A Game of Snooer

This is an entry for the Crime & Punishment 2024 Story Event -- thanks heaps to soflabbwlvr for organising the comp. I was unsure whether to submit this as a romance or as a loving wives tale, especially knowing a little of the reputation of the latter. But why not have some fun? Fair warning to readers -- this story deals with a wife who has been wronged and who takes her revenge. Also, it does take a while to get to any sex, but if you stay the course, I hope you'll agree that the payoff is worth it.

Please remember to vote and comment -- it's the rocket fuel for authors to write new works. Also, my apologies in advance to any snooker players or artists who are frustrated by any errors. This story has been lightly updated to correct some typos and include some creative brushwork near the end.

=======

The call was from an anonymous number. I answered with my usual 'preparing to hang up' voice for scammers.

"Yup?"

"Matthew Knox," said a calm baritone down the line.

"Yes."

"Are you in your studio? My employer would like to see your work."

"I'm here. Your employer is....?"

He ignored my question. "We'll be there in thirty minutes."

Intrigued, but a little disturbed, I put the phone down. Anybody who said 'my employer' and turned up shortly afterwards would get a hearing. But there was something in his voice that troubled me.

Exactly half an hour later, I saw a beautiful blue Maserati pull up outside. The driver, a young, energetic looking man of about my age, got out and opened the passenger door for his companion, who looked a little older. They were both well dressed, with the driver in a sharp mid-blue suit matching the car, and his companion in charcoal.

They knocked on my door, but then entered my little studio without waiting, looking around at the various pieces of fine art around them with interest, and then the older man walked across to me with an outstretched hand. Up close, he exuded an air of command. He looked to be in his 40s, a little thicker around the middle than his companion but still in his prime.

"Joe. This is my chief of staff, Bruno. Also my cousin and closest living relative."

"Matthew." I gestured towards by little table and chairs, but he ignored that, and walked straight over to a piece that I was working on -- a detailed painting of a domestic scene on a plaster vase. I normally painted directly onto walls, but little pieces like this were more portable and helped spread my name around.

"A fresco painting?" he asked.

"Secco. Fresco is done when the plaster is wet. Secco is for when it's dry. It doesn't last for centuries but it's fine for what people want."

"You paint dry plaster walls?"

"Yes."

"You can paint landscapes? Inside scenes? Still life? Nudes?"

"All of those." I pulled my portfolio down from the shelves, and showed him some photos of some recent commissions.

Bruno nodded when he saw one of them, and interrupted. "Boss, that's the one I saw." It was a folksy Garden of Eden scene with Adam and Eve as Renaissance-style nudes, that I had recently done on a wall in one of the wealthier suburbs, east across the river from me. I didn't think there was anything particularly ground-breaking about it, but work like this seemed to be in fashion in a certain 'new-money' segment of Melbourne's well-heeled: particularly those who wanted to buy some respectability and demonstrate how far they've moved from their north-western suburban roots. I had picked up more than a few jobs along those lines in the last couple of years. It paid the bills.

Joe didn't really seem to know all that much about art, but I seemed to have ticked his boxes, just as I was mentally filing him into one of my own.

"I have several rooms, just finished, where I'd like large, detailed scenes on the wall that reflect what happens there. Needs a classical look, with a bit of raunch maybe. My study. My bedroom. The pool room. If it goes well, there might be more. Do you have a daily rate?"

I had been stiffed before by wealthy clients. I named a rate, and then added "Paid fortnightly, cash preferred." No need for the tax-man to believe that I was anything but a starving artist.

"Sensible man," said Joe. "We can work together. Come out tomorrow to have a look. Bring your sketchbooks."

He gave me an address and a time, and they left, with Bruno driving again. Joe hadn't asked whether I was available, or had a contract for him to look at, or was finishing off anything else. He had the habit of command.

...

