The Gift of Shame

by Sophie Hope-Walker

  Seeing Jeffrey stilled by the interruption she went to the telephone and lifted it.

  Her mother’s excited voice poured into her ears. ‘Where on earth have you been? I’ve been calling and talking to that stupid machine of yours for days. Why haven’t you called me back?’

  ‘Mother, I’ve been busy …’ she looked back over her shoulder and shrugged an apology in Jeffrey’s direction.

  ‘Too busy to return the messages I left on your machine?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother, I haven’t had time to play them back and I’m in a tremendous rush just at the moment – can I call you later?’

  ‘No!’ cried her mother. ‘We’ve been worried sick about you …’ With the stream of non-stop complaints ringing in her ears, Helen had dropped her guard against Jeffrey only to be forcefully reminded of that oversight when she felt his hands at the fastenings of the gown. The telephone in her hand prevented anything but the weakest attempt to still the downward slide of the clinging silk. Covering the mouthpiece she turned, genuinely angry, towards Jeffrey. ‘No, Jeffrey … we have to … this is my mother … I—’

  Determined and unsmiling Jeffrey gently took away the one hand that stopped the gown from uncovering her entirely and she stared helplessly, and pleaded speechlessly, as the gown slid to the floor leaving her facing him, naked. ‘Please …’ she begged, but Jeffrey was implacable.

  She was turned and he thrust hard into her from behind. Her gasp at his penetration carried all the way to Eastbourne.

  ‘Are you listening to a word I’ve said?’ her mother was demanding. ‘It’s that man, isn’t it? The one you brought down here? I suppose you’ve been with him all this time with never a thought that we might be worrying about you? I think I have a right to know …’

  Her mother’s words were now only background as the convulsions Jeffrey was creating in her took command and extinguished all will to do anything but respond.

  ‘Helen?’ her mother’s voice was calling down the line. ‘What on earth is going on …’

  ‘Mother, please …’ she managed. ‘Not now. There’s someone here …’ she broke off, trying to silence her rising climax.

  ‘Who is there? Him?’ asked her mother and then, after a steely silence in which Helen could almost sense the keening ears, added in horrified tones, ‘Oh, my God! You’re doing “it” with him right this minute aren’t you? What on earth …? How dare you?’ Helen heard the phone being slammed down in her desperate ear.

  ‘You bastard!’ she seethed even as her body begged release.

  Jeffrey pulled her hips tight to him as she, still holding the telephone in one paralysed hand, bent forward and gave him even greater access. ‘You’re my whore!’ he breathed throatily as he bent over her to sink his teeth into her shoulder.

  ‘Yes!’ she yelled into his face. ‘Fuck me! Fuck me, fuck me!’ then gave vent to a scream as the onrush of orgasm vibrated inwards before bursting out to encompass her entire body. Within a second she felt him straighten and then, as his grip dug painfully into her flesh, surge into her.

  ‘God, I must look a mess!’ she said the moment she managed to disentangle herself from him. ‘My hair! What am I going to do?’ she wailed.

  ‘You’ll go as you are. The “just screwed” look is all the rage this year!’

  Turning from the mirror where she was surveying the damage she was enraged. ‘You pig!’ she yelled at him. ‘How could you do that to me?’

  ‘Because you looked so beautiful,’ he smiled. ‘I had to put my mark on you.’

  ‘My hair!’ she wailed. ‘My face! I spent hours getting ready and then you have to do that to me. I haven’t packed anything yet, and …’ her voice trailed into silence as she remembered with horror what her mother had said as she slammed down the phone. ‘And my mother heard us!’ she cried.

  ‘You mean, until now, your mother imagined you were a virgin?’ His tone was so close to sarcasm that she felt a sudden urge to hit him.

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean,’ she said defiantly. ‘Well, we’ll just have to be late. I’m going to repair the damage.’

  Jeffrey physically blocked her progress to the bedroom. ‘There isn’t time,’ he said. ‘You’ll just have to do what you can in the car!’

