Lecture Notes

by Justine Elyot

  “What…now?” I straighten my spine, running a hand through my hair. “It can wait till tomorrow. Perhaps those creeps outside might have gone by then.”

  “My understanding is that time is of the essence in these situations. I don’t care about them. I’ll run them over if I have to.”

  "Are you sure you're sober?"

  "I didn't have that much. I don't have much of a head for booze, if I'm honest. Two measures…two hours ago. That's all right, isn't it?"

  “But Sinclair….with me….they know I’m a student…isn’t that a bit….brazen?”

  He stands up and pulls me up with him. “I have nothing to hide,” he says with a flourish. “I’ve never been ashamed of my liaison with you and I’m not about to start. Come on, get dressed. We’re going out.”

  *

  It is like watching Clark Kent turn into Superman, but without having to step into a phone booth and swirl around so much.

  One minute he is naked, tousled and still slighty alco-scented, the next he is coiffed, cologned, suited and booted, all creases ironed out by the Sinclair steamroller. My glimpse of the tattered and torn boy that was Kevin Wronksworth will be just that – a glimpse. Sinclair is back. And this time, it’s personal.

  “Are you sure about this?” I jitter, watching him perform a final preen before the hall mirror, flicking unruly strands of hair into submission with his deft fingers.

  He straightens his tie and gives me a look that shoots straight to my solar plexus. A ‘nothing can stop me’ look; the Sinclair alpha-male force-field never looked so unbreachable.

  “They’ll be after your blood,” I remind him, trotting behind him after he grabs my hand and makes for the door.

  “They won’t get it,” he says, then he smiles. “I am sanguine.” I am supposed to laugh at this, I’m guessing, though I’ve no idea why.

  He sighs faintly. “You have so much to learn,” he says, for possibly the eight millionth time in our relationship.

  “Just as well you’re a teacher then.” We are taking the stairs at a gallop when my stock response comes out. Speeding across the vestibule, nearly at the door, opening the door.

  Flash! Flash! Catcalls, roaring, skittering feet running back from the coffee stand that’s set up shop on the other side of the road. Flash! Flash!

  Sinclair pulls me over to his car; not the one they were expecting, for they are all pointing their lenses at the sporty silver number on the other side of the drive. Ha ha. Sinclair drives a decidedly run-of-the-mill hatchback, highly polished as it is.

  “Professor Sinclair! Beth!”

  I hear snippets of questions threaded through the jumble of shouts, but never the full sentences. “Do you think…BBC…are you…bondage…will there…student…”

  I jump into the car as quickly as I can. “I didn’t even know you had a car,” I tell him.

  “No, well, I don’t use it much. I walk to work and get cabs if I’m going out. It’s for emergencies.”

  “I think this definitely qualifies.”

  “Yes. Come on, Beth, belt up,” he says impatiently, revving the engine like a boy racer to intimidate any hack that might be considering standing in our way. I’m tempted for a second to do a bit of brat-flirtation, you know, “What if I don’t?” style, but the battery of white lights and jeering over by the gate soon brings me back to earth.

  “You wouldn’t seriously run them over?” I ask, as he reverses quite sharply out of the parking space with a harsh crunch of gravel.

  “Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” he mutters, and I recall that, despite his current icy control, Sinclair must once have had quite a fierce temper to have attacked that youth worker. His tyres squeal and I laugh at the way a great many of the journos fall backwards in alarm; a row of voyeuristic ninepins. Mags Parker is somewhere underneath the pile, and it seems appropriate that her nose should be as close to the ground as possible. Bottom-feeding bitch.

  We leave the hue and cry behind, although Sinclair’s driving does not seem to recognise this. It is erratic to say the least, and his grasp of the complex one-way system in operation around the university is sketchy. “Should we just park and walk the rest of the way?” I wobble after narrowly avoiding a face-to-face interaction with a delivery truck.

  “It’s fine,” he grits, desperately looking for the right gear while the car kangaroo-hops past Senate House.

  “Just park!” I scream.

