Reformatory Girls Ch. 10

"Don't worry," says Miss Lucy. "I'll use it sparingly. Maybe a little round here?"

She traces her finger around the outside of Kim's vulva, over the top and down along the crevices at the join to her legs.

"You are evil," smiles Kim. "I'm glad I'm not one of your girls. Around there should be just fine."

"I know one girl in particular who is going to be driven insane next Saturday," says Miss Lucy. "You know I'm allowed to strap down their hands? Imagine that stuff in your arsehole and you can't even scratch."

"And if she tries to scratch herself in front of a Warden, won't she be caned?"

"Exactly," says Miss Lucy. "Caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea."

"And we know who the Devil is, don't we," says Kim, pulling Miss Lucy towards her and pressing her breasts to her own.

"I think I'm looking at her," Miss Lucy says.

If Clare was hoping for any respite in bed she was hoping in vain. Although the hateful placards are now locked away again, the word 'Bedwetter' is still ringing in her ears. Worse: Donna May will be back: and the ordeal Clare will face tomorrow will be even worse.

Donna is not long in arriving. This time she does not slip into Clare's bed but gets straight down to business.

"You know what to do," she tells Clare: "lie still and stay shtum and you won't get hurt."

Clare has nothing left with which to resist. She lies dumbly, helplessly, as Donna peels back the bedclothes and takes up a squatting position over her thighs. She watches in the near-darkness as Donna hitches up her own nightdress and prepares to piss. Moments later she feels a trickle of warm liquid landing on her tummy, flowing down her sides. She watches numbly as Donna shifts position, and gyrates her pelvis slowly, ensuring that her piss flows over Clare's chastity belt, over her thighs and the tops of her legs. Once again the warm smell of urine soaking into fabric fills the night air.

Then Donna is covering her over, and is gone, leaving Clare to sleep as best as she can in her piss-soaked bed.

In the morning it is Fatty Armstrong whose scorn she has to bear.

"The second time in two nights," she tells Clare, as if Clare didn't know. "Making a habit of it aren't we? I'd have thought you'd have learned your lesson. Let's hope a day in nappies will concentrate your mind."

Clare feels like a beast being led to the slaughter house, as she is taken to the steel cabinet, and once again handed a cloth, a bin-liner, and the placards. There are Terry nappies, plastic pants, and also disposable nappies in the cabinet: Miss Armstrong takes one of the latter. Though it is large it bears a pattern of small teddy bears.

After she has cleaned her bed and bagged the soiled fabrics, Clare follows the others to the washrooms.

Back in the Dormitory, whilst the others are putting on their uniforms, she is allowed to put on only her socks and sandals and blouse and pullover.

"Lie on your bed," Miss Armstrong orders. "Draw your legs up."

With the other girls all craning to watch, Clare does as she's ordered. Miss Armstrong positions the nappy between her legs, takes hold of her bare thighs and lifts her, pushes the nappy up under her, then spreads her legs, pulls the two halves of the nappy together tight over her vagina, and fastens the sticky tabs.

"You'll be changed at regular intervals," she tells Clare. "You'll stay in nappies until bed time."

One of the girls close by sniggers into her hand.

When Clare stands up the BEDWETTER placards are also fastened into place.

The Wardens make no attempt to hide their scorn. The moment Clare Davenport files into the Laundry Miss Harman screws up her pinched face and sniffs:

"Two nights running Bedwetter," she says. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

Clare does not reply, merely hangs her head.

"I told her earlier," says Miss Armstrong, who is chewing gum in a hostile sort of way: "She ought to have her face rubbed in it."

"You look like a toddler in that thing," says Miss Harman. "Get on and sort those sheets."

Clare knuckles down to her work: the eyes of the other girls, seven of them in all, seem to burn into her: every sound of a squeaking shoe or a groaning machine sounds like a snigger.

It is also hot. She has stripped off her blouse and pullover, but the padded nappy is hot around and between her legs.

She has one thought: to avoid emptying her bladder, and thus avoid the humiliation of being cleaned up and changed.

But it is not easy. The rules regarding the intake of fluids are as strict in Hazely as every other rule. At breakfast, lunch and tea, the girls are given one cup of tea and one pint of water to drink. And drink it they must. Somebody long ago laid down this rule, believing the pint of water was necessary to prevent dehydration; and most days Clare, like all the Laundry workers, is thankful for it.

