Lecture Notes (3 page)

Chapter Two

“You
what?
He’s going to give you extra lessons at his own place? You
did
go to bed with him, didn’t you?” gasps Emily.

“No, I didn’t!” I insist, shifting about uncomfortably on my arse and trying to use lager as an analgesic.

“What were you doing in there all that time then?” demands Dearbhla.  “Looking at his etchings?”

“Yeah, if it’ll shut you up, we shagged each
other senseless. He said he’d loved me ever since he first set eyes on me and threw me on the floor then and there.”

Em
ily looks at me mistrustfully. “It’s just a bit strange, though, isn’t it? Do you think he really does fancy you?”

My heart is shot th
rough with a lancing pain. Is it too much to hope?

“Obviously, judging by the way he ruthlessly dismantled my se
lf-esteem, he’s mad about me.” I swig moodily at my pint. “Hi, James.”

James Winthrop from Opsoc
smiles shyly on his way past. He is very cute. No Professor Eliot Sinclair though. Oh dear. This has really thrown me for a loop.

I excuse myself and sidle into the Ladies’ to c
heck the state of my backside. A lobsterous crimson meets my eye, unlikely to fade for some time – I can’t convince myself it was a dream. Is he really going to do it all again on Sunday?

For the first time in…well, ever, actually….I leave the pub before closing time, wanting nothing more than to lie on my stomach in my bed and revisit the event over and over in my head
. Already his harsh approach is mending my ways! By Monday perhaps I will have quit smoking as well.

*

On Saturday morning, after checking my behind in the mirror (speckly purple pattern across the middle of both cheeks) and getting dressed, I find an unwelcome item in my pigeonhole.

“
Dear Miss Newland

It is now six weeks since the bala
nce of your Hall fees was due. As stated in the two reminder letters sent, you owe the sum of £350.

I must advise you that this money must now be paid by Monday or you will face eviction from your Hall of R
esidence. Please make cheques payable to the University of Wessex.

Yours sincerely

J.J. Beresford, Warden of Cliveden House.
”

I stomp
outside and light a cigarette. Shit, bollocks, shit, fuck, shit. It never rains but it pours. Life’s a bitch and then you die. Insert cliché of choice.

I can’t approach my bank manager, who has promised seven shades of doom if I ask her for another
penny before the end of term. I’m overdrawn to my utter limit, and there are four more weeks to run before the Easter holidays.

“Doesn’t the
Union have some kind of contingency fund?” mentions Emily, who has stood me an emergency pint in the Biko Bar at lunchtime.

“That’s for genuine emergencies,” says Dearbhla, doing an inverted comma gesture around ‘genuine’.

“And this isn’t?” I moan. “It seems genuine enough to me. I’m genuinely sleeping on the streets next week if I can’t cough 350 big ones.”

“You have to admit, you’ve been haemorrhaging cash this term,”
says Dearbhla disapprovingly. I love her dearly, but that Voice of Reason tendency can grate. “You’ve been to every gig in town, you hardly ever eat in Hall, and those hundred pound shoes…”

“They were Blahniks! They were on sale!
It would have been rude not to buy them!”

“Tell it to Beresford,” says Dearbhla bluntly. Her face softens
at my appalled O-shaped mouth. “You can sleep on my floor as long as you like.”

“Thanks. But I need a plan.
How much do you think my body would fetch?”

“About
three fifty,” giggles Emily. “As in…three pounds fifty.”

Har-de-har.

*

I a
m on tenterhooks on Sunday. Half of my brain is wrapped up in delicious previews of tonight’s encounter with Sinclair, the other half with my parlous financial situation. What can I do? What will he do? The dual questions rattle through my head all the way through my afternoon Opsoc rehearsal. I am so distant that Seb, the director, has to constantly bring my attention back to the scene at hand. If I actually were on board
H.M.S. Pinafore
I’d have fallen into the briny by now.

James Winthrop, a fresh-faced Ralph Rackstraw to my Josephine, asks me if I’m feeling all right.

“Oh, I’m fine, James, thanks,” I assure him. “Bit, uh, strapped for cash.” I give him a speculative eye. Emily thinks he has a crush.

“Oh…sorry to hear it.
I could lend you a tenner?”

“No, no, honestly.” I laugh with embarrassment.
“It’s OK.”

I skulk off to get changed for my dubious dat
e with the perverse Professor. Mindful of the painful heft of his right palm, I stick a pair of big knickers over my thong and then wear the heaviest denim jeans I own. I mean, he didn’t definitely say he was going to spank me again tonight…but hope springs eternal…

Leaving my room for Sinclair’s abode, I wonder if it will be my last night in the utili
tarian square box I call home. Goodbye thin curtains, goodbye thinner walls, goodbye positively anorexic single bed. I hurry through the eerily quiet Sunday dusk, hugging my cord jacket around me. It is early March and there is a cutting wind that makes me twinge. I try to spot signs of spring in the gardens of the lavish mansions I pass but most of them have been given over to gravel and hardy perennials.

I have a swoony, nervy thing going on inside me tha
t is not unlike severe nausea. Perhaps I should have eaten first. Couldn’t face it though.

The picture windows loom yellow and enormous from the crepuscular half-light like the malevol
ent eyes of an enormous beast. I wonder what Sinclair is doing in there as he awaits me. I imagine him lounging elegantly in his bathrobe, gin and tonic in one hand. “Ah, Miss Newland, I’ve been expecting you…” Nice.

When I walk through into the living room he is not even in there though.

His voice appears before he does. “Sit down; I’ll be a few minutes.” I can hear furious tippy-tapping coming from another room. A study, presumably. I park my arse on the sofa and take a good long look at Sinclair’s living space. It is mutedly tasteful, quite modern but classic at the same time. I imagine I am doing an in-depth piece for an Interiors magazine.

