Chapter 10
Daylight, filtering through the open hatch cover into the hold, illuminated Prunella Garfield's white, haggard face. She stared intently at the sleeping man, transferred her gaze, quite unconsciously, to his drooping penis, wondering how he could sleep in such chronic discomfort, with his hands tied and insects clustered on his flesh. Occasionally, he snorted, stirred uneasily, mouth twitching.
From the adjoining cabin came sounds indicating the imminent departure of Boone and his associates. Miss Garfield had not been further molested. Apart from one intrusion when her dentures were returned and the tightness of the gamekeeper's bonds checked, the teenagers had left her, and West, strictly alone. They had not even bothered to replace the gag in Prunella's mouth.
Her thoughts as she leaned against the cold iron and tried to relax her cramped limbs were chaotic. The ordeal was almost over. But the memory of it would remain fixed in her mind forever. She would never be able to erase the hideous train of events following her compulsory violation by Grant Dexter. Thinking about that, remembering how the dean had responded in his temporary insanity to primitive, bestial passions, Miss Garfield shivered, but not entirely from disgust.
She looked at West again, and could not refrain from staring at his genitals. The enormous, flaccid phallus held a morbid fascination for her, a kind of hypnotic attraction stronger than revulsion. Vividly recalling the tumultuous upheaval created in her belly by that monstrous, fleshy roll, Prunella closed her eyes tightly—and saw every squalid detail as if reflected in a mirror.
Involuntarily, her thighs came together, elongating the thickened lips of her vagina into a more pronounced slit. She did not understand what was happening to her. The past forty-eight hours seemed to have wrought a complete change in character and personality, as if the very things she abhorred had opened doors in her mind to admit stark reality, and now remained permanently open.
She could look upon the sleeping man's hirsute nudity without more than a brief flicker of the burning self-consciousness which, until so recently, she had accepted as an integral part of her inbred nature. Her primary reaction now was, she had to admit, interest, and curiosity, and a certain amount of awed apprehension, remembering where that great branch had been. Nor could she deny the hasty but satisfying experience of orgasm achieved in the moment prior to the abrupt termination of the gamekeeper's obligatory fornication.
Miss Garfield sighed. Her drab, conservative world had been turned inside out, revolutionized. She could no longer ignore certain brutal facts that filled her clouded mind with doubts and misgivings. And now she had another acute problem—the complex enigma of adjusting to a new and alien environment coupled with the dread of facing Paul West (as yet an unknown identity to her) when he awoke and found himself alone with her on the abandoned barge. Would he, too, revert to primeval behavior?
He was so youthful, Prunella thought wistfully, so big and strong, yet so helpless with his wrists cruelly roped. There was a large, livid bruise on his jaw where Boone had struck him with the shotgun stock. Would she, Miss Garfield wondered, ever know complete peace-of-mind, a normal, healthy relationship with a man? The idea seemed ludicrous. A few days ago it would have seemed obscene, almost irreverent. She could not understand why she was not utterly revolted by what West had done to her, under duress, but then with brutal willingness, or why the sight of his gross, sprawling nakedness and the limp symbol of his rugged masculinity did not appeal her. Actually, his condition seemed quite natural, and her own state of nudity afforded only minor qualms and slight concern.
She heard Boone shouting, coarse laughter, and wondered what final indignity was being planned. Sounds of a car approaching the wharf reverberated hollowly. The motor stopped.
"All gassed up and ready to go," Prunella heard Mason report. "What's the idea of the wheelbarrow and the spades, Fletch?"
"Take a deep breath," Boone answered. "Smell it?"
"Smell what? Oh, that. Yes, of course. It isn't hard to detect, for God's sake! Every time the wind blows from the south that reek comes down the canal. What is it? "
"Pig shit. Over there, a trench filled with the sloppy muck. Somebody used to keep pigs in those ruined brick buildings, probably the sluice-gate keeper. They are right adjacent to the canal, handy for shipping hogs to market. That foul mess has lain there for years, but you don't notice it so much until the wind disturbs the surface."
