Chapter 7: A Lesson on Latching

Chuck

Latching, Chuck wanted to know what it was.

Madame reiterated, "latching went back to before the turn of the century," She referred to the piece of plastic that looked like paper which had come into her possession not long before. "We had an idea something peculiar was happening back in '504 when the first tranche of orphans was matched with their guardians and went to live with them. The orphans, or should I say 'housekeepers', were so besotted with their guardians that I was stunned."

"What was unusual about that?"

"The extent that they were captivated with their man. One or two who were obsessed like that, OK, but almost every one of those I met was besotted."

"So everyone was bemused? All the others thought it strange as well?"

"What others? The housekeepers accepted the fact each girl just thought she was lucky enough to have fallen head over heels in love. It's not as if men and women go out together, and even if they did, it's drummed into the women to conduct themselves so reservedly, haven't you noticed? Men with an over enthusiastic partner, would just thank their good fortune if the new housekeeper really related to him and couldn't do enough for him, why question it?"

"But how did you find out then?"

"You've never noticed women are more observant then men?"

"That can't be the reason, what would you see more than the men? I've never seen a 'penguin' being luvvy –dovey to her man. It's illegal in public, isn't it?"

"Oh, I go shopping, it gets me out. I'd drop into the Emporium and climb the stairs to the Women's House-wear Department."

"The what?"

Madame offered a superior smile, "It's where they get the pretty stuff that the females aren't allowed to wear around town. Having said that, you'd be surprised at what is under the penguins' habits."

"Women were buying undies. I thought they wore big bloomers?"

"I won't ask you how you got that information. But, I found out when I started to see the girls who had left the orphanage, young women they are. They were regularly at the counter looking at cupless bra's, frilly things and see-through panties."

"I'm shocked." No. I rushed to correct her misapprehension, "I'm not upset at the saucy stuff; I rather like sexy lingerie, particularly when it's worn by pretty young women, but I'm amazed at the very fact that they are stocked at the Emporium."

Madame knew all about that, "There's a lot of profit in lingerie. I made quite sure that Brunter had a good quantity of decent underwear in stock. I want my girls, in the House, to look attractive and I don't see any reason why, if they are going to buy their undies, they shouldn't use the Emporium. At least I get eighty per cent of the profits there."

"I'm surprised you don't have a section in the clothing shop. You'd make a hundred per cent on that."

I could just tell by the way she looked at me that I had hit the nail on the head.

"The more exotic stuff, upmarket and specialist wear, real silk, leather and kinky rubber. It's all there, in the backroom."

"There is no backroom?" I screwed up my face trying to conjure up the layout.

"Ladies' Fitting Rooms," she illuminated in response to my query.

Come to think of it, I'd never been in the Ladies Section. All I could ever see, having glanced in, were loads of black clothing and white and off -white pinafores. Oh, there were different styles of ribboned mob caps, to be tied under the chin, they were in the window.

"So the young housekeepers are keeping you in money there too?"

"We're hoping the trade will grow with all the 'penguins' being turned out each year. That little department, which previously relied just upon my girls, is going to be very profitable. It's all very well-made stuff and my girls are some of the few who can afford it but there are going to be a few guardians with money to spare within twelve months. I'm hoping they like their housekeepers parading around in their smalls and encourage them to buy an assortment of dresses for home-wear. Oh, and I'm cajoling one of my suppliers to introduce a new line, Preggers is Proud and sexy. No, that's not the name we'd put on it.Can you come up with a better one?"

"Cajoling?"

"Twisting his arm really."

She suddenly recalled I knew more about her finances than anyone, "It wouldn't be Frillies for the Frontier, would it?" knowing I'd seen she had a majority holding in that small Lush manufacturing concern.

"Rotten name, isn't it? I was going to change it but I never got round to doing that. Yes, we're concentrating on big bellies and big boobs. The rubber bra's are more popular than I thought. Originally we bought them to stop leakage in public, but their sales took off. When I made a few discrete enquiries I found they were being purchased at the same time as more exotic wear.

"That decided me, once I introduced a few more attractive styles and put them with the sexy stuff, the sales took off. It's amusing to hear the purchasers pretending to be interested in the leak proof qualities. Next, I introduced matching baby dolls in rubber too 'It's to stop my milk getting on the bed clothes, ' they say, as if they need to justify the fact their man has that male kink in the material."

She sat still for a moment then came out with, "I had no excuse for the preggy-sized rubber panties, so just displayed them as a set.

A few lactation items have really taken off and I should hate to know why the breast pumps are so popular." She adopted a deep voice, intoning, "Whose drinking my baby's milk?" as if taking a part from Goldilocks and The Three Bears.

She described how her own girls though, bought much of the various stock –including the rubber bra's, but not in the maternity sizes.

