by Leo Barton
She is nodding, assenting to her torment. She is agreeing to being hurt!
The lash comes down onto her blushed, trembling body, on the quivering cheeks of her bottom, on the top of her thighs and the small of her back, and the voice says after every lash, 'You know you want this, Lillian! You know you want this very much!' And each time her head nods.
Unlike before, when the woman thrashed her, there is no peak, no nadir of pain, each lash is worse than the last, less worse than the lash to come.
She tries to visualize her pained skin, to imagine how many red marks have been laid onto the whiteness of her, but she cannot. The lash comes down again.
Only when her body has reached the absolute limit of pain is the whip thrown to the floor. She can hear the wooden handle click against the stone. Two old wrinkled hands are touching her, rubbing against her once smooth skin. They nip and scratch her, where whiplash has already scarred. Her bottom is being kneaded by the near septuagenarian hands of James Hyde-Lee, winner of international awards, awarded with honorary doctorates.
His hands are going further down, grabbing the rubicund flesh of her bottom, separating her buttocks. It is an agony of course; the slightest touch would be an agony after such a thrashing.
She feels repulsed by such contact. To be touched so intimately, there on the flesh-taut surround of her anus, by such an old man disgusts her, his wrinkled old hands pushing into that tight opening, and she is so tight. Then a finger is inside her, jabbing into her, remorselessly. To feel so impotent against such a thing, such a repulsive thing, the indignity of it, to be molested like this by such an old man.
There is more flesh now pressing into her and in her stultifying horror she realizes that he is trying to ram his cock into her bottom. His ancient cock pushes into her hard and she feels his clammy old hands nipping her inflamed skin and there is nothing she can do about it. She is useless, destroyed.
'You know you want this?'
Suddenly he pulls the gag from her; she is free at last to scream her resistance, to cry out against the multiple cruelties that have been inflicted on her, to protest, to complain. She feels her lips parting, her tongue pushing against the back of her upper teeth.
YYYYeeeeeeeesssssssss!!!
1: Lillian Arrives at Forte Dei Marmi
As the taxi sped through the lush, spring, Tuscan countryside, Lillian flicked through the file again, the dappled light illuminating the hastily scrawled notes she had made on the plane. She liked the idea of the provisional, opening chapter. It would set the book up nicely, point to ambivalences in Hyde-Lee's character that would engage the casual reader.
It was a great professional opportunity for her. She'd been working on the book for a year now and if it was successful, it would shade the three other writer's biographies she had already written, the last about William J. Symonds, an Oxford contemporary of Hyde-Lee. However Symonds, like all her other previous subjects, was a minor character compared to James Hyde-Lee.
She had been pestering Hyde-Lee for months for an interview and finally he had relented.
'Miss Simpson, I hear you're interested in me.' She had recognized his cultured English voice immediately. She was a little nervous speaking to him.
'Yes, I am, Mr Hyde-Lee, very interested.'
'Well in that case, maybe we should meet.'
'I'd be delighted.'
'I don't travel so much these days. I live in Italy with my half-brother, Lance Willingham.'
'Well, perhaps I could visit you.'
'It's a bit of a hike, but we can put you up for a day or two. I don't really have more time than that.'
He had sounded quite brusque on the telephone, but Lillian had barely noticed, so happy was she to finally have an interview with him. After the phone call, she had wasted no time arranging her trip. And here she was, one week later, heading towards Hyde-Lee's home. As Lillian discarded her file and gazed onto the sumptuous green of the countryside around her, she could not help but feel excited at the prospect of meeting Hyde-Lee.
On reaching Forte Dei Marmi, the upmarket seaside resort where Hyde-Lee lived, the cab turned down a side road, then halted by a pair of wrought-iron gates.
Lillian noticed how astronomically high the meter was. As she searched through her purse for the correct number of notes, she saw a tall, blond man walking towards her from the other side of the gates. Lillian wound down the window of the car.
