He burst out laughing at that, waving the butt plug in the air.
‘You’re funny,’ he said, between fresh gusts of mirth.
‘You’ll have to share the joke.’ A third voice spoke from the doorway.
I fell backwards on to my arse, my hand clamping my mouth so hard and fast I almost knocked a couple of teeth out.
I watched through wide-stretched eyes as everything seeming to crash into slo-mo. Will dropped the butt plug and raised himself to his feet, shoulders back, squared for combat.
The man in the door was, presumably, Jasper Jay, though he wasn’t the way I remembered him from that medical soap he used to be in when I was a girl. Of course, a lot of water had passed under the bridge since then – fifteen years’ worth. He wasn’t a fresh-faced bright-eyed youth in a white coat now. He stood with one arm braced against the doorframe, in an expensive suit, its light biscuit colour accentuating his dark looks. He had that famous-person thing of looking somehow bigger and shinier and brighter than a real man. I hadn’t fancied him in the medical soap, or in the many news clips of him accepting the Palme d’Or, but now I could almost see the vortex of charisma inside which he existed.
But now wasn’t a good time to be ogling my boss.
Now was about the worst time ever for that kind of thing.
‘Shit, I thought you were in France,’ was Will’s pretty dreadful attempt at defending his actions.
I remained silent, cowering on a Turkish rug of early nineteenth-century vintage, concentrating on keeping Will’s bathrobe tightly wrapped around me.
‘Shit, you’re fired,’ replied Jay laconically.
‘You can’t just –’
‘Yes, I can. Pack your things. Load up your car. Get out of here.’
‘But my rights …’
‘In what universe isn’t this gross misconduct?’ He stepped into the room, unfolding his arm grandly to usher Will through the door. ‘Not ours, at least. Goodbye. I’ll forward any holiday entitlement you had outstanding on to you.’
‘Mr Jay, please … four years of good service.’
‘Ruined in the space of one night.’ Jay shook his head. ‘Like a film script, isn’t it?’ There was a pause. ‘I can’t help noticing that you’re still here.’
Will looked at me, as if expecting me to leap to his passionate defence. Seeing this wasn’t about to happen, he made as dignified an exit as he could muster.
I watched the knots between his shoulder blades, the buzz-cut V at his nape, retreat through the door.
I looked up, expecting my neck to be next on the block.
I ought to say something but I couldn’t think what so I waited, while tension and mortification played ping-pong in my emotional centre.
He didn’t say anything either, which was odd. He just looked at me, not angrily or severely, just sort of … pensively. His eyes were wintry and sombre, but not hard.
His abstraction was only broken when I cleared my throat and swallowed, looking desperately around me for any magical escape route that might present itself.
‘Sit down,’ he said.
I was already sitting down, but I gathered from the direction of his waving hand that I was to go and sit on the side of the bed.
There were armchairs in the room, but these wouldn’t do, it seemed.
‘Are you going to sack me too?’ I asked, the words coming out of my cotton-wool mouth in a thick wad.
He made no reply but walked over to the chest and reached inside.
I’d lost track of my heart. It had giddied up and up and now it was steeplechasing fit to collapse. What on earth did he have in mind?
He drew out one of the many long, thin boxes and came to stand over me, a looming presence, shadowing me. I felt very small and very vulnerable and yet a part of me was revelling in my disgrace, making sure it recalled all the details to be mulled over at leisure later.
He took the lid off the box and withdrew the contents – a wide strap of supple leather, with stiffer, darker, embossed leather at one end and a metal chain link intended for hanging it on a hook.
‘Do you know what this is?’ He presented it across his two palms where it lay, dormant but no less deadly, its antique tang gathering in my senses and whipping them up. ‘Take it. Hold it.’
Uncertainly, I plucked the thing from him and read the gilt lettering on the leather handle. ‘Holborn Barbering Supplies’. The leather was cold and smooth and cruelly sensual to the touch.
