Dirt on His Hands Pt. 02

The mud had dried on Charlotte's face.

It had begun to crack and itch. She tried to scratch the itch by rubbing her head against her shoulder, but she was not able to quite satisfy it. She adjusted the position of her arms, feeling the pressure of the rope around her wrists. It was a hot summer day. The sun shone in her eyes. She cast them downward to avoid squinting. A fly landed on her leg, and she jerked her leg to the side to push it off of her.

Tom looked out at Charlotte through the window of her upstairs bedroom. She sat on the garden bench, looking small and subdued. Helpless. It made his blood pump fast in his veins just to see it. What good do your money and your fancy things do for you now, Mrs. Edgcombe? He thought to himself. What difference is there between us now? Even from his view through the window, he could sense her discomfort. She must be hot in the sun; he could see her squinting in the bright light. She kept adjusting her posture as if she could not find a comfortable position to sit. He did not wish real pain on her, but a little discomfort was good. Anything he wanted today--that had been the arrangement. He wanted to impress on her that he could make her as uncomfortable as he chose.

He turned away from the window. He had never been in Charlotte's house on his own before. He felt an impulse to touch everything. He wanted to linger in the wealth of this room: to run his hands over the trinkets on the mantel and up and down her velvet bedcurtains. And why not? Anything he wanted, after all. He walked to her washroom. It gleamed with dazzling modernity. The new bathtub in the middle of the room was pristine and milky white. He walked up to it and ran his finger across the edge of it. He turned on the hot water tap, then the cold water tap, and he observed with fascination as the waters mingled together in the showerhead; he could make it warmer by turning down the cold tap, and he could make it hotter by turning it up again. He began to remove his dirty clothes and piled them on the floor. When he had adjusted the temperature of the spray to his satisfaction, he stepped in.

He let out an audible sigh of pleasure. The warm water tickled his skin, washing all the grime away in a deluge of mist. It warmed him through to his core. He splashed water over his face and through his hair. No wonder Charlotte kept herself so clean, he thought. If cleaning himself were this pleasurable, he thought, he would do it all the time. She had a lavender scented bar of soap on the ledge next to the bathtub, and he rubbed it all over his body, taking in its perfume.

Tom let himself linger in the shower for a long while, so long that the hot water in the boiler began to deplete and the water turned cold. When at last he turned off the water taps, his skin practically gleamed. He dried himself off on Charlotte's towel and changed into a fresh set of clothes.

He returned to the window of Charlotte's bedroom and checked that she was still there. She had not moved from the spot. Her head was bent down, and her hair hung tangled around her shoulders. He rapped on the window. She looked up to see him, and he waved at her good-naturedly.

Tom took his time returning to the garden. First, he meandered around Charlotte's room, opening drawers and touching all of her possessions. He ran his fingers over the fine fabrics of her clothing and the elegant luxury of her jewelry. Then he made his way through the hallway and into the dining room, tracing his fingers along the borders of the inlaid wood of her table and the delicate bone china of the breakfast dishes the maidservant had set there the night before.

He looked around the room. The walls had recently been redone with wallpaper in a dark red pattern, and there were paintings hung around its perimeter in gold frames. One painting in particular caught his eye. It depicted a field of wheat, dappled in golden sunlight. An old mill with crumbling walls stood off to the side, next to a babbling stream. In the foreground two peasant women stooped down over the field. Tom recognized the labor--"gleaning," they used to call it, when peasants would gather the excess grains of wheat that had fallen to the ground after a field had been harvested. It must have been grueling, tedious work. How much would these peasant women's backs have ached after a day of constant contortion? None of their toil was visible in the painting, though: they were simply part of the landscape. Instead of their work or their pain, the painter had seen only the dappled sky and the rolling hills. What a luxury, he thought, not to have to see work as work, to see only beauty.

He picked up one of the dishes, along with a fork and a knife, and brought it with him to the kitchen. Then he placed the lamb pie that the cook had set out on the counter for Charlotte onto the plate, filled a ceramic cup with water, and took it all out into the garden with him.

"How are you?" He asked Charlotte, sitting down next to her on the bench. He began to cut into the pie with the fork and knife. The silver cutlery felt so dainty in his hands, smooth and well-balanced.

