The Bound Heart (4 page)

Her body navigated the pedestrians, the streets. Closer to home, her voice worked automatically as it answered greetings, yet her mind was thought free, empty, numb.

The walk home, the narrow alley they lived off, the stench of waste in the gutters. She opened the door to the smell of soup. Her sister, the five kids, the husband all bustling in the room. Mum thankfully not there. Her other sister with a man of her own two streets over.

Up the stairs was a small room, hers. She sat on the bed. Basket at her feet. Hat and coat still on. It still hadn’t sunk in.

Perhaps she didn’t have a place for it to go.

The only place he does it…

Yet.

Her hand shook as she pulled the photos out of her pocket.

That one was on the top.

Fire ran between her legs in a fierce, vibrant ache.

That was his finger. That was him.

The heat pushed and throbbed through her body.

Olive looked at the next image.

The rope.

Her heart beat faster.

The small cues, the way he always held himself back, the sure confidence as he wrapped the ribbon around her calf.

“That’s not something for you, Olive,” Evie had said.
Yet it didn’t feel like that. Right now and up in the workshop with him, she felt more alive, more right than for what seemed like forever.

Had there even been a time when she’d felt like this?

Every bit of her skin was on fire, hungry for things she didn’t even know.

Downstairs, the kids were crying. Her sister and her husband were arguing. It sounded so far away. Her body made it impossible to think.

A door slammed; her sister’s husband had left again. Olive knew she should go down and help, but going into normality with her body in this state was an impossibility.

Putting the pictures down, Olive stood, took off her gloves, removed her hatpin and hat, and placed them on the small table next to the bed as her legs wobbled. Her core was hot and drenched with a need she may never fill in the way she needed.

She walked over to the door and locked it, unbuttoned her coat and placed it on the hook behind the door. Then she placed her leg with the brace on the rung under the chair next to the door. She pushed her face into her coat and lugged up her skirt. Her hand slid under her waistband and down her drawers. She closed her eyes as her fingers slid over wet, slippery folds, and her head dropped back.

Her finger slipped in and out. She was going to come fast.

“Olive, luv,” her sister called.

The memory of his hand, his fingers touching her there and she rocked into her hand. Her fingers slid in, out. Touched herself as he had begun to do. She ran her fingers up and around her hard peak.

His lips were surprisingly gentle. Firm and full, they moved over hers with passion, hunger and yet control.

The fullness of him in the palm of her hand, as he strained against his trousers. What would have happened if they hadn’t been interrupted?

Now that she’d seen the pictures, she understood why he didn’t snatch and grab.

Images moved behind her closed eyes. Images she shouldn’t be able to think or to want. Images out of that box Evie had. Her fingers moved a little faster.

“Olive!”

Her face pushed into her coat, her mouth opened; please…his face was right there in her mind, so close, the warm puff of his breath as he had leaned forward washed her face.

She let the thick scratchy surface of the wool rub her cheeks and lips. It smelled of the book glue in his workshop or so she imagined. Felt like the bristles on his cheek.

She thrust her hips forward. The lock rattled, once, twice, three times as her hips thrust forward.

She imagined the slide of rope.

How it would feel over her skin, her breasts. What it would be like to be totally wrapped.

Pleasure exploded through her body, arched her spine with light that had no place entwined with such dark thoughts.

“Too dangerous,” his voice had whispered over her. “Too beautiful. Go home, Olive Thompson.”

Her hand stilled as her body pulsed and her skin tingled. Still that image of him, his hand, his finger in that woman, that woman who should be her. Her body wept with a dampness she should not feel.

Slowly, she drew her hand away.

Let her fingers slide over the sensitive skin. The pleasure of it. Imagining it was him. Wishing, wishing he had been the one to give her this pleasure.

“Olive!” Her sister’s voice was washed in frustration, beyond its capacity.

“Wait!” Her voice was harsh back. She knew that strained sound of voice.

Sisters. Even after all the hurt and all the differences, she was still compelled to help, to come whenever they needed her.

Olive let her dress fall back in place and took her leg off the chair.

What was she doing staying here?

She had no man of her own. She had stopped looking, stopped going out two years ago. Instead, the focus was on her sewing.

The repairs and paid work of course, but the other decorative work, the embroidery, the use of color and texture with the satin and silk threads and ribbons, that was the real focus.

