The Apprentice

by Carrie Williams

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Carrie Williams

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1: The Interview

  2: First Day

  3: The Morning After

  4: Return of the Sugar Daddy

  5: Down Time

  6: The Toy Boy

  7: The Diary

  8: The Maid

  9: Girl Alone … ?

  10: The Woman

  11: And the Little One Said …

  12: Aftermath

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Aspiring writer Genevieve Carter secures a job as personal assistant to her novelist-heroine, Anne Tournier. But she quickly discovers that Anne expects a lot more from her young assistant than was implied in the advert.

  Genevieve becomes enmeshed in a web of sexual experimentation and intrigue that takes her to places darker than she has ever been. And when she discovers the true motives behind Anne’s behaviour, a battle ensues between mistress and apprentice that will push Genevieve to her artistic and erotic limits.

  About the Author

  Manchester-based writer Carrie Williams travels widely as a reviewer of hotels, restaurants and bars. She began writing for Black Lace’s Wicked Words short story collections before progressing to novels.

  She is the author of Chilli Heat, The Apprentice and The Blue Guide.

  Also by Carrie Williams

  THE BLUE GUIDE

  CHILLI HEAT

  The Apprentice

  Carrie Williams

  To Nuala: love, thanks, admiration

  Prologue

  Sitting in one corner of the room, she reminds me of a spider waiting to catch a fly – watchful, unmoving, almost supernaturally contained. Even in anticipation, I think, she’s cool and controlled. I stand naked, proud, before both of them, enjoying the thrill of two sets of eyes on me. Far from embarrassed, as I felt the first time, I am filled with a sense of my own power. In the lamplight my flesh glows like pale amber, and my breasts are as pert as young buds. I place my hands on them, let my fingertips flit around my nipples.

  I hold his stare, which seems to interrogate me. Is he wondering who I am? Does he care? Is that what this is about, or is it the opposite: is it our very anonymity that’s the point here? Or is it that he’s asking me what to do, how to proceed, and, if so, does he not realise that it’s not up to me?

  I wait, as I waited before, as she has taught me to wait. It’s she who’s calling the shots here, and what I want is wholly irrelevant. But I do want this man, this … boy. For surely that’s what he is? His smooth tanned skin, his large bright eyes, unsullied by too much life – he’s eighteen, nineteen tops. I’ve never had a younger man, and the appeal is strong, both physical and mental. That he has some experience is obvious. He’s too gorgeous, surely, to be a virgin. But there’s an undeniable innocence to him – something to do with the cleanness of him, of his skin, and with the trust in his eyes. Like me, he’s agreed to submit himself to her whims, or else why would he be here? Trickery, I’m sure of it, is not part of her armoury; I believe her to be upfront. I wonder what’s in it for him, but I wonder only briefly.

  ‘Take him,’ she says, interrupting my line of thought. It’s almost a bark, the decades of unfiltered French cigarettes having taken their toll.

  It’s the signal I’ve been waiting for. Stepping forwards, I adopt an imperious air – I am older than him, after all, if only by three, four years or so – and, placing my hand on his bare, hairless chest, push him gently back. He yields, allowing himself to tumble back onto the bed, looking up at me in mock-surprise, irony flitting around his eyes and mouth. Come on then, he seems to be saying, voicelessly.

  She’s dressed the bed for the occasion, this time in lustrous dark-chocolate satin sheets, like you see in boutique hotels in magazines. I climb onto it and kneel over him, taking his prick in my fist. But I know that she doesn’t want to make it that easy for us. I look over at her, awaiting fresh instruction.

  She’s smoking again, face impassive. I wonder, again, that she doesn’t want to join in, and then the thought occurs to me, for the first time, that perhaps she does, deep down. She’s just paralysed by fear, hidden beneath a veneer of what could be mistaken for indifference. But why would an indifferent woman go to all this trouble? She must be getting something out of these things, however little it seems that way.