Charlotte breathed in and out and collected her thoughts. She was sore and hot and tired--that was the most immediate answer to Tom's query. She was hungry and thirsty. Her skin felt raw from the sunlight and irritated from the mud and dirt that clung to it. And yet, even in the midst of the barrage of discomforts, she felt utterly calm. Serene, even. She was undone. In this moment, her will was thoroughly dissolved into Tom's. There was a tangible relief in it, in the midst of a life so carefully arranged, to let go of all agency, all responsibility, for a few tantalizing hours. "I'm alright," she said at last.

"Are you thirsty?"

"Yes!"

"Tilt your head back." She did so. Tom picked up the cup from the ground. "Open your mouth."

He poured a trickle of water into her mouth. She swallowed gratefully. He set the cup down and cut off a bite of pie, which he held out on the fork in front of her face. She opened her mouth, but he did not bring the fork to her.

"Come and get it." She leaned forward, but he moved the morsel away from her before she could reach it. "What, you don't want it?" He teased. He wiggled the fork just out of her reach. She strained against the restraints that bound her to the bench, leaning toward the fork. It quickly became apparent that the exercise was futile. Tom popped the bite into his mouth. She returned his action with an expression of exasperation. He cut off another bite and held it over her head. On cue, she strained upward, trying to catch the fork's contents in her mouth as he waggled it above her. The morsel dropped from the fork and fell onto Charlotte's dirt-spattered lap. She leaned down and lapped it up, seeing that he clearly meant for her to do so.

"May I please have some more?"

"Not just yet," Tom grinned. "I'm going to make you work for your dinner." He reached behind Charlotte and untied her hands. "The garden needs watering," he informed her. "There's a watering can in the shed."

Charlotte rubbed her wrists where the cord had bound them and got to her feet, somewhat shakily. "Yes, sir." She took a deep breath, resolving herself to the task ahead.

Tom leaned back in his seat on the bench, crossed one leg over the other, and continued to eat the pie. As he watched Charlotte fetch the watering can and fill it up, he luxuriated in the idleness of his position. He cut the pie into neat bites with the silver fork and knife. He took note of the lightness of the dish he was eating off of, with a gold rim and a pattern of poppies in the center. This must be what it was like to be Charlotte all of the time, he mused--to inhabit her garden as if it were solely a place of pleasure, to willfully disregard the toil that went into making it what it was. There she was, his own picturesque peasant girl, just like the ones in the painting in the dining room. Stripped of all her clothing, she may as well have been a peasant girl. There was a hardiness about her body that was easy to miss beneath her fine tailored dresses and gloves. She made her rounds to each flower patch, watering them with deliberate care.

When she had finished watering the flowers, Tom made her rake the leaves that had accumulated underneath the apple and pear trees. He had a leather strap that he had used before to hit her, and he followed her around, slapping her rear end when she did not work fast enough.

Slap! "You missed that leaf over there!" He chided.

"I'm sorry sir," she answered. He struck her again. She winced and cried out, and hurried to collect the forgotten leaf. A red mark shone on her back where he had hit her. Tom smiled to himself, then hit her again, just for good measure.

"Now the gravel," he instructed. "I want you to rake it into straight lines, horizontally across the path."

At this, Charlotte looked incredulous. For a brief second, her mind returned to all of her carefully detailed garden plans, and she said in her most matter-of-fact voice, "But I always have the gravel raked vertically! Horizontally isn't proper."

Tom's reaction was immediate. He pushed Charlotte roughly to the ground and began to thrash her, hard, with the strap. Once on her back, twice on her thigh, her breast, her rear end--wherever he could reach, he brought the weapon down. She had slipped so easily back into her mode of easy, presumptive ownership. Her immediate, kneejerk dismissal of anything he might know was buried just below the surface, so easily disturbed and brought to the forefront. It made his insides burn, and he thrashed her all the harder. Not today, he thought. He would beat it out of her while he had the opportunity.

Charlotte squirmed and flinched involuntarily each time the strap cleaved into her skin. A searing pain in her thigh made her turn to the other side, only to receive another blow to the other thigh. No matter where she turned her body, Tom's strap found a place to torment her. It made her muscles tremble all over it. It consumed her. It wiped all other thoughts out of her mind--all pasts, all futures, all plans, all forecasts. There was only the immediate future of the strap in Tom's hands, and where it would find her flesh next.