I turned up promptly the next day. It was an over-large, imitation Provencial mansion of the sort that crowds out a suburban block, and it looked like it had been freshly built. I'd worked in smaller versions of these before, and in fact it was one of those where I had done the painting that Bruno had seen. This one had been built on a double-sized block so that it didn't look so ridiculous as some of them do, but it didn't exactly ooze rustic charm to me. Still, the larger block meant that the effect could be softened by a decent garden.

It wasn't Bruno who answered the door, and for a moment time stood still. A tall, blonde woman was greeting me with a faint smile, as if she was perfectly used to my gaping reaction (as indeed she probably was). Her hair was well past shoulder length, arranged in a French braid. She was wearing an elegant, calf-length day dress in an apple red: bright, with a soft pink undertone, perfectly matching her lipstick and her fingernails. The moderate-sized cleavage in her dress revealed flawless pale skin and a well-proportioned bust. Her eyebrows were well-shaped and the same colour as her hair. Everything suggested that she was a natural, classical beauty and comfortable in her own skin. Unlike the house, she oozed elegance and a good upbringing. She looked like she might be a year or two younger than me.

"You must be Matthew,", she said. "I'm Catherine, Joe's wife." Her voice was warm and resonant: it was what I thought of as a classic Australian private schoolgirl's voice, with any coarse vowels polished out when greeting strangers, but still a sense that she could swear with the best of them if she was out with bad company.

I found my tongue and smiled. She was not the first beautiful woman that I'd met, after all, and some of them had even been gracious enough to model for me previously. "Yes, Matthew. Very nice to meet you, Catherine."

"Come through," she said, and turned to lead me into the labyrinth of the house. We stopped first at a large room dominated by a snooker table, which looked just installed, and with one whole wall left as blank plaster ready for me. I had been a bit worried that the 'pool room' would turn out to have an Olympic sized swimming pool in it, but this would be fine. I'm not sure how it goes elsewhere, but Australians tend to talk about the 'pool room' regardless of whether it's pool, billiards or snooker that's played there.

"Next is the bedroom," she said. There was a noticeably sharper edge to her voice as she said this, and given her otherwise impeccable voice control, I sensed that she had done this for my benefit. However, she kept her expression neutral as she showed me a large Master bedroom, again with one wall left blank, broken by a door that presumably led to the walk-in robes and en-suite. A large window opposite the blank wall showed a pleasant view of the garden. I noticed that an apple tree and some other fruit trees had been crowded into the space on this side of the house.

"And Joe's in his study," she went on, and her voice had relaxed just a little, although still with a hint of tension. Clearly, there was something that she wanted to say, but she was holding back. She knocked on the closed study door and turned to give me a small smile. "Joe only usually lets his business associates in to the study. I'm not allowed myself. You're very fortunate." The smile remained, but now her eyes showed a touch of cold. This woman was testing my reading skills, and I hoped that I would pass her exam.

I gave her an intrigued look, but further discussion was curtailed by Joe throwing open the study door. "Matthew. Good." He brought me in, leaving the door open for Catherine to hear the discussion, but he didn't invite her in, and she stayed at the doorway.

The study was a large room laid out in two sections. The first was set up as a small meeting room, plush green leather upholstered chairs around a polished wooden table. At the back of the room was a large wooden desk facing to the side, which was clean other than a green banker's lamp and an expensive looking computer screen. A bulky safe sat in the wall opposite the desk. At the end of the room there was no window, but instead another wall of bare plaster.

"You will start here," said Joe. "This is a secure room, but it gets a bit dull. I thought that you could paint a window onto the wall showing a nice view outside, like that Garden of Eden scene, but you don't need the nudes in this one. We'll have to work around each other, and I will sometimes ask you to leave the room, but I'll give you lots of time to work."

"I can do that," I said.

"In the pool room, you can paint a picture of us playing snooker," he said. "You'll see what my business associates look like when they come here for meetings, so just show us having a good time together. Make sure I'm winning the game though. I usually do." He barked a short laugh.

"And in the bedroom...." he continued. "Actually, you can do the bedroom second, after the study. Catherine and I have a plan, don't we?" he said, turning towards her in the doorway and winking. She gave him a wan smile, but her eyes were still chilly.