  He pauses in his gearstick hell to look at me in a way that causes me to quantify seriously the respective hazards of Sinclair’s wrath and an early death on the road. Then, to my infinite relief, he turns into the Senate House car park and finds a space.

  “We need to get away from here as quickly as possible,” he says, glancing surreptitiously up to where I guess the Powers-That-Be have their executive suites. “It would not be a good time to bump into the Vice Chancellor.” He takes my hand and yanks me along Spinneylands Avenue, cherry blossom confetti on our head again, around the corner to the road where the Student Health Service is located.

  “You don’t have to come in with me,” I assure him, but he shakes his head and escorts me up the steps and into the waiting room.

  Amongst the posters warning of the dangers of meningitis and STDs and recreational drugs is tacked the newspaper photo of Sinclair, underneath which a student wag has scrawled ‘PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING – This man could seriously damage your arse!’

  I clap my hands over my mouth and check for Sinclair’s reaction – and I am not alone, as the gaggle of sniffing, rheumy-eyed undergraduates in the room are also staring, fascinated.

  He moves his eyes from the poster and diverts them slowly on to each of the patients’ faces. I watch enthralled as every one of them looks away or dives back into the magazine or book they were previously occupied with. Then he strolls suavely up to the receptionist, who is too busy reading the Daily Mail to have registered his entrance. “Excuse me,” he says, and for a second she does not look up. She looks up boredly, then looks back down at her paper, then slams it guiltily down on the desk, in the mother of all tizzes. I almost laugh, but I’m too busy inwardly squirming. In all of this, it had not occurred to me that my relationship with Sinclair will now be wide open to public scrutiny. In other words, they will all know – or at least have a strong idea – what we get up to behind closed doors. Damn Mel and Rob and their stupid video; it seems I will have to get used to giggles behind hands and whispered remarks wherever I go as well.

  “Can I help you?” she asks breathily. I tell her I need to see the doctor.

  “Oh, well, I’ll see…” She looks vaguely, unseeingly, at her appointments screen.

  “It’s an emergency,” clarifies Sinclair.

  “He’s very busy…”

  “It’s…an….emergency,” repeats my lover, his eyes boring into the unfortunate woman.

  “I’ll just buzz you through,” she says, almost in tears. While she busies herself with the intercom, Sinclair snatches the Daily Mail off the desk and throws it into the bin. I hear the other students gasp and stifle giggles. Then the doctor’s light flashes and we march into his office like royalty.

  *

  Pill prescribed and collected, we return to the flat, already growing used to the way the crowds part for us like the Red Sea for Moses wherever we go. Oh my God, it’s Sadist Sinclair and his Student Submissive, the whispers seem to hang in the air above us. I catch an awful lot of sibilance anyway, whatever they are saying. A black curtain of baying journalists surrounds the car on our turning into the driveway, but they are not permitted to enter the grounds of the block, so they fall away once we are on the gravel. Flashing lights accompany us to the front door and then we are safe again, just us in our own private space.

  Well, almost. An elderly lady in one of the ground floor flats curls her lip at us when we come in and asks Sinclair how long she can expect to have that circus camped on her doorstep.

  “Until they lose interest,” is hi
s only reply and I shrug apologetically at her before Sinclair’s hand clamps around my elbow and pulls me up the stairs behind him.

  I get myself a glass of water and pop my pill. In the living room, Sinclair is plugging things in and switching them on, moving through to the office to turn on his computer as well.

  “This is where the fun really starts,” he says grimly, and before I know it, all manners of ringtone blast into the air. The answering machine is blinking fit to bring on an epileptic seizure, and both our mobile phones compete against each other for harmonic mastery. Sinclair’s bleeped ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ just about pips my Mozart piano concerto.

  I switch my phone back off again – it won’t be anyone I want to talk to – and collapse on to the sofa, watching Sinclair as he frowns at his mobile then answers it.

  “The VC,” he explains to me before putting it to his ear.

  “Yes….I know….No, no…that part wasn’t true….Well, yes, of course….I understand that….tomorrow then…yes, goodbye.”

  “Short,” I comment. “Sweet?”

