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The Sacred Band Ch. 01

By: potsherd





The Sacred Band Ch. 01



I had never before tasted a mouth as fresh and sweet, and a moment later the answer came to me. 

The typists and factory girls I had partnered at the dance-halls would not have regarded the evening complete without three of four ports and lemons, or gin and it's, plus the inevitable half dozen cigarettes. By the end of an evening, these tastes had grown stale and sour, and flavoured the kisses with a strong hint of dustbin. Denise's breath was sweet and clean, and tasted of the eternal feminine. After a few minutes we came up of air. She looked at me delightedly and said in a strangely humble voice:

"You do fancy me, don't you? I am so glad."

Denise; How right he was. I was as afraid to put it to the test as he was. An older woman is so utterly vulnerable to rejection at a time like this – for all I knew he might think of me as a mother figure... 

I was overwhelmed. Here was this wonderful woman wanting me!

"Denise, believe me, you are the most exciting woman I have ever kissed – come to that you are the only exciting woman I have ever kissed. I am just so afraid if being a disappointment to you." 

She rightly judged that remark not worthy of comment. She put her hand on the back of my neck and drew my face firmly down. We kissed again and again, only pausing for breath. Finally, she got up and said:

"Let me get you another drink. Give me ten minutes – a girl must have her secrets – and then come upstairs."

I had already identified by feel that under her lovely silk dress, Denise was wearing a full corset – a feeling that filled me with intense, but slightly guilty, sexual excitement. It brought my mind back powerfully to a Friday evening some time around Christmas 1938. My parents were going out to Leicester Trades Council's dinner and dance, and my mother was doing her hair in front of the fire, looking into the fireplace mirror, whilst I sat in my pyjamas listening to Henry Hall's Guest Night on the wireless. 

Satisfied with her hair, Mum took off her dressing gown, and revealed a full-length Spirella corset, with real silk stockings attached to suspenders, and her incongruous bedroom slippers. She revealed a classic hourglass figure and I was quite suddenly overwhelmed with sexual excitement My penis stiffened for the first time in my life, and I was overcome with confusion. I must have gone bright red, because mum glanced away from the mirror, looked at me and said,

"Phil, don't sit so close to the fire ducks, you're getting overheated. If you go outside (to the outside lavvy) you'll catch your death of cold." 

I curled up in the armchair and evaded her gaze. She must have taken my manner for petulance because she asked, slightly concerned, if I minded them going out and leaving me alone in the house.

Funny how something you haven't thought of in yonks, is suddenly so vivid in your mind that you can smell every scent, and see and hear every detail. With the memory still buzzing in my mind, I walked upstairs, resolved to do or die. 

The bedroom door was open to reveal Denise, wrapped in a silky dressing gown; her clothes all put away and the room, immaculate.

Denise; Damn, if only I had known he had a bit of a corset fetish – our first night might have been even better than it was. The trouble with Philip - at this stage at least – was his reluctance to say exactly what he wanted and how he wanted it. Luckily I had no such inhibitions, and he soon caught on...

"Darling Philip, she asked, "please may I ask you something? Would you do something really important for me?"

Of course I assured her that I would. I would have gladly jumped out of the window if she required it of me. Her request was even more unexpected.

"Will you keep your clothes on, and put me over your knee and spank me. Tell me what a naughty girl I am and how disappointed you are in me. Smack my bottom until it is all red? Please do it for me; I do miss it so much. After that we shall do anything you wish."

I signified assent and she took off her gown. Underneath she was wearing some flimsy garment, giving tantalising glimpses of the flesh below the hem, and leaving most of her shapely thighs bare. She positioned herself over my knees, revealing almost all of her bounteous buttocks. I lifted the garment a little higher, and gazed, entranced at her smooth, white, pearshaped bottom. The aroma of clean, scented female flesh was intoxicating; I could see a little fringe of dark hair down the cleft of her buttocks, and, beneath, I could barely glimpse a cleft, lightly dusted with dark hair that spread to the tops of her thighs. I placed my hand on her bottom and hesitated.

"Come on, smack my bum. Smack it hard," she encouraged. Memories of the very few spankings handed out to me by my father came to my aid. I slapped hard on one buttock and then the other, and found my self speaking, almost chanting, in rhythm with the smacks.

"Now (smack), look here Denise (smack), I don't get any (smack), pleasure (smack), from this believe me (smack,) (what an outrageous lie!), but I can't (smack), ignore your misbehaviour (smack), any longer (smack). You are a lazy (smack), disobedient (smack), slovenly (smack) girl (smack), too self-indulgent by half (smack). You neglect your work (smack), and defy me at every turn (smack). I can't (smack), let it go on (smack), any longer (smack), and any more bad behaviour, (smack) will get the same (smack), treatment (final fusillade of smacks)."

Her bottom was by now turning crimson, and I could hear little sniffles coming from her. What is more, I could smell the aroma of sex rising from warmed and moist flesh. She looked up at me, and I was charmed and excited by the contrast between her tear-stained face and her blissful smile.

She got to her feet and wound her arms round my neck: "Thank you, darling." She said, "Thank you so very much." She glued her mouth to mine, and I ran my hands over her hot, flaming buttocks and up her smooth back.

Denise: Not a hard spanking or a long one, but his rhythmical reproaches were a real turn-on. It showed that Philip had a natural leaning towards role-play and we capitalised on that for years to come, especially when Laura came on the scene. 

Denise started to undress me, unbuttoning my shirt and drawing it off my shoulders and down my arms. Having wearied of redundant layers of uniform in my RAF days, I do not wear a singlet, and straightaway she started licking my chest hair, muttering appreciatively that she loved a man with a hairy chest.

She drew me to my feet and I stood, not knowing what to do, as she undid my braces and unbuttoned my trousers, sliding them, together with my underpants, down my legs to concertina around my ankles. 

Denise sat me on the edge of the bed and, kneeling between my thighs, took my erect penis and caressed it with her hands before beginning to lick it all over. She began by drawing back my rather long, tight foreskin and running her tongue all around and under the crest, then concentrating on the nerve nexus immediately below. 

I had been gobbled often enough before by the street-girls, who saw it as a quicker and easier way to earn ten bob than a knee-trembler. Their sucking had been perfunctory, and accompanied by a vigorous hand-wank to speed things up. Denise looked and sounded as if she had been given a treat – and was intent on enjoying it to the utmost.

Of course, most of my previous experiences of gam, like virtually all my sexual experience had been in the dark and unaccompanied by any speech at all. Denise broke another taboo when she lifted her eyes, put in her long tongue, looked at me under her eyelashes and said with a grin:

"Until sweet rationing comes to an end and they bring lollipops back into the shops, a girl's got to have something tasty to suck on!"

I was a bit shocked at this blatant vulgarity from someone who was in all other respects such a lady. This contradiction was to prove to be one of the keys to her character, and seemed, as I grew accustomed, perhaps her greatest charm of all. She was still laughing to herself when she put the whole head of my cock into her mouth and started sucking gently and rhythmically. 

I think she was trying to avoid too strong a rhythm so as to make it last for me, but if so she was fighting a losing battle. I had never been at such a pitch of sexual excitement in my life. Every previous experience was tawdry and squalid by comparison with this thrill. I said, falteringly,

"Denise, I'm going to come", in order to allow her to avoid a mouthful of spunk; but she sucked on, laugher in her eyes and the corners of her busy mouth, and I shot spasm after spasm into her mouth. She continued to suck, as grey-white pearly spunk trickled from the corners of her mouth, until the spasms stopped and I was at rest. 

She got up, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand and - to my astonishment – licked up the smears of spunk on her hand and wrist. She was, as I later realised, setting me an example of wholehearted, generous sexuality that I took deep into my heart.

Denise: How sweet! He was a perfect gentleman, and a quick learner. If only he had a bit more cruelty in his soul, we might have been soulmates. Of course I had been trained to swallow every drop or face the consequences, but for this first time I thought the sight of my face shiny with spunk might be a thrill for him. I was right!

I was a little weak at the knees, and sank down onto my knees. I lifted the hem of her chemise, and revealed her sex, well bushed out with brown, curly hair. Denise spread her knees to allow me a better view. Did she guess, I wondered, that I had never looked closely at a woman's private parts before? 

I was almost intoxicated by the perfume that arose from it, and gazed in wonder at the pinkish-brown wrinkled lips and the twin cushions of the plump ellipse, parted with deep creases; a hint of pink at the centre. It looked and smelt so inviting. 

"Please may I kiss it", I implored, longing to get closer to that enticing aroma.

"I wish you would", she said so quietly and so demurely, her voice in total contrast to the wicked smile on her face.

This was a moment that transformed my life. Her glad willingness and her generous co-operation allowed me my first taste of a feast that has remained one of my chiefest pleasures. Strangely, in the years to follow I was to find it much, much easier to persuade girls and young women to suck my cock than to allow me to taste their hidden wellsprings.

I licked my stiffened tongue up and down the central creases, breathing her perfume deeply into my lungs, I used my lips and even my nose to give caresses, not well focussed, for I had no idea of technique whatsoever, but just enjoying all the unfamiliar and exciting flavours and textures. 

After a minute or two, Denise opened her sex with her fingers and gave me better access. I tongued deep into the entrance to her sex, and followed my tongue with one and then two fingers as I felt the slippery wetness begin to flow. 

"Up here," Denise begged. "Lick harder on the little bud you can feel just there."

I was delighted to have some guidance. Denise was obviously experienced and skilled in the use of lips and tongue, and I wanted to reciprocate the pleasure. My exploration continued for several minutes 

to our evident mutual satisfaction. Denise was gasping and panting a little, and making little pushing gestures towards my face. 

Then she stopped me.

"Take off the rest of your clothes and come and lie here beside me," she said; "I want you inside me right now."

I lay down beside her on the bed, our arms about each other's neck, and we began to kiss deeply and languorously. As we kissed, lying side by side, our bodies pressed close from head to toe, she reached between us, took my erect cock and guided it all the way into her body. Our hips were pressed together and our ability to move was restricted to tiny thrusts and withdrawals.

"Slowly and gently now. There's no rush, we've got all night."

I had never had sex like this before. No feverish race to completion, but a slow and measured dance like a horizontal Viennese waltz. I relaxed a little and the thrusts got deeper, but still at a slow and easy pace. Denise was getting a little red in the face, and gasped rhythmically in time with our thrusts. 

We continued like this, a symphony of nerve endings for ten minutes or so, Denise checking me if I started to hasten the pace. It was a delicious agony as I fought the desire to rush headlong to orgasm; something I had never attempted, or even considered before. 

At length she began to thrust her belly harder and faster against mine and I accepted her lead like a ballroom dancer and we rushed together to a thunderous mutual climax. 

Denise showed no concern about accepting my spunk into her body (I learned later that she was fitted with a cap), so I did not hesitate to come inside her. As I began to come, I felt her contract again and again in tiny rhythmical spasms and she groaned out loud in time with the spasms. We subsided into relaxation, our mouths still pressed together and my cock slowly shrank in her body.

We stayed together almost until dawn, and enjoyed each other's bodies twice more. Each time Denise licked and sucked my cock to a throbbing erection before guiding me to a new sexual position each time. The final time, she kneeled with her back to me and presented her lovely pear-shaped bottom to me. 

"Slap it a few times before we begin, and if you like to smack it some more whilst we are fucking, please do. You know I like it."

She used the work fuck! I was astounded and, I suppose, shocked. In the RAF, fucking was the all-purpose adjective and adverb, used to give a rhythm to speech and add a little bite and texture, just as cunt was the all-purpose noun. A squaddie might say something like:

"....so there I fucking was, fucking going down to the fucking cookhouse for char and a fucking wad, and that daft cunt stopped me and asked me why I hadn't fucking saluted him..."

This was commonplace to me, but Denise was, in my mind breaking two taboos at once. Firstly, although the girls as well as the men in the hosiery factories could f and blind with the best, it would be normal to watch your language in the presence of the other sex, just as soldiers and airmen would watch their language with officers about. 

Secondly, I had never heard anyone, male or female, use fuck as a normal verb, like kiss, or smack, or cuddle. Not long afterwards Denise lent me her late husband's precious signed edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover, published in Paris in 1929, and I read Lawrence's attempt to rehabilitate the Anglo-Saxon four-letter words. I thought it a dull, ponderous book despite its subject matter, but I suppose it helped bring about a change in me towards greater frankness.

My shock was not apparent to Denise, as, in that position she could only see me out of the corner of her eye. I slapped her bum resoundingly a few time, leaving bright red blotches and making her moan gently, then entered her and commenced, as she said, fucking her.

I spent the night in her bed - another first for me. In then morning she sucked me off again, swallowing it all this time, and then, instructing me to lie in bed and wait, she went off to draw me a bath. Afterwards I dressed and we went down to find a beautifully laid table in the kitchen and breakfast frying on the stove. I was being treated like a Lord. 

I returned a couple of nights later, just for the evening, , and then again the following Saturday evening when I stayed the night. I was gaining confidence and learning all the time. We repeated the spanking episode each time and I could tell that it was very important to her. As I departed mid-morning on the following Sunday, she stopped me and said with some suppressed excitement:

"I am going to be away for the next few days in London. Can you come next Saturday? Next time you come I want us to do something really exciting. I'll phone you on Friday and tell you what I have in mind, so that you can think about it."

Denise: As a lover, Philip was learning very fast and I was feeling that life was worth living after a long dry spell. Walter last gave me a good seeing to on the night before he was killed – luckily he took me right through the card that night - but that was more than three years ago. Now I had to up the ante. I thought that it was time to introduce role-play into our sex-lives, and I would choose a game that invited, even demanded a little brutality, to see if I could coax some out of him.



The Sacred Band Ch. 02







The Sacred Band Ch. 02



Denise: Who but Philip (and Rimbaud of course) could make poetry out of buggery? It was lovely, strong and vigorous, and I came like a steam train. If there were some disappointments in the early days with Philip, there were ample compensations.

I lay back on the bed beside her for a few minutes as we get our breath back. Then Denise got up and walked into the bathroom, bringing back a soapy flannel and a hand-towel. She then meticulously washed my cock and balls, telling me all the time what pleasure I had given her and how grateful she was that I had co-operated with her plans for our night together.

Denise: I got the flannel and towel and soap and washed him as he says. What he didn't know was how hard it was to stop myself from licking it clean for him. Walter had always made me do this for him and it was one of our rituals. Only the strong fear that Philip could be so disgusted that he might end our relationship held me back. I already knew only too well that I didn't want to lose him.

Suddenly I had a thought. I put on my dressing-gown and slippers and went downstairs to where the bunch of flowers still lay, unnoticed and all but forgotten the hall table. I carried them up to her.

"Denise", I said, "these are for you with all my love."

She wept a little in a happy way, and then said something that I have treasured from that day to this.

"Philip, you know I said that Walter taught me all I know about sex. Well it's true and now I'm teaching you. But you are giving me something better than that. You are teaching me about love." 

Denise: I'm so glad in retrospect that I said that at that time. It is so true that it makes me tearful to read it. This is the reason why I told him, after a couple of years, to go out and find himself a girl to train like Walter trained me. He found Laura, who could give him all the love and worship I couldn't. How I wish it could have been different, for me, but, as it turned out I was right to wait, because one day, when I least expected it, I was to find Andy.

cont to/Into business.



The Sacred Band Ch. 03



This is the third chapter of a long story about a vicious and remorseless criminal and a group of people with unusual lifestyles who attempt to combat him. It is written in two ways. Sections which tell the personal lives of the participants are told in the form of memoirs. These are headed with personal names e.g. Philip and Denise, Ivy and Ginny. They contain graphic sex of various kinds. 

Sections that tell the Rotkoff story are written in the third person. These do not contain any explicit sex. 

The story is set in Leicester and Birmingham, England, between 1951 and 1956.

My thanks are due to several volunteer editors, in particular Lusty Madame whose valuable advice I ended up (protesting all the way, in accepting in its entirety. Thank you Madame. I also acknowledge the help of Michchick98.

Of course, the end product, w.a.f. is my own.

There is no sex in this episode. There is a scene of violence. 

The Sacred Band, chapter 2.

Vignette; 1937. Philip Rotkoff comes of age

Stephen Rotkoff's real experience of violence began in his teens. Not the routine domestic violence of the beatings his father handed out to him, but the sort of experience that was life transforming.

When he was sixteen, and already big and strong enough to intimidate and sometimes physically chastise streetgirls and their pimps, he became aware that his father had a problem that was worrying him. 

A bookie's runner named flapper, because of his habit of flapping his hands about vigorously when frightened or excited, had overheard information about a drug purchase; information that he should not possess. 

Of course, when taxed with this, he denied any such knowledge, and said plainly that he had not being paying any attention, since he was working out the payout on a four-horse accumulator that looked like coming off and costing a lot of money. 

This could, of course, be true, and Rotkoff senior had appeared to accept his word for it, but after Flapper left, he turned to his son.

"What do you reckon, Stevie boy? Should we trust him?"

Stephen knew that this was a test, and that a lot depended on his answer.

"No!" he responded. "We can't take a chance. We have to off him".

His father plainly concurred.

"Right you are then son. I'll get Denny and Bern to take care of him."

Stephen knew better that to ask questions, or dispute his father's word. This led inexorably to a punch in the face, and sometimes worse. This time he had to take a chance.

"Dad, let me take care of him, I know I can do it, and I have to start some time."

Rotkoff senior pondered the matter for half an hour, keeping his son on tenterhooks, then announced his decision.

"Ok, you can do it. I'll send Denny and Bernie along with you just to be on the safe side, but this one's down to you, and don't fuck it up or I'll fuck you up."

Stephen knew just how he wanted this to go. The Stalinist Treason Trials were all over the newsreels, as ex-Bolshevik after ex-Bolshevik, in treason trials with world-wide coverage, confessed tearfully, that they had betrayed the Revolution and acted as tools of Western Imperialism. Accounts of how the NKVD, the Soviet Secret Police used torture and brainwashing techniques intrigued him, and he read all he could about them. 

One method of execution especially attracted him. Prisoners would be escorted along a white tiled underground corridor, and, at a given signal, the NKVD agent who walked behind would raise his pistol and shoot the prisoner at the point where the base of the skull met the atlas bone, the first cervical vertebra. The lowly guards would then drag the body away for disposal and then hose down the corridor.

In a powerfully effective variant on this technique, a prisoner was forced to his knees in a crowded cell, and shot in full view of his friends or family. They would then be left, staring in shocked horror at the body, their clothing crusted with blood and brains, awaiting their own interrogation. 

Stephen grew more and more excited as he replayed this scene in his imagination. He decided that this should be how he would conduct his first execution. It would intimidate even hardened gang members like Denny and Bern, who would act as witnesses and spread his reputation abroad.

In his father's arsenal there was a nickel-plated Smith and Wesson .38 revolver. with a four inch barrel, that had fascinated him as a child. He loaded two bullets into the cylinder. The three men then went in search of Flapper, who was doing his rounds of pubs and barbers' shops collecting betting slips. They met him just coming out of a newsagents, and fumbling to remove the silver foil from a packet of ten Woodbines.

"Flapper, the Guv'ner wants another word. He sent us to fetch you back to him."

Because he was being spoken to by a sixteen-year-old he had known all his life. Flapper gained a bit of confidence. Surely, he reasoned, the Guv'ner would not have sent him along if his two bruisers were going to work him over. 

The four men turned down the narrow alley between two crumbling terraces of back-to-back houses. They walked along the cobbled passage, with its central evil-smelling drainage channel, until they reached the middle. Anyone who saw the group, with its two brutal, middle-aged thugs, razor-scarred and fist-battered, turned away hastily and hurried in another direction.

"On his knees", Stephen ordered tersely. Denny and Bern grasped Flapper by his elbows and forced him to his knees. Flapper knew that he had made a misjudgment. He was in for a kicking. Sill, he reasoned, it's not the first, and I don't suppose it will be the last. He could get through it.

They dragged him to his knees and held him, straight-armed like a deformed crucifix. No fists or boots were laid upon him. His last coherent thought was to wonder what was the loud metallic click. Then the world exploded into a clap of thunder; a flare of vivid colours; followed by eternal blackness. 

Rotkoff watched, fascinated, as the man on the ground writhed and convulsed, whilst strange strangled sounds came out of his shattered mouth. The bullet had passed right through the man's brainstem, smashed his spinal column, and come out of his mouth in a spray of teeth, bone and blood. As he watched the steaming urine pool under the body and trickle down into the gutter, Rotkoff made a mental note to angle the gun a trifle higher next time.

Rotkoff's two wingmen allowed the body to drop, and prepared to walk away.

"Wait, you clods. Get the betting slips from his pocket, and empty his pockets. Lets make it look like a robbery."

Denny and Bern felt deeply humiliated tobe told their job by a kid. To Rotkoff this was the final glorious touch. He had come of age. Tonight he would take a couple of the youngest whores to bed, and fuck himself to repletion on their unresisting bodies.

cont.to/ Philip Cheshire: into business



The Sacred Band Ch. 04



The Sacred band

This is the fourth chapter of a long story about a vicious and remorseless criminal and a group of people with unusual lifestyles who attempt to combat him. It is written in two ways. Sections which tell the personal lives of the participants are told in the form of memoirs. These are headed with personal names e.g. Philip and Denise, Ivy and Ginny. They contain graphic sex of various kinds. 

Sections that tell the Rotkoff story are written in the third person. These do not contain any explicit sex. 

The story is set in Leicester and Birmingham, England, between 1951 and 1956.

My thanks are due to several volunteer editors, in particular Lusty Madame whose valuable advice I ended up (protesting all the way, in accepting in its entirety. Thank you Madame. I also acknowledge the help of Michchick98.

Of course, the end product, w.a.f. is my own.



Into business 

Background briefing:



Philip Cheshire left home happily enough at sixteen and a half with good passes in his School Certificate, He quickly decided that College or University were not for him, but after a tedious year working in the local ironmonger's shop, he started to think he could do worse than to escape the post-war austerity by anticipating his National Service and volunteering for the RAF. He was accepted, and, after basic training, evaluated, but, sadly, found unfit for flying duties because of a recurring inner-ear infection. Since maths and physics were his strong points, he was sent for training as a radio operator. So, in 1947, Philip was sent to Hong Kong, with duties as a radio operator. 

In Hong Kong, other ranks found themselves pretty low in the social pecking order, with about as much chance of finding a girlfriend as a diamond tiara in the street. There were Chinese, and a few Indian girls and an ageing White Russian or two who provided sex and a bit of company at a moderate price, so, aside from playing brag or cribbage and drinking watery lager beer, that was their social life. For Philip this existence was simply not stimulating enough.



To his great shock and disgust, he was turned down for anything marked confidential and above because his security vetting found out that he was the son of a Labour Party borough councillor and two trade union officials. Just how this gave him a hot line to Moscow is not clear, but the insult never ceased to rankle.

Almost three long, weary years in the RAF in Hong Kong provided huge tracts of unwanted inactivity. Philip filled the dreary hours by reading more and more about the stock markets of Britain, the USA and Europe. He subscribed to the airmail editions of the Economist and the Investors' Chronicle and picked up the Wall Street Journal locally, bought every book on the topic he saw advertised, and gradually developed the habit of keeping every news clipping, plus notes of news broadcasts and even overheard conversations. He filed each major sector and its leading companies separately, and started to build up a business and economic database that eventually came to rival the morgues of the better national newspapers. 

It became less a hobby than an obsession. He would watch the news and try to guess what the news from China, the USA or the Middle East would do to share values, and try to distinguish between surface movements and the deeper currents that meant long-term growth or decay. By the time he returned to Britain, Philip had some skill as a predictor of trends, and, with massive condescension, a number of RAF officers, some of them complete strangers, came and asked for opinions, recommendations and advice. In November 1949 he was demobbed from the RAF with the exalted rank of Corporal, some savings and a pittance of a resettlement grant. With no difficulty at all he walked into a job in a Leicester stockbrokers firm and used it as a finishing school. Three years later he was ready to go it alone, with the financial and moral support of two sleeping partners, one his former RAF Commanding Officer from Hong King.

***























late Summer 1951.

Denise Warburton picked up the phone and dialled the number of Cartwright, Simmons and Bray, solicitors at law. When the telephonist answered, she asked to be put through to young Mr. Bray. There was the usual short delay, and she sat listening to the irritating buzzes and squeaks on the line as she waited to be put through.

"Don, hope I'm not disturbing you in the middle of something important, but I wondered if you were free for a bite of lunch?"



"I've got a two o'clock, but I can easily manage an hour at half twelve. Where would you like to meet?"

"How about Lewis's? I want to talk about Philip."

"No! Really? Of all things..."

"Sarkie beastie. See you in Lewis's cafe at half twelve."

As soon as he set his eyes on her, Donald could see at a glance that Denise was happier than she had been at any time since Walter died. She was positively glowing. 

"Well, chuck, I don't need to ask how you are. You look radiant."

"I feel radiant. Donald he is adorable. Thank you so much for setting it up for me. But I really went to talk business.

Philip says that you offered to become a silent partner when he goes out on his own. Well I want to do the same. Together we can make sure that he has enough start-up capital to get him off to a good start. And I don't see why he needs to wait any longer."

"Well, I was thinking of putting up £5,000 in the first instance, and I'd still have something in hand if push comes to shove. When the time comes, I've got something else up my sleeve. I can think of at least half a dozen people like yourself, who have substantial portfolios that are earning something derisory at present. If I could point them towards Philip, he could turn them around in no time." 

"It's not just individuals Don. Walter was people's churchwarden of St. Peter's, Oadby. They are in terrible financial trouble with massive repairs needed, and their investments are earning a pittance. I know the present churchwardens very well, and I could at least suggest that they reinvested say a third in something that gives a real chance of income growth.

Anyway, be that as it may. Supposing I put up £5,000 to match yours and we each had a fifteen-twenty percent share in the business - whatever is fair. How would we handle the legal side?" 

"I'll look into it, but offhand I think a limited partnership might be the right approach. You and I would just be liable for our own investment and any other monies we are committed to provide in the deeds of partnership. Philip would have no legal protection, but he has no significant assets to protect. In any case, if I know our Philip, he would despise himself if he tried to avoid his legitimate debts. He is a very straight, very moral person." 

"Sounds good. So how shall we tell him we're launching a takeover bid?"

"Invite us both to dinner one night. We'll put it to him."

***

At dinner, a few evenings later, Donald put the proposition to Philip. He was thunderstruck, and protested weakly that it was far too much money for far too small a share in the business, and much too soon. After letting him get it off his chest, Denise over-rode his feeble protests.

Now listen Philip. Don and I have given this a great deal of thought. You have to forget about working out of your mum's house. Its totally the wrong end of town, and you would never make people take you seriously. You need an office in the town centre. 

And not just any old office. You need a really classy office. I know that fixed premises cost an arm and a leg - that's why we're putting up enough money to do the job properly. You need to be where the high-class solicitors and surveyors and accountants are. 

I'll lend you some really nice pieces of antique furniture. What's more

I'll act as receptionist/secretary for a year or so. Ok, so I've never worked a day in my life, but I'll look and sound the part. In the long run it's your knowledge that counts, but right now it's all about appearances."

Denise had broken the ice. Now Donald took on Philip's objections one by one and used his negotiating skills to talk him round. By this time Philip was finding echoes of all their points in nagging worries he had suppressed over the past months. The great leap was from starting small and cautiously and starting out with style and panache. When his future partners had finished with him, it was no contest.  

"Denise; Don. You are right on all counts. I couldn't be luckier. With you two as partners the chances of success are so much greater. Thank you both, with all my heart."

Don filled their glasses with a crisp, flinty chablis.

"So, raise your glasses, to Philip Cheshire Associates. And God bless all who sail in it." 

"Philip Cheshire Associates," echoed Denise. 



***

Over the next month Denise hunted all over town for a suitable office, taking Philip and Don to look at the best prospects. Philip would gladly have accepted any of them, but he found that listening to his partners' well informed criticisms was an education in itself. This one was in the wrong part of town. That one had no secure parking. This one was too poky, that one looked impossible to heat. This one was just too run-down ever to look the part... 

Finally a pair of rooms on the first floor of an early Victorian house in 

New Walk met all the exacting criteria. Reserved parking for three cars; two spacious rooms, an outer office for a secretary with space for filing cabinets and work surfaces, and an inner room with a large rectangular bay window for Philip. It was right at the top of their price-range, but the floor below was occupied by the Footwear Trades Association, and the floor above by a Patent Agent of Donald's acquaintance and a representative for a large German Hosiery machine manufacturer. Philip's business would fit right in, and there was a space of a brass plate at the side of the front door. 

"There now," said Denise happily. "Wasn't that worth all the wait and all the legwork?" The other two were happy to agree, and six weeks later Philip was signing his brand new partnership agreement and a five-year lease. 

Whilst the decorators were in his new office, Donald took Philip to his tailor. To his astonishment his tailor occupied a small shop in the Humberstone Road. Donald assured him that Mr Frankel was trained in Saville Row, and customers from Canada to Cairo had their measurements in his care. Philip, urged on by Donald, ordered three suits, and was told that they would be ready in a month. Denise took over, and took him to London to buy shirts and ties. Then the pair went one step too far and Philip found himself putting his foot down.

"You've got to remember", said Donald, "that this a shoemaking town. People will take one look at your feet and pass judgment." 

"Yes," Philip replied. They will take one look at the stitching on the welts and say 'Avalon Boot and Shoe Workers Co-partnership; Italian buffalo hide - those shoes will last a lifetime and never give a moment's discomfort.' You can dress me up like the fairy on a Christmas tree and you won't get a peep out of me - but nobody touches my feet."

***

Denise would not allow anyone to visit the new office until it was all complete. Then came the grand unveiling.

The first thing that caught the eye was the neat, polished brass plate with Philip Cheshire Associates - Independent Financial Analysts in elegant, flowing italic script.

Inside, the nameplate was echoed on the frosted glass of the general office. A secretary's desk with a typewriter and a small switchboard sat diagonally facing the door. Against the two blank walls stood two long workbenches with shelves of stationery, wrapping materials and a stack of telephone directories and current Kelly's Directories of London, Birmingham, Nottingham, Derby and Leicester. Three comfortable visitors' chairs stood in the other corner, grouped around a low glass table, on which stood a tall flower arrangement. It all spoke of calm efficiency and attention to detail, with a decidedly modern feel.  

The inner office was a complete contrast. A sumptuous, century-old Bokhara rug glowed rich ruby red in the centre of the floor, surrounded by stained and varnished floor-boards. In the bay stood an early Victorian Waring and Gillow partners' desk in rich, dark Honduras mahogany; the tooled green morocco top showed scarcely a scratch or stain from its hundred years of life, and, behind the desk 

stood a wing chair upholstered in wine-red cowhide. In front, for the use of visitors, were two identical chairs.

Opposite the large bay window stood a huge fruit-wood break-front bureau bookcase, over a century older than the desk. On the bookshelves, behind astragal-glass, Donald could see a set of the India-paper edition of the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a very up-to-date five volume Times Atlas of the World. The final touch of opulence was an eight-day long-case clock by Joseph Knibb, in a slim black ebony veneered case; its discreet ticking scarcely audible; its brass pendulum bob moving silently and regularly behind the oval lenticle glass; keeping perfect time as it had done for over two hundred and fifty years.

The final details bore the hall-mark of Denise's work. On the desk stood two tall flower arrangements in Dublin glass claret jugs. In between, she had placed an ice-bucket with a bottle of excellent vintage champagne. On a silver tray, stood three champagne flutes and a little display of smoked salmon open sandwiches. Donald moved across to open the wine and pour it, and, as they toasted the partnership for the second time, Philip thanked them both with tears in his eyes. 

Donald recognised the furniture and the rug immediately as being pieces that Walter had inherited from his family home in Smisby. It was perhaps fortunate for Philip, he thought with an inward smile, that he did not know that Denise could have bought a suburban semi-detached house for the cost of the furniture adorning this room. Donald had no intention of telling him. Had he known, he would have been scared to use the room at all.













































Philip decided to launch his business with a subscription-only newsletter, and, with his former employer's grudging permission, mailed the first two issues free of charge to their entire client list. A surprising number of recipients bought an annual subscription, clients trickled in and he was in business. A year or so down the road, by this time mainly occupied in stock picking for individual clients, he restricted the circulation of the newsletter to his own clients. 

