Serving Ms. Shreya

Chapter One Third-Person: Michael/Shreya Looking back, he would realise all the signs had been there. The ever-so subtle assertions of control and the gradual positioning of herself into a figure of authority in his life. All the while, conditioning and training him to her service as she weakened his resolve by supplying him a comfortable home he knew he had no likelihood of supplying for himself – either then or at a future date. Ensuring his life in her home gave him something to contrast against the harsher realities awaiting him if her were to leave. All the above done beneath an umbrella of care and understanding of his position that was really no more than a gossamer barrier she had erected to prevent the rain of true perception from falling onto his unsuspecting head and preventing the knowledge of just how expertly she was manipulating him from scuppering the long-cherished plans she had for him – or at least a man of his kind – and was now in a position to implement. Too late now, for either him to rescue himself, or for her to re-think her course. Both, in their own markedly different ways, imprisoned in the situation she had engineered. The only difference being that only one of them would have loved nothing better than to find the right circumstances or the strength-of-will to leave it. And that someone was certainly not her. Of course, and as is always the way with hindsight, by the time suspicion of her motives had crystallised into pure and hard certainty it was far too late to extricate himself from the shackles she had placed around both the s****l desires now obsessing him and the nuts and bolts of his life itself - the spanner for the latter a tool she had taken into her possession and used only to secure even further the control she already wielded over him. He often asked himself, normally after the delicious and, at one-time, uncharacteristic weakness she had worked and contrived to overlay upon his sensibilities had been satisfied and he could think clearly again – and at least until his need for her and what she had become to him kicked in again – how a man such as himself could have been so easily taken in and reduced to such a condition of dependency. And by such a person! After all, hadn’t he always been considered a man of principle and substance? The scorched earth approach he had taken with his ex-wife after discovering her affair with a young intern at the PR firm where she was a junior executive, surely evidence he was anything but a woman’s dupe. Even if it was pretty much the last manly thing he had done. Patsy’s avowal that it was a one-time lapse and that she couldn’t live without him, and the tears and seemingly genuine devastation greeting his determination to end their twenty-three-year union, doing nothing to move him. There was no way he would be a cuckold for any woman – no matter how deep his love for her had once been. What would be the point, after all, of a marriage without trust? Neither had the entreaties of his two university age daughters who insisted their mum loved him and had simply made a menopausal and hormonally driven mistake, make him reconsider for a second. A stubbornness and refusal to forgive that had ensured what remained of his life would be shifted onto a completely different trajectory. And one that would not be an improvement in any way. The fact both he and his wife had been forty-four-years of age at the time of her faithlessness, and that she had exhibited none of the visible signs of a woman going through the change at that time, not supplying their pleas for him to forgive the errant wife and mother with any teeth. Second-thoughts that recall of even one hot-flush might have given him pause to make. Though it was unlikely it would have made him re-think his first reactions after having given due deliberation to the affair she insisted was evidence indicating her… change. Change of which, as we have already mentioned, there was none according to the evidence. All the above, perhaps, explaining why neither of his daughters would speak to him and showed no sign of shifting their total support from the mother who had trashed her vows in the first instance. A stance, he often told himself, that did not bode well for his daughters’ future marital prospects or those of the men they managed to snare. Which did not stop him from missing the love and affection he had once been sure of from all three. Though he was glad his parents were no longer around to see how low he had fallen. As for friends? Well, they had taken pretty much the same stance as his daughters and, if not sided with the cheater exactly, had let him know she had their sympathy for her regrettable “Mistake” and his stubborn refusal to forgive it. A response he did not take well and the forthright language with which he took those friends to task ensuring he was unlikely to ever be a part of their social plans again. Or wanted to be. When he first met the woman about to become both his landlady and his employer, she was a widow of two years while he - Michael Wilson – had less than proud possession of a decree-nisi barely six months current. Together with a small rented apartment for which the first half-year lease was about to lapse and not be renewed by an owner who wished to move in a renter with both the capacity and the willingness to pay more on a monthly-basis for what was barely above being labelled a “s**t-heap”. The family home had barely any equity left in it after their having borrowed on the strength of it for the Uni-fees of his two estranged daughters - that and some renovations Patsy simply had to have. This and the fact his wife actually earned a