Reformatory Girls Ch. 06

Back in Hazely frustration grows. Whilst Abigail Morgan is lying in her hospital bed, diddling herself at her leisure, for the girls of Hazely it is business – or rather lack of business – as usual.

Every girl is feeling the strain. Some express their frustration through outbursts of temper: others burst into tears at the slightest provocation.

Even the good-natured Clare Davenport is suffering. She is sharp, and even catty at times. At night she finds herself kicking at her blankets in frustration. Tina Dukes tries to comfort her: but it's all very well for Tina, she has only another few weeks to serve. It is very much easier to endure when the end is in sight.

Clare, Karen, Donna, Ruth, Amber, Laura, Sienna, Kelly, Eve, Sharon, Suzanne, Fay Dudley... All of them lie awake at night, frustrated, miserable.

Little do they, or any of the girls in Hazely, know that, for a few girls at least, life is about to change.

Few aspects of life in Hazely afford the girls any pleasure. But few cause them more revulsion than the weekly shave.

This takes place on Saturday afternoons, in one of Matron's Consulting Rooms.

In fact the whole of Saturday afternoon is given over to grooming. At two o'clock the girls congregate in the Waiting Room – a bare room with benches around the perimeter. Whilst they are waiting for Matron to call out their names, nail-clipping and hair-cutting take place. Thirty nail-clippers and emery boards are distributed from a box by the Wardens in charge, and the girls are obliged to clip and file both their finger- and toe-nails. Whilst this is taking place two upright chairs are set up in the middle of the room, and girls are called out in pairs in order that their hair can be cut. The cutting of hair is a crude art: the two Wardens in charge, wielding two large pairs of scissors, simply cut each girls hair to the length of her collar, and cut her fringe straight and high on her forehead. The results are not flattering to the girls. But they are not intended to be. Function, not ornament, is paramount. And over time, since they are all in the same boat, even the girls who initially cried at the loss of their flowing locks have got used to it.

Miss Bulstrode, though, views even this somewhat brutal grooming with disfavour. She can still remember the days when every girl had her head shaved: and every Saturday she deplores afresh what she sees as the Liberal tendencies of the current Principal.

The girls do not so much mind the hair-cutting and nail clipping, as for the rest of the time they must sit in silence, with only the four walls and the girls on the opposite benches to stare at. What they hate is the pubic shaving.

Their names are called in alphabetical order. When her name is called a girl enters Matron's Consulting Room, at the centre of which is an examining couch. It is an old-fashioned couch, complete with iron stirrups. The girl must then remove her skirt and knickers and lie on her back on the couch whilst Matron straps her feet into the stirrups. The stirrups are then adjusted, such that the girls legs are held open, bent at the knees, to give Matron the easiest access. It is a humiliating position, a position a girl should only adopt for a lover or a gynaecologist: not to have her private parts manipulated by the bony fingers of an unsmiling fifty-year-old woman with a safety razor.

But adopt it each girl must, every Saturday. And if one of them were so bold as to ask why they must submit to this practice they would be told it was for hygiene reasons: to prevent any spread of pubic lice and to improve cleanliness.

During the procedure Matron makes no concessions whatsoever to a girl's sense of modesty.

Clare Davenport can remember the first time she was shaved. Lying on her back with her legs spread and her feet clamped into what seemed to her like a medieval contraption, she had closed her eyes, tried to tell herself she was somewhere else, that this barbaric event wasn't happening.

"Eyes open," Matron had ordered.

So she had opened her eyes. The ceiling light was designed for examinations and was too bright to look at; the shelf along the side wall seemed to contain mostly enema bottles, piping and nozzles and chamber pots, douches and clamps and bulb syringes and stirrup pumps and giant tubes of lubricant. The other wall was blank except for a small window onto a lavatory cubicle. So she had been forced to stare at her own legs, held open in such a degrading position, and at the assault – for that was how she viewed it – on her pudenda. She had started with a fine thatch of fair hair: by the time Matron had run the electric clippers over it, it had been reduced to stubble. Then had come a warm flannel, shaving soap, and heavy-handed circular motions with the shaving brush. As Matron had drawn the safety razor down over her delicate parts she had pulled Clare's flesh this way and that, gripping her here and there with no regard for how Clare might be feeling, her aim purely functional: to remove every last wisp of hair from Clare's genital regions. She had stretched Clare's labia, drawing the razor sideways, upwards and downwards: she had poked around Clare's clitoris, pushing out the fleshy areas the better to get a smooth glide of the razor. And just when Clare thought she must be done she had started on Clare's perineum, drawing the razor down between Clare's bum cheeks, spreading those cheeks with one hand whilst she spread yet more shaving foam, positioning the razor over Clare's anus before scraping sideways and outwards.

