by John Gardner
‘Doctor Thirel’s methods.’
‘Tell me. What do you learn here?’
Mary looked at him. Boysie thought he detected a pinpoint of uncertainty in her eyes before she spoke. ‘She is a very clever woman, Doctor Thirel. She has a knack at finding out where one’s talents really lie.’ She was getting excited now. Committed. ‘Back home, at school in Boston, I was a nut at languages. Couldn’t learn them. Had no idea how to approach a foreign tongue. Doctor Thirel explained that I was afraid of languages. I was setting up a mental block—because I wanted so much to be able to speak something other than Boston-flavoured English. I’m doing French, German, and Russian now. Loving it. Making progress.’
Boysie’s security mechanism pricked up its antennae. ‘Do many girls take German and Russian?’
‘Why yes. Quite a few.’ Mary looked blank. ‘After all they’re going to be the major commercial languages in Europe aren’t they? I mean in a few years they’re going to be almost obligatory for business.’
Boysie hoped he was not visibly shaken. ‘And other talents? What other talents has the Doctor discovered?’
‘Oh, the strangest things.’ She was a prattling schoolgirl again. ‘One of my room mates—my best friend actually—has developed a passion for contemporary European political history. Never had a thought in her head until she came to Il Portone—that is except for beat, boys and clothes. Amazing.’
‘Amazing,’ Boysie repeated, his head nodding like a plastic Alsatian in the back of a family car.
‘Then there’s Indra—the Pakistani girl over there.’ She indicated with her eyes towards the remarkable features which could have been finely shaped from appetising coffee cream. ‘She’s doing twentieth-century political economy.’
Boysie took advantage of the following pause to look at another four faces. No recognition. ‘I’d never have guessed any of these girls were hard cases,’ he said.
‘Some of them are not too easy to crack either,’ Klara chimed in. ‘Eh, Mary? Mary had a bad patch to start with.’
‘Aw heck.’ Sheepishly from Mary. ‘But the Doctor’s methods always win.’
‘Tell me more.’ Boysie found his interest growing. Girls from good backgrounds, with delinquent characters, being moulded, taught languages, political history and economics. A situation ideal for exploitation. A breeding ground for intriguers or intriguettes.
‘Simple really. Military. If you’re tough she can be tough. We have a system of punishment cells.’ Mary giggled. ‘You know you can be sent to jail for between seven and thirty days here?’
‘Jail,’ stated Boysie.
‘Yep. And that can mean one of two things depending on your attitude. Either you can get it soft—just locked in a room with a lovely bed and TV ...’
‘Huh?’
Klara came back into the conversation. ‘I can assure you that it is very humiliating to a girl who thinks she is being really clever—acting up to become some sort of martyr.’ Turning her attention to the Châteaubriant which had just been served, oozing juices and running with Maitre d’hôtel butter.
Boysie followed suit nodding. The nodding was getting habitual. ‘I can see that.’ Looking at Mary. ‘And the other way?’
‘The other way is really tough. Proper cells. And you’re looked after by the Seniors. They can be bitch ...’ She braked her tongue before the word was wholly out. Klara Thirel’s look was designed to maim at three paces. The Doctor smiled. ‘Say it, Mary.’ Gently. ‘The Seniors can be bitches. That’s what you were going to say. All women and girls can be bitches, Mary.’
‘Seniors?’ queried Boysie.
‘This is only the Junior School. They wear white shirts. We call them,’ Klara paused, her face still in the set smile she had given Mary, ‘we call them the Virgins. A vain hope I’m afraid, but I have a warped sense of humour.’
‘The Seniors are the grey jobs then?’
‘You could say that.’ Cold.
Mary was anxious to reinstate herself. ‘Most of the girls come here for a straight twelve or eighteen months. Some, who do well, are invited to stay on for another year.’
‘You become a Senior by invitation only. That’s important.’ Klara was directing the conversation. ‘We only have a dozen or so Seniors at any given time. They do advance studies and assist me. Like prefects.’
‘And they can get rough?’ Boysie was determined to hear it from Mary. The skin on his shoulders, and arms crawling with the apprehension that he was going to learn of something unpleasant under the calm surface of life at Il Portone.