"AD right. So what do we want with an accumulation of pig manure?"
"A good question, Rocky. I thought, as a parting gesture, we might tip a few barrow loads in on Prunella and her boyfriend."
More boisterous laughter followed Boone's obnoxious suggestion. Horrified, Miss Garfield thrust out a bare foot and prodded the gamekeeper vigorously in the stomach.
"Wake up!" she whispered, her voice restricted to a husky rasping. "They're proposing to do something awful."
West came awake slowly, grunting, shaking his head. He sat up, tried to stretch, and swore through the wet gag when he realized his hands were tied.
"Get away from the hatch opening," Miss Garfield warned urgently. "Those fiendish ... Oh!"
She paused, sniffed. Her nose wrinkled with disgust. A strong, nauseating stench seeped into the hold. It seemed to cling to everything, thickening until the humid air was saturated with its appalling reek. West's eyes widened. He stared up at the square opening as a shadow blocked the daylight. Boone peered down, grinning derisively.
"Bloody awful, isn't it?" he observed cheerfully. "And that's only what Jim and Dave have kicked up scooping out a few dollops into buckets. But you're going to get the full benefit. They say shit is good for the complexion, Prunella darling. If that's true you'll finish up a raving beauty. Well, raving anyway. Here comes the first barrow load now."
Presently, the captives heard the rumbling sounds of the barrow being trundled across the deck, then Boone's mocking voice.
"Tip 'er in, Dave."
"All right," Roach answered sullenly. "But you can fetch the next lot."
"I thought Jim was getting it?"
"Like hell," Dent declared truculently. "I'm not hanging over that pit. The stench of that slimy much knocks me sick. If you want any more get it yourself."
"Chicken! AH right, this will do. Maybe just one more, eh? Phew! It does pong. Slosh it in there."
There was a scuffle of movement, grunting exclamations. A rile, reeking mess descended, cascading onto the squirming woman and the equally helpless gamekeeper, spattered them both from head to foot and puddled all round them, plastered hair and heads and filling mouths, ears, eyes and nostrils.
Spluttering, choking, retching, they groped blindly. Miss Garfield crawled frantically from below the opening, but the rope round her wrists, again secured to the ringbolt, prevented her from retreating more than a few feet. West slithered and sprawled, wallowing.
The rumble of the wheelbarrow returning to the odious trench vibrated overhead. Youthful heads appeared, framed in the hatch opening, nostrils clamped shut between forefingers and thumbs.
West writhed across the deck. His shirt became caught on a projection, and tore as he jerked. Shaking his head furiously, he dislodged the wadded rag from between his filth daubed lips, voiced a frantic bellow of rage and protest as the light was again blocked and another load of pig dung was dumped through the aperture. His wild yell was abruptly stifled.
Through the commotion the unfortunate captives heard Connie shouting.
"I can't stand any more of this bloody stink. Let's fuck off."
"She's right," Roach declared. "Let's split away from here before I spew my ring up."
Somebody shoved the wheelbarrow violently and sent it skating across the deck. Feet pattered, receded. The car motor started up. A blast on the horn conveyed a final, derisive gesture. Then the vehicle moved off with its whooping, jeering occupants scattering toilet rolls into the wind and hurling bottles and all manner of objects toward the canal.
The loathsome smelling objects imprisoned in the hold crawled and slithered among the spreading filth. West shouted repeatedly, his voice echoing loudly. He renewed the struggle to free his hands but was defeated, and presently concentrated on releasing his snagged shirt and clambering to his feet. Standing, he shuffled precariously to where Miss Garfield lay, and attempted to loosen the rope where it was looped through the ringbolt.
