Chapter XXXII Bullwhip Master

 

  I made my way back to the Civic Centre reception area. Jim was there.

 “Hello, Councillor. Were you having a problem with your car lock? A company called Lock something have got your keys at the moment.”

“Thanks, Jim.” I replied. “I’ll make my way to the car-park.”

My mobile rang. Ted Grayson was on the line. He was anxiously enquiring whether everything was OK and whether he should be lobbying any Committee members. “I am ready to do the best I can. I have spoken to Andy Trosser and he will give you all the backing you need. You know Andy. No backsliding now. Anyway I shall be present at the Planning Committee on Tuesday. Just to give you moral support.”

“Thanks, Ted,” I replied. “I really appreciate that.” Like Hell!

I reached the car park. Two mechanics with the words “Key Lock Company” emblazoned on the backs of their purple overalls were just locking up my car after removing fingerprint and oil stains from the lining on the front bucket seats.

“Hello, I’m Peter Axtell. You lads sent by Mr Clements?”

“We most certainly are. And we’ve found the little charmer. Just underneath the driver’s seat, inside one of the springs. Here’s the little beauty. Your car is now as clean as a whistle.”

I looked at the innocent-looking device. It was no bigger than a blue bottle fly but it could have caused me grief; quite serious grief. I racked my memory to think what I could have discussed in the car, either while talking on the phone to somebody or talking live to Meena or my mother. I remembered the time I had discussed the development with Meena on our way to our meeting at the Leader’s office. I also remembered the important conversation with Meena immediately after the mayoral chair incident when I had prevented her from resigning in despair. I remembered my conversation with Roger Clements today, half held inside the car and half outside. Was I now compromised because of what Sheremovsky’s eavesdroppers had heard? I was not sure, but I felt instinctively that I had made no adverse comments about the planning application while in the car. I also had a tendency never to use my mobile while I am driving. As I had said earlier, I am not a particularly experienced driver so I tend to be careful not to overload my concentration when holding a steering wheel. Besides it would soon be illegal.

One of the mechanics had rung Roger to report to him. Roger asked to talk to me.

“Well that was close, Peter. You’ve definitely been bugged! How much of our conversation today was in the car?” I explained that, to my mind, we had discussed the Kapacek incident in the car but the hard exchange of information about the voting intentions of the Committee members occurred while I was still outside of the car. Any earlier conversations with Meena in the car about the scheme would have been more than a week ago and would have indicated me showing expressions of strong support for the scheme. No wonder they seemed to be going so far out in their trust of me. Somebody was going to get a very big shock before the end of Tuesday. As long as it was not going to be me!

“Now I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you, Peter, that you have to be extra careful over the next few days. Also I’ve discussed the position of the minority Councillors on the Committee with Melanie and she’s going to work on them.”

In turn I described to him my meetings with Phil Marchmont and with Chris Finneston and confirmed that Marchmont will now be able to attend the Planning Committee meeting.

“Good, good,” echoed Roger. “But remember, be extra careful and watch your back.”

“Well Ted Grayson has just latched on to me again. Reminding me that he’s supporting me all the way but that he’s watching me like a hawk. He’s also talking round our Chief Whip. I mean, Andy Trosser.”

“That’s the last minute signs of panic on the side of the developers, Peter. They want their pound of flesh from all those who took bribes to support the development. Grayson may not be the only one who is trying to put the screws on you because they are having the screws put on themselves. These are the vultures circling round for the last round. Let them circle. We’ll get them all in one huge turkey-shoot as soon as the Planning Committee is out of the way. Just make a note of what they say to you.”

“I appreciate that,” I replied, “but I will still need to talk things through with Andy Trosser this weekend. He’s the last piece of the jigsaw that I have to play.”

I went for a lunch in the glorified Civic Centre canteen that was now pretentiously being called a “Restaurant”. I was delighted to see some cross-party Councillors emanating (in origin at least) from the Indian sub-continent. I recognized that troublemaker Vincent Perera as well as the young Ahmed Kausar. The smaller minority party Councillor on the Planning Committee, Gurcharan Khan, was also there. These three together held quite a key block of votes in the next Planning Committee and as far as I was concerned they were uncharted waters. We agreed to meet in a corner of the canteen after lunch.

