Lessons in Art

by Sam Eden

‘We should begin the second stage of your punishment,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t flog me straight after the paddling!’ exclaimed Rebecca. ‘Nicola had days to recover.’

  ‘True, but we haven’t the time, have we?’ he shrugged.

  ‘You must give me some time to rest.’ She heaved herself up and went upstairs to lie down on James’ bed, without recovering her bra and panties. No doubt they would only have to come off again later.

  Apart from the physical anguish her heart was heavy from the quarrel with James and the nagging worry that Carlo may continue to be a threat to her marriage. His deal with her gallery would bring him to London quite often, and she suspected he’d have no scruples about blackmailing her again.

  How she rued her hot-headed retribution against Nicola. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind, she thought, as she fell into a recuperative doze.

  When Rebecca awoke soon after five o’clock her heart sank as she recalled her new dilemma. Reluctantly she rose from the bed and examined her bottom in James’ cheval mirror. She doubted that her sore skin could stand another beating so soon after being paddled. Even aside from the agony, the bruises would take an age to go. It was poor consolation that she was unlikely to sleep with James for a while, so that the marks would not matter.

  Slowly she went downstairs. Carlo lounged on the drawing room sofa, idly sketching objects in the room.

  ‘Are you feeling better, my sweet?’ he asked solicitously.

  She wanted to shout that she was not ‘his sweet’, but she hadn’t the energy. She didn’t know whether her fighting spirit had been sapped by residual stupor from her nap or the misery of her predicament.

  ‘How do you want me?’ she asked listlessly.

  ‘Naked apart from the shoes,’ Carlo replied brightly. Even had his voice sounded less cheerful, his trousers confirmed how he revelled in her distress.

  She looked for the chair to bend over, but it had been moved back to its original position.

  ‘Where?’ she asked, removing her stockings and suspender belt.

  ‘Standing at the mantelpiece,’ he said.

  Dutifully she went over to it. A large carriage clock stood in the centre, which she moved along so she could rest her arms on the ledge. On the wall in front of her face was an enchanting eighteenth century landscape. She had forgotten who it was by and looked for the artist’s signature.

  Meanwhile Carlo was dictating the rules whose infraction would bring penalty strokes. Finally he told her to cheer up, because soon her suffering would be over.

  ‘Since you are sad I will make a concession,’ he added. ‘You need not count the lashes.’

  Quietly he came up behind her and pushed her hair over her shoulder, away from her back.

  ‘Keep your shoulders clear, ready for any extras,’ he said, letting the tails of the flogger play over her flesh.

  She had not wanted to give him the satisfaction of screaming, but after the first few lashes she could not help herself. She twisted her head in pain and her hair fell back over her shoulders.

  ‘One extra for moving the position of your hair,’ he said gleefully.

  Rebecca was confused. Had there been such a rule that she’d missed? It seemed so mean. But then that was probably what he intended it to be. She smoothed her hair back in front and immediately her shoulders flinched as the penalty lash struck them. Rebecca tried to take her mind off the pain by studying the picture a few inches from her eyes.

  After another two strokes there was a further penalty for throwing back her hair. To avoid it happening again Carlo allowed her to change her stance. He told her to take a step back from the mantelpiece, bend forward from the waist and support herself by resting her hands rather than her forearms on it. With her arms straightened in this way she could lower her head and let her hair fall forward, leaving her back uncovered.

  Rebecca had lost count of the number he’d given her across her buttocks, but guessed it was about ten. Another thirty seemed impossible to bear. She wondered whether she would faint as Nicola had done.

  She steeled herself for the next lash, but it never came. Instead she heard a thud and turned in astonishment to see Carlo on the floor with James standing over him.

  ‘James!’ she cried, but her heart sank when she saw the look of fury on his face.

  On the whole Carlo looked like a man who could handle himself, but he was plainly reluctant to fight back against his generous benefactor. Perhaps he also recognised that being caught tampering with another man’s naked fiancée deserved a punch. In any case he scrambled to his feet, and when James told him to get out he did not dawdle.

  Rebecca and James stared at each other, and her earlier resentment flared up again. ‘You’re always sneaking up on me!’ she cried.

  ‘Sneaking up?’ He sounded flabbergasted. ‘If you weren’t behaving deceitfully my movements around my own house wouldn’t seem like sneaking up!’

  Rebecca began to dress gingerly. ‘It’s not what you think,’ she said.

  ‘How can it be otherwise?’ he said icily. ‘You’re sleeping with him.’

  ‘No!’ she denied, and then looked him steadily in the eye. ‘Once,’ she admitted quietly. ‘In Milan. It was a mistake.’

  He glared back at her but said nothing. His silence goaded her.

  ‘You slept with Nicola,’ she said accusingly, and at least he was shamefaced enough to lower his eyes.

  ‘How can we go on with this lack of trust between us,’ he asked, more in sorrow than in anger.

  Rebecca groaned. It all seemed so unfair. For the second time in a few days she felt close to tears. Feeling wounded and humiliated she slipped off her engagement ring and handed it to him. There was a flicker in his eyes, but he accepted it without speaking, so she left.

