The Interview

I shook myself as I turned the handle. If I was a betting person, I could have won a tidy sum guessing her first words as I entered the room. I would have been virtually spot-on as well!

“That was very silly; why on earth did you not use an umbrella? Wait there and do your dripping by the door” she shook her head disapprovingly and disappeared into the adjacent bedroom, making disapproving noises. “Try not to shake yourself either your not a dog!” Her voice floated out of the open doorway. She reappeared a moment later and thrust a coat hanger at me along with a  cellophane packet containing a pair of white courtesy bathroom flip flops at me.

“Here, hang your coat up there on that ugly thing and change your footwear as well” she pointed to the arm of the automatic door closure. “Now come and sit yourself down and get something warm down your throat. Do you need anything else, or are you alright as you are? No point in catching a chill unnecessarily. I can have the heating turned up if you want?”

I waved a hand. No, no, no, please, I am perfectly fine. My fault; the breakfast show forecast did say heavy showers, but there was no mention of monsoons. That outburst caught me the moment I emerged from the underground station!”

She thrust a cup of coffee towards me. “Here, drink that while it’s nice and hot, or I can ring down and get something else, hot chocolate perhaps?”

“Thanks, but I’m alright, really”, I reassured her, a little touched by her obvious concern, “Just a trifle damp on the outside, and the girl on reception gave me a towel when I told her I was here to see you” I smiled in appreciation of her evident concern. Strange, I thought when contrasted with that utterly callous side of her nature in other matters!

“Honestly”, I reassured her, for she was still regarding me with that particular look, managing to seem both concerned and a little annoyed at the same time.

“Well, if you're quite sure. What was her name?”

That threw me halfway through an extended sip of coffee, and I spluttered, “name?”

“The girl on reception, silly. The one who gave you the towel. I should like to thank her.”

I blinked a couple of times, but nothing came to mind. The girl had been wearing a name badge, but of course, it hadn’t registered. I mean, they never do, do they, at least not with me. A pair of penetrating eyes were on me, demanding an answer.

“I already thanked her”, I replied and then thankfully, memory and inspiration combined to rescue me. “She was an Indian girl, tall, very attractive, perhaps Eurasian rather than Indian. Nice girl, beautiful like I said and very helpful!”

“Ah yes, I know who you mean. Charming girl, just what I would have expected from her.” She suddenly laughed. “I've had my eye on that one for a bit!”

I blinked.  “Is that intended as a pun, a hidden message?” I asked. 

She looked puzzled “ A pun?”

“You said you’d had your eye on her for a bit, I just thought...”

Enlightenment dawned in her eyes, and she interrupted me with a loud chuckle. “No, no, not at all, although I get what you mean. No, I wasn’t using the word bit in my pony stable context. No, very much the opposite. At least opposite in the other side of the stall door sense.  There is just a little something about her that gives me a certain vibe, a feeling, shall we say. I wonder if she would like to work with animals and, of course, earn a whole lot more. She speaks French fluently as well, you know”.

I smiled. I didn’t know that. Why should I? But I thought it was convenient for her to say so and promptly said as much.

“Very appropriate considering that’s where I thought we would be heading today” A thought struck me. “How is your own, l mean do you...”

Her immediate response was to interrupt with a prolonged fast stream of French that sounded perfect even down to the accent. My barely remembered school lessons were of no use whatsoever. Maybe if she had spoken slowly, very slowly, I might have stood a slight chance with the odd word.

She laughed at the rueful expression on my face. “You did not understand a word of that, did you? Be honest now!”

I smiled ruefully and shook my head.  “I might have done at least one or two words if you had said it just a little slower”, I admitted doubtfully.

That made her laugh again, and it was her turn to shake her head. “Unlikely, very unlikely. I told you that my fathers donkey was sitting on the roof after eating the monkey's dinner and would not come down till the Pope told it a story!” she laughed again and added.  “On the other hand, I might have just been making convincing noises in a French accent and speaking pure gibberish!” she gave me a slow mischievous wink. “Or even more gibberish than I actually was!”

