BDSM Library - Story: Stiffkey Blues, Chapter: Chapter 4 Storyboard

Chapter 4: Storyboard

Madeleine Roth, posting under the name of Fatima, was putting the last touches to her daily blog. Eastern Promise, the web site she ran with a number of her friends, took up most of her spare time. She and Krista Collins had founded the site almost three years earlier as way of publishing their fantasies of life in the east, veiled and enslaved as part of some potentate’s harem.

Over the years they had created a series of stories. They, in turn, had attracted other, like-minded, authors and those that shared their interests posting on the site’s message boards or contributing their own tales.

This weekend, though, she wouldn’t have much time for posting. She, Krista and three of the others that had contributed to Eastern Promise had agreed to meet up for a couple of days in a cottage in the Norfolk. Well it wasn’t the mysterious east, Madeleine thought but at least it was the east of England.

Madeleine wasn’t sure whose idea it had been but now that the time had come she was looking forward to it. It was a cottage that Krysta had found out about. Set way out on the edge of a stretch of marshes along the North Norfolk coast, it would offer them all a chance to get away from work, share their thoughts and enthusiasms and maybe do some writing as well. The weather didn’t look promising and Madeleine knew that Norfolk could be bleak but she didn’t care. It was going to be fun.

The sound of a car’s horn announced Krysta’s arrival. She and Madeleine had known each other for years. They shared the fantasies that led them to set up Eastern Promise and they’d collaborated on the site’s most successful tales.

Madeleine threw her bag into the back of the car and the two of them set off through the suburbs of North London. As they slowed for a set of traffic lights passing through Walthamstow it began to rain. Krysta peered out over the steering wheel. “Well, it’s hardly Baghdad,” Krysta said.

Madeleine smiled. “Well perhaps this is our magic carpet.”

“A Volkswagen Magic Carpet!” Krysta laughed in turn.

“At least it would solve the energy crisis.”

The suburbs gave way to the Essex countryside, Essex to Cambridgeshire and Cambridgeshire eventually to Norfolk.

They began the last stage of their drive, working their way slowly through the gloomy evening along narrow country lanes to their final destination. It was dark when they reached their destination and Krysta’s Volkswagen pulled in through an open white gate that hung from a brick and flint pillar. She drove up a short length of gravel drive and swung around, passing beside a battered Land Rover and a small sailing dinghy on a launching trailer. As Krysta turned the car again, Madeleine could see enough of where they were headed in the car’s headlights to exclaim, “That’s not a cottage. It’s a windmill!”

Krysta laughed. “Isn’t it fantastic? I was sure you’d love it. It’s not a mill though: it’s a pump. The land is pretty close to sea level here, it’s only the pumps that keep it from flooding. But come on inside. If we go up to the top the views are terrific.”

Together they climbed the steps of the ladders that led up to the mill’s cap. A wooden gallery circled the tower of the mill close to its top. They stepped out onto the gallery, just below the point where the heavy wooden beam carried the wind pump’s sails, holding them suspended over the dark, wide spaces of the marsh lands that stretched away to the coast. They could see the moonlight reflected in the sea half a mile away but between them and it the marshes were pitch black. There wasn’t another light to be seen that way apart from a faint green glow as a tiny boat puttered its way eastwards some way off-shore. In fact the only lights they could see were those of Stiffkey – “Stoo-key” Krysta had told Madeleine it was pronounced – a small village a couple of miles away.

The sails of the mill were still. They seemed regretful, Madeleine thought, saddened that they weren’t slicing through the wind. The wind, however, seemed to be slicing through her coat with no difficulty whatsoever. “It’s wonderful. But its cold,” Madeleine said. “Let’s go back in.”

“Fair enough,” said Krysta as she led the way inside. “But it is fantastic isn’t it. Tell me you love it.”

A few minutes later they were in the warm. Pump Cottage, a small brick and flint, tile roofed, building was tucked in beside the great brick tower of the pump. The living room was small but cosy. The kitchen led straight off it, built as an afterthought on the back of the building. Beside that another room served as a dining room.

“It’s going to be a bit crowded, isn’t it?” said Madeleine. “With five of us?”

“Well, there are three rooms upstairs so some of us are going to have to double up or we’ll have to use downstairs for sleeping too.”

“Or the pump tower.”

“Now that wouldn’t be my idea of a place to sleep. Too many bats. Not to mention the mice and the rats from the ditches.”

“Brr,” said Madeleine. “Not my idea, either, then. I guess we’ll all manage in here.”

“Well, we’ve got the place to ourselves tonight. I thought we could go shopping in Fakenham tomorrow morning and get some food. The others will be turning up in the afternoon.

‘The others’ were three of the other authors on the site. Madeleine and Krysta had met Angela Dark and Celia Best at an earlier event when they had all fetched up in London at the “Power of the Eastern Idea” exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. It was the success of that meeting that had led Krysta to suggest this get together.

