The Sacred Band Ch. 08

Joan's story – narrated by Dr. Jessamine Buller.

Editor's note: By the time this story was put together by the various participants, Joan Agass had retired to South Africa after the death of her beloved mother. It was impractical to go to East London, and she did not feel up to the effort of writing her story herself, so she suggested that we should ask her close friend and confidant to tell it. This is Joan's story as told by Dr. Buller to Ivy Matthews.

I first met Joan Agass when I joined the medical practise in Highcross street in 1947 after I was demobbed from the RAMC. She was in excellent health herself, but she was having to devote more and more time to the care of her chronically sick mother. I cannot go into the details of Mrs Agass' condition here, but, merely say that she was slowly losing all independent movement and depended on Joan for more and more. Mrs. Agass bore her conditions bravely and cheerfully most of the time, and it was clear where Joan got her courage and resilience from.

Around ten years later, in the winter of 1956-7 Mrs Agass was clearly dying, and a friendship had grown up between Joan any myself. I am a chronic insomniac myself, and we sat up together for stretches of many nights. In those long night hours, we sat in the kitchen and, piece by piece she told me this story. She is now living with her sister in South Africa; and cannot tell her story herself. She wrote to me recently, asking me to retell the story she told me over those long nights. She has given me her permission to tell the story on my own words; in fact she asked me to do it for her and I am glad to do so.

Joan had worked at the Leicester stockbroking firm of Prettyman and Bassett since she left school in 1934. For the greater part of that time she was private secretary to one of the partners, Joseph Everard. She insists that the relationship between the two was strictly formal. Although, as she says, "He never even patted me on the bottom in nineteen years", she was clearly a little infatuated by him. So it came as a devastating shock when, in February 1953, she was abruptly sacked, and told to clear her desk and leave at the end of the week.

Joan was so shocked and humiliated by her dismissal that for a time she became a virtual recluse. The depression ran its course, and, one day she came to me, thin to the point of emaciation and haggard, asking for a sedative. Around this time she took the drastic step of writing letters to Everard's biggest clients that detailed his financial irregularities and led to his dismissal and prosecution.

This breach of confidentiality got her blacklisted in the tight financial circles of Leicester, and she had to subsist for several years by typing envelope at home for a pittance. Her mother was needing more time and attention by this time, so she was fully occupied, although her emotional state was fragile.

Her working routine was inexorable, on Monday afternoon a van would call at her house to deliver the week's work, and collect the finished product.

Abruptly, after two years, the van stopped calling. She walked down the road to the phone booth outside the Chemist's, shop and heard the phone ring and ring. It went unanswered; her employers had totally disappeared, leaving her with four hundred envelopes, perfectly typed, awaiting collection, and an almost new Imperial office typewriter for which she had been paying her employers on the instalment plan.

She had recovered her mental equilibrium sufficiently by this time to look around for a job, and she called on her old secretarial network for help. Joan had a lot of friends who felt very strongly that she had had a raw deal. One of them had heard that a young financial analyst, Philip Cheshire, who had worked at Prettyman for a couple of years, and whom she vaguely remembered, was in search of a really good private secretary.

Philip Cheshire was delighted to hear from her, and eager to offer her a job. To him she was a gem; she was not only an excellent short-hand typist, but her knowledge of the financial life of Leicester was encyclopaedic. Although it was a bit rusty, it could quickly be revived.

Dr. Buller paused at this point and said, "I want to make it clear that I asked Miss Agass specifically about the next section, since I feared that some of the revelations might embarrass her. She told me firmly and specifically that I should include everything, and leave out nothing, and that I should leave the decisions about censorship to others. She wanted her full and complete testimony to be given and I am carrying out her wishes. The words I use are not hers, but medical ones, as they come naturally to me"

When I first met Joan, she was in her late thirties. She was a well-turned-out professional woman, well-dressed with a rather severe but elegant hairstyle. She would be the first to admit that she had never been a pretty girl, but with meticulous grooming, skilfully applied makeup and good fashion sense, she achieved a handsome, poised style befitting a senior private secretary in an important local business. By the time she started work for Philip Cheshire she had been at home as a household drudge for a couple of years, and she had, as she admitted to me, let herself go.

