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‘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.
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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?’
