CHAPTER 1

It all gets institutional as Dr Ecclestone takes charge, Alice finds herself carted off to a church-run ‘industrial school’ for wayward intractable teens and girls of loose morals and a friend intervenes - or tries to.

“...PROVIDING A DISCIPLINED ENVIRONMENT FOR RECALCITRANT YOUNG WOMEN...”

The first shallow-angled rays of sunlight lancing through the stained glass window fanned out like a celestial rainbow. But the scene presently unfolding beneath the slim and flattened spreading fingers of light made a red, gold, blue and green mockery of the pious depiction tinting its metallic shafts. Mottled subdued-coloured shadowy apparitions, obliquely projected and stretched out over the cold green-grey flagstones told of the disruption caused by the vertical bars of sturdy iron set on the outside, the purity of tone further corrupted by the thick diamond shaped hinged wire mesh frame affixed to the window’s inside. The obligatory heavy-duty padlocks securing this latter Norman-arched framework - its deep-set wired contours paralleling the little chapel’s window cringing behind it - were as ubiquitous as to be practically symbolic of the place. Mounted at the edge furthest from the stout paint-gnarled hinges, one top and one bottom, the two askew padlocks added a few bluish silvery sparkles of their own - little pinpoints of metallic starlight that managed little in lightening the dead oppressive atmosphere of dread penitence and hypocritical control; there was no hint of gaiety to be had here, just as there was little to be had in terms of Christian compassion from the stained glass mural beyond, just a further reminder of the totality of captivity. Solid ice-cold stone and iron captivity set in faith... That is Faith... with a capital ‘F’.

The ironic gaiety of all that glitter and gold seemed to snigger over the faux solemnity of the tableau unfolding at that moment - an old man and a young woman meeting through the most extraordinary of circumstances.

The gold-halo-framed saint’s head, all pinks and roses, divided into slats by the prison-bar shadowing and crisscrossed by a white-painted scarring of wire mesh had disapproval woven in to its eyes as if preordained to gaze down on such a scene from the very moment of the window’s conception. The sword in the saint’s glass-rendered chain mail hand, the hilt in the form of the crucifixion, was depicted raised as if to smite the perpetrator of all this desecration and shame yet as a mere work of art was as impotent as a young woman’s struggles against steel fetters and iron-link tethers.

In a stone niche where one might have expected an altarpiece - perhaps a chalice, a cross, a pair of gold candlesticks, some richly embroidered cloth of scrolling gold thread - there was indeed the cloth rolled out, the cross in its place and fat beeswax candles flowering yellow flame seated high in their sticks at each end. But where the chalice and wafers might have been set out for the holy communion there were laid out instead paraphernalia associated with an altogether different form of ‘communion’ entirely - something far less holy, yet just as ritualistic. Two crook-handled school-master canes of different thicknesses lay side to side at the foot of the gold cross spread between the candles, the tip of each settled in to the curling handle of the other.

Closer to the front of this cloth covered stone ledge a split-tongued Lochgelly tawse, the sturdy yet pliant oiled leather embossed in gold with the symbols of the institution - the lamb of god, the cross and the crossed canes, all set in a shield-like device - lay alongside a particularly fine example of the French martinet, the turned wood handle in the form of the Virgin, the fine leather fronds sprouting from the top of her veil like thick strands of hair the thickness of a shoelace, each bisected along its length by a series of tiny painstakingly tied knots. Viewed in profile the outline of the handle of the latter owed a lot in its form to the erect male member, a clue to a secondary function; considered too light to be applied to the backside of some strapping young tomboy type or plump modern adolescent, it could equally set alight the soles of dainty feet, soft pampered palms or indeed similarly indulged young breasts.

Set closer still to the edge, the jar of pearly blue-grey Vaseline already lay open, resting within its lid and bracketed each side by the brown twists of a pair of rolled-up leather belts, one pierced along its length, the other studded with silvery metal conical points. Alongside one candlestick a prison-style birch lay, a bunch of the whippiest silver birch twigs imaginable all bound in tarred rope to form a grip; a second bunch graced the opposite end of the ledge or shelf, this set the other way up with its broom of twigs and stems facing outermost. Only the greenest wood had been used, nothing too brittle to shatter and split, yet suitably festooned with buds and jaggedly truncated offshoots - all the better to ‘mortify the flesh’; and if there was anything The Most Reverend Father Kenneth Aloysius Mcmacmarghn knew all about it was the mortification of the flesh; girl flesh!

It stood to reason girl flesh had to be scourged, flagellated, reamed, penetrated - yes, it stood to reason; the functional necessity of procreation surely corrupted by the ‘Dark One’ as the juiciest, most succulent root of temptation. How else might one explain the all-pervading inflammation of the senses, the madness of desire brought on, the wicked urging ignited in the loins at the merest glimpse of a provocatively wobbling pair of buttocks, bouncing breasts, long waving locks of gold, red or brunette, laughing eyes and those wide generous mouths that promised so much yet he knew would deliver little but scorn to one of his age if approached on the street, even if in the most innocent, well-meaning and polite manner? But this was not the street, those locks were unlikely to be as long and free flowing, and that mouth, swinging bottom and all the rest would not be promising more here than they would deliver - nor need he fear scorn, rejection, spiteful backtalk nor anything save complete and utter supplication to his will; the wild-cat-taming zing of the Mother Superior’s cane will have seen to that.

The mouth, wide and generous as it might be and innocently cherry-lipped; the bottom, private, tucked away, a secretive rose; the vagina - undoubtedly the most treacherous of all - all these were sites where the darkest lust lurked. But it was a fact the semen of the pious could cleanse the seed of the daemon, trickling down a pretty chin, dribbling from within a well-cleansed, well-reamed bottom, oozing from that other unspeakable organ between its legs, this set free from pleasurable temptation by the surgeon’s excising of the bud or infibulating that toadstool of feminine deceit with platinum wire and vouchsafed from other ‘unfortunate consequences’ by its making barren with another surgical ‘snip’ or two.

