Geoff Nicholson - Bleeding London

So after a hard day he should, if he were following the classic scenario, wish to abandon all power, should wish to submit totally and become helpless. He should want someone, a wife, mistress, maîtresse , to take complete control. But he did not. He left the submission to his wife, Louise. Not that the submission was completely straightforward. Within the rules they set themselves she was perfectly entitled to struggle a little, to fight, to beat his chest with her fists, dig her nails into his back, to threaten him with vengeance, police, with the wrath of the BMA. For Pryce’s profession was of paramount importance in their sexual games. His wife played the vulnerable, needy, hypochondriac patient and he played the wicked, invasive, unethical swine of a general practitioner. It was a satisfactory arrangement for both of them.

They lived in inherited splendour in a Georgian town house off Fitzroy Square. They liked to think of themselves as Fitzrovians; as heirs to the streets of Augustus John, Sickert, Hazlitt, Charles Laughton; as tolerant historical neighbours of the likes of Dylan Thomas, Nina Hamnett, Marie Stopes. Their living quarters were in the upper reaches of the house, the ground floor being used as a reception area and consulting room for Pryce’s growing roster of private patients.

The consulting room was a comfortable, reassuring place, one that spoke of discreet money and good health. The room was warm and richly wallpapered. There were leather chairs for both doctor and patient, a wide Axminster rug on the floor, glass-fronted bookcases containing medical textbooks. There were no images of sickness, no stark posters warning patients about disease and distress. Instead there were framed engravings of London buildings, and although a closer look would have revealed that these were in fact London hospitals: Guy’s, Bart’s, St Thomas’s, the Brompton, this room seemed to offer the promise that associations with such establishments would be cordial and brief. Tucked away close to the filing cabinets was a small engraving of Bedlam, but patients never saw that one at all.

Any transaction that took place here would be costly, and yet the doctor who inhabited this room was clearly rich enough that he wouldn’t need to rob you. The service delivered would be expensive and honourable. Inevitably, therefore, this room had to be the venue for the Pryces’ erotic games.

Once in a while, as often as their mutual needs and tastes coincided, Pryce would book his wife in for the last appointment of the day, and he would send his nurse home early.

Having been out all afternoon, Louise would come to the house as though she were a bona fide patient, and Pryce would let her in and show her through to his consulting room.

His manner would start out reserved and thoroughly professional, although a patient might notice that his tie was loose and that there was the merest hint of malt whisky on his breath. He would listen sympathetically as Louise Pryce told her story, recounted vague symptoms of tiredness, anxiety, ennui. He would ask a few desultory questions about her diet, her sleep patterns, her libido, and then conclude that she was in need of a thorough examination.

She would go behind a screen and shyly remove a few of her clothes. When she had emerged he would bossily tell her to take off the rest (except for the stockings and suspender belt) and when she was a bit slow about it he’d lend a rough but practised hand to speed the process along.

She would stand before him, denuded, eyes downcast, while he took her pulse, while he touched various parts of her body with his fingers and with the cold end of his stethoscope. He would feel her breasts to make sure ‘everything was all right in that department’ and, once convinced, he would conclude that her problem must lie elsewhere.

He’d slip on surgical gloves and tell her to hop up on to the examination table where he would brusquely spread her legs and begin an internal examination. The touch of rubber-encased fingers, of swabs and speculum, would make her feel that she was melting. Her husband was taking over and she was blissfully losing power. But when he started peering deeply into her, getting his nose and mouth so close that she could feel his breath on her labia, well, a decent woman surely had to protest. She would express a certain lady-like outrage, but that would only bring out the worst in her doctor.

Before she knew it he’d have abandoned his pleasant bedside manner and he’d be buckling leather straps across her midriff, using lengths of bandage to bind her wrists and ankles to the table. A broad piece of sticking plaster would be slapped tightly and immovably over her mouth. Then, when she was totally restrained, totally vulnerable, totally at his sexual mercy, he would step back, do up his tie, straighten his jacket, and say that was enough for one day. He would turn off the lamp on his desk, gather together a few papers and slide them into his briefcase. Then he would go to the door, turn off the overhead light and be gone. His wife would be left there in the dark, bound and splayed, and she would stay like that in a state of ominous, rising sexual tension until Pryce saw fit to return.

By the time he got back, up to an hour later, they would both be in states of headlong arousal. He would return, rush into the consulting room, flail his clothes aside and fuck her where she was, bonds still in place, her mouth still taped shut. The coupling was blind and short, and afterwards, when the whole act was finished, he would release her, let her dress, say the treatment might need repeating quite soon, and then the game would be over. They would go up into the body of the house, open a decent bottle of wine and have a casserole that she had prepared earlier. Domesticity and decency were once again restored.

Mick had seen only part of the performance, the public side. He’d watched Louise Pryce arriving at the house and he’d found it strange that she had to ring the bell to be admitted to her own home. He found it stranger still that after a while all the lights were turned off and that Pryce then left the building. Mick knew that the wife must still be in there, in the dark, and although it just about seemed possible that she had simply decided to go to bed, take an early-evening nap, Mick felt sure there must be a more potent and enticing explanation, one that he could use to his advantage.

Mick was keen to get on with his task. He would be glad when he was finished. He felt he might be losing his taste for revenge. His life was getting too difficult and convoluted. Sleeping with Judy Tanaka had been a terrible mistake, worse than he’d first thought. Love, lust, affection, attraction, desire, need; these were the things that made life complicated and intolerable. They were traps. They threatened to involve him, to enmesh him in the workings of a city where he did not want to belong. He had wanted to be unknown in London, to be invisible, anonymous, to move in and out swiftly and unobserved. Things had changed. He was feeling bogged down, static, and it made him want to hurry, to detach himself, get away from Judy, and that perhaps more than anything else was what spurred him into a rash, improvised revenge against Pryce.

Having seen the outer manifestations of the Pryces’ variety act he now wanted to see the whole story. He had set himself up outside the house. He had watched Louise Pryce arrive and enter, seen the lights go off, seen Pryce leave. Mick decided it was time to go in. He knew this was not strictly wise. He knew that Pryce was not there and it would probably have made more sense to be out in the streets following him. Yet something told Mick that the appropriate act of revenge would take place in the Pryces’ own home.

Breaking in presented no problems. Once inside the house he began switching on lights. He’d had enough of subterfuge, of hiding and sneaking. He would have illuminated the whole house and walked freely around all of it, intruding, trespassing, searching for nothing in particular. But there was no need. The first room he came to was the consulting room, and there she was, Mrs Louise Pryce, just as her husband had left her; naked and trussed. Mick had not been expecting anything so extreme, so theatrical as this, and yet in the event it came as no great surprise. It made sense. It fitted.