Slaveholder

Then he gave me away.

"Twatti, I have something to say to you. I have come to care for you very much, but I have to go back to Austria, or we will lose our family home and our family business. I am sorry but, much as I would like to, I cannot take you. My brothers and my wife and son would simply not permit it."

I collapsed and started to howl with shock and grief. He smacked my face, not brutally, but firmly, and I subsided into sniffs and floods of silent tears. Above all, I knew I must not make him ashamed of me.

I knew that he had his wife had been separated for longer than my lifetime, and did not so much as exchange birthday cards. He was not going there to replace me or to be with them, and I could believe that it was only urgent necessity that as tearing him away from me.

Then he dropped the bombshell. "Twatti", he said, "I'm giving you to my friend and ex-partner Yura Ypsilanti. He is a good man and he will take care of you. I am hopeful that one day we can be together again, but if it happens at all it is years, if not decades away.

I thought maybe he is right, perhaps I can't take care of myself. So I made no protest and allowed him to make the arrangements. I suppose, if I had some money of my own, I might have thought otherwise, but apart from cash for the local shop, I never handled money, and he chose and bought my clothes and even bought my sanitary towels for me. Looking back, I can see that I had been systematically infantilised, but at the time I simply felt totally incompetent to care for myself.

So I was handed over, like an unwanted gift. Mister Horrabin helped me pack, I had few possessions and the suitcase I had brought with me when I came to his flat needed only to be supplemented with one cardboard box and a Spar carrier bag. He put me in the taxi, gave the address and paid the driver. I wept bitterly throughout the twenty-minute journey, that brought me to a house I had never visited before, to become the chattel of a man I had met only half a dozen times. I felt that the bottom had dropped out of my life and I was a hapless ant, sliding inexorably into the rapacious jaws of an ant-lion.

Ten years or so later, my true master gave me a book called The Story of O, which had been smuggled into England by a friend who owned an erotic bookshop just down the road. I was much struck by her mixture of fear and elation when her lover gave O to his brother, on the grounds that she had to get used to being the property of someone she did not love and who did not love her.

It made me aware of the gulf between O's depicted drive to self-annihillation and my own perverse desire for fulfilment and love with a kind but strict master. I did not love Mister Ypsilanti (he demanded to be called and referred to as Master, but I thought of him as Mister Ypsilanti a symbol of silent and inward rebellion).

I certainly had no affection for Mister Ypsilanti. He was a dour, humourless man with what I thought, and still think, was a streak of misanthropy going right through him. Mister Horrabin called me Twatti with some affection and, although it seems an odd word to use, respect. Mister Ypsilanti called me Twat as if it were a bitter curse. He cared nothing for my satisfaction, and, I thought, not much for his own.

He raped me, night after night, seeming to prefer to fuck me dry and cause soreness and pain. On the least provocation he would whip me, and by the end of a month, I had to go around bare because the open sores on my back would weep and stick to my clothing. This was pain, pure pain, with no frisson of pleasure left in it.

Mister Horrabin had played water sports with me, and I quite liked it. The taste of piss was not unacceptable, and the feeling of warm rivulets running down my face and body was mildly pleasurable, and naughty in a childish sort of way. One day he made me clean his arse with my tongue after his morning bowel movement. I went through with it and then dashed to the toilet to vomit until my stomach was empty. He never made me do it again. It was an experience I was not eager to repeat, but I knew that I could do it again it if he wanted it enough. Now I was forced.

As I came to hate Mister Ypsilanti, my resentment with Mister Horrabin grew and grew. How could he show so little concern for me as to consign me to this prison? I knew that even if he came back for me, I should refuse to go with him. I started to plan for escape. To escape I needed money. I knew I could use his clothes and shoes, but without money, I was trapped.

I started by saving six pennies, one at a time, from the change from fish and chips and bagels. I turned that into a sixpence and hid it under the bed, where he could not get down to look. Soon I had a shilling, two months later, two shillings, and finally half a crown -- enough money to get the tube into the middle of London and disappear. Soon, soon I would be free. I did not care when happened then. I might live, I might die, but I would rather starve than stay here.

I didn't know he was so ill. I knew he wasn't too well, he looked thin and drawn, in fact the bones of his face coming into prominence made him even more austerely handsome. God, how I hated the final insult of his handsomeness.

He was sleeping badly, and for the past couple of weeks he had been sending me to sleep in the spare bedroom. Then, one Sunday morning, I went out early for his usual Sunday bagels and lachs, and when I went to wake him up he was dead. I suspected it was heart failure. I knew he had to take heart medicine and I suspected that he had stopped taking it when he felt too ill to go out, Unexpectedly soon, I was free.

He was stone cold, so there was no point in taking any action; you can't ameliorate death. I had no intention of hanging around for the authorities; for whom I probably didn't exist anyway. I began to search the house. I found a wallet with three pound notes, a ten-shilling note and a chequebook. The chequebook was no use to me so I left it in plain sight on the bedside table.

