The Slave World (5)

(5): Blanchette

“Cat, will you please just marry me?” said Adam as I struck an ironic pose beside the table with my left hand on my hip, my right hand relaxed at my side. I had in the end picked out one of the very few dresses from my wardrobe, something I hadn't worn in years; a floral-print voile long dress with metallic thread, thin spaghetti shoulder straps and a side slit just up to my knees. I'd matched the dress with flat folk style sandals and a clutch bag for my essentials.

I grinned as I saw his reaction as I entered Blanchette near Oxford Circus. “Surprised?” I asked as I placed my clutch bag on the table. I could see Adam had been true to his word about avoiding anything by Superdry and was dressed instead in smart black jeans, light olive green shirt and a black jacket.

“Yeah. You look...” he seemed lost for words as he rose from his chair and lightly kissed me in greeting. “I mean... wow.”

It felt strange to be wearing a dress. I hadn't worn one since Mimi's wedding a year and a half ago. Stripped of my day to day uniform of tight jeans, simple tops and leather jacket I felt very exposed, under dressed, vulnerable even. Wearing a skirt or dress makes you feel more... I don't know... open, I guess. And men look at you in a different way. Adam certainly was right now, gazing at my bare arms, the revealing cut of the neckline, the way the soft fabric touched and contoured my body. His eyes casually regarded my throat and the v-shape of flesh and bosom that the dress drew attention to.

“I'm going to take a picture,” said Adam as he reached for his phone. “I may never see you looking like this again.”

I laughed softly and stood there as he snapped a couple of shots. He scrolled through them and allowed me to look. So that's what I look like in a dress. Hmm, interesting.

Strangely one of the photos seemed to focus on my neck line and only showed the lower half of my face and the top of my body so that you might think the long dress was some shorter tunic. Perhaps he had a thing for women's throats.

Adam did something he didn't normally do. He walked behind me and pulled my chair from the table to enable me to sit down. Obviously the way I was dressed had flicked some switches in his head. “Aren't you the gentleman tonight?” I said as I smoothed my long skirt and sat down.

“It seemed appropriate,” he said as he sat opposite me. “Dress like that and I'll treat you as a Lady.”

“Oh?” I reached for the wine list. “I hope you don't expect me to swoon.”

“I can't imagine you swooning, Cat. White or red?”

“White. It's a warm evening. You choose.” Blanchette in Soho is a French bistro serving simple, classic and inventive French food and has an adjoining 'jungle room' space for private parties that features stunning hand-painted rain forest themed murals by an artist called Aldo Gigli. Tonight though we were dining in the main area.

“Terre de Lumiere Jean D’alibert Vin de pays D’oc Viognier, Languedoc,” said Adam in an immaculate French pronunciation that I couldn't possibly hope to emulate.

“Just as long as it's chilled.” I glanced at my own copy of the menu and saw it was priced at £29. Good. If he had opted for the £53 Sancerre Les Perriers, André Vatan Loire Sauvignon Blanc I'd be worried he might be tying to sleep with me tonight. £29 wine wasn't cheap but it wasn't so expensive that it required sex by way of appreciation.

The waiter brought us the bottle and of course he deferred to the man at the table to taste it. Adam knows his wines and so it wasn't a pretence as he rolled the wine around the glass and nosed it before sipping.

“That will do, thanks,” he said.

I was the woman here. The waiter assumed I simply complied with the wishes of my dining companion. That sort of thing irked me a little, but I said nothing.

“Would monsieur care to order?' asked the waiter, deferring again to Adam as he poured us each some wine.

“We'll have a sharing plate of mixed olives and duck terrine with pistachios, pickled fennel and toasted sourdough. For the mains I'll have braised lamb shoulder with anchovy, rosemary and soubise sauce and the lovely Miss Ambrose will enjoy a fillet of sea bream with courgette fritters, preserved lemon vierge and labneh.”

I looked up in surprise as Adam closed the menu, having ordered for me without even asking.

