Teena Thyme (28 page)

The girl was about my own age, with long, henna red hair that looked suspiciously as though it might be a wig, a face made-up with the sort of carefully overstated deliberation that was very much the seventies glam-rock of the day and dressed as if she had only just made it back from a late night of disco-clubbing.

The skirt was flared, pleated, made of a black suede-like material and almost obscenely short, so that I knew the silver spangled tights were just that and not stockings. Her feet were clad in knee length boots, low platform soles and high chunky heels, again very much the vogue, as was the halter necked, silver spangly top, beneath which I could see the definite outlines of two apparently unfettered breasts with nipples that quite obviously had been reacting to the cold outside, for the flared leather jacket hung open to the waist and looked as though its owner must usually prefer to wear it that way.

'Sorry,' she said, seeing the consternation and confusion in my face. Her voice was quite deep and husky and purred with that seductive quality that men find so enigmatic and which I, when I tried to emulate it once, managed to turn into something that sounded like a band-saw on a bad motor day.

'Sorry,' she repeated, stepping towards me. I cringed involuntarily and tried to take a backward step, but the work surface was pressing against my back and the L-shaped layout had me trapped in its corner. 'Did I make you jump? You haven't burned yourself, have you?'

Heavy eyelashes batted in concerned unison and she held out a hand to me, displaying long, blood-red fingernails on fingers that peeped out from fingerless lace gloves.

'Here, let me make sure,' she said. 'That was very stupid of me, but I didn't see you were chained, honestly. I should have realised Annie-Em would keep a new slave cuffed, though.'

'I - I'm all right, honestly,' I managed to gasp. My hands fought against each other, but there was no way of separating them and I was forced with the choice of covering either my depilated sex or my still-belled nipples. In the end, I settled for the former.

'Thank goodness,' the girl sighed. 'Here, you just sit on one of the stools over there and let me finish the tea. Sugar?' All I co
uld do was nod, stunned at the
blasé way in which this newcomer accepted my appearance. Was she one of Anne-Marie's lesbian friends? Maybe this was the Penny to whom she had referred the night before, the one who had 'borrowed' the singularly endowed not-quite brother Andy.

'Annie-Em still in the land of nod?' She moved past me and proceeded to set out another mug, re-boil the kettle and generally set about providing us with a cup of tea each.

'Yes.' I managed to find my voice again. 'I didn't want to disturb her. She was driving most of yesterday, so she must be tired.'

'And driving you most of last night?' She grinned and nodded towards me as I turned and tried to lift myself onto one of the bar stools by the small breakfast counter. 'The stripes are still pretty red on your bum,' she added, by way of explanation.

'Oh.' What else could I say? This whole scene was so surreal. How can anyone make small talk when they looked the way I did right then?

'She likes the Cleopatra look,' the girl said, stirring mugs noisily. 'She also goes for Indian squaws, harem girls and rubber alien space girls, but then you'll probably find that out for yourself, assuming she hasn't scared the pants off you first.' She turned, grinning at me over her shoulder. 'No pun intended,' she added, and I felt my cheeks burning hotter still.

'Make that three cups, you cheeky bitch.' For the second time in as many minutes the sound of an unexpected voice made me jump and I jerked my head around to see Anne-Marie framed in the kitchen doorway, one hand almost stifling a yawn, a cigarette burning in the other.

'I - I didn't want to wake you,' I offered lamely. Anne-Marie smiled and yawned again.

'That's okay,' she said. 'I appreciate your consideration, but noisy slut here woke me up with her chatter.' I frowned, wondering just how the newcomer's voice could have reached up as far as Anne-Marie's bedroom and penetrated the door I had closed behind me. The girl snorted and shook her head, setting the pageboy styled tresses to swinging to and fro.

'That's it,' she muttered. 'Blame me as usual.' She turned to me and smiled lopsidedly. 'I'm always in the shithouse here, whatever goes wrong,' she said nonchalantly.

