Neither Past, Present Nor Future
Lady Madison Daisy Bartlett
Erstwhile media mogul and ex fashion bunny she flowed across the floor with a dancer’s lithe grace and a businesswoman’s smart confidence, her floor length satin-draped gown a wind-swept late summer wheat field shimmer of golden waves echoed by her old-gold streaked brown shoulder length bob that glowed with random highlights and reflected in her honeyed solar-speckled hazel eyes. There was a golden-ish something around everything to do with Daisy Bartlett, or rather Lady Madison Daisy Bartlett as she was now entitled. From the golden glow of her bare shoulders and slender arms, a nod towards some long lost strand of antique exotic ancestry, to her carefully gold lacquered finger and toe nails embellished with the very latest holographic sparkle effects. Beneath the clinging folds of fabric a swelling fluid oscillation of heavy-bedded shadowing spoke of many hours of dedicated gym work as much as of the expense entailed by the finest breast and buttock enhancement that surgery had to offer.
The accessories and trappings were all there, the epitome of the wealthy, if somewhat ostentatious, businesswoman dressed for a fashionista Paris soirée - only the dark brown riding crop occupying her right hand, the latter white leather gloved lest she should suffer discomfort, spoke of different plans for her evening. Now with the full scene unfolding, her swaying walk took on a more threatening aspect, with each step a deliberate flexion of her right wrist brought the switch’s leather tongued tip to tap rhythmically against the ludicrously high heel of her hand-tooled golden strap-work open toe shoe.
Before her the blue-uniformed teenager knelt with haunches squatted back on her heels and head bowed, all the time following that swinging tip with a mesmeric fatalistic fascination through saucer eyes as blue as her uniform dress. Small shell pink manicured fingers fidgeted awkwardly between hands rested on an aproned lap of satin-sheened powder-blue and pastel-pink stripes. The long-sleeved frock had long since began to display the irregular darkenings, indicative of nervous tension, spreading along and through the fabric at the sides of the breasts, expansions of sweat following the lines and folds of the soft powder-blue fabric as juxtaposing wetted navy-blue contours around both armpits.
That there should have been such a corruption of her carefully contrived colour scheme had Lady Madison bristling with indignation.
Notwithstanding that the girl’s sweat was a perfectly natural response under the circumstances, a physical representation of terror and dread, a terror and dread that Lady Madison herself had carefully and lovingly crafted and instilled in her, nevertheless the slowly spreading staining was earning Lady Madison’s ire, it was ruining the entire aesthetic.
Quite with what strange perversity of aesthetic led her to lay such import upon the colour of what, after all, was merely a servant’s working dress exactly reflecting the girl’s eyes we will never know, suffice it to say that much time and effort had gone into sourcing a fabric that was suitable, practical and that exactly matched those huge, pretty, powder-blue eyes. She had eschewed the traditional black-and-white look and definitely ruled out any influence in the direction of the ‘ French maid’ as being “ most unsuitable”, feeling compelled to comment in her most haughty of tones: “ ... that the little strumpet should ever appear so overtly attractive is quite, quite unthinkable”.
No commercially available design could be found quite meeting her criteria and quite able to provide that critical balance between functionality, pleasing aesthetic and, importantly, humility. In the fullness of time Lady Madison herself had been forced to put pen to paper, a task for which she had had no little enthusiasm; indeed a fever set in that had her working practically day and night with an inspired fervour that she had never before achieved, nor since, if she be honest.
Drawing after drawing, each feverishly more outlandish than the previous, poured out of her imagination; through cycle after cycle of evolution, excitement nourished imagination and imagination in its turn stimulated imagination. The result was a froth of domestic femininity, a confection more likely the province of the more fetishistically-extreme transvestite than a real live teenage girl such as was presently facing her ire. That particular blue more than just reiterated those eyes but juxtaposed with the pastel-pink trimmings, details and accessories, emphasised prettily her girlish blonde looks; endowing her with an innocence beyond which she had long ago travelled, totally robbing her eighteen years of any pretence of adulthood while implying total servitude.
A soft and elaborate lacework trimmed the cuffs and collar, both of which were of blue and pink stripe so as to match the apron. The collar was an oversized circular affair lying flat across the shoulders and reaching down at the front to halfway between the dress’ second and third buttons and to a similar extent at the rear with its laced edging almost brushing the small neat puffballs of the shoulders at the sides.
