Lecture Notes Read online

  “But I did all the essays,” I defend myself, somehow knowing that it is going to be too little too late. We seem to have crossed the Rubicon somewhere along the line.

  “I’m not just talking about your slapdash approach to your studies, Miss Newland,” he says softly. “Your manner is disrespectful, bordering on insolent. You seem to think you are here to drink too much and sleep all day. You insult the philanthropists who have endowed this university and given such as you this opportunity to commune with greatness. If your tendencies aren’t caught and corrected soon, you will be out on your ear, young lady.”

  Talk about a character assassination. I am cut to the quick.

  “I’m sorry,” I mutter. “Can I give you the essay now?”

  “I haven’t quite decided whether to accept it yet,” he says haughtily.

  “What do you mean? It’s compulsory coursework!”

  “Ah, you understand that now, do you?” He stands looking at me for a long, long time. I focus on the big framed print on the wall behind him. Charlotte Corday stabbing Marat in the bath. Cool. Cogs are whirring inside his head, it seems; he is making momentous decisions. As long as they don’t involve my signing on to the dole, I’ll accept them, whatever they are.

  “Do you seriously want to keep your place on the degree course, Miss Newland?” he asks finally.

  “Of course I do! I’ve worked really hard over the last two weeks! I’ve eaten, slept and dreamed the bloody French Revolution.”

  He half-smiles and fixes his eyes beadily on me preparatory to making or breaking my future.

  “Very well, I’m prepared to hold your place open for you, but you need to understand that this is your last chance. You are on probation.”

  I am dismayed. This is so unfair. I have been the model student lately; I even went to all the lectures, Friday afternoon as well. Above and beyond the call of duty.

  “What does that mean, Sir?” I sulk, sticking out my lower lip in textbook disgruntled fashion.

  “It means, Miss Newland, that I am going to take a personal interest in your progress. You will report to my office twice a week with all relevant reading lists, essays and lecture notes so I can ensure you are keeping up with the demands of the syllabus. Additionally, I want to see you here every Sunday evening for extra work.”

  “Extra work?”

  “I intend to be strict with you; it seems to be the only way to keep you from falling by the wayside. I am far too busy to be nursemaiding recalcitrant First Years as a rule, but in this case, I am prepared to make the time.”

  Oh. Why? The whole sexual tension question hangs in the air again. Is it my imagination?

  “Right. Thanks,” I say, not particularly sincerely. I think about my friends waiting for me in the pub. I am absolutely dying for a stiff drink. “Can I go now?”

  “Have you listened to a word I’ve said?” he hisses indignantly. I stiffen and my hairs stand on end. There is danger in the room. “I expect a serious improvement in your attitude, Miss Newland, and I’m inclined to give you your first lesson here and now.”

  He glides down to a sitting position on the sofa and begins rolling up his sleeves to the elbow. My mouth drops open….he was actually serious about spanking me…?

  “Let’s see how committed you are to your studies, shall we? Now you can place yourself across my knee or you can go home and pack your bags. Which is it to be? Hmmm?”

  He holds my consternated eyes coolly. Well…I can fulfil a long-held fantasy or I can write off my life. No-brainer. I giggle nervously and slump forward over the accommodating lap of my Head of Department.

  “Sensible girl,” he murmurs. “You understand that you need to be punished, don’t you?”

  Another giggle. “Uh, yes, Sir.”

  “You’re nervous,” he says. “Hardly surprising.” He raises the light cotton of my dress to my waist before resting a hand on my arse, clothed in tight black jersey leggings. This feels so surreal I can hardly decide how I am meant to take it. I should be feeling…what?...humiliated? Aroused? Afraid?

  I feel a little awkward and graceless, hanging off his knees like this, the blood rushing to my head, but otherwise I am concentrating on each individual sensation. I want to remember this. I don’t want to miss the tiniest nuance. Professor Sinclair, the sexiest man in the universe, is going to spank me. I want to be reliving this on my deathbed.