The last of the five was a relative newcomer to Eastern Promise, Penelope Trating had started sending her stories in about three months earlier. She had been welcomed enthusiastically by the site’s readers. Her tales, written under the pen name of ‘Yasmin’, seemed to convey a deep feeling for the world they were all trying to evoke, although some felt that some of her subjects trod a little too near the site’s boundaries in the areas of what was acceptable in sex and violence. She defended them saying that there was nothing in them that couldn’t be seen portrayed on television a lot more graphically most nights. Most of the other readers felt obliged to agree, and besides they enjoyed them.

“Have you given any thought to what we’re going to do?” said Madeleine. “I mean we’re miles from anywhere and there’s nothing outside except marshes.”

“Exactly. It’s peaceful and quiet. We’ll all be able to write. I thought we’d have a sort of workshop session where we exchange ideas about some of the things we’re working on. And if all else fails we’ll have to work our way through the wine that’s stacked up in a cupboard in the kitchen.”

“What a disaster!” Madeleine laughed. “That seems like an ideal way to finish the evening now.”

Krista grinned back. “Sounds good to me,” she said and went in search of a bottle, two glasses and a corkscrew.

+++++

Krysta and Madeleine woke with well deserved headaches the following morning. The rain had cleared through leaving a bright, sunny morning that at least gave the girls an excuse for the dark glasses they put on to spare themselves the worst of the brightness.

In Fakenham they fortified themselves with coffee before venturing in to a supermarket. The shop was small by London standards but still seemed to have most of the things they needed to keep them fed over the weekend. They got back to the cottage half an hour before Angela and Celia turned up in Angela’s Peugeot 206, the roof down so that they could enjoy the sunshine which, according to the weather forecast was the last that they would see that week-end.

Krysta and Madeleine spilled out of the cottage to greet them as the Peugeot pulled up. “It’s fantastic,” Celia called, pointing at the tower of the pump. “All it needs is an onion dome instead of the cap and we could pretend it’s a minaret!”

“Not sure how the denizens of Norfolk would take to that,” Krysta laughed. “They still think multi-culturalism means putting up with people from Lincolnshire.”

++++++++

The afternoon gave the four girls a chance to enjoy the sunshine with a walk along the raised path that ran beside the ditch leading down to the coast. At the end, the path ran between a few low dunes and down onto a deserted, sandy, windswept beach. They stood there for only a few minutes delighting in the emptiness of the place.

“It’s beautiful,” said Celia.

“But it is cold!” Madeliene responded. The others agreed and headed back to the warmth of the cottage.

“Well those dunes weren’t really too much like the Sahara,” Celia said. “But I want to get into the mood for writing. I’m going to change.”

She reappeared a few minutes later, wearing a long dark robe and with her face veiled by a niqaab, her wide, dark brown eyes somehow made all the more arresting by being her only visible feature. She squatted down in one corner of the room, balanced her laptop on a pile of cushions. She opened the laptop and began to type, losing herself in her concentration, oblivious to the other three preparing that evening’s meal.

It was only when Madeleine called her, saying that they were all about to eat, that she snapped herself out of the imaginary world she was creating. She was delighted to find that the others had joined her in Arab dress. While Celia wore her abaya and niqaab, Madeliene was in jilbab and hijab while Krysta and Angela had got themselves up like harem slaves in full belly dancing regalia. It was funny, Madeliene thought. She, Celia and Angela looked nothing like the typical middle-eastern woman. With their pale complexions, especially Celia with her ginger hair and freckles, they could never look anything other than the Northern Europeans that they were. Krysta was different though. Her black hair, dark eyes and sallow skin could easily be middle-Eastern. And she had the fuller figure that Madeleine always associated with the denizens of a potentate’s harem. In the end though it didn’t matter what they looked like, it was the fantasies that they shared which were important.

The four of them sat down on cushions to enjoy the dishes that Madeleine had cooked up. Raiding her Moroccan cookbook she’d found a recipe for a lamb tagine with apricots and prunes. She served it with a coriander flavoured couscous. The rest of the girls agreed that it was delicious.

+++++++

“How’s your latest story coming along.” Madeleine and Celia were chatting in the lounge after dinner.

“OK I think. I think I’ve managed to build in a couple of plot twists that will amuse people and Princess Arana manages to get herself into some more exciting scrapes.”

Madeleine was pleased. Celia’s tales about Princess Arana, a sort of harem detective that solved crimes like the disappearance of the Sultan’s favourite pet monkey, were very popular on the site, always attracting plenty of comments and reviews, especially if Arana’s “scrapes” involved her getting tied up in some way or other.

“That’s good. I’m a bit stuck with mine, I’ve really been blocked since that last story. I just don’t seem to be able to come up with ideas at the moment.”