“
Eliot Sinclair’s home is as elegant as the man himself, sharing his understated charm and wit….
”

Sinclair’s understated charm is little in evidence as he stalks into the room, glaring at me, with
an armful of books and papers. Open-necked white shirt, unusually dark trousers. Barefoot again. I like that. Casual but sexy. I am too busy eyeing him up to take in what he is saying at first, then he clicks his fingers almost in my face and I start.

“I said, I hope you are ready for some serious work, Miss Newland. I am not in the habit of wasting my time.”

“Oh…no. Of course not. Yes. I’m ready when you are,” I mutter.

He stops to look me up and down, obviously getting why I have worn the jean
s and suppressing a half-grin. Then he places the pile of books between us and sits down on the sofa. So close to me. I can smell him. He must have showered recently; he is all piney and fresh. This is going to be way too distracting.

I offer a silent prayer to whoever is the patron saint of hapless women addled by inappropriate lust and turn to my tutor.

He brandishes one of my essays in my face. The one on how Laclos’
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
presaged the downfall of the decadent French aristocracy.

“I notice a long list of references at the end of this piece, Miss Newland, but I can’t help wondering how many of them you actually read.”

Ah. I move my eyes shiftily to the left, avoiding his questioning stare.

“Well?
Did you read any at all?”

“Was it no good?”
I ask desperately.

He flicks his eyes over the comments he has appended to the essay – and there are many – before boring them back into me.

“A passing acquaintance with the plot and a nod to the political climate of the time do not a degree level textual analysis make, Miss Newland. Did you even read the book?”

Possibly my face might be redder if stuck it into a vat of Napoletana sauce, but only just.

“I was in a rush,” I whisper. “I had to write five essays in two weeks…”

“And whose fault was that? Did you read the book? Be honest with me.
I’ll know if you are lying.”

My throat is drier than Oscar Wilde in the
Sahara as I rasp, “I, er, watched it on DVD.”

A long silence.
“You watched the film?”

I nod.

“That was it, was it? The sum total of your research?”

Another nod.

“You thought you’d get away with that, did you?”

Nod times three.
My nails are digging into my sweaty palms quite hard. I think he’s going to kill me.

He takes a deep breath and puts the essay down.

“Tonight we are going to look at the book, which you should have read back in November, and you are going to take notes which will act as the structure for a second version of this essay. I will expect that essay on my desk by Wednesday; this is, of course, in addition to any other work you may have to complete to keep up with the syllabus. Clear?”

I give him a miserable affirmative, though I’m secretly quite relieved my jugular vein is still intact.

“Very well then; let’s make a start.”

For over two hours we study and pore over and discuss the book while I scribble lists of points and spider diagra
ms. Sinclair is a major slavedriver and even begrudges me a toilet break towards the end of the session, tutting prissily as if I’ve asked for a loan. That’s a thought…No! Don’t even consider it.

But I can’t help considering it as I was
h my hands in his suavely bacheloresque black-tiled bathroom. Would Sinclair be good for three hundred and fifty quid? Could I…somehow….persuade him….No. No way.

I wander back into the living room; Sinclair is tidying up papers
and has rolled up his sleeves. Eek. Does that mean what I think it does?

I hover by the door fr
ame, unsure of how to proceed. He looks up at me, takes off his sexy reading glasses and beckons me over. The gesture raises the hairs on the back of my neck; it is intimate – the kind of thing a lover might do – and yet sinister at the same time.

“Now let’s address the matter of your woefully ill-researched essay, shall we?” he purrs, as if he relishes his disciplinary
task, which I’m sure he does. Once again, a newsflash of Mags ‘Nosy’ Parker’s radiant expression if she could see this interrupts the usual nonsense broadcast of my head. Simultaneously I become aware of the uncomfortable bulge of my camera-phone in my jeans pocket. And suddenly the two concepts intermarry and I know how I could make £350. Just…like…that.

I stand in front of him in a slightly defiant pose, hand on hip, shoulders slouched, thi
nking ‘
Could I really do that? No, I’m not that type of person! I’m not a blackmailer! But what type of person am I? The type who sleeps on the street? He’s not blameless in this; he’s a grown man of 40-odd in a position of responsibility and I’m a vulnerable girly…he deserves it…no, he doesn’t; he’s trying to help me…in a weird, weird way…Argh!
’.

The babbling is inconclusive.
I am almost sure I couldn’t possibly go through with anything so nasty. But will I feel the same when my belongings are piled up outside Cliveden Hall in three black binliners tomorrow? My fingers fidget compulsively with the slim silver phone while Sinclair delivers a lengthy diatribe about letting myself down and taking opportunities from people that would truly appreciate them etc. etc. When he tells me I’m the worst kind of social parasite, I crack and decide I’m going to do it. I’m going to get a photo of him in action and I’m going to demand the three fifty. I push my shoulders back and smile at him.

“Everything is going to change from now on,” I promise him,
my eyes glinting villainously. Wow. I feel like a Bond baddie; it is strangely empowering.

I feel less empowered, though, when he tells me to lower my jeans.

“Do you mean…?” I squeak.

“I’m not spanking you over those; I don’t want to crip
ple my hand,” he says tersely. Damn. My phone is in the pocket; how can I get it? I slip it out and into the waistband of my thong at the front, fumbling in my attempt to do it without being noticed. “Today, Miss Newland, if you don’t mind.” I shimmy the jeans down to my ankles, staring furiously at the floor as I do so.  I can’t believe he is doing this to me. Still, all the better for my purposes, I think, looking on the bright side.