It was that final act of sterilisation that seemed to crush them the most, squeezed the devil out from their souls like pips from an over-ripe pomegranate, that did, and that god-awful boisterousness with it! Once freed of all that pram-faced obsession with families and babies, boyfriends and husbands, they knuckled down under the dominion yoke of the church, submissively going about their daily chores and duties as the modest and pious always should. And the oocytes that were harvested - the eggs - could still fulfil the creator’s wishes, fertilised in vitro by those with actual gifts to give and implanted in more worthy, more righteous wombs, to the everlasting spiritual - and financial - benefit of the church.

Sterilisation; Yes, he always pushed for that, if there could be any possibility of levying a suggestion of ‘feeble mindedness’ or ‘mental incompetence’ - and he could almost always make a diagnosis like that stick if he put his mind to it.. And in the case of this particular girl - this winsome Welsh girl, Gwyneth Tealsdown - that diagnosis had become essential, more urgent than usual. It was beginning to look increasingly likely that she’d got word out; and perhaps that new girl had also, although in that girl’s case certain remedial steps had already been taken.

The Reverend Father, his face jowled, thread-veined and eye-baggy with scotch, turned away from the multihued fan of sunlight spreading out across the dust-strewn flagstones and lighting the skeletal carved figures of the knight and his spouse reclining in prayer on their shared tomb. His attention was turning to that other pedestal-like furnishing occupying the vaulted stone space, this one temporary and moveable, unlike the stone tomb of the once lord of the manor and his good lady.

The fetters spoken of previously did not rattle nor jangle metallically but rather creaked, shuffled, rustled and squeaked, consisting as they did of padded leather cuffs, plastic or nylon buckles and tough leather straps secured by nylon bolts and fixings. The ‘horse’ over which the tousled, toothsome blond Gwyneth was currently pinioned, limbs spread obscenely akimbo, was a wood-framed brown-leather-topped gymnasium vaulting horse especially adapted for the purpose and furnished with all manner of imaginatively positioned rings, ‘U’ bolts and other ‘fixing points’.

The prayer just spoken over her suggestively prone form, over her bared behind - the surplus, cassock and all the rest of the church choir-girl regalia he’d had her change into having been pinned up out of the way and the frilled navy-blue flannel bloomers eased down - had been hypocrisy made incarnate. He’d actually had the temerity to pray to god that her sins be forgiven, that her culpability in that damned diabolically-sculpted attractiveness she exuded, and that inflamed him to such a degree, baiting him from the righteous path , be ‘overlooked by the lord’! And she’d had enough of his waving his cock in her face in the past to know how she might be required to pay penance later, once he’d had his fill of one or other of her other orifices. At least for now he’d end in her mouth or her bottom.

She prayed it would be the latter, would wiggle suggestively like a harem favourite to try to add to his pleasure, to tip him over the edge before he prised it between her lips; there was nothing she could imagine more repulsive than having his fat, ugly, smelly ‘thing’ up her bottom and then pressed in to her mouth. But if he did she’d have to suck and swallow, swallow and suck like a good’n , like the good little Jezebel whore he accused her of being; then allow just a little trickle down her chin to show ‘the daemon seed’ had been flushed out of her. If not he’d not stop at half a dozen with the reformatory cane afterwards, nor be satisfied with adding a dozen or so with the heavier - though unaccountably equally pliant - prison-weight cane, a real beast of bamboo, ribbed like arthritic finger joints.

No, he’d like as not follow up with a good thrashing of her blameless bottom with one or both of those bunches of birch twigs he’d put together, and then have her stand with both her arms behind her back in a single elbow-length leather glove or arm binder while he went to work on her breasts with the martinet - the cushions of Beelzebub himself, as he called them. The knotted square-section fronds were intended to lacerate - and they did; and some of the marks, some of the stigmata as the Reverend Father liked to term the fine red veiny lines left written across and around her nipples, and seeming to radiate out from them, appeared to be permanent. What would be more permanent would be sterilisation - and that would be next if she wasn’t careful. One complaint, one word whispered in the wrong direction, and it could be twisted against her, used as evidence of her ‘mental unbalance’; and if that happened... And she couldn’t be sure who to trust - some of the other girls were agents of the institution itself, willing to sell out one and all to secure an easier existence; they’d made a point of telling her that on her arrival, and she’d seen the evidence since, fallen foul of it in fact; it was how the place operated, how they maintained such rigid control; divide and conquer...

Divide and conquer - just as he’d soon be dividing her plump bottom cheeks, or her lips... Given the chance and she’d bite it right off for him, bite right through it - she’d enjoy that! But he’d thought of that of course, placed rubber wedges in the corners of her mouth to stop her teeth coming together, and a strap running under her chin and over her head to stop her opening wide and shaking them free. Plus she’d seen what had happened to other girls, those that had tried to bite.

They had a tame dentist in this place, her sense of ethics - shockingly to Gwyneth, a Welsh-valley girl still steeped in the mistaken assumption of the incorruptible kindness of womanhood, it was a ‘her’ - blinded, warped by lucre. This woman was more than happy to remove teeth where necessary in order to sculpt ‘a good cock-sucking mouth’; at the drop of a hat - or silver in her palm - she’d remove all but the molars. That woman was capable of more (or less - depending on your point of view) than that; already Gwyneth had had a heavy tongue stud added, so weighty as to leave her with speech that was all but totally unintelligible, and a set of the ugliest teeth braces or retainers imaginable in god’s heaven, the lower set possessing a ring at the rear that could be engaged with one similar that was pierced through the tip of her tongue. In addition, a miniscule wire cage had been sutured in place over her clitoris, to discourage ‘the sin of self-pleasure’, and a metal thimble with a narrow slot in the top had been placed over each nipple, the slot locating over a suitably proportioned ring previously infibulated in situ and locked into place with a tiny gold-hued padlock, for the same purpose.

