The Interview

“Alright?” she politely inquired as I returned.

“Fine, thank you for allowing me to….”

“Oh, piffle!” she interrupted. “No point in you going all the way down to the lobby to use the public ones when I have one through that door. Now here’s a fresh pot of coffee they just brought, and help yourself. I felt a touch peckish and asked for a small plate of sandwiches. As usual, they have completely overdone it! Don’t make a pig of yourself, though, because I have already made arrangements for lunch.” 

I couldn’t fault that observation. ”So I see!” I eyed the elegant silver three-tiered cake stand so familiar to anyone who’s ever partaken of ‘afternoon tea’ in an upmarket British café or hotel. There was an assortment of dainty triangular crustless sandwiches on the base plate with a few mini sausage rolls and other pastry savouries. Scones jam and cream occupied the middle tier and a selection of tempting little cakes and biscuits on the top plate. Overdone was an understatement.

“All yours”, she chuckled, waving generously towards the stand after helping herself to several of the tiny sandwiches and a sausage roll, then after a moment’s deliberation adding a small chocolate cake to her plate sucking excess cream off her thumb as she did so. “They get a little upset when things don’t get eaten, you know”, she chided with a wicked grin.

“You’d better ask them for a doggie bag then”, I countered as I mirrored her choices and then sat back expectantly. “Dumb insolence was the topic before we broke, as I recall? But I can wait!”

I returned that very same grin as I added the last words just as she’d made to speak and promptly choked, trying to swallow a mouthful of the sandwich before she was ready. 

“My apologies”, she offered. “That was greedy of me. I was a trifle peckish, not ravenous. Heavens, I sometimes think that I eat more in a single day here than a week at home. I don’t think the concept of small portions has ever occurred to the management” she paused and laughed. “Other than for the bread-and-butter budget coach tour parties, of course!”

“They probably make up for it by stealing all the towels”, I quipped.

“Now, don’t even get me started on that one” a half-eaten sausage roll was waved somewhat threateningly at me. “You’ve no idea…but that’s not what you are here for, so just let me see if I can finish this without choking myself to death, and then we’ll go back to the stable, okay?”

I nodded and sneaked another couple of sandwiches plus a cake off the stand while she was otherwise momentarily engaged in finishing her snack and staring absently toward a far corner.

“That was delicious” she eyed the cake stand, which looked relatively untouched despite our combined efforts and shook her head. “Maybe later and you? Alright,” she laughed in response to my emphatic shake of the head and settled herself comfortably into the big armchair once more.

I did likewise brushing away a few stray crumbs and waited as she composed herself and let her mind drift back through a good many years to that first stabled visit and her first encounter with human equines. Real ones, not the pretend wannabe’s she’s attended to in her London dungeon.

“The stallion was a magnificent animal. The very first member of that special unique breed I had ever encountered” she paused and smiled. “The first two-legged pony, I mean, not the normal male of the species! Not that there is that much difference when you get right down to it. Both are basically beasts, at least most of the ones I have met over the years! His owner had named him Rufus, probably  because the beast was covered in a shaggy mat of coarse bright red hair, one of the finest animal coats that I have ever seen!”

“Big?” I asked and added ‘how old?” I was trying to picture the man or beast rather in my mind. I stifled a smile as she put a finger to her lips like a small child as she thought about my question. The image struck me as rather cute despite the subject she reflected upon.

“Not that big now I come to think about it. At the time, at first sight, he’d initially seemed huge. Huge and very angry. Neither Celine nor I were particularly tall, and despite all those silly fetish pictures, no one wears high heels in a stable and certainly not thigh-high boots! That would be ridiculous! So he was not much bigger in that sense, taller, yes, but he didn’t dwarf us or wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been wearing hoof boots. He was big in the stocky sense, well built widthways, very broad. You could have skinned him and made a decent hearth rug off his hairy chest alone, almost! She chuckled. 

I raised my eyebrows at that remark and promptly received the threatening wagging finger treatment.

“Now, don’t be silly. Why on earth would any sane, sensible person waste a magnificent healthy animal by doing something so stupid, really!”

I adjusted my expression to that of one who has been suitably verbally chastised and silenced, outwardly at least. Inwardly, I wondered about the fate of ‘unhealthy’ animals. In any case, sane and sensible people did not imprison their fellow human beings and keep them like animals under the most horrendous circumstances!

