The Gift of Shame

by Sophie Hope-Walker

  Hate him! Hate this! It’s over between us!

  She saw him coming and watched, her face muscles tensing, her vocal cords rehearsing the invective she intended showering on him. Punishment? He didn’t know the meaning of the word.

  ‘So, are you suitably chastened?’

  His fingertips reached out and gently touched her nipples. It was as if he had touched her with heated needles.

  The hands moved outward and encircled her breasts. His lips nestled to her throat, a clinch from which she couldn’t escape. His hands circled her belly and then, gently, with the subtlety of a soldering iron, touched her most vulnerable bud of flesh.

  Then a switch was thrown and a gear moved in her body. She found herself moaning, pressing herself against his caresses, and desperately wanting him. But please, God, she thought first, please, set me free!

  ‘I love you like this.’

  God. No. Not like this! Please don’t let me come!

  His fingers returned to her nipples, now extended and sensitive. Gently at first he tweaked them then, increasing the pressure, he bit his nails into her tender flesh.

  Using one hand he reached up and loosened the silk gag, and threw it from them.

  ‘I want to see you smile,’ he said, increasing the nail-given pain.

  She was breathing too hard, her throat too constricted to say anything.

  ‘If you smile for me and tell me you love me then I’ll set you free.’

  Her uncertain eyes managed to still his swimming image and she saw his eyes – those eyes! Then, straining every muscle in her face, she managed to smile. ‘I love you,’ she said.

  It was late evening before they spoke of anything other than their pleasure.

  ‘Why did you do that to me?’

  ‘You deserved it.’

  ‘Why did you just leave me there and walk away?’

  ‘I had things to do.’

  ‘I hated you. You know that, don’t you?’

  He smiled to himself and, by so doing rekindled the anger he had washed away with a gesture.

  ‘I think I still hate you.’

  ‘That’s healthy. Hate is closer to love than any other emotion.’

  Earlier he had shown her the tanning lamps built into the solarium to bring a touch of summer to even the dreariest winter’s day.

  They now lay side by side enjoying the counterfeit sun.

  ‘Are you frightened?’ he asked her.

  ‘I’m not sure. I think I am but it’s like a recurring nightmare. You know it will come at you in the night but it doesn’t stop you wanting to go to sleep.’

  ‘I have a technique for destroying nightmares. What you do is turn and face them. Stops the pursuing horror dead in its tracks. When you know your fear you can face it.’

  ‘That’s how I feel about you. Unknown. And yes, that frightens me.’

  ‘Sure it isn’t yourself that frightens you? Haven’t you found out things about yourself you never knew?’

  ‘Also.’

  Even as she spoke she discovered something new about herself. She could lie here next to him and calmly, objectively, discuss things which would have, previously, shamed her in any context other than the throes of passion. Of course, the protective eye shields they were wearing helped. The past few days had taught her that direct eye contact can be the most excoriating experience between two people.

  Warmed by the lamps, confident to be naked yet masked from the world, she felt totally relaxed.

  ‘What do you want of me?’ she asked him out of a lengthening silence.

  ‘To be allowed to worship.’

  ‘Worship what?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Is that what you think you were doing when you tied me up in the solarium?’

  In truth, she still harboured a hate of what he had done to her but also recognised there was emerging a perverse recognition that the price was worth it for the joyous aftermath. When he had finally released her, the pain, if anything, had increased. The blood rushing back into her veins had seemed loaded with liquid fire rendering her totally helpless – and therefore without responsibility – for what had followed – an unfathomable depth of pleasure.

  He had stayed silent for a long moment. ‘Do you know how incredibly beautiful you looked?’

  ‘How could I?’ she asked with a degree of asperity.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘There should have been a mirror. Selfish of me. Next time. Promise.’

  ‘What makes you think there’ll be a next time?’

  ‘There won’t,’ he said. ‘Unless you want it.’

