The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (15 page)

He awakes, feeling sorry for himself (he’s not sure why, something he’s been dreaming perhaps, or merely the need to wake just by itself: come, day, do your
damage!), tears himself painfully from the bed’s embrace, sits up, pushes his feet into slippers. He grunts, squinting in the dimness at his watch: she’s late. Just as well. He can
shower before she gets here. He staggers into the bathroom and drops his pajamas, struggling to recall his dream. Something about a woman in the civil service, which in her ignorance or cupidity,
she insisted on calling the “sibyl service”. He is relieving himself noisily when the maid comes in.

“Oh! I beg your pardon, sir!”

“Good morning,” he replies crisply, and pulls his pajamas up, but she is gone. He can hear her outside the door, walking quickly back and forth, flinging open the curtains and garden
doors, singing to herself as though lifted by the tasks before her. Sometimes he envies her, having him. Her footsteps carry her to the bed and he hears the rush and flutter of sheets and blankets
being thrown back. Hears her scream.

He’s not unkind, demands no more than is his right, pays her well, and teaches her things like, “All life is a service, a consecration to some high end,” and,
“If domestic service is to be tolerable, there must be an attitude of habitual deference on the one side and one of sympathetic protection on the other.” “Every state and
condition of life has its particular duties,” he has taught her. “The duty of a servant is to be obedient, diligent, sober, just, honest, frugal, orderly in her behavior, submissive and
respectful toward her master. She must be contented in her station, because it is necessary that some should be above others in this world, and it was the will of the Almighty to place you in a
state of servitude.” Her soul, in short, is his invention, and she is grateful to him for it. “
Whatever thy hand findeth to do
,” he has admonished, “
do it with all
thy might!
” Nevertheless, looking over her shoulder at her striped sit-me-down in the wardrobe mirror, she wishes he might be a little less literal in applying his own maxims:
he
’
s drawn blood!

He awakes, mumbling something about a dream, a teacher he once had, some woman, infirmities. “A sort of fever of the mind,” he explains, his throat phlegmy with
sleep.

“Yes, sir,” she says, and flings open the curtains and the garden doors, letting light and air into the stale bedroom.

She takes pleasure in all her appointed tasks, but enjoys this one most of all, more so when the master is already out of bed, for he seems to resent her waking him like this. Just as he resents
her arriving late, after he’s risen. Either way, sooner or later, she’ll have to pay for it.

“It’s a beautiful day,” she remarks hopefully.

He sits up with an ambiguous grunt, rubs his eyes, yawns, shudders. “You may speak when spoken to,” he grumbles, tucking his closing morning glory back inside his pajamas (behind
her, bees are humming in the garden and there’s a crackly pulsing of insects, but the birds have fallen silent: she had thought today might be perfect, but already it is slipping away from
her), “unless it be to deliver a message or ask a necessary question.”

“Yes, sir.”

He shoves his feet into slippers and staggers off to the bathroom, leaving her to face (she expects the worst) – shadows have invaded the room – the rumpled bed alone.

It’s not just the damp towels. It’s also the streaked floor, the careless banging of the garden doors, her bedraggled uniform, the wrinkled sheets, the confusion of
her mind. He lectures her patiently on the proper way to make a bed, the airing of the blankets, turning of the mattress, changing of the sheets, the importance of a smooth surface. “Like a
blank sheet of crisp new paper,” he tells her. He shows her how to make the correct diagonal creases at the corners, how to fold the top edge of the upper sheet back over the blankets, how to
carry the spread under and then over the pillows. Oh, not for his benefit and advantage – he could sleep anywhere or, for that matter (in extremity) could make his own bed – but for
hers. How else would she ever be able to realize what is best in herself?

“A little arrangement and thought will give you method and habit,” he explains (it is his “two fairies” lecture), but though she seems willing enough, is polite and
deferential, even eager to please, she can never seem to get it just right. Is it a weakness on her part, he wonders as he watches her place the pillows on the bed upside down, then tug so hard on
the bottom blanket that it comes out at the foot, or some perversity? Is she testing him? She refits the bottom blanket, tucks it in again, but he knows the sheet beneath is now wrinkled. He sighs,
removes his belt. Perfection is elusive, but what else is there worth striving for? “Am I being unfair?” he insists.

