‘Too lovely a day for work,’ he said, and she stared back at him, lost for words. Gone were the immaculate suits, shirts and ties, and expensive shoes. He stood there tanned with his boyish grin and dreamy eyes, relaxed, framed in the doorway of the library in a black tee-shirt. Her eyes were drawn to his tight black leather jeans and its distinct bulge. On his feet were what seemed like boots. He was holding a bottle of champagne in his hand.
‘Classy,’ he said, admiring Catherine's get-up, ‘and cool.’
‘Likewise!’ she said with a slightly nervous laugh, pointing to her skirt, and he laughed too.
‘Let's go for a walk,’ he said. ‘There's something I want to show you.’
‘Oh! Something interesting?’ She was excited.
‘Very,’ he said with a joyful smile and held up the bottle. ‘I feel like celebrating.’
‘Oh! I can't wait!’ She was beaming and asked no more. She adored a surprise. He turned to move off. He looked really good in those jeans. She decided to leave her jacket behind as it was already getting quite warm.
They walked round the back of the house in its enclosed grounds where Catherine had never really ventured before.
‘Shall we try the maze?’ he asked.
‘The maze?’ She had no idea there was one.
‘The maze. Yes. It's quite a big one, really. It's at least a hundred and forty years old.’
‘A hundred and forty years old?’ She could not believe it.
‘Yes. It was built by the original owner. Installed on a whim.’
‘A whim?’
‘Yes, Catherine. A whim. Have you never done anything on a whim?’ He looked down at her. She blushed and giggled. She was enjoying this. ‘It's amazing what men will do on a whim. Perhaps it reflects their true nature deep down, don't you think?’
She took a deep breath, smoothing out her skirt as they walked through the grass and suddenly saw herself in the bushes, skirt above her waist, legs wrapped round big leather-clad thighs, and being fucked hard.
‘I think doing things on impulse often has repercussions, complications one doesn't see at the time,’ she said, and was surprised to be thinking a bit deep on such a carefree occasion as this.
He laughed. ‘True Catherine, ever the cautious one. And yet ...’
‘Yet what?’ she asked.
‘Push you and you fall the way you're pushed. Isn't that right?’ He was smiling at her.
She was slightly uncomfortable with the way this was going yet liked the way he was trying to ensnare her. She cleared her throat.
‘We all have our different natures,’ she said, and added, ‘and I think we should respect them.’
‘Precisely, Catherine. I know yours; you know mine. Isn't that right?’ and he patted her bottom. She laughed, though it was somewhat forced.
They had reached the green outer hedges of the maze. The hedge was taller than Michael and would dwarf her. The entrance looked rather narrow.
‘Mind how you go. The hedges have some blackthorn in them. It’s probably linked to the name of the house.’
She was suddenly not so sure about going into it. The last thing she wanted to happen was to get snagged by thorns and have her expensive blouse and skirt ruined.
‘Right.’ He flashed an excited smile at her. ‘In we go! Follow me,’ and took her by the hand.
She could not help feeling a little apprehensive as deeper in they went and she quickly lost her recollection of the way they had come. Her heels scraped the well-worn ground and she felt the tightness of her skirt with the wide steps she was forced to take to keep up with him. She kept glancing at him from behind and that tight leather.
‘Nearly there!’ he said without looking round.
The walls closed in around her and she saw herself being dragged along the ground, her expensively-clad backside bumping on the rough stones, her high heels falling off, her stockings torn, her blouse ripped and tattered, her protests ignored, her distress mocked. The thought stopped there. The going was becoming a bit rough in the now hot sun and this was no place for a fantasy.
Suddenly.
‘Here we are!’ and she was led out into a rather large clearing. It was the centre of the maze.
For a moment she was quite dazzled by the sun and was only aware of something like the shape of a large, stout tree in the centre before her. He let go of her hand.
‘Time for our special picnic!’ he announced triumphantly and disappeared off somewhere to the right.
