The Choice (9 page)

‘Yes?’

‘Not here, in some quiet corner.’

He took me by the elbow, not hard, but as if to support my arm, and led me out of the bar to a quiet corridor.

‘What is it?’

‘Just this. Don’t let James McLean get you alone.’

‘Why not?’

‘He is not a healthy companion for young girls.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘Far from it, I fear.’

‘What then? I suppose you’re going to tell me he’s a letch?’

‘Far worse, my innocent little poppet, far worse. You wouldn’t believe what he likes to do to pretty young students like yourself.’

‘Try me. I know he was thrown out of Mary’s.’

‘But you don’t know the full, incomparably juicy scandal, do you? He was kicked out for giving a student the birch.’

‘Giving a student the birch? I don’t understand.’

‘You know, whacking her on the bum with a bunch of birch twigs, on the bare bum.’

‘What! You are joking?’

‘Oh no I am not. They got caught red handed, by the junior dean and one of the scouts, who walked in on them. Apparently she was stark naked, bent over his armchair, arse in the air. Juicier still, when they were caught she was pretty well done, as red as a cherry while he pulled his pudding over her cheeks.’

‘Now you are joking.’

‘Not a bit of it. That comes straight from the scout who caught them.’

‘I don’t believe a word of it.’

‘That, my dear, is your privilege, but may I point out that just because up until now your most unusual experience of sex has been one up the bum over the back seat of the boyfriend’s motor …’

‘It has not!’

‘Not even that? Oh dear. But my point is that others have more peculiar tastes, including Dr James McLean. Unless, that is, I have underestimated you and you share your tastes with your Roman namesake. Tell me it’s so, Poppaea, and I will have my slaves fetch dildos and drugs and donkeys!’

‘You’re disgusting, Giles, and very drunk.’

‘But of course, and you, my dear, are a prude, which is a pity.’

He gave a mocking bow and left. I stayed where I was, trying to work out if what he said could be true, because he was perfectly capable of making the whole thing up either with some strange and elaborate motive or just for the hell of it. What decided me was the memory of the strange noises I’d heard through the wall the night he’d visited college, which fitted disconcertingly well with how I imagined a girl might sound as she was beaten with birch twigs for pleasure. It was true, and, while Giles hadn’t given away the name of the unfortunate girl, there was only one person it could possibly be – Violet.

I spent the night with Stephen, which should have been wonderful but was spoiled by the images Giles had planted in my mind and worrying about Violet. What I thought I’d worked out and what Giles had told me didn’t seem to fit together at all. If she’d seduced him, teased him and tormented him until he lost control, how come she had ended up bent over his armchair having her bottom thrashed? I could just about imagine her accepting a beating as some form of twisted sexual retribution after he’d been kicked out of Mary’s, but that didn’t make sense when it was the reason he’d been kicked out. Was she being abused and in thrall to the man responsible? Did she actually enjoy being beaten?

The last idea seemed absurd, but was horribly compelling. I knew people did that sort of thing, but I’d always assumed it was just dirty old men taking out their jaded tastes on younger women, and for money, or on some poor girl with such low self-esteem that she felt the only way she could attract attention was to offer herself up for the satisfaction
of
some elderly pervert’s debauched tastes. I couldn’t imagine for a moment that Violet was charging Dr McLean, and she certainly didn’t suffer from low self-esteem, while to judge from what I’d heard she had been thoroughly enjoying herself.

I simply could not get my head around the idea, but I couldn’t get rid of it either. Again and again I found myself imagining the humiliation of allowing a man to whip me, as if he somehow had the right to punish me and not across my back but with my bare bottom stuck out to take the blows. The idea filled me with disgust and outrage, but every time the awful thoughts came I found myself desperately pushing them away as a very different emotion began to creep up on me – desire.

Stephen didn’t seem to notice, but then once he’d got going he always handled me like a puppet anyway, which added another dimension to my disturbing thoughts. I’d always liked men to be a bit rough with me in bed, or at the very least to take control, which made me wonder if Violet and I were much the same except in that she had learned to give herself completely while I hadn’t, or not yet. It hurt just to think about it, and yet I could remember all too clearly how the idea of letting a man put his penis in my mouth had once not only disgusted me but also seemed unspeakably degrading. Now it was one of my favourite things.

