s feeding bowl, “but I am afraid you will have to eat on your knees. Enjoy your evening!”
With that, still smiling, she steps back and closes the outer door. It’s heavy. It closes with a thump. I can hear the locks as they turn. One, then a second, then a third. I stand, helpless and naked in a high security prison cell, skin still glowing from the whip, buttocks tender and throbbing from the paddles and the cane, arms strapped to my sides, useless. I glance down. My penis is large, tightly erect and throbbing. I cannot reach it with my hands. The walls are rendered with rough cement. There is nowhere I can find relief. I groan with sexual frustration and there is nothing I can do, to bring myself peace. I have enjoyed every minute of my session and my present predicament is the perfect climax.
Footnotes
1. Delia Smith. Goddess of British home cooking. http://www.deliaonline.com/. Her recipe for Crème Brulee really is good, by the way and much more reliable that some others.
2. Skin fold callipers. Probably the best day-to-day method of estimating what percentage of one’s total weight is made up of subcutaneous fat.
More tales at……
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
© Phil Lane & Freddie Clegg 2010
All characters fictitious
No reposting without permission.
18 Months, 567 Days Since Jenny’s Disappearance
I am back in London, at a meeting with the Consulting Engineers working with us, on the Cambodian Project. The meeting is to review “strategic opportunities and future development”. I don’t have high hopes for it.
Their offices occupy one of the gracious Georgian terraced buildings which form the sides of Fitzroy Square and the conference room looks into the Square across the gardens, towards what used to be called The Post Office Tower. It’s almost 200 metres tall and was once the tallest building in London.
This is difficult for me. This is where I was, when Jenny disappeared. This is where I had my last sight of her. The room where I made my last call to her. The call which broke up. The call which I could not return. The last time I heard her voice.
I can feel myself starting to break up. It’s always the same way. I can cope with it intellectually but every so often events or places conspire to bring the ghost back. It’s a ghost that I have to exorcise, from here at least, if I’m going to get on with my job. The question is - do I want to? If I can come here, here of all places and not feel “that sweet sorrow of parting”, does that mean she really has left me? Left me physically. Left my imagination. Left even my memory. Left never to come back?
“… So we have commissioned some further detailed studies of the hydrology of the upper Mekong area to have a more accurate understanding of the way water drains into and flows through the river system …”
I remember a friend I had at University. He married quite young but his wife got leukaemia. She went through all the treatment; lost her hair, everything like that. Sometimes she looked quite well. Other times she was very weak; the treatment does that. In the end, after everything they had been through together, she died. He said it took a year to get over it; to get on top of bereavement; to be able to move on, with a clear conscience. That’s what he said, but I know it took him much longer than that.
The loss of Jenny has been like bereavement. She vanished a year and a half ago.
“… There seem to have been climate changes in recent years probably due to global warming. There is at least one NGO carrying out development work near Phnom Penh who has reported that the climate has become significantly drier and it has made for practical difficulties for fish farming projects which they had hoped would provide a source of dietary protein for the subsistence farmers. However, this serves to underline the importance of this suite of projects…..”
It’s the anniversaries and birthdays and Christmas which have been the worst. No card for me to buy her and no card from her to me. No present for my birthday. No surprise for me to plan, for her birthday. Friends have been supportive, having me over at Christmas and so on but then it’s not easy for them, either. We were a couple and now there is just one of us – it must feel to them, as if a friend has turned up with an arm or a leg missing.
I mean, what are they supposed to say? Should they pretend all is well: “you look just great” when it’s quite obvious that their friend has this dreadful injury or do you say “gee you look terrible” and perhaps make it more difficult for the friend to come to terms with the way they have to live now?
“…. And this data serves to underline the importance of the irrigation projects and the care needed to properly integrate these with any hydro-electric generation opportunities. The example to bear in mind is the very modest power generation actually produced by the Moscow-Volga canal scheme compared to the very significant and deleterious environmental impact it made, for example the very low population density of fish in the north Volga river system ….”
I’m staring at the man speaking but my thoughts are miles away. I wonder if I should start dating again? When will I feel I’m not betraying Jenny? When will people be easy about going out with me? If they knew about Jenny and me? And what about me? Would I subconsciously start looking for some who was like Jenny or should I deliberately look for someone who was as different as possible or should I just carry on as I am, and let life take its course?
