Christmas At Leo's - Memoirs Of A Houseboy (13 page)

“That was quite some outburst.”

I almost jumped out of my skin, my stomach lurching with apprehension as Shane walked into the room. I made a point of not looking at him, fiddling with the zip on a case, expecting wrath to fall on me at any moment.

“Are you done shouting, swearing, slamming and banging?”

I nodded, still not looking at him. I knew his face would match his voice and be stern.

“Then get those wet things off.”

I struggled out of my clinging top, shorts, socks and briefs. He went into the ensuite bathroom and came out with a large bath towel. He came to me, draping the towel over my head, rubbing excess moisture out of my hair. He then wrapped the towel around my waist and drew me against his body, warming me. “You deserve a belting for that foul mouthed display.” He twined a strand of my damp hair around his fingers. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I spoke into his chest, torn between wanting to melt into him and have him take care of me and wanting to fight him.

“Don’t brush me off. Something is troubling you. I want to know what it is.”

I suppose I could have told him about the memory box, but I didn’t want to talk about it or about mum or my mixed up feelings. I didn’t want to be reminded about what was coming or what had passed. I offered a feeble excuse. “I overdid the run, made too much adrenaline. It made me bad tempered. I’m sorry.”

“I’m going to take a look at your wretched diaries and see if there’s anything written amongst the nonsense to explain what’s going on with you.”

“You won’t find anything. I never write what I don’t want you to find, not that there is anything.” I pulled away from him. “I told you. I overexerted myself. I ran too fast and too far.”

He surveyed me for a moment and then said calmly. “In that case, do your stretches, a full set, to loosen off your muscles or you’ll get cramps.”

“I’m too tired to faff on with stretches. A hot shower will sort me out.”

“Let me remind you of a house rule, Gillibran, one you discard far too often.” Tilting my chin up, he made me look at him. “I’m Master in this house. When I tell you to do something, you do it without contradiction. I told you to do your stretches. Make a start or I’ll colour your backside a shade of crimson that will take a week to fade. You, boy, have had the full quota of my patience this morning.”

I did my sets under his supervision, conscious of my nudity and his critical appraisal of my technique. He didn’t hold back, barking reprimands and making me repeat stretches when he considered my execution to be sloppy.

When I was done, he sent me for a quick shower. He meant quick too, rapping on the cubicle door before I’d rinsed the shampoo from my hair.

“Hurry up, Gilli. We haven’t got all day. I want to get to Leo’s and settled in.” He knocked again. “Come on, move it. You’re not lingering in there, holding us up.”

Mention of Leo tightened my lips. I rinsed my hair and then raised my face, letting the hot water flow over it for a few daredevil seconds before turning off the water and opening the shower door, stepping out onto the mat. He handed me a towel.

“Get dried, put on a robe and go downstairs.”

I rubbed the towel over my face and hair. “I’ll get dressed first.”

The towel was whisked from my hands. Tucking me under his arm, he struck my damp buttocks hard and fast, landing at least six strikes in as many seconds. Bathroom acoustics made the slaps sound like a burst of rapid gunfire and my yells sound like the cries of a murder victim.

He righted me. “Do I speak a different language to you, boy?”

“No.” I rubbed my stinging backside, taken aback and tearful.

“Then why do you seem to find it so hard to understand my instructions. Did I tell you to get dressed?”

I shook my head.

“What did I tell you to do?”

“Put on a robe and go downstairs.”

“See, you do understand plain English when you put your mind to it. Do it and do it quickly. Dick will make you some breakfast. We’ve had ours. Make sure you apologise to him for your rudeness when you came in.”

He left the room. I dried my body and pulled on my robe. My knees trembled as I descended the stairs, due to a mix of running exertion and fright at Shane’s harsh authoritarian action. Coming in the wake of his initial kindness it had somehow impacted harder. I passed him in the hall. He was on the landline to Leo, telling him we might be later than planned. I could almost hear Leo’s eyeballs rolling in their sockets:
don’t tell me, bébé brat is playing up again, really, Shane, you need to sort him out once and for all.

