The driver’s eyes. Cliff and her need others, now, need to elaborate; need to shift away relentlessly from sameness.
‘Come,’ her husband commands.
Connie climbs across the wide interior to her husband’s seat.
‘Sit.’
She straddles her husband, her back to the driver; she goes to kiss Cliff but veers to the left of his cheek at the last moment and hooks her chin on his shoulder. He lifts her body high. ‘Yes,’ he whispers, examining her cunt with his fat pen, parting her lips then running his fingers in luxurious strokes along the wetness then lifting up her hips so that her behind is fully exposed, high, so high, to the driver, and Cliff is parting her cheeks wide, wider now and she is like a baboon there, poised, with her ready arse. ‘Display yourself,’ Cliff whispers and she parts her cheeks with her own hands, flattening her belly and moaning and pushing out her cunt, as wide as she can for the driver, for her husband, for any camera that may be filming for she is now, entirely, someone else. Poised. For the next step, whatever it may be.
‘Your Maglite,’ her husband says to the driver in another voice entirely.
‘Sir?’
‘Please.’
The driver fumbles in the glove compartment to his left and hands a tiny, slim torch across. Cliff switches it on and runs the beam across Connie’s wideness then he turns the torch around, switches it off, and toys the blunt end at her anal opening. The shock of the cold, the thrill of it. She groans, starts to move under its questioning, the chill pushing soft against her resisting bud. Cliff works it and works it until Connie is tightening her muscles and coming in a spasm of wet and collapsing against his strong shoulder that’s like a sudden scaffold to her limpness.
‘Yes. She’s ready,’ Cliff smiles. ‘Proceed.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The car revs yet does not lurch, never lurches, all is smooth and seamless and utterly correct.
5
The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames
How far will you go? When do you stop? Have you stopped, have you shut down, did you ever start? Bow out, now, if you must. When is the spell broken so that the inhibition, the flinching, the admonition and retort come rushing back? Have you put this down yet? Once, Connie would have thought a woman could have died of shame but instead of which, the shame died. Just like that, so D. H. Lawrence wrote. Shame, which is fear. And judgement. And with the death of shame she was released. A regular, everyday woman, any woman, of demure and considered tastes; raised by an empowered mother to be an empowered woman and yet deep down she was plumed into transcendent life by this. How? Why? It doesn’t make sense, yet it seems like something deeply animal, biological, these moments of vividness when she surrenders to something quite disconnected from everything else in her life; baubles of otherness, oh yes. Surrenders her body, by relinquishing her mind, such a delicate balancing act. And so Connie is released, for nights like this, to become someone else. Entranced. On the cusp of an unimaginable fate …
The city peels away, the car drives on, out into open country and through villages bunkered down against the cold and they’re gone in a flash and then they’re bulleting along runnels of narrow, high-hedged green and then thick woods, on, on, through the waiting quiet. The snow-scrubbed day has absorbed all sound.
The car suddenly, smoothly, pulls over into a small clearing. Without a word from either man. As if this has been done before. As if all is proceeding to plan. As if they are in some kind of strange, unspoken collusion. Connie jerks up her head, like a dog suddenly alert; lights are in front of them, but at a distance, high, wide; something momentous is close. She has no idea what. She trusts.
‘For his little task I need you to lie across my lap, my lovely, but up, up, on all fours,’ Cliff requests politely.
When Connie is done, arranged, as to specification, he whispers to her, ‘Do you love me?’ a moth’s breath to her ear, the pen in his hand stroking her labia, the familiar pen.
‘Yes, yes.’
Something is reached for, it is hard and cold, it suddenly penetrates her anus, is switched on, it buzzes. ‘Yes, yes,’ she repeats as she flinches, groans, widens herself.
‘Will you do what I want? Are you my good girl?’
‘Yes, yes,’ as the car pulls away, soft, with barely a murmur and certainly no signal, no talk.
