Eventually his hand was rock steady. Viola looked into his eyes and nodded. ‘Yes, Master Martin. Do it.’
Teschmaker looked down at the point of the needle and rolled it over so the bevelled edge was facing upwards. He inhaled deeply then halfway through the exhale held his breath and pushed the needle beneath the surface of the skin. He pushed it almost its full length then angled the point up so it broke through the surface. Slowly he removed his hand. The rosette formed by the red plastic needle handles was perfectly centred around Viola’s nipple.
‘It’s beautiful.’ Viola sounded breathless and there was no doubt about the sincerity of his awe.
‘You think?’ Teschmaker sounded as tentative as he felt.
‘Truly beautiful.’ Viola’s face was flushed. ‘You’re ready, Master Martin. You had better go and get changed. I’ll pack up the tool kit.’
‘What about the needles?’ Teschmaker asked softly.
‘I’d like to keep them in for a little while. That is, if you don’t mind.’
‘Of course.’ Teschmaker found himself whispering as the intimacy of what he had just done suddenly hit him. For half an hour he had been concentrating totally on Viola’s breast, not with any homosexual eroticism but a sweet, calm caring. He tried to think of something to say that would distance him from the feeling, but his mind was a blank so he turned and walked slowly from the room. He knew that something profoundly strange had taken place and, for some reason, he didn’t want to break the moment. For two hours they had gone through the weird assortment of implements — toys, Viola had called them — in Adrian Wright’s tool kit. Then Viola had brought up the issue of needlework.
‘It’s Doctor Orpheus’s signature piece. You’ll have to practise.’
At first Teschmaker had refused point blank, but Viola had gently insisted and then removed his shirt.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘You can practise on me.’
Viola’s instruction had been as tender as it was thorough. He took Teschmaker through the swabbing with alcohol, needle choice and the actual method of inserting them under the skin. But the revelation Teschmaker was having trouble coming to terms with was the mental space he found himself in. He tried to rationalise it, telling himself it was a by-product of his reduced breathing rate and meditative concentration. But the rationale didn’t fully explain the floating feeling and heightened awareness he was experiencing.
‘Dom space,’ Viola explained. ‘Just like a subbie can get into sub space.’
‘Like the religious ecstasy you told me about when you were flogged?’ Teschmaker’s previous incredulity was slipping away.
‘Exactly.’ Viola smiled, then added wickedly, ‘You may even find you enjoy this evening.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Teschmaker had Gerard drop him off at the Botanical Gardens end of Nikolayevsky Street just after 10 pm. Although, according to Viola, some people would arrive as early as eight o’clock, his advice was to wait until things began to warm up. ‘Nothing much happens before ten, they just stand around and socialise, and that’s the last thing you need.’
Teschmaker couldn’t agree more. His nervousness had been increasing all evening and in a way it was a relief that the waiting was over. He had half convinced himself that he probably would not even make it past the front door. And even if he did, there was a distinct possibility that Jane would not be there. One thing was certain. He would have no trouble recognising Master Francis. Viola’s description — bald, moustache, silver mask and a silver-handled whip — suggested he would be hard to miss.
He thanked Gerard and told him he would take a taxi home. Gerard offered to wait outside, but Teschmaker insisted that it was more important he keep a close eye on Adrian Wright and the boy. Kidnapping was bad enough; the last thing he wanted was for one of them to come to more serious harm.
Gerard protested that they would be fine, but sensing that the fewer things Teschmaker had to worry about the better, reluctantly agreed. He waited while Teschmaker took the tool kit from the rear seat, then did a U-turn and headed back towards Gower.
The evening was pleasantly warm and though down on the street there was only a hint of a breeze, above him the few clouds were drifting slowly towards the south. He was five blocks away from the top end of Nikolayevsky Street but was glad of the walk. He patted his pocket to double-check his mask was still there, then picked up the bag and strolled slowly towards his destination.
