Chapter 7

After over two hours of holding the same position in the cold afternoon air Harriet was beginning to regret not taking advantage of Gwendoline’s kindness in getting her out of the assignment. It was not a comfortable pose at all, involving as it did keep one foot raised almost off the ground with only the tip of her big toe on the ground and almost all her weight on the other. One hand was resting lightly on her hip and the other touching her breast, which Jim assured her looked fine despite a few scratches acquired during that insane dangerous climb earlier on. Jim was intent on his painting and seemed oblivious of her discomfort.

I was not only the cold that caused her distress, but the agony of not being able to move a muscle for so long. The prospect of seeing the final result was all that sustained her - she had so admired his portraits of Gwendoline that she really very badly wanted him to paint her as well. And he had only done Gwen from photographs! Think what a painting using a very present and very live Harriet would look like! And one thing he had said before starting work was that he hoped to submit the painting to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

The light was beginning to fade, but Jim seemed intent as ever on continuing when Gwendoline came storming out of the house and furiously told him to let Harriet go inside and get warm.

“Can’t you see the poor darling is just about fit to drop - your heartless sod!” And she picked up her fainting friend who had virtually lost the power of movement by this time and carried her indoors.

“Thanks for coming to the rescue, Gwen. Mind you, I can’t wait to see the final result and I’m glad I did it, but he doesn’t know when to stop. Is he like that in bed?”

“No,” giggled a blushing Gwen, “I have to keep waking him up, poor old fellow! After all he is thirteen years older than I am and I don’t think he leads a very healthy life. He needs to look after himself better and get a lot more violent exercise. And I’ll make sure he does; there’s a lot of spare fat to lose before I marry him and he’ll have to keep it off thereafter.”

“Don’t worry, Gwen, you’ll manage him OK. I think he’s scared of you, like I still am!”

“Yes - he’s a bit of a wimp, but such a darling man. Do you know I had to virtually throw myself at him last night!! But once he’d got the message, everything was so dreamy!”

Gwendoline carried Harriet upstairs, laid her on the bed and got on it after her and began warming the frozen girl up, enfolding her in a tender embrace which might have made Jim rather jealous if he had been present to watch!

“What about all those extra muscles you are going to make me develop, Gwen?”

“You’ll get them, but I promise I won’t be a bitch to you any more - not ever, even if I do still drive you hard. Just get some sleep, Harry my love - we’ll need to be off in a few hours.”

After an evening meal which Harriet insisted on cooking and serving as if Gwen were still enforcing her former harsh regime, Jim told them all to pile into his station wagon and he drove them through the dark to a field fifteen miles away in the general direction they were headed. He left them the small tent which Harriet had occupied the night before and made sure they were provided with enough food to last them all into the next day.

“Just leave the tent in the field, ladies. I’ll come by and pick it up sometime tomorrow. Good luck, although I daresay we’ll meet a few times before the 23rd.” After a very tender and lengthy farewell to Gwendoline, he drove away.

Gwen thought with regret of the house - now her future home -that she was not to see for a few weeks. She supervised the erection of the tent - this had been one of her particular fortes in the Guides. It was much warmer with three bodies to heat the enclosed space and a more comfortable and less lonely time was in store for Harriet, although the groundsheet had been left behind and they were forced to sleep on grass.

“I suppose we will be sleeping under the stars again tomorrow night - best make the most of this,” Gwendoline said as they settled down for the night. “Unless we meet someone like the three perverts or Mummy and Richard - at least we wouldn’t freeze if we were held prisoner again, unless poor old Harry gets stuck in a cage again.”

“Remember me saying you lot would never survive the November cold and frost? I never thought back then I’d end up going through all this with you two,” murmured Harriet.

“You’ve suffered colder than either of us these last few days, you poor dear - what with my making you do all that swimming and hill climbing. You DID volunteer to be my Jim’s model, though - can’t blame that on me.”

“It’ll be worth every shiver and every agonizing cramp to see myself at the Summer Exhibition,” she replied.

With this vision of future celebrity in mind Harriet fell asleep to be followed in seconds by the other two. Gwendoline’s last waking thoughts, now that the long initiation rite was nearing its end were of the future beyond this journey. She looked ahead to her statement to the police about the religious child abusers, to telling her parents about her engagement to Jim and taking him to see them. Above all she felt growing excitement invading every part of her mind and body at her ever more fiercely feared but longed-for ordeal at the hands of Mrs. Travers - she writhed in ecstasy at the thought of that good lady daily working out thereby to strengthen her arms so that she would be able to bring down the flail all the harder on her bare back - all that Harriet had gone through would be nothing compared to that! She hoped her friends were already asleep and would not notice the smell of female arousal.

