‘This is your first brush with what us old hands call bondage and discipline, isn’t it?’ asked Harriet.
Embarrassed, Rachel nodded. ‘Yes. I’ve read about it, but I don’t know much about it from my own experience. And Jeff isn’t much help,’ she added.
‘Jeff?’ Harriet asked.
‘My . . . partner,’ Rachel replied. ‘We live together but he doesn’t know I’ve come to see you. I want him to help me but I haven’t the courage to tell him about these fantasies.’
‘How did you find out you were interested in B&D?’ Harriet asked.
‘I found my grandmother’s diaries when Mum and I were clearing out her attic after she went into the residential home. From them I learnt how much she enjoyed it, and I have always wanted to find out what was so exciting to her. She wrote that her parents had insisted she wear the sleeping garment after they had caught her masturbating. According to Nan, she slept in it regularly for several years, all through her late teens and even into her early twenties. She said she was terribly embarrassed when she was taken into the harness maker’s shop to be measured for it. She knew what the thing was for, and the harness maker must have known, because he asked remarkably few questions and seemed to be eyeing her closely. Thinking about why she had to have the restraint, probably. At first, she said, her parents trussed her up every night. She was offered the choice of sleeping on her front or her back, but once she was in restraint she couldn’t change her position. They would use these brass rings to fasten her to the bed. In later years, she wrote, if she promised to be “good”, sometimes they would only tie her hands behind her back and not insist she be strapped down all night.
‘I get the impression that her parents used the threat of more or less restraint to reward or punish her for other sorts of behaviour – not just masturbation. She wrote that she had been sleeping with only her hands tied for some time when she had a fearful row with her father over a friend she had met at school. That night, and for weeks afterwards, she was made to sleep in full restraint, tied to her bed by her hands and feet. Her mother seemed to think that was a bit drastic, but she never argued with her husband. Getting Nan into her straitjacket and into bed took two of them, and her mother helped with the task whenever it had to be done. Nan thinks her mother also wanted to be there to make certain there would be no impropriety – though how there could be once she was in the straitjacket I don’t know.
‘The one thing that’s clear in the diaries is that my grandmother came to enjoy the experience of being tied up. It became a part of her sexual ritual, something that aroused and excited her instead of the reverse. She found she couldn’t think of anything except masturbating when she was in her restraint, and she went at it like a demented thing as soon as she was freed and had the chance. Her parents’ attempts to tame her sexually backfired badly.’
Harriet nodded. ‘They often do,’ she said with the air of a cognoscente.
Rachel continued. ‘The situation would have gone on like that indefinitely had it not been for the appearance of yet another player. Benjy – she never called him Benjamin – came to stay with her family. He was the son of one of her father’s friends in the Foreign Service. From what she says, I gather he was a bit younger than her, and a whole lot more shy. He shared the almost universal ignorance of sexual matters that characterised the era. My grandmother doesn’t say how he found the courage to enter her room after she had been trussed up for the night, but one night there he was, standing beside her bed and staring down at her.
‘He had never gone into her room at night before, but the amount of time her parents spent with her at bedtime must have aroused his curiosity. They spent much less time with the other children, and he wanted to find out what they were doing. When he saw she was awake he touched her shoulder and asked her why she was tied to her bed.
‘She had never considered the possibility that an explanation would be called for, so she told him what she had been told by her parents, giving him the reasons they had given her. She hadn’t any other experience to go on. She says that worried him. He asked her if he would go insane unless he was tied up at night as she was. My grandmother tried to reassure him, but he was still worried. And he was curious. He had never seen an insane person. Was she insane? he asked. No, she said, not as far as she knew. The straitjacket was intended to help her stay sane. The explanation seemed to baffle him. He might have asked further questions, but at that point her parents stirred and he made a quick escape back to his room. But over the next few days, she wrote, he kept watching her to see if she was going insane – whatever that might mean to a person of his age and relative innocence.
‘Several nights later he crept in again. This time he sat on the bed and woke her deliberately. He was still curious and worried. He seems to have regarded her as an older sister and he thought of her as a confidante in a strange household. Seeing her strapped helplessly to her bed at night worried him. Would there be a day when she had to be kept tied up permanently? My grandmother told him not to worry. She would be all right, she said. She asked him to get her a glass of water to give him something to do. When he came back, she discovered that there was no way she could drink it unless he poured it into her mouth for her. That made her choke and they were afraid the noise would wake their parents. When she was quiet once more he got a clean handkerchief which he moistened. He used that to give her the water a few drops at a time. After that he made a habit of going into her room when everyone else was asleep to see that she was all right. My grandmother was touched by his concern, and they spent many hours in conversation, with him sitting on her bed and she strapped up tight in her leather cocoon. On the hot nights he would brush her hair from her face or wipe her forehead when she sweated. When it was time for him to go back to his bed he would lean down and kiss her goodnight.
‘There wasn’t much else he could do so long as she was strapped into her straitjacket, even if either of them thought of something else. But there came a time, after she had been sleeping in her restraints for about six months, when her parents decided she might be more free. They would both go into her room after she had got into her nightgown to wish her goodnight and to pray together for her continued safety and health in the midst of the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil – in particular against the demands of the flesh. One or the other of them would tie her hands behind her back and help her to get into bed. Then they would take the lamp away.
‘And on many of those nights she would be unable to restrain herself. She would roll over on to her stomach and grind her hips and vulva against the mattress, trying to make herself come. She described how she bit the bedding to stop herself crying out and waking her parents. She always felt guilty afterwards, but she couldn’t stop.
