Annie Holder used to live two doors away from me through the seventies and into the early eighties as I grew up, living with Foster parents long term in a Yorkshire village in England.
I first met her when I was 7 years old. She would give biscuits with butter on to my friends and me if we knocked on her door. That was, until my Foster Mother told me to stop going there.
Annie was a Widow, and at the time of this account, starting in September 1981, she would have been in her late 60s, not much over five feet tall with slightly stooped shoulders.
She was a little overweight with large hanging breasts and straight shoulder length, white hair. She used to wear patterned knee length dresses, donning a headscarf and a gabardine raincoat when she went out.
At the same time I was nineteen, six feet tall, slim but well built as I used to play rugby. I had short, dark hair and was clean-shaven.
At eighteen I had become a bit of a rebel. Annie Holder's garden and house often cropped up in my escapades. The garden of Annie's semi detached house became a thoroughfare for my mates and me, lazily choosing not to walk around the road.
We played football on her rear lawn when she wasn't in, churning up her grass, I stole apples from her trees and got up to all sorts of petty crime including stealing underwear from her washing line.
Annie would come out shouting at us, brandishing a broom or a stick. Often she chased us on her own but sometimes with the enlisted help of her next-door neighbor, Eddie Hall who lived 3 doors from me with his wife, Dot.
Eddie was known in rumor circles as "a bit of a pervert" and a suspected peeping tom among other things. My Foster Mother had expressly told me to avoid their house and him in particular. Eddie was in his mid 50s, around five and a half feet tall, with a beer belly, thinning black hair and a black moustache. He wore black trousers with braces over pastel colored shirts with "Granddad" collars.
Being young, fit and cocky we taunted them and ran off laughing any time they tried to catch us doing anything, often name calling, "Slack Annie" and "Pervy Eddie".
One time after an unpleasant encounter she turned up at my home. We had let off fireworks outside Annie's window and rudely called her names when she screamed at us. My Foster Mother listened and placated her while I was sent upstairs.
As she left I heard her say, "I don't care if he is an adult. He's living at home. If he was mine he'd be slippered on his bare ass!" That was probably when ideas started to come into my head and I started fantasizing about Annie.
A week or so later I spotted Annie pushing some kind of package into Eddie's letterbox. It obviously wouldn't fit and I laughed as I stayed out of sight seeing her unable to get it in or out of the letterbox, eventually leaving it stuck there.
When she left and walked to the bus stop I sneaked in and managed to pull the package out myself, hoping it might be valuable.
It was three thin paperback books wrapped in plain brown paper. I was going to just toss the whole package in the garden, assuming it to be Mills and Boone rubbish she was sharing with Dot, but opened it with curiosity after seeing it was addressed to Eddie.
The top and bottom of the book pile were pulp-romance novels but between them was a science fiction novel about a thief who, after being tortured sexually by his cronies, had befriended visiting aliens and helped them to torture and kill humans in very graphic, sexually sadistic ways. I kept it for a while, but fearful of my Foster Parents finding it, I burned it.
What really got my mind racing was an incident about a month later and we had been almost caught using Annie's garden as our thoroughfare. Stupidly we had done this at the same time for several nights and on this occasion she and Eddie were waiting to ambush us, Annie wielding a broom and Eddie a long bamboo cane.
All of my mates escaped over the fence at the end of Annie's garden but I ducked behind a stone wall and blackberry bush between her garden and Eddie's. As I sat quietly I heard a bizarre but ultimately exciting exchange between them.
Eddie started it, saying, "I'd wipe the smile off his face!" I was stunned when Annie responded with, "I'd like to stick this broom up his ass hole!" They both laughed, Eddie adding, "I'd like to strip him naked, fuck his ass hole and fill his bowels with cum!" I was momentarily scared thinking that maybe this was all for my benefit and they knew I was there.
It wasn't, though. They really didn't know of my presence as they both walked off making small talk. The last significant thing I heard was again uttered by Annie, "I'd scrub his cock and balls with Vim and a stiff brush!"
My imagination went into overdrive after that, imagining fantasy scenarios where I was imprisoned and tortured in Annie's house by Annie herself. I tried not to imagine Eddie being involved.
