Read Players at the Game of People for Free Online Page B

up the fabric and flung it in the direction of a

waste bin.

Her sandals had come off along with her satin trousers, so now all she

wore was a pair of white panties, also -- as she realized when she noticed

his glare of distaste -- soiled. She whimpered with self-loathing.

"Get in there and clean yourself," he said, pointing at the glass cabinet.

"But . . . !" She stared for a drink-extended moment at the clear glass

walls; the door stood wide. Then she reasoned out that on the one hand

there was no alternative, and on the other she could scarcely be more

humiliated than she was already. Sullen, tears still trickling down

from her red-rimmed eyes, she obeyed: emptied her bowels into the pan,

flushed the mess away, squatted on the bidet and scrubbed as though

trying to punish herself.

"Here," he said, entering the compartment and handing her a glass half

full of cloudy white fluid. "Drink this."

She obeyed as though he were a doctor and she a patient totally committed

to his care. When the glass was empty, he took it back and threw her

a towel.

"Dry yourself."

"Have you -- have you something I can put on?" she dared to whisper.

"Where do you think you're going?"

He turned his back with deliberate contempt and, waiting for her to

follow him out of the glass cage, sipped at a ballon of 1858 Armagnac,

which had lost all its vinosity and tasted -- and smelled -- solely of the

oak casks in which it had been matured prior to bottling. The flavor and

the bouquet were unique; there was no other liquor like this in the world.

Behind him he heard her crying cease. When she stepped back into the main

room, the towel wrapped around her body and tucked in above her breasts,

her eyes were sparkling.

"It's incredible! What was it you gave me? I feel fine again!"

"That's what it's for."

"But it's amazing! I never heard of any medicine that could do that!"

"I'm not surprised," he grunted. And wasn't; it was nowhere on sale.

Nowhere on Earth, at any rate.

Better or not, though, next moment her face fell. Her gaze had lit on

the bundle of cloth he had torn from her.

"That was all I had to wear," she said timidly. "All my other clothes

are at the -- the house where I rent a room. Please lend me something

so I can go home!"

"No."

She stared at him like a child astonished by a promised punishment which

had suddenly turned out to be real. Her lips trembled on the brink of

renewed sobs.

He said harshly, "How much of tonight were you expecting to spend at home,

you little tart?"

"But I -- but I . . . !"

Her last resistance crumbled. She dropped forward on her knees, her head

in her hands, and the storm of sobbing which racked her this time was

cathartic. Easing his way to a chair, he cajoled her gently closer so

that she could rest her forehead on his lap while he stroked her hair,

and piece by piece he assembled her story.

Half of it was, predictably, a tissue of lies.

She was eighteen. Her parents had divorced when she was so small she

could scarcely remember her father, and into the bargain she hated the

name he had bequeathed her -- "Simpkins! I mean honestly, who wants to

be called Simpkins?" -- along with her given name, which was Dora --

"Isn't it the bloody end? Dora Simpkins!"

Gorse was a nickname from school which she felt suited her. Currently

she was looking for an adoptive surname to go with it. School was an

extremely expensive private boarding school near Kenley, in Surrey, not

because her father had been rich -- he was supposedly a ne'er-do-well

and gambler with more charm than persistence -- nor because her mother

had inherited money. On the contrary, although she had brought up her

daughter single-handed, luckily having no other children to worry about,

she came from an out-and-out working-class background and had clawed

her way to financial success by any means to hand.

"I'm following in her footsteps," Gorse said viciously. "And Granny's

as well, though she's dead