The Gift of Shame

by Sophie Hope-Walker

  Jeffrey, who had been watching her/him for some silent moments, now gave the most sickly smile she could imagine before patting the couch beside him. ‘You look so distant sitting over there. Why don’t you come and sit by me?’

  Feeling sickened and revolted – Jeffrey was that good at it – she warily moved to sit next to him as he had asked.

  Jeffrey, laying a careless arm along the couch behind her, smiled again. ‘Got a little treat on its way for you, George.’

  A very real shudder of revulsion went through her body. ‘Really?’ she squeaked.

  ‘Yes. Possibly something a young lad like you has never seen before.’

  Quite suddenly she felt she wasn’t there. It was as if her body had been invaded by another creature. Everything was suddenly unreal, even surreal. She really was starting to respond like a nervous schoolboy in the company of a disreputable uncle.

  This was ridiculous. A waking nightmare. Could it be that she had been subtly hypnotised or even drugged?

  When the arm, which had been ‘carelessly’ laid along the back of the couch, became a hug, she actually felt quite sick.

  Abruptly, not quite sure where the impulse had come from, she found herself on her feet blurting out that she wanted to go.

  Jeffrey was staring up at her, obviously taken aback. As they looked at each other in confusion the apartment door bell cut through the tension like a knife.

  ‘Not now,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Surely,’ he added, before turning away to answer the door.

  She looked around for succour but none was apparent. She began to think she might be going mad when she strained to hear the subdued murmur of voices coming from the apartment’s lobby.

  Now, in total confusion, she felt as if she was suffocating. Her brain had simply ceased functioning and the earlier ‘disassociated’ feeling grew even stronger.

  The voices drew nearer and she turned to see Jeffrey returning accompanied by a tall slender girl wearing a full-length ‘gowny’ dress and, of all things, a feather boa over her shoulders.

  ‘This is my young nephew, George,’ he was saying to the girl. ‘George, this is Lesley.’

  Lesley came forward with a graciously extended hand. ‘George’ found ‘himself’ awkwardly shaking her hand and not knowing where to look.

  Lesley, fortunately, seemed oblivious to anything about her but her own appearance. ‘Darling,’ she said, addressing Jeffrey. ‘Put my music into a suitable slot, would you?’

  Jeffrey, who seemed to be enjoying himself enormously, took a cassette from her and went off to place it in its ‘suitable slot’.

  Meanwhile Lesley was casting an assessing eye around the apartment, which gave Helen a chance for a good look at her.

  The hair looked as if it was fighting for its life under layers of lacquer. The face had been made up by an undertaker and the word ‘glitz’ had been invented to describe the dress. All in all, Lesley was what her mother would have called ‘extravagant’ and she would have called, enamelled.

  Jeffrey rejoined them to be received by an anxious enquiry from Lesley. ‘My music, darling! Aren’t you going to play it?’

  Showing her a black box he was carrying, he smiled. ‘Remote control,’ he told her. ‘Any time you’re ready.’

  Casting another despairing eye about the apartment Lesley spoke again. ‘Yes, darling, but we’ll have to do something about the lighting …’ Lesley moved off around the apartment, turning off this lamp, turning that one on, until she came back murmuring, ‘I suppose that’ll have to do,’ and struck a startling, dramatic pose; standing in profile to them with one hand raised in the air and the other knuckled to her forehead.

  Turning to ‘George’, Jeffrey indicated that she should come to sit next to him on the couch, as Lesley hissed: ‘My music, darling!’

  Jeffrey hit the play button on the remote and, as the brassy show music filled the apartment, Lesley started making swooping, leg dragging movements about the space before the couches, only occasionally tripping on the hem of her gown in the deep rug piling.

  Feeling that things were moving from the surreal to the preposterous Helen realised that Lesley was about to launch into a strip tease of the most excruciatingly embarrassing kind. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Jeffrey – on the other hand, she could barely tear her eyes away from the ludicrous Lesley – but she did begin to wonder when he had decided to turn their ‘affair’, if their relationship could aspire to so grand a status, into farce.

