‘And then you go to the … what class?’
‘Strapping class. They use leather belts, and straps, and
tawses. A few more strokes each time. Then it’s – ouch – paddles and, oh, ow, whips and canes and stuff, ow, ow, ow!’
‘Now you feel it,’ he said, with some satisfaction. ‘And your, what, we call them
fesses
, are a beautiful red. I think, scarlet.’
Poppy could believe it, but she tried to maintain her submissive tone.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she said.
He stopped, rubbing her all over her rounded mounds again.
He sighed deeply.
‘But I think I hurt you,’ he said.
‘I learned my lesson, sir.’
‘And it is painful,’ he said. His palm rested on her right cheek.
Poppy wriggled, very, very slightly.
She knew it was against the rules to solicit him for sex, or to try and invite a fingering but, oh Lord, she wished it were not.
‘But you like it,’ he whispered.
Two of his fingers fluttered idly near the wettest part of her gauzy thong. If they just moved, just touched, just … He removed his hand from her and she clamped her thighs together in an agony of frustration.
‘So what now?’ he asked.
‘It’s done,’ said Poppy. ‘You can take more tea if you want.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Then you pay me the rate for a hand spanking and, er, that’s it.’
‘That’s it.’
He pulled her skirt back down and lifted her from his lap.
Poppy hardly dared look at him but, when she did, she
saw a misty, affectionate expression on his face that gave her complicated feelings.
Don’t get involved with the customers. Don’t think of them as people.
She should take that advice. She should take the money, and nod a submissive farewell.
He put his hands on her upper arms and bent close to her. She could smell the sour tea on his breath and, beneath that, a hint of brandy.
‘When do you leave?’ he asked softly.
Here it came. The big decision. To accept an assignation outside the club or to walk away. She should say no. She lacked the experience and he could be the proverbial axe-murderer …
‘I can leave now,’ she said, the words spilling anyhow. ‘I only have to take one client.’
‘That’s good. Listen. It is your choice. I will be in the pub on the corner, you know it?’
She nodded.
‘For one hour. If you want, you can meet me. If not …’ He shrugged, then put a fingertip to her cheek. ‘If not, then thank you. OK?’
He took a wallet from his shirt pocket and handed her the spanking tariff in crisp twenty-pound notes.
‘I wonder if your Queen knows what she is paying for,’ he said, looking at Her Majesty’s face on the final purple banknote.
Poppy’s nerves dissolved and she smiled.
‘Good evening, sir,’ she said. ‘And thank you for correcting me.’
It was the script. She had to say it.
‘I hope you will.’
He opened the screens and left.
Poppy re-arranged the booth into perfect order then made the trip upstairs to Allyson’s office, nodding at the security guards so that they would know she was clocking off for the night.
‘My goodness.’ Allyson greeted her with evident surprise, looking up from her computer screen. ‘New girls are always popular, but you’ve broken the record, I think. We’ve hardly been open ten minutes.’
Poppy blushed and held out the wad of banknotes.
Allyson counted them carefully. ‘There’s fifty over,’ she said. ‘He must have liked you.’
‘Oh, he was French. Perhaps he just didn’t understand the exchange rate or something.’
‘All the same, take your tip and your half of the fee. Well done, love. That’s a good first night’s work. Back tomorrow, I assume, since he only used his hand?’
‘Oh, yes, that’s fine. Same time tomorrow, then?’
Allyson smiled.
As Poppy turned to go, she stopped her. ‘Poppy, did you enjoy yourself?’
Her face was tilted on one side, as if the answer mattered to her.
‘Yes, it was cool,’ mumbled Poppy, wanting nothing more, now, than to get out of this silly costume and meet Bruno in the pub.
‘Would you mind showing me your bottom?’
‘Oh! Er, all right.’
It seemed an outlandish request but then, considering this was a spanking club, perhaps Poppy was being oversensitive. Allyson probably needed to make sure she hadn’t been marked.
She turned around and lifted the brief satin skirt of her robe, exposing the newly-spanked cheeks.
‘Lovely and pink,’ commented Allyson. ‘But you won’t have bruises tomorrow. Perfect.’ There was a long and pregnant pause. ‘All right, you can go.’
Poppy’s throat was dry and she needed a long drink of water before she slipped back into her dress. The dressing room, so shabby and prosaic, seemed to lower her mood and warn her against meeting Bruno.