'Miss Simpson,' he shouted through the metal barrier.
'Yes, that's right.'
'You're a little late,' the blond man said, a tone of admonishment in his voice. He was clearly English. It was not only the accent; Lillian had realized his nationality even before he had spoken. There was something very English about his demeanour and the measured, deliberate manner he had walked towards the car.
'Yes, I'm sorry, I...'
'Never mind.' There was no kindness in his voice.
He was handsome, pretty-boned, with a thick, square chest pushing out the gray serge of his suit. It seemed outlandish to be dressed in such clothes when the May sun baked the Italian earth.
She climbed out of the taxi and went to the boot to fetch her luggage.
'Don't worry about that. I'll get somebody to fetch it,' he said agitatedly, handing a bundle of rolled up notes to the taxi driver and with machine gun rapidity informed him in staccato Italian to wait while Senora Simpson's luggage was reclaimed by a servant from the house.
'Follow me, please,' he said turning around, before Lillian could protest about him paying her taxi fare.
The house, set fifty meters back from the road, was a huge three-storey baroque affair, with sandy-coloured walls and large latticed windows. She entered through a grand oak door into a huge marble-floored hall. The hall, and the whole house for that matter, spoke of a lavish but tasteful opulence.
The hall really was fabulous. It was not only the checkered marble floor or the terracotta walls lined with the paintings of the great artists of the renaissance that impressed her. The oak banister of the staircase was extraordinary: it had such delicate carvings of nymphs and cupids. There was also an enormous crystal chandelier that hung in the center of a wonderfully painted ceiling of scantily clad girls whose pale beauty reminded her of the female figures from the paintings of Botticelli.
She was led up the wooden staircase. There must have been at least ten rooms on each floor, and from the balustrade she got another view of the colossal size of the building.
The blond man opened a door, and she entered into an elegant boudoir. It was beautiful, with French windows leading onto a tiled balcony that faced the snow-capped mountains to the back of the resort. The walls of the room were painted in a soothing azure and there hung from them two or three impressive paintings of Venice executed in the style of Canaletto. In the centre of the room was a plain double wooden bed, an antique chest of drawers, and beside it and an elegant, free-standing, ornamental lamp. Rather incongruously, considering the age and ambience of the room, there was a black, slim-line television set on an ancient mahogany table placed next to the wall opposite the bed.
'Miss Simpson.' The tall, blond man looked intently into her eyes for the first time. 'This is your room. Your luggage will be brought up shortly.'
She stared back at him, wondering why he was being so preposterously formal with her. He seemed too young to behave with such old-fashioned and stiff decorum.
'When can I see Mr Hyde-Lee?'
'Mr Hyde-Lee will speak to you this evening. He is a little indisposed today. He apologizes for his absence. You can take dinner with him in his private quarters this evening.' He glanced at her as a schoolteacher might at an impertinent child. 'Next door you will find a bathroom where you can freshen up. Dinner is served at seven. You are quite free to walk around the grounds if you so wish. Mr Hyde-Lee also told me to inform you that his library is at your disposal. It is on the ground floor next to the dining room.'
'Thank you very much Mr...'
&
nbsp; 'Mr Everton.'
'Mr Everton, can I ask one last question?'
'Of course.'
'May I ask who you are?'
'I am Lord Willingham's personal assistant. I attend to all his domestic requirements. Now is there anything else you require?'
'No, I don't think so.'
He bowed his head with a kind of supercilious servility that made Lillian want to burst out laughing.
On his way out of the door he was passed by a sumptuously attractive woman with beautiful shiny black hair tied up in a chignon. She wore a black maid's uniform with a white pinny. She deposited Lillian's bags without speaking, but Lillian caught her eyes, and fleetingly thought that she could detect some warning in their black centre.
A few minutes after the maid had exited, Everton reappeared, as Lillian was unpacking her bags, the new lingerie she had bought at Heathrow sprawled all over the bed.