The girl’s breasts rose and fell with an ever-increasing tempo, emphasised in their shadowy bedded curvature by the close tailoring of the bodice, its glassy-looking plastic buttons nestling neatly in the distinct cleavage thereby formed. Her mistress loomed ever closer, taking her time, always taking her time, letting the humiliation of the situation soak in; punishment was an opportunity. Chastisement was an opportunity to bring the girl deeper under her control, bind her; the mind was to be punished as much as the body, only then could the girl’s training be deepened, become truly irrevocable, a permanent and inescapable aspect of her psyche. The cane cracked down on the brown leather stool...
Momentarily the girl started before her response spelt out her resignation in her contrite bending at the waist - the French-plaited golden-tressed head dressed in frilled blue and pink striped cap springing down almost upon the floor, then lifting, so that her lips might meet the proffered riding switch to yield the required gentle kiss, the twin tails of her cap’s long striped ribbons lying heaped beneath on the immaculate polished parquet flooring.
From the very first stroke the tears came. She had no resolve, such had left her long ago hand-in-hand with her self-confidence, her pride, her vanity and the majority of her self-respect - the latter she now cursed for it had been through some residual remnant that her present situation had arisen; it was a malady that she knew her mistress had well in hand and would very soon have cured in its entirety.
What possible point was there in resolve, in strength and determination? The six strokes she was to receive were always the minimum tariff, always had been, there was no maximum only the advent of tears, and even then only fully heart-broken weeping, would satisfy her mistress. And she had been fully broken or very nearly so; there wasn’t much left now - her mistress was an expert who had brought her to heel long before her introduction to corporal punishment and humiliating uniforms, before she had herself realised what was happening to her. It had been a gradual eroding and overpowering of her will. And then there had been that institution, that hospital...
Her knickers had stayed up but merely to aid in the aesthetic, the red swellings enhanced and endowed with a novel beauty beneath the skin tight white satin, any protection was negligible and in any case was offset by a rule that left no freedom to failure: the end came when the tears came, always the tears, always at least six strokes.
The bloomers were the only part of her uniform that was not either pink, blue or both and even these were fastened at the waist and just above each of her knees by blue ribbons threaded through the fabric, those at the knees having to be tied with a neat but obvious bow on the outside of each knee, the ribbon tales dangling to below each knee and well displayed by virtue of her skirt’s three-quarter thigh length.
She particularly hated the bloomers; the legs were very full and loose and rustled together noisily as she walked drawing attention to that which she would much rather her skirt kept hidden. Around and between her buttocks, on the other hand, they fitted so as to sheave them as if a second skin, as if sprayed on, every nook, cranny and dimple displayed and she was obliged to ensure that they were kept pulled up tight enough to do so. Lady Madison thought nothing about flipping up her skirt to check and following up with a long hard caning if necessary, as had happened a more than one occasion; now she always not only tied them tightly pulled up as hard as possible but in addition took the precaution of running her index finger along between her buttocks and between her lips at the front, taking care not to linger lest she be punished for self-abuse. The fabric was of the thinnest and finest satin she had ever seen or felt, the snow-white colouring displayed the slightest of staining, both inside and out, and her pubic hair could quite clearly be discerned. The latter manifested as a thick bulging triangle now that she was no longer allowed to cut nor trim it.
This was in complete contrast to how they had kept her in hospital; there she had been kept shaved of course but, in its own way, this was every bit as humiliating if not more so.
Lady Madison or, even more humiliatingly, sometimes her housekeeper, would on occasion have her drop her knickers to around her knees, at which point she would be obliged to stand with her legs parted wide enough so as to keep the knickers stretched in position for inspection. Always the gusset would be scrutinised with utmost care; she could, and would, be caned for any staining, the slightest discolouration, they might perceive. And there was always something, she could be sure of that. This, she had long ago realised, was the raison d’etre for the choice of fabric, the colour, the cut, everything; those knickers were specifically designed to humiliate a woman by confronting her with her own femininity.
This was a concept that she had become only all too familiar with during her time in the hospital; an experience from which she had emerged totally ashamed of her own body, of even being a woman. Such checks and inspections were common to all aspects of her uniform, the seams of her pink stockings had to be dead straight, her blue satin pumps had to be kept pristine, the pink ribbon bow that fastened each tied just so.