I keep thinking of Gwenda. She is funny, emotionally strong, lively, beautiful – but that’s just like Jenny. Although, actually, who wouldn’t want a woman like that? On the other hand, Gwenda is, well, earthier, I suppose, than Jenny was. She has a broader sense of humour - Jenny’s was more mischievous, Gwenda’s tends to the more basic. If it wasn’t for her warm broad smile, you might think her vulgar. And she is - how to express it? - bigger. Not just physically bigger – although she is probably 25 pounds heavier than Jenny was at the same height, but everything about Gwenda is big; her hair, her movements and her laugh. And of, course, Gwenda is black and proud of her West Indian background where Jenny was less interested in her origins, although she did feel that being part Scandinavian was a little exotic, I suppose. Was? Surely she still is? I mean, surely she still is alive - or is she?
What would the Palmers think if I started to date other girls? Gwenda, for example? Would they be hurt? Would they think I had washed my hands of their daughter, of Jenny? Or would they understand that life has to go on, that I have to move on?
“… We are now able to use remote sensing from earth resource satellites to observe the day to day weather over the Mekong area and observe the effects of water levels in the river and the effects on the adjacent country in real time ….”
And tomorrow I have put myself down for this bloody course! Well, it was Ylena who told me I ought to go on it. “Shibari,” she said, “it’s precision, an art, exact. It should appeal to an engineer.” And Ylena is a Domme and people are supposed to follow the instructions that Dommes give them.
The only problem is, I am beginning to question what it is I am trying to do. If I am going move on, should I still go on looking for Jenny, in all the things which she enjoyed, trying to “get myself ready” for Jenny coming back? I am beginning to think that it may be a time for realism. To be realistic about Jenny. To accept that she is never coming back.
I don’t know South London very well, but fortunately the course is only about twenty minutes’ walk from one of the Underground stations on the Northern Line. It’s a warm, sunny, Saturday morning so it’s a pleasant walk through late Victorian suburbs with largish houses peeping out from behind over-grown gardens. It’s 10.15am when I arrive.
I ring the door bell. I am greeted by Rick, a lively, relaxed man in his late forties. He welcomes me into his flat and inside the large front room, I find several other people, mostly couples and two other blokes like me – but it seems that other people are expected. Presently everyone who is coming has arrived and the business of the day begins.
Rick sits down in the one armchair that isn’t occupied. “The first thing you have got to know,” he says, “leaning forward towards the group of us, in a way that’s designed to encourage interaction, “is that Shibari is supposed to be fun. Yes, there are technicalities to master but the initial moves are all very simple and success comes from doing simple things, well. The next thing to remember, s that Shibari is also supposed to be sensuous. Your partner should try to turn you on when they tie you and you should return the compliment.”
We watch a couple of illustrative videos. In one a “rigger” places an elaborate rope harness over a squealing laughing girl. The harness is formed from ropes of different colours and whilst she punctuates proceedings with comments about what feels nice, the rigger ploughs on with what he is doing without much regard to what the girl says. At the end, the girl looks aesthetically wonderful but I am left agreeing with Rick, that the demonstration could almost have come from the pages of a guide to Tying Mountaineering Knots!
The second video is an all together different animal. It comes from Japan (where Shibari has been elevated to a Performance Art). A delicate, athletic Japanese girl is restrained, partially stripped, restrained further, stripped completely, suspended and then gently but oh, so thoroughly flogged. She squeals and squeals with pleasure – with ecstasy. The Shibari Master and the girl seem engaged in an erotic ballet where each choreographed move flows effortlessly into the next.
The effect of the videos on this morning’s students is instructive. The first video produces jokes and laughter. The second is received in silent appreciation.
“So let’s learn the first wrap.” Rick breaks the spell. “Shibari is not really all about knots and most of the crucial basic moves are about wrapping the rope smoothly around your partner. Now we always work with the rope doubled in lengths of about six or seven metres. Always try to keep the rope in standard lengths – you can easily join lengths together and I will show you how later …”
As Rick lectures, he has moved around the room to stand by one of the females. He turns to her. “May I?” he asks
“Pardon?” she replies
“Thanks,” he responds, grasping both her hands together but in one of his hands there is a length of doubled rope. He fixes her gaze with his and before she can react further, the coil of rope has snaked around both her wrists twice, changed direction and travelled twice round again between her wrists parallel to her forearms. She is trapped, hopelessly, helplessly. She glances down, open mouthed at the speed and ease of her capture and before she can collect herself further, the ropes are tied! She smiles, then giggles, then smiles broadly – as does her partner.
Rick addresses his audience. “You see: that’s the reaction you want! People like their partner to take control! See how she is laughing? That’s the reaction you are after! Everybody laughs when they get tied. And you will never get that if you are completely absorbed in technicalities. You have got to be practiced so you can effortlessly bind your partner whilst you watch their reaction and play them like an instrument!”
We practice with each other, performing the same wrap. For Rick it’s easy. With the rope in my hands it’s difficult, but all my colleagues share the same difficulties, born of inexperience. With easy and jocular patience, Rick moves through his little group of pupils correcting, advising, encouraging until we can all tie one another’s wrists together.