little more than him in the Civil Service position at the Department of the Environment he still had at the time – Executive level or not - ensured he had agreed when she offered to buy him out and take on the remaining mortgage herself. Hence his removal from the Beckenham home she had been awarded in the settlement and his renting of a tiny and depressing studio apartment in the dormitory town of New Eltham on the outer-edge of South London that was at least more in keeping with his now modest means than more upmarket Kentish location of his former residence. Hence also, his ever-growing panic as his savings receded and his six-month lease neared expiry without him finding either a job or a living space within his reduced means. It was a nightmare and he now sympathised with refrain of many of the recent homeless that it was but one small setback from an evening spent sleeping warm and cosy on a mattress, or trying to snatch a few hours rest while under cardboard upon the paving stones of a street or alley. No surprise then that the advertisement he had seen while scanning the pasteboard for local adverts at Sidcup library caught his attention: “Living-quarters in large and comfortable Chislehurst home offered to a suitably mature candidate with no issues in regard of performing light chores in and out of the home for a private lady requiring both domestic and DIY assistance and an unobtrusive presence. The owner being a woman who regards privacy as paramount. The most suitable candidate will be paid weekly spending money, together with food lodgings and other expenses, by way of a salary. The ideal applicant will also be between forty-five and fifty-five years of age. This is intended as a long-term position for the successful applicant” Which was how the forty-five-year-old Michael Wilson came to meet Shreya Laghari and found himself living in a self-contained flat above the garage of her home, not a mile from the high-street at expensive Chislehurst and only a few miles distant from the bustle of Bromley and its popular shopping-centre. The somewhat unusual composition and requirements of the ad not concerning him so much when what it offered was taken into account, along with his recognition that living there would afford him the time to get his head right and find a way back into proper employment. It was just what he required at this time, and if it meant stringing along whoever had placed it on the subject of making it long-term then he didn’t see the harm in such a small subterfuge. That leaps into the unknown of such served only to irritate the fickle and easily angered fates who laughed at the making of human plans, and that designs of such a kind seldom turned out well for the one taking the gamble, did not occur to him. Though the fact he would be working under the supervision of a woman did. And a woman of Indian subcontinent origins, too. A fact that was embarrassing to him, given his somewhat old-fashioned views and the pride that went with it? Certainly. But hardly a position of a kind likely to prove injurious to his future health! Even if those “light chores” did prove to be a little more involved than the advertisement had first described them to be. Such was his belief at the time, anyway. In the end, it had taken two interviews, and a rather painful recounting of his life and personal situation when the Pakistani woman in her early thirties told him she required complete transparency from the person who would, in effect, be sharing the home she owned. This a non-negotiable part of the process before she could even think of allowing him to move into the space above her garage on a month’s trial basis. And barely a day before the lease on his current residence expired and he found himself on the street. A last gasp reprieve from a possible new-home made of cardboard and a flooring of paving stones that made him thankful to the fates already planning to betray him and even less likely to trouble himself in regard of the position he was about to take on. If not ideal, he had told himself – the prospect of doing domestic chores for a woman not making much appeal to him – it was certainly a relief to find himself with a roof above his head when his lease expired. Understandable that he could have no inkling that the widowed young Pakistani woman had instantly seen in him the devoted white chattel she had always dreamed of fashioning for herself after having interviewed so many applicants who were utterly unsuitable on so many different levels. The same Pakistani girl now in a position to make her fantasies a reality since the death of her unmissed husband of an arranged marriage. The arranged marriage that had brought her to the country of which she had fantasised as a young girl. Moreover, her new house-guest would be a chattel she fully intended to make as dependent and obedient as any of her fellow countrywomen and men who had served the British during their time ruling her land. Though even she might have conceded that there would not have been many who served their English masters in the way she intended Michael Wilson to serve her. And in all ways. His unawareness of what she had in mind for him and what would befall his life were she to be successful, not enlightened any by the fact she made no appeal to him as a woman whatsoever. Despite a suspicion there was a very womanly body beneath the concealing silks of her habitual sarees. The face above, along with a certain sense of unspoken and subliminal superiority on his part for people from her part of the world, ensuring he felt no attraction for the woman whose house he was living in whatsoever. A condition, he was not to know, that she