Slaveholder Ch. 02: Slaveowner

Tottie grinned, plainly delighted. "Oh yes, please master. I can wag my tail like anything when I am pleased." She took it as permission to stay, and I couldn't bear to say otherwise...

Slaveholder. Part two, Slaveowner.

Jim McMurty:

As I was going to learn. It is one thing to be a slaveholder, and another to be a slaveowner.

During the evening I dressed her wounds again and noticed how relaxed she was in her nudity in the face of a strange man. We talked a little.

"In the morning I'll go and get old Doc Shapiro to look at you. He is retired now, but he still looks after the girls and a few people from up and down the street. He'll know what to do."

"I'm ok Master, don't worry about me. I'll heal in no time if you take it easy on my back for a week or two. How about you just spank me on the twat and the tits?"

"Tottie ducks, I don't plan to spank you at all."

Her face fell as if I had just told her she could not have any sweets. There was something seriously wonky in her circuits.

"Please don't say that. If you don't punish me, how am I going to learn to please you?"

See what I mean? She's misfiring on at least one cylinder. I turned the conversation, thanking her for the delicious soup she had made. Her little, pinched face lit up, and she smiled, timidly, as if smiling had been a high-risk procedure in her recent life, and she had to be ready to snatch a smile back at the drop of a hat.

In the course of conversation I learned that she had never been registered for food rations, and she was using her former Master's ration books. There was not enough meat, cheese or butter for two, so she had lived mostly on bread and vegetables and a scraping of jam. She did not even have her own identity card. Mister Horrabin had never given it to her when he gave her away. I'll have to have a serious conversation with Mister Horrabin if he ever reappears.

Getting her registered with a grocer and a butcher was no problem. We just needed to get his books transferred to my address, and bob's your uncle. Pity she did not freeze on to Mister Ypsilanti's book too. I know a bloke...

Anyway, we sat about and chewed the fat. I put a coverlid over her shoulders to keep her warm, but she did not seem to feel the cold. At eight o'clock we listened to a play on the Home service, all about a lifestyle in which the household had a Scottish maid called Aggie. Hubby was a doctor and she knitted socks for soldiers, or some such bollocks, and she was worried about his good-looking young secretary (needlessly as it turned out). All in cut-glass accents that reminded me of some of our posher officers. (In our regiment, posher certainly did not mean less competent or less conscientious than the others. Just saying...) Anyway, it was all a bit far removed from the lives of an East End tattooist and an escaped slave. We giggled through it. I drank a glass of pale ale, and she sipped from my glass, not enough to make an ant put its umbrella up, but she seemed happy.

At bedtime she again asked permission to use the bathroom. With my permission she got her toothbrush out of the carrier bag, and cleaned her teeth thoroughly, using ordinary lifebuoy toilet soap, then washed her hands, face and neck. She asked for a blanket and settled down to sleep on the hearthrug. I wasn't having that. I picked her up and plonked her on the bed and pulled the covers over her.

"You sleep there Tottie, and don't argue about it." Not that she would dream of arguing about anything. I got into bed behind her and cuddled her gently, listening to her soft, slow breathing until I fell sleep. It felt good to have a warm body to cuddle with.

In the morning she was up by seven thirty, making us both a cup of tea, without milk. We went down to the tattoo parlour and worked together on cleaning and tidying everything - I could easily get used to how much cleaner and newer everything looked - then we went to Alfredo's for breakfast. Doc Shapiro was just leaving as we arrived and I asked him to come and give Tottie a once-over.

"Sure enough, my girl, would about 10.30 suit you?"

Tottie looked scared stiff, but wouldn't say anything. The Doctor saw her hesitation and guessed, correctly, what the problem was. He addressed himself to me:

"Maybe oneish would be better? Then you could be there as a chaperone, Jim."

She relaxed immediately.

It was a patchy morning, just a few little jobs, an ear-piercing, a small red rose tattoo and a London Rifles badge. In the breaks, I started a list of things I needed to do for Tottie pretty sharpish.

