"We are going to have fun with your Mr. Sandos," Thalia said confidently.
The three girls were on their feet, glorying in their relative freedom. Each was still handcuffed. But their pain was gone. Thalia scornfully kicked one of the hated straps that had joined their elbows. She did a small dance of joy on the swaying and uncertain floor.
"He may not be all that pleased," Terry suggested doubtfully. "He?ll probably put the damn things back on just to teach us a lesson."
"So what!" Thalia kicked this way and that, flexing her cramped limpes. "For now, I do not hurt. I think that for girls who are as we are there had best be no thinking of next day or next hour or next week. Oh, how dearly I would love to unlock these things upon our wrists!"
For a little while she amused herself by testing the grip of the metal that joined her hands. She pulled and twisted, her face intent. "I know I cannot get free," she acknowledged, "but it is good to try. If I am to wear such bangles, it is best that I find out what I can doe or cannot do with them. With these now I cannot do anything at all." She paused, thinking. Then sought her companions with dancing eyes.
"Darlings?"
"Yes?" She had their full attention.
"We have a little time together now, alone. We do not know what your nasty man do with us when our journey ends…"
Her lips pouted. Her eyes glowed. She discarded words.
"Oh darlings, yes. We must! I?m crinkling already…"
Dorinda laughed in joy.
Three girls made love.
The truck bumped its way toward the Sea.
I did not get my victory. I think that men must never let us win. It is important to their self esteem. But I was very angry. He was just pretending not to notice that we were free of his bits of straps and cords. He said no word at all. I knew from this that he would not be easy. The girls had told me. Terry and Dorinda are afraid of Mike. Perhaps I will be before he is through with me. If he ever is through with me. There is that to think of too. For a little while, bound in the truck, I was excited. That thing that was done to me when I was fifteen was not like this. I was very frightened then. I expect I should be very frightened now. But the girls make it so different. Pure romance: three lovely maidens chained and captive. The perquisites of a Pirate Prince! How silly a girl can be. Even a girl like me. Rabin?s doughter! I deserve to be whipped. Mike cheated me of everything. I expect it was because of those rotten straps and cords. So I must be made to know I am a nothing. Just a little curio picked up along the way. He does not strip me. He does not strike me. He does not ask questions. He just motions with his hand and I am taken down and locked in what he calls the?Brig?. I do not like his Brig. It is awful! I must have claustrophobia. The tiny iron box with its rivet heads was a terrible place for a girl all alone. I did not know what he had done with the others. I had been taken from them. To tell me very plainly that I was never going to escape he had my handcuffs removed, my hands pulled round to the front and locked very tight in heavy chains that joined my wrists and linked them to the wall with a tether that stopped me getting near the door. I could sit or stand or lay down on a miserable little shelf. That was all.
They call it?softening up?, don?t they? I was chained in that beastly little Brig for part of a day and all night. When I was handcuffed and taken to Mike?s office I knew I was not quite the same girl who had ridden in the truck the day before. Even a little journey from my prison to my first interview with the man who now owned me was designed to put me in a properly receptive frame of mind. At first on deck it was glorious. All my happiness came back. The Quest is a lovely boat. The Mediterranean is a lovely sea. For a moment I forgot my handcuffs nad the big fingers on my arm. But then I saw Dorinda….
I had never seen her clothed. She was not clothed now. But what was being done to her made her seem doubly naked. She was hanging from the rigging by her wrists. They were spread out above her head and tied with many strands of rope so that she just hung there high above the deck, her body swaying freely as the boat moved in the swells. As a final touch of cruelty, perhaps for the sake of shame, a wooden rod was tied to her ankle so that it spread and seperated her legs. We on the deck who looked up saw first, and most of all, her pubic hair and that which it was supposed to hide.
He had his own sense of the dramatic. He must have given orders. When the breakfast things had been cleared we all gravitated, a sort of fitting in of jig-saw pieces, to a space on the deck that suddenly became a stage. We were all audience. There were no actors. The three man crew drifted into seats on a hatch or a box. We girls stood or sat as we pleased. We were a semi-circle facing the Rail, against which Mike lolled. A very casual M.C.
"You got a little job, honey. Fetch it."
My heart bled for her. Poor, poor Dorinda! She did not deserve this. It was on my tongue to intervene. But instinct told me that even she would rather I kept silent. But it was very cruel and very humiliating, this thing that she must do. She did it well. Before those men she must have hated it, but she kept her face serene and went to the companionway. When she returned she carried the cane. A cane I knew would hurt very much: I have used such things. She knelt before her owner. She was more beautiful than she knew. She kissed the cane as though it was flesh. Then offered it that she be beaten. Slowly then she placed herself where all could see, bent down, arched her back and clasped her ankles so that the link of her handcuff was very tight. Mike struck her very hard. I winced. It is a sound all its own, the thud of a cane upon a girl?s flesh. Her bottom flowered it?s scarlet band. Poor darling Dorinda! How naked and alone, and how very slender she seemed there, exposed to all. I knew. I would not wish to be as she was.
He was so unkind. He need not strike her so hard. She was only a girl. No need to make her sway under the impact of each blow. But, of course, Mike would always strike like that. Somehow I knew. She could not forbear to make small sounds. Once she apprehensively looked round and back as though to speak or to plead. But quickly bowed her head again to wait for the next stroke. She quivered and twisted, but was always still and receptive when the cane found her. When the five were done, she did not clasp her bottom or rub her wounds. But, once more, slowly and with grace she knelt before the man who had whipped her. "Thank you, master." Her voice was low but clear.
With surprising gentleness he raised her to her feet and kissed her hand. For a moment they gazed into each other?s eyes in a communion I could not interpret. Then the slave girl Dorinda rejoined the audience. She did not sit down. There fell then a silence. No one stirred. Dorinda had been a preliminary. The stage was bare, waiting. It took a little time before I felt his eyes. Then I became aware that the three men were looking at me too. They knew something I did not. Shamefacedly, the two girls looked from me to him and back again. Suddenly, as though someone had switched on a light, I realised the stage was set for me.
There is a much used sentence in fiction and on the stage in which someone declaims: "The time has come!" I had known it would come. It was here! I was not ready. I never would be. I had asked myself what I would do. But I had no answer. I could obey or resist. I would not resist, then men would enjoy handling me. So I would obey. But how? A puppy dog. Or try and hold on to being me…. No one helped me by speaking. There was not even an order to disobey. That Mike…!
"Am I on stage, darling?" I inquired sweetly.
Mike simply pointed with the cane to where Dorinda had received her strokes.
So I was to be caned like a schoolgirl in front of all! It was a beginning. No worse than I had feared. I shrugged and walked out for my initiation. Always there is a twist. I stood and looked at my master. I did not want to bend. Once more the silent cane gave a message. It did not reach me. It was not the motion given Dorinda. He flicked it up, not down. I was about to ask what I must do, when he did it again and I understood. My hand flew to the fastening of my dress, our eyes locked. He nodded. It was time for me to strip.