Chapter 8: Homecoming

The arrival of Helena Voutrakis at Highgate presaged one of the most challenging periods of my professional life. It was not until I began the task of redirecting her behaviour that I became aware of two things. Firstly, it was how much my methods were tuned to my own expectations of existing attitudes and behaviours in the subject. Naturally, one has to start somewhere but I came to realise that previously it was many of my own preconceptions about attitudes and behaviours that had dominated my approach. Secondly, it soon became obvious how few of those attitudes and behaviours were found in Helena.

A great deal of my method depends on confronting the student with behaviour that they would normally deprecate. The prudish attitudes of the young wife, I confront with licentiousness and fornication. The modesty of the maidenly, I press to exhibitionism and display. The fastidiousness of the lady of the house, I subject to the indignities of a maidservant. To the woman who has passed through her life with no fear of sanction for unreasonable behaviour, I demonstrate that actions can have painful consequences. What, however, was I to do now that I was confronted by Helena's foul mouthed, lascivious nature and her history of physical punishment?

My observations of Helena's nature on our voyage from the Mediterranean offered me two potential channels for exploration. Firstly, her sense of her own physical attractiveness and the need for enhancing it presented one possible area for attention. Her fondness for a vocabulary that had, at times, scandalised the most seasoned members of the crew of the Minotaur offered a second possibility for consideration. By applying my methods to these features of her personality, perhaps I could achieve something, I felt.

I reviewed my files of recent cases and decided that my best course of action involved visits to my artisan friends in Ponders End and to that mistress of corseting, Madame Genoux.

The Ponders End workshops and foundries have nurtured an ingenious a group of engineers. Their motivation is sometimes more in the fascination of their work than in their financial reward, which is an unfortunate trait that has led to a number of them falling by the wayside over the years, but their craftsmanship cannot be faulted. As is my usual practice when needing their services, I had taken a simple sketch of the device that I wished them to construct. We spent some time in discussion of the best materials to be used for each element; whether brass here or steel, whether mahogany there or oak, whether leather or rubber for this component. In the course of our debate the design changed subtly but by the conclusion of our discussions we had an agreement on the work to be carried out and, I was pleased to say, an expectation of a completed device before the end of the week. I was also, I must confess, delighted by the enthusiasm that all I spoke with felt for the project.

Madame Genoux, however, proved less tractable when I outlined my requirements. "M'ssieur, this is most irregular. I do not normally consider that the products of my labour should ever be used in this way. To train, yes. To enhance or beautify, of course. To punish, even, yes. But to do as you propose, it offends me."

"Madame," I responded, "I hope that you will indulge me in this. I have been a good customer for some time and I have been pleased to recommend your products to my clients. If the design of the garment concerned is so distasteful to you, I am happy to give an undertaking that I will in no way publicise its use or the fact that you provided it to me. I do need it, however; it is central to the programme that I have in mind."

In spite of Mme Genoux's protests, my own views carried the day and she delivered exactly what I had asked of her by the end of the week, as did the Ponders End engineers.

Helena's initial response to being introduced to the accommodation in my cellar had been predictable. Relieved of her clothing, allowed to introduce herself to the confines of her cage, she had at first shown curiosity, then, in turn, boredom, anger and defiance.

By the end of the week, evidently convinced that my will in the matter of her preparation for marriage would prevail, she was becoming a little more accepting of that which was done to her. Even so she did not seem delighted by the equipment that I introduced her to on the Friday afternoon.

In preparation I had taken her from her cage and shackled her wrists together. By running a chain from her shackles to a pulley over her head I was able to bring her to a position standing on tip toe in the centre of the room her arms stretched up towards the ceiling. This, she accepted with forbearance.