Notebooks of the Young Wife by Tara Black Page A

shaping up well.
     
     

Sub-Frame
     
    I passed a restless night battling with monstrous images of walls and furniture that sprouted orifices I could find no means to fill, though I was somehow desperate to do so. The dawn light was creeping round the curtains so I threw on sweatshirt, jeans and thick socks and tiptoed down the stairs, wellies in hand. Outside the back door I pulled on the boots and set off over the dewy grass in the direction we had followed to the birch wood. After five minutes the fresh air had banished the oppressive residue of dreaming and I sat on a gate at the top of the rise just as the sun pushed up its rim towards the salmon-pink clouds. The combination of uxor’s anal exercises and the real-life hole I’d been probing were enough to explain the lurid scenes my mind had concocted, but I was tempted to see more in it. I’d been angling to get the boy into the fucking position; the theme of the night put me in the driving seat, as it were, though frustrated by anatomy. Well, there were ways around that , and a certain young lady in my thoughts might be just the person to have the equipment for the job.
    As I surveyed the house from my vantage point my eye was drawn to a group of outbuildings. A sizeable thatched barn closed off one side of a yard in which stood a couple of cars under tarpaulins. At right angles to it was a more recent brick structure with machinery visible inside, and at the end an outside stair led to an upper floor. All of a sudden golden sunlight picked out a window at the moment curtains were drawn back and a dark-skinned face looked out. It was unusually early for a social call, let alone the serious business that had been mooted, but the event had the force of an omen. Ama was up and about and I’d been apprised of the fact. On an impulse I waved a hand high over my head and she threw open the frame and waved back. The conclusion was inescapable: I had to visit her there and then.
    I made myself concentrate on negotiating the rutted track until I reached concrete on rounding the corner into the enclosure. The door to the accommodation above was open, so I climbed the steps before I could think better of it and left my mud-caked boots at the threshold. The smell of newly made coffee hit me as I put my head round, tapping on the wood.
    ‘Come on in, Jane. I hope I don’t need to tell you not to be shy.’
    At the poised milk carton I said, ‘Just a splash,’ and took the steaming mug out of her hand. ‘Thanks, Ama. And I don’t think I’d be here at all if I were afraid of taking a plunge.’
    ‘So I can hope you’re not just stopping by, welcome though that would be, of course.’ We were in a small kitchen area and Ama pointed me to one of two high stools by the polished counter. She disappeared behind the partition at the back of it, past which I could see a large divan that occupied the far end of the living space. When she came back my host took her seat, placing a long black rod carefully on the surface beside us. I recognised the nature of the beast at once, though to be quite certain I tested the feel of it with a finger.
    Pulse quickening I said, ‘Resin bonded into a hard rubber coating. A formidable instrument.’ She was watching me as I spoke, but I couldn’t make out the expression.
    ‘You are familiar with such a thing, Jane.’
    ‘Indeed. From both ends, so to speak.’ There was a silence in which Ama seemed to be considering her words, and I waited it out. Give her time to put her own spin on what I was by then in no doubt I was going to be asked to do. Through the window the sun was warm on my back and the bright spring morning was out of joint with the dark thing that had been brought into it.
    ‘I mean, I actually hate the whole idea, everything about it. All the baggage it so often gets laden with. Men’s fantasies of compliant schoolgirls for instance, or uppity wives getting beaten into obedience. For fuck’s sake, have you seen those