This young Gwyneth definitely didn’t want to suffer any of the other ‘preventative’ or ‘disciplinary’ procedures that were open to them carried out on her, such as having the centre of her forehead branded with the crucifix or having the sign of the cross tattooed in bold black on each cheek and the name of the institution similarly tattooed across the top of her bust... She had seen girls having had their eyebrows removed by electrolysis and replaced by a permanently tattooed, permanently surprised look that had left them looking stupefied and doll-like. She had witnessed how red circles drawn in on the cheeks by the tattooist’s pen and lips filled to brimming with surgically implanted fat and outlined in tattooed black and red could add to the illusion; the novice nun’s habit or laundry-girl’s drab brown uniform dress serving to magnify the effect by contrast. And she definitely, definitely, didn’t want her clitoris excised surgically in its entirety... let alone be sterilised! STERILISED! The word both made her blood run cold and kept her bum in place when the rattan whistled in... or whenever that dog-collared pig’s cock was shoved up her bottom or stuffed in her mouth.

The Reverend Father ran his fingers stickily around the inside of his dog collar; despite the cool of the heavy grey stonework surrounds and the earthy, musty crypt air wafting up through the ironwork floor grille he was hot, beads of sweat breaking out on his taunted and vexed brow. He lowered his gruff smoker’s voice a little, addressing the tethered prone girl almost as if speaking to himself.

“To be honest with you, I far prefer to rape a girl than have her meekly submit to my cock. That way I can be sure of what I am doing - and why. I can be certain I am not myself merely becoming an agent of His... of the devil, that is; he moves in devious ways, just as our lord’s motivations are mysterious. I have you fastened over the ‘horse’ - and as helpless as can be - and it is going to seem every bit like rape.... but...” He coughed like dry parchment, collating his thoughts while absentmindedly rubbing himself lewdly through his cassock. “...You’re still in the early stages, yet to be properly broken in... but I will break you in - just like breaking in a young filly” He was eyeing the naked twin mounds of the girl’s bottom cheeks, recalling with envy how he’d witnessed that delectable bottom getting a damn good caning from the Mother Superior just a handful of hours previously - that woman had really laid into it.

For the moment all he could do was stand gazing star struck at the lovingly stripped, naked creature curved across the top of the vaulting horse, at those succulent hindquarters so invitingly presented, the girl’s wrists corded with leather to the sloping legs at the front, her ankles cuffed tightly to the rear. There could be no denying it; practically anything was possible here!

He removed his lower clothing and still gazing lustfully at the prone teenager stood a while semi-naked, running his bony fingers up and down his painfully throbbing, aching member, casually playing with himself like the pervert he was. He dipped a finger in the fish-cold Vaseline and slopped a dollop down across the girl’s stretched anus, running it between her pulled-apart bum cheeks, the sumptuous flesh of the girl’s buttocks quivering in apprehensive response. It was clear the girl appreciated just how helpless she was, how totally vulnerable, how pathetic. He pressed home a little, at the puckered brown bud, and the girl rewarded him with a little sighing mewing sound. Oh, what a terrible place this institution must seem to her! What heaven it was to know that’s how she felt - and that he was part of making it that way for her! Would she ever get used to being repeatedly violated, repeatedly used, repeatedly raped, forced to perform the most nauseous acts she could imagine, or others might imagine for her? He fervently hoped not.

He pressed his member up against the girl’s bottom, centring it between the girl’s chubby bum cheeks, she shuddered violently. “Excellent!” he thought. Pausing to slap both cheeks violently with his palm he pressed on in - and began bumming the girl rhythmically, clawing at her backside, heavy-sagging balls slapping against her young buttocks as he pushed in and dragged out - over and over and over... He was thrilled by the notion that with every stroke he was storing up trouble for her in the future, stretching tiny tendons and muscles to the point that one day she might find herself rendered incontinent - in fact he would make that his aim, make it come true sooner rather than later.

He looked down in wonder at her bottom, those reddening globes bouncing like beachballs: “You’ve a couple of real little beauties, there, my child; a temptation taken straight from the very sketchpad of the devil himself I shouldn’t wonder. But we mustn’t be too vain - and I mustn’t be too complacent. One can never let down one’s guard where the devil’s tempestuous works are concerned - and if I must now punish that tender bottom of yours, you must understand, child; it is His sin I am striving to expunge, His hand I am struggling to free you from under... Please believe that, my dear.”

Stepping back, red-cheeked and still panting from his previous exertions, he raised his veined and liver-spotted hand, the thick well-oiled pliant plaited leather cord slung from its wrist strap flopping listlessly backwards behind his head under its own weight like the tail of the Great Beast himself. For a moment he paused, licking his fat lips greedily, a bead of pious sweat dribbling down his wrinkled, furrowed brow as he surveyed the temptation of girl flesh bent double before him, the girl helpless in her bonds and all the more heartbreakingly attractive for it. One hooded blood shot eye squinted at the dust-laden Cinemascope shafts of sunlight beaming across the cold-shadowed space, the other joined it in tracing back the kaleidoscopic imagery from the worn uneven flagstones to the iron railed and mesh covered Norman arch window, and the stained glass saint with his raised silver-glass sword; raised in preparation to smite the sinful; raised, as his own hand was now raised, to speak on behalf of the Lord God, chasten the flesh, pursue that unclean intent clean away. He glanced at the golden cross, at the altarpiece flickering with the reassuring yellow tongues of candlelight, the opened bluish Vaseline jar appearing opalescent, almost visionary, like a giant mystic pearl perched on the edge of the gold-threaded alter cloth. Satisfied that God was indeed at work here, expunging his guilt with His guiding hand, he brought his own, very much mortal, hand slashing down.

The air in the little chapel hissed like the serpent that tempted Eve as the serpentine lash found its mark. A sharp concussive crack like an electric discharge reverberated off the close block-stone walls, rounded fluted pillars and vaulted ceiling and was followed near instantaneously by a soul searching scream emanating from the girl’s tossing head buried deep amongst the very darkest of the shadows. Smoke-like ghosts of her tortured features flickered around the walls and across the ceiling, projected up from the mirror he had laid on the floor beforehand, beneath where her head hung down, so that she might witness the fruits of her own vanity depart under the scourge, bear witness to her own redemption in pain and suffering.