“Thank you, Sir,” said the waiter as he took the menus and left.

“I'm having sea bream, am I?” I said as I crossed my arms and gave him 'the look'.

“Yes.” He grinned and picked up his glass.

“Someone is acting bolshie this evening. What makes you think I wanted the sea bream?”

“You love sea bream. Tell me I'm wrong?”

“Not really the point though, is it Adam?” Was it the sight of me wearing such a soft feminine dress that was making Adam go all cave man on me? Perhaps I should have stuck with the jeans and casual top. I felt a bit self conscious now. What had possessed me to dress in such a feminine fashion? I felt stupid all of a sudden, conscious of my bare arms, my bare shoulders, the deep v-neck of the fabric.

“I didn't mean to upset you, Cat. I just thought it would be... you know...”

“Fine. Okay. I'll have the sea bream. It's not a big deal.” I picked up the wine and sipped it. I wished I'd brought a jacket now or some sort of wrap. It was obvious where Adam's eyes were lingering. Didn't he realise how obvious he was being? I felt uncomfortable, like I was on display for him.

“So, these books...” I said by way of changing the subject.

“Yeah, about that, Cat. Were you really serious when you described your current case?”

“I have a client who is convinced she is being watched and followed and that there are some men who want to abduct her.”

“And the Gor connection?” Hs eyes narrowed.

“She reads those books. She met some creepy bookseller who told her to kneel in some position from one of the books. And she woke up with a symbol drawn on her left thigh with a red marker pen.”

“Symbol? What kind of symbol?”

“This symbol...” I reached into my clutch bag and produced the scrap of paper with the design I'd copied from memory. It was the elegant kef character that I had seen on Rebecca's left thigh.

“Wow.” Adam sat back and drank some more wine.

“You recognise it?”

“Well, yeah, sort of. I mean I've never actually seen it drawn, but from the description, that's definitely a slave brand.”

“Brand?” I looked surprised. “No, this was an indelible marker pen.”

“In the books when girls are abducted and enslaved they are branded with that symbol. It's more permanent than an indelible marker pen. What you saw on your client's thigh is just the intimidation that occurs on the run up to the actual abduction. I mean, it's not real of course.” He glanced at my throat and then looked back down at his wine glass. “There are no actual slavers of Gor. I'm just talking about what occurs in the stories.”

“Obviously. But we may be dealing with some whack jobs who are inspired by passages from the books. So girls are sometimes abducted in the books?”

“I wouldn't say sometimes. It's quite common. Pretty much a running theme throughout the series. One of the things that stands out is that the slavers like to play with the emotions of the women before taking them. There's a pattern. It's never as straight forward as just abducting them outright. Often the woman who is their particular target may be charmingly oblivious to begin with, but gradually things happen to draw her deeper into the web. She often isn't even aware that she is on the 'acquisition list' and that she has been under surveillance for some time without her knowledge. Then she begins to notice things as the slavers permit her to see them for the first time and she is allowed to find out a little about Gor. Even then she often remains confident and thinks she's in control of the situation, but gradually she loses that confidence and begins to realise she's in over her head. Then she starts to worry and the worry slowly turns to panic. She knows she's free but slowly the limits of that freedom become apparent as the net closes in around her. It's like a psychological game. And the more she wriggles, the more she traps herself. There are generally two essential criteria when women are placed on an abduction list.”

“I assume beauty is one of them? What's the other?”

“Gorean slavers value highly intelligent, articulate women. They look for that in addition to beauty. Several of the books are narrated from the point of view of the abducted women when they're taken to the planet Gor.”

“What happens to them?”

“They're inevitably trained as slaves. The training is harsh and brutal if they resist.”

“And they have adventures and escape?'

“No. None of them ever escape. They actually grow to love being slaves. On the whole. They begin to love being collared and owned by men.” He glanced at my throat again without meaning to. “The author has this idea that women secretly desire strong masters.”

