Teena Thyme (7 page)

Her hand slipped out from between Angelina's thighs and swung round in an arc so swiftly that Angelina had no chance to even tense herself for the slap, which met her left cheek with a terrible report as loud as a pistol shot in the confines of the room. Angelina's head jerked back and instantly a myriad tiny stars began to explode across her vision and a terrible resonance echoed inside her head.

'You'll watch your mouth from now on, lady,' she heard Meg say, as if from a great distance now. 'Any more of your cheek and I have just the thing to still that nasty little tongue of yours. You'll meet the pear soon enough anyway, of course, but you just keep this up and it'll be sooner still!'

It took me a good fifteen minutes to finally get the front of the corset to close and I was huffing and puffing like a mad thing long before it was finished, but at last I made it and there was a curious feeling of achievement when I finally knotted the laces in a bow and leaned back against the wall again.

I saw that I was now left with quite a length of trailing laces, however, and spent the next few minutes, while I struggled to regulate my breathing pattern to this even greater constriction, wondering what I should do with them. There were scissors on the dressing table and I could, of course, have simply cut off the excess, but then, as I quickly realised, when I finally removed the corset the remaining laces would not be anywhere near long enough to use again. In the end, I solved the problem by wrapping the spare ends about my now astonishingly narrow waist and tying them off again.

'Why on earth am I putting myself through all this torture?' I gasped to the empty room, but of course there was no answer and I doubt whether there would have been, even if there had been someone else there with me. Why indeed? The truth was, I really had no idea, though since then I have had a few thoughts on the matter, none of which makes any sense. Mind you, none of what's happened to me in the intervening years can be said to do that either.

Sitting on the edge of the bed to sort out a pair of stockings presented me with a far greater problem than I had bargained for. The corset was not only tight, but it stretched down my torso so far that it was now all but impossible for me to bend at the waist, so I was forced to perch on the very lip of the mattress, leaning backwards and with my legs stuck out at a very ungainly angle. Eventually, practise and familiarity would allow me to sit with a lot more dignity, but of course I didn't know that then.

If selecting which stockings to wear - there were four pairs, all in various shades, all pure silk and all very delicate both to the touch and to look at - was one problem, actually putting them on was a much greater one. It was far from easy and even with my natural athleticism and pliability, I really struggled and was glad there
was
no one there to witness my very ungainly efforts.

Eventually, however, I succeeded. The stockings, a smoky grey colour and reaching to my mid-thigh, felt absolutely sensual, the thin silk caressing my soft skin in a way I had never thought to experience and I felt little shudders tiptoeing their way up and down my spine as I reached for the garters. These were something else again.

Unlike their modern counterparts, which you can usually buy easily enough from any lingerie shop or department worth its name, these were not elasticated. The main reason for this, I presumed, was that they hadn't got around to inventing elastic back when these were made and although I couldn't put an exact date on its invention, good at history or not, I was pretty sure it had been much later.

However, in most other ways they looked exactly as you'd expect a garter to look - frilly ruffs of lace, threaded through with thin contrasting ribbons; in this case the lace was red, the ribbons black, echoing the colours of the corset. They were kept in place by the simple expedient of tying the trailing ribbon ends into bows, but it was necessary to tie them quite tightly, compressing the thigh muscles quite a lot. I suspected that varicose veins might have been far more prevalent in eighteen-forty than they were in nineteen seventy-four and that, if I was right in this supposition, I knew the culprits.

For all their frivolous and undeniably sexy appearance, the garters were actually hidden by the drawers, once I managed to wriggle my way into them. These were also red with black piping, made of more sheer silk and evidently intended to be worn with the corset I had chosen, but what a palaver it was getting them on.

Firstly I drew them up to my waist, over the corset, obviously and then carefully drew the ribbon tie tighter, anxious that it might tear, for it was not only old but had never been intended to endure the sort of strain imposed on the corset laces. However, I needn't have worried. Despite the years that had passed, the trunk from which I'd taken everything had obviously been pretty much airtight and the ribbon felt quite new in my hands.

To call these drawers voluminous wouldn't have been at all accurate, for they were actually quite close fitting, even if the legs did reach halfway down each of my thighs and, as I have already pointed out, covered and hid the garters. Here again were two more ribbon ties, with which the leg openings could be tightened as required and I couldn't help but smile at the way in which I seemed now to be sealing myself into my chosen outfit.

Because of the rigmarole involved in putting on and taking off such a garment the designer had been required to add another feature, presumably in order to save on little accidents and this he or she had done, and in the most basic way imaginable. The crotch of these drawers had simply been slit open and kept together afterwards by three more sets of ribbon ties which, once unfastened and the fabric of the drawers held apart, would permit the wearer to perform what I grinningly thought of as her 'usual offices'.

I stood up and practised walking back and forth across the old carpet, my stockinged feet padding soundlessly. It felt really strange, the corset having the effect of making the two halves of my body - upper and lower - seem like separate entities and my top half felt like it was floating around, supported by some invisible giant hand. Meantime the silk of my drawers swished and hissed against the silk of my stocking tops in the most intimately suggestive way and I shivered with pleasure as it whispered to my every step.

Maybe I should have stopped there. After all, I was still battling for breath, no matter how much I might have liked to think I had acclimatised myself to the corset's grip and my face, I knew without looking, was glowing bright red, especially my cheeks. But then, what else was there to do that evening? I had no television yet and the choice of radio programs was hardly exciting at the weekend.

Shoes.

