Trouble with Tim
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By Gillian B
Sat Jun 06 00:09:34 GMT Daylight Time 1998
This story goes way back to when I was 10 or 11 and in my last year at primary school (1964 or 65). My brother Bob would have been a year younger than me (as of course he still is!). I think we knew Jon(McA) at that time, but he doesn't come into this story. This is all so far in the distant past that I have to embroider a bit more than usual to fill in the gaps in my memory - I hope you don't mind.
There was a boy in my class, name of Tim, who lived a few doors away from Bob and me, in the same street. Tim and I were not exactly friends, nor were we exactly enemies. We were quite capable of knocking each other black and blue one day and playing together like the best of friends the next. It was a somewhat uneasy relationship even at the best of times.
I was playing at Tim's house after school one day. His mother was out somewhere and the two of us were alone in the house. (Tim had no brothers or sisters.) Quite out of the blue, Tim bet me that I couldn't tie him up so he couldn't escape. (I think the reason behind this may have been that I had been bragging in the school playground about having tied Bob up.) Now, I always rise to a challenge - especially one as forthright as that. I accepted the challenge and Tim found a big ball of string in a kitchen drawer.
We repaired to Tim's bedroom for me to do the tying. I started by tying Tim's wrists behind his back. I snipped off about a ten foot length of string and just wrapped it tightly round his wrists lots of times, finishing it off with my very best reef knot. The result was encouragingly secure. Tim invited me to carry on, so I applied the same method to his ankles and knees. (Tim managed to stay standing up through all of this.)
I still had about half of the ball of string left, so I tied the free end onto Tim's ankle binding and went round and round him, paying out string and pulling it tight as I went. When the string ran out, Tim was comprehensively cocooned in string. I tied off the end to some convenient point on the string bound round him.
I was quite pleased with the result and challenged Tim to free himself. (Probably with the time-honoured words "Now get out of that!") Tim was amazingly still standing at this stage, but fell over as soon as he started struggling. Tim wriggled around on the floor energetically, but made almost no progress towards getting loose. I sat and watched with interest until it was time for me to go home for tea.
I told Tim that I would have to untie him so I could go home, but Tim insisted that I leave him tied up so he could finish escaping. I said his mother would probably be furious if she found him like that. He replied that she wouldn't and anyway, he was nearly free. I shrugged my shoulders and left him to it.
I went home and had tea and afterwards there was a ring at the doorbell. I was nearest, so I opened the door. It was Tim's mother, with Tim in tow, and she was monumentally angry. I stood dumbfounded while she yelled at me. My Mum heard all the shouting and came to investigate. She managed to calm Tim's mother down enough to get a coherent explanation from her. The gist was that she had returned home to find her poor son bound hand and foot. She was adamant that I had done the tying and that Tim had been the unwilling victim. Furthermore I had not only overpowered her son and tied him up but had then been callous enough to leave him like that while I went home. Tim's mother demanded to know what my Mum was going to do about it. Tim said nothing but stood there looking suitably crestfallen. I was horrified to notice that he had angry red marks visible on his wrists and knees (he was wearing shorts) and there were marks on his legs from the string cocoon. My Mum assured Tim's mother that she would find out what I had been up to and would ensure that justice was done. Suitably mollified, but still angry, Tim's mother departed, taking Tim with her.
As soon as the front door was shut, I was subject to my Mum's wrath. With some difficulty, I managed to persuade her that while I had indeed tied Tim up, everything else had been a fabrication. I told her all the details several times until she calmed down. We concluded that Tim had been found by his mother still tied up and to avert her anger, he had shifted the entire blame onto me. Mum pointed out that I had been unwise to leave Tim on his own still tied up, even if he had asked me to. I shamefacedly agreed with her, having seen the state of Tim's wrists.