Back at his house he had packed and unpacked the tool kit several times until Viola had been satisfied he knew where every last item was and how it was stored. Despite the fact that the contents of the tool kit were alien to him, Teschmaker had to admit that Adrian Wright had a very tidy mind. Each of the floggers was velcro-sealed inside a strong plastic bag, which in turn had external velcro strips that allowed it to be attached to the inside of the tool kit. In his head he reviewed the inventory: whips around the outside, studded leather wrist and ankle manacles at one end. Under them the heart-shaped paddle, solid leather. In the middle were the containers of nipple clamps, a pair of evil-looking breast clamps, clothes pegs, rubber gloves, condoms . . .
‘For Christ’s sake, Viola! He can’t need all this stuff,’ Teschmaker had said the first time it was spread out in front of him. He picked up a strange object with a tail of horse hair. ‘What the fuck is this?’
‘A butt plug.’
Teschmaker dropped it quickly. ‘You mean that someone . . .’
‘They wear it sometimes for the whole night.’ Viola picked it up, straightened out the tail and placed it neatly back on the table. ‘Look, these are the same but without the tail. And this is for CBT.’ He held up a stainless-steel tube with a clasp that looked like bent teeth from a comb. Several heavy metal rings were clipped to the side of the instrument.
To Teschmaker it looked like a surgical instrument you might find in the operating theatre from hell. ‘CBT — Competency Based Training?’
That broke Viola up completely and he laughed so hard he had to sit down, hugging at his sides to stop the pain. ‘That is such a vanilla thing to say,’ he managed through tears of mirth. ‘CBT is shorthand for cock and ball torture.’
Teschmaker shook his head, speechless.
‘The tube hinges open and then clamps shut around —’
‘Enough! I get the picture.’ He took the clamp and weighed it in his hand. ‘So what’s the socket for?’ It looked like something you would plug a headphone into.
‘It’s a connection for a TENS machine. Usually it has contact pads . . .’ Viola saw he was way ahead of Teschmaker so he backtracked. ‘A TENS machine is used in electric play. It delivers a variable charge,’ Viola explained patiently. ‘Normally the contact pads — one positive, one negative — are put on a subbie and the Master or Mistress operates the controls.’ He frowned, remembering something difficult. ‘I’ve heard that you can put the positive pads on one person and the negative on the other and then . . .’ He blushed, hesitating. ‘Then they make love and the charge is felt through anywhere that is . . . lubricated.’
Teschmaker had tried to imagine the sensation, but couldn’t.
He was now only two blocks away from the alleyway that led to the side entrance. Stay calm, he told himself. You’ll walk in, have a look around and walk out. Simple. Another part of his brain was telling him a completely different story. In his hand, the tool kit felt a great deal heavier than it had back at the house. He forced his mind to concentrate on reviewing its contents. What was it that Viola had told him? You always warm somebody up first. Warm them up? It sounded deceptively friendly considering he had been talking about the floggers.
‘This large heavy one, it’s very thuddy — not much sting but a lot of noise. Use this to warm people up. Because of the noise you can fuck with people’s minds.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Probably fifty per cent of pain is in the mind, so if you use something that makes a lot of noise then the subbie feels you are doin
g more than you actually are. Some people play a lot of mind games. Anyway, you’ll see what I mean tonight.’
Teschmaker had felt totally out of his depth; inadequate and stupid. No, he told himself, there is no reason why I should have known all this stuff. He’d picked up another whip with a yellow handle and a very long tail. ‘This one?’
‘It just plain hurts.’ Viola’s eyes were shining again. ‘But you need a fair bit of skill to use it. The leather is harder and thinner. You should try it out.’
‘Damn it, Viola, I’m not going to whip you, okay?’
‘I meant on the back of the chair,’ Viola protested innocently.
And so for half an hour, under Viola’s eagle eye, he had lashed with both forehand and backhand strokes at a kitchen chair to which Viola had obligingly tied a pillow. After the first twenty minutes it had seemed like a pretty normal thing to be doing on a Saturday afternoon. Then they had returned to the tool kit. A quiver of canes; a single-tailed whip; the viper — a single piece of thicker leather split like a snake’s tongue — an evil version of the old school strap. ‘It produces a beautiful welt that lasts for days,’ Viola informed him. Ropes, cuffs, leather and steel . . . Teschmaker had struggled to take it all in.
