The Eunuch's Ward (The String Quartet)

by Smyth, Silver

  THE EUNUCH’S WARD

  The First Adult Suspense Romance in the String Quartet Series

  by

  Silver Smyth

  Copyright © Silver Smyth 2013

  Illustrator: Stanton Images

  Published by: Silver Threads Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events described in the novel are fictional. Any resemblance to real-life characters or events is purely coincidental.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author publisher.

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to all the brave young women who told me their remarkable life stories.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In the course of my work with people of all ages and backgrounds who suffered from post-traumatic stress in a variety of countries and environments, I was lucky to meet very many girls and young women, willing and able to fight the pressures and cruelties of their own families and society as a whole.

  Sonata, Asha, Rosebud and Rafaela, each is a collage of scores of girls of the same age with the same ambitions, aspirations and problems. They have my deepest admiration and gratitude for sharing their thoughts, feelings and stories with me.

  Chapter 1

  Like everyone else’s story, mine started long before I was born. But, the first time when I realised that I had a story was when I decided to run away from home.

  At the end of May last year, thousands upon thousands of students up and down the country were swatting for their mocks and A Levels in the unseasonal, sweltering heat. In that respect, they were not any better off than I was. Naturally, a good proportion of them were seventeen years of age. Many of those would have been long-legged, attractive and sex-obsessed. After that, the number of those in the position comparable to mine dwindled dramatically. Not all that many would have been reading their Rise and Fall of The Ottoman Empire by their own swimming pool, situated on the terrace of one of London’s most expensive penthouses. Even fewer would have been locked in, with no means of escape. And I’m sure that the number of virgins among them could have been counted on the fingers of one hand.

  In this day and age that will take some explaining, I expect, so I’d better start from the beginning.

  My father was the investment banker Leon Ganis. Most people recognised his name as one of the super rich in the world’s new order. Leon Ganis, the man for all seasons, had something for everyone. He featured in practically every issue of every newspaper, from the pink pages of Financial Times to the covers of gossip magazines. Not that he’d ever given any grounds for any gossip of the usual kind. He and my mother were a golden couple, devoted to each other and family values.

  In between donations to charity, surprise appearances at refugee centres anywhere in the world, the offer of his own kidney to a child in a remote Amazonian village, and emotional public partings and reunions with his wife, a poll of university students up and down the country declared him ‘hip’ and ‘cool’. It was no great wonder that when he bought out a well known but financially wobbly telecommunications company, its shares tripled in value. The media, those who bothered to look up his Official Page or the Ganis Enterprises website, called him Armenia’s greatest export to the UK.

  My mother was a good looking, well presented woman of no great spirit or intelligence. Her first and last radical gesture had been to enter a seaside beauty pageant at the age of seventeen. A year later she was wearing the tiara of the second runner up to the Miss World throne. She was only just done with the small round of interviews, expressing her desire to travel and devote her life to the welfare of children and animals when she was swept up into the arms of thereto little known Leon Ganis, the surprise heir presumptive to the throne of global finances. A fair proportion of those finances had been spent on the maintenance of my mother’s looks and public image. All she had to do was use her modest talent for acting and learn what to wear when, what to say when and how, and never ever to fall asleep in a public place.

  In fairness to my father, I have never been made to feel guilty for not being born a boy. Not necessarily just because a year after my naming ceremony, Sonata ranked fifth on the list of most popular girls’ names. The early publicity pictures showed him changing my nappies and pushing me around the garden in my pram at 2 am. Then came the obligatory first tricycle, first bike, first pony, first day at prep school. He was often photographed visiting some new investment project in the middle of a muddy field, holding me by the hand and making a show of consulting me on key issues or stopping the proceedings altogether because I needed the toilet.

  He was twice nominated for the father of the year award.

  At six I was sent to a Brownies’ Camp for a week to learn about hardship and bare necessities. From the age of seven I was regularly accompanying my parents on their visits to disaster areas and children’s hospitals. My birthday parties were among the biggest events of the season. They usually involved eccentricities like a charter flight for fifty or so carefully selected youngsters and their parents to Lapland – yes, you’ve guessed, I was born shortly before Christmas – or tons of ice cream of different flavours posing as snow in the garden.

  And then suddenly, shortly after my 13th birthday, everything changed.

  Chapter 2

  I was still expected to make occasional public appearances with one or both my parents. And I had been used to bodyguards ever since I could remember. Living under their supervision wasn’t the news, What worried me was that my father found it necessary to hand me the list of my fellow students at Queen Matilda School for Girls that I was allowed to associate with. Several of those names were typed in bold and marked with asterisks. The note at the bottom said ‘Form a close friendship.’

  ‘How do I do that? They may not want me for a friend.’

  ‘Not my problem,’ he shrugged. ‘Never under any circumstances accept any invitations before they have been vetted by me or Bakir. If you do you’ll only expose yourself to the embarrassment of having to unaccept them. The same goes for handing out invitations. Never under any circumstances leave the house or the school on your own even if that means that you’d be late for something. In short, you can only leave the house with my or Bakir’s consent. Never under any circumstances...’

