Deceived and Enslaved

by Leo Barton

  'Who is Sabrina?'

  'The girl you brought to Lord Willingham's house. I know that much about you. I know about Sonia too, his maid.'

  'I really don't know what you are talking about.' Her face looked fixed, stone cold, resentful. It looked as if Anna had decided she would try to bluff her way through.

  'I have evidence.' Anna was not the only one who could bluff. Lillian had prepared herself for such hostility, for blanket denial.

  'What evidence?' She was still trying to bluff, but her face had fallen. She knew now that she was going to have to take Lillian seriously. Both women peered into the eyes of the other.

  Anna spoke in a hushed tone. 'What do you want? Money? Is that it, is that your game, all this talk about being a biographer? You are trying to blackmail me, aren't you?' The words tumbled over one another, the Italian accent biting into the pristine English enunciation, her Latin temper breaking through the seemingly nonchalant indifference.

  'Calm down, please. I am not out to hurt you. Believe me.'

  'Isn't that what all blackmailers say?'

  'I'm not a blackmailer. I just want to know the truth.'

  'How did you find out about me?'

  'That's not important.' Lillian gazed at the beautiful woman, for even though at that moment she was hostile and aggressive, there was something astonishingly attractive about Anna Bertini. 'I only want to know the truth.'

  'So you can write some filthy book about people you don't even know?' Anna nervously flicked open a packet of cigarettes and lit one.

  'No, I just want to know the truth, that is all, nothing more. Maybe I won't even write a book. This is personal. My father might have been involved in all this a long time ago.'

  The confession seemed to ease Anna's hostility a little. A moment passed when neither woman spoke but merely gazed at one another, weighing each other up.

  Anna spoke first. 'So you were asked to write Hyde-Lee's biography?'

  'Yes, I was...'

  'Oh, I'm sure that Jimmy wants a glowing report to go out on.'

  'But he didn't ask me.'

  Anna continued ignoring what Lillian had said. 'If Jimmy wasn't dying somebody would probably kill him. I am surprised they haven't already.'

  'Just because of his sex life?'

  'People kill for less, but there is more to Jimmy than sex.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'How do you think he got so wealthy, through writing books? The man has done some very dangerous deals in some very dangerous areas.'

  'You mean with the Mafia?'

  'We might be in Italy, Miss Simpson, but there are more connections than just those with the Mafia. This is not one of your police films. I'm sure Jimmy has connections with the Mafia, but he has connections with hundreds of other people too. He's lived a dangerous life. Did he tell you about Bangkok?'

  'No.'

  'He didn't leave Bangkok to come back and write novels about it. He left Bangkok because if he stayed somebody would have killed him.'

  'Who?'

  'That I can't say.'

  'What can you say?'

  'Not much.'

  'How did you meet him?'

  'Miss Simpson, I am not going to tell you anything. I have said enough already.'

  'I'll make a deal with you. Whatever you tell me, I promise I will guard your privacy.'

  Anna Bertini considered the proposition. 'How can I believe you?'

  'You will just have to trust me.'

  'I don't know.'

  'I don't have any tape recorder if that was what you were thinking. It is my word against yours.' She had noticed how Anna's eyes had scoured her and her bag as if searching for something.

  Anna remained quiet. 'Still...' she eventually said.

  'I promise.' Lillian smiled and Anna's eyes suddenly melted. Maybe it was that Anna recognized there was some sexual attraction between the two women. Certainly Lillian could not take her eyes of the Italian beauty, remembering what Sonia had told her about Anna opening her legs to her.

  'Okay. I don't like this, but something tells me that you are trustworthy. Perhaps I am just mad.' Anna chuckled to herself. 'But you really mustn't tell.'

  'I won't.'

  'If things like this get around then there will be trouble for all of us, do you understand?'

  'I understand very well.' It was the menacing admixture of warning and threat that Lillian had seen as much in Anna's startling eyes as in her words that sent a shiver through her body.

  'So what do you want to know?'

  'How did you meet him?'

  Anna paused before speaking, weighing up one last time whether she could trust this stranger with such personal stories of her life.