1. Get her to a dentist.

2. Sort out some decent clothes for her.

3. Define a few ground rules for her so everything isn't so random and seemingly arbitrary.

4. See Stan the Man our friendly local wide boy about her ration book and if poss. an identity card.

Just before one, Doc. Shapiro stuck his head around the shop door. I was just putting away after my last client of the morning, and we walked up the stairs together. I opened the door and walked in. The curtains had been taken down to wash, and I had never seen the windows so clean. We found Tottie, naked as usual, in the tiny kitchenette, buttering bread for the corned beef and lettuce sandwiches she was making for our dinner. The Doc took one look and got her to lie face downwards on the settee so that he could examine her.

"Sorry, young lady, but I have to ask. Did Mr. McMurty do this to you?" I could tell by his tone of voice that he did not really suspect me, but Tottie did not know him.

She started to weep. "No, no, he has been nothing but kind to me. It was my previous master, Mister Ypsilanti. I lived at his house in Dynevor Road, Stoke Newington until the day before yesterday. He died in the night and I ran away and came here. Mister McMurty rescued me."

By now Tottie was really scared. She was sure that abandoning her former Master's body and stealing his property were serious crimes, and Doc Shapiro would report her to the Police. I, on the other hand, knew that the old medic sailed well on the wrong side of the law, and would do no such thing.

I explained what I had been using to dress her wounds, and Doc approved.

"None of these seem to be less than a week or two old, and some are already practically healed. Carry on with what you have been doing for a day or two, and I'll call round Friday about this time and see how Tottie's getting along. Unless we get a really nasty infection, we'll keep this under our hats. If she gets a temperature, or if one of the wounds starts to swell or throb, get me back pronto. I suppose documents are a problem?"

"Got it in one. She hasn't even got an identity card, let alone a registration with a GP."

"Right you are then guv'ner. Nice to meet you young lady. Jim will take good care of you, don't you fear. See you Friday then."

I paid him a quid in the hand, and he departed. He may be a pox-doctor, and almost certainly an abortionist, but Doc Shapiro's a good man. I wish there were more like him. Before I even opened here, he was in to inspect my standards of hygiene and cleanliness and to give me some good, down to earth advice, which is more than can be said of the Council or the Public Health people.

I went downstairs, to meet the first of a full list of clients. Throughout the afternoon my thoughts went back time and again to Tottie. What did the future hold for us two? Could we give each other what we needed? Would the forces that threatened to tear us apart prove stronger than those that drew us together? Would I have the courage to give her what she needed? Could she give me what I wanted? There were no answers, only incessant, nagging questions.

I finished up after half past six because my last client was late and the work she wanted, necessitated removing about four layers of clothing including a long spirella corset like a suit of shiny pink armour. There was no help for it though, she came straight from work as some sort of high muck-a-muck in the Civil Service. She had shaved her pubic hair away and wanted This coochie belongs to Barbar. right across the shaven area. Fine! Whatever the customer wants, however twee.

When I got upstairs I found Tottie on the bed asleep. She had been crying her heart out; red, swollen eyes, soaking wet pillow and tear-stained face. I left her to sleep her sleep out and made myself a couple of slices of toast and jam. I'd been lucky and scored a two-pound tin of South African cherry jam over the weekend, so I opened it and indulged myself.

I was just drawing the curtains in the living area when she awoke. She started up and when she saw me her face crumpled and she began to sob all over again. I took her in my arms and made those silly little comforting noises you make when your arms are around someone in distress and you can think of nothing better to do than to pat her shoulder blades and murmur nonsense.

Finally she began to speak, haltingly and incoherently:

"Oh Master, Please forgive me. I've been a wicked girl and broken the most important rule. I'm so, so sorry...I finished shampooing the rug and I felt a bit woozy with the smell of the solvent, so I decided to have a lie down. I started to daydream about you. I pretended that you were putting rings in my twat, to run a chain through with a little padlock, so that only you could fuck me. It was so exciting...you started with a clit ring, a big one, and for a moment it felt like a red hot nail had pierced me, then you started putting in one ring after another I was lying there, wide open to you...God! It was so strong, I've never...and then I was coming like a steam train, and you had not given me permission. I was betraying you behind your back. I could kill myself. I don't deserve a lovely master like you, I should be back with Mister Ypsilanti..."