  I stopped listening. In the country I had a degree of freedom. Even so, I’d never left the house or garden without telling someone. Out of courtesy. Because I knew it was expected. Because it made sense. But now that voluntary compliance with an unspoken rule was taken to another level. Freedom of movement suddenly acquired the status of criminal offence.

  Yes, yes, I know... I was only 13 at the time and I couldn’t have possibly defined the situation in those terms, not even to myself. All the same, that’s how it felt, that’s what it all amounted to.

  What really sent shivers down my spine was that I was handed over to Bakir.

  Bakir, the Eunuch.

  I mean, he really was a eunuch. You know, what I mean, don’t you? All his bits had been chopped off at some point in his life. That made him fat, bald, and absolutely repulsive. I’d never seen a snake close up, but his eyes would have looked good on a snake. Or a lizard. On an over 6-foot tall man who never blinked, they looked evil. All the same, Bakir was a very influential member of our household. According to one version of my father’s humble begin
nings, he and Bakir broke out of an orphanage for boys run by monks in the Armenian hinterland. They had been inseparable ever since. The only person that Leon Ganis had ever completely trusted was Bakir, the Eunuch. He was my mother’s keeper in the early days of their marriage. Now it was my turn.

  ‘Above all,’ my father was nearing the end of his list of don’ts, ‘under no circumstances will you spend any time with any boys or men, be it in the company of others or on your own, unless accompanied...’

  ‘I’m only 13, Father.’

  He raised his left eyebrow as always when he mocked someone. ‘So? At your age my mother had...’

  ‘Your mother? I thought that you were a foundling used and abused by those revolting Armenian monks who gave you your name and a degree of basic literacy. If you need reminding of your own life story, just have a look at the latest issue of the Inside Story magazine.’ I was too angry to be afraid. And I didn’t realise that the worst was yet to be delivered.

  ‘Make sure to have a bath before 11 am on Thursday,’ he fired in between my shoulders as I was storming out of his den. ‘Dr. Tanner is coming to see you.’

  I turned sharply back on my heel but he had already dialled a number on his land phone and was asking for someone called Baker or Parker.

  Mother was just climbing out of the pool when I stomped across the stone tiles with the grace of a baby elephant.

  ‘Why is Dr. Tanner coming to see me at 11 am on Thursday?’ I demanded. ‘I’m not ill.’

  ‘Dr. Tanner?’ she frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’

  Bakir handed her a towel and she expertly arranged it into a turban over her dripping wet hair. ‘What have you been up to?’

  ‘What do you mean, what have I been up to? Can you just give me a straight answer to a straight question?’

  She looked over her shoulder. ‘Bakir?’

  Noiselessly as usual, Bakir had crept up behind her and was oiling the back of her legs. ‘Miss Sonata started bleeding a couple of months ago. She’s a woman now. Her father needs to know that she’s innocent.’

  ‘Innocent of what?’ I knew I was screaming but I couldn’t help myself. It was bad enough that not just my father but even Bakir knew about the start of my periods, the mention of them made me mad.

  ‘He means a virgin,’ said my mother. She rolled her elegant black one-piece down below her navel and left it to Bakir to cover her taut, finely tanned skin with exorbitantly expensive sun block.

  ‘So what?’ I mocked recklessly, ‘if I’m not a virgin, I’m guilty?’

  ‘Got it in one.’ She stood with her arms akimbo as Bakir’s glistening hands appeared from behind and took firm hold of the two voluptuous hemispheres of her breasts. ‘You’d better remember that, Kitten. You’re an investment. Your purpose is to marry well.’ She rotated her hips in a lap dancer’s fashion against Bakir’s front and giggled. ‘No one at home, Bakir? Not even for me?’

  My breakfast of cornflakes and peach yogurt was finding its way back up. I hurriedly turned back the way I’d come.

  ‘I should have been told about that,’ I heard Mother say tersely to Bakir.

  ‘You would have been too tired to listen,’ he threw back at her. ‘It’s for the best.’

  Chapter 3

  Bakir would have never allowed a man into my bedroom.

  As soon as the good doctor was announced, Bakir ushered me into our fitness suite, instructed me to remove my jeans and knickers, and pulled a starched white masseur’s tunic over my head. He helped me up on the massage table and threw a light blanket over my legs.

  ‘Before he starts you can cover your face with it,’ he uttered in his even, high-pitched voice and opened the door.

  Dr. Tanner was absolutely fascinated by my hymen. ‘You don’t see such a perfect specimen very often, Mrs. Ganis. You wouldn’t believe how many are misshaped.’

  ‘Are hymen inspectors in great demand, Doctor?’

  My mother’s presence surprised me but on the other hand Dr. Tanner would have expected me to be chaperoned. He may have even refused to make the examination without a respectable female in attendance.

  ‘Not among the indigenous population. It’s very much frowned upon by the human rights brigade. For all I know it might be even illegal.’ Dr. Tanner didn’t sound particularly concerned about legality of the procedure that he was performing. ‘Here, have a good look at it...’