"What's that you said about the gravel?" Tom held her down with his knee on her lower back and thrashed her rear end. "Something about not wanting to do it the way I wanted?"

"I...no!" He struck her twice in quick succession on the same spot, and she screamed. "I mean...I...aaaah!" He hit her again. "No, I..." He held the strap above her, waiting for her response. She took a deep breath. "Anything you want," she said in a low voice. "I'll do it any way you want, sir."

Tom let the strap fall to his side. "That was the right answer. Now do it."

"Yes, sir." Charlotte took the rake and began making careful lines in the gravel, back and forth across the path. The gravel hurt her bare feet, and she kept shifting her weight back and forth to try and find a more comfortable position. Tom smacked her rear end with the strap, and she let out a yelp.

"It should be straighter," he chided. "Do it over again."

Charlotte obeyed, moving the rake slowly across the path, trying to make the line as straight as possible. She made the next line just as straight and deliberate as the previous line, and worked her way slowly up the path toward the house.

Tom followed close behind, examining her work, slapping her with the strap whenever her work was not to his satisfaction. By the time they had reached the other end of the path, the gravel was perfectly straight, and Charlotte's rear end was thoroughly sore. She looked up at him, waiting for his next instructions.

Tom ran a finger through her hair. "You've done a good job with my gravel," he told her. She raised her eyebrows at him but said nothing. His gravel, Tom had said, as if the garden belonged to him and not to her. "What needs to be done next, do you think?"

Charlotte looked around the garden. She noticed that there was a patch of grass that had grown over onto the path on the left-hand side. That would need to be trimmed back, for sure. "The grass needs to be trimmed on the left-hand side of the path," she informed him, pointing to the patch.

He grabbed a fistful of her hair, held her head back, and slapped her across the cheek with the other hand. She gasped. "That was the wrong answer," he told her.

"It...it was?"

"The correct answer," he continued, "was 'anything you want, sir.'"

"Y-yes sir."

"Let's practice, shall we?" He tightened his grip on her hair, making her wince and grit her teeth. "Let's say I wanted to cut those hedges at a wide angle over there," he said. "What would you say?"

That same kneejerk response that had overtaken Charlotte when Tom had wanted to rake the gravel horizontally appeared again at the back of her mind. The hedges should be cut straight, not at an angle. That was the proper way of doing things. But this time, she held her tongue. "Anything you want, sir," was all she said.

"Say I wanted to plant geraniums in the left-hand flower patch, what would you say?"

"Anything you want, sir"

"Say I wanted to dig up that flower patch entirely?"

At this Charlotte paused. Her eyes widened at the thought. He wouldn't really do it, would he?

But she had hesitated too long. Tom slapped her face again. "I'll wipe the hesitation off your face." He let go of her hair. "On your knees." She knelt down on the grass. "Not there--on the gravel."

Charlotte repositioned herself so that her knees were on the gravel. The pain was immediate. The sharp, irregular rocks dug into her skin. It was a deep, dull pain, and it grew more acute with each passing second. She grimaced and gritted her teeth, looking up at Tom for his next instructions. He ran a hand through her tangled hair.

"Count to sixty," he ordered.

"One," she began, taming the tremor in her voice. "Two, three, four."

"Too fast. Slow down."

"Five. Six. Seven." Heeding his instructions, she counted deliberately, lingering on each syllable. As she continued counting, Tom felt her muscles tense with exertion. "Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen." The longer she counted, the more the pain crept into her voice. "Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one," she whined. She tried to adjust her weight, but he slapped her, hard, on her chest and tightened his grip on her hair.

"Don't move," he insisted. "Keep looking up at me.

She drew in a deep breath. "Thirty-one. Thirty-two. Thirty-three." The gravel felt like fire underneath her knees. It burned and cleaved into her. Her counting grew more and more desperate. "Thirty-nine! Forty!" Tom could feel her trembling under his grasp. "Forty-seven! Forty-eight!" She cried out, "Forty...forty-nine!" She tried to adjust her weight again, but Tom gave her three hard, merciless slaps, one on her breast, one on her thigh, and one on her cheek. She bowed her head. "Fifty-one," she groaned in a low voice through gritted teeth.