Surrounded by four small smoky tallow candles of its own - one set at each corner and balanced on its own waxy base - the mirror lit the pretty, though now pain-distorted face as if ablaze in yellow flame, the smoke making her cough and adding to her misery, the under-lit effect making her upturned button nose appear positively piggy in her reflection and her eyes droop-lidded and baggy, despite her youth - and the squealing emanating from her parted lips all the more ironically apt. The tears drip-dripping now, falling like rain, stippling her reflection, appeared to her as if bullet holes drilled in her soul, her cheeks so red as if bleeding lifeblood, her bloodshot eyes - yellowed and reddened in the candlelight and somehow rendered disease ridden - robbed of their natural innocent blue and looking every bit as sin-filled as his accusations of harlotry made out... Perhaps she deserved this after all... Perhaps it was her fault - just like he said, just as Mother Superior was always saying whenever she had her down on her knees, her head bobbing under the woman’s ruched-up black-on-black robes...

Panting with the exertion the old man raised the plaited leather switch again and again; he was dolling out a real biblical thrashing, and he had a suitably biblical validation to impart; a ‘man of the cloth’ there were always certain theological arguments he could apply to justify his actions. It seemed the Bible was full to brimming with excuses to discipline his ‘flock’, to ‘excise the Devil’ being just one; the irony added to the suffering somehow... perhaps that was why he troubled himself... or was it just to ease his own conscience. Crying out in pain, writhing in her bonds like some dark-ages penitent, she decided it was the former...

“You must repent, my child... repent... R.E.P.E.N.T - repent...” He punctuated the spelling with a rapid back and forth, to and thro, crisscrossing of the laying-on of the lash, slashing the pliant rubbery implement across each of her perfectly taut, tight, globe-like bottom cheeks in turn. “The Bible says: ‘the blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil’... Proverbs 20:30 my dear...”

All the religious indoctrination she had been exposed to since finding herself detained here must have been working, for regarding the hypocrisy of the old pervert’s words, a suitably apt riposte wrote itself into her pain and humiliation fogged mind: Ill-advisedly she found herself muttering it out between breathless sobs; catching her words he leaned close to listen. Already his right hand was reaching for the prison-weight cane lying along the cloth-dressed stone altar slab, his left almost absentmindedly let fall the lash-like plaited leather switch he had been using to the floor; his wine-laden, gum-rotted breath heavy and corpse-sweet in her nostrils made her want to retch. “...And shall cut him asunder... and appoint him his portion... with the hypocrites: and there shall be weeping and... gnashing of teeth... Matthew 24:51...” she murmured between shuddering, shoulder-shaking breaths, her lungs rattling, filled with crypt-dank air and fatty-acrid candle smoke - all that soot was making her wheeze; she could see the jet particles rising, dancing like gnats around her face.

Along with the weight gain, muscle-wasting and general loss of aerobic fitness - they wouldn’t let her keep up her exercise régime, saying there was ‘insufficient scope within the day’s itinerary’ and besides her concern over her appearance ‘smacked too much of vanity’ (an attitude she now understood was a mortal sin in itself) - it seemed she now had asthma to contend with. As much as anything else it appeared she was allergic to certain animal fibres, the most obvious culprit being the thin horsehair mattresses and horsehair-stuffed pillows that filled the narrow iron-framed cots in the dormitory. The others had at least a fitted rubber sheet over the mattress to lie on; her mattress cover - and two other girls who were clearly (to her mind anyway) similarly afflicted - had been taken away, ‘in case an allergy to rubber is to blame’ as the dormitory mistress had said.

The later was a particularly buxom, wide-beamed stern-faced nun - supposedly medically-trained - who habitually dressed in the navy blue uniform dress and white apron of a British hospital matron and who usually was to be found swanning around her domain of beds, examination couches, enema and douche bottles, bedpans, commode chairs and all the rest with a slender crook-handle school cane in her hand as if it were an extra God-gifted appendage. She was a formidable woman at the best of times, to put it mildly, and certainly not one to be argued with, not if you didn’t want to feel the bite of her cane across your backside - and she never stopped at anything less than six, even for the most innocent of infractions. Which was why she had said nothing when her single coarse woollen blanket - so noxiously smelly that the rumour whispered between those few that still dared whisper was that the blankets were actually washed in the pooled liquid contents gathered from the bedpans and commodes - was unceremoniously swapped for an even coarser one woven from horsehair ‘lest a sensitivity to the lanolin on the wool be the problem - a very common allergy’. As if any residue of the animal’s natural oils would have survived all the decades those old red and yellow striped grey blankets had been in existence, the countless necks they had been clutched tightly around against the biting winter chill, the sweat they would have soaked up in the summer when the lack of ventilation caused by the bolted shut wire-covered windows really told.

Latterly there had been the additional requirement to deal with that one-piece woven horsehair ‘combinations’ be worn beneath her ‘foundations’ and ‘stays’ - but this stipulation applied to all girls, not just herself and those other two; quite besides the effects on her breathing, the scratchy, prickly fibre brought her up in hives, and in the most unfortunate and private places. The Reverend Father’s own private stipulation of befrilled and beribboned lacy choir-girl surplus, the ankle-length frilled-necked cassock with its close-fitting waist and sleeves and - more to the point - the old-fashioned navy blue flannel schoolgirl knickers he insisted she report to him wearing underneath had actually come as something of a relief, or would have if he hadn’t then added he wanted a horse hair vest worn ‘to ensure you keep warm’. The knickers initially he had tugged up so tight that the material had pulled deep into the declivity between her cheeks, her now-plump thighs spilling out from beneath the elastic of the legs. He had soon tired of that; a few slaps of his hand across the back of her thighs and down they’d come.

