Nine and a Half Hours by VO
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nine and a Half Hours
I saw Sarah along the concourse the very first day. It was drizzling and
she was wearing a smart little trench coat and schoolgirl's rubber boots
and, startlingly obvious, nothing else.
Later, she told me she often liked to do that - looked forward to the rain
and the excuse it brought to show herself half-secretly through the thin
tissue of her mackintosh. We are all of us naked under our clothes, she
said, but covered only by her mackintosh's slight and moulding fabric she
felt her nakedness revealed.
So whenever the clouds gathered and a raincoat seemed justified she would
return to her room and take off her things - bra, slip, panties, everything
- and then, enjoying the shiver as the cream rubber lining slid cool
against her skin, slip into her mac. She would watch herself in the
wardrobe mirror as she did up the buttons and pulled the belt tight, taking
pleasure in the cinched waist, the flare of the material over her hips, the
thrust of her breasts highlighted by the garment's fashionable triangles of
fabric descending from the shoulder. She would then resume her day.
It was later still that she explained, hinting obscurely at first, what it
was she really wanted to do, or have done to her, once accoutred thus.
One day in April she wanted to know what I was doing for Lent.
"Easter eggs," I said, "I'm giving up Easter eggs."
"No, I'm serious. I think you have to do something. Something you would
think twice about."
We were in her flat, just finished eating, stretched out on the bed.
"Something that stops you short and makes you think."
"You're not religious, are you?" I asked.
"No, but there is value in a lot of religious things. We have it so easy.
We are comfortable, we are warm and full, and we take it all for granted.
We should stop every now and again. Stop and realise, appreciate."
"So what do you propose?" I asked.
"Oh, I don't know. I'll have to think. Something uncomfortable, painful
perhaps. Some kind of discipline, I suppose, to bring home how comfortable
and privileged everything normally is."
"You could stop seeing me."
"No, that wouldn't hurt much at all. It would have to be something like
starvation, or getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning, or wearing a hair
shirt."
"Or eating at Mario's."
"Yes, but I'm serious. If I think of something, will you help? I may need
someone."
"Anything for you. Just give me the word. But I won't join in, if that's
all right. I shall go on taking my pleasures as and when opportunities
present themselves, all right?"
There was a pause after this. Sarah shifted her head on the pillow so she
was staring at the blank wall. Then she said quietly:
"Frank ... I've actually thought of something." She hesitated - and then -
"I thought perhaps ... the cross."
"What?" I had to ask.
"The cross. I thought the cross. As a penance."
"Oh, I see. I suppose it could be seen like that. For the sins of the whole
world, and all that. Yes. I thought you meant for you!"
"Yes," she said, tense and quiet. "I did. I do. I'm thinking of it as the
most daunting thing I could do."
"Well, yes. I can see that," I said rather lamely. "And you need me to get
the nails."
"Rope, stupid. It would be rope. They usually used rope, nails were
overkill."
"Ah."
"Nails were a mercy, really. You fainted with the pain. But with rope you
just hung there."
I tried to enter into the spirit of things: "And then you would need me to
make a cross, I suppose. Easy."
"I've got a cross," she answered, intense, disregarding my bantering tone.
"What?" I was incredulous again. Was she joking?
"In the cellar. In bits, but we can put it together. And all the pulleys
and ropes. I've got it all."
"Christ ..."
"I could do it myself really, but it's difficult. And it's not really the
same. If you do it yourself you know you can always stop it if you really
want to."
"Christ," I said again. "You're serious. You're really serious."
"I'll show you," she said abruptly, sitting up. Just let me get into my
uniform and I'll take you down."
She was back from the bathroom in a moment, wearing her mac and boots.
"This is what I have to wear down there," she said, with something of a wry
smile now. "Do you mind?"
"A girl has got to do," I observed, "what a girl has got to do."
It was a ground floor flat, and we went down a flight of steps behind a
door opening from the kitchen. There was not just one cellar at the bottom,
but a passageway with openings off on either side, some with doors. The
house was Georgian, I think, and really big.
Sarah took us through one of the doors, using a key. It was heavy - wood,
reinforced with steel - but it swung open smoothly and also clunked very
solidly shut behind us .
"I've just had that put in," she explained. "And I've finished decorating.
Do you like it?"
"Very post-modern," I said. It was, as far as I could see, a cellar in the
classical mode. Whitewashed stone walls and vault, no windows, stone floor.
Against one wall lay a couple of lengths of wood.
"This it?" I asked.