And when she had finished, when Clare's genitals were as bald as those of a new-born baby, she had dabbed on some after-shave, which had stung like anything.

"Don't make such a fuss," was all Matron had said when Clare had winced.

For the rest of the day Clare had felt like a newly-shorn lamb. At night, standing next to her bed now minus her bush, she had felt doubly exposed, doubly naked. And when the chastity belt had been locked in place the cold steel against her bare and sensitive skin had felt horrible.

Four months on and she had still not really got used to it. Apart from anything else Saturday afternoons were the ultimate in boredom. It took around five or six minutes to shave each girl: which meant that the girls spent a total of almost three hours in the Waiting Room. Even if you could drag out the nail-clipping for half an hour, that left an awful lot of time to spend sitting still, staring at bare walls and watching girls having their hair cut.

It is Saturday afternoon now. The girls are all assembled in the Waiting Room. With them are Miss Bulstrode and Miss Harman, an angular woman with a sour, pinched face, who has a grudge against life in general, and girls who are more shapely and buxom than she is in particular.

The door which leads to the corridor onto which the Consulting Rooms open swings open, and Matron appears. But this time she is not alone. Following her, standing now beside her, is a girl no older than the Hazely inmates. She has black hair, tied back from her face, and is wearing the same white uniform dress as Matron wears – except that she is wearing hers with a good deal more style than does Matron.

"Right: listen everyone," says Miss Bulstrode. "Matron has an announcement to make."

Matron clears her throat.

"This is my niece and new assistant," she says, in her nasal voice. "Her name is Miss Lucy. From now on she will be sharing shaving duties with me. You will follow her instructions exactly as you would follow mine, and you will show her the same respect and the same degree of politeness that you would show to me or to any of the Wardens. Any failure to do so will be reported to me and the appropriate action taken.

That is all."

The girls stare in astonishment at Miss Lucy. They take in her figure, shapely under the uniform dress; they take in her face, the fullness of her red lips, the fine black lines of her eyebrows: surely, they think, she cannot be wearing lip stick or eye-liner, here where all cosmetics are strictly forbidden? And they take in, or try to take in, her expression: there is a sultry quality to her, and there seems to be just a hint of a smile about her lips: though whether it is a smile of warmth or a mocking smile they cannot be certain.

Then the first two names are called, and two girls leave the room, one to follow Matron, the other to follow Miss Lucy.

There is a buzz of excitement in the Waiting Room. So little happens that is new or different that any deviation from routine attracts the girls' interest. There is not one among them who does not hope that her turn will fall to Miss Lucy.

Clare Davenport is next in line. When the girl who has just been shaved by Miss Lucy returns to the Waiting Room she gives a surreptitious thumbs-up to the other girls. Miss Lucy appears in the doorway with a clipboard and calls Clare's name. Clare follows her into the consulting room.

"So," says Miss Lucy. "Clare: I'm sure you know the ropes better than I do. Perhaps you'd like to slip off your skirt and pants for me?"

There is a strange, caressing quality to Miss Lucy's speech. For a moment Clare, who is not used to being spoken to so politely, remains motionless, her functioning temporarily suspended by this novel situation. Then the automatic pilot kicks in again, and she takes off her skirt and knickers, eases herself onto the examination table and places her feet in the stirrups. If Miss Lucy finds any of this odd she doesn't show it: she fastens the stirrups, though not as brusquely as Matron, adjusts them, and sets down the shaving equipment and jug of warm water.

Then she stands a moment, looking down at Clare Davenport, taking her in just as Clare is taking her in. There is a hint of a smile across her features.

She begins smoothing the shaving foam over Clare's genitals, and drawing the safety razor down and across, and making adjustments down there with her fingers – much as Matron does, only more gently.

