For twenty-two days after I arrived in the village I did very little. I walked daily along the sea paths, and, later, I contemplated the unfamiliar seascape from my study window, and… that was all of it really. Ms C had brought me tea on a tray and a home baked macaroon almost before the removal van had pulled away. I saw her instantly for what she was and yet it hardly registered with me that first day. I had come to the village to get away from all that. What I felt I needed was rest, and my sexually frustrated widow-neighbour struck me as a little bit too much like hard work.
Part of my bargain with myself, when I left London, was that I would not return to my old ways. In my village beside the sea I would find the peace I had been seeking for so long, work only when it was absolutely necessary, write when I could, and, most of all, savour the recuperative benefits of prolonged celibacy. On the twenty-third day, exhausted of staring at the sea, I called an old friend.
‘Hello A.P.’
‘Hello Gus,’ she said. ‘I did wonder when I’d hear from you…’
I am convinced that A.P. has always known me so much better than I know myself. Perhaps it is because we are fellows of the same craft – as it were.
‘I’d heard rumours that you’d moved down this way. So I thought it was only a matter of time before you got in touch….’
It was obvious that A.P. was wearing her best ‘knowing smile’ as she spoke. A.P. was an odd little creature to look at. Barely five foot tall and as skinny as one of the spokes on the ancient black bicycle she rode everywhere. She had loved books for as long as I’d known her, and looked every little inch the diligent head-librarian that she now was – by day. Prim and bespectacled, and rather officious in her manner she ruled those corridors of books like an almost benevolent dictator – though even the most scolded of borrowers would never have doubted infatuation with the written word. Still, stern as she is, few of those who visit her library would ever suspect that this pale spinster was also the one of the most effective and admired dominatrix in the country.
In her natural environment, with all her instruments to hand, A.P. was a true master of the dark sexual arts. I have seen her at work and would have some difficulty in describing just how exquisitely she handles her many and willing ‘slaves’. She frequently works with two big muscular ‘bucks’. Having secured her ‘subject’ - in whatever position most pleases her - she will often set her ‘brutes’ (as she calls them) to work on their most vulnerable parts with their big and brutish cocks. Where they lack the necessary finesse she will guide them. Where they lack the necessary brutality she will spur them on with the fronds of the leather strap she carries with her while she is at ‘work’.
Those who still remember when corporal punishment was permitted in our schools would be more than familiar with the nature of this particular leather strap. Few of us who were at school back then escaped its bite, or would doubt its near perfect design as an instrument of ‘correction’. A.P. uses it to great effect, and few, if any, would dare to contradict her while it is in her expert hand.
A.P. has always specialised in ‘cum sluts’, and frequently arranges private viewings of their public humiliations. Her girls – almost pathetically enthusiastic at times – often tower above the tiny figure that is A.P. – at least until she brings them to their knees so that she can parade them in front of her exclusive audience. Some are invited to join in and fuck one of the girls in the mouth, or presented with some exquisite object, allowed to fuck the girl in some other hole – always of A.P.’s instruction. And all this merely as a prelude to the main event - where audience participation was strictly forbidden. A.P.’s performances are of the most intense variety, and more often than not, end with a standing ovation for the tiny - but very formidable – ‘ring mistress’. Those who choose to, and a surprising number do, are then permitted to lick up the wide-variety of spillages from the cold flagstone floor.
‘So,’ said the tiny sometimes-librarian. ‘What is it you want…?’
I might have been asking to borrow a book.
As well as being a very formidable Dominatrix, A.P. keeps as extensive a catalogue of ‘interested parties’ as she does of the books in her library. A.P. had put me in contact with a few ‘pupils’ over the years and her recommendations had always proved very… satisfactory. Twenty-two days staring out at a dreary sea had convinced me that I very much needed a new pupil… and quickly too.
Before I could word my request A.P. was already making suitable arrangements:
‘I do have… one… actually. I was going to send her to Mr D but you know how heavy handed he can be… and this ones a rather… delicate sort. Very respectable… just the type you’re so keen on.’
A.P. is a sort of evangelist for the cause of ‘hedonism’ and she has made it her mission to… corrupt the innocent when she can; or, as she puts it:
‘All I want to do is get them to see themselves as they really are… and stop pretending they don’t have cocks and cunts like the rest of us….’
Like myself A.P. has always avoided too much contact with the S&M ‘scene’ – which has always struck us as being fashionably outrageous. Fashion, inevitably, attracts the fashionable, and the fashionable are a fickle bunch, and are rarely prepared to pursue anything beyond the immediate trend.
‘They’re only there because they like the accessories,’ as A.P. will often observe.
Avoiding the scene therefore suits us both but it does mean that making contacts beyond our own little circle very much more difficult. Over the years, however, A.P. has developed a very effective strategy for finding unlikely converts in the most unlikely of places. A.P. reaches out through her numerous Book Groups.
‘You can tell a great deal about people by the way they react to a fine bit of erotic literature,’ she explained once.
‘They come to ‘better themselves’ by reading obscure Russian novel, and to try and get some support as they labour through that Salman Rushdie brick of a book they always promised themselves that they would finish. God help them! And I do give them some of that. But it’s the erotica that really finds them out. Still obscure and Russian to begin with, but then… later, perhaps something French and rather more… delightfully… punishing. Some drift away… some… linger…. And some… I keep. And some… I pass on….’
As her own needs are very specific she often lands herself with far more potential pupils than she could possibly handle. However, where she can, she will find appropriate ‘teachers’ for the others. When I phoned A.P. on that bleak twenty-third day of abstinence it transpired – by luck or design? – that she had the perfect match for me already in mind.
‘This one is… plumpish, and not young,’ A.P. explained.
‘Rather shy on the surface and, once of twice, as our conversations… deepened, I thought she might have bolted. As I said… rather delicate. She doesn’t entirely know it yet but she has yearning to be… humiliated, is clearly aroused by the thought of being restrained, and almost desperately wants to be fucked in the mouth – possibly even against her will. Too old for me… and almost depressingly heterosexual…. I think you may be just what she… needs. But, as I say… delicate in some ways, and not quite certain what she wants… yet.’
‘You’ll introduce us…?’
‘I’ll recommend you to her. I think she’s ready for that. Do you have a suitable… room? I mean when will you be ready to have her?’
I said that I would begin work on a space immediately, and would be ready within the week. Even as I thought it the precise arrangement of the ‘quiet room’ was forming in my mind.
‘I don’t think she’ll want to talk very much. I will tell her what to expect, of course, and, if she accepts those terms then I will send her too you. A formal introduction will not be… necessary with this one.’
Good as her word A.P had sent my new ‘pupil’ to me before the end of the thirtieth day. And so my interminable fast was broken on the plumb arse of Ms T ? (see The Visitors Book of Pleasures)
And, just as A.P. had promised, she was, and remains, a most excellent ‘pupil’.