The breeze suddenly swayed the branches and leaves on the tree, momentarily blotting out the sun, and then she saw it. The glare returned at once but, shielding her eyes from the blaze of the sun, she now could see the ghostly figure that seemed to almost hover on the spot below the biggest branch that reached out furthest. Catherine blinked. The branches swayed again. A sickening thud struck her deep down and a cramping surge of nausea and revulsion swept up through her as her whole being was ripped out by shock. She shuddered and let out a strangled cry.
‘Ugh! Ugh!’
There, shimmering in the dazzling light, stretched up taut and rigid by cord round wrists tethered to the branch above, teetering on tiptoes, lashed up tight from ankles to waist in transparent, red plastic rainmac revealing all of the naked body underneath, hood up and gagged with black tape tight-wrapped round the lower half of her face and hood, was Anne. She knew it was her, just knew it was her. Her face, such as could be seen under the tight hood and gag, was as red as the mac under the hot, blazing sun and her eyes, wide with horror, as she looked at Catherine. She let out a stifled cry and struggled futilely in her distress. Catherine looked away.
‘Shut up!’ snapped Michael, and struck Anne’s bottom with a sharp blow from a crop. She winced and groaned. A second blow followed, harder. ‘I said shut up!’ She groaned even louder. The plastic clung to her all over as if she had been poured into it, and Catherine knew instinctively just how much she must be suffering, wrapped up like that, under the blazing heat of the sun.
‘Oh my God! How could you! Just how could you?’ and she searched his face desperately but the smile on it did not change.
‘It's easy, Catherine. She deserves it. Our Anne is the consummate masochist, you see. She loves it, don't you, my dear?’ and he gratuitously gave her bottom another swipe with the crop. She twisted violently, frantically giving out a beseeching wail for mercy. He turned to Catherine.
‘Here. Put this on,’ he said, throwing her a transparent, blue plastic mac he had taken out of a hold-all. She caught it in a reflex reaction. He was pulling out some cord from the bag.
She turned and fled. She dropped the mac and fled back the way she had come, her tears running from the wound that ripped her apart. All she saw was the tunnel of the high thicket. All she heard was the half-stifled sobbing, the breathless panting, the cries in her head from the searing pain, and she ran and ran.
Dead end!
She screamed and turned round, running back to the last junction. There, coming down the path towards her was her tormentor, crop in hand. She cried out, the tears streaming down her face, and frantically took the left hand fork. He was shouting after her but in her frenzy she could discern no words. Suddenly, he was upon her and she felt a sharp, stinging blow to her buttock. She shrieked. Terror gripped her.
‘Please!’ she begged, 'Please!'
‘You and Anne are one and the same!’ His voice was wild. Another blow struck her hard through the leather skirt and she almost fell down, scratching her hand painfully in the thicket and tearing the sleeve of her blouse.
‘You can't run from me!’
But run she did, crying and pleading as she half-stumbled, half-staggered down one path then another while he whipped her and mocked her desperate attempts to find the exit.
‘There's no way out, Catherine! You're a prisoner of yourself! You're a slave to your needs!’
The high sides of the maze closed in on her, the crunching stones underfoot snatched at her heels tr
ying to rip off her shoes, and branches of the thicket whipped her hands and arms, and snagging her blouse, scratched her skin. The sun burned into her head, shoulders and back, and her restrictive skirt slowed down her headlong flight from the nightmare, and outright terror now devoured her.
Suddenly, just when she was on the verge of collapse, she turned a corner and there was the exit. There was no going back. He stopped pursuing her as she ran with her last ounce of strength toward it. She ran on and on, out through the garden, all the way non-stop to the house. She crashed in through the side door, slamming it shut behind her and collapsed down hard against it, and cried and cried and cried.
The evening was racked with pain, buckets of tears and grief for the loss of all she had believed in these last couple of months when she had felt truly alive. Her distress was intensified all the more by his betrayal of the special bond she thought had grown between them. She would have given him everything, if only...if only... and the image of Anne under the tree loomed large in the room with each attempt to blot out incidents that now came crashing in on her, mercilessly, as she moved from room to room, unable to escape facts she had not faced all along.