Then it’s time to move on; to place the wrap around thigh and leg, upper arm and forearm, chair leg and human leg. Each time the basic wrap is the same and the possibilities gradually occur to each of us, how this arcane oriental art can be brought to bear on the game lovers play.
After lunch, we learn the “single arm wrap” or as Rick likes to say in more general terms, the “single column” wrap. It’s surprising but it turns out to be a more difficult proposition. It’s important though; it has a wide application; the human body is, as Rick says, a collection of single columns: single arms, single legs, chests and tummies. We can soon see that there are lots of possibilities - wrists together and brought back over the victim’s head can be attached to a single column wrap wound around your lovers tummy, creating a delightful opportunity to fondle her breasts - the more we explore this, the less I’m sure that ‘victim’ is the right word. Tying your girl’s forearms together behind her back, in combination with single column wraps above and below her breasts makes for an even more delightful presentation. Tie your man’s forearms together and place a single column tie around your man’s cock and balls and he is in real trouble!
It’s turned out to be a fascinating and amusing day. I am glad I turned up, against my better judgment, as I thought yesterday. The only down side is that I am left envious of the couples there, who can go home and practice what they have learned. I am also disappointed with myself, looking back to when I was together with Jenny. How slow I was! How I let the opportunities for laughter, for ecstasy pass us by, unexploited, and unheeded.
By five thirty, the course is over and alone once more, I retrace my steps. My mind is filled with the possibilities I have glimpsed today. I imagine slowly, deliciously tying Jenny, her legs captive: lower limbs to thighs; right and left limbs tied open; vulva exposed, wet, and vulnerable. My head slides towards it. I put out my tongue. Lick her labia left and right, left and right. She is very wet. Drooling. Crying with pleasure. Her taste is heavy, musky sensual. Her smell says “Fuck Me!” I strip. I draw closer My cock springs out hard, rampant, throbbing. I kneel closer. She is so wet, I slip inside so easily.
“Hey!” she says, “You’re bareback!” – I should have gagged her. I know I shall fuck her bare-back. It’s what she wants. She wriggles, gasps, writhes but she never tells me to stop. My mouth is on hers. Our tongues explore each other’s mouths. She sucks mine, drawing me into her; my prick pressing into her, deep surrounded by her intimate wetness. In my daydream she is suddenly free of all her bindings. She rolls on her back and I follow her over. She spreads her legs and wraps them round me. We buck and squeeze and thrust together, united, in concert, intimate until we both orgasm in a sweaty churning seething duo and there we lay, in each others arms. Her voice is deep, soft exotic. “I want you Joe,” she says. I glance up into her eyes and take in her sweet, soft, strong dark–skinned body. In my dream, Jenny has become Gwenda. I have fucked Gwenda. Yes: I finally admit it to myself. I want to fuck Gwenda and in that moment I know that I will fuck Gwenda - if she will have me.
There is a cool, fresh, evening beeze as I walk down the side of Kennington Park. I think again about Jenny: it’s time to let her go. To thank her in my mind for all the happy times we had together. To wish her well and apologise for being such an unadventurous husband and lover but above all to let her go and move on. In my mind’s eye we meet and stand on the street corner. The London traffic booms and roars past us. She takes my hand and I take hers. We embrace one last time. We kiss - and we part. She turns, and walks east, until her image is lost amongst those of the other passersby. I turn and descend into the Underground, resolved but also resigned, to start my life over.
..............................................................................................................................................
Footnotes.
Visit www.esinem.com to learn more about Shibari and maybe sign on for a Shibari courses in London?
More tales at……
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
© Phil Lane & Freddie Clegg 2010
All characters fictitious
No reposting without permission.
CHAPTER 23 : A VACATION IS ANNOUNCED : JUNE
June: 19 Months, 597 Days Since Jenny’s Disappearance
I’m sitting here waiting for a phone call. I’m still not sure if I’ve done the right thing but maybe it really is time to move on. It’s an irony that Jenny’s mother and father have brought matters to a head, but that’s how it is. A few weeks ago, I took a call from Inga Palmer. She said that she and Andrew were going to their summer house, south of Stockholm and would I like to go? I was in two minds. Jenny’s parents have been enormously supportive but going on holiday with them, going somewhere I had been with Jenny, somewhere that Jenny had known as a child, somewhere haunted with memories of Jenny; was that really such a good idea?
Then Inga said, “and why don’t you bring a friend Zhoe? Anybody at all. Andrew and I would not mind.” (Even though she has lived in England for almost thirty years, she still can’t quite manage all the sounds of English. I have always been ‘Zhoesef,’ not ‘Jozeph’)
I realised just how tough and brave the Palmers were being. Brave and typically generous. They were telling me that I had to move on, that they had to move on; to leave Jenny as she had left us, on a November afternoon in London: it will soon be two years ago. They were telling me that they understood that I would form new relationships; that they would open their hearts to whoever I chose.