‘Well?’ Jay’s voice was soft but commanding.
‘It’s a razor strop. Antique.’
‘Can you date it?’
‘Not precisely. Mid-Victorian, perhaps.’
‘It’s not modern.’
‘No, it’s too heavy to be modern.’
‘That’s right. You know about these things, don’t you, Sarah?’
I looked up sharply at his use of my given name, which was spoken in a peculiarly intimate tone, with a whisper of caress behind it.
‘I … you hired me, after all.’
‘Yes, I did. I hired you.’
‘Do I still …?’ I couldn’t finish the sentence.
‘Have a job here?’ He stepped back and looked up at the ceiling, seeking advice in its elaborate cornicing and plaster rose. ‘Yes, I think you do.’
I waited a moment for my breathing to regulate then said, ‘Thank you.’
The silence between us was broken by the sound of bags being thrown heavily down the stairs.
‘Excuse me one moment,’ he said, leaving the room, presumably to direct the departure of Will. I wondered if Jasper Jay directed everything in his life like this, getting the details right, making art of the day-to-day. He had certainly orchestrated our first encounter to make it memorable. I stared down at the antique strop, picturing it employed for other purposes than the sharpening of blades. Had he used this on somebody? Had it fallen heavy on some bent-over bottom, marking it with a hot red rectangle?
I heard the front door slam, the revving of an engine outside. I wondered if I should feel sorrier for Will, but I couldn’t summon much in the way of sympathy when it came down to it. He’d been caught fair and square with his hand in the … well, I could hardly call it a cookie jar.
Jasper came back, but he didn’t enter the room, just stood with his hands on the top of the doorframe, leaning in, looking me up and down and over until I bristled with a weird exhilaration. At least the towelling robe was thick and he couldn’t see the way my nipples perked into stiffness under his gaze.
‘Come downstairs,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll light the fire. Have a drink with me.’
‘Oh … this robe … I should get dressed …’
‘No, you shouldn’t.’
I stood up and dithered with the razor strop, mutely asking him what to do with it.
‘Bring it with you.’
He walked off and I followed him, the leather clutched to my chest, trying to make my footsteps as barely-there as possible on the highly polished wood.
He had lit the fire by the time I reached the sitting room. I winced at the sight of the two abandoned wine glasses on the low coffee table. Jasper picked one up and sniffed into it.
‘Christ, the fucking nerve of him,’ he muttered. ‘My best vintage.’ But when he put it down, he smiled at me, a dazzling, film-star smile that knocked me off course.
‘Sarah,’ he said, all effusiveness and warmth. ‘Sit down.’
I sat on one side of the fire while he poured me some wine from an ornate cut-glass decanter, circa 1820s.
‘Aren’t you angry with me?’ I asked, taking a nerving sip while he seated himself in the opposite wing-backed chair with his own glass.
‘I’m assuming you were led astray,’ he said.
‘You’re assuming?’
‘Yes. Because that’s the interpretation that suits me. So I’m sticking to it.’
I hid my confusion in another sip.
‘You can leave if you really want, of course. But
I’d prefer it if you stayed. I went to some considerable lengths to find you, Sarah. Now you’re here, I have no intention of letting you go.’
‘What?’
I put the glass on the card table and sat up straight. What could he possibly mean by that? The fire burned at the side of my face and I put my hand up to my cheek, protecting it.
‘The job you applied for wasn’t universally advertised, you know. I only had it placed in the university history department magazine I knew you wrote for.’
‘What?’ I said again.
I thought back to the advertisement, quite a showy one for my humble little student history-geek mag. I’d presumed it to be just one of many, fired off to every university history department in the country.
‘After I read that article of yours.’
‘You read an article of mine? In Past Pleasures?’
This made no sense at all. Why the actual hell would famous arthouse film director Jasper Jay read my obscure little postgraduate pamphlet?
