Lecture Notes

by Justine Elyot

  A few of the lines on his face straighten and it seems he is swayed by my assurances. “You didn’t? I just thought…woman scorned…”

  “Always lovely to hear misogynistic claptrap in a crisis, Sinclair, but I’m not the only one, am I?” I say sharply.

  “No. But Beth. Beth, you have to believe me. You’re the only student. Thass all rubbish about there being lots of students. Just you. Only you.”

  Alarmed that he might be on the tip of bursting into drunken song, I try to wrestle the whiskey bottle from his hand. “How much of this have you…Christ, Sinclair, it’s not even ten in the morning!”

  “S’funny, you lecturing me,” he says. “Seriously, Beth, just go. Go away, get away from here. Leave me to my failure.”

  “I can’t leave you. I want to help you. I love you.”

  He looks at me, struggling to focus.

  “No,” he says. “You love Sinclair. You don’t love poor old Kev. Kev from dahn the estate.” I blink at how his normally cultured tones have been ousted by a harsh London twang. “Nobody could love that little bleeder. Not even ‘is mum and dad.”

  I risk a move closer, regardless of the sour breath wafting over me. “Then they didn’t deserve you, did they? It wasn’t your fault…none of it was your fault, Sinclair. I don’t care where you come from and I don’t care what you’ve done. I love you and I want to be here for you and I want to help you move away from the past for good.”

  I put a hand on his face, at which he grimaces as if wounded and tries to turn away, but I keep dogged contact.

  “I love you,” I tell him. “Trust me.”

  His eyes are swimmy; I have never seen him vulnerable and it tears me into tiny pieces. He pulls me down on to the carpet and squeezes me into him silently, his hand tangling my hair, his unshaven cheek prickling against mine.

  “I love you,” he says, his voice cracked and wobbly. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  I wind my hands around his body, spasming with grief and the emotion that has been held so fiercely in check for so long. I hold him until he passes out on the carpet.

  *

  “Water?” I whisper.

  He has woken up and is squinting against the half-light with pink baby-mole eyes. His reply is to reach out a hand and I place the clear pint glass in it.

  Having drained it, he reaches out again, for me this time, and I go to sit beside him, propped against the sofa, grabbing some cushions to ease our bones.

  “Christ,” he says, inspecting his shaking hands, then, “Christ,” again, then, “Why are you here?”

  “I told you why,” I assure him. “I love you.”

  “No, I mean after the way I’ve treated you. You should hate me, Beth.”

  “Well, I almost did for a while. But I’m beginning to understand now. You’ve…repelled intimacy for so long, I suppose it’s become second nature for you.”

  “Yes. That’s true.”

  “Was your past really so bad that you would rather be alone forever than have anyone find out about it?”

  He looks at me for a long time. “It had ceased to become relevant, that’s all,” he says. “It was no longer anything to do with me. When I became Sinclair, I set myself free from that. I actually mentally dissociated Kevin from Sinclair. It just…wasn’t me. Wasn’t my past.”

  “But…didn’t you think it would all come out one day?”

  “I didn’t think about it at all. That was the trick to being Sinclair, Beth.”

  “Total denial?”

  “If you like.”

  “But….don’t you think…because of the way you have to control every detail of every single thing in your life…that that is a legacy of being Kevin? That he is still very much part of you; still dictates how you act? And how you relate to people? And lovers?”

  “I beg your pardon; I thought it was French and History you were studying, not Psychology,” he says snippily, but then his tone relaxes and he says, “Yes, yes, you’re probably right.”

  “Did you ever get any kind of therapy? Counselling?”

  “No, I didn’t feel the need. It was enough for me that I’d finally taken ownership of my life. From the frightened child who had lurched from one chaotic situation to another to the shining academic star for whom no challenge was insurmountable. It was the most intoxicating, exhilarating feeling.”

  “Power?”

  “Yes, power. You know I like it.” He half-smiles at me and I twitch my lips back.