The gatehouse they come to, a short distance away, is a frippery of sculpted sandstone three storeys high. The car slows through its high arch and stops. Connie is on all fours, still, naked now except for her stockings and McQueen’s; her haunches across Cliff’s lap, her willing cunt exposed high to the side window which the driver now lowers. A shock of winter cold, a crunch of gravel, a low West Country voice commanding a flurry of dogs to ‘git, the lot of you, be still’. Torchlight sweeps the car. Connie does not turn, does not look, stays still, pliant, tremulous, waiting, entranced; anonymous, as she knows she should, as she knows she must. For it is what Cliff wants. She is the good wife.
‘We’re here for the doctor,’ Cliff says, the V of his fingers spreading her as if in some secret prearranged signal. ‘We’re ready.’
‘But is the lass?’ a man says with a rough laugh. The heat of a torch, suddenly close upon Connie’s cunt. Examining, considering. Fingers, gnarled, rough, brusque, brushing aside Cliff, roughly spreading her lips. Connie does not turn, does not look, she gasps at the shock, folds into it; signalling her need, her readiness, her want.
‘She’s been prepared. She’s wide enough where she needs to be.’ Cliff kisses her cheek lightly. ‘And narrow enough’ – another kiss – ‘where she needs to be.’
‘Off you go then. They’re all waiting.’
Connie’s rump is smartly slapped like a mare set off into pasture.
6
The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity
Snow is raggedy and undisciplined, in big, blowsy flakes as Connie steps from the car. Naked but for her stockings and shoes, naked against the visceral shock of the cold. Cliff is already out, thanks to the driver, he is readied, silken and immaculate, by her door. The driver now removes an ankle-length mink coat from the car boot and wraps it around her and hooks it, just once, at her neck; the silk of its lining cool and comforting against her skin. Her face is blank, as is his. ‘Thank you,’ she murmurs and as he finishes adjusting the fur at her shoulders he brushes his hand, once, swift, along her wetness in its entirety and up her belly which rises softly, subtly, to meet his cupped touch. ‘Thank you,’ she repeats.
Face blank, he turns to Cliff who is patiently waiting, smiling and holding out his hand for Connie; the two of them like the crème de la crème of a society ball about to glide into their grand moment; as if all is precisely as it should be. Connie crunches through snow as resistant as a frozen grape. Tugs the coat shut against the snow, the chill, the opened door ahead of them and its spilling light but Cliff shakes his head – ‘uh-uh’ – it is not what he wants and so she steps inside that beautiful, warmly lit Jacobean building, through its wall of heat, with the coat ever so slightly open and fluid to her readied, strummed nakedness.
Before them, a high desk. Of the kind found in an exclusive nightclub. A lone woman is at its helm. Slicked-down blonde bob, scarlet lips, bustier; Vivienne Westwood, Connie guesses.
‘Good evening.’ Cliff nods, ever the gentleman.
The woman looks at Connie. Takes a riding crop from the desk before her and inches the fur coat open with it, as if to assess. A wry smile, one side up one side down. Approval. The woman rises from her desk, and it is then that Connie and Cliff realize she is wearing nothing but that bustier, her pudenda a strip of blonde, her cleft strong and visible underneath. She walks right up to Connie, thrusts a hand between her legs. ‘Is she ready?’ she asks, moving closer, cunt to cunt. Connie can feel it, the shock of another woman so violently close, her energy, her challenge; she flinches and reel
s back, has never been with a woman before, doesn’t know what to do. The receptionist draws back and gazes at her, with what? Fondness, pity, wonder. What is ahead, what …?
‘I’ll let the master of the house know.’
They are all in collusion, Cliff is in on it. Part of the excitement is surrendering completely to his control but the two of them have never gone this far before. A prickling of discomfort; Connie quells it. The element of surprise, of teaching unfolding, has always been a crucial component of this journey; like being blindly led further and further down a secret path. Where will it end? How? Connie is astounded at her trusting capacity to shut off mentally in order to transport herself physically; her deep willingness for the drug of transcendence. The desire to go deeper and deeper down that secret path, whatever is at the end of it.
The receptionist makes a call – ‘She’s here, the main act, you promised me a go’ – then explains to Connie her face will be covered so she is truly anonymous, and free, that she has to be as free as she can be tonight or it will not work, it can’t, she has to surrender completely or it will not be any good … ‘for me, for you, for any of us’ … but then they are interrupted by a man of fifty or so bouncing down the imposing wooden staircase and warmly greeting Cliff with a shake of both hands.