I expect they need me to be part of the process. To show I am moving on so that in some way they could justify to themselves that they should move on, too.
Confronted with their kindness, how could I turn them down? I agreed and said yes, I might bring a friend. Now I knew exactly who I wanted to take. I wanted to take Gwenda.
It’s her call I’m waiting for. The vacation is next week. I called her. She wasn’t there; anticlimax! I left a message; asked her to call me.
My mobile rings, it’s her number.
“Gwenda?”
“Joseph! How’s things?”
Her voice, as ever, is deep, soft, warm, and has laughter in it.
“Well fine. I’m glad I reached you,” I can almost see her putting her head on one side and pursing her lips in the way that she does when she’s confronted with a problem. I can sense her thinking, ‘get to the point’.
“Sorry I wasn’t there earlier, I was ... , well there’s always stuff going on. I’ve been up to my ears in it.”
“Well, maybe you need a break. How would you like a few days in Stockholm?”
“Stockholm? That’s seriously smart. Why Stockholm?”
“Jenny’s parents have a summer house there and they have invited me ...”
“Oh …”
“… in particular me and a friend.”
“Ah, that’s better. Joseph, that’s very brave of them.”
“Yes, isn’t it?”
Gwenda pauses. “Joseph I should love to! When were you going?”
“Well, I’ve booked a couple of weeks annual leave and I happen to know you did too, so I thought we could …”
“Next week?”
Yes: next week.”
“Oh, Joseph! I am so sorry!” Her disappointment sounds genuine. This isn’t a casual brush off but why would it be? After all, we have some shared history now, Gwenda and me. “I’m going over to a wedding in Tobago. Relatives. I really can’t duck it. I’ve got to be there. You could always come with me?”
“I would absolutely love to go to a wedding in Tobago with you, Gwenda but I have said ‘yes’ to Inga and Andrew. In the circumstances I think I should …”
“Yes, of course you should. You definitely should but ... well I am coming back, you know?”
“I should hope so!”
“So when we are both back, you know I will have had enough rice and peas and you’ll have had enough of tall blonde girls.” …. She pauses and gives Joe a broad smile ... “So, you can take me to the best restaurant you can get a table at and I’ll give you … a roll in the hay with something not so blonde!”
Gwenda laughs at her own joke. I laugh too but inside I’m not laughing; my heart is beating faster and I seem to be salivating. So, definitely not a brush off, then. And definitely something to look forward to when I get back!
It’s the night before I’m due to leave for Stockholm. I’m staying in a hotel in London to save time in the morning, before I meet Andrew and Inga. The room’s hot; it took me ages to get to sleep.
I’m dreaming. I know I’m dreaming but that doesn’t make it any less real. I’m holding two lengths of rope, one red and one white. My eyes follow the red rope to where it is entwined, shibari style around a girl’s bald head. She turns to face me and smiles in spite of the rope that frames her head and gags her. It’s Jenny. Naked and wrapped in the red rope she looks calm and peaceful; standing, accepting her restraint.
I look at my other hand: its holding the white rope. My eyes follow that. It is tied in much the same way around a dark skinned girl. Gwenda. The white rope shows sharply against her dark breasts, pressing in against them; and against her waist and belly where it loops tightly about her. It’s odd, I think to myself. Why would she let herself be tied like this? And why I am I standing here holding the rope?
I turn, as if to ask Jenny, but as my eyes follow the rope I see only its loose end trailing on the floor. She isn’t there.
I wake, knowing that it’s time to leave.
Then, as I leave the hotel, my mobile bleeps telling me I’ve got a text. It’s from Gwenda. “J,” it says, “Can join U after all. Chris P wants to meet me in Sweden to look at the Sysav1 project in Malmo. How about that dinner/roll in the hay?”
I don’t think twice. “Great,” I text back. “Let me know your flights. I’ll book a table and make sure I get my fill of blonde girls in plenty of time.” I press send. It’s a curious feeling.
POSTSCRIPT : STRIFE IN THE GROVES OF ACADEME : JUNE
20 Months, 600 Days Since Jenny’s Disappearance
Cathy Corbin is sitting at her desk, setting out her teaching schedule for the coming months. This is a job she shares with the other lecturers in the department but since Jenny McEwan disappeared, there is one less member of staff to share the burden. Giving the lectures which Jenny used to give is uncomfortable for Cathy: she and Jenny were close and when Cathy has to step into Jenny’s shoes, she feels a real sense of anxiety over what might have become of her friend. That is exactly how she feels now, when the telephone on her desk rings.
