His House of Submission

‘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.’