When she started work she made an effort to pull herself together, but at forty-two she felt that she was losing the battle against sagging muscles, wrinkled skin and hair losing its colour and lustre. On the positive side, within a month of starting work again she knew she was greatly valued for the contributions she was making and the knowledge she was bringing into the business, and more important still, she felt that Philip liked her and enjoyed her rather acerbic wit.

So when Christmas Eve came around with its exchange of gifts, she felt that a little extravagance was more than justified. She bought Philip a silk tie from Gieves, and, coincidentally, he bought her a bright jacquard silk scarf by Dior.

He also produced a bottle of fine solera Malmsey, laid down whilst Napoleon was on St. Helena. He made her drink two large glasses with him. Joan was chary about alcohol, but the malmsey tasted sweet and unthreatening, totally belying the punch it packed.

Not used to the drink, she got a little maudlin and started telling Philip a rambling story about her past, lamenting that she had never had any love in her life and that now it was too late. She began to cry quietly to herself. Philip didn't attempt to reassure her with a string of platitudes. Instead he took her totally by surprise by asking,

"Joan, have you ever sucked a man's penis? It seems like a good place to start."

"I've never even seen a man's penis," Joan replied, "let alone sucked one."

"Right", he said cheerily, "Come over here and kneel down on a cushion. Don't worry, I'll tell you what to do."

She went over and dropped down onto her knees in a state of bewildered excitement. Philip dropped his trousers and underpants, revealing his thickening penis and a large pair of testicles in their loose, hairy sack. Philip retracted his long foreskin, revealing the wrinkled, pink, slightly glistening glans, which was purpling and fattening before her eyes.

"Just lick the head a little, and then see if you want to go on."

Somehow, Philip had not left her the option of refusing, in any case, by now Joan would not have let a team of horses drag her away. All she was concerned about was to do exactly as he told her and to try to give him all the pleasure she could.

Step by step, Philip talked her through the process that she had heard once or twice referred to as "gam" or "plating" by her colleagues in the long-ago typing pool. At that time it had sounded nauseating and repugnant. Now she just wanted to gain Philip's approval. This was the most intimate encounter with a man she had ever experienced, and she wanted to make it last and bring it to a successful conclusion.

Under his guidance she began to suck rhythmically, taking more and more of the shaft into her mouth whilst avoiding gagging. From time to time, on his instructions, she paused to lick up the shaft and around the prominent flared head, before returning to suck just a little quicker. At length he said,

"Joan, I'm going to shoot. Try to keep sucking until I've finished, but don't worry if you can't." He pulled a clean white handkerchief out of his pocket, shook it out and held it under her chin as ropes of sticky semen filled her mouth and tricked down her chin. Joan valiantly tried to go on sucking, but it was beyond her as she felt that she was choking in the spasms of semen.

"Well done my girl. That wasn't so bad, was it? Now go and make yourself comfortable and we'll go on to the next lesson."

Joan, the sour-salt taste of semen in her mouth, went down the corridor to the lavatory and cleaned herself up, taking the time to straighten her blouse and comb her hair. She told me that the one thought in her mind as she looked in the mirror, was that she wished that she were prettier for him.

She returned to the office, and found him sitting in the large chair by the table.

"Come along Joan, take off your knickers, bloomers or whatever you call them and lie down here in front of me. It's your turn to provide the entertainment."

"No, no, I couldn't possibly..." she cried aghast.

"Joan. Listen to me. You have two options. Either you leave this room and go home, and we will never mention this again; or you will do as I tell you. First of all I am going to spank you for disobedience, then I am going to lick you out until you are breathless, then I am going to shag you senseless. Well, which is it going to be?"

Joan capitulated. She walked over to where he was sitting. He pulled back the chair from the table, sat back and patted his knees amiably.

Joan lowered herself over his knees and he lowered her voluminous, unflattering undergarments, pulling up the bottom edge of her long corset, he began to smack her bottom briskly.