  Sinclair is digesting the gist of the conversation, but he turns to me eventually and says, “Probably fine. He wants us to meet tomorrow morning. His chief concern seems to be the slur that I have preyed on students as a matter of habit. I think I can convince him that that is not the case.”

  “But what about me? Would that be enough to get you into trouble?”

  “I hope not, Beth. I’m hardly alone in what I’ve done…though most manage to keep things quiet until graduation. I only have myself to blame for it. I wasn’t exactly discreet.”

  “No,” I say, thinking back to that glorious shopping day in the Village. “You weren’t. Why not?”

  “For the same reason I don’t think I’ll lose my chair here. I’m high profile; I attract funding and patronage to the university, and generally speaking, for a poorly resourced subject like History, no publicity is bad publicity. It’s not as if I’m a holocaust denier.”

  “No,” I agree. “And I am legally an adult. It’s not professional misconduct in the way a schoolteacher with a pupil would be. You don’t even teach me, strictly speaking. You don’t mark my essays, even if you do help me with them.”

  “In an unofficial capacity,” he reminds me.

  “Yes,” I muse. “Completely off the record.”

  He cannot settle though, and paces the room, listening to answerphone messages. Dozens of them. Mainly journalists looking for a quote or an interview. Then Dex Gifford, a famous publicist, asking if Sinclair needs representation. Then the producer of History Matters requesting an urgent ‘face to face’. Then Rob and Mel, in a fury at their video being all over the media. Silly arses. Then some incoherent slurring that Sinclair pounces on and fast-forwards through, his face twitching. Then his secretary with a thousand questions about the running of the department in his absence. Then…oh….Dr Blakey.

  “Eliot..” (wince) “…I’m so sorry. I really didn’t know all that about your past; I never meant for all that to be dragged up.”

  We both stiffen, hackles rising, and listen more closely.

  “I’m just…I feel terrible now. I only meant to teach you a lesson, I suppose…that you can’t go around treating people the way you do, especially young students. But…well. Oh dear. It wasn’t me that contacted the press, by the way, though I did speak to them when they called me. I think it was Rachael West – you were seeing her at Oxford, I gather? She’s an old school friend of mine; I bumped into her at a reunion over the Easter break. We, er, compared notes and…well, she’s the only person I can think of that would know all that about you. I’m so sorry. I just thought it would be…a mild sort of sex scandal. Please don’t hold it against me. I’m going to look for another post; I don’t think I can work with you any more. Goodbye.”

  He sits down heavily next to me. I take his hand and he squeezes me painfully.

  “Oh dear,” is all I can think of to say.

  “That solves that little mystery,” he says numbly.

  “But what about the video? I still don’t understand how they got hold of that. Or the photo of your office.”

  “Oh, I know that. That was Nerys. She hasn’t been in this morning and she isn’t at home. Off spending the fat cheque she was given for selling me out, I imagine.”

  “Wow, a double pronged attack.”

  “Hmmm. Classic battle tactic,” he says with a rueful smile.

  “The price of fame, I suppose. Everyone wants to make some money off your back.”

  “Except you, I hope.”

  “Oh yes. I’m the exception.”

  We sit entwined on the sofa for a silent while until he leaps up and starts calling people back, quick scattergun conversations, putting his points across clearly and firmly. He hires the publicist, persuades the producer that this will blow over and will be good for ratings anyway, calls his publisher and makes a number of book proposals. He is back in full effect. It is beautiful to observe.

  Finally he replaces the handset and stands, arms folded, eyes fixed on me with foreboding intent. The adoring smile that has been drifting about my features settles into a query; my eyes refocus and my brow furrows. “What? What have I done?”

  “It’s what you haven’t done that is my concern,” he rejoinders sinisterly. What does he mean? “I’ve dealt with the world at large, and now it’s time I dealt with you. Into the bedroom. Now.”

