Chapter 8: Strenuous Exercise, a Race, and a Riding Crop

"Time to get that fat arse out of bed!" Gwendoline stood over Jim, her arms folded over her breasts and looking sternly down. "Time for an early morning half hour run followed by a twenty minute swim and then another half hour run - and mind you keep this up after we leave later today.

You have two slices of toast, tea without milk and fruit juice for breakfast - no more fried breakfasts for you as long as we live together! I think a banana and a cheese sandwich should be fine for lunch - and NO eating between meals. Only one cooked meal a day (in the evening), and make sure you always go to bed feeling a little bit hungry - you've a lot of weight to lose. Trust me - in a few weeks you'll be the trim fellow I fell in love with last summer."

"And I've got to endure all this misery, just so I can hang on to you?"

"Yes"

"You bitch - no wonder Harriet's so scared of you! I must be mad to put up with all this - you going through it with me?"

"You bet - only I run and swim faster and further and for longer, that's all. Let's wake up the others and they can enjoy all this as well. Then I'm sure good old Harry will do a lot more heavy labouring for you - she's coming on so well - that girl."

After the three had finished their morning marathon and eaten breakfast - watched by an envious and tired Jim, who had quickly swallowed his meagre meal, he and Harry went upstairs to continue clearing out unwanted furniture. Harry carried each piece out into a garden shed where it was to be kept for the time being. She had some difficulty with one large wardrobe and Gwen offered to help, but Harriet determinedly refused and somehow carried it downstairs and out of the house, without pausing once for breath. She was covered in dust and sweat by the time she had finished.

"I think we should make this place our home" said Gwendoline to Jessica as they watched the toiling pair. "The trouble with the other place is that it's too small for when the children start coming along and that wonderful rock would always be tempting me to climb it alone. Nor does it have a pool and a tennis court. Shame I got poor old Harry to clean up that kitchen for nothing! She can start on this one in the afternoon."

"Will you go on living here when you inherit the family seat and that lovely place in London?"

Gwen looked desperately sad as she always did at any hint about her father's precarious health. "No - we'll move in right away when the day comes. I only hope it won't be for a very long time!"

She changed the subject. "Harry's doing incredibly well with the kick-boxing training. She wants to fight one of us for real, just to see how she could do. What do you think - bit too soon?"

"She's a big girl, Gwen! It's her choice. I'll give her ten minutes tomorrow and hold nothing back - she won't be coming back for more for a long time."

"OK. But don't hurt her too much, Jessie. I won't tolerate a massacre. I'll be watching."

"You're getting very fond of her, aren't you?"

"I admire the magnificent way she put up with all the shit I gave her a few days ago. She never complained, except just a bit at first, perhaps. She's a very brave girl and I rate courage over all other qualities."

"All the more reason not to interfere on her behalf tomorrow. Let her learn the hard way that you can't run before you can walk. Just keep out of it Gwen - she'd thank you for that!"

Gwendoline's icy blue eyes looked angrily at her best friend and Jessica wilted.

"I don't like it Jessie - but as you wish. Just remember this - my friend, she's coming with us all the way and if she can't stand up, thanks to you, then you can be one to carry her"

"Don't worry Gwen, I won't kill your precious Harry - not quite!"

"It's never pretty to see jealousy. Just don't hurt her, even if you would love to."

Jessica scowled angrily but did not reply. Gwen later urged Harry to withdraw her challenge, but she angrily told her she knew perfecty well she was in for a torrid time but had to find out how well she was progressing, even though it meant getting a bit bruised in the process. Let them get on with it, then, was Gwen's sad conclusion.

Harriet prepared a magnificent lunch for Gwen and Jessica and a superb sandwich for Jim. Once again she refused to join the others at the table despite Gwen's almost tearful pleas, and waited on them as if she had been born a servant rather than the daughter of a peer.

"Can I do anything else for you before we all leave" she asked Jim after clearing away and washing up.

"Don't let her, Jim" said Gwen. "Come and sit with us for the afternoon, dearest Harry and watch all this crap on the television, like a good girl"

"If you're so keen on hard work - why not make a start on that wilderness at the bottom of the garden, said Jim gratefully. " I'd like all those overgrown shrubs and brambles totally taken out and the whole lot dug over. I have visions of a lawn there. You won't do that this afternoon, but if you made a start I'd be for ever in your debt"

"Who says I can't do all that? Just watch me!"

And Harriet went out into the garden in the raw November cold and comprehensively demolished all the shrubs that Jim had pointed out to her, ignoring all the sharp brambles, scratching her skin and hurting the soles of her feet. By nightfall she had finished the job completely and was in a state of triumphant exhaustion.