  Mouth involuntarily open in stupefaction she watched as Lesley slipped out of the gown to reveal black stockings on a garter belt framing surprisingly good legs, then used the feather boa to play peek-a-boo with her undersized breasts.

  Having thought that things couldn’t get worse she was appalled when Lesley started waltzing towards her, flicking the boa into her face. ‘Have you been a really good boy? Lesley loves really good boys!’

  Fortunately, Lesley waltzed off into a series of crotch-probing poses, enabling Helen to stop herself throwing up on the glass table before her.

  When was this nightmare to end? She had never felt more shamefully distressed in her life. Distress for the totally untalented Lesley who, somewhere, waited like a taxi to be summoned out to embarrass people.

  The music was building to what had once been a show-stopping climax and she could pray that it signalled the end of this torture – a prospect which focused her mind on the horrendous potential the aftermath presented. Suicide would be the only rational response if Lesley were to be included.

  Now their ‘dancer’ was dramatically sticking one long leg before the other as she advanced on ‘George’ with fixed gaze and malice aforethought. Then, throwing her arms and boa wide, she exposed her almost non-existent breasts as, looming menacingly closer, Lesley placed one leg on the glass table, threw her thighs wide to expose the diamante G-string, which ‘George’ realised, with horror, was about to come off!

  It did! To reveal an even greater horror. There before her eyes was an unmistakably male penis! She felt unable to take her eyes from it as the music died away and total silence reigned.

  ‘Want to feel it, darling?’ asked the voice of ‘Lesley’. ‘It’s a real one.’

  Mesmerised, she heard Jeffrey speak. ‘You have my permission …’

  Slowly, she raised her eyes to the now grotesque face of ‘Lesley’ to see that he had whipped off the lacquered wig. As their eyes met Lesley spoke. ‘I don’t do penetration, darling, but if you want me to go down on you, that’s cool!’

  She heard a silly, squeaky voice protest, ‘But I’m a girl!’

  Lesley chuckled. ‘That’s all right, love. I don’t discriminate.’

  Feeling as if she had been transmuted into a waxworks tableau, she could find no thought, no words, other than a silent prayer that somehow the floor would open up and get her out of this.

  Her prayer was answered by Jeffrey. With a sonorous clap of his hands he stood up and spoke the first sensible words she had heard all evening. ‘Wonderful! Absolutely marvellous. Thank you Lesley, but, sorry, that’s as far as we can take it tonight.’

  Afraid to meet anyone’s gaze Helen sensed Lesley immediately dropping out of character to fussily gather up her discarded props as Jeffrey shepherded her away.

  Meanwhile ‘George’ sat feeling as if a dentist had sneaked up and injected her entire body with novacaine.

  There was more murmuring at the door but, this time, thankfully, it was the sound of ‘Lesley’ departing. It was then she realised she was still wearing the hat. How long ago her preparation all seemed now! The hat lay in her hands like the reminder of another life.

  When he came back into the room, thankfully alone, she found her voice. ‘Why did you do that?’ she asked him.

  ‘It’s what “us chaps” do.’

  Silently, she looked at him. Were men an alien species? Had he imagined that what they had seen could, on any level, be construed as titillating, arousing or anything
but humiliating to the onlookers?

  ‘Sad, isn’t it?’ he asked, voicing her thoughts exactly.

  When he came and reached down for her she went into his arms with a sob of relief. The nightmare was over and the world could resume its axis.

  But not quite.

  ‘Look,’ he said, and she watched as he reached under the glass table and, pulling away a furry rug, revealed a mirror laid to reflect upward.

  ‘What’s that for?’ she asked.

  ‘For you,’ he said. ‘You told me you liked to watch yourself suffering.’

  She felt herself jellifying. The protest her brain was making was choked off by the excitement in her throat.

  His voice softly insistent, he said, ‘Kneel on the table.’ When she hesitated, he added, ‘It won’t break.’

  Suddenly, the role intended for Lesley was clear. ‘She’ had been hired to witness her humiliation. As she tentatively did as he said, she reflected that, comparatively, it made what was to come an act of love.