I thought for a moment. "I'll do some measurements now, if I may, and if you could please show me around the outside of the house, I'll sketch out what a nice view outside the window would look like and show you a proposal."

He waved me away. "Measure away, and Catherine will show you around. Don't show me your sketches for the window view -- I trust you. Although if I don't like it, I might kill you." He barked in laughter again, but his eyes showed that he wasn't entirely joking. I would need to watch my step carefully with this man.

After taking some quick measurements, I left him alone in the study and went with Catherine, who had been waiting outside. As the study door closed behind us and we started towards the door to the garden, she gave a little hiss of frustration, and then looked at me with an apology.

"Forgive me," she said. "You're here to do a job, and you don't want to see our little tensions."

I smiled. "It's not my business. I work in other people's homes all the time. None of us have perfect relationships."

"Are you in a relationship, Matthew?"

"No."

"Sounds perfect to me," she said with a light laugh.

We walked to the edge of the garden, and then around the perimeter. I was looking at various angles to see what kind of fantasy garden I might construct in his study window. There was certainly a good opportunity to reimagine the landscape without the neighbours' houses crowding around.

I did need to have a level of trust with Catherine though, and I chatted to her as we walked.

"Have you lived here long, Catherine?"

"No, we've really only just moved in. Joe had one of those expensive townhouses in the inner north, but with the business doing well he wanted us to 'find our place in the world'." She gave a little smirk at that. "Actually, I grew up in a place like this in Sydney, although the house was older, the garden was wonderful, and the neighbours were really good friends. You can only go so far to buy yourself into a neighbourhood."

We talked a bit more, as I did some random garden sketches to prolong the conversation. It didn't take long before her barriers were down; she was clearly dying to open up to somebody. Catherine had met and fallen in love with Joe while on a European holiday and had married him quite young. She had still been establishing her career at the time and had effectively given that up to join him in Melbourne. He was about ten years older than her, and this had caused a lot of family tensions.

"I know I'm over-sharing now," she said, "but I was a fool to get married so young and being stubborn I cut myself from my family and friends when they were only trying to give me good advice. Never mind. I made my bed, and I'll lie in it."

Just before we headed back inside, Catherine stopped me.

"Two things you need to know. First, do not cross Bruno or Joe in anything. Bruno and I barely tolerate each other, and he's a piece of work. I displaced Bruno in the inheritance pecking order, but I'm kept well out of the business. I have little influence over Bruno if he turns on you and both of them will crush you if they feel like it. To make matters worse, Bruno is obsessed with me and Joe refuses to see that." She paused.

"Got it, and that's a lot. The second?"

She was rigid again, facing forwards. "The second is that Joe is requiring me to model nude for you for the painting in the bedroom. Some kind of sexy Eve thing. He and Bruno came up with the idea when they were discussing your work."

I was a bit taken aback. "Oh, I'm sorry. I've never had a model working under duress. We can't have that."

"No," she said, allowing her voice to show me some annoyance. "I just told you how dangerous they are, and you need to take that on trust. I won't give you examples. I will do the pose. He wants to make his ownership of me clear to all. He will show the painting off to his inner circle, and he'll probably show a photo of it to his mistress when he visits her on Friday nights. Be very careful what you say in front of him. Be careful how you look at me in front of him."

Now I was genuinely shaken. What the hell had I stepped into? Catherine didn't come across at all as a helpless damsel in distress, but she was consciously choosing to suffer a controlling relationship rather than challenge her husband. And any poor choices on my part from here would clearly have the potential for bad consequences for her as well as me. This commission had gone downhill very quickly.

I turned to her, chastened. I chose my words carefully.

"Catherine, thank you for sharing this, and I'm sorry for your situation. If I paint you, nude or otherwise, I will honour you, regardless of how others are treating you. If there is something that I can do to help that doesn't make things worse, please let me know. If you want me to decline the job, tell me. And tell me straight if I'm blundering around again."

She relaxed a little and smiled. "Don't pull out, please. He would just get someone else to do it. I'd give them the whole spiel again, and then they'd run away screaming and I'd get a reputation as the crazy woman from Kew. But thank you for offering."