Gwen put her arms around Harriet's stinking, sweaty, dirty, naked body and kissed her.

"You really are a wonder, Harry. I do love you so much!"

Jessica looked on in a rage.

"Just you wait, you bitch. When I'm through with you, your own mother won't know you."

She kept this angry thought to herself, but the look on her face spoke volumes. Harriet saw it and wished she had never been so silly as to issue her challenge, but it was a little late to be backing out now.

11th November.

The three girls woke up well after sunrise to find that the ground outside their sleeping place was covered with frost. The sky was totally free of cloud and the sun was dazzling so low in the sky was it. They had spent the night in a cabin belonging to Jim and occasionally used by him. It was situated on a particularly bleak part of the moors and he had painted some of his best work in this area - so he claimed. The place was full of his stuff and also contained an oil stove which had given the three a pleasantly warm night. Only another twelve days and nights to survive and the initiation would have been completed. It would be touch and go whether all three girls' resolutions would last out.

Despite Jessica's protests that they could not possibly venture out until the frost had gone, Gwendoline insisted -with Harriet's enthusiastic agreement - that they all go for a morning jog around the moorland and even see if there might not be some stretch of water deep enough to swim in. With a shivering Jessica bringing up the rear, the girls found themselves about two miles away from their night - time refuge and looking at a sparkling and extensive stretch of water, blue under the cloudless November sky.

"Good - there's only the odd bit of ice floating on the surface here and there. You go in first, Jessica. Harry and I will follow in a minute or two after I give her her a bit more training for this stupid fight you both insist on. You don't get out until we two have finished our swim - you ARE going to be cold by the time it's all over."

And in a whisper, Gwen continued, "Of course you could always decline Harry's challenge and forget about all this nonsense and then we'd all go back to the hut for a few hours and be nice and warm."

Jessica responded to this plea by moving twenty yards back from the edge of the pool, running towards it and jumping in - landing in deep water yards out into the middle. She swam across to the other side and came back to the centre, treading water and announcing that it was absolutely lovely and she would like to stay in all day.

After Gwen had put Harry through a few more moves the other two got into the pool and cooled off. Gwen sadly decided after ten minutes that Jessica was totally obdurate and ready to freeze to death rather than pass up on her chance to demolish poor old Harriet, who was picking it all up very quickly, but not quickly enough. She signalled that they should all emerge and go back to the artist's cabin and warm up in front of the stove before going on.

By mid-day the frost had gone and they set out on the walk to where Jim was due to meet them with their evening meal and hot drinks. Apart from a couple of times when they had to take cover and wait shivering while parties of hikers passed by, the day was incident free and Jim duly appeared at the redezvous.

He and Gwen disappeared behind a convenient wall for a very long time and the other two ate their meal in silence until Jessica spoke.

"I'm really going to love altering that lovely face of yours, Harriet. You won't ever be pretty again - I promise you that"

"You and whose army? You don't scare me, Jessica." sneered Harry. "I'm far stronger and getting stronger every day - you're frail."

"We'll see. It's not brute force that decides these things."

Gwendoline rejoined them after bidding Jim a lingering and loving farewell until the morrow.

"Good! Having a nice talk are we? That's better, girls. It's been deadly the last couple of days with you two being so nasty to each other."

Jessica managed to twist her face into a semblance of a smile and Harriet beamed happily and said she had always loved Jessica and would continue to do so, no matter what.

They decided to take advantage of the remaing hour of light to continue before finally finding some sort of shelter in a fold in the ground, so shallow as to give scarcely any protection from a stiff breeze which had been increasingly biting at their hardened bodies for the second half of the day. Only their physical proximity kept them from dying of hypothermia and even so they felt more dead than alive when morning came.

For once in the last few days, Jessica was glad of Harriet's ample form pressed against her for the whole night - she had to admit that it was indeed a strong and well muscled body that was lying both beside her and partly on top of her. Maybe she would be not such a pushover after all. When she was sure Harry was asleep she ran her hands along one of her thighs and realised that this girl, properly trained would have have the strength to give a kick that could fell a horse. She put a hand on the upper arm and shoulder and almost gasped at the layers of muscle she felt there. Maybe I will think again, she thought, before falling asleep herself.

12th November.

"Another night like that and we're finished" moaned Jessica as the three of them got to their feet and stood in a circle, their arms wrapped tightly around each other and keeping as close as they possibly could. "My feet are completely numb after hurting all night. I mean - look at us all. We've so many ice hard goose-bumps on our skin you could use us as sandpaper!"

Harriet disagreed.

"Nonsense - we're still alive and after a night like that we can survive anything," she said. "By the way - I loved the way you were fondling all my muscles last night, Jessie. Made you think twice about your chances against me - I'll bet."

