Victorian Governance in the Age of Freedom

Garth ToynTanen

Description

Another cane-in-hand tale of domestic discipline, domination, dependency, psychological manipulation and unashamed exploitation from the INSTITUTIONALISED stable.

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 11 juin 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782345985
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
VICTORIAN GOVERNANCE IN THE AGE OF FREEDOM
Another cane-in-hand tale of domestic discipline, domination, dependency, psychological manipulation and unashamed exploitation from the INSTITUTIONALISED stable
Hand crafted by
Garth. P. ToynTanen




Publisher Information
Fresh Wounds published in 2013 by Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary
and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright © Garth. P. ToynTanen 2013
The right of Garth. P. ToynTanen to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.



PREAMBLE
The dust motes were dancing on a golden shaft of late-afternoon Gloucestershire sunlight. In the distance a petrol-driven lawnmower droned. Nearer to home a gold fountain pen nib was scratching its blue-black elegancy across Basildon Bond watermarked paper, the peace of the study-bedroom intermittently disturbed by a clucked tongue, a ‘tut’, and a shuffling of slender golden-tanned limbs occasioned by the discomfort afforded by a hard wooden chair and the latter’s upright back. From time to time a hand threw aside a froth of blond ringlets and curls from an upturned-button-nose face disarmingly younger even than the owners tender years, a physiognomy blessed with features reminiscent of the oddly post-adolescent child-star of the age - Hayley Mills - and thoroughly immune to the maturing effects of cosmetics, however expertly applied. The valleys, waterfalls, frothing rapids and milky-white feldspar outcrops of the remote North Wales villages, culturally speaking, were a world away, even if geographically there were similarities to be found in the rolling Cotswolds: There was homesickness detectable in the flowing hand spreading out across the page; whirls and flourishes subtly more pinched, more angular, than they ought, and which ached with nostalgia.
June 21 st 1964
Dear Pippa and dearest Charlotte.
Just a little note to let you know I’m safely back at the good old ‘alma mater’ and nicely settled back in, mama and papa’s memorial service behind me. Most of my friends have returned - except those who left last term of course - which is helping me get over it. Everything is pretty much as it was - though in truth it will never be the same now that mama and papa are gone... I’ve been told I mustn’t think that way, so I’ll not mention it again, by Miss McBainstone - Aunt Flora she likes to be called, though of course she is not actually our aunt or anything. Do you know her - or of her - she just seems to have come out the woodwork. She approached me at the service and I’ve been sort of ‘under her wing’ ever since...
It’s so sad neither of you could have been there, by the way, though I understand the situation with you out there in Abu Dhabi having to deal with my papa’s estate and all, and all the difficulty attending to that. It’s just that she seems quite young and appears very nice - don’t get me wrong - and I know that you, Charlotte, will have appointed her, but there’s just something about her, something... I don’t know... unsettling. Underneath it all, the pleasant smiles and all, she just seems so... I don’t know... overbearing... domineering almost, though not in an obvious way. She doesn’t leave one pause for thought, just sort of takes charge - and I get the feeling that deep inside she’s actually very strict, stern even. And yet she has invited me to take tea with her tomorrow, at a fine eatery in Cheltenham.
She wants to discuss my staying with her over the summer hols - which is fine (I guess) - but the trouble is, she is insisting I leave with her before my finals (and you know how serious I am about my studies). She says I have a very fine writing style but that I should think twice before accepting what she predicts will be a relatively mediocre pass mark and consider refining my education under a private tutor first. But that will mean losing contact with all my friends and setting aside my university place for a further year. But I’m not so sure I can stand up to her. She’s probably set wheels in motion already - and I’ve already sort of agreed to spending the summer with her (I’m not sure how).
Anyway I must rush, there’s cross-country running coming up, but I just wanted you to know that I’ll be at the following address for the summer. I’m sure you know of the arrangement already - and I know I’m being silly - but just in case something happens and... you know... I go missing or something... well I just wanted someone to know where I’m going to be... just in case. I’m not sure what it is, and I’m sure you know what you’re doing in appointing her, Charlotte, but... it’s just this feeling I have. I can’t quite put my finger on it but... well, for some reason there is something I just don’t trust about ‘aunt’ Flora McBainstone. I will write more at the weekend once I decide what to do. Meanwhile I hope that Middle East situation does not become too unbearable.
Your loving cousin,
Gwyneth.
Satisfied with her work and bolstered by her initiative in having covered every angle the pretty, worryingly girlish, late-teen licked the envelope flap and stuck it down firmly, addressing it with a few more deft strokes of her Parker - a gift from her doting father some twelve months previously. She thought of her now departed parents and then of her far-distant cousins - and momentarily suffered a sharp pang of anguish, wishing they could all be here in England at this time and that at the end of each school day she might be able to return home, like certain of her friends. That might once again have been the case once her father’s contract had concluded. But now that was never to be.
The sun-blond Gwyneth put the envelope on her desk, its positioning a reminder to post it come the morning. For now she turned her attention to the present. The upcoming cross-country run was due to start in a little over ten minutes and the jeans and tee shirt had to come off to be replaced by the regulation sports kit, one of the few regulations applying within the rather liberal framework of the ‘enlightened and free thinking academic environment’.
In many ways it was an environment well suited to the flowering into womanhood of a girl like Gwyneth. To certain others, not at all sure they were ready to witness such a blossoming, something more structured was to be preferred - but what was a girl like Gwyneth to make of such concerns.
She really was an astoundingly pretty girl, every one said so, with her neat upturned nose and soft, delicate girlish, almost childish, features. With the regulation sun-burst of sharp royal-blue pleats framing a pair of somewhat skimpy white nylon knickers, topped with a figure-fitting white poplin blouse having an innocent Peter Pan collar and finished off by a pair of cutesy white ankle socks peeking out from her running shoes, to certain eyes she made a choice package indeed.
Slim, yet well fleshed out where it mattered most, as she was presently dressed she made a tasty morsel, firm apple breasts, pert rather than large, bottom and hips perhaps slightly larger in proportion - it had been all of that, and more, that had drawn the attention of the aforementioned Flora McBainstone from the outset, more so even than the potential financial advantage, substantial though that promised to be. That woman’s knowledgeable, alert, eyes had immediately registered on first alighting on her future ward - and it had been in that especially alluring PE kit that young Gwyneth had been dressed at the time. But of course all that had been well before her parent’s tragic demise - that was the way the cogs of fate turned, or rather were turned or driven, by those with the power to transform notion to concrete substance.



