The love of a long soak in hot water is an ancient pursuit, and one not only enjoyed by humans but by other primates, as wildlife films have shown us. The Romans had their elaborate bathhouses like the one at Bath. Separate Turkish baths for better-off men and women were common in many towns and cities in Victorian England, as well as the more basic public bathing establishments for the poor, and many modern Japanese prefer to take their holidays at a spa.

In recent years, the Scandinavian variant on this theme — the sauna — has become popular and many small establishments may be found on our high streets, nestling amongst the coffee bars, wine merchants and charity shops. Although some may be genuine, many are really establishments where clients can pay for an erotic massage or more intimate sexual services. In other words, they are brothels although keeping a brothel is illegal in the U.K.

They are generally owned and managed by a woman, and the masseuses are usually much older than the girls who ply their trade on the streets. Many of them are single parents struggling to make ends meet; they often suffer from depression and may have an alcohol problem, though few use hard drugs.

This is Rachel’s story, a story which has a happy ending. As the reader it is up to you to decide whether Rachel actually worked as a prostitute at all, depending I suppose on your opinion about erotic massage. She does eventually enjoy a lot of sex with both men and women but never for material gain, unless you count a free Mediterranean holiday on a luxury yacht as the guest of a wealthy man as payment for sexual services.

ooOoo

Chapter 1 — Rachel’s Dilemma

Rachel was at her wits’ end. She was nearly forty with two children at primary school, without a job, and no income other than benefits… and the government was planning to cut those. There were days when she was forced to go without food just in order to feed and clothe the children, and pay the cost of heating and electricity.

It was all the fault of that low-life of a husband. When they had got married they had both kept on working so that they could buy their dream home in the leafy suburbs. She had a well-paid job as a physiotherapist at the large hospital in a nearby city, but when they eventually decided they could afford to have children, she retired from her senior post to become a full-time mother. She thought that everything was okay until the day he buggered off to live with his floozie in a loft apartment in a smart development in the city centre.

She had always left all the financial matters to him, but she quickly discovered with a shock that they had fallen into serious debt because of his extravagance — the fancy car, and those so-called business trips to America, and unknown to her, the mortgage on his apartment. It turned out that the bastard had been cheating on her for years.

They sold the house, but after settling all the debts there was virtually nothing left, and she was forced to move with the children to a two bedroomed flat on a run-down estate of what had been social housing until the government forced the council to sell them. If she could have got a divorce, he would have been forced to pay maintenance for the children, but she couldn’t even afford the cost of a lawyer, and he couldn’t be bothered.

She couldn’t even go back to working at her profession. The hospital had outsourced physiotherapy services to a private company, but with the financial cutbacks in the health service — the government called them efficiency savings — and even they were laying off staff, starting with the those on the highest grades. She didn’t even have the option of setting up in private practice. There was no way she could afford the expense of renting somewhere which she could fit out as a treatment room, let alone the cost of equipment and insurance; and childcare was prohibitively expensive.

ooOoo

Rachel really didn’t know what to do, but one day when she was on her way back to the bus stop with two carrier bags of groceries from the cheap supermarket she saw a glossy poster in the window of the new wellness clinic which had recently opened on the high street. It was an advertisement for trained masseuses who could work for a few hours each week. She thought she might as well apply since that was at least something she could do.

Massage was one of the skills that she had most enjoyed learning when she was at college, although she had rarely had occasion to use it in clinical practice, and it was no longer part of physiotherapy training. She was wearing her usual pair of well-worn jeans and a faded tee-shirt so, knowing the importance of first impressions from her experience of interviewing job applicants, she decided to come back the following day dressed in a more appropriate fashion.

The following morning, after taking the children to school, she looked through the few remaining smart clothes in her closet and eventually chose a plain navy skirt and jacket and a simple white blouse. She applied her makeup with care, choosing subtle shades to enhance her olive skin — the heritage of an Indian grandmother — and tied her long glossy black hair back in a French pleat. Once she was satisfied that her appearance was suitably professional without being too nondescript, she put on her only pair of smart shoes and, after a quick glance in the mirror in the hall, left the house before her courage failed her.