It took all my effort to concentrate on work the next day, both at lectures and preparing for my essay, which wasn’t made any easier by my success at the Chamber. Everybody suddenly wanted to know me, to talk to me, and to invite me to lunches and dinners. I could see that if I didn’t watch what I was doing I would start putting on weight, so on the Saturday I signed up for the college rowing club, partly to keep fit and partly so that I could see more of Stephen, but also I knew it
would
help me to keep my mind off the bizarre erotic daydreams Giles Lancaster had inflicted on me.

My strategy worked, with the effort and discipline of trying to learn a new skill keeping me busy and tired, while Stephen was delighted. He’d also been blackballed by the Hawkubites, to my surprise and his own. They’d apparently done it in the old-fashioned style, with the existing members placing either white or black marbles in a bag, all completely anonymous. In Stephen’s case there had been a single black marble among the white, but acceptance had to be unanimous and that was that. Giles had been sympathetic, reporting the vote in more detail than he was really supposed to, but had no idea who had voted against Stephen, or why. I commiserated with him, but was secretly glad, both because of what they did and because for a politician having a partner with a past can be nearly as damaging as having a past yourself.

In response Stephen threw himself into his work, his rowing and me. The evening after his rejection we went out drinking, then returned to his room. He was so eager he had me on the floor the first time, then put me into his bed for a second round before we fell asleep and a third in the morning. I didn’t leave Emmanuel until gone noon, and missed rowing practice that afternoon, so the following day the coach told me to take a skiff down as far as the Donnington Bridge and back.

I accepted the punishment, blushing a bit in front of all the other Boniface girls I’d let down, but as soon as I was on the river I was happy again. Up until then I’d rowed in eights and fours, in which teamwork is everything, but in the skiff I was alone, with only the cox of the men’s third eight on the tow path to yell at me if I slacked. I had no reason to, enjoying stretching my muscles and determined
to
make a good time in order to re-establish myself with the other girls.

The scene was idyllic; the sun glistening on the Isis, the rich colours of the autumn foliage along the banks, the meadows and the spires and turrets of the university beyond, rising tawny against blue as they had done for hundred of years while the world moved on. A painted houseboat pulling past me to one side fitted perfectly with the scene, the black and green livery set off by baskets of geraniums hung from bow to stern. Even a girl on the bank might have just been listening to stories with the Reverend Dodgson, her simple red dress and her black curls moving in the breeze as she walked, stopped where the straggling twigs of half-grown silver birch hung down over the water and began to pick them.

She was quite a long way away, and only then did I realise it was Violet. I stopped rowing, my mouth wide as I watched, with all the images I’d tried so hard to push from my head crowding back in; Dr McLean looking stern and dutiful as he hefted the bunch of twigs, Violet’s face full of sorrow and resentment as she turned up her dress and took down her knickers, her bare bottom, round and neat and pink, just as I’d seen while she brought herself to orgasm with it stuck up in the air, no doubt imagining her lover chastising her as she came.

If the cox yelled a warning I never heard it, only the awful, splintering crash as my skiff hit the houseboat at full speed. We’d been shown how to bale out, and I’d dropped the oars and got my feet free as the boat began to settle sideways, with water sloshing over the side to wet my legs. I tried to jump, but only succeeded in flopping myself out into the water, leaving me, the oars and the ruined skiff spinning slowly in the wake of the houseboat as it moved on.

* * *

Once I’d hauled myself out of the river and listened to the unreserved opinions of the cox, the coach, the owner of the houseboat and the captain of the boat club I could have done with a supportive word from Stephen, but for once he wasn’t there. I made for college instead, picking bits of waterweed out of my hair as I walked up St Aldate’s and doing my best to ignore the curious stares directed at my dripping, nearly see-through clothes.

Back at Boniface I stripped off and climbed into the shower. Washed and dried, with my hair wrapped in one towel and another draped over me, I collapsed onto the bed, thinking black thoughts that mellowed gradually as my fatigue took over. It had happened in an instant, and I hadn’t had to swim very far at all, but the shock combined with being bawled out by people I might have expected to be sympathetic had got to me, draining my energy and leaving me feeling vulnerable, an emotion made keener by thoughts of Violet.

