The Possessions of a Lady Read Online Free PDF Page A

and turn
milk-white skin to red.
    The culmination, that century's diligent observers reported, came
in Theresa Berkley's flagellation house in Portland Place. Theresa was a game
girl. She had ambition. True blue capitalist, she reasoned that it was wrong to
restrict this thrill to women. Also, why use only stiff Jermyn Street rods?
Serious thinking was required here. Madam Berkley therefore set up her own
code. Green birch wands, kept whippy in warm water, were always available.
Leather cat-o'-nine tails, adorned with needles and fine wire nails, also
proved popular. Slender canes from Long Acre's furniture makers, green nettles,
coach-harness thongs, broom faggots, God knows what else, were ready for males
and females alike. Remember, it was the age when sin was front-page stuff,
notions of guilt and torment were the rage, life one enormous religious
porridge.
    Theresa's establishment flourished.
    One problem, though. La Berkley saw that a support was necessary.
Thrashing clients to ecstasy had a certain transcendental quality, but proved
messy. Bed laundry cost, as the clients became bloodily replete. Her business
expenses ate profit. Luckily, Georgian London was inventive, and proved equal
to the task. Why not, some unknown artisan suggested, create a flagellation
frame? Custom-built, faced with kid leather, covered with a single replaceable
sheet. Adjustable, on a rachet with mahogany stretchers, you could thrash from
any angle. Make sure there was space for the weapon, for different types of
stroke, and Bob's your uncle. No beds needed! Cheap quick turnover, strong,
eminently re-usable, desirable . . .
    The famed Berkley Horse was born.
    Theresa ordered a set, and life's rich pageant rolled on just that
little bit richer for the Berkley Flogging Establishment of Portland Place.
    See one, you can't mistake it, unless you're as daft as the
average dealer. It reminds you of an easel, a leather-covered wooden support
about sixty-five inches tall. Later models extend or shrink with wooden holding
pegs that screw in. There's an arched space for your head, and two rectangular
openings for your belly and knees, slots for your feet. Three pairs of ornate
brass rings for binding your head, chest, calves. That's it.
    And Aureole had one on her stall, pristine, so genuine it chimed
in my chest. God knows who'd made it. The great furniture makers of that golden
age had lived only a stone's throw beyond Piccadilly. Tom Chippendale, eldest
son of his immortal dad, was beavering away nearby at 60 St Martin's Lane,
though plummeting downhill to bankruptcy ... I felt my divvy's malaise as
Aureole's Berkley Horse clanged in me. Chippendale? I moaned inwardly.
    The recent boom in erotica has taken antiques by storm. Dealers
are crazy for sexy implements, paintings, working models, sexy tobacciana. It's
a queer world, but you just can't ignore a 'push,' as the trade calls
inexplicable surges, because it's where money suddenly goes. A few years ago it
was Georgian silver. Then the Impressionists. Then the Moderns, until those
international sales when modern paintings didn't hook in the floating money. Antiques
is an exciting landscape dotted with smoking ruins showing where dealers came
to grief.
    My mouth watered. Aureole was using the Berkley Horse as a stand.
She'd pinned some repro brooches to the leather, silly cow. Damaging a genuine
antique ought to be punishable by poverty, and serve her right.
    It isn't just antiques, though. City of London companies were
floated for dafter things than colours daubed on canvas, or for clay shaped by
a potter's hands. It's an odd fact that if a stock exchange demands money for
some loony enterprise it's taken seriously. Old does not mean honest. It can
also mean tricky. 'A Wheel of Perpetual Motion' had ancient investors flocking,
as did that well-known, 'Undertaking Which Shall In Due Time Be Revealed . .
.'—and you had to pay up beforehand. Don't laugh; 1,000 investors raced to buy
on the same