"So Clare," she says, as the razor glides over Clare's mound: "How are you finding life in Hazely?"

Clare does not know how to answer: her attention is taken up by the feel of the razor and the feel of Miss Lucy's fingers, both of which are causing her to experience sensations she knows she ought not to be feeling.

"It's difficult," she says eventually.

"Yes," says Miss Lucy: "I can see that it must be." She moves on to the area around Clare's anus, parting her cheeks gently and drawing the razor over the almost non-existent stubble with a lighter touch than ever Matron brought to bear. Clare shivers as Miss Lucy's finger touches the tight little folds of skin at the entrance to her anus: for a moment she gets the feeling that Miss Lucy is about to insert her finger. But that does not happen, the fingers move on: and then it is finished, the wet flannel is being applied and Miss Lucy is drying Clare with the white towel. When that is done and Clare is quite dry she braces herself for the assault with the after shave. But to her surprise Miss Lucy has a bottle of baby oil in her hand.

"Some oil now?" she asks Clare. She doesn't wait for an answer, but squirts some oil into the palm of her hand and begins to massage it into Clare's shaven pudenda. Clare sighs involuntarily: she wonders if Miss Lucy knows that aftershave is the norm: but she's certainly not going to enlighten her, it feels nice, dangerously nice, having a warm hand between her legs instead of a stinging spray of aftershave. She twists slightly, and feels herself blushing, her face turning bright red. Miss Lucy smiles down at her – there is something knowing in her look – and then it is over: Miss Lucy is un-strapping the stirrups and washing her hands at the wash basin. And Clare, feeling somewhat confused – is Miss Lucy aware of what she is doing? – finds herself back in her skirt and pants and out in the Waiting Room once again.

The grooming period is over in two hours instead of three, and to their great delight the girls find that they have an extra session in the Recreation Yard. There all the talk is of Miss Lucy. She's amazing. A breath of fresh air. She's gentle. She takes an interest in you. She touches you with respect. She doesn't sting you with aftershave. And what about her name? Is it Miss Lucy or Miss Lucie? Is Lucy/Lucie her first name or her surname? The girls who have been shaved by her can't sing her praises highly enough. The girls who have not been shaved by her are jealous: they can only hope that next week it will be their turn.

One of the girls who has not been shaved by Miss Lucy is Tina Dukes. And now she has missed her chance, because in four more days she is due to be released from Hazely.

Tina is naturally excited about her release, and in her mind has been rehearsing for it. She knows almost exactly what she will do once the steel gates have closed behind her. A short distance from Hazely is a bus stop, where every two hours a number 74 bus calls on its way to the town centre. From the town centre it is less than a mile to Tina's family home.

Tina will be supplied with sufficient bus fare for her journey. But Tina will not be on that bus. For Tina intends to walk until she is out of sight of Hazely, then find a field, or a wood, or a piece of waste land or even somebody's garden – anywhere she find a bit of cover. There she will take off her jeans and pants and rub herself senseless. Not until she has rubbed away four months of enforced celibacy will she continue her homeward journey.

This is the prospect that has kept her going through her final weeks in Hazely. But she has not mentioned it to Clare Davenport. Not because she is ashamed or embarrassed; not because she is someone who likes secrets. But, rather, out of tact and consideration for Clare's feelings.

Excited as she is, Tina is also feeling sad at the prospect of being separated from Clare. Since the thrashings in the gymnasium the girls haven't dared to share a bed: but on her final night Tina slips into Clare's bed to say goodbye. The girls hug, tearfully. They hitch up their night-dresses so that they can touch their bare breasts together. Tina entwines her legs around Clare until there is a metallic clunk as their chastity belts come together. Their genitals are little more than an inch apart: yet they might as well be in separate continents.

They kiss and they whisper. Tina promises Clare she will wait for her and make up to her for all the months of frustration. Clare, who at times is a bit overwhelmed by Tina's devotion, thanks her, and asks her what she is going to do first when she gets out of Hazely. Tina hesitates: Clare picks up on this and asks her again to tell her:

"It's all right Tina," she reassures her. "You won't hurt my feelings."

So Tina tells her.

"Good for you," Clare says.

"Really?" says Tina. "You don't mind?"

"Mind?" says Clare. "Just make sure you have one for me whilst you're at it."