“About thirty-five maybe a little older”, she was still musing. “They tend to age more rapidly after a while in captivity, far more than their counterparts who remain running free. Celine told me that she’d only had him for about a month, so he was still fresh in those terms”.

I thought about that and about everything she’d told me to date. It was my turn to contemplate. “A month, four weeks,  I’ll bet that felt like an eternity to him?”

Her shoulders twitched in an unsympathetic shrug. “To the animals, every single day is an eternity. There is nothing to do but stand around in a cramped stall trying to avoid your own shit and piss. Eat a couple of stone-cold, nourishing but unappetising meals, suffer the humiliation of being handled and groomed, which is probably the best bit for them, the highlight of the day, so to speak!”

“And the worst?” I immediately retorted although I could guess the answer easily enough.

She showed her teeth. “Training periods or visiting time, of course, but not every day. Something they get lucky and can even go several days before they get something painful to liven up the endless monotony. Weeks even for those housed by distant owners who dislike the idea of anything other than the basic daily necessities performed on their animals”. She paused and pulled a face. “Some owners can be so damn proprietorial and jealous! However, it is not advisable to leave them too long without ‘hands-on attention’, shall we say. Besides, ponies, well any similar animal for that matter needs frequent attention from its owner or trainer to be reminded it of its status, or lack of such!” She finished with a short laugh.   

“So being helpless, harnessed, muted, stalled, handled, washed, brushed, fed, etc, by others month after month is not enough!” 

“Of course not!” She snorted. “Let’s not beat about the bush or pussy foot around the subject. I know that I’m as guilty as the next person when it comes to…to dressing things up or even down a little. We all do that, you know. A subconscious sense of guilt, maybe, but I doubt it. More a case of, em, well not indifference, let us say, more…? She paused thoughtfully.

“Custom and practise?” I offered.

“Excellent” was her immediate exclamation. “An excellent way of putting it. I mean, they are there, they exist; as owners, we enjoy every aspect of ownership and training, so we certainly aren’t indifferent to the creatures. They certainly don’t come cheap either, to run as it were or in many cases to acquire. No, not indifferent!” 

“I suppose”, I mused aloud, “it must be a bit like owning an expensive brand new individually customised top-end Porsche or a Ferrari or similar. Something relatively unique and only owned by a small elite. You’re not indifferent and don’t take it for granted, yet on the other hand, it’s merely a car just as your ponies, although very special, are merely animals to you!” 

She eyed me thoughtfully. “Mmm, getting a bit deep again, aren’t we, methinks! Actually, I’ve never owned a Porsche or a Ferrari myself, so I wouldn’t know. Way too flashy for my tastes. I’ve always subscribed to the theory that if you’ve got it, you don’t need to flaunt it! Besides, at heart, I’m a very frugal woman. Frugal, mind you, not miserly. My francs have gone to Renault and Peugeot, standard mid-range diesel models with enough poke to tow a horsebox containing a couple of two-legged equines easily.” 

I eyed her as she stopped and suddenly chuckled and grinned at me as though a funny thought had occurred cured to her.

“Do tell?”

She repeated the chuckle. “Do they fit tow bars to Ferraris? I’ve never seen one towing anything so far as I can recall. Besides, I suspect the gendarmerie might take an interest in such an unusual combination, so not exactly good for security!”

“I think the up-market pony set leaves them at home and favours various four-wheel-drives such as Range Rovers and the like when they drive their little angel and her pony to the local gymkhana. At least in the UK for such mundane tasks.”

She nodded. ”Same here, my niece, who’s neither little nor an angel, has a big Toyota pickup for that. I leave deliveries and collections to her these days when driving is involved, well when most things associated with the business are concerned these days!”. There are other ways, of course.”

I sensed she was about to deliver a discourse on how captive human equines and the like could be transported around Europe and perhaps beyond but thought it time to turn the clock back again. No doubt it would have been interesting, but I also had a slight feeling of disquiet about the prospect. Those shadowy, sinister people she’d casually mentioned a few times, would they approve of such glibness? I changed the subject.

 “So, that morning, you were looking at your first real live human equine, the stallion called Rufus. How did you feel about that?” I was curious.

She looked a touch surprised for a second, then frowned briefly before smiling as her mind flitted from one subject and back down the years to another. “Excited”, she finally announced, pursing her lips after another lengthy pause.