"It just needs bolting together. And it goes here."
Underneath the highest point of the vault a square hole had been cut in the
stone paving. "I'm quite proud of that. It goes down two feet, and it fits.
And there's the hoist." She pointed up. "That was quite difficult it's
quite high up there and it's difficult to lean the ladder." Somehow she had
fixed a pulley into the stonework.
Round the pulley ran a rope, and Sarah showed how one end of the rope was
already fixed to the top of the longer piece of wood. The other dangled
down in the middle of the room. Sarah took it and tied it off to a cleat on
the wall.
"I thought of other things, you know. Like the wooden horse. Do you know
that? You have to sit astride a narrow plank thing. I could fit that up.
Especially with you to help. You will help, won't you?" She was pulling the
wood out into the middle of the floor. "Can we just do this?"
The main post was long and heavy. There was just room for it to lie flat
between the hole in the middle and the wall. Towards one end a groove had
already been cut, and when we manoeuvred the cross piece into place it
fitted tight and true.
"Just needs bolting, that's all. I'm doing that on Saturday. And these
rings for the ends." she showed me two sturdy rings on steel backplates and
positioned them at either end of the wooden arms. "You good at knots? I've
got a book if not."
A pile of books lay in a corner, and some more, left open, were scattered
about.
"I think the best would be to tie one end round the wrist and then fix the
other with a quick-release knot to the ring." There was a picture in one of
the books showing it.
"Could you do that?" She handed me a length of rope and held out her wrist.
Pushing back the sleeve of her mackintosh, I had a go - and made a mess. We
looked at the book and found the step-by-step instructions. I tried again.
Practice made perfect, and after half-an-hour I found I could make a tight,
neat job, the white rope circling her slim wrist four times and leaving a
tail of about a foot.
"Clever thing!" she enthused. "That really looks professional." She
stretched her arms out. Great! And what about fixing it to the ring? Is
there enough?
"Can you fix it so it'll come undone quickly?"
There were several rings set at various heights on the walls, so I
suggested we try with one of those. I knew a good way tie the rope this
time, and had her wrist securely hitched without looking at the book once.
She tugged at it sharply several times. It passed the test. Then I pulled
the loop and, Hey Presto! the knot dissolved.
"Fantastic!" she said. "Brilliant!" Then - "Let's do it again - from
scratch." She held out her wrist.
Obediently I undid the rope, then re-applied it. I was really quite
efficient now.
"This wall, she said," crossing the space. "Then we can try it properly."
There were two rings there, one for each wrist. With all the practice I had
had it took me no more than a couple of minutes to have her spread-eagled
with her back against the white stones.
She pulled and twisted, testing the knots, but they didn't budge. "Oh God,"
she said. Then, "This is good..." she struggled again. "You're marvellous,"
she said. "Marvellous! The ropes are so tight!" More pulling and twisting.
Her face was flushed now. She wasn't exerting herself all that much but
even so her temples were beading with perspiration. With her wrists hoisted
high I could also see damp spreading through the underarm eyelets of her
mac.
"I can't move! God! It makes me feel so ... " But she didn't say. Instead
she seemed suddenly to check herself. With a change of tone she asked me to
pull the loops and let her go, which I did.
She led the way upstairs in silence, the evening clearly over.
She looked bedraggled now in her mackintosh. Her exertions may have been
modest, but the rubberised material had made her sweat and now it was
clinging wetly to her.
"You ought to get changed," I said as I hugged her goodnight. The air
struck cold through the open front door.
"Oh, no," she said quickly. "I'm not allowed. I have to wear this all
night. When I've been downstairs. Regulations." There was no hint of a
smile this time, and in fact she went on in some irritation: "You know,
what I said. Penance." She stopped, close to tears. "I can't explain.
Goodnight... Goodnight." And she pretty well pushed me out.
Poor Sarah! She was upset, I think, because she was trying to believe her
own stories and not quite managing it. In the midst of what she thought
should be discomfort and suffering she kept stumbling into pleasure -
sharp, shivering pleasure - and knew, and hated to know, that it was indeed
this brilliance rather than any grey moralistic ratiocination that inspired
her scheme of being bound helpless and enduring pain .... I wondered, half
wondered - had to stop myself half wondering - how soon it would be before
I had to acknowledge the irresistible brilliance it held for me too.
At lunch the following day, she seemed to have been comfortably repossessed
by her fiction. "It's a week on Saturday," she said. "Can you manage that?"
"What?" I asked.
