Angela's Trial and Tribulations (5 page)

“You have. You have. You have always been most considerate of me and I have always appreciated it, James. We have a good marriage and I am aware of the current mores on the subject. I am just surprised you haven't taken her yet - she is so exquisitely beautiful and I am sure she will perform most adequately.”

He didn't ask how she knew. In a big house, everyone seems to know everybody else's business. But he was clearly embarrassed. “Amanda!” Now his voice had an almost strangled tone to it. “Do you really want to discuss this in front of her?”

“Why not? She is only a prisoner. Almost a slave. I'm sure she will be interested, won't you, my dear?”

Angela kept her head down and James appreciated her consideration.

“Alright, Amanda, I'll tell you why. It is because of her beauty - her inner beauty not what is on the outside, that I have not taken her. I think this girl is something different from any female I have yet met with the possible exception of yourself. I want to protect her, as far as I am able, anyway, from the worst aspects of our new laws and keeping her here in our house and otherwise under my eye, so to speak, is the best way I know.”

She didn't say anything for a while but just sat there, eyes brimming, staring at her husband. “You are something else yourself, you great oaf,” she said at last, rushing over to him and taking him in her arms.

“I think, Angela, it is time Mrs Swift and I went inside. You may continue to weed here until Jane calls you in...”

She didn't even smile. “Certainly, Mr Mayor.” But inside she smiled. She was glad it was good between them, just as it was with her own parents. She knew so many men these days had girls on the side. They could of course. A boss might ask one of his female workers to come to his office and she would know very well it wasn't to take dictation. But she wouldn't dare complain or refuse. He might well have phrased the invitation in that guise but if she refused, she might well find herself on a charge of rebellion or impertinence and few male juries acquitted a girl these days. A few months as a naked prisoner soon squashed any fractious ideas such girls might harbour.

Similarly, a male customer might ask for a favour from a female clerk or assistant in a store. That assistance might well involve a kiss, a feel or even more but if she complained of sexual harassment, she well knew what her immediate fate would be.

Angela felt both relieved and in a strange way ennobled by James' words and his actions - or lack of them. She had begun to think there was something wrong with her for Jane was often summoned to his presence when his wife was out on some fundraising bash and Angela well knew what for. Now, it seemed, he wanted only to protect her from the worst excesses of her predicament as a female prisoner in the second decade of the Twenty-first Century. She blushed though as she recalled his words about her to his wife. Surely she was nothing special. No, she knew she was nothing special. She just tried to live her life by rules which she thought were fairly common amongst decent people.

She lived her days according to her own ideas, subject only to James' requirements. They were not demanding apart from the constant shame of her total and utter nudity. She drove him to work in the gig except on those occasions when he had to go out of town when a city car came to pick him up. On these occasions she stayed at home and gardened under Amanda's direction.

She came to like her boss's wife very much but she also feared for her. For Amanda now revealed that she belonged to a secret society. In fact she headed it. The society, named Females and Males Equal, FAME, met very secretly to plot a course to restore equality for women. “You, Angela, may be in a position to help us. My husband is a good man and he doesn't abuse women but he is a politician and a product of the system. He would never get behind us. You, on the other hand, if he does take you into his office and give you some responsibility may well be able to assist us. Will you help?” “No, Ma'am. Not because I am not sympathetic but because your husband has been very good to me. Very good indeed. I could never betray the trust he seems to want to place in me. I hope you understand... ?”

“I do and I admire you for it. All right, but I trust you will erase this conversation from your memory?”

Angela smiled. “What conversation, Ma'am?”

No more was said of the conspiracy and Angela gradually forgot about it. Her days were full enough although the waiting periods were both boring and harrowing. Boring for long inactivity and harrowing because she often had to stand in conspicuous places and suffer the examination and ribald comments of those who chose to stop and stare at her nakedness. They hadn't lessened in their suggestiveness or obsceneness and she still blushed all the time although she tried to ignore the worst of them.

Most invited sexual congress in one form or another with the speaker but usually in some unusual way as up her backside, down her mouth or between her legs rather than in the more usually accepted way. But nearly as many told how they thought a good beating would do her the world of good. These were usually quite detailed in how the beating should be administered.

A spanking whilst draped over the speaker's knees was the most common but then, as he warmed to his theme, he often went on to more painful and some quite weird punishments. The cane was the next most popular and there were many ways it could be applied to her buttocks and thighs. Some men wanted to cane her breasts as well at which suggestion she paled. How could they even dream of doing such a terrible thing to so delicate organs as a woman's breasts?

Others wanted her spread out along an upright sloping bench with her legs pulled out wide to expose her vagina which they then proposed should receive an impossible number of strokes of the cane, right up along the crack. Similarly, the soft and so sensitive insides of her thighs ought to be similarly treated.

Then there was the paddle. This instrument of leather and wood was the perfect instrument of chastisement to some of her ‘admirers'. “Yes, girlie. I'd have you strung up by your heels - spread as wide as my servants could get them mind, and then get stuck into that pert little bottom of yours. The paddle being leather it doesn't do as much damage as the cane but it sure hurts and we can go on for a long time. A stroke a minute over two hours would be a fitting punishment.”

Others spoke of ‘electrical stimulation' of her most sensitive parts: “A probe into your anus while another goes deep into your vagina and then the current raised up to around fifty volts would soon have you thrashing around beautifully,” said one technical wizard. Another young man agreed with the anal probe but suggested as the other electrode, a roving instrument with ultra-fine wires at the end, grazing over various parts of her anatomy would be even more effective.

