I was too excited to take in his comment.
“Can we go for spin? Please, please?” I clasped my hands together imploring him.
“How could I deny you the pleasure?” Jason fished out the keys from his pocket and dangled them in front my eyes.
We drove out of the gate and I could see it close behind me in my rear view mirror. I turned out on the main road and sped off.
“Whoa, Gemma, watch your speed,” warned Jason.
I could not help being excited. I was driving Jason and to be behind the wheel of a car was so liberating.
“I’m good you know. One of my previous doms made me take advanced driving lessons. He was very safety conscious and hated driving. A bit of a control freak.” My voice halted, perhaps not a suitable remark to make to a dominant – weren’t they all control freaks? I followed the bends in the country lane. “Where are we going?”
“Left up here, there is a good little pub not far from here,” he pointed to his right.
“Pub, we’re going to eat out!?” I could not hide the excitement in my voice.
“Yes my dear. I’m well known in the city, but I don’t think the locals are that interested in the odd millionaire lurking on their doorstep,”
I pulled up outside a small pub. As it was a little short of mid-day, it had not opened. It was not quite lunchtime and we killed half an hour wandering the small lanes chatting about the food we enjoyed eating. Having travelled the world, Jason’s tastes were varied and somewhat exotic: sushi, Thai, and other dishes that I failed to pronounce or remember. He laughed as I told him my upbringing was meat and three veg. I did not believe he quite appreciated my humble origins; his start in life had been far more privileged.
It was not that I wanted for anything as a child. My parents had provided adequately for their children. We had been well fed and clothed, gifted with sufficient presents for birthdays and Christmas and the odd day trip out. My family existed in a no-man’s land, neither impoverished nor affluent enough that my parents could spontaneously spend money. A day at the zoo had needed financial planning, so had family meals out in decent restaurants. The latter had to serve a purpose, be it a birthday, anniversary or a good school report. Everything had to be earned and accounted for fairly.
My father had been the first in his family to go to university. He did not boast about the fact, if anything my mother was more likely to extol his educational achievements than my dad. His family had to scrimp and save to send him away. Even with government grants, the lengthy spell at university had taken its toll on their meagre income. Deep down I thought dad was uncomfortable that he had a ‘jolly good time’- as granny used to say - while his wider family had worked long hours.
Mum did not talk much about her upbringing. I doubted the reason was that her parents were horrendous or bad in anyway. My mother’s attitude was that childhood served very little purpose. It was a space to grow, be educated and a stepping stone to when life began in earnest. Her own working life was punctuated with numerous jobs interspersed with being a typical homemaker. Her income was necessary, but I suspected she found the domestic life appealing. Cooking and cleaning were not chores in her book. They were a service that she provided while dad worked his long hours and brought home the all-important big salary.
Mum’s outward veneer of dutiful homemaker did not always stand up to scrutiny. I was convinced the reality was she had always envied dad’s career, his education and his purpose in life. In her mind, he provided a real service to the community by working in the health sector. Her jobs were menial, unimportant and transient. They fitted around school and term times, and rarely required skills beyond answering the phone or typing.
When it came to my childhood, education had a purpose and nothing would interfere with my achievements – that
was mum’s own childhood legacy shining through.
My recollections had caused my mind to drift off and if Jason noticed, he had not commented. Catching my hand his thumb traced along my knuckles. A repetitive heartening sensation and I was pulled out my thoughts.
“Look, the pub’s open.” I could see the landlord in the distance propping open the oak door and putting out the blackboard for the day’s specials.
The meal that followed our walk was simple fare, well made and Jason downed a local ale smacking his lips gleefully. I was restricted to mineral water. We spoke little and I was content to be in a public place with him. I was not going to push for extra social occasions. I had won a little of his precious time and I was grateful.
***
Time was ticking on and Jason was absent. He had been holed up in his study all afternoon. He told me the afternoon was often the most productive work time, no phone calls or meetings to interrupt his thoughts. His work also curtailed our day together, which disappointed me. Using a small sketchpad, pencils and a much reduced selection of pastels, I opted to sit in the garden drawing the trees and house. I tried to catch the sense of autumn in the air. At one point, I looked up and I saw Jason watching me from his study window. I waved at him, but he did not return my wave.