This time I stuck my tongue out adding. “I’m not sure I believe either, but I’ll take the first one on cautionary approval, although that seems pure gibberish as well! I hope we will stick to basic Anglo Saxon for the remainder of the session today, even if it does have continental content!”

She grinned at me. “ Maybe, if you are good but no promises, but I'd suggest we avoid ‘basic Anglo Saxon’ as you put it. The language you frequently hear over here nowadays is often far too basic for my taste! I’m certainly no prude and frequently employ similar in my stable when some recalcitrant beast irritates me but never in public! Young people toss the F word around like confetti; that is when they are not putting ‘like’ before every other word! Not at all attractive to my aged ears!” 

She pursued her mouth and looked very prim and disapproving for a moment, then relaxed and muttered something else in French and laughed at my expression. 

“Alright, no more, I promise. It’s not that easy either. Some people can switch it on and off just like that” she clicked her fingers. “Even though the girl has only lived in France for a few years, my niece is like that. Whereas I always seem to struggle for the first few days both here and back there. I understand fine, but when I go searching for the right words to reply, they’ve gone temporary AWOL!”

It was my turn to laugh. “Absent without leave. Has that ever happened to you?” I asked as the question popped into my mind.

“Has what ever happened? My local vocabulary disappearing, I just told you!”

I shook my head. “No, I was thinking more of the occupants of your stables. Has one of them ever gone AWOL?”

“Certainly not, the very idea!” she said immediately, looking extremely indignant. Her expression changed, and that purse-lipped disapproving schoolmarm look returned, “But if ever one of them did, it had better make damn sure not to let me get my hands on it again!” then her features softened as she added quietly. “They all try, and of course, they invariably think they can initially, but I’m afraid that is just wishful thinking. For those that are born to wear harness and occupy a stall, there is, indeed, can be no escape!”

She sounded almost sad and a little apologetic when she said that, so I commented on it. “You sound a little sad about that!”

Wrong thing for her jaw dropped, and her eyes opened wide in astonishment. “Sad, why on earth should I be sad?”

She appeared to be genuinely astonished by the question and knowing what I did know about her; it was perhaps a silly thing to say on reflection.

“Sorry, maybe we should dive straight into today's main course, and then I’ll perhaps have a better understanding,” I said, unleashing my best smile.

“I think we better had she replied and then muttered, “sad, really! What a silly thing for you to say, sad!”

I gave a slight cough.  “You and Celine were in your basement, as I recall when we left off?”

She was still giving me, well, if not quite the ‘evil eye’ then one of its close relations when she abruptly left her chair and walked over the door. Evidently, she disapproved of the hasty way I’d hung my coat up. She took it down, gave it a shake and rearranged the hanger, then replaced it, gave it a tug to straighten it and resumed her seat.

“Not quite. By my recollection, I’d said we were sitting upstairs, and Celine had told me about her parents, and she’d been so effusive with that invitation to visit her pony stables.”

I nodded and sat back, relaxing in that big and far too comfortable chair.

“Well, her mood had changed entirely from that she’d exhibited on her arrival. I suspect that she’d been brooding on things for serval days and making herself more depressed. Celine was like that, a person who could shoot from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other in the blink of an eye. The two I had chained up below and my interest in her establishment had evidently tipped the ball heavily in the positive direction. Before I’d had time to think everything through, she’d made all the arrangements, in her head anyway!”

There was a pause as she glanced at me. I tried to think of a French word for fast or quickly but my classroom days, although not that long ago, offered no concrete help, and I certainly wasn’t going to embarrass myself by guessing. I was still smarting a little regarding the Pope, the donkey and the monkey, if she really had said that! I threw her a smile instead, which seemed to suffice, for she continued. 

“That girl was, well, unstoppable. She grabbed my phone without so much as asking and made several quick phone calls, and then, poof!” she threw her hands in the air in a dramatic gesture.

“Poof!” I grinned. “I take it she didn’t suddenly disappear in a cloud of green smoke!”