'And I'll tan your rude little arse if you talk like that in front of guests again,' Anne-Marie snapped back, but there was no malice in her tone. 'Teenie may be a slave, but at least she knows how to talk like a lady - well, most of the time, anyway.' She sniggered and I blushed again, remembering certain scenes from our extended encounter. She turned back to me again.

'She'll never make a proper lady,' she said, grinning. I tried to look noncommittal, but she simply began laughing, tears springing into her eyes. I stared at her uncomprehendingly.

'What's so funny?' I demanded. Anne-Marie controlled her mirth and took a long drag on her cigarette. The girl finished stirring the third mug of tea and turned to face us both and I saw she was grinning, too. All of a sudden the penny dropped and I realised that was the only penny in the room.

'You're not Penny, are you?' I gasped. The red lips curled even more and the henna wig swung again.

'Sorry,' the
girl
said. 'Rude of me not to introduce myself.' Even the voice changed subtly now, all attempts at pretence gone.

'Bloody wicked too, as usual,' Anne-Marie said, then let out a cloud of smoke, which she waved at ineffectually and addressed herself to me.

'This,' she said, 'in case you hadn't now realised it, is Andrea, or at least, she's Andrea at the moment. In so-called normal life she's Andy, my not-quite stepmother's dearly beloved only son!'

24
.

Things were now becoming most bizarre, which sounds like a ludicrous thing for me to say, especially in the light of everything that had happened to me - real and/or illusionary - during the past weeks, but the arrival of 'Andrea' was almost the straw that broke the camel's back and I was beginning to think that either my entire life was really a dream from which I couldn't wake up, or else I had somehow gone completely insane and missed the turning where I'd first started losing the plot.

But Anne-Marie, with an insightfulness I was to come to know as normal with her, realised that I had gone beyond mere inquisitiveness and adventure and needed propping up, and urgently.

'I think maybe we should go to your cottage and take a look at those things in the loft,' she said firmly. 'I can't believe you haven't gone through the rest of those trunks. You've been seeking answers that may well be in them, you know.'

'I don't think so,' I began. 'I think I'd sense it, but all I get is a sort of, well, weird feeling, every time I go up that ladder and look in there.'

'Scared to touch anything else of it?' Anne-Marie said. Andy, or Andrea, as Anne-Marie insisted we call him/her while she was in her female character, looked on somewhat bemused, for obviously 'she' wasn't yet privy to the secret of my possible time-travelling adventure.

'Not scared, exactly...' I started to say, 'oh, who the hell am I trying to kid? Yes, I'm terrified of touching any of it and that's the truth. What happens if I end up back there and what if I can't come back here again next time?'

Of course, we had to explain everything to Andrea, who listened wide-eyed and intent, nodding as I retold my tale, letting out a low whistle when I outlined the details of that awful punishment post where I last remembered being before coming back to the present in my cottage.

'Wow!' she said when I'd finished. 'What a story! You should write it as a book!'

'Shut up, Andrea,' Anne-Marie told him, frowning her disapproval. 'This may seem like a game to you, the same as everything else does, but this is deadly serious for Teena, can't you see that?'

We decided to have breakfast first and then go over to the cottage together. Released from my chains I removed my stockings, shoes and the cincher, released the belled nipple clamps with exaggerated care and slowly dressed in my own things, feeling quite drab alongside Andrea, who was apparently quite happy to travel in her female guise. Not that she was risking much, I realised, for even up close she would have passed for a girl, so long as no one ever got to grips with the secret she kept well hidden in her panties, if what Anne-Marie had told me about her male endowment was even halfway true.

Surprisingly, the cottage did nor feel damp and, even more amazingly, embers still glowed in the fireplace. I opened the damper, raked them through and added more coal, together with one of the logs I'd bought from the local general store and, by the time I put the kettle on and arranged mugs for tea, bright flames were licking towards the chimney.

'This is nice,' Anne-Marie said approvingly. 'Needs a little bit of tarting up and twiddling here and there, but it's
so
quaint - and this was all left to you?'