Dick was in the kitchen, making a pot of tea. He set it on the table as I walked in. I offered him an apology, which he accepted.

“Have you had your meds this morning, sweetheart?”

“Not yet.”

“Then take them at once, you naughty boy.” He sounded vexed. “You shouldn’t go running before you’ve had them. It makes you more vulnerable. I’ll make your breakfast. What do you fancy?”

I got my meds out of the drawer, going over to the sink to get a glass of water to swallow them with. “Just tea, thanks, Dick. I’m not hungry.”

“Your body needs to be fuelled by more than tea, hun, especially after exercise. You looked exhausted when you came in.”

I swallowed my meds before repeating. “I’m not hungry. Besides,” I made an attempt at a joke, “your tea qualifies as solids.”

“He’ll have scrambled eggs and buttered toast.” Shane came into the kitchen. He sat down at the table and pointed at the chair opposite him, clicking his fingers at me. “Sit there.” He addressed Dick. “Make me some coffee, please, instant will do.”

I sat down where indicated and poured some milk into a cup before picking up the teapot. True to Dick’s form it oozed out of the spout like Glastonbury mud. I’d need to don wellies to drink it. Plonking down the pot I stood up, intending to get some hot water to dilute the tea, only to be barked at by Shane.

“Sit.”

“I’m going to get some hot water to thin this tea. It’s like liquid silage. I can’t drink it.”

“Park your bottom and keep it parked until I say otherwise.”

I dropped back down on the chair, sullenly folding my arms.

Dick came over to the table carrying a plate of lightly scrambled eggs and the kettle. He set the eggs before me. Lifting the teapot lid, he poured in some hot water and replaced the lid. “Toast is coming, hun.” He patted my shoulder.

Shane handed me a fork. “Eat those eggs before they go cold. They’re good protein for you.”

Dick brought my toast and Shane’s coffee. He sat down and poured a cup tea for himself before topping up my cup. It was still strong, but I didn’t complain. I added a bit more milk. Silence fell.

I ate without tasting, my mind crowded with thoughts. It was Christmas Eve, but I didn’t feel in the least bit festive. There was no thrill of anticipation. On the trivial side, it would be my first Christmas as a teetotaller. On the serious side, it would be my mother’s last as a living being, and she was spending it with family that didn’t include me. I hadn’t shared a Christmas Day with her in years, so why should I expect to be involved just because it was her last one. She didn’t need me. It was right for her to spend her last Christmas with people she felt at ease with. God knows we hadn’t been at ease with each other for ages past, not since I was a little boy. It didn’t take much for old wounds to open, as had been proven the day before. I thought our reconciliation and her illness had cancelled out the past and all its grievances, but it hadn’t. For some reason her impending death was reawakening it. What kind of petty unforgiving twat was I?

I blinked back tears, forced the last morsel of toast past the lump in my throat and finished my tea.

“What’s wrong, babe? Surely my tea isn’t so bad?” Dick touched my hand.

“I’d better go get dressed.”

“You’ll get dressed when I tell you to get dressed.”

Propping his elbows on the table, Shane interlaced the fingers of both hands and rested his chin on them, giving me a long thoughtful look before speaking again. “Dick disciplined you yesterday morning, rightly so. He thinks you may have an issue with it. Do you?”

I shook my head.

“Then what do you have an issue with?”

“Nothing.”

“If you’re not prepared to tell us what’s chewing at you then we’ll have to make assumptions and deal accordingly.” He took his elbows off the table and leaned back in his chair. “I think the issue is alcohol. Jesus Christ, boy. It’s been, what, seven months since you were told it’s permanently off limits and you’re still not close to accepting the decision with any kind of grace. You seek any excuse to regurgitate and throw a tantrum over it, such as going to Leo’s.”

“It isn’t a tantrum. I just don’t feel like being with a bunch of strangers over Christmas. Seeing as you’ve brought up the subject I want to renegotiate the alcohol rule, like we were supposed to in September until Dick denied me the chance. It’s nannying over and above the call of duty. It annoys me. I don’t agree with it at all.”