‘Oh, they can be rough. I know, Mr Oakes. The Principal told you, I was difficult when I arrived.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No need to be.’ Bright. ‘Did me the world of good.’
Boysie shrugged and continued to demolish his Chateaubriant followed by a magnificent Fruit Zabaglione. Even the food at Il Portone was fashioned towards the sensual. He reluctantly dragged his mind back to the matters in hand. The Seniors were obviously a race apart. If his thesis was correct, the girls in grey shirts were graduates of Klara Thirel’s academy: those invited to take special training for the cause. They lived in segregated quarters—somewhere below stairs, he imagined, having seen the fair Angela take the lift down from the ground floor.
The pish-pish of revolver shots fired near the building made Boysie’s stomach turn turtle. Klara must have felt the jump. ‘Don’t worry. Only some of the Seniors,’ she said sweetly. ‘We keep a small firing range down on the lake-side. They like to go and try a bit of target practice about this time of day.’
A wiry rat-faced instructress sitting on Klara’s left, joined in—a mannish, and very English, cut glass. ‘Good for the gel’s co-ordination. Hand, eye, brain. All that sort of thing. Like shootin’ for the jolly old clay pipes at the fair.’
‘The clay pipes.’ said Boysie passively. Then, to himself, ‘Three bullseyes and a couple of Virgins. A Teddy Bear and a plastic loofah for the girl with the 36B cup bust.’ That just about clinched it. Shooting practice yet. Probably if he got a peek at the lawn they would be cavorting about doing Karate. This was it. A choice of actions. He could try and make his getaway, or cheekily stay and investigate the Seniors (Boysie’s mind shuffled from the point at this last unfortunate turn of phrase). Natural inclination told him to take to the hills. Fascination bade him stay and meddle. It was not a question of bravery, or even the old loyalty, Queen-and-Country spiel. Rationalising, Boysie began to talk himself into the idea that if he stayed there was less likelihood of being injured, or even killed. Wild dashes for freedom had never been his strong point. After all, he might discover that he was over-dramatising the situation. II Portone could—just possibly—turn out to be nothing more than a rather off-beat finishing school. Boysie curled his lip. He would stay. He was a match for any woman.
Opportunity for action came shortly after the meal finished. The girls had filed off to work once more.
‘They have another hour of classes after dinner,’ Klara explained before inviting him out on to the long, stone-flagged terrace which seemed to run round the entire area of the house. It was already getting dark and the last flush of sun had left the tinted garden stretching in a shallow slope down to the lake. From what he could see, Boysie deduced that the house itself lay about one hundred yards from the road, and about half that distance from the lake. To their right the village of Brissago was beginning to twinkle. Boysie leaned against the stone balustrade and blew a thin stream of smoke towards the dark lake. He could feel Klara’s upper arm gently touching his—pins and needles at the first approach of sexual shock waves.
‘What are those?’ he pointed towards two dark humps which seemed to rise out of the water about a quarter of a mile from the shore.
‘Those islands? The Isole di Brissago.’ She sounded as though that was all there was to say about the matter.
‘Inhabited?’
She laughed. ‘Not by cannibals anyway. There’s a boat house and a largish v
illa. Tourist attractions now. Nice gardens though. The villa is permanently closed.’
Boysie was about to enquire further, but Klara quickly changed the subject. ‘I wish you could see this view in sunlight. It’s so beautiful. Therapeutic for some of my girls.’
‘Well, maybe I can come back in daylight before I return home.’
A pause. ‘Maybe.’ She turned. A Senior—short with cropped hair and muscular outlines—had come on to the balcony. ‘Principal?’ Agitated. ‘A word, please.’
‘Excuse me.’ Klara allowed her hand to rest momentarily on Boysie’s arm as she moved over to the girl. There was a low rapid conversation with Boysie straining his hearing to full volume.
‘Would you wait here for a minute, Boysie?’ Klara returned, the hand again resting on his arm. The promise of something more if he stayed put. ‘There is a matter which needs urgent attention. Please don’t stray from the terrace. We have guards. You know. The girls. There are strict rules—and dogs, fierce dogs, I would hate you to get mistaken for a prowler or a Peeping Tom.’
‘Never peeped in my life,’ said Boysie, taking another drag on his cigarette and trying to look like Brando when the chips are down.