Eventually the corroded ringbolt tore from the rotten wood, and the exertion of his jerking effort sent West sprawling on his back again. It seemed an eternity before he succeeded in dragging himself through the gap in the bulkhead and into the cabin.
He assisted Miss Garfield through, and they flopped together on the muddied, rumpled rugs, scattering gobs of stinking green manure.
For a time they just lay there, spitting and coughing. Then West squirmed to his feet. Nothing, with the exception of his shotgun, had been removed by the teenage gang. They had not even bothered to take the blankets. Writhing, cursing, contorting his lean, muscular body, the gamekeeper strove again to slacken his bonds. The effort was futile. Finally he hit upon the idea of sawing the rope against a projecting iron angle.
It was a long, torturously slow operation, but West persevered. His wrists were chafed raw when he was eventually able to snap the weakened strands.
He chafed circulation back into his hands, blew his nose violently, probed pig manure from his ears, then dropped to his knees beside Miss Garfield and struggled to untie the wet rope embedded in her white flesh. The knot was drawn tight, the cord thick and new, but he tugged and pried until the stiff hemp yielded, then assisted Prunella to her feet and helped her to the sofa. But she shook her head, preferring to remain standing.
"Never mind the mess and the stench," West said. "Well get cleaned up in a minute."
Prunella Garfield shook her head again.
"No," she muttered thickly. "Now. I can't bear this awful, clinging foulness a moment longer."
"Take a plunge over the side," he suggested. "That will wash it off.*"
"I-I can't swim."
"You can't? All right, 111 swill you down in the shallows. Let's get out of here, for God's sake!"
Prunella preceded him to the hatchway steps, mounted stiffly. West, oblivious of the sexy appeal of the broad exposure of buttocks and vagina in his desperate need for fresh air, pushed impatiently at her yielding bottom, practically lifting her up the ladder.
The moment he r< ached the deck he approached the rail and vaulted over it into the canal. Miss Garfield was too busy vomiting to notice what he was doing. He swam round the stern of the barge where the water was deepest, and surfaced several yard" away, blowing and spluttering, and trod water, grinning at the distressed woman as she clung to a stanchion red with flaky rust.
West clambered back on board, scattering chilly water. He shook lank, dripping hair from his eyes, picked up a battered bucket lathered with pig manure, and tossed it into the shallows. He indicated the warped boarding-plank.
"Get down there," he instructed. "Away from the. stench."
"Suppose somebody comes?"
The gamekeeper stared, momentarily rendered speechless by her incredibly artless simplicity.
"Who the hell is likely to come here?" he demanded scathingly. "You've been stuck in that bastard barge for two days, and God knows how long that bunch of juvenile morons have been shacked up here. Nobody disturbed them. Go on. Don't be so damned naive."
Prunella moved sluggishly, padded reluctantly down the sagging gangplank shedding blobs of semi-liquid filth. West followed, grimacing, seemingly unconscious of his nudity, or Prunella's, Miss Garfield equally indifferent. Standing in shallow water up to her calves, Prunella splashed herself, recoiling from the chill contact but persevering.
West rinsed the bucket out, filled it and doused Miss Garfield, scooped the bucket full again and repeated the deluge. He threw several more lots over her while she slowly turned round. Finally, gasping, invigorated, her torso and back cleansed, Prunella stooped forward, facing away from the gamekeeper, and began washing manure from her matted hair, apparently without giving a thought to the delightful combination of splayed buttocks, puckered anus, and dark shrouded vagina thus provocatively revealed.
Paul West, confronted with the startling display, was suddenly very conscious of his condition, and especially Miss Garfield's rosy charms. Instinctively, his hand went to his penis. The organ reared, lifting in a series of powerful jerks, coaxed by firm handling and stroking. West licked his lips, stared at Prunella's luscious behind, captivated by the pouting gash of her quim, and was on the verge of yielding to the rapidly mounting urge to batter his turgid erection into the murky pit when Miss Garfield straightened up and, turning, saw the hugely distended phallus. The almost immediate reaction was a flood of tears.