'Yes?' she said slightly embarrassed as Everton's eyes roamed along the untidily discarded silk and lace.
'May I suggest formal dinner-wear this evening? Lord Willingham normally insists.'
'But you told me that I was dining with Mr Hyde-Lee.'
'Even if Lord Willingham will not be present, there are still certain standards that he would wish to maintain.' Everton gave Lillian a chilling glance.
'As you wish.'
Ludicrous though the figure of Everton seemed, there was something striking about him; his starched formality offered a tantalizing temptation to discover the human and the intimate behind the stern demeanour. She tried a flirtatious smile that she thought might at least melt the cold, disdainful manner. Everton ignored her attempt at warmth, slightly tilting his head in her direction before disappearing out of the door.
2: Lillian Meets Lord Willingham
Lance Willingham had been informed of Lillian's arrival as soon as he had returned home. He certainly was not happy with Hyde-Lee for agreeing to the interview, and worse, agreeing to have it in Forte Dei Marmi. If he had been consulted before Hyde-Lee had acquiesced to the interview, he would not have permitted such a thing in his own house. Not only did he not want her snooping around the place, but also he hadn't had a chance to send Magda, the Polish girl, home.
'Two days and she'll be out of our way,' Hyde-Lee had said. He was the older of the two men by some years but it was Willingham who was the more domineering.
'I still don't like it,' Willingham countered. 'It could all go terribly wrong.'
'But it's probably the best thing we can do. If I don't agree to this she's going to keep on pestering me, she might start snooping around and god knows what she'll find. She's been writing this thing for a year, she told me. Speaking with me, it's only the final touch. Better to keep her on our side, get the authorized out of the way and have done with it.'
Still Willingham was not convinced. It seemed an unnecessarily risky business to him, but maybe his brother had a point: better to take a young innocent they could easily manipulate than somebody who would be more prone to discover all their closeted skeletons.
Willingham had bumped into her in the grand hall after he was returning home on the train to Viareggio from Rome where he had been concluding some business buying antiques, and also checking up on one or two of the women he had recently trained.
He was particularly happy with Isabella, a late developer, a stunning thirty-four year old Roman housewife who he had recently 'educated' for an art-dealer friend. Isabella had been more reluctant than most, but Willingham had persevered with her and had that very afternoon had the pleasure of seeing her crawling around his friend's villa on all fours on a lead. Willingham himself had dangled her from a chandelier and spent a pleasant afternoon with her and his favourite riding crop.
Maybe if he hadn't had the image of the raven-haired Isabella in his mind, he might not have noticed how beautiful Lillian was. She had one of those angular English faces with very stunning clear green eyes. Her full breasts pushed out the black polo-neck sweater she was wearing, and her shortish skirt revealed a pair of very shapely legs. But it was most definitely the hair that Willingham noticed, parted in the centre, jet black, wavy and shoulder-length, just like Isabella's; and maybe something in her countenance suggested that she might be of an equally submissive nature.
'You must be Lillian?' Willingham asked cordially.
'Yes, and you're Lord Willingham.'
'Please, call me Lance. Could we have a brief chat?'
'Of course.'
Willingham was an imposing figure, a bulky but solid man, tall with a firm chest and thick broad arms. He could have passed for a man ten years younger.
He ushered her in to his impressively decorated private study on the first floor.
'So, you're writing James's biography?' Willingham asked seating himself on an armchair while Lillian sat on the sofa.
'Yes, I am.' The room was as stunning as all the others she had seen in the house. The walls were painted terracotta and the high coves had delectable carvings of exotic birds and fruit.
'What attracted you to writing about James?' Willingham continued, his tone curious and polite.
She had known something about Willingham of course. He had gained his peerage for being an outstanding patron of the arts and for the various scholarships and grants he had awarded to young artists. There had been one or two questions raised about dubious share dealings but he had weathered all scandals without any great taint being attached to him, and he had a reputation for being a man of high intelligence and admirable wit. Lillian also knew that Hyde-Lee had abandoned his Roman apartment and gone to live with his wealthier brother after the death of Lucille Clifton, Hyde-Lee's wife.