I couldn't believe the absolute audacity of Madame, only letting the girls take home about forty per cent of their earnings at most, or was it less than that, even for the Freedwomen? Then she tried to relieve them of the rest! I wasn't sure whether to admire her business acumen or despise her for exploiting the girls so much.

"I can see what you're thinking. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to let some tatty trader set up and sell them rubbish that falls apart after a couple of days? That's what a lot of the sexy wear is like. They make some of it out of remnants and rags, throw a cheap sewing machine over it with a few missed stitches and cheap cotton thread, and then sell it at exorbitant prices because there's not a big market. I make quite sure that the Emporium sells well-made items. It's not that much more expensive than the garbage that you used to see, sold on the worst market stalls. What use would that be to me and my girls? They could never work in that. They need something that they can put on and take off half a dozen times a night, sometimes none too gently. The last thing they want is for the seams to give way, or the fastenings to break. It makes them look cheap apart from anything else.

"My girls are not cheap."

"More than once, I've insisted Brunter return items. He doesn't like it, but he has no choice. Some suppliers think we'll not return sexy wear. They soon learn not to send that sort of thing to us."

It began to make sense, when you looked at it like that.

She hadn't finished, but tried to explain how she was NOT exploiting either her girls nor the locals, "I might sell a bra' for sixty cents. Outside this city, you'd get what they call in the trade, tat in sexy wear, for forty cents or so. I might be more expensive but the quality is twice as good. You will find this town has the best bargains for pretty underwear, bra's that fit, are well stitched, and, more important than you think, are comfortable to wear and do their job as well. They look good too, that's one line in which I have the final say."

"And the clothing store?"

" ... Much more expensive. I have six girls who are over the age of thirty, and not one of them goes elsewhere. The same can be said of my Freedwomen. They all swear by it. As experienced prostitutes, they have no reservations about unusual, exotic and downright bizarre items to wear, some downright vulgar."

I couldn't believe that she added, "They set a very good example to the others."

"I wonder why you pay your working girls at all. Have you really considered how much you exploit them?"

"Chuck, of course I exploit my girls, and if I didn't, others would. They've been sent to Hartglade, and until they make Freedwomen status, they're stuck here. I think you are beginning to understand now, that neither I nor you, have a choice in that decision. It's the same for you and me. What I'm doing, is simply making the most of the hand that I'm dealt. I suggest you do the same."

She further defended her foray into selling clothing, "By having a monopoly on females' clothes, I could quite simply double or treble my prices. That would be exploiting them. The mark-up on clothes like that is normally two hundred per cent. Shop anywhere else on the Frontier, if you don't believe me. At the Emporium the mark-up is no more than a hundred per cent. I must admit that we reckon on a one hundred and forty per cent mark-up at the clothiers."

"But that's extravagant! What's the mark-up on work shirts?"

"I think we sell a few dozen work shirts a week, and the mark-up is a normal thirty per cent, but what we're talking about is not the work shirt, they fly of the shelves. We're talking about stock that we have paid for, but may be on the shelves for a couple of years. It's a very peculiar market. I'm darned sure that some of the stuff we have in, won't sell at all until we halve the price in a sale. Now leather, there's a case in point, and the reason so few people stock it. We also made a large mixed rubber and latex purchase, and I'm sure some of that stuff, which was very expensive, will be on the shelves until it's perished."

"The maternity rubber stuff?"

"Gracious, no, we have everything from boots to headwear"

"Rubber boots?" The mind boggled I had an image of ... well I just ignored THAT.

"Rubber boots, rubber socks, rather stockings, rubber panties, rubber bra's, rubber dresses. To look any good, rubber-wear has to fit. The fit must be perfect, just a little tight so that there are no wrinkles. The trouble is, the purchaser can't just cut a bit off and get out a darning needle. Yes, we over-ordered and may lose quite a lot of money over that purchase.

"What we really need is a decent rubber couturier to make bespoke items. We asked if there were any in Lush, you know what we were told? 'Couturier' means a person who stitches and sews, but they don't sew rubber or latex they glue it.' We have to get our supplies from the far north, near the Purple Mountains. They have rubber trees there, you know."

"Rubber wear?" It still puzzled me. "I can't see what's attractive about a woman bonking in Wellington boots."

"I don't either. But strangely, a few men do, and have no qualms about paying extra to have a girl wearing a pair of thigh high waders splayed out on the bed."

I'd only said, bonking in boots, jokingly. Taken aback by the fact things like that did go on, I just admitted "I still can't see it," finding that I was shaking my head.

"You wait till you see one of my girls wearing shiny rubber stockings." She lowered her voice, "I always had a good standby when I was a working girl, the ubiquitous pair of rubber knickers. When a man gets his hands on your bum and his fingers glide over the shiny rubber, particularly if it's thin and he feels the heat of your body, it never failed to work." She became pensive for a few moments, "That's not true. I must've worn those knickers seven or eight hundred times, and they only failed to arouse a man - maybe seven or eight times. Work that out!"