From the outside, the wellness clinic was rather anonymous — more like a solicitor or accountant’s office — with window blinds concealing the interior from curious eyes. Rachel was surprised to find that the interior was equally bland — just a single room plainly decorated in relaxing pastel colours with a reception desk staffed by an attractive business-like looking girl facing the door. To one side there was a waiting area with several comfortable armchairs around a couple of low tables and a coffee machine and chilled water dispenser.

In the opposite wall were two doors, one with a sign saying “Office” and the other “Treatment Rooms”. For a moment Rachel thought she must be in the wrong place — except for the large head and shoulders photographs of contented looking men and women on the walls, it looked just like a dentist’s surgery, with none of the bustle of a conventional hair or beauty salon that she had expected.

Rachel approached the desk and when the girl looked up, explained that she had come about the advertisement in the window for trained masseuses. The girl said nothing but just opened a drawer in her desk and took out a form which she asked Rachel to complete, politely indicating that she should take a seat while she did so.

The form was fairly simple, just a couple of sides of A4 asking for the usual information — name, address and telephone number, National Insurance number etcetera, and for details of professional qualifications and past employment history. Once she had completed the form, Rachel handed it to the receptionist, who asked her to wait and then got up and knocked on the door to the office. After a brief interval, she opened the door and disappeared inside, coming out a couple of minutes later. She told Rachel that the Manager would see her soon and suggested that while she was waiting she should help herself to a cup of coffee.

After about fifteen nervous minutes, Rachel began to think that she was wasting her time and that she might as well leave, but then the telephone rang on the receptionist’s desk and after listening for a couple of seconds she smiled and said to Rachel, “Mrs Robinson will see you now,” before going back to manicuring her nails.

As Rachel was walking across the room to the office door she thought to herself that the job of the receptionist seemed to be rather boring and hoped that the lack of activity wasn’t indicative of the state of the clinic. She knocked on the door and was immediately greeted by a well-spoken and rather melodious middle-class voice asking her to come in.

From her experience up till then she had expected to find a typical office with the manager seated behind a desk, but as she closed the door a smartly dressed woman who appeared to be in her late fifties got up from the comfortable settee where she had been sitting and indicated that Rachel should come and sit next to her.

As she walked the few steps across the room Rachel glanced around the room, which was unlike any office she had seen. In contrast to the plain reception area, the walls were richly painted in a rich crimson colour and hung with several large photographs in silver-gilt frames of men and women seated around an indoor pool in various stages of undress, many of them totally naked.

“Well, Mrs Hunter — may I call you Rachel? And please call me Angela. You are lucky to find me here today, normally I would be at my clinic which is out of town and my secretary would have asked you to make an appointment. Anyway here I am, so let’s get on with the interview. In the first place, I am surprised that you would want a job as a simple masseuse, so I have to ask why? You are highly qualified and surely would have no difficulty in finding a job commensurate with your experience in the NHS.”

“Rachel is fine Mrs Robinson — Angela,” Rachel replied, “anything is better than Mrs Hunter, and once I can afford it, I will divorce my rat of a husband and be able to go back to officially using my maiden name,” and then proceeded to tell her sorry tale of betrayal.

When Rachel had finished, Mrs Robinson paused for a moment before speaking. “I am very sorry to hear your story, but before I offer you a post with us, I had better explain fully the nature of my business.

“When my uncle died a few years ago,” she continued, “I inherited a large Victorian villa about fifteen miles outside Manchester set in ten acres of parkland which I have had converted into a wellness clinic, or more properly, a country club and spa. Like you, I trained as a physiotherapist and I worked in the NHS for many years. Also like you, I am divorced, but I went back to work when my children started full-time education and I was able to support myself and them without help from their father until they went to university.

"They have both made good careers in London and are now married with families of their own, leaving me free to please myself. When I was working I realised that while patients can benefit from the kind of basic therapeutic treatment we were trained to provide, people need something more holistic. In particular, by ignoring the sexual aspect of the human psyche we deny people the route to total health and happiness.”

