The 'Orford's Retreat'

It was early morning with the autumn light shining behind the barge as I followed the westerly flow of the canal through the sleepy housing estates with only the occasional dog walker or jogger wrapped up against the frost awake at this hour.

I cruised on past Haslam Park and soon entered the open countryside of the Fylde. Great flocks of starlings swirled against the gray sky, preparing for their migration to warmer climes.

I barely needed to move the tiller pole, and I sat with a fresh pot of morning coffee steaming in my gloved hand as I watched the dairy farms and grass fields glide gently past.

There are not many canal-side pubs on this stretch of the canal so I was looking forward to a few hours of isolation and solitude, the occasional stray loon upon the water and the gentle lapping of the canal water against my meandering hull.

But I had hardly taken a sip of my coffee when I saw ahead of me a butty barge being towed along by a solitary figure on the towpath.

Most butty barges these days have a motor fitted, and this rather antiquated and unusual sight piqued my interest.

As my barge drew nearer I recognized the butty barge as belonging to the narrow boat, 'Orford's Retreat', but the larger boat was nowhere in sight.

Both the 'Orford's Retreat' and its butty barge were immaculate vintage barges, ornately painted with flowery designs and always overflowing with flower pots and antique paraphernalia.

They were family owned holiday narrow boats, not 'liveaboards', and I assumed they had forgotten to store up enough diesel and so had decided to let the butty boat be towed for a while.

Being towed by just one person, the butty barge was idling its way along the canal, with another figure holding the tiller pole, and it did not take long for my barge to catch them up.

The woman at the tiller was dressed in traditional Victorian canal woman garb; a long, thick skirt reaching to her ankles and a bonnet, tied around her face, with the traditional back flap to protect her neck from the sun. Coiled in her gloved hand was a smacking whip and she acknowledged me with a quaint nod and a slight rising of her whip hand.

I grinned. "You're not thinking of actually using that, I hope!" I said, holding my cup up as a greeting.

She gave me the most poised smile and raised her eyebrow. "I sincerely hope not, one should hope that backering goes without a glitch."

I'd heard around the way that backering was an old Victorian word for a horse towing a boat without anyone on the towpath to drive it. The immaculate traditional butty boat, the Victorian garb and now her use of antiquated words, had me pigeonholing the Orfords' as pretentious and wealthy, playing at recreating the indulgent end of Victorian canal boating.

The Orford's butty boat was between me and the towpath, blocking my view of the figure I had noticed pulling the barge along earlier.

"I can't actually see your mule."

She smiled again, this time looking genuinely entertained, and then suddenly standing, she lashed the smacking whip towards the canal bank.

"Present!"

With the crack of the whip carrying over the fields of harvested grass, she motioned me forward with one gloved hand, to appreciate her mule.

As the butty boat slowed and I cruised past, she even handed me a pair of theater binoculars with a bemused smirk.

I brought the focus of the binoculars in line with the canal bank and then looked for the figure pulling the barge.

I followed the canal bank along until the lenses found a pair of booted feet. I let the binoculars move up from the booted feet, up a pair of naked legs to where a leather strap protected her modesty. Her legs were short and the pale flesh of her exposed thighs was trembling and raw looking from the icy November air.

Above her covered private area the strap thickened out to cover her belly with straps pulling it painfully tight above her hips.

The tight leather seemed to restrict her breathing and her soft belly pushed against the harness as she tried to catch her breath. Moving up her body, the leather thinned, leaving her small breasts naked on either side of the black leather. It attached to a collar by a metal hoop.

Putting down the binoculars to see the whole vision I saw standing facing me, panting hard and with her hands on her head, a beautiful young woman, her petite body practically naked in a black leather harness.

With her hands on her head, the young woman stood on the towpath, jutting her naked breasts forward. The November air cooled her glistening sweat, making her nipples stand erect.

Other than the harness and straps the woman was naked, her shoulders, arms and breasts fully on show.

Her head was bridled with a complex set of straps with blinkers on each side, and she stood breathing hard around a silicon bit that forced her mouth open.

Her eyes were blue, and as they had caught me watching her with the binoculars she averted her eyes and blushed profusely, struggling to maintain her exposed position.

I cut the engine and steadied the barge with the boat pole to let the mysterious woman in the butty boat catch up again.

She responded with another crack of the whip that shattered the silence of the surrounding countryside and I used the binoculars once more to watch the young woman as she lowered her naked arms and resumed towing the butty boat by a rope tied to the back of her harness at the base of her back.

Having let the butty boat come to a halt, the young woman had to work hard to give the boat the necessary momentum to move forward and her thigh muscles strained as she leaned forward, her teeth biting against the bit.

The strain eased with each step until the woman was able to walk slowly, still slightly stooped with her burden, and pull the butty boat through the water, the other lady sipping a glass of champagne and smiling contentedly as she drew alongside me once again.

I handed the woman her binoculars back as she floated by and she took them with a smile.

"Intrigued? Of course you are. Join us for breakfast at Salwick bridge."

I followed behind the Orfords' butty boat, my engine barely running and enjoying the reflection of the trees overhanging the canal as they rippled in our wake and grew calm again in our passing.

The morning sun still back lit my view along the roof of the barge, casting long shadows from the tarpaulin stretched over the hatch and the ropes and barge pole lying alongside.

