Chapter 8
Family Bonds
"A lazy cruise in the Caribbean sun does wonders for the complexion of a girl's southernmost exposure." Lucretia Sue Merydith observed her naked and pardonably proud buttocks in the stateroom full-length mirror. "None of those nasty birching tracks are still blemishing my heigh-di-hinds, which can go back into hiding."
"Just because the sun has tanned over the spoor doesn't mean one can't still feel every lingering trace." Juliana reposed on her tummy across her bed. She sipped tentatively at a long glass of Long Island iced tea. Her demurely bikini'd sit-upon showed only a finger's fashionable width of upper cleft.
"A-men, sister." The lanky redhead piroutted, studying her nude body. "Yet if I were to let my little nightmare voices have their field day, I'd be daubing vaseline up my--" Juliana frowned.
"--self in various locations (is that dainty enough for your cuss-maiden ears?) and cringing every time I saw a jock strap bulge. Speaking of which."
She fished money from her purse and tucked it into an envelope. The black-eyed, cocoa-skinned waiter on the bed accepted it and began replacing his uniform.
"Afternoon fun over?" Juliana's voice had a liberal crusting of frost.
"Therapy, sugar, just therapy. Otherwise I'd freeze up in memory of that sturdy li'l steer, with more lead in his pencil than anyone still packing balls."
The waiter executed a solemn bow, did a sudden genuflection, and kissed something not Lucretia Sue's hand.
'Oh! Well, thankee kindly, sweet stuff."
He wheeled the luncheon cart out into the ship's corridor. The door clicked smartly.
Juliana held her glass to the light and tasted it cautiously. "Your codless wunderkind seems to have left a trail of vigorous successors."
"We both have our little after-effects from the Qu'imram calaboose, I'd say. I seem to notice someone skipping to the loo three or four times a day for more than watering the daisies."
"A simple post-traumatic psycho-physiological gastrointestinal reaction," Juliana announced primly. She took a farther swig of her Long Island iced tea. "You know, Trews, I believe there's alcohol in this."
"The bartender would hope so. I was a tad curious why you squeezed lemon and poured cream into it, but I gave up offering you English advice on serious drinking when I saw your pop swizzling Martell cognac into his ginger beer. Speaking of whom, how is the ol' pater familias?"
"Still potty." The woman put her glass on the floor in disgust. "He closed up the country place along with the London house. Pensioned off his entire staff, even Borogove, who'd been his man for ages. Repaired to the ancestral lands on this Mardi Blanc island. Grandsire left there in 1505 and none of us have even seen it since."
Lucretia Sue studied her watch as she slid feet into sandals. "We'll be taking in the sight soon enough. Docking's in a couple of hours. I want to get another touch of sun in my bones before I have to masquerade as a decent woman again." Still wedding-night naked, she opened the stateroom door.
"I'll do the packing," Juliana offered. "I fear that alcohol is going to go through me like the Bastard plow through Hastings."
Her mildly sun-brushed English curves shuddered graphically.
"Seven o'clock beddie-bye, mind." Rita stood in the kitchen doorway, coffee in hand. "Don't dawdle at the library."
The luscious twin mounds of cotton-trousered girlmeat continued their wobbling course. The snowy britches had that extra-tight look born of sore and sorry hide beneath. For a fleeting instant, Rita had an illusion of seeing the streaks and blotches wink through the well-scrubbed pants seat.
". . .not fair ..." came a delicate murmur.
" 'Hem. A moment, Mona dearest. Dissatisfaction in the ranks of tender . . . ah . . . minds?"
The girl shifted a pale blue folder crammed with note One eye peeked around a vagrant golden lock. "You don know what it's like-in public-sitting on a bottom li mine."
"You'd rather have to kneel on a chair?" The soft pun brought an eloquent flinch. "See? It always can get worse Trust me. Now, toddle. Think of all the bedrest you'll g before tomorrow's classes."
Rita sipped the slow-drip Kona coffee, well-laced with Tia Maria. She savored Mona's cringe at the thought of twelve solid hours in the blanket-lined sack.
"Be sure to give my love to Professor Peters, the man who ignited a passion for physics in the soul that couldn't tell a quark from a Smurf two months ago."
She'd have to check his biography in the school catalogue. Her cousin's rather blubbery confessions had been explicitly detailed and far too imaginative for hastily contrived fiction. Amazing what liberal education and excess leisure time could produce . . .
Mona's sweetly-filled cotton dingers waggled out the door.
