Teena Thyme

by Pope, Jennifer Jane

  'This,' she said, 'in case you hadn't now realised it, is Andrea, or at least, she's Andrea at the moment. In so-called normal life she's Andy, my not-quite stepmother's dearly beloved only son!'

  24.

  Things were now becoming most bizarre, which sounds like a ludicrous thing for me to say, especially in the light of everything that had happened to me - real and/or illusionary - during the past weeks, but the arrival of 'Andrea' was almost the straw that broke the camel's back and I was beginning to think that either my entire life was really a dream from which I couldn't wake up, or else I had somehow gone completely insane and missed the turning where I'd first started losing the plot.

  But Anne-Marie, with an insightfulness I was to come to know as normal with her, realised that I had gone beyond mere inquisitiveness and adventure and needed propping up, and urgently.

  'I think maybe we should go to your cottage and take a look at those things in the loft,' she said firmly. 'I can't believe you haven't gone through the rest of those trunks. You've been seeking answers that may well be in them, you know.'

  'I don't think so,' I began. 'I think I'd sense it, but all I get is a sort of, well, weird feeling, every time I go up that ladder and look in there.'

  'Scared to touch anything else of it?' Anne-Marie said. Andy, or Andrea, as Anne-Marie insisted we call him/her while she was in her female character, looked on somewhat bemused, for obviously 'she' wasn't yet privy to the secret of my possible time-travelling adventure.

  'Not scared, exactly...' I started to say, 'oh, who the hell am I trying to kid? Yes, I'm terrified of touching any of it and that's the truth. What happens if I end up back there and what if I can't come back here again next time?'

  Of course, we had to explain everything to Andrea, who listened wide-eyed and intent, nodding as I retold my tale, letting out a low whistle when I outlined the details of that awful punishment post where I last remembered being before coming back to the present in my cottage.

  'Wow!' she said when I'd finished. 'What a story! You should write it as a book!'

  'Shut up, Andrea,' Anne-Marie told him, frowning her disapproval. 'This may seem like a game to you, the same as everything else does, but this is deadly serious for Teena, can't you see that?'

  We decided to have breakfast first and then go over to the cottage together. Released from my chains I removed my stockings, shoes and the cincher, released the belled nipple clamps with exaggerated care and slowly dressed in my own things, feeling quite drab alongside Andrea, who was apparently quite happy to travel in her female guise. Not that she was risking much, I realised, for even up close she would have passed for a girl, so long as no one ever got to grips with the secret she kept well hidden in her panties, if what Anne-Marie had told me about her male endowment was even halfway true.

  Surprisingly, the cottage did nor feel damp and, even more amazingly, embers still glowed in the fireplace. I opened the damper, raked them through and added more coal, together with one of the logs I'd bought from the local general store and, by the time I put the kettle on and arranged mugs for tea, bright flames were licking towards the chimney.

  'This is nice,' Anne-Marie said approvingly. 'Needs a little bit of tarting up and twiddling here and there, but it's so quaint - and this was all left to you?'

  'By an ancient aunt I'd never even heard of before,' I said. 'It was to go to the eldest surviving female blood relative on her side of the family and that just happened to be me.'

  'Want a housemate?' Andrea asked mischievously, dropping into one of the fireside chairs and crossing her legs with practised ease. I was still having trouble believing this was a male; her every move and gesture was so feminine and she must have worked on her alter-persona for a long time to achieve such perfection.

  'You just behave yourself, you tart,' Anne-Marie laughed. She gave a meaningful look towards the ceiling. 'Shall we go up and have a look-see?' she said.

  I hesitated. 'Let's have some tea first,' I suggested, delaying the inevitable as long as I could. 'I'm still feeling a bit vague after last night and I need something to wake me up properly and get me going.'

  'Good idea,' Andrea agreed, yawning indelicately. 'That damned Penny is an insomniac and she seems to think everyone else is the same.'