  ‘Mount him,’ she says simply, and I feel my pussy melt. I bring it towards his eager prick, let it graze at me for a moment, just to remind him of who’s boss. Of course, I’m not boss, but in terms of the two of us on the bed I have more say than he does. Then I slot myself down over him, delighted to find that I fit him like a silken glove. He moans and, as I move around on top of him – from side to side, and round and round – I reach round behind my arse and take a good firm fistful of his downy balls.

  For a while I drink in his face as I fuck him, gaze at those big wide eyes, bigger and wider now that he’s inside me, at that smooth jawline, at that floppy chestnut fringe falling back from his face. Then I turn my head and look over at her, to see what she’s doing as we fuck. And, as our eyes meet across the bedroom, I see not impassiveness but some kind of spark, a smouldering fire. This is getting to her. I feel jubilation inside. We are turning her on.

  ‘Come now,’ she says, and I nod, bringing two fingers to my clitoris. I press it for a moment, feeling its throb. Then I start massaging it from side to side. I’m gazing down as I do so, at my own hand. I can’t bring myself to look at her when I’m doing this, when I’m about to lose it.

  I don’t look at him now, although I know that by this point his eyes are closed, falling back in his head in some kind of swoon. But his hands are firm on my hips, pulling me tighter in to him, and I sense from the rhythm that has established itself between us that he won’t be long in coming either.

  I arch up as my climax takes hold, throw my head back as I feel my face contort with something like pain.

  ‘Oh God,’ I hear myself moan, but the voice sounds like it comes from far away, almost from another realm. It’s at that moment that the boy jerks his hips up, convulsive, puppet-like, and starts coming too, hands still fast on my hips. I fall forwards over him, hair trailing down over his face. I’m panting, feeling ravaged by my orgasm, yet I want him again, want the feeling back almost as soon as it’s died away.

  I look wildly over towards the corner where she sits. She’s standing up.

  ‘That’s all. You may dress,’ she says.

  My lips form the word ‘No’, but her hand is reaching for the doorknob and I know that there’s no use. That it’s finished for her, and therefore for us. Like before, she’s in a hurry to be somewhere else. Will she masturbate now, in her room?

  ‘Come on, girl,’ she says, a bit impatiently, and I grab my clothes from the floor and, still naked, hurry after her. As I pass her in the doorway, she turns back to the bed.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says to the boy, with a slight incline of her head. Her voice is somewhat cold.

  He smiles over at her, nods, but says nothing.

  She closes the door and we part ways at the staircase: she’s en route to her study, me to the shower. As I’m making my way up, she reminds me that we are to meet at four, that she has some correspondence to dictate. I tell her I haven’t forgotten, that I’ll be there.

  1: The Interview

  MY NAME IS Genevieve Carter, and I have a confession to make. While my elder sister Vronnie, on whose very chic Heal’s sofa I have been crashing for the last three months, thinks I’ve been pounding the pavements of London looking for a job in media, I’
ve been sitting in cafés, making a latte last through entire afternoons, dreaming and staring out of the window. Or rather, I’ve been trying to write a novel – I’ve always wanted to be a writer. But so far it’s been like banging my head against a brick wall – it just won’t come. My notebook is full of false starts and phrases that go nowhere, doodles and lewd little sketches and ink blobs from my leaky Biro. My mind tends to wander somewhat.

  Vron would be livid, if she knew. (Big understatement.) I’ve already outstayed my welcome. The fact that she’s a fashion stylist on one of the big women’s glossies at the tender age of twenty-five shows what a tough cookie she is. She decided what she wanted to be and went for it. I wish I was like her: decisive, go-getting, hard-nosed even. She climbed on other people’s shoulders, lost friends, never looked back. Whereas since leaving uni and splitting up with Nate, my sixth-form sweetheart, I’ve felt lost, directionless. Sometimes I wonder if this thing about becoming a writer is as much about finding a place for myself, a role in life, as about writing itself.