Jessica’s last thought was that if the experiences of this three were any guide, considering the ease which they all seemed to having in finding themselves husbands, one essential feature of any of their lodge meetings would be a creche.

They would all have been wise to ponder the old adage about fat ladies singing.

Harriet returned to the shore after swimming across the reservoir and back twice - as opposed to the others’ once. Ever since being forced into that combined double swim and hill climb by an incensed and vindictive Gwendoline, she had deliberately pushed herself to outdo her friend and leader to Gwen’s great admiration and amusement.

Gwen had decided that she might as well continue using Harriet as the workhorse of the group, since it seemed to be what she wanted and in the two days since they had left Jim’s Harry was beginning to feel that promised extra muscle coming on - or she liked to kid herself she did.

She had appointed herself as the ‘one’ in the two against one wrestling which they were finding ever more helpful as a way to keep warm in the raw upland November cold, and it was already taking the other two longer to beat her even after a couple of days. They had crossed a shallow river earlier today and she had carried them across on her back, wading waist deep and saving them from the cold water at the cost of enduring it three times herself.

Harriet thought it strange when she saw her friends were out of sight and as she swam closer to where they should be, she started to feel slightly anxious. Coming out of the water, she looked around for them. They were nowhere to be seen. She shouted but there was no reply. It was as if they had been spirited away into thin air.

(Don’t worry, folks - they have not been taken away in a flying saucer - author’s note)

There had been no sound of engine noise, so wherever they had gone it must have been on foot and that meant they could not be that far away. If they had been forcibly abducted just as she had started out on her swim, they could only have been gone for ten minutes - you can’t get too far in that time. They had to be within sight of where Harriet was standing or in a building within sight. The trouble was that there were no likely looking buildings - only an old and very dilapidated shipping which seemed to be open to the four winds.

She approached it carefully, resisting the impulse to run towards it to warm up. She cursed herself for her silly bravado, which had caused the trio to be split up again. She felt that something was terribly wrong.

For whatever reason, Harriet decided to circle around the building and approach it from the other side. It did not seem possible that she could have been seen by anyone, but she sensed danger.

The other side of the building was up against a stone wall and she climbed over this and crept up to the old cowshed. There were no windows, but quite a few holes in the old structure and she was trying to peer through a gap when she was seized from behind by several hands and dragged around to the other side and through a wooden door, which she noticed had a very new and shining padlock and was very substantial for the door to a disused building.

“Found another of these dirty little naked tarts, chief,” said one of Harriet’s captors. “Wonder how many more of these we’ve got wandering around like this - shameless disgusting sluts.”

Jessica and Gwendoline were inside against the far wall and tied to a couple of chairs and Harriet soon joined them. The old cowshed was filled with about twenty unsavory looking men all dressed in some kind of uniform.

“How did you two manage to get caught?” asked Harriet, feeling terribly scared.

“You don’t argue with the kind of weapons they had trained on us,” said Gwen. I was going to shout at you to get away and get help, but they had other ideas - sorry Harry, but these people are dangerous - you can smell it somehow.”

“It’s obviously some kind of political extremist group and we’ve stumbled on their armory and meeting place. Not only that, but they’ve obviously got some kind of thing about public decency and the decline in moral values - as you could tell by the charming way that guy described us all. Don’t worry - I’ll get us out of this. At least these are no Boy Scouts - luckily for me, if not for you!”

Gwendoline shook her head as a sign that conversation should cease and Harriet did not ask what she meant by that last sentence.

The man addressed as Chief came over to Harriet and asked her if there were any more of them. She was slow in replying - not knowing whether to pretend there were friends around who would soon be looking for them and he slapped her across the face.

“Leave her alone you piece of shit,” shouted Gwendoline, “dirty, stinking motherfucking coward!”

The man turned his attention to her at that at punched her in the face and then doubled her up in agony with several hard blows to her stomach the sickening sound of which made Harriet wince as she thought how Gwen had deliberately drawn these thugs’ attention to herself to save her, Harriet from what she was now suffering.

“Keep your dirty little mouth shut, or you’ll get some more.”

The majority of the men then started to drift away, leaving the chief and two others behind. Presumably they were all going home or to work after whatever meeting they had just had.

The remaining three left the old building a little later after standing around a defiant and cursing Gwendoline for a few minutes, taking it in turns to hit her many more times. They promised to be back shortly to continue teaching her a lesson in manners and decency.