  'Well, stereotyped though it might be, we did meet with the assistance of the Mafia, that is for sure. The director of the film I was going to star in was Mafia, the whole production company was Mafia. I was sent to Jimmy to get funding.'

  'Hyde-Lee was going to fund your film?'

  'No, not him, Willingham, his brother, his partner in crime. Willingham was going to fund the film because he had a lot of money to launder, to wash, and Hyde-Lee was going to write the screenplay. It was perfect, tax breaks everything. The people that I was working for wanted some money. They ran a very high-class protection racket for people like Jimmy and Willingham.'

  'How did you get involved in all this?'

  At this stage the waiter came and Anna Bertini, dropping her homely persona, ordered a double whisky.

  'I just wanted to be in a film. It was going to be in Hollywood. I was going to make it in America. Knowing what they were like I was sent as a present as a sweetener, a gift, the carrot that went before the stick.'

  'And did you know all this at the time?'

  'No, not really. I was very ambitious. My brief was to do everything I was told. I knew that this might involve sex. I knew that much but I didn't know what kind of sex.'

  There seemed to be a disjunction between the innocent that Anna was making herself out to be and the dominatrix that Sonia had been forced to pleasure.

  'I can imagine what type of bitch you think I must have been but I work in a very competitive industry. I was desperate for success.'

  'Do you regret it now?'

  'No, how can I? It made me a rich woman, even though the film never got made, and nobody, so I later discovered, intended to make up. What I am saying is that everybody had lied to me. I was a gift that was true, but that was only the line that they gave me. I have no real idea what the connection was. I only know what they told me.'

  'So how did you make any money out of it, if the film never got made?'

  'I forced Willingham to use his contacts to get me in an American soap opera. They pay ridiculous money in those places.'

  'So what did you have to do?'

  Here Anna breathed in deeply. 'What didn't I have to do? Everything, I did everything.'

  Here Anna began to tell her story...

  10: Anna Bertini's Story

  She was greeted by Everton at the gate, much in the same way that Lillian had been only a few days before, led through the marbled hall and told to freshen up. Anna was neither allowed to leave the room until the allotted time, nor to contact anybody else.

  At seven a bell sounds, and a maid, the maid who worked at Hyde-Lee's before Sonia, calls at her door. A beautiful Swiss girl with long blonde hair and clear emerald eyes.

  Anna is not looking forward to the experience. Her boyfriend has spent three days pleading with her to go through with it. After this, he has told her, they will both be rich. His whole life depends on her. Anna is very young and she believes him, but even as she is putting on the black stockings he has advised her to wear, the lace panties, or smoothing down the short, black halter-neck, she has doubts. She feels like a lamb being led to the slaughter, or more appropriately for the setting, a Christian being fed to the lions.

  She walks down the stairs, not noticing the exotic and expensive paintings, o
r the kindly smile the maid gives her as she turns around. She can hear a noise coming from the dining room. There only seems to be men's voices, no women's. There is loud macho chuckling. She can hear above the banter two English voices that are lighter, but seem to be holding court. She has spent a lot of time in England and The States and her English is excellent. She believes it is essential to speak good English to be a worldwide success.

  She notices the loud noise her stilettos make on the marbled floor. They are quite uncomfortable. The voices hush; her shoes have heralded her entrance into the room.

  She is right. There are twelve men seated around the table, all in formal evening wear. They all turn to look at her as she enters. Her eyes flit from one man to another. It is an international cast. Three or four Englishmen, a couple of Italians, a few Orientals, but she couldn't say exactly from where. There is a German-looking man. He is the youngest and by far the most handsome there. A good strong jaw, beautiful blue eyes, and angelic, golden hair. She is immediately attracted to him.

  She is frightened as their eyes rove over her body. The room is silent. She stands in the doorway feeling awkward, feeling a little stupid. She doesn't know what to do. Why doesn't somebody say something? The silence seems to last an eternity, before Hyde-Lee stands up and walks over to her.

  'You must be Anna?'

  She nods nervously but she doesn't say anything. She notices for the first time how hot it is in the room, how all the men's faces seemed to be glazed with sweat. She wonders why none of them take off their jackets.