  “Is that because you had so little when you were growing up?”

  “Sexually, no. I think that’s just hard-wired somewhere. In my personal day-to-day life, yes. Of course. My childhood was a frantic struggle to get a handle on some sense of who I was and where I was heading. I was neglected, unloved and angry. At first I tried to seize power through violence and fear. I intimidated the other children in the home; attacked the staff. Was expelled from two schools. But ending up in court – seeing the real possibility of a life spent in institutions – was an epiphanic moment for me. I could not take on the establishment; I could only play it at its own game. My lawyer was also an inspiration. She gave me a glimpse of a future that could be entirely different. She was the first person to see my intelligence, my potential. I determined that I would dig my way out of the hole. I overcame all the obstacles that stood in my path. When the other kids in the home were all out sniffing glue and feeling each other up, I was teaching myself French from scratch. I made social services harass the Grammar School until they agreed to let me sit an admission test. And the rest was…dare I say it…history.”

  “You’re completely self-made. The press should be applauding you, not making you out to be some kind of dodgy creep. So you are a real person, not a construct. But where all this falls apart is when you start to feel close to someone. Am I right? You can’t take the risk. The danger of them finding you out and rejecting you is too great?”

  “Partly.” He shrugs. “I like Sinclair; I’m comfortable with him. It stands to reason that any woman I become involved with is also attracted to…Sinclair.”

  “Can’t you accept that somebody might accept you for the whole of who you are?”

  “Trust.” He smiles. “I had a girlfriend when I was an undergraduate. She was my first. I’d been too busy getting into Oxford for sex before that. Like everyone else on the course, she assumed I was from a middle class background. I told everyone my parents were dead, so they didn’t enquire too far beyond that. We’d been seeing each other for about a year when I decided to level with her. Tell her the awful truth. She was sympathetic, of course, but about a week later she finished it. Said she didn’t think relationships where the couple were from such diverse backgrounds stood much of a chance of survival. Said my pain and anger would be bound to come out one day, and she was afraid I might lash out at her.”

  “Oh…God. I’m sorry! That was….hard.” I lean my head up against his shoulder; his face is all twisted and distant.

  “Indeed. So I changed my name and never mentioned it to anybody again.”

  “Lack of trust became your default setting.”

  “Yes. The 24 hour power-exchange relationship became the ideal that I pursued. A woman who was completely submissive to me on every level would pose…no threat. I couldn’t find one though. I thought perhaps you…”

  “You reeled me in under false pretences, Sinclair. You did not say that that was your ultimate aim. You promised me one thing and then set about trying to force me into another.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I hope you’ll be able to forgive me in time.” He pauses. “The plan went badly wrong almost from day one anyway.”

  “Why?”

  He winds fingers through my hair. “I fell for you. Stupidly quickly. It shouldn’t have happened; I didn’t mean for it to happen. There was just something about you that slipped under my defences.”

  “I didn’t know.” There are tears in my eyes as I look up at him.

  “When you c
ooked that awful meal…dressed to the nines…and you told me over dinner that you couldn’t believe Sainsbury’s didn’t stock chanterelles…” A burst of odd, giggly laughter escapes him that sounds almost like a sob. “I was so touched. Ridiculous girl.”

  “I was infatuated with you. I know. It was just a crush to begin with. But it’s so much more now. I love you very much, and I’d like….if we could…”

  “Are you serious? Would you give me another chance? It’s more than I deserve, I know…”

  “Sinclair, when you said that you knew what I wanted – for you to hurt me, to own me, to love me – you made me gasp. It was absolutely true. And it still is. It was just that I had more physical pain in mind for the hurting bit rather than this horrible emotional wringer you’ve put me through. I can’t imagine ever wanting anyone else the way I want you.”

  “Beth, you’re so young…”

  “I know my own mind. I didn’t really, before I met you, but I do now. You hurt me, it’s true, but you also did me a lot of good. When I think now about how you worked so hard to overcome the horrors of your childhood…and here’s me, slacking away, thinking I’m entitled to a good degree without putting anything into it….I’m just ashamed of myself. I was such a brat.”