"You know - the vigil, the Lent thing. You must help. I need your help. Say
you can!
It was a bright day, and there was no excuse for wearing the mac, though
she had it with her, and had had it hung over her shoulders when we met.
Now it lay folded over the chair-back next to her and she appeared in black
jeans and navy silk shirt. Anyone who looked at her sitting in the window
of the cafe, and plenty did, would have found her preoccupation not a
little surprising.
I said I would.
"It's eight hours. Eight hours! Shall I stand that?" I asked what she meant
.
"I have to be up there for eight hours. That's the Penance."
Where she got this from I didn't know. It could have been from one of the
books in her voluminous collection, or she could have just dreamt it up. It
seemed to me an impossibly long time, but then so did fifteen minutes. I
asked how she knew it had to be eight.
"That's the rule, the Roman working day. I can't really imagine eight
hours. It'll be awful. It terrifies me. Look!" She held out a shaking hand.
"I dreamt about it last night, after you had gone. It was that practice
with the ropes, I suppose."
"Look," I began, "don't you think ..." I didn't know how I was doing to
finish, but Sarah stopped me anyway
"It's no good," she said. "I have to do this thing, so please don't try and
put me off. It's nice to talk to someone about it, but if it's a bore, just
say. Only I must do it."
She was on the verge of cutting me out, I could see, but I couldn't resist
one more attempt: "But why so long? There are real dangers, you know. There
are limits. Isn't there a problem about breathing?"
She explained that there was, but that there was a way round that, which
was to have a footrest. Either that or a little ledge behind the bum to
take some of the weight. She hadn't decided which yet. Both worked, she
assured me, perfectly well. Breathing apparently got painful but it didn't
stop, not within eight hours or anything like.
I raised my eyebrows and shrugged. Sarah was discussing this thing like she
was planning to decorate a room, but what she was suggesting seemed really
dangerous.
"Must dash now - a lecture at two. Say 8 tomorrow and I'll do some paella?"
I promised, and she was off, slinging her mac over her shoulders.
After the paella the following evening one went across to the wardrobe and
showed me the outfit she wanted me to wear. It seemed that I too was to
dress for rain: a trench coat, like Sarah's, except that the one for me was
heavy and black, and a pair of matching boots. Not, I thought, a terribly
comfortable ensemble. I learnt however that there was little room for
argument. "Regulations", Sarah quickly explained, laid down in detail the
uniform for someone officiating at a penance, and this was it.
She then also explained, as I was pulling it on, that of course I couldn't
wear it over anything. I had to take off my other clothes first.
It was a peculiar experience, slipping nude into the extraordinary garment
Sarah had got for me, and having her pull the belt tight and buckle it
round my waist. The material hung heavy on the shoulders, touched the skin
elsewhere in a way not exactly uncomfortable but enclosing, enveloping,
imprisoning.
"That's good," she said, standing back. "You look right. And here's your
staff of office." She handed me a short black leather-covered cane. "And
your cap." I put it on.
In the wardrobe mirror I was surprised by a quite striking figure. I posed
with legs astride, cane underneath my arm, chest out.
Sarah took only a moment to take off her things and slip into "uniform",
and a moment after that we were down in her sanctum.
The cross was flat on the floor. It now sported a little wedge of wood
about a third of the way up. Sarah explained she had decided on a footrest.
A saw and various pieces of wood lay scattered about.
"Can we try the gag?" She gave me a long strip of cotton, I guess torn off
a sheet.
"It's either this, just wound round and round, or a bladder thing." She
rummaged in a cardboard box. "Here." She held out a short strap, like a
dog-collar, with a red flap of rubber attached half way along.
You buckle it on, and then pump it up. Hold this a sec."
She handed me a bicycle pump, then preceded with a demonstration. She took
the rubber into her mouth and fixed the buckle at the back of her head,
then took the pump and attached it where the strap passed over her mouth:
and then pumped! Gradually her mouth sort of bulged open, and her eyes
began to bulge too. She stopped pumping, fiddled with a valve in front of
her mouth, and there was a hiss of escaping air. She unbuckled the strap.
"A bit inauthentic, do you think?" she asked reflectively. "Perhaps we
should stick to the cloth. Of course, that's just as bad really. They
didn't really use a gag at all."
I thought breaking with tradition was not allowed.
"I know what you're thinking," she said quickly, noticing my look. "It's
because of you. If you're there and there's no gag, you won't let me alone.
