Justine Elyot - His House of Submission

‘This is his private stuff,’ I agonised. ‘I don’t think we should.’

Too late, though, because the lid was raised and I stared down into an abyss of deviance.

‘God,’ I whispered, lowering myself to my knees and peering inside. It was all so neatly compartmentalised, boxes within boxes, but some of the contents were in long fabric bags. For instance, the whips. And canes. And riding crops.

‘Is this what you’re into?’ asked Will, opening one of the boxes and showing me a selection of cuffs – leather, metal, fur-lined, velcro, you name it.

‘This is … I mean. Wow. It’s a collection. Does he just collect the stuff or does he use it?’

I opened another box, my curiosity overwhelming my caution now, and found a selection of first-edition titles, some of which – like The Story of O – were familiar to me, others not so well known.

‘ The Harem of the Flagellants ,’ I read, my finger hovering over a cheaply but sturdily bound Victorian tome. I shivered.

It was one thing to fantasise about these things, but quite another to see them in real life. I felt a strange kind of fear, as if I had skimmed a surface and been dragged underneath it. Now I was here in the underworld, could I get out again?

Will hadn’t answered my question, so I asked it again.

‘Does any of this stuff get used?’

‘I don’t know. He hasn’t had anyone here for a while. When he stays here, he just buries himself. Doesn’t go out. It’s like hibernation.’

‘I guess his work is quite intense. Ever since he won the Palme d’Or.’

Will shrugged.

‘Don’t ask me. I’ve worked here for four years but I wouldn’t say I knew him. This is the closest I’ve got to knowing anything about him. This here.’ He waved his hand at the boxes.

I had opened another. It contained things I had never seen in my life before, silicone things that were a little bit like dildoes but with an outward flare halfway along the length.

‘What the hell are these?’

Will snorted.

‘Don’t you know?’

‘I’ve never done anything kinky,’ I defended myself.

‘Butt plugs, my love,’ he said, picking one up.

‘Oh, don’t touch it!’

‘Why not?’

I shook my head. I knew I was panicking, but I couldn’t seem to rein myself in.

‘Fingerprints,’ I mumbled.

He burst out laughing at that, waving the butt plug in the air.

‘You’re funny,’ he said, between fresh gusts of mirth.

‘You’ll have to share the joke.’ A third voice spoke from the doorway.

I fell backwards on to my arse, my hand clamping my mouth so hard and fast I almost knocked a couple of teeth out.

I watched through wide-stretched eyes as everything seeming to crash into slo-mo. Will dropped the butt plug and raised himself to his feet, shoulders back, squared for combat.

The man in the door was, presumably, Jasper Jay, though he wasn’t the way I remembered him from that medical soap he used to be in when I was a girl. Of course, a lot of water had passed under the bridge since then – fifteen years’ worth. He wasn’t a fresh-faced bright-eyed youth in a white coat now. He stood with one arm braced against the doorframe, in an expensive suit, its light biscuit colour accentuating his dark looks. He had that famous-person thing of looking somehow bigger and shinier and brighter than a real man. I hadn’t fancied him in the medical soap, or in the many news clips of him accepting the Palme d’Or, but now I could almost see the vortex of charisma inside which he existed.

But now wasn’t a good time to be ogling my boss.

Now was about the worst time ever for that kind of thing.

‘Shit, I thought you were in France,’ was Will’s pretty dreadful attempt at defending his actions.

I remained silent, cowering on a Turkish rug of early nineteenth-century vintage, concentrating on keeping Will’s bathrobe tightly wrapped around me.

‘Shit, you’re fired,’ replied Jay laconically.

‘You can’t just –’

‘Yes, I can. Pack your things. Load up your car. Get out of here.’

‘But my rights …’

‘In what universe isn’t this gross misconduct?’ He stepped into the room, unfolding his arm grandly to usher Will through the door. ‘Not ours, at least. Goodbye. I’ll forward any holiday entitlement you had outstanding on to you.’

‘Mr Jay, please … four years of good service.’

‘Ruined in the space of one night.’ Jay shook his head. ‘Like a film script, isn’t it?’ There was a pause. ‘I can’t help noticing that you’re still here.’

Will looked at me, as if expecting me to leap to his passionate defence. Seeing this wasn’t about to happen, he made as dignified an exit as he could muster.

I watched the knots between his shoulder blades, the buzz-cut V at his nape, retreat through the door.

I looked up, expecting my neck to be next on the block.

I ought to say something but I couldn’t think what so I waited, while tension and mortification played ping-pong in my emotional centre.

He didn’t say anything either, which was odd. He just looked at me, not angrily or severely, just sort of … pensively. His eyes were wintry and sombre, but not hard.

His abstraction was only broken when I cleared my throat and swallowed, looking desperately around me for any magical escape route that might present itself.

‘Sit down,’ he said.

I was already sitting down, but I gathered from the direction of his waving hand that I was to go and sit on the side of the bed.

There were armchairs in the room, but these wouldn’t do, it seemed.

‘Are you going to sack me too?’ I asked, the words coming out of my cotton-wool mouth in a thick wad.

He made no reply but walked over to the chest and reached inside.

I’d lost track of my heart. It had giddied up and up and now it was steeplechasing fit to collapse. What on earth did he have in mind?

He drew out one of the many long, thin boxes and came to stand over me, a looming presence, shadowing me. I felt very small and very vulnerable and yet a part of me was revelling in my disgrace, making sure it recalled all the details to be mulled over at leisure later.

He took the lid off the box and withdrew the contents – a wide strap of supple leather, with stiffer, darker, embossed leather at one end and a metal chain link intended for hanging it on a hook.

‘Do you know what this is?’ He presented it across his two palms where it lay, dormant but no less deadly, its antique tang gathering in my senses and whipping them up. ‘Take it. Hold it.’

Uncertainly, I plucked the thing from him and read the gilt lettering on the leather handle. ‘Holborn Barbering Supplies’. The leather was cold and smooth and cruelly sensual to the touch.

‘Well?’ Jay’s voice was soft but commanding.

‘It’s a razor strop. Antique.’

‘Can you date it?’

‘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.