“How... How,,,” Uncharacteristically lost for words the disbelieving old self-styled God’s Shepard spluttered and stammered out his outrage. Suddenly he was beside himself in rage, shrouded in red mist. That his own teachings should have been spouted back at him by such a wanton creature... Why, it was... it was... heretical, blasphemous! “... How, how dare you... How dare you quote the Lord’s word at me, harlot” he spat, unchristian venom staining every word like the bilious yellow discolouration of his fingers and the rings around his staring bloodshot bagged eyes; “How dare you, festering-sin-ridden daughter of Satan that you are, misappropriate the scriptures, sully The Word with your forked serpent’s tongue!!”

His thick Irish brogue always strengthened in anger; it became harsher, more grating, aggressively migrated northwards from his native Eire, becoming more Belfast soapbox-thumper than Dublin coffee house debater, leaving him sounding like a 1970s Unionist figure at the height of ‘the troubles’, though back then - as a young seminary priest in Londonderry, where he had lived most of his adult life - his allegiance had always been staunchly Separatist; a Sinn Féin man through and through, Catholicism oozing from his pores: He hated the English. He hated the Welsh too, with their elitist little fundamentalist protestant and Baptist chapels - even in London they had to have their own churches, he’d seen one such of these ‘capeli’ for himself, sited behind the hustle-bustle of Oxford Street in Eastcastle Street... In fact he hated any form, any expression, of reformist (as he rather anachronistically still saw it) bloody puritanical Protestantism; Bloody Martin Luther! What a better world it would have been, had he never been born.

In some ways this almost pathological intolerance was forgivable, though not justifiable or at all Christian. After all, his father had perished in a Unionist sectarian bombing while visiting him during a particularly brittle and incendiary period. His Mother - unfortunately all too easily identifiable as a so-called ‘papist’, as was the slur spat out - had been attacked on the street by a group of enraged women on her way to the hospital in the aftermath. And his two younger brothers - twins, barely out of school, both largely apolitical and anachronistically tolerant of religious belief up to that time - then became swallowed up in the conflict as a result. Heading north themselves, seduced by the mystique of the provisional IRA, these two blameless young lads were both subsequently been put down at the hands of the British, summarily executed on the street (as he saw it) by the Royal Ulster Constabulary backed by a contingent of the British army. It had all been too much for his mother; the final straw.

Left blinded in one eye and wheelchair-bound as a result of the Belfast street attack, his mother had become a broken woman overnight. Her mind torn apart by grief, she’d had to be institutionalised at that point. Having moved to the UK to be closer to émigré relatives living in North London’s Kilburn area - home to a large Irish diaspora community (diaspóra na nGael, in Gaelic) at the time - it had accordingly been a British hospital she had then been confined to: She’d subsequently taken her own life - an unforgivable act in the eyes of the Catholic church, and in direct contravenance of his teachings and her own faith - when in the mid-nineteen eighties the ‘Great’ British Government had announced they were to close down the hospital, the only home she had known for the previous ten years, as a result of their ‘care in the community’ scheme. She’d stockpiled some portion of her medication for weeks beforehand apparently, washed it all down with a goodly swig from a bottle of poteen he’d once smuggled in for her while visiting.

Father Kenneth Aloysius Mcmacmarghn had been distraught at the news, the balance of his mind dubious ever since; though such worries were easily glossed over in such isolated communities as this one. And Father Kenneth Aloysius Mcmacmarghn had been the recipient of a Gregorian doctorate in theology in his time, before he went mad (not that anyone around him would ever use that word) was a polyglot, speaking ancient Greek and Hebrew among other tongues, besides the expected Latin, and was steeped in philosophical thought: a learned man. It was ironic, really; if it was God’s work, then it was the work of a very humorous, mischievous deity indeed; it was little wonder He would set out all this wobbling feminine temptation before him, to test him, to test his resolve to thrash and whip and cane the sin from it.

Livid now, his face ruddy as much with foul temper as exertion (and the excitement he consciously had to suppress, consigning it to the back of his mind) the Reverend Father brought the crook-handled cane he had retrieved from the altar arcing down and swooping around into the restrained girl’s defenceless cheeks, the many-ridged pliant bamboo cracking sharply across the centre line of both heavenly-rounded globes. The girl screamed a shrill scream of desperation greater and more piercing than any she had ever produced before, her vocal cords surely shredding. He had thrown off his jacket now, showing he meant business. Having rolled up his sleeves, and having swung his arm back behind his head for another strike like a golfer teeing off, pausing a moment to let the previous sink in (most important, that) he smiled to himself - never mind ‘choir girl’, her vocal cords would be so covered in nodules she’d barely be able to speak other than with a husky high croak before long; but he loved that sort of earthy huskiness; a real cock-sucker’s voice. He’d have to start her training in that direction soon. He’d start her off gently of course; first of all on its own; only then, once she became more experienced, less fazed by the act, he’d move on to making it second fiddle to having ‘taken her’ conventionally first... But it was so much more satisfying to have sodomised her beforehand. He brought the next stroke slashing in, swinging the long length of finger-thick yet pliable bamboo down and around as before, just like a golf swing; he was good at golf, despite his antiquity.

His mind racing now as if possessed and sweating profusely he flexed the cane between his hands, the two ends almost meeting; it was heavy, so-called ‘prison weight’ yet as flexible as one of half its diameter; all thanks to the pickling, he reflected. Standing over her, staring down at the candle-flickered reflection of her face in the mirror lying on the floor he felt his old flaccid member once again begin to twitch into life, as if miraculously resurrected; a sure sign from above if ever there’d been one, surely a sign that all was right with the Lord. Feeling vindicated he wondered if he shouldn’t have her bring her tongue to the thing at least, just let her have a taste of her own bottom’s corruption - just this once, just to give the filly the idea of how it felt to be being broken in, before he got down to her real training over the next weeks and months... Not yet, a few more strokes of the cane, then she’d be ready; another half dozen or so, just to purify her thoughts, and she’d be amenable to anything! And if not, if the Devil still proved to inhabit the petulant, pouting little fool; well, there’d be no harm in another dozen or so more - there were always the smelling salts if worst came to the worst. He slashed in another strike - then two more in quick succession, these in criss-cross fashion as he had a little earlier with the leather switch: That, scream, deafening in such an enclosed space; he was almost glad he was becoming a little hard of hearing; but was it not a littler hoarser this time, a little huskier, or was it his imagination. No, definitely a little hoarser; he’d have to stop, pause a moment, remind her of how she should strive to look after her voice - the voice of an angel a music teacher had once told her apparently - advise her to apply a little self-discipline to avoid crying out so.

