Chapter 10: The Stocktaking

Katie was eating breakfast. Breakfast nowadays consisted of a glass of fruit-juice, a pot of China tea and two slices of wholemeal bread covered with a thin layer of low-fat spread. (The pursuit of health and fitness can make life such a total bore and the author certainly wouldn't recommend it!)

Katie assessed the score, thus far, in her unasked for contest with Charlie Ford and his sinister cousin.

Chained to the ground for five weeks in a foreign police station.

Point to Charlie.

Photographed regularly over the entire period of captivity in order that every embarrassment might be recorded for posterity

Point to Charlie

Charlie beaten to a pulp and satisfactorily humbled

Point to Katie

Duped into interviewing a phantom financier

Point to Charlie

Subjected to days of painful and humiliating servitude as a Pony Girl, being lashed on her buttocks, worked unmercifully, made to sweat like a pig, and sufferng a thousand times more than had Charlie at her hands.

Point to Charlie.

"Not a very good score line." thought Katie! And those five weeks - they probably counted for twenty points. Revised score 23 - 1. And the horror of her pony girl torture probably counted as five - maybe ten - maybe another twenty! Not good!

"Let's face it old girl, you're not doing very well, are you?"

Katie sighed and absentmindedly scratched at an itch, thus reminding herself of the worst photo of all. She had been tempted to have that one framed and displayed prominently on her sitting room wall!

There seemed nothing to do, other than wait for her tormentors' next move. She had escaped the bogus Consul and the fat women pretty easily in the end, but next time - no way! They would be smarting with anger at her escape. It would be a very black day indeed for Katie when and if she ever fell into their evil and merciless clutches again.

Katie had had the presence of mind to warn her fellow bathers that her failure to turn up on any weekday morning should be treated as suspicious so her disappearance would soon be noticed by her friends. Her secretary had been given strict instructions to report her boss's failure to maintain regular contact, to the police, and these officers were still keeping an eye on her, though nothing like around the clock surveillance. She had had security at her home stepped up with barred windows and new locks and alarms. Her place was a veritable fortress. Despite all these precautions, she knew that when her enemies struck, it would be from an unexpected quarter She was extremely sure they would be too astute to try anything so obvious as a frontal attack.

December was now into its third week and the pond was becoming so cold that even the hardy Katie was forced to cut down the time she spent in the water. After fifteen minutes her fingers were screaming with the pain of it all. For some reason her feet seemed to tolerate it better. She had thought of wearing gloves in the way that some of the other ladies did, but felt, somehow, that this would be cheating. Katie O'Brien wanted it to be just her own naked body interacting with the water. Even the tiny bikini, which the lifeguards still eyed with immense disapproval, was a nuisance, and she looked forward so eagerly to her regular weekends at the coast where she could cast her one hundred per cent unclothed, liberated body into the sea. Then she felt like some kind of quivering sacrifice feeling an echo of that wild abandoned day back in November. That first glorious immersion was only a few weeks ago, but it was another age, so much had happened to change her since that magnificent experience.

Somehow she still managed to walk from her car to the bathing pool dressed in the same unsuitable and unseasonable outfit, and she kept her feet unshod, but it was becoming much more of an effort and not very enjoyable either, merelysomething she did to prove her hardihood. She no longer left the enclosure dripping wet from the swim and shower. She took a large towel with her every morning and was tending to keep it draped over her shoulders before and after swimming, despite a deep reluctance to shelter her skin from those elements of air and water with which she felt such increasing affinity.

"I hope I'm not getting soft." she thought sadly.

She still kept the heating off in her home, which she had not yet sold - prevarication is my middle name lately, she thought - and still remained naked whenever she was in it, even when visitors were there. Not that she got too many visitors. They seemed to find the place cold and always appeared embarrassed when in the presence of the cheerfully unclothed Katie.

She was not looking forward to Christmas and had not done so for three years since her parents had died in a car crash. Katie had been their only child and they had been a close family, so wrapped up in each other that when her mother and father were taken from her, there was no one else to turn to. Her grandparents had all died and there were a few cousins in New Zealand whom she had never seen and most likely never would.

She decided to book for Christmas Day and Boxing Day at that same seaside hotel that she had been to in November. she intended to spend part of Christmas Day on her favourite remote beach, naked for as much of that sacred day as she could bear and probably a bit longer!

ST THOMAS'S DAY (21 DECEMBER)

Katie had just finished interviewing the newly appointed chairman of the country's largest bank and was preparing to stroll back to her paper - quite a hike, but she needed the exercise, when she spotted one of the two fat ladies on the other side of the road, about to go down into the Bank Station.

By the time that Katie had got to the station concourse, the fat lady had gone. Seeing this reminder of her slavery was enough to put her well and truly on her guard and she cancelled her plans to walk back to Docklands, hailing a taxi instead.

So at least one of her enemies was here in the City, right on her professional stamping ground, where she might be seen by her any time! For the first time since the Pony Girl episode Katie O'Brien felt frightened. She was probably being watched all day and even those very personal, private trips to the Swimming Pond and the various distant seaside beaches at weekends, were probably observed.