  Filled with a sudden need to show anger, she remembered she had once been told how grimly her face set when she needed to express rage. Fully aware that she now wore that expression she decided to let it out. ‘Jeffrey, I’m warning you – I really mean this – get out of my way.’

  Jeffrey stayed where he was. ‘Shall I go?’ he asked quietly.

  The rush of blood that was carrying an affirmative response to her lips stopped dead in its tracks as with sudden, chilling clarity she saw the space where Jeffrey now stood would, if vacated, be nothing but a yawning void which, she knew, would haunt her for the rest of her life. All anger was suddenly frozen. Icicles, she would later swear, formed in her gut at that moment. ‘No,’ she murmured so quietly that he made her repeat the words more loudly.

  ‘No, you bastard!’ she yelled at him.

  Seemingly much relieved, Jeffrey smiled. ‘Lucky thing for you I changed my mind.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘When I saw how gorgeous you looked I wanted to put my mark on you in another way.’

  It took a moment to realise his meaning. ‘You were thinking of spanking me – just before going out …’

  ‘We aren’t “out”, yet.’

  ‘Don’t think about it!’ Her voice was pitched half way between plea and resolve.

  ‘All right, but you should bear in mind that you will have to be punished later.’

  Annoyed that the threat both warmed and thrilled her she agreed that there would be time in the car to repair her face and hair and, after throwing some things into an overnight bag, happily went down to the waiting Turner feeling that she had narrowly escaped disaster.

  * * *

  The limousine whisked them to a part of Heathrow she didn’t know existed. This was the area, far from the commercial terminals, from which private planes departed. Jeffrey, she discovered, had rented an air taxi and so, with the minimum of formalities, they were in the air and en route to Le Bourget airport which, she was informed, was even closer to Paris than the sprawl of the Charles de Gaulle.

  Waiting there was another chauffered limousine which took them directly to the reception hall. It had all been so effortless and quick that she understood what Jeffrey meant by Paris being only a cab ride away. All it took was money and a willingness to spend it.

  Feeling pampered and flattered she took wicked pleasure in thinking of how horrified her mother would be by all this ‘extravagance’!

  They were barely inside the exhibition hall and had no time to pick out one face from another when an authoritative voice started calling out that the arrival of the President was imminent, and the person behind it fussily started lining up those who were to be presented.

  Falling back among the lesser guests Helen and Jeffrey could now see Qito, who had deferred to the admonitory ‘formal’ dress only so far as donning a black T-shirt under a darkish jacket, and, towering over him, was the unmistakable figure of Carla Colardi. It was only then that Helen was reminded that Carla, still overwhelmingly beautiful, was Qito’s wife of almost twenty years. Dressed in a glittering silver gown, cut aggressively low to display her famous bosom, the glitter theme continued with her jewellery which, all platinum and white gold, flashed in the lighting as if powered from Carla’s own formidable personality – which seemed further emphasised by her ‘big hair’. Two legends in the same household should have been fertile ground for the gossipmongers yet nothing had ever been found to besmirch their union.

  Looking at Carla, Helen could not help relishing the thought that she had, if only momentarily, shared Qito with her. The frisson of excitement this engendered was rapidly followed by the daunting thought of what the formidable Carla’s reaction might be if she ever found out. />
  It was then that Qito spotted her. ‘Helen!’ he called out with such excitement that she felt all eyes, tensed ready for the arrival of the President, turning to her. Qito was gesturing wildly for Helen to come to him. Aware of Carla’s huge black lustrous eyes searching her out from top to toe, Helen turned to Jeffrey. ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘He wants you in the line up,’ Jeffrey smiled. ‘Go!’

  Aware that everyone in the crowded room was now looking at her and wondering who the hell she might be, she felt Jeffrey’s hand on the small of her back urging her forward. With a growing sense of unreality that this was really happening, Helen found the crowd opening up before her and the fussy organiser looming before her to demand her name. Having hastily added her name to the official list he ushered her forward to where she found Qito insisting that she stand to his right, between him and Carla.

