His House of Submission

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.

He bathes it in my dew, noting well how it flows, for he knows how these discussions excite me. He plunges hard into my tight heat, stretching my cunny wide, slapping his thighs up against my sore bottom. But this rough usage is no punishment, oh, no, it melts into the purest pleasure. He holds the strap against my breasts while he thrusts, its well-worn surface rubbing against those tender buds.

He takes me well and thoroughly, until I sob with a presentiment of the flood to follow, and then he puts the strap between my legs and presses it to my pearl and then, oh, yes, oh, my dearest love …

I opened my eyes and then sat up straight. Oh, what the bloody hell was I thinking? The real strop, the antique, possibly worth a shedload of money, was pressed to my clit, all shiny and slick with my juices.

I grabbed a tissue and rubbed it clean, but when I put it to my face and sniffed, my scent and the leather were all mixed in one incredibly sexual cocktail. What if I’d destroyed the delicate balance of the textile? Did I not know better than to masturbate with precious artefacts? History 101, surely. Though I didn’t remember seeing it in the textbook.

I put the strop aside and began packing. It seemed my only course.

* * *

‘What’s that?’

Jasper at the breakfast table in the cavernous kitchen, laconic, handsome, dangerous.

I put my bags down on the trestle.

‘I think I ought to go.’

‘Why?’ He bit into a triangle of toast.

‘Um, because I don’t really know what’s going on.’

‘And you like to know what’s going on, do you, Sarah?’

‘Generally speaking.’

‘You don’t like stories?’

‘I don’t … follow.’

He patted the chair beside him and for some reason I didn’t think twice about going over there and sitting down.

‘Do you or don’t you? Like stories?’

‘Well, yes, I do.’

‘Do you always know what’s going on in a story?’

‘Sometimes. If it’s blatantly signposted, I suppose. More often not.’

‘It’s dull, isn’t it, when you know the ending.’

‘Not always.’ I had an idea what he might be driving at. ‘I can watch film versions of classic novels over and over, even though I know the ending.’

‘That’s a different kind of pleasure,’ he said.

‘Maybe.’

‘The thing is, Sarah, if you know the ending, you can’t explore any other possibilities. If you know what’s going on, you can’t be surprised. You can’t have your breath taken away. You miss all the best bits. Do you see?’

I swallowed. He was very close to me and I was intensely conscious of it. So intensely conscious that I was having some difficulty processing thought.

‘You’re very …’

He leaned closer.

‘Very what?’

‘Very … I don’t know.’

‘Don’t go, Sarah. If you don’t go, I’ll make you bacon and eggs.’

Breakfast. Probably a good idea.

‘That would be … acceptable,’ I said.

‘And I know you’re an accepting person,’ he said, rising and moving towards the cooker top. ‘An open-minded soul.’ He opened up a pack of bacon. ‘Incidentally, do you have my razor strop?’

Oh, God. I thought of it on my bedside table, still perfumed with essence de Sarah.

He turned around, my silence putting him on the scent.

‘Sarah?’

‘Oh. Yeah.’

‘You’re scarlet.’

‘Am I?’

‘Is there something you want to tell me?’ He threw the bacon in the pan, never taking his eyes from me.

‘I don’t …’ No, I didn’t want to tell him. But perhaps I ought to. But then what? What would he do or say? A tremor quickened in my lower stomach, a tightening at my core.

‘Well?’

‘It’s just … I spilled something on it. I’m sorry. I’ll get it professionally cleaned.’ What was I saying? Was I really going to explain what had happened to some remote tradesperson?

‘Bring it down,’ he said.

‘Now?’

He nodded, the corners of his mouth tight.

My legs were heavy on the ascent of the staircase, and I felt sick with panic, yet at the same time exhilarated, as if I were embarking on some fantastic adventure.

When I sniffed the leather, my faint hope that the aroma had faded overnight was dashed. Maybe Jasper wouldn’t notice. But no. That was just exactly the kind of thing he would notice. In fact, he probably knew what had happened already. I had the feeling he could see inside me, peel away my layers and pluck out my private thoughts.

I put its metal ring around my finger and let it dangle on my way back downstairs. All the beautiful pictures watched me pass, all the ballerinas, bons vivants, burlesque girls. They were the witnesses to my onward march of shame.

Jasper was breaking eggs into the pan when I re-entered the kitchen.

‘Ah,’ he said, looking up. ‘Show me.’

He held out the hand that wasn’t occupied with pushing the bacon around with a spatula.

I laid the strop across his palm, tenderly, giving it the respect I had forgotten to accord it last night.

He put down the spatula and inspected the strop at close quarters.

‘Where’s the spillage?’ he asked.

It wasn’t visible but I pointed towards the damned spot.

He frowned.

‘I don’t see anything. What did you spill?’

He bent closer and then drew in a breath, raising his eyes to mine. I held myself perfectly still for a horrible second, then he smiled the most radiant smile I had ever seen.

‘Oh, I see,’ he said.

I had nothing to say. I stood there, panting a little, wondering why my legs wouldn’t let me run away.

He wrapped it around his hand, slowly, making sure I paid attention.

‘What shall we do about this?’ he wondered aloud.

‘I can get it cleaned,’ I repeated.

‘No, no.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll take care of that. That wasn’t what I meant.’

With a tremor of shock, it occurred to me that I had been meaning to leave, so all of this was technically avoidable. The thought crashed into my head but I didn’t want to let it in. I didn’t want to leave now. I wanted to know what was going to happen. I wanted to read the next page of the story.

‘What did you mean then?’ I whispered.

‘What am I going to do with you?’

The pan hissed and spat behind him. He sighed and turned his attention to it, putting down the strop and picking up the spatula.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘No, before you do that, take your bloody bags back upstairs.’

I wanted to ask him what he was going to do with me, since the words hung so agonisingly and tantalisingly between us, but I did as I was told instead, running up the stairs two at a time and flinging the bags on the bed.

Anything could happen, I told myself, racing back down. Anything could happen and I want it to!

The plates were on the table and he was already digging into his food.

‘You look like you could do with a square meal,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing in the cupboards. What have you been living on?’

‘Soup, mainly,’ I said, sliding into the chair opposite him.

‘Not that foul packet stuff I saw on the shelf?’

‘Yeah.’ I felt guilty for my consumption of powdered soup. Obviously it was the Wrong Thing to do.

‘That won’t do. You’re going to need your strength, my girl.’

Jesus, what was happening to me? Lightning bolts, electricity up and down my spine and all over my skin. As for my crotch, I could barely sit still, it felt so full of sparks.

‘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?’