I said “block of votes” from the Indian sub-continent, but the three could hardly be more different. Vincent Perera was a wily and whining anti-colonial anti-Atlanticist lefty rebel, always anti-establishment. He was an elderly Goan Catholic. I sensed that ever since I had challenged him for the Deputy Chairman’s post on the Planning Committee he had been quite cool towards me. Ahmed Kausar was a flash secular young Muslim entrepreneur and Gurcharan Khan was a tall bearded Sikh with a red turban, who owned a repair garage.      

I chose this occasion to brief all three of them carefully on my possible doubts concerning the development and to draw out from them what their own voting intentions were. Perera had been against the development, Kausar declared for it and Khan had not yet made up his mind. I was careful not to align myself totally with Perera so as not to put off the others, but Kausar would not explain his motives other than to say that he had been impressed by the maquette and the lecture given by Sir William Tallis at the site visit. Khan was going through an agony of indecision and implied that he would vote on the day after listening to everybody’s arguments, but especially mine. The one thing he said he was sure of was that he would disagree with whatever Melanie Sheldrake would propose. “And what,” I asked Gurcharan Khan with a slightly mocking voice, “would you do if Melanie Sheldrake and I should end up on the same side?”

“Then I would have to think about it again. May be I would abstain?”

At first I felt like regurgitating the somewhat stodgy spotted dick with custard, which I had just eaten, over Gurcharan’s turbaned head. Nevertheless he redeemed himself partly when he told me at the end of the day that his biggest concern would be accommodation on the site for young Asian teachers and nurses with families needing cheaper places to live.

Still no wiser about the final voting outcome than I was before I returned to my car, I drove home and prepared myself for the evening excursion on The Love Boat.

As I showered for a second time that day I heard the tell-tale sound of a message being deposited on my mobile phone. I stumbled out of the shower rubbing my hair with a towel and checked the message. It was Carlo Gambetti. “Sorry, change of plan. Can you pick us up, please? Sorry again.”

I have to say I was fully expecting this. It was obviously convenient for him and his friend not to go wandering unaccompanied around the streets of London in fetching fetish outfits. There are some Love Boat revellers brazen enough to parade in their freak frocks in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. But neither Carlo nor I belonged to those. I pressed the Reply button on my mobile. “OK. Fare costs six whacks per person. Remind address.”

Back came reply with Carlo’s street address in Earls Court and the following comment: “Fare quite low but friend will tip generously.” Now I love that kind of reply. There will be bottoms to smack tonight, I thought. I went back to finish my shower.

I had put on a gaudy bright red shirt with black flashes together with a black leather waistcoat and a velvet black bow tie. I wore my very tight PVC drainpipe trousers and a metal studded black leather belt. I had equipped myself with a crooked dragon cane and a 3 tail tawse. I also took with me my cheque book covered by the old black leather Midland Bank cover. HSBC only produce plain plastic white covers. Not like the good old days.

 After the last hectic three weeks I needed to relax and I promised myself that I would do this on the Love Boat. Even at the wedding which I had enjoyed so thoroughly there had been an undercurrent of tension. I had felt like a spy in the enemy camp. Here at last I would be with Carlo and his woman  friend and the names “Framden” and “Sheremovsky” need not be mentioned once. Having got myself ready in good time I switched off my mobile phone and gave myself half an hour to watch a comedy sitcom on TV and flip over the latest editions of “New Statesman” and “The Spectator”. I even allowed myself fifteen minutes of shut eye to recover my strength.

 The boat departed sharply at eight in the evening from Charing Cross Pier. An hour before that I had parked in the mews near Earls Court where Carlo lived. I rang the doorbell and Carlo  answered the door. He looked resplendent in a one piece black leather outfit with a covered side zip, which clung tightly around his legs, hips and shoulders but left his chest and belly button exposed in a plunging neckline. His navel was pierced by a metal stud. I am sure that to a fellow gay he looked simultaneously ravishing and menacing. I could imagine any natural slave falling on his or her feet before this dark goddess to offer fealty and be prepared to suffer punishment and humiliation. Hell! I felt ready to do that myself and I was no natural submissive. I told him as much and he kissed me, delighted at the impression he had made on me.

 His friend, the one who had promised to “tip generously” for the fare, was still changing in Carlo’s bedroom, and we had a few minutes to wait. Carlo offered me a drink but I satisfied my thirst with a glass of water as I had no wish to exceed my alcohol limit driving through London with these delightful perverts.