If I can, I'll scream. I know that. I'd scream, and beg and plead to be let
down, and if you heard all that you would give in and break your word, I
know, because I'd actually be asking you to, and you'd take me down and
ruin the whole thing. So it has to be a gag. See?"
I saw. "Christ!" I said, frightened again at her clear-sightedness and
commitment, "How can you be so sure all this is right? Don't you think
there ought to be some kind of safety net, some way of keeping control if
it doesn't go like you think it will? How can you rule that out? - Sarah?"
She was looking at me in silence, with a little smile of indulgence. Then
she said: "You don't have to understand, it's all right. But the control
has to go. That's the essence of it. It's a penance, remember!"
"But you choose a penance! It has to be voluntary or how can it be any
good?
Sarah remained serene. "You choose it, yes, but once you've chosen it, you
must carry it through. No matter what. And it's bound to be unpleasant.
That's what it's about."
"Unpleasant!" I couldn't help picking up on the word. 'Christ! Not sure
you've quite caught it there ...It's going to be like nothing on earth up
there, you know. It's supposed to be one of the really nasty things you can
do to anybody, crucifying them. You'll have to be careful it doesn't
actually kill you. And you want to block up every possible escape, every
possible way of changing your mind."
"Exactly," she said with quiet indulgence. "That's exactly what I want. A
decision, but then no going back. No second thoughts when the going gets
tough, or its useless, don't you see? I know it'll be ghastly, that's what
I'm bothered about. I shall be quite desperate to stop the thing, I know,
and if I can, I will, I certainly will. So I can't leave it up to myself.
That's why I need you. With you fixing it it's out of my hands. It doesn't
matter then what I feel, how weak my will is, I won't be able to jack out.
Surely you see?"
I don't know whether I saw or not. But I knew I couldn't argue her out of
anything. Her plan had been thought through, and I suppose the thing was
that once you accepted her premises, it was a perfectly logical one.
We proceeded with the remaining rehearsals. The monitoring gear I had left
at Sarah's flat the day before and she had brought it down earlier. Just a
black box and a TV monitor and some wires really - nothing complicated. The
trick was to keep the long trails of thin wire untangled.
"Do we have to bother with all this?" Sarah protested wearily as I set it
up. "It isn't necessary, you know. "
She unbuttoned her mac and pulled the flimsy fabric open. Her breasts were
damp from the rubber - and also, I was moved to see, pouting with
excitement. The dampness made wetting the little suction connectors
unnecessary, and I quickly had them firmly applied in just the right
position. I then fed the wires down the left sleeve of her mackintosh, out
at the wrist, securing them with a light band, and across to the equipment.
"What about the rope?" she complained. "That's just where the rope round
the wrist will be."
"It's all right," I had to reassure her, "I'll fix the rope first, and then
the band. It'll be fine."
"Won't it come lose?" was her next objection. "I don't suppose I'll be able
to keep absolutely still. The wires are bound to come loose. Perhaps we
just try. Fix me to the wall like last time an I'll see if I can wriggle
them free."
This was the bit she liked, and I didn't object. It took me a few minutes
to rearrange the wires and fix her wrists to the rings, and then she was
free to indulge her interest in wrestling against the ropes. I helped.
"See if you can dislodge them while I get the electronics going," I said,
and went to twiddle with the black box. The cg trace danced into life
without any trouble, and showed Sarah's heart responding jauntily to her
exertions. How long it would remain perky when she was perched spread-eagle
and fighting for breath on her cross was another matter ...
Meanwhile, she was entering fully into the spirit of the test, struggling
resourcefully against the ropes, wrenching to the left, then to the right,
then attempting a rhythmic twisting to and fro, then thrusting her chest in
and out, all to the accompaniment of little gasps and grunts and
expletives, which might be registering climaxes of frustration and effort,
or bursts of pleasure: or, of course, both.
"Huh. OK", she said at length, catching her breath, "You win. I can t
dislodge them. Great. Undo me now."
I didn't jump. She looked vulnerable and alluring in her exhaustion, her
face highly coloured and glistening, her breasts, waist, hips accented
almost unbearably by the clinging mackintosh, which covered but did
absolutely nothing to conceal.
I pretended to be concerned with the screen.
"OK," she said again, "You can undo me now."
Again I ignored her, engrossed in the electronics.
"Frank!" she asked again after a pause, now with an edge of irritation.
"Just undo me will you? I've got something in my boot."
"Uncomfy?" I asked. I couldn't help making the point. "Don't you think you
ought to stay a bit and get the feel of the thing? You've only been there
ten minutes, and you've got your feet on the floor."