Women came for extras with their repairs, some embroidery or lace added. Every now and again, she got a special project like Mrs. Everson wanting her daughter’s wedding veil embroidered with her favorite flowers. And, Miss Wimple who marched down from her Kensington home and commissioned wall hangings embroidered with tales of feminine hardship and endurance to add to the Suffragette cause. ‘
The Needle and thread are the wheels to move you out of any hardship Olive.’
She’d say.
‘Every stitch will emancipate you from your lot. Stay focused and dream big.’

There were things that Miss Wimple said, that Olive didn’t agree with but when she spoke about how sewing and her growing skill were a vehicle to a new life, she believed her.

Olive washed her hands in the basin on the chest of drawers and slipped the photos into the pages of the little book on the nightstand next to her single bed. She only had one book.

Her finger ran over the binding. She couldn’t read very well. Wasn’t sure what it was about. The important thing was she knew who had bound it.

It had cost a big part of her savings. Buying it had been foolish. The kind of thing ‘no hope’ girls like her did. She knew that; yet still she’d bought it, and over the last year, never regretted the extravagance. Next to her bed on the nightstand, it was him.
“Good night,”
she would say as she blew the candle out.

It was a moody little book. Sometimes she would hear it answer, other times not. Much like its maker.

She had looked at every part of it. She’d lifted the front and back covers so the spine arched and she could see the binding, see the tight even stitches. Now, she knew he bound up a woman with as much patience and precision as his books.

Her hand stroked the surface. A great many secrets were in plain view. Just like he’d said today about her brace. We all had them.

But not for Mr. Edwards. Not anymore. No, today she’d found out what he wanted from a woman. And, perhaps why things had not progressed as they should have.

“Olive.” One of the children started to cry and pans clattered. “Olive! Please!”

Thunder rumbled in the night and echoed through the stillness of the house like a low growl. The sound of discontent and unfulfilled hungers.

Okazaki, the house’s long-term tenant and self-imposed housekeeper, moved in the doorway, a large tray in front of her.

Jamie waved her in.

She moved into the traditional sixteen-mat Japanese tatami room with those impossibly small steps Japanese women mastered.

Her kimono, a subdued sheen of taupe and greens, was the colors for spring. If he never saw a tree, yet could see Okazaki, he’d always know the season simply by the colors she wore.

“It’s nice to have the room open again,” she said in Japanese.

The room ran along two thirds of the back of the main house much like an English conservatory would. Everything had been imported from Japan made to order. And those craftsmen who did not reside in the Japanese expat community were sent for from Japan to craft and do the instillation.

Opening the room was an impromptu move, as if inside the foreign space thoughts of Olive were not likely to follow him.

Fool.

After those kisses in the workshop today, she curled around him tighter than if he’d left her alone.

Her panting breaths, her shaky fingers, the tentative touch of her tongue. And, he closed his eyes as he remembered, the feel of her as he pushed his fingers deep into her satin folds. The images and phantom touches rolled around in repeated loops through his mind and teasing.

Jamie didn’t want to know what he now knew about her. That her kisses tasted of pure spring water. That her hair was gossamer silk threaded through his fingers.

He especially didn’t want to know that she would be a very responsive lover. That they were in tune together, could communicate together with no words spoken.

Moreover, he totally chose to ignore that being bound calmed her. That her eyes grew heavy and her breathing deepened as he worked the ribbon around her calf. No, he was going to forget that as fast as he could.

Jamie stood as Okazaki came in, he walked over to the white-paper sliding doors overlooking the back garden and slid them open. On the other side was a narrow wooden passage with a wall of glass sliding doors.

The glass doors gave access directly to the garden.

Staring at the glass, he saw his reflection, and past that image, the garden. The moon painted silver brush strokes over the shrubs, pathways, and stones.

“It’s a beautiful night.” His voice sounded tight.

In fact, everything about him felt tight. He needed to shake the lingering mood that was all about Olive Thompson.

“Storm’s coming,” Okazaki said.

Clouds twisted and rolled high above the city, taking away the heat of the day. Instead, the cold, crisp spring air would wrap around everyone who walked through it. Small puffs of mist, remnants of the fading winter, pushing ahead of them as they walked.

The smog was getting sucked up in the turmoil, pulled off the city, giving London’s inhabitants breathing room for a couple of days before the thick pea soup of murky air settled back around them.

“Sensei would have opened the glass doors,” he said.

The old man would sit in the wooden corridor, the glass doors open, one leg outside resting on the stone step, and his back against the edge of the glass sliding door.
The place where inside and outside meets, half of me in and half of me out. That’s how it is Jamie-kun, a part of us drawn to nature and the secrets it holds, and the other to the tight patterns of our civilization.