“Cathy? It’s Angela. Have you got a few minutes to spare? Can you come and see me please?”
“Yes, of course, Prof, …er … half an hour?”
“Well, I’d like it to be now if you can.”
Cathy bites her lip. The interruption isn’t welcome but there isn’t much else she can do. “Sure, I’ll be right with you.”
Professor Dawney. Cathy is very glad she does not have to work closely with her. Cathy works in a separate research group and this is the sort of incident which makes her very glad she does. Cathy finds Professor Dawney and her prima donna ways a significant irritation. Unfortunately, for this academic year, Angela has the role of organising the undergraduate teaching and so Cathy finds herself in Angela’s orbit.
This perfunctory summons is almost certainly something to do with teaching, probably to ask Cathy (or tell her if Angela can get away with it) to cover some of Angela’s own lectures because Angela has to (probably not) or wants to (almost certainly) go to a research meeting and the date of the meeting clashes with Angela’s own teaching commitments.
Cathy is not inclined to be cooperative and has a few minutes to prepare in her mind at least three reasons why she will be unable to help Angela out of this particular hole.
Cathy knocks and Angela immediately answers “Come!” As Cathy enters her office she looks up sharply.
“Have you seen this?”
“What?”
“This!” Angela brandishes a sheaf of papers.
Cathy takes then and reads. This is typical Angela. It’s a research report translated from a Russian psychological journal or perhaps a pre-publication report from someone known to Angela and obviously something inside Angela’s area of focus of the moment. Cathy’s research interests and Angela’s interests do not overlap very much so why should Cathy have seen the report, whatever it is? This is Angela posturing again.
“Well?”
Cathy sighs and reads – and then reads more closely, more analytically.
“Do you see? An account of a research strategy into the psychology of BDSM and play. Exactly what the McEwan girl was supposed to be working on before the little bitch took herself off somewhere. You don’t know how angry this makes me! We (actually Angela means “I”) should have had the first publication in this field and now it will go to this other group.”
Cathy is confused. Is Angela accusing Jenny of some sort of intellectual defection? Or is she just angry that this other group has pre-empted her?
“Did you know anything about this?”
Cathy has had quite enough of Professor Dawney’s histrionics. The suggestion that she might know more about Jenny’s disappearance is more than enough to raise her hackles. To make sure Angela knows it, she replies slowly and carefully.
“First, Prof, no. Of course, I did not know anything about it. This is not my research area so I do not keep up with this particular literature and, no, I am not in clandestine touch with Jenny. You may remember there has been a police investigation into her disappearance. Whatever you think of me, I haven’t held anything back from them.
“Second, you may know Jenny and I were close and I am very hurt when I hear you refer to her as “the little bitch” or “that McEwan girl”. I will be grateful if you can not do that in future. Is there anything else?”
Angela is taken aback by Cathy’s forthright response. It’s obvious that her bullying isn’t going to have any effect. She purses her lips. “No, no nothing. Look, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.” Her placatory manner doesn’t last long though. “It is just so frustrating, when this sort of thing happens! I just had to get it off my chest to someone.”
“And I happened to be the nearest one to lash out at,” Cathy thinks to herself. To Angela she says, “Here’s what I can do. Jenny had asked me to read over some of the work she had done, to be a critical friend so to speak. I will read through the report and compare it with what Jenny gave me. There may be fewer similarities than appears at first glance.”
After Cathy’s confrontational manner, Angela is surprised that she is offering to help and finds herself backing off. “Would you? I would be grateful.”
“Next week?”
“Yes … next week will be fine. I know you have a lot on your plate, Cathy, and I am grateful for your help.”
Once back in her office, Cathy allows herself a smirk. She had put Angela in her place for once. Might as well get this chore out of the way, she thinks. Cathy reads. The Russian report is by Mendeleyev, Romanova and Kuznetsova.
Mendeleyev is the head of department, Romanova is the statistician and Kuznetsova … who is Kuznetsova? Is she a junior colleague or someone who has made a more substantial contribution? Cathy continues reading. The flow of words is disquietingly familiar.
She gets up and picks a file of the book case. It contains the written work Jenny asked her to read over. Cathy opens the file beside the translation. She scans the two. Back and forth; back and forth. As she reads, she feels more and more uncomfortable with what she is seeing. The feeling spreads up the back of her neck, making her hair prickle. It’s like seeing a ghost. The organisation of the ideas, the sentence order, the words chosen - allowing for the peculiarities of the quaint translation - are all the same. In every essential it’s the same document that Jenny gave her. It’s almost as if it has been written by Jenny or by someone deliberately using Jenny’s own words. Another wave of discomfort washes over her. Is “V.A. Kuznetsova” really Jennifer Karin McEwan?