"Look at me, remember." She tilted her head up toward him. He ran a finger across the outlines of her face, noticing the contortion of her muscles, the agony in her eyes.

"Fifty-three," she whispered. "Fifty-four. Fifty-Five. Fifty-Six!" Her body gave a mighty tremor, but she stared up at him with furious determination. "Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine." She drew in a deep breath. "Sixty!"

Tom let go of her hair. She collapsed in the direction of the grass. There were indentations on her knees where the gravel had imprinted itself, deep and red, and she ran her hand over these irregularities. He knelt down beside her and took a closer look at her knees. The skin was red and irritated--she would have bruises there tomorrow--but there was no blood. "What do you say now?" He asked. "What else should be done to my garden?"

Her voice was low, but her tone was fervent and sincere. "Anything you want, sir. Anything."

Tom smiled. He had done it. In this moment he had made her and the garden she occupied entirely his own. He pushed aside thoughts that lingered at the back of his mind of how fleeting this moment might be. He wanted only to dwell in it, to exploit it for all he could. He rested a hand on her thigh. "Are you thirsty?"

She nodded. He fetched the water cup and handed it to her, and she gulped the rest of its contents gratefully.

"I'm not going to make you dig up the flower patch," he informed her.

Charlotte breathed an inward sigh of relief. Outwardly, she only reiterated, "Anything you want."

Tom knew what he wanted. He had had an idea that was quite sadistic, but he thought it just might work. "I want a new flower in my garden," he said softly.

"What?" Charlotte did not comprehend.

"Here's what I want you to do. Go to the garden shed and fetch a shovel. Then go to the back corner of the garden, by the old wall. Find a dry patch of soil, and dig a hole."

Charlotte took a deep breath and stood up with effort, sore from the bruises that covered her body. "Yes, sir." She went to the shed and fetched the shovel, just as he had told her to do. "How big should the hole be?"

He grinned at her. "Big enough for you to sit in."

Charlotte's eyes widened, and a glimmer of understanding played across her face. Fear shot through her, but the fear was accompanied by another emotion: a kind of elation. Anything he wanted, she had said. Tom was testing her limits, seeing how far she was willing to go. Well, she had not reached her limit yet. She wanted it--wanted to know what it was like. "Yes, sir," she told him, and she made her way determinedly to the back of the garden.

Digging was hard work. Charlotte's skin itched with sweat and dirt. She had to strain her muscles to press the shovel into the ground, and a blister began to develop on her hand where she clutched the shovel's handle. She had felt Tom's calloused hands on her body many times before, but she had never thought to wonder about where the callouses had come from. From work just like this, she realized now, for days and days.

Charlotte was clumsy and inefficient as she dug. Tom enjoyed watching her struggle with the heavy dirt, with not knowing how to force the shovel very deeply into the ground or what to do with the dirt after she had turned it over. He stood over her while she worked, waiting ready with the strap. Smack! He brought it down across her rear end. "Faster!" He insisted. Smack! He struck her again. "Don't put the dirt over there, put it over there!" Charlotte strained to obey the commands. She pushed her body to dig harder and faster, breathing heavily from the exercise.

When the hole was around two feet wide and three feet deep, Tom told Charlotte that she could set the shovel down. "Step in," he ordered. He held her hand and helped her step down into the hole. The earth was cool and damp. Charlotte settled into the unfamiliar environment, hugging her knees. Her head came up just above the ground, but the rest of her was completely submerged.

Tom took note of the way that Charlotte was clenching her hands around her knees. He saw how tight-knit her eyebrows were beneath the dirt and sweat on her face. "You're scared," he observed.

She nodded.

His expression softened. "I'll tell you exactly what is going to happen." He traced a finger across the outlines of her face. "I'm going to cover you with dirt all the way up to your neck. I'll leave your head free so that you can breathe, don't worry. You'll spend some time like that. As long as I say. And then I'll dig you out and get you all cleaned off and tell you what a good girl you've been. Can you do all that for me?"

Charlotte took a deep breath. "Yes," she said. "Yes, sir."

"Good." Tom began to shovel the dirt that Charlotte had dug back into the hole. He piled it over her feet, then up to her ankles, then her shins. She shifted her weight and moved her hands up to scratch her face. "Keep still," he ordered.