Perhaps he should encourage her with the promise of a few extra stripes for each time she called out? Hmm? Singing and athletics wasn’t it (or was it athletics and singing? What order did she rate her greatest loves and ambitions?). Well he never had been one for the sort of swooping angelic-chorus type of vocal style this girl favoured. He still felt sure she was destined to be his favourite choir girl though - why, he’d have to get her in here for ‘choir practice’ daily from now on; he’d square it with the Mother Superior later. After all, it was his duty as choir master; he could still keep those vocal cords nice and active, even if the athletics aspect of her ambitions and aspirations couldn’t be supported and fulfilled in this place. Deciding to put off for the moment imparting his professional voice-coaching advice, he swished in yet another stroke of the cane, perhaps even harder this time, inspiration adding power to his arm, augmenting his strength; it was caning that kept him limber he sometimes thought, even more so than golf... and that other thing he enjoyed so much about all this: Yes, he thought, definitely throatier, in fact quite hoarse really - he slashed in another stroke, quickly this time, not giving her time to recover - what a shame! He smiled down at her reflection - and sullenly she looked up at him, the man who had mastered her, her full lips moving, something croaky, some sort of plea most likely, issuing - he flexed the cane as he spoke.

“You really must try to control all this wailing and hysterics my dear, be careful of that voice of yours. A voice like yours is so easily damaged through overuse, you know - and we don’t want that, now... do we?” So saying he drew back his arm once more, satisfied to see her wince, satisfied that now it was not only limited to the anticipation of the coming sting. “Perhaps if I were to offer a couple more for each time you made a sound it would help? Hmmm?” The air whistled around her; the cane, when it landed across her wriggling, convulsing bare behind stung her then like a wasp, the pain magnified a thousand fold by the knowledge she dare not cry out... But of course she did - who wouldn’t have - the sound reverberating off the walls and flagstone floor and deafening even herself... “Two more strokes then... to be added on at the end, of course.” Not that he’d necessarily inform her at what point that ‘end’ might be reached. That throat did sound sore now, though... yes, what a shame. But she’d have the night to rest - after serving her time in the workhouse performing her labours and then the school-room sessions after that - so those vocal cords would be given at least a little time to recover. But he’d have to have her back in for a ‘practice session’ again on the morrow, perhaps after evensong; one had to exercise the voice if one wanted to hold down a career as a singer... But ambition and aspiration were forms of sin, expressions of another form of vanity... Oh well!...

***

Outside, in the saintly priory grounds, all was idyllic; dovecot doves cooed, leaves rustled gently on the branches, penned sheep bleated and somewhere in the distance a cockerel crowed, awakening the sleepy. From the distant hay meadow a skylark soared as if to conduct the morning chorus, taking it on itself to take the twittering lead part, rooks sang along in their baritone barks from up in the great oak at the rear of the church and a late-pairing greater spotted woodpecker drummed for a mate, or to claim territory, a green woodpecker laughing back from the top of one of the slender poplars that picked out the line of the outer perimeter wall some half-mile distant. The house martins were already swooping back and forth from their inverted bee-hive-like mud dwellings tucked away under the eaves of the outbuildings, their off-white bellies flashing under swept-back blue-black wings, their high-pitch cries splitting the silence.

The mid-June sky was a cloudless purplish-blue, welcoming, beckoning dawn, but as yet still devoid the great yellow sun disk it missed and craved. Presently represented in jagged rose pink bands on the horizon interspersed with piercing gold rods the sun would ascend the cliff escarpment to the east in its own good time. Already a few eye-blinding shafts were fanning out across the dry-stone-wall-enclosed fields lying outside the abbey walls as if God’s hand were sowing seeds of redemption upon the land, having overflowed and poured through distant saw-toothed rocky gaps. One such soul searching spotlight beam had already found the grey stone foils and cusps, the tracery, outlining the great stained glass window filling the abbey church’s eastern apse illuminating the central nave with over-flamboyantly rich colours and projecting the image of the cross down the central aisle, as happened every mid-summer’s morn; later as the angle steepened, around midday, the beam would alight upon the altar itself like a door opening from heaven, as if validating the structures consecration. This precise orientation with the lowest, narrowest ‘V’-shaped gap in the distant rocky escarpment was unlikely to have come about by chance and had more to do with the ‘old religion’ - as was still whispered about locally, surviving in the form of various traditional superstitions and annual celebrations - than with Christianity.

Not that there were many native to the area left resident; most had long ago departed for the promise of the towns and cities. Those handful (if that) still resident, unfortunate enough to have been born locally, owed their livelihood to the priory; and their allegiance to the Church, with a capital ‘C’, their very survival in this harsh land, devoid of even of rabbits to poach, dependent on the institution that owned the flocks that grazed, and the sparse pasture they grazed upon. Even the cluster of natural springs high up in the rocks that fed the stream running through the grounds were owned by the abbey. The few sea trout that ventured into the lower reaches (and perhaps a few eels - though their numbers were declining faster than an inner-city church congregation) might have been fair game, though strictly speaking the Church owned the fishing rights, but the upper reaches, that stretch above the dam situated in the priory grounds, had been netted out long ago; not so the plentifully-stocked abbey pond though.