He had developed a strong speciality in the staple industries of the East Midlands, although his time in the Far East had left him with no great confidence in their long-term future. In his first two years he had an astonishing run of good luck with a high proportion of the tips in the newsletter coming good, and now he could pick and choose his clients. It was not long before Donald was only one of the solicitors in and around Leicester who referred clients to him for investment advice. 

Denise, who had sat around for entire days at the beginning waiting for the phone to ring or the door to open, now found herself busy most of the day. She had laboriously taught herself to touch-type, and after six nail varnish-chipping months, she had become a fast, accurate copy-typist. She could not take dictation, but Philip had only to outline what he wanted a letter to say and she would quickly produce a draft, that seldom needed correction or improvement. Surprisingly, she was finding office work stimulating and enjoyable, and her suggestions on ways to develop the business or improve efficiency were always well-considered and often creative. Philip could not have asked for a better helper in the early years of the business. 

Denise was not a person to grudge effort on behalf of someone she loved. Neither was she someone who would will the end without willing the means. She cheerfully put her life on hold for almost three years whilst she worked to get Philip's business off the ground. Her dinner parties for clients became legendary, as were her Sunday afternoon garden parties, to which were invited the entire client list, plus the solicitors and bankers who referred clients on. 

Local Members of Parliament and even a Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire were not too proud to accept her dinner party invitations, and Philip liked to joke that the Garden Parties were one of the few places where employers and trade union officials could meet on neutral ground and share a convivial drink.

By the time Denise passed her workaday responsibilities over to Laura, Philip Cheshire Associates enjoyed a high reputation; the business was paying Philip a modest income and the partners were receiving a useful sum in profit-shares each year. The outlook seemed set fair for the future.      

cont. to Philip and Laura i.



The Sacred Band Ch. 05



Vignette 2. - Rotkoff encounters love.

Stephen Rotkoff grew up with sex ever-present in his life. His mother, Edit had been a battle hardened brothel keeper in Hamburg, when she and her husband took the decision to up sticks and go to England in the miserable, starving aftermath of the Great War. They bribed their way onto a tramp steamer and fetched up in Birmingham via Liverpool. 

Stephen was a menopausal child - born when his mother was in her late forties. This indignity was the culminating insult. She was a hard, brutal woman who despised everyone around her. Above all she hated and despised her husband to the depth of her being. Rotkoff''s early childhood was made hideous by her tirades of screaming insults - calling her husband a weakling, a coward, an eunuch, a pansy; on any or no provocation. 

The child soon learned not to be anywhere in sight when he heard these virago howls. If his father saw him at these times he would inflict a savage beating on the helpless child, so Stephen went into hiding and did not emerge until he was sure his father had left the house.

He had no memories of affection, or even of simple kindness from his mother. It was a relief, rather than a grief when she died of an aneurysm when he was twelve years old. 

He and his father slowly began to build a relationship. The random brutality that so terrified him was replaced with strict, physical discipline in which mistakes and misjudgements were violently punished, but successes were rewarded. 

Around the time Rotkoff killed his first man, he was given the responsibility of training the young teenagers recruited as whores. This was a task he relished. His mother's legacy to the family was the belief that nothing a punter could ask would not be available to him at the right price, and available with at least an appearance of complaisance. 

Rotkoff's knowledge of the more extreme forms of sexual practise was encyclopaedic, and he taught each girl all she could stand to learn and a bit more. He was wryly amused at the thought that, even those perversions so extreme that the professionals would balk at undertaking them would be taken on happily by enthusiastic amateurs.

Out of his role as a trainer of whores came a knowledge and understanding of drugs. Heroin, cocaine and hashish were tools in his armoury, used sparingly and frequently withheld to enforce compliance. 

It was Stephen Rotkoff's initiative that led his father's organisation into the lucrative and rewarding paths of drug-dealing, and thence into casino gambling. Soon these exploitable human weaknesses fed back into prostitution, as wealthy women could be used, sometimes with their total co-operation, as part-time, afternoon and weekend whores. This gained him great prestige in his father's eyes. Before his twentieth birthday he was de facto second-in-command of the business.

***

SUMMER 1949.

He first saw Sonja Kanievsky in the line of contestants in the Mecca Ballrooms beauty pageant. She was a tall, blonde, leggy teenager, slim and small-breasted. He noted her exceptional beauty, but also her vulnerability. She lacked the sort of practised poise that would win her a crown. Her figure was flawless, but her makeup was amateur, her costume and shoes not of the best, and her hair was dressed in an over-complicated, fussy way that took too little account of her colouring or features. 

There had been whores in his organisation who had her beauty and grace, but it was not long before they had sold both to make him money. This girl was not a commodity to be bought and sold. He felt that she had a quality that should have made her immortal. 

That evening, she made it into the final ten competitors on her promise rather than her performance, but she failed to be selected as one of the three runners-up or the winner. Her disappointment was palpable, and, when she came out of the staff entrance in a gaggle of other girls, her face was bleak and set in hard lines. 

He was waiting for her at the stage door with a broad smile and a bouquet of roses and carnations. She allowed herself to be led to his deep blue Alvis TA14 drophead coupe, goggling at its rakish elegance. He took her to the Casablanca nightclub, where he knew he would be treated like a king. Then he waited, trying to relax her before he began his sales pitch.

He escorted her to a table and helped her into a seat as the Head Waiter came over. He called for champagne, and, noticing her pallor and pinched face, he asked: 

"When did you last eat?"

"I had something at the bus station at Wednesbury first thing this morning."

Rotkoff turned to look at the Head Waiter.

"...And get us a plate of hot bacon sandwiches."

The Head Waiter knew very well that if he were to say that the kitchen was closed, it might not ever re-open, so he took the order with a silent bow. If necessary, he would fry the bacon himself.

She ate hungrily, wiping the grease from her lips and sipping the chilled champagne. She guessed that she was about to be propositioned, and she had decided that, for tonight anyway, she would play hard to get. 

Instead of making a pass, her escort started to give her a shrewd and detailed analysis of her strengths and weaknesses as a beauty contestant. The points about her cheap costume and make-up came as no surprise, and, although she felt she had done a pretty good job on her hair, she could see that it was a little bit amateurish. Then he really surprised her.

"But the biggest thing is; you've got to work on your walk," he said baldly. Keep your shoulders back, head up, and glide. You wobble on those high heels, and when you made that turn at the front of the stage I thought for a moment you were going to go arse over tit into the orchestra pit."

She was torn between indignation and amusement, but she allowed amusement to win and giggled charmingly.

Rotkoff pressed on, presenting himself as a prosperous businessman, and offering to sponsor her in future contests. Sonja was not so naive as to see this as a purely business proposition. Rotkoff seemed to her just the sort of protector and sponsor she was looking for; a decided cut above the seedy spivs who had come on to her in Wednesbury. She mentally wrote off the ten and sixpence she had paid for a room in a boarding house near the bus station, and let events take their course.

He took her back to his flat and suggested confidently that they should go to bed. She was not surprised or shocked, and allowed herself to be led to the bathroom. A few minutes later she made her way through the open door of the bedroom. He was already down to his underpants, and she undressed, shyly, folding her clothing carefully over a bedroom chair. She stripped naked, but then, as an apparent afterthought, replaced her best silk petticoat and slipped into bed beside him. 

***

Rotkoff was charmed and delighted by Sonja's apparent innocence and genuine lack of sophistication. She was not very highly sexed, and her readiness to lie quiescent whilst Stephen enjoyed her body was exactly what his heart desired. His world was full of overtly sexy girls who traded on their sexuality to manipulate men. Her willing but passive compliance was the perfect antidote. 

The one occasion, shortly after they met, when he attempted to kiss her sex was received, to his secret delight, with heartfelt revulsion. Each of her very infrequent orgasms was to him a personal triumph. He was never to know that she hated and distrusted them - seeing each involuntary spasm as a breach in her wall of reserve and self-defence. If she had a secret wish it was that he would take his sexual demands to one of his stable of high-priced call-girls. It would never happen.

A year after he took her under his protection, the careful professional coaching and lavish investment in grooming and costumes paid off to gain her third place in the Miss England contest. Of course she knew perfectly well that her protector was a criminal, and the leader of a brutal gang, but this only made her feel more secure. By this time he was ready to marry, and she, her heart in her mouth, realised that she was pregnant.

Sonja and their two children, Tim and Bee were the most precious things in Rotkoff's world, and he knew he must take all risks to protect them and provide for them. He was a man driven by twin ambitions. He had long since achieved his first goal, to dominate the Birmingham underworld. The second; to achieve respectability for himself and his family, was harder to achieve, but he was making headway, and he privately saw himself in five to ten years time as a respectable and respected businessman.

His hard, ruthless drive to win at all costs meant that he was always ready to ride over anyone who got in his way. but although he used cruelty and fear as a management tool, he kept his deep, sadistic desire to torture and destroy under iron control. The urgency of his desire to establish his children in respectability had led him to assert his dominance in quarters far outside the Birmingham underworld. 

Rotkoff had the perfect, mechanistic morality of the ichneumon fly. He would feed his children at all costs - and at any sacrifice - provided that those sacrifices came from others.



The Sacred Band Ch. 06



There is explicit sex in this chapter. Just a reminder. Chapters written in the first person are generally sexual accounts. Chapters written in the third person have no explicit sex in them. 

Sorry there has been such a delay in getting this on the site. I have been having trouble with html coding and finally given up in despair. Is there anyone out there who can help me?

Chapter 6. Laura and Philip - Laura meets her Pasha

June 1955

Growing up in a small market town has its disadvantages. Yes, knowing everyone and having gone to school with your entire age-group, at least up to the age of eleven can be nice, and there is something comfortable in knowing that you can't walk down the street or go into a shop without meeting people you sang in the choir, or played netball with. 

On the other hand, everything you do gets back to your Mum and Dad. You can't go into the bakers and buy yourself a surreptitious cream cake without someone saying;

"I saw your Laura filling her face again outside Smithard's. She'll come out in spots as sure as my name's Gladys Watson." 

Believe me; you don't have to go all the way to East Berlin to live in fear of the Secret Police. 

Another problem; although it takes you a while to realise it; is that you grew up with all the eligible males from the time they were out of nappies. The boys a couple of years older then you, who are just starting to get a little bit interesting suddenly disappear into the Army and they are out of circulation for two years.

As often as not, when they get demobbed, they're looking around for a bigger pond to swim in, and move to Nottingham, or London, or even New York. 

Yes, Ashby is a small town, with all the limitations of a small town. My father was Chief Accountant for the Bardon Hill Quarries, a well-known local business. Mother had her church activities at St. Helen's and both of them were dedicated – and very good – bridge players who played three or four time s a week. 

Mother has her own private income, which, she promised, would one day come to me, and we lived in one of the large early Victorian houses on Upper Packington Road, with the gardener, Mr. Ashe who came to work each day on his bicycle, and Despina, our live-in maid. Despina, who came from Greece, was a sweet person who called me kukla mou. She was always the one I ran to as a little girl, when I fell down and grazed my knee, and always the one I took my problems to when I was in my teens. 

***

It was the middle of Wimbledon fortnight 1955. The world had gone tennis mad and we were all wondering if Jaroslav Drobny would win for the second time, or if one of the Americans or Australians would beat him. 

I was just leaving school and I had been accepted for a place at Leicester University to read history and literature, starting in September. Mum and Dad had arranged for me to live with my aunt Hilda in Stoneygate, and I was feeling a bit resentful because most of the girls I knew were going into Hall for at least the first year. Much as I love Aunt Hilda and her five cats, I had a sinking feeling that I was going to miss out on all the fun.

I was at the club, or to give it its proper name Ashby Lawn Tennis club, playing a singles game with Jill Packe, and had just won, two sets to one. I came into the clubhouse hot, sweaty and very satisfied. Jill ordered two large lime and lemonades and we stood against the bar, looking around. Across the room I saw a familiar face. 

Philip Cheshire had already left school, and was just getting ready to leave the Youth Choir, when I was just starting as a ten-year old. A whole group of us used to cycle the five miles to Coalville and five miles back each week, and Philip impressed me right away, when he made the older cyclists wait for us young ones. 

At the time he was a tall teenager, skinny and large-jointed, with straight black hair usually hanging in his eyes; his pale face lit up with a bright, cheerful smile. 

Seven or eight years later, his smile was still just as bright and warm – and aimed directly at the middle-aged man who sat with him at the corner table. They were clearly discussing business, and Philip was well-dressed in a formal dark suit, shoes you could see your face in and a red, white and blue striped RAFA tie.

I felt my mouth go dry as I looked at him, and I couldn't help noticing that several of the girls and women in the club were looking at him in the same way. For the next three-quarters of an hour I went on watching him surreptitiously, whilst pretending to be looking everywhere else. 

When I could see that his meeting was drawing to an end, I caught his eye and we smiled at each other. I picked up my drink and walked over to greet him.

"Phil Cheshire, I haven't seen you in ages. What are you doing in Ashby?" 

"Laura. Grand to see you. May I introduce Jerry Wainwright? Nowadays I work as a financial analyst and Jerry, here, is one of my customers. Jerry, this is Laura Fisher; we knew each other as children when I lived here."

"Hello Jerry; pleased to meet you. I've a feeling I've seen you around the club once or twice." 

"Lovely to meet you too Laura, but I must rush away. I've got to be back home in half an hour to mind the baby, so that Junie can take the older children Summer holiday shopping. Why don't I leave you and Phil catch up on old times?"

Soon Philip and I were deep into one of those, "whatever happened to Sally and Trish", conversations, laughingly reviewing our old childhood friends. From there we went into his RAF days, and my years at the Girls' Grammar school "with absolutely no time off for good behaviour." 

All the time I could see him sneaking looks at my long legs, well displayed in my short tennis skirt; smiling his wide smile, showing his lovely even, white teeth. Philip, I decided, had gone from gangling teenager to a handsome, confident and very sexy man in the years he had been away. He was what we grammar school girls called a 'dish.'

Philip bought more drinks, a straight tonic and ice for me, and a large Beefeater and tonic for himself. He settled back down and started to bring me up to date.

"Whilst I was in the RAF, my dad died and my mum moved back to Leicester and bought a house just off King Richard Road. When I was demobbed I moved back in with her and since then I've been trying to establish myself as a financial analyst. So far it's all working out very well; touch wood."

Philip and I might have gone on talking all afternoon, but Jill came over and reminded me that it was two o'clock and we had a court booked for mixed doubles. I quickly wrote down my phone number, invited him, to ring me around teatime, and departed. 

My competitive spirit took me over and my partner and I started to give Jill and Chris a hammering. Changing ends I looked up at the window but Philip was gone. 

My game went to pieces as all I could think of was hoping that he liked me, and that he would ring. You could call it love at first sight if you like. All I knew at that moment was that, if he chose to, he could transform my life for ever.

***

Flashback - May 1950

From the age of thirteen I had been leading a secret life, concealed from my parents, my friends and everyone. 

I got two pounds for my thirteenth birthday; a pound from Aunt Hilda and one from my parents. This was the most money I had ever possessed, and I was determined to make the most of it. 

On the Saturday morning I went into Leicester to have a look around. After looking at the shops in Charles Street and walking up High Street towards the big Co-op emporium, I turned left towards Silver Street to look in the Arcade. 

There was a rather dusty second-hand shop there and I could see tennis racquets in a box at the back. They turned out to be ancient fish-tails, as heavy as lead and no use to man or beast, but then I started looking at silver thimbles, found a very sweet one with tiny roses embossed all over it, and decided to have it. 

Then I found a silver vesta box that still had some original waxed matches in, and thought I would buy it for my Dad. Idly looking along the shelves of old, scruffy books, I saw a title Loves of the Harem, and my heart leapt with excitement. 

I took it down. I had been vaguely excited by the thought of life in a Harem for a while, whilst not really knowing anything. I suddenly knew that I had to have the book although it was marked two and sixpence and all the other books were thruppence and sixpence. 

I took my finds to the fat old woman sitting in the corner and paid for them, six and sixpence. I didn't really want the old lady to see what I had chosen so I held the book open at the flyleaf with the price pencilled in, but she scarcely glanced at it. I went back to Aunt Hilda's house where I was spending the day, and showed her the vesta box and the thimble; but hid the book carefully away. 

"What on earth do you want to spend your money on that junk for?" she grumbled. I kissed her, thanked her again for my present and took my book into the garden. 

That afternoon I was transported to Constantinople and the Ottomans, Agra of the Moghuls, and the slave-market of Tunis, the lair of Barbarossa and the Moorish pirates of the Mediterranean. 

I was scarcely old enough to know what love was, but that afternoon I desperately wanted to be an odalisque, locked in the Seraglio and guarded by Eunuchs; a prisoner of love; the plaything of some Sultan or Pasha. 

That night as I lay in bed in my Wincyette nightie, I imagined myself waiting with the other concubines in filmy, revealing silks, hoping to win the favour of the Sultan. In my fantasy we were paraded before him and I must have stared too directly instead of keeping my eyes averted. Far from attracting him I annoyed him. Immediately I was turned over and a fat eunuch was beating the soles of my feet with a strap - the dreaded bastinado. 

The Sultan took pity on my tears and cries, and I was taken, undressed by scented attendants and laid on his divan to await my fate. I fell asleep with feelings coursing through my body that I could not describe or understand. 

Oddly, I didn't dream of being Roxalana, 'She who makes me smile,' the concubine who captivated Suleiman - I was just the naughty slave-girl. 

I hid the book in my bedroom at Aunt Hilda's; putting a brown paper cover on it. I wrote 'Physical Geography' on the spine, and put it in a row of other books she had given me. I knew I could not take it home and hide it from my mum, but Aunt Hilda was blessedly incurious about me, and in any case she did not climb the stairs more often than she had to.

Three weeks later I was again spending a weekend with Aunt Hilda. I rode into the centre of town on my bike and this time I went to Edgar Backus the well-known second-hand bookshop. I had a tissue-thin cover story about a project for school, and I was ready to run out of the shop if questioned. 

Behind the counter there was a cadaverous, elderly man, with piercing eyes shining out from under bushy grey eyebrows, and a shock of white hair. He wore the working costume I was to see him in for the next decade; a dark grey apron over his cardigan, a shirt with a narrow navy tie, moleskin trousers, and large, voluminous oversleeves, of a cloth looking for all the world like old blackout curtain, to keep his cuffs clean. 

At the time he was serving another customer, and I took the opportunity to look around me, but all unsure how what I wanted would be classified and where it would be shelved. 

After a few minutes he turned his attention to me.

"Are you looking for anything in particular, young lady?" 

"I am doing a project for school on Harems and Harem life in the Middle East. I wonder if you have anything".

I later realised that to a bookseller, any interest that led people towards reading and acquiring books was a precious gift. To booksellers, people are divided into two camps, Book People and the rest who are not even dignified with a name.

"I think there may be something in the store-room if you'll just wait a minute".

He came back ten minutes later, by which time I half way through the opening chapter of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock. He looked at me with a small smile of approval, and handed me a small thick book with a leather spine and corners and embossed green cloth sides. He smiled gently and spoke in a soft lowlands accent.

"This is the History of the Ottoman Empire by G.W.M. Reynolds, from the 1840's. I think it may be just what you are looking for. Not the most scholarly history, I'm afraid, but full of lively stories about the Seraglio and the Sultans' wives and concubines."

My heart thumped. It was just what I wanted. But how much did it cost? I scarcely dared look. The price was thirty shillings, just within my reach so soon after my birthday. I bought it and my fantasy world grew so much richer, deeper and darker. 

After a year or two my secret library at Aunt Hilda's house had grown and grown. Before long the man at Edgar Backus had become a secret conspirator and a dear friend. 

His name was Jamie Gillespie. He had come down from Fifeshire to work as a coalminer in the South Derbyshire coalfield, but after finishing the war as a checkweighman he found that he preferred the peaceful drudgery of selling books. 

I am sure he knew perfectly well what he was doing as he fed me books and discreetly directed my reading. He had his own secret passion. One day I went into the shop and found him like a dog with two tails. 

"Look at this. Laurie my dear," he gloated, "Francis Barratt's The Magus - there was only ever the one edition – it's a fine copy in the original strawboards. I've been after it for thirty years, and I never thought for a moment it would ever be mine."

It was a beautiful book to be sure, with its delicate hand-coloured plates of most horrifying faces of Demons and meticulous setting out of the spells and arcane knowledge of ceremonial magic and the Kabala. 

Mr Gillespie, I learned, had spent a lifetime studying and practising ritual magic, and his own secret life made him a happy conspirator in mine. So, when a huge tome like the History of the Rod came along in my GCE year at the Grammar School, more or less at the same time as I became Captain of the Hockey team, Mr Gillespie knew perfectly well that at three guineas it was beyond my reach. 

He had a solution, and I agreed, at his suggestion, to pay five shillings every other week until the debt was cleared. It became a little ritual for us both, making the book even more precious to me, and our fortnightly meetings over a cup of strong, mahogany coloured tea, were the basis of a strong friendship.

I had known from the beginning, beyond any doubt, that my secret library must be kept concealed from everyone. Some of the books were not deemed suitable reading for anyone, let alone an adolescent girl. I felt that I should have died rather then let anyone but Mr Gillespie into my secret. I was gaining a lot of sexual knowledge. 

Whilst physically I was an innocent; in my mind I was just waiting for the man to arrive. It was certainly going to be a man, of that I was in no doubt. And when, several years later, I saw Philip that Saturday in June, I just knew that my wait was over and that he was the man. 



Wimbledon Fortnight - first Saturdauy 1955. 

At the end of that momentous first Saturday afternoon of Wimbledon, I was home at four, listening to the tennis on the wireless and waiting within earshot of the phone. Four times in the next hour the phone rang and I snatched it up, only to be disappointed. Then, finally it was him. 

"Hello Laura, it's Philip. It was so nice seeing you today. I was wondering if we could get together soon."

I was too excited to play it cool. 

"Yes, when are you free? Would tomorrow afternoon be any good? I could come over to Leicester on my bike." 

"Even better. You come on the bus, I'll pick you up at St. Margarets bus station and run you home later in the car. Can you arrange to be home at around ten?"

"Later if you like. There's no school now I've taken my A levels and I haven't started work yet."

That morning I had put on a summer dress in a bright cotton print, buttoned all down the front, with a crisp white collar and open v-neck, and a jade green cardigan. I had put on white cotton ankle-socks to emphasis my schoolgirlishness, and, of course, I was wearing my best white cotton bra and my prettiest yellow knickers. Despina, who knew what was in the wind, had say me down and brushed my reddish-blonde hair until it shone. I could see from the way men looked at me that I looked really good. 

As the bus pulled into the Bus Station I could see Philip standing, waiting, in white short-sleeved shirt and khaki slacks; his black hair, parted on one side, hanging down over one eye. 

He looked so handsome that I was unable to believe for a moment that he was there for me. Was he really the man I was looking for? Soon, very soon I should find out. I knew I might have to be patient if I wanted to get close to him, but I was prepared to wait.

He greeted me with a kiss on the cheek, and suggested that we walked the mile or so to his home, just off King Richard Road. As we were walking past the ancient Norman church of St. Nicholas with its fragment of Roman wall, he was explaining that his mother had the ground floor of the house, as she couldn't manage stairs. 

They had put in a downstairs bathroom for her, and he had the whole top floor. I said I should love to see his flat, and we went to the house. By the time we crossed the Soar and started heading towards the Hinckley road, we had changed the subject.

Do like living in Leicester Philip? It must seem humdrum after Hong Kong."

"Humdrum? Never! I love every inch of the place. It was the happiest day of my life when I came back to live here again. I lived in Highfields until I was twelve when we moved to Ashby. I've nothing against Ashby, but it was the hardest thing I ever had to do to leave all my friends behind, and change schools and home all at once. 

Ashby Grammar was small and shabby compared to Alderman Newton and the teaching was none of the best. The best teachers were a couple of ex-servicemen who were invalided out of the Army in the first years of the war. They were still young enough to remember what it was like being a boy in war-time. 

The other thing about it was the strangeness of making a new set of friends. In Highfields I grew up with a street-full of kids like myself. Girls played girls' games, boys played street football and cricket, but we all knew each other as friends.

We were in and out of each other's houses all the time. By the time I was ten I had a sweetheart named Lily Saltmarsh. If I'd stayed in Highfields we would probably have got married and have a handful of kids of our own by now. 

Then I was transported to Ashby, and the only people I got to know were the boys in my form at the grammar. I've always been an easy-going sort of bloke, but they did not make it easy for me to fit in. 

It was the first time I met real, crude, unthinking snobbery and political prejudice because of my parents' trade union and labour connections. 

The odd thing is, when I was in Hong Kong, I found it was like Ashby-de-la-Zouch writ large. Social status was everything, and knee-jerk toryism ruled."

Naturally I had to ask what he meant by "knee-jerk toryism". I was learning so much that I didn't want the conversation to end.

"What I found is that people with strongly entrenched right-wing views do not think that they are political at all. They just believe that what they think is what all right-thinking people believe, and what everybody really believes in the back of their hearts. 

They simply cannot believe that people who think differently from them sincerely believe what they are saying. There have to be ulterior motives, Bolshevism, anarchism or whatever. Winston Churchill was the saviour incarnate, and anyone who thought otherwise was mentally sick or hopelessly corrupt."




The Sacred Band Ch. 06



"But Philip, Churchill was our greatest war leader, wasn't he?"

"Matter of opinion. I'd put Cromwell in first place, followed by Lloyd George, with Pitt the younger third in a photo finish. 

"Cromwell? But he was a vile person, consumed with hatred."

Philip roared with laughter and I blushed crimson. I could feel the tide of heat and colour rise up my face.

"See what I mean by knee-jerk toryism?" He chuckled. 

The book of rules for girls in love says never to argue with your man-friend. Defer to him prettily, reflect back his opinions and he will think you are intelligent and attractive. 

I knew instinctively that this would not wash with Philip. Let him think I was a doormat and he would wipe his feet on me, if he even bothered to do that. I prepared myself for a fight. 

I may not know as much history as he did, but I would go down fighting. I could see a point of weakness in his argument and girded up my loins. 

It all got put aside for another day as we turned off King Richard Road and into Muriel Road. 

"Well here we are," he laughed, "saved by the bell."

First Philip took me into the back parlour and introduced me to his mother. Madge was sitting in an armchair in front of a television, showing a cricket game with the sound turned off. 

She was very welcoming; a plump, smiling, grey-haired lady in a flowery pinafore over an ankle-length grey dress. Her hands were deformed by arthritis and her legs and feet were dark, almost black; swollen and painful looking. Although she clearly walked painfully, with two sticks; she seemed serene and quietly content. 

Whilst Philip was mashing tea, I learned how proud she was of her talented son. 

"I wanted him to stand for Parliament for Labour, and he could have walked it", she explained, "but he had other ideas, and I suppose that's only to be expected. Different generations see things differently miduck. My parents were old-fashioned Liberals, and they couldn't stick the Labour Party, but I had to make up my own mind. So does he".

I replied honestly. 

"I don't really understand politics. The differences between what the parties want and believe seems so small that I don't know what it is that arouses such anger." 

"That's right", said Philip, entering the room with a tea tray. "Tell the old girl her whole life's work has been wasted; that's the stuff to give her."

I was so shocked that tears stood in my eyes. Had I really been so rude? Then they both roared with laughter, and I realised that they were just teasing me. I gave a sort of watery smile, and Philip put his arms around me and hugged me.

"I'm so sorry, Laura ducks. I never meant to hurt your feelings. It was only in fun." 

I hugged him back. Wonderfully, something had happened that broke the ice between us. If he was hugging me in front of his smiling-faced mother, then who knows what he might do when we were alone?

We finished our tea and the three of us chatted desultorily. Then the cricket came to an end and the scene changed to show-jumping. This was more like it! Madge got to her feet, painfully, and hobbled over to turn up the sound on the television. This was our signal to leave. 

Philip allowed me to precede him upstairs, so I wiggled my bum a bit. I waited on the landing for him to lead the way. 

He took me into a large room at the front of the house, furnished as a lounge with an old but good three-piece suite and a Pye Black Box auto-change record-payer in pride of place with stacks of long-play and extended-play records. He obviously cared about music and wanted to hear it reproduced as well as possible.

We sat together on the settee; his arm draped loosely across my shoulders, and chatted lightly.

"How does it feel to have almost left school? Are you looking forward to going to University?"

"Well, I really can't wait to leave school. I wanted to do History or Psychology at Imperial College, London, but Leicester was my second choice. 

Much as I love my parents, I think it will do me good to get away for a bit. In a way I am a bit disappointed to be staying weeknights with Aunt Hilda in Stoneygate, but it will certainly be more comfortable that those rabbit hutches in the Halls of Residence."

In the back of my mind I was thinking that maybe living at Auntie Hilda's might not be so dull after all. It would give me freedom to spend evening – and maybe nights - here, if things worked out.

Philip asked me about tennis, cinema and dancing. Then came the moment I was waiting for.

"What about boyfriends? I'm sure a lovely girl like you must have plenty."

"I don't go out with boys very much. Somehow I don't find boys my own age very attractive, and all the slightly older ones have all been called up."

"Tell me all about the boys you have gone out with."

"Well, there are only three really. Dennis Middleton; I went out with him a couple of times when I was fifteen. Richard Price; we lasted about a month, and Peter Patterson, last winter. 

I didn't really like any of them very much, but all my friends were going out with boys and I didn't want to stand out."

"Not the Mata Hari of Ashby then. But you've learned how to kiss."

He drew my face to his, and gave me a long, deep kiss, I opened my mouth to his and his tongue crept into my mouth, Not the wet, slimy sort of kiss, but strong and thrilling, and a little bit fierce.

"Now, tell me all the naughty things you have been up to in the back row of the pictures."

His command was my wish. I described how they had snogged me, how all of them had groped my tits, and how I had let Peter feel me up through my knickers, but how I had run out of the cinema when he tried to put my hand on his knob."

"I was more curious than anything, but when he did that I knew that I didn't want to let him get any further." 

"Well, well Miss Fisher. I think you deserve a spanking for each of those innocent boys you led astray, and then you can consider yourself forgiven." 

I was right. He was the man. Maybe I should raise the stakes a little...

"But if I deserve spanking for what I did with those three, maybe I had better not tell you about Mr Gillespie."

"Mr. Gillespie?" he queried. "Was he your schoolmaster – what wickedness did you get up to with him?"

"I told you I don't like boys much. The only time I really felt that if a man wanted me he could have me, was with Mr Gillespie at Backus' bookshop. But he wasn't interested in me that way. He's really old – nearer seventy than sixty, and not in the least sexy-looking, but he went out of his way to help me and make friends with me, and somehow I could feel a sort of power coming from him that excited me. 

He's a magician – no; not a conjurer who does children's parties, I mean a real, dedicated, lifelong magician. 

"What help did he give you that was so important?" 

"He helped me to find books. Look, I shall tell you all about it one day soon, but please don't ask me any more about it right now."

"All right my girl. I'll just ask you one thing. If you deserve a spanking for letting boys grope your tits, what do you deserve for nearly seducing an older man?"

"I don't know. A caning maybe?"

"Well, for the moment we'll make do with the spanking. That's four you owe me."

Now the moment had come. For the first time in my life I felt my knickers getting wet. I was so excited I squeaked. 

"How do you want me? Shall I take off my clothes?"

"No, certainly not. Naughty girls go over my knee and I take their knickers down and spank their bare bottoms. Naked spankings are for good girls who like to play."

I can't describe the satisfaction I felt as I lay myself across his knees. He lifted the back of my dress and laid it over my back, revealing my bottom, clad in my best primrose yellow knickers. He stroked my bum appreciatively, and I am sure he felt that I was already excited. 