"Just untie me, please," she said, not really amused. "We've got the other
things to see to."
I did as I was told.
The other things didn't take long. she stretched out with her back on the
cross for me to get the right knot for her ankles, and we arranged the
monitor where I could see it from the chair she had brought down for me.
The Walkman was also ready, with a pile of tapes. Sarah said she would make
sure there was food too - for me only of course. Regulations would
certainly not permit nourishment to the penitent.
She explained as we went up that she didn't want to say anything or take
any initiative on the day itself. I was to take charge, escort her down at
the fixed time, bind her in position, fix the wires if I must, raise the
cross at the fixed time, and lower it eight hours later. That was what I
must do, and it was all I must do.
She didn't invite me to agree or anything. She was just telling me how it
had to be. I didn't argue, leaving her preparing for another night attired
as the Regulations prescribed, her legs presumably hot and uncomfortable in
the boots, her body damp and presumably quite sleepless in the mackintosh.
The next time I was to see her was at five in the morning on the Appointed
Day. I had a sleepless night myself.
What was I doing collaborating in such a dangerous game? It was dangerous,
no matter what assurances Sarah had found in her literature. Crucifixion
after all had been a method of execution, a punishment as well, but not one
you were expected to recover from. You were hung up to suffer, but also to
die, and surely the dying didn't take that long. Could I really accept
Sarah's casual assurance that eight hours was certainly safe?
That was why I shouldn't have been collaborating. The reason I was that
since I had first stumbled wide-eyed into it, I had come to find the
thought of Sarah roped to her cross unbearably exciting. Simply that. I
didn't know why, nor did I like to dwell on the reason.
Whatever its ground, my caution was absolutely no match for the excitement
- excitement which gripped me with almost unrelenting persistence during
the three days, the thirty-eight-and-a half hours that intervened between
my last sight of Sarah and the appointed hour.
The night before I attempted an early bed to prepare for the early rise. It
didn't help much. The alarm was unnecessary. I had a bath, dressed, walked
round the block three times so as to press Sarah's bell at five o'clock
precisely.
It opened immediately, as though, what I suppose might have been the case,
Sarah's cue for opening it was the strike of five, not my fallible ringing
of the bell. I went to kiss her, but she drew away. She wouldn't even meet
my eyes. Her special day had clearly begun.
"There s just one thing," she whispered as I went in, not raising her eyes
but very intently. "There is a libation. You have to take a libation. It's
ready, but you mustn't forget. The book says it's very important. You take
it at the beginning, as soon as I'm up. OK?"
In the circumstances, a drink was not something I was going to object to.
"OK, fine," I said, not trusting myself with anything else.
Sarah was of course already kitted out. My own gear lay on the bed. I got
into it, and we went down.
I locked the heavy door behind us. Sarah had put cushions on my chair, and
a little table by it with a plastic food box and a half-full wine glass. By
it there was a little card, impossible to miss. It said in printed letters:
VERY IMPORTANT
THIS DRAUGHT MUST BE TAKEN
BY THE PERSON
SUPERVISING THE PENANCE
IMMEDIATELY IT HAS
BEGUN
Laid out on an inverted box were the things that would be needed - ropes,
gag, wires and clock. Sarah just stood in the middle of the cell with her
hands clasped behind her back and her head bowed. I wanted intensely to ask
for her assurance that she wanted to go ahead; even though the presence of
her slight figure, neat and demure in her schoolgirl mackintosh and boots
and her pose of utterly suppliant obedience should have been reassurance
enough. I knew I mustn't ask anyway. She had me there to fulfil a perfectly
defined role in a drama she had very carefully devised, and I must simply
get on and play it.
I took the long length of cloth which it had been decided should be used
for the gag and took it behind her. "Open," I said, and pulled the cloth
into her mouth. I crossed the ends at the back of her head, and brought
them across the front again, settled the second turn of cloth firmly
between her open teeth and tied the ends behind. Sarah worked her jaw and
head once or twice, but she resisted any temptation to use her hands.
As she twisted her head up I had sight of her eyes for the first time that
morning, and that gave me a hint of how excited she was. They were
twinkling bright, and the colour in her cheeks was high too. They belied
the quiet resignation affected by the hanging head and averted eyes the
penitent had presented me with up to that moment.
Perhaps that was the reassurance I needed. Anyway, it gave me a newly
businesslike air.