That Professor Packer could do the girl's GPA some real food. Rita decided, if he didn't get boorishly possessive tot her. Perhaps he could spread the good word and Mona could ease her way up the academic ladder. Certainly she could do more good with faculty than with that hunk Ron, srutting and fretting his assets upon the stage . . .
The doorbell chimed. Rita gulped another spiked dram in irritation. "Clang-clang yourself."
As she strolled to answer it, she considered installing the faithful cane in an umbrella stand by the entry. That way Mona could have a reminder going and coming that her roomie meant capital-B Business.
"Yes?" she inquired through the wrought-iron grate across the peeping hole.
A lean, tanned face had an authoritative fringe of grey above the ears, with salt-and-pepper giving character to the mustache. For a moment she recalled a hyperthyroid tennis pro who'd impressed her with his vicious backhand and follow-through foreplay. "Special delivery for Miss Henshaw."
She gave a curt shake of her head. "You are not the mailman. You look too well paid."
"True." His teeth flickered charmingly under that mustache with the raised ends. Spitfire pilot style, was that? "However, Antonia Henshaw thought you'd appreciate it, since I was passing through."
"Oh. How nice of muh-ma." Bloody, bloody, bloody. She been looking forward to firing up the pleasingly plump dildo she'd bought in Amsterdam and reliving those scrumptious lickings she'd just handed mournful Mo'.
"Thank you, ever so." She unlatched the door. "You'll have to excuse me for not inviting you in. I'm just about to step out to church-" The caller pushed the door open. He carried a plaid carpetbag in his left hand. Rita made a gracious grab for the grip, but found herself back-pedaling as he strode right on ahead.
"And what church might that be?" He abruptly lost a nasal Midwestern accent and sounded unsettingly British as he closed and locked the door. "We could be the same denomination."
He stepped forward, swinging the bag jauntily. She had visions of Whitechapel and Springheel Jack, ripping the bodices and thoraces of sporting women.
"Uh, Non-Conforming Resurrectionist Brethren of the Latter-Day Evangelist." She thought of the bone-shattering iron skillet hanging by the stove. "Look, I really must insist-"
"A fellow Resurrectionist, and here in such a small town. Tell me, do you use the Zoroastrian Rite Temple or the old Monophysite Hall?"
Her questing hand found a wiry modernistic lamp on the bric-a-brac table. A determined swing got effortlessly blocked in mid-air. He popped the lamp from her fingers.
"Look, I really don't know your name." Her bottom butted the couch. Her toes shifted for a power sprint the minute those hawklike eyes wavered. The ox-stunning skillet and the fourteen-inch razor-honed carving knife . ..
"Of course. Forgive me. Gustavus Fielding Porter." He managed a bow without averting his gaze. "Doctor of philosophy, master of pedagogy, liter arum baccalaureus, associate professor of physics, lecturer in comparative lit, and-on my mother's side, I admit-hereditary commander of the Lithuanian Light Horse, as recognized by the exiled court in Washington."
She rocked and sat on the couch back. "Not, by any chance, private marital arts tutor to one Mona Forbes in your inevitably copious spare time?"
"My disguise is penetrated."
"About as thoroughly as my cousin." Rita stepped forward. "Really, that trick with the Ivory Soap and the j goose feather went out with Mata Hari's farewell as a j courtesan. You're in the neighborhood mighty quickly! after calling. Planning a study date with Miss Forbes, perhaps?"
"She's off to the library. We met in the foyer. Such a vivid color scheme below decks. I peeked."
His smile had the style of Ronald Colman mixed with something uneasy from Peter Cushing.
"Isn't there a phrase in your alleged profession's code of ethics about sleeping with the student bodies?" She tried to recapture the initiative.
"We never slept together."
Her brows arched scornfully. "You just smoked cigars while she tried to guess the secret word?"
"Only beforehand. Mona kept far too busy to get a wink's rest between the sheet-and we did use sheets. She much prefers her bed that way, and her bottom unbruised."
"Look, Professor Portsmouth, doctor of philandery, master of pederasty, bachelor ad libitum, I happen to be standing in loco parentis for Miss Forbes-"
"Speaking of parents, how is dear Antonia? Still as radiant in person as she sounds over the phone?"
He settled the carpetbag on a couch arm. The image clashed with her memories of Mona's pink tail, barred with reddish violet, bent for a deterring flogging ... the recollection brought back times when her stepmother had forced Rita to bare her behind . . .
"Ah, yes, mama's fine and feisty as ever." The skin over her buttocks tightened warily.