“No, I was the one who did the instant disappearing act, minus the green smoke, minus a lot of things that I forgot to take with me. No smoke but a hell of a lot of haze, not to mention confusion. I doubt if it took her even ten minutes, but in that time, she completely turned my life on its head!”

“Did you resent that?” I asked, reaching for the ever-present plate of biscuits. An entirely different selection today, I noticed.

“Resent!” she considered the question. “Mmm, maybe a bit, just a teeny bit, but I was also excited, very excited. I was also swamped with urgent things to do and cancel or pay, which probably drove anything else out of my head. Celine was coming at noon on the following day to collect me and her two new toys, and we’d head off to” she paused. “Dover, I think or was it Folkstone, one of them anyway and the ferry for Calais!”

“Vroom, vroom”, I chuckled, “full throttle and chocks away!”

She nodded, “Indeed, very vroom vroom with the foot flat to the floor in this case. Like I said, somehow I had to close up my house, cancel a few things plus pack, and I had no idea how long we or I was going to be away, and I am definitely not a person who likes to be hurried!”

“I suppose you also had to cancel some of your clients?”

She thought about that and then laughed. “I can’t remember, possibly not, for I’d wound that sort of thing down to almost zero by then. I suspect it was more mundane. Back then, we all had milk and newspapers delivered, that sort of thing”. She laughed. “I remember when I did go back, there was a rather indignant note from my window cleaner telling me that he had cleaned them six times now and wouldn’t be doing them again till he received payment!” she chuckled. “I never did pay him, and he always left smears anyway!”

“Heinous!” 

“Not quite, but if I pay for something, I expect it to be done correctly or at least to the best of someone’s ability. He was always far too fast, a lick and a spit merchant with a bucket of filthy water and a greasy cloth to match! Unfortunately, he was also the only one to cover my area.” She paused again before continuing. “I hadn’t thought about him in years”, she mused. “My attitude had changed though since those days. My levels of expectancy are certainly a lot higher than they used to be perhaps because achieving such depended as much on me as the subject?”

“Always aim for a hundred per cent”, I offered.

“No, not quite that”, she smiled. “My niece, grand…well, you know what I mean. She has a degree in business management and administration. We argue about that. I’m a realist, and she’s a perfectionist. She says I aim for ninety per cent and except eighty, which is a little unfair and certainly not true, eighty-nine maybe” she laughed.

“And your niece?”

“Oh, one hundred per cent every time and no excuses, not ever!”

I thought about that for a moment and the implications. “You told me that she now runs your business?”

She laughed again, a little louder this time. “Correct and very efficiently and very profitably too. Although I say it myself, I did have, indeed, still have an excellent reputation, but young Emma has taken things one step further when it comes to obedient perfection! When I look at the sort of product, she turns out I sometimes get a little guilty twinge. Somehow she always manages to extract that final few percentage points out of her charges that I never could! That why she’s in such high demand.”

I thought about what she was saying and then decided to steer her back to where we had started. “So, did it all go smoothly then?

“What?”

“Your midday trip to France. I take it you were ready and packed and on your doorstep, all ready and waiting,” I chuckled.

“Wrong on all counts. I hadn’t finished packing; I wasn’t ready, nor apparently was Celine or her accomplices. They and their van turned up an hour late, and Celine twenty minutes after that. By which time I was packed and ready likewise Marlen and her beau. I’d had them ready all morning, toileted, well-watered but unfed since I’d said goodbye to Celine the previous day.  Ring gagged for the journey, travel diapered and suitable dosed with the usual drugs”,

“So you moved then in broad daylight!”

“That wasn’t all that unusual. They would often arrive after dark, but you can’t do that during those months when it stays light until late. I mean, shifting huge containers around at midnight and the early hours would attract attention, wouldn’t it! Those guys were experts at playing ‘the elephant in the room .’ There was never really an elephant to see anyway! The area was one or relatively high property values, but mostly all rental, popular with embassy staff, and there was a hell of a lot of those nearby. People coming and going, boxes and containers big and small, no big deal!”