  ‘Cara mio …’ Qito spoke across the highly embarrassed Helen to the highly interested Carla. ‘This is the English girl I told you about. Isn’t she incredible?’

  Carla’s look to Helen was, to say the least, smouldering but, whatever verbal response she might have made was lost in the sudden stirring of interest as the President’s party arrived.

  Standing next to Qito, Helen had the unsettling feeling that she was caught up in a fantasy made real. She watched with blurred vision and bated breath as the President’s party paused in the doorway, as they were welcomed by the Gallery officials staging the exhibition. Then her vision was filled with the sight of the President making directly towards Qito. It was only then Helen realised she had absolutely no idea how one greeted a President and, since it seemed she would be the first female to be introduced, she would have little chance to learn by observation. Grimly, as the President all but embraced Qito, she thought it would have been simpler if the man had been royalty. Then it would only have been a matter of a quick curtsey. Desperately, her mind raced over the possibilities only to find her brain otherwise engaged when the thought of her recent violation at Jeffrey’s hands chose that moment to leap into her head, creating a stirring in her groin and the resulting fervent juices to start trickling down her thighs.

  Her heart thumping out a drum beat of impending disaster, she heard her name, as if at a great distance, being spoken and a Presidential hand being extended to her.

  ‘My new inspiration,’ Qito was saying by way of further introduction, and Helen, totally lost, settled for an ingratiatingly embarrassed smile.

  ‘How charming …’ mused the President in a tone that managed to convey its uncertainty at why such a nonentity should be being introduced, and she felt enormous relief when the hand-shaking personage moved on to greet Carla with more obvious enthusiasm and genuine warmth.

  It was then that her swimming vision brought Jeffrey’s face, grinning at her from across the channel left in the crowd and, for a passing moment, she hated him for exposing her to such an occasion with barely an hour’s notice. Carla’s voice broke into her seething mind. ‘Qito tells me you have inspired him.’

  Looking into the familiar famous face, Helen felt even more lost. What is there to say to a wife when her husband has declared that he has been ‘inspired’? Fortunately, Carla didn’t wait for any cogent reply but instead murmured, ‘So no doubt we will be meeting again,’ before being caught up in a surging crowd of admirers which somehow managed to elbow Helen to one side. Jeffrey caught her arm. ‘Hungry?’ he asked.

  ‘Aren’t we going to look at Qito’s work?’ a bewildered Helen asked.

  Jeffrey indicated the great crowds. ‘We’d see nothing in this scrum. We can come back tomorrow if you want. Meantime, I don’t know about you but I’m starving.’

  Not sure if she was hungry, she was certainly ready to flee from the confusion of this sudden exposure to so many famous faces, so she readily agreed to his suggestion that they go and eat.

  It wasn’t until they were seated in the small but exclusive restaurant that she realised this was the first time they had formally eaten together.

  Jeffrey’s choice of conversational topic was, initially, surprising. ‘When I was ten,’ she heard him saying, ‘my father caught me smoking one of his cigars. I thought he would be furious with me but instead he fooled me into thinking he was delighted. He sat me down and lectured me on the proper way to prepare and really appreciate a cigar. In fact he watched me smoke my way through that first one and then insisted I had another. I got about half way through it before I turned green and spent the rest of the evening in the bathroom. I have never smoked a cigar since.’

  Smiling politely, and wondering why she was being exposed to such a mundane tale, she was startled when he came to the point. ‘That’s how I intend to deal with your masochism.’

  Gripped with apprehension she managed, ‘“Deal” with it? Is it a sickness then?’

  ‘Not the sickness – a symptom. To get at the root we have to cut away the undergrowth.’

  Stilled with fear of what he might be about to propose she nevertheless found herself anxious to be told. ‘To face my nightmares?’ she asked.

  ‘To find out whether or not the nightmares really exist.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, filling in time as her mind raced. ‘And how do you propose to do that?’

  ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘You have to do it yourself, but what I can do is show you the way. It will be up to you whether you go down that road or not.’