I found some nice women's jewellery and a gold wristlet watch. They went straight into my heap of things to take with me. Then I struck lucky. I had never been allowed to open the cupboards, and I started to see what was there. On a high shelf, I found the clothes I brought with me, that I had never been allowed to wear. I also found what must have been things left behind by his wife. A good leather handbag, some very old-fashioned but very good pre-war women's clothes including an Astrakhan coat with a big, snuggly collar and a Russian-style fur hat. A search among the boxes revealed four pairs of women's shoes, a size too small for me, but wearable.

These winter months he had made me go shopping naked under a thin, shabby cloth coat, feet in a pair of worn-out black plimsolls whilst that sybaritic luxury hung in the wardrobe. If he weren't dead, I should have wanted to batter him senseless. Anyway, that's one problem solved. I don't have to pollute my body with his clothes. I can dress up handsomely and hide under the hat the hair that he had cropped with nail scissors so that it looked as if eaten by rats.

I made some tea; no milk or sugar since, as he did not take them, we had none in the house. I ate my fill of the bagels, smoked salmon and cream cheese. In these eighteen months of fetching them from the Jewish delicatessen on Stamford Hill, this was the first time I had tasted them. They were heavenly and, now that I was free, I vowed to add them to my own diet and always make sure I had enough money to buy them. Unaccustomed to such a full stomach, I was soon bloated and it hurt, so I went for a lie down. No need to listen out for his hateful, hate-filled voice. He can never hurt me now. Tomorrow I shall close up the house and depart. Soho here I come.

Jim McMurty.

When you get demobbed, they give you a hideous shit-brown double-breasted chalkstripe suit, They take away the battledress you've been wearing for the past two years, and you feel strangely unsupported, emotionally empty. Your feet are adapted to ammunition boots, and shoes feel light and insubstantial. You get a railway warrant and a cardboard suitcase in place of your kitbag. And they have finished with you without a word of farewell.

Back in London, I spent a few days with the family, and helped Dad out in the tattoo parlour whilst I got my bearings. There was nothing for me in Bow, and I was going to make the break and look for a shop-front premises up west.

Four weeks of going from estate agent to estate agent, scouring the Evening Standard and Dalton's Weekly and walking my feet to rags on the pavements of central London, and I had settled on a closed-down barber's shop in Bewick street. There had originally been four chairs in a long shop not much wider than a corridor.

It already had the plumbing installed, and it would be easy to partition the back for privacy, whilst people looking in the front could see tattoos being applied on the less private areas of my less sensitive customers' bodies. The single toilet in the far rear, originally for the barbershop staff, could be turned into two cubicles for male and female clients. Yes, I expected to be doing a fair proportion of my work on female customers. This was Soho, not the West India Dock Road.

The place was a tip. It had been empty for years, having sustained war damage, and it needed to be stripped out and thoroughly cleaned and decorated. I have never been afraid of getting my hands dirty, and, even more than my parents, the army had ingrained cleanliness into me.

I took a five year lease, with no rent for the first three months whilst the work was in progress. My first action was to get a signwriter to paint the fascia on the day after the lease was signed.

Nine weeks later I was open, and Dad and Mum and a few of my army mates turned up to wet the new baby's head. I was working Straight away, I was getting a trickle of work, but it took a few month for me to become busy. Strangely enough, my first job was a regimental crest -- the Coldstream Guards.

Bewick Street was a friendly place for the people who worked there. Alfredo's would always send a plated meal in or cut some sandwiches. The ladies of the street, several of whom lived in the bed-sits over my shop, would stick their heads round the door and chat when I wasn't busy, and the Dennis and Bern from the erotic bookshop would always say a good word about me to their customers, which brought me some interesting jobs. They also procured books with photos of tattoos, especially the beautiful Japanese books which were like hen's teeth since the war. It was Bern who pushed me into putting up the notice that said Intimate piercing and tattoos available on request.

It was the winter of 1949-50 and it was bitterly cold. Not record-breaking great-ice-age cold like 1947, but still pretty parky. Tuesday morning and I was just about to open up -- I leave myself a good hour to clean and sterilize everything and give the place a good once over before customers arrive at ten.

I walked down the narrow staircase from my nice little bed-sit over the shop, out into the street and down to Mickey's for a Daily Mirror and my daily ten Capstan. Mickey's wife had been very pulled down with bronchitis and I was asking how she was and if she'd like to try some of the soup I had made from some kidneys I had managed to score. You know, typical neighbours' chat. As I walked up to my doorway I could hear footsteps behind me, and I turned to see the young woman in the furs who had stood behind me at Mickey's. She was tiny, thin as a wraith, white and shivering; she looked scared stiff.

"Come in love," I said reassuringly. What can I do for you? Here, have a seat; get a load off."

She just sat there, seemingly unable to speak. I got up, filled the kettle and put it on the stove for hot water. I didn't want to upset her, but I was hoping this wouldn't take too long. I had a shop to clean. She took off the Russian fur hat and I was shocked to see her hair. It reminded me of those pictures we saw at the end of the war, those nasty bastards of the French resistance scalping the poor tarts who had gone out with German soldiers. French resistance my arse!