'Well, I love his work and he's such a respected writer,' Lillian said enthusiastically, turning her attention to Willingham's question.
'You do realize that you have a hard task on your hands. Just about everything that is really interesting about James, he has already written about,' Willingham said nonchalantly.
His eyes rested uncomfortably on her, making Lillian feel nervous.
'Well, it's my job to find other angles, other viewpoints, to write my version of events,' Lillian answered, picking up on the slight dismissiveness of Willingham's comment.
Willingham paused momentarily, then leaned towards Lillian. 'There is just one thing, Miss Simpson...'
'Yes?'
'I hope you will respect my brother's privacy.' His eyes were smiling now, but his words were forcefully clipped, almost strident. His hands clenched tight as he spoke.
'I know my obligations,' Lillian responded with a defensive brusqueness. She did not understand why Willingham should be so suspicious of her intentions.
'I'm sure you do, Miss Simpson, but people like you have it in your power to sully many people's lives. I wouldn't like to see James...' Willingham paused momentarily, his penetrating gaze staying firmly on Lillian.
'You talk about him as if he has lots of secrets,' Lillian interrupted, annoyed by Willingham's insinuations.
'No, it's only that we live in an age where personal privacy no longer seems to be private property.'
'I'm not that sort of writer,' Lillian said indignantly picking up on Willingham's inference.
'I'm sure you're not, but just remember...' Here Willingham hesitated.
'Remember what?'
'That a man's reputation is at stake here.'
'I only want to write something to illuminate the work.'
'I'm sure you do, my dear, I'm sure you do.' Willingham paused before continuing. 'Well I think we understand each other,' Willingham added, reverting to his usual charm.
'I think we do.' Lillian wasn't sure that she understood him at all. Why would he be so over-protective of his brother?
'Anyway, my house is at your disposal,' Willingham said politely but his manner was less than inviting.
'Thank you very much, Lord Willingham.' Lillian had no desire to call him by his Christian name.
Lillian nodded
and got up to leave.
'I knew you're father,' Willingham said, lighting a slim cigar, as Lillian was at the door.
'Really?' She feigned surprise, because it was hardly surprising. Her father had mixed in that artistic world of bohemian London, first as a young novelist and then as a respected critic. It was the world in which she had been raised. Her father's house had always been full of writers, academics and artists of one sort or another. She knew that he had had a passing acquaintance with Hyde-Lee before she was born, and that this had partly increased her interest in writing his biography.
'A wonderful man.'
'That's very kind of you...'
'I remember you as a child, Lillian, a curious child, looking up to me with those big beautiful eyes, wondering who on earth I was. I knew then that you would grow up to be a beautiful woman. We all did.'
'I'm sorry, I can't remember you.' Her voice was kindly, not vindictive.
'I used to call at your house when you lived in Kensington. It seems like an age ago.' Willingham looked wistfully at the beautiful English woman. 'You know you have your father's eyes.'
'I'm told that we have a lot in common.'
'Oh, I hope so, I hope so!' he said chuckling to himself, a lewd sneer breaking through the laughter.
She didn't know what he meant, what he was inferring, Lillian only knew that there was something terribly sinister in what he was implying.
'What do you mean?'
'Oh nothing,' he answered, smiling at her with a seeming cruelty that Lillian didn't understand. 'If you'll excuse me I have rather a lot of work to do.'
3: Lillian Meets James Hyde-Lee
His face looked gravely pale, and he moved his hands and arms feebly, almost falteringly; his voice was moist and weak; it was only his eyes that betrayed the intelligent vitality for which his work was famous.
She answered his questions about her travels and family with an assured confidence that was at odds with the sense of tense unease that Willingham had planted in her mind.