Joan was beyond resisting by this time. She told me years later that, although she did not enjoy the spanking, she wished with all her heart that it would go on and on, to spare her the humiliation and embarrassment to come.

Decades earlier, she told me, she had come across a reproduction of a painting by Courbet with some fanciful title like "The Origin of the world." It was nothing more or less than a beautifully painted close-up of a woman's spread thighs and pubic area with abundant dark hair.

Later she had been inspired to take a hand-mirror and inspect her own genital area and was overwhelmed with disgust at what she saw as its ugliness.

At that moment she had felt a profound relief that she would never have to expose her balding pubic mound and drooping, wrinkled purple-brown labia before a man, and now here was the occasion she had dreaded for so long.

"Your face is as red as your bottom Joan," Philip laughed. "I must say that you have a lovely, smackable bottom. I can't wait to get closer acquainted with it."

Philip's nicely calculated remark lightened the atmosphere just enough. Joan placed herself on the table as he directed and spread her thighs, cringing inwardly as she did so.

Philip leaned forward and buried his face in her vulva. He pressed his lips to her opening, and began to lick hard, parting the outer labia with his fingers. Joan, in the depths of her shame, felt the wetness and tickling with more or less indifference at first.

Then came an electric jolt of pleasure as his tongue found a sensitive spot just above her opening. She felt it again and again, bouncing with her hips as pleasurable feelings took a hold upon her. His tongue was still lapping away at that pleasure spot (she had no idea what name to give it until I told her years later), and she felt his fingers probing deeper and deeper into places her own fingers had not ventured since she was a girl.

The little shocks continued and intensified. Joan recognised her feeling as physical pleasure, a feeling she had almost forgotten about. Tongue and fingers continued to do their work with increasing intensity, until, as she was reaching fever pitch, Philip stopped.

Joan began to relax, but Philip was pausing merely to drop his trousers.

"Now, Joan, I'm going to fuck you. This may hurt a little a first; so, if you ask me to stop now I can do so. But you have to ask now, because in a minute or so it will not be at all easy for me; so make up your mind."

Joan said nothing but, legs akimbo, she lay and panted and waited. Philip took his mostly erect cock in his hand and ran his hand up and down the shaft a few times, spreading his natural lubricant over the head.

Then he placed it between the inner lips at Joan's opening, well wetted by his saliva, and pressed it firmly up against the barrier. A steady push of his hips in towards her body, and his cock drove all the way home. He began to withdraw, and Joan cried out sharply in a panic,

"No, don't stop now. Do it please, or I'll never forgive you."

One consideration Philip knew he could dismiss out of hand was any risk of pregnancy. There was nothing to stop him from completing the act without protection.

Joan was a post-menopausal virgin, and he wondered whether she would remain dry and lacking in her own natural lubrication, but he need not have worried. His oral stimulation and her own powerful emotions were enough to make her wet and slick as any teenager.

He drove in again and drew out, slowly and cautiously at first, but soon, realising that there was no need to be too gentle, he began to drive home his cock so strongly that he had to grasp her around the waist and hold her hips to his.

Keeping it simple, as befits a first time, he continued in the missionary position, feeling no need at all to try anything more adventurous. He looked at Joan's red face and neck and heard her heavy, stertorous breathing.

She was working as hard as he, and seemed intent upon bringing herself to orgasm. She reached it a scant few second later, and her spasms sent him off into his own little death.

They dressed, or rather tidied up their clothing and Philip poured them both another drink.

"Now you have the first idea of what it's all about. I shall be happy to go on teaching you what I know. What you have to be is honest about what you want – as I shall be. If you don't want to try anything – just say so – I shan't mind. All I want to do is help you make up for lost time."

Joan was at a loss for words. They went down into New Walk and walked the two or three hundred yards to Philip's parked car in silence. She was frantically trying to digest what had happened.

Philip drove her home in his beautifully kept Riley, with his left hand on her thigh, above the top of her stocking the whole way, and in the bubbling mixture of emotions, Joan felt a glimmer of pride to be driving down her street in such a beautiful car.

At her door, Philip got out and walked around the car to open the door for her, a courtesy she had never enjoyed in her life. He kissed her cheek, and said,

"I think we should do it all over again soon. What do you think?"