‘Yes. Don’t look so shocked.’ He laughed. ‘It was forwarded to me by an associate who thought it … up my street. As it were. And it was. It was an amazing article. Superbly researched and lacking the usual prurient or hysterical tone one grows so weary of.’
‘You’re talking about … I can’t remember what I called it …’
‘“The Old Perversity Shop”. About that collection of Victorian fetish implements they found in Lincoln last year.’
I looked into the fire, wanting to laugh for some reason. This was like a dream, unravelling so quickly and so absurdly.
‘The thing about your article, Sarah,’ he said softly, ‘is that it was written with more than academic curiosity. It was written with enthusiasm. With love.’
‘You think so?’
‘I know so. Only somebody close to the subject could have written about it in the way you did. No “ugh, those old-school freaks”. No “isn’t this interesting, in a scholarly, abstract kind of way, of course”. You understood the allure of those whips and cuffs. Didn’t you?’
I was under the spotlight, on the spot. There was no feasible response to this other than a good deal of squirming and evasive body language.
But something told me that Jasper Jay wasn’t a man who would stand for squirming and evasive body language.
‘Didn’t you?’ he persisted. ‘There’s no point trying to deny it. I see it in you.’
‘Do you mean to say that you read my article, placed the advert in the hope that I’d respond and, and …?’
‘Had you hired on the spot? Yes. My agent knew she had to give the job to Sarah Wells. So when Sarah Wells walked into the office … bingo.’
He clicked his fingers and beamed with delight.
My toes were curled right under and I realised that every muscle in my body was held in a state of supreme tautness, as if in preparation for some kind of desperate death-match. Did it mean I was scared? I didn’t feel scared. Not exactly.
‘But why?’
‘You’ve seen my collection. I had hoped to leave it until later in the summer, when you’d finished the more … orthodox … portion of your task and my filming schedule was complete, but it can’t be helped, can it? Even my strict timetable can be subject to sudden changes.’
‘Why did you come back? I thought you were in France till August.’
‘So did I.’ He sighed, sipped his wine. ‘Our leading man disagreed. Ridiculous bastard went and got his leg broken in a jetski accident. Next movie I make, I’m having everyone, cast and crew, living in a barracks and having to apply to me for passes to get out.’
‘Control-freaky.’
He smiled at me again.
‘Yes.’
I appeared to have finished the wine. Christ, that was quick. I needed to sip from the glass, for my hands to have something to do besides shaking.
‘Don’t be nervous,’ he said. I watched his fingers, long and white, stroke the stem of his glass. ‘Unless you want to be.’
‘I can’t help it,’ I said, a tad mutinously. ‘This situation isn’t covered in Emily Post. I don’t know what to say or do, or …’
‘Just say what you feel. Do what you feel.’
‘In that case –’ I put the glass down with an overstated flourish ‘– I’m going to bed.’
He shrugged and smiled, watching me make as dignified an exit as I could.
‘Sweet dreams,’ he said when I reached the door.
I looked back at him. His face was shadowed, his brow low, the smile a Hollywood-white tease.
I fled.
I turned the key in my door lock and sat down on the bed, catching my breath. Situation out of control. I had to try and slot the different pieces of the night into place, discipline them into making some kind of sense.
One: I shagged Will.
Two: Will showed me Jasper’s collection of BDSM gear.
Three: Jasper caught us and fired Will.
Four: It turns out he hired me because I wrote that article.
My mental cataloguing stopped here, unable to proceed.
He hired me because I wrote that article.
Jasper Jay, the film director and winner of the Palme d’Or, had read my silly little piece on Victorian kinksters and hired me on the strength of it.
Why had he gone to those lengths? Weren’t there professional evaluators of this kind of thing? Could he not have got somebody from an auction house?
I felt creeped out, as if he had stalked me, which, in a way, he had. Where was the boundary between stalking and headhunting anyway?
What did he really want?