"Keep your hands behind your back and hold your chin up," I instructed her
with a new severity. I unbuttoned the top of her mac. She was already
streaming with sweat. I pushed the two sensors into place and poked the
trailing wires down her left sleeve, then buttoned her up.
I tried to keep my voice controlled, but it was increasingly difficult as
the big moment approached.
"OK," I said, "you can get into position."
In her painstaking way she had already marked the wood where her behind
would come when her wrists were correctly positioned for the rings. Now,
carefully but without hesitation, she put a foot on either side of the post
and sat on the marked spot, using her hands to keep the skirt of her mac
from rucking. Then she lowered her back till she lay flat, and stretched
out her arms along the cross beam.
She performed these movements with practised accuracy - but once she had
got into position and tried to lie still, I could see she was shaking. As I
began to bind her right wrist I saw I was shaking myself! It made me get
the rope wrong the first time, but I knew we had time to spare. I fixed the
left wrist neatly at the first attempt, then slipped a band over the wire
as it came out of the sleeve and secured the connections to the CRO.
Before fiddling with the electronics I fixed her ankles. There was no need
for anything special with them, since they weren't to carry any weight. In
fact, roping them was really quite unnecessary. To move her legs Sarah
would have to take her toes off the footrest, and I couldn't see her
tempted to do that.
Still, "Regulations" I knew, were Regulations, and I did as I had been
instructed, running a short rope first round each ankle - protected by the
boots of course and then back to the ring.
I stood up. She was ready.
The moment, which both of us had been preparing for these long weeks, she
from one perspective and I from another, was almost upon us. I could see
that it meant a great deal to her - not from her face - she was holding the
back of her head motionless against the wood and staring straight up at the
pulley in the vault, and the cloth across her mouth made her face rather
immobile, expressionless - but from the movement of her chest, which,
displayed, rather, by her uncompromising pose, was rising and falling with
almost wild exaggeration.
This reminded me that I had yet to tune the monitor - made me glad indeed
that I had managed to insist on having it. For if this turmoil was what the
mere thought of her ordeal did to her breathing control, what would happen
to her physiology when it began for real?
I glanced at my watch. Five minutes to go. I used a couple of them get a
nice trace on the screen. I checked that my watch and the clock were
synchronised, then crossed to the rope that looped its way lazily from the
pulley up above to the cleat on the wall. I unwound it, took up the slack.
I checked the position of the bottom of the cross. Sarah seemed to have got
it just right, ready to pivot against the edge of the hole and tip in.
Unable to assist now with the project, she was waiting for fate to take its
course - the fate, albeit, that she had herself so deliberately decreed.
She lay rigidly back, seeking not to disturb the disposition of her body
that the three ropes now largely prescribed, her eyes open but fixed on the
vault.
Her breathing she had not been able to discipline.
Her chest was heaving as mightily as before - and what I now saw was that
the thin cotton of her mackintosh, tightly belted and buttoned over this
seething maelstrom, would certainly not withstand the extra strain that
would come in a moment or two when her weight, carried solely by her
outstretched wrists, would be dragging her down, sharpening the angle
between her arms and the wooden upright.
"I'm loosening your belt," I told her. "Or your mac will tear. I'll tighten
it when you're in position."
This broke her studied detachment. She strained her head up and shook it
left and right in an effort I think to forbid such a gross departure from
the prescribed procedure, but roped more or less immobile as she was,
silenced as she was, virtually expressionless as she was, her powers of
protest were not considerable.
I just went ahead, loosening the belt, which she had fixed really tight, by
six holes.
Then back to the wall. The time had come.
I wound the rope round my hand and began to pull.
It pulled easily - there was gearage in the pulley and without my feeling
very responsible for it, the wooden structure with its peculiar human
attachment slowly tilted.
I just kept pulling.
The degree of tilt just kept increasing.
Then the base caught on the edge of the hole, as was intended, and from
that point on progress was less steady. The wood stuck and scraped, stuck
and scraped as the heavy structure located itself in the unyielding stone.
For Sarah this meant a jolting introduction to the full traction of the
torture. With every lurch, a further increment of her weight was
transferred to her wrists, her back slipped against the wood, her feet sank
towards the footrest.
A few more feet of rope passed through my hands. Now as the discomfort
mounted, her toes were straining for the shelf below them.
Suddenly, with a final shudder, the base dropped the last six inches. The
jolt, quite a severe one, displaced her toes from the footrest they had
just found, and, with the post now quite vertical, Sarah swung for a moment
from her wrists.
