The Tied Man

by Tabitha McGowan

  I remembered a time when it had shocked me that people whose names I didn’t even know would quite happily line me up for a battering. ‘Not really. You want me to tell Blaine that that’s how you were talking about one of her valued guests?’

  ‘Hmph. Doesn’t look like anyone I recognise. Thought they was meant to be famous before they was allowed to set foot in the hallowed halls,’ the landlord blustered, but I’d rattled him – I wasn’t alone in my fear of Blaine’s wrath. ‘Not that it’s any of my business. People pay for their beer, they can drink where the fuck they like. Now take these bloody glasses so I can have me tray back.’

  He trudged out and I touched my glass to Henry’s. ‘Cheers, little man. To an interesting morning.’

  Lilith

  In the end, it took me fifteen minutes to get what I needed, but that was due to the stupid woman in front of me at the chemist’s, who was brought to a grinding halt by the life-changing decision of which haemorrhoid cream to buy for her husband. By the time I returned to the pub with two new carrier bags, Finn had half an inch of lager left in his glass.

  ‘We were just thinking you’d taken my advice and fucked off.’

  ‘Not without my vodka and tonic. Right, let’s see the damage, then.’

  ‘Don’t be such a bossy wee cow,’ Finn grumbled. ‘It’s fine now.’

  ‘Your t-shirt looks like the Psycho shower curtain and I will not let you walk back down the street like that just to provide the matinee performance for a tribe of village idiots.’

  ‘I really think you should let Lilith take a look, Finn. It doesn’t look good at all,’ Henry added.

  ‘Pair of bloody old women.’ Finn reluctantly peeled his t-shirt off to reveal the full damage from the night before.

  ‘Ohmygod.’ Henry choked on a mouthful of martini.

  ‘Well, someone didn’t use their safe word,’ I observed.

  ‘Hah. Safe word. I wish. Bad?’

  ‘Like someone’s fed your back into a paper shredder.’ I wished I’d slapped Laura Fenworth clean off her chair when I’d had the chance. I pulled another twenty from my purse. ‘Henry, be a love and go and get another round in, would you? Same again, with a double bourbon as well.’

  Henry nodded gratefully, happy to be out of sight of blood, and I tipped the chemist’s bag out onto the table.

  ‘You buy up the whole shop?’ Finn asked as he edged his way out of the blood-stained shirt.

  ‘Nearly.’ I tore open a pack of sterile dressings. ‘I was denied the last of the pile cream, though.’

  I took a closer look at the carnage. A few of these latest welts had begun to crust over, but others continued to weep blood where they had been rubbed open by the fabric of his t-shirt.

  ‘I’ll be as gentle as I can, but this might hurt. I’m sorry,’ I said, in between ripping off strips of surgical tape with my teeth.

  Finn gave a soft laugh.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘I think you’re the first person to actually apologise for inflicting pain. Usually it’s someone’s hobby.’

  He fell silent for a while as I sprayed a fine mist of antiseptic over the raw skin. It must have stung like hell. ‘You know, you are allowed to express your discomfort at any point during this process,’ I assured him.

  ‘Nah, just give us a hand digging my fingernails out of the tabletop when you’re done.’

  It took seven separate dressings to patch up Finn’s back, and I took care to position them so that he would be able to move freely without them tearing away. I was glad of the focus: although there was no spare flesh on him, gardening had given Finn a tone and musculature that any gym-freak or model would envy – useful, I supposed, for someone who spent more time out of his clothes than in them. It was the first time I had ever felt guilt at finding a man attractive.

  I smoothed down the final piece of tape. ‘There. All done.’

  Finn exhaled. ‘Cheers for that,’ he said, just as Henry returned with the second round.

  I handed Finn the bourbon. ‘There you go. For being a brave little soldier.’

  The whiskey was dispatched in one mouthful. ‘S’better. So what’s in the other bag?’ Finn asked.

  Finn

  ‘A dilemma,’ Lilith said.

  ‘Really? Didn’t know they sold them.’