  ‘Stay quite still,’ he murmured as she knelt on the table and looked through its transparent surface to her ‘twin brother’ looking back up at her.

  She watched as Jeffrey reached round and loosened the rolled-up trouser tops and then eased the elasticised top over her hips. Fascinated, she felt distanced, like an audience watching a play, as he ran his hands over her rump. Then she flinched and gasped as she felt the lubricant jelly being worked into her.

  Now she knew he really meant to go through with it she felt her body preparing itself – except it had gone into action in the wrong place!

  ‘You’re going to get a thorough screwing,’ he told her, moving her raised buttocks towards the end of the table. ‘You can scream and shout all you want. It won’t make the slightest difference.’ He was standing behind her now, as she stared down at the frightened face of her ‘brother’s’ reflection as he waited with her.

  Standing behind her, she felt him hard and probing. She gasped in anticipation of pain as he found her and tried to force entry.

  With a tight grip on her hips he thrust again and she found herself falling forward to rest her arms, to the elbows, on the glass top.

  Then he withdrew, but the respite was fleeting, since he had withdrawn only to better prepare the ground. His jelly-laden fingers searched her out and acted as warning precursors for the giant that would follow in their path.

  Again he addressed himself and this time the resisting sphincter muscle surrendered to him and she screamed as he surged into the breach.

  The mirror relentlessly recorded every flicker of expression, each and every one of her protests against the strange sensation, but there was no escape now. He was lodged firmly and moving smoothly while she stared, in horror, at the maddened face in the mirror.

  Now the rushing sensations were close to unbearable; layers of pain and pleasure so intermingled they seemed inseparable. Now she saw her reflection screaming and she cried out for the lash of him.

  ‘Yes,’ screamed the demented creature in the mirror. ‘Yes!’ and he responded, bucking and rearing into her with even greater vigour, ever greater cruelty. Now, having transmuted pain into pleasure, she rejoiced; she no longer cared about what he was doing to her. Happy only that he could harvest such pleasure from her body, she felt herself thrashing in the grip of an orgasmic wave.

  Insensate to anything, overburdened with delight, she felt him throbbing and pumping, and filling her with his pleasure.

  When his exhausted weight bore down on her she slid forward to lay on the glass, her head now turned sideways away from the indelicate, mirrored, vision and thanked any interested god that she had lived long enough to know this moment.

  They lay for long minutes, he still inside her but now of more accommodating size, in silent communion until she got an uncontrollable fit of the giggles.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ he asked, defensively acerbic.

  ‘I was just thinking of poor Lesley,’ she said. ‘“No penetration”! She doesn’t know what “she’s” missing!’

  5

  THEY WOKE LIKE lovers.

  Lying side by side in his huge bed beneath a single sheet, they held hands in silent communion, feeling no need to question or explain.

  She was the one to break the potent silence. ‘Yesterday, when I saw you on my door monitor you looked exactly like someone in an old newsreel.’

  ‘Good news or bad news?’ he asked in a slightly puzzled tone.

  ‘At the time I didn’t know, but now I do.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Because now I feel exactly the same.’

  ‘As what?’

  ‘As if I was in an old newsreel.’

  Raising himself on one elbow he looked down into her smug, smiling face and was puzzled. ‘Have I missed the point of this conversation – or what?’

  She shook her head. ‘I haven’t come to the “point” yet.’

  ‘Would you mind hurrying up? I have this uncontrollable urge to fuck you.’

  She smiled, cat-like. ‘You must have seen those old newsreels of the Allied troops liberating France.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, right this minute, I feel like one of those French women, beside themselves with joy, clambering onto the tanks.’

  Looking down, his expression was still puzzled.

  ‘Liberated,’ she told him. ‘That’s what you’ve done to me. Liberated me after months of oppression.’

  His eyes flickered during a momentary stunned silence. ‘I think that’s about the best compliment I have ever received.’

  ‘My hero!’ she said, but couldn’t contain the giggle.

  His mouth nuzzling into her throat, he murmured, ‘And how, exactly, did those newly liberated women reward their conquering heroes?’

