Lecture Notes (29 page)

“No?”
He frowns, replacing a tie in the rack.

“They’ve seen you in formal wear – on television and, er, probably some stills of t
hat tape as well. I don’t think your intimidating side is the one you should be projecting towards them.”

“Hmmm.
You could be right,” he muses, then he turns to me and smiles ruefully. “But I find confrontation very difficult when I’m not properly dressed.”

I blink a few times.
“You mean the clothes make the man?”

“If I look the part
I can take on anybody, Beth. I don’t really have anything casual in my wardrobe.”

Oh. I am stymied for minute.
“OK…well…maybe just an open-necked shirt and trousers? Would that work for you? I’m worried that if you wear a tie my dad might grab hold of it and throttle you.”

Sinclair chuckles briefly.
“You have high hopes for today then, Beth? Your concern for my welfare is quite moving.” He selects his habitual linen shirt and trousers combo and dresses for battle.

*

“What will you say to them?” I enquire, my head leaning on his shoulder as the train rattles through pastoral idyll after pastoral idyll. Thank God he decided not to drive, or they would be having this meeting in a hospital, no doubt.

“I don’t have a script,” he tells me.
“I intend to play it by ear. I hope I can persuade your parents that I am a civilised man with your best interests at heart rather than an exploitative monster.”

“So do I, believe me,” I say, snuggling in further and catching the guilty eyes of the couple sitting across the aisle before they furtively look away.

Once we are at the opening of our cul-de-sac, I feel a jolt of nausea so strong I have to stop and jerk Sinclair’s hand in panic.

“
You go on ahead,” he advises. “Prepare the ground. I’ll wait in that café over the street until you call me.”

I stare mutely up at him, all bravado evaporated in a puff of smoke.

“What if they cast me out? Disinherit me?”

He
ruffles my hair and chuckles. “It won’t come to that, Beth. Go on. Be brave.”

Halfway through his
go-get-em kiss goodbye, I am distinctly aware of twitching curtains in the vicinity. I watch Sinclair step back, dismissing me, thrust out the chest, throw back the head and march past the neat semis with their landscaped driveways and lead-paned upvc windows.

Mum is halfway down the drive before I get there, waving a dishcloth in a manner I’d have to describe as agitated.

“Beth, Beth, come in quickly before the neighbours see you,” she flusters. “If Mrs Mack at number 22 catches a glimpse, she’ll be straight over with some made-up cookery crisis.”

I flit inside the open door and mak
e a break for the living room. Dad shoots up from his armchair, throwing the paper aside – it doesn’t seem that we’re on the front page today; relegated to an inside spread, I guess.

“Beth!”
He lumbers over like an overeager buffalo, crushing me in an awkward embrace until I have to laugh falsely and protest that my ribs are about to crack. He holds me at arms length and scans me from top to toe while Mum wrings her hands in the doorway. “Are you all right, love? Has that man…hurt you?”

“No, really, I’m fi
ne,” I say brightly. “Really. That’s what I wanted you to know. Everything’s fine.”

“Is it true?”

“Some of it,” I say, and mum throws her hands up in the air, lamenting.

“I’d love a cup of tea though,”
I entreat. “I’ve been on the train all morning.”

“Yes, yes,” mutter
s mum, heading to the kitchen. “We need tea.”

*

“So then,” opens mum, pouring the a golden stream of hot liquid from the spout of the teapot, “You said some of it was true. How much of it?”

I take a breath.
“I am seeing Professor Sinclair,” I open and there is immediate crashing of crockery.

“AM?”  explode
s Dad. “As in….present tense? I’ll wring his bloody neck!”

“No,
no, please don’t!” I implore. “Dad, I know it looks a bit…fishy…but it’s not. He isn’t the way the papers have made him out to be – there’s much more to him than that. They’ve just picked up on a couple of salacious titbits and…made them look like the whole story.”

“VERY salac
ious titbits,” Mum points out. “Beth, he’s old enough to be your father and he’s…he’s…well, you know. Not very nice.”

“It’s not true that he sleeps with l
ots of students,” I tell them. “I’m the first.”

Dad snorts.
“So he’s told you.”

“I am! I believe him!
And if it hadn’t been for him, I’d have been kicked out of the university by now. He’s helped me so much – academically, financially and…you know…on a personal level.”

