The Maltese Budgerigar

“So where should a lady start the story of the most crucial event of her life?”

Rebecca Wesley read the line over to herself again. “Well it might not be how Agatha Christie might have started a story, but I don’t think it’s a bad opening line,” she told herself aloud. “The problem is, what comes next?”

Rebecca sat back and reflected how much harder this second novel was going to be to write when compared to her first. That to be honest had not ever been much more than an idle August’s project to keep her brain from ossifying. She’d never have let her flatmate see it if she’d known Milly was going to send it to a publisher, and there was no way as she wrote it that she ever saw it becoming the monster best seller that it did.

The three book deal that her publisher had signed her to meant she was now a professional author, no longer would she have to work as a substitute teacher, it also meant though that she now had a deadline to meet, and an editor looking over her shoulder.

“Every book starts with one line,” she told herself as she sipped her coffee and stared at her computer screen.

“Yes but it also needs a second line, and then another, and then another after that,” she heard Lady Dorothy Paine her detective character telling her in her head, “so what is this crucial event of my life Rebecca?”

“Aye, there’s the rub…”

Rebecca’s problem was actually very simple - she didn’t know what was going to happen. The first novel was basically a retelling of a true life murder case that had happened in Ireland in the Fifties, but which she had had Lady Dorothy solve. This book she had no idea in her head where the story was going to go.

“The basic problem,” she told herself, “is that every possible murder mystery story has already been written. How can I hope to be original?”

“Well you do have a knotty problem to solve darling,” she heard Lady Dorothy slowly drawl in her head. Inwardly Rebecca chuckled, “if Lady Ordford knew I’d based my detective on her, I wonder if she’d sue me?”

She had met Lady Ordford when she had visited her sixth form college, as a patron of the parent school. She had been the epitome of good manners and taste, but the way she talked had been the thing that stuck most in her mind. So when she envisaged Lady Dorothy, she was this ice cool blonde with a languid manner, and a body to die for.

“A knotty problem is an idea though,” she mused.

“Darling,” Lady Dorothy said in a shocked tone, “you aren’t having me trussed up, bound and gagged again…are you?”

“Well, people liked it in the first book.”

“They liked that you had that bastard feeling me up, and me having an orgasm as his fingers sunk into me…it was almost pure pornography.”

“Well,” Rebecca said with a laugh, “you didn’t have to enjoy it?”

“Darling I had no control over it, you were the one writing it.” Rebecca could see Lady Dorothy sitting across the table from her now, in her Dior jacket and skirt, smiling as she shook her head. “Although it was rather – stimulating…”

“So how about this time the villain has you stripped nude and tied to a bed?”

Lady Dorothy raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, and said “Why do I think I won’t like this?”

Smiling, Rebecca shook her head and said “It’s not as though you are a virgin Dorothy.”

“Are you going to have my father finding that out?”

“It’s a thought,” Rebecca sat back in her chair and mused.

“So while you are thinking that out can you tell me one small thing?”

“And that is?”

Lady Dorothy leaned over and whispered “what happens to me while I’m tied on this damn bed?”

“You won’t be saying anything that’s for sure, he’s stuffed your silk headscarf in your mouth, and secured it by tying one of your stockings round your head?”

“Oh lovely darling, a £300 scarf ruined… All right, what happens next?”

“Well, let’s review, shall we? He’s forced you to strip at gunpoint, tied your wrists and ankles to the four posters of the bed, and gagged you… Do you have anything particular that you’d like to happen to you?”

“REBECCA!”

“Alright,” she said with a laugh, “it was just a question.”

“I am surprised you would consider that a proper question, darling. Which raises one in my mind - what does my captor look like?”

“Well I had in mind having him as a middle-aged bald dwarf with a squint, and…”

“If you dare write that,” Lady Dorothy nearly exploded, “I’m never talking to you again Rebecca Wesley.”

“Alright Dorothy, how do you see him?”

“Tall, dark, muscular, suave, sophisticated, possessing a huge…”

“DOROTHY!”

“Sorry,” the character laughed inside Rebecca’s brain. “But you said I’m not a virgin, and can you imagine him climbing on top of me as I lay on that bed?”

“I remember many years ago a TV series – The Charmer?”