  This struck her as a bizarre remark and left her feeling curiously bereft. Must she be forced to ask him to torture her? Did he imagine she ever would?

  At that moment the timer that controlled the ultraviolet dosage clicked off and broke the mood.

  Lifting the shields from their eyes they looked at each other as if for the very first time. Curiously, she even felt a little shy.

  ‘Say it,’ he said. ‘Say the words you have often thought but have never dared say to a lover.’

  The challenge struck her to the core. The words were there instantly, known to her since puberty and although never spoken they were now brazenly echoing in her mind and insisting she give them life. Words that, if she spoke them, would be the most terrible of all her betrayals of Kenneth. Fight as she might she couldn’t stop them as they leapt into life from her lips.

  ‘Fuck me in the arse,’ she said and, unable to take breath until he answered, she listened, horrified, to the dying echo of the words.

  Had he laughed, had he leapt on her and taken her cruelly in that place where she knew she would suffer, she might have been able to plead a moment of madness, but he didn’t. Instead he held her eyes for a whole heart-stopping minute then, standing, he reached down a hand to help her to her feet. ‘Come with me,’ he said softly.

  Now quite frightened by what she might have started she padded beside him across the wide carpet and into his bedroom.

  Throwing open his closets he indicated the rank upon rank of suits, shirts, ties and underwear.

  ‘If you are to be taken like a man then you will dress like one. You have one hour before I greet your identical twin brother.’

  Turning, he left her alone with a heart-pounding dread at what she had done. Damn him, she thought. Why couldn’t he have just taken her? Why force her into this humiliating ritual and make her responsible for her own madness?

  If she did as he asked there was no escape, no turning back, no excuses she could make to herself in some future sleepless night. She was alone with her own wantonness.

  Finding a full-length mirror she questioned her reflection. ‘Shall you be his whore?’

  After a moment’s pause the image in the mirror, eyes wild with light, smiled and nodded.

  4

  CONFUSION.

  Her mind was racing and outstripping her brain’s capacity to process the bombarding stream of thought.

  His clothes. Where did she start? Choosing her own clothes for any occasion was stressful enough but deciding what to wear for her imminent sodomisation, with her immolator impatiently waiting, was the very stuff of which panic attacks are made.

  Very few useful ideas were getting through to her oppressed brain.

  Her body was not much help either. Her heart was pumping blood at a rapid rate. Her hands shook as they fluttered over the serried ranks of shirts and sweaters, while her breathing was audibly hoarse.

  She was in no shape to go shopping!

  Feeling the task had overwhelmed her, she turned away from the closets to sit down heavily on the huge bed, almost ready to let the threatening sobs break through and, head in hands, simply give up.

  Either that or run away and hide.

  What a good idea! Where would she go? Home? What would she use for clothes or money? Her decision had been made – forced on her – when she got out of the taxi. What would she do now? Put time on rewind and d
elete that decision?

  Damn him!

  Why couldn’t he have just done it?

  Why put her through this hell?

  Because he liked it, that’s why.

  In retrospect she saw her predicament as the result of a carefully engineered plan.

  Bringing her to his apartment wearing only a coat and shoes, he had ensured that she was his captive as surely as if he had bound and chained her. What initially seemed a spontaneous, mad caprice, she now realised was the first move in a diabolical plot!

  Testing her, that’s what he was doing. Even now he was probably gleefully chortling at the prospect of her tear-stained appearance before him to admit defeat.

  It then came to her that he might be expecting her not to go through with it. That would explain why he hadn’t just done it. He was counting on her cowardice! It was entirely possible, she thought, that his plot had extended that far.

  Well, to hell with him!

  Picturing him, confidently waiting for her capitulation, angered her. Out of anger was born resolution. She’d damn well show him she was not going to play his ‘little woman’. Now she was determined to call his bluff.

  Returning to the closets she found her anger had calmed her. This was, after all, a simple, if unfamiliar task. Take it a step at a time and anything was possible.