He thought she was a prostitute. He expected sex. No matter how attractive and sweet he seemed, no matter how sexy his accent, this was what he was after. Wham, bam,
merci madame.
However you looked at it, it wasn’t romantic.
Poppy, back on the street, joined the teeming nightlife and hoped she could slip past the pub unnoticed. She wove a path through the gangs of men peering into peepshows, and past the windows filled with mannequins in rubber basques. It was so old-fashioned now, this sexscape, it almost seemed like a fabricated street in a heritage museum. Serious sex-seekers went online – all you found here was tourist curiosity.
Around the corner lay freedom and fashionable restaurants. She ducked as she passed the pub, hoping that a combination of busy streets and frosted glass windows would be her friend.
But she couldn’t resist a quick look inside the open door on the way past.
Bad move.
He was there, at the bar, right in her line of vision, and he caught sight of her as she crept by.
‘Allo!’ he exclaimed, taking two steps forward.
She froze.
He looked so pleased to see her, and Poppy could never resist anyone’s good opinion of her.
She changed course and went into the pub.
‘I wasn’t sure,’ she said with an apologetic look.
‘You would like a drink?’
‘Oh, maybe a vodka and cranberry. Thanks.’
Squashed into a corner, their thighs touching, they clinked glasses and smiled, him radiantly, her nervously.
‘Bruno,’ she opened. ‘I’m not a prostitute. If that’s what you think. I just like you.’
‘That’s good. I am not going to pay you for sex,’ he said.
‘You aren’t?’
‘No. Maybe you can tell me your name now?’
There didn’t seem any harm in it.
‘Poppy.’
‘Pop-py,’ he said, seemingly finding it enchantingly novel. ‘What is poppy?’
‘A flower. Red. Like, um, the Somme, Flanders Fields, the First World War, remembrance …’ The reference he was most likely to understand was the grimmest.
‘Oh,
coquelicqot
,’ he said, grinning. ‘
C’est joli
.’
‘Yes, I remember looking it up in the French dictionary at school. I don’t suppose anyone has that name in France? What a mouthful.’
‘And it is Poppy’s first day in the spanking club,’ he said.
She looked around, dreading that they might be overheard. Everybody was engrossed in their own affairs, though, and she turned back to Bruno.
‘Yes, as I said.’
‘I just wondered. You know, you seem so … I did not expect a girl like you. I thought perhaps you were playing a part, the innocent. But this is really you?’
‘I’m not so innocent. I knew what I was getting into. Please don’t cast me in the role of victim. I’m not.’
‘OK, no, I see that. You have a strength.’ It took him about five minutes to mangle the word ‘strength’ and Poppy’s brief fit of pique evaporated.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘I am going to confess to you. I didn’t think you would come. Or if you did, you would try to get me into a room upstairs, for a fuck.’
Poppy had nothing to say to this, but her wide eyes and open mouth must have said it for her.
‘But it seems like you are not in that situation. You are a genuine employee, who goes to her home a free woman after she is spanked.’
‘I told you. I’m not a prisoner.’
‘You told me the truth, so now I will tell you. I am not really interested in spanking.’
‘You … I thought—’
‘OK, I like it now. But I never thought about it before, not much.’
‘So, why …?’
‘I am here on a work visit. I am a police detective in Paris, I recently change my job and work on prostitution, drugs, that kind of thing.’
‘This is a set-up?’
Poppy half-rose and looked wildly around her, expecting uniformed officers with handcuffs to emerge from all corners of the room.
Bruno put his hand on her forearm, drawing her back down.
‘Calm,’ he said. ‘You are not in trouble. Not at all. Don’t worry.’
Poppy sat back down, but she couldn’t shake a strange sensation of being under arrest and bound to answer all interrogations.
‘It’s legal. I pay tax,’ she said.
‘OK, it’s OK, I know. I don’t say you are doing anything wrong. I am here for study. There are links between gangs in Paris and London. I am getting an idea of them, you know? A feel, you say.’
‘Gangs? There’s no criminal stuff going on at the club.’
Bruno gave her a long look.
‘You believe that. But your whole club is a front for drugs and prostitution. It is used to launder money.’
‘No!’
‘Oh, Poppy, of course it is. My God. How old are you?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘Nineteen. I have a daughter, four years younger than you.’
‘You’re married?’