‘Welcome, welcome, my friend. Ahmed is waiting. And this – this – must be the beautiful Constance.’ The man unhooks her coat and throws it back from her shoulders. ‘Can I watch?’ he asks Cliff, never taking his eyes from Connie, the length of her waiting, ready, primed body, utterly exposed to the three of them. ‘It would please me immensely. It’s been a long time since we had one of these.’
‘Be my guest.’ Cliff nods in the smoothly charming way he has with his clients as he extracts their money from them.
‘And everyone else?’
‘But of course.’
‘Excellent. The theatre, the good doctor, the instruments. All are ready and waiting, my friend.’
A suddenly violent flinch, flaring through Connie, like a horse’s shudder. Cliff takes her hand – ‘I love you so much’ – he is whispering his approval, his gratitude, steadying her. ‘The next step. For both of us. Your gift to me. To us.’
Connie is righted, almost buckles, with anticipation, readiness, want. Nothing must break the spell, nothing, she must not rationalize too much. She must not let fear clench her want, dissolve it.
‘Surrender – completely – or it will not work. For me … for you … for any of us.’
7
For most of history, anonymous was a woman
A young woman is summoned, her hair in a plain bun. She is bearing a silver tray. The receptionist picks up a length of silk cloth and wraps it several times, with practised expertise, around Connie’s eyes and cheeks, her belly firm into her back. ‘My name is Nika,’ she whispers. ‘And I’m going to look after you tonight.’
The master of the house observes, takes over. ‘The cloth is so no one knows who you are in the real world,’ he explains, ‘so no one will ever know. Tonight, our little club is packed. They are being thrown morsels as we speak but you … you … are what they want. They have been told something of what to expect. And none of them will ever know who you are. Or who you belong to.’ Cliff squeezes her hand as the master reties Nika’s knot tighter and whispers in her ear. ‘Anonymity is your refuge. Your liberation. Into another world, another life. You are one of us now. You will be ours from this night. You will want to be.’
He steps in front of Connie and parts the silk, just a sliver, so she can see out, for now, a touch. His fingertip brushes down her lips, he smiles, their secret.
‘Nika, please escort my old friend into the red room. He needs some pre-show entertainment. And perhaps a stiff drink. I need to prepare this dear girl.’
At that, Connie starts trembling; trembling as she realizes this is all entirely new, and Cliff will not be with her, not leading her, telling her what to do, not whispering a kiss on the cheek and assuring her everything will be all right; she is trembling as the maid takes her husband by the hand and leads him out, away, from her, from whatever is next; trembling as she realizes she is now alone with this man with his sudden greed of a touch. For what, she does not know. Have they gone too far, Cliff and her, in spilling their secret wants? She never expected that world to leach into real life.
It is too late, Cliff is gone.
The stranger throws her fur coat briskly on the counter. ‘We’ll be needing none of this now.’ Summons another girl from the shadow of a doorway, also bearing a silver tray. Upon it is a thick red collar. ‘Such a pretty little thing, for a pretty little girl,’ he murmurs, buckling it around Connie’s neck then suddenly tugging it roughly, pulling it a notch too tight as if he is free, now, to be vicious, since his friends have left the room, like a man in a secret moment with a dog. The collar is too thick, the leathery smell pungent. Connie gasps but does not cry out. ‘Oh, you sweet, sweet thing, you are ready, so ready for this, aren’t you?’ A chain is attached and she is jerked towards a wooden door, low, with brass studs. Roughly pushed through it. She stumbles. A foot in the small of her back forces her up, into looking.
A room like Connie has never seen before. Like some anatomical theatre of old. Small and windowless and steeped with hard wooden benches on three sides, on several levels. In the centre of the floor: a narrow, unforgiving doctor’s table. Instinctively Connie knows it will be hard and cold upon her flesh, for it is for her, instinctively she knows that. It has steel railings at its head, like a bedhead, for securing things she presumes, and stirrups hanging down from the ceiling above. Next to it is a narrow steel table with various implements; she can hardly bear to look, she is breathing fast now, shallow; there are irons and manacles, collars, whips of different sizes and some strange instrument that looks like a medieval hole-puncher. How has her world come to this? Where is Cliff? No, no, she must veer back into willingness.