  'Welcome, please come and sit beside me.'

  The noise of chatter continues, little conversational groups break off. She sits near Hyde-Lee who is sitting at the head of the table. As he talks to her, she notices occasionally how the other men in the room eye her occasionally, sometimes even shamelessly, before returning to talk to the people beside them.

  She feels in some strange way as if she is in a dream. It is unlike any other social gathering that she has ever been to, so forced, so unnatural, and at the back of her mind is this frightening idea that these men are going to do something to her, that she is expected to perform in some way.

  Hyde-Lee has a pleasant welcoming voice. There is another Englishman sitting opposite her, not speaking to anybody else, but merely staring at her without saying anything. He unnerves her with his greedy, piggy eyes. Later, although Hyde-Lee does not introduce him, she learns that he is a lord and his name is Willingham.

  Hyde-Lee seems like a comfort in this place. Maybe he will act as some kind of protector. He doesn't seem cruel at all. She has been told, after all, that he is a writer, and writers are supposed to be humane, aren't they?

  He speaks pleasantly, doesn't stare at her like some of the other men do. He asks her about her career, where her family come from, what her ambitions are, general questions about Rome and Tuscany, but nothing personal, nor for that matter particularly interesting. The man is obviously cultured. He speaks Italian well. In fact, he has asked her whether she would prefer to converse in English or Italian. She always prefers to practice her English whenever the opportunity arises. She likes his voice: it is clear, masculine, a voice much younger than the man who possesses it.

  'Would you like a drink?'

  She would love a drink. A gin and tonic, she asks. Something that might calm her nerves. She hadn't expected anything like this. From what Mauro had implied, it wouldn't amount to much more than giving a couple of old men blowjobs. She was expert at that, he laughed. But twelve men all sitting around staring at her, their collective mass chilling her, disorienting her? A couple of old men she could have coped with, but not all this. She could protest, but what is there to protest about. Nothing has happened yet. She catches the German boy's eye. He smiles, but his smile seems full of contempt for her.

  'Oh no, my dear. You are on loan to us. We decide everything. Wasn't that explained to you?'

  Foolishly she nods her head. She cannot say why. Nothing it appears has been explained to her at all.

  'Never mind. I have just the thing. This will relax you. This will put you in the right mood.' Hyde-Lee sounds so friendly, she can not believe that he has anything cruel in his mind. She reminds him of some of the professors she once met in Cambridge, quite kindly, chivalrous in the way that only educated Englishmen can be.

  She picks up on what he has just said. She seeks clarity, though instinctively she feels that she is not going to get it. 'In the right mood for what?'

  'For the evening, of course.'

  The drink comes. It is brought to her by Everton, although she does not know his name yet. The drink is red in color and tastes sharply of strawberries. There seems to be some kind of alcoholic base to it, possibly vermouth but she is not sure.

  'What is it?'

  'Oh, the drink. A special little cocktail I made especially for you. There are certain excellent herbs in it. It really will do you the world of good.'

  'It's very nice,' she says, not knowing what else to say.

  'Have some more.' Hyde-Lee refills her glass from a crystal decanter that Everton has left on the table, even though she has only taken a sip. 'You must drink at least three glasses before we can start.'

  It is the first thing Hyde-Lee has said that has a truly sinister ring. She wants to ask him what is going to start, but he subtlety warns her off with his eyes. She takes another sip.

  'That's a good girl,' Hyde-Lee says, like a country doctor talking to a small child.

  They return to talking to pleasantries. How nice Tuscany is in the spring. And if she has time later she must go to see his orchard. And he is thinking of investing in a little vineyard down the road.

  It can only have been a few minutes, but suddenly her mood has changed. She feels lighter. She has not quite accommodated herself to such a strange situation. She only concentrates on talking to Hyde-Lee, trying to ignore the gaze of the plump Englishman. Once or twice she tries to freeze him with his eyes but he remains staring at her, a half smile in the twist of his mouth.

  'Well, my dear, I think we can begin.'

  It is eerie, almost surreal the way in which all other conversation stops, and all the other men in the room turn their heads in unison in her direction.