  Eventually, however, the moment came and I led the way up. The stepladder was still propped against the open loft hatch and Andrea, possibly her inherent male gallantry or bravado, offered to go up first and retrieve the nearest trunk. I caught a brief glimpse of black panties as her skirt flared above my head and looked away guiltily, until she hauled herself from view.

  There followed a series of scrapes, bumps and muttered curses and then a henna-topped head appeared, looking down at us, a huge smile belying her protestations.

  'It's absolutely filthy up here!' she exclaimed. 'Must be the dust of centuries on everything.' She sneezed and shook her head. 'I've got the first one right here, but it's a bit heavy, so we'll need to incline this ladder a bit more and try to slide it down. I'll hold the top handle, but I'm not sure how trustworthy it is.' I noticed Andrea's voice had dropped slightly and definitely taken on a more masculine edge.

  One by one we retrieved the remaining trunks and cases. There were actually more of them than I had first thought, Andrea noticing two additional small cases lying right under the eaves in the deepest shadow, and they filled the spare bedroom completely by the time she finally made her way back down to join us.

  'Where do we start?' I asked, standing back, hands on hips. Anne-Marie shrugged.

  'I don't suppose it'll make much difference,' she said. 'Maybe we should just open them all and get a rough idea of what's in each and then we can get them downstairs one at a time and go through them properly.'

  'It'll take all day,' Andrea observed, yawning again.

  'You can always go through and curl up on my bed for a couple of hours,' I offered. It was obvious the poor thing was struggling to keep her eyes open and I felt guilty that my problems should be the cause of depriving her of much needed sleep. But Andrea shook her head.

  'Not yet,' she replied. 'Let's have a quick rummage first, but I'll take you up on that in a bit, if the offer still holds.'

  An hour or so later, Andrea had indeed retreated to slumber land and Anne-Marie and I sat in my lounge, several items of clothing and three leather-bound document packages on the floor between us. The clothing items were all very much pre-Victorian, if I was any judge, one dress dating almost to Elizabethan times and certainly of at least Stuart vintage. The fabric felt surprisingly supple, but I still handled it with extreme respect.

  'Some of these things must be worth a fortune,' Anne-Marie observed. 'And we've hardly scraped the surface of those trunks. But let's see what all this paperwork is about, shall we?'

  You may, dear reader, find it somewhat mystifying that, whilst I had expended much time and effort in trying to trace my various ancestors via official records, I had not thought to look for any further written clues among the trunks in the loft space. The truth is that I had, but that I had also not quite been able to bring myself to go up there again and touch those trunks; was I scared I might again find myself trapped back in time? Was I worried I might find something written that I did not want to know about?

  I'm not sure that I know the answers, even now, only that I needed to do my detective work through a different route and that, meantime, even the clothing I'd brought down from the roof that first time had been put away in the unused bedroom, covered by an old sheet, where it had lain undisturbed during the intervening time. Call it cowardice, call it what you want, but only now, when I had people with me, was I prepared to venture back towards a path whose destination I could not predict.

  The documents were, in fact, something of a disappointment, largely because they were letters, mostly written in the same hand, an ornate script that had faded and blurred with the years. There were also assorted receipts, bills of sale, a letter from a dressmaker in Chichest
er - I made a note to check up and see what was at that address now - and a list that appeared to be an inventory of some kind, although it did not appear to relate to any of the current contents of the cottage.

  'It might be worth seeing if we can find anyone who can do something with these letters,' Anne-Marie suggested, carefully unfolding yet another of them. She peered closely at the even lines of tiny script, but shook her head again. 'It's a shame they're so unreadable,' she said, 'but there are people who can do things with ultraviolet light and stuff.'

  'I wonder who the writer was?' I mused. 'They all look far too old to have been written by dear old Amelia herself, so they must be something that was handed down to her.'

  'Could be an entire family history in here, for all we know,' Anne-Marie said. 'It's just all too frustrating, isn't it? By the way,' she added, 'I was wondering whether you'd have any objection to an idea I had?' I looked up, my expression inviting her to continue.

  'It's Andrea,' she said, seeing this. 'Did you see her face when she saw some of those old dresses? Only I wondered...'