‘Yes, my dear, oh yes,’ the master murmurs, propelling her towards the table, grasping her chin and forcing her into looking. She pulls back, resists, the man immediately calls out ‘Hans’ and through the door steps a man in tight jeans and singlet, no neck, just a fall of skin into shoulders and with two panting dogs on leashes; all three of them look like they’ve been plucked from the London just driven through. He has her fur coat over his arm. One dog barks. Connie is very, very still, scarcely breathing now, trembling.
‘Just remember, my love, this is what Cliff wants,’ the master says, mock-soothing, holding her leash tight so they are now cheek to cheek. ‘He has asked for this. For everything. He will be in the audience. He needs to know how much you love him. How obedient you will be. For him. For others. It’s what he wants.’ Connie whimpers. ‘You know that.’
She does. Everything she has done beforehand has led to this point. She shuts her eyes, wilts. Her tongue is nailed to the floor of her mouth. The master takes her mink from his servant and spreads it upon the doctor’s table, fur side up. Connie knows, now, what she must do, what is expected of her. She does not resist, it is what Cliff wants, it is what she wants, what she has led him to think she wants. She steps obediently up onto the small platform by the table. Slips off her shoes and places them carefully, side by side, on the floor. Lies down gingerly, for she knows this is what Cliff has prescribed; in his precise way, he has thought this through carefully. She says nothing as the bouncer secures her wrists with iron manacles and ties them to the iron bars at her head. Surrenders, gasps. Says nothing as he trusses her up, knees bent, violently exposed, for the entire theatre to see; says nothing as the bouncer runs a finger across her, slips a digit in, grunts his approval. A dog barks, comes forward, Connie moans. The servant withdraws, too quick. Is gone.
And now. Just the master and her. He walks around the theatrical space in a circle, assessing. ‘We certainly don’t need these,’ he says suddenly, crisply, taking out a small ivory penknife and running it down the Wolford silk on each leg, sna
pping off the garters. Expertly, no skin is broken. Connie cannot see, can barely move, she is so bound. A tongue laps her up, once, quick. Her arse is rimmed, entered. A groan.
So ready, so ready.
‘I’ll leave you for now,’ the master says, looping the dogs’ leashes over a post by the lowest seats. Then he kisses Connie gently on the forehead, caresses her like a child being put to bed. Adjusts a surgical light so it is glaring onto her and steps away. ‘Enjoy. You are extremely lucky to have someone who allows you to be so utterly, magnificently … free.’
He is gone.
Connie hears the door shut, the panting of the dogs, the faint hum of the light. So. Utterly alone. Anonymous. Another person entirely. And waiting, wet. Within the valley of her mind; her roaring raging glittering mind. All the shaded creek pockets like crypts; the beauty and ugliness, the rawness and the want. The night feels open with possibility. How ironic this is, Connie thinks; how ironic that like so many suicides these actions can stem from nothing more than a simple desire to be good. It is the obedient, the pliant, who succumb, who always succumb. The selfish, the craven, the canny – those with the chip of ice – would never get to this point.
Yet the enthralling power of it, too. The thrilling sense of command, of being watched.
Wet, so wet, as she waits, like a spring-loaded trap ready to lock its jaws upon life. Anonymously. Entirely someone else.
8
Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt you can set upon the freedom of my mind
Connie can barely see through her sliver of silk. The banked seats are full. The animal anticipation. Cliff there somewhere, anonymous, hidden, but she can’t make him out. She is exposed, in the glary light, yet no one can discern who she is. She waits. A gong, a frisson of silence. Backs straightened, straining. A ringmaster strides in. He cracks his long whip either side of her and she gasps and flinches at the shock but is untouched. The audience cheer. Then the stirrups begin to move, mechanically, straightening her legs, forcing them apart in a violent V. The audience, primed, thunder their approval.
Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You Page 48