I could only suppose this to have been the moment of truth. At any rate,
this was the Point at which she broke her rigid pose, twisting her head
down, and then up to the left, and then to the right - and uttering such a
cry as was by no means smothered by the gag. Her feet lost no time at all
in re-establishing themselves on the rest, the rubber just behind the toes
creasing so very sharply, as she fought desperately to ease her suddenly
outraged arms.
I wound the rope on the cleat out of the way, then, with my part
essentially done, sat awkwardly in the chair. Sarah had not stopped making
noises. When I looked directly at her, which I found myself surprisingly
loathe to do, she was looking straight at me and jerking her head. She was
attempting to tell me something, I imagined. That she had had enough? It
couldn't be that, I thought, or if it was, she wouldn't thank me for taking
any notice. I would keep my eyes on the monitor, and if it gave me an
excuse or, actually, I thought, even if it didn't - I would let her down as
soon as a face-saving interval had elapsed.
As I reached for the glass to fulfil my final ritual obligation, the
mewling she was making made me look at her pinioned figure again - and I
noticed the loose belt. Was that what was exercising her? It could be. The
tightness of the penitential belt was sure to be covered in the
Regulations, and maybe - or was this really unthinkable? - maybe even in
the sudden dizzying swirl of insupportable discomfort that those first
moments of suspension must have represented she still had room for worries
of that sort.
Anyway, I went over and pulled the belt tight, much tighter round her
diminished waist than it had been originally. The thin material was safe
from ripping once the loosened belt had allowed it to ride up to
accommodate the high spread-eagle of her arms.
Close to, it was obvious that the impact of those first moments of penance
had been enough to induce a drenching sweat. It was running in rivulets
where the skin of her forehead and temples and highly-coloured cheeks was
uncovered, bedraggling the cotton swathed round her mouth, and her
mackintosh, clinging everywhere, was already pungent with the warmth and
wet enveloping her straining body. Just before, I had found her
expressionless, on account of the gag. But by creasing her eyes fiercely
shut, and wrenched her brows together, she now she achieved the expression
of desperate discomfort.
As I stood back though she opened her eyes to stare at me, and then, when
she had caught my eyes, she transferred her gaze to the table by the chair
- and then, when she had caught my eyes, she transferred her head. Again
her stare concentrated on the table - again a vigorous shake of the head.
What was it now? - The drink, of course. The "libation". I had not yet
taken of the cup.
I went over and sipped it down - just a cheap sherry wine, I thought,
reminiscent of Sam on a Sunday morning.
With that done, Sarah apparently felt free to concentrate on what gravity
and those short pieces of rope were doing to her muscles and nerves. Her
eyes snapped shut, her head twisted up, and the noise that was forcing
itself past the cotton binding took on a tone of even greater distress.
In a moment though the eyes were open again, searching for mine and
expressing what seemed more and more like insupportable suffering. The gag
wasn't serving its purpose at all. It took me only a few moments of this
desperate, urgent, pleading, agonised look of hers to realise that
regulations or no regulations I was going to have to bring this project to
an end. My sadism, lively in my imagination, had been completely doused by
the reality of this girl I knew, Sarah, hanging there, in front of my eyes,
in obvious and extreme distress. It was beginning to make me feel ill.
I went over to loosen her gag, so she could respond when I told her what I
was going to do. My legs felt distinctly wobbly, and it took me a moment or
two to get the cotton strip undone. My head was beginning to feel funny
too.
"For Christ's sake!" she screamed, as soon as I had freed it sufficiently
for her to get her tongue in action, "Get me down! Quick!" She was clearly
shouting this with great urgency, but it somehow sounded distant and
somehow not very much to do with me.
"The drink! It was drugged! It'll put you to sleep! Get me down before it
works for Christ's sake!"
I heard these things, and in a way understood them, but they didn't seem to
be of much concern to me. At this point my legs must have given way and I
left the scene of Sarah's penance: for a number of hours.
When I came to, nothing had changed, except the shouting had stopped.
I don't what the drug was, but it left me with no sense of the passage of
time. Later I discovered I had been slumped there below Sarah's feet for 9
hours and thirty two minutes: an impressively accurate dose. She was
hanging there unmoving in the silence, her hands white and limp beyond
where the ropes circled her wrists, her head slumped down between her
shoulders, chin on her right breast. Her hair hung in ropes. Her
penitential robe was sodden, the rubberised fabric smothering her thighs
and waist and chest. Huge circles of dark centred on the underarm eyelets,
where the sweat had escaped from the mackintosh embrace.