  'Whether I'd mind if she tried a few things on?'

  'Well, me too, if that's all right,' she confessed. 'If there's anything in there that'll fit me, that is.'

  'I don't mind at all,' I replied. 'Only I'm also feeling really tired.'

  'Well then,' Anne-Marie suggested, 'why don't we choose some likely stuff, pack it all in one of the smaller trunks and then we can all go back to our place. You and Andy can have a nap, then we can all bathe, eat, change, whatever. We've got plenty in the freezer and there's a lot more room there. I can even phone in sick in the morning and we can make a long weekend of it.' She nodded at the papers.

  'I might even know someone who can organise something with that little lot. I got to know her when she was using the library for some research work, but she's at the University of Sussex now and her specialty is domestic history - you know, what it was like to live in such-and-such a town at such-and-such a time? She's actually a professor now, but very sweet.'

  I could imagine. If Anne-Marie met her at the library, it was odds-on that this lady professor had, like me, spent some little time parading around Anne-Marie's father's house in much the same state that I had been.

  'Okay,' I agreed, stooping to tidy the nearer pile of paperwork. 'None of this lot is telling us anything as things stand, so if your friend can maybe help, let her have a go. I can afford to pay, as long as it's not silly money.'

  'Leave the money bit to me, at least for the moment,' Anne-Marie replied, reassuringly. 'Helen is a dear and she gets access to all sorts of equipment at the university in the course of her work. She'll probably be only too grateful for the chance to get to grips with this lot anyway.'

  25.

  Luckily, Anne-Marie's car had a large boot space, but even so the trunk we took only just fitted in and it, in turn, was filled almost to the point where the lid wouldn't close, so difficult was it to decide what to leave out of our joint selections of clothing. In the end, we travelled back with Andrea sharing the back seat with three voluminous gowns, including one of the really old ones, a Jacobean ball gown in deep red with gold and black trimmings.

  Back at the house an hour later I lay in a deep bath, bubbles tickling my nose, soft music on the radio. Elsewhere in the house, Andrea had retired to her bedroom, presumably to catch up on some much needed sleep and Anne-Marie was down in the kitchen, preparing a meal for us to share later. It was very peaceful yet, on the inside, I was far from at peace with myself.

  Quite when my disquiet started I could not be sure, but now, as I lay alone without outside influences or disturbances, it began to manifest itself strongly. What, I asked myself, did I think I was doing? How could I let myself be so easily manipulated, allow myself to be so quickly drawn into Anne-Marie's peculiar sex life? What the hell was wrong with me that I was finding myself so intrigued by Andy/Andrea and so excited at the prospect of being seduced by such a weird creature, for that I most certainly was?

  I sat up in the bath, water and bubbles streaming from my breasts, reaching for one of the sponges that sat in the rack above the taps. Come to that, I asked myself, what were the three of us about to do? Our planned fancy dress masquerade was potentially dangerous, surely? Given what happened to me the last time I'd dressed in anything from one of those trunks were we not risking something similar happening to at least one of us and maybe all three?

  But had anything really happened that last time? I still had no proof either way, reality or dream-hallucination. Yet something definitely happened, whether it was real or only imagined, for ever since, apart from the recurring dream images, something had been going on deeper within me, a longing stirred for something that was triggered by my experiences, whether they had taken place in eighteen thirty-nine or just somewhere in the darker recesses of my mind.

  I stood up, reaching for a towel. There was something very bad in me, of that much I was certain, something really dark and sinister, either a genetic flaw or else...

  Or else what? How to describe that feeling of wanting once more to be possessed, punished, ravished? I had been terrified as a prisoner of Hacklebury and company, but even then I responded eventually by surrendering completely to my most base instincts and then, when Anne-Marie put her slave chains on me, the feeling returned, though with less intensity it was true.

  Did I really want to go back, to be made a helpless sex slave again, to be whipped, tied, humiliated? Was that what I wanted this coming evening, willing to accept whatever happened at the hands of Anne-Marie and Andrea as a substitute, yet perhaps hoping I would again find myself back in time as Angelina?