He took hold of both sides of my knickers at my hips, and I lifted my tummy off his knees slightly so he could pull them down. He took them right down my thighs to my knees, and I felt them slowly slide to my ankles as I could not stop myself from wriggling. 

Could he smell my excitement? I hoped so – I didn't want him to be in any doubt.

He began lightly, a brisk, loud slap on each buttock in turn, that spread a stinging warmth. Then slaps became louder, and I thought what a blessing it was that his mother's television had the sound turned up loud. 

He began by slapping each cheek of my bum in turn, then as the intensity built up the pattern changed to three or four slaps on each buttock. That was much fiercer. By the time he stopped my bottom felt as if it were on fire. I had imagined this so many times, and it was a hundred times more wonderful that I ever imagined.

Years earlier, when I was sure I was alone in the house I had tried spanking myself with a table-tennis bat and the riding crop my dad gave me with my hard hat when I went to riding school. 

It might work for some people, but for me it just gave a sort of empty feeling, utterly devoid of any thrill, and after a few times I gave up the attempt. Now, here with Philip, it was all thrill.

He stopped. "That's enough for a first time."

I wanted to assure him that I could keep going as long as he could, but decided that he knew what he was doing better than I did. I got off his knees, rubbed my bottom with both hands, making sure he could see my legs and perhaps a little bit more. 

Then; nothing ventured, nothing gained; I made sure he watched me as I took my knickers off and put them in my handbag. 

We went over and sat on the settee together again.

"Tell me about your girlfriends," I said. "Do you have any on the go at present?"

"Why? Do you want to spank me for my naughty behaviour?"

I was shocked, and for a moment took him quite seriously.

"No, of course not; how could you think that? I couldn't possibly respect someone who let me spank his bottom." I could feel tears in my eyes at the thought.

He was teasing me again. Philip loves to get a rise out of me. He roared with laughter at me, and, just as quickly, took me in his arms again and hugged me. As we kissed a long, deep, thrilling kiss, my body draped over his, his hand lifted the back of my skirt and began to stroke my bum again. 

I rolled further over to make it easy for him. After a moment or two, he moved his hand round to my quim, and started to caress me with gentle, knowledgeable fingers. He already knew that I was a virgin, but his probing finger confirmed it. He found my little man in the boat, and his massage sent shivers through me.

"What would you like to do now, Laura?"

"Whatever you want. Do you want to break me in – take my virginity I mean? Or perhaps you would like me to suck your cock – or maybe you could spank me some more?"

"Break you in? What a quaint term. Is that what you horse-riding girls call it?

"It's what all girls my age call it. We talk about it all the time and try to scare each other, but really we are all just waiting for the right man and the right time."

"Suppose I want something else?"

"Do you mean you want to do me up the bum before I've even been poked? That's a bit perverse isn't it, taking a virgin up the bum?"

"Which would you prefer, the perverse Philip or the innocent, unthreatening Philip?

"Oh, the perverse one, of course."

"Right then. Perverse Philip says suck me off, and if you do it well enough I might consider shagging you." 

"Yes please, but you'll have to tell me what to do. I've heard girls describing it, but not in much detail."

Philip unbuttoned his slacks, and pulled out his knob. To me it looked enormous, and I wondered if I would be able to suck it to his satisfaction, but I was going to give it a good try. 

I took his balls in my left hand and caressed them gently, and then placed my other hand on his staff, just below the head, and moved my hand gently up and down. 

As I retracted the foreskin over the broad, purple mushroom head, a bead of clear liquid appeared from the slit. I put out my tongue and licked it up. It was stringy, with the taste and texture of egg-white, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The one worry I had is that the taste of his spunk would be as nasty as some of the other girls had said. I need not have worried... 

First though...

"I must just tell you. When I was working in Woolies as a Saturday girl last Christmas I listened to a couple of the girls talking. They were both about my age, but they had been around the block a few times, and they were talking about how three of them went with their boyfriends to one boy's house, and had a gobbling contest. 

The boys sat side by side and took their trousers down, then the girls knelt down and gave them the best gobbler they could manage, and the first girl to make her boy spunk was the winner. 

A week later they were still arguing about who won! I found that story so sexy. Imagine being watched whilst you did everything you could to bring your boy off with your mouth. It was the most exciting thing I ever heard."

"Do you know Laura, I have never heard a girl talk like you. It's just amazing. If that is what a Girls' Grammar School does for you, everyone should go to one."

"I bet you wish you'd been to one. Anyway, I'm only saying to a man what girls say to each other in private."

After that, under his gentle guidance, my mouth was busy for about ten minutes. Then he said,

"Keep sucking until I've finished coming, or I really will spank you again."

I don't know who came harder, Philip or me. Nothing I had ever heard suggested that a girl could come to orgasm just sucking a man off, but after that it has happened to me more times than I could count.

It made me realise that, for women at least, orgasm is in the head as much, or more, than it is in the body. (Oh dear there's an unintentional pun there, but I'll just leave it in.)

I knelt there, spunk all over my chin where it had dripped from my mouth, feeling prouder and happier than I had ever felt in my life. I looked at Philip and he smiled. 

"Well," I asked, smiling up at him. "Which have I earned, the poking or the spanking?"

He smiled back at me, laughter in his beautiful grey eyes.

"You have amply earned your poking my little one. You look so captivating like that. Angel and whore all in one beautiful wrapper". 

At Philip's suggestion we went into the bedroom and found (surprise, surprise!) a double bed. We undressed and lat down side by side, kissing long and deeply but without any sense of urgency. Then, when we had caught our breath, I said.

"Now tell me about your girlfriends, I've told you all about my sordid past".

"Well, there's Shelagh, she's a Ward Sister at the Royal Infirmary. She works long hours and gets a lot of unavoidable overtime when they're short-staffed. She hasn't got a place of her own, just the Nurses Hostel, so she comes over here and spends a night when she can, maybe once a fortnight, and every week we get an evening together but she has to be in by ten."

"Do you spank her bottom like you did mine?

"No, she's into straight up and down sex – no frills – but she's a lovely lady and she has a terrific sense of humour. We are laughing and giggling all the time when we're in bed. One day she'll get married and have a horde of kids, but meanwhile I seem to suit her very well." 

"And the next one?" 

"Magda. Her family come from Poland; she's a musician. Right now she plays viola in the string quartet at the Lyons Corner House in Granby Street, but she's capable of much more than that. She's married but her husband left her and went to Canada. She's been trying to divorce him for desertion for over a year now. She's rather a sad lady really, and I do my best to cheer her up, but she's been really bruised by the break-up of her marriage.

Now and again after a really good shag, she'll just burst into tears and nothing seems to comfort her. It's a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Sometimes we'll spend every evening together for a week, then she'll keep putting me off until I think she's dropped me completely. Then, weeks later she'll ring again."

"Why do you keep on going out with her?"

"She's very sweet, and I think she needs me. She's going to drop me one day, but I'm not going to hand her another rejection. She deserves better than that. You know, I've made her sound far less attractive than she is. She's very warm and affectionate in lots of ways, and I can be very happy with her just cuddling up with me."

"Anyone else?"

Yes, the most important one of all. Denise. She's stunning. Incredibly vibrant and full of life, and tremendously sexy. Laura, are you sure you want to hear all this?"

I could listen unmoved to him talking about Shelagh and Magda, but the change in tone when he started talking about Denise sent a pang of jealousy through me. I covered it up as best I could. 

"Yes, I want to know everything about you. You know, Philip, you're such a lovely man, You're full of kindness and you really like women. Somehow I think that a lot of very sexy men really don't like women at all".

"You would have to love women of you had a mum like mine. She's given her whole life to trying to help people, and caring for my Dad and me. When you know there are women like that in every back street in Leicester, and every town in the world I guess..."

"Anyway, tell me about Denise, she sounds terrific."

"She's a widow. Her husband, Walter, met her when he was nearly forty and she was not yet seventeen. He was a really dominant man, and he trained her like a pony. They got married as soon as she was eighteen. Her parents were horrified, and tried everything they could to stop her, but she simply said:

"If you won't let me marry him, then I'll just live with him as his mistress until I am of age. I'm over seventeen and You can't stop me from leaving home." 

She adored him, totally and completely, and when he was killed in a riding accident, she was left behind totally bereft. But she pulled herself together. She's so strong and confident and such fun to be with. I met her not long after I got demobbed from the RAF and came back from Hong Kong. I was about twenty-three and she was ten years older. 

I became her financial advisor, and when I started up my own business she put up half the money and became a sleeping partner. Up 'til then, I'd had a lot of one-night stands and I thought I knew about sex. She showed me I was wrong and taught me how to give her what she wants and to get what I want."

"Philip, you are going to keep me and teach me all about sex too, aren't you? Please say you will. If this is just a one-night stand it will still have been worth it for me, but I just know that you are my Pasha."

"You what?"

"My Pasha. That's what I call my secret lover. My Pasha is mysterious and powerful. He punishes me or rewards me as he sees fit and my pleasure is in giving him pleasure. I've dreamed about him since I was twelve, and I am sure that it is you. You even talk like him. You know when you said that if I didn't make a good enough job of sucking you off you would spank me? That was it. Just hearing it made me come."

"Laura, you are not only the most beautiful girl I have ever known, but you are without doubt the most exciting. Would you like to meet Denise? She has been telling me recently that it was time I found a girl of my own to train. I'm sure she will love you, and you will love her. I take it you are not demanding that I drop all my other love interests?"

My heart leapt at the thought of him training me. I could not help giggling, but I gave a little bob curtsey, bowed my head and replied with a straight a face as I could manage:

"We concubines don't make demands of our Pasha. As long as we can serve our Pasha and get a share of his love we are content."




The Sacred Band Ch. 06



"Now why should I possibly think that someone is taking the piss?"

I looked up into his eyes and grinned. 

"All right, that was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but all the same I really mean it."

We lay and kissed and caressed each other for what must have been an hour. Philip suckled on my nipples, licked around my navel and kissed down my sensitive belly to my wet, receptive quim. 

He played me like a violin in the hands of a master, and made me too impatient to lie back any longer and be the passive recipient of his attention. I tried to drag him on top of me and bring matters to a head. 

Exasperated, I cried out;

"Philip, for goodness sake. Please don't make me wait any longer or I shall scream. Do you have any idea how long I have been waiting for this? For Christ's sake do me or I'll burst". 

I must have seemed really comical, demanding to be poked, and he laughed out loud as I cried in frustration. 

Then, with the great, deceptive strength in his slight frame, he picked me up bodily by the waist, and lifted me right up in the air. I spread my thighs, opening myself up as wide as I could as he lowered me slowly down onto his rampant cock. 

As I took most of my weight on my knees and feet, he released his right hand and deftly opened me up and guided the bell-shaped crown of his cock into my body. I sank down and he was inside my body, and every cell in my body was singing a hymn of welcome. 

I felt something tear inside me with a sharp, piercing, momentary pain, and I was full to bursting with his maleness. Soreness warred with pleasure, and I was aware of the unexpectedness of looking down on the beloved face of the man who was taking my virginity. 

I leaned down and kissed him - a long, wet, open-mouthed kiss. We

both lay quite still for the duration of the kiss, and then he began to move inside me and I worked the unfamiliar muscles of my thighs and bottom to try to move in unison with him. 

Soon I was to know the unutterable pleasure of physical release, but not this first time. This time I was satisfied with the joy of our union, and contented myself with co-operating to bringing him to orgasm. I felt his cock swell, and then had the sadness of feeling him withdraw to spend his seed outside my body. 

"Oh, darling, why couldn't you come inside me? I so wanted you to."

"Not this time, I'm afraid. I wasn't wearing any protection and daren't risk it. The responsibility for your future was in my hands".

We lay side by side, our bodies adjoined from head to toe. I was bursting with happiness, and contentment. Later Philip got up and made a cup of tea, before driving me home in his beloved Matilda. 

I went to Leicester a virgin, and returned to Ashby a beloved concubine.



The Sacred Band Ch. 07



Chapter 7.

Laura finds her Pasha - part 2.

This is a good time to tell about my toys, stored for years in an old canvas travelling case on top of the wardrobe at Aunt Hilda's. 

Three years or so before I met Philip I had been wandering down Wharf Street looking idly in the shop windows. I came to a shabby small shop called Geo. Abbott, surgical supplies, and, glancing into the dusty window, I saw a selection of puzzling surgical goods including hernia trusses, flasks and mysterious lengths of rubber tube with nozzles. 

Then I froze. 

Hanging almost out of sight on the corner of the window was a long, black, sinister two-tailed leather tawse. I stared at it open-mouthed for some time and then, unable to get up the courage to go into the shop, I finally turned and walked dispiritedly away. 

I suppose I stood and stared that tawse three or four times in the weeks that followed, to be frank, I cycled the twelve miles into Leicester a couple of times just to look at it again. Finally I thought of the young Queen Elizabeth's riposte to Sir Walter Ralegh:

If thy heart fail thee, do not climb at all.

Just as I nerved myself up to pushing open the door, an elderly lady, rather fat and shabbily dressed with grey hair in a bun, came waddling out of the shop and spoke to me.

"Coom in and have a coop of tea me duck".

I followed her in to the ill-lit, dusty shop. There were two cups of steaming black tea on the counter, a sugar bowl and a milk-jug sat on a small round metal tray alongside.

"Hope you like it strong. Sugar and milk there if you tek 'em".

"Thank you", I said weakly adding condensed milk from a Nestles tin to my tea and stirring.

"I know what you're about me duck. I remember only too well how you feel".

She reached down the tawse and placed it in my hands. I stroked the smooth, stiff, fine-grained leather sensuously. Someday, I knew, I should put it in the hands of my Pasha. 

"Mrs. Abbott", she volunteered, "but you just call me Ada."

As we drunk our tea, Ada told me that she came from Ilkeston, and that she had just gone into service there when the Boer War broke out. 

She knew that she was different from the other servant-girls she knew. Their stories about the boys they walked out with sounded hollow and unreal to her. As she explained it to me, she just kept on waiting for lightning to strike. 

Then one Sunday afternoon, she was walking with a friend in the Forest Recreation Ground; a popular place for young men and women to do the monkey walk; when she saw a particular man, and the lightning struck. 

He was a wounded soldier, a corporal in the Sherwood Foresters, not long back from South Africa. He looked very deeply tanned; fit and strong until she saw that his left arm was missing from just below the elbow; his empty sleeve pinned up to his tunic He saw her looking at him and they were drawn together like a glass rod and a pith ball. She was sixteen and he was twenty-four. They married a year later, in 1902 and had been together ever since.

"George said on our first walk together that he could see I was a girl who needed a firm hand. I knew just what he meant, and I said, 

"Yes, and you look like the man to give it me."

We went to a caff for tea, then we walked, arm in-arm along the canal bank. Then he sat down high up the bank, put me across his knee and gave me a good walloping - of course I had to help him, with him only having one arm. I asked him if he wanted me to take my bloomers down, but he said no; what was in there was his private business, not for every Tom, Dick and Harry to gawp at. Some couples came by and giggled at us as he were doing it – but he didn't mind and no more did I. When I asked him what the walloping was for, he said, 

"It's joost to show you that Ah'm tekkin care of you now." That's all he said – but it were more than enough for me.

Now I'll tell you sommut. Them was Victorian times – just; but girls were the same then as they are now. I was wearing my prettiest bloomers with a bit of lace on, and every girl on the monkey walk was doing the same – them as were wearing bloomers at all. We were all waiting for the right man to come along and tek' 'em off us. 

"Any road oop; watching you these Saturdays peering my window makes me think that you are another girl who needs a firm hand – is that right Ducks?"

"Yes Ada, I think it is".

"Well, why don't you go and have a look in my back room and see if there's anything there you fancy whilst I tyek the tawse out o' the window."

The back room was at once exciting and deeply sinister. On the back wall hung row of canes, straps and riding crops, including a really frightening lunging whip. There were handcuffs and chains, gags and blindfolds. In the centre of the room stood a whipping bench that looked well used.

My overwhelming thought was that I was no longer alone in the world – there were clearly other people out there who felt like me; women who had their Pashas, men who had their Dark Ladies. Fear fought with happiness within me and happiness won.

When I got home I went to the cupboard under the stairs, and found what I was looking for. 

Years before, when they were just starting out in life, Dad had the sort of home cobbling kit that so many families had. A cobblers last a bit like a caltrops, with four different faces, for man's, women's and children's shoes; a pair of Whitcher pincers, a tack hammer or two, some heelball, and what I was after; a complete men's shoe sole of cow-hide, never used; narrow at the heel, wide at the sole and pointed at the toe. 

I put everything away tidily, sure that Dad would never look at it again. I carried it to my bedroom, bent over the bed, raised my skirt and gave myself a couple of hefty swats across the bum. God! it stung. 

"One, day..." I thought to myself. "One day...".. I hid the tawse and the shoe-sole under my bed, and transferred them to Aunt Hilda's at the first possible moment.

I bought the tawse that day and, over time, went back and bought canes, blindfolds and a pair of shiny chrome handcuffs, keeping them under the bed at Aunt Hilda's. In the shop there were silly handcuffs covered with fur fabric in pastel shades, and blindfolds with lacy trimmings, but I knew straightaway that they were not for me. Somehow they lacked potency. 

When I bought my first cane, trying to choose between dragon cane, rattan or just plain bamboo, Ada startled me.

"You could try them out if you like Ducks. I'm sure me Mester would be happy to oblige if thi so wishes. He's tanned the hides of more ladies than you've had hot dinners, but not many as pretty as you." 

I can't say that I wasn't tempted; my curiosity was overwhelming, but I knew it was not right. I had to wait for my Pasha.

Note to philologists: Working women of Ada's generation in Leicester and Nottingham would refer to their husbands as 'the mester' as a matter of course. Generally their husbands knew better than to take it too seriously).

***

Wimbledon - finals day 1955.

After I returned to Ashby from our first afternoon together, Philip and I spoke on the phone almost daily. On the Saturday following my first visit to Philip in Leicester, I was once again on the Leicester bus. Philip was waiting for me at the bus station with the lovely car he called Matilda.

First of all we went to Aunt Hilda's house and I introduced him as a friend who was going to store some bits and pieces for me for a little while. Accepting as always, Aunt Hilda welcomed him in and made us tea and some of her ubiquitous seed-cake, whilst we carried my books and toys down to the car.

When we had got to Philip's house and spent a little time with his Mum, we went upstairs and unpacked my goods. Philip whistled when he read the titles of my books, and turned and grinned at me. For some reason I blushed. Then he unpacked my toys and laid them out on his low, spindle-legged coffee table.

"I've never really tried any of them – I just had to buy them and I take them out and look at them sometimes. The tawse was what I bought first, and it's my favourite. I sometimes used to take it to bed with me at Auntie Hilda's and cuddle it – crazy isn't it?"

"Would you like to try them out?"

I said yes please, rather vacuously, as if I were being offered another slice of seedcake. My mouth had gone totally dry and my forehead beaded with sweat. At last it was going to happen.

Take off your clothes, and come here. I shall put the handcuffs and blindfold on you, then we'll try them out, one after the other."

I stripped off my clothes, folded them over a chair, and tidied my hair in front of the mirror. My little, round, pink-nippled tits jiggled nicely as I brushed my hair, and I knew Philip was looking at my bottom. 

Soon he would be giving it some real attention. 

I turned around and looked straight at Philip, posing for him, knees bent slightly, keeping my thighs tightly hiding my crotch, like the nude pictures in Lilliput and Men Only. I could see he approved. I walked over to the coffee-table and stood there quietly and waited for him to blindfold and handcuff me.

Of course I had put on the blindfold and the handcuffs before, but not both together. Having them put on me by somebody else had an oddly chilling effect. I felt more then a bit frightened. I trusted Philip completely, but totally relinquishing control made great inroads into my sense of security.

He led me over to the settee, and positioned me there, bottom sticking out knees on the slightly abrasive moquette cushion, and hands holding the back of the settee. I clung on tightly and waited. 

"Try to guess which of your toys I am using on your bottom. I'll give you four strokes with each. Every one you guess wrong earns you two more strokes, so concentrate."

The first one was easy. A sort of fipping swish, a burn like fire across my bum that seemed more intense a few second later than when it landed – the riding crop!

"The cane." I called out triumphantly.

"Don't go off half-cocked," said Philip, "there's three more to come." 

Three more cracks as the implement – the crop, I'm sure it was the crop – bit into my tender flesh. My whole bum was on fire for a moment or two, then it settled into a hot glow. Philip loosened the handcuffs whilst I felt my bum. It was ridged and furrowed like a midlands landscape.

He cuffed me again. 

"Ready for the next one?"

"To hear is to obey, O Pasha". I joked. 

The next one landed with a thump that threw me forward. My breath was knocked away for a moment, and the pain was bruising and deep. 

"The tawse! My lovely tawse." I shouted. In my I was thrown back into my days at junior school, taking a test and determined to come top of the class.

Three more fierce, thudding, fiery pains as the implement – yes, the tawse - it must be the tawse - seared my flesh. Then it was over. 

"Ready for the next one?" he asked again.

"Just a moment please, let me give it a rub." Again he took off the handcuffs to allow me to massage my sore bum. I was asking myself, 'How can something so painful give me such joy?' I found myself giggling as I took up my position and took hold of the back of the sofa and stuck my bottom out again.

Oh God, this is the riding crop – the first one must have been the cane. Another swish, another line of molten fire, fiercer and more concentrated then before. 

Maybe this is the cane after all? Or does it feel different because of what had gone before? This time I did not cry out until I had tasted all four strokes and given myself enough time to make a decision. 

"I think I was wrong before. That was the cane – the first one was the riding crop", I said triumphantly. 

"Wrong". Philip sang out. "That was the riding crop – the first one was the cane."

"Philip", I said laughing, "If I thought you were lying to me just to maltreat my poor bum some more..."

He was laughing too. "Would I do that?" he asked. Truthfully I didn't know, but knowing what a tease he was, I had my suspicions. 

He took off the blindfold and I waited whilst he got into position for two more of the cane and two more of the riding crop. This time I watched him swing and saw that, like a good tennis-player he hit through the bum, rather that onto it, to get maximum value for energy output. Nice to see a skilled man at work.

He was right of course. The crop bit deeper, burned more fiercely and the burn lasted longer. I got up, rubbed my bottom and we looked at each other and both burst out laughing. 

Then I was in his arms and we kissed, deeper, more fiercely and longer than ever before. My naked body rubbed against the roughness of his clothed one and I was totally content.

"Come across my knees and I'll put some arnica cream on your stripes." He offered. 

"Yes, in a minute. But please can I see my bottom first? I want to look at my marks".

Philip obligingly took me into his bedroom. He stood me with my back to the full-length wardrobe mirror, and, just like the hairdresser showing you the back of your hair for approval, he moved around me with a large hand mirror and showed me the long, raised, granular pink weals and the purpling beginnings of bruises on my pink and white bum. 

They looked lovely. Philip and I both admired his handiwork. As I hugged him and thanked him, I felt myself weeping a little from pure joy. 

A few minutes later I lay over his trousered legs, and gave up my bottom to his attention. He smoothed the cream over and massaged it in, letting his fingers linger in my moist cleft for a moment then back to one buttock and the other. Then I felt his lubricated thumb rubbing round and round my bumhole, and then gently probing for admission. 

"Oh ho me hearties! Sits the wind in that quarter?" I asked in my best Long John Silver (Charles Laughton) voice.

"I know a girl who's going to be bumfucked before she's much older. Why not today? The better the day the better the deed".

"All right, but first may I suck you off again. I've only done it once, and you must admit I need the practise.

"Laura, you're a born cocksucker; but how could I stand between an artist and her work?"

Over then next two hours Philip pleasured me in each of the three apertures a man can employ for carnal purposes. 

My second poke was an order of magnitude better than the first, and so, I was smugly convinced, were my sucking skills. This time, when he was about to come I pursed my lips tight under the crest of his bell-end, and sucked thirstily; managing to keep most of the sour-salty spunk in my mouth until he had finished coming.

"Is it alright to swallow it?" I asked him with spurious, wide-eyed innocence. In answer, he took me in his arms and kissed me long and deeply, his tongue probing deep in my mouth. What a wonderfully dirty thing to do.

He lay me gently on my back on the table and spread my thighs. He lowered his head and his whole mouth covered my quim. His tongue dived deep and I could feel myself getting wetter and wetter. 

After a minute or so, his tongue-tip found my clitoris and wave after wave of pleasure shot through me like tiny electric shocks. Oddly, I felt languorously tired and disoriented, and found myself calling out:

"No, stop Philip. Please stop".

He stopped immediately and straightened his back, looking me straight in the eyes. 

"What's the matter Laura – afraid to come?" 

"No, darling, of course not. I just want you inside me."

No sooner said than done. Holding my thighs in his two hands, he adjusted my position on the table, and, with one long thrust he was deep in me. My slippery folds embraced him. Like Odysseus's dogs, they recognised their master and welcomed him. 

To describe it further would be tedious. Love isn't about engorgement and release, mucous membranes and rings of muscle. It is about lovingly sharing moments of pleasure with someone you feel privileged to be with. 

Of course I wasn't afraid of orgasm – it had become one of my life's purposes, and I felt wave after wave of ecstatic pleasure convulse me before Philip withdrew and began to prepare me for my next new experience. 

When Philip buggered me, I pushed when told to push, relaxed when told to relax, and breathed long and deep as instructed. I placed myself in his hands, and he was gentle and controlled, but relentless, with the bedside manner of the best family doctor. I passed through a little; not too much; pain as I was stretched wider than I had ever been stretched before. 

My main feeling was simple triumph. This was so perverse – so bad and so good. I knew, and glowed inside with the thought, that Philip could be arrested and imprisoned for what he was doing to me, but of course they would never know. 

Before he was finished with me the pleasure in my head was superseded by a simple physical pleasure that brought me close to climax. 

I lay face-down on the bed, smugly replete and a little bit muscle-weary as he went to the bathroom to wash himself, and returned with a hot soapy flannel to wash me. 

He pulled out the towel that he had thoughtfully placed under me before we began, and dried me carefully. I giggled a bit and asked if he was going to dust my bottom with baby powder. 

Philip is not a man who reads much for pleasure, although he has a phenomenal memory and he thinks long and deeply about what he does read. He acknowledges, a bit grudgingly, that situations that cannot be expressed in numbers must somehow be expressed in words, but words are, for him, a poor second best. 

As I lay there in post-coital relaxation, I told him about one of the footnotes in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that went around the sixth form, about the Roman (or was it Byzantine?) Empress who regretted that she had only three altars on which to sacrifice to Venus. He thought about it for a bit and then fell about laughing, and I laughed myself silly to see him laugh.

Then he told me that we were going to have an early evening meal with Denise, so that he could drive me home for ten o'clock. I know I had said that I wanted to meet Denise, but I suddenly thought, 'I know how important Denise is to him. Supposing she doesn't like me; could she persuade Philip not to go out with me any more?'

Before I could stop myself I had voiced the thought.

"But Philip, suppose she doesn't like me?"

"Of course she'll like you, and I want you to like her. But if she doesn't it's not a tragedy – the two of you need never meet again. Denise doesn't choose my girlfriends; I do." 

to follow: chapter eight. Joan.

Laura meets Denise in chapter eleven.



The Sacred Band Ch. 08



Joan's story – narrated by Dr. Jessamine Buller.

Editor's note: By the time this story was put together by the various participants, Joan Agass had retired to South Africa after the death of her beloved mother. It was impractical to go to East London, and she did not feel up to the effort of writing her story herself, so she suggested that we should ask her close friend and confidant to tell it. This is Joan's story as told by Dr. Buller to Ivy Matthews.

I first met Joan Agass when I joined the medical practise in Highcross street in 1947 after I was demobbed from the RAMC. She was in excellent health herself, but she was having to devote more and more time to the care of her chronically sick mother. I cannot go into the details of Mrs Agass' condition here, but, merely say that she was slowly losing all independent movement and depended on Joan for more and more. Mrs. Agass bore her conditions bravely and cheerfully most of the time, and it was clear where Joan got her courage and resilience from.

Around ten years later, in the winter of 1956-7 Mrs Agass was clearly dying, and a friendship had grown up between Joan any myself. I am a chronic insomniac myself, and we sat up together for stretches of many nights. In those long night hours, we sat in the kitchen and, piece by piece she told me this story. She is now living with her sister in South Africa; and cannot tell her story herself. She wrote to me recently, asking me to retell the story she told me over those long nights. She has given me her permission to tell the story on my own words; in fact she asked me to do it for her and I am glad to do so.

Joan had worked at the Leicester stockbroking firm of Prettyman and Bassett since she left school in 1934. For the greater part of that time she was private secretary to one of the partners, Joseph Everard. She insists that the relationship between the two was strictly formal. Although, as she says, "He never even patted me on the bottom in nineteen years", she was clearly a little infatuated by him. So it came as a devastating shock when, in February 1953, she was abruptly sacked, and told to clear her desk and leave at the end of the week. 

Joan was so shocked and humiliated by her dismissal that for a time she became a virtual recluse. The depression ran its course, and, one day she came to me, thin to the point of emaciation and haggard, asking for a sedative. Around this time she took the drastic step of writing letters to Everard's biggest clients that detailed his financial irregularities and led to his dismissal and prosecution. 

This breach of confidentiality got her blacklisted in the tight financial circles of Leicester, and she had to subsist for several years by typing envelope at home for a pittance. Her mother was needing more time and attention by this time, so she was fully occupied, although her emotional state was fragile. 

Her working routine was inexorable, on Monday afternoon a van would call at her house to deliver the week's work, and collect the finished product.

Abruptly, after two years, the van stopped calling. She walked down the road to the phone booth outside the Chemist's, shop and heard the phone ring and ring. It went unanswered; her employers had totally disappeared, leaving her with four hundred envelopes, perfectly typed, awaiting collection, and an almost new Imperial office typewriter for which she had been paying her employers on the instalment plan. 

She had recovered her mental equilibrium sufficiently by this time to look around for a job, and she called on her old secretarial network for help. Joan had a lot of friends who felt very strongly that she had had a raw deal. One of them had heard that a young financial analyst, Philip Cheshire, who had worked at Prettyman for a couple of years, and whom she vaguely remembered, was in search of a really good private secretary. 

Philip Cheshire was delighted to hear from her, and eager to offer her a job. To him she was a gem; she was not only an excellent short-hand typist, but her knowledge of the financial life of Leicester was encyclopaedic. Although it was a bit rusty, it could quickly be revived.

Dr. Buller paused at this point and said, "I want to make it clear that I asked Miss Agass specifically about the next section, since I feared that some of the revelations might embarrass her. She told me firmly and specifically that I should include everything, and leave out nothing, and that I should leave the decisions about censorship to others. She wanted her full and complete testimony to be given and I am carrying out her wishes. The words I use are not hers, but medical ones, as they come naturally to me"

When I first met Joan, she was in her late thirties. She was a well-turned-out professional woman, well-dressed with a rather severe but elegant hairstyle. She would be the first to admit that she had never been a pretty girl, but with meticulous grooming, skilfully applied makeup and good fashion sense, she achieved a handsome, poised style befitting a senior private secretary in an important local business. By the time she started work for Philip Cheshire she had been at home as a household drudge for a couple of years, and she had, as she admitted to me, let herself go. 

When she started work she made an effort to pull herself together, but at forty-two she felt that she was losing the battle against sagging muscles, wrinkled skin and hair losing its colour and lustre. On the positive side, within a month of starting work again she knew she was greatly valued for the contributions she was making and the knowledge she was bringing into the business, and more important still, she felt that Philip liked her and enjoyed her rather acerbic wit. 

So when Christmas Eve came around with its exchange of gifts, she felt that a little extravagance was more than justified. She bought Philip a silk tie from Gieves, and, coincidentally, he bought her a bright jacquard silk scarf by Dior. 

He also produced a bottle of fine solera Malmsey, laid down whilst Napoleon was on St. Helena. He made her drink two large glasses with him. Joan was chary about alcohol, but the malmsey tasted sweet and unthreatening, totally belying the punch it packed.