Yes she had been proud once, this girl, once blessed with a model’s figure, potential and, even, ambition. A single word summed her up now, it was embroidered in navy blue thread across the front of her cap and the breast pocket of her dress: MAID. Whatever she had been, whatever she could have been, it had been superseded, wiped out by that most fantastically unnecessary act of embroidery, that one defining word: MAID.
The second stroke slashed in; a redoubling both of effort and of recipient’s tears - the woman’s anger was obvious now, had the girl the fortitude to face the ornate floor-to-ceiling mirror before her she could barely have failed to recognise the smile of satisfaction curling across her tormentor’s lips. First those unsightly darkened swathes of sweat and now the tear stains disfiguring her collar and cuffs - it was unforgivable! Was it not bad enough that the girl had had the temerity to have disobeyed her, or a least to have hesitated long enough as to have qualified as disobedience. True she had dropped to her knees eventually, visibly steeling herself for the ordeal to come, her face a contorted portrait of consternation and of unendurable distaste.
That in itself, that distorted countenance, would have been bad enough. That she should have faced her mistress possessed of an aspect of anything other than that of utmost pleasure, that she should have presented an attitude anything other than that of one to whom servitude gave the utmost pleasure and to whom the intimate pleasure of her mistress represented the very pinnacle of that service, was unforgivable. After all it was not as if she had demanded of the girl some sudden stepwise transition in situation and status, she had put the girl through a carefully orchestrated graduation spread over several months.
Ritual was all important; in gently graduated stages the girl had learnt to kneel and bring her lips to her mistress’ feet and then the hem of her skirt in greeting. Later she had she been required to kiss the gusset of her mistresses knickers, taken straight from the draw, before holding them out for her mistress to step into, doing so from bended knees.
Still later the ritual had been expanded to form part of her laundry duties; each and every piece of her mistress’s underwear, whether knickers, thong or panty girdle, required the gentlest of kisses placed upon the gusset before progressing to the bowl for washing.
At first it had been sufficient to place her lips to each garments exterior but once judged that she be sufficiently familiar with the flavours and odours she had been progressed to having to kiss the more intimate soiling within.
Throughout these duties she had been placed under the supervision of Lady Madison’s housekeeper with whom Lady Madison had been delighted, both with the latter’s informed reference to the ritual as the ‘ pre-wash’ and her subsequent functional expansion of it beyond the boundary of mere terminology. There had been some required intervention from Lady Madison’s riding crop but as her housekeeper had pointed out: a good minute or two of mouth soaking, pre-wash, did wonders for the more stubborn stains. More recently the girl had progressed to the point of regularly kissing her mistresses knickered crotch. The girl was well used to the sights, tastes and scents, should such a finely-diaphanous barrier of fabric have made such a difference by its removal?
She had begged in the end, the girl, begged to be allowed to do as had been required of her, pleaded that she might worship her mistress’s body. All too late of course, all to no avail - the punishment was to be as much for her display of distaste and reluctance as it was for hesitation and refusal; it was all equally indicative of an attitude requiring of adjustment, an adjustment she was presently undergoing.
Swish-Crrrack! Ssswish-Crrack! The third and fourth strokes slashed in, the riding switch practically bending double as it cut through the air, its flexibility equalled only by its expense. This was very much a whipping, the girl’ s screams were evidence enough, dammed-wails that would not have sounded out of place in some mediaeval dungeon rather than echoing from the oak panelled walls of an English country house in the late 20th century. Lady Madison, the title purchased along with the estate, riding switch in leather gloved hand, stood in an ecstasy of appreciative irony surveying the weeping supplicant before her, savouring the scene whilst aiming her next stroke, anticipating the result.
How ironic that the humbling title of maid should be surmounted by the heraldic device of the girl’s own family wherever it appeared on her uniform. That her family’s crest, for centuries a badge of control, title and possession, should have been turned about so, should have come to represent the control wielded over her, her possession, nay, ownership, by the estate rather than of the estate, was a humbling crushing irony. How humbling it must have been to have had to embroider it with the skills of her own hands and fingers, fingers only moments removed from setting signature, for what it was worth, to the final papers. Not that such a signature was required or even valid; her sectioning under the mental health act had achieved all that the documentation purported to set out to.