"How the heck did we get into this conversation," I protested. "We were talking about this 'latching' stuff. You were telling me about it."

"We got onto that because these women, once they've been connected to their guardian, 'latched', they want to do anything for him, and that includes acting sexy, so of course, it includes wearing sexy clothes."

"Let's get this right? Are you saying that I have to make love to this girl, Beth, to latch with her, so that she falls head over heels in love with me?"

"You do put things simply, Yes, that's about it. You do like girls don't you, not men?"

That was something I was very conscious of, being mistaken for a gay. Why else had I grown a beard, but to make me look more macho? I still sported it now. Like most men around here. It was a few minutes before I realised she asked because I'd never shown any interest in her facilities at the 'social club,

Eh, was she trying to divert the topic? 'Latching', I got us back on track, "But why me? Why do I have to ... with her?"

"If it's not you, it must be a man. Now, who else can I ask to be her first man, the one who takes her cherry, one of the punters?"

"Will that be so bad? You boasted you have some very decent punters."

"Those, I call members, yes. But Chuck, don't be so slow. How the heck can I have a girl working for me whose only interest is in pleasing one particular punter."

"Members," I corrected, being awkward, but that only served to make her laugh loudly

"I don't get it, why me," I repeated.

"She has to be broken in, and if it's not you, who else can I ask?"

"You could ask Craggs. He comes along and fucks the girls."

"Craggs hasn't slept with a girl for over eighteen months."

"But he brings out his seven credits and that's the price of a girl, isn't it?"

"Craggs used to be a good vigorous fuck, a really great man, hard and energetic. He just doesn't have the energy nowadays." She lowered her voice, "You know how old he is?"

"Fifty? Maybe even sixty."

"This goes no further, but he was about sixteen when he came here seventy years ago. Work that out."

"He's not?"

"Getting on for ninety, but this goes no further, understand? There are men older than he is around here. You do know after we regenerate, we are slow to age. I have Freedwomen look as if they're in their twenties. But I learnt that with men up to the middle of the last century THEY had problems. THEY generally selected old prospectors and explorers with lots of experience but these men were aged. Rejuvenated, they arrived here OK, but once they started to get old they began to look their age quickly and really slowed up.

"Craggs has had more than two full lives, and I'm pretty sure the first one started halfway through the middle of the Seventeen Hundreds. It came up one night when we both had a little bit too much to drink. He told me how scared he was, being a young, country boy, to visit the biggest city in America. I asked him what that was, and when he said Boston, we had a big argument. He proved to me that in 1755 Boston had the most people. That man was a child in 1755.

"It was preying on my mind for a few weeks afterwards but then I got one of those 'feelings' that THEYengender. The feeling tells me that Craggs was a very old man before he was rejuvenated to the age of sixteen."

"Can't he use Viagra, or something like that?"

"You aren't very observant, are you, at all?

"Why?"

"Have you seen anybody used any medicines here? Have you seen anyone making a sale of cough medicine in any of the shops, have you even seen any herbal remedies, have you seen anybody out picking plants to mash up into a country potions, have you seen a doctor's office? Oh we have bandages for cuts and scrapes and the wise women will sew you up."

"Wise women, I queried.

"'Sages femmes', wise women, a literal translation." She was annoyed with herself. I recalled she had had a French childhood. "You'd think I'd know better than think in French and translate word for word. I meant the midwives."

She knew I'd have to think. I was slow in responding, " Midwives? Ah, there's a women's health centre somewhere, isn't there?" Now why do women merit a health centre and not the men?

"'The Breast Works', it's basically a prenatal and postnatal help centre. It's an opportunity for those gossiping mothers and mothers-to-be, to get out of the house a bit. Yes, there are a couple of midwives there. In all the time I've been here, I've never heard of one really difficult birth. I'm sure the midwives were properly trained once, but apart from cutting the umbilical cord and ensuring that the new mother doesn't go walking around before the placenta has been pushed out, they have very little to do."

She obviously had her ear close to the ground. "The women go there, and almost the first thing they ask is how they can keep pleasing the man in their life, particularly when they don't look good and when they can't get around much. They have to be cajoled to eat well, because they don't want to be too fat for their man.

"There's no reason for their lack of confidence. The thing is, the men just dote on having a baby. And most pregnant women have a flush or glow in their faces and bodies when they're carrying. They look beautiful, but they don't always see that ... Furthermore, it's only their perception that they look ugly. Just see how many male artists like painting pictures of bulging preggies. OK, throughout much of history it was a taboo thing to do, but in the last few years before my regeneration it's been a much acclaimed subject matter." She was thinking 1960's onwards.