  ‘Funny. It’s just that I know what I’d do if someone did this to me, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to go for the radical approach.’

  ‘Do what? What the hell are you going on about?’ I asked.

  ‘This,’ Lilith replied, and picked up my t-shirt and threw it on the fire.

  ‘What the – for fuck’s sake, Lili! I don’t have much of a bloody wardrobe to begin with!’ I watched in dismay as the thin fabric began to smoulder and catch.

  ‘You’d better wear this then.’ Lilith emptied the second bag out onto the table and handed me the contents: a smoke-grey cashmere sweater that I knew would fit me as if I had been there to try it on in the shop. It was the most beautiful – and expensive – item of clothing I had ever been given, and there was no way I could accept it.

  ‘I can’t take this.’

  ‘See? That’s what I knew you’d say. Hence the alternative fuel. From what I can see, it’s either put that on or walk back to the boat half-naked.’

  I glared at her, furious beyond words, but she unblinkingly held my gaze for a good half-minute.

  ‘You know, your eyeballs are going to dry up any second,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you are a fucking nightmare!’ I was an expert at knowing when I was beat. I reluctantly reached out and touched the down-soft wool. I could already imagine how it would feel next to my skin. ‘There was no need for this, Lili. I could have just rinsed my shirt under a tap…’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ She kept looking straight at me. ‘But you deserve better.’

  I didn’t know what the hell to say to that. I just gave an ungrateful sigh of exasperation and pulled the sweater over my head.

  ‘It’s just your colour,’ Henry enthused.

  ‘And you can fuck right off,’ I said, but he was right. It was never going to be anything less than perfect if Lilith had anything to do with it. So I sat and drank my second pint, enveloped in a rare warmth that wasn’t entirely to do with the latest addition to my wardrobe.

  We sat there for the best part of an hour. Inconsequential banter for the most part, but I couldn’t remember last time I’d enjoyed a quiet beer so much.

  With hindsight, I should have marked the date in a diary – it would be the last time in a while before any of us felt like smiling again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lilith

  Blaine draped herself over several thousand pounds’ worth of ancient sofa and watched me work with an unnerving blend of amusement and close scrutiny. As I had predicted before my arrival she had decided on the final pose for her portrait, so I was stuck with the cliché of ‘Woman, Reclining’.

  She was ebullient, relaxed and entirely naked. The fanciful theory that a person’s life was etched on their physical form – be it despair, happiness, or in this case sheer depravity – was entirely disproved by Blaine. That, or she already had a huge portrait of herself slowly decaying in the attic. A woman twenty years younger would have envied her: there wasn’t a blemish on her ivory skin, and her discreetly enhanced breasts hardly moved no matter how she positioned herself.

  ‘So, do you ever...’ she began. I had come to dread these moments: her attempts at light conversation now felt more like interrogation.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Before I’ve even finished the question?’

  ‘No, I never get turned on. It’s work. Simple as that.’ Which hadn’t always been true, but the less Blaine knew about me, the more secure I felt.

  ‘It’s no wonder people think you’re psychic,’ Blaine laughed, amused rather than offended. ‘Such self-control. I’ve always found it to be one of the bonuses of my line of work, if I’m honest. Perhaps
you’ve never had the right sitter: some irresistible man to break through the ice.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Or maybe some irresistible woman? There are some very interesting rumours surrounding you, after all.’

  ‘Which should be placed in the same file as my seven abortions, planned sex-change and profound belief in alien lizards ruling the nation,’ I lied.

  ‘For someone with such an ability to dissect others, you’re a veritable Swiss bank vault yourself, aren’t you, Lilith? Perhaps I should send Finn to sit for you again.’

  ‘Mm,’ I said by way of reply, in a way that suggested I was now too engrossed in the task to respond.

  As technical drawings, these final sketches were near-perfect, but that morning I hated them more than ever. Even at this stage, long before the meticulous blending and layering of pigments that would leave me red-eyed for weeks from working inches from the canvas, I had come to dread working on the piece. Only a need to earn my freedom kept me going.