Surprised and dismayed, feeling awkward, West attempted to console her. He drew her into an uncertain, tentative embrace. Prunella, trembling, sobbing, did not try to pull away but came into his arms hesitantly, reluctantly, and allowed him to hold her close. His jutting penis jabbed into the junction of her thighs and crotch, ploughed a furrow through the mass of pubic hair and, lying turgid and swollen against her lower belly, beat fiercely, the knob reaching to her navel. Her nearness, the exciting warmth of her naked body shuddering in his arms, stiffened West's superb prick still more.
"Come on," he coaxed. "Don't go to pieces now, and don't pretend this thing shoving against your belly doesn't exist. I can't help it, if that's what's bothering you. Look, I'm sorry for all you've been through. I'm sorry for what those bastards made me do to you. But I'd be lying if I said it was anything but pleasant. All right, so I was a willing party. I got carried away. It was too much for any man to resist, just like now, seeing you the way you are. I'm only flesh and blood, Prunella, and you—you're all woman. I'm only sorry we didn't meet sooner, in very different circumstances. My name is West, by the way. Paul West. It's a bit late for introductions, but—. Anyway, a week from now, a month at most, and you'll be able to laugh at the whole absurd escapade."
Prunella clung to him, lips quivering.
"They—they broke my glasses," she whispered evasively. "I can't see very well without them."
West raised her head with a hand under her chin, looked into her eyes. There was a peculiar look in the smoldering depths, an expression that seemed to indicate silent pleading, an effort to convey some vital, tormenting need.
"I didn't notice before," West said. "You have lovely eyes. It's a shame to hide them behind glasses."
Impulsively, he kissed her on the mouth. Some of the manure smell still adhered stubbornly to her skin, but he ignored it. The muscles of his thighs and stomach ridged when Prunella's tongue probed unexpectedly between his lips, fluttering nervously.• She pushed against him, timidly at first then with increasing boldness. His penis chafed her soft belly, prodding, pulsing, and she moaned softly. He felt the tension in her body, the acute trembling of her limbs.
"Don't!" she whispered hoarsely. "Please don't. You mustn't. We-"
She groaned. Suddenly her hand was between his flesh and hers and she was gripping his penis convulsively, her mouth still crushed against his. West released pent breath in a long sigh. He slid both hands down the smooth curve of her spine to the flared perfection of her buttocks, cupped the taut cheeks—heavy, vibrant mounds that heaved and strained and writhed under his probing, exploring fingers, and presently closed together with a warm, clutching tension to trap and squeeze his hand when he groped into the deep, damp division.
Desire lashed him. The grasp on his penis tightened. He relaxed his left hand, moved it quickly, slid it palm down over Prunella's gently swelling belly past her tense forearm and into the pelvic nest harboring her vagina.
She went wild then, clung and panted and pressed her thighs together, straining and tugging at his rampant cock, wanting him, sick with longing but unable to take the initiative further, beyond the bold, preliminary stage, stubbornly resisting, even now, a force greater than her will-power and all the combined influences and restrictive prudery of a mind and body steeped in scruples and misconceptions established by years of sexual suppression.
West knew and recognized the symptoms, realized that beneath the frigid crust a volcano seethed on the brink of eruption. Removing his mouth from Prunella's clinging lips, he captured the white oval of her mature left breast and pressed his mouth repeatedly into the yielding mound, teasing the large nipple between his teeth, sucking, pulling, rolling it against his tongue, and growling with all the savagery of a snared beast when Miss Garfield rubbed the bulging glans of his penis avidly but amateurishly in the moist split of her palpitating cunt.
Her carnal hunger was pathetic, almost frightening in its demanding urgency, the clutching hold on his bloated organ painfully intense, the desperate, distraught, self-debasing gesture of a woman driven to the borderline of complete nervous breakdown through sheer sexual frustration, and now, at last, surrendering scruples to the unleashed fury of her explosive temperament.