  First, imagine what her identical twin brother would have looked like. No problem. Exactly like her. Except, of course, for the hair.

  Solution? Obvious. Find a hat!

  She looked but there were no hats. A cap, then? Sports clothes. Not this closet. Try the next. No. Maybe he kept his sports gear, supposing he had any, in a different closet.

  Looking round she could see none that weren’t already open.

  Intending to look in the bathroom, she had started towards it when she noticed a closet standing between the bedroom and bathroom doors. In there she hit pay dirt.

  Rackets for squash, tennis and a curious basket-like glove. Caps? Top shelf. Bingo! Baseball caps in profusion, a multi-coloured curiosity with a gold tassel on it, cricket caps, and then she saw it – a wide-brimmed panama. Perfect!

  Going to one of the many mirrors, she piled up her hair and placed the panama on top. Untidy wisps showed through. She needed to wind her hair onto the top of her head and then find something to keep it there. Dismissing the possibility of finding any hair grips, she spotted a pair of his shoes. The lace from one of them would have to do.

  Her hair bound into a bun, secured by the lace, wasn’t the perfect solution but it would do. Slamming the hat down over the piled-up mess, she smiled. Great! Next, a shirt.

  She didn’t waste time on it. She took down the first silk shirt she could find. There was a momentary confusion with the left to right buttoning, but she finally got her clumsy fingers to work that out. Oversize and looking ridiculous but, with the sleeves folded back and a jacket on top, she thought it would be acceptable.

  Underpants? Why not. In a bottom drawer she found some pretty exotic ones – not a whole lot unlike panties. An unworthy thought came into her head but, considering the determined stamina he’d shown in administering to her, it was immediately dismissed. However, some of his under-pants were little more than posing pouches. It was possible they were unwanted Christmas presents. Whatever they were they fitted snugly round her waist and hips. God knows what they did to him!

  Now, trousers. This was an immediate problem. All his seemed to have been made to accommodate two of her, and there was no way her waist and hips could keep them up. She didn’t want her own brother to look like a baggy-pants comic.

  Skis! She remembered seeing skis stacked in his ‘sporting’ closet, where there were skis there would be ski-pants. Tight, clinging ski-pants. Perfect!

  After a moment’s search she found them folded neatly in a drawer. Pulling a pair over his suspect posing pouch she saw that they fitted well enough except for the inordinate length of the legs. Sitting down she found that by pulling and stretching she could fold the excess length up and into the bottom of the pants.

  They were loose under the crotch but she took up that surplus by rolling the waistband in on itself.

  How did she check out so far? Not too bad. She needed a sweater, loose but not too much, a windcheater, also loose, on top of that and things were taking shape. Socks obscured the bulge where she had rolled in the leg length of the pants. Shoes? Despair gripped her. There was no chance she could find shoes to fit.

  Her own shoes! They were only medium heeled. They would do but the trouble was she had lost them while being taken over the desk. How could she retrieve them without risking him seeing her before she was ready?

  Simple. Let him do something for once.

  Crossing to the bedroom door she opened it a few inches and called, ‘Hello!?’

  No answer. She opened it a few inches more and put her head out. She could hear his voice murmuring somewhere off in the distance. Cautiously, she slipped into the living room, darting from potted plant to potted plant, peering round them to make sure she wasn’t spotted.

  As she got closer to his voice she could hear that he was on the telephone but, fortunately for her, at the far end of the apartment and not at his desk.

  She found one shoe lying where she would have expected it, but no sign of the other. Thinking it couldn’t be far she started anxiously looking round. She had just spotted it partially obscured by the valance of one of the couches when his end of the telephone conversation impinged on her.

  ‘Yes, he’s quite young and inexperienced. I want the young lady to, you know, give him something to remember when he goes back to school.’

  She listened, mouth open, and horrified. What was he plotting now? She had no doubt that the ‘he’ of the ‘inexperienced’ was meant to be her. She couldn’t believe he was hiring some kind of call girl.