The Senior followed Klara Thirel into the villa. Boysie waited a full two minutes before slipping back into the dining hall. He crossed to the doors, gently trying the handles. They opened silently. Cautiously he edged out into the hall. Once more at the crossroads. The way to both the front entrance and the lift was clear. Boysie closed his eyes and took a deep breath, on the edge of indecision. Fascination again won through. Six paces, clumsy because of the oversize sandals, took him to the lift. The outer gates slid back and he instinctively pressed the lowest in the row of operating buttons. The lift dropped and he was descending through a smooth steel shaft. Fifteen seconds and the cage reached bottom. Boysie found himself in a high-roofed hall. The walls were white and bare, lit by two long strip-lights running the length of the ceiling. A thick grey carpet covered the floor. Opposite the lift gates an archway led into a long corridor which sloped downwards. Removing the hampering sandals, Boysie went through the arch and headed down the passage. It was about six feet wide, lit—like the hallway—by strip-lights, and covered with the same grey carpet. There was no sound except for the whisper of air conditioning, coming through gratings set flush against the roof at intervals of seven or eight yards. The temperature was pleasant and, even though he was obviously moving deeper and deeper underground—and, judging by the direction, underlake—Boysie could detect no dampness.
Suddenly, ahead and to the left, a voice, feminine and strident, yapped into the silence. ‘Second position. Hup. Begin.’ Followed by a deep rhythmic thudding. Boysie flattened against the wall, his heart beating to the drumming noise. Nothing happened. He moved on. The thudding got louder until he realised it was coming from behind a pair of heavy wooden swing doors —set into the wall on his left, each with a large upper window panel. Boysie, still taut against the wall, crept up to the doors and slowly pushed one eye into a peering position round the edge of the nearest panel. Boysie blinked. He was looking straight into a vast gymnasium in the centre of which about thirty girls—led by one of the strange lady teachers—were doing warming up exercise. Boysie felt the perspiration begin to mount the back of his neck. Girls were dressed only in tight white briefs and brassieres. Bodies rippling as they went through an intricate routine of lateral bending, arm circling and the dreaded partial sit-ups. It was a sight for sore eyes let alone optics that were blessed, like Boysie’s, with twenty-twenty vision. ‘On your backs, Hrrp!’ shrieked the muscular madam. Boysie’s reflexes made him catch his breath. Thirty female bodies (in the pink of condition) went prostrate. ‘On your stomachs. Rrroll!’ Boysie’s eyes glazed over. ‘Legs A-part.’ Boysie swallowed. ‘Chest and leg raising. Begin!’ Boysie smiled happily, propped one shoulder against the wall and felt for his cigarettes. Then he remembered where he was. Reluctantly he dropped to his knees and crawled under the panels of glass, well out of sight.
About one hundred yards further on a large notice warned ‘Junior Girls Not Permitted Beyond This Point’. The passage flattened and turned sharply to the right. As he rounded the bend Boysie could see another archway which marked the end of the tunnel about fifty yards ahead. The thudding, from the gym, was still just audible, but now it was joined by other noises, floating into the passage from beyond the archway. A shout. A girl’s voice raised in banter. Joan Baez asking what have they done to the rain?
The passage led into a hallway, similar to the one by the lift shaft. But here other corridors branched off to left and right. A third seemed to be a short continuation of the one through which he had just walked. The Joan Baez record thrummed out from the passage to his left. Boysie moved along the wall until he could look down this corridor at an angle. It was like a passage in an office block, with doors set at regular intervals. The first door, about four feet from the hallway, was wide open. Lying on a bed, very much in full view and reading Homes and Gardens, was the lithe Angela. She had discarded the short-shorts and her shirt was unbuttoned revealing a neat grey brassiere and easily dispensible bikini pants. Another girl sat with her back to the door. The Joan Baez came to an end.
‘Want the flip side?’ The girl in the chair spoke, husky with a slight Italian accent. Further down the passage, someone began to sing.
‘Why bother,’ said Angela. Shouting, ‘The singing blackbird’s off again.’