A furiously blushing Jessica said nothing by way of reply to this last comment, and suggested they be making a move before they froze solid.

Once again the ground was covered by frost and their feet seemed to cry out in agony at the cold. They all mechanically resolved to press on and try and ignore that terrible pain in their lower extremities - a pain that no amount of massage or exercise seemed able to alleviate. Finally the weak autumnal sun rose high enough to warm the ground a little and by noon they were all three beginning to feel that, after all, they might survive the day - although the prospect of another night as cold as the last made even Gwendoline and Harriet feel afraid.

As for Jessica, her enthusiasm seemed to be ebbing away by the second for the project which had been her idea for so many years. Only the desire to administer a chastisement to the Harriet who had so unaccountably supplanted her in Gwendoline's affections continued to provide her with any degree of motivation. She hated the cold and that never - ending nakedness which seemed to expose her body to every gust of wind, every sharp stone and every thorn and bramble. She wanted to be clean again and use a proper toilet instead of the open heath. She ached to be warm and wear lovely clothes and go to parties and do all the things their former school friends were doing at this second.

And just as she was giving way to despair an energetic Springer spaniel seemed to appear from nowhere jumping up at them and barking in a friendly way, obviously delighted to have met these strange people so unexpectedly in the middle of the moors.

November 12th - continued

"What a lovely doggy!" cried a delighted Jessica - all her troubles and misery forgotten as she bent down and hugged the unexpected visitor. After having her face licked, she picked up a stone and threw it energetically as far as she could (which was quite a long way) for the animal to retrieve. The friendly and energetic spaniel scampered after it it and brought it back to her, dropping it on the ground at her feet and looked up eagerly, panting and grinning. She was about to throw it again, when Gwendoline, who had been looking out for the dog's owner, pointed at a figure in the middle distance coming in their direction.

"Looks like Fido's owner" she warned. "Fat chance of avoiding detection, not now you've gone and made friends with his dog. Let's hope he likes meeting three dirty, cold and very naked girls when out walking his pet."

"If he's a red blooded male, he should be delighted - and what if we could use a wash? We're still any normal guy's idea of heaven, as long he has a strong stomach!" was Harriet's reply to this.

They would not have long to find out. The gentleman was coming towards them at a very brisk pace. It soon became clear that he was not young - possibly in his late fifties. He was tall and thin-faced with an irritable air, like a fussy schoolteacher. The three became all the more apprehensive the nearer he came. His expression seemed to become more forbidding all the while and they dreaded that he would report them to the authorities at the earliest opportunity. Visions of disgrace and incarceration came before their eyes.

"He looks a really sour faced bastard" was Jessica's verdict."Do we have our fight in jail, Harry or wait until we get released?"

"Let's wait until we get out." said Harriet, "These Women in Prison flicks are so corny and utterly crass - let's not add to the genre. You're a lucky girl to get a reprieve"

"Reprieve - bollocks. You're the one whose been reprieved - but I'll still pulp you when the day finally comes."

"Shut up you two. As if we aren't in enough trouble" ordered Gwen.

And they waited until the man came up to them and smiled in a friendly way. All the sourness which characterised his face in repose disappeared and a look of eager delight spread over his features.

"Good morning ladies. I see you've made friends with Victor here - not my dog - walking him for a sick friend who can't get out and about for a few days. Delighted to meet you. I see you three all love the fresh air and open country like me"

"Good morning, Sir" replied Gwendoline. "I'm very relieved you don't seem to mind our nudity - it's become such a part of me that I can't imagine ever dressing again as long as I live - can't speak for the others."

Harriet nodded her agreement and Jessica neither said nor indicated anything.

Gwen continued

" My friend here seems to have fallen in love with Victor. He's certainly a healthy active dog - must keep you fit trying to keep up with him"

"Oh! I don't know where he gets the energy from. My goodness, I don't. But what brings you three lovely people to this remote spot at this bleak time of year?"

Gwendoline explained something of the nature of their endurance test and how they were nearing the end, much to the relief of Jessica. She also told the stranger how much the experience had changed her and how grateful she was to have found out so much about herself these past two months. Jessica contented herself with reflecting that all she had learned was what terrible things bitter cold could do to the human body - knowledge she would be happy to do without right then. Harry said she was glad to have discovered how much physical potential she had and did not explain further. The man listened to them and seemed to come to a great decision.

"I have to deliver Victor back to his owner," he explained. "When I have done that, would you like me to come and pick you three up and take you to my house for a chat and a meal and maybe you could stay for the night or two nights even"

"We can only stay one night in the same place, I'm afraid - but we'd be delighted to accept your offer. We could use a shower, I'm afraid. We must all stink to high heaven" said Gwen.