'By an ancient aunt I'd never even heard of before,' I said. 'It was to go to the eldest surviving female blood relative on her side of the family and that just happened to be me.'

'Want a housemate?' Andrea asked mischievously, dropping into one of the fireside chairs and crossing her legs with practised ease. I was still having trouble believing this was a male; her every move and gesture was so feminine and she must have worked on her alter-persona for a long time to achieve such perfection.

'You just behave yourself, you tart,' Anne-Marie laughed. She gave a meaningful look towards the ceiling. 'Shall we go up and have a look-see?' she said.

I hesitated. 'Let's have some tea first,' I suggested, delaying the inevitable as long as I could. 'I'm still feeling a bit vague after last night and I need something to wake me up properly and get me going.'

'Good idea,' Andrea agreed, yawning indelicately. 'That damned Penny is an insomniac and she seems to think everyone else is the same.'

Eventually, however, the moment came and I led the way up. The stepladder was still propped against the open loft hatch and Andrea, possibly her inherent male gallantry or bravado, offered to go up first and retrieve the nearest trunk. I caught a brief glimpse of black panties as her skirt flared above my head and looked away guiltily, until she hauled herself from view.

There followed a series of scrapes, bumps and muttered curses and then a henna-topped head appeared, looking down at us, a huge smile belying her protestations.

'It's absolutely
filthy
up here!' she exclaimed. 'Must be the dust of centuries on everything.' She sneezed and shook her head. 'I've got the first one right here, but it's a bit heavy, so we'll need to incline this ladder a bit more and try to slide it down. I'll hold the top handle, but I'm not sure how trustworthy it is.' I noticed Andrea's voice had dropped slightly and definitely taken on a more masculine edge.

One by one we retrieved the remaining trunks and cases. There were actually more of them than I had first thought, Andrea noticing two additional small cases lying right under the eaves in the deepest shadow, and they filled the spare bedroom completely by the time she finally made her way back down to join us.

'Where do we start?' I asked, standing back, hands on hips. Anne-Marie shrugged.

'I don't suppose it'll make much difference,' she said. 'Maybe we should just open them all and get a rough idea of what's in each and then we can get them downstairs one at a time and go through them properly.'

'It'll take all day,' Andrea observed, yawning again.

'You can always go through and curl up on my bed for a couple of hours,' I offered. It was obvious the poor thing was struggling to keep her eyes open and I felt guilty that my problems should be the cause of depriving her of much needed sleep. But Andrea shook her head.

'Not yet,' she replied. 'Let's have a quick rummage first, but I'll take you up on that in a bit, if the offer still holds.'

An hour or so later, Andrea had indeed retreated to slumber land and Anne-Marie and I sat in my lounge, several items of clothing and three leather-bound document packages on the floor between us. The clothing items were all very much pre-Victorian, if I was any judge, one dress dating almost to Elizabethan times and certainly of at least Stuart vintage. The fabric felt surprisingly supple, but I still handled it with extreme respect.

'Some of these things must be worth a fortune,' Anne-Marie observed. 'And we've hardly scraped the surface of those trunks. But let's see what all this paperwork is about, shall we?'

You may, dear reader, find it somewhat mystifying that, whilst I had expended much time and effort in trying to trace my various ancestors via official records, I had not thought to look for any further written clues among the trunks in the loft space. The truth is that I had, but that I had also not quite been able to bring myself to go up there again and touch those trunks; was I scared I might again find myself trapped back in time? Was I worried I might find something written that I did not want to know about?

I'm not sure that I know the answers, even now, only that I needed to do my detective work through a different route and that, meantime, even the clothing I'd brought down from the roof that first time had been put away in the unused bedroom, covered by an old sheet, where it had lain undisturbed during the intervening time. Call it cowardice, call it what you want, but only now, when I had people with me, was I prepared to venture back towards a path whose destination I could not predict.