  Purring with pleasure at his caresses she could barely contain her mounting excitement. ‘Well, first they would permit their hero to bring them chocolates and then, perhaps, allow a kiss. All most proper, of course. Then, another day, perhaps he would call with flowers and get two kisses. Some days later she might receive chocolates and flowers …’ His lips on her breasts were creating tidal waves, making it difficult for her to maintain her little-girl tone so she broke off to indulge herself in moaning restlessness.

  ‘And, after all this long drawn out courtship – what did he get?’

  ‘Movietone never showed that,’ she managed – the words barely escaping her throat.

  ‘Shall we try an educated guess?’ he asked as his lips moved to cover her urgent mouth.

  Suddenly the bed was a battlefield. No more a place for bantering philosophers or, even, thought. Here only the animal responders could survive. Ecstatically, her body greeted his penetrating surge while her brain became fixed in a loop of joy.

  This was right! This act between these two people at this time and place, she thought, was the true definition of consummation; the saturation and the wholesome, natural completion of self.

  She welcomed his unstoppable climactic surge with genuine joy, screaming out with an intensity more appropriate to fear than pleasure. Suddenly they fell apart like broken dolls to lay appalled at the pleasure they had known at each other’s loins.

  She was the first to find words. ‘Ah, mon Colonel! Où sont les autres?’

  He was still gasping for breath. ‘For God’s sake don’t talk French to me. I can barely think in English!’

  Filled with the joy of a confident temptress she rolled to press her breasts against his heaving chest. ‘I wanted to know where the rest were?’

  ‘Rest of what?’ he gasped.

  ‘Your Regiment! We liberated women do not stint to reward our liberators and we show no discrimination!’

  ‘Or mercy!’ he gasped.

  Kissing her way down the centre seam of his chest and belly she came upon his fearful pride.

  ‘Pauvre petit!’ she murmured. ‘Je crois trouver un héros tombé!’ With sinuous tongue she reached out to tease
the ‘fallen hero’ now limply lying in repose, bringing a moan of delighted protest from him.

  ‘I see it all now,’ he said. ‘The entire Machiavellian plot!’ Reaching down he seized her head and turned her grinning face towards his own. ‘You’ve insured me for a million pounds and now you’re set on fucking me to death!’

  Her laugh rang out in delight. ‘The way I see it, is that it’s got to be worth a damn good try!’

  Dragging her up the length of his body he brought her nose to nose. ‘’Tis a far, far better thing I do now than I have ever done.’

  She joined in to mangle his quote. ‘That a man should give his life for a woman’s pleasure?’

  Closing his eyes against the intensity of his sigh he pushed her head to rest on his chest. ‘This is a moment of such exquisite pleasure I feel there ought to be a way of preserving it forever in amber.’

  Each pleasurably confident that their thoughts were identical, they lay in silent communion for some minutes before he spoke.

  ‘Tell me something,’ he said.

  She smiled upward. ‘Like yesterday?’

  ‘No. Yesterday I asked you to say something you have never before dared say to a lover. This is different.’

  She waited, confident that there was nothing she couldn’t tell him.

  ‘Tell me something about yourself that you’ve never told anyone. Not even your best friend.’

  A twinge of pain, discomfort, shuddered through her. This man had plundered her body in the most absolute manner possible, and she had rejoiced in the surrender, but now it seemed he wanted to assault that most intimate part of her body – her mind.

  She knew exactly what he wanted to know. Just as yesterday the five words that had hovered on the edge of her lips, unspoken for years, had struggled free, now her greatest secret was there, fully formed, and impatiently waiting its turn – but it was too painful to share, even with him.

  When she was very young and still experimenting with her own sexuality she had discovered that the man who lived opposite her in Eastbourne had been spying into her bedroom with a telescope. Night after night she had tormented the man, sometimes giving him full view of what he sought and on others coming to the brink and then closing her blinds before he got what he wanted. She had been knowingly cruel in her exhibitionism and thought herself a monster while consoling herself with the thought that he was only getting what he deserved.