Cathy finds herself breathing faster. She is torn between three emotions: joy at (perhaps) finding her friend, dismay at how her (possible) discovery has been made and fear at what this might mean for her, because she is now someone who knows the secret.
Cath’s mind races through possibilities:
Jenny has been abducted and through this paper, is sending a forelorn, desperate cry for help. The bottle with a note inside, thrown into the sea from a desert island and washed up on a distant shore.
Perhaps Jenny has fled the country, to start her life afresh, free from the difficulties that her relationship with Joe had been going through and free from the consequences that her old relationship with Angela might bring, but at least this paper is evidence that she is alive and well and brings with it the hope that there could be reconciliation with Joe.
Maybe Jenny has been killed because of what she discovered or more likely, killed by Angela out of jealousy and here is Angela testing her, Cathy, to see if she notices anything strange in the Russian research paper.
Jenny is alive and being held prisoner, perhaps even enslaved by these others and now Cathy is the only one who knows it, the one who will be in danger herself, if she shares her suspicions.
What should she do? Who should she tell? She has promised Angela a report on the article in a week. She has a week to decide. A week with the fate of Jenny and perhaps herself resting in her own hands ….
As she reflects, the copy of the Big Issue Cathy bought from the street vendor rolls across the desk, propelled by the shuffling of papers and opening of files during the past few moments. It’s open at the last page; the page with appeals for information about missing people. From the top right quarter of the page, Jenny McEwan’s face stares out at her from a photograph – silent; patiently watching Cathy; waiting to see what she will do …
THE END
© Phil Lane & Freddie Clegg 2010
All characters fictitious
No reposting without permission
1 Europe’s largest waste-to-energy project, curiously not located in Strasbourg or Brussels. Gwenda would be better getting a flight to Copenhagen but geography isn’t her strong point.
CHAPTER 23 : A VACATION IS ANNOUNCED : JUNE
June: 19 Months, 597 Days Since Jenny’s Disappearance
I’m sitting here waiting for a phone call. I’m still not sure if I’ve done the right thing but maybe it really is time to move on. It’s an irony that Jenny’s mother and father have brought matters to a head, but that’s how it is. A few weeks ago, I took a call from Inga Palmer. She said that she and Andrew were going to their summer house, south of Stockholm and would I like to go? I was in two minds. Jenny’s parents have been enormously supportive but going on holiday with them, going somewhere I had been with Jenny, somewhere that Jenny had known as a child, somewhere haunted with memories of Jenny; was that really such a good idea?
Then Inga said, “and why don’t you bring a friend Zhoe? Anybody at all. Andrew and I would not mind.” (Even though she has lived in England for almost thirty years, she still can’t quite manage all the sounds of English. I have always been ‘Zhoesef,’ not ‘Jozeph’)
I realised just how tough and brave the Palmers were being. Brave and typically generous. They were telling me that I had to move on, that they had to move on; to leave Jenny as she had left us, on a November afternoon in London: it will soon be two years ago. They were telling me that they understood that I would form new relationships; that they would open their hearts to whoever I chose.
I expect they need me to be part of the process. To show I am moving on so that in some way they could justify to themselves that they should move on, too.
Confronted with their kindness, how could I turn them down? I agreed and said yes, I might bring a friend. Now I knew exactly who I wanted to take. I wanted to take Gwenda.
It’s her call I’m waiting for. The vacation is next week. I called her. She wasn’t there; anticlimax! I left a message; asked her to call me.
My mobile rings, it’s her number.
“Gwenda?”
“Joseph! How’s things?”
Her voice, as ever, is deep, soft, warm, and has laughter in it.
“Well fine. I’m glad I reached you,” I can almost see her putting her head on one side and pursing her lips in the way that she does when she’s confronted with a problem. I can sense her thinking, ‘get to the point’.
“Sorry I wasn’t there earlier, I was ... , well there’s always stuff going on. I’ve been up to my ears in it.”
“Well, maybe you need a break. How would you like a few days in Stockholm?”
“Stockholm? That’s seriously smart. Why Stockholm?”
“Jenny’s parents have a summer house there and they have invited me ...”
“Oh …”
“… in particular me and a friend.”
“Ah, that’s better. Joseph, that’s very brave of them.”
“Yes, isn’t it?”
Gwenda pauses. “Joseph I should love to! When were you going?”
“Well, I’ve booked a couple of weeks annual leave and I happen to know you did too, so I thought we could …”
“Next week?”
Yes: next week.”
“Oh, Joseph! I am so sorry!” Her disappointment sounds genuine. This isn’t a casual brush off but why would it be? After all, we have some shared history now, Gwenda and me. “I’m going over to a wedding in Tobago. Relatives. I really can’t duck it. I’ve got to be there. You could always come with me?”