Not used to the drink, she got a little maudlin and started telling Philip a rambling story about her past, lamenting that she had never had any love in her life and that now it was too late. She began to cry quietly to herself. Philip didn't attempt to reassure her with a string of platitudes. Instead he took her totally by surprise by asking,

"Joan, have you ever sucked a man's penis? It seems like a good place to start."

"I've never even seen a man's penis," Joan replied, "let alone sucked one."

"Right", he said cheerily, "Come over here and kneel down on a cushion. Don't worry, I'll tell you what to do."

She went over and dropped down onto her knees in a state of bewildered excitement. Philip dropped his trousers and underpants, revealing his thickening penis and a large pair of testicles in their loose, hairy sack. Philip retracted his long foreskin, revealing the wrinkled, pink, slightly glistening glans, which was purpling and fattening before her eyes. 

"Just lick the head a little, and then see if you want to go on."

Somehow, Philip had not left her the option of refusing, in any case, by now Joan would not have let a team of horses drag her away. All she was concerned about was to do exactly as he told her and to try to give him all the pleasure she could.

Step by step, Philip talked her through the process that she had heard once or twice referred to as "gam" or "plating" by her colleagues in the long-ago typing pool. At that time it had sounded nauseating and repugnant. Now she just wanted to gain Philip's approval. This was the most intimate encounter with a man she had ever experienced, and she wanted to make it last and bring it to a successful conclusion.

Under his guidance she began to suck rhythmically, taking more and more of the shaft into her mouth whilst avoiding gagging. From time to time, on his instructions, she paused to lick up the shaft and around the prominent flared head, before returning to suck just a little quicker. At length he said,

"Joan, I'm going to shoot. Try to keep sucking until I've finished, but don't worry if you can't." He pulled a clean white handkerchief out of his pocket, shook it out and held it under her chin as ropes of sticky semen filled her mouth and tricked down her chin. Joan valiantly tried to go on sucking, but it was beyond her as she felt that she was choking in the spasms of semen. 

"Well done my girl. That wasn't so bad, was it? Now go and make yourself comfortable and we'll go on to the next lesson."

Joan, the sour-salt taste of semen in her mouth, went down the corridor to the lavatory and cleaned herself up, taking the time to straighten her blouse and comb her hair. She told me that the one thought in her mind as she looked in the mirror, was that she wished that she were prettier for him. 

She returned to the office, and found him sitting in the large chair by the table. 

"Come along Joan, take off your knickers, bloomers or whatever you call them and lie down here in front of me. It's your turn to provide the entertainment."

"No, no, I couldn't possibly..." she cried aghast.

"Joan. Listen to me. You have two options. Either you leave this room and go home, and we will never mention this again; or you will do as I tell you. First of all I am going to spank you for disobedience, then I am going to lick you out until you are breathless, then I am going to shag you senseless. Well, which is it going to be?" 

Joan capitulated. She walked over to where he was sitting. He pulled back the chair from the table, sat back and patted his knees amiably. 

Joan lowered herself over his knees and he lowered her voluminous, unflattering undergarments, pulling up the bottom edge of her long corset, he began to smack her bottom briskly. 

Joan was beyond resisting by this time. She told me years later that, although she did not enjoy the spanking, she wished with all her heart that it would go on and on, to spare her the humiliation and embarrassment to come.

Decades earlier, she told me, she had come across a reproduction of a painting by Courbet with some fanciful title like "The Origin of the world." It was nothing more or less than a beautifully painted close-up of a woman's spread thighs and pubic area with abundant dark hair. 

Later she had been inspired to take a hand-mirror and inspect her own genital area and was overwhelmed with disgust at what she saw as its ugliness. 

At that moment she had felt a profound relief that she would never have to expose her balding pubic mound and drooping, wrinkled purple-brown labia before a man, and now here was the occasion she had dreaded for so long.

"Your face is as red as your bottom Joan," Philip laughed. "I must say that you have a lovely, smackable bottom. I can't wait to get closer acquainted with it."

Philip's nicely calculated remark lightened the atmosphere just enough. Joan placed herself on the table as he directed and spread her thighs, cringing inwardly as she did so. 

Philip leaned forward and buried his face in her vulva. He pressed his lips to her opening, and began to lick hard, parting the outer labia with his fingers. Joan, in the depths of her shame, felt the wetness and tickling with more or less indifference at first. 

Then came an electric jolt of pleasure as his tongue found a sensitive spot just above her opening. She felt it again and again, bouncing with her hips as pleasurable feelings took a hold upon her. His tongue was still lapping away at that pleasure spot (she had no idea what name to give it until I told her years later), and she felt his fingers probing deeper and deeper into places her own fingers had not ventured since she was a girl.

The little shocks continued and intensified. Joan recognised her feeling as physical pleasure, a feeling she had almost forgotten about. Tongue and fingers continued to do their work with increasing intensity, until, as she was reaching fever pitch, Philip stopped.

Joan began to relax, but Philip was pausing merely to drop his trousers.

"Now, Joan, I'm going to fuck you. This may hurt a little a first; so, if you ask me to stop now I can do so. But you have to ask now, because in a minute or so it will not be at all easy for me; so make up your mind."

Joan said nothing but, legs akimbo, she lay and panted and waited. Philip took his mostly erect cock in his hand and ran his hand up and down the shaft a few times, spreading his natural lubricant over the head. 

Then he placed it between the inner lips at Joan's opening, well wetted by his saliva, and pressed it firmly up against the barrier. A steady push of his hips in towards her body, and his cock drove all the way home. He began to withdraw, and Joan cried out sharply in a panic,

"No, don't stop now. Do it please, or I'll never forgive you." 

One consideration Philip knew he could dismiss out of hand was any risk of pregnancy. There was nothing to stop him from completing the act without protection. 

Joan was a post-menopausal virgin, and he wondered whether she would remain dry and lacking in her own natural lubrication, but he need not have worried. His oral stimulation and her own powerful emotions were enough to make her wet and slick as any teenager. 

He drove in again and drew out, slowly and cautiously at first, but soon, realising that there was no need to be too gentle, he began to drive home his cock so strongly that he had to grasp her around the waist and hold her hips to his. 

Keeping it simple, as befits a first time, he continued in the missionary position, feeling no need at all to try anything more adventurous. He looked at Joan's red face and neck and heard her heavy, stertorous breathing. 

She was working as hard as he, and seemed intent upon bringing herself to orgasm. She reached it a scant few second later, and her spasms sent him off into his own little death. 

They dressed, or rather tidied up their clothing and Philip poured them both another drink. 

"Now you have the first idea of what it's all about. I shall be happy to go on teaching you what I know. What you have to be is honest about what you want – as I shall be. If you don't want to try anything – just say so – I shan't mind. All I want to do is help you make up for lost time."

Joan was at a loss for words. They went down into New Walk and walked the two or three hundred yards to Philip's parked car in silence. She was frantically trying to digest what had happened. 

Philip drove her home in his beautifully kept Riley, with his left hand on her thigh, above the top of her stocking the whole way, and in the bubbling mixture of emotions, Joan felt a glimmer of pride to be driving down her street in such a beautiful car. 

At her door, Philip got out and walked around the car to open the door for her, a courtesy she had never enjoyed in her life. He kissed her cheek, and said,

"I think we should do it all over again soon. What do you think?" 

Without waiting for an answer he suggested,

How about Boxing Day morning at around eleven? I'll pick you up here."

He took her silence for consent. As he was about to drive away he stopped, struck by a thought. 

"Joan", he said, "Do you mind if I tell Laura about this afternoon? I won't say anything if you insist, but I have promised to be open and honest with her in all things, and I shouldn't like to go on deceiving her."

Joan's level of astonishment rose to new heights. Nothing that she could have thought of would have surprised her more. Seeing him pause and consider had made her heart sink and she had thought that he was seeking for a kind way of telling her that it could not happen again. 

But, telling his lovely young fiancée that he had had sex with his unglamorous middle-aged secretary on the office table? She simply did not know what to say.

I understand that you have arranged to interview Laura Fisher, so I shall leave the denouement of that story in her capable hands.

Interviewer: Did the sexual relationship between Miss Agass and Philip Cheshire continue?

Oh yes, Right up to the time she finally had to leave off work to look after her mother full-time. After that, until she moved to South Africa it was a question of visits from Philip on her birthday and Christmas, which always led to some sexual activity, and a very occasional fleeting visit to Philip at the office in New Walk.

Interviewer: Have you anything you wish to add before I switch off the tape-recorder? 

Just one story that may tell you something about her feelings. 

A busy G.P. is not insulated from the world. We hear stories of sexual deviations far more extreme than anal penetration and soon mere sexuality loses all power to shock us. So when Joan started to tell this story she looked at me closely to see if I was dismayed, but soon realised that I took it as a matter of course. 

Shortly before Joan's mother died, we were sitting in the kitchen drinking strong tea and Joan began to reminisce. Her story sent us both into such a gale of laughter that we laughed until we cried. And it was a tribute to Joan's dying mother that she heard the laughter and commented on it a few minutes later, smiling at her daughter with such love that it seemed a blessing on them both.

Her story went something like this....

"Of course when we were in the office on a working day, there was often no time for anything elaborate or time-consuming. It was more a question of a quick gobbler between clients or phone-calls, or a quick one over the desk. 

After a few weeks I could get worked up so quickly that a few minutes of vigorous sex would tip me over into an orgasm, sometimes leaving Philip lagging along behind.

Although they called the RAF the Brylcreem boys because of their pomaded hair, Philip himself didn't actually like Brylcreem. He kept a tin of Cussons Imperial Leather solid brilliantine in the drawer of his office to smarten himself up. 

But it has another purpose. There I would be over the desk, presenting him my bare bottom for a few slaps, followed by a brisk fuck, and I would hear the tin of brilliantine being popped open, and smell the familiar masculine perfume. I would know what was coming and hold myself open to him. 

He would continue fucking me heel and toe, and a well-greased thumb would slowly slither into my bottom. Philip was a gentle and considerate lover, and he would wait until he was sure I was ready and then a pause whilst he lubricated his cock, and I would feel it slowly opening up a passage for itself. 

He would gently but firmly push right in as far as he could go, and then stop and wait for me to catch up. Then he would bugger me to his heart's content and mine too. After that, it was as often a not a matter of a quick dash to the loo.

Did it hurt? I asked. And her I think I am quoting her exactly:

"Sometimes it hurt like buggery as they say, sometime the pain wore off and I would feel something approaching pleasure, occasionally, but not often I would even achieve orgasm. 

But, you see Jess, pleasure and pain were not the point – they were almost the same thing to me. What I got was a tremendous feeling of joy. I felt just like a long abandoned house that had been opened up and was being lived it again. Yes, that's exactly it, I felt inhabited. My life had a meaning again.

But do you know the funniest thing of all? Our family name used to be Akass, but my father found it a bit embarrassing and changed it to Agass. Oh! If only he had known!" 

Annotations by Laura Cheshire.

Almost from the moment I took over the office from Denise, I had been on at Philip for a while to get a real secretary. So I was delighted when he was able to get someone as good as Joan. I met her after the interview and liked her immediately. I knew well enough that Philip was often attracted to older women, so that evening I asked him,




The Sacred Band Ch. 08



"Do you suppose you'll fuck her?" knowing that the crude term would amuse him. 

"I shouldn't think so. She's an attractive woman, but she's a spinster of a certain age, and a bit set in her ways."

"Well, if you do, perhaps you could bring her round here now and again. We could play Harem. She could be the favoured concubine and I could be the naughty slave-girl." 

"Darling, who would think to look at you that you had such a lovely dirty mind. We'll take things as they come, but I won't turn down an opportunity if it comes my way".

"You wouldn't be my Philip if you did", I said, full of pride and affection. After that matters took their course over the kitchen table until the potatoes boiled dry and the room began to fill with smoke.

Then came the 23rd. of December (or it may have been the 24th. I'm not sure). I was expecting Philip to come home early And I had bathed and dressed up a bit for him. He got home later than I expected, and I could see he had news.

"Guess what! I gave Joan an unexpected Christmas present. A good hearty fucking over the office table."

I dragged him over to the settee, and was busy undoing his trousers whilst demanding to be told all about it. As soon as his cock was in my mouth and I was licking up the unfamiliar and exciting flavours of Joan that clung to the root of his cock and his pubic hair; he started to tell the story.

By the time he had finished I was crying out for the same treatment as he had given Joan – and I got it.

I agreed that he had better take her to the empty office on Boxing Day.

But, I said, immediately after Christmas I shall come into the office and have a talk to her. I'm glad you asked her about telling me, that was sweet of you, and it will get her thinking. 

On the 28th, which was a Wednesday, I went into the office at around mid-day. I knew that Philip had an appointment an hour later with the NUHKU pension fund trustees, and he was making a presentation to get them to buy his services as analyst, at least for a portion of their liquid funds. He had strong family connections and was guaranteed a friendly hearing.

Philip knew just what to do. I arrived with half a dozen Eccles cakes in a little box, and the intention to have a heart-to-heart with Joan. She turned pale as I came in, but I smiled my warmest smile and went over and kissed her cheek.

"Is he in" I asked.

She looked petrified, but managed to gasp out,

"Yes, I'll just tell him you're here".

"Don't bother, I'll tell him myself", and I walked into his office. .

Within seconds I was over the desk, knickers down, and he was giving me exactly the sort of loud, ostentatious caning I had asked for. I am not a noisy spankee; I don't yell or squeal much at all, because I find that it squanders the tension. Philip can rarely get a yell out of me, and only once did he make me cry over a spanking. This time, though, I gave full voice, and Joan would have to be deaf not to know what was going on. 

When he rang for Joan, she came into the office there was a tableau awaiting her. She found me on my knees, knickers around my ankles, and skirt tucked up to show her a well-marked bottom that would be black and blue by tomorrow. I was sucking his cock as if my life depended on it. 

Joan came in stopped by the door, and would have turned and ran out again if Philip had not stopped her, and asked for two cups of tea. Joan left in a flurry to go to the little kitchenette at the end of the corridor. By the time she came back with the tea, Philip had left for his meeting, and I was sitting, probably with an insufferably smug smile on my face in one of the visitors' armchairs. 

I apologised if I had shocked her, but explained that it seemed a good way of making the point. I told her that I had been coming into the office for lunchtime sessions with Philip all the time I was a student at the Uni. and that I was not the only one who did so. 

"Joan, I love my fiancé very much, he is everything to me, but I have never wanted to be the only woman in his life. I am delighted that you are making love with him; in fact I suggested it to him on the day he interviewed you. 

I wish you all the joy in the world of it, and all I want you to know is that it is not a secret and certainly not something to be ashamed of, or embarrassed by. I hope that when you get a bit more familiar with it all, Philip will bring you round to our house for games, but if you don't want to, that's fine too."

She was relaxing a little, so I gave her some tips on how to please Philip. I told her that he would certainly want to visit her by the back door, and how to keep it clean, to relax and make it as pleasurable for herself as possible. I could see that the idea frightened her quite a lot, but it was pretty clear to me that she would acquiesce to that, or any other of his demands.

About a month later, Joan did visit our house for a games evening, and, after dinner we did play Harem, one of the games that Denise and I had devised. 

Tonight, Joan was the favoured concubine, and Philip gave her a long and varied shag on the bed, whilst I, the little slave girl, served them at table, naked but for a pinafore, kneeling by the Pasha's throne to be fed tit-bits. Whilst they were shagging I knelt on my rug on the floor and watched in not wholly simulated admiration. 

Finally the Pasha pulled his drooping cock out of her and rolled onto his back.

"Slave-girl", he said, "Lick your master clean".

"No!" I flounced, "why should I, she's no prettier than I am, and not as good in bed. Let her lick you clean." 

Of course that earned me a whipping with the stiff two-tailed tawse we kept in the bedroom. I howled and howled until Joan started to feel quite alarmed, I turned my head and gave her a wink, and she subsided. 

Finally I begged for mercy and begged to lick him clean if my kind Master would allow me the honour.

It was one of Philip's magnanimous evenings. If he was feeling mean he would reject the slave-girl's pleas for forgiveness, and she would be made to grovel and lick his toes whilst the favoured Concubine sucked him off. 

On this occasion the slave-girl was given the privilege of sucking her Master off. After that, the Pasha and the favoured concubine would normally have settled down to sleep, whilst the slave-girl slept on the mat, but Philip had to get up soon afterwards to drive Joan home to put her mother to bed, so the slave girl got into bed and awaited her master's pleasure there. 

Joan came other times and we played that and other games, but it was clear that her heart wasn't in it and she was doing it mostly to please us. What she really wanted was to have Philip to herself in the office. So, although Denise or I, or one of Philip's more temporary flames might pop in for a quickie over the desk when we were in town; we let Joan have it her own way.

to follow: chapter nine: Donald and Bruno; Ginny and Ivy.



The Sacred Band Ch. 09



I had not realised how much I was victim of my childish arrogance until I met Denise. I had been used to being one of the two or three prettiest girls in school, and, being good at games, a bit of a leader. 

In fact, I must confess that when Mary Holland was made Head Girl instead of me, I was filled with jealousy. I kept it well hidden up to the time when we had an inter-house hockey match and I shoulder-charged her so hard that she broke her collar-bone.

I can't say I had any pity for her. What hockey teaches you is that you must rise above the fear of getting hurt if you are to have any chance of playing well. 

It was her own fault that she got hurt. If she had not veered off her line as I bore down on her, she would have been a bit shaken, but that is all. 

At my first sight of Denise, smiling and welcoming in her elegant dress and immaculate hairdo, my immediate thought was, 

"...but she's old..."

How guilty I have felt since for that thought, and that flash of totally unwarranted superiority.

Denise was all warmth and friendliness. If she saw my flash of triumph she showed no sign of it, but Denise wasn't a woman who missed much. 

She led us into the large, beautifully furnished lounge, not the dining room, and on the mahogany side-table she had set out what she called a buffet; which must have taken her all day to make. My guilty feelings were only added to by her generosity.

We all helped ourselves to platefuls of lovely food, and Philip got us drinks (lemonade for me with a slice of lemon and a tinkle of ice). 

She watched as I sat down rather carefully at one end of the settee, and I saw a little smile quirk the corners of her mouth. She could make a good guess at why my bottom was stiff and sore. 

Well my dears, what have you been up to today?" she asked brightly, looking at me.

It was a test, I knew. I looked at Philip and he nodded.

"Well", I replied, "first of all we tried out some of the toys I've bought from Ada Abbott."

"Oh you know Ada do you? She's a sweetie isn't she?"

"Yes, she's really nice. She's one of the few people happy to accept me as I am and make me feel good about myself".

"Well, my dear; now you have Philip and me. Anyway, go on with this afternoon".

I knew now that Denise was one person who would not judge me, whatever I said.

"Well, Philip blindfolded and handcuffed me, and then we tried out my tawse, one of the canes – was it the dragon cane Philip?"

"No ducks, it was just the ordinary bamboo. If you thought the riding crop bit harder than the cane you have a surprise or two in store." 

"Anyway we played this game. I was blindfolded and handcuffed and Philip would use one of the toys and I would have to guess which one it was. I only got one out of three right, so there were penalties". 

"So, you like games do you? Good, so do I. When Walter was alive he could beat me black and blue in a game and I never minded a bit. But the few times he punished me for being rude to people, or making him late for an outing; I just cried and cried and begged him to forgive me".

She really did understand. I relaxed completely, knowing that I could tell her anything.

"So, Laura, after the game, what did you do then?

"Well, first of all I sucked him off. It was only my second time ever, but he says I am a born cocksucker". I turned and smiled proudly at Philip. "Then he laid me down on the settee and licked my..." I hesitated for a word. 

"Say cunt dear. Let's call things by their right names". 

I blushed. I was still a little shocked at using the one word that even men hesitated to use in front of women. I knew it would take some getting used to.

He licked my cunt, then; until I was practically screaming. Then he fucked me."

As I said fucked I looked at her significantly, and she nodded approvingly. It felt a bit like getting an answer right in infant school after jumping up and down in your seat with your hand up, shouting Miss! Miss! Miss! 

"It was only my second time for that too, but I couldn't believe how much better it was. Philip didn't come, but he made me come like crazy. Then he made me lift my legs up all the way, until my feet were around my neck, then he had me up the bum."

"Which did you like best?" 
"I loved all of it, the spanking, the sucking, the fucking; the lot."

"All right, but if you had to choose, which did you like least?"

"It's difficult. But if I have to choose, I suppose it was having my cunt licked. I know it was wonderful, it's pure pleasure, and I know Philip likes doing it a lot, but; how can I put it? I would rather be giving him pleasure, or at least sharing it equally, than to be the one who is being pleasured. Does that make sense to you"?

 "Yes, it makes sense to me. But you know what a thrill it is to bring someone off in your mouth – when you've been working hard to give him every ounce of pleasure you can? Well, men like that satisfaction too, and we can't grudge it to them, now can we?" 

We refilled our plates and Philip poured Denise and himself more drinks. Denise chattily asked me what my immediate plans were. I explained that I was still technically at school until the term ended in a week's time.

Then I had a counter job at Woolworths until we went on holidays at the end of August. After that my time was my own until the back end of September I should be starting at Leicester Uni. 

"Good, so you can come over one afternoon next week and we can have a nice cosy chat – you know girl talk about Philip."

She gave me such a nice smile that I could see with absolute clarity why Philip loved her. She could be excused some bitchiness as far as I was concerned, but, on the contrary, she couldn't have been sweeter, and it was a genuine deep-down sweetness, not the sacchariny sort that some of my mum's friends used to disguise their barbed remarks.

She asked me what we were doing about contraception, and I floundered a bit. Philip answered that he had not used a durex the first time with me, but pulled out instead. This time he had not, because he hadn't intended to go all the way. 

Denise was shocked, and spoke to him sternly.

"Philip my dear, I never thought you could be so irresponsible. Laura is standing on the threshold of life – and the whole world is opening up to her. If she were to get pregnant it would be horrid for her, and potentially devastating. You simply can't risk an accident"

She turned to me:

"Laura, next week when you come over I'll take you to see my doctor. She's private, and she will respect your confidentiality; there's no way it will get back to your parents. 

We'll get you fitted with a cap. I know that Ada could do it, but just this once I'd like a doctor to fit it and teach you to use it. Don't worry about the cost – it's a present from me".  

After that we chatted amiably about the Wimbledon men's singles, taken by the young American Tony Trabert; the prospects for a fine summer; the state of the world and so on. Then, for the first time  I saw another side of Philip. I asked, rather earnestly, what they thought about the nuclear arms race, now that the papers were all saying that the Russians had tested a true hydrogen bomb. 

Philip said, quite seriously, "Are you asking me as a financial analyst, or as a private person? Because, as a financial analyst I should say that Denise would do well to buy stock in firms like AEC, who are certain to do well, but the firm I've got in my eye is Ferranti.  I plan to advise all my clients to buy Ferranti; I think they are well placed to get a lot more major defence contracts.

That's another point, Denise. You should get some money into the new motorway developments. It won't stop at the M 1 you know; soon there'll be roads to Leeds and Manchester, Bristol and the Southwest; in fact all over. It'll be like the Autobahns in Germany, there'll be no stopping them. 

You should start by looking at Tarmac and Taylor Woodrow; maybe Marples Ridgway, and I've got more suggestions for later..."

"Philip, you didn't bring Laura here to talk business all evening. What will she be thinking of you?"

Philip looked embarrassed. I was gobsmacked. So this was Philip the financial analyst – so focussed it was almost frightening.

"Yes, Philip", I said, unable to stop myself. "But what about you as a citizen?"

"Well, J.B. Priestley and Bertrand Russell say that nuclear knowledge is unstoppable, but that Britain should be no part of it, and I rather agree with them. We probably can't stop the USA and Russia having nuclear arsenals, but if Britain and France could be persuaded to give up the bomb, the world would be a bit safer."

"If we do give it up, might that protect us from nuclear attack?"

"No. I don't think so. Not really. That's just wishful thinking."

Nothing further was said, but that was the start of something. Two Easters later, Philip and I were among the people marching from London to Aldermaston in the first Ban-the-Bomb march.  

***

Denise had the last word, and it when it came it was quite unexpected.

"Philip, you've been saying for ages that we need an assistant to keep those files of yours in order. Why don't we give Laura my job for the summer? It's got to be better than working behind the counter at Woolies". In any case, it is high time you got yourself a  really capable private secretary, and this would give you the Summer to find one.

And that's what happened; and, indirectly, that's how Joan came into our lives.

Later, when Philip drove me home in Matilda, I timidly asked him.

"Are you going back to spend the night with Denise?"

"Yes, my duck. That's what we planned". How I loved hearing him call me his duck, or his dear. Little endearments came so easily from him. 

"Next weekend, you will tell me all about it, won't you?"

"Yes, love, I promise".


***

As Denise suggested, all that Summer I worked for Philip and stayed weeknights at Aunt Hilda's. Denise taught me the switchboard, and how to act as a receptionist, but mostly I was archiving. 

The work was routine, but keeping up that massive archive of press-cuttings, magazine articles, company reports and a mass of private letters, all annotated and underlined, impressed upon me as nothing else would, the huge amount of detailed knowledge needed to do Philip's job. 

I was delighted to help him, especially as being in the office all day gave us lots of opportunities for spankings and sex.

By the autumn, Philip and I were deeply attached. I knew I loved him wholeheartedly, and I suspected he was coming to love me. Shelagh dropped by the wayside. A nursing officer's job came up at Queen's Medical Centre and she moved away. His on-off affair with Magda continued, but seemed to get more half-hearted than ever. 

He dipped in and out of two relationships with women that summer, and several times I had the uneasy pleasure of listening at the keyhole whilst he fucked one or the other of them, as I played the little slave-girl. All the time I was aware that after he and Shelagh broke up,, I was the only one he took back to his mother's house, so I felt a bit special in that respect. 

At that time I learned something about Philip's personal morality. He picked up a very attractive woman at the University library, where he had  a reader's ticket. He made a tentative date with her for the following evening to go dancing, and then came back to the office to talk to me about it. 

In effect he was asking my consent, and I could see that if I had acted hurt or angry he would have been quite willing to drop the whole idea. Of course I encouraged him to go ahead, and he went out with her sporadically for a couple of weeks, several times bringing her back to the office for a fucking over the desk; but it wasn't serious on either side. 

I tried to tell him, halfheartedly, that whilst I should prefer to be told what was going on, he certainly did not need to ask me; but Philip had his own rules.

We went to Denise's for games every week or two, and played my invention, Harem, or her favourite, Gestapo, to our great enjoyment. Denise encouraged me to take more and more of a central place in Philip's life. On one occasion, she was totally frank with me.

"You know I love Philip, and the sex with him is terrific, but he will never take the place of Walter for me. I met Walter when I was sixteen, with hardly a thought in my head except horses and dancing. My parents had pots of money, and sent me, to Roedean, but I was never academic like you and I was just waiting for my chance to leave. 

Mother wanted to send me to finishing school in Switzerland, and suppose I might have gone if I hadn't met Walter. He was almost twenty years older that me, and divorced. We met at a Hunt Ball, and before the evening was over he had told me that next time we met, he would give me a whipping. 

I was shocked and frightened, but I couldn't stay away. He phoned me at home four days later, crafty bugger, leaving it until I had almost given up hope of a phone call. 

I am not like you. I never dreamed and fantasised about spanking and submission, and at first I hated it, but I loved him too much to resist. Then suddenly, one day he was caning me hard, and I realised that I was loving it. Not so much the pain, but the helplessness and surrender. I was totally his.

"The difference with Philip is quite simply that he doesn't frighten me. He plays the games, and he plays them well, with panache, but with Walter there was always a tinge of real fear there somewhere in the mixture. I know that Philip won't really push  me beyond my limits, but Walter always might, and I miss that thrill. 

You're different from me. You don't need it, and that is why Philip is perfect for you. He is your Pasha; Walter was my Master. I don't know if I'll ever find another master, but I have to keep looking and hoping. Philip knows this, and now you know it too."

Not long before Christmas, Philip proposed to me and I accepted. His mother was delighted, especially when we said that when we were married we would live in the upstairs flat. 

I suppose my parents were a bit less enthusiastic. They thought I was years too young and they had assumed I would marry someone with a profession, not someone who was in the process of inventing one. All the same, they must have seen how happy I was, and realised that they had to let me have my way.

Following:   

chapter 10. Bitterest pills.                                     

chapter 11.  Laura Philip and Judy



The Sacred Band Ch. 10



The bitterest pills come sugarcoated. Philip was quite delighted when a Birmingham businessman named Stephen Rotkoff booked an appointment in early 1955. It seemed that he was being heard of outside the East Midlands triangle, and that the reports were good. 

Mr. Rotkoff was a large, powerful man in his thirties with a high colour, sparse sandy-coloured hair, a loud, braying laugh and a powerful, crushing handshake designed to hurt. 

Luckily for Philip, he had learned how to deal with this sort of bullying in Hong Kong, and, seeing the hard glint in his visitor's eye, he automatically pushed his hand so far forward that Rotkoff could not apply anything like his full grip. 

Philip could see a quick spasm of anger in visitor's  eyes, swiftly replaced by bonhomie.  The two men sat in the handsome, early Victorian office overlooking New Walk. The normal courtesies out of the way, they swiftly got down to business.

"I understand, Mr. Cheshire,  that you are not affiliated with any stockbroker, and don't buy or sell shares. How do you make your crust?"

Philip reached into a drawer of his desk, produced a contract and passed it to his visitor.

"It's very straightforward. I recommend purchases and sales of shares or bonds and you make the purchases through your usual broker. I shall give you a mandate to sign and pass on to him. He will then send me copies of any transactions made on your behalf, and I open a ledger page for you. 

Alternately, I can deal with a broker on your behalf, and in that case you would be copied in to all the transactions. The broker would send you a quarterly statement and you could collate it with mine.

Any transactions that do not arise out of my advice I disregard, but I keep a running account of all the sales and purchases you make, and identify those that came about directly as a result of my advice. At the end of the year, I calculate what capital gain you have made from following my advice, and I bill you 7% of that gain as my commission. 

You also receive my fortnightly newsletter, with current reviews and forecasts. Every time you implement a concrete recommendation from me, I make a one-off charge of £10 guineas." 

Rotkoff put the contract on the desk with scarcely a glance. His voice had the quality of a sneer.

"You are not going to get rich like that, but that's your affair." 

He opened his wallet, proffered a rather noncommittal business card, and explained that he and his partners owned Hanson, Calke and Partners, an estate agency with branches throughout Birmingham and the Black Country. Philip recognized the name from advertisements in Country Life and The Field. 

It all seemed above board, and together they drew up the guidelines and planned a portfolio with an initial value of £70,000; one of the largest the partnership had had handled up to that point.

Within a day or two, Philip produced a well-balanced portfolio made up mostly of lively companies spread through what he took to be the growing sectors of the economy. 

Rotkoff took the advice and fifteen months later, when the account was showing  a capital gain of 19%, he received a meticulously itemized bill for  £712, representing fees and charges plus the standard 7% on the capital growth. Rotkoff had every reason to be delighted, and Philip was gratified when the bill was paid promptly. 

***

Alarm bells began to sound one evening at Denise's house. Philip and Laura were having supper with Denise and her new gentleman friend, Andy Summerton, the retired former head of the Leicestershire CID.

The ladies had withdrawn to the dining room to lay out a cold supper, when Andy, refreshing their drinks, casually, asked Philip how business was going on.

Philip was happily telling him about gaining Stephen Rotkoff as a client when he noticed Andy's rather jowly face tighten ominously. 

"You're looking a bit iffy Andy. Is there something about him I should know?" 

"If it's the same Rotkoff, then there certainly is. He's no more an estate agent than I am. Old Man Rotkoff was the biggest brothel-owner in Brum and the Black country before the war, and Stephen was his muscle. 

The brothels were put out of business at the end of the war and now Stephen runs half the street girls in Brum, plus a particularly nasty protection and extortion racket. He's heavily into illegal bookmaking and probably has a slice of the drug traffic to boot.  