"I was wondering if you knew anywhere I could get a room and if there were any jobs going." She looked desperate. "I was in the sweetshop and listened to you. You sounded like a nice man, so I took a chance. It's all right, I'll go in a minute; my feet are beginning to warm up."

It would be like drowning kittens to be unkind to the poor tart.

"Tell you what, ducks, you help me clean the shop and get ready for customers and I'll buy you a hot breakfast as Alfredo's. OK?"

She didn't say a word other than to ask where things were kept. whizzed round the place with a vacuum cleaner, cleaned the ashtrays, tidied the magazine rack, took the post from the postman and put it out the back on the table, gave the front windows a polish and found a dozen other jobs to do in the next hour, as I organised my workspace. I have an autoclave like they use in hospitals to keep my stuff sterile, and it needed unpacking and everything straightened up. With mystery girl's help, everything was tickety-boo by twenty past nine. Time for a good breakfast.

"Come on gell," I said, time for breakfast". She put on her coat, and we walked three doors up to Alfredo's.

"Right gell, what's yer name? Mine's Jim".

"My masters called me Twat, but I prefer twatti."

"Yer masters? Yer pullin' my plonker."

"No, not at all. I've been a slave ever since I left home. The real reason I came to see you today was to ask if I could be your slave. I would be so good. I would do everything you asked me to, and I would soon learn to serve you. Please, even if only for a little while! I don't eat much, and I would not need much, just a place to sleep and a who will take care of me."

Just then Rosemary came over to take our orders. Breakfast here was strictly for the locals, shopkeepers, bookies' runners, tarts (some tarts anyway, not the druggies), even the postman and the local Bobby. Anyone else would be politely but firmly told that this was a private party. Nobody wanted questions asked about where the bacon, eggs and bloaters came from.

Mystery girl asked for scrambled egg, and she was overwhelmed to find it was made from fresh, not dried, eggs. I had my usual fare, porridge and a bacon sarnie, plus a big mug of strong milky tea. She said in a whisper that she had not had milk in her tea since she left home over five years earlier. Her masters took their tea black.

I took her back to my bed-sit and turned on one bar of the electric fire for her.

"I've got to get to work. You stay here, ducks, and have a kip. If you need anything, come down the stairs and knock on the wall near the front door, I'll knock back and you can go back upstairs to wait for me. I'll come as soon as I can, but I can't leave a customer half done. OK?"

"May I use the lavatory?" she asked shyly. I was astonished.

"Of course yer fucking can, Why the fuck not?"

She hung her head and didn't answer.

Around one I had a break and went upstairs. She had taken off her clothes and was sitting close to the fire, naked, darning a stocking. The sight of her back and bum horrified me. All over welts and scars, some healed or healing, some scabbed, some weeping and some, quite clearly infected. She looked like something out of a concentration camp. She was thin to emaciation, her little tits flaccid, her belly swollen. Hearing me cry out in shock she looked up, scared, and immediately cringed, putting up her arms to protect her head.

"Be back in a sec.", I said and went down the stairs.

One thing we have in plenty in a tattoo parlour is antiseptic and sterile dressings. I brought them up and made her lie on the bed whilst I dressed her wounds. The open cuts I dressed with sulphanilamide powder, a powerful anti-infective agent. That would have to do until I can get a doctor to see her, and maybe prescribe some of the new miracle drug penicillin, which was in such short supply. I was trying my best to be gentle and she repaid me very well by falling asleep as I worked.

I had a client at half past two, and from then on I was busy until six. When I got back upstairs the flat was cleaned and tidied throughout and she was peeling potatoes and dropping them into the pressure cooker. She looked up at me, unsure if what she was doing was acceptable. I smiled reassuringly and she smiled back, looking relieved. She was wearing a man's white shirt, but she was otherwise naked. I guess it was a common state for her and caused no embarrassment.

"I'm making a sort of kidney and vegetable soup with the cabbage, turnips, onions and a bit of celery. I found a bottle of cooking sherry and used a bit, I hope that's all right."

"Yes, that's ok. The cooking sherry is left from my last girlfriend, Anita. She moved out not long after I had finished tattooing her back and bottom. I guess I'd served my purpose."

If I sounded a bit cynical, that's all it was. By the time she left I was about brassed off with Anita, and coming back one evening to find her gone was a heartfelt relief.

Mystery girl could not have known that, and she started to weep at the idea of my pain. I started to laugh, and after a hesitation, she laughed back at me. I was really starting to like this girl.

"Look, I can't call you Twat, I really can't. How about we make it Tottie, like the little tottie wagtails?"

She grinned, plainly delighted. "Oh yes, please master. I can wag my tail like anything when I am pleased." She took it as permission to stay, and I couldn't bear to say otherwise.

And this is how I became a slaveholder.