  She heard him winding up the call. ‘You can? Oh, excellent. Straight away? Fine. Yes, here’s the address.’

  She listened, her mouth so wide open that it became dry, and as he gave his address she wondered what he was playing at.

  Realising the conversation was coming to an end she scuttled back to the bedroom wondering why she felt guilty.

  That he had some further complication to add to her already overburdened worry banks, there was no doubt. Just what it was she couldn’t imagine. Well, she could … but surely not ‘that’? If so the ‘young lady’ with her ‘memorable experience’ was due for a surprise of her own!

  She pulled on the shoes and stood to look into the mirror. What she saw was a completely outmoded, expensively dressed, idiot. She looked like a boy who had got hurriedly dressed in a bomb-distressed ballet chorus dressing room. The panama didn’t go with the jacket. The jacket might have gone with the ski-pants – but nowhere she would have wanted to go. The shoes were the only familiar thing about herself.

  What was she going to do? She looked a disaster and felt worse.

  She was about to give up when she heard a brief tap on the bedroom door and, as she whirled round, ready to explode if he so much as smiled, saw him hesitate only briefly before breaking into an overly hearty greeting.

  ‘George!’ he beamed, ‘I was wondering where you’d got to! Come, I’ve got us both a drink. You do drink don’t you?’

  Feeling that he must be either blind or more easily pleased than she thought, she followed him out of the room.

  With a comradely arm about her shoulder he walked her across the expanse of the living area. ‘I’ve been looking forward to having a talk with you, George.’

  Leading her to a bar which seemed to have been born out of a bookcase – the first hint of crassness she had found in his furnishings – he handed her a tumbler of whisky.

  ‘As you know,’ he was saying, ‘I’ve been seeing a great deal of your sister and quite frankly there are some things about her that puzzle me. I thought you might be able to help me with a pointer or two.’ Jeffrey paused and smiled with patronising indulgence. ‘D
rink all right?’

  She had gratefully taken a sizeable draught of the smooth malt but, still unsure of her voice, simply nodded in reply.

  ‘Good!’ he cried, leading her to sit on a couch opposite his own. Sitting himself down he beamed across at her. ‘I mean, frankly, she’s a bit of a tart, isn’t she?’

  She frowned and conveyed her dissension as best she could without yet daring to try out her voice.

  He seemed to pick up on her dilemma and sorted it out. ‘Now, George, I know your voice is about to break and you’re embarrassed about it, but you can talk if you want to, you know.’

  ‘She’s not a tart!’ she said positively.

  ‘Well, you would say that wouldn’t you? Being a loyal brother and all, and, of course, I respect that, but tell me, George, have you ever had a woman yourself?’

  She reverted to a resentful shake of the head while waiting to see if this was going to lead to an explanation of the phone call.

  ‘No, I suppose not. The Old School keeps to its regime of cold showers and avoiding “evil” thoughts, eh?’ He paused and drew in a long breath as if contemplating the ‘good old days’, before going on. ‘Matter of fact I was reading the other day that cold showers actually stimulate the libido. Did you know that?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘So you see, the Old School idea can lead to a lot of mischief in the showers.’ Idly picking an imaginary thread from his jacket sleeve, he went on. ‘Much of that going on still?’

  Again she shook her head, aware that her ‘twin brother’ wasn’t being very good at this. Despite the sanctioning of her unmasculine voice, she still couldn’t speak because, having been reminded of where all this was supposed to be leading, she was scared to death. He hadn’t been bluffing!

  Seeing Jeffrey in the role of an ‘old queen’ intent on seducing a ‘young boy’ was unnerving to say the least. He was just a little too smooth and convincing for her taste. An added concern was the knowledge that there was a ‘surprise’ on its way.

  Perversely, she also resented him thinking that any brother of hers, imaginary or not, would fall for such a line.