  Rebecca and Carlo had come in the same car, and at least the bastard had waited for her. She got in without looking at him and sat in silence as he drove away.

  At the cottage they found Nicola waiting outside. When Carlo had not turned up at her flat or answered her calls, she decided to come over to see him. She took in his black eye and Rebecca’s distressed state with astonishment. He slunk off in shame to the pub, leaving Nicola to help Rebecca inside and make her a hot toddy.

  Over the course of the next hour Rebecca related the horrors of the day. She did so in fragments, between periods of feeling so utterly desolate that she could not speak. Nicola was caring and compassionate. At the end Rebecca broke down, her tears, so long held back, flowing. She apologised for being such a baby, worried her crying might diminish the girl’s respect for her.

  ‘It’s okay,’ whispered Nicola, holding Rebecca’s head to her shoulder. ‘We’re girls. We’re allowed to cry.’

  Nicola was so upset with Carlo that she did not want him to come back to her flat, but realised it would be quite wrong to let him stay at the cottage alone with Rebecca.

  After they had gone Rebecca rose listlessly and put on a favourite CD. She was indulging her grief too much, she told herself. ‘Snap out of it,’ her father would have said, but somehow she couldn’t. The second track was Handel’s aria, Lascia ch’io pianga; Almirena lamenting her separation from her knight. At least she was reunited with him in the end. Rebecca had lost hers for good. Let me weep.

  She curled up on the sofa, recalling times spent with James and cursing the day she ever met Carlo.

  She was awoken by the sound of church bells. After brooding for hours she must have drifted off to sleep. It was Christmas Eve and people would be going to Midnight Communion. Rebecca was not a very religious person, but she decided to join them, hoping it might divert her from self pity.

  St Mary’s was less than five minutes’ walk from her cottage. It was the largest church of the local villages, so it tended to be the one used for special occasions. She
passed the pub, which had a late license, and sounds of drunken revelry came from inside. Smokers hunched shivering and chatting around the doorway. Cars were everywhere, spilling out of the pub’s small car park, around the village green and along the lane by the church. The noise from the pub receded as the bells grew louder. Rebecca joined a steady stream of people making their way up the path to the porch.

  One or two people she knew slightly wished her good evening and she responded with a thin smile. She realised her mood must have seemed to them rather lacking in festive cheer. She was struck by the way many of them knew each other and gathered together in cheerful groups. Spending a lot of time in Oxford and London she had never really been drawn into village life. Secretly she tended to look down on it as boring and petty in comparison with her own career, but she realised that many people drew fulfilment from it simplicity.

  The church was nearly full. Rebecca slipped into a pew near the back. Although those around her sang the opening hymn with gusto she sang quietly, looking about her at the architecture: slender grey stone pillars and gothic arches. The tower and nave dated from the early fourteenth century. A small Lady Chapel was even older. With a twinge of sadness she recalled walking around it with James one quiet Saturday, admiring the intricate stone carving.

  Caught up in the prayers she found some solace and forgot her troubles for a while, but during the sermon her mind began to drift back to them. Predictably the vicar was speaking of Mary and motherhood, and Rebecca wondered if she would ever have children. She wondered if, in time, she would find another man to love as much as she did James. At the moment it seemed doubtful.

  People had been bringing their sorrows within these walls for nearly seven centuries, and she was sure that matters of unrequited love had figured prominently in their prayers. Perhaps some were answered, but she thought it probable that most were not; that seemed to be the nature of the human lot. But just in case she said a silent prayer for her cousin Mark’s family. It was strange how sadness of your own brought other people’s tragedies to mind.

  The hard pew began to hurt and it was a relief to kneel for The Creed. Rebecca wasn’t sure she believed the words, but they were phrased to sound soothing when spoken. She hesitated over whether or not to take communion, but in the end she did, carried along by the people from her pew. She sipped the wine and swallowed the tasteless wafer, then returned to her seat as inconspicuously as possible.

  As she left the church a clean-cut man in a navy cashmere coat and silk scarf wished her a happy Christmas. He was an accountant whom she knew slightly, a partner with a medium sized firm in Oxford. Normally she found money men rather soulless, but he had nice eyes which were looking sympathetically into hers. He knew she’d been crying, she sensed.

  It transpired that he was recently divorced, so maybe he was angling for a date. She knew she would be in no condition to see somebody new for a while, but she smiled at him and left the door open. He had his hand in the small of her back, gently guiding her past groups of people, and as she turned to go he lowered it and firmly patted her bottom. In the crowd it was difficult to tell for sure whether it was intentional, but it was interesting.

  After a good night’s sleep she drove down to Hampshire to spend the holiday with her parents.

  Chapter 12

  James spent a bleak Christmas, mainly alone. On New Year’s Eve he went to a party in London. He enjoyed catching up with friends, but he had to endure endless sympathy when he told them about his break up. On the whole he was glad when the holidays were over and normality returned. His only reservation was that the first full week in January would be Nicola’s last. He smiled ruefully when he remembered that, just a month ago, he had wanted to sack her.