She re-lived those times she had been with him. Images of him framed in the doorway, with that winning smile, those eyes that gathered her in to him, that richly-intoned voice she could listen to all day …
Rubbish! came the voice within. Rose-tinted glasses! You’re deceiving yourself. You’ve always deluded yourself! He’s a sadist - full stop! She winced at the word. Grow up! Even that poor bitch must have suffered more at his hands than enjoyed the sort of schoolgirl fantasies that you fondly cling to and will never grow out of!
That hurt her. She was a grown woman who knew what she was doing all along. It’s not all sex, she thought. There’s nothing wrong with romance and tenderness and intimacy, and she remembered that afternoon on the bed with him lying peacefully beside her, talking about his childhood and, with difficulty, possibly for the first time in his life. It was with her that he had opened up.
Rubbish! snapped the voice. He was just tired out! It may have been the most phenomenal shag in the history of womankind, but he was all spent, well and truly drained, and once he’d lied down, he was soon sleepy and dreamy. He fell asleep for goodness’ sake!
‘But the passion!’ she muttered to herself. She could still feel the way he fondled and caressed her.
Lust, more like! Groped and pawed you like some slavering beast! Another month or two, he’d likewise have you strung up to the same branch as her as he leads his next gullible victim into the maze. The thought struck home and it threw her for a moment.
‘But I got out!’ she said audibly, meaning to say that her mind and heart were still intact and she knew the difference between right and wrong.
Sheer luck, that’s all! came the voice.
‘Yes! But I kept going!’
Only because you were in the grip of terror!
Her mind was suddenly weary. She no longer had any reserves of will to counter the voice and was becoming exhausted by the thoughts and counter-thoughts that were swirling around in her head.
Slowly, the turmoil abated as she slumped, drained, on the sofa and stared, catatonic, into the blank screen of the television that was not switched on. Then, as she slid down into a calmness of mind, a ghostly face, like Marley’s on Scrooge’s knocker, materialized before her on the screen, but it was that of Anne and her voice emitted those haunting words: ‘You see, sweetie, masochism can be so painful’. She froze, and remained there sitting rigid, staring ahead blankly, as the words struck home. Eventually, she turned away, shattered and empty, and closing her eyes, longed for sleep.
She woke an hour and a half later, tired, but a little rested, and, clear in her mind what she should do, she sat down at the table and, putting pen to paper, explained her feelings to Michael. She stopped only to put the light on, as evening became night and silently, intently, wrote as she had never written before. Suddenly, she stopped in mid-flow. She heard a voice.
For a moment it was behind her. Fool. It was within. Fool. Soundless but clear, it echoed other feelings, and she knew at once, this was it. She put the pen down and screwed up the letter. Dear Michael … Screwed it up. Michael. Screwed it up. Obliterated him and his cruel, selfish world. She crushed the sheet so fiercely in her hand that the last remnants of tenderness were squeezed out dead.
Dear Mr Richmond … A short, formal letter of resignation was dashed off and, determined, she went out to post it nearby. It was gone one thirty in the morning and suddenly dreadfully tired, she got to bed and almost immediately her head struck the pillow, she fell fast asleep.
Chapter 22. Indelible stranger
Over the next two weeks, she did not return Michael's calls left on her phone. She threw away the flowers he sent her without reading the attached message. She did not open the two letters he sent her and threw them away too, despite the agonizing it caused her.
It was still summer and she found herself on long, aimless walks, often along the river by the boat sheds where she had once sat and felt there was everything to play for. But that was then. Now, the softly-rippling waters were slowly cleansing her of the past. Bit by bit, she was beginning to see more clearly before her, and the future beckoned. As she gazed into the flow and the patterns it made over the pebbles on the river bed, she could see most clearly an image. It was the face of Paul.
Val was no problem. The crowded coffee-shop was a favourite meeting place. Right at the start after Catherine quit the job, Val was the epitome of sympathy and understanding as Catherine told her why her position had become untenable.
