On Sunday morning I left the house early. I had an appointment in Whitby; a small timber yard that had formerly thrived on supplying the boat trade had a stock of mahogany that it was selling off.
I had a plan for it. One of my regular customers wanted a coffee table that could double as a flogging support, and I'd offered them a design that I thought they would like. Mahogany was needed for the surface and the legs, and the timber yard in Whitby had just the right quantity at an affordable price.
I was thinking about Andy, and trying still to work out what to do next, but I was also concentrating on not falling foul of the Sunday morning traffic, and their counterpart, Sunday morning traffic police...
Having sex with Andy the previous day hadn't solved anything. We'd talked for a little while, and held each other, but she didn't seem any happier afterwards. How selfish does sex have to be? I was thoroughly enjoying myself, and wanted more of her, and while we were having sex she seemed pretty keen on the idea as well. It was just afterwards that she seemed a little awkward....
She'd left, with a kiss on the cheek that mixed longing, sadness and lust remembered in equal parts. I went home, and, in a show of weakness that was almost adolescent, moved my mobile from room to room with me throughout the day in case she called or texted me.
Enough.
Sutton Bank is a scary road in normal circumstances without getting misty eyed about someone else's life that I couldn't change for them. I went back to thinking about the coffee table, and the couple who were commissioning it. If I had a few more customers like them I'd be able to give up my job in the callcentre and become a full time cabinetmaker.
In the last few years I'd made for them a flogging stool, small, compact and easily put away, a bedroom washstand with demountable ring bolts for bindings, including pull out ankle bars to hold the legs apart, and a padded carver chair that was designed for the lucky sub to be bound over the back of.
Actually, sub was probably the wrong name for the role Pam, the wife, played in that relationship. True, they got their kicks by her husband beating her and then fucking her anyway he wanted to, but their relationship was much more about ritual and role play than about power exchange.
Pam planned every aspect of their scenes; the time, the place, the implements, the clothes she would wear... There again, as a deputy headmistress she was used to organizing things. Her husband, Steve, was a much more easy going man, a lecturer in literature who seemed more cerebrally involved in his wife's sexuality.
After I made the stool for them it was Steve who broached the idea that I should beat and fuck Pam, so that I would understand their needs more fully the next time I designed a piece for them. The experience of reading Pam's meticulous notes of how she expected the scene with me to go was what prompted the Victorian Gothic complications of the washstand, with carved decoration and an elaborate catch system that concealed the ringbolts and spreader bars.
Pam was meticulous in her note making, and her explanation of what she wanted from an encounter, but uncomplicated in her participation. She wanted to be secured, preferably to a piece of furniture, beaten a specified number of times with an implement of her choice, with no safe word or way of stopping the scene if it went beyond her limits, then fucked or buggered at the choice of her flagellant until he was satisfied. Of course her husband was always present in another room; he described his role in her scenes as curator, which made me wonder how much they came from Pam and how much from him, but a large part of her pleasure came, I'm sure, from the preparation she undertook before putting herself at someone else's disposal.
Whichever it was, the table was an innovation for them; they'd decided on something more abstract, and which could be in their lounge. I did ask if maybe that was connected too the last off their kids going away from home to university, and a sense that their sexuality could move more into the centre of their lives. I got a chilly response that suggested getting too close to the rhyme and reason off their private world was an intrusion in a way that having the use of Pamela could never be. Not that I was invited to use her often; maybe once every three months.
The specification of the table had another interesting feature; all their other items had been designed for the flogging of Pamela when she was standing but bent forward; the table's purpose was to allow her to be spanked when kneeling. I'd shown them some drawings before agreeing the design; a three legged table shaped like a slender pear, as if mimicking Pamela's body, broader at hips than shoulders, with a notch at the end where her groin would be. Underneath the top the legs had plain white rope running between them; purely decorative to the innocent eye but capable of being used to secure the table's user in place; one length of rope around her waist, one around each of her thighs. I was proud of it as a design, and with the way the rope, the asymmetrical design and the use of jointed lengths of timber suggested flotsam put to a new use.
I don't always get so involved with the people who buy my productions. I think Pam and Steve took pleasure in knowing that I didn't act like a dog with its tongue hanging out each time I met them. I didn't find it complicated; if I was invited to use Pam sexually I did; if not, then they were just friends.
That kind of split reached its peak when they invited me to New Years day dinner with them last year; their eldest daughter was there with her girlfriend, and a teaching colleague of Pam's had been invited to even the numbers up. The objective, I'm sure, was some kind of cool, we're all grown ups now kind of event; Pam and Steve's son was away skiing with his university OTC, and there was a certain loucheness about the whole event. Pam's daughter and her girlfriend were uneasy at first; just like you never want to know your parents are having sex so it can be hard to admit to your parents that you're having sex, and that, just because it's different to the choices they made, it's not a criticism of their choices.
I came out with that gem of instant wisdom over lunch; I thought for a while I'd said the wrong thing, but by dinner time Charlotte, the daughter, and her friend (I've forgotten her name) were completely at ease and abandoning any pretence that they'd use two bedrooms during their stay. Pam and Steve were as relaxed as I've seen them, with Pam oozing cleavage and kissing Steve at every chance, and I was rapidly discovering that Alyssa, the teacher, was more attentive than I'd expected. It was odd, but I stayed the night with Alyssa in the bedroom vacated by Charlotte's girlfriend, and, in the morning, over breakfast, the noises that had emanated from each bedroom during the night hung like a shared wickedness between us all...
So why has that come to mind now? Why am I driving to Whitby remembering that one occasion out of half a dozen that Pam and Steve could bring to mind? I'm not convinced I know, but maybe my brain was trying to tell me something about honesty. We'd had breakfast the next morning, each couple not wanting to be the one to broach the subject of the night before first. Alyssa had been happy, and content, if not overwhelmed by a desire for more, and Charlotte and her friend had been relaxed, and more easily affectionate, while Pam and Steve had been just Pam and Steve. I suppose the truth was, we all knew, and knowing was enough.
The transaction in Whitby didn't take long. Hand over the cash after checking the timber, cut it down where necessary to six and a half foot lengths on the yards chop saw, then lash it to the roof bars, hang a warning triangle on the back and set off back up the road.