  “Hmm, you were,” he smiles, tweaking my ear a little between thumb and forefinger.

  “Please don’t leave me again,” I whisper.

  “I won’t,” he whispers back and then our lips are together, touching softly, and even the stale whiskey-breath is not enough to keep me away from the all-consuming, all-forgiving kiss we share.

  At first a languid tenderness, a whispering tickle of beard, a tentative refamiliarisation with old ground. Has it changed? Must we re-map it? It seems not; it seems that we know where we are and where to go next for we are soon darting tongues and pressing our skin harder so that the tickle turns to prickle. I can feel his teeth, I can feel his hands at my neck, a thumb pushed up into my hair, holding my head tight so that I cannot move back from him, and he has pulled me over to sit on his lap now, one arm twined around me like a steel tendril. The tongue plunges deeper, taking its time, marking every part of my mouth as its own; the tingle of my lips is becoming a burn but there is no way I would ever pull back now.

  He nips at my bottom lip and slowly disengages, leaving me panting into his face, my whole body singing for more.

  “Would you say it was inappropriate, Beth,” he whispers, “to be sitting here with my life in ruins, my career in jeopardy, my head tortured with hangover, thinking of nothing else but how much I want to take you to bed?”

  “I can be inappropriate if you can,” I reply hazily, the only signals getting through to my brain being More! Now!

  He reply is to haul himself to his feet, pulling me up along with him until suddenly I am sailing through the air with my arms clasped around his neck. ‘Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong’ runs cheesily through my head as he staggers through to the bedroom with me, lacking only the bright white uniform, though I guess I can live without that.

  The door is kicked open and I am flung, giggling, on to the plush, plump duvet. He creeps up stealthily from the foot of the bed, like a predator stalking its evening meal, until his shadow falls across me and I am looking up into rapacious eyes, then squealing indignantly at the unceremonious ripping off of my shirt. Buttons ping around the room but for once Sinclair does not seem averse to having a mess on the floor; he is considerably more interested in what the parting of my garment reveals to him. Before he sinks his teeth in, I put a hand up to his face, stroking the hair, then up along the cheekbone, so that his eyes are drawn back to mine.

  “I want to kiss you,” I say, even though my lips are worn out from our earlier encounter. “I want to make love to you.”

  He says “Beth,” then he lowers his head to mine and we roll around rapturously, ebbing and flowing, giving and receiving, seeking a true fusion of selves. Clothes come off at regular intervals, there is touching and squeezing, mouthing and lapping and nipping. We move across each other’s bodies encountering different signs along the way, some hard, some wet, some both hard and wet, tending to them with our hands and mouths until the urgency overtakes us. Then he is inside me and I am around him, our limbs are intwined and we are one, working together, slipping and sliding, generating heat and sweat and steam between us. We take it slowly yet intensely, both of us trembling with the immensity of it, and I come first, tearfully, saying his name, and then his is a heartrending cry, as if his body is wrenched apart and we fall back together on to the damp sheets, keeping as close as we can for as long as we can.

  From head to toe I am wringing wet, but the stickiness between my thighs comforts me more than I can say; part of him in me. Oh. That’s a thought.

  “Sinclair,” I say, my voice coming out thickly. “We weren’t….protected.”

  “Hm?” He does not seem to understand what I’m saying. “You’re protected. I’ll protect you.” He sounds as if he is half-asleep already.

  “No! I mean…y’know. Contraception.”

  “You aren’t taking your pills?” A note of the Sinclair sharpness creeps back in.

  “I have to wait until after my period. You can’t just leave them off and take them back up again. They don’t work like that. I’ll have to get a morning after pill.”

  “Right.” His fingers shred through my hair. “You know, if you don’t….I won’t mind.”

  I sit up. “Sinclair!”