Rachel was somewhat taken aback by this and was about to interrupt and ask for clarification, but seeing her confusion Mrs Robinson patted her on the knee and went on, “Let me explain more fully. Whilst we do provide a normal therapeutic massage service and accept referrals from GPs, which is why we have two fully equipped treatment rooms here, the main thrust of my business is to offer what is called sensual massage — or to put it more plainly, erotic massage. The aim of such massage is to apply conventional massage techniques to integrate the physical, spiritual and sexual needs of the client, whether male or female, with the purpose of achieving total bodily and mental relaxation through orgasm.”

At this point, she paused to let Rachel digest the information, before asking whether she had any questions at this point.

Rachel gulped and then asked, “What specifically would this mean for me?”

“Well Rachel, you might decide that you are only prepared to accept a job with me as a conventional massage therapist. If so you would work here and receive a flat fee of £25 per one-hour session — 25% of what I charge the patient. I should caution you however that the number of clients on our books is not large and even in a good week I could not offer you more than five sessions.

"On the other hand, if you decided to become one of my team of therapists you would be based at my country club — I assume that you have a car — and would be paid £50 for each one-hour session plus tips, which would often be double that. Your clients would be private members of the club who pay an annual fee of £2500 per person or £4500 for a couple, plus £100 per session, which might sound expensive, but the service I am offering is very special, and in addition, the cost discourages unsavoury elements. Most applications come on the basis of a personal recommendation by an existing member, but if anyone from the general public came into this office enquiring about the services on offer over and above conventional therapeutic massage therapy they would be given a brochure to take away.

"All applicants must complete a comprehensive form with questions about their good character and sexual health and every application is then vetted by me and a small committee of members. After that, if the client is still considered acceptable they must undergo a series of tests for sexually transmitted infections before they can receive their membership card. The good news from your point of view is that with membership now standing at over 1000, and with most members coming at least once a week, I could certainly offer you at least twenty-five sessions per week.”

Rachel interrupted her at this point. “If I were to accept such a position, I assume that as part of the massage I would be expected to masturbate the clients to orgasm. Surely, offering such a sexual service is a form of prostitution?”

“Theoretically from one point of view you are correct,” replied Mrs Robinson, “but I prefer to see the service I am offering as a fully holistic massage. There are also strict rules which the clients must observe. Firstly, in order to preserve their anonymity, all therapists are known only by their first names — we already have a Rachel, so you would be known by your second name Elizabeth.

"Similarly, all members are given an alias once their application is accepted and are known only as Mr or Mrs Smith and so on — I should tell you that many of the members are people with important public positions including senior officers in the police force. Secondly, although therapists wear a revealing costume rather than a normal tunic and may work in the nude if they are comfortable with it, no touching of the therapist is allowed, and sexual intercourse with a therapist is strictly forbidden on the premises of the clinic.

"Any infringement of the rules by a member will result in the immediate withdrawal of membership and a lifetime ban. Equally, any therapist who on the premises solicits for sex or offers sexual services other than erotic stimulation of the client to orgasm by massage, including oral sex, will be dismissed. I must emphasise that my clinic is not a brothel. Is that clear so far?”

“Perfectly clear,” replied Rachel, “although I will have to think about it for a few days. I am no prude, and I often used my skills to please my husband before he left me for his mistress, but if I were to accept a position as a therapist at your clinic it would take me way beyond my normal comfort zone.”

“I understand your reservations completely Rachel, but I can assure you there is nothing sordid or unpleasant about the kind of erotic massage offered to my members, and I think that once you were used to it, you would find it personally very satisfying as well. But before you make up your mind, can I suggest you might like to visit the clinic and have a look round?

"In fact, it might help if perhaps you allowed me to give you a massage while you are there — from what I understand about your situation you could certainly benefit from the utter release of physical, mental and spiritual tension it gives. Let me give you my card. Once you have had time for reflection give me a call, whatever your ultimate decision. It has been a pleasure meeting you and I sincerely hope that you will decide to join us.”

To be continued.