"I knew her first as Toni Belefont. Such a fun name, we all thought. She hated it dearly-the only point of vulnerability with her. Even in those madcap days when she captained her way to fame on the women's sabre team, she had this conviction that hers was to order, ours to obey."
Something nibbled at the back corners of her mind. "Talked to mama recently, have you?"
"Last night. She instructed me to look you up, quite as she had in the old days." The trophy and photo flashed crystal clear into her mind's vision. "Your name is . . . ?"
He inhaled. "Gustavus-"
" 'Toni, ever la belle dame sans merci, my love through the ages, Tavi.' "
"She still has that?" A mild, distant look touched his keenly whetted eyes. "I wonder if she ever--?"
Rita felt light-headed as she cleared her dry throat. That Tia Maria must be hitting with an extra mule kick.
"You mean: " 'Tavi lowered Toni's slacks, And gave her beauties forty whacks; And when she felt him have his fun, She begged the beast for forty-one.' " His tugged his mustache reflectively. "She actually told you that?"
"Uh, no. Daddy."
"Of course, that shy lad without any absurdly Latinate given name. Phil-not a Philo, or Philemon, or Philander, but an honest Philip, with the wind at his back, the world in his palm, and the girl at his side. Two, in fact.
"Thoroughly British Toni and All-American Polly, the sirens of our bright set." He marveled, "Married them both, that cad. Your comely cousin startled the deuce out of me when I saw her in the lecture hall."
" 'Startled' apparently isn't the verb." She tried for accusation again. "According to Mona, she's been trod and scrod--"
"In ways quite odd." He beamed. "A bountiful armful, indeed, but Forbes women always have been."
She thought for a moment of Uncle Jack's wife, then her imagination mated two plus two. "You mean mother!"
"Your generation did not invent the follies and pleasures of good-natured libertinage. It pleased me to find Polly's niece so apt to tutelage."
She watched blankly as he opened the carpetbag. A chill tumbled down her spine as he extracted a complicated arrangement of thin leather harness and chromed metal.
"Do you recall the last time we met?" The contraption jingled as he shook it straight. "Toni's wedding to my twice-rival." "Oh, my god."
"I doubtless didn't stand out, though I did kiss the bride rather deeply. On the other hand, the willowy little shepherdess with the bouquet seemed so central to everyone's memory, her pink satin panties so evident as she did that cute sommersault in the aisle during the ceremony." "Look . . ." Her coffee-and-cordial basted tongue clung to the roof of her mouth.
"Toni certainly didn't spare the shoe leather, to judge from your howls in the vestry. I gather the spanking stung, Certainly, you looked rosier below during those three summersaults Toni made you turn without your satin step-ins. Then, the passionate ex-Miss Belefont always favored the dramatic in her corrections."
"And stand in that corner for a full hour, missy, or you'll do another gymnastic exhibition, with a much less pleasantt set of links between your legs." The hot summer sun beat through her brief white tennis outfit. Its skirt had been pinned to her back to demonstrate the effects of a summary switching. Her stepmother had personally belted the saddle-strap about her waist, and drawn the rawhide thong tight between her legs, Rita'd had to walk on her hands and do jumping jacks for the vodka-faced guests, the willow's welts scalding her sixteen year-old cheeks. The humiliation had been a hundred times worse than at that wedding so long ago. And pain...
The calistenic display had left a shocked, flaring cunt almost as sore as her switch-scored buttocks. "Weepy at one end and welty at the other, eh?" Aunt Salty had chuckled in her vague way, and that wide-eyed piglet Mona had drunk in every detail. "Chin up, precious, and get the most good out of it." Rita'd stepped into the small, square planter box in the patio corner where dry fenceboards met stucco wall. The sun-baked gravel flooring the box bit harshly at her feet.
She shifted from heels to toes, conscious of the barbecue guests glancing and sniggering at her punished bottom. The rawhide split her in two. Better that than the chain her stepmother sometimes used.
"When you've had your hour, you can take milk and cookies with the grown-ups." Antonia Belefont Henshaw had chucked her salt-tracked chin.
"Thank you, ma'am," she'd whispered.
She'd stood in shame and loathing.
". . . as round in the can as Polly ..."
". . . a lot hairier-doesn't she trim it for the pool. .."
"... has to take a skinny-dip in the garden pond first thing each morning, November through March, to 'toughen the blood,' Toni tells her ..."
"... Sally spoils Mona rotten by comparison, only spanking her with a ping-pong paddle once or twice a month ..."
Rita blinked, caught in reverie. "What? I'm sorry."
Professor . . . Pater, was it? . . . studied her intently. "Do fun-loving Jack and his bemused frau approve of all your Draconian methods with their daughter?"