  It does not alter the tone of Hyde-Lee's voice. He speaks to her as he spoke before, kindly, intimately. It is his words she finds confusing, as if all of her sudden her English is slowly slipping away from her.

  'Right, my dear, will you get up on the table?'

  What does it mean? To get on the table! She glances at the wood. She notices that everything has been cleared from the polished wood.

  'Why... what?'

  'Can you climb up onto the table?'

  She can't move. She is stuck. The men stare at her, anticipating her, waiting for her to climb up, to get off her chair and climb on to the table. There are twelve men waiting for her to get onto the table. What does it mean? What is it all about?

  'Come, my dear. Hasn't all this been explained to you? It is a very simple request. Can you please get onto the table?'

  She looks again at all the eyes on her. She catches the German boy, but now he just looks like all the rest. She feels all the weight of their social pressure. She feels like a naughty schoolgirl at a friend's birthday party who is refusing to join in all the after-tea games.

  'Come on, up you get!'

  And she does. She feels like she has no choice. It should have been explained to her. Mauro should have said what she was supposed to do, what was expected of her. The men were waiting. It's part of the deal.

  As she gets to her feet, she feels so light-headed. It must be the crimson drink.

  There is total silence in the room. The noise of her chair scraping against the marble floor seems deafening. She can hear nobody else's breathing but her own.

  How should she be on the table? She does not know. Do they want her to stand? Do they want her to sit?

  'That's a good girl,' Hyde-Lee says encouragingl
y. Now kneel, but turn to face the gentlemen, please, and kneel straight.'

  All their eyes are on her in her pretty black, halter-neck dress. Suddenly she feels the pressure of Hyde-Lee's hand on the inside of her knee, then his fingers glide up her stockings reaching up below the hem of her dress.

  What is he doing? She feels his hand now touching the lace of her panties. What can she do? It wasn't part of the deal. Mauro should have explained it all to her, but nothing was explained, and now she is in this fix and she cannot get out. She knows underneath everything that she cannot escape from these men. The situation is impossible. She knows she must do as she is told.

  'Bend over, my dear, right over.'

  She follows the instructions more easily now. She has relented. She has accepted that she will do whatever it is Hyde-Lee asks her to do.

  Hyde-Lee has also stood up from his chair. He is pulling the bottom of her skirt up higher and higher, over her thighs, over her patterned stocking tops, over her lacy black panties. The dress is pulled all the way over to her waist. She looks at the men. She is still at eye level to them but she feels she is now much closer. She can smell a fusion of cologne, of cigar smoke and hair gel, woody breaths and minty breaths, and Hyde-Lee is pulling down her black lace panties. He is doing it gently, tenderly. The panties are down her thighs. Again, with tender care, he artfully lifts her knees one by one to ease the panties over her legs, and then pulls them over her stilettos.

  Amazed by everything that has happened to her so far, nothing so stuns her than what she witnesses next. Hyde-Lee scrunches her panties up in his hand, sniffs them and then passes them over to the man she later discovers is Lord Willingham. He does the same thing, scrunching them up in his hand, breathing in deeply, all the time looking at her appreciatively before he passes them on to the next man.

  And so it goes on; each man sniffing her scent, each man staring at her approvingly. Eventually they return to Hyde-Lee having done the whole round of the table. He takes another sniff and then places her panties before her. She inhales her own smell. Hyde-Lee tosses the panties aside.

  Hyde-Lee moves his hand between her legs, tracing the contours of her labial lips. She is surprised to find that she is wet. Hyde-Lee, she suddenly notices, is wearing white gloves. She feels the material against her, probing the rose pink of her inner flesh, and then one finger slides right inside her. It tickles her, and then she finds that it arouses her as he presses against her cunny walls. The finger slides out and then slides into her other aperture. This is the first time a man has ever put his finger there. Not even Mauro has touched her in such an intimate place. It is not an unpleasant sensation, or it would not be had it occurred in more usual circumstances. The men still stare at her. It is a violence committed against her, those staring eyes, like a monolith of masculine desire, trapping her. And as she thinks about the indignities that are being performed on her, this is how she sees herself, like a trapped animal with nowhere to go, no way of defending herself.