  “I’m guessing that your lacklustre performance in class is symptomatic of a broader set of personal failings, Miss Newland,” he says patronisingly, landing his first couple of smacks squarely in the centre of each cheek. There is considerable force behind them and I wonder how long and how hard this is going to be. I have never been spanked before and I do not know quite what to expect. “I’m tediously familiar with the syndrome. The temptations of independence…” (Whack! Whack!). “…The freedom to spend all night every night in the pub…(whack! Whack!)…and wake up red-eyed and hungover every morning…(whack! Whack!)….too late for lectures…(whack! Whack!) ….but not too late for shopping and socialising….(whack! Whack!)…and flirting and more drinking and smoking…(whack! Whack!) …while your bank account runs dry…(whack! Whack!)…and your work falls behind…(whack! Whack!)…”

  He continues in this vein for a very long time. Sinclair has a great knack for monologue and covers my irresponsibility, dishonesty, disrepect, disobedience and laziness in unflinching detail, accompanying the diatribe with rhythmic slaps on my backside, slow and heavy-handed at first then gaining in speed and stinginess as his speech gathers in righteous indignation. At first, as long as I close my ears to his wounding words so that they all melt into blahness, I find the experience fabulously erotically charged. Professor Sinclair is punishing me; my behind is warming up deliciously and I feel like rubbing myself into his lap and purring. But after scant minutes of this pleasure-wave, he seems to realise that I am enjoying myself and changes his tactic, smacking much harder and faster, giving me no time to catch my breath and recover between strokes so that I bring my hands up to cover my bottom and defend it from his relentlessness.

  He catches my wrists in the act and holds them rather painfully behind my back, tutting at me as he does so. “You need to learn how to accept chastisement with grace and gratitude, Miss Newland,” he admonishes. “Well, well, we have plenty of time to work on that.” What? He is pencilling in my next appointment over his knee before this one is even finished. I kick my legs but he holds them secure with one of his own long pins, grunting with annoyance at my electric-eel impression and hardening his hand accordingly. “We will certainly be working on this again,” he threatens, raining down smacks with abandon now that my bum is completely at his mercy. He has been hard at it for ten minutes or more and it is on the tip of my tongue to ask how long this is likely to last, when a burst of electro-bleeping competes with the solid thwack of his palm on my buttocks for airspace.

  “My mobile,” I gasp. “Can I answer?”

  His response is physical, precipitating a long ‘Oooooh’ of pain at the fresh sting on my burning cheeks, but then he fishes into my bag and draws out the chirrupping phone, handing it to me.

  It is Dearbhla.

  “Hello,” I say, craning my neck round to look up at Sinclair’s impassive face.

  “What the hell is going on? You’ve been in there ages. You’re not in bed with him, are you?”

  “Not exactly.” Sinclair adds a couple more strokes to the total. “I’m on the phone!” I shriek, outraged at his…effrontery. “Look, I’ve got to go…I’ll be with you in…” I give him a querying look. “Fifteen minutes?? Fifteen?? OK, fifteen minutes. Get me a pint in…ouch! No, I’m fine. Bye.”

  For the next ten minutes he sears my rear in fine style, making it abundantly clear that I can expect a lot more of this during our forthcoming ‘private lessons’. Relentless and painful as it is, it is also making me insanely horny…and I’m not the only one…unless he has a gun in his pocket. Regardless of the heat of my ru
mp and my annoyance at his bloody endless nagging, I feel a little disappointed that he is going to send me to meet my friends in the pub in only five minutes time. Not long enough for anything untoward to happen. Though if this isn’t untoward, I don’t know what is. I imagine the scandal that would ensue if my lips sprung a leak in the vicinity of Mags Parker, the editor of the university newspaper. Heh heh. It would be fabulous.

  But then it would never happen again…and that is not what I want at all.

  He casts the final few handprints on my derriere and then rests his weary spanking arm with a long sigh.

  “Well, that’s a start,” he opines. “Stand up, Miss Newland, in front of me, if you please.”

  It is almost more difficult to stand up and face him than it was to go over his knee. I can barely look at him, I am so overwhelmed with a fatal commingling of mortification and lust.

  “Some appreciation of the time and effort I have just expended on you would not go amiss,” he snaps severely. He wants me to thank him! He is such a perve. Mmm.