“It’s something Penny never seems short of. “

“No you’re right. Although some of her stuff is a bit strong for me.”

“The sex or the violence?”

“Well, both really. And the violent sex!”

“And the bondage. There’s so much of it. Chains and ropes. Her poor heroine barely goes a page without finding herself in some sort of helpless situation.”

“Well a lot of the readers like it. Let’s face it for a lot of people the attraction of the East is the idea of sexual slavery and some of your stories have had their moments too.” Madeleine recalled how one tale had Princess Arana roped across the back of the villain’s camel as he tried to flee the palace across the desert. It had attracted record responses, especially when the Princess had almost fallen for the villain’s seductive charms while she was chained to a palm tree during an overnight stop at an oasis.

“Mm? Well, fair enough I guess but it seems a bit heavy to me that’s all.” Celia sometimes felt a bit prudish, but she didn’t see why she had to like everything that was submitted to the site.

“Well, there you are, perhaps the role of sex and violence on the site could be a topic for debate over the week-end?”

Celia didn’t respond but she did look up at the sound of car tyres crunching on gravel. “Well, I guess that this must be Penny now.”

Angela looked out through the living room’s small front window. Krysta’s comments should have prepared her but nevertheless she was surprised to see a rather old fashioned looking saloon car draw up towing the smallest caravan that Angela had ever seen.

Penny wound down the window of her peppermint-green, A-plate, Ford 105E Anglia and waved to Angela. She stopped the car and climbed out, smiling happily as the rest of the girls emerged from the cottage.

“Hullo Penny, welcome,” Krysta said. “You found us all right then. Does that have satnav?”

Penny laughed. “Oh no, nothing so up to date.”

Up to date was certainly a not description that could be applied to Penelope Trating, Celia thought as she saw her standing beside the car. She was wearing a lemon yellow suit with a straight knee length skirt and a short jacket with a contrasting Peter Pan collar in white. She had matching yellow low heeled shoes and a pillbox hat perched on top of her bouffant, lacquered, hair. She clutched a small white handbag in front of her, almost defensively as she peered uncertainly back at the girls.

Madeleine was determined to overcome any shyness that Penny might feel. “Well, you’re here that’s the most important thing. It’s really great you could join us. We’ve all enjoyed your stories. It’s so good to see you for real.”

Penny seemed to relax a bit, encouraged by the warmth of the greeting. “Well, I’m pleased to be here too. It’s lovely to meet you all.”

“That caravan is extraordinary,” Angela enthused peering at the tiny cream trailer that the Anglia had towed in. “It’s so small. Can you really use it?”

“Oh yes,” Penny responded. “I use it a lot. It’s an Eriba; they’re German. I thought I’d bring it because Krysta said the cottage would be crowded. I’ll sleep in it out here.”

“You don’t have to,” Krysta responded, “there’s room enough. We can all squeeze in.”

“No, it’s all right. Really. I quite like having my own space. I mean I don’t want to be stand-offish or anything but well, maybe I’m just funny that way.”

“Don’t worry. Nobody minds,” Madeleine cut in. “But only if you show us inside.”

“Of course,” said Penny, evidently relieved. “Look.” She opened the caravan’s door.

Together Angela, Krysta, Celia and Madeleine peered in through the tiny caravan’s door. “It’s perfect,” said Madeleine, “Almost like a doll’s house.”

“Well there’s enough room for me,” smiled Penny, “but you’re right, it’s not really much good for throwing parties.”

“You’ve got your record player though,” Krysta pointed. Perched on the tiny table at the front end of the caravan was a Dansette portable record player. Beside it a small, rexine covered, case held a collection of 45rpm, 7” vinyl, singles. “Can I look?” Penny passed the case across. Krysta thumbed through the faded paper sleeves that held Penny’s precious collection. “Wow! You could start your own golden oldies station with these,” Krysta said.

Angela leaning over her shoulder read out a roll call of the artists on each the disks, “Neil Sedaka, Helen Shapiro, Dion, Ketty Lester, Little Eva, Dusty Springfield.”

“Oh, that one’s not right!” Penny interrupted.

“I think she’s fantastic,” disagreed Celia. “What’s this? ‘Just a Little Lovin’. Wasn’t that on ‘Dusty in Memphis’?”

Penny gave an embarrassed nod but then perked up, pleased that anyone should share her taste in music. “Yes,” she said, “and that’s what’s wrong with it. It was 1969, I mean it’s too late really but I can’t resist her voice and it’s such a soulful album. All the others are tracks from 1962.”

“So you really do try to keep things authentic?”

“Oh yes,” said Penny, “No iPod, no FM radio, no Internet. It seems to me like it was a better world. Why shouldn’t I live in it?”

All characters fictitious

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