“Nothing ever comes for
free,” says mum, lips pursed. “I don’t suppose he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart.”

“He was doing it out of love,
” I say firmly. “He loves me. And I love him.”

“Do
n’t be ridiculous,” snaps Dad. “You’re a child. You’re infatuated. Flattered that an older man who’s on the telly has taken a shine to you. Wake up, Beth. This is a fantasy. You’re an ego trip for him and as soon as the novelty wears off, he’ll lose interest.”

Ah, how well I u
nderstand this interpretation. It was, after all, my own for quite some time.

“That’s what I thought,” I s
ay quietly. “But I was wrong. He does love me. And I do love him, and not despite of what he is like, but because of it.”

“But he…that video…” says mum
brokenly, unable to continue. Dad looks away, repulsed at the mention of this.

“That’s nobody’s business,” I say, discomfited.

“It’s no use, Beth, we can’t accept him. He’s not what we want for you,” says Dad. 

“But you want me to be happy, don’t you?”

“That’s why we don’t accept him,” asserts my mother.

“I can’t be happy without him!”

“Oh, less of the Scarlett O’ Bloody Hara, Beth. Of course you can. And that’s an end of it. I don’t want to hear his name mentioned in this house again.”

“If you’d just give him a chance…listen to him…” I plead.

“No, Beth, no way. Never.”

“Please don’t make me choose between you!”

“Beth, don’t be silly,” says Mum in a panic. I have flipped open my mobile and am texting Sinclair. “NO GD, THEY DON’T WANT 2 KNO, I AM ON WAY 2 C U.”

“You aren’t leaving this house
to go back to him!” booms Dad. “Over my dead body!”

“I
am going back to him,” I cry. “I love him and that’s all there is to it.” The phone beeps. “DON’T YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?  I AM COMING TO TALK TO THEM.” Argh!

Dad leaps out of the chair (second time today; that’s more leaping than I’ve ever seen him do in his life), thrashing around for my arm, but I elude his grasp and head for the front door, desperate to keep Sinclair away from this scene of carnage.

“Beth, darling, please stay, you don’t have to go back to him!” sobs my mother. I open the front door, oh God, he is walking up the road and there appears to be a couple of people with cameras in his wake.

“Sinclair!” I yell, “Go back!”

My Dad, by now in the final stages of apoplexy, is bawling, “NO WAY IS THAT MAN CROSSING MY THRESHOLD!” and I can hear him rummaging for something in the cupboard under the stairs.

“John, no!” gasps my mum and I glance back to find him brandishing a weapon.

“Dad, that’s a nail gun!” I shout. “What are you going to do? Nail him to the front door? Put it away, for Christ’s sake. SINCLAIR, HE’S GOT A GUN!”

Sinclair is turning into the drive now, his stride as purposeful and unstoppa
ble as that of the Terminator. I run over towards him, intent on shielding him from the nail assault. He bundles me aside and continues his walk towards doom, attached to one of my wrists but otherwise ahead of me, staring down my father who is waving the nail gun around and yelling incoherently.

“Put the weapon down, Mr Newland,” he says,
icily calm. Dad bellows again, Mum catches hold of his arm, trying to wrest the thing away from him, there is a moment of confusion and then a loud discharge into the air, and it is pointing straight at me and I scream and then Sinclair….pushes me on to the grass and…oh God! He’s been hit! In the shoulder, I think.

“SINCLAIR!”  I scream, flailing around in front of him as he crumples to the ground, clutching his wound and moaning.

A white-faced Dad races over. “Beth! Beth! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to shoot you, I really didn’t…oh my God…what was I doing? Oh my God.” He raves on like that for a while but I am not listening, totally focused on Sinclair’s injury.

“Mum, call the ambulance!”
I order. “Oh God, are you badly hurt? Oh Christ, you’re bleeding really badly. Oh God, should I try and pull the nail out? Oh God…”

“Beth, stop fussing,” he says weakly, then he passes out.

*

Two hours later, once the nail has been extracted and the wound cleaned and sewn up, I am admitted to the A&E bed he has been assigned for overnight observation.

He looks pale but otherwise perfectly composed, reading a newspaper with a gathering frown.

“Sinclair,” I say tentatively.
“I’m so sorry about Dad.  He feels dreadful.” I go to sit down at his bedside, but he takes my hand and pulls me on to the mattress with his good arm.