Her cracked, strained voice grated hoarsely, pleading, goading, frantic with irrepressible craving. In her mental and emotional stress she mouthed words the meaning of which she had not even known a few days ago and which even now remained void of lucid significance. Her quivering thighs clamped West's hand with clamlike strength.
"I want you!" she rasped. "I want that again, Paul, the way it Was before. Oh, I know it's wrong. I know! Don't look at me, not at my face. Just make—make love to me. Please, Paul! PLEASE! Maybe I'm mad. I don't know. I only know I'm burning up, that I can't fight this awful gnawing compulsion, this exquisite, tender passion. I must be mad. But I don't care. I can't resist any more. Fuck me, Paul. I want it. I want all the filthy things those teenage morons made me do. Morons? Oh, dear God! What am I? They didn't know what they were doing to me. Help me, Paul. Sweet, wonderful man, so big and strong, and so understanding. I need you, my darling. I NEED you. Put it in, for God's sake. Why must you torture me too? Damn you, fuck me! Oh, Paul! Paul! Forgive me. I don't know what I'm saying. Just love me. Take me. Enjoy me. Purge this dreadful agony from my body before I go completely out of my mind and—"'
West checked her impassioned outburst with another torrid kiss, then spun her round and positioned her in an exaggerated stooping gesture. Prunella Garfield parted her legs—a purely instinctive gesture, and groaned in savage ecstasy, writhing and jerking, when West leaned forward and, separating the cheeks of her quivering bottom, plunged his face into the incomparable cleavage. She shuddered violently each time his tongue probed the crevice and his nose delved into the dark area round her subconsciously cringing anus. Her stance was ludicrous, utterly absurd and obscene. West could not get enough of her.
He kissed her vagina, licked the wet, gaping fissure and sucked the hairy vulva, agitated the torridly erect clitoris. Miss Garfield's eyes were closed, her teeth gritted together. The breath gusted through her flared nostrils.
With an abruptness that wrung a Cry of frustration from him, she twisted her reddened, throbbing parts away from West's ravenous mouth, increased the angle of her posture and quickly reached between her thighs to grasp the gamekeeper's hugely inflated penis, guiding it unerringly to her glistening split and then fumbling, trying desperately to insert the straining glans.
West helped her put it in, completed the operation and squirmed in deep until his belly merged with Prunella Garfield's rolling, squashing buttocks and her eyes bulged enormously.
The compelling inroads of his relentless rod butted Prunella forward, destroying her balance and moving her bodily through the shallow water, stirring up clouds of mud and silt. She tried to brace herself but failed, and finally stumbled forward and collapsed with West on top of her, squatting on her back like a gigantic toad.
His penis escaped the warm, clutching sheath, and he seized her shoulders, turned her over with impatient strength and no visible effort, and spreadeagled her. As she opened her legs wide, her feet lashing the muddy water, buttocks surging up and down in eager anticipation, creating a continually widening flow of ripples and resounding impacts, he re-entered, shagged furiously, forging resolutely into the partly submerged quim with water lapping round his asshole and cushioning the vigorous movements of his testicles, his knees gouging into gritty ooze, both hands cupping Miss Garfield's energetically undulating bottom.
A miniature tide-race swirled through the valley dividing her flopping breasts, washing over and round the firm, swollen nipples, isolating then submerging them like tiny coral atolls, and drifting her trailing hair in floating ma round the pale island of her grimacing face.
Suddenly it was all over, West sated, indifferent, Prunella's savage exultation replaced by guilt and violent, panting reaction bordering on hysteria. She lay with arms fully outstretched in the water, frightened and terribly confused. Gradually, as the tumultuous aftermath subsided, inhibitions returned, crowding in. When Paul West eventually heaved his weight off her belly and squatted with knees bent and his balls dangling in the water, Prunella could not meet his cynical gaze.