“I would absolutely love to go to a wedding in Tobago with you, Gwenda but I have said ‘yes’ to Inga and Andrew. In the circumstances I think I should …”
“Yes, of course you should. You definitely should but ... well I am coming back, you know?”
“I should hope so!”
“So when we are both back, you know I will have had enough rice and peas and you’ll have had enough of tall blonde girls.” …. She pauses and gives Joe a broad smile ... “So, you can take me to the best restaurant you can get a table at and I’ll give you … a roll in the hay with something not so blonde!”
Gwenda laughs at her own joke. I laugh too but inside I’m not laughing; my heart is beating faster and I seem to be salivating. So, definitely not a brush off, then. And definitely something to look forward to when I get back!
It’s the night before I’m due to leave for Stockholm. I’m staying in a hotel in London to save time in the morning, before I meet Andrew and Inga. The room’s hot; it took me ages to get to sleep.
I’m dreaming. I know I’m dreaming but that doesn’t make it any less real. I’m holding two lengths of rope, one red and one white. My eyes follow the red rope to where it is entwined, shibari style around a girl’s bald head. She turns to face me and smiles in spite of the rope that frames her head and gags her. It’s Jenny. Naked and wrapped in the red rope she looks calm and peaceful; standing, accepting her restraint.
I look at my other hand: its holding the white rope. My eyes follow that. It is tied in much the same way around a dark skinned girl. Gwenda. The white rope shows sharply against her dark breasts, pressing in against them; and against her waist and belly where it loops tightly about her. It’s odd, I think to myself. Why would she let herself be tied like this? And why I am I standing here holding the rope?
I turn, as if to ask Jenny, but as my eyes follow the rope I see only its loose end trailing on the floor. She isn’t there.
I wake, knowing that it’s time to leave.
Then, as I leave the hotel, my mobile bleeps telling me I’ve got a text. It’s from Gwenda. “J,” it says, “Can join U after all. Chris P wants to meet me in Sweden to look at the Sysav1 project in Malmo. How about that dinner/roll in the hay?”
I don’t think twice. “Great,” I text back. “Let me know your flights. I’ll book a table and make sure I get my fill of blonde girls in plenty of time.” I press send. It’s a curious feeling.
POSTSCRIPT : STRIFE IN THE GROVES OF ACADEME : JUNE
20 Months, 600 Days Since Jenny’s Disappearance
Cathy Corbin is sitting at her desk, setting out her teaching schedule for the coming months. This is a job she shares with the other lecturers in the department but since Jenny McEwan disappeared, there is one less member of staff to share the burden. Giving the lectures which Jenny used to give is uncomfortable for Cathy: she and Jenny were close and when Cathy has to step into Jenny’s shoes, she feels a real sense of anxiety over what might have become of her friend. That is exactly how she feels now, when the telephone on her desk rings.
“Cathy? It’s Angela. Have you got a few minutes to spare? Can you come and see me please?”
“Yes, of course, Prof, …er … half an hour?”
“Well, I’d like it to be now if you can.”
Cathy bites her lip. The interruption isn’t welcome but there isn’t much else she can do. “Sure, I’ll be right with you.”
Professor Dawney. Cathy is very glad she does not have to work closely with her. Cathy works in a separate research group and this is the sort of incident which makes her very glad she does. Cathy finds Professor Dawney and her prima donna ways a significant irritation. Unfortunately, for this academic year, Angela has the role of organising the undergraduate teaching and so Cathy finds herself in Angela’s orbit.
This perfunctory summons is almost certainly something to do with teaching, probably to ask Cathy (or tell her if Angela can get away with it) to cover some of Angela’s own lectures because Angela has to (probably not) or wants to (almost certainly) go to a research meeting and the date of the meeting clashes with Angela’s own teaching commitments.
Cathy is not inclined to be cooperative and has a few minutes to prepare in her mind at least three reasons why she will be unable to help Angela out of this particular hole.
Cathy knocks and Angela immediately answers “Come!” As Cathy enters her office she looks up sharply.
“Have you seen this?”
“What?”
“This!” Angela brandishes a sheaf of papers.
Cathy takes then and reads. This is typical Angela. It’s a research report translated from a Russian psychological journal or perhaps a pre-publication report from someone known to Angela and obviously something inside Angela’s area of focus of the moment. Cathy’s research interests and Angela’s interests do not overlap very much so why should Cathy have seen the report, whatever it is? This is Angela posturing again.
“Well?”
Cathy sighs and reads – and then reads more closely, more analytically.