She howled and howled inconsolably. I cuddled her and tried to comfort her, but she was in a hell of her own making.

How to straighten her out? I didn't know.

"Tottie, listen to me. I am your master. Right? You are my slave. Right so far?"

She agreed, with evident delight.

"Your body belongs to me. Yes?"

"Yes, master, my body belongs to you, and I abused it without permission."

"Yes, yes, we've done that bit. Now, pay attention, I am lending you this body to look after for me. You must take great care of it. I want to see it all healed up. I want to see it a bit less skinny. I want you to eat better, even when I'm not here, if your body needs food, you feed it. Understand?"

"Good. OK so far. Next, thing, clothes. When we are in the flat on our own, or when you are here on your own, I want you to wear clothes when you are cold. I get no pleasure from you being uncomfortable. Understand? No pleasure at all.

"Next. I want you to be pretty for me. When your hair grows out, I will take you to get it properly cut and styled. My friend Dolly, upstairs from the sweetshop will do it, and she'll show you how to use a bit of lipstick and powder. I want to be proud of you when we go out. When I can I'll score some nylon stockings off a bloke I know, and we shall have to find you underthings. Dolly will know how. You just mustn't let her dress you as a tart. She's a bit apt to revert to type.

"That's more or less enough for now. One final thing. If you have daydreams, and they make you want to wank off, do it. I don't want you to feel bad about it. What the fuck is wrong with feeling good? I should like to know. If I had a dog I wouldn't stop him licking his balls. Should I treat you worse than a dog?"

I don't know how much of that got through and how much was in one ear and out the other. She seems to have been fitted with very high -level commonsense filters. These so-called masters of hers seem to have been a right pair of nutcases.

She looked at me mischievously.

"You know you said I should do things to give me pleasure? Did you mean it?"

"Well, within reason. No going off with strange men for a bit on the side. I'll get very shirty if you do that. If you want a bit of strange, pack yer bags."

That shocked her.

"No, no, I never meant anything like that, This body is yours. I am yours. That is a plain as plain. What I meant was, I really, really want to suck you off. I want your cock in my mouth, and I want you to give me your precious spunk. Please, please master, may I?"

How could I resist? I last had a really good gobbler in Germany. Maybe I was about to get another...

I was about to get the best I had ever had. It was not just technical quality and artistic merit, it was the sheer delight on her face as she watched me and saw my pleasure. I lay back in my armchair, cacks around my ankles, and watched her at work.

Her long tongue laved the bell end of my prick, finding every several nerve ending and dragging it into technicolour life. Her lips curled round and sealed, and she started a slow, gentle, rhythmical sucking, seemingly designed to lure every drop of blood to the scene, then she started to take in more and more of my prick until her nose was buried in my wiry pubic hair. Where it all went, God only knows, but she seemed quite comfortable, and I was in clouds of glory.

It was thirty years later, during the inglorious reign of Richard Milhous Nixon that I heard the term Deep Throat, and a bell went off in my mind. I was right down her throat, and this realisation broke my last vestige of control and I shot my load. She licked her lips with a huge grin on her face, and wiped her wet chin.

I hated the next stage, but knew it had to be done. I thanked her for the wonderful gobble and said it was the best I had ever had, then I began to cast around for how to express what I had to say

She sat at my feet, looking up at me, pleasure giving way to concern:

"Tottie, you know you have to be punished, don't you?"

She nodded solemnly. A little tear crept from the corner of her eye and trickled down her nose.

"Do you know why you're being punished Tottie?"

"Because I didn't have any self-control or self-discipline. I did something to hurt you, and I'm so very sorry."

"No, you don't understand at all. Tottie, you are sad and guilty and angry with yourself. I am punishing you so that you know I forgive you, and you can forgive yourself. Now do you see?"

"Yes," she burst out triumphantly. "You are doing it for me because you care about me, You do care about me, don't you?"

She was getting up so that justice could be done and atonement could follow.

I wasn't going to use a method of punishment that had sexual overtones, she was going to be punished this time as a child, not an adult.

"Stand on the table, Tottie, you can brace yourself against the ceiling. This is what Miss Lewis used to do to us when I was in junior school."