“Too much sake.” Her voice held a smile.

Sensei loved his sake. He’d go all red from the smallest amount of it; he said it heated his blood, and he would slide back those glass doors to let nature in no matter the time of year, snow, rain, or humid heat.

Jamie came back to the low, polished, wooden table and sat down on the oriental cushion, crossing his legs.

Something about Olive pushed him too hard, inflamed him more than anyone he’d met before. Inflamed him more than was wise.

The body had a reaction and speed all its own. Foolish people thought themselves in control. Control was possible only because the dam of emotions, of physical responses, was a manageable flow. But there were encounters, people who somehow opened a reserve, a floodgate that washed away all that control.

Olive was possibly that trigger person for him.

He had never been on the other side of his control, had fashioned rules, and a lifestyle to ensure he never did.

It had been the worst part of growing up in the knock house. Clothes everywhere, no one following the house rules, the bickering and poor behaviors and the use of sex to manipulate and bring men to their knees.

Not me.

It was the one thought that he’d had again and again from as young as he could remember. And so far he’d been able to ensure that was the case.

Olive was a threat and a promise in the one package. She promised the ideal bond he sought with another through his erotic art and yet she drove him past his plans and into a realm of unplanned and uncontrolled hunger.

Their brief encounter in the workshop, the softest and simplest of touches and he had dropped all his good intentions and push forward. If Mr. Howard had not knocked on the door he would have taken every liberty she allowed even though it wasn’t what he’d planned.

The new bookbinder started in the workshop next week, and there was little probability of seeing Olive again before he left.

That was for the best.

Okazaki, sank to her knees, the tray placed on the mat, and then proceeded to transfer a hot, rolled towel in a half round of bamboo in front of him.

“I have work tomorrow night. I’ll look after the front door.”

“Will you need help?” Okazaki asked.

He shook his head no and picked up the roll of cloth. It was piping hot. He juggled it in the air to cool it. How she managed to get it that hot and not scorch her fingers was an ongoing mystery.

Then he placed it over his face. The heat was immediate, clinging to his skin. The soft cotton towelette hugged the contours of his face as he pressed it against himself.

The intimate heat, his breath against the fabric, and there she was again, Olive Thompson. He wanted to push his face into her heat. The damp of her skin at the base of her neck, under her breasts, between her thighs.

Jamie lifted the cloth, wiped the day off his hands, and then placed it back in the bamboo receptacle.

None of that was going to happen. His appetite for Olive would pass. It always passed when he liked a woman. After a time focusing on his work Olive would fade away too.

Okazaki continued to lay out an array of small tasting size plates of Japanese food, chopsticks, rice, and miso soup. He’d asked for the lot. Asked for the room to be opened for the first time after Sensei’s death; he wanted a full Japanese dinner here.

“Are you sure you won’t join me?”

He’d wanted Okazaki’s company; she wasn’t ready, not ready to be in a room full of memories of her old lover. She sat back on her haunches but her posture said she was not staying.

“Do you have a good model?”

“You know I use Madeline.” Jamie knew exactly where she was taking this. There were other models but of all of them Madeline, although still not what he wanted, was the most reliable and focused.

Okazaki poured some sake for him then sat back on her haunches. She may be in her fifties, but her flexibility and strength would be almost the same as when she worked in rope with Sensei.

“She has no feel for the rope.”

“She has a feel for the camera.”

And for most of what he did that was perfect. This more focused direction to develop the rope, well she was better than his other options.

Jamie picked up the small sake cup and threw the warm liquid back. A soft, smooth heat filled his mouth and slipped down his throat.

“Kobayashi-sama was not wealthy enough for you? You must earn from men of the street? Sew books?”

Okazaki refilled the sake cup.

His jaw tightened. “I’m proud of what I have done and I like what I do; you know that. Besides, I have given my notice at the bookshop. And the bulk of my photo plates–as you know-are with rope. I see no need to stop the in occasional erotic photo plate work because of Sensei’s inheritance.”

Although less frequently now, he made images, which were sold through The Velvet Basement and other somewhat lower-end establishments of a similar nature. Working men who came in from the country, their earning power weak, bought them. They couldn’t afford a woman who made her money on her back, let alone a respectable girl. Instead, they saved for an erotic postcard, perhaps a few. For many of them, those postcards were their faithful women. Some of those men, if they survived the sixteen plus hour days, would only ever have those postcards as companions. Their preferences were easy to do and when he first started out, they were his staple income.