Without waiting for an answer he suggested,

How about Boxing Day morning at around eleven? I'll pick you up here."

He took her silence for consent. As he was about to drive away he stopped, struck by a thought.

"Joan", he said, "Do you mind if I tell Laura about this afternoon? I won't say anything if you insist, but I have promised to be open and honest with her in all things, and I shouldn't like to go on deceiving her."

Joan's level of astonishment rose to new heights. Nothing that she could have thought of would have surprised her more. Seeing him pause and consider had made her heart sink and she had thought that he was seeking for a kind way of telling her that it could not happen again.

But, telling his lovely young fiancée that he had had sex with his unglamorous middle-aged secretary on the office table? She simply did not know what to say.

I understand that you have arranged to interview Laura Fisher, so I shall leave the denouement of that story in her capable hands.

Interviewer: Did the sexual relationship between Miss Agass and Philip Cheshire continue?

Oh yes, Right up to the time she finally had to leave off work to look after her mother full-time. After that, until she moved to South Africa it was a question of visits from Philip on her birthday and Christmas, which always led to some sexual activity, and a very occasional fleeting visit to Philip at the office in New Walk.

Interviewer: Have you anything you wish to add before I switch off the tape-recorder?

Just one story that may tell you something about her feelings.

A busy G.P. is not insulated from the world. We hear stories of sexual deviations far more extreme than anal penetration and soon mere sexuality loses all power to shock us. So when Joan started to tell this story she looked at me closely to see if I was dismayed, but soon realised that I took it as a matter of course.

Shortly before Joan's mother died, we were sitting in the kitchen drinking strong tea and Joan began to reminisce. Her story sent us both into such a gale of laughter that we laughed until we cried. And it was a tribute to Joan's dying mother that she heard the laughter and commented on it a few minutes later, smiling at her daughter with such love that it seemed a blessing on them both.

Her story went something like this....

"Of course when we were in the office on a working day, there was often no time for anything elaborate or time-consuming. It was more a question of a quick gobbler between clients or phone-calls, or a quick one over the desk.

After a few weeks I could get worked up so quickly that a few minutes of vigorous sex would tip me over into an orgasm, sometimes leaving Philip lagging along behind.

Although they called the RAF the Brylcreem boys because of their pomaded hair, Philip himself didn't actually like Brylcreem. He kept a tin of Cussons Imperial Leather solid brilliantine in the drawer of his office to smarten himself up.

But it has another purpose. There I would be over the desk, presenting him my bare bottom for a few slaps, followed by a brisk fuck, and I would hear the tin of brilliantine being popped open, and smell the familiar masculine perfume. I would know what was coming and hold myself open to him.

He would continue fucking me heel and toe, and a well-greased thumb would slowly slither into my bottom. Philip was a gentle and considerate lover, and he would wait until he was sure I was ready and then a pause whilst he lubricated his cock, and I would feel it slowly opening up a passage for itself.

He would gently but firmly push right in as far as he could go, and then stop and wait for me to catch up. Then he would bugger me to his heart's content and mine too. After that, it was as often a not a matter of a quick dash to the loo.

Did it hurt? I asked. And her I think I am quoting her exactly:

"Sometimes it hurt like buggery as they say, sometime the pain wore off and I would feel something approaching pleasure, occasionally, but not often I would even achieve orgasm.

But, you see Jess, pleasure and pain were not the point – they were almost the same thing to me. What I got was a tremendous feeling of joy. I felt just like a long abandoned house that had been opened up and was being lived it again. Yes, that's exactly it, I felt inhabited. My life had a meaning again.

But do you know the funniest thing of all? Our family name used to be Akass, but my father found it a bit embarrassing and changed it to Agass. Oh! If only he had known!"

Annotations by Laura Cheshire.

Almost from the moment I took over the office from Denise, I had been on at Philip for a while to get a real secretary. So I was delighted when he was able to get someone as good as Joan. I met her after the interview and liked her immediately. I knew well enough that Philip was often attracted to older women, so that evening I asked him,