A few days after my nineteenth birthday my Foster Parents sat me down to talk seriously. The general subject was the fact that in the eyes of the law I was considered an adult.
I had actually turned myself around a bit. I was on a bridging course at a local college and I was hopeful of securing a University place studying engineering. I hoped that would lead to a career in the design and development of mining machinery.
One Sunday, my Foster Father dropped the bombshell. If I was in trouble with the police, and especially if I was convicted of anything, I could kiss my chances of a place at a good university goodbye.
I assured them both that I knew that and that I had no intention of getting into trouble. My Foster Father informed me that I already was in trouble.
Annie Holder had been round stating that someone had been stealing her milk from her doorstep for some time. She knew that I had done it because she had seen me.
She had also had money taken from her kitchen and both she and Eddie Hall had seen me in her back garden. She was going to go to the police but had let my Foster Parents know, out of courtesy, before doing so.
I hadn't done it but my previous track record meant that my Foster Parents didn't fully believe me. With hindsight, it was something that couldn't really be proved but at the time it was a devastating allegation.
The outcome was an agreement by my Foster Parents that I would go to Annie's house that Sunday evening and talk to her myself.
I would apologize for any offence I had caused and any mischief I had subjected to her to in the last year. I would offer to do odd jobs for her as some form of recompense.
With apprehension, I wondered if this what was she wanted, that she was luring me in so that she could punish me physically. Her genuine shock when I knocked on her door told me that wasn't the case.
"What do you want?" she snapped. I had rehearsed what I was going to say, so I immediately responded. "I have come to apologize for all the hurtful things I've done to you and to see if I can make amends." She scoffed at this, responding with, "You've just come to see if you can get me to drop the charges!"
I nodded; saying that I would like her to drop the charges but that I had changed and I sincerely did want to make up for what I'd done in the past. She was visibly unmoved until I uttered the phrase, "You can punish me any way you want."
She invited me in, asking if I knew how to make tea and sending me through the living room into the kitchen to put the kettle on and make a pot. The kitchen was the same shape and size as ours but very old fashioned.
No cooker, a coal oven, a deep Belfast sink, a small fridge and a washing rack on rope suspended over the fireplace. Several stained but dry cloths were draped over one of the washing rack's beams. Upon closer inspection, one was an old pair of ladies' panties.
The kettle was a non-electric one and sat on the grate over the kitchen fire. It boiled quickly. I brewed a pot of tea and took it in to her on a tray with a clean cup and saucer, sugar bowl and milk that was already in a jug in the fridge.
I poured it in front of her, adding the milk to the cup first. "One sugar," she said. Holding her tea and sitting in an armchair she told me to stand up straight and answer some questions. "What do you think I should do with you?"
"Whatever you think I deserve." I replied. She sipped her tea before telling me, "Suggest something, then!"
I thought about my answer and decided to be upfront. "A few months ago, when you came to my house, you told Mum you would slipper me on my bare ass." I looked down at my feet, embarrassed at what I had said. She was obviously nervous herself, her cup rattling on its saucer as she spoke.
"Suppose I was to do that?" She snapped, "It doesn't even come close to what you deserve! You'd go blabbing about how I stripped you bare and tanned your ass! If that's what you are planning you might as well go now and I will call the police!"
I felt relieved that she hadn't contacted the police about the alleged thefts yet. I shook my head and assured her that I would tell nobody. I gulped, nervously. My mouth was dry and my head spinning.
She put her tea down, shakily and spoke, "I don't think you understand how much you hurt me. You don't know how much I want to humiliate you and cause you pain over and over again until you have learned your lesson. Do you hear me?"
I had to steel myself to speak the words I wanted to get out, to assure her that I was not bluffing. I croaked and stammered, "I heard you once with Eddie next door saying that you wanted to strip me naked, put things inside me and do things to my ... my ... err ... my genitals. If that is what it takes I will do whatever you want and I will let you do whatever you want to me." I found myself lost for further words.
She sat thinking, still shaking, sipping her tea. "Wait there and don't move!" She ordered and walked to the phone in the hall.