‘Divorced. This job, you know.’ He waved his hand, his face darkening.
‘I’m sorry. So what were you doing in the club? Investigating? Are you trying to catch somebody?’
‘No, not at all. Like I say, it is study. Research.’
‘And you came to me just because you wanted to question me?’
‘I’m afraid you think I am using you?’ Bruno laughed. ‘If a man wants to hit you or fuck you for money, that is fine, but if he wants to talk to you, that is very bad. You don’t think this is strange, Poppy?’
‘I don’t know. It is a bit, I suppose,’ she said, still feeling as if the cuffs were upon her.
‘Who is in charge of the club?’ he asked.
‘I don’t want to tell you, now.’
‘I can find out very easily,’ he said with a shrug.
‘She’s called Allyson. Allyson Bruce.’
‘She hired you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you really, absolutely truthfully, like working there?’
‘The money’s good. I’m a student, so I always need money. And it’s not exactly hard work.’
‘I would find it hard.’
‘You aren’t, you know, into that kind of thing.’ Poppy looked away, flushed. She suddenly felt very old and it wasn’t a good feeling.
‘If you were my daughter …’ he said.
‘I’m not. It’s my life. My decision.’
‘I wish I could take you away from it.’
Poppy was trying to devise a coherent response to this when two people came and sat down at the table opposite them.
One was Emma from the club, the other a gentleman Poppy recognised as the theatre critic, Peregrine Sands.
‘Poppy,’ said Emma, glancing at Bruno with a trace of steel in her eye. ‘Is this a friend of yours? Would you like to introduce us?’
‘This is Bruno,’ said Poppy, a sinking sensation of impending doom settling upon her stomach.
‘Hello, Bruno. I’m Emma and this is Mr Sands. How do you two know each other, then?’
‘We met in the club. It’s OK,’ blurted Poppy. ‘I know it’s allowed.’
‘Yeah, it’s allowed,’ said Emma. ‘But it’s your first night, love. It’s her first night,’ she said again, for the benefit of Bruno. ‘She’s new. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.’
‘Bruno isn’t a punt—’ opened Poppy, but a kick on the ankle from Bruno silenced her.
‘That is up to Poppy, I think,’ he said, accepting a peanut from the packet Emma proffered. ‘If she wants to be friendly to me, that is up to her.’
‘You don’t have to, Poppy,’ said Emma. ‘But if you’re hellbent on it, how about we make it a foursome?’
Sands coughed. ‘Actually, Emma, I’m meeting Caroline for a late supper. I don’t have to worry about marking
her
. But thank you for the rather titillating idea. Who needs theatre when one’s life is so rich with dramatic colour?’
He rose and left.
‘I’m sorry, Poppy,’ said Emma, once he had gone. ‘But I’m just looking out for you. If you go with him, I go with you.’
Bruno’s posture was stiff and alert. Poppy wondered what he was plotting. Surely he wasn’t going to take Emma up on her offer? Surely the thing for him to do now was to make an excuse and bow out?
‘Perhaps you will like to come to my hotel for a drink?’ he said at last.
‘Good man,’ said Emma with a nod. ‘I won’t charge you for me if you don’t want me. If you like, I’ll sit in the bathroom while you two get down to things. But I’m not letting Poppy go alone. If you do want a threesome, though, I’ll have to charge you the market rate.’
In the cab on the way to Bruno’s hotel, Poppy felt numb and bemused. Bruno sat beside her while Emma took the front seat. He put his hand on her thigh and whispered into her ear, ‘Don’t worry.’ When he noticed Emma looking in the rear-view mirror, he turned the whisper into a nibble of Poppy’s earlobe.
She whispered back, ‘I’m scared. What are you doing?’
‘Nothing you don’t want. She is watching. I will have to kiss you. Do you mind?’
Poppy didn’t. The nearness of him gave her butterflies and their lips were already so close, nearly touching. The warmth and scent of him were exotic somehow, deliciously different.
He put an arm around her and pulled her into his lips. They kissed for the rest of the journey while the taxi stopped and started, the gears squeaked, and Emma made desultory conversation with the driver.
Poppy felt her apprehension turn to excitement. It was like being in a spy drama, having to keep Emma in the dark about the true nature of their relationship. There was a spice of danger that didn’t seem too real. Allyson was nice. The club was legitimate. Bruno had some funny ideas about it, but he didn’t understand, that was all.