‘Inevitably, Benjy went in one night and found her bucking and writhing in her bed. He was alarmed. Was this what insanity looked like? He thought it might well do, but luckily he went to look more closely at her before raising the alarm. She looked as if she were in another world, as indeed she was. He watched intently as she gasped for breath and shuddered in the bed. Her eyes were closed and she was unaware of anything except what was taking place between her legs.
‘When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Benjy, his face creased with worry and his eyes puzzled. Of course, he had to know if she was all right. When he was assured on that point, he asked what she was doing. There was no concealing that she had been up to something, and the fact that she chose the time when she was least likely to be observed suggested that it was something others – particularly her parents – might not approve of. At this point she had a choice: try to deny that she had been driving herself to orgasm, and hope he wouldn’t realise what her writhings were intended to do; or tell him as much as she understood and enlist him in the cause. In either case she had to ensure he kept quiet about what he had seen.
‘She thought the best chance of keeping it quiet was to enlist his aid. So she told him as much as she knew about her desires and the pleasure she derived from gratifying them in this way. She revealed that their parents had found out about her “nightly activities”. Masturbation wasn’t a word in either of their vocabularies in those days. That was why, she said, her parents had put her into the straitjacket – an attempt to prevent her from touching herself. “Is that why your hands are tied tonight?” Benjy asked. She nodded. He didn’t understand what she meant by orgasm, but he grasped the central problem at once. His next question took her by surprise. “Do you want me to untie you so you can do it again? I can come back later and tie you up again, so they won’t know what we’ve done.”
‘Deborah – I don’t want to keep calling her grandmother now that I know so much about her – was surprised by the generosity of his offer. He was willing to risk her parents’ displeasure for her sake. But common sense came to her rescue. She told him that that was too risky for both of them. Instead she asked him to help her get out of bed. Benjy pulled the covers off her and helped her sit up. Deborah scooted over to the edge of the bed and let her legs hang over so that her feet touched the floor. Then she told Benjy to raise her nightgown to her waist. She spread her legs and had him kneel between her thighs. “Touch me, Benjy,” she commanded. When he hesitated, she continued, “Don’t worry. It won’t hurt you or me. I’ll tell you what to do. But touch me between my legs now.”
‘Hesitantly, he did as she asked. Deborah gasped when his fingers brushed against her sex, and he drew back in alarm, probably thinking he had hurt her. Deborah told him again not to worry, and to continue with the explorations. It was a bit like the children’s game of show and tell, with Deborah doing all of the showing and most of the telling. At first she had to direct his every move, but she was patient because he didn’t know what he was doing. Deborah didn’t know much more, but she had her feelings as a guide. She knew when he touched a spot she liked. When she came the first time Benjy was scared all over again. He almost bolted, but Deborah calmed him down and got him to do it again, telling him that it felt so good for her. That night he brought her to climax several times without ever understanding what was happening. At the end he helped Deborah to get back into bed and tucked the covers in for her. Benjy wiped her sweating face and shyly kissed her goodnight. Then he went back to his own room.
‘The next night there were guests who stayed late, and the younger members of the household were sent upstairs to prepare themselves for bed. Benjy wanted to know if Deborah wanted him to come to her room that night, but she said no. She would have to wait for her parents to come up to see her before they retired, and he should go to sleep. She regretted it, but caution was needed. It wouldn’t do to get both of them suspected. And the sense of guilt she felt was stronger after the last night.
‘But of course she had no intention of stopping. It felt too good, and Deborah wrote that she was not completely sure that something that felt so good could be so awful. For a young woman of her times she was becoming quite liberal, as people often do when the strictures of their society prevent them from doing what gives them pleasure. When Benjy came to her room the next time, they repeated the earlier success. Well, for Deborah it was a success – she didn’t know what Benjy got out of it. After they had fallen into a regular pattern, she plucked up the courage to ask him what he felt. His reply startled and moved her. He told her he liked doing this for her because it made her so glad. He might have been trying to say that he loved her, but then, as now, no one wanted to use the L word openly. In the diary she only recorded that she was pleased he felt that way, avoiding a display of her own feelings.
‘The next turning point came when Deborah got Benjy to massage her clitoris with his finger. It was the next logical step, and I wonder how she took so long to get there. But I have to remember that she belonged to a different age.’
Harriet nodded her agreement, but added, ‘There are still people around now who should have been born into that age. Your grandmother must have been a remarkable woman. Her behaviour took courage, and her diary even more so. It would have been dynamite if her parents had found it.’
‘I know,’ Rachel agreed. ‘But she had even more courage than that. She showed her diary to my grandfather shortly before they were married, and he both helped her conceal her feelings from others while he did his best to give her physical pleasure of the type she had come to depend on. She was so happy with him. And he was liberated or loving enough to be able to do gladly the things that made her happy. She doesn’t say if he shared her predilection for bondage, but he did what she preferred often enough to please her immensely, and never condemned her tastes or tried to change her. Maybe that’s the greatest love – to accept someone else for what they are. And maybe Benjy was responding to her in the same way.
‘They were drawn together by the secret they were keeping. It was something private between them. It made them fellow conspirators in the universal game of outwitting one’s elders. Deborah wrote that they carried on this way for a couple of years, with Benjy visiting her almost every night after her parents were asleep. Even when there was no sex play, he liked to talk things over with her. Deborah describes him creeping into her room and asking, “Are you awake, Debbie?” Then he would go over and sit on her bed and they would talk. On those occasions when she was strapped into her straitjacket that was all they could do, but there were other times when only her hands were tied and still they talked. He was curious about what she felt when he touched her, and Deborah tried to explain it to him. That wasn’t very successful because he had no experience of what she felt. Merely saying that she felt good conveyed nothing to him. Eventually the time came when she resolved to show him. He was getting interested in girls on his own, and his ignorance was getting in his way.