Yes, a poor, scratchy barren land indeed, yet a destitution strangely belied by the richness of the ornamentation to be observed around the priory and its grounds. Stonemason-crafted gargoyles, exquisite tracery, an obscene acreage of stained-glass, gold-leaf embellished saints, painted statuary - all the paraphernalia that elsewhere would have vanished with the coming of the reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries had somehow survived here intact. With little by way of natural resources to plunder, not much in terms of visible industry outside of the wool harvested off the scraggy hardy sheep and the odd stand of barley, the priory’s continued existence raised the vexed question of patronage: Just whose deep pockets were funding all this? Why, if not for the solitude, the peace, isolation and the solitude?

And if isolation and the solitude were to be assigned some kind of monetary value - well, this establishment’s wealth was assured. Isolation and solitude were certainly attributes the priory and its surrounds possessed in spades. But could one export isolation and solitude, make a commodity of such abstract concepts, - or perhaps exploit something to be made of these attributes instead? But then such establishments had ever been masters of exploitation in one form or another - that was ostensibly the reason old King Henry, Henry (VIII), had supported the reformation, closed so many of the great houses, pulled so many of these places to the ground. But this had been considered a quite minor house back then in the late 1530s, merely an annex to one of the great houses of Ireland. That, its lack of value - having little to offer to line the king’s pockets - and its remoteness had saved it... The place had come a long way since the seesawing machinations of the Tudors.

The first couple of swallows had now arrived over the carp pond - more would arrive later - their forked tails trailing behind, wheeling, twisting and turning above the weeping willow before swooping low, blurring through the gaps between the golden flag-topped rushes and yellow-flowing water irises. Glancing off the surface, plucking insects from the water, or as close to it as makes no difference, they left ripples in their wake streaking and spoiling the biscuit box imagery of the modest abbey church’s small crenulated spire, the great stone cross standing defiantly before it and the gnarly old wooden fence all painted within the irregular circle of white-flowered lily pads and yellow and white butter-cup-flowering water crowfoot. Dense mats of the latter spread out in a pincer movement from stronghold deltas of green yellow and white sited either end of the expansive, roughly oval, pond, where the stream feeding it -and dammed in antiquity to create it - flowed in and out, the latter point being by way of an aged sluice gate, crooked and in dire need of repair.

As with the just-flowering lilies, the late-breeding woodpecker and the casual arrival of the swallows, the crowfoot mats had only of late erupted into bloom, rushing into flower in a hurried chain reaction like ignited paraffin blazing across the water. Spring arrived late in these parts; those fauna and flora that did best were those best able to make up for lost time; industry was everything here. Despite the early morning chill, clouds of midges circulated maddeningly, bumble bees droned and groaned low long and hard from any sunny surface they might find, shivering urgently, actively warming their flight muscles. Predatory stiff-winged green and blue dragonflies perched on overhanging twigs and stems patiently awaiting the sun to warm them through.

Closer to home, coal-black and virgin-white clad nuns, rosaries clicking and clacking between slender lily-soft fingertips, wandered meditatively amongst the flickering leafiness of the apple and pear orchid, the air still fresh and cool with the earthy scent of early-morning dew, ghostly powder-puffs of steam rising from murmuring lips, rising like diffuse bubbles of prayer towards the heavens. Meandering apparently aimlessly back and forth, in their white headdresses - or wimples - the women, some flicking through wrinkled black prayer books, looked like contented magpies eager to spread out their wings on the sheep-cropped grass, hoping to rid themselves of parasites under the all-cleansing rays of God’s own light. This latter impression was one that could only be encouraged by their hooded headdresses which rising to a near-point at the apex at the rear of the crown, swept downwards and exaggeratedly outwards to either side at shoulder level like a pair of dove’s wings.

Possessing a tight band around the forehead, the wimple left only the fresh, well-scrubbed, central circle of the face uncovered, the eyes, nose lips, cheeks and chin, adding to the depersonalising, dehumanising effect. Yet there was still something very human about them, a straight-backed poise and grace in the way they glided to and thro. Close up, each radiated a sort of self-conscious, almost smug, superiority, authoritative as much as pious, humbling as much as humble; flashing eyes and a tight-lipped determination that commanded - no, demanded - respect, that bordered on the domineering. It was a state each could confidently justify as emanating from a much higher authority, one for whom they acted by proxy thus validating their actions, however harsh those actions might seem to the outside world. This was something reiterated daily over and over by the Abbess herself, the credo imparted through readings and prayer in the chapter house and at mealtimes in the refectory. Below this calm exterior lay a conflicted state of mind, then; human, vulnerable and as corruptible as all the rest.

These same aspects of pause, self-confidence and authority could hardly be applied to the slope-shouldered snaking line of brown-clad figures just visible in the distance beyond the flint-walled triangle of fruit trees and the lichen and moss covered headstones that lay beyond that. A single file brown serpent, headed and tailed by a black-and-white tented figure, could be seen winding its way along the worn stone path tracing out the transept’s southern wing - the irony being, this was a land supposedly devoid of snakes and serpents; those creatures that slithered on their bellies banished in legend before history itself had begun. Shuffling along silhouetted against the light-beige stone of the abbey church, the overtly feminine outlines of the line’s members could momentarily be made out, one at a time, picked out in fringed orange under the oblique side-on rays of the morning sun as the line negotiated the outermost arm of the transept before slithering into the transept’s shadow, practically disappearing from view.

Moving closer, trim heads could be seen tentatively twisting, glancing this way and that with widened inquisitive eyes set deep-circled within sun-starved pasty faces, as if amazed and intrigued by even the most common place sights and sounds of nature. It was a furtive curiosity and quickly curtailed by the strident voice barking from the rear, the terse command to “keep looking straight ahead... and no talking” ringing out and reverberating coldly off the stone walls, bringing all necks to erect stiffness and all heads to face forward, the addendum “... and three swipes of the cane for the next girl I see misbehaving” betraying the secret of the snake’s contrite obedience. And then the next command, this coming from the serpentine line’s head, exasperated and long-suffering and prefixed by a long overly-dramatised sigh: “That’s it... Hands on heads... That’ll be six strokes of the tawse bent across your bench, each and every one of you, once we get inside!” From somewhere within the body of the snake a sob can be heard, elsewhere a sniffle, a snuffle - someone has a cold, a dripping nose she dare not catch, not with her hands planted firmly on her head; and Mother Superior herself bring up the rear, tapping her cane against her robe and the side of her foot..