He’s standing there in the sunlight in his slippers and pajama bottoms, cracking his palm with a leather strap, when she enters (once and for all) with all her
paraphernalia. She plants the bucket and brushes beside the door, leans the mop and broom against the wall, stacks the fresh linens and towels on a chair. She is late – the curtains and doors
are open, her circumspect crossing of the room no longer required – but she remains hopeful. Running his maxims over in her head, she checks off her rags and brushes, her polishes, cleaning
powders, razor blades, toilet paper, dustpans – oh, no . . . ! Her heart sinks like soap in a bucket. The soap she has forgotten to bring. She sighs, then deliberately and gravely, without
affectation, not stamping too loud, nor dragging her legs after her, not marching as if leading a dance, nor keeping time with her head and hands, nor staring or turning her head either one way or
the other, she advances sedately and discreetly across the gleaming tiles to the bed and, tucking up her dress and apron, pulling down her flannelette drawers, bends over the foot of it, exposing
her soul’s ingress to the sweet breath of morning, blowing in from the garden. “I wonder if you can appreciate,” he says, picking a bit of lint off his target before applying his
corrective measures to it, “how difficult this is for me?”

He awakes, vaguely frightened by something he’s dreamt (it was about order or odor and a changed condition – but how did it begin . . . ?), wound up in damp sheets
and unable at first even to move, defenseless against the day already hard upon him. Its glare blinds him, but he can hear the maid moving about the room, sweeping the floor, changing the towels,
running water, pushing furniture around.

“Good morning, sir,” she says.

“Come here a moment,” he replies gruffly, then clears his throat.

“Sir?”

“Look under the bed. Tell me what you see.” He expects the worst: blood, a decapitated head, a bottomless hole . . .

“I’m – I’m sorry, sir,” she says, tucking up her skirt and apron, lowering her drawers, “I thought I
had
swept it . . .”

No matter how much fresh air and sunlight she lets in, there is always this little pocket of lingering night which she has to uncover. Once she found a dried bull’s
pizzle in there, another time a dead mouse in a trap. Even the nice things she finds in the bed are somehow horrible: the toys broken, the food moldy, the clothing torn and bloody. She knows she
must always be circumspect and self-effacing, never letting her countenance betray the least dislike toward any task, however trivial or distasteful, and she resolves every morning to be cheerful
and good-natured, letting nothing she finds there put her out of temper with everything besides, but sometimes she cannot help herself. “Oh, teach me, my God and King, in all things thee to
see, and what I do in any thing, to do it as for thee,” she tells herself, seeking courage, and flings back the sheets and blankets. She screams. But it’s only money, a little pile of
gold coins, agleam with promise. Or challenge: is he testing her?

Oh, well, he envies her, even as that seat chosen by Mother Nature for such interventions quivers and reddens under the whistling strokes of the birch rod in his hand.
“Again!”

“Be . . . be diligent in endeavoring to please your master – be faithful and . . . and . . .” Swish-
SNAP!
“Oh, sir!”

“Honest!”

“Yes, sir!”

She, after all, is free to come and go, her correction finitely inscribed by time and the manuals, but he . . . He sighs unhappily. How did it all begin, he wonders. Was it destiny, choice,
generosity? If she would only get it right for once, he reasons, bringing his stout engine of duty down with a sharp report on her brightly striped but seemingly unimpressionable hinder parts, he
might at least have time for a stroll in the garden. Does she –
CRACK!
– think he enjoys this? “Well?”

“Be . . . be faithful, honest and submissive to him, sir, and –” Whish-
SLASH!
“And –
gasp!
– do not incline to be slothful! Or –”
THWOCK!
“Ow! Please, sir! ” Hiss-
WHAP!

She groans, quivers, starts. The two raised hemispheres upon which the blows from the birch rod have fallen begin (predictably) to make involuntary motions both vertically and horizontally, the
constrictor muscle being hard at work, the thighs also participating in the general vibrations, all in all a dismal spectacle. And for nothing? So it would seem . . .

“Or?”

“Or lie long in bed, sir, but rise . . . rise early in a morning!”

The weals criss-cross each other on her enflamed posteriors like branches against the pink clouds of dawn, which for some reason saddens him.

“Am I being unfair?”

“No – no, s –” Whisp-
CRACK!

She shows no tears, but her face pressed against the bedding is flushed, her lips trembling, and she breathes heavily as though she’s been running, confirming the quality of the rod which
is his own construction.

“Sir,” he reminds her, turning away.

“Sir,” she replies faintly. “Thank you, sir.”