I waited as she nodded to herself and took a sip of probably lukewarm coffee before carefully placing her cup back on its saucer and toying with it for a second, one finger pushing the handle from side to side.

“Celine was in a bubbly mood that morning, obviously delighted to be home, to be back in her stable. All bounce and enthusiasm like a small child on Christmas morning, yet not sure which of her toys to play with first. I remember her introducing me to Monique at some stage. A tall, thin sour-faced woman in her late thirties or early forties, hard to tell. When I say thin, I mean thin; she didn’t seem to have the slightest bulge anywhere, bum, hips or boobs. Her lips followed the general pattern and only seemed to curl into a small smile when she was disciplining some poor pony.

“Sounds frightening!”

“Oh, she was alright. Monique was of those reclusive types who are exceedingly wary of strangers. Still, she melted some during my extended visit, and I was to learn more about handling captive human equines from her than anyone else over the next few years! French as well, for she was an ex-teacher of English and frequently made me repeat what she said or translated in French once I’d acquired a basic vocabulary. Usually tapping me lightly with the heavy riding crop she always carried when I got something wrong” She laughed. “Fortunately only very lightly unlike the way she used the terrible implement upon the luckless ponies in her charge for the slightest infringement!”

“A sort of stable girl or head stable girl?” I surmised.

“Not exactly, well, maybe, but I don’t think she had any sort of official title; she was just Monique to everyone, although she was clearly the number ‘un’ in the pecking order after Celine. Two others worked there as well that I met later. Marie, a young cousin of Celine’s and little Claude.”

“Not Little John” I couldn’t resist interrupting rather to her evident annoyance and then looked suitably apologetic.

No,” she replied firmly and looked for a moment as though she was going to say a good deal more but changed her mind. “Little Claude, I said, and little Claude, I meant poor man. You know Tolkiens Lord of the Rings?”

I nodded, wondering at the question. “Both books and movies”.

“Never seen the movie, but I adored the books. Try imagining a fictional dwarf sans beard and the mane of untidy hair and combine that with your mental image of Gollum and throw in a touch of Victor Hugo’s Quasimodo for good measure. You will get a  general picture anyway. Accuracy is not important, but you can appreciate what I meant by poor little man”.

I nodded again as she paused once more to stare, unseeing into that distant memory window that was open only to her. Her features morphed into a smile as she returned to the present with a shake of her head.

“A lovely little man, so gentle and sweet,  well, except for his attitude to the ponies, of course. He also had a speech impediment, poor chap, but he and I became great friends despite that. Indeed I probably became closer to him even than Celine during those first few years. Like the butler, Maurice, Claude had been another member of the same resistance group her father had organised. The village idiot, or so everyone assumed. No one ever suspected him of anything, let alone being highly intelligent with a prodigious memory. The local German garrison foolishly made him something of a pet and employed him as a cleaner in the regional headquarters. He only had to glance at a document to remember it and then copy it out later!”

“Useful”, I murmured.

She shrugged. “Oh, I suspect Claude was also somewhat autistic, not that anyone would have noticed given all his other problems. He positively loathed the Germans, though, and he was the one who provided all the necessary physical persuasion, let's say, when they needed information from some poor wretch they’d captured. Also, the one who disposed of them afterwards. Celine once told me he’d killed at least thirty by the time the war ended plus another dozen or so who’d collaborated with them, I….” She paused, breaking off as though a thought had suddenly occurred to her. “I wonder?”

I waited for a couple of seconds, then politely posed the question. “Wonder what, ma’am?”

Her eyes met mine, looking thoughtful. “I never asked, you know. I always assumed that Claude had sort of drifted into the stable or been assigned there by Celine’s father. He was a very loyal little man and virtually worshipped the entire family, especially Celine. I wonder if they had had anything to do with it?”

“They?” I queried, becoming a little lost, and evidently, the expression on my face must have said as much for suddenly laughed and apologised.

“That German family, the one I’ve told you about before. The parents were the ones in that photo, remember? It just occurred to me to wonder if they had something to do with Claude and his enthusiasm for the stable occupants?” She pondered for another second or two and then shrugged and laughed. “No matter, anyway, it could have been another more physical attribute that took him there either by choice or that of his employers. His considerable hatred of ‘Les Boche’ only dwarfed by the size of his cock!”

I thought about that and then said, “Compensation, perhaps?”