  “Thank you, sir,” I say meekly.

  He inclines his head in acknowledgement, never lowering the menacing look he has fixed me with once more.

  “Now go and join your friends, and I hope the discomfort you experience when sitting will have a salutory effect on your behaviour, Miss Newland. I will see you here again at seven on Sunday. Yes?”

  “Yes, sir. Goodnight.” I lunge for my tote bag, throwing the contended essay on to the sofa beside him. He gives me the merest flicker of a smile before pointing silently to the door.

  I run out, down the stairs, along the gravel drive, down the road. It isn’t until I am out of range of his vast windows that I lean back against a wall, beneath a bush and breathe. Really breathe. My posterior is stinging like a bastard but my heart is full. What a man. I think I’m in love.

  Chapter Two

  “You what? He’s going to give you extra lessons at his own place? You did go to bed with him, didn’t you?” gasps Emily.

  “No, I didn’t!” I insist, shifting about uncomfortably on my arse and trying to use lager as an analgesic.

  “What were you doing in there all that time then?” demands Dearbhla. “Looking at his etchings?”

  “Yeah, if it’ll shut you up, we shagged each other senseless. He said he’d loved me ever since he first set eyes on me and threw me on the floor then and there.”

  Emily looks at me mistrustfully. “It’s just a bit strange, though, isn’t it? Do you think he really does fancy you?”

  My heart is shot through with a lancing pain. Is it too much to hope?

  “Obviously, judging by the way he ruthlessly dismantled my self-esteem, he’s mad about me.” I swig moodily at my pint. “Hi, James.”

  James Winthrop from Opsoc smiles shyly on his way past. He is very cute. No Professor Eliot Sinclair though. Oh dear. This has really thrown me for a loop.

  I excuse myself and sidle into the Ladies’ to check the state of my backside. A lobsterous crimson meets my eye, unlikely to fade for some time – I can’t convince myself it was a dream. Is he really going to do it all again on Sunday?

  For the first time in…well, ever, actually….I leave the pub before closing time, wanting nothing more than to lie on my stomach in my bed and revisit the event over and over in my head. Already his harsh approach is mending my ways! By Monday perhaps I will have quit smoking as well.

  *

  On Saturday morning, after checking my behind in the mirror (speckly purple pattern across the middle of both cheeks) and getting dressed, I find an unwelcome item in my pigeonhole.

  “Dear Miss Newland

  It is now six weeks since the balance of your Hall fees was due. As stated in the two reminder letters sent, you owe the sum of £350.

  I must advise you that this money must now be paid by Monday or you will face eviction from your Hall of Residence. Please make cheques payable to the University of Wessex.

  Yours sincerely

  J.J. Beresford, Warden of Cliveden House.”

  I stomp outside and light a cigarette. Shit, bollocks, shit, fuck, shit. It never rains but it pours. Life’s a bitch and then you die. Insert cliché of choice.

  I can’t approach my bank manager, who has promised seven shades of doom if I ask her for another penny before the end of term. I’m overdrawn to my utter limit, and there are four more weeks to run before the Easter holidays.

  “Doesn’t the Union have some kind of contingency fund?” mentions Emily, who has stood me an emergency pint in the Biko Bar at lunchtime.

  “That’s for genuine emergencies,” says Dearbhla, doing an inverted comma gesture around ‘genuine’.

  “And this isn’t?” I moan. “It seems genuine enough to me. I’m genuinely sleeping on the streets next week if I can’t cough 350 big ones.”

  “You have to admit, you’ve been haemorrhaging cash this term,” says Dearbhla disapprovingly. I love her dearly, but that Voice of Reason tendency can grate. “You’ve been to every gig in town, you hardly ever eat in Hall, and those hundred pound shoes…”

  “They were Blahniks! They were on sale! It would have been rude not to buy them!”

  “Tell it to Beresford,” says Dearbhla bluntly. Her face softens at my appalled O-shaped mouth. “You can sleep on my floor as long as you like.”

  “Thanks. But I need a plan. How much do you think my body would fetch?”

  “About three fifty,” giggles Emily. “As in…three pounds fifty.”