He tilted his head and gave a humourless smile. “No fucking kidding, we’d never have guessed. Thank you for enlightening us.” The smile vanished. “I don’t give a fig that you disagree with it. I don’t give a fig that it annoys you. It’s set in stone. You’ll abide by it.”

A sense of angry injustice swept over me. I jutted out my chin to issue a rebellious statement. “Don’t bet your plush pension on me ever accepting it with grace, because it isn’t going to happen, not ever. I don’t care if you’re sick of hearing me whine on about it. You’ve trashed this Christmas for me and left me with nothing to enjoy. You even took away my harmless pleasure in the summerhouse.”

“It was not a harmless pleasure.” Shane tapped his forefinger on the table in front of me. “You were using it as a bolthole to hide away and brood in. It was a covert sulk. As I told you last Friday, Gilli, I’m not putting up with it.”

“You both go party at Château Lion, but I’m staying here. It will be less stressful for me to
abide
on my own.” I shoved back my chair and stood up. “You can sage and onion Christmas with Leo and stuff it up your lordly arses!”

I strode out of the kitchen, putting on a spurt of speed as I heard chair legs scraping tiles. I made it to the foot of the stairs, but didn’t get chance to ascend them. Shane caught me, grasping the back of my bathrobe. Damn his long legs. I was domiciled with giants.

“I’ve a good mind to soap your mouth for the cheek that’s come out of it this morning.”

He escorted me back to the kitchen, thrusting me onto a chair. Placing one hand on the table and one hand on the back of my chair, he leaned towards me.

“You say it will be less stressful to stay at home, but you’re deluding yourself. You’ll end up in one of your states of mindless hysteria and there’ll be no one around to apply the brakes. You’ll go on one kind of a bender or another. I want you where I can keep an eye on you.”

“I don’t need to be kept an eye on. I’m not a child.”

“Oh, but you are. You shy away from the less pleasant aspects of life and refuse to accept what needs to be accepted. You want sweeties all the time, and too many sweets are bad for you.”

“Not if you brush your teeth afterwards, and anyway, according to you two, everything is bad for me, except sex, of course, but then that’s as much for your pleasure as mine and God forbid you deny yourselves anything.”

“Oh, Gilli,” Dick looked upset. “You do say some hurtful things. You make it sound as if we torture you. All we want is…”

Shane interrupted him. “Calm yourself, Dick. You’re allowing him to manipulate your emotions again. I thought you were beginning to toughen up in that respect. You do not offer him excuses, justifications or apologies for the decisions you make. He knows the lay of the land well enough. He’s known it from the moment we took him into our bed. Be a pet, tidy up in here. The boy and I have some business to attend to upstairs.”

Hoisting me to my feet, Shane marched me down the hall and up the stairs at such unceremonious speed I couldn’t spare breath for speech. Powering me into the master bedroom, he shoved me nose first into a corner of it, placing my hands on top of my head.

“Stand there. Don’t move a muscle, especially that overactive one behind your teeth. If I hear so much as a squeak out of you, I’ll be most annoyed.”

He departed the room. Given my state of tension my arms, back and legs began to ache immediately. I prayed my corner punishment would be of short duration.

I heard the sound of running water from the main bathroom. He must have gone to the loo and was washing his hands. The water ran for a while and then stopped. A moment later he walked back into the bedroom.

Tingles of nervous anticipation began to filter through every nerve in my body, including the ones in my cock, making it twitch. Was the corner punishment going to be all he inflicted on me, or was there going to be some physical accompaniment, a hand spanking, a paddling or belting? After ousting me from my winter palace the previous Friday he’d promised me a premier leathering if I put a foot wrong between then and Christmas. I suspected in his view I’d put both feet wrong.

I strained my ears, listening for the paddle drawer being opened or the sound of a buckle being undone and leather drawn through belt tabs. There was silence. Sweat began to form on my back. After what seemed an age, he spoke to me.