“I thought that went well, for a first meeting,” he says with casu
al irony. “Don’t worry, Beth. They’ll come round.”

“Well
, actually, they already have. And you’re being very…forgiving. You could prosecute Dad. But I hope you don’t, of course.”

Sinclair smiles and kisses me.
“Just what I need at the moment, Beth – more publicity.”

“Uh, no, suppose n
ot. Are you in dreadful pain? I thought you might die.”

“The p
ainkillers are good,” he says. “I’m much better at inflicting pain than tolerating it, I must admit.” He shifts position, wincing.

“Hmm, yes.
I’m not sure my parents will ever really get their heads around that.  But mum has persuaded dad that the way you took that bullet, I mean nail, indicated that you must really care for me. And I think dad would just be relieved not to be up in court for assault. They want you to go round for dinner when you’re out of here.”

“Really?
How much does your mother know about poisons?”

“Oh, ha h
a. No, I think she’s genuine. She wants to try and approve of you, at least.”

“Just as well,” he sni
ffs. “If she’s going to be my mother-in-law, we ought to at least have a relationship with some basis of civility.”

“Is sh
e?” I sit up, staring at him. “Going to be your mother-in-law?”

He kisses me, his fingers pushin
g into my neck, long and slow. A nurse pulls the curtain aside, says ‘Oh, excuse me!’ and scurries off.

“
One day,” he says into my ear. “Whenever you’re ready, Beth.”

“I’m ready when you are,” I breathe.

Chapter Sixteen

There’s a little thing that happens all the time now – quite a small thing in its way, bu
t also quite significant. I’m not sure I will ever really get used to it; I certainly notice it every time it occurs. I know, absolutely and beyond doubt, that it is going to happen again now as Sinclair and I cut a swathe through the clicks and pops of the flashbulbs up towards the high table covered in hardback copies of The Book. He is holding my hand reassuringly - he knows I am nervous about my first scheduled ‘public appearance’ – and I am grateful for its largeness and warmth as we negotiate the steps and move towards our seats….yes…now…it is going to happen.

Yes.  It happened.

Every time I sit down, the covert, under-brow glances of fascination, usually accompanied by lips pursed in anticipation of some illusory pain. If I sit swiftly and without fuss, the momentary tension dissolves as rapidly as it appeared. If, on the other hand, there is the ghost of a wince or intake of breath or any reflexive response at all, there is a kind of collective sympathetic sigh.

Every lecture, every seminar, every time I take a seat in a theatre or a restaurant, I become the subject of intense attention and it is, I don’t mind tel
ling you, bloody embarrassing. Sinclair, of course, utterly revels in my discomfiture, finding it satisfying that there is this prurient interest in the state of my arse. He also likes to bring the point up during disciplinary scenes, adding the element of an invisible audience to the already painful proceedings.

At least on this occasion there is n
othing for them to pick up on. After all, we only got married yesterday; even Sinclair isn’t evil enough to punish a bride on her wedding night. He was very keen to get the knot tied before the book launch – he judged that having the volume co-credited ‘Eliot Sinclair and Beth Newland’ cluttered the jacket in a way that offended his aesthetic sensibilities. ‘Eliot and Elizabeth Sinclair’ was infinitely preferable. So that is why we got married. Well, OK, there were the side issues of being madly, passionately in love and wanting to spend the rest of our lives together and have each other’s babies too. But it was the book consideration that dictated the date of the ceremony.

Sinclair picks up a copy of our first joint production, running a caressing thumb down its spine and smiling sli
ghtly at the cover design. Crossed riding crops above a satin blindfold. Tasteful, no? ‘
Deviation from the Norm:  An Anthology of Historical Voices from the Dark Side of Erotica’
. It has a spuriously pretentious title, although it is little more than a collection of kinky stories, sourced by Sinclair and I during the three month summer vacation and cobbled together with his scholarly introduction and my unscholarly foreword. The editor insisted I contribute this little overview of the Sinclair scandal from my point of view, assuring us it would jump-start sales straight away. Judging from the press interest here – still keen six months later – he might have had a point.

The story is still fresh enough in people’s minds that the book is likely to be a bestseller, and that is the positive angle I have to focus on every time I am in the department or the student bar and there is yet
more whispering and giggling. Sinclair has a number of nicknames amongst the undergraduates now:  Professor Sin, the Marquis and Wackford are just a handful. Though it would be a brave soul who would use them to his face.