It made sense to finish sorting out my footwear, especially when I looked at the dress and the voluminous petticoats that were intended to go under its incredible skirt. Once I had that little lot in place, it would be goodbye feet, see you again later - and that wouldn't be the biggest of my problems. Giggling to myself I started for the door, intending to go downstairs to the toilet and then stopped.

There was a stone floor to cross down there and these stockings were flimsy, to say the least. Risking their delicacy on such an unsympathetic surface would be criminal. Whatever these things had cost way back when, I knew enough to know that a pair of genuine silk stockings in nineteen seventy-five, always presuming you could find somewhere that still sold genuine silk stockings, cost an arm and a leg. Not literally, of course, otherwise it would have been a waste of time bu
ying a pair in the first place.

So, shoes it was and I'd brought two pairs through to consider, one of which could not really be described as shoes at all. Rather, they were like ankle boots, made from very soft thin leather, black as the night and fastening all the way up each side by means of tiny buttons. I turned one of them over and over in my hands and then, beautiful as they were, I realised with regret that I would have to discard them for now. Without a buttonhook there was no way I was ever going to manage them.

I glanced upwards, at the ceiling. Hopefully, I thought, as I took up one of the other shoes, there would be a buttonhook in one of those other trunks. If not, I resolved, I would go into Chichester or Portsmouth first thing Monday morning. Surely there were still shops where I could buy one? I was determined to wear those boots soon, in a way that only someone with my sometimes inexplicable fads for certain clothing items could ever hope to understand.

The shoes I could wear were hardly less beautiful. They were made from little panels of black and red leather and fastened across the instep with buckles that had taken some long dead silversmith many hours of loving toil, though they could not have been made from pure silver, for the metal was not that soft. The heels were quite chunky, but also sculpted and something I had read not so long before came back to me. Louis Quinze. Yes, that was what they were called and they had been fashionable in ladies' footwear for many years longer than any fashion fad ever held unbroken sway during our own century.

The heels were also quite high compared to most period illustrations I had seen before, but, to a girl who'd spent the past six months clumping around in shoes and boots with four inch platform soles and eight and nine inch heels, they presented no difficulty at all and their almost total lack of weight made me quickly forget I was even wearing them.

'Right then,' I said to the shoes, once I'd promenaded to and fro in them a few times. 'Take me to the loo, while I'm still in a position to use it!'

Even with the application of the smelling salts, Angelina was close to fainting several times before Meg eventually finished the final lacing of her corset and she hung by her wrists, almost oblivious to the next stage of her preparation.

Handling her now as if she were no more than a dangling carcass, the two maids quickly set about drawing long silk stockings up her legs, fastening them with tightly knotted garters and then pulling a pair of black silk drawers into place. On her feet they placed ankle length boots, boots that were as black as the corset and stockings and which they needed to button in place with a great deal of patience.

The Louis Quinze heels of these boots were far higher than anything Angelina had ever worn before, forcing her instep into a cruelly arched position, but at least, she reflected through the haze of semi-consciousness, at least now some of her weight was supported other than by her wrists, which by now had passed beyond the stage of pain and were feeling quite numb.

'Let her down, Polly,' Meg instructed, 'but keep a hold on her. She looks barely capable of standing now, so we'd better get her over to the bed again. Once her gloves are in place, I think we can safely leave her to come to her senses. Without the hook she won't be able to remove anything, so if we give her an hour we can slip down to the kitchen and have ourselves a well-earned cup of tea.'

I hadn't needed the toilet that urgently, but I felt better afterwards, knowing that I wouldn't suddenly be faced with the problem of a protesting bladder while I was trapped inside all that extra silk and lace. How my unknown ancestors had coped back then I couldn't even begin to imagine, though now I thought of it, I could vaguely remember a couple of almost laughable illustrations I had once seen in a reference book in the school library.

Still, that was then and this was now and, laughable or not, I didn't have recourse to either of those particular alternatives. Once the dress and gloves were on it was a case of grin and bear it, so the bottle of wine that still awaited me down in the front parlour would need to be treated with respectful restraint.

It took me less time than I'd expected to get into the rest of my chosen outfit, though the row of hooks and eyes at the back would have troubled a less supple person than myself. I carefully arranged the puffed sleeves, so that they neatly covered half of each shoulder and left what I considered would have been just the right amount of shoulder flesh showing, and then I took up the gloves.

Like the boots, they really needed a buttonhook to close the wrist openings, but I persevered with my fingers alone and finally, after much muttering and a fair few very unladylike curses, I had them both fastened in place and the soft velvet smoothed up my arms as if it were a second skin. Gingerly, I raised my arms, finding that I could now bend them at the elbow only with quite a degree of difficulty and then only to about half the extent I could before. Not very practical, these Victorian designers, I thought to myself, but then Victorian ladies weren't supposed to be practical. Just decorative.

Decorative and demure - neither of which description would normally have been applied to yours truly, at least, not by anyone who really knew me!

'Demure? A lady? Our Teena?' I could just hear the voices. 'No, never in a thousand years. Not our Teena!'

Wrong, as it happened. On both counts.

Slowly, Angelina began to recover her senses, but what she saw and what she felt did little to ease her sorely tried spirits. Her breathing now seemed to be easier, if still very shallow and rapid, but her body still felt as if it had been cut in two and, to make matters worse, a strange numbness seemed to have set in, so that both her legs and her arms felt curiously heavy.

With a great effort she managed to sit, although not completely upright, for the corset made it impossible for her to bend sufficiently at the waist for that. However, by persistent effort and by using her hands and heels to push against the bedcovers, she finally was able to lay back against the head of the bed, where the piled up pillows offered support for her back that she now realised it no longer required.