I sighed. I could not seem to breakdown the barrier he put up. What did I expect? I told myself, I was his sexual submissive, nothing else, not a status that took me into the realms of girlfriend - the significant other. There was hope though, in me, to be more for him.
I returned to my sketching, outlining the architecture of the house and sampling the texture of brickwork in one corner of the paper. The afternoon's artistry smacked of slapdash and unfocussed. My pastel colours were washed out, poorly blended and lacked vibrancy. Sighing, I selected a fresh piece of paper and tried again to describe Blythewood in the autumn.
My love of drawing and painting came from deep within me. My artistic nature was intrinsically part of my triad of passions, which also encompassed dancing and submissive love-making. All three of them elicited an energy within me that was indescribable and vibrant. When I had a pencil or paintbrush in my hand, I became another person. Around me were pictures waiting to be captured and recreated on paper or canvas. I took delight in trying to reproduce my surroundings with exacting precision including the duplication of colours. I photocopied the world about me into my mind and spewed it back out as a permanent image.
Sometimes it was not the landscapes or scenery about me that I wanted to capture, but the original pictures adorning my head. My own creations, which reflected my mood or desires. Inspiration would come in many shapes and forms, but rarely did they become a complete work of art. Many versions would be trashed or scrunched up unfinished, not quite the illusion in my mind. The wrong colours or contrasts or I simply had lost the urge to paint my thoughts. The re-working and repetitious style of creation was innate in me and had been encouraged by my childhood experiences.
As a small child, I had constantly handed my mother pieces of paper, scraps, or backs of envelopes - all covered in marks and splodges of colour. She had smiled sweetly, stuck them on the fridge with magnets for a few weeks and when I had been tucked up in bed, she had stuffed them between copies of old newspapers ready to be collected by the local scout troop for recycling. I had taken it upon myself to make up for the loss of my pictures by creating even more at a faster rate. She had suggested different themed scrapbooks as alternatives and I had filled those rapidly too.
As I had made my way through primary school, I had acquired a large store of materials that littered my small bedroom: crayons, pencils, pastels, chalk, charcoal and paints. Under my bed had been shoe boxes filled with my brushes and pots. Chaotic to the outsider, I had labelled my boxes with decorative labels and I knew exactly what they contained. I had watched not only the children’s arts programme but the adult ones too. Poker-faced academics with haughty voices describing the artistic eras in flowery, adjective strewn monologues - Impressionists, Pre-Raphaelites, cubists, schools of this and that. During my self-imposed lessons, I had written copious notes in lined exercised pads. Shouting to my mum in the kitchen, I would ask her how to spell the names of foreign artists, styles and other technical phrases. She would then patiently articulate the letters back at me. Only later did I notice she knew how to spell everything correctly.
While my brother had helped my dad for hours in the garden learning the Latin names for plants, my mum had taken me to art galleries: local by car, national by train. I read all the tiny descriptive labels for each painting, then I had sketched my favourites in my own little pad before finding my mum in a nearby cafe. She had waited patiently for me with a magazine in one hand and carrot cake in the other. I would tell her the pictures I had liked the best and those that I had found disappointing. Her aging face had nodded and agreed though her thin lips had remained tightly pressed together. After a several trips out, I had decided she had no interest in my love of the arts and stopped asking her to take me on the excursions.
In secondary school, I had been taken under the wing of a young enthusiastic art teacher. From her I had been, at last, taught technique, a list of how to's. Different brush strokes, palette knives, mixing paints, preparing and stretching paper prior to use, fixing and displaying. Her end of year reports on my efforts had been glowing, full of praise for my perseverance when I had struggled with a project and hinting that I had a future which should be nurtured and cultivated. Through her tutelage I had achieved an A grade and a small exhibition of my course work in the school's main hall.