If it's the same bloke, you really should  watch out for him, Philip. Most criminals are a bit pathetic really, but the odd few; men like him; are something else. They're hard, clever and cruel. They thrive on putting the frighteners on people and watching them squirm."

Seriously alarmed, Philip asked.

"What do you think I should do, Andy? I don't want to have dealings with criminals if I can help it, but I have no evidence that there's anything wrong."

Andy reassured him quietly.

"It's probably nothing at all; I should just go on as normal if I were you. But it can't hurt for me to have a quiet word with an old oppo or two in Brum and see what I can find out."

 There the matter rested for some time. In the following months, Philip proposed a couple of additions to Rotkoff's portfolio, and suggested that he sell his holdings in one under-performing company and he had the satisfaction of being notified by his stockbroker that Rotkoff had implemented the proposals immediately. 

Time went on, the business had another pretty successful year, and again Rotkoff paid up promptly. Andy's warnings had slipped out of his mind, and when he got a message that Rotkoff wanted a meeting, the memory revived, leaving him feeling profoundly uneasy. 

It was at the very end of December, when Christmas was over and the New Year celebrations a couple of days away. The office was very quiet and Philip had gone down to the reference Library to catch up on some essential reading. Joan was off or a couple of days and Laura was manning the office when the phone rang.

"Hello, Philip Cheshire Associates."

"This is Stephen Rotkoff. Is Philip in?"

"Hello, Mr. Rotkoff; nice to hear from you. No, Philip is in town right now, and I don't expect him back much before we close. Can I take a message?"

"Yes, I am in Nottingham on the third of January, and I should like to see him later on in the afternoon. Does 4.pm. sound a possibility?"

"Yes, four o'clock seems fine. Shall I put it into his diary?"

"Yes, do that small thing." With that he rang off rather abruptly, leaving Laura thinking what a rude man he was.

When Philip got back to the office shortly before five, Laura told him about the phone call. She had no idea what Andy had said about Rotkoff's reputation, so she had given the matter little or no thought. 

The news hit Philip like an electric shock. Laura could see he was upset but Philip decided to keep her in the dark a bit longer, so he covered up as best he could, by inventing something about maybe forgetting to mail him a receipt.

As soon as he could do so in privacy, Philip picked up the phone to call Andy Summerton.

"Hello Andy. Yes, we're fine thank you, and you?  Good. You remember a few months ago you were telling me some very disturbing things about Stephen Rotkoff? Well he's surfaced again, and I was wondering if you got any information about him."

Andy's reply made Philip's heart sink.

"Yes. I'm afraid it is the same Rotkoff. He's a heavyweight gangster, associated with at least half a dozen killings as well as beatings and maimings. And there's no doubt at all that he is heavily into the heroin trade." 

"Well, he's coming over to see me next Thursday. I offer all my clients an annual review meeting to see how their portfolios are going on, and I guess he's taking advantage of it." 

"It may all be above board for all I know, but you need to be on your guard. Is there any chance that I can listen in to the conversation without him knowing?"

Philip thought rapidly. 

"Not in the office – there's nowhere you could keep out of sight."

"Maybe we could set up a hidden mike and I could make a wire recording?"  

"You really are taking this seriously, aren't you Andy?"

"You can't take scum like Rotkoff too seriously. The man's a cold-blooded killer, there are no half-measures with him.

At three a.m. a couple of nights later,  a couple of Andy's old mates in the fraud squad, moonlighting for old time's sake, hid two microphones in the office. Then it was a matter of waiting until the man himself appeared.

Rotkoff arrived for his appointment forty-five minutes early. He ignored Laura's friendly greeting and walked into Philip's office as if he owned it. He spent five minutes chatting amiably about this and that; then stood up abruptly.  

"You're sweating Philip. Perhaps it is a bit close in here, let's go outside and take a stroll."

The two men walked slowly down New Walk, towards the Art Gallery and sat down on a bench.

"You seem very nervous Philip. I don't know why you should be. I'm bringing you some very good news. You have done a really very good job for us, and we are very pleased. So pleased, in fact, that you can stop looking about for new clients altogether. 

My accountants reckon that you are handling somewhere in the region of £800,000 in clients' money. They also calculate that you are taking a gross income of around £6,000 a year. How do those figures strike you?"

They were disturbingly accurate. How could he have got so close?

"Yes, that's about right, but how could you possibly have known that?"

"Philip, Philip, your security is about as good as my kiddy's piggybank. My men went through your desk a couple of weeks ago and photo'd everything. By now we know more about your business than you do. And we shall continue to keep an eye on you, so don't get any ideas."

"How could they have? There wasn't a thing out of place."

"Glad to hear it. If you had suspected anything my men would be due for a hospital visit. 

Anyway, here's the plan. You will be working for me in future. I'll put at least a million in up front and regular installments after that. I want to see at least an average of 10% growth a year. 

Don't worry. I'm not unreasonable. I understand that the markets fall now and again, just give me an average of 10% plus over a five-year period and I shan't complain. I'm better off; you're better off."

"But what about my partners? They own 40% of the business."

"No problem. What do you owe them? About £20,000? Pay them off out of the advance I'm giving you, and pay me back over two-three years. I'm not asking you anything unreasonable. Get rid of your other clients. Tell them that you can no longer carry such small accounts and refer them on.

Now, let me make myself crystal clear. You will run a totally clean business. Declare every penny for tax. Pay your employees well and keep your books clean. Do nothing to draw the attention of the authorities."    

"Why should I just hand my business over to you on a plate?"

"Philip, you are so transparent. I knew as soon as I saw you today that you have heard something about me that frightens you. You do well to be frightened. People who turn down my offers of partnership do not thrive. You are the researcher. Take a look at what happened to these people, and then come back to me – but don't take too long making up your mind. I don't like people who play hard to get."  

He handed over a piece of paper. On it was a typed list of five names and locations. 

Dr. and Mrs. W Butler   - Rugby

Michael Hanson and Adrian Calke -  Birmingham

Patrick Kavanagh    - Wolverhampton

Edgar Abrahams   - Birmingham

Charles and Diane Rollinson - Walsall


 "Don't think you can go to the police about this. If you do I shall hear about it within 24 hours, and I might be driven to do something you'll regret. Oh, and by the way, if you did take that piece of paper to the police, they'll find that it was typed on the typewriter in your office. The one that pretty fiancée of yours was using this morning".

Rotkoff got up and walked calmly away, leaving Philip staring blindly at the list, his whole life crumbling about him. After a while, like an old man, he walked slowly back to the office, a feeling of cold, clammy dread in the marrow of his bones.

following: chapter eleven: Laura, Philip and Judy.



The Sacred Band Ch. 11



Laura, Philip - and Judy. 

By October, I had been with Philip for four lovely months, and I was happier than I had ever been in my life. I began to want to give him something really nice to show my love for him. I decided that my gift should be an attractive new concubine of my own age.

At the end of September 1955, I started as a first year at Leicester Uni. Gazing at the imposing building on University Road, I was reminded of what the Personnel Officer at Bardon Quarry had told my father,

"You know, that building was the old Leicestershire County Lunatic Asylum – and that, as far as I can see, nothing much has changed from that day to this.

We endured a whole day of registration procedures, and introductory faculty and department meetings, the result of which was to fatten my hitherto empty briefcase with a sheaf of syllabi and booklists. 

Father's colleague had one good tip at least, and I took the booklists straightaway to the University Library; registered once again, and, as one of the first freshers off the starting blocks, came away with half a dozen essential, and very scarce, textbooks on short-term loan. 

The only other bright spot in an almost unremittingly dull week was the Freshers Bazaar, when all the university societies and clubs set out their stalls to attract new members. 

Standing around the Hockey Club stall I saw two familiar faces – rivals from other local school teams. Ginny Weatherall from Wyggeston Girls, who beat us in the semi-finals this May, and Valerie Massey, from Market Harborough, whom we beat both years, although, admittedly, we might not have fared so well this year if their goalkeeper had not been ill at the time.

Ginny, Val and I greeted each other with delight and went off to have coffee in the refectory; our new common bond making old rivalries seem irrelevant. When we had first-year tryouts a week later, we were all picked for the freshers team, and pitted against the University Hockey team in a match soon after. By this time my mind was working overtime and a plan was forming in my mind.

A couple of afternoons a week, when I didn't have a two-o'clock lecture, I would walk down New Walk to Philip's office and we would make love over the desk or on the carpet. Only the spanking was obligatory, sometimes Philip would only have time for me to give him  gam. 

Sometimes; the best times; he would take give me a good shagging and then bugger me to repletion. It was those times when I acted on Denise's suggestion, always to carry some tampax in my handbag to sop up the spunk so that I didn't have to sit in it all afternoon. 

Then I would walk back to the University for an afternoon seminar, or a couple of hours in the library, wondering with an inner grin if any other girls had tampax up their bums that afternoon.  

Midweek I could always get a night with Philip, as Aunt Hilda was perfectly happy at the idea of me staying over with a friend in Hall. This gave us the opportunity to play a game, Maybe with Denise, or maybe with just the two of us. I would sometimes go home to Ashby at weekends, but if I did I would always catch the bus back to Leicester for the middle of the day on Sunday.

Sunday afternoon was our most important time of all. After a bit of lunch, I would get down on my knees in the middle of the carpet in front of Philip, and confess all my little sins and misdemeanours. Philip would listen, ask questions, and pass sentence. 

Then I would get my punishment; so many strokes of the cane, so many of the tawse, and I would be forgiven and start again with a clean slate for the next week. Then Philip and I would just lie on the bed and cuddle, with his hand caressing my sore back and bottom, his cock within easy reach of my tongue.

Four weeks into the term. I decided that I should make a move to find Philip's present. The hockey team seemed a good place to start. On the Wednesday we were playing a friendly game against Sheffield University's first-year side. I was playing midfield, my best position, and Ginny and Val were also picked. 

Our captain was Judy Daitches, the centre-forward - brave as a lion on the field, and a perpetual clown the rest of the time. 

I told Philip I might stay over on Tuesday night, so I met him from work. We went back to his flat, and settled down for an evening. I already had half an idea of how to provoke him into giving me a real thrashing, and my opportunity came. 

I was sitting astride him on the bed, and riding his cock. It felt really good and I was sorry to have to break it up; but sacrifices have to be made.  I licked my fingers, getting them really wet. Then I leaned over and started to caress his balls. Then I gently slid a fingertip into his bumhole. 

Philip hates having his anus touched – he doesn't even like me kissing it – and I knew pretty well what would happen. He took me under the armpits and flung me off his still erect cock. 

I landed half on, half off the bed and slid ungracefully onto the floor. I know it is silly, but, although I had deliberately created the situation, I was already starting to cry quietly for having so annoyed him.

I got the beating I had asked for. Without a word he took me over to the bedroom door and cuffing my hands, hooked the cuffs over the hook for his dressing gown. 

He took the tawse and started to whip me across the shoulder blades. One or two of the swipes went under my armpit, and I could feel the tawse wrap its two tails around my right breast with a slap like a clap of thunder. 

This wasn't one of our games; this was a punishment, and I cried and cried, and begged forlornly for forgiveness as he beat my back and then he took the dragon cane and raised welts on my buttocks and the tops of my thighs. 

The beating did not take long, but I had never experienced anything so intense in my life. When he was finished, He looked as upset as I felt. He laid me down face-downwards on the bed, and gently soothed the raw areas with arnica cream.

"God," he said, "that went a lot too far. It was lucky I didn't hit you across the kidneys or you'd be pissing blood. I really shouldn't beat you when I'm angry like that. I'm dreadfully sorry pet. If it ever happens again you must use our safe word and stop me. Promise me."

"Darling", I said, "It wasn't your fault, it was mine. I am so sorry for upsetting you. Please, please forgive me." 

I felt so guilty for deceiving him and tricking him like that, but for the time being I had to go on pretending that it was an accident or an oversight.

"I'll forgive you, if you'll forgive me."

"There's nothing to forgive my love; nothing at all. Now, will you show me you forgive me by letting me suck your beautiful cock?

He did better than that. In the next two hours he took me through the card, and left me wrung out, sore all over, and blissfully satisfied. I felt no inclination to move, so I phoned aunt Hilda and told her I was staying overnight with a friend. 

When Philip fell asleep, I lay awake and had another little weep over lying and deceiving him, and just hoped that the ends would justify the means.

***

By quarter past one the following afternoon, our hockey team were on the coach to Sheffield for a friendly game with their freshers eleven. Some of the girls had twelve o'clock lectures, so we arrived late at the playing fields. 

We scrambled to change and be on the field at 3 pm, but just made it with minutes to spare. We played well, beginning to coalesce as a team and getting to rely on and support each other. Sheffield held us to a 2-2 draw, but they had some luck in doing so. I must admit that I played exceptionally well, and my passes to the forwards gave us our two goals.

 I went into the dressing room on top of the world and gleefully stripped off my kit and went into the shower. The moment my team-mates saw my back and bum there were squeals of shock. I looked down at the yellow and blue-black bruises on my right breast – and knew that my rear view would be colourful enough to make a mandrill jealous. 

It had not seemed appropriate the previous evening to admire and gloat over my battle scars, but today I could glory in them.

"God, Laura, what happened to you? You look as if you've been in a road accident," squealed Ginny. "How on earth did you play in that state?" asked another team-mate. 

"Oh that," I said insouciantly, "My boyfriend and I were playing role-play games yesterday evening. I was a Russian spy and he was a counter-intelligence agent interrogating me.  I'm absolutely fine – it was a brilliant evening."

"You mean he beat you up?" asked Valerie, in a shocked voice.

"No, of course not. He just gave me a spanking, that's all. He more than made up for it later."

It was going just as I planned. The girls were shocked and worried, but consumed with curiosity. 

I pointed to Val.

"Look at your thigh, Val. You've got a huge bruise there. Where did that come from?"

"I stopped a shot at goal at the beginning of the second half. I'd forgotten all about it 'til I stripped off to come in and showered."

"You didn't make a big fuss of it, did you? It's all in the game, and the pleasure always outweighs the pain. Same with Philip and me".

To say that they were unconvinced would be the understatement of the year. But my job was done. There would be a bit of gossip about me, and sooner or later the right girl would make her way to me and when she came I would know.

I fielded a lot of questions that day from girls who were merely curious, or downright nosy. I was as open as I could be, and felt that I was drawing back the corner of a curtain and showing a different perception. They asked, reasonably enough, if I would call myself a masochist.   

"No", I said firmly; "not at all. I'm not really submissive by nature and I don't take any pleasure in pain as such. Pain hurts and I don't like being hurt any more than anyone else. If I stub my toe I hop about and cry like anything. What I do like is to play rough games now and again and getting a few bruises is a lot of the fun." 

What I tried and mostly failed to communicate is the pleasure of surrendering and relinquishing control to a completely trusted lover. 

Every girl relinquishes control and accepts some pain as the price of pleasure at least once in her life, when she gives up her virginity. Most women willingly do it again when they give birth to their children. 

Women have their ears pierced and men accept the pain of tattooing as the price of self-adornment. For me, that exchange of pain for joy is a central part of my life, and I wouldn't have it otherwise.

I had sown the seeds and now I just had to wait. The first contact happened that same evening. When we got off the coach on the London Road, I started out to walk up New Walk to the centre of town – seeing if Philip was still at work as I went by. 

Ginny asked, shyly, if she could walk with me, and I noticed that her eyes were averted. This is not a rehash of the game then, I thought to myself, and smiled inwardly.

Ginny talked all around the houses for a bit, and finally started to ask me about my life with Philip. 

No sense in not being frank after putting myself so far out on a limb, so I told her about our first afternoon in his flat, and how he had sentenced me to a spanking for every boy I had ever been naughty with, then made lovely love to me. Then I asked her if she had ever felt anything like that.

"No", she said, "not like that exactly, but I have some feelings I can't ignore or shake off, just like you. In my case it's that I have always liked girls, not boys. And I have always felt apart from the others because of that. I thought that you might understand". 

"Yes, I understand very well. Have you ever been with a girl – I means sexually?"

"No. I've never known how to approach somebody and I'm scared stiff of being rejected. You were so incredibly brave this afternoon that I felt I could talk to you and you wouldn't reject me."

I hugged her, feeling a great wave of affection sweep over me.

"Have you ever been with a girl that way?" she asked me, overcoming her shyness with some effort.

"No", I said gently, "The only way that would happen is if Philip told me to, and he hasn't.  We've played games with another woman, but they never involved that."

"So, you can't help me," she said sadly.

"No, I didn't say that at all. I'm pretty sure I can find out where Sapphic women get together in Leicester. I know two people who are sure to know, and I'll ask them just as soon as I can. I'll let you know something in a day or two, I promise."

By this time we had passed the Art Gallery and reaching Philip's office. I was disappointed to see that his lights were off, and he had already gone home. So Ginny and I walked together, companionably, to the centre of town and went our separate ways.

Yes, in a way it was a false alarm, but I gained a good friend out of it. Ada and Denise came up trumps, with the names of a café and a hotel cocktail bar where she could make contact, and, less than a week later she was already head-over-heels in love with a rather prim-looking reference librarian named Ivy. (see Ginny and Ivy's story below chapter 13.)

A few days later the one I was looking for appeared. Unexpectedly it was Judy Daitches, our centre forward; the rather boisterous clown of the team, always laughing and joking with everyone, and a bit inclined to have a drink too many when we got together in the pub after a game. 

I was in the library, finding Dryden's poem Absalom and Achitophel a trifle hard going, and coming to the opinion that Dryden was a bit of a hypocrite if truth were told; when Judy Daitches sat down at my table, her usually animated face unusually serious. 

I was struck by the realisation of what an exceptionally pretty girl she was with her straw-blond hair, straight as a yard of pump-water; with long, pale eyelashes framing a pair of limpid, baby-blue eyes. 

It struck me that, for whatever reason, she habitually used her clown persona to throw a camouflage over her beauty. Before she spoke I knew what she was going to say. 

"Please Laura, can we go somewhere where we can talk?"

I got up straight away, picked up my notes and put the books in a pile for later. I was in no doubt that she was the girl I was looking for. 

I must confess that I couldn't help wishing that she were just a shade less pretty. I had gone all over the permutations well in advance, and one of them was that when I found a girl, I might find one that Philip fell head over heels in love with. 

Supposing he preferred her to me. Would I be strong enough to cope with that if it came? I had decided that I would. One thing I know beyond a doubt. Even if he found someone he preferred to me, he would not leave me until I was ready to leave him. I might not be the chief concubine, but there would be a place in his life for me, and really, that was all I needed.

So Judy and I went off the campus and sat in the old Victorian cemetery on Welford Road, where we knew we would not be disturbed. 

"Laura, I can't tell you how much I admired you last week. You were so brave and so open, and I absolutely longed to be like you. Please tell me more about yourself".

No sense in hiding anything. I told her everything, from my first stirrings, through Mr Gillespie and Ada Abbott; my books and my toys; how I met Philip and Denise, and our games together. When I described our game of Harem she was squirming in her seat, and her face was hot and red. Judy was hooked.

"Now tell me about yourself".

Judy really had not much to tell. She felt the same distance from her schoolfriends that I had felt. Her parents had never spanked her, but she had fantasised being punished from before she had her first period, and she, like Ginny, had no idea what to do about the strange stirrings inside her. 

"Judy, here's what we should do this evening. I should take you round to Philip's flat for a nice bare-bottom spanking. You don't have to go any further than that unless you want to; you could just watch Philip and me, or go straight home if you like. In any case, Philip will see that we both get back to our lodgings by ten.

"Well, I don't know..." Judy's voice tailed off. I reached out and took her hand.

"Don't worry, it won't be like the spanking I had last Tuesday, just a hand-spank to warm you up and make you tingle. Philip knows  what he is doing, and I'll be there to keep an eye on things... 

Look; take the rest of the afternoon to think about it. I'll phone Philip and tell him you might be over. If you don't think you can face it, don't worry; but if you do want to come, meet me at the main gates at five o'clock."

When Philip drove up in Matilda at five, I was in the company of a tall, very pretty, very nervous-looking blonde, her usually bouncy ebullience not in evidence. I introduced them, and Philip drove us back to his mother's house. I was filled with a secret triumph. Everything was working just as I planned.

When we got to the flat, after introducing Judy to Philip's mother, I bustled about making tea and sorting out the sandwiches I had bought at the refectory, whilst Philip exercised all his warmth and charm to make Judy feel comfortable. He asked her all the usual reassuring questions about where she came from (Chichester), what she was reading (German); and told her a little about himself and his business. 

By the time I came on the scene she was looking a little more relaxed, and we ate sandwiches and drank tea and made companionable small-talk.

Then Philip made his move. 

"So Laura, you have been a very bad girl", he said, smiling to take the sting away, "and you have drawn Judy into your misbehaviour. I'm afraid I shall have to punish you both. You first Judy."

He sat on the spanking chair and patted his knees. I smiled at Judy reassuringly. She took the plunge; got up and placed herself across his knees, bottom in the air. He lifted the back of her skirt, revealing plain, serviceable white cotton knickers.

"Take your knickers down Judy." 

She lifted her body slightly to shift her weight from his knees, and drew her knickers down to halfway down her thighs. From where I was sitting I had a clear view of her long, shapely legs and lovely round, unblemished bottom. I felt another pang of jealousy. That was my place!

Philip began her spanking at a slowish pace, slapping lightly at first, and building up the force behind the slaps until the sound echoed through the room. Judy was silent at first, and only after the first couple of dozen slaps did she start making a sort of suppressed squeal and kicking her legs. Her bottom was reddening, her knickers had slid down to her ankles and I could see the telltale glistening that betrayed her excitement. 

Philip knew when to stop.

"Now Judy, go and stand in the corner. No, turn this way; I want you to see Laura get a well-deserved punishment. Now Laura, what have you to say for yourself?"

So that you don't think that Philip was a mind reader, I should say that I told him on the phone that I had something serious to confess that couldn't wait 'til Sunday.

I knelt in the middle of the floor and faced him.

"Philip, I was really dishonest with you, last week, and I broke our most important rule. I did not confess it to you on Sunday, because I wasn't sure anything would come of it. I have been feeling desperately guilty ever since. 

You remember when we were making love last Tuesday night? I did not annoy you by accident; it was deliberate. I went out of my way to provoke you into giving me that thrashing because I wanted to be well marked when I changed for the hockey game. I hated to do it but it was necessary. Please punish me for it, and tell me you forgive me."




The Sacred Band Ch. 11



I was confessing not just to Philip. Judy too must understand that I had deliberately enticed her here. I hoped that she would not feel angry and used, but she had to know.

"So, you deliberately got me so wound up that I risked injuring you?
I felt really bad about losing control like that, and even apologised to you. I can hardly believe what a bad, bad girl you are. 

I'm going to give you twenty strokes of the dragon cane – ten now and another ten on Sunday in addition to any other punishment you might get for your misdeeds over the week." 

"Thank you darling."

I got up and took off my knickers and knelt on the settee, bent right over with my bottom sticking right out. Clever Philip. He was giving me a caning severe enough to thrill Judy, but not enough to frighten her.

The dragon cane is the most painful implement in the toybox. Each stroke hisses through the air like a venomous snake, and lands like a red-hot poker, with enough force to take your breath away. I clenched my teeth and hissed out the breath through them slowly in the long interval between strokes. 

I knew quite well that the pain of each stroke would soon fade, leaving a throbbing welt behind. Then would come the hiss and burn of the next stroke. A few minutes of agony and Philip's forgiveness would purge my guilt over deceiving him. When it was finished, all I needed was to hear him say in his usual calm way:

"There, that's over then. Come on over my knees and I'll rub some arnica on those stripes. Come and have a look Judy. This is what a well-marked bottom looks like."

Judy came over, and rubbed her fingers reflectively across the ridges and furrows, tracing the granular weals with a fingertip. I smiled up at her a bit mistily, and she smiled back, and started to laugh softly. Philip and I joined in and soon we were laughing fit to bust.

"Philip, you do really forgive me for behaving so badly?" I asked anxiously. If he were to say 'No', the evening would be over and he would drive us back to our lodging. But fortunately he said 'yes' and kissed me long and hard, and I knew that all was well.

Philip went over to his favourite armchair. 

"Judy", I said, "if you are staying, come over here. I am going to say my best thank-you to Philip for forgiving me. You can just watch, or join in if you like."

I unbuckled Philip's belt and unbuttoned his trousers He stood up halfway and I slid his trousers and underpants down to his ankles in one movement. His lovely cock sprang up erect; his long foreskin half retracted over the bulbous purple head. He sat down, and spread his knees. I breathed in the slightly musty smell of maleness, and began to lick all up and down the shaft of his cock and down around his balls, lifting them to get right underneath. 

Judy watched in fascination, and sort of tentative half-mile on her face. I love being watched, and as I started sucking his cock, licking around the crest and nibbling at the sensitive spots, then sucking deeply and rhythmically. I was putting on a little performance for Judy as well as for Philip.

"Judy, don't you want to thank Philip nicely for having you?" I asked in my driest tone; making her giggle. She shuffled forward and started to lick the shaft up and down. I leaned back on my heels and gave her a bit more room. Philip could take it from there.

I was struck by how exciting it was to watch her first (I was sure it was her first) act of fellatio. I had watched Denise do it dozens of times, but watching Judy I was reliving my first experience, only three or four months ago. Philip told her how to use her tongue, her lips and her full mouth to best advantage and she sucked industriously until Philip said,

"Laura, I'm going to come. Show Judy how you catch every drop." 

I slid into place as Judy moved back a little and took as much of his cock as I could get in my mouth, sucking hard, and, as I felt the first spasm, tightening my lips around the crest of the erupting cock.  I caught it all, and swallowed it down in a great noisy gulp. Judy had a sort of equivocal look on her face, so I reassured her,

"You don't have to swallow if you don't want to. The important thing is to keep sucking until he has finished spunking. After that you can spit it into a handkerchief if you like. I prefer to swallow; it just seems nicer somehow."

Probably it had all been a bit eventful for her. I remember that my first experience had had a sort of Alice in Wonderland quality about it, so I asked her what she would like to do now.

"Do you want to take it easy for a bit. There's some beer in the larder, and maybe a drop of gin?"

She was perfectly clear.

"Please, I should like Philip to cane my bottom like he did yours. Is that all right?"

She looked right at me as she asked. My first impulse was to point out that Philip was in the room and that he had perfectly good hearing; but I thought better of it. If she should become Philip's new concubine; which, so far was only my secret dream, maybe perceiving me as the gatekeeper wasn't a bad thing. 

Philip was already responding. He put away the dragon cane and drew out one of the thinner bamboos.

"This time, you will take off all your clothes. This is not a punishment, it is just play, and we usually play naked and punish dressed. So get undressed; there's a good girl." 

No hesitation this time. Judy was out of her clothes in seconds, and  
walking over to the settee before she could be asked. She had a lovely figure, slim, straight and strong, with large, firm breasts and a beautiful pear-shaped bottom.

"I'm going to give you six strokes, then a break and then another six Judy; but you can simply tell me to stop and I'll stop straightaway. Understand?"

"Yes Sir, I understand. But I shan't be asking you to stop."

She took up her position on the settee. Philip stood alongside her and raised the cane. I could see Judy watching him out of the corner of her eye, just as I did the first time, after he had removed the blindfold. 

 "Philip", I interrupted, "I think Judy might like the blindfold, and maybe the handcuffs as well." 

"Good idea sweetie," he replied, amiable as ever (well, almost ever). He fetched the toys and, despite her feeble protests, cuffed and blindfolded her. I remembered so clearly the feeling of waiting, bound and sightless, not knowing when or where the strokes would fall. 

There is a powerful pleasure too in keeping your position despite the powerful impulse to wriggle and twist away and put your hands and feet in the way of the stroke, but for this first time, the blindfold makes everything so totally, incandescently vivid in your mind. I was sure it what Judy would have wanted, if she had known what I know.

The cane hissed and cracked, and the first stroke landed right in the middle of her cheeks. She jumped, but controlled it instantly. A faint red line appeared slowly, and a dark mark, as if made with a grease pencil, appeared where the end of the cane drove into the middle of her right buttock. 

Philip waited about five seconds; although it always seems so much longer to the person in the blindfold; and the cane whipped down again. She gasped and her belly dipped down with the force of the blow, but she got straight back into position, with the centre of her bum looking redder. 

Four more hard strokes, evenly spaced and delivered slowly and deliberately, Judy giving a little hiss of escaping breath  as each one landed; and Philip uncuffed her hands so that she could rub her bottom.  She felt the marks rather gingerly with a strange look of fierce concentration on her blindfold face. 

Then she gave a smile of reassurance and resumed her position; holding out her hands to be handcuffed again.   

Six more times the cane whistled down, landing with a hissing slap; then it was over. Her bottom was a bright blushing crimson and there were now clear, dark streaks, almost parallel, but with one dipping diagonally down across the left buttock and onto the right thigh. 

Nothing like as severe as my dragon caning, but as a first experience it seemed to leave nothing to be desired.

Still handcuffed and blindfolded, Philip placed her gently across his knees, and I fetched the pot of arnica cream and held it out to him. He took a generous two-fingered dip into the pot and began to massage the cream, gently and thoroughly over the red lines. Judy let out a little groan, but it sounded more like an expression of contentment  rather than pain. 

Philip looked at me enquiringly and I smiled and nodded. His fingers strayed lower and found her slit and the evident moisture within and around it. Judy made no sound, but parted her thighs a little to accommodate his questing fingers. Soon she was letting out little moans of pleasure and squirming around on his lap.

"Judy", I asked, "would you like the blindfold off?"

"No! Please, not yet. I had no idea how good it would feel. I had never even imagined being bound and helpless. Please leave it a little longer."

When she was nicely warmed up, Philip took Judy over to the settee, and sat her down, thighs spread wide and looking good enough to eat, which is what he proceeded to do with obvious relish. 

Being sucked out has never been my favourite activity for some reason, although it never fails to bring me off. Judy revelled in it, and I thought wryly that it was just as well she was cuffed and blindfold or she might have done Philip a mischief with her thrashing about. 

Afterwards he uncuffed her and removed the blindfold. She dropped into an armchair, and lay there limply whilst Philip put me onto the settee and set in to tickle what he calls my naughty bits. 

I had found an opportunity earlier to go to the bathroom, put in my diaphragm and wash as far up my bumhole as my long fingers could reach on the off-chance. Time well spent. 

Philip shagged me to screaming point; then out came his trusty tin of brilliantine and he made full use of my tradesman's entrance. I looked over at Judy out of the corner of my eye. She was staring open-mouthed, one hand clutched across her rather full breasts, the other a fist clenched tight between her thighs.   

Later, in the car, I sat in the back with Judy and hugged her tight, whilst Philip drove us home. 

"Did you have a good time?" I asked her, maybe a bit disingenuously.

"Yes. Mummy says I must always say Thank you for a lovely evening. It was so good of you both to have me," she said with a dead straight face. 

"Sarkie beastie," I quipped back. "You had better watch it you little madam, or you'll be getting a good spanking."

"No, really Laura, I can't thank you enough; it was better than I could have dreamed. Please could we do it again some time, if you and Philip don't mind?"

We arranged to meet the following morning for coffee and a post-mortem. Her hall was on the Oadby road, and we dropped her off and turned around to take me back to Aunt Hilda's. Philip got out to open the car door as always, and he gave me a long, luxurious kiss, both hands clutching and squeezing my sore bottom. 

"Do you like her my love? I found her especially for you. I thought you deserved a present."

"She's an absolute poppet. I think the three of us will have a lot of fun."

Something gave me away. Philip looked deeply at me, and I knew he could read my mind. 

"No Laura. I shall not love her more than I love you. I shall never love anyone more than you. As long as we live I will never do anything to hurt you, I swear." 

"I know you won't; or at least not intentionally. I could bear pretty well anything as long as you don't tell me you don't want me any more."

"That will simply never happen. There is room in our lives for Judy, and we shall try as hard as we can to make her happy, but you are my love."

And then he asked me to marry him.