  “Do me a favour, will you?” Carlo asked me. “Let me have a bit of last minute practice.”

  I knew exactly what he wanted me to do. “Where do you want me to stand?” I asked. I knew enough about Carlo’s skills and seen his performances to know that he was one of London’s top bullwhip masters. Yes, my head knew that well and my heart accepted it, but you try convincing the nerves in my body of that. Standing rock still while this devil cracked his whip and enveloped you in its violent coils required complete utter trust and a silent kind of heroism. It’s like being the son of William Tell. Still, nobody was going to call me a coward and it is precisely because of my complete trust in his skills that the two of us got on so well to the mutual advantage of us both. It served us in both our social and our business relationship.

 “Where do you want me to stand?” I repeated again. He moved around the sofas and a side table to give himself space and pointed to a spot near the bedroom door. “Now then Peter, form a cross but with your legs well apart and your armed stretched out to the side.” I did as he asked. It must have looked like a scarecrow pose, but the “scare” part referred to me. I watched him with fearful fascination as he played with the bullwhip making circles in the air, first silent ones and then ones cracking with single outbursts as the ends of the whip kissed each other individually and then going for a firecracker series of explosions. These sounds alone put the fear of God in me and only my pride and my confidence in the fact that Carlo knew what he was doing kept me still holding my position.

  Having completed his earlier solo exercises he now his eyes on my ridiculous pose. He was looking at me dispassionately, not as at a vulnerable human being quivering in trepidation, but as a target object, of no more significance than a metal hat stand. “Everything OK with Framden Council?” he asked out of the blue. Suddenly he launched that whip and it curled snake-like with a devastating crack around my left arm. “OK, Peter? Feel anything?”

 “Not a thing!” I hasten to add that I was not lying. I felt no pain at all. I had seen him perform these skills a few times now and each time he amazed me. A whipping without the pain. But his questioning was a bit surprising. “Why do you ask about the Council?”

 “Just asking really. We are all following the events over the Sheremovsky application. Remember my earlier warning?”

 I was drinking in his words slowly. Was this just talk, or was he actually warning me?

 “Right, Peter. Keep still now.” I remained in the same position, arms outstretched, and legs well apart. He was looking lower down now, seemingly at my groin area. As I stood there in tense anticipation, the door behind me opened. I was in no position to look round just then.

 Carlo did not want to lose his concentration either so he waved his companion silently to the side and began slowly to flex the wrist on his whip-hand. Suddenly he launched himself forward and the whip wrapped itself round the top of my right leg just below the crotch. Again I felt nothing except the wind as the whip passed near my body.

  “Amazing,” said Carlo’s companion behind me, emphatically.

  I spun round at the somewhat familiar voice. It was I who was amazed.

There in a resplendent black padded basque embroidered with rosebuds and with matching thong and suspenders, stood our early departed ex-Press Officer, Susan Sweetman.

 “Surely, you remember Susan?” Carlo chuckled as I stood in numbed silence. “We two have got on like a house on fire, haven’t we? Susan joined me at the beginning of the week and she’s been like a breath of fresh air at Whispering Trees. We want to thank you for getting us together.”

I emerged from my torpor and kissed Susan chastely on her cheek. “Hi, Susan,” I said as I stepped back now and admired her outfit and the way it complemented her figure. “Superb, Susan. It exposes your legs. You have fabulous legs. Well enhanced by those suspenders.”

“Just my legs?” she asked mischievously.

She spun round. Her white bum cheeks were completely exposed by the thong she was wearing. Her basque also revealed her white shoulders and exposed a large part of her back. She looked eminently eatable. In fact her costume was very much “in yer face” which seemed quite out of character to the Susan I had known.

“Not just your legs,” I conceded.

She walked up to Carlo. She gave his lips a long extended kiss which Carlo responded to readily as they seemed to gaze at each other with great intensity.

Perhaps I had never really known the real Susan, I thought. In fact I felt quite excluded.

“Look, guys, you both look gorgeous,” I told them, “and it was a very unexpected surprise to see Susan, but can we please get going? We mustn’t be late for the boat. It never waits for latecomers.”

They stopped their kiss and looked at me as dispassionately as if I had been a bus conductor interrupting their conversation in order to check their tickets.

Politely I went out to the car first to wait for them.