  Feeling sorry for himself he had half planned to try to dissuade her from moving to Italy, and perhaps even ask her to be his girlfriend. But saner thoughts had prevailed; the age difference was too great, and although they were fond of each other it was not, he suspected, enough for either of them. Moreover, dreadful though Carlo was, she claimed to love him, and James saw that he could help Nicola best by trying to take on aspects of Edward’s role, so that the girl was not adrift in the world without family.

  When Friday came he ineptly put these thoughts to her. He emphasised that he had meant her to take seriously what she’d overheard him telling Carlo. He didn’t use the word ‘daughter’ to her face because it didn’t seem appropriate after their sexual encounters, but instead he said he would help to protect her interests whenever she felt she needed him. Nicola blushed nicely and pecked him on the cheek. She seemed grateful.

  At lunchtime she surprised him by returning early, and came into the study just as he was cradling a diamond choker in his hands.

  ‘Whoa!’ she exclaimed. ‘Lucky girl who gets that!’

  James was worried that she might think it was a leaving gift for her. ‘It was Rebecca’s Christmas present,’ he explained hurriedly. ‘I noticed her admiring it a couple of months ago. She never guessed I would buy it because it was so expensive, but I went back and bought it the same day.’

  ‘Oh,’ murmured Nicola, ‘so that was the last minute present.’

  James looked up sharply. It never failed to amaze him, the details women would share with each other. ‘I was just teasing her when I said that.’

  ‘It’s very beautiful,’ she said, gazing in wonder at the quantity of diamonds. ‘It must have cost the earth.’

  ‘Well, the price of a small island, anyway,’ he said wryly.

  He put the choker back in its case. Rebecca’s engagement ring was next to it on the desk and he slipped both of them into his desk drawer.

  ‘Did you want me, Nicola?’ he asked, his manner becoming businesslike.

  ‘Actually, James, I wanted to ask you a favour.’

  Nicola explained that she intended to let her flat furnished, but that she had some furniture of sentimental value which she didn’t want to leave there. So she asked him to store it for her while she was in Italy, which he readily agreed to do. But this wasn’t enough for Nicola; she wanted him to come to see the furniture to make sure he was happy with the space it would take up. Given the vastness of James’ house this seemed to him pointless, but he humoured her. It would be a convenient way of saying goodbye on her last day without too much emotion.

  They each took their own car, since Nicola would not be returning. She packed up her personal belongings, and he was in his car ready to follow her when she had to dash back for something she’d forgotten. Some red lingerie peeped out of the bag she brought out and with mixed emotions he remembered the afternoon she’d worn it.

  He smiled when she blew a kiss to the house and waved it goodbye.

  At home Nicola seemed to have become more tense. James supposed it was due to the impending goodbye or the excitement of soon starting her new life.

  The living room was much emptier than on his previous visit. Rectangular patches on the walls showed where pictures had hung. All plants and ornaments had disappeared. One or two cardboard boxes stood waiting to be taken to some place of storage, and he noticed their suitcases already packed in the hall.

  ‘You’ve tidied up at last.’ It was a feeble joke, but she laughed.

  Mercifully Carlo was not in evidence. Nicola had told James that Rebecca had kicked him out of her cottage, and James had not looked forward to the awkwardness of meeting him at Nicola’s.

  She pressed him to have a drink and he accepted a small scotch. They talked a little about her plans in Milan. There was no job yet but she hoped to get one soon, and Rebecca had promised to speak to her contacts in the art galleries there.

  Then abruptly she changed the subject.

  ‘James, don’t get all huffy on me, but there’s something I want to tell you.’

  He bristled a bit to find that she thought he could be huffy, but when she
started to talk about his relationship with Rebecca he realised that huffy was what he felt. It embarrassed him to talk openly about his private life.

  ‘Carlo forced Rebecca to take that beating on Christmas Eve,’ she told him.

  ‘How could he force her?’ he asked frostily.

  ‘He threatened to tell you that they’d had sex when she sat for him in Milan.’

  ‘So her response was to have sex with him again?’ he said sceptically.

  ‘No. He wanted sex but she refused. She only accepted the punishment.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Rebecca told me,’ said Nicola. When she added that she had prised the same story out of Carlo James accepted it grudgingly.

  ‘So how can you put yourself in the hands of this man?’ he asked incredulously.

  ‘For the time being I love him and I can live with his flaws. But we were talking about Rebecca and you,’ she continued. ‘Carlo also blackmailed her with something else.’

  She told him how Rebecca had conspired with Carlo to punish her for seducing James. She told him about the paddling and the whipping at the cottage.

  ‘You didn’t seduce me,’ he objected, ‘it was my doing.’

  She waved the quibble aside. ‘The point is that Rebecca thought I was trying to steal you from her.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘She loved you so much she didn’t want to lose you, and...’ she paused, ‘...well, you know how mad she can get.’

  ‘Why couldn’t she confess all this to me herself?’

  ‘It’s too late now, and before she was too worried that you cared for me so much you might turn against her.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem likely. She knew I’d dealt with you pretty severely myself.’

  They sat in silence, and glumly he mulled over this new information. No one had come out of the events of the last month with much credit, he thought, but perhaps Rebecca’s conduct now appeared a little less culpable.