“Really? Well that explains why I couldn't find the books in Waterstones. The woman who worked there must have thought I had secret slave fantasies and wanted to be spanked.”

“A lot of women do,” said Adam without thinking. When he saw how cross I looked he quickly added, “fantasies are harmless enough. They wouldn't want to be slaves for real of course. Everyone has sexual fantasies of some kind. Even you, Cat?”

“If you're fishing for what turns me on...” I said with a laugh.

“Master/slave fantasies are quite common. There's something in our sexual nature to be turned on by bondage, either being subject to it or being in control. We're hard wired that way.”

“Speak for yourself.” I shifted uneasily in my seat.

“Haven't you ever had bondage fantasies, Cat?”

I gave him a hard stare but said nothing.

“I mean, I have,” said Adam. “When I read the books originally I got a bit turned on by the thought of being a Gorean warrior with a beautiful slave girl in silk and chains at my feet. It was just fantasy. It's the way men are. It's harmless.”

“Well I'm learning something new about you tonight, Adam. You like the thought of a girl in chains kneeling at your feet?”

“Yeah, yeah I suppose I do.” Adam said that without any trace of shame. “Of course I do. It's a very sexy thought. Most men would like that.”

“Most men wouldn't admit it to a woman though.”

“I guess I'm braver than most men. I'm ex-army, remember? We're not really in touch with modern feminism and political correctness.”

“Well you're going to go the way of the dinosaurs then.” Our food arrived so we paused in the conversation while the waiter served us. Once he left our table Adam picked up from where I'd left of.

“I'm not so sure, Cat. Just look at what's happening in America now. The 'New Feminism' movement and the push to return to old fashioned gender stereotypes by the right wing Government there.”

“New Feminism has about as much to do with actual feminism as National Socialism in the nineteen thirties had to do with Socialism. What's happening in America is alarming, but it will never spread to Europe.” I had read about how companies in America were emboldened by changes to the legislation that allowed them to fire women from positions that had traditionally been the preserve of men in the 1950s. Many women were reporting now there was an expectation that they should be housewives, mothers or work as meek secretaries. There had even been reports of bars refusing to serve unaccompanied women, or women dressed in trousers.

I was glad I lived in the UK.

“You say that, Cat, but a lot of people are calling New Feminism 'feminism' now. There are a lot of women who are buying into it to so as to not rock the boat.”

“It's a subject that makes me fucking angry.” I stabbed at the fish with my fork. “It's getting scary in some mid western towns and cities over there. Decades of civil rights for women being rolled back in a matter of years.”

Adam nodded. “Yeah, it's not a good time to be a strident feminist in America.”

I hated that. That way men have of attaching words like 'strident' to 'feminist'. They did it without thinking, but it spoke volumes.

“Did you bring some of the books?”

“Yeah.” He reached below the table and produced what looked like two paperbacks in a plastic bag. As I watched he opened the bag and pulled them out. “I've lost or thrown away most of my books but I found these two. They're both point of view from the women so they may prove useful for research. They're written as if the main character is ignorant of Gor.”

The titles were 'Captive of Gor' and 'Slave Girl of Gor'. Both featured 1970s covers with naked women on them in a way publishers wouldn't get away with these days. “I can see why teenage you was attracted to these books,” I said as I held up Slave Girl of Gor with its cover of a naked woman crouching on the sand, trying to cover herself up as best she could while some savage Greek warrior stood behind her, holding a chain that was attached to a metal collar around her neck. The spine was heavily creased and I suspected it would probably fall open easily at the 'juicy bits'.

“It''s a sexy cover,” said Adam with a shrug.

“I suppose you'd quite like to see me like this?” I said with a warning smile.

Adam said nothing but stared at my throat again in silence for a moment. And then, with a chuckle he said, “oh no, I'm not falling into that trap with you. I'd never hear the end of it. I know what you're like when you want an argument, Cat.”

“Good boy. You're learning,” I said with a smile as I replaced the books in the bag. “There's hope for you yet.”