***

I walked into university the following morning, buoyed up by Philip's proposal. I had arranged to meet Judy in the refectory after my 10 o'clock lecture on France from 1788 to the Third Republic.  My mind was still on Marat and Robespierre, until I saw Judy standing outside the refectory waiting for me. She had an uncertain look on her face, so I smiled broadly and she smiled back, plainly relieved. 

"Hello, Judy," I greeted her cheerfully. "You look as if you're afraid I might bite your head off."  

She laughed, a little nervously. 

"Well, I was a bit worried that you might be angry with me when you thought it over. After all he is your boyfriend."

"And you were sucking his cock..." 

"Well, yes."

"Judy love. You only sucked his cock because I invited you to. If you want to blame anyone, blame me for enticing you in. Besides, do you know what happened when he drove me home? Philip asked me to marry him. We're going to choose the ring on Saturday.  How could I possibly be angry with you after that?"

She flung her arms around me and hugged me; a welcome return of the old, boisterous Judy.

We decided to give coffee a miss, and went and sat in our quiet corner of the Welford road cemetery.

"Well, Judy. What did you think of yesterday evening?" I asked.

"It was lovely. He is so handsome and charming, and you two are obviously made of each other. Are you sure you want me around?"

"Yes, of course we do. If I had the least doubt I shouldn't have invited you".  This was a bit of a lie, but a well-meaning one. I certainly had a bit of doubt, or at least jealousy, but I was suppressing it bravely. I went on, plodding through my script: 

"Judy, you have to consider what you want to get out of this. It's a bit more than a normal boy/girl relationship after all. For Philip and me it is pretty straightforward, we have been playing games with Denise for a while now, and we can easily include you if you like. Usually the games involve Phil having sex with one or both of us, and either one or
both of us being punished. On the other hand, you could have private sessions with Philip if you like. Like I said last night; you don't have to do anything you are not comfortable doing."

"Laura, she said, blushing crimson; was Philip doing you up the bum  last night, or was it just my overactive imagination?"

"Yes, he was. We often finish off a session like that. Philip loves it, and I am getting it like it more and more."

"But doesn't it hurt"?

"Doesn't caning hurt? The pain can be part of the pleasure, can't it?
In any case it usually only hurts for a minute or two, and not even then if you've had it recently enough to be still stretched. 

I suppose if it went on hurting you would probably give it up for that night, and give yourself a rest. I love the whole thing and get a terrific thrill out of it. I don't often get an outright orgasm from being buggered, but believe me, when it happens it was worth waiting for." 

I guessed that Jenny's question was, as much as anything, a way of getting a little time for thought. So I used the occasion to sow a few more seeds.

"Jen, the point is; Philip and I would never pressure you into doing anything you don't want to do. If you don't want sex with him, fine. If you don't want to watch us having sex, fine too; we'll just  wait until you've gone home.  

Just tell Philip plainly that you don't want to do something. I would only have sex with someone else if Philip told me to. But he knows how I feel and he wouldn't ask me." 

"Thank you for setting it out so clearly. Truth is, I loved watching you make love. It was so beautiful and thrilling. And, if you really don't mind, I should want to try it too, but only if you are there, and you approve."

"Well, in that case, it's time you met by friend Ada Abbott, and got fitted for an occlusive cap. She'll tell you all about how to use it safely. Are you still a virgin?"

"Well, emotionally yes, the first time anyone has touched me there was Philip last night. But physically, probably not. His fingers went right up me with no trouble at all."

That's brilliant then. When will you have you a couple of hours to meet Ada?"

following/  ch. 12. Donald and Bruno
                   ch. 13. Ginny and Ivy



The Sacred Band Ch. 12



Note. This is my first attempt at describing a gay male relationship from the time of my own youth. Please forgive my presumption but the story demands it and I am the slave of the story. I shall shortly be posting my lesbian chapter Ivy and Ginny.

Advice, criticism or any other feedback would be very welcome.


The Sacred Band. Chapter twelve - Donald and Bruno

told by Donald Bray

November 1955.

I was  in the Chancery Court, sitting behind Mr Carruthers Melford Q.C. one Thursday in the Autumn of 1955, when the events began that changed my life. I might say with a strong element of truth that they began my life. Everything before that day was overture.

Melford was a well-fed, florid-faced man, whose complexion suggested large intakes of sirloin steak and claret. As an advocate, he was prolix and self-satisfied, with a command of detail that left something to be desired. I was listening to a complex breach of patent case brought by one of my firm's biggest clients. 

My trip to London had been more than justified by the couple of important notes I passed forward, but, all in all, listening to the case beat watching paint dry by only the slimmest of margins.

At shortly before four o'clock, after one day of hearings, the court rose for a three-week adjournment. I kicked my heels outside the robing room for some time, before I got a brief, unsatisfactory meeting with Melford who seemed to need the flattery laid on with a butter-knife. 

Restless and stifled, I decided to walk across central London from the Strand to St Pancras  rather than taking the tube. I dawdled along, window-shopping along the way and arrived at the station just about opening time. 

A fleeting memory of a pub just off the Euston Road between Euston and St Pancras stations tugged at my consciousness and I was in such a state of boredom and frustration that I headed towards Euston Station. After three, long, celibate years, I thrust caution aside, opened the door of the Saloon Bar and walked in. 

Yes, this was the place. Not a female face in sight, but fugitive traces of lipstick on a face or two.  Half an hour to drop the mask and be myself. It wasn't too much to ask was it? I took off my black homburg hat and overcoat, the uniform of the well-placed solicitor; ordered a Guinness and a cheese and onion roll and settled down to enjoy an early supper. 

As a former RAF Squadron leader, now as a partner in a prominent Leicester firm of Solicitors, I am a man accustomed to keeping secrets. I keep the secrets of my clients, obviously; but the biggest secret of all, and the one I have kept the most carefully hidden, was the secret at the heart of my own life. 

Moments after I sat down, the street door opened again and in walked a huge man in a fisherman's navy-blue gansey and black corduroys. He was not  especially tall; an inch or two over six feet; but massive, with great broad shoulders, a barrel chest, and a face carved out of granite by an enthusiastic amateur. 

Despite this bulk he seemed to vibrate with energy. A nose several times broken sat, a shapeless blob, in the centre of a face alive with humour and geniality. I have never seen a man so attractive and charismatic before or since. My eyes were riveted on him as he turned to the bar to order a drink. 

His broad grin  was answered with smiles flitting across the faces of the men standing by the bar. I could see at once that he was known here and well-liked, but I noticed that nobody made a  move to accost him. 

"Evening sergeant," the potman greeted him.

"Bruno, Benny; call me Bruno."

"Sorry, force of habit. Been playing? See you ain't got your guitar with you."

"Yes, I sat in with Tubby Hayes and Victor Feldman at the Flamingo, but I borrowed Patch's old Epiphone - it's almost as good as my Gibson. Pint of Mann's IPA., please,  and whatever you're having."

"Thanks Bruno; I'll take a half and drink it later." 		

"Anybody in this early?"
"Mystery over in the corner's worth a once-over."

The bear-like man looked over straight at me, a long, measuring look. He strolled over to my table and loomed over me.

"Mind if I join you?"

"Help yourself. I hear you're a musician. Jazz?"

"Yes, bebop mostly. I play a bit, semi-pro. I'm a regular at a club outside Nottingham, but sometimes when I'm in London, I sit in with old friends; like last night." 

"Near Nottingham? I'm a Leicester lad myself. Donald Bray."
We shook hands.

"Bruno Canelli. What a coincidence. I've been working in Leicester for a few years now." 

"I'm a solicitor, mostly commercial law. Just down in London to keep an eye on one of my cases. I'm catching the 8.05 back to Leicester."

"Great - so am I."

An hour and a half later, after three more rounds of drinks, we were getting on the train for the two-hour journey to Leicester. I was feeling pleasantly relaxed and happy in his company, and he seemed to feel the same. 

We began to sketch in our life stories, and soon we began to recognise a fundamental kinship; two men who had both been forced to hide their sexual identities in the hostile and unforgiving profession of arms. Our conversation was serious, but from time to time we found ourselves laughing fit to bust at some absurdity or another.

As we talked on the train, I was aware that this was not the usual chat that presaged a one-night stand. We were talking with a degree of trust and respect that was unusual. I  realised that I was strongly attracted to this quiet, modest man, whose happy-go-lucky manner hid deep complexities.

Unlike me, Bruno had had his share of one-night and weekend stands in London, and sometimes in Nottingham. In the private space of the first-class railway carriage, he began, with breathtaking openness and trust, to tell me little anecdotes of his varied sexual encounters. 

Some were happy tales of ephemeral, but satisfying meetings that left behind happy and grateful memories. Some encounters left him disappointed, and occasionally he carried away abiding memory of disgust and degradation. It was the luck of the draw.    	

At shortly before 10 the train pulled into Leicester station, and we walked the short distance into the centre of town. Bruno lived on Charles Street, right in the town centre, in a second floor flat above an Italian delicatessen. We paused at the door.

"Like a quick drink? I've got some grappa, and I think there's a drop of gin somewhere about. We Royal Marines used to put down a lot of pink gin on combined ops. The Navy floats on the stuff. 

My navy friends used to say they needed three liquids to function; gin, diesel and salt water, and at a pinch they could manage without the water." 

"Gin would be great. I've got about half an hour. I live with my Dad, and I usually help him into bed elevenish."

"Ok, let's go upstairs."

A green door beside the shop opened into a narrow staircase that wound its way up two stories. At the top, a door was built into the staircase. Bruno unlocked it and led the way. 

The door opened onto a narrow, short corridor with fading wallpaper showing a stylised trellis with climbing purple cabbage roses. A narrow strip of patterned carpet ran down the centre of a hallway, with three doors opening off. 

The end door was open, and I could see through the window to the streetlights of Charles Street below.

This room was painted white. White walls and white gloss paintwork, shining and clean. I saw to my surprise that there was almost no furniture. 

Wide pine floorboards, stripped and polished to a dull golden gleam, a three-seater settee in a brown needle cord fabric, a low table, its glass top only about nine inches off the carpet, a geometric patterned rug  and some large, bright-coloured cushions. 

There was something almost monastic about the beautiful austerity that reminded me of pictures of Japanese interiors.

As we entered the room, Bruno gently but firmly took me into his arms and kissed me deeply. I felt weak in the knees and clung onto his broad back like a drowning man. I returned the kiss avidly.

After a minute or two, both pairs of hands moved down; trousers were unbuttoned, and the treasures within winkled out. Four experienced, knowledgeable hands lured two cocks to erection, and caressed them gently at first then progressively harder, faster and more rhythmically. We broke off the kiss as our breathing became a heavy pant and we tumbled helter-skelter towards a shattering mutual orgasm. 

We stood, still, still linked by our now quiet hands. Bruno, unsurprisingly, recovered his self-possession first.

"God, I needed that," he joked. He dropped onto his heels in perfect balance like a coalminer, licked the smear of thick, pearly spunk from the head of my knob, and from his own fingers. 

I had just come harder than I had ever come in my life, but that sight was making my cock thicken again. He looked up and smiled broadly and affectionately at me, standing there, breathless and overwhelmed. 

He buttoned my fly.

"Now, drinkies". He rose smoothly to his feet, buttoned his own fly, and turned to the built-in cupboards barely noticeable against the white wall. 

"Plymouth Navy gin," he announced, "the real thing, not the usual over-flowery stuff." He got two glasses, poured a generous slug of gin into each glass then, without asking, put a sugar lump into each. 

Taking an orange from the fruit bowl on the low table and opening a jack knife from his pocket, he cut the orange in two and squeezed each half, neatly into a glass. He wiped the blade carefully on a handkerchief, swirled the coloured liquid around in the glasses and handed one to me.

"Try that. Here's to us, and our first meeting."
We drank to that.
***
We began to meet after work every evening after work. Often at my local, the Durham Ox on Bowling Green Street, sometime at the Town
Arms.

As often as possible, after a couple of convivial pints, we would part company, and meet up at Bruno's flat half an hour later. Bruno soon gave me my own key, and I could slip in quite unobtrusively.

We met for sex, of course, but, after the first frenzy had died down, it became one pleasure among many. Bruno loves to cook, I love good wines, and I brought along carefully chosen burgundies and clarets. 

Soon our chief pleasure was simply sitting and talking, about books we had read, films we saw together, places we had visited, and, inevitably, the parts of our lives that we had never been able to talk about.  

I had often mentioned my cousin and dearest friend Denise in our conversations. I knew I had to tread carefully, because Bruno had already revealed a deep distaste for sado-masochism, born of many repellent encounters.

"These sods come on to me in one of two ways", he explained. "Either they want me to make them my slave and beat and humiliate them, or they see me as a Mount Everest to climb, and set out to conquer and subdue me. Either way, I didn't want to take the card they are offering. Sometimes, when they just wouldn't take no for an answer, I've had to pick them up bodily and throw them out."  

So I was a bit gingerly in my approach to the topic.

"Bruno; Denise is the one person who knows me as I am. I told her everything when I was going off to join up. In fact, she was the one who taught me what I know about passing as a straight. 

She dissected the way I walk, my speech mannerisms, and everything. She ought to have been on the stage - she has that amazing awareness and she taught me to look at myself from the outside.

I've told you that when I was in Hong Kong, I had sex with more women than men. I had three girlfriends, and two of them had no idea I was queer. Well, I am as sure as eggs is eggs that I owe Denise my career."

"Ok  Don; now for Christ sake drop the second shoe."

I want you to meet Denise, and I want you to meet the other people I'm close to; Philip, Laura and Jenny, Ivy and Ginny, Jamie and Dolly. I want you at the centre of my life, and that means being part of their lives too."

"Fine with me; but what's the catch?"

"Well, I know how you feel about the leather and chains side of things, and as far as my own life is concerned, I agree. But Denise has been in one submissive relationship or another since she was sixteen. I hooked her up with Philip, and she introduced him to the life. He brought Laura and Jenny along, and introduced them too. Not that it took a lot of persuading on their parts. 

Ivy and Ginny are lesbians, and, again, Laura introduced them and takes on a sort of mother hen role. Jamie and Dolly are also friends of Laura's. Jamie is a lifelong ritual magician and Dolly was married to another until he died a couple of years ago."   

Bruno burst out laughing. 

"God,  you had me going there. You were frightened of shocking me. I thought you were coming from the other direction - warning me to keep my head down and avoid giving offence. 

You've got me all wrong. I'm the last bloke on earth to be sniffy about other people's foibles. If they want to play spanking games, all power to them. 

Don, I am going to try to express what I really believe at the bottom of my heart. And I must tell you that I have never said any of this to anybody before in my life.

People tend to say, glibly, that it wouldn't do for everyone to be alike, but they mostly haven't thought it through. To me though it's an absolute truth. I see sexual diversity as an aspect of the triumph of the human spirit. I think it's as lovely and valuable as all the other sources of difference between human beings. 

I'm glad there are different races of mankind, all with unique qualities to contribute. We need all of those qualities to make us fully human. 

I'm glad men and women are different from each other, not just superficially but deep, deep down. 

I am glad there are fetishists and transvestites; may they have joy of it. I'm glad there are bisexuals. I'm glad there are sado-masochists who can say 'let pain be my pleasure.'  That is a wonderfully life-affirming statement. 

The only line I would draw, (and I suppose I'm a bit of a hypocrite in drawing it), is that I would protect children against being used for sexual pleasure, and put the people who do it out of harm's way.  Pederasty is a sexual preference I know; but it is a cruel, unclean one.   

Anyway, I've been a bit long-winded and I'm sorry. Here's the fundamental point. The men and women who chill my blood are the ones who seem to be in a perpetual state of festering self-hatred. They either take it out on others, or they're always seeking to be punished and humiliated. 

My feeling is that, like heroin addicts, they are seeking out their own deaths, whether consciously or not. 

Your friends will not be like that, I know. You wouldn't feel any more comfortable with the self-haters than I do. I'm have no doubt that I shall love your friends and I hope they take to me."  

***

A phone call to Denise was all it took. She welcomed Bruno with delight, and hugged him ecstatically, arms most of the way around his waist, and head just a few inches short of his shoulder. It might have been comical if it had not been so moving. 

Half an hour of breathless conversation in her company and Bruno might have been her oldest friend. I just watched quietly and happily as my dearest friend and my lover bonded.  Bruno and Denise both looked at me now and again to see that I was all right, then turned back, reassured, to their conversation.

Denise, being Denise, had to organise an impromptu party to introduce Bruno to her small group of intimate friends. Being Denise, she did not tell them anything in advance, rightly judging that her friends would be as welcoming as she. If she rationalised it at all, she felt that anyone who could not welcome Bruno wholeheartedly did not deserve any consideration.  

Years of concealment had left their mark on me, and I could not take such a cavalier attitude. Bruno was daily making me feel better about myself than I had ever felt in my life, and I never doubted Denise's loving support for a moment. 

But I was frankly scared stiff at the thought of exposing myself in this public manner, especially to people I had been thinking of as close friends - yet I knew I had to take the chance. It as all very well for Bruno to laugh it off - he had little or nothing to lose. But I risked losing my business partner and closest male friend. 

Five minutes after we arrived at Denise's house, with a couple of bottles of good vintage champagne, and Bruno's beloved Gibson guitar. Philip and Laura were already there, with their friend Judy.

Denise introduced them gaily.

"Darlings! I want you to meet Donald's smashing new friend Bruno. Bruno this is Philip, and his girlfriends Laura and Judy." 

The girls smiled. Philip looked blank and then chortled loudly.

"Well Donald me lad. You've certainly kept this quiet. I wouldn't have guessed in a million  years." 

He slapped me on the shoulder with a big grin on his face, and held out both hands to take Bruno's in a warm handshake.

I gave centre stage to Bruno. He was more than ready to make the running. Bruno knew better than to respond to the hint of patronage in Philip's first words. This was just a manifestation of surprise, with maybe a bit of embarrassment mixed in. 

What was important was what came next. He shook hands with the girls, impulsively hugging them both and kissing them on the cheek They giggled and blushed, and the atmosphere lightened immediately. 

Then with Mediterranean style, he bowed to Denise, and kissed her hand. Even I could see that the battle, if there had been a battle, was won. 

Just then Ivy arrived with Ginny, and  a fresh round of introductions were made. It had been a real pleasure to me to meet them both a   month earlier, when Laura brought them to a party. 

Ivy, away from work, substituted her heavy horn-rims for discreet rimless spectacles, and immediately took ten years off her age. Her slightly curly auburn hair was dressed in an elegant French pleat.  

She was immaculately made-up and dressed in a style that suggested that she did not have to live on her librarian's salary.  Tonight she was wearing a creamy-coloured bias-cut raw silk sheath dress, with a little stand-up collar and a deep v neck that displayed a double row of beautiful pearls, matched by the pearl drops in her ears. 

Ginny, on the other hand, looking as if she had just left the University campus, took off her camel-coloured duffle coat, to reveal a purple turtle-neck sweater and tapered jeans. The two women looked at each other with evident mutual admiration, and smiled broadly. 

"We just met up five minutes ago," said Ginny amiably. "I nipped home to spend the day with Mum and Dad. Ivy met me at the station and we caught a taxi here." 

"I don't suppose it made a blind bit of difference," Ivy teased. "It takes a general anaesthetic to get you out of those jeans." 

"It didn't take any effort last night, did it? I couldn't get out of them fast enough."

Everyone laughed, and whilst they were still laughing, Denise introduced them to Bruno as Donald's lover. They both hugged him and me, murmuring congratulations to me with total and evident delight. 

Ten minutes later, everybody had a drink to hand, and we were all eying one of Denise's  delicious buffets on the side-table. Philip and I were discussing the Conservative plans to denationalise the Iron and Steel industry with Laura listening intently. 

Bruno was sitting in the corner, on a straight-backed chair he had snaffled from the dining-room. Smoke was rising from his cigarette as he worked through the chords of All the things you are, humming quietly to himself. I noticed that Ivy and Ginny were sitting on either side of him. After a couple of choruses, Ivy began to sing in a sweet contralto:




The Sacred Band Ch. 12



You are the promised kiss of springtime
that makes the lonely winter seem long
You are the breathless hush of evening
that trembles on the brink of a lovely song...

Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to watch and listen as she sang Oscar Hammerstein's lovely lyrics with poise and assurance. After one chorus, Bruno started a cheeky guitar solo that lifted phrases bodily out of Bird and Miles' solos to Bird of Paradise and transmuted them. After 32 magical bars of guitar, Ivy's voice returned:    

Some day my happy arms will hold you 
And some day I'll know that moment divine
When all the things you are, are mine.

Everyone burst into spontaneous applause and cheers. Ivy blushed crimson, and Ginny threw her arms around her and kissed her. Bruno sat back, smiled his wonderful smile, and winked at me. 

to follow.  
chapter 13,  Ginny and Ivy
chapter 14,  Denise and Andy  



The Sacred Band Ch. 13



This is my first attempt at writing about a lesbian relationship. Please forgive the presumption and please send me criticisms, suggestions and comments.


The Sacred Band, chapter thirteen

Ivy and Ginny (and Donald and Bruno)
told by Ginny.


She just started singing All the things you are to Bruno's sympathetic guitar  backing, and we all stared open-mouthed at the sweet, controlled lyricism of her golden wisp of a voice. Of course I had heard Ivy singing in the bath. I told her that she had a lovely voice, and she said it was just the bathroom acoustics. 

Privately I knew that bathroom acoustics do not give you perfect pitch, but sometimes I just give up trying to compliment Ivy, because she turns everything into a joke against herself. How can someone so wonderful be so insecure? 

I picked up the clues at our first meeting. Here was a lovely person who thought of herself as worthless. I wanted to make it my work, (my life's work I hoped), to show her herself in a different mirror.

How we met

Acting on information received from an informant (Laura of course) I proceeded down The Hinckley Road in a south-easterly direction and found myself outside a small shop called the Leisure Hour Library... 

Laura had found me two places I might meet Sapphic women, and I had tried them both. The nice woman behind the bar in the Midland Hotel looked me up and down, saw how frightened I was, and kindly gave me a Britvic orange on the house. I suppose to her I must have looked about sixteen.  

She said that I should try the Leisure Hour Library, because I looked as if I needed a minnow rather than a shark. I think I saw what she meant when I looked around at the banquettes, and saw a thin-faced
woman in Harris tweed suit, trilby hat and cigarette holder eying me and licking her lips as if I were a fairy cake and it was a long time since lunch.

So off I trailed.

The Leisure Hour Library turned out to be a subscription library. Yes, I know, the London Library is a subscription library. This one had the same resemblance to the London Library as your local chippie has to the Savoy Grill - for a start I can afford to eat at a fish and chip shop!  

The window told the story. There were cowboy books, of which J.T Edson and Louis L'Amour seemed to be the star turns with Zane Grey bringing up the rear; detective thrillers with Hank Jansen and Mickey Spillane well represented, and about half the window made up of pulp romances by such literary luminaries as Barbara Cartland and Denise Robins. 

Fivepence enabled the discerning purchaser to borrow up to three books a week. Two discerning customers - in the shape of shapeless middle-ages housewives with headscarves covering up their hair-rollers, carrying capacious shopping bags, were scouring the shelves, looking for something a bit more spicy than Mrs. Dale's diary. 

Seated at a desk in the front corner of the window, sat two women sipping tea. One was motherly and middle-aged, wearing a pinafore over her blouse and skirt, and bedroom slippers on her swollen feet. She clearly worked here,  and I greeted her politely.  

The other woman was younger, in her thirties, and quite beautiful. Her face was long and a perfect almond shape, with a long straight nose. She had red lips made for smiling, and, behind her horn-rimmed spectacles, the saddest hazel eyes I had ever seen blinked and blinked at me.

She was wearing a tailored grey business suit with a pencil skirt that came half-way down her calves. Her calves tapered to  slim, elegant ankles in black suede, buckled low-heeled shoes. The jacket revealed a crisp white blouse held together with a handsome cameo brooch at the point of the v-shaped opening. 

Her hair caught and held my attention, small waves of a rich auburn, gathered at the nape of the neck in a club with a green velvet ribbon, with curly tendrils of hair around her ears and the nape of her neck making their bid for freedom. 

I stared at her, and I suspect that my mouth was agape. 'God!' I thought; 'is this love at first sight?'

The shopkeeper saw my expression and comprehended immediately. I was clearly not here for the latest Naomi Jacobs. She stood up, smiling.

"Hello dear. Come and have a nice cup to tea - I'll just fetch you a cup. Have you met my friend Ivy?"

Ivy looked up at me briefly, then blushed crimson and averted her eyes. She looked so shy and so insecure that I wanted to hug her.

"Hello Ivy", I said. "I'm so pleased to meet you. My name's Ginny; I've just started at the University this term."

She visibly pulled herself together. Good manners made her overcome her desire to make herself invisible. She extended her hand.

"Ivy Matthews. I work at the public library  in Bishop Street."

I held her hand just a little too long - maybe ten minutes...

I afterwards learned that she had achieved her Fellowship of the Libraries Association with distinction, and that she was the Head Reference Librarian for the City. Ivy had a compulsion to belittle her achievements before any else had the chance.

Well, let's be honest. The first time I felt truly alive, and not just living a shadowy half-life was when I confided my secret to Laura. That afternoon with Ivy I took another step.

I suppose I felt for the first time in my life that I was free to fancy a woman without exposing myself to ridicule and obloquy. I fell for Ivy, first of all because I could; even before I realised what a truly remarkable and lovable person she was. In retrospect it seems a bit mechanistic, but I was caught up in the moment.

My cup of tea arrived, and the  shopkeeper introduced herself as Deirdre Collins. We exchanged greetings. Ivy looked all ready to retreat into herself,  but Deirdre brightly kept the conversation going by extracting every scrap of information about myself. Her training in the KGB was certainly paying off. 

Ivy listened attentively, and every now and again I felt her eyes brush across my face, and return to her lap.

We finished our tea and I rose to leave. I simply could not think how to prolong the encounter. Ivy solved the problem for me.

"I've got to start making my way back to work. This should be my afternoon off, but I'm swapping an evening session with a colleague, so I'm on duty from four to seven. Would you like to walk back to town with me?" 

We walked back to the centre of town. on the way we passed what was then a new phenomenon, a brightly decorated Chinese restaurant. Idly I wondered aloud what the large calligraphic characters on the window meant. 

"I don't speak Cantonese, only Mandarin, but the characters are the same for both. It says Dragon of good fortune - Lucky Dragon you might say. In China dragons are a symbol of good luck."

"What!" I exclaimed in astonishment. "You read and speak Chinese? How on earth did you learn it? Isn't it fearfully difficult?"

"Not if you're born there. My mother and father went there as Baptist missionaries as soon as they were married. My father's family were very well-to-do, and they were strongly against the whole project, but my parents were unshakeable.

I was born a couple of years after they got to China, and I was brought up by a succession of Chinese nurses, and by the time I was four I spoke Mandarin better than I spoke English. 

Then my father took over my education. He overruled my mother and found me an old Confucian scholar who could teach me to read and write Chinese. When I got to England I realised what a good education I had been given. I was sent to Cheltenham Ladies' College, and I was years ahead of the other girls my age."  

"Why did your parents send you back to England? Where did you go?"

I lived with my grandfather in his big house in Shropshire. There were just the two of us and the servants. After China it was a pale imitation of life. 

They sent me back for two reasons. One, they wanted me to get a good education, and go to Cambridge like they did. Secondly, although I only realised it later, I think they knew that all-out war with Japan was coming and they wanted me to be safe."

Her eyes filled with tears, and, standing there in the street, I took her in my arms and she put her head on my shoulder and cried.

"They starved to death in the great famine," she sobbed. "The last correspondence I had with them was a flaming row about me refusing to got to university. I wrote such angry, hurtful things to them, and all the time they must have been slowly dying of starvation. I can never forgive myself..."   

I must have made  a spectacle of myself, patting her and murmuring sympathetic noises to a woman four inches taller and fifteen years older than I was. I called her a poor darling, hugging her and kissing her cheek as if she had been a four-year-old with a scraped knee. 

I dried her tears with my hankie and kissed her wet cheeks. I had never kissed anyone but my mum and dad, but it felt so natural and so right. 

"Thank you for being so kind. I don't know what came over me. It's all so long ago, but it just welled up in me. I'm so sorry for being so pathetic."

"You were not pathetic, you were hurting and all I wanted was to comfort you."

"If we go to Bishop street we can sit in the staff room and it will give me time to pull myself together. Would that be all right?"

I took her hand and squeezed it tight. I hoped that it conveyed that I would go with her to Siberia of she wanted me to.

I stayed with her until the reference library closed at seven. Readers drifted in and out, reading periodicals and checking reference books, but, all but a few, they knew what they were doing and needed no help.  At around six thirty, a poorly dressed elderly man came in smelling a little the worse of drink. 

I watched in awe as she explained to him how to decode the form of racehorses from the back pages of the evening paper. From the stacks somewhere, she pulled out a copy of Timeform and patiently explained how to use it. 

She could not have been nicer or more thorough if he had been an important local businessman wanting trade statistics. I giggled as she gently detached his hand from her bottom without pausing in her explanation.

After he shuffled away to find a bookie's runner, we both looked at each other and bust out laughing. I could see that she had enjoyed every minute and thought her time was well spent. I afterwards discovered that the copy of Timeform was her own, and that her grandfather had taught her and encouraged her to bet on horses.

As I sat there in the commercial library, watching Ivy, I started to understand something.

Readers came to the counter and asked for help. She got them to explain as precisely as possible what they wanted to know, and put her hand unerringly on the appropriate source. No sign of nervousness or shyness; just complete professionalism. Within that particular context she had a role - she felt secure.

It seemed to me that in an odd way, I fell into the same category as her readers. She knew what I was there for, and what I wanted from her. She did not have to carry the whole load of insecurity and self-doubt. All she had to do was to decide whether or not to grant me what I obviously wished for. 

When the library closed, we went to Lyons for poached egg on toast, and then, she smiled her sweetest smile.

"Shall we go back to my flat?"

I jumped to my feet, spilling my last half a cup of tea into the saucer in my haste. Ivy laughed, and so did I. Sometimes I wish I were not such a clot.

Her flat was in Oxford Street, close to the Royal Infirmary. It was surprisingly spacious and well furnished with the first wall-to-wall carpets I had ever seen. Our own home in Market Harborough has nice Wilton and Axminster carpets like islands in the sea, with stained and polished floorboards all around. 

We went straight to the bedroom, and, without a word, started to undress. Ivy took off her suit and put it on a hanger in the large, well-filled wardrobe. I watched, enchanted as she took off her blouse, carefully unfastening the cameo brooch, which was guarded by a tiny gold chain and safety pin. 

Over her head came the long petticoat, and it joined the blouse in the washing basket. Now she stood in bra and knickers and seamed nylons held up with a suspender belt . She was so slim that she had no need at all of a corset, and wore none. 

I was a bit surprised. All the sixth-form girls at Grammar School had worn roll-ons as a matter of course, as much to provide  a comfortable way to hold up their stockings as to suppress unsightly bulges.

I was too busy watching her to attend to myself. My drainpipe jeans take some getting off, and Ivy knelt down to help me. She took off my socks; picked up my feet one by one and kissed my toes, then began to pull off my jeans, a big smile on her face. I jack-knifed at the waist, and dragged my sweater over my head.

We lay together in our undies and kissed. It was my first kiss and I simply did not know what to do. Gently she forced my mouth open with her tongue, and we lay, open mouth on open mouth, exchanging souls. 

Later she undid my bra and kissed and suckled my breasts. I felt my nipples hardening and rising up to meet her lips. I took her lead and did the same. Her breasts were larger than my little bee-stings, with large brown nipples that stood up like sentinels. 

As I sucked on them I heard her breathing get faster until she was panting. She was as excited as I was. Her hand stole into my knickers and I suckled on, with her fingers painting magic stardust arabesques in the slick wetness of my opening.

After a minute I reached down to do the same to her, but she took my hand away and kissed it.

"No, not tonight, please. Just let me make love to you. Don't worry, you will learn everything, but tonight you are mine."

That night, and ever after, I was hers. 