‘Now . . . ooh . . . this brings tears to my eyes just to look at it,’ Viola whispered. ‘Oh, that’s gotta hurt.’
‘This?’
‘It’s called a scourge — a chain flogger. Those tiny metal balls really get the claret flowing.’
‘Hang on.’ Teschmaker was confused. ‘I thought that blood was a no-go area.’
‘Usually. Most groups have a no-blood rule, so they have a safety system, a word or phrase to let the dom know that it is getting a bit much and to stop. But the Chambers of Pain people were brought together by Master Francis because they were all established edge players — people who like to go to extremes. The edge is where most groups stop but with Master Francis it is where they begin.’
It was not a comforting thought.
At the end of the laneway that led down the side of the building to the Chambers, Teschmaker reached into his pocket and fished out the mask. It was, in fact, only a half mask: black leather outlined with silver studs. In addition to a strap that fastened at the back there was another thin strip of soft leather that passed either side of the bridge of the nose, over the crown of the head and joined the other strap at the small buckle at the back.
‘It’s meant to stay securely in place, no matter what you might do,’ Viola had said in a reassuring tone. Teschmaker, however, was a long way from feeling reassured about anything. He had adjusted the straps before leaving home and thankfully it slipped on easily now and simply required tightening. He stepped back as a man in a business suit brushed passed him. He too was carrying a tool kit, looking for all the world like a slightly overweight, middle-management executive on his way home from work with his gym bag, ready to pump some iron or hit the squash court.
‘Good evening.’ The man had a pleasant, educated voice. Confident. Normal.
Teschmaker gave him a slight nod and, picking up his own bag, followed him down the alley. Of course the man sounded normal. What had he expected? That these people would speak like a cross between Hannibal Lecter and Quasimodo? It’s too late for fear, he told himself sternly.
The door was open and so he stepped over the sill and found himself in a dimly lit reception area. In front of him the man in the business suit stood at a small window fitted with thick steel bars behind which sat a man dressed in the uniform of an SS officer. The hat-check clerk, Teschmaker thought, in an attempt to forestall the rising sense of panic. The SS officer ran his pencil down a clipboard and, finding the name he was after, ticked it off.
‘Lord Eros, welcome.’
‘Thanks, Commandant. See you inside?’ The man sounded hopeful.
‘Yes. We’ve nearly got a full house, including a busload of kinksters from out of town. I shouldn’t be stuck up here much longer.’
Lord Eros turned to Teschmaker and winked. ‘Full house, eh, Orpheus? And some fresh meat, should be a good night.’
Teschmaker repeated his curt nod and, hearing Viola’s voice in his head, remembered to grunt for good measure. It seemed to do the trick.
‘That’s the spirit!’ Lord Eros beamed.
Teschmaker thought he had never seen anybody less evocative of Eros than the plump individual hurrying down the stairs that led off from the right of the lobby. He turned back to the SS officer. ‘Evening.’
‘Ah! Doctor Orpheus, glad you made it. Dog Dirt was looking for you. Probably wants you to take him for a walk. I told him that he’d be locked in the kennel if he got too pushy. He liked that a lot.’ The man laughed shortly and ticked his clipboard.
He was about to say something else but his laugh had triggered what sounded like a nasty bronchial cough and so Teschmaker grunted and made his way to the stairs. He felt a little light-headed at having made it past the first hurdle so easily, but as he went down the steps the feeling evaporated.
The basement of the building appeared to be cut from solid rock and he experienced the first onslaught of claustrophobia. He had never suffered from such a fear before but the unevenness of the steps and the closeness of the walls combined to fill him with unease. He put out his hand to steady himself and the stone felt cold and damp to his touch. It felt dead. He knew it was an irrational thought, but knowing did nothing to mitigate the tomb-like atmosphere and his sense of dread. He realised he had stopped, so he took a deep breath and forced his feet forwards.