I nodded. “And Celine?”

“Oh, she finally turned up after we’d got them all comfy cosy and boxed up and had just reached the transporting them upstairs stage from the basement. All apologetic and, to a certain extent getting in the way as I recall.  Maybe it was because they were destined to become her property rather than someone else’s, but she was certainly not her usual calm self. I dragged her into the kitchen for a coffee so the guys could get on with it. Why she was late and so worked up, I never found out, but it was as well I went outside to see them off”.

“Why was that?”

“Why!” she exclaimed. “I’ll tell you why! Unlike many women, I am relatively modest so far as my personal needs and wardrobe go. Even for what might be an extended trip to the continent, I’d confined myself to two small suitcases and an overnight bag. Back then, parking was nothing like the problem it is today.  I had a licence but didn’t drive, and I knew all my neighbour's cars. I guessed that the small red open-topped two-seater belonged to Celine” she stopped and looked at me expectantly.

I waited, but she just continued to stare at me. Obviously, something was expected, but I hadn’t the slightest idea what. All I could come up with was a questioning, “Yes?”

“Luggage silly, my cases, as I said, were not like some juggernauts you see these days on the baggage carousel, although these days I can afford to avoid that hassle. However, one glance told me we were going in that sporty little vehicle and assuming Celine also had luggage loaded. Well, you get the picture?”

I grinned and nodded as she threw her hands up in the air.

“Heavens, I do not know what had come over the girl that day. I grabbed her arm and pointed out the problem.”

I frowned. “Surely no big deal your luggage could have gone in the van.”

“Of course, and that’s exactly what Celine said, but if I hadn’t grabbed her arm and also stopped the van driving off, then where would we have been. No cell phones to say ‘hey come back here’ in those days!”

I smiled, it all seemed very trivial to me, but that hasty departure had evidently rankled down the years for some reason. 

“So apart from that, I take it your journey went smoothly?”

“Mmmm, clockwork, well almost. We weren’t exactly a convoy but went the same route, same ferry and the same the other side.  I was worried about the van and its contents, and I am not referring to my suitcases! Rather police, customs and all things official, but Celine just laughed and told me not to worry and that it had been taken care of as usual. What the usual was I have no idea, greased palms I expect!”

“What was the, almost?” I asked out of curiosity.

“Oh that, about an hour into France, Celine suddenly pulled into the side and announced she was feeling tired, and I could take over for a bit. Hell, I’d hardly driven since I passed my test. I was in France, in a strange car, the wrong side of the road and everything in the car on the opposite side, plus it was dark. That was the almost, and Celine wouldn’t take no for an answer. She seemed to find it amusing. Fortunately, after half an hour of me cautiously crawling along, her impatient temperament took over, and we swapped back, much to my relief.”

She stopped and looked at me, then out of the window and back to me.  Memory, eh! I can remember that departure from London; I remember most of our journey. I even remember that we had coffee and croissants with some delicious cheese on the ferry, but our arrival at Celine’s home, nothing!”

“Nothing”.

“Nope, not a thing. Complete blank.  Maybe if I sat like this,” she screwed her face up into a ferocious grimace,” and thought hard for an hour, or so something would eventually come back” her face relaxed, “but I have no intention of doing that, so lets just hit the fast forward button to the stables. I certainly remember that!”

I grinned. “Fine by me,” I told her, and the index finger on my right hand pretended to make a button pressing movement into to the plush padded arm of my chair.

“If you start making silly whirring noises, I shall probably hit you,” she said, watching my finger, then sighed, and her face softened into a smile of recollection, “We both did some hitting that first day as I recall, serious hitting!”

I grinned but obeyed her instruction, not that I’d intended making any such noises and deliberately folded my hands in my lap. However, my host was looking absently past me once again as a new train of thought occurred to her.

“Actually, I do remember a couple of things, mainly Maurice, the butler come major-domo who greeted us on arrival. He was the guy I’d once spoken to on the telephone.”