“Hmmm – Nigel Havers as a conman who tied women up? Put a bit more muscle on him, darling, and you have the right idea…”

“The problem is I can’t imagine it well enough Dorothy,” Rebecca sighed as she sat back, “I have all these bondage fantasies, but never having really done it, I lack the expertise to write it properly.”

“Hmmm - you know you were dreaming about the postman tying you up and then assaulting you with his manhood last night?”

“Yes…but have you seen Sam our real postman? He looks nothing like the hunk in my dreams.”

“Ah, and what he did to you…”

Rebecca nodded. “He tricked his way into the house, took some rope from his pocket and tied my wrists behind my back, then blindfolded me with my black scarf. He walked me round, then sat me down and I felt him tie my ankles together, before he made me kneel down…”

“Yes – and then forced his dong into your mouth?”

Rebecca nodded, unaware she was licking her lips. “Oh yes – he made me suck him off as he held my head, and then he made me lie down, pulled my skirt and panties off, and…”

“But all in the best possible taste Darling,” Lady Dorothy laughed. “Did he have a name?”

“Mmmmm his name was Steve Steele,” Rebecca told herself, “and for a rapist you know he had awfully good manners?”

“Well write him in as the chap who molests me, I’d like it to be a man with good manners lifting up my skirt and pulling down my knickers…”

“Exposing your shaved pussy?”

“Women didn’t shave in the fifties darling,” Dorothy drawled, “at least ladies like me didn’t.”

“Alright then, exposing your bush Dorothy, and using his large hands to stroke you as you struggle against the gag in your mouth, his lips embracing and sucking on your erect nipples, and then brutally thrusting two fingers…”

“Rebecca darling, just calm down please,” Lady Dorothy panted, “I think we are both getting a little over excited here.”

“Sorry Dorothy,” Rebecca smiled inwardly as she felt the dampness inside her own knickers.

“Anyway it certainly sounds like it might be ‘the most crucial event of my life’,” Lady Dorothy drawled, “but tell me darling - how do I get tied to the bed in the first place, and what mystery is there going to be for the reader if I see the face of my attacker and can describe him?”

“And that’s all the things that have me stumped at the moment.”

“And for another thing… why are you calling this book The Maltese Budgerigar?”

“Don’t you like it?”

“I do,” Lady Dorothy nodded, “but does it have anything to do with the plot?”

“At this point no, but I’m sure something will come to me. It never stopped Dashiell Hammett, after all.”

“By the way, talking of things coming to you,” Lady Dorothy said with a smile, “why are you also having thoughts about dominating Milly? It’s very kinky darling, and if you are thinking about having me do some of those things, then I have to tell you I’m not that kind of girl.”

“I can always make you that kind of girl you know,” Rebecca laughed, “have you having had crushes on other girls at school, a passionate fling with your roommate at Oxford?”

“Well the school thing might have happened…”

“Really?”

“Rebecca – brought up at a boarding school during the war, what do you think?” Lady Dorothy smiled and continued, “but no way Mummy and Daddy would have wasted good money back then on sending a girl whose role in life was to find a socially acceptable husband, to university. No I’d have been ‘finished’ in Paris, then come home and be brought out as a deb, with my own ball at one of the big Mayfair hotels.”

“Okay,” Rebecca said quietly, “but given all that… Don’t you feel the littlest bit interested in what it might be like to put on a corset, black stockings and high heels, and using your riding crop to…”

“NO!”

“Spoilsport,” this time Rebecca laughed aloud.

“Is that why you went to Soho and bought all that stuff you have hidden in the bottom of your wardrobe?” Dorothy asked, “are you actually one day going to propose to Milly that she submit to you and after you’ve tied her up use that rather vicious cane to beat her arse, to make it red raw, to leave your mark on her?”

“Well I can dream can’t I?”

“It’s all you do Rebecca, and you have a contract to fulfill, so isn’t it about time to write that second sentence?”

“Oh I suppose so…but still can’t you see Milly bent over, her wrists secured to her ankles, and me striking her bottom?”

“Honestly Rebecca make up your mind, do you wish to be dominant or dominated in life?”

“I truly don’t know Dorothy, but I do have the next line for the book.

“So where should a lady start the story of the most crucial event of her life? I suppose with a telling of her dreams and secret desires…”

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