  *****

  Blaine spent only two hours with me, announcing that she would be too busy to do a full sitting, as if that were a bad thing. Just as I was revelling in the relief of being left alone with a pile of mute and pliable preparatory sketches instead of the real thing, I heard the first distant crash from somewhere in the vast house; the distinct sharp sound of ceramic shattering against stone. Grateful for the diversion, I rested my brush on the easel’s shelf and went to investigate.

  *****

  It looked as though the kitchen had played host to a particularly malevolent poltergeist. An entire dinner service appeared to have been sacrificed to the slate, and by the far wall a pool of milk seeped in streams around jagged little islands of atomised crockery.

  In the centre of this devastation crouched Henry, oblivious to my presence as he picked up the wreckage piece by piece and placed it in a crumpled supermarket carrier bag.

  ‘Need a hand?’ I asked from the doorway.

  Henry started at the sound of my voice. ‘Oh, Lilith... Sorry, I didn’t... Be careful in your bare feet, dear – you’ll rip them to shreds if you come in here.’

  I hardly needed the warning as I cautiously began to make my way to his side. ‘What the hell happened?’ I asked, already sensing what the answer would be.

  Henry confirmed my fears. ‘It was Finn. He, well – you can see, really. It was unfortunate that I’d just finished washing up – another five minutes and there’d have been nothing out for him to break.’

  The second time he had lashed out in as many weeks. Not good.

  I knelt down to help Henry clean up. ‘I thought you said it was a rare occurrence?’

  ‘Thank you,’ he sniffed. ‘It is. Was. Oh Lilith love, he had good reason this time. I’ve done such a dreadful thing.’

  This was the point when I would traditionally leave the room: someone else’s mess, someone else’s problem that I didn’t need, or want, to know about. Time to run away. However at Albermarle Hall I estimated that the furthest I could run in any given direction was considerably less than quarter of a mile. I dropped a disembodied teacup handle into the bag before sitting cross-legged on a kitchen chair. ‘So, what caused it?’

  Henry joined me at the table and promptly burst into tears. I tore off a length of paper towel and handed it to him. He wiped at his eyes from under his glasses, noisily blew his nose and finally took a deep breath as if about to pronounce a death sentence. ‘As you’re aware, part of my job is to perform certain secretarial duties for Lady Albermarle.’

  It wasn’t the most obvious lead-in to an unspeakable crime. ‘And?’

  ‘You’ve heard mention of her London establishment? ‘Marley’s’? Several million pounds’ worth of South Kensington real estate that she likes to think of as an exclusive playground for well-heeled hedonists. In truth it’s nothing more than, well...’

  ‘A brothel?’ I volunteered. ‘Finn’s said something about it. I gather it’s a little more mainstream than this delightful fuck-fest, though.’

  ‘Just your average, run-of-the-mill whorehouse, as long as your income’s in six figures,’ Henry said acidly. ‘Well, it was until this morning.’ He sighed and fell silent, rolling a corner of kitchen paper between finger and thumb. ‘Over the past few years there have always been requests from clients that Blaine has turned down, either through some vestigial morality, or more likely, excessive risk of exposure. This morning, she sank lower than I thought she could possibly go.’

  I thought of what Finn had been through in the few weeks I had spent on the island. ‘Some feat.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Henry fought tears again. ‘There are two American gentlemen – something big in music production, apparently – who’ve spent the last year petitioning Blaine for a boy who’s still under the age of consent.’

  ‘Oh no...’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Henry gave me an infinitely sad little smile. ‘He’s called Jake, he’s a runaway who got picked up in Leicester Square, and he was thirteen last January. I spent a considerable part of this morning on the telephone to London, arranging the logistics of his secure accommodation at the club until those beasts have finished their summer break in the Cayman Islands.’ More shredded kitchen roll was added to the pile on the table. ‘And however unwillingly I performed that task, I can now add pederasty by association to my list of sins.’