“The ones who spoke excellent English”

She nodded and laughed. “That is correct. Your memory is vastly better than mine anyway he was a lovely old chap. We became excellent friends, for he was something of an anglophile”.

It was my turn to laugh. “Unusual for a French person in my experience!”

“Oh, he was De Gaullist through and through, but Maurice adapted to life in London and the English, unlike his revered leader. He’d slipped out of a Catholic orphanage just after his fifteenth birthday and put his rough working knowledge of English to good use, getting adopted as a sort of mascot come interpreter by a British infantry unit. He was still with them at Dunkirk and then once in England found a role with the Free French forces.”

“He sounds like an interesting chap!”

“He was a perfect gent and a lovely man.” She paused and then laughed again. “Well, mostly. I never did pluck up the courage to ask him as to how he felt about his employers rather unusual…..”

“Hobbies!” I offered, and she gave a long chuckle.

“I suppose that is as good a term as any. It will serve our purpose anyway. He was sent back to France a couple of years later, still only seventeen, but I gather he looked much younger. His mentors thought that would serve as additional cover. That’s where he met Celine’s papa, who was the leader of a local resistance group, although, by all accounts, he was as much an opportunistic bandit as a local hero. Anyway, they formed an enduring bond which would last a lifetime!”

She stopped, and there was another of those overlong pauses; then she chuckled again and gave me that cheeky grin again and wagged the ginger once more.

“You really should shut me up when I start going off track, you know”, she admonished. “I do get so carried away when these long-forgotten snippets pop up so unexpectedly!”.

My turn to grin as I replied, “I dare not, ma’am”, and I wasn’t entirely joking, for I knew that there were frightening depths to this seemingly harmless little woman, and there was no way I wanted to upset her. I wasn’t a ‘somebody’; I was a ‘nobody’, and I had no wish to vanish into thin air as so many other unfortunates had done!

“Oh, pish,” she said dismissively, waving her hand. “I do remember being excited, no, not just excited but more than that” she paused thoughtfully. “I can’t think of a suitable word, but it wouldn’t be too far out to say that I was drooling with anticipation as we walked across the rear yard to the stable building that morning”  her eye caught mine. “Figure of speech”, she added.

“I’m sure that you are always far too composed actually to do such a thing!”

“Hmm, well, there have been occasions when I came near it. I do so relish those first few hours with a new animal and thinking about the prospect beforehand. Yes, I can fully understand and appreciate where that expression comes from. Celine naturally was perfectly dressed for the occasion. Her work clothes, as she called them, just like I’d seen her in that photo, she showed me months before in that café. Riding boot and pants topped by a crisp white blouse with the sleeves rolled up. The perfect vision of a sexy young stable mistress”.

“Which she was, of course!” An innocent remark immediately elicited an evil giggle from the figure opposite me.

“Oh my goodness, yes, the very epitome,  a pony fetish fanatics wet dream, although I doubt that even the most extreme scene devotee would have enjoyed the reality of daily life in Celine’s stable. I realised that the moment we pushed open the doors”.

“An eye-opener, I expect.”

She shook her head. “Not quite. First impressions were very much through the nasal passage. A certain strong animal-like but not entirely so stink. Under ordinary circumstances, I might have wrinkled my nose and found it unpleasant. However, knowing what type of creatures occupied the building, my reaction after the first impact was very much the opposite”.

“Deep breaths?” I smiled.

She shook her head. “No, not really, or if I did, I can’t remember such trivia. I was way too keyed up and excited. I remember Celine laughing and tapping her pretty little nose and saying something in French, presumably about that stench. The only word I recognised was Nez!”

“Nose”, I translated and added, “Elementary French at School, which was about as far as I ever got!”

That made her laugh, and she added, “Me too at that time. I learned most of my basic and conversational French from Maurice; I always felt he’d missed his calling as a language teacher. He had a ton of patience, something that Celine usually lacked!”