***

After Ivy's song, the party soon broke up. Bruno had arranged for Eric Weiss to cover for him on piano for the first set at the Mardi Gras Roadhouse. He wanted to be there in time to set up for the second set starting at 10.45, so he and Donald had to leave.

"Why don't we all go?" asked Denise, who loves a party above all else. The next day was Sunday, so there seemed no good reason not to go, as long as the menfolk were acceptable in lounge suits. Bruno manoeuvred Ivy and me into Don's car, and he then spent the journey persuading Ivy to sing her song a second time in the club.     

She was obviously a bag of nerves at the idea, but Don and I joined in the persuasion. I was so proud of her and so astonished at her talent that I am afraid I probably put a bit of unfair pressure on. 

She could refuse Bruno and Don, but she could not bear to disappoint me. She agreed to sing just the one song, soon after the start of the second set. 

That was the start of something that leavened the lump of all our lives. She walked up onto the small stage like Mary Queen of Scots to her execution, and sang like an angel. 

Bruno had arranged for Danny, the manager of the club to act as sound engineer, and the microphone made her small voice fill the club. The applause was deafening, and she smiled and curtseyed like a trouper, before running off to the ladies to be convulsed by the dry heaves. 

I held her tight as she retched, and dried her watering eyes before leading her back to our table.

Next time I went round to her flat, as I let myself in I heard laughter and music, and went into the lounge to find that she and Bruno were having a whale of a time singing a duet version of  Making whoopee and hamming it up outrageously. 

Somehow, without anything being said, it became a weekly event for us to go with Don and Bruno to the club, and for Ivy to sing half a dozen songs widely spaced through the evening. 

Don, always immaculately dressed and groomed, made a perfect partner for Ivy, leading her around the pocket handkerchief-sized dance floor in a stylish foxtrot. Ivy was soon making trips to Bond Street to buy new evening gowns, and with every week that passed she seemed happier and more at home in herself. 

Bruno and I had a similar attitude to life. He was never happier than in his gansey and corduroys, looking relaxed and amused by life. As the we started spending more time together, going to concerts, the pictures, and sometimes just out for a meal or a drink, it seemed that all four of us felt that we had found something that was missing from our lives. 

We all found a private joy in the fact that, at the end of the evening, Bruno and Don would go back to their bed, and Ivy and myself to ours.

When, a few months later, Denise suggested that the four of us should buy a house together, we all wondered why we hadn't thought of it ourselves. But that was to have to wait, whilst we confronted Rotkoff.

follows: 
chapter 14. Denise and Andy.
chapter 15. Rotkoff - beginning the fight back.



The Sacred Band Ch. 14



This is the final "relationships" segment. After this chapter the story focuses on the struggle against Rotkoff.


Chapter fourteen - Denise and Andy

as reported by Laura.

May 1956.

After our engagement party, Philip and I did not see Denise for several weeks. We had plenty to keep us busy.  

Philip was snowed under with reading and research as great chunks of the world seemed to be falling apart. 

Deep cracks were appearing in the hitherto monolithic Soviet bloc, with Kruschchev's denunciation of Stalin seeming to invite insurrection from the Satellite states of Poland, Hungary and East Germany. 

In the Middle East the situation was equally stressed, as a dangerous level of tension was developing between Israel and the new nationalist leader of Egypt, Gamel Abdel Nasser, who was assiduously promoting an United Arab Republic. 

Philip was trying hard to project the implications of these hotspots on the volatile international economy, especially when there was talk of a need for a return to petrol rationing, and the inevitable price rises of basic commodities. 

The speed of change was creating stresses in Philip's own business. He could not express the depth of his contempt for Atlee and Churchill's inability to see the consequences of their boycott of the European Coal, Iron and Steel Community. 

As soon as the Iron  and Steel industries were safe from nationalisation, his customers were pressing him to recommend good safe investments in steel companies, and he was getting tired of telling them that his recommendation was to sell any existing holdings and, not, under any circumstances, make any such purchases. 

His categorical veto actually led to the loss (temporary in both cases) of two good clients. 	      

I, on the other hand, was throwing myself into revision for my first year exams. I really needed good marks in these, or my choices of honours schools would be severely limited. 

I wanted to be accepted into the double honours programme, although I knew it meant a lot of extra work, and I had  set my sights on taking Dr. Dinsmore's Shakespeare's England for my dissertation subject. I could not think of letting down Philip and may family by doing less than my best.

Of course we were not so busy that we could not find time for  fun and games. Judy and I had read The Lustful Turk together, reading out the best bits in affected upper-class ladylike tones, so it naturally turned into a role-play in which I, playing Emily, and Judy playing Sylvia (or sometimes Eliza the maid) tried in vain to protect the sanctity of our bottoms from Philip as the Lustful Turk himself. It was one of our most successful games.  


***


On Thursday morning I was sitting at my usual table in the Library. I was reading up Pythagoras and the messy aftermath of the siege of 
Syracuse. 

Pythagoras, so the story goes,  was running for the high hills pursued by Roman soldiers when he came to a field of beans in full flower. He devoutly believed that the flowers sheltered the souls of the recently dead awaiting reincarnation. He could not go back, and he could not cross the field so he waited, quietly for the soldiers to come and kill him. 

A sad and moving story. My fickle mind jumped to a favourite gag by Max Miller.

"Well there I was Missus. I was crossing a narrow bridge and walking towards me was this beautiful girl. Tell you what Missus, I couldn't decide whether to toss myself off; or block her passage."

It made me giggle uncontrollably. What a vulgar little trollop I was! I thought how Philip's mum, Madge would have roared at the joke, and, sadly, how  my mother would have put on  one of those pained expressions as if there were a bad smell just under her nose. 

That was the end of work for that morning. I wondered if Philip could be prevailed upon to give me a quick one over his beautiful desk. Maybe he would like the chance to block my passage. What was there to lose? I walked down University Road and into New Walk.

As it turned out, Philip was out, but Joan handed me a note dated the previous day, asking me to call Denise, so I picked up the phone on Philip's desk and dialled.    

"Hello, Denise. It's Laura. you left a message for me to call you, and I've only just got it. Hope it was nothing urgent."

"No darling, not urgent at all. I haven't seen you and Philip since the engagement party, and I just wanted to catch up".

"Tell me about your new gentleman friend you mean."

"Yes that's right. Are you free some lunchtime soon?"

"Let's see. Tomorrow seems ok. I've got a tutorial at eleven and lectures from three to five. Shall I  come over to yours? I can get the bus down the Harborough road and walk from there. It's only ten, fifteen minutes."

"Good then. See you tomorrow sometime after half twelve. It be good to let our hair down and have a good old natter." 

Shortly after one the following day I was walking up the long gravelled drive, admiring the colourful display of wisteria in full flower, smothering the weathered brick frontage of Foxton Lodge. 

Denise must have been watching out, as she opened the door just as I raised my hand to the bell.

"Laura! Lovely to see you. Come in, the kettle's on and I've made us something to eat."

Denise is the soul of courtesy. I could see she was dying to tell me all about Andy and herself, but first of all she had to be sure that I was comfortable, and that all was well in my life.

In reply to Denise's polite enquiries, I explained that we were snowed under with work, but otherwise fine. I passed on Philip and Judy's greetings, and settled back to hear the news.

"Come on Denise, tell me everything."

"Oh, Laura, I'm so happy. Andy and I are just made for each other. He is a dreamboat. I've told him everything about myself, Walter, you, Philip and everything. Her understands me and I'm sure he is going to 
give me everything I need." 
"Everything?" I looked at her with a little smile and raised my eyebrows.    

"Yes, that too. I don't know if you know, that he's a very religious man, a strict Baptist and all that? He has been like that all his life, and it's the reason he was so respected in the Police. There was no way he would do anything that was not right, and everyone knew it. 

Anyway, his late wife Dora came from one of these strange Adventist sects, where the women are totally submissive to their menfolk. 

When Andy started courting her, her parents gave him the third degree about his background, his beliefs and his intentions towards her. 

Well, apparently, although he was not a member of their sect, he passed, because he was given permission to take her out, and it was understood that they would get married as soon as he passed his Sergeant's exams. 

Anyway it was accepted that there would be no hanky-panky between them until they were married, but they were seen as a betrothed couple. 

Now here's the exciting bit. Her mother and father sat there like patience on a monument in front of the two of them, and said, as clear as could be, that Dora was a girl, and girls could be flighty and irresponsible, and that it now it was up to Andy to discipline her. 

What's more, father handed him a heavy leather strap, and told him not to spare the rod when she needed it.  Mother looked on with total approval, and Dora seemed as happy about it as anyone.

Laura, they got married and lived as happy as could be for twenty-odd years until she had the stroke that killed her. They never had any children, but they were blissfully happy together right to the end. 

And every Friday night, out would come the strap, and Dora would have her bottom thoroughly warmed up. Then they would go to bed early and have a cuddle. 

When she died, Andy says he felt that his life might as well be over too. He thought he would never recover. Then he met me and started to come out of his shell. Now we go to the tea-dances a couple of times a week, and I've started to teach him golf. 

He is the best kisser I have ever known, and we just spend the evening snogging like teenagers. But best of all, he gives me a lovely strapping whenever I ask for it. 

"Denise, that's lovely. I am so pleased for you. But what about s-e-x? Is he as good As Philip in bed?"   

"I honestly don't know. We kiss and cuddle and give each other a good groping, but he has made it clear that that's as far as it will go until we're married."

 "Married?" I squealed is surprise and delight. "When! Where! Can I be a bridesmaid?"

"Back end of June or July we think. And of course you will be matron of honour, and Ginny, Judy and Ivy will be bridesmaids. Andy feels he has to ask his brother to be best man, but he will probably not want to come all the way from Ontario, and if that falls through he will certainly ask Don."

"How do you feel about doing without for three or four months? It would drive me scatty". 

"After Walter was killed I thought I should never want to be physically  close to someone ever again. It took me over two years even to go to George Abbott and ask him to give me a good hiding. I think George and Ada saved my life, or at least my sanity.  

Then along came Philip, and then you, and I started to live again. I've told Andy everything and he understands completely. He is grateful to you all for everything you have done for me. 

Laura, of course I want Andy physically, but if I had to I could wait for him for years, not just months." 	

"I don't suppose..."

"No chance at all. Andy isn't that sort of man. Our bedroom life will be strictly private. That doesn't mean that we won't get up to Heinz 57 varieties of sex, but it will be strictly between the two of us. Believe me, I've talked to him about that too. He says that he and Dora always used to believe, like the old Muslims, that how a man ploughed his own field was his own business."

"That's sad in a way. We've played some lovely games together, but I am so happy for you."

"Yes, it's smashing. I feel young again. It's just like it was with Walter.     
I know he's not handsome or charming like Philip, but he is a wonderful man and I am just totally in love with him. Everything about him seems right. 

You know your weekly sessions with Philip when you tell him your little faults and mistakes..."

"And sometimes big mistakes and downright misbehaviour..."

"Well, Andy used to do it with Dora, but they hardly ever took it seriously. They made a game of it. So now I am trying to tell a taller and more ridiculous tale every Friday. Last week I tearfully confessed that I had snuck in at night, stolen a piglet from Danny Finch's farm and smuggled it into the Oadby swimming baths in a shopping bag and let it loose, and it swam around chasing the kids, and disgraced itself in the water. So now I'm banned from all the swimming pools in Leicestershire. 

The challenge is to tell it with a totally straight face whilst he is rolling about laughing. Then he gives me a good spanking supposed to last a week, but it seldom does. When I am feeling a bit deprived, I dream up the next silly story and practise it on front of a mirror.

"Oh Denise - you're a riot! I think that's the funniest thing I've heard in ages.  I should love to be  fly on the wall when it happens. I haven't seen your luscious bum being warmed up for ages."  

"And you probably won't see it again. But you'll certainly see Andy and me. How about dinner next week? Any evening...except Friday of course."

I couldn't wait to get home and tell Philip the whole story. He would know what to do...




The Sacred Band Ch. 15



Now the characters are all introduced - and we enter the final part of the story. Thanks to anyone who has maintained enough interest to get to this stage. New readers might care to back-track to the beginning... 




Chapter fifteen:  Rotkoff - fighting back, part one.


Dr. and Mrs. W. Butler - Rugby

Michael Hanson and Adrian Calke - Birmingham

Patrick Kavanagh - Wolverhampton

Edgar Abrams - Birmingham

Charles and Diane Rollinson  -  Walsall


Ivy was in charge of the Bishop Street reference library the following morning, and, working together, she and Philip spent a useful couple of hours. By midday Philip knew something about all five of the names on Rotkoff's paper. 

All featured in stories in the West Midlands local papers over the past three or four years. None of the people had clearly been murdered, but all died in circumstances giving rise to suspicion. Philip was forced to believe that Rotkoff was in deadly earnest and that his life, and those of his loved ones were under threat unless he gave in. 

He urgently needed to tell those most deeply involved what sort of threat they were under. Philip was not sure he could trust the office telephone, so whilst Joan manned the office, he called on Denise at her home. She stuck a small malt whisky into his hand, and gestured to a chair.

"Philip dear, how lovely to see you. If you had let me know I should have come in and met you at the office. There are always things to do in the centre of town. I take it you haven't come to play?"

"No my love, this is not a social call. A really bad situation has arisen, and it affects all of us. How can you and Andy, Donald, Laura and myself get together without attracting any attention?"

"A restaurant might be the best. You take Laura out for an evening, and Andy and Don and I will accidentally meet you there.  Don's the man. I'll get him to suggest somewhere where we can be guaranteed privacy. I'll tell Laura the place on some pretext. Don't worry, we'll sort it all out."


That Friday evening, Laura and Philip drove out to their rendezvous at the Mardi Gras Roadhouse on the Six Hills Road. They arrived at a non-descript large, low building. It had evidently started life as a motor car showroom whose builders thought that, with cheap enough occupancy costs they could flout the laws of location. 

Empty for over a decade after 1935, it was now metamorphosed into a nightclub of a kind familiar in the roads south  and west of London, but a rarity in the midlands and north.

Short-skirted waitresses and evening gowned hostesses, all of them with beautiful, bright smiles and at least a veneer of sophistication decorated the place. The Mardi grass was established as a private club, so membership took 24 hours; but a generous policy on signed-in guests complied with the law and satisfied the customers.

The club served expensive, but genuine drinks. Unlike the clipjoints of Soho; what you read on the bottle was what you got in your glass. The champagne was champagne, the Teachers whisky was Teachers. 

The food, too, was expensive but good and well served. The music was superb. A piano trio played fro dancing on weeknights and, at weekends, one of the owners, Bruno Canelli, led a five piece jazz-oriented dance band that drew people from four counties. 

At around nine pm. Laura and Philip stood at the door and surveyed the large, low-ceilinged room with its obligatory haze of cigar and cigarette smoke. They saw clusters of white-clothed tables surrounding the small central dance floor. 

Down the room, the eye was drawn to the small stage with  a runway where scantily-clad dancers , who got even more scantily clad after midnight, danced and sang routines clearly derived from MGM musicals. At one corner of the room, a small triangular dais housed the band, with a piano (unused this evening) and a full drum kit.

From the bandstand, Bruno gave them a nod of recognition. Ginny and Jenny, looking very much at home, smiled at them from their privileged positions on the band wives table. 

They followed the long, black-stockinged legs of the lovely waitress who showed them to their reserved table and ordered drinks. Ten minutes later they saw Ivy, in another beautiful cocktail dress, walk in with Donald. 

They seated themselves in the vacant places. Philip greeted them effusively and ordered drinks for them. As they were reading the menus and making small-talk, Andy and Denise arrived. 

Philip, taking on the role of host, insisted that the new arrivals joined them, and made the waitresses bustle about setting two more places and bringing up chairs. 

To an uncritical eye, the scene, with its three dinner jacketed men, and three evening-dressed women crowded on a table for four, looked just like a happy accidental meeting of old friends.  

As the smoked salmon pate starters arrived, Donald broke into the small-talk.

"Bruno has a share in this place. He has known these people since his Army days. He says they are utterly reliable, and trustworthy. He has helped them out once or twice when the Nottingham gangs tried to muscle in on the action, and they are only too happy to help in any way at all. Danny the manager has made sure that nobody iffy can overhear us." 

There was a tension at the table, as the summons was clearly urgent and important, and there was a sort of hesitance, or reluctance in the way that everyone took their time choosing meals and drinks.

Now that everyone was assembled in response to his urgency, Philip was at a loss how to start. Andy saw his hesitation and began.

"This is about Rotkoff, isn't it Phil?"

"Yes, that's right. You were dead right about him - the man's a monster." 

Laura looked at him in bewilderment. It did not take a genius to see that the meeting a couple of days previously had gone badly. but once Philip had come back to the office alone, she had jumped up, kissed his cheek and hurried back to the university library to get in a couple of hours' work on an overdue essay. 

Since then, with Joan back in the office, she and Philip had had scarcely time to exchange a greeting.

Philip looked a little embarrassed. He knew that Laura would be hurt at having been kept in ignorance of the threat posed by Rotkoff, but it could not be hidden any longer.

"I'm sorry that I kept this from you, darling, but I hoped that nothing would come of it, and I didn't want to worry you. Rotkoff has been spying on the business. His men had got in and copied all our files and he knew all about the business. Yesterday he came along to demand that I buy out Denise and Don's shareholdings and make him our sole client."

"But that's outrageous," Laura burst out. Donald and Denise, shock in their faces, were exclaiming in angry whispers. Andy grasped Denise's hand, and held up his own, in a well-practised gesture, to command silence.

"Rotkoff is a dangerous criminal, and a crafty one too. We planted hidden microphones in the office to try to get something on him yesterday, but he was too clever for us."

"Yes", Philip continued, "he stuck to small talk in the office, and then suggested a walk. It wasn't until we had got well away from the office that he gave me an ultimatum, and this list."

Just at that moment the band ended its first set with Bruno singing Louis Jordan's great song  Let the Good Times Roll, giving the alto sax player free rein for four, rousing,  consecutive blues choruses that the small audience greeted with prolonged applause. 

Conversation stopped for a well-deserved final round of applause. Bruno slipped off the bandstand, in so far as so huge a man could be said to slip,  and he came over, greeted everyone warmly and pulled up a chair. The prettiest waitress watched his every move and immediately brought him a pint.

For some time he listened in silence.

As Philip spoke  he passed around copies of the list of names. They all read them carefully, but the names meant nothing to any of them except Ivy.

His voice sharp with tension, Philip told what he had discovered.

"All these people have died in suspicious circumstances in the past couple of years. Rotkoff strongly implied that they turned down his offers of so-called 'partnership', and that he was responsible for their deaths.

First of all, the Butlers. Dr. Butler was a very respected dentist; he inherited a thriving wine-merchant's business in Rugby. Rotkoff wanted it, maybe as a cover for drug smuggling, or whatever. 

Butler refused, and a couple of week later his house burned down in the night and all five of them were killed. Three little ones they had; the oldest was eight." 

Everyone around the table exclaimed in shock and horror. Philip paused, a stricken look on his face. He was sharply aware of how vulnerable his mother would be to a house fire. 

Andy Summerston took up the story.

"Rotkoff was suspected, but the police couldn't put a case together.  It could very easily have been a case of arson, but if so it was rigged to look like an electrical fire that started in the kitchen. 

George Torrens, my old oppo in Brum, is certain sure that Rotkoff was responsible, and that's what came from his snouts in Brum. After that, people really began taking Rotkoff seriously." 

Philip continued,

"That was four years ago. Next came Michael Hanson and Adrian Calke. They jointly owned one of the top estate agencies in the West Midlands. Hanson worked out of the office at the Bullring, Calke had an office in Solihull. Calke was the finance man and Hanson was the salesman.  Their fathers, who stared the business, had been great friends, but the sons did not really get on outside business. 

That's why everyone was amazed when they were found dead together in a hotel room. Hanson's throat was cut and Calke was stabbed through the heart with a big kitchen knife. They were both naked, and it looked like a homosexual suicide pact. 

The newspapers had a field day about it.  Michael Hanson and Adrian Calke, the owners of  Hanson, Calke and Partners, in a sensational double suicide, and they died in bed together in a somewhat disreputable hotel in Solihull. 

Their deaths were officially regarded as suicide. A week or so later, Stephen Rotkofff presented himself at the solicitor's and  produced signed documents dated a few days earlier, agreeing the sale of their business to him for £5,000 'and other valuable considerations.' 

Calke had paid Rotkoff's cheque for £5,000 into his bank account the day before he died. Their families flatly refused to believe that they were bisexual, and fought a losing legal battle to keep possession of the business."

"You can't rule out them leading double lives", said Donald knowledgeably. Ivy nodded agreement. "You'd be surprised how far people go to keep their secret from their family and friends. On the other hand it was a perfect smokescreen for a double murder." 


"Was any traces of drugs found in the bodies; any unusual bruises or ligature marks?" Hugo asked.  "For murder to be rigged to look like suicide, they had to be got to the hotel room and the scene set. A couple of old Special ops mates of mine specialized in doing jobs like that for MI6 and it's very much their style." 

"We don't know all the details, only what appeared in the inquest report, but the police and the pathologist didn't see anything suspicious. "

"Anyway", Donald summed up. "Rotkoff claims it as his doing, and he certainly got what he wanted out of it. Let's give it the benefit of the doubt. Go on Phil."

"Patrick Kavanagh ran the Windsor Castle public house in the centre of Wolverhampton. It was a very successful pub, where the local Rotary and a couple of Oddfellows lodges met. 

Kavanagh was a fairly tolerant man, and the police had been on at him once or twice for letting one of his barmen take illegal betting slips, but a year or so ago, according to Andy's friend, some of Rotkoff's men were seen selling drugs in the lavatories out the back, and Kavanagh threw them out bodily and kicked them half-way across the road.

Two days later when he was taking the cash to the bank, he was killed in a blatant hit and run accident. The car was stolen a quarter of an hour beforehand and dumped five minutes later.   

You can see the picture now, so I'll be brief.  Both Abrams and the Rollinsons had something Rotkoff wanted. Abrams ran an accountancy business with many of the biggest businesses in the City on its books. He was attacked, robbed and beaten to death late at night, and Rotkoff  produced papers to prove that he owned 55% of the business. Now he owns it all. 

The Rollinsons had a transport business that Rotkoff wanted to make use of. They turned him down. Rotkoff apparently took it amiably enough, but a week later they died when their canal-boat exploded. Now, according to Andy's informants, Rotkoff has the business community scared stiff". 

Donald interrupted, asking the question in all their minds.

"Yes, but can't the police do anything?"

"Well", Andy responded cautiously, "most of this comes from my police sources. They have been quietly putting two and two together. Maybe, if people who were threatened went to the police and made a complaint, the police would investigate, but they would have to have some evidence to go on.

Rotkoff is clever and cautious. Philip was our best chance of getting something on him. I thought we might get something by bugging the office, and I made dead sure it didn't go through official police channels, so as to reduce the risk of it getting back to him. 

I don't think Rotkoff knew anything but still he made damned sure that nothing he said went on wire."

"Yes", said Philip. "He even told me that the piece of paper he gave me was typed on my office typewriter and that it was worthless as evidence. If I produced it, it would look as if I was trying to fit him up for something he didn't do."

They were all silent for a minute or two as the complex situation sank in. In effect Rotkoff wanted Philip's business, and his skills, and he was determined to have them.

"Yes, but what is it all about,", asked Laura.

Philip replied, careful not to inflame the situation.

"I have read about this sort of thing in the USA. The Mafia families buy casinos in Nevada and Atlantic City. Then they can disguise the money they get from their criminal operations and look like legitimate businessmen. 

Then they reinvest the casino profits in other legitimate businesses. They even own undertakers and even crematoria, so that they can dispose of bodies easily and cleanly. I think that Rotkoff is aiming to do the same thing in England."

This was a very shocking idea, but it brought the whole pattern together and made sense. But what to do?

Andy, with his experience in command, summed up.

"There seem to be only three options. Give in and become Rotkoff's tool. Safer in the short term, but decidedly dangerous in the long run. 
The other two options are flight or fight."

"Flight is out". Philip said flatly. "My mother won't be moved, and I won't leave her. Besides, running is no answer. I've built my life around my business. I can't bear to see it corrupted and destroyed. 

Besides, it doesn't just belong to me. Don and Denise have taken a big risk in backing me, and they deserve to be considered." 

Denise and Donald both murmured dissent. They were adamant that they would not do anything to risk Philip and Laura's lives. 

"Then that just leaves fight." 

Andy was aware that his past as a senior policeman made his friends uneasy. It was time to put up or shut up.

"You all know what I was. I was a detective, and I believe I was a good one. I respected the rules, and tried hard to be fair, and to this day I have a clear conscience about the people who got banged up, and those who walked away. 

You are all wondering if I can be trusted; am I a friend first, or a policeman first? Well, you deserve a straight answer from me. Let me make myself crystal clear. I am a friend first, middle and last. If you decide to fight, I am with you one hundred percent". 

"Me too," said Bruno firmly. "I was a sergeant in the Royal Marine Commando, got seconded to S.O.E. and spent four years in Special Ops. I specialised in demolition.

You know the murder of the two estate agents? Well, that sounds just like the sort of thing a couple of our special units used to do. 

Remember, after the war, there was a bit of fuss about the way some of the local bigwigs on Jersey and Guernsey assisted the Germans to deport the Jews to the Concentration camps? The Government kept schtum and the leading lights were given knighthoods and OBE's. 

It's not just a coincidence that two of them died soon afterwards in car accidents, and another one fell off a cliff. Mates of mine were sent to tidy them up. Believe me, I shouldn't be telling you this, but I really want you to understand."      

Bruno Canelli, thought Laura; sitting there as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth; pint beer tankard looking tiny in his huge hand; cuddly as a teddy bear; stalwart of the Borough Surveyor's Department. How little we know about people.

Philip turned ashen. "Now hold on a minute. I won't be a party to murdering anyone. My business isn't worth a human life."

"OK, Philip, take it easy. Nobody is suggesting killing anybody. I just wanted to make it clear that, if we decided to take some action, I am 
not just up for it, but pretty well equipped to pull it off. And if push comes to shove, I have some pretty handy friends."

Suddenly the mood in the room had changed. Philip felt less hopeless. He was among real friends, who would back him all the way, and take real risks for his sake. It was one of the things about RAF life that he had valued. A spirit of camaraderie and mutual loyalty. He could feel tears swelling in his eyes. He came to a decision.

"Very well then, we'll fight. But how?"

Bruno had already started thinking ahead.

"Well, first of all we need more people.  Joan will have to be involved, but she must be kept well away from the rough stuff. We must have  Ivy and Ginny in on the planning. Ivy can co-ordinate our desk research. We really need to know about Rotkoff's living arrangements and his people."

"I can help with that, Andy contributed. "I've got good contacts in the West Midlands Police forces. Of course I shan't tell them too much but you can bet your bottom dollar they'll be glad to help behind the scenes."

"Ivy is already involved," said Laura. "Philip and she did the research on the list of names together. I should really like Judy in as well, and we can't do without Joan.  

But also, we really need Mr. Gillespie and Dolly", said Laura. "They know so much, and they have such a network of friends all over the country. I don' know how they well be able to help, but we won't be complete without them."

"Yes, I agree entirely", said Andy. "Davy's the original cunning man. What he doesn't know isn't worth knowing."  

Denise had the last word. "Well, the first thing we need to do is to get us all together. I think, Andy love,  we are going to have a party."

Bruno returned to the band and the second set began. They ordered more drinks, and settled down for an evening of small talk, drinking and dancing. 


***


Monday was, fortunately, warm and sunny for the time of year - shirtsleeves weather. Laura took Joan out for a sandwich lunch in Victoria Park. They sat on the grass companionably, and, when Laura was sure they were safe from prying ears, she told the whole story. 

Joan was horrified, but more angry the frightened. She agreed to do everything she was told without question, however odd it might seem. Philip worked away quietly in the next few days.

Assuming that Rotkoff would be aware of his actions, Philip consulted his solicitor about dissolving the partnership and set a formal valuation in train.. He arranged for offer letters to be drafter to be sent to Donald and Denise. 




The Sacred Band Ch. 15



Joan prepared dummy copies of letters to his clients, advising them that he could no longer handle their financial affairs and asking them to make other arrangements. At the end of the day she went to the postbox and dropped in a couple of dozen letters; being careful that nobody could read the addresses, meanwhile leaving the carbon copies in the "to be filed" tray over the weekend.

A couple of days later, loud and acrimonious meetings with Denise and Donald with threats of legal action signalled the rift in Philip's lute. 

Sure enough, a phone call from Rotkoff followed within a day.

"Hello, Philip my son. Glad to see that you have seen reason. Get the business valued and we'll discuss the terms of the buyout. Don't worry about where the money is coming from. Maybe you were a bit previous in dropping your other clients before the valuation was done, but it'll all come out in the wash."

Rotkoff's tone, despite the spurious bonhomie, was that of a boss to his subordinate. Philip couldn't get a word in edgeways, but he drew satisfaction from having bought some time. Now it was all up to Andy, Bruno and the rest of what he was coming to think of as 'the team'.

On second thoughts Denise decided to hold the party somewhere unlikely to be under Rotkoff's observation. A discreet visit to the Edgar Backus bookshop led to party invitations to Jamie's house in Knighton Church Road. 

Nobody came empty-handed; nobody came under-dressed for a party; and, above all, nobody came late. At Bruno's suggestion, Philip and Laura arrived last, and were greeted warmly by Jamie and Dolly. Philip was pretty sure that he and Laura had been followed by a maroon Morris Oxford. The car slowed right down but drove on by. Laura and Philip went straight upstairs and, on their knees in the big front bay-window, checked that the suspect car did not return to the street. 

Dolly and Denise bustled around with nibbles whilst Jamie smiling an almost imperceptible, crinkly smile, opened a precious bottle of Dufftown fifteen-year-old single malt and poured drinks. 

Bruno opened the case and  got out his old s-hole Gibson L12 and tuned it; neatly impaling his burning cigarette on a stub of string protruding from the headstock for just that purpose. 

When he was satisfied, he played Teddy Bunn's opening to If you see me coming; singing in a light baritone voice:

If you see me coming, hoist your window high,
If you see me coming, hoist your window high,
And if you see me going, hang your head and cry.

Everyone was very much aware that there was serious business to discuss, but Bruno's music was settling them and setting a positive mood. It was a roomful of pairs and small groupings. 

Philip, Laura, Joan and Jenny, Donald and Bruno, Ivy and Ginny, Andy and Denise, and finally, the hosts Jamie and Dolly. They all knew each other by sight, and small talk at picnics and a couple of theatre visits, but the acquaintance needed to grow rapidly into a deep mutual trust. Questions tended to be probing.

Andy broke the ice:

"Were you brought up as a Roman Catholic, Bruno?"

"Fuck, No!" said Bruno in mock indignation. "My mum and Dad were lifelong anarchists. They worked with Mussolini In Bologna when he was a red-hot anarcho-syndicalist, but things turned sour and at the beginning of the twenties they brought me here as a baby. We came here more or less as refugees. The fascists were making things too hot for their old chums. 

Most of my parents' friends went to Argentina and founded the Pampa libre  group, but mum had an uncle in Glasgow and we fetched up with them. 

During the war, the British government stupidly locked up some of their best friends in internment camps including my aged p's. They were left to rot on the Isle of Man." 

Andy, who had, perforce, carried out some of the arrests, agreed wholeheartedly.

"So, were you interned?"

No, I joined the army as soon as I was 17. I had to beg and plead to get into the army and even then Italians and Jews were stuck in the Pioneer Corps. I was lucky because I am a big feller.  Not long out of training camp I won the Regimental Boxing championship as a heavyweight, and got transferred to Third Commando. 

They saw that I had been apprenticed to a surveyor, so they sent me for training in explosives and demolition. Somehow, God only knows why, I fetched up in the Royal Marines. Things were a bit weird in those days."

"Where did you learn to play the guitar?"

"That's down to the Army too. I could strum a few chords before I joined up, and back my dad's mandolin on O sole mio but some of my oppos were jazz mad and we got V discs from American troops and I listened to Charley Christian and Lonnie Johnson and tried to work out what they were doing. 