“Indeed, perhaps as you say. Nature certainly had not been kind to poor Claude, so maybe it was as you suggest. I remember Celine whispering to me one day when we stood watching him introducing his monstrosity to the rear opening of a freshly delivered ponyboy. Male or female, it made no difference to Claude. He stood on his ‘mounting box’ and gave no quarter as they say to whatever hole he intended to assault for his pleasure. Celine had whispered that she thought he was making up for lost time probably even been a virgin until her mother employed him in the stable”.

“Free rein”, I observed and added, “no pun intended”.

She shook her head. “By no means. Every pony was different in that respect. One or two, yes, but most had restrictions as to their treatment outside of the basic daily requirements, and Monique was certainly a stickler for enforcing the rules. The woman was strong on patience whether it was with me or some pony she was training, although they didn’t have the advantage I had of receiving extensive verbal communication. But an absolute savage when it came to stupidity or, worse, willful disobedience. You were right; she was certainly frightening to the stables, permanent occupants!”

She paused and absently ran her forefinger around her mouth, caught my eye and grinned sheepishly as she removed her finger, looked at the tip, then licked it. “Biscuit crumb being tenacious! If they have one fault here, it’s baking them a tad too, too crisp in the hard sense!”

“Well, you are a major shareholder, go down and complain to the head chef!” I smiled.

She raised her eyebrows in an expression of mock horror. “What! Hell no, he and I are old friends, and he knows damn well I can’t even boil an egg, let alone bake anything. Nor could my mother, so my youthful girlie education had a significant gap in it!

“Not so much a case of not being able to lick out the mixing bowl as no mixing bowl in the first place!”

She gave me a thin smile akin to the rare ones I gathered. Monique bestowed on her victims. “Do children really do that? I can’t say I find the idea very appetising, but then” she paused thoughtfully. “At least it would have been a variation from the mountains of bread and jam I consumed. Always strawberry jam, I don’t think my mother ever realised other varieties existed. Either that or the corner shop didn’t stock them”.

I was grinning broadly now, and once more, that finger wagged accusingly. “Oh alright, back to Celine and her Stallion. Well, not her stallion, and now I come to think about it, I never did find out who owned the hairy beast. An actress, I was told, but she never visited while I was there, and the next time I stayed with Celine, the animal was gone, collected they said much to my disappointment. Likewise, Monique’s, I bet!”

“Why was that? Was she a man-hating lesbian?”

“Nooo, not that I know. I rather think she was asexual. Unless she hid it extremely well, I never saw or sensed her get even the teeniest bit aroused by anything she did in the stable, which is very unusual. Training and owning two-legged ponies makes us all horny, but she seemed to be the exception. Oh, I don’t mean that she didn’t enjoy what she did, for she clearly did. She was the exception, though, the only one like that I’ve ever encountered. Sadistic, very much so, but without the other usual accompanying obvious sexual element, strange! Yes?”

 I was looking enquiringly at her. “Disappointment?”

She looked at me blankly for a moment, and then the penny dropped. “Ah, yes. I soon noticed that she gravitated more to male ponies than female, a little unfortunate for them as Celine and her younger cousin, Marie, preferred female ponies. Hence, although Monique was extremely professional, the males received more unwelcome and frequently painful attention than merited by stable occupancy ratio. I was disappointed that the brute had gone, but there were others, and there is something so delightful about pretty ponygirls after all!”

I nodded, and a question occurred to me. I debated for a second and then, noticing that she seemed to be about to enter one of those silent contemplative modes, decided to head her off.

“Is that the norm? I mean, from what you’ve told me so far or hinted at and from what literature I’ve read, popular fictional stuff on Amazon and the internet, most of it seems to feature ponygirls rather than the male equivalent?”

Her eyes swivelled to me, and she sucked thoughtfully at her lower lip, nodding as she did so. “Some of that Amazon stuff is quite good, even surprisingly accurate to a degree”, she admitted. I can’t say about the internet as I’m only a casual user, but some of the books I’ve read might well have been written by someone whose knowledge is not wholly based on their vivid imagination if you get my meaning! As to stock ratio, it can vary”.

We were both distracted by a heavy rumbling in the corridor outside that grew steadily louder and then faded again after it trundled past her door. We looked at each other, and she shrugged as if to say ‘no idea, so don’t ask’ before continuing.

