Whip Hands (17 page)

She slipped the cassette into her bag and collapsed the tripod in a professional manner.

‘If the results are good, I'm prepared to recommend acceptance for your daughter. If not, we may need to make another date for your busy diary so that we can do it all over again. Of course, if you try to make any complaint against me I can't guarantee that further copies won't be made. Just learn to take it in silence, Joyce, and you will have nothing really to fear. There will just be the one copy, I promise you. I needn't tell you that it will sit on my shelves right next to another video that I've had for the last fifteen years. Strange coincidence that you also appear in that one, too. But only fleetingly. Do you hear me, Joyce? I'm sure you must know the one I mean.'

I groaned as she released my wrists. She had a quiet smile on her face. Was there more satisfaction or triumph in it? Better not to think about it. I was mortified to have been treated so. But maybe even worse than all that had happened was the realisation that another woman had got the better of me. And now there was a video to prove it.

 

 

 

I really could have kicked myself. I must have been in a dream. Meeting up for a pub lunch near Hector's office, I allowed myself to be diddled by the oldest trick in the book.

The Grapes
- I must now refer to it as
The Sour Grapes
- didn't look at all inviting. I was frankly surprised that Hector had arranged to meet there. Phoney Edwardian on the outside with an absolutely deafening jukebox inside.

I suppose it was just the sort of place that appealed to a bunch of chauvinistic solicitors who wouldn't dream of letting a woman become partner but still liked to eye up the talent over their lunch hour. When I arrived the entire clientele seemed to be under twenty, mainly whey-faced and smoking.

I had been sitting in a fairly dark corner, trying to look invisible until my pinstriped husband came to rescue me. Instead, I was joined by a couple of waifs who plonked their garish drinks down at my table and asked would I mind? Despite nose studs and chain accessories they seemed polite, so I smiled and said of course.

I'm not naturally an eavesdropper but in this case they had to shout to one another just to be audible above the jukebox, so I heard everything they were saying. The one with the long, bleached tresses had obviously just lost her job. She was asking the other one, a brunette with a pageboy bob, if she could help out. I gathered her name was Eve and she was in work - a check-out girl in a local supermarket, if you can call that work. Not that I'm the person to judge, having never stirred an industrious finger since getting married twenty years ago.

The two of them became more confidential and lowered their voices; I was determined not to look interested in their affairs, so I ostentatiously read my magazine. The next thing I knew the two of them were getting up and moving off.

‘Missus, will you look after my bag while we go to the loo? I'd really appreciate it. I won't be long, I promise.' That was the one called Eve. The other one was struggling with a large tapestry shoulder bag that was bulging with what I assumed to be spare clothing.

I'm a sucker for the trusting look. Only five minutes later, by which time you couldn't see the pair of them for dust, did I think to feel around for my own bag. No sign of it. Just as I was about to howl in disbelief, Hector turned up and took charge.

 

The CID never tracked them down so far as I know. I rather got the feeling those two detectives considered I had received my just deserts when they visited our elegant home in an ostentatiously affluent suburb. The amount of cash was less than a hundred pounds, after all, and the credit cards were not going to be my loss. They suggested I might pay better attention to my ‘personal effects' in public places. Anyone would think I made a regular habit of taking lunch in city pubs.

What I never mentioned to them - or, indeed, to Hector, who had already sworn direst vengeance on the miscreants - was the other main item in the bag. This was a wallet of freshly developed colour prints showing Marjorie and me in some extremely frank poses. I had picked these up from a tatty but discreet processing shop just five minutes away from
The Grapes
.

I expect you're dying to know just what I mean by ‘frank'. Well, Hector and I have recently formed a kind of foursome with Kevin and Marjorie. We get together every few weeks for a bite to eat in their place or ours. The only unusual part of the evening occurs after the drinks when we go through a little bit of horseplay.

Don't get me wrong: it's not wife-swapping or anything kinky like that. Marjorie and I just pretend to be, well, bad girls. Hector and Kevin take it in turn to administer the chastisement, and Marje and I kneel at opposite ends of a rather nice pine blanket box we keep specially for the purpose. Round at their place we put two Sheraton-style carvers back to back. And when that's all over we sit down to our supper.