He angled her face round until she was looking directly into his eyes, but she immediately averted her head again the moment he removed his hand.
"What's wrong now?" he demanded irritably. "I've never known anybody with so many conflicting moods. You ebb and flow like a spring tide. What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Oh, everything. Ill be all right. Just leave me alone. Oh, I wish I could speak."
"It's what you wanted," West persisted. "You practically bulldozed me into—"
"I KNOW. That's what makes it so awful. I said I'd be all right. Just give me a moment. How can I make you understand, Paul? All this is, well, alien to my nature. I used to be reserved, so utterly opposed to anything physical. Quite frigid. Suddenly I'm involved in rape and disgusting perversions, and almost immediately afterward indulging voluntarily in sensational sexual relations with a man I hardly know, copulating stark naked and actually reveling in it, wallowing in debauchery like a common prostitute, no, something much worse, doing it out here, openly, regardless of who might be watching, or could be for all we know, allowing pagan emotions to over-rule reason, and letting vulgar desire dominate all my principles and over-ride all my beliefs and upbringing. How do you EXPECT me to feel? I should be sick with the cheapness and sordidness of everything. In a way, I am. But only a small part of me. The rest—."
She shrugged, sighed.
"It was rather wonderful," she admitted. "My God! What a fool I've been. It was so absolutely ridiculous to be afraid. I realize that now. How little we really know, Paul. And how much we sacrifice in our ignorance. I'm almost twenty-eight, Paul, but until two days ago I was a—a virgin.
Now . . . Now God alone knows what I am. I feel like a whore, yet gloriously alive and relaxed. I didn't, a moment ago. But the reaction is passing now, and being immoral just doesn't seem all that important any more. If only I could convince myself and rid my stupid mind of these stabbing twinges of conscience."
"You talk too much," West told her. "After a time you'll find that doing what comes naturally brings peace-of-mind anyway, without you striving for it. Sex: is a God-given gift. You, me, the whole human race, we're supposed to enjoy it and appreciate it. You've got a gorgeous body, Prunella. Be proud of it and its functions. Enjoy every moment of being a woman while you're young."
Miss Garfield nodded slowly. She forced a smile.
"What you say does make sense," she agreed. "You're a remarkable man, Paul West. And so right, of course. I suppose, in a way, I should be grateful to Fletcher Boone. Oh, my throat! It's red raw. It's rather funny, about young Boone. Not what he did—that is unforgivable. But he set out to shame and humiliate me, and in succeeding he also succeeded in making me appreciate sex and realize how beautiful it Can be, not the way Boone and his monstrous, adolescent friends contrived it, but the way it was just now—darling. I simply can't get over the wonder of it all."
"It will be even better next time," West promised. "Those crazy kids. What makes them like that?"
"God knows. I shall never understand those three girls. They always seemed so respectable."
West stood up, water cascading in rivulets down his lean thighs, and helped Prunella to her feet. They splashed toward the canal bank. Prunella, with one foot on the timber shoring, uttered a croaking exclamation.
"Our clothes!" she wheezed. "What about our clothes? Oh, this stupid voice of mine. I can hardly make myself heard."
"Clothes!" West echoed. "Those shit soaked rags? If you think I'm going back on board that stinking scow you are crazy. Leave them. It isn't far to my place. I've got plenty of clean, dry clothing, and—"
"But—somebody will see us!"
"That's unlikely. Poachers work at night, and nobody else comes up here during the day, except—" He broke off, frowned.
"What's wrong?" Miss Garfield demanded anxiously.
"Lady Gloria Mayne, that's what's wrong," West answered pensively. "Ill explain as we go. Hell! I'd forgotten about her. Shell have my guts for garters. Balls to her, anyway. I've got you now. Come on."
He preceded Prunella through the bushes and led the way along a narrow track hemmed in by flowering rhododendron shrubs.