Well, be that as it may, her life was going on as planned. She wasn't going into purdah, becoming some kind of petrified hermit. Let them make their move, whenever and whichever! She would be ready for them and give them something to be sorry for! She hoped!

The following few days of pre-Yuletidejollity in the City and Docklands were a trial for Katie for she had to maintain all her financial contacts in the City and do the right thing at the office by her colleagues. It was a dreary chore on top of everything else. She bought her loyal secretary a bejewelled wristwatch, which had the dear sweet girl in tears. That was nice! But the rest of the enforced jollity was a pain in her shapely, well-toned and rapidly healing bvuttocks.

OFF TO THE SEASIDE!

Christmas day dawned, a duller, milder day than of late. Katie attended early morning Mass and returned to her hotel to don her by now familiar leisure wear. As she slipped out to walk over the Downs to the beach, the two vinegary old ladies who had commented on her first foray with such disapproval, smiled and wished her a Merry Christmas, inviting Katie to join them for Dinner that evening. They had decided that she was not a tart, after all - just mad. Immorality caused them problems but insanity they could cope with.

Katie thanked them and accepted their invitation, promising that she would wear her best and smartest outfit for the occasion.

As soon as she reached that turf-covered cliff-side path which she had come to know so well, she gloried once again in the way her naked, hardened soles leapt off the ground with every step. Still early on Christmas day, there was not a soul to be seen and she was nude for the rest of the walk to the beach. As mentioned, the temperature had risen in the last few days and it was appreciably milder than in November, when she had first embarked on that magical voyage of self discovery which had led her to glory in her lovely young body as never before. Why had Adam and Eve ever got themselves thrown out of Eden?

CHRISTMAS ON THE BEACH. KATIE MEETS AN OLD ENEMY AND MAKES TWO NEW FRIENDS

The tide was out - way out when she got to this, her favourite beach. An expanse of golden sand stretched out to the distant sea and to left and to right. My Word, you could walk for miles in either direction this morning. She cast her clothes on the ground beside a large rock and dashed out to the inviting waves. The air temperature might have risen, but the sea was as cold as in November and maybe a degree or two colder, so she had to fight against the freezing pain to stay in the water for the kind of length of time she needed to satisfy her craving. After 40 minutes, she came out and commenced to run as fast as she could far along the stretch of sand until she was warm again and then rushed back into the water swimming for another 45 minutes. Then more running to get warm. The tide was well on the turn after three hours of this and the area of sand was diminishing rapidly as the sea encroached. It was afternoon and she had better think about getting back to the hotel, as it would be becoming rather dark by half past three.

Back to the rock and her clothes. She would carry them up the steps and as far back to the hotel as she could before putting them on.

"Leave those clothes alone Miss O'Brien, I think you need to spend a lot more time here before you go back." And the bogus Consul stepped out from behind the rock. "Merry Christmas, you pretty, but soon to be ugly, and disfigured young lady!"

"No gun, today, you creep - you won't find me so easy this time"

"Ah, yes! Your Martial Arts skills. I know all about your proficiency in that highly unladylike department at school and college. But you will be a bit rusty now, I don't doubt. Let's test your mettle by all means. It will be to my great pleasure and your very considerable pain, before I knock you out and leave you naked on the beach to spend a long cold night."

"Ok, you bastard if a fight is what you want you can have it! I never wanted trouble with you or any one else. I've never hated any one in my life or wished anybody harm until these last months and I suggest even now that we call this off. This is so utterly stupid and unnecessary - to say nothing of it's being blasphemy on this of all days."

"Very pretty speech my dear. You robbed my best friend and cousin, Charlie Ford of career and self respect and then you cut his face, you vicious little bitch. You are going to pay for that."

"Only when he threatened me with violence! And what about those weeks chained up and the three days your two fat friends whipped me round and round that estate? Don't you think I've got a few grievances of my own? But as you wish, you evil, twisted sod, but how that fat creep attracts such devotion from you and from his darling wife is beyond me - too much to ask you to remove your shoes before we fight?"

"Quite my dear young lady. And so let us to it!"

Katie knew early on, when her nose was broken by the man's first lighting-quick, well aimed, vicious kick that this guy would be no push-over.

"Got to take him a bit more seriously than old Charlie," she thought as she gathered herself together. No clever tricks with this chap. He's damned good - but so am I."

The first moments of this merciless fight were pretty well honours even. Katie's nose might have been broken in seconds but she kept out of trouble from then on, and concentrated on defensive tactics, hoping to find an opening and land a few solid, painful kicks or punches of her own.

She had one lucky shot in which the back of her foot made contact with his cheekbone and wiped the contemptuous, mocking smile off his face - but not for long In a few moments it reappeared. But for the rest it was mainly a matter of keeping out of trouble and hoping to tire him out. Fighting on shingle was a drawback for both combatants - Katie had her problems and the guy certainly seemed to be having his. Her bare feet seemed to find it easier than his shod ones, despite the constant pain of the sharp stones as she wheeled and spun and manoeuvred her way time and time again out of trouble. He had great difficulty aiming his kicks and most were well wide of the mark. It was chiefly a matter of punching and chopping.