‘Oh dear!’ tutted Val. ‘The bastard! I don't know how you coped for so long, honestly, I don't,’ and she gulped down her coffee as if it would help her swallow the distasteful facts Catherine told her. ‘I don't know. It’s all over the place isn't it? Workplace harassment. Why should a woman have to put up with attentions like that which her employer is giving her, just to hang on to a crappy job, anyway? And she was as bad. You'd think she would have spoken up and supported you. Been a witness against him - whatever. Bitch! She knew which side her bread was buttered on, that's for sure,’ and she gulped down more coffee. ‘Still. There are plenty more fish in the sea, Cathy. There are loads of men who'd fall for you head over heels, I'm telling you.’
‘As if...’ said Catherine, sighing, and looked through the window, ‘None like Paul,’ she added, and the mere mention of his name had a boosting effect on her mood. ‘You see, Val…’ and she hesitated, playing with her teaspoon, ’I don't think anyone else will match him. He was really something,’ and it hurt to use the past tense.
Val looked suddenly uncomfortable. ‘Hmm, Cathy …There's something I ought to tell you. Something, well, I thought I'd never be saying.’
Catherine looked at her friend and tensed slightly. ‘What is it, Val?’
‘Hmm …’ and she looked down into her coffee cup.
‘Val. What is it?’
‘I'm having an affair.’
Shocked, Catherine sat there for a moment. Val, sixteen years happily married, the epitome of stability and contentment. Why, she and Tom had only just come back the other month from their ‘umpteenth honeymoon’, Val had said, laughingly and nudging Catherine at the same time.
She could not think of a better vindication of marriage than that exemplified by Val and Tom and the shock broke open suddenly a world of possible illusions, or was that delusions? She pulled herself together, realizing that in her own time of despondency, her best friend was having an adventure, and presumably a very happy time in her life.
‘Never!’ said Catherine, forcing a disbelieving smile, ‘You're having me on!’
‘No, Cathy. Honest. It's a full blown, honest-to-goodness, real affair. It's serious. He's really knocked me out.’
‘God!’ and this time, Catherine really could not help her astonished, and suddenly excited reaction, and then giggled. ‘Tell me
more! What's he like? Is he good looking?’ Val was about to answer. ‘Is he? Is he, you know?’ and Catherine flashed her eyes at her in a coded gesture.
‘Is he good in bed, you mean?’ responded Val, calmly.
‘Well...’ beamed back Catherine, ‘Is he?’ and waited with baited breath.
‘Bed's the last place he has me,’ and, with a look of half-embarrassment, half-glee, she looked Catherine in the eye. ‘I've never had so much way-out sex before in my life.’
‘God!’ exclaimed Catherine. ‘Oh, you’re kidding! What do you mean …way-out?’ and her heart beat quickened.
‘You know...’ said Val, suddenly blushing.
‘You don't mean …kinky?’ Catherine was gripping the table's edge.
‘Let's say masterful.’
Catherine's enraptured expression froze. ‘Masterful?’
‘Yes. You know...’ Val was wrestling with something and Catherine sensed she may have stumbled on one of her friend's deepest secrets.
‘You mean dominant,’ she said flatly.
‘Yes,’ said Val, and then, ‘Are you shocked?’
‘Me?’ said Catherine, taken aback. ‘Shocked? Why, no, of course not,’ but her mind went blank. Both women sat there in awkward silence for a moment. Catherine was the first to speak.
‘I think if that's what works for you, that's OK. Really I do,’ though her voice lacked conviction. ‘Besides, it's really none of my business what people get up to behind closed doors. Myself. Well, as you know. I'm a hopeless romantic. Not my scene, I'm afraid Val,’ and she gave a nervous laugh. ‘No. Good luck to you. To you both. What's his name, by the way?’
Val looked more than deeply uncomfortable.
‘That's just it, Cathy,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It's Paul.’
A train hit her head-on. The blood drained from her whole being. She felt sick and the room was spinning.
‘Cathy. Are you all right?’ and Val grabbed her hand, her face full of concern.
She could not hear clearly her own voice, but managed a response.
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