“Do you see? An account of a research strategy into the psychology of BDSM and play. Exactly what the McEwan girl was supposed to be working on before the little bitch took herself off somewhere. You don’t know how angry this makes me! We (actually Angela means “I”) should have had the first publication in this field and now it will go to this other group.”
Cathy is confused. Is Angela accusing Jenny of some sort of intellectual defection? Or is she just angry that this other group has pre-empted her?
“Did you know anything about this?”
Cathy has had quite enough of Professor Dawney’s histrionics. The suggestion that she might know more about Jenny’s disappearance is more than enough to raise her hackles. To make sure Angela knows it, she replies slowly and carefully.
“First, Prof, no. Of course, I did not know anything about it. This is not my research area so I do not keep up with this particular literature and, no, I am not in clandestine touch with Jenny. You may remember there has been a police investigation into her disappearance. Whatever you think of me, I haven’t held anything back from them.
“Second, you may know Jenny and I were close and I am very hurt when I hear you refer to her as “the little bitch” or “that McEwan girl”. I will be grateful if you can not do that in future. Is there anything else?”
Angela is taken aback by Cathy’s forthright response. It’s obvious that her bullying isn’t going to have any effect. She purses her lips. “No, no nothing. Look, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.” Her placatory manner doesn’t last long though. “It is just so frustrating, when this sort of thing happens! I just had to get it off my chest to someone.”
“And I happened to be the nearest one to lash out at,” Cathy thinks to herself. To Angela she says, “Here’s what I can do. Jenny had asked me to read over some of the work she had done, to be a critical friend so to speak. I will read through the report and compare it with what Jenny gave me. There may be fewer similarities than appears at first glance.”
After Cathy’s confrontational manner, Angela is surprised that she is offering to help and finds herself backing off. “Would you? I would be grateful.”
“Next week?”
“Yes … next week will be fine. I know you have a lot on your plate, Cathy, and I am grateful for your help.”
Once back in her office, Cathy allows herself a smirk. She had put Angela in her place for once. Might as well get this chore out of the way, she thinks. Cathy reads. The Russian report is by Mendeleyev, Romanova and Kuznetsova.
Mendeleyev is the head of department, Romanova is the statistician and Kuznetsova … who is Kuznetsova? Is she a junior colleague or someone who has made a more substantial contribution? Cathy continues reading. The flow of words is disquietingly familiar.
She gets up and picks a file of the book case. It contains the written work Jenny asked her to read over. Cathy opens the file beside the translation. She scans the two. Back and forth; back and forth. As she reads, she feels more and more uncomfortable with what she is seeing. The feeling spreads up the back of her neck, making her hair prickle. It’s like seeing a ghost. The organisation of the ideas, the sentence order, the words chosen - allowing for the peculiarities of the quaint translation - are all the same. In every essential it’s the same document that Jenny gave her. It’s almost as if it has been written by Jenny or by someone deliberately using Jenny’s own words. Another wave of discomfort washes over her. Is “V.A. Kuznetsova” really Jennifer Karin McEwan?
Cathy finds herself breathing faster. She is torn between three emotions: joy at (perhaps) finding her friend, dismay at how her (possible) discovery has been made and fear at what this might mean for her, because she is now someone who knows the secret.
Cath’s mind races through possibilities:
Jenny has been abducted and through this paper, is sending a forelorn, desperate cry for help. The bottle with a note inside, thrown into the sea from a desert island and washed up on a distant shore.
Perhaps Jenny has fled the country, to start her life afresh, free from the difficulties that her relationship with Joe had been going through and free from the consequences that her old relationship with Angela might bring, but at least this paper is evidence that she is alive and well and brings with it the hope that there could be reconciliation with Joe.
Maybe Jenny has been killed because of what she discovered or more likely, killed by Angela out of jealousy and here is Angela testing her, Cathy, to see if she notices anything strange in the Russian research paper.
Jenny is alive and being held prisoner, perhaps even enslaved by these others and now Cathy is the only one who knows it, the one who will be in danger herself, if she shares her suspicions.
What should she do? Who should she tell? She has promised Angela a report on the article in a week. She has a week to decide. A week with the fate of Jenny and perhaps herself resting in her own hands ….
As she reflects, the copy of the Big Issue Cathy bought from the street vendor rolls across the desk, propelled by the shuffling of papers and opening of files during the past few moments. It’s open at the last page; the page with appeals for information about missing people. From the top right quarter of the page, Jenny McEwan’s face stares out at her from a photograph – silent; patiently watching Cathy; waiting to see what she will do …
THE END
© Phil Lane & Freddie Clegg 2010
All characters fictitious
No reposting without permission
1 Europe’s largest waste-to-energy project, curiously not located in Strasbourg or Brussels. Gwenda would be better getting a flight to Copenhagen but geography isn’t her strong point.
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