  Only this afternoon, I’m surprised to say, is a bit different. For once, I’m not mooning about in cafés – I’m actually doing what I told Vron I’d be doing, and going for a job interview. Leafing through the Guardian jobs page two, maybe three, weeks ago, I spotted an ad for an ‘assistant/home help’ for a novelist in West London, and I’m happy to find myself on my way to his/her house for an interview. Chances are slim that I will actually get the job, of course, but if I did then maybe being in such a creative atmosphere might unblock me. The pay’s not bad either.

  I look down at the piece of paper I clutch in my perspiring fist – a handwritten letter on fine paper, curt, to the point, stating the day and hour at which I am required to present myself. I reread the address – 167 St Petersburgh Place, W2 – then I look up around me, for the nearest street sign. Yes, I’m on Moscow Road. I need to hang a left further up, then I’ll be there.

  I study again the scrawled initials at the bottom of the letter. A.F., it could be, or A.T. Strange that the person hasn’t written out their full name, that they don’t wish to disclose their identity. I don’t even know if it’s a man or a woman. I wonder if it could be even be Sir Andrew Fogerty, but then I remember that the job ad stated ‘novelist’ and he’s mainly a biographer.

  As I round the corner into St Petersburgh Place, nerves hit me, and I have to do some deep breathing in an attempt to calm myself down. I walk slowly, and then, when I’ve located the right house on the left-hand side of the street, I realise I’m at least ten minutes early and I carry on up the road, wondering some more about the mysterious A.F./A.T.

  I recognise her as soon as she opens the front door with its peeling, faded green paint; she’s aged considerably since the last photos I saw of her. After all, it’s been twenty-odd years since her last book that made any real impact – not too long after I was born, in fact. I’ve read them all, of course, and I disagree with the critics about her more recent output being sub-standard, lacking in the earlier inspiration. But up-to-date publicity photos have been scant, and she’s hardly a household face.

  ‘Come in,’ she says simply, and I know from the look of gratification on her face that she knows that I know who she is.

  ‘Thank you, Ms Tournier.’ There’s an undertone of ingratiation in my voice. I suppose that’s natural in any interviewee, and unavoidable in one who’s just come face to face with her literary heroine and the prospect of working with her, but I hate it.

  She ignores the hand I hold out, is already turning away and walking back down the dark, narrow hallway. I watch as her trademark raven bob swings to and fro about her long, elegant nape. She still has a certain French chic, despite the decades she’s lived in London, but I imagine she must dye her hair by now.

  She leads me to the kitchen, where a long oak table is loaded with unread newspapers, unopened mail, paperback books and teetering stacks of paper. She gestures to the only chair free of such debris.

  ‘Do call me Anne,’ she says, as she turns away to fill and switch on the kettle.

  I want to tell her how lucky I feel to be here, having been such a fan of her work for so long, but I’m horribly tongue-tied, and also afraid that if I strike up conversation I’ll blather on idiotically in order to fill the silence. There’s a forbidding aspect to Anne Tournier, which is not surprising given the laconic voice of her fiction but which doesn’t encourage one to make the first move.

  She turns back to me, hands over a mug steaming with tea.

  ‘I assumed you didn’t want sugar,’ she says, but as I nod she’s no longer looking at me. She’s eyeing something on the table in front of her, something that I soon recognise to be my CV. I wince. Like everyone, I talk myself up on paper. I’m not sure whether what’s written down bears much relation to who I am.

  ‘Soooo,’ she says, fumbling in her cardie pocket for her cigarettes. ‘Pendleton Girls, Durham … All very impressive. You have had a charmed life. Privileged, would you say?’

  I shake my head vehemently. I know the connotations and associations those names carry, but I honestly don’t feel that my course through life has been assisted by my attending these places. In fact, I sometimes wonder if it’s been hindered. Otherwise, why would I feel so ill at ease in my skin, so directionless?

  I know, too, that Anne Tournier is strongly left wing, and although I consider myself to be the same – in spite of, or perhaps because of, my background and education – the last thing I want is to become embroiled in a political debate with someone known for her intellectual rigour.