I turned her around so that she had her back to me. I looked at the healing scrapes and cuts on her back; those on her bottom were mostly gone and showed up as dark shadows on the skin. Never again, if I had anything to do with it; never again would this beautiful ivory skin be blemished and desecrated.

I slapped the wide part of each calf in turn, as hard as I could sustain. Each slap made a loud crack that echoed off the walls and windows. Not a sound did she make, and I looked at her face to see her jaw clenched and her eyes open wide. Her hands, white-knuckled, fingers spread, were pressed tight against the ceiling, showing that she was frightened of falling. I knew there would be no protest from her. A dozen smacks on each leg, and I told her quietly to get down. She stepped onto the chair, and from there to the floor. I caught her up in my arms and hugged her tight, reaching for her soft mouth to kiss her. Out first kiss. Now she could let it out, and as I felt her tears wetting her cheeks, I realised that I was crying too.

"Tottie, I love you. I shall never let you go."

"Promise you will never set me free." An insistent demand, not a request.

"Yes, I promise. I will never set you free."

A slave-owner is different from a slaveholder. With Tottie, I think we are both slaves, and we are both owners. It will not be an easy journey for either of us, there are many compromises to be made, many accommodations, many gifts to each other that will have to be given and accepted.

Sylvia Hughes (Tottie)

My True Master is not an easy man to know. He seems very open, and friendly and our neighbours love him. 'Your Jim has a heart of gold,' they say to me, as he puts a new sash into Dolly's window, or replaces the lock on the door of Alfredo's. Someone has to step up. It's no good asking the landlords. They have an office in Clapham Broadway, and the only human face we see is the elderly rat-faced rent collector, extinguished woodbine behind one ear, and a bright yellowy-brown patch in the middle of his droopy moustache. He recites the same mantra each time:

"No good askin' me nuffink, love. I just put the rent money and my book in a registered envelope Satd'y mornin, an' it comes back We'nsdy. If I put a note in about problems I don't never hear nuffink back."

Since I left home with Mister Horrabin, My True Master is the first person I have felt any love for, and the first person who feels any love for me. I bless the impulse that made me follow him back from the newspaper shop that morning, and I say a prayer of thanks each night.

Every now and again we go out to Bow to see his parents. I have to refer to him as Jim, never Master, and I have to masquerade as a complete person. I try hard, for his sake, but I long to sing out loud "I am his slave, and I have given him the power of life and death over me." I can say this to Doc Shapiro, and to Dolly, and to one or two other people up and down Bewick Street, but not in his hearing because it embarrasses him.

He tries really hard to give me what I want. Sometimes I just want to be taken like a master takes a slave, and we have a sort of code. I meet him naked at the door and kneel down submissively as I had to for Mister Ypsilanti. He reads my signals, and demands a suck. He thrusts hard in my mouth and holds my hair in two bunches now it had grown long enough. He really tries, poor love, and I never feel so much love for him as when he is trying to still the hurt in me. He spanks me, harder than usual and I appreciate it. Really I do. I put the vaseline in an obvious place, and he knows I want him to use all my holes as hard as he can.

Then, happily, the need goes away and does not come back for a week or two. A night seldom goes by when I don't suck him off, and in which he doesn't fuck me, and we never miss our Sunday mornings when our bed is our playground. But even now, after two years, I still sometimes have to slip out of bed and finish the night shivering on the hearthrug.

I am pregnant. I missed my period in February, and it is now April. I can't bear to talk about it, but I had two abortions before I found my True Master, and the two little ghosts haunt my nights and drive me out of the bed and onto the hearthrug. I am sure he guesses, but he never pries, and I try not to overload him with unwelcome knowledge.

Anyway, when I had missed two periods, I could not keep it from him any longer, and I told him. It was the hardest and most painful thing I have ever done. It is no secret that Doc Shapiro 'helps girls out', and I dreaded having to get him to "help" me.

I had to tell him, so I did it first thing in the morning as I handed him his usual cup of black tea, before we started work.

"Master. I have something I have to tell you..." I began, all of a tremble. He caught me and held me in his arms.

"Yes, ducks. I've known for days you had something that you were scared to say to me and kept putting off. Don't be scared. I can take it. Do you want to leave me?"