It helps to break the ice, I suppose. It certainly seems to give the men an appetite. Marjorie is definitely keener on it than me and it was they who suggested it, as I remember. I couldn't see what she was on about until I let Hector try out a swagger stick on me, a relic of his army career that he'd unaccountably retained as a souvenir. After that, and the extraordinary session in bed that followed, I took less persuading. Maybe getting whacked together face to face like that provided Marje and me with a bond of intimacy.

I wasn't keen on the photographs being taken and it only happened twice. After the first time Kevin said Polaroids were much too crude, so for the next session he set up lighting and did all sorts of tests with a meter. He took so long about it that we all had too many drinks and the results were more, well, uninhibited than usual.

I had completely stripped off whereas normally we kept on underwear. Marjorie was trying out the riding crop on me while Kevin snapped some close-ups of my extremely red posterior. Hector just sat back and enjoyed the spectacle, whisky in hand. By the time Marje was bare-arsed Kevin had run out of film. Afterwards we must have eaten well, I suppose. For heaven's sake don't ask me what it was we had.

Anyway, it was those selfsame snaps that my light-fingered companion in
The Grapes
had whisked away. Presumably she had dumped them in the canal after removing the cash from my handbag. I just had to pray she hadn't looked at them. After this there was going to be no more candid camera, I said to myself.

 

It was one afternoon two or three weeks later that I had a visitor. Before I'd fully taken in who it was, she produced the bag and held it out to me with a look of contrition.

‘You'd better come in,' I said, trying to sound quietly menacing.

Eve was more formally dressed than at our first encounter. She wore an ankle-length Regency style outfit which went rather strangely with her cropped hair and emerald-streaked fake fur. Obviously out to impress someone, or was she just bolstering her own fragile self-esteem?

I opened the bag with trembling fingers and immediately saw the bright red photo wallet. It was still there, but other eyes would have seen them, too. I visualised a group of college dropouts or computer nerds slavering over snaps of my raw buttocks.

‘I had to take the money, missus,' a small voice said from behind me. ‘It was for Janet, my pal. She was desperately behind with the rent and she'd just been given her notice. She's accident prone, that one.'

I turned round to face her; she only came up to my shoulder. Her features rapidly adopted a look of mute appeal. ‘How old are you, Eve?'

She was clearly surprised I knew her name. Coming here was a risk; so why had she taken it?

‘I'm twenty-five. I know I don't look it.'

‘So why did you return here with the bag?'

‘I thought there were things in there you'd be wanting, credit cards and the like. Your address book. And - other things.'

‘Like these?' I produced the wallet of prints from the bag with a flourish. To her credit, she blushed, but I wasn't letting the little minx off the hook so easily. ‘You know I could phone the police. You stole my bag quite brazenly and caused me real inconvenience. Tell me why I shouldn't phone the police right now.'

Her demeanour became a shade less contrite. ‘Maybe you haven't seen the photos in the wallet yet, missus. My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I looked at them. Do you really enjoy taking a beating from a dyke like that?'

Her eyes shone with curiosity. I opened the wallet and flicked through the prints. Kevin was quite right: the quality was certainly an improvement on Polaroids. Looking at them as dispassionately as possible gave me quite a shock. I could see five or six purple stripes neatly aligned across both buttocks. I was going to get my own back next time on Marjorie for sure.

‘You're young and you probably wouldn't understand. I'm not a lesbian. It's just something my husband and I do with another couple to spice up our sex lives. You may think it's odd, but putting yourself in that position assumes a great deal of trust in the other person.'

To my surprise she didn't smirk. There was a silence as I checked the rest of the contents of my handbag. Sure enough, everything except the cash was still there. But then I remembered that there were originally negatives with the prints. I had made sure of that at the shop. Now they were no longer in the wallet.

‘I've come to say I'm sorry and to ask if there's any way I can repay the money,' Eve went on. ‘Janet took most of it and she can't pay me back until she's got another job. She wanted me to give her the credit cards. She knew someone who knows how to fix them. But I didn't.'