She enters, once and for all, radiant and clear-browed (a long devotion to duty), with all her paraphernalia, her mop and bucket, brooms, rags, soaps, polishes, sets them all
down, counting them off on her fingers, then crosses the room deliberately and circumspectly, not glancing at the rumpled bed, and flings open the curtains and the garden doors to call forth the
morning, what’s left of it. There is such a song of insects all about (the preying birds are silent) – what inspiration! “Lord, keep me in my place!” The master is in the
shower: she hears the water. “Let me be diligent in performing whatever my master commands me,” she prays, “neat and clean in my habit, modest in my carriage, silent when he is
angry, willing to please, quick and neat-handed about what I do, and always of an humble and good disposition!” Then, excited to the most generous and efficient accomplishments, she turns
with a palpitating heart (she is thinking about perfect service and freedom and the unpleasant things she has found) to the opening up and airing of the bed. She braces herself, expecting the
worst, but finds only a wilted flower from the garden: ah! today then! she thinks hopefully – perhaps at last! But then she hears the master turn the taps off, step out of the shower. Oh no .
. . ! She lowers her drawers to her knees, lifts her dress, and bends over the unmade bed.

“
These towels are damp!
” he blusters, storming out of the bathroom, wielding the fearsome rod, that stout engine of duty, still wet from the shower.

Sometimes he uses a rod, sometimes his hand, his belt, sometimes a whip, a cane, a cat-o’-nine-tails, a bull’s pizzle, a hickory switch, a martinet, ruler, slipper,
a leather strap, a hairbrush. There are manuals for this. Different preparations and positions to be assumed, the number and severity of the strokes generally prescribed to fit the offense: he has
explained it all to her, though it is not what is important to her. She knows he is just, could not be otherwise if he tried, even if the relative seriousness of the various infractions seems
somewhat obscure to her at times. No, what matters to her is the idea behind the regulations that her daily tasks, however trivial, are perfectible. Not absolutely perhaps, but at least in terms of
the manuals. This idea, which is almost tangible – made manifest, as it were, in the weals on her behind – is what the punishment is for, she assumes. She does not enjoy it certainly,
nor (she believes – and it wouldn’t matter if he did) does he. Rather, it is a road (speaking loosely), the rod, to bring her daily nearer God – and what’s more, it seems
that she’s succeeding at last! Today everything has been perfect: her entry, all her vital paraphernalia, her circumspect crossing of the room and opening of the garden doors, her scrubbing
and waxing and dusting and polishing, her opening up and airing and making of the master’s bed – everything!

True service, she knows (he has taught her!), is perfect freedom, and today she feels it: almost like a breeze – the sweet breath of success – lifting her! But then the master
emerges from the bathroom, his hair wild, fumbles through the clothes hanging in the wardrobe, pokes through the dresser drawers, whips back the covers of her perfectly made bed.

“What’s this doing here –?!” he demands, holding up his comb.

“I – I’m sorry, sir! It wasn’t there when I – ” “What?
What –?!
” He seizes her by the elbow, drags her to the foot of the bed, forces
her to bend over it. “I have been very indulgent to you, up to now, but now I am going to punish you severely, to cure you of your insolent clumsiness once and for all! So pull up your skirt
– come! pull it up! you know well enough that the least show of resistance means ten extra cuts of the –
what
’
s this?!
” She peers round her shoulder at her
elevated sit-me-down, so sad and pale above her stockings. “I – I don’t understand, sir! I had them on when I came in –!”

Perhaps he’s been pushing her too hard, he muses, soaping himself in the shower and trying to recall the dream he was having when she woke him up (something about ledgers
and manual positions, a woman, and the merciless invention of souls which was a sort of fever of the mind), perhaps he’s been expecting too much too soon, making her overanxious, for in some
particulars now she is almost too efficient, clattering in with her paraphernalia like a soldier, blinding him with a sudden brutal flood of sunlight from the garden, hauling the sheets out from
under him while he’s still trying to stuff his feet into his slippers. Perhaps he should back off a bit, give her a chance to recover some of her ease and spontaneity, even at the expense of
a few undisciplined errors. Perhaps . . . yet he knows he could never let up, even if he tried. Not that he enjoys all this punishment, any more (he assumes, but it doesn’t matter) than she
does. No, he would rather do just about anything else – crawl back into bed, read his manuals, even take a stroll in the garden – but he is committed to a higher end, his life a mission
of sorts, a consecration, and so punish her he must, for to the extent that she fails, he fails. As he turns off the taps and steps out of the shower, reaching for the towel, the maid rushes
in.