  Har-de-har.

  *

  I am on tenterhooks on Sunday. Half of my brain is wrapped up in delicious previews of tonight’s encounter with Sinclair, the other half with my parlous financial situation. What can I do? What will he do? The dual questions rattle through my head all the way through my afternoon Opsoc rehearsal. I am so distant that Seb, the director, has to constantly bring my attention back to the scene at hand. If I actually were on board H.M.S. Pinafore I’d have fallen into the briny by now.

  James Winthrop, a fresh-faced Ralph Rackstraw to my Josephine, asks me if I’m feeling all right.

  “Oh, I’m fine, James, thanks,” I assure him. “Bit, uh, strapped for cash.” I give him a speculative eye. Emily thinks he has a crush.

  “Oh…sorry to hear it. I could lend you a tenner?”

  “No, no, honestly.” I laugh with embarrassment. “It’s OK.”

  I skulk off to get changed for my dubious date with the perverse Professor. Mindful of the painful heft of his right palm, I stick a pair of big knickers over my thong and then wear the heaviest denim jeans I own. I mean, he didn’t definitely say he was going to spank me again tonight…but hope springs eternal…

  Leaving my room for Sinclair’s abode, I wonder if it will be my last night in the utilitarian square box I call home. Goodbye thin curtains, goodbye thinner walls, goodbye positively anorexic single bed. I hurry through the eerily quiet Sunday dusk, hugging my cord jacket around me. It is early March and there is a cutting wind that makes me twinge. I try to spot signs of spring in the gardens of the lavish mansions I pass but most of them have been given over to gravel and hardy perennials.

  I have a swoony, nervy thing going on inside me that is not unlike severe nausea. Perhaps I should have eaten first. Couldn’t face it though.

  The picture windows loom yellow and enormous from the crepuscular half-light like the malevolent eyes of an enormous beast. I wonder what Sinclair is doing in there as he awaits me. I imagine him lounging elegantly in his bathrobe, gin and tonic in one hand. “Ah, Miss Newland, I’ve been expecting you…” Nice.

  When I walk through into the living room he is not even in there though.

  His voice appears before he does. “Sit down; I’ll be a few minutes.” I can hear furious tippy-tapping coming from another room. A study, presumably. I park my arse on the sofa and take a good long look at Sinclair’s living space. It is mutedly tasteful, quite modern but classic at the same time. I imagine I am doing an in-dept
h piece for an Interiors magazine.

  “Eliot Sinclair’s home is as elegant as the man himself, sharing his understated charm and wit….”

  Sinclair’s understated charm is little in evidence as he stalks into the room, glaring at me, with an armful of books and papers. Open-necked white shirt, unusually dark trousers. Barefoot again. I like that. Casual but sexy. I am too busy eyeing him up to take in what he is saying at first, then he clicks his fingers almost in my face and I start.

  “I said, I hope you are ready for some serious work, Miss Newland. I am not in the habit of wasting my time.”

  “Oh…no. Of course not. Yes. I’m ready when you are,” I mutter.

  He stops to look me up and down, obviously getting why I have worn the jeans and suppressing a half-grin. Then he places the pile of books between us and sits down on the sofa. So close to me. I can smell him. He must have showered recently; he is all piney and fresh. This is going to be way too distracting.

  I offer a silent prayer to whoever is the patron saint of hapless women addled by inappropriate lust and turn to my tutor.

  He brandishes one of my essays in my face. The one on how Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses presaged the downfall of the decadent French aristocracy.

  “I notice a long list of references at the end of this piece, Miss Newland, but I can’t help wondering how many of them you actually read.”

  Ah. I move my eyes shiftily to the left, avoiding his questioning stare.

  “Well? Did you read any at all?”

  “Was it no good?” I ask desperately.

  He flicks his eyes over the comments he has appended to the essay – and there are many – before boring them back into me.

  “A passing acquaintance with the plot and a nod to the political climate of the time do not a degree level textual analysis make, Miss Newland. Did you even read the book?”

  Possibly my face might be redder if stuck it into a vat of Napoletana sauce, but only just.