She paused, picked up her coffee cup, looked quizzically at the contents for a moment, then swirled it and drained the lot in one swallow. I shook my head in response to the questioning look she directed from the coffee pot to me. I made an observation come question instead.

“You just used the word creatures, and I have often noted you have used the word animal rather than pony. Is that truly how you saw them? As animals, not people, I mean? Just curious” I trailed off a little apprehensively as the expression on her face hardened somewhat.

I needn't have worried, for that rather frightening look passed off almost immediately as she considered my question. “Good point and perhaps an appropriate one at this point”, she replied. “I believe that I have mentioned before and more than once my ‘Burning bridges or Rubicon crossing type moments”.

I nodded, relieved by the rapid softening of her features. “Yes, you have”.

“Walking into that stable and that first morning was undoubtedly another of those moments, a no going back moment. Indeed, an attitude adjuster for me” she suddenly chuckled. “Hmm, interesting thought, the first time I can recall ever using that expression about myself. But your observation is apt. As a professional Dom, I had sessioned with slaves or variations on a submissive fetish theme. Slave, puppy, sissy maid, whatever and at the end of a session, they went home just as they’d arrived. Pure fantasy, and even when I was housing Celines merchandise in my cells, it was not overly different to my normal paying clients in some ways.  Naked and shackled slaves in my cells! But I didn’t think of them as anything other than human. Unfortunate ones, at least as far as they were concerned!”.

She paused and gave a wry smile. “Foolish of me now that I think back upon it, especially so since I’d already had some first-hand experience when I visited Darcia’s house that time and met her doggies! I’d never thought about it till now, but I must have undergone something of a transition mentally during those first few hours that morning”.

“Your own particular attitude adjustment, as you just put it!”

She nodded. “Very much so. I suppose I’d been so wrapped up in my little world that I had virtually forgotten Darcia’s unusual little empire. Sounds silly, doesn’t it now but somehow everything was focussed on my experience as a pro dom and my facilities and their occasional unwilling occupants. Strange as it may sound, but at that stage, I hadn’t considered overmuch the sort of lives said occupants were ultimately destined to endure”.

“Would that have made any difference?” I asked out of curiosity.

She gave me a rueful smile. “Not in the least!” her reply was emphatic. “The general feeling among us, not that it was a subject ever discussed overmuch, was that it was a mere matter of fate or bad luck. Some, an elite few were destined to become owners whereas the unlucky destined to become owned.” She paused and shrugged her shoulders in a deliberately exaggerated gesture of indifference. “Fortunately, I was destined to be one of the lucky elite”.

A door banged loudly somewhere in the corridor, and for a second, we both turned our eyes to the door, but beyond that bang, there was nothing, so she resumed her story.

“I won’t bore you with a pony by pony description of that particular morning, but to me, it was an absolute revelation. I suppose it would have horrified any normal, sane, rational person, but I was beyond that by this time. The very sight of those captive creatures, my God!”

I smiled. “Yet another of your Rubicon crossing moments?”

“No”, she considered for a moment. “No. not in that sense, but certainly it was a defining moment for me. The moment my eyes fell on the first pony, a big stallion who snorted with rage and glared at me so angrily over the top of his stall door, I realised that I’d found my calling in life. You remember me telling you about those photos of her ponies Celine showed me in the café?”

I nodded. “That German couple, if I recall correctly? But you won’t bore me if you detail the other ponies,” I assured her. ”

“Yes, well, my mind instantly recalled those photographs, and although I hadn’t realised it back then because I was processing so much other crazy stuff she was telling me, something must have flicked a switch in my subconscious. I hadn’t realised it at the time, even though I meditated for weeks on those images, nor later when I became much more active with those, I briefly looked after. It hit me though like the proverbial sledgehammer the moment that big angry brute and I looked at each other!”

“Your professional calling!”

“He was called Samson”, she recalled ignoring my comment and laughed. “A magnificent example of a two-legged equine stallion. I always called the brute Sammy, though, and we were to spend many happy hours together. Happy for me anyway. I wonder if he ever regretted looking at me like he did the moment I walked into that building. I wonder if I would have reacted as I did if it hadn’t been for that silly malevolent expression in his eyes?”