“Of course, it varies and in some stables such as mine and Celine’s depended on other factors. We both accepted liveries, ponies belonging to other owners either for stabling or training, often both. Plus, in my case, I was, indeed am, always on the lookout for new stock. My business depended on obtaining and training such to sell on; that was my speciality after all. Something that I sort of fell into almost by accident, but I’ll save that one for another day.” She raised her finger. “Remind me at some point, please.”

I nodded. “I most certainly will”, I assured her. 

She flashed that charming smile of her at me that made her look thirty years younger for a brief second, and then she continued. I missed the first little bit, for I wondered if I could somehow see a picture of her younger days and did her niece, great-niece, look similar?

“….all male, of course. You do get some and often the nastier ones who like to have one or more females or males in their stable. I've noticed that that tends to be far more prevalent, and again certain preferences prevail. Gay guys  generally prefer their stallions and colts remain intact, whereas the opposite is often true among lesbian owners; you are much more likely to find geldings among their livestock, although not always.”

I pulled a face, and she stopped and made a dismissive gesture.

“It's the way of the world, I’m afraid and not the least bit new. Most people imagine that the slave trade grew from European exploration and greed. In fact, it existed as a significant profitable commercial enterprise long before the so-called slave triangle was formed,  Europe, Africa, the USA and back to Europe.

The demand for enslaved people in the Arab world, particularly Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States region, was voracious, yet strange is it not that, unlike the USA, you hardly see a black face there today, do you? Why do you think that was given far more slaves were transported there over hundreds and hundreds of years. Far more than ever went to the US or South America?”

I shook my head. I knew something about that awful business, but that question had never occurred.

“Castration!” She spoke the one word slowly. “Every male slave was castrated immediately on arrival regardless of age. Younger slaves were more prized because they tended to survive better than the older ones. Apparently, the process was both primitive and brutal, with a one in four and often higher death rate. Of course, that didn’t matter because there were always plenty more to be had and not that far away. The Arab slavers took millions over many centuries. The Europe Americas trade was very brief in comparison!

Then they were worked to death by their new owners, who generally treated them far worse than those who later toiled on the cotton and tobacco plantations in the new world. At least they were valuable property in the eyes of their owners, especially breeding stock” she paused and cocked an eye at me. “Nor to my knowledge has much changed in the Arabian world! Not in the private and very secluded palaces of the ultra-rich and ruling class! Although you can perhaps add the unfortunate ‘legalised’ trade in so-called ‘house servants’ from impoverished South-East Asian countries these days as well. Many of them never return to their families, I expect!”

She wasn’t joking either, I thought by that look on her face. Enigmatic, I felt with perhaps a hint of disapproval, only a hint. It wasn’t her problem to worry about any more than a neighbour taking their randy tomcat to the vets for neutering to prevent it from straying at night or spraying everywhere—just something you did as a matter of course.

We sat in silence for a moment, me thinking of what she had just told me, her with her own thoughts, whatever they might have been. Then she gave a loud sigh and clapped her hands, startling me out of my sombre reverie. 

“It was the first time I’d ever looked at a man that way, or woman come to that, but the moment Celine took his reins and led Rufus out of the stall tapping his rump with a long riding crop, I saw an animal, a magnificently two-legged animal! Not a captive miserable human being but an animal!”. 

“A sort of slow merge,” I asked, “a transition in your mind, perhaps?”

She thought about that for a moment and then shook her head. “I get what you mean. Kind of like something you might see in the movies, a sort of slow transposition, one image blurring into the other. No, I can’t say that happened. One moment I was looking at an angry man wearing harness in a stall, and the next, just an animal and a splendid one at that. There was no in-between, at least nothing I was conscious of or remembered.”

She smiled at the memory, and her eyes sparkled. “I’d seen those photos, of course, the old snapshots Celine carried around with her, but that had been months before and seeing something for real, in the flesh literarily in this instance. That was something else, believe me! You can’t possibly imagine the thrill that shot through me, not till you see your first for real live two-legged captive pony!”

“Like cool, eh” I couldn’t resist it.

I received a baleful look by return, and then she giggled and winked. “Like mega cool, like uber wild, don’tcha  know, man!”  Then she laughed. “And that's about the extent of my knowledge of street language! It irritates me, so I tend to shut my ears and ignore it entirely.” 

“Me too,” I laughed. “Can you define your feelings a bit more? I’m curious. Your first human equine encounter, was that a sexual feeling or something else you experienced, or a combination?”