With a shock I discovered that in the still silence her eyes were open! She
looked down the length of her body, past the boots still perched on the
rest, and into, or rather through, my own eyes. Involuntarily I glanced
over to the monitor screen - I must have been suddenly very wide awake -
and the slightness of the flicker I saw there galvanised me into action.
I pulled the steps over, got to her right wrist and released the knot.
Thank God it came undone with a single pull. She then swung towards me at a
crazy angle, held, of course not only by the other wrist but by the rope
round her ankles too. I saw it would be disastrous to have her crashing to
the ground with her ankles caught three feet up, so I jumped down and freed
them first. Then she was dangling from a single wrist. I pulled her so she
would collapse onto me, then tugged the wrist rose undone.
She folded over my shoulder like a tablecloth.
1 staggered upstairs with her draped over me and slipped her onto the bed.
She lay exactly where gravity left her. Even her eyelids lacked the power
of movement, and she stared out unblinking from the depths of her ordeal.
The arrangements had been of course exactly as she had intended, give or
take an hour. She had known she would not be capable, once the torture had
actually been applied, of enduring it voluntarily, that in the face of the
devastating agony in arms and chest and belly for which crucifixion was
famous her resolution would fail: so she had arranged for someone else to
bind and release her. She had also realised that this person would be
humanly incapable of ignoring the desperately eloquent imploring that would
undoubtedly be wrung from her as the torment developed: so she had insisted
on the gag.
And she had seen, though I guessed rather at the last minute, that no gag
would conceal her suffering completely, and that I was not be relied on to
sit back and ignore the unequivocal manifestations of distress that her
body, in spite of the gag - and the ropes, and every ounce of mental
determination - could not be stopped from displaying. Hence the drug.
I had to insist to myself, as I peeled off her mac and pulled the duvet
over her now-stiffening body, that there had been no "disaster".
When she had screamed in the awfulness of those first revelatory moments of
suspension for me to release her, and I fell back unconscious before I
could do so, there had been no "failure", no appalling lucklessness of
timing. She had planned it that way - engineered the execution of her
rational will, the circumvention of the "emotional" reaction she knew would
usurp control if she didn't take steps in advance to render it impotent.
Those searing hours she had endured, the merciless and ineluctable physical
destruction devised by ingenious Roman sadism for those held in most
contempt, this, I had to remember, was no more than the sentence she had
soberly passed upon herself.
It turned out that Sarah had done herself no lasting damage. I stayed with
her until she got back enough strength to insist on me leaving, and we
slipped back over the next weeks into our old pattern. Those extraordinary
nine-and-a-half hours were never alluded to, except in my asking early on
with calculated vagueness "how she was," and in the embarrassment with
which this gentlest of sallies was received. And, I suppose, in the fact
that, as before, she was inseparable from her (cleaned and
crisper-than-ever) white mac.
Until, that is, three months and five days after I had drawn that duvet
over her drained and motionless body, when out of the blue she asked me -
we were sitting on the bed just as we had done when she broached that first
bizarre project of hers - whether I thought that when you had done wrong
you should be punished for it.
I was beginning a careful reply when she cut me short.
"I do," she said. "It puts things right."
And then, into the silence: "Frank, do you know anything about 'The Wooden
Horse'?"
I knew what was starting, but I could see no way of stopping or even
deflecting it.
"No," was all I could muster.
"It's a punishment ," she whispered. "Specially for women. You sit astride
this plank thing with your legs up and your hands tied, so all your weight
is carried by your ... oh well, down there. A real lesson, apparently..."
A pause. I could think of nothing to fill it.
She went on, "I've .... I've got all the stuff...
Pause.
"I could do it myself, of course - it's quite straightforward really, but
...." Her voice trailed off. Her request, an earnest, importunate appeal,
was left to be posed by her eyes.
Should I have been embarrassed? Or disappointed? Or frightened? Or bored?
I was not.
It was a thrill that I felt: physical, strong, unmistakable, irresistible.
I didn't want it to, didn't like myself as it did, but the thought of Sarah
bound and helpless and, yes, suffering again ran through me like a
flash-fire. And as I had none of her ingenuity in protecting myself from
the emotional reaction of the moment, the new project was born. Those
nine-and-a-half hours had not changed her, and, to my astonishment, they
had not changed me either.
I offered desultory opposition for half an hour, but before the evening was
out my collaboration was committed.
Sarah changed into her beloved mackintosh and we were on our way
downstairs.
END
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