Her stomach tightened. They certainly hadn't objected to Toni Henshaw's wicked stepmother regime. "I have carte blanche in Aunt Sally's own handwriting. Besides, you have to know that Mo' actually adores it."
Which Rita most emphatically did not. She had been slack-jawed in astonishment when she'd stepped into the bathroom and found her shame-faced cousin fingering herself off minutes after a tidy shelacking. Puzzled and uncomprehending, the woman had made Mona stretch out her lustful palms for three cane slashes each.
Thereafter, she'd simply born down all the harder to compensate for the undoubted masturbation later. That had led to the first night with the girl's wrists trussed to the headboard. The wet-eyed blonde had actually begged for a longer walloping at times-red bottom and bountiful breastworks wiggling as she pleaded-in exchange for free hands at night.
It often amused Rita to listen to the hard breathing and rustling sheets and grunting as her well-whipped charge found relief. That had actually inspired the further refinement of the rough blankets. Pussy-rub on those, Missy Mo'. . .
"Eh?" She was totally unaware of what he'd been saying.
"There seems to be this attention span problem." He eyed her critically. "Educators used to prescribe speed for dysfunctions like that in the States. We always used the stick or the tawse in England. Do, pray, attend as I speak: "My judicious word, supported by some physical evidence, such as today writ large across Mona's expressive tambo, could inspire Jack and Sally to put their suffering fjirlchild into one of St. Cloud's dorms or even foot the fees for a sorority." His mouth had a wicked twist. "Consider the testimony for the prosecution."
He pointed at the blinds, now open. Rita wondered just how co-operative the biddy across the way would be.
"Further, there's the trust which Toni and Phil administer for you."
She stiffened. "I'm self-employed and wholly self-supporting. Art imports do a roaring business."
"Yes." He observed the yellow happy-face clock with the smear of blood. "A Watchmen accessory from Hong Kong. A high profit margin, no doubt. Surely the five hundred a month from Polly's fund helps with the knick-knacks."
His finger indicated a nude in a silver frame. "Is that sketch a good Elmeer van Hory, or a bad Modigliani?"
"The papers claim Modigliani. Why?"
"Pity, as a forgery it has some merit. Not cheap with papers, surely." His mustache twitched up at the ends. "I have some influence with Toni and Phil, I dare imagine."
Rita wondered if the skillet and knife were still possible solutions. Messy, but a good house cleaning service could get blood out of the parquet floor after she'd finished explaining the attempted rape to the police.
"What do you have in mind? I can't let Mo' run wild. Besides, would the family care for your own fondlings of her fair white bod?"
"She did mumble those dreadful innuendos about how she gets her grades from me. All healthy-spirited exercise between us comes as recompense for the tutorial hours I've spent with her." His brow furrowed. "She could spend less time cramming-and being crammed-if she'd concentrate more during class.
"I do concede some choice lines across her fundament may be needed to bob up her math scores. I've made inroads there, I trust, in the past week."
"You're sure she hasn't been skating through your course on her well-greased twat?" Rita gave him the hard, narrowed eyes she used on dealers.
"Ask her to expound on Millikan's Experiment sometime. Her dissertation was lucidity itself."
Rita remained unconverted. "So what's this hyperthyroid truss you've been playing with?"
His eyes gleamed while the harness swayed hypnotically. A finger jabbed at the clock. "The old chestnut of Who Watches the Watchmen. We agree the slothfully inclined Miss Forbes must not get slack-but there's a broad frontier between taking up that slack and stretching the rope till it snaps. I propose to keep watch on her fundament and other equally fun parts. Excessive severity, such as you've exhibited recently, will result in . . ."
" 'Blackmail' is such a pretty word." The young businesswoman remembered her stepmother when the lady got bent out of shape. "Not a word to your old tongue-fencing partner, then?"
"Not a whisper." His smile had Old World elegance. "I'm afraid I'll need to administer a . . . call it a warning demonstration. Strip down to your skin, if you please."
"Not while I'm telephoning! No, not even there ... Trews? I hate these cordless phones, could you hold yours steady? The crackle when it moves . . . N-not your thumb, either! . . . Not you, Trews, just some distraction ... If you could just stay on deck, the room's a bit disorganized j... Do you mind? . . . Well, there'll be plenty of time to pit up again once I've finished talking, won't there? . . . Mo, Trews, it's impossible at the moment. I'll lay out jour shore clothes and meet you on deck for a drink. Stay f there. That'll give me time to finish-sh p-pa . . . PACKING!"