Ahead was the canal, slightly curving towards the small stone bridge and one could nearly forget that in the cold shadows of the trees' canopy, the girl in the harness and bridle was towing the butty boat along.

Occasionally the sun would shine through a gap in the trees and the woman's naked shoulders and arms, pale against the black leather would suddenly appear, or her exposed buttocks framed by the leather straps that kept her harness in place.

It was still early, but I wandered how many passers-by had seen the exposed woman hauling the boat along in the frosty November morning.

The Orford's narrow boat was moored up at Salwick Bridge and I guided my barge to the next available mooring pin, letting her fenders take the gentle impact against the bank before tying her up tight.

As I walked up the towpath towards the 'Orford's Retreat' a tall man jumped deftly from the barge, dressed as a Victorian gentleman, and wrapping the harnessed girl in a blanket, hugged her warmly.

He gently unclasped her bridle and removed it from her head and she stared up at him adoringly.

I hadn't realized until then that the steel ring through her septum wasn't part of the bridle, but she stood with her head rapturously against his chest, the sun glinting off the metal in her nose.

Even as she stood in the man's arms, her eyes closed in his embrace, the woman from the butty boat snapped a chain to her nose ring and yanked her free from the embrace.

The young woman held the blanket close around her body as she was hauled over to a mooring pin and her chain locked around it.

"Well, I am quite ravenous after all that fresh air!" the woman declared, turning and striding towards the 'Hand and Dagger' pub.

Inside the pub, the groups' Victorian garb and the man's great sweep of his top hat ensured a lively welcome and we were warmly greeted and guided to the table before the roaring wood fire.

"Four miles and three and a half furlongs and the poor dear looks exhausted!" The woman from the butty boat announced, her eyes peering disapprovingly from over the breakfast menu.

The group guffawed, removing winter coats and shawls and settling down to the table.

"Oh, and this is a 'liveaboard', I believe, who was not immune to the charms of your newlywed, dearest brother." She said, motioning for me to take the empty chair at the table.

Breakfast was enjoyed heartily by the group of five, of which I made a rather uncomfortable sixth, being a stranger and being rather raggedly dressed.

But, with that, I joined the extravagant bon ami of the Orford's, cheery and carefree, generous and welcoming to all who chose to partake of their self referential lifestyle.

Petunia, the sister who had been steering the butty boat, sat offering me enthusiastic asides as the group chatted, so that I learned much over a cooked breakfast, washed down with champagne beside the welcome warmth of the well stacked wood fire.

The tall gentleman was Jed, ("papa just simply adores Jed") an only son and brother to the two ladies who accompanied him at the breakfast table. Both his sisters, ("I'm Petunia, by the way, and she is Lesley") and there rather meek husbands ("don't bother about them, darling") accorded Jed the utmost respect as the male Orford heir, a position he enjoyed with great aplomb.

What emerged was that this was the Orford annual November retreat; strictly for family and their spouses only. A family tradition the three siblings had enjoyed since their teens. The main difference this year being that Jed had also married and so the November retreat was doubling as his honeymoon.

This family group seemed to live a charmed life, with money aplenty, sharing their generosity and humor with anyone who fawned before the legendary Orfords. The landlord not only halved the bill because of their fantastic outfits, but actually joined us to hear the story of the Orford traditional family holiday.

No mention was made of the young woman chained by her nose to the mooring pin outside, although I had surmised she must be the new wife of the heir apparent. It was only when Lesley returned from 'powdering her nose' sooner than the others that I asked about her.

"Oh, her! I really have not the slightest idea what Jed sees in her, I am quite sure. But c'est le vie."

"But why is she...well...dressed like that...and...towing like a...a..."

"A mule, perhaps? Or a pony? Well, the poor dear is, how shall I say it; being educated in what we like to call the 'Orford way'.

The others returned before I could ask anymore and Petunia waggled a finger at the scraps left on the plates: "Doggy bag, darling!"

The landlord scraped the plates into a bag and handed it to Petunia.

"Must be pretty cramped on your barge with all you guys and a dog. What type is it?"

"It's a little bitch!"

"But I've ways of training it." Petunia said, showing the landlord her whip and getting the obligatory round of laughter, only Jed's smile seeming a little empty.

We eventually returned to the canal, well fed, warmed and with the autumnal leaves fairly sparkling with frost to my drunken gaze as we hugged like old friends.

I looked back, waved and toppled along a gunwhale to see Petunia pouring the leftovers into a steel dog bowl and then pushing it with the toe of her boot towards the chained woman.

I went below for a quick nap and when I surfaced the moorings were empty. The Orford's had carried on their journey.

The sun shone a beautiful white light on the trees, dazzling brightly off the canal water and I drifted along content in the serenity of life on the water...except that the vision of the girl in the bridle and harness haunted me.

There was something beautiful in her surrender to her husband, something I had not seen before and something noble in her laboring without complaint this morning. She had worn her exposure at such an obvious cost and with such bravery, and I wandered at Jed and how he had earned the subjugation of a creature so beautiful.

Had my memories only been of the exposed young woman in her harness, naked and panting as she labored to tow the boat midst the trees along the towpath I might not have felt so restless.

But there was something else, something more sinister in the mocking laughter of Petunia's eyes and in the nonchalance of her toe as it pushed the dog bowl before the huddled woman.

I wasn't sure if Jed's giant arms could hold her as safe as she needed to be, not with Petunia there too.