  ‘Henry, I don’t believe for a moment -’

  ‘You might not, on the basis that you’re an intelligent young woman in full possession of the truth. But let’s face it, to anyone else, I’m just a pathetic old queen doing what all pathetic old queens really want to do.’ Henry brushed the scraps of paper into his hand and dropped them into the bag before starting a fresh pile. ‘I did argue with her, you know. I’ve never spoken to her in the way I did this morning, but it was never going to do much good. All she had to do was merely threaten a call to Mother’s home and I caved. She didn’t even have to pick up the phone. What kind of a monster does that make me, Lilith? ’

  Henry sat motionless, waiting for me to pass judgement on him.

  Just weeks ago I would have known exactly what it made him, and would have happily told him as we sat there.

  Just weeks ago I was living in an altogether different country. Realisation tasted vomit-sharp in my mouth.

  ‘It makes you the same breed of monster that sits and draws a man who’s being forced to screw a woman who’ll maim him as her therapy. And who patches him up so that he can do exactly the same thing again the next time he’s called.’

  Henry shook his head. ‘It’s hardly the same, love,’ he reassured me.

  ‘It’s exactly the same. We’re both assisting whilst some poor bastard gets fucked for fun. So how did Finn find out?’

  ‘Blaine told him, naturally. Just after dictating a couple of letters to me, and just before working on her VAT return. As you might imagine, he decided to come straight downstairs and make his feelings known.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘With Blaine. She requested his company for the rest of the morning. Accounts bore her.’

  Disgust tightened my face. ‘After this?’

  ‘Because of this,’ Henry corrected me.

  ‘I’m sorry, Henry – I’m being a little slow on the uptake, but what the fuck does that mean?’

  Henry dropped the carrier bag full of broken fragments into the bin. ‘It’s because his despair arouses her beyond measure.’

  *****

  Minutes passed before I felt able to speak again. ‘Why does she do it?’

  ‘Because she can. Because she enjoys wielding sex as power in the same way that her father did, and just about every generation of her accursed family before that. Even the most rudimentary research will dig up a tawdry detail about a Lord or Lady Albermarle entwined in some society scandal or other. You’ve never read about it?’

  ‘No.’ I gave a humourless laugh. ‘I’ve had enough of that with my own family.’

  ‘It’s almo
st funny – Blaine’s meant to be the one responsible for rehabilitating the family name: a respectable businesswoman, tireless charity worker, devoted mother...’

  ‘Whoa.’ I held up a hand. ‘She bred? You mean some mad bastard actually impregnated her?’

  ‘Married her and gave her two children, before he saw sense and snuffed it from a brain aneurism. Michael’s at Oxford, Emily’s working for a senator in Washington DC. Sweet girl, amazingly. Mummy offered her Finn as an eighteenth birthday present, and that was the last we saw. If I’m honest, Michael would have been the far more grateful recipient. Now there’s a young man destined to go into the family business.’

  Finn

  In my long and illustrious career I had been fucked by a procession of evil bastards, but none ever quite matched the sublime cruelty of Blaine. We lay side by side in the vast expanse of her bed and she ran a perfect fingernail in languid circles around my left nipple.

  ‘You know, I really can’t find the energy to do anything right now, darling,’ she purred in my ear. ‘Shall we just talk for a while?’ She moved her hand down my stomach and stroked my chemically-induced erection. ‘Why don’t you tell me the story of your first time?’

  I felt the familiar darkness close in. Lying wasn’t an option; neither was skimping on the worst of it. Blaine knew too much for that.

  Only the truth in all its sordid, bleak detail was ever going to satisfy her. I closed my eyes and began to tell my lover her tale.

  Lilith

  I left Henry to his preparations for dinner and trudged back to my studio. I tried to drown myself in my work, but when that work involved surrounding myself with a dozen detailed sketches of the woman who was the cause of my problems in the first place, I was always going to struggle. Everywhere I turned she stared up at me with that same supercilious expression.

  Eventually I gave up on Blaine and stacked the drawings face-down on my desk before busying myself with a sketch of a background flower arrangement. I was working on this when the studio door creaked open just wide enough for Finn to peer around.