Ten steps down he came to a landing from which the stairs continued down at right angles. Fortunately he could now see what he assumed must be the main entrance to the Chambers: two stone pillars cut in relief from the surrounding stone. Above the pillars, on a massive stone lintel, was carved what Teschmaker recognised as a quote from St Augustine: Ama et fac quod vis, Love and do what you will. Given the location, he thought, it could just as easily have been from Aleister Crowley. The Great Beast, as he liked to be known, would have felt quite at home here. As a teenager Teschmaker had read an account of Crowley’s exploits at the Abbey of Thelma in Sicily, where he had gone after leaving the Society of the Golden Dawn. Teschmaker remembered it well because he had been severely castigated by his lower-sixth English master for including a reference to Crowley in an essay. His defence — that WB Yeats had also been a member of the Society — had done nothing to ease the severity of the reprimand. Ironically, he had been caned for arguing his case.
Teschmaker stepped through the door and found himself in a small but stunning replica of a basilica, complete with a row of colonnades on either side, running the full length of the chamber and ending in a polygon-shaped apse. He felt he had stepped back into the Dark Ages. There was not a single electric light, the entire space lit by a series of large candles burning in niches cut into the walls. Viola had assured him that the lighting would be dim, but this was brighter than he had expected. As his eyes adjusted he could see relatively clearly. There were forty or fifty people milling about, and so for a moment Teschmaker stood, taking it all in.
Even more stunning than the architecture were the furnishings; a medieval torture chamber was the nearest comparison he could think of. Large posts were set into the floor at regular intervals. At the top of each a solid spike secured the chains that were being used to constrain the men or women attached to the posts. They were not being whipped; as far as Teschmaker could make out, they had simply been left there, much as one might leave a horse hitched to a rail. To his right though it was a different story. A huge naked man was strapped into a contraption that resembled a dentist’s chair, except that it was built from large, roughly polished slabs of timber. His chest, wrists and ankles were restrained by broad leather straps with large buckles. Several men and women were standing around watching as a woman, in nothing but a black miniskirt, applied what looked like shaving cream to the man’s extremely hairy upper body. Teschmaker sauntered over
and attached himself to the rear of the group, trying to catch some fragment of conversation that might enlighten him as to what was going on. But the onlookers were engrossed and, apart from the odd murmur of appreciation, were silent.
Viola had warned him to expect a wide range of fetish wear, but nothing he could have said would have prepared Teschmaker for the impact of seeing it in these surroundings. He glanced at the large woman beside him. Her enormous breasts were forced up and out by a black corset and she appeared to be wearing nothing else. No, he looked down at her feet, she was wearing riding boots. Sensing his attention the woman turned and smiled. Her mask was a work of art. Though it must have been lined with something, the outward appearance was all peacock feathers.
She leaned over to Teschmaker and whispered, ‘This should be fun.’
He grunted his agreement and turned his attention back to the man in the chair. The cream substance now not only covered his chest and stomach, but all down the length of his widely spread legs. The miniskirted woman was moving around him, checking something. Then, satisfied all was in order, she took a couple of small white towels and laid one across the man’s face, the other across his genitals. She gave two more towels to members of the crowd and, keeping one for herself, motioned for the onlookers to step back. As she picked up a small taper and moved to the nearest candle and lit it, the onlookers moved back another step. In a single movement she spun back to the bound man and touched the taper to the cream on his ankles. In an instant the man vanished beneath a sheet of flame. The crowd gasped and then, just as quickly, the people with towels moved forward and wiped the remnants of the flames from the now totally hairless body.
‘I’ll stick to my razor,’ someone quipped and there was a ripple of laughter.
‘Nice work, darling,’ the woman in the feather mask called and then turned back to Teschmaker. ‘Honestly, I don’t know where she gets such hairy specimens.’ She gave a deep-throated laugh and moved off.
Delicate Indecencies Page 24