There was the power of attorney to be transferred, the sale of her property to be authorised, the sale of her family’s title, her title. That the proceeds, indirectly through the power of attorney, were to come under the control of the purchaser was a most fragrant twist.
Then there was the documentation in which the now effectively disinherited and penniless wretch had had to admit to her incapacity, her mental illness and her inability to govern a her own affairs. There was the letter from her psychiatrist releasing her from the hospital with the proviso that she remain under Lady Madison’s care and that she could be returned to the clinic at any time should her condition deteriorate. This latter was a most transparent threat, a ‘deteriorating condition’ could clearly encompass any form of disobedience. Anything other than the most docile acceptance of her servile position was to result in her re-incarceration in that place with its unrelenting white walls, therapy sessions and, most of all, the discipline and isolation.
And so, with the grace of Lady Madison’s intervention, she lived still within her ancestral pile yet owned nothing, not even the uniform that Lady Madison insisted on. Yet, ironically, in a manner of speaking she herself was now owned, possessed. She was part of the estate now, a fact of which she was eternally reminded at each awakening, her first sight ever being that of the hideous uniform patiently awaiting her, hung upon the wall opposite the foot of her bed. The very act of enrobing was now in itself an act of surrender, to be reconfirmed at each break of day.
Ssswish-Crrack! Swisssh-Crrack! Strokes five and six, the cries were hoarse in her throat now, even her tears were relaxing their flow; she was all cried out, finished. How many? How many more strokes...?
The woman’s arm was draped comfortingly around the sobbing girl’s shoulders, encouraging and insisting that she rest her head against the amply soft pillowing of her golden satin-sheaved breasts. “There, there, honey” she soothed. “It’s not that I don’t love you, I love you very much indeed, it is just that you insist on being so wilful. It’s as if you feel you have to be disobedient from time to time, just on occasion, it’s as if there is some part of you that just won’t give in. It’s not as if you have anything to hold out for; you have nothing, you have no future outside of my home or some institution somewhere. The truth is; you just aren’t capable of functioning independently, you’d be lost if you were ever returned to society, you silly, silly, girl. Surely they taught you that at the hospital. Sometimes it’s just little things, certainly, but it’s always there, there’s always this little bit of stubbornness in you. Perhaps its pride, I don’t know, but we are going to have to work on it together, see if we can’t lose those last few vestiges.”
She was shepherding the girl slowly across the silk Persian rug that longitudinally dominated the centre of the room, the two women moving together as one towards the thick red velvet drapes that hung down over the French-doors that in turn led out onto the formally arranged garden beyond. Lady Madison kicked aside the puddle of velvet from the foot of the doors, first one side and then the other, simultaneously drawing open the drapes. The afternoon sun poured in, flooding the room with light, forming blinding dusty shafts of almost religious illumination wherever it cut into the more darkened recesses.
“It’s not as if you are a prisoner here, I’ve said that before, many times, there are no locked doors here, see?”
The doors were flung back with a deft movement, the still gently sobbing girl urged towards the green and flowered patchwork opening up before her.
Spread out there lay freedom, potentially at least, albeit notwithstanding the humiliation entailed; the spectacle that a public airing of her uniform would likely provide was not exactly an appealing notion. The garden opened out before her and beyond it, beyond the safe reassuring symmetry of its network of gravel paths and formal flower beds, lay the main road, just half a mile hence. The girl recoiled with such dread-inspired haste as to almost send her mistress sprawling across the room. Her eyes wide with terror she turned away from her agoraphobic torment to run, to hide. She collapsed in the darkest corner she could find, shivering and cringing in a sobbing thumb-sucking foetal heap behind a huge potted palm.
The smile on Lady Madison’s lips spoke now of some pity, some compassion, and yet, at the same time, this was a very knowing smile, there was, perhaps, just the vaguest hint of satisfaction to be discerned there.
What with the tour coming up, the meetings and then the cruise, some relaxation at last, she was going to be out of the country for pretty much the next six months or so. The girl was coming along fabulously but perhaps some more time spent back in that clinic would still be of benefit, besides who else could provide the special care that the girl now required. After all, she could hardly be expected to take an extreme agoraphobic half way around the globe with her.
Lady Madison Daisy Bartlett sighed; there was always some complication to be negotiated, such was the burden that came with success, such was her world.