My Mum decided that she should go and see Tim's mother, explain that Tim had not been entirely blameless, and try to negotiate a peace settlement. She asked me to go and play in my bedroom while she did so, so that she could claim that I had been sent to my room if she needed to.
Mum's peace negotiation was successful, and I made up (somewhat warily) with Tim over the following week or so. However, I still had revenge in my heart and I conceived an ingenious plan.
The next time I played at Tim's house, I put my plan into action. We were playing in Tim's bedroom and on some pretext or other, I managed to send him off to find something. (I can't remember what he went for or where, but the point was that I persuaded him to go into the garden or the garage or somewhere.)
While Tim was away, I took two pieces of string out of my pocket. With one, a ten-foot length, I quickly tied my ankles together. I tied a hankie over my mouth as a gag. (That's what gags always looked like in comics - I didn't know any better at that time.) Finally, I used my second piece of string. This was also a ten-foot length, but I had already formed it into a pre-tied coil which was just big enough to wriggle my wrists into it (with difficulty). I used it to fake my wrists being tied behind my back.
Tim's mother was pottering about doing housework. My next objective was to alert her. I did that successfully, by kicking over a chair and squealing loudly. She came to Tim's room and found me apparently tied up and gagged, with Tim nowhere in sight. She looked suitably shocked, saw how I was tied up and rushed off to find a pair of scissors. She pulled my gag off and started snipping my wrist binding. As she did so, she asked if Tim had done this to me. I said that he had and tried to look suitably distraught. Tim arrived back on the scene just as his mother had freed my hands. Tim managed to look confused, surprised and innocent all at once (as well he might).
My plan was working perfectly so far, but it worked no further. Tim's mother comforted me, and, instead of the blasting I expected her to give Tim, she gave me a little homily on the theme of 'boys-will-be-boys'. I was not at all pleased - I had framed Tim just as effectively as he had framed me, but he was clearly not about to be punished. Tim's mother appeared to have double standards regarding boys' and girls' behaviour and regarding her own child versus other people's children. Tim quickly worked out what I had done and deduced my motive and had a lot of trouble keeping a straight face.
Back home, I indignantly told my Mum what had happened. She pointed out that as I had been dishonest in my attempt to frame Tim, I didn't really deserve to succeed and as Tim was innocent, he wouldn't have deserved to be punished. I grudgingly accepted that, but was incensed at how funny my Mum seemed to think the whole thing was.
Unwittingly, I had also set another dangerous precedent. I hadn't thought through the implications of my attempt to set Tim up, but he had.
Some days later, we had again made up with each other and were friends once more (still somewhat warily). We were playing at Tim's house after school again when, without warning, Tim wrestled me to the floor. (Not difficult - he was much bigger than me.) He produced a length of string and proceeded to tie my wrists behind my back. I was protesting quite loudly, so his next move was to cleave gag me with a hankie. It wasn't all that effective, but it probably reduced the volume of my complaints to a more acceptable level.
Tim dealt with my legs next, binding them at ankle and knee level with two more lengths of string. A whole ball of string appeared next. This was clearly going to be a re-run of my first tying of Tim. Sure enough, he tied the end of the string to my bound ankles and systematically wound it round me, working his way up my legs and body, pinning my arms to my sides until it reached shoulder level. There was lots of string still left, so he continued to wind it round and round me working his way back down to my ankles, then back up again until the string was exhausted. I made it as difficult for him as I could, but even lying on the floor and wriggling, I couldn't prevent Tim from cocooning me thoroughly.
Finally, I ended up as well tied as Tim had been by me. I was still making quite a lot of noise, so Tim turned his attention to my gag. He produced a tartan wool headscarf which I recognised as belonging to his mother. (It dawned on me at this point that he had planned to tie me up and had prepared all the materials beforehand.) He untied the hankie that he had previously gagged me with and, before I could spit it out, stuffed the whole thing into my mouth. The headscarf was then tied tightly over my mouth. (I managed to work it down a bit, but Tim thwarted that by pulling it up over my nose.)