Now, he did them because he got ideas he wanted to portray or simply wanted a break from the more strenuous work of the rope.

“Those postcards are no different from the erotic ukiyo-e prints and the role they’re playing in Japan even now.”

They were both a sexual placebo for the poor.

The line of reasoning went uncommented.

Jamie took a sip of the sake and placed the cup down.

Okazaki topped it up and placed the small bottle next to his cup.

“Of course, Jamie-sama, you are
very
talented. So many things to choose from. No obligations to fulfill.”

Irritation itched him at her tone; it implied the very opposite of what she said. Of course, he owed Sensei, even without this house and the financial wealth he’d inherited at Sensei’s death. The mentoring into the rope and the world of The Collectors had created a career, a pathway he never knew existed. A path outside of the rules of the social classes. A never dreamed of life for a boy from the knock-shop.

As an artist, he straddled the classes.

If you were good, you mixed with the richest and noblest on one day and rubbed shoulders in the poorest parts of town the next, and anywhere in between with no social consequence. That straddling layers was what made you interesting, made you colorful, and added grit and depth to your art.

Artists, writers, and clairvoyants were classless if they were good.

With Sensei and now on his own, he was building a name for himself in that world. A world where the only requirement was to make art that people wanted to see. For him and his field of erotic art, what people wanted to see was endless.

“Sensei just hoped, we both hoped, you would one day wish to continue his work.”

“I do. And I am.” Tension ticked in his jaw.

Okazaki was impatient for him to continue with the rope, continue what she and Sensei had started to explore and do for The Collectors who commissioned Sensei’s work and now his own.

However, he’d started his own explorations, his own themes of what he wanted to do, not simply to follow in the footsteps of his mentor. Just as Sensei had done from his teacher, Jamie too wanted to branch out, to make something for himself.

“You are talking about a battle of rope between two schools of thought, a battle where the two men who started it are now dead.

“With Yamata-sensei gone, perhaps, the battle of ideas has gone with them, replaced by a more liberal exploration of independent ideas by each rope worker?” he said.

“Yamata-sensei has strong pupils continuing his work. They teach what rope is and how it should be done as based on the tradition of interrogation, the ‘correct’ knots, the ‘correct’ method as if there are no other schools of thought.

Who is there for Kobayashi-sensei? For his work working to bring the art of connection, the rope as we see in Shinto, in life. This is a profound shift that needs advocates. So who is there to continue it if not you? Sato?”

Bloody Sato, the man did not deserve to be in anyone’s lineage.

“That’s not the point. You know I support Sensei’s way.” His finger stabbed at the tabletop. “What about my work? I have my own work. I am building my own ideas.”

Her silence was a recognition of sorts. She and Sensei were more traditional in their ideas. What they had built, and what he was trained in, related more to the Japanese samurai history of rope, to Shintoism and Shiatsu. What he wanted to branch out to, what he was developing had more to do with art. Of form over role or function. Of rope as the medium that he used on the canvas of skin, the shape of his model.

“Have you been working on anything?”

Tension tightened his back.

He hadn’t, not outside of easy commissions.

“You know I will continue Sensei’s work. I hold his lineage, I believe in what we have done and developed over the years. And, I need to grow. I am not content to simply follow.”

What lay at the heart of this constant push from Okazaki was that he wasn’t ready to start again.

The last few months he’d simply worked the erotic postcards with Madeline. And despite Okazaki’s disapproval, it was work. Madeline was an old lover; they’d long lost the awkwardness in the intimacies of the work, and apart from an occasional transgression, they went their own ways with no expectations.

Madeline was set finding on a powerful patron; she wanted to do more work with him and catch the eye of The Collectors. That was the only reason, apart from some ready cash, that she still did the postcards with him.

Olive’s shaky breaths flashed through his mind. The way her eyelids got heavy as he tied the ribbon around her leg. He shifted on the cushion.

“You need more than a good model. You need a great model. How can you expect to grow, if you don’t have the right girl?” Okazaki said.

“Madeline is perfectly capable.”

And, she was. The trouble was she didn’t move him, didn’t make him slip into the place he needed to be in to make the rope sing. She didn’t drive him to find new ties, new expressions.

He needed a muse.

The soft-sense memory of Olive, her breasts cupped in his hand, the tight cord of communication between them caused his fingers to curl into his palm.