Annie’s World, Matron’s World
For others the world is a very different place, there are a very different set of trials and tribulations to be faced this day.
Take Annie for example, a runaway once lost amongst the city’s sprawl; what if we were to be offered a glimpse into her life this particular day, a snapshot as it were? The same day, a far, far different location, environment and routine...
Annie is 21 today. No ‘happy birthday, birthday girl’ here. For Annie, today shall start like any other and as any other day, Annie is awoken by the harsh shrill ringing of the morning bell. Opening her eyes, the view that greets her she knows only too well. The clinical whiteness of the dormitory walls, the twin rows of hospital style beds. She has spent the last five years of her life waking to this scene.
She climbs quickly from her bed, as do the five other girls. All around is silence save for the soft rustling of latex bed covers and the crinkling of plastic knickers; talking could never be allowable in the dormitory. As do the other girls, Annie meekly kneels on the snow white carpeted floor alongside her bed , hands crossed in front of her, palms facing outwards, head bowed. As are the others, she is waiting for Matron to bring her bed pan. Above her, hanging from a hook on the wall beside her bed, awaits, patiently, her gymslip with its short, knife pleated skirt.
Matron will appear in due course. Her approach heralded in this surreal suffocating silence by the soft rhythmic sighing of her uniform dress against the nylon of her stockings and the occasional softly-cushioned footfall of high healed shoes on carpet. Her dress and demeanour are a study in the art, development and presentation of authority; she is the absolute image of control and domination.
Matron wears her full - skirted blue uniform dress at calf length. From her elasticated nurse’s belt with its ornate silver butterfly-wing clasp she hangs her keys to the left and her tawse to the right, the symbols of her rank and authority. She by far prefers to use a tawse to discipline girls - so much more personal than the cane somehow - but a cane hangs above the nurse’s station nonetheless.
This, then, is her world. She is queen here, empress, absolute ruler and dictator. The dormitory is her dominion, the girls, ‘her girls’, subservient serfs and the subjects of her realm. Her rules, her regulations, her stipulations, no matter how petty, are the unquestionable, unassailable law of this land. Unyielding, unbreakable. Unlike her charges, they who, in their turn, kneel, as is only fitting in such a majestic presence, in abject supplication; they are here to be moulded, one and all, broken to her will. The morning ritual is just beginning and ritual is all important here, in her world.
Not that there does not exist a higher authority, albeit outside of the immediate environs. Ultimately there is her employer of course but there are other determining forces; she never goes long without reflecting on her good fortune and her gratitude to their mutual benefactor.
From its inception the unit has been gifted with facilities and funding beyond their wildest dreams and set within premises of insurmountable and incomparable perfection of function. Presently the financial aspect still depended on that source; to date the provision of the new workhouse facilities only went so far towards their first stage goal of making the unit self funding, profitability lying some way off in the future.
Many might label as insane the substantial sums that have been poured into the unit, the old fashioned moirés upon which it is structured, the concept of ‘protection from moral danger’. However, few are privy and those that are support whole heartedly the goals.
Their benefactor is a woman of not insubstantial means, influence and philanthropic drive who, having stepped back from the reins of her businesses, has seized the opportunity to indulge further her unusually active interest in aiding ‘runaways’ and the homeless. If some might be cynical enough to point the finger at her intention of profitability, labelling it as exploitation, so be it; as she sees it there are many other aspects and benefits to her work. These were young impressionable girls plucked from the jaws of the greatest moral and physical dangers the city had to offer. Some of these girls were barely out of school and generally were lacking even the most basic of qualifications let alone employment prospects; what chance of an education did they have, what chance now? “What these girls need most is a good, stable, secure home, a good education, caring but firm guidance”. She is simply a successful business woman in a position to offer exactly that, albeit so far to just a handful of young women but, with the completion of the new wing, she will soon be extending her hand to others. Soon a few more lucky young women will be coming under Lady Marchment’s caring regime, to restart their lives in a ‘fine, stable and secure home’. A secure home indeed. Lady Marchment sets great store by security, ‘protection’ as she sees it; few prisons could be more secure. Once a girl has entered Lady Marchment’s program she finds that changing her mind is not an option; she has entered a private little world. A world of uniforms, bedpans, petty rules, strict routines and bells. Bells, bells, bells, always bells!...