  Again the challenge! Again, he was forcing her to commit herself. Once more she found herself excitedly willing to do just that.

  ‘I’m in your hands,’ she told him.

  Jeffrey smiled and, reaching out, laid an admonishing finger on her lips. ‘Now I sentence you to silence,’ he murmured as she, with mounting excitement, reached her lips forward to nibble at his lingering finger. ‘I’ve dismissed the limousine and rented a self-drive car instead,’ he said, as her lit eyes fixed alertly on him, ‘so I will be driving. You do remember our drive to Eastbourne, don’t you? I asked you to do something that night and you refused. You will not refuse me tonight.’ For answer she drew his fingers deep into her mouth and, uncaring what other diners or waiters might think, kept her eyes firmly fixed on his.

  ‘It is quite a short drive so you will have to be particularly expert since you will be performing that small service totally naked.’ As she stopped sucking on him and stared instead, he added, ‘However, you may remain clothed until we are in the car. Shall we go?’

  The formalities of paying the bill, him signing his charge slip and their finding the car, seemed to take forever. Her body was totally encased in the excitement of the moment and the trivial interests of others were merely obstacles in the way of opportunity.

  Still trembling she was seated in the car as he turned the heater to full and waited for it to warm up.

  When he drove away she, with a sense of assertiveness, reached to her shoulders for the catches that held the dress and let it slither down into her lap, leaving her breasts bare to the flash of passing lights and the eyes of pedestrians. It was then only a matter of shifting her weight, first this way then that, before she was completely free of the gown. Laying her head across his lap, her fingers sought out his already risen flesh.

  The steering wheel rubbed hard against her head as she plunged him deep into her throat. There was only one thought in her mind – he must come before they ended the short drive. At that moment it became her only aim in life beyond which there was nothing. Feeling an exquisite moment of total self-abandonment she worked her lips and tongue feverishly around his stiffened cock, trying as she did so to remember everything she had ever learnt or read about this particular pleasure. She felt almost total despair as she realised that the car had stopped and she had yet to feel his first convulsion. Desperately, she ignored the possibility of passing strangers looking in on her and increased the tempo and intensity of her lips and mouth.

  Eerily aware that Jeffrey had remained silent, she continued working on him while dreadi
ng that he might intercede and stop her and tell her she had failed. Sensing his first flesh-quickening throb she sucked deeper and harder, forcing herself to concentrate on what she now knew was inevitable. Feeling his hand resting lightly on the back of her head she waited eagerly for his gush but, even as it started, she heard him add yet another condition. ‘Do not swallow it!’ he gasped as he started to issue. ‘I want you to take it and guard it in your mouth. You understand me?’

  All she could do was nod as he filled her mouth. When he nudged her to indicate that she could now sit up, she found his imperative that she must not swallow his tribute almost impossible to obey. Having to fight against instinct she was aware that her puffed cheeks and strained throat must be making her look ridiculous. As he got out of the car she sat, still naked, and only vaguely aware that they were stopped in a wide, tree-lined avenue.

  When Jeffrey opened the car’s door a blast of the winter’s night air flooded in to remind her that she was still naked. ‘Come,’ said Jeffrey.

  Stepping out of the car she found herself keeping her eyes strictly to the front, not wanting to know if there was anyone there to see her. Instead she kept her eyes firmly fixed on his until he, smiling, turned away and led her still naked up the steps to a substantial villa. There he rang the bell and she had to wait interminably, the cold now piercing her body in places she was only vaguely aware existed, and wondered where it was she had been brought and what might lay behind the glossy shine of this green door.

  8

  HELEN CAUGHT BARELY a glimpse of the girl who had opened the door before Jeffrey, taking her elbow, urged her into the long, high-ceilinged hallway. At the far end a woman appeared wearing the kind of long floral evening gown that overweight ladies use to disguise their widened hips. She was directing a broad smile at Jeffrey. ‘I had almost given up hope,’ she was saying, before directing her gaze to Helen.

  ‘Helen, this is Madame Victoria. She runs the most famous House of Pain in Paris.’