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The sun was shining brightly as Lady Peggy approached the dark wood. She never came here; she was kept too busy caring for her wheelchair bound husband, Sir Jack, and besides there was something about the lush, verdant greenness of the fields and woods that frightened her; that threatened her dried up, shrunken soul. But today Sir Jack slept and the sun called her out.

Tentatively she stepped into the unknown wood. It was dark and damp in there and something about the soaring, massive girth of the tall trees made her feel nervous, like a scared child. The fetid, humid, dank smell of the place made her wrinkle her delicate nostrils and the strange sounds made her flinch.

She had gone deeper than she intended when suddenly she gave a scream. A figure had appeared as if from nowhere. It was a man, a dark, swarthy gipsy of a man dressed in rough, earthy tweeds and carrying a shotgun. He came up close to her - closer than any man had for a long, long time. He stared at her and then spoke.

"Tha mun be Lady Peggy, I'm thinking."
"Yes, yes I am" she said, trembling uncontrollably under his rough male stare.
"A strange place for thee to be straying milady" he rasped. "Ah thowt thee was more one for the drawing room and the dried up old biddies that go there - Jill Archer, Shula (he spat) Hebden-Lloyd"
How Peggy wished she was dispensing Lemon Drizzle cake in her drawing room at that very minute.
"You shouldn't speak to me like that or talk about my friends like that" she said, almost fainting at the musky odour that emanated from him.
"'Appen" he replied. "We've not met, I'm Turner, the gamekeeper."
"Yes" she said. Sir Jack had mentioned Turner and hinted at his rough ways. There were rumours that he had been intimate with village women although Sir Jack liked to protect her delicacy from such vile talk.
"Appen tha's coom to see t'oot?" He said.
"T'oot?" she said, bewildered.
"Aye, t'oot wheer ah live" he said, fiercely.

And taking her by the arm, he led her, almost fainting, to a rough wooden building that lay in the deepest part of the wood. In a rough cage in front of the hut were a number of pheasants and their chicks.

"Doest like them?" he asked, angrily. Taking up a small chick he thrust it at her. "I reared them" he said. "Aye, I reared the whole lot of them and that's not good enough for your gentlemen friends, for they tell me I must take more and rear them. But it'll nivver do, I tell thee, it'll nivver do."

Lady Peggy clutched the small feathery creature to her bosom. Her soul soared in the life affirming aliveness of that tiny beast, its little claws scrabbled in her hands. She looked up at the tall man looming over her, his coal black eyes devouring her and the chick, and she began to feel things that she had not felt since VE Day. Her breath quickened, she felt the blood coursing through her veins, her heart thudded against her Damart vest. A tiny moan escaped her lips which were suddenly dry.

He reached out and touched her arm and an electric thrill coursed through her body.

"Appen thee'll coom into t'oot wi' me for a bit o' John Thomas?" he enquired.
All at once she knew. She knew that if she went into the hut she would not be the same person when she came out. She knew that things happened in that hut, things that could never be mentioned. She looked at him again, from under her lashes. She was afraid but she wanted to go there, to find what was under those tweeds, to savour the musk and maleness of him.
Slowly, she nodded.

"Aye he said, a grim, grizzled smile slowly settling on his face. "And now we shall find out if 'twere worth ten pennorth of shot up Sir Jack's arse."

***

Lady Peggy emerged from the hut in the woods. Her hair, normally ratchetted into a rigid perm by Wayne at Maison Berylle of Borchester, was in disarray, with stray wild flowers clinging to the remaining curls. Her lipstick was smeared across her face. The buttons on her blouse were undone and her tights were laddered. As she emerged a shaft of sunlight piercing the gloom seemed to accuse her and she shrank back. The expression of shock which had rendered her face blank was replaced with one of fear and yet somehow of liberation.
As she set off along the track, a voice sounded behind her.

"Milady."

She turned and there he was in the doorway, Turner the gamekeeper, strong and lusty with his lazy, insolent smile. He was bare-chested, his braces dangling down, obscenely. His full, red lips curved into a smile that was almost a sneer.

"'Appen tha's forgot summat." he said.

Dangling from his finger was a whisp of white. Lady Peggy recognised it and blushed to the roots of her hair to see him holding her vest in such a roguish manner.
As she turned to take it from him she spoke, although willing herself not to.

"Shall I come again, tomorrow?"

He looked at her for a few moments. Then he reached into the pocket of his tweeds and withdrew a worn black pocket book.

"Now" he murmured, "lets see, tomorrow, Thursday..... Pat Archer, Susan Carter, Freda Fry...... nay milady I fear there's no time for you."

The shock of it froze her to the marrow. "You mean" she whispered.... "all those women... all those...."

"Aye" he replied, savagely, "all those respectable butter-wouldn't-melt women. Surprise you does it? Well I'll tell thee summat about Ambridge women."
She didn't want to hear. She felt humiliated and demeaned. She wanted to cover her ears but she watched him as a rabbit watches a snake.

"Aye" he continued, "These Ambridge women, all nice and respectable on the surface, what they do is, you see, they take a man, an ordinary man and they grab him here..." and he clenched his hand suddenly and ferociously making her jump as she recogised the gesture. "And then they squeeze tighter and tighter and then....." there was a crash as he slammed his hand on the door jamb.Lady Peggy cried out in fear.

"They cut them off."

She whimpered. He laughed, an unearthly, mirthless laugh.

"That's what they do. You only have to look at these poor Ambridge men; they all started normal and they've been tamed, domesticated, turned into little mice. And then the women come looking for someone to provide the excitement they're missing and the find their way here to the hut and who am I to deny them?"

He smiled again, a triumphant cock on a dungheap.

"But then, milady, oh then.... " he thrust his face close to hers - "then they want to tame me and get me by the manhood and make me a mouse but I tell thee, these Ambridge women, they'll nivver get me, however hard they try."
And with a final snarl he thrust the vest at her and turned back into the hut.

Lady Peggy, her face hot and red with shame and humiliation turned away and plunged into the wood. How dare he, she thought. How dare he treat her like any common, lusting woman and her the lady of the manor? She would have her revenge, see if she didn't. A word with Sir Jack or Squire Aldridge and they would do her bidding, no doubt about it.

A bonfire smouldered on the edge of the clearing. Without a second thought she thrust her vest into the embers and strode on.