This, then, is Matron’s world; a world within a world, ritualised and controlled. Today though there is disruption; there are girls here other than ‘birthday girl’ Annie and one of them is having difficulties adjusting.
Humiliation, shame, embarrassment, mortification. These terms and more could easily be applied to Jane’s reaction to the situation in which she has found herself this morning, yet no mere words could truly do justice to describe the depths of her despair. She can feel the soggy wetness of the thick knicker-liner, is only too aware of that other soft squigyness confined within her plastic bloomers. She has caught sight of herself in the mirror, kneeling there, and her horror is written across her pretty face. She can see the areas of yellowing and those of the more shaming blackness within the semi -transparent garment. She is acutely aware of the smell and, what is more, she can hear Matron approaching. She can feel tears falling on her upturned palms.
If we could listen in we would hear words of comfort and kindness from Matron, her voice would be soft, no hint of anger nor irritation. We would hear her curt instruction to the nurse to ‘clean the girl up’ and the nurse’s prompt response; “yes, Matron”. We might, just might if we were to listen closely enough, make out the occasional soft grunt from girls desperate for control, forced now to wait for their bed pans while the girl is dealt with. There then comes a sequence of events, inevitable under these circumstances.
First there comes the voice of the nurse; “she is ready, Matron.”
Then Matron; “thank you, nurse”. Then Matron again “bend over, girl”.
There is a pause, perhaps a sob, before: CRRACK! “One, t,thank you Matron”; CRRACCK! “T,tt two, tthank yyyou, mmmMatron”; CRRRAACK!! “Th, th, thr, three, th,th,tt thank yy,y you,,’sob’, mmmMatron”.
A bell rings; six girls take their places squatting over bed pans barely adequate at best. There comes the gasp of the freshly punished girl. She has been lucky, had she failed to count, failed to recite her formula of gratitude there could have been many more than three strokes of Matron’s tawse; Matron is apt to re-start her punishments. There are other sounds filling the air now of which the more sensitive might rather not be privy and which the girls, without exception, would rather not anyone hear. Suffice it to say that the bell, although continuing its tintinnabulation throughout is never quite loud enough, particularly under the never distant supervision of Matron and her nurse, strolling up and down between the twin lines of squatting girls as if invigilators in some twisted exam.
Well, what of the rest of the day in Matron’s world? For most they will have slipped outside Matron’s immediate sphere; there are lessons to be attended. The next two hours Matron spends at her desk; there are reports to be filled in. There are also plans to be drawn up; there are soon to be many changes made, particularly within the framework of the research activities, a bold extension of scope, in fact ground-breaking.
Post lunch and Jane, the girl for whom the morning has proved so vexatious, is scheduled to attend her therapy session with Ms Soames. She has thus been returned to Matron’s jurisdiction with the reminder of the latter’s authority still throbbing across her rather full buttocks.
She has been left to stand at the foot of her bed to wait for Matron, her compatriots having returned to the class room. She stands with hands on head facing the mirrored wall at the room’s far end. There is little scope for anything else.
There are three doors, the two set in to the side walls, one on either side at the room’s end toward which she is presently facing, she knows lead to the class room and the examination room, the latter being kept locked. The third door, the one set into the centre of the end wall behind her, the only door in or out of the suite in fact, lies safely beyond the floor to ceiling iron security grille that bisects the entire room at that point and that sets the limit of their living space. The symmetry of its thick bars is disturbed only by its inset gate with its bulky lock beyond which the door itself would, of course, be locked. She knows that through that door and only a short distance along the passageway beyond is to be encountered an identical, if somewhat narrower, grille of equally imposing bars and equipped with an equally robust lock. Besides, in front of her, no more than two bed-widths distant, the nurses’ station is occupied, as it always is, the woman, a red head, her colouration set off prettily by her light blue uniform, sits with her back to the mirror working on her reports but occasionally glancing up. There is always supervision here in Matron’s world.
In due course Matron arrives and takes Jane by the hand. This is one of Matron’s little rules; she always insists that a girl holds her hand if moving about the building outside of the ‘schooling wing’ as the suite is described.