But not today. The girls work from eight-thirty until twelve-forty-five, with a short toilet break at eleven. By the time of the break everyone is ready to pee. As far as Clare's bladder is concerned, today is like every other day, and as eleven approaches the tell-tale sensations have started: the little shifting movements and flexing of stomach and vaginal muscles that tell a girl her bladder needs emptying.

But when eleven arrives and the girls are led to the washrooms, Clare must stand with her nappy on, and listen to the sounds of seven girls tinkling away on the loos.

"Getting desperate Bedwetter?" grins Tania Nye, as the girls file back.

As the morning progresses Clare is aware that both the girls and the Wardens are walking past her more than is usual. It is only when Tania Nye deliberately cranes her head and peers at Clare's legs that Clare realises: they are all curious to see if she has wet her nappy.

This brings her agonies of self-consciousness: she is like some freak in a freak show. It also makes her more determined than ever not to pee.

But as the clock ticks the minutes slowly by, the urge to pee grows stronger and stronger. And when, for a second day running, she is obliged to squat down and wash her own soiled bed-sheets and night dress in the zinc tub, her body takes the squatting as a signal, a movement preparatory to pissing, and she has to catch her breath and squeeze hard with her vaginal muscles to stop herself from letting go.

Of course she knows it is useless: at some point in the day she will have to give in. But if she could just get through to lunch time, it would be one less humiliating change.

And somehow she manages it. Five minutes earlier than usual the Wardens call a halt to the work and order Clare to lie down on one of the vast wooden tables where laundry is sorted. With the other girls looking eagerly on, Miss Harman peels back the sticky tabs and pulls down the front of Clare's nappy, exposing her shaven pudenda to the onlookers.

"Well," she says, sounding disappointed: "she seems dry."

"A pity she couldn't have shown the same restraint last night," Miss Armstrong says.

As the girls file to the washrooms on their way to the Refectory, Clare feels she has scored a very small triumph. But the tiny measure of satisfaction she feels is short-lived: at the washrooms they meet up with the other twenty-two girls, and once again Clare has to stand and listen as twenty-nine girls happily empty their bladders. And as she does so, and as the running taps almost set her off, she realises that she has not though things properly through. For she cannot hold out much longer: and instead of starting the afternoon with a clean nappy and an empty bladder, she is going to have to spend the long stretch of the afternoon with a full nappy - in fact a nappy soaked to saturation point.

She is almost bent double as she enters the Refectory. Here she encounters more sneering looks and more scornful remarks. Her eyes are prickling, her bladder is swollen fit to burst.

"Bedwetter: stand up straight," Miss Bulstrode orders her.

Clare feels dizzy as she straightens up. She feels the beginnings of a trickle into her nappy and clamps her muscles, snatching at the escaping urine like a cricketer snatching at a half-dropped catch. As far as she can remember she has never wet herself in her life: now at age nineteen she is standing in front of a hall full of people, wearing a nappy covered in teddy bears, barred from using the lavatory, with no option but to piss herself. She sees the faces, some of them looking at her expectantly. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes.

"Eyes open Bedwetter," order Miss Armstrong.

Clare gazes into the round face of the gum-chewing Warden. Then things start happening over which she has no control. First a spurt; then a trickle; then she is in full flow, the pent-up urine rushing out over her labia, out of her vagina into the padded absorbent gusset of the nappy. She feels her face flush; she feels the warmth and the wetness between her legs. She looks down, expecting to see a stream of urine hitting the parquet floor: but there is none, it is all captured in the nappy, which is filling out between her legs, the warm wetness spreading, between her buttocks, over her buttocks, around the tops of her thighs.

When she is done she feels both great relief and great shame. The uncomfortable sensations in her bladder are gone: but her face is burning and people are staring at her, staring especially at the place between her legs. It is almost - though not quite - as bad as the time Miss Bulstrode hauled her out to the front of the class and made her sit on the potty, and had Matron give her an enema.

Then the order comes to sit down, and she takes her place gingerly at the long table, afraid her piss will ooze out and wet the bench. But amazingly it does not: it merely squelches between her legs as the nappy shifts to accommodate her change of position.