Then they laugh, and Tina promises she will have a rub for Clare:

"And I'll think of you whenever I cum," she promises.

"What will you do if your father starts molesting you again?" whispers Clare.

"I don't suppose he will now mum's back home," says Tina. "If he does - well, worse things happen."

Clare doesn't know whether to be concerned at Tina's low expectations of life or inspired by her ability to remain cheerful in the face of indignities and brutalities which she herself would be traumatised by. She kisses Tina again; then, deciding they have pushed their luck far enough, disengages, so that Tina can return to her own bed.

The next morning, shortly before the girls go off to their jobs, Tina is led away by Miss Bulstrode to collect her belongings and deal with whatever paperwork has to be dealt with. Half an hour later the steel gates clang behind her just as she has imagined: Tina is free.

Clare by this time has graduated to the Laundry. No longer does she have to scrub out the lavatories and wash-basins. It is cleaner work but it is still hard work, and it is noisy. The washing machines clank and whirr continuously, as do the huge steel drums of the driers. It is also hot, and the girls are allowed to strip down to their underwear.

Clare has not yet been shown how to use the machines. Her tasks are sorting and ironing. For much of the morning she stands at an industrial sized ironing board, ironing Reformatory sheets and skirts and blouses, under the watchful eyes of a Warden. Three other girls accompany her. The girls are not allowed to speak except as the work requires: but they do share the occasional moment of camaraderie. The sheets, and the clothes worn by the inmates, are not individualised: you take whatever is doled out to you. But the clothes worn by the Wardens have individual name-tapes sewn inside. And sometimes, when the Warden's eyes are elsewhere, a girl will hold up an enormous pair of knickers, and mouth Fatty Armstrong and set the others off giggling.

So Clare stands there in her bra and knickers – none of which fit especially well – ironing sheets, and wiping sweat from her forehead. She is feeling sad – Tina is gone – but she cannot afford to lose herself in introspection as one of the girls she is working with is Tania Nye. Tania's idea of keeping things lively is to wait until both Wardens have their eyes elsewhere then creep up behind Clare and yank down her knickers. More than once Clare has barely got her knickers back up before the gaze of Miss Barker or Miss Harman has fallen on her.

Tania doesn't mean any harm. It is just her way of coping. But Clare wishes she would find a less risky form of entertainment

Today, though, Tania seems subdued, kept busy by a seemingly endless pile of skirts and blouses. Clare works her way through she sheets, wishing her bra was a better fit, then remembering what she was told about Kelly Watson. When Kelly arrived and the box of bras was brought out, there was nothing to fit her, the only 'A' Cup being designed for a girl much less broad in the chest and shoulders than Kelly.

"Never mind," Miss Bulstrode had told her: "You don't need a bra you've got nothing to put in it."

Since then Kelly has never worn a bra. On cleaning duties, and in the kitchens, where she now works, that isn't so much of an issue. But when she worked in the Laundry she had to work bare-breasted, sorting and ironing with her little fleshy protuberances, such a source of embarrassment to her, on show to all and sundry.

Clare should be grateful she has a bra, even one that is too big for her.

She folds her tenth sheet of the morning and is just spreading out her eleventh when out of nowhere she feels a tingling between her legs. It is so vivid and unexpected that her hand automatically reaches down to touch: Clare checks herself: Miss Barker is much too close for comfort. Clare blinks and continues with the sheet: but the feeling grows, it is as though a small electric current is passing through her: she can feel her clitoris swelling: for a moment she thinks that if this continues she is liable to have an orgasm. She does not have an orgasm: but all of a sudden the sensations in her clitoris cease, leaving her with a mild feeling of well-being; and at the same time an image of Tina Dukes comes into her head.

"Oh My God," Clare mutters silently to herself.

Clare has never believed in telepathy. But in that moment she is absolutely certain that Tina Dukes, in a field or a wood or a garden somewhere, close by the road into town, has just given herself an orgasm.

Three weeks on from Miss Lucy's unexpected arrival, almost every girl has been shaved by her. Still she is the talk of the Recreation Yard, but whilst all the girls prefer her to Matron, many are also puzzled by her.

"It's her way of looking at you," says Laura Marsh. "That half-smile of hers. You can't tell if it's a warm smile or if she's mocking you."