“Oh, darling Gwen - why do you always have to be so stupidly brave - it’s as if you want to get hurt?” said Jessica.

“I refuse to hide my feelings for that kind of lowlife. Anyway, it’s time to be going. I don’t like it around here - don’t know about you two...”

She started to writhe about in her chair and soon had her hands free.

“I told you they hadn’t been in the Boy Scouts - at least not the fucking cretin who tied me. Surprised he can dress himself in the morning or wipe his own arise.”

The other two had been much more efficiently tied and it took a few minutes for a bloody-faced Gwendoline to release them.

“Go and see if you can find out what they are doing out there Harry - be very careful, sweetheart - don’t let them spot you. You and I are going to start another fire, Jessica if we can find the wherewithal. There looks to be some kind of kitchen behind that screen.”

There was indeed a sink and a primitive stove and in a cupboard a box of matches. The two girls started to pile up anything that would burn easily in the middle of the building putting the gang’s arsenal of weapons on top of the heap.

Harriet signaled and mouthed, “I think they’re on the way back.”

“You two get ready to light the fire - I’ll deal with these three.”

“NO - Gwen. I’ll help,” said Jessica. “There are three of them and look at the state of you after what they did to you. You don’t want to be tackling them alone!”

“Do as I fucking well tell you, Jessica - or you’ll be in line for a bit of what I gave Harriet and don’t think I wouldn’t - go on and start making a bit of a blaze.”

Gwendoline did wonder a little during the few minutes that followed, why she had been so stupidly proud as to refuse Jessica’s offer of help. She knew, though that she was honor bound to exact revenge herself for the injuries they had inflicted on her. She sustained an awful lot more before the three crypto-fascists were all neatly laid out in a row in front of her.

The first one - the Chief - came through the door first and he was quickly nursing two crushed testicles as Gwen adroitly brought her knee up into his groin. The other two were alerted by this time and showed once more their total lack of scruples when it came to hitting women. Jessica stood by ready to come to her friend’s aid should they get the upper hand, but they did not have Gwen’s speed or skill and finally joined their still writhing chief on the ground. Jessica and Harriet tied them up with the rope that had recently bound them.

“Well done, Gwen - you certainly showed them!” said an admiring Harriet. “But you look a terrible mess you poor dear! You’ll need to get that face seen to.”

“Never mind that now. Get these three into the field - we don’t want them being burned alive - not even scum like them. See if you can fish their car keys from their pocket - they must have a vehicle parked somewhere fairly near - I want us a long way from this little blaze when the fire brigade and police arrive. I think there’s plenty of evidence of their wrongdoing around here to put them behind bars for a while!”

Two hours later, Gwen was bathing her battered face and body in the waters of a mountain spring and feeling and looking a lot better. She was bruised and cut about her face but mightily relieved that no bones had been broken. The beautiful Gwendoline had long had a horror of breaking her nose, being always very vain about her appearance. Her stomach was red from the punches it had received and bruising was already apparent on her ribcage - it hurt her to touch herself anywhere and she prayed there had been no internal damage. (One of her first acts when returning home was to be to have a check-up, only to be told by the family physician that she was in better shape than ever and could go on to have a whole army of children if that was what she wanted).

“How are you feeling now, Gwen?” asked an exhausted Harriet who had just carried her on her back for the last five miles over the moors.

“Awful, darling. But I get the feeling I might just live! I do wish my good old Jim was here. Not that he’d have been any use against those guys back there - couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag, that one.”

“Could you two teach me to be as good a fighter as you?”

“Of course, Harry - we’ll certainly make a beginning. It’ll take time and lots and lots of really hard work - we can only give you a start and you’ll have to keep it up for months - years, even to be any good like us - Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that - you’ll take a lot of hard knocks along the way - don’t worry, we’ll be gentle with you, although it might not seem that way at times! We’ll begin your training on the morrow.”

“How do you feel about carrying me a few more miles, dear Harry? I don’t think I’ve any internal bleeding - it would surely be starting to show by this time, but we should err on the side of caution and I did promise you some extra muscles after all!”

“Be my guest, Gwen - you saved me from their tender mercies - it’s the least I can do.”

“I’d love it, but the answer is, NO! You went through absolute hell on account of saving me from being roughed up. I still can hear that wicked bastard’s punches thudding into your poor belly. I know it must still hurt you awfully! And that might have been ME he was doing it to! That more than makes up for all the things you put me through - a million times more! And what you put me through was no more than I deserved and did me a power of good anyway. SO - let’s hear no more crap like that - boss.”