I heard T Bone Walker playing They call it Stormy Monday, and the harmonies just knocked me out; all those augmenteds and diminished sevenths. I just had to find out what he was doing. That's where it all started."

The spotlight turned from person to person. They learned that Ivy had been born in Henan province, China, where her parents were Baptist missionaries. Everyone was dying to ask how she got on with her parents now she had a female lover, but nobody had the nerve. 

Andy, it turned out, had been a Military policeman in the closing stages of the First World War and saw at first hand the appalling condition of the Russian prisoners of war in German hands. He said, sourly, that he was not at all surprised by the scenes when the  concentration camps were liberated in 1945. 

After the war he was asked to take a permanent commission in the Military Police, but he did not like the smell of the post-war army and politely declined.    

After a lengthy session of getting the feel of each other, Philip finally said:

"Fill your glasses, everyone, and get comfortable. You all know there is something in the wind, and it's time to come clean."    

They all listened in silence as Philip told the story of Rotkoff's approach, the implicit death threat, and his determination to fight back, providing he could protect his mother and his friends. 

"So that's where we stand at present. Rotkoff thinks I am capitulating and that he will soon gain control. In the short term I want to keep him sweet, in the longer term I want to drive him off for good. I have said before that I won't be party to murder, even of scum like him; but, for myself, I shall beat him or die in the attempt."

Bruno was not so measured in his views:

"Quite frankly, I wouldn't draw the line at killing him, or throwing a bomb into his headquarters, but it isn't my decision. Philip and Andy are in charge and I'll take orders from them. 

Where there's real physical risk involved, Philip, Donald and I will be the ones in the firing line. We will need a lot of backup and support, but we'll keep the others out of danger as much as possible."

Joan was unequivocal,

"You can't keep us out of danger. You didn't create the danger and you mustn't feel responsible. As far as I'm concerned, I'll do whatever is needed, and take my chances."

Laura, moved beyond words, hugged and kissed her with tears in her eyes. 

Ivy, whose shyness was the bane of her life and seldom spoke above a whisper, spoke up boldly, a croak in her voice:

"Bruno and Donald, you are my dearest friends in all the world. I won't see you put yourselves at risk, and hang back myself." 

Ginny just grabbed her lover's hand and squeezed it tightly, nodding in total affirmation.

Soon everyone was wet-eyed, and hugs and kisses were exchanged all round. The pairs and clusters were welded into a single group with a single, overriding purpose.

For the men, and for Ivy who had been a WAAF, it felt like a return to service days. 

Bruno sat for a few moments, his brain racing, Then he started to talk quietly and urgently.

"This must be the last time we are seen together until all this is over. It wasn't a big risk coming here tonight, but we can't do it again until this is all over.

Ivy and Jamie. Can we use the ref. and the bookshop as letter-drops? We give letters to you, and you see that they are collected or pass them on through Ginny and Laura. 

You can contact Don though me. There's no way the Town Hall switchboard can be bugged. Don and Denise have to put up a smokescreen. Go to your solicitors and threaten legal action. Fight the valuation. That gives you a perfect reason to stay in communication. Have a furious row with Phil, and then cut him dead. 

Denise, turn Laura away when she comes to try and make peace. Send her away in  tears. She will be watched and it will get back to Rotkoff. Jamie and Ivy can think up good excuses to phone all of us. Laura, you go to Edgar Backus every week anyway. Carry on going. Tell him how bad things are and have a weep. Any and I won't have attracted any attention yet, so we can meet and plan pretty safely. We'll make sure you all know all you need to know. We all have to trust and rely on each other until this is done.

Laura, ever the romantic, had an idea that touched all their hearts.
"We need a name for ourselves - like the Three Musketeers - so that we feel part of something larger than ourselves."

Instantly, Bruno had a suggestion.

"My fantasy has always been to have been a part of The Sacred Band of Thebes - the archetypal unit of shock troops who were almost impossible to defeat - they rolled over the Spartans, and you can't do better than that.

What made them so powerful is that they were pairs of lovers who fought together and defended each other to the death. Kill one and you had to kill the other. The Spartiotes who survived the Battle of Leuctra didn't reckon queers were a liability in the armed forces. 

Us lot, we are all queer in one way or another, and happy to be what we are - and we all care for each other and we'll defend each other at all costs. We are a sort of Sacred Band".  

There was an instant chorus of "What's queer about me, I should like to know?" and Speak for yourself, young man!" in jocular mock outrage. The solemnity of the moment was shattered, but the point was well made.

Carried by acclamation; The Sacred Band they should be.



The Sacred Band Ch. 16



Chapter sixteen.  Fighting back part 2.

Getting to work.


Philip continued to buy time over the next few days, by maintaining the pretence of severing his links with his partners and clients. Meanwhile Andy pulled strings with his former police contacts and renewed his acquaintance with Superintendent Bill Torrens. Andy  knew that his old friend was personally incorruptible, but bitterly frustrated at the way big gangsters could move around with total impunity.

He learned where Rotkoff was living, and found out a lot about the occupants of the big house in Barns Green. 

Knowing that Rotkoff had bent coppers on his payroll, Andy was very careful about whom he approached. A long, beery afternoon in a pub in Aston got him a promise from the very top level of the CID that a blind eye would be turned if Andy's team could pull off something the protocol-driven police could not.

Bruno was also spending some time in the West Midlands and finding copious quantities of beer useful to oil the wheels. He paid a visit to colleagues in the Warwickshire County Planning department, and clandestinely came away with the ground plans of Rotkoff's' house in Mearse Lane. 

A day or two later a firm of tree surgeons pollarded the row of elms along  the edge of the next-door garden, ascending each tree in turn to remove the topmost branches. A month later the occupants of the housed returned from their ranch in Colorado to be confronted by a mystery. 

Ivy and Ginny were at work too, collecting and collating a file of press cuttings, court transcripts and totally illicit copies of police files. 

Soon Philip and Andy had access to a very accurate outline of Rotkoff's affairs, together with photographs of Rotkoff's house and grounds, and snapshots of Mrs Rotkoff, the former beauty queen Sonja Kanievsky, the children, their two bodyguards, the dog-handler and the two guard dogs. 

Now some serious planning could begin.

By common consent, Bruno had assumed the leadership.

"Let's set out some objectives. Philip, what do you want us to achieve?"

Philip knew that his squeamishness could imperil the others, but he could not countenance serious brutality.

"I know it is childish, but at first I just wanted him to leave me alone, but the more I think about it the more I want him stopped before he harms anyone else. But I don't want deaths on my conscience."

"Ok then, no unavoidable deaths or needless cruelty. I understand.  Oddly enough, I have been thinking of an elaborate practical joke that would destroy his business and permanently undermine his credibility.  

We would make him 'disappear' for a day or so, and give the police the chance they have been looking for to take his business to pieces.    

Events over the next week moved to plan. Andy and Bruno went to a closed-down USAF airfield in Lincolnshire to attend a Sunday car auction. They came back with a pre-war Pickford's furniture pantechnicon with a big Bedford engine. 

They parked it discreetly at the back of the Mardi Gras roadhouse, and Bruno, with lots of help from Ginny and Ivy, repainted it inside and out. They left it in the care of Bruno's ex-Army friends to give the smell of new paint time to dissipate.

At the New Walk office, the telephone rang and rang as Laura and Joan had to try to placate angry and embittered customers. Letters arrived from Don's and Denise's solicitors contesting the forced buy-out and the valuation. Laura threw herself into the role-play. 

She went and visited Denise at her home, but got no further then the doorstep. She tried to calm down a furious Denise, and went away in a flood of tears. 

She made an attempt to talk to Donald, at his flat, and met a less brusque, but still implacable response. Laura went to see Ivy to appeal to her to try to mediate, and Ivy was sad but unable to help. 

A visit to the Edgar Backus bookshop gained her tea and sympathy, and she ended up crying on Jamie's chest.

Ever alert, Laura noticed the maroon Morris Oxford following her bus to Oadby and parked outside Denise's house. 

She also identified a seedy-looking elderly man in grey gabardine raincoat and greasy trilby hat who loitered on a bench in New Walk and followed her on foot whenever she turned left out to the office to walk up to the Uni, or right when she popped out to drop some letters into the postbox or do some shopping in the marketplace. 

After a couple of days in which she contrived to avoid catching his eye or making him aware that he had been spotted, she decided to follow him. 

Watching him prepare to depart one evening, she put on Joan's duster coat, a pair of her spectacles and a headscarf, and followed him into the centre of town. As she got to Wellington Street she saw him get into a black Ford V-8 Pilot and drive away. 

Since Bruno was acting as clearing house for information, Laura reported both number plates to him along with descriptions of three men. Smugly, they were beginning to feel like people out of spy thrillers like Casablanca or The Third Man. The situation, they felt, was well in hand.

***

As Donald Bray arrived at work one morning, the receptionist cheerfully informed him that a new customer, one Dr James Gray, had asked for an appointment with him for advice on a commercial lease. From force of habit, 

Donald looked up Gray in Kelly's Directory and found that he was in practise as a GP in Countesthorpe, a nearby village. The hour of the appointment arrived and the receptionist showed in a heavily built man in his forties, with a boxer's shoulders and a broken nose. His thinning sandy-coloured hair and high colour seemed somehow familiar although he had never seen the man before.

Don  rose to greet his visitor.

"Stephen Rotkoff. We haven't met but you will have heard of me. Now listen Bray. You and your cousin are causing me some problems, and I don't like people who cause me problems. 

Now get this. Philip Cheshire is very anxious to sell his business to me, and he and I don't want hangers-on cluttering up the deal. You have a good life and a charming girlfriend. The last thing you want is for some drugged up piece of scum to be waiting in Bishop Street one evening to throw acid in her face. Very unpredictable these druggies. 

Wouldn't it be better all round for you and your pretty cousin  to  drop your objections and accept a very fair valuation for your shares? You know, I don't know if it has occurred to you, but your cousin's house is very vulnerable to fire. It would be a pity if it went up one night and she got trapped inside."

With that Parthian shot, Rotkoff got up and left, leaving Donald shuddering. He jumped up, rushed to the lavatory and vomited in to the pan. He knelt there, his stomach in spasm, for some time, then slowly got up and wiped his mouth. 

He looked without recognition at the grey-faced man, suddenly old, who stared blankly back at him in the mirror. The danger had seemed to be receding, but now it was terrifyingly, chillingly close to home.

As soon as he could get half an hour free, Donald went to the Reference Library and told Ivy all that had happened. Ivy phoned Bruno.

"Hello, Mr, Canelli. This is Ivy Matthews, the reference librarian at Bishop Street. 

Your name has been given to me as someone who is knowledgeable about the history of civil engineering. We have been given a collection of old mensuration and surveying books, and we should appreciate some suggestions on which ones to keep or get rid of. Do you suppose you could pop in some time?" 

Donald approached Denise directly and openly and told her the story. She sat down abruptly, and Don poured her a scotch and splashed in some soda. Denise recovered her colour and her mind was soon racing through the implications. Time was obviously pressing, and if action were to be taken against Rotkoff, it could not be long delayed. 

There was no way of knowing who was being observed, so some risky assumptions had to be made. Rotkoff had identified Philip, Laura, Denise, Donald and Ivy, so they had to keep well away from the rest of the band. 

On the other hand, his assumption that Ivy was Donald's girlfriend suggested that Bruno was in the clear, and they took a chance that Andy had not been linked to the others - Rotkoff could hardly ignore a former high-ranking policeman, but seemed totally unaware of his existence.  

***

Andy and Bruno became the de-facto planning group. They started to meet at the roadhouse in the early evenings and compare notes.

"I've just run down to Aldershot", Bruno began. "Some old mates of mine have slipped me a useful cocktail of drugs they have developed for field interrogations. 

They call it nightcap. It's  morphine and scopolamine, with  a dash of lysergide and one or two things that are still on the secret list. 

It makes the subject very suggestible and weakens the will to resist. Nobody knows what it would do if it were used continually, but it's safe enough in small doses. I swore to Don that I wouldn't risk the bastard's life."  

"Well now, we've got the location sorted out, and we've got the treatment ready. Now we've got to face the real challenge. Getting him out of the house without disturbing anyone. Seems a tall order."

"It wouldn't be the first time I've done it. Seven or eight years ago a mate and I winkled  a senior member of Irgun out of a house in Jaffa. By morning he was in Famagusta with nobody the wiser. 

In this case we may have a bit of help. I must admit I can't quite weigh Jamie Gillespie up. He says he can put a cloak over us so that we are very hard to notice. 

He says he can also cloak the furniture van so that people just walk right past it and not see it. Trouble is, I don't know whether or not to believe him. It's so far outside my experience."

"Well I for one take Jamie very seriously indeed. If he says he can do it, I'm inclined to go along with him. How essential is his help? Could we get away with it without him?"

"I'd give us about a sixty percent chance; maybe a bit better".

"Would you go ahead with those odds?"

"Course I would; I've gone in with much worse odds than those and got away with it. In any case, the risk isn't being caught; it's having to take prisoners and losing the element of surprise."

"So Jamie does his stuff, and maybe raises the odds on us pulling it off. It's not to be sneezed at."

"Ok. So the show's on for Thursday night. I'll co-ordinate with Ivy and Jamie, and make sure everyone knows exactly what to do. God; it feels good to be back on the job again."

"You sodding extroverts make me tired. For myself, I'm scared spitless".

"First night nerves. They'll go away when the curtain goes up."

"Oh! Fuck off Bruno, you great ape."



The Sacred Band Ch. 17



The Sacred Band - chapter seventeen.

Fighting back part 3.  The gig.


Barns green, outside Birmingham  - night of August 12 1956.


It was a moonless, starry night, and a few small clouds scudded across the indigo sky. Three figures stood, motionless, against the high wall they had just scaled. 

They wore shapeless, hooded  camouflage smocks and loose canvas trousers. On their feet were newly purchased plimsolls that would be incinerated before their footprints were discovered.

At shortly after one a.m. the lights went out on the upper floor, and only the kitchen was illuminated. Here three men, the two bodyguards and O'Brien the dog-handler, were playing a game of brag, grumbling sometimes at their luck. 

They took occasional pulls at the bottle of Bushmills whiskey that they assumed the boss had left out for them.

Half an hour passed before the largest of the three men waiting by the wall walked lightly and easily across the lawn and stood outside the kitchen window for five minutes listening. His body was quite motionless.

When he made no sign, another of the hooded men went to the snoring forms of two unconscious Dobermann Pinscher guard-dogs and checked that they were in no danger of suffocation.  

He smiled slightly as he reflected that the inadequacy of their training had rendered them so easily hors de combat. RAF guard dogs would never have eaten anything that did not come from their handler.

The first figure was satisfied that the three guards in the kitchen presented no threat. He walked around the house to the large French windows he had opened a couple of hours earlier. 

They opened silently under the pressure of his fingers, and he walked in. The man who had checked the dogs followed a few moments later, leaving the third man on watch in the shadows beneath the wall.

The large man went silently upstairs, treading only on the extreme edges of the stairs to prevent creaking. Five minutes later he came down again, but this time he was carrying the inert figure of a man. His partner had a syringe ready with a long, fine needle. 

He met with no resistance as he swabbed a spot on the left elbow of the unconscious man, slid in the needle and slowly, gently eased the plunger home. The three then took their captive and left by the garden gate. They walked down the road towards the vehicle parked a few hundred yards away.


***

Rotkoff had spent the evening playing poker with Tommy and Percy, his two bodyguards and Len the taciturn dog-handler. As a result, he had drunk rather more than his usual half bottle of his favourite Black Bush. He slept heavily for the first part of the night in the spare room where he often slept rather than disturb Sonja when he came up late. 

The pressure on his bladder woke him, and he forced his reluctant eyes open. He first realised that there was something wrong when he 
could not blink his eyes clear of the bleariness that made all around him look like a heavy fog, relieved only by the slightly paler area where he knew his bedroom window to be.

Puzzled, he tried and failed to lift his body from the bed. Not restraints, he realised. Once in his teens he had been tied and gagged on his father's orders and given a vicious working over, and all because he had broken a pretty whore's nose teaching the silly bitch her new trade. 

Oh yes, he knew first-hand what ropes and manacles felt like. 

He could expand his chest freely and he could not feel tight bands around his wrists and ankles. He simply could not move them; nor even could he move his head from side to side. 

A thrill of unaccustomed fear prickled his mind. By now he was wide awake, but he found that he could not move so much as the eyes in his head.  

He knew that there were people in the room. He could hear more than one person's breathing, although he could see nothing and nobody through the fog. Who could they be? 

Were Cody and Roberts making a move against him? Maybe they had bribed his bodyguards to sell him out. No! They didn't have the nerve and anyway attacking him like this in his own home was not their style. 

Could it be the Maltese? Those bastards would stick at nothing - but, again, not this sort of sophistication. Axes and sawn-off shotguns were more like them. 

Fighting off the fog that seemed to be seeping into his brain, Rotkoff thought hard, his analytical mind sifting the possibilities, but coming up blank.

...whispering.

"He's conscious I tell you."

A low, deep voice with a South London accent.

"No; he can't be after the dose I gave him."

A thin, nasal tenor - a professional voice - a Doctor? Maybe he was in hospital. But how could he be?

"Keep your voices down. We mustn't disturb his wife and kids. You know the boss said no killings. Half the point is lost if we have to kill them. He's got to live as an example."

A Midlands voice - low pitched and vibrant with authority - this was the leader.

'The Doctor' replied, a little waspish hiss.

"They don't live very long after what we are doing to him - not more than a year or two.  They can't cough and their lungs fill up with phlegm. It's a sort of slow drowning."

The leader's London voice was blandly reassuring.

"No problem. The job's done by then. We'd better get on with it and get out of here before he comes to."

Rotkoff felt he was descending into the pit of Hell. These three calm, dispassionate voices were frightening in a way no hate-filled cries or oaths would have been. They were discussing killing him as if he were a complete nullity. 

Why didn't he know who they were? He had been the biggest beast in the jungle of Birmingham for some time. He had fought off all the challengers and imposed his control by bribery, violence and fear. How could they be doing this to him? What were they doing?"

Someone took his head and turned it. A cold, wet pad was pressed against the nape of his neck. He could feel a small trickle of liquid run down the side of his neck and a cold, numbing sensation came over the area. A local anaesthetic!

"Just be a minute or two now." It was 'the doctor' muttering to himself.

Powerless to resist, or even to protest, Rotkoff felt his inert tongue too big for his mouth. Cold, wrenching fear coursed through his body like an icy tide. 

He felt a hard inexorable pressure against the back of his neck. Although he could not move his limbs, he could feel the hot trickle of urine spill helplessly down his legs and cool under him.

"That's it now. It will take eight or ten hours for the fibres of his spinal cord to swell, and then he will be permanently paralysed. Hope his wife will take on the job of wiping his arse for him, because he'll not be doing it for himself."

'The doctor' again. A trace of professional satisfaction in his voice. How, Rotkoff wondered, can a doctor do things like this? Aren't they bound by some sort of oath not to injure people? From the recesses of his mind the phrase 'to do the sick no harm' popped up, but he couldn't place it.

The door closed quietly and he knew he was alone. All he could hear now were the ambient sounds. Little creaks and groans - the sounds of the house moving, he assumed. 

Funny how he had never noticed them before. Far in the distance he could hear the distant buzz of a car.  Again he felt a warm liquid trickle down his leg, hot at first then growing slowly colder and clammier against his flesh. 

As Rotkoff lay unmoving, he could hear the repetitive thump-thump of his heart beating. Faintly he could hear the swishing of the blood being forced through the tracery of tiny veins and capillaries that networked his body. 

It seemed that he could feel the accretion of tiny dust particles drifting down onto the surfaces of his eyes, unable even to blink them away. 

By degrees he became aware that, behind his head - out of sight - the people he had killed - the three children he had burned in their beds in a house-fire, the bent bookkeeper whose fingers he had cut off with a bolt-cutter, the two men he had slashed and jabbed to death with knives in a hotel room - were standing  waiting silently; patiently. 

He lay, externally, as inert as a log in a swamp. Inside he was beginning to scream; for his mother...his wife...for anyone who could take it all away.


***

At four o'clock in the morning, a frantic telephone call came to the front desk at Birmingham Central Police Station, where a Detective Superintendent had changed shifts just so that he could be there to receive such a call.

"Is that the Police?"  The light, cultured voice, of what sounded like a youngish woman. An edge of fear in her voice.  

"My husband has been kidnapped. His bed has not been slept in; the chauffeur and the handyman are downstairs. They seem to be drugged. My husband's bed is empty, and the front door is wide open."

"Can you give us your name and address please? A patrol car will be with you in five minutes."

"Sonja Rotkoff. My husband is an important businessman. We live at the Copper Beeches, on Mearse Lane, Barns Green. Please hurry, I'm sure every second counts."

Ten minutes later, three police cars arrived at a house in total darkness. Superintendent Torrens decided to accompany this little expedition himself. 

He beckoned his sergeant forward, and there was a short, angry exchange with the gatekeeper, before the bleary-eyed man agreed to call the house. 

By then lights were beginning to come on inside. Three or four minutes passed before a woman's voice answered. Only the Duty officer at Birmingham Central would have known that the thin sibilant voice with a hint of a foreign accent was not the voice he had heard on the telephone.

"I don't know what's going on here. My husband is not in the house, and there is something wrong with Baxter and Andrews Oh yes, and O'Brien the dog-man. I've called my solicitor, but I suppose you'd better come in."

By some unfortunate misunderstanding, never satisfactorily explained, the solicitor could not seem to gain access to the house. 

Fuming and making increasingly strident threats to the policemen on duty outside, he sat in his Jaguar car in the driveway whilst police searchers found an empty bed, stripped of its sheets and pillows, plus some very large stashes of cash, caches of heroin and cocaine and, most important of all, firearms including two Sterling sub-machines, a Sten, various handguns and sawn-off shotguns.  

Over the next month, ballistics would link the handguns to five unsolved shootings.

Finally, the Police were able to resolve the misunderstanding.  Apologetically, they let the solicitor into the house and confirmed that Rotkoff was indeed missing. 

Under police escort, and fulminating about illegal searches, he was led around the house and shown the various hiding places and their contents. 

Meanwhile, the chauffeur and the handyman, both men with extensive juvenile criminal records for violence were detained as suspects in a possible kidnapping. 

Before the solicitor could get them released on bail, their confused state made them less than usually discreet in the face of police questioning.    

Stephen Rotkoff was not found until mid-day the following day, when two boys, out on their bikes, opened the back of a large furniture van parked on the runway of an abandoned wartime airfield. 

They found a still, silent figure, lying in a made-up single bed staring blindly at the ceiling. Although doctors could not find anything physiologically wrong with him, he had retreated from the world into a hiding-place  from which he would never return. 

Sonja sold the house, emptied the bank accounts, took the children, reverted to her maiden name and moved back to Wednesbury. 


***


Superintendent Torrens was ready to intervene if his colleagues got too close to the truth of what happened to Stephen Rotkoff. 

In the event there was no need. The only real lead petered out when the pantechnicon was traced to a car auction in Lincolnshire a month earlier, and they discovered that an unknown purchaser who had not been asked for identification had bought it for £110 cash. 

The bed was untraceable and Sonja Rotkoff confirmed that the sheets and pillows had been removed from Rotkoff's bed. 

The police enjoyed a temporary but welcome respite before the Maltese took over as bosses of most of the Birmingham underworld, and the Jamaicans took the rest. 

Even the Maltese, not known for nerves, moved cautiously at first. Their police informers told them all they knew about how Rotkoff had been snatched from his bed and driven into a cataleptic breakdown. They looked over their shoulders a little uneasily for some time to come.

***

After he retired, ex-Superintendent Torrens would occasionally visit Rotkoff in his bed in the mental hospital. He talked to the inert form for half an hour or so, and then went home to his wife and his dahlias. 

Unaccountably, he felt a bit sorry for the poor sod, although he would never confess it to anyone. After all, he too had been a big beast in the jungle of Birmingham.

When he knew he was safe from eavesdroppers, Torrens would talk to the living cadaver with a frankness he could never share with any other soul. 

"You know Stevie, what the biggest irony of the whole caper was? As long was you preyed off thieves and whores, and sold drugs to people prepared to bend the law themselves you were sitting pretty. 

My mob could never really hurt you. Oh yes, we could scratch the surface, shake down a street bookie, arrest some of your girls, mop up a few of the small-fry selling eights of blow to schoolkids; but you, at your level, you were safe as houses. You had a better chance of ending up in the House of Lords than in Parkhurst.

Where you went wrong was getting civilians involved, and they fucked you over. You see, they don't play by the rules. They write their own fucking rulebook. This time they brought you down. But you and I both know that next time they could just as easily turn on the Bill. They just can't be trusted."




The Sacred Band Ch. 18



This chapter will not make a whit of sense if you have not been following the story. 

The Sacred Band chapter eighteen

Epilogue.

told by Laura.

Well of course we had a party to celebrate our freedom from Rotkoff, and every now and again from then 'til now we have got together at the Mardi Gras Roadhouse for an evening of reminiscence and remembrance.

Our friendships were baked hard in the fire of those events of 1956, and (to mix a metaphor) the bonds have never loosened. Philip and I truly feel that we owe our lives to the Sacred Band.  Without them our choice was between surrender and death.

***

Fifteen years have now passed since Rotkoff was put down. Fifteen momentous years. Here are some of the edited highlights:

Philip and I got married the week after I graduated with Upper Second class honours and an offer of a PhD place. We are still living in Muriel Road, but since Madge, Philip's mum, sadly died, we have taken over the whole house. 

We miss Madge's courage and cheerfulness, her easy acceptance and her wisdom, every day of our lives. The great comfort we have is that she lived to greet her grandchildren and smile an atheist's blessing on their young lives.

I have a career of my own, several times interrupted by babies. Alongside my degree courses, in order to support Philip, I took a book-keeping course run by the University Extension people. I got the bug, and did my postgraduate work on the history of bookkeeping. 

I must be one of the few academic historians who is also a Chartered Accountant. The direction of my research led to my learning Italian (it was called the Italian system of double-entry bookkeeping after all), and spending a term a year in Rome as a research student. 

Unsuspected by myself and my supervisors, I had hit on a hot topic. My Ph.D thesis provided the nucleus of a book on the history of book-keeping that sold very well, and the publishers immediately demanded a follow-up workbook for students.

I am now a senior lecturer in the History department, and I teach a successful M.A course in the history of bookkeeping. It is a very hands-on programme, involving reading and interpreting accounts books up to five hundred years old. This year we recruited 17 students from 9 countries, including (would you believe?) two from Italy.

Each year Philip and I go to Berkeley, California for my semester as a visiting professor.  Harvard and Cambridge have approached me with offers of a tenured professorship but I shall never leave Leicester. (Stop press: Leicester have got the funding to make me a full professor in 1975!)

Philip's business has expanded greatly. Besides the ever-expanding business as financial analyst, we now have a thriving property development company with four shareholders, Don, Denise, Philip and myself. 

By nature of his job, Bruno cannot be on the board, but, as deputy County Surveyor since the recent local government amalgamations, his disinterested advice is always at our disposal. 

It was the demolition of Wharf street, with its twin rows of small shops (one of them very dear to my heart) that inspired us into action. We buy old houses and shops and convert them into flats. 

Our latest project is to restore a cinema built in 1911, which is a grade 2 listed building. One of our priorities is to try in a small way to protect the city against the rapine of the Poulsons and T. Dan Smiths of this world.

Philip Cheshire Associates  now really has some associates. He employs a small but very well-qualified staff; five women and one man, all with post-grad degrees and two with MBA's. Being my lovely Philip, he spanks them all regularly, and they often show their appreciation by sucking him off. How did that come about, you ask?

Simple really. They are self-selected. Philip puts heavily encoded advertisements into some specialised magazines. People who are not attracted to work in a "disciplined" environment, simply don't present themselves for interview. 

Philip lays out the ground rules at the interview, and as often as not they offer to take their knickers down then and there. One lovely girl cried in gratitude for having been offered a job. 

My latest fellow concubine, Shirelle, flew in to her interview from Perth, Western Australia. She had sent copies of her first class degree at Melbourne University and her MBA, plus a set of photographs of herself naked, bound and gagged. I am not generally attracted to girls, but I almost wet myself when I saw the pictures.

Wait a bit; I said he spanks them all. Not strictly true. The male staff member, Garry, has a special ritual of his own. When he needs a spanking, Philip gives him a chitty to take to George and Ada's nephew Roland and his beautiful wife Shirley. 

George and Ada retired when Wharf Street was scheduled for demolition, and Rollie and Shirley took over the business and moved it to the gym they run over the old Co-op on Welford Road. 

They are very successful. Shirley spanks the men and Rollie spanks the women; thus is the sexual division of labour maintained.  We pay them a retainer as personnel consultants, and, consequently, Garry's spankings are tax-deductible. 

Around the time Philip and I got married, Judy began to go out with a policeman, and went to live with him in Husband's Bosworth. Bob has all she needs to make her fantasies come alive, including the policeman's uniform and the handcuffs and truncheon. They came under pressure from Bob's employers to get married. Judy has a real, deep moral disapproval of marriage, but she gave in after a while. 

She is godmother to our two children, so we see them almost every week. When the children are asleep, Judy and I are as naughty as ever, and we play four-handed. Bob spanks Judy and Philip spanks me. No, we don't change partners, and probably never will.

Since then a number of fellow concubines or slave-girls have passed through our lives, and lived for a time in our house. As I said, the latest is our stunning Aussie, Shirelle. I was present at her interview (I'm present at all the interviews) and when Philip introduced me she sweetly came over, knelt and reverently kissed my hand. I think she may be with us for the rest of our lives. I'm still the naughty slave-girl at heart, but nowadays I bring a bit more conviction to the role of Chief Concubine/Hürrem Sultan. 

Ivy, Ginnie, Donald and Bruno did buy a house together. Ginny now has two children and Ivy one. Thanks to Ginny's genius with the turkey baster, Donald and Bruno have the joy of being fathers. Ivy often jokes that that it must be unusual for babies to be conceived as a result of two separate, but co-ordinated acts of love.

Their three adorable children, two boys and a girl are Philip's and my god-children, and we could not be more proud. I remember when the youngest, Philip, was three, he took some little friends around the house, saying proudly: 

"My mummies live downstairs and my daddies live upstairs. Mummy Ivy sings in Daddy Bruno's band. She is brilliant. She's made a record; would you like me to play it for you?"

As soon as the Rotkoff business was cleared away, Denise and Andy got married. Recently Andy has been having some heart problems, but they keep going, as much in love as ever. Denise bought him a motor-mower for his birthday, and he can spend the Summer days in the garden with his immaculate lawns and prize-winning roses and chrysanthemums. 

Sadly, Jamie Gillespie died a couple of years after the Rotkoff incident. I worried that he might have worn himself out in helping us, but Dolly says, on the contrary, that he stayed alive and strong just so that he could help us. She says it was the proudest moment of his life, and she will always be grateful to us for including him.

Joan flew back from South Africa to attend the memorial we held for him, so all the members of the Sacred Band were present, and many tears were shed  What took us all by surprise is that people came from all over the country and so many people wanted to give tributes that his memorial service at the Secular Hall lasted over an hour. Ivy sang Every time we say goodbye to Bruno's guitar. Discussion of the funeral music brought the first smile to Dolly's face since he died, when she suggested That old black magic as a suitable hymn. 

Whenever I think about Jamie, I see him in the bookshop in his black oversleeves, his old cardigan and narrow tie, and I see again the light in his bright, piercing eyes as he looked at me; a timid girl  in school uniform, just entering adolescence; and I see him smiling his little, crinkly, knowing smile.  

The end.




If you have had the stamina and forgiving temperament to pursue this tale to its end; thank you. 
I should be pleased to hear any reactions, criticisms or suggestions, that might help me in producing a revised version in course of time.

Meantime: watch out for the prequel:

The Mardi Gras Roadhouse.