Mrs. Charlotte Edgecombe had just purchased a heated bathtub.
It sparkled in its novelty. Its pearly white ceramic body rested on brass feet plated in gold. It had a tap that released cold water and a tap that released hot water, which was heated by means of a gas boiler. Above the tub was a shining brass showerhead that spewed warm water over the bather. It looked so pristine, in fact, that at first she was hesitant to get into it out of fear that she might soil its purity. But when she did, the water washed over her like a scalding hot, foaming sea. The heat was invigorating; it baptized her. She emerged pink, raw, and thoroughly cleansed.
Charlotte liked to be clean. She kept her life in as orderly a state as she kept her body. Ever since her late husband's death five years ago, Charlotte had been very much mistress of her own world, and she liked it that way. She made sure that the housemaid polished her silver to perfection whenever she entertained guests. She masterminded the aesthetic of the household, making improvements whenever necessary. Everything in her house, from her fashionable silver table set to her manicured, Italian-style garden, was kept perfectly in its place.
She did not, however, seem to mind when her gardener, Tom Baker, tracked mud into the house in his work boots. She did not tell him to clean himself off in the kitchen before entering the house. She did not wrinkle her nose at the scent of sweat and exertion that he exuded after a long day's work. And she did not object to his dirt-caked fingernails as they caressed her neck, or his sodden clothes as he cast them off onto her bedroom floor. Tom was her exception. He tarnished the exacting hygiene of Charlotte's life, in all the most gratifying ways. He pinched her and pulled her and pounded her, and she let herself be lost in him when he visited her.
Tom, for his part, was more than happy to oblige Charlotte's desires. She was a buxom lady, just to his liking. Her body swelled with bounty, and she let him do things to it that no other woman had let him do before: not just to be inside her, but to dominate her. He could hurt her, if he liked--and he did, when he felt like it. He slapped her and bit her and pulled her hair, and she gasped and moaned and begged him for more. She was quite shameless when she was with him, admitting vices to him that she never would have confessed in polite society. Tom understood the strange privilege of the position in which he found himself. She could be open with him about her desires because he was a servant: he was not the kind of person one needed to impress; she required nothing from him; his opinion was of little import. And so she let him undo her, let him break through the clean lines of her life and expose the dirt beneath.
Of course, there were practical benefits to the affair. Charlotte was Tom's main patron. Her Italian garden required daily upkeep. The hedges had to be pruned, the flowers watered, and the grass trimmed. The fish in the pond next to the fountain needed to be fed. It made for regular employment for Tom, and it came with free lodging in the gardener's shed behind the house. Tom had moved out of London to the countryside to escape the filth and toil of the slums and the factories. It had not been easy to find a job without experience or references, and Charlotte had been his saving grace. Whether she had hired him because she saw some talent or passion in him, or simply because she liked the way he looked, he did not know, but he did not question it. As soon as he began to live away from the city beneath the blue skies of the countryside, the wheezing cough that had clung to him in the city slums disappeared. He breathed the clean country air, and he could feel it heal him as it passed through his lungs.
It was one evening in late August when Charlotte suggested their most radical game yet. They were lying in bed. Her hands were tied to the posts of her bed frame, and her legs were spread as Tom thrust in and out of her. "Yes," he muttered to himself, gearing up for orgasm, "yes!" He came inside her with a shudder and a moan, and he felt her tremble beneath him with the intensity of the thrust. He sat over her for a long moment, looking at her breathe in and out heavily: helpless, undone, compliant.
"Peggy and Sheila will be away on Thursday," she told him presently. Peggy was her housemaid, and Sheila was her cook. "We'll have the house and the garden all to ourselves."
He smiled. "I see. And what did you have in mind?"
She looked up at him thoughtfully. She knew exactly what activity she had in mind, but it was daunting to say out loud. "I...I want to be yours entirely," she told him finally. "The whole day. I want you to do anything you want with me. Anything at all."
Tom raised his eyebrows. "And what if you don't like what I want to do with you?"
"All the better."
He searched her face for a trace of jest or insincerity, but she stared back at him with calm determination. Tom's mind began to race. Anything he wanted. The possibilities were vast. To hurt her? To humiliate her? To make her submit to him as if she were the servant and he were the master? "I'd like that," he said.
"Good."
He untied her hands, and she got up to wash herself off in her new bathtub. The deluge of water cascaded down from the showerhead, washing all traces of the night's revelry away, the dirt, the sweat, the semen. What did Tom have in store for her? She pondered the possibilities with a thrill of excitement. Anything he wanted, she had told him. Perhaps it had been foolhardy; perhaps she would regret the words come Thursday. Nevertheless, she ached to find out.
***
To work was to be at the mercy of another. Tom was keenly aware of this immutable fact. He had been dominated by the foreman at the textile factory he had worked at in London, and he was under Charlotte's dominion now. Hers may have been a benevolent dictatorship, but it was a dictatorship nonetheless, except in those fleeting moments when he lay on top of her. Even then, the fact remained: she had a bank account that was full to bursting with all the money she needed to make her comfortable, and he relied absolutely on her generosity. Tom had long been used to the subordinance of his position, but sometimes it itched at him, and he fantasized about what it would be like to be the one owning instead of the one laboring, to sit in his own house and walk in his own garden and know without reservation that he could do anything he wanted with it.
And so, as he worked in the garden all the next week, the thoughts to which Tom's mind returned were of power. He knew that Charlotte's offer to him to do "anything he wanted" did not truly negate the powerlessness of his position. He relied too heavily on her favor to be able to think that "anything" really meant anything. Still, he wanted to do something that would seize back some of that power--not just the power that she lent to him as he pounded her into the bed, but a power beyond her designs, beyond her pleasure, beyond perhaps her imagination. But how?
On Wednesday afternoon, as he squatted down to prune the miniature hedges by the main walkway of the garden, Charlotte came to observe his progress. She wore a fashionable white gown with white lace trimming down the skirt, and before she stepped out into the garden, she pinned it up carefully with a silver skirt grip so that it would not drag on the dirty ground. She had brought with her a detailed diagram of her plans for the garden, which she always masterminded with meticulous care. "It should be straighter," she chided.
"Yes, ma'am," he said. Privately, he disagreed; he liked the way the hedges looked at a wider angle. But, of course, it was her garden.
She showed him the angle to which the hedge should have been trimmed with her white gloved hand. He caught her hand in hers and gave it a kiss, smiling up at her, but she pulled her hand away. "Not now," she whispered, "These gloves have just been washed!"