  At that point I was beyond cringing or crying. I was beyond pretty much anything.

  When he’d first arrived and without so much as a nod in my direction, Dr. Tanner, a thin, chronically nervous looking little man in a grey suit, ordered me to lie flat on my back. He then pushed some sort of a leather-padded wedge under my backside that brought my entire lower end up directly into his line of vision. He instructed Bakir to take position above my head and lift my knees as far up and wide apart as they would go. Grudgingly, I was grateful to Bakir for the gift of the blanket. It hid the rampant stream of silent tears that ran down my face.

  ‘Here, I’ve got my little torch on me. You should be able to make it out under the light,’ Tanner was prattling on happily.

  With the vestiges of the sense of touch that I still had left, I felt something cold and pointed circle between the lips of my vagina and around the opening to it.

  ‘To answer your question, Mrs. Ganis, hymen reconstruction is a big business in some communities. Also, these days we deal with overgrowth a lot too. In some cases the hymen bars the entry so badly that even the most energetic penis can’t break its way into the vagina. And some young husbands, I must say, care more about their bride’s comfort than their own reputation for virility.’

  ‘Ah,’ said my mother.

  ‘Ah, indeed, Mrs. Ganis. It takes a brave, or shall we say a foolishly besotted man to admit that he’s unable to deflower his woman. I’m glad to say that your daughter won’t be causing any such problems to her husband. If you wish to preserve her in this condition make sure that she doesn’t ride horses or bicycles...’

  In a formidable surge of rage I let the blanket drop from my face. I took a deep breath and with superhuman effort tried to free my legs. Bakir’s palms must have been sweaty and slippery, for much to my surprise his grip on my knees loosened and my lower end snapped back together. Before anyone fully realised what was happening, in a knee-jerk reaction my legs abruptly struck out and my feet smashed the good doctor’s face with mindless force.

  The episode somehow failed to reach my father or else, he decided not to act on it. He may have been even pleased to have a spirited daughter.

  But the following morning my pony Esmeralda wasn’t in her stable and my red bike had disappeared from the garage.

  * * *

  The ridiculous thing was that Father worried over absolutely nothing.

  The last thing I was interested in at the time was sex. At that particular time boys were below newts, rats and Bakir on my scale of attractions.

  The summer fêtes at the Queen Matilda School for Girls were one of those occasions when the entire rural community came together. Nearly everyone in the village had either attended or had family members who’d attended Queen Matilda. The attractions on offer had never changed over the past hundred years or more. Stilt walkers, fire eaters and acrobats attired in Commedia dell'Arte costumes greeted the guests at the gates, the best bakers in the county offered their pies and carrot cakes, elderberry wine in brown bottles graced practically every stall, and Mrs. Perrin, the school secretary, read palms, tarot and crystal ball in the school orangery as her mother and grandmother had done before her.

  My mother left her Lamborghini in the garage at home. She and I arrived to the funfair fairly early in the Range Rover. Sports cars didn’t look good at a village fête. Only parvenus drove fast cars fast down country roads. My father who’d always courted publicity didn’t mind the reputation of a lovable rogue, if anything it suited him down to the ground. No decent human being would ever
dare think ill of a lovable rogue. But a parvenu, now that was a completely different ballgame. Parvenus were people that one met in busy bars in the City and share liquid lunch and a mutually beneficial handshake with them. Under no circumstances, to quote his favourite threat, should one be seen with them at the coconut shy corner or caught sharing an expensive hamper that they’d brought with them because they’d seen it done at Wimbledon. So, when in Rome, or more precisely when in the grounds of an expensive country school with a tradition longer than a Shakespearean play, Carys Ganis wore Laura Ashley dresses, partook of Mrs. Harvey’s excellent steak and kidney pudding served piping hot on a paper plate, bought a brown bottle of home-made ale to take back to her husband, he’d be hopping mad if she didn’t and that could have serious consequences for her credit card limit, as she’d explain to anyone who happened to be around, and ask Mr. Taylor for advice about sweet peas. Hers never looked quite as lush and vibrant as Mr. Taylor’s.

  I never quite knew what happened to the food and drink brought home in some quantities from the fair. The Laura Ashley outfits invariably ended up in the school’s next year’s charity collections or were given to local women who came occasionally to help clear up after a major party or with spring cleaning at our Hartsfield House.

  Another peculiarity of the Queen Matilda’s summer fêtes was presence of boys. Baby boys, young boys, young men, old men, and of course the fee-paying fathers, they were all allowed to attend as long as they were in some way related to a student. The practice was generally described as the entry point into the marriage market. Having watched locally grown talent for a few years I had some doubts about that.

  But, I was wrong.

  Lily Merchant was in my class. A large, loud, horsey girl, the youngest daughter of Sir Alec Merchant, a high court judge. She must have been lonely because she was always inviting me over for sleepovers, trips to the cinema and birthing of foals. I didn’t mind Lily all that much. Once she’d start talking she couldn’t stop and that meant that I didn’t have to listen at all. And I did enjoy horse riding and grooming, while giving wide berth to foaling.