In Ms Soames’s office she is told to sit in the deep soft leather armchair in the corner. She knows why she is here and what this is all about. She is reluctant but Matron softly whispers “hush child, be a good girl”. Jane feels compelled to sit, suddenly weak and tired. Tired to the bone, she just has to sit down for fear she might otherwise collapse, such is the extent of her fatigue.
And so she sits, sinking into the soft leather, her arms resting on the arm rests. Attached to one side of the chair is a table top that can be swung round over the lap of the occupant. On this there sits the television, an innocuous enough device. Matron swings the table top into position; the television screen now occupies practically the whole of the girl’s field of vision, the screen only a foot or so from her eyes. It flickers on, a vivid, constantly shifting, coloured, ‘herring - bone’ pattern appears. Jane looks away, Matron again whispers “hush child, be a good girl” and gently positions the girls head to again face the screen. Try as she might Jane cannot look away; soon she finds she does not even want to. She just wants to relax.
Only the pattern now, the room has receded. For five or six minutes the girl sits gazing at the mesmerising pattern before Ms Soames arrives. Matron smiles in greeting “I think she is ready.”
“Good, I take it there is no resistance now?”
“A little, still, I’m afraid.” Matron’s confident smile is never in danger of fading “...but the trigger phrase seems to quell her quite easily”.
Ms Soames approaches the girl from behind and gently begins to soothingly massage her temples with her soft long fingers. Softly, as we listen, we can her voice, but only just.
She is whispering now, whispering deep into the now - so receptive - girl’s ear. “Hush child, be a good girl, that’s it. Deeply, deeply, deeeeply, that’s a good girl, such a good girl. There are only us two, just little Jane with her best friend Ms Soames. You must trust and believe, you can trust and believe me can’t you, sweatheart?”
“Yes Ms Soames.”
“Well child today we are going to learn just how much we should trust, love and obey our betters. You remember how little, how so, so small you are, how defenceless, how weak and tired you feel, how difficult decisions are to make, how much better and safer you feel when others can make those decisions for you.”
“Yes Ms Soames.”
“We are in charge of you for your own good, you understand that now don’t you?”
“yes Ms Soames” the girl softly whispers.
“Good girl, you are such a good girl”
There is much, much more of course, whispered so sweetly, so maternally, so softly that we just can’t quite catch it; we have missed much. Perhaps another day, if we listen even more intently. But then again, perhaps it has been for the best; after all, Ms Soames can be very persuasive.
Matron leads Jane away from the office. The girl still feels drowsy, she is listless and confused. She is undoubtedly finding Ms Soames’s words seemingly completely occupying her mind; it will be quite some time before she will be able to fully concentrate on anything. Clearly, there is little point in returning her to the classroom in this state, accordingly she is led back to the dormitory ward and helped to get ready for bed; an hours afternoon nap will leave her feeling better. Matron leaves the sleeping girl with a recording playing through her bed’s headboard speakers. If we listen we may just be able to discern Ms Soames’s sweet tones, a reiteration of the main points of today’s and previous sessions
Ms Soames has prescribed three such therapy sessions per week for the next few weeks. She has been considering, recently, experimenting with techniques she has been thinking of with which to introduce some degree of sexual reorientation and she considers Jane ideal for these trials. She is pleased; under her guidance the girl is developing into a really good ‘easy’ subject. One or two of the other girls, the more institutionalised ones, are coming along nicely too, notably Annie, with whom we have met earlier, but this girl, Jane, is fast becoming the most responsive.
This then is Matron’s world, her immediately influential sphere. We have glimpsed something too, albeit indirectly, of her outer sphere wherein she is undoubtedly influential yet is herself influenced by the ideas and actions of others.
Do we not all inhabit our own little worlds in this way; each life a continuum of influence reaching out in all directions and through time, growing ever more diffuse yet significant nonetheless. Within this we are influenced and, in our turn, are influential. The actions we take, the decisions we make, all have been influenced by events elsewhere and ultimately feed through, influencing future events elsewhere in some way no matter how minor or subtle. A new circumstance is the outcome of the overlap of untold numbers of such influences; spheres overlapping spheres if you will, perhaps infinitely.
It may be argued that no situation or event exists in isolation but is rather like the skin of an onion; a concentric series of causes and effects each orbiting the next.
What then of Matron’s world? What of those more distant orbits; the lives she has touched or is destined to touch, the legacies of the past and the developments to come? Time passes, scenes change...