All this she heard but tried to ignore. She couldn't really ignore them though and as the suggestions became more and more horrible she blushed furiously and the sweat on her flesh showed how badly they were getting to her. It only egged them on to better things.

“I think these sluts ought to be permanently enslaved. Then they could take off their arms entirely. Let them pull the gig with a belt around their waists... That's teach them a lesson and also be a warning to other would-be sluts.”

These were the worst moments. The best were when James climbed into the gig and bade her trot to another part of the city. The gig was light and he was no heavy-weight. It was easy enough work and anyway she delighted in punishing her body physically - with hard work anyway. She felt the wind in her face, there were no spectators to goad her and she was doing what she loved, running.

She never complained to him about the men, young men mostly, who abused her as she waited for him to come out from the building to which she had brought him. He didn't find out until he came up silently to where she was waiting one day and heard a particularly nasty suggestion involving golden syrup being introduced into her vagina and then being staked out near a nest of soldier ants. He took hold of the young man and shook him by his shirt front, scattered his audience with threats of prosecution for loitering (not indecent language as that would have been laughed out of court when applied to a mere woman) and then turned to Angela. “This happen often, girl?” he said gruffly as he climbed into the gig.

“Most days,” she said. She wasn't going to complain but she wasn't going to lie to him either.

“I see,” was all he said, but from then on, when she dropped him off he always told her to take the gig around the block until he was due to come out and he gave her a cheap watch so she could be on hand as required. She was inordinately grateful and that night as she soaped him down in the spa, she kissed him on the forehead. He just smiled.

One night after they had gone to bed, Jane asked her shyly if she had ever had sex with a woman. The implication was clear. So far, they had been good friends and the Thai girl had never even touched her improperly let alone tried to make love to her. “No, Jane. And I won't. Not that I don't like you - I even love you a little, but not like that.”

Jane, recognising the girl's antipathy towards homosexual love, desisted immediately and talked of other things. She was sorry though. James only had her about once a week and while it was true he was a good and considerate lover, she wanted more. Masturbation wasn't really satisfactory and she thought the idea of rubbing her copper- coloured breasts against the lightly tanned orbs of the other girl would be a wonderful feeling. So would their vaginas when conjoined and if she could manage to introduce one of those double-ended dildos into both of them, that would be even better.

She both admired Angela as a person - and as a sexual object. She would dearly have loved to cup her beautiful breasts in her small brown hands and fondle them, then move them down her delightful belly to feel at the intriguing slit between her legs. But it was not to be and Jane was not one to try and force herself on another.

Angela was now into her sixth month. After the first, during which she had been the rounds of some of the worst details - they always gave the new girls the worst to soften them up, she had settled down and then had been brought here to the mayor's residence and if she still thought the system dreadful in the extreme and mourned the loss of equality between men and women, she said nothing and gave no hint that she didn't accept her lot in life. Inside though she was with the mayor's wife. Why shouldn't women have a say in things, she thought. We are as intelligent and as clear-thinking as men. What gives them the right to make all the decisions?

But she was wise beyond her years and she held her counsel. Not by word of expression did she ever give any indication that she had not accepted her punishment and that when it was over she would go back to her library, if they would have her, or would instead fill any position open to her.

It was now the mayor began to talk to her about her future. “You heard what I told

Amanda, Angela. I think it's time I revealed the rest of my plans for you.”

“Plans, Your Honour?”

“Yes, and you can drop all those titles when we are alone. Call me James... Now, you will be freed in less than six months. I want you to come and work in my office. I am going to create a position as a personal assistant. Something between personal secretary and deputy mayor. It will be up to you to filter out my mail and make arrangements to facilitate meetings and the like. Would you like the position?”

Angela's eyes sparkled but then she realised the implications. “Will not that be going a little outside the guidelines for women, James? I mean, I would have to talk to men on an equal basi... ?”

He looked at her seriously and then smiled. “Yes, you would, wouldn't you... Well?”

“I would love to do it,” she said.

And from then on they made plans, the two of them, sometimes with Amanda listening as well. Angela was frightened Amanda might let on her chairmanship of FAME when she heard how her husband was, at least tentatively, championing the cause of women. She didn't for Amanda was a very intelligent woman and had no intention of compromising her husband. She knew just how dangerous a game she was playing but she wasn't going to implicate James in her schemes.

Jane wondered what went on at these late night discussions but Angela was polite but firm. It was the mayor's business and he would tell her in time. She kissed the Thai girl's forehead and hugged her and told her to be patient. “It's not that I want to have secrets from you, Jane, but believe me, it's better you don't know.

Jane accepted it with good grace but still she wondered.

James wanted to take her up and show her his office. She was horrified. “If you did that, everyone would look at me in amazement. What's a prisoner, the mayor's pony-girl, doing up here in his office? They would draw altogether the wrong conclusions but even if they happened to light on the right ones, don't you think they might think you rather risque and presumptuous?”

He smiled. “You really are something. I wondered what your reaction would be to such a suggestion. It is no less than I anticipated...”

“You were testing me?”

“Yes. I apologise but I will be doing it often now. You are going to have to tread a very fine line in this job and any guidance I can give you, by this means, or any other way, can only be of help, don't you think?”