It is said that anything, even murder, is easier after the first time. And after she has drunk her tea, and her pint of water, Clare does not bother to try to hold it in. She knows she is going to piss in her nappy at some point, and that later Miss Bulstrode is going to change her, and she decides there is no point in compounding her humiliation with physical pain. She wets herself a second time just after she has sat down at her desk in Miss Bulstrode's class.

The smell fills her nostrils, but there must be some chemicals in the nappy, as the urine has a sweet, unnatural tang. Clare imagines everyone in the room can smell her, yet no-one else seems to notice, they all have their eyes on the blackboard. She sits there miserably, resting her head on her elbows, wondering when she will be changed: until suddenly, with only a few minutes left until break, Miss Bulstrode's voice breaks in on her thoughts.

"Bedwetter: come up to the front of the class."

Clare rises from her desk, and walks slowly down the aisle. The nappy bulges between her legs: it feels as though she has an udder down there, like a cow's udder, slapping wetly between her thighs. All she wants now is to get rid of the thing, to feel clean again.

That, however, is not what Miss Bulstrode intends:

"Face the blackboard Betwetter," she orders, handing Clare a piece of white chalk. "And write: 'I must not wet the bed'."

Groaning inwardly if not quite outwardly, Clare does as she's ordered: sounds of merriment, which would normally be suppressed, rise from the class.

"Now face the class," Miss Bulstrode orders, "and say out loud: 'I'm Clare Davenport and I'm a dirty little bedwetter.'"

Clare stands, a picture of woe. The nappy sags between her legs. Her breathing is choked.

"I'm waiting," says Miss Bulstrode, tapping the palm of her left hand with the crop.

Clare takes a deep breath:

"I'm Clare Davenport and I'm a dirty little bedwetter," she says in a quiet voice, her eyes fixing on a spot just in front of her feet.

"Louder," says Miss Bulstrode. "And keep your eyes forward."

"I'm Clare Davenport and I'm a dirty little bedwetter," says Clare, looking out over the sea of amused faces.

"Louder!" snaps Miss Bulstrode. "And say it like you mean it."

"I'M CLARE DAVENPORT AND I'M A DIRTY LITTLE BEDWETTER'" Clare yells at the twenty-nine girls facing her.

"Better," says Miss Bulstrode. "Now we will all depart for Break."

Having once again been forced to listen as the other girls emptied their bladders, Clare stands alone and wretched in the Recreation Yard. The sopping nappy between her legs is now cold and feels horrid against her skin. When she walks it squeezes against her thighs, so she stands still, wearing the placards like a badge of shame, longing for Break to be over, enduring the sneers of the Wardens and the titters of other girls.

It is approaching the middle of the afternoon when Miss Lucy alights from the number 74 bus. Even at half a mile away the walls of Hazely are visible, looming over a largely barren landscape. Hazely was once a Victorian Workhouse, and structurally little has changed, except that the brick walls are now topped with razor wire and the gates, once wooden, are now of reinforced steel. Miss Lucy's has passed her journey in a haze of happy anticipation - there are so many good things on the horizon - and as she walks towards this grim edifice she smiles to herself. She has the little box of itching powder in her overnight bag; she has an envelope and writing paper, on which Karen Frayn is going to write another begging letter to her father. And further ahead there lies the prospect of Kim Starkey embroiling Mr Frayn in some sexual shenanigans which could bring who knows what wealth and advantages to the two girls

As the gates close behind her, Miss Lucy hears the piercing sound of a whistle. Moments later, as she crosses the courtyard, she sees two lines of girls filing out of the Recreation Yard. She pauses to watch. One of the girls is not wearing a skirt: she is wearing a disposable nappy, and some sort of sandwich board over her chest. Her head is bowed, but as the lines of girls pass closer Miss Lucy sees that it is Clare Davenport. Little butterflies of pleasure flutter between Miss Lucy's legs: Clare Davenport must have wet her bed! Maybe Miss Lucy has even had a hand in that, making Clare so anxious that she has lost control of her bladder in her sleep.

A few places behind Clare in the line is Donna May. Miss Lucy notices her; and as she passes, Donna notices Miss Lucy. They catch one-another's eye: and Donna May winks and, concealing one hand behind the other, gives Miss Lucy a surreptitious thumbs-up. And just so as Miss Lucy is left in no doubt, Donna gives and almost imperceptible nod forwards - in the direction of Clare Davenport.