  He pulls me back down.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Very. Totally.”

  “I…don’t think I’m ready for that yet,” I say tentatively. “Could I get my degree first?”

  “Of course. Up to you.”

  I kiss him. “I love you so much.”

  “Somebody has to,” he says laconically.We lie there like that for a while, thinking about how weird it is to have a future together.

  “So…objectively speaking…how bad is it, then?” I say eventually.

  “Come again?”

  “Mmm, is that an offer? No, I mean….the shocking exposé. Is it really that shocking?”

  Sinclair sits up and reaches blindly for the glass of water on the nightstand. “To be honest with you, Beth, I haven’t actually read it. Beyond my perception that the truth was finally out there, so to speak, I haven’t considered any of the rest. The sex scandal stuff is minimally damaging, I’d imagine, if not possibly even an image-enhancer.”

  “That’s what I was going to say, as a comfort thing. It’s not like you’re a prime-time family-friendly type of figure, is it? You’re on a marginal-interest programme on the ‘intellectual’ channel. I’m sure your paymasters at BBC4 will probably think it’s quite cool. They hired you in the first place, so they obviously wanted to sex the thing up. Well, they can’t accuse you of not fulfilling your brief.”

  He drains the water and bangs the glass back down with a rueful smile. “I don’t think the media image will suffer too much, no. And publishers will love it. I could have a Christmas bestseller if I play it right.”

  I laugh. “You’re unbelievable. Was your thesis on Machiavelli?”

  “ ‘Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage’,” he quotes.

  My heart jumps. This is going to be all right. God bless old Niccolo Machiavelli; between him and a shag, Sinclair seems to have perked up no end.

  “The Chancellor, on the other hand…” he intones, his voice doom-laden. “He will want to know about my, er, extracurricular activities with students. If he can be convinced that you are the only one, I may not be in too deep waters. If, however, the perception lingers that I am a predatory old lecher, stalking my undergraduates, there may well be a knock-on effect on applications.”

  “You mean they’ll go up,” I say cheekily.

  “Beth,” he admonishes. “I can’t regret what I’ve done with you,
but it isn’t what I’d want for my daughter.”

  Christ, that’s a sobering thought. “You feel guilty? You wish it had never happened?”

  He takes my hand, “No, Beth, never that. I suspect I’ll never regret seducing you. But I can understand how people might consider it morally dubious.”

  “I suppose you’re right. God, I hope the Chancellor is on your side. What if he isn’t?”

  Sinclair shrugs. “Somebody else will want me. Possibly overseas. My academic reputation is such that I would probably be in demand.”

  “Oh. But then…”

  “Beth, it will all be all right. As for the revelations of my past…” He shrugs. “They are neither here nor there. As you say, they are more likely to work in my favour – the underprivileged child who beat the odds – than otherwise. I’m happy to print an apology to that childcare worker whose tooth I knocked out. We corresponded privately many years ago, and he bears me no grudge; indeed, he was very supportive of my new endeavours. It’s just the sex tape…things like that tend to linger in the collective memory.”

  “You could never go on Have I Got News For You,” I point out. “And wherever you go you’ll always have people whispering behind you about canes and suchlike.”

  “Ah, but they will never dare do it to my face,” says Sinclair with an evil glint. “So in that sense, it’s much more satisfactory than being caught in the opposite scenario, with a dominatrix.”

  “You should have called yourself Pollyanna. You’re definitely winning the Glad Game today.”

  “You seem to be having this effect on me, Beth,” he says, pulling me into his side with a strong arm. “Ordinarily I’m infinitely more pessimistic than this. Having you here has diminished the impact of all this by a considerable factor.”

  “Whatever happens, Sinclair, you know I’m in your corner, don’t you? Even if your entire career goes up in smoke and we have to live in a burger van at the side of the road?”

  He laughs, loud and long. “I’m quite tempted to do just that,” he says. “But first things first. We need to get you to the Student Health Centre. Get this pill you need.”