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‘Am I? For … what you’re going to do with me?’
‘All that cataloguing,’ he said, deadpan. ‘Takes it out of you, I imagine.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to … make me pay … can you tell me how?’
‘Later,’ he said. ‘Eat your eggs. You need protein.’
He refused to refer to the subject again, questioning me instead on my background and education until the food and the mugs of strong tea were all gone.
I wanted to talk about him, since his experiences were so much more interesting than mine, but I sensed that he didn’t take well to interrogation and would dispense information at his own pace. I watched him speak, watched the light and shade fall across his face, followed the expressive motions of his hands. All his animation seemed to be channelled into them, while his facial expressions remained serene and controlled. He is master of himself, I thought, and that made me want to squirm even more.
‘Finished?’ he asked when I laid down my knife and fork.
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘You’d better get to work then. Go on. I’ll wash up.’
I hesitated. Wasn’t he going to mention the strop débâcle?
‘What room are you working in at the moment?’ he asked.
‘The, uh, the one with the piano.’
‘The drawing room,’ he corrected me. ‘I’ll be in the study. Come and wait outside in, shall we say, two hours? That’ll give me enough time to devise something suitable.’
Instant shivers. Something suitable.
‘Run along then, Sarah,’ he said with a ghoulish smile. ‘We mustn’t neglect our work, must we?’
But I’m afraid I did neglect my work.
Over and over again I came to with a start, some ornament or other in my hand, after drifting into reverie. If I carried on like that, something was going to get broken. And then what might be my fate? I kept going to the door and looking around it, towards the study, listening. Sometimes I could hear his voice, faintly, making telephone calls, or the tap of a keyboard.
While he worked, he was thinking of me. Thinking of what was to be done with me, for my shameless behaviour with his property.
And while I worked, I was thinking of him. Thinking of how he compelled and disturbed and attracted and repelled me. I had never met a man who could do all those things simultaneously before. Perhaps there was no other man in the world who could.
The hands of all the antique clocks made their slow progress through time until the two hours had elapsed and I put down my clipboard and pencil, patted down my skirt and left the room.
I could keep walking, walk to the front door, walk to the car, get in the car, drive away.
But I stopped at the study door and lifted my hand and …
I heard his chair creak.
I knocked.
He didn’t reply.
I knocked again.
‘Come in.’
The study was a glorious room and his desk was one of my favourite pieces in the whole house. Mahogany with brass handles and a green leather writing area in the shape of a cross, on top of which his computer looked somewhat incongruous. He should be writing longhand with parchment and ink. There was a raised gallery at the back of the desk, along which were perched a procession of film awards, the Palme d’Or in pride of place.
I breathed in the beeswax and stillness, letting it calm my jangling nerves.
‘Sarah,’ he said, sitting back in his oxblood leather chair. ‘Now we come to the real test.’
‘Do we?’
He opened a drawer and brought out the strop. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, staring at it.
‘When I was at university,’ he said, ‘I directed a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. The Mikado. Do you know it?’
‘Yes,’ I said, discombobulated by this line of conversation.
‘There’s a song in it about how the Mikado dispenses justice. He’s particularly keen, he says, to let the punishment fit the crime. I like his way of thinking.’
He stroked a finger along the strop. My eyes followed it, hypnotised.
‘I see,’ I said, filling in the tense space with the useless remark.
‘So what punishment do you think would fit your crime, Sarah?’
He smiled up at me, for all the world as if he had asked me what flavour ice-cream I preferred.
‘I think you’re the Mikado around here. I think it’s your decision.’
‘Ah, my decision. Yes. That’s a good answer. And I like the bit about being the Mikado too. The emperor. Monarch of all I survey.’ He tapped his fingertips on the strop, then picked it up and slapped the end into his palm. ‘How far has your interest in this kind of thing gone?’
‘This kind of thing … meaning …’
‘You know what I mean. What have you actually done? If anything.’
‘Nothing. I’ve only …’
‘Fantasised?’
‘Written about it,’ I said defiantly.
‘Ah,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘I thought you might know the score. You’ve played this so well, like an old hand. But you’re new to it all. And, lucky for you, I’m not. You do want to try it, don’t you?’
‘I’ve always wanted to.’
There. I had crossed a line now. I had delivered myself right into his hands.
‘Good. Come over here then.’
He put the strop back on the desk as I drew level with him and he placed his hands on my hips. He rose from the chair, regaining the height advantage he had temporarily lost. He was so unnervingly close, as close as a lover. He would barely need to move at all to kiss me.
But he didn’t kiss me. He just held my hips and spoke softly into my ear.
‘You don’t have to do a thing I tell you to, Sarah. You can say no whenever you like. Is that understood?’
I nodded.
‘I want you to say yes, though. In fact, I want you to say, “Yes, Sir.” Can you say that for me?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
He sighed.
‘That’s perfect. Are you ready?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘You’d better be.’
He let go of me and took a step back, picking up the strop again.
‘Well, Sarah, I don’t know if this will ever be the same again after the way you’ve treated it, do you?’
‘No, Sir.’
‘Exactly what was it you did with it? I want to hear your confession.’
‘Oh, God!’ I really don’t want to tell you out loud.
‘Understandable, that you should mix me up with a deity, but I’m not your god, Sarah, just your master. Now tell me what you did. I want the truth.’
‘I put it somewhere I shouldn’t have.’
‘And where was that? The airing cupboard?’
‘No, Sir.’ I probably shouldn’t have giggled.
He slapped the leather down on the desk with some force and I jumped.
‘So?’
‘I, uh, put it next to my, uh, private parts.’
‘Your private parts.’ He mimicked my prissy voice. ‘And once it was there, slap bang up against your private parts, what did you do with it?’
‘I, sort of, rubbed it against them.’
‘You masturbated with it,’ he said, narrowing his eyes in mock horror. ‘You committed the sin of self-abuse. With my razor strop.’
‘Yes, Sir,’ I whispered, shaking with humiliation. Or arousal. Actually, both.
‘And what did you think about while you were doing it?’
He was too cruel. He knew exactly which buttons to press to rack up the shame and mortification.
‘Must I answer that, Sir?’
‘Of course.’
‘I thought about how it might be used.’
‘What, sharpening a razor?’
‘No. You know.’
‘I don’t. Enlighten me.’
‘As a thing to, to, hit me with.’
‘Oh. As an instrument of punishment, you mean?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘On your hands?’
‘No, Sir, not my hands.’
‘Where then?’
‘Uh.’ I put a hand behind me, providing a dumb show I hoped he would pick up on.
‘I’m not a fan of mime, Sarah. Say the word.’
‘On my … bottom,’ I whispered.
‘Oh, I see. That’s what you thought about while you were rubbing my razor strop all over your soaking wet cunt, was it? The way it would feel on your bare bottom?’
The word ‘cunt’ made me quiver with shock, and yet it also made me want to hear it again, in his rich, dark voice, again and again.
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Well, now we’ve arrived at the truth of the matter, I have an idea of what I should do with you.’
‘Do you, Sir?’
‘Yes, I do. Bend over the desk, Sarah, with your elbows, yes, like so.’
He pushed my spine into position and moved my arms until they were the optimum width apart. I looked down at the green leather I had so often admired, and the gold-leaf pattern that surrounded it.