Miss Lucy returns Donna a barely perceptible nod of acknowledgement, and the lines of girls pass into the building and out of sight.

As she climbs the stairs towards the sick bay Miss Lucy allows a huge grin to steal over her face.

Clare Davenport has to wait until Class is almost over before the inevitable happens.

"Come to the front Bedwetter," says Miss Bulstrode. "Fetch the plastic sheet, the baby-wipes and a disposable nappy from the cupboard, then spread the plastic sheet over my desk."

Clare does as she's told.

"Now lie down on your back."

Clare clambers awkwardly onto Miss Bulstrode's desk. The lights above her seem glaringly bright.

"The rest of you gather round," says Miss Bulstrode. "One day you may have children of your own: this will provide a useful lesson for you."

If Clare's heart could sink any further it does so now. The whole class is to have a ringside seat at her ordeal. There is some jostling - everyone wants to have a clear view - then Miss Bulstrode takes her place next to the desk.

"You can of course buy changing mats," says Miss Bulstrode. "But a plastic sheet will do just as well." She makes some adjustments to Clare's legs, bending them slightly at the knees, pushing them a little way apart.

"Open the soiled nappy carefully," she says, pulling open the tabs then pulling the whole of the front of the nappy open and laying it flat. "Sometimes they can split. Now we need to clean up our baby carefully: if she is left too long in a soiled nappy or is not cleaned thoroughly she can get nappy rash."

Miss Bulstrode takes a baby wipe from the packet and begins the wipe Clare between her legs, from top to bottom of her vulva, getting into the creases at the tops of her legs.

"If you don't have baby wipes you can use warm water and cotton wool," she tells the class. "Always wipe from front to back, you don't want to get excrement inside their vaginas."

Clare squirms with shame as she feels the Warden's fingers wiping away at her private parts. A less maternal woman than Miss Bulstrode it is impossible to imagine, and there is something hideous and unnatural about her solicitations, a travesty of genuine motherhood. The girls seem to be enjoying it though, crowding ghoulishly around her, watching as Miss Bulstrode pushes Clare's legs up towards her chest and begins to wipe her buttocks, taking a fresh wet wipe from the packet, discarding the used one in the bin. Finally she wraps the wipe round her finger and pushes it into Clare's bum crack, slowly drawing it along the crease, and giving it a twist around her anus.

"We seem to have forgotten the towel," says Miss Bulstrode. "Fay Dudley: fetch one from the cupboard please."

Fay returns with a white cotton towel: Miss Bulstrode wipes Clare all over between her legs and around her buttocks until she is dry.

"It's a good idea to leave your baby with her legs open for a while," says Miss Bulstrode. "Allow some air to circulate around her private parts. We have a minute or two before the end of class. Does anyone have any questions?"

The girls are not used to being invited to ask questions. For a moment nobody speaks. Then Donna May says:

"I have a question: might we be allowed to practise for ourselves?"

You bitch, Clare thinks: she watches Miss Bulstrode's heavy face - the Warden is clearly mulling this over.

"We're out of time now," she decides. "But if you'd like to put our bedwetter into a clean nappy you may do so. And if it happens again, then yes, anybody who wants to may take a turn."

"Thank you Miss Bulstrode," says Donna sweetly. She gives Clare a faux-innocent smile and takes her legs, lifts them up and slides the clean nappy beneath her bottom. Then she spreads Claire's legs, lingers a moments, then draws the other half of the nappy over her fanny, and fastens the tabs.

The changing is over; though Clare feels as though the humiliation will stay with her for the rest of her life.

She survives tea in the Refectory, and though she thinks she could hold on until bedtime, she realises that would be suicidal, as she would only wet the bed again. So at around eight-thirty she fills her nappy again, resigned to the mess and the smell and the further humiliation of being changed. This time it is Miss Barker who changes her, on her own bed - mercifully without the commentary or the attentions of more than a handful of other girls. And when she is clean and dry, the wet nappy is replaced by the chastity belt - for which Clare, for once, is truly thankful.

"Do try not to wet yourself again," Miss Barker says, tutting. "You're not a three-year-old you know."

She may not be three, but Clare Davenport curls up in bed feeling very small.