From three doors down a scrumptious girl, the colour of oiled ebony, stepped into the passage trilling. She was quite naked. Boysie leaned back out of sight—quivering. The coloured girl stopped in mid-bar (she was singing ‘I believe in you’) long enough to suggest that the fair Angela was a colourless sex-fiend. Boysie felt oddly shocked. The ‘I believe in you’ songstress was muted by the bang of her door closing. Boysie peeped out again. Angela was laughing. The Homes and Gardens dropped to the floor and for a moment Boysie thought the girl was going to look straight at him. He pressed himself against the wall wishing he was a chameleon. Silence.
‘It’s tomorrow night then,’ said the other girl.
‘So they say. Klara promised to let me look at the operations room. There’s one absolutely gorgeous man up there. The other two are a million years old, but this one—Russell—is super.’
‘I should’ve thought you’d had your fill of supermen today after dealing with that Oakes person.’
‘Instant cat,’ thought Boysie. ‘I wish I were a sadist.’
‘Super-duper-duper-men,’ mused Angela. The phrase seemed vaguely reminiscent. Angela continued. ‘I would tell you things about him that would wrinkle your kinky boots, darling.’
‘Huh!’ Scorn.
‘Anyway, you’ll be seeing him yourself before long. Klara’s bound to dump him down here with those two bright bitches.’
‘And there’s one of those I’d like to get my soft perspiration-free hands on. That Lynne vixen tried to bite my thumb off when we put her in.’
Boysie turned down the corners of his mouth, frowned and nodded. So they had Lynne and Petronella here. The cells? He shuffled back along the wall and crossed the hall out of the line of vision from Angela’s open door. There was no sign of life in the continuance of the main passage, which went on for about twenty yards, ending in a massive steel door. Boysie walked back and tried the corridor to the right. This was also a short passage, but with two doors, ten paces apart, in the left-hand wall. Each was fitted with a large mortice lock—the keys hanging on small hooks to the left of the doors. At eye-level, pear-shaped slices of flat metal covered peep-holes. Boysie stopped at the first door, raised the cover and pressed his eye to the aperture. A bare cell, windowless and white—the light coming from some source high in the ceiling. Against the far wall was an iron bedstead. A girl lay face downwards. She wore tight faded jeans, naked from the waist up. Boysie’s face crumpled. The girl’s back was criss-crossed, like some monstrous railway lay-out, with angry
red welts, the spaces between freckled with blood. She had been beaten—almost certainly with a thonged whip. From the peep-hole the young back looked like an abstract in violence. Boysie breathed a soft, unpleasant oath. As though she had heard him, the girl groaned and half-turned on the bed. Boysie’s first recognition. She had been among those in the au pair file in Mostyn’s office. Blonde. Twenty-three years old. Helmuson. Or was it Holmusen? Something like that. Greta—that was the Christian name. He was sure that was the Christian name. He let the cover slip back into place. Swinging like a pendulum making tiny scraping noises.
Boysie needed only a brief look into the second cell. His hand shot up for the key. The locked turned easily, the hinges were well oiled.
‘Boysie!’ said Petronella jumping from the bed.
‘Oakes. Well done.’ From Lynne. She looked different. The same clothes: cream skirt, sweater and ankle socks. Yet something had changed in her manner. Tigerish.
‘You two all right?’ said Boysie stupidly.
‘Now we’re all right. I thought they’d killed you.’ Petronella made it sound as though it mattered. By this time, Boysie had slipped into the habit of glancing over his shoulder every few seconds. Jittery.
‘Come on then. We’ll have to move. There’s a girl in the other cell, but she’s in no condition ...’
‘We’ll have to leave her then,’ snapped Lynne. ‘Ruthlessness. We all knew what to expect on this assignment.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Boysie nearly asking ‘What assignment?’ He was disturbed by the rabbit Lynne’s quick change to the snake Lynne. He might even be losing his natural superiority.
‘Follow me then,’ trying to make it sound confident. They had gone only a few paces—about to turn into the main passage from the hall when the bell started ringing. A violent, urgent, electric, warning burr. Boysie faltered. Petronella bumped him. Lynne was to their right.
‘Run!’ hissed Lynne as one of the Seniors sprang into the corridor and leaped towards her. Boysie flailed out with his right hand, but the girl had already closed with Lynne, teeth bared like an animal.