  I had to do something, I knew. As I patted myself dry, staring down at the bald mound that had been my pubic hair, I knew I should simply go through to the bedroom, dress in my own everyday clothes and ask Anne-Marie to take me back to the cottage. I should make up some excuse, feign illness, fatigue, a headache, anything. There would be no need for any friction, or for any bad feeling between the three of us. I would simply go, promising to phone, or to meet up again in the library and then simply fade from their lives.

  I nodded to my reflection in the mirror and wound a dry towel about myself. Yes, that was the easiest, safest way to deal with the situation. Forget about all this, forget about the past: Angelina, Amelia, Hacklebury, Meg, Erik. Go back. Go back to school, finish my studies, take my exams and then see about university.

  Yes, go back. Forget about it. Go back.

  Go back.

  Go...

  'I've laid out some things for you on the bed.' Anne-Marie's voice penetrated the door and my thoughts, bringing me up with a guilty start. Why did I feel guilty? Why should I feel guilty? 'I haven't bothered with those silk stockings,' she continued, quite matter-of-fact. 'They're very nice, but they look and feel a bit fragile, so I've put a pair of mine out for you instead. Only nylon, of course.' She laughed and then I heard her retreating footsteps.

  Go back. Go... go back.

  I went through to the bedroom and stood staring down at the garments that had been made ready for me; the corset, older in style than the one I wore before, the boning designed to push the breasts up in front, from what I could see, the silken drawers, the frilly garters and the fresh, modern stockings as Anne-Marie had said, plus long gloves, wrist buttoning for a tight fit and finally a pair of ankle boots with that delicately curved French heel.

  Clutching the towel close still, I turned and looked around, searching for where Anne-Marie had left the dress, eager to see what choice she'd made, but there was nothing in view and I doubted whether she would have placed anything inside the closets.

  'I see,' I said to the empty room, but I wasn't really surprised. Modern day or antiquity, I was still supposed to be Teenie slave girl for Anne-Marie, it appeared. The only thing that did surprise me, at least a little, was that my chains weren't also laid out ready for me to don myself.

  I dropped the towel on the end of the b
ed and scooped up the corset, turning it round and examining it closely. It was white, with red lacy trimmings and piping and intended to fasten at the front, a row of small hooks running from top to bottom, tiny metal things, but made to withstand a lot of force in their day and probably still as strong as when they were made. As I had thought on first seeing the garment, there was no scalloped or reinforced cupping for my boobs, just artfully formed boning that would lift my bust high, producing that strange effect often to be seen in portraits from the Regency era and through into the very early days of Victoria.

  I began fastening the hooks, working slowly, and saw that the shape of the corset was quite deceptive, the waist a good deal smaller than it appeared at first, even though it did not have that same 'stove pipe' form so popular in later years. I sucked in my stomach, not at all sure that I would fit into the thing at all, aware yet again of how much smaller our ancestors must have been.

  'Not bad, Teenie.' Anne-Marie's appreciative comment made me jump, for I had not heard the door open behind me. I spun round, my hand instinctively going down to cover my denuded sex, even though I knew she had more than seen it already. Seeing my reaction, she smiled broadly.

  'Still my shy little slave,' she chuckled. I almost bridled at the 'little', but in her platform shoes and with me still barefoot, she was actually taller than me at that moment and there was that something about her that made me feel so much smaller and almost defenceless whenever she was near.

  'Let's see if we can lace that any tighter,' she said, moving around the side of me. I stared at her in disbelief.

  'Are you kidding?' I gasped. 'This is like a vice already. I know it might not look as tight as that cincher thing of yours, but believe me, it is.'

  'There's still a couple of inches at the back,' was her only comment. 'Let me have a go at it, there's a good girl.' And I just stood there and let her do it, her knee in the small of my back, gasping and grunting, red in the face, as slowly but surely she reduced that gap from two inches to one, from one inch to a half and then, as I was on the point of fainting, finally made both edges meet.