The flashbulb frenzy abates to one or two pops per minute, then Sinclair commences the monologue he ha
s prepared as an introduction. As ever, when he knows he has an audience, he is absolutely in command of the situation, blending charm, wit and menace in perfectly balanced proportions. He slightly plays up to his notorious reputation, using deliberately provocative language, making no attempt to tone himself down.

The floor is opened to questions and suddenly everyone has turned to me.

“Congratulations on your wedding, Mrs Sinclair,” says one hack, smiling ingratiatingly.

“Thanks.”

“What’s it like to be married to the Professor?”

“It’s very nice, thank
s.” Christ, what am I supposed to say?

“Have the stories in your book given you any…ideas?”

“I don’t think Sinclair needs any help with his imagination,” I blurt. Oops. Should I have said that? Sinclair seems to be amused, so I release my breath and smile dazzlingly into the white lights.

“But you share his interests?”

“Oh yes. We’re both very interested in history,” I say sweetly, and there is general laughter.

“Do you think academic staff should have relationships with students half their
age?” A woman has asked this and I frown.

“Oh…well, it’s not
as if he was my tutor,” I say. “And…do you disapprove of age gap relationships in general, then?”

“Only when they are exploitative and abusive,” she says.

“Then you should approve of ours,” I say, knocking out another winning smile, “Because it is neither of those things.”

Sinclair has moved one hand up to my shoulders, ostensibly a gesture of support, but with two fingers he begins to twiddle the leather thong necklace I am w
earing. Well, I say necklace. More like a choker. Well, I say choker. More like a collar, with a metal ring at my throat, decorative enough to pass as jewellery, though I doubt this crowd would be fooled.

The press conference ends and Sinclair and I spend a while signing copies of the bo
ok for interested parties. Lots and lots of fluttering women, plus quite a few younger guys who seem to want to talk to me for longer than I’m comfortable with, until Sinclair fixes them with his glittering eye and they shuffle away.

As the crowds recede to join the vast queue at the till, our edito
r raises a glass of champagne. “To populist sadomasochism,” he says.

“I think it’s tim
e we left,” responds Sinclair. “Good afternoon.”

*

We are in the hotel room. The honeymoon suite indeed.  I am kneeling at the foot of the bed with my hands cuffed behind my back and my collar leashed to the bedframe by a length of silver chain. I am nude except for a pair of stockings, a suspender belt and a blindfold. Cool air drifts across my skin, stiffening my nipples and prompting a ripple of gooseflesh up and down my arms. I can hear Sinclair pacing up and down behind me, sometimes to my left, sometimes to my right, and I know that he is carrying a riding crop. He told me so.

There is an anticipatory silence so drawn out and loaded that when he speaks, the distinctive baritone unleashes a tremor from my lips to my toes and I release a tiny sigh of longing.

“You were right about one thing, Beth,” he says, his voice somewhere beyond my left shoulder. “I don’t need any help with my imagination. None at all. But you might need some help in learning what I consider to be conduct befitting my wife.”

“Have I disple
ased you, Sir?” I ask faintly. I know what this is about. I set it up myself. Waited until I knew Sinclair was watching at the signing, then started flirting a little with the boy I was talking to, leaning forward, winking, offering to recommend additional reading material. Sinclair’s hand descended upon my thigh and I squeaked, “Thanks – next please!”  and shivered a little as his fingers pinched into my flesh. One of those warning pinches. I always know where they are heading. And on this occasion I am absolutely right.

“I wonder if you can work it out for yourself, Beth,” he says and I flinch at the feel of the crop
’s tip at the nape of my neck. “A little test of memory for you.” He runs the crop down my spine, exquisitely slowly, making me itch and cringe at the same time.

“I
’m….not sure, Sir,” I whisper. The crop moves down into the crease of my buttocks, then a succession of the lightest of taps alight on my cheeks.

“Need a reminder?” he breathes, guiding the flexible leather underneath the curve of my bottom, along the top of each thigh.

“Uh…” The words don’t make it through my lips before two sudden stunning stings crack down on each thigh. “Owwww!” I complain.