I was in no doubt whatsoever that she’d been picking birch twigs so that Dr McLean could beat her with them, which brought back all my confused, disturbing thoughts. For a long time I simply lay there, staring at the ceiling, my feelings a mess, until at last exhaustion triumphed and I fell asleep.

When I woke up the air was cool and I was in near darkness, leaving me so disorientated that for a moment I thought I was back at home. I had no idea what the time was, but it was dark outside, the only light an abstract pattern of yellow and orange thrown onto the ceiling from streetlamps and windows. I thought I’d heard a noise, but couldn’t be sure whether I’d been dreaming or not, until it came again, a knock at my door, then a voice.

‘Poppy?’

It was Violet, and I was going to answer, eager for somebody to lend a sympathetic ear and perhaps fuss over me a little, but I was still groggy with sleep and didn’t respond immediately. Another voice spoke, James McLean.

‘She’s probably with Stephen, or asleep.’

At the sound of his voice I decided not to answer, with all my curiosity and concern crowding back into my head. They were up to something, I was sure of it, from the tone of their voices more than anything.

Violet spoke again, doubtful. ‘Maybe. Poppy?’

She knocked again, harder, but I ignored her. Stephen said something in a voice too low to catch. Violet giggled in response and a lump had begun to grow in my throat. I lay still, listening as they went into her room, my ears straining as their voices faded but my imagination easily filling in what I could no longer hear.

They’d wanted to know if I was in and they thought I wasn’t. That meant they needed to make sure they were safe, and it was all too obvious what they wanted to be safe for. I could picture every detail in my head; Violet nervous as she presented the birch she’d picked for his inspection, Dr McLean calm and full of authority as he took it from her. She would still be in her old-fashioned red dress, languid and beautiful even as she bent to touch her toes, her eyes full of fear or maybe longing, resentment or lust, most likely a mixture. Her bottom would be the highest part of her body, stuck up in a pose at once lewd and slightly ridiculous, with her back curved to make her cheeks part and ensure that she was showing everything once her dress had been turned up onto her back and her knickers pulled down.

All of a sudden I was painfully aware of my own nudity. The towel had got wrapped around me as I slept, leaving my breasts and the curve of my hip naked. I got up, wondering
if
I should make some noise to alert them to my presence but instead slipped into my bathrobe as quietly as I could. Next door Dr McLean laughed, a throaty chuckle that seemed to me both wicked and knowing. Again I imagined Violet holding her pose, trembling and scared as he deliberately tormented her by holding back the threat of the bundle of spiky little twigs in his hand, and with that I knew I had to look.

I did try to resist, but it was hopeless. It was just too easy to open my door and duck down at the keyhole. As I knew from before there was no risk of being caught, while it was easy to get over my guilt by telling myself that if Violet was being abused then I had a responsibility to find out what was going on so that something could be done.

Our oak was shut, leaving a thin pencil of light striking down from the keyhole to the floor, otherwise only the dull glow from my window. I got down on my knees as I had before, leaning cautiously forwards until I could see, my heart hammering in my chest as I tried to make sense of what I could see; blood-red folds moving as if to a gentle breeze. Then Dr McLean spoke, his voice now clear. ‘Do you accept that you need to be punished?’

Only then, as he stepped forwards, did I realise that I was looking at the back of his gown. He was in full subfusc, the gorgeous scarlet and blue of his doctoral gown over immaculate white tie, while in his hand he held the birch twigs, a thick bunch of them tied tight with a bright-red ribbon I recognised as one Violet occasionally wore in her hair. She was seated on her bed, also in subfusc, but the feminine version, a white blouse and black ribbon tie, black tights and skirt, and black shoes. Her hands were folded in her lap and she was fidgeting with the lowest button of her blouse as she looked up to him, her eyes wide and her lower lip pushed out
a
little in a sulky, resentful pout. She hadn’t answered him, and he spoke again. ‘Well, Violet, do you accept that you need to be punished?’