We walked back inside, and then I asked her to show me the view out of other windows in the house so that I could quickly sketch some perspectives that would let me imagine the study view as accurately as possible. Then I left for home, with much on my mind.

...

I spent some days in my studio to work on my sketches, and then was back the next week with the sketches, my paints, limewater, brushes and other tools to start work in the study. Joe had had his desk moved out of the room so that I could have working space, but still had his computer at the conference table. He sat there while I started the wall preparation. This was going to take some days to do, in sections, with the detail of the garden scene likely to take the longest.

I have a specific technique that I use while working around clients. I put headphones on, not to play music, but to discourage people from talking to me. I find that after a while, if I'm not speaking, and they believe that I'm not listening, they tend to behave like I'm not there and start to relax themselves. It's only when they're behaving normally that I can really pick up the vibe of a place.

So it was with Joe during the week. He did ask me to leave the room a couple of times, but after a while he tended to just leave me alone. When Bruno or others came for meetings, at first I could sense that they were edgy in my presence, but he encouraged them to treat me as part of the furniture, and after looking over my shoulder a bit to see how the work was progressing, they would get on with their business. In the main, this appeared to be illegal tobacco, vaping, extortion and protection -- the expected fare. I didn't approve, but I'd heard it all before doing similar commissions. Business conversations were mixed with the usual braggadocio, with a fair bit of back and forth between them, although others were careful to not push it too far with Joe or Bruno.

There was one conversational incident, when Bruno and Joe were alone together, and Bruno asked if Joe had heard any more about investigations into 'that certain matter'. Joe just replied 'not now', and took Bruno out of the room to discuss whatever it was somewhere else. I did pause my painting for a few seconds at this. They hadn't been shy about discussing several crimes in the room with me: what was suddenly so sensitive? Whatever it was, what mattered was that I had not seen the worst of them, and I filed that away to sit alongside Catherine's warnings.

There was also something that gave me a quiet chuckle, although I couldn't think of a way to immediately use the information without putting myself in danger. I've mentioned the big safe on the wall. Joe went back and forwards to it a lot when the others (including Bruno) weren't there: he seemed to be very much a cash and jewellery kind of guy in terms of where he put his wealth, and it seemed like he kept some critical documents in there too. Since my back was turned to him and I was acting oblivious, he didn't make me leave the room when he punched in the key code. But I noticed that he did have the habit, shared by many others, of quietly muttering the numbers to himself as he punched them in, and since he kept forgetting about me, I was able to hear it enough times to have the code memorised by the end of the week.

Catherine herself I saw on most days. I brought my own lunches and ate them outside in the garden, and on several occasions she joined me to chat, clearly bored. I found out that she was actually a business graduate from Sydney University.

"I was such a dimwit," she said quietly and matter-of-factly. "I thought I was joining a glamorous family, and with my skills I would be helping Joe take his operation further. I was all too ready to ignore the nature of the business, too. But Joe shut me out, because my job is to be decorative and pop out children. And there have been no children so far. Joe won't admit this, but it's because he's firing blanks; I've been tested and I'm fine. So here I am, wasting my youth to make a minor crime boss look like he's still got his. And tolerating creepy Bruno, hanging around, leering at me when he thinks I'm not looking, and working on getting his tentacles into his boss' house, his business and his wife."

"What do you do with your time?" I asked.

"I socialise with the other wives. Nobody realises this, but I've learnt quite a lot about the inner workings of the business, because they all talk about what they hear, and their husbands won't stop boasting about their petty lowlife exploits. They all disgust me now. Occasionally Joe takes me overseas, but he makes sure to keep my passport with him or in his safe and he controls the money. And I host or attend social events with him and do my best to look attractive and act gracious. Most Friday evenings, Bruno drives Joe to visit Joe's mistress in the spa region north of here, and then picks him the next day or even the Sunday to bring him back here. And I stay here, trying not to seethe, fantasising about getting out and starting my life again."