She pursed her lips again, thinking before saying. “Human equine, a strange term in some ways. We all use it, and yet given the circumstances, something of a contradiction, is it not?” She continued before I could say anything. “I mean as owners and trainers, a major part of the process is to beat those ‘human’ attributes out of them likewise the way we keep them, feed them, train and use them. Everything we do, in fact, is the exact opposite. Very inhuman!”

“Is there a difference, I mean deep down a difference then between you and those Arab slave masters you mentioned?”

It was a serious question, and she knew it. We’d developed an easy-going, jocular relationship throughout our meetings, but that I realised was a very difficult question, but one I felt needed to be asked at this point. 

She gazed at me steadily for what must have been a full minute. Only sixty seconds. Not by any means a significant length of time, yet it seemed to last forever. Nor did her slightly wooden expression change in the slightest till she eventually sighed.

“No,” she said softly, “I suppose in some ways, perhaps many ways I am far worse as are those like me. The Arabs used them as slaves, workers, cheap labour, and disposable assets. They had no value, at least not in relation to the sort of prices even a poor pony can fetch in my circle. Perhaps a few were used for personal entertainment, the women especially, but that would have been secondary to the prime reason they acquired such merchandise, I expect. They were still human, though. Whereas….”

“Whereas to you and Celine, they were mere animals, primarily a source of amusement and entertainment? The profit motive, I think, was always secondary.”

She looked at me steadily for a second and then slowly smiled. ”In my case, a little less of the ‘were’, and a lot more of the ‘are’! I expect some poor creature is suffering under my niece's whip right now. Nor would I choose to belittle the profit motive.” She made a gesture with one hand around her expensive suite. “My father was a minor accounts clerk working for the coal board in a small northern industrial town. I grew up in a tiny, two up, two down terraced house. We were lucky; he worked ‘clean’ as they still put it back then and earned a little more than his neighbours. Even then, there were still a couple of houses on that same street that only had an outside toilet and no bath!”.

I wasn’t sure if my remark had annoyed her or not, for the expression on her face hadn’t changed, but I thought perhaps I should say something conciliatory, but I had no need.

She smiled at me. “The profit was not just an accidental bonus to me, a useful ancillary as it was to Celine, a means perhaps of keeping score or for her or to assert her independence. But to an impoverished little Northern lass like me, brought up to think in copper pennies and half-pennies, not shillings and pounds, a whole new vista of fiscal opportunity! Not that I realised that at the time, of course.” She paused. “Perhaps I did in some subconscious way; after all, thanks to Celine, my bank balance was way higher than it had ever been before. Positively astronomic and beyond compared to previous meagre highs!”  

I nodded and thought about for a moment.“But not that morning in the stable for the first time. I expect your mind was more interested in the present than anything else?”

“Quite so. That last thing on my mind was that I might soon own such a facility myself, even less so that I would make a great deal of money from such an establishment. Perhaps there was a vague tinge of regret that my arrangement, my lucrative life as temporary keeper for Celine’s exotic human merchandise, was probably over. Still, I can’t recall feeling overly bothered by that fact.

“Kid in the candy shop time? I quipped.

She opened her mouth to make an immediate retort but somehow muffed it and stumbled over her words turning the intended exclamation into a cross between a grunt and an imitation of someone choking on a chicken bone. 

“Alright?” I was a touch concerned.

“Perfectly, thank you” she wiped grinned and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Kid and candy shop indeed!”

“Sorry”, my turn to grin.

“No need to apologise, dear. Your analogy is relatively apt, save that Celine’s stable was certainly no Candy Shop, and I was no Kid, far from it on both counts! There was to be nothing remotely sweet for the occupants! Now then, she looked at her watch. Another break, and then I will tell you all about my first ‘hands on’ encounter with that beast, Rufus”.

“Along with his dumb insolence?”

That made her laugh as she stood up and gestured for me to follow her towards the door.

“Let us have lunch, and then I’ll tell you how I helped that particular animal find his voice along with a more respectful attitude!” She laughed. “Come along now”.

I arose rather slowly from my deep comfortable chair glancing back at the cake stand, wishing I’d been a touch less enthusiastic towards its tempting content earlier. She caught my look and laughed, gently reaching out to take my elbow. 

“Oh, don’t worry, they do child’s portions, you know. Trust me; I’ve years and years of experience when it comes to keeping two-legged creatures fit and healthy” She laughed again. “But not necessarily happy or content!”