  ‘And … let’s see …’ Her eyes are flitting across the page; already, it seems, she’s lost interest in my life story. ‘Ah yes,’ she says, tapping the paper with one manicured finger. ‘You’re the one who wants to be a writer?’ She looks up at me, blowing out a ring of smoke. ‘Or one of them,’ she says. ‘Been published yet?’

  I shake my head, feeling hopeless. Everything she’s asking me makes me feel small and stupid.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I … I guess I never really finish anything.’

  She flicks her cigarette ash into a nearby saucer. ‘Maybe,’ she says throatily, ‘maybe you should forget about writing, at least for the time being. You’re –’ She glances down at the CV. ‘You’re only twenty-three. You should be living, not writing. And what can you write about anyway, until you’ve lived a little?’

  I shrug, feeling even more stupid. She’s right. What do I have to say to the world, after my private education, my limited love life? There was uni, of course, but what did I do there that everyone else didn’t do: drink, read books, sit around talking crap about things I had little knowledge of?

  ‘But Françoise Sagan …’ I begin, desperate to show that I have some shred of intelligence.

  Anne waves her hand dismissively. ‘A fluke,’ she says. ‘A one-hit wonder. Never did anything again that even remotely lived up to Bonjour Tristesse.’

  She’s right, of course. Again, she’s right. I look at her, and the intelligence in her keen eyes blazes out like fire.

  She looks back down, and for a moment she is silent, as if she really can’t find anything else to ask me about. It’s true, I think humbly: my life is really not worth talking about. But do I need to be fascinating in order to do the job she advertised?

  ‘Funny,’ she says at last, ruminatively, rubbing her elfin chin with her fingers. ‘CVs are basically all the same. Boring as hell. What’s interesting about a person never comes out in a CV.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well –’ She jabs at the printed sheet with one finger. ‘I suppose what I’m saying is that this gives me no feel for who Genevieve Carter really is. I know that you like reading, writing. I know what you studied, etcetera etcetera. But I have no idea who you really are.’

  She glances up, and there’s an added fire in that shimmering, watchful intelligence. ‘For instance,’ she says, ‘it tells me nothing about your experienc
es as a woman.’

  ‘As a woman?’

  ‘Your sexual experiences, for instance,’ she breathes. ‘What makes you tick, what turns you on.’

  I must be blushing, for she lets out a little laugh. ‘You’re not a prude, are you? Oh Dieu, the English can be so uptight. It still amazes me, after all this time.’

  I recover myself, hating to live up to a national stereotype. ‘What … What do you want to know?’ I say. It’s an odd line of questioning for her to adopt, but then this is no ordinary interview. Why, for instance, doesn’t she conduct it in her study? Why are we here in her cramped, paper-strewn kitchen, where there are not even enough free chairs to accommodate the both of us?

  She gives a little shake of her head, setting her bob in motion. ‘Oh, I don’t want to know what positions you like, all that sort of stuff,’ she says. ‘But … well, I’m a novelist, so I’m incurably nosy, I’m afraid. Do you think you could put up with me? With my asking you personal questions, from time to time? Sometimes I don’t even realise I’m doing it, it’s so ingrained.’

  ‘It depends on the sort of questions.’

  ‘Well, of course you can tell a lot about a person by knowing about their previous lovers. It’s one of the first things I always ask mine, in fact. Who they’ve been with before me, what they were like in bed. Enormously instructive, as well as just plain fascinating.’

  I feel one eyebrow arch. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘there’s really not that much to say about my relationships. I’ve only had one lover.’

  ‘One?’ She holds up an index finger, eyes round and incredulous. ‘One lover? And you are –’ She glances at my CV once more. ‘You are twenty-three? What have you been doing with your life?’

  I shrug. ‘I’ve been with the same guy since I was eighteen,’ I say. ‘We were in sixth form together. And I stayed with him right through uni, so …’

  I pause. It feels like I am trying to justify my behaviour, when others might see it as laudable that I haven’t slept around. Anne is making me feel, by the look on her face, as if that’s really rather pitiful.