  With a muffled squeak, I scamper off the sofa and along the corridor to his (ours again?) bedroom. He places me in the centre of the room and wheels around me, stroking his beard and looking me up and down. It is highly intimidating and I begin to calculate how long it would take me to escape to the bathroom, though that involves knowing factors like velocity and distance; maths was never my thing. If one short-legged Beth travelled four metres at eight strides per second, how long would it take one long-legged Sinclair to catch up with her…hmmm…something like minus three seconds, by my reckonings. Not a flier.

  “Would you mind telling me…what?” I ask nervously.

  “I think you know, Beth,” he says, maddeningly, then he stops in front of me, arms folded again. “An inspection is in order. Take off your clothes.”

  I blush to the roots and begin fumbling with buttons.

  “I didn’t hear you, Beth,” he says, jerking my chin up with a forceful hand. “I issued a command; what is the expected response?”

  “Yes, sir,” I recall. It has been a while; he can’t expect me to remember everything.

  He nods and drops me. I keep plucking at the buttons of my shirt; those that are left anyway after his earlier efforts. I had to put a cardigan over it for our trip to the doctor. Once I am down to bra and knickers I pause to look at him.

  “Keep going.”

  My skin feels prickled all over, as if his eyes are a laser beam transferring little darts of heat to me. It is not as if I have never had to undress in front of him before, but it still makes me feel very, very small and submissive. And turned on. I unwillingly unhook my bra, wanting to wrap my arms over my naked breasts, but knowing better than that. Then I shimmy the knickers down past my knees and step out of them, so that I am perfectly nude opposite the fully-clothed Sinclair.

  “Now we get to the crux of the matter,” he says softly, reaching a hand out to stroke the downy hair that is regrowing all over my pubis. I haven’t bothered to shave for two weeks or so. “What’s this, Beth?”

  His fingertips move down between my thighs, rubbing between my lips, nudging my legs further apart.

  “I…don’t like shaving there,” I mutter, looking away from him. “And since you weren’t around…”

  “No matter where I am or what the circumstances are, Beth, this is still mine.” He pinches a lip and I jump on to my tiptoes. “It all belongs to me, whether I am there or not. You seem to have been acting in defiance of this.” Another pinch, another jump. “Don’t you?”

  Oh God, I can feel the juices multiply, a
nd I’m sure he can feel it too. My voice is thick, breath constricted as I reply, “I know, sir, I’m sorry, sir.”

  He spends another minute moving his fingertips back and forth, feeling my clit become swollen and my channel congested as the flames of desire leap up and start dancing. A small, broken moan leaks out and he takes his hand away.

  “Go to the bathroom and fetch the razor and shaving foam, with a towel,” he orders. I trot off and back, placing the items on the bed as directed. This is not too bad. I know he has a steady hand.

  “Thank you, now go to my office and fetch the strap. The two-tailed one; it’s in the right hand drawer.” Oh shit! I give him my most tragic look, but his expression is unyielding. I trudge away again and lift the supple leather from amongst its companions in evil, counting my blessings that he did not send me for the cane at least.

  He nods that I am to put it on the bedside table, then he unfolds the towel and spreads it on the bed. “Come on, then, lie down and prepare yourself.”

  I do as I am told – I’m keeping my nose clean today, believe me – scrunching my eyes shut and clenching my hands all the time that he is lathering me up and scraping the cold metal blade against my fuzzy regrowth. I concentrate on not moving a muscle, conscious of Sinclair’s shadow over me, his measured breathing, his skilled hands. He mops up the excess foam with a corner of the towel, then he slathers some kind of lotion on me, cool and moisturising, slicking it over my mons and down to my labia, behind to my perineum, massaging it with pleasurable firmness of touch.

  “Much better,” he judges, standing back up and throwing a quartet of pillows down near the foot of the bed. “Now then, Beth, up and over. I want to see that bottom nice and high and ready for me.”

  Dazedly I sit back up, the room unblurring before my eyes. “Will it be many?” I ask meekly, crawling reluctantly down to where the pillows wait for me to drape myself across them.

  “You will count them and find out,” says Sinclair, predictably.

  With a weighty sigh I bend over the cushions, thrusting my arse up as much as I can, the way he likes me to. I have the duvet to clench and bite into; much better than being over the desk for the cane really.