Her voice trailed off inconclusively and she kept avoiding my eye. It was almost as if she saw me as a headmistress figure.

‘Well, I'm sure we can investigate that aspect of the matter, Eve. In the meantime, just who has the negative film for these prints?'

‘There'll be no hassle over them, honestly. I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't shop me. I feel bad about the stealing, honest. I thought if I could do something for you in exchange then the money would be like wages, wouldn't it?'

‘And when you were finished the negatives would be returned? You seem to have it all very neatly worked out. However, there is another person involved in this - my husband, Hector, who is quite adamant that the law should be obeyed. He is a senior partner in a firm of solicitors, you see.'

She gulped at this and pulled her fake fur close around her upper half even though the room was quite warm. I had to admit she suddenly looked delightfully gamine.

‘Well, missus, maybe you could persuade him? Please try.'

Her appeal to my softer side was having an effect. I had an idea.

‘Eve, have you ever done any waitressing...?'

The details were agreed between us and then Eve left. It was only afterwards I realised how incongruous my behaviour was. I had just acted the gracious hostess to someone who had stolen nearly one hundred pounds out of my handbag.

 

As you can imagine, ace photographer Kevin was delighted to have another model on tap, so to speak. Marjorie was less delighted, but I sensed she was more than a little intrigued about meeting Eve. After a long discussion with Hector I eventually persuaded him that it would be to his advantage if the police were kept totally out of the affair.

He was still visibly fuming that evening the following week when Eve arrived. I had asked her to wear black, but tight-fitting fake leather trousers were hardly what I had in mind. Eve must have realised her dress sense had once again let her down badly. Anyway, she kept dropping things, including a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil that shattered on the kitchen floor. And Hector swore under his breath when the contents of the fruit salad bowl spilt on to the white damask. I noticed he was writing continually in a small notebook at his elbow.

We invited Eve to bring the coffee into the lounge after the dessert and join us there. The tension in the room rose as we waited, with Marjorie tittering as she does in moments of crisis. When Eve entered I thought the tray she was carrying was about to be a further casualty. She gasped when she saw Kevin's lights all set up and the pine chest pulled into the centre of the room.

‘Ah, Miss Eve,' Hector intoned in his driest professional manner, ‘set the tray down and dispense five cups immediately. Would you like a digestif with yours?'

Naturally, I had to explain to Eve. She settled for a vodka. To give her some credit, she must have only at that moment perceived exactly how she was going to make amends. The photographs would have given her all the clues she needed, but it must have come as a bit of a shock. Anyway, the vodka went down in a flash.

‘Now, young lady,' Hector continued, ‘I think you realise that the time has come to settle your debt to society, or at least to those of us who were injured by your crime.'

She almost snivelled. ‘But I thought the waitressing was all I needed to do.'

‘No, I'm afraid this evening's episode if anything only compounded your criminal record. I want you to go quickly into the conservatory just through those glass doors and undress for your punishment.'

Eve hesitated only a second. I sensed that she knew there was nothing she could really do to alter the inevitable. Suddenly I realised I felt sorry for her, almost guilty that I had tricked her into this. She seemed so small and innocent, standing there in her wildly inappropriate black outfit, looking straight into my eyes before she turned and went into the conservatory.

I had no idea what Hector was planning to torment her backside with, but I hoped he would make allowances for her youth. I may have suggested something to that effect. If so, it did no good at all. For, after searching around on his hands and knees, he produced a studded leather paddle from our special cupboard under the corner bar. His face was red from his exertions.

Kevin was busy adjusting his tripod so he didn't see Eve returning. The rest of us just gasped. She crept back in through the doors naked, but for a black satin thong; her small hands were clasped ineffectually over her surprisingly full bust.

Hector had, of course, only meant her to remove trousers and tights. But then I remembered the photographs from the handbag. In my alcohol-induced zeal I had stripped to the buff for that last photographic session. Eve must have concluded this was the normal procedure. Hector harrumphed to hide his embarrassment, conscious that I was watching him like a hawk. In truth, my eyes were fixed, like everyone else's, on that pale, waif-like figure who had drifted in like a faery child.