I lay down and let my thoughts drift around my head. The sensible course was clear. Tomorrow I would pack my bags and leave. This was all too weird and potentially disastrous. Shame about the money though and …
Practicalities grew vaguer, blurring away. I still held the razor strop in my hand and its particular heft and texture beguiled me into fantasy. Jasper Jay, in Victorian times, my Victorian husband, with impressive sideburns and a cravat, sharpening his razor on the leather.
Me on the bed, in my bodice and pantalettes, trying to fasten my corset.
‘You should get Jenny to do that for you,’ he says, and I watch his hands move as he plies the blade, swipe, swipe, swipe, from the top to the bottom.
‘That’s what I meant to tell you, dearest,’ I say, and my voice shakes. I’m nervous.
He puts down the razor, one eyebrow raised.
‘My love?’
‘Jenny … and I … that is to say … we had a difference of opinion.’
‘Oh?’ I watch his fist close around the strop.
‘It was nothing really but I’m afraid I lost my temper.’
‘Have we not discussed your impetuous humours?’ The question is couched so gently, so reasonably, but my heart jumps to my throat.
We have many such discussions. Discussions that don’t involve a great deal of actual discussion.
‘I know, dearest. But I’m afraid I lost my head for one moment and I … slapped her.’
He sighs, lowers his head, puts a hand to his brow. He is at the end of his tether, I know, and I have worked so hard on my self-discipline, but we both know that my impulses overpower my will too often.
‘And she has left?’ he says in a low voice.
‘I’m afraid she has, dearest.’
‘And she will explain the circumstances to the agency and we shall be on their black list. Another black list.’
I cannot deny it. I fidget with my corset laces, wrapping them round and around my finger.
‘Shall we discuss this now?’ I ask in a small voice.
‘Oh, yes, I think the more immediate the consequence, the more beneficial the lesson, don’t you?’
‘Yes, dearest.’
He waits for me. I know what I have to do. I remove the corset and take my place at the foot of the bed, gripping the carved wooden footboard for grim life. I hear the little clink of metal as
he removes the strop from its hook.
‘Now, my love,’ he says, pacing behind me. ‘You know I never get angry with you and I am not angry now. I know, however, that you are angry with yourself, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, dearest.’
I tilt my pelvis forward, bend a little at the knees.
‘And in order for you to forgive yourself, the matter must be dealt with so that you can feel refreshed and prepared for a new start. Is that not so?’
‘It is so, dearest. Oh, I am so sorry to disappoint you.’
‘I will admit to some disappointment, Sarah, and some sorrow that we find ourselves once again in this position. Let this punishment be swift and sharp and then all can be forgiven, if not forgotten.’
Not for a few days, at least. Every time I sit.
He steps forward and parts the cloth of my drawers, the split exposing my bottom. His hand is sure and firm. I hear the shush of the strop rubbing against his trousers, dangling from his other hand.
I should not admit to my faults while he is shaving. I must learn to pick a time when that strop is far out of his reach. Perhaps on the way to church on Sundays.
I will pay for my ill-timed confession now. I squeeze shut my eyes and lower my head, trying to relax my neck muscles.
Oh, the sound it makes, the mighty whoosh, the burning crack of impact. It is so heavy and yet so fiendishly flexible. It snaps across my poor posterior, over and again, marking me with shame, making my skin blush.
As my husband whips me, he lectures me on my shortcomings and how they must be overcome. He points out his position in society and at his place of employment and how I must be a credit to him and our home and family. He reminds me of my position, my vow of obedience, my promise of submission.
And the strop catches me in every painful place it can until I scorch beneath its scorpion tongue.
‘Enough,’ he says, his voice laden with exertion. ‘I trust that the lesson is well inculcated.’
‘Very well, Sir,’ I whisper.
‘Good. Then let us forgive.’
After the discussion, there is always forgiveness. He shows it by placing the strop beneath my breasts and holding it there while he lowers his trousers and underwear and places his manhood between my nether lips.
His House of Submission Page 2