CHAPTER 1
GWYNETH: A WELSH GIRL IN THE SMOKE’(LONDON TOWN)
A little under a month has passed - and a pretty teen girl travels alone from one of the deepest emerald-grassed, crystal-streamed milky-feldspar and cottage lined Welsh valleys to ‘The Big Smoke’. This was supposed to be the start of an age of freedom, of liberation and emancipation - at least some said so - though sitting there in the hot, clattering diesel-engined taxi, the worrisome clamour of London’s Paddington station now safely behind her, young Gwyneth Tealsdown was beginning to question exactly how free that ‘freedom’ really was.
It was the early nineteen-sixties, and the world seemed on some sort of cusp. In some ways it was still a time of innocence and modesty. In other ways it was the start of the modern era, the first of the supermarkets just beginning to creep on to the high street, even in the more rural regions of the country.
Perhaps that was it - more than anything else - the way the shape of the high street had seemed to change overnight, or at least the form of the shop fronts had. There were modern flat-fronted shop windows appearing everywhere and the papers crowed on about the space-race and ‘The Bomb’ but there was also still the cry of the rag and bone man and the coal still came on the back of a horse-drawn wagon in huge black sacks.
Man was working towards a quest for the moon, while in the distance on a hot summer’s night with the windows open one could still hear the rushing sound of engines letting off steam over on the railway. There were nuclear power stations and ther