“Has that helped at all?” he
asks urbanely.  “Or perhaps….” He begins to swat at my inner thighs, forcing my legs further apart until my position is quite uncomfortable. He flicks the crop swiftly from one side to the other, the flesh there so delicate that it burns horribly almost at once and I yell for mercy.

“Please, Sir, no, I know I shouldn’t have winked at that boy!”

“Ah, good. Always effective as an aide-memoire, I find.” He retracts his weapon and I am permitted to wriggle my knees back to a more even keel. “So then, Beth, if you knew you shouldn’t have done it….why did you do it?”

The crop is back, snaking sneakily across my bottom, like a cobra preparing to strike.

“I’m sorry, Sir, I forgot myself. I need correction.”

“Yes, you do.
Ask me for it then.”

I swallow.
This is always the most difficult part, more difficult than thanking him at the end, more difficult than breathing through the hardest stroke.

“Please, Sir, will you punish me as I deserve?”

“Most certainly,” he murmurs, his lips next to my ear for a second before he steps back and I know he is making those split-second calculations, the best position, the best angle, the best distance and then I hear the whooshing descent and then there is a full-force detonation of pain on my bum and it has begun again.

All of the familiar thoughts and sensations dance through me…I wanted this but now I don’t, or do I, and surely this is more painful than the last time, and oh God, I want him to stop, but I’ll be disappointed if he does and all the while bright red starbursts of heat and stinginess explode on my arse.

Ten strokes in he pauses and removes the blindfold. The unique selling point of this particular honeymoon suite is its mirrored ceiling; wonderfully tacky and perfect for Sinclair’s purposes.

“I wan
t you to watch this,” he says. “Watch yourself.”

I lift my head as far as I can, feeling the leather of the collar tighten around my neck, and watch Sinclair step back again, waving the crop around in slightly ninja-ish fashion, then lining it up with my already reddened and welted bum and
drawing it back…how many more? I wonder.

Ten more times I watch the slow rise and speedy fall, ten times I admire Sinclair’s precise flick of the wrist, ten times I lurch forward and howl at t
he searing jolt of connection. He is so good at this; I wonder where one learns these kind of skills?

He lays the twentieth hard stroke, then replaces the crop on a table and walks around to the fr
ont of me. “What do you say, Beth?”

“Thank you, Sir,” I shiver, the flames on my backside licking up and down and across my body.

“Look at me when you address me,” he says, forcing my face upwards by the chin. “Tell me again.”

“Thank you for disciplining me, Sir,” I elucidate, my eyes blurring him a little so the cruel set of his mouth is in soft focus.
His lips twitch.

“Better,” he concedes.
He unclips my collar and lifts me to my feet, turning me around to inspect the state of my behind. He bends me over his forearm, using his free hand to pinch and squeeze my burning flesh, then his hand moves between my legs and he makes the usual inarticulate sound at the slick coating he finds there. He runs his fingers, almost lazily, around and inside my most intimate places, tutting at me when I attempt to grind against him, removing his hand and spanking my sore bottom a couple of times before returning to his teasing. “Not yet,” he cautions.

My hands are uncuffed and I am led over to a high-backed wooden chair, made to kneel before it and bent over so that my upper body is su
pported on the cushioned seat. He fastens my wrists again to the top strut of the chair back, then I am instructed once again to lift up my head and watch myself on the ceiling mirror. I stare mutely up as my husband undresses behind me, then he kneels down at my rear, takes my calves in his hands and pulls them upwards and towards him so that I am half-suspended, secured to the chair but with my lower body held by Sinclair. He surges forward and quickly, unceremoniously impales me on his large, thick cock, moving his hands up to my hips and clinging tightly to them, pushing himself up as far as he can while he pulls my body downwards. Thank God for padded cuffs or my wrists would be lacerated by this, but I manage to curl a few fingers around the chair strut and hold on for dear life as he pounds into me, making me yell with the intensity of it. It is quite a sight to behold, my upturned face and upper body sloping down to an angry red bottom  and split-open thighs, between which Sinclair’s engorged manhood bangs in over and over again at such a frenetic pace that the chair tips this way and that, knocking against the wall until I fear the plaster will be damaged.

“This…” puffs Sinclair as he works me over vigorously, “is how I deal with wayward wives,
Beth, and don’t you forget it. You are mine, always mine, forever mine….”

I begin to climax, waggling my legs furiously, pushing back on to him.

“…And you won’t be allowed to forget it.”