“Reaction?” I queried and watched with interest as she momentarily wriggled in her chair as a sort of ecstatic shudder ran through her diminutive frame.

“I can’t for the life of me remember what I said to Celine”, she mused. “Strange since I can recall so much of that morning. I do remember that I was angry, furious, outraged! Unreasonably angry, but there was just something in those eyes of his that set me off on the spot.”

“Like a bomb!”

“Whatever”, she shrugged. “Hard to judge an expression when most of the face is covered by the bridle and head harness leather, but maybe it’s a gift. A knack perhaps that I can always judge such an animal’s attitude from the look in its eyes and maybe body language. I can always tell, though; the silly creatures can never hide their emotions from me”.

I grinned. “So, you and Samson didn’t exactly hit it off them at first sight!”

My grin was promptly returned. “Au contraire, my young inquisitor. The attraction might have been one-sided, but I certainly wanted to spend time with that big brute and the ‘hitting’ right from the start of our relationship was going to play a pivotal part” she gave a nasty laugh. “A very prominent part! I remember going right up to the door to his stall and looking over. It came up to my chest, not much more than his waist. My but he was a magnificent specimen, huge and muscled, or at least as much of him as I could see. Muscled and gleaming with an oily sheen but not a single hair to be seen anywhere on his body! ”

“And angry?”

“Oh my, yes, so very angry! Celine came alongside to join me and told me his name. He wasn’t one of hers, but she was looking after it and breaking him in for the client she’d sold him to. ‘C’est Magnifique. I remember agreeing that he certainly was that and added that the big bastard needed to learn better manners. I didn’t appreciate the way he’d looked at me! ”

“What did Celine say to that?”

Oh, that girl seemed to find it very amusing and said something like ‘scary no?’.  I remember saying to her that no, he had not frightened me. He might have been big and bulky, but I could see the restraints and harness on him and recognise top-quality heavy saddle leather when I saw it. Nor had my eye missed the hobbles around his lower legs and the substantial chain leading to an equally substantial eye-bolt in the wall. No, I was not frightened merely suddenly very vexed. Not by any means the first time I’ve felt that emotion when viewing an animal. I demand and will have them show respect to me at all times!”

I thought about that and then said, “Interesting”, elaborating as she cocked an inquisitive eye in my direction. “Interesting that you went like that from the beginning, I mean.”

She considered. “Perhaps, then again, I’d got myself worked up by the thought of the visit. I’m not quite sure what I expected, but somehow or other, it wasn’t the sort of look that foolish animal gave me!” she finished with an indignant sniff.

I shuffled in my chair and stretched my legs, wriggling my toes at the same time. The movement caught her eye, causing her to glance at my damp shoes perched precariously along the top of the radiator and then back to me.

“Did your socks get wet too?” 

There was a genuine note of concern in her voice which made me smile inwardly. The way she could switch personalities! That jump from anger at a wretched human equine held captive against its will to the possibility of my having damp toes. Only it wasn’t a personality switch, just contrasting aspects of the same personality. Freud and his adherents would have found her fascinating. I certainly did.

I shook my head and smiled at her. “Nothing I can’t live with, and I doubt if I will suffer any consequences, major or minor, from a touch of moisture down there. What about that Stallion? I assume that in his case, there were consequences for his, his visual insolence?”

“Ah!” her eyes sparkled mischievously for a moment, then she glanced back at my shoes. “Polish, I’ll bet that’s why they got like that or rather lack of it. Hardly anyone polishes their shoes and boots these days so that once the factory finish wears off, they have no protection.  Society has become slack and lazy in so many areas nowadays! 

 She broke off and dialled a number on her cell phone, speaking very softly; then, as she replaced the device in her pocket, her tone suddenly went very cold. “Your observation is entirely correct. “There are many things I can’t abide by!” she made that familiar whipping motion with her right hand. “Dumb insolence being very high on that list!”