But why should such a scene as this be thought so unusual - given the context? One might think not; after all these establishments were ever known for their values of discipline, chastity, devotion and obedience. A group of novice nuns, then? But this browbeaten group being herded between the dormitory and the workhouse do not necessarily fit with the common image of the novice nun. There is the odd way they are garbed for example - all that brown; brown, brown and more drab damming penitent brown. Brown shoes, brown stockings, brown high buttoning and long-sleeved button through dresses, cuffs tightly buttoned around spare wrists, fingers interlocked on short-shorn heads retaining only just sufficient coverage to sport a boyish, side-parted style. An occasional, intermittent flash of gold-yellow is the only real colour to be seen outside this pale-faced sepia-tinted crocodile line, this emanating from the convent crest or motif and name embroidered on the single breast pocket of each dress.

All in all, a medieval scene of disciplined, repressed tranquillity. And well it might be; certainly there are few clues present to argue against it: But there are few pointers to raise the eyebrows. And it was in the style of dress it would have been most obvious; not in the nuns’ attire, for their regalia had not changed for centuries, but in the garb of that snaking line there was definitely something wrong, given the assumption of the mediaeval or immediately post-mediaeval periods . Those dresses: As the line wound closer still any person having previously guessed at the mediaeval period would certainly have seen there was something wrong with the styling. Here was an anachronism that notwithstanding the relative brevity of the skirt - the Victorians would never have shown the ankles, let alone the calves - bordered on Victoriana. It could be seen in the high-buttoning collar, in the fuller-that-strictly-functional skirt, the waspish waist secured by a buttoned belt of the same fabric, fitted tailored bodice and puffed ‘leg-of-mutton’ shoulders which tapered down into deep-sectioned cardboard-stiff buttoned cuffs. There was also an aspect of the juvenile too - after all the Victorians would never have allowed display of the ankles, let alone the calves... unless designed for a pre-pubescent school child! But by the figure alone, the bodily profile, it would have been clear that here was a group of girls and young women of early marriageable age.

Then there was that lustre, that slight silky sheen possessed by those severe, drab chocolate-brown knee length dresses, the glassy-looking rubbery buttons, the similar smooth shimmer just barely detectable in the matching waist aprons or tabards some wore over the top: It would hardly be likely that some element of silk would have been incorporated within a form of garb so clearly intended to withstand the rigors of hard menial graft. To the modern eye the mystery would be less unassailable: It all went to suggest some manner of hardwearing, washable, manmade fibre - and that assumption pushed the clock hands still further forward.

Looking up through the apple tree canopy and already, this early on, the brightening, bluing sky out to the east and south would not now be entirely pristine; two or three high diffuse feathery streaks would be scarring the sky as if drawn across by some heavenly quill pen, one perhaps still growing, a tiny silvery nib glinting at its high-altitude head. So... contrails... The hands of the clock are wound even further forward. To be sure only very few are ever seen here, but always there are a few each day; a few in the morning and a few in the early evening; and only ever at high altitude. These are long-haul flights setting out and returning. Rarely is anything low flying seen here, nothing low enough to make out any detail; no airliner at least; it is all passing stratospheric traffic - there are no airports nearby. It is if the modern world is rushing past, both oblivious and unheeded - well, almost.

There is, however, a single solitary airstrip nearby, but a grass airstrip Only quite recently constructed - with money from the Church - and controversially swallowing up one of the only few level patches of useable pasture in the vicinity, it is really only suitable only for single-engine light aircraft.. When the wind blows in a certain direction the orangey-yellow wind sock can sometimes be glimpsed distantly beyond the western perimeter wall, despite the eighteen-foot-plus of stone blocks and the wire-guarded top. When the wind comes in along another bearing, the perceptive detect the tang of salt on the air and the herring gulls circle - as today - and the distant guillemots can be heard crying; then you can be sure there is a storm brewing out at sea: How long then before it ventures inland?

The airfield occupies a plateau area, sited higher up than the sheltered valley occupied by the priory. But nevertheless, somewhat tellingly, there is no point so high within a sensible distance of the perimeter from which the privacy of the priory might be violated by cameras or binoculars or the carryings-on within its high walls overlooked or otherwise witnessed. And this is a good thing, given the hysteria igniting within the pages of the United Kingdom’s tabloids; given the press revelations of late regarding abuse - sexual or otherwise - allegedly carried out by various entertainment celebrities under the noses of those supposedly in authority, and the almost daily reports of various atrocities carried out and covered up within the Catholic church, the privacy of such an establishment as this was becoming an increasingly fragile thing.

You see there is another type of storm brewing; and everybody (almost) whose home this is knows it. Some might say it is long overdue coming ashore; after all it struck everywhere else long ago: Why should this remote stronghold of ‘traditional values’ be immune? Everything and everybody is increasingly coming under scrutiny. Even to the most self-denied denizen of this remotely-sited, high-walled private world it is becoming clear that this establishment’s days are likely now numbered. In particular there has been all that harping back in the press, resurrecting in the public’s collective mind the uncovering of the so called Magdalene Laundries scandal and how the last of those had only been closed down in the 1970s. Some claimed it was in the 90s... Opinions varied, arguments raged, films had been made and books written... But the fact remained... They were all of them wrong, the pundits and the investigative journalists; all of them.

You see, despite the fact that the only ‘laundering’ going on nowadays has more to do with taxation and the shuttling back and forth of ‘charitable’ funds than cleaning grubby dresses and grimy jackets - and although it is now the more labour-intensive side of fashion-industry manufacturing that is the money-spinner, (together with that more sinister industry known as ‘human harvesting’) - despite all of this, all these specialisation changes reflecting the march of time (and the sheer remoteness of this establishment) one single irrefutable fact remains:

This is the last of the Magdalene Laundries, in all but name and detail... the very, very, very last of the Magdalene Laundries!