When I had tied Tim up, I had used a ball of smooth cotton string supplied by Tim (or at least 'liberated' from his household). The string he had used on me was sisal twine - thick, rough and really hairy. I quickly became aware that any attempts to work my hands free was leading to unpleasant abrasion of my wrists. The way he had tied them, one wrist was protected by the cuff of my cardigan, but the other wrist had string against bare flesh and it was obvious that I couldn't hope to pull a hand free and keep my skin intact. I was wearing woolly tights under my dress, so my legs were protected from the worst that the string could do. I quickly concluded that I could do nothing to get loose without risk of hurting myself badly. I settled for just lying still and looking incensed.
Shortly after Tim had finished tying me up and was sitting gloating, his mother came into the room to put some clean clothes away. "Now he's for it," I thought, pleased. But I was wrong. She actually stepped over me to get to Tim's wardrobe. As she left the room, she smiled at me and told Tim not to keep me tied up for too long. It was then that I realised what Tim had already worked out - if he didn't get in trouble when his mother only thought he had tied me up, he wouldn't get in trouble if he really did it.
Tim kept me tied up for about an hour, while I tried to move as little as possible to keep my wrist from being hurt. When Tim decided I'd had enough (or possibly when he got bored), he freed me by snipping through the string. By now one wrist was grazed and bleeding slightly and together with the hand had swollen quite noticeably. For the first time in the proceedings, Tim became worried and fetched his mother. She gave him a very mild ticking off when she saw the injured wrist. A sticking plaster was applied to the graze and the headscarf that had been used to gag me was pressed into service as a sling, to take some of the strain off the wrist, which was by now very painful.
Tim's mother escorted me home. My Mum took me into the kitchen and made me a cup of tea (that most English of remedies). She quickly asked me what had happened to me, then took Tim's mother into the sitting room and closed the door. I could hear raised voices for some time, then Tim's mother left the house.
That incident finished whatever friendship I had with Tim permanently. We went to different secondary schools the following year and I effectively lost contact completely at that point. I think his family moved away a year or two after that.
You would think an experience like that would have made me give up tie-up games for life, but it didn't seem to put me off at all.
Oddly enough, I still have a memento of that incident. The headscarf which had been used as a sling was overlooked and never returned to Tim's mother. It must have been mislaid amongst my clothes for several years - I remember re-discovering it when I was packing up the contents of my bedroom to go and set up my own home at the time I started my first teaching job. The headscarf is now slightly scruffy, but I still have it and it's still warm and fairly serviceable and I sometimes wear it for winter walks on the moors or for gardening.
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Gillian B's stories
- 01 - Jill's Revenge (fF/mm)
- 02 - Murder at the Vicarage (ff/f, f/F, f/ff)
- 03 - Gillian's Birthday Present (*/mf)
- 04 - Peter and Paul (mm/F, F/mm)
- 05 - Tying Myself up in Knots (f/self)
- 06 - The Magic Show (f/f)
- 07 - Tying Myself up in Knots (Again) (f/self)
- 08 - Trouble with Tim (f/m, f/self, m/f)
- 09 - The Great Biscuit Robbery (mf/F, F/mf)
- 10 - The Lamp Post (m+f+/f+)
- 11 - Teacher Torture (or: Ol’ Soggy) (ff/FF)
- 12 - Anna's Story (ff/f, F/ff)
- 13 - A Game of Soldiers (mm/f, Ff/mm)
- 14 - A Good Old Fashioned English Hanging (f)
- 15 - Kidnapping Cathy (f/m, m/ff, ff/m, f/f)
- 16 - A Surprise Party (fff/f)
- 17 - Challenging Mum (F/mf, mf/F)
- 18 - Getting Tied Up in my Studies (f/f, ff/F)
- 19 - Money for Old Rope (M/F)
Index of all stories in the "Archive for Everyone" section