fully intended to change. By the end of his first week in her comfortable home, he professed himself delighted with the way things were turning out. By no means his first choice to be performing her cleaning, doing laundry, and ironing – amongst other less than manly delights; and especially for a young woman from a land his own had once ruled – he was surprised to find how easy the chores Patsy had performed and he had taken for granted came to him. All his life and work had involved logic and practicality and it stood him in good stead in his new role. At least until he could get his head right and start applying of for jobs in the real-world more suitable for a man of his ability and experience, rather than the new-role he had been forced to take on. A new-role, she had been insistent upon in both interviews, that might be made more lasting. If, that is, his work merited such longevity and she found him… suitable. You can only imagine his inner outrage at being patronised in such a way. And by such a person. “It is a good opportunity for you, I think,” she had told him evenly and without seeming to crow in the least; though in truth there was no way she could have delivered the words within his hearing without sounding condescending. “A good opportunity?” he had thought through gritted teeth. For him? Living in the home of a young Pakistani woman and doing her household chores? It made him grateful that he had no contact with either his loose-legged wife or the two daughters who had treated her betrayal of him so lightly while expecting him to simply forgive and forget. The humiliation of having the former love of his life see what he had come to since their separation might just have tipped him over the edge. And as for the daughters who had once been the apple of his – undiscerning, it turned out – eye? Fuck them! Fuck all three of them, in fact. And the former friends who’d taken sides against him. He had bitten his tongue as the woman had gone on with her embarrassing assessment of his future in her excellent and very correct, but poorly delivered English. “It is regrettable that your personal life took such an unfortunate turn at this stage in your life. It seems nowadays that society values only youth rather than experience and I can well understand how difficult – perhaps impossible – you will find it to ever find the kind of employment to which you were used.” Hearing a similar sentiment exit her lips to the one he had been attempting not to address to himself only served to depress him and she noted his reaction. “Believe me, Michael,” she went on in a kindly tone – a tone that seemed to him even then, and through the gloom her reminder of his condition had inspired… ersatz …and unnatural to her; “it is not my intention to rekindle your memories of the way you were treated and what it has led to.” He nodded with a tiny smile he didn’t feel, all too aware that he was, to all intents and purposes, a supplicant before the Pakistani woman and that he needed to… cultivate …her. At least if he wished to experience a roof over his head in the immediate future. Her black hair was pushed from her face and tied at the back in a way that did nothing to alleviate the asymmetry of her features – though it did bring her eyes into startling and somewhat disturbing effect when he realised they were trained upon him and she seemed to require some kind of… What? Thanks? Validation for her having mentioned a past she knew was painful for him? Thanks, for having extended him the opportunity to enter her home and take care of her chores? “I realise that, Mrs Laghari…” he began before she interjected with a tight smile of her own. “I prefer ‘Ms’,” she told him. “I’m sorry?” “I would prefer it if you addressed me as ‘Ms Laghari’,” she explained. “It is the name I went by in my homeland, Michael, and one I returned to after my husband died.” “I see,” he replied with a tight smile, not having missed the fact she continued to address him by his first-name, despite having just insisted he address her more formally in an obvious attempt to let him know he would not be in her home as either a guest or an equal. She shook her head. “No. I am not so sure that you do, Michael. My marriage to the late Mr Bhabra was an arranged one, entered into by my family for reasons of money. My husband, you see, was very successful in business but physically repulsive. At least to me. As you can see, I am not what men describe as a ‘beauty’ myself in facial terms, so it was not so surprising when he found the more desirable women back home – and certainly those who were already here in England – were not amenable to either his advances or the money he was prepared to pay their parents. Explaining why he decided to set his sights… lower.” Wilson shifted uncomfortably on his chair in front of her desk in the downstairs room she used as an office. Hearing of her relationship with her late-husband – physically repulsive or otherwise – was not high on his list of must-have conversation. Though he managed to keep his expression blank as he nodded what he hoped she would interpret as understanding before changing the subject. “Our union, as people have it, was joyless, sexless, and, thankfully, childless. My great good fortune in marrying Mr Bhabra was the fact that he was mercifully impotent and wanted only a wife for the sake of appearances. Someone to take his arm at the many business functions and dinners he attended that he might not be seen as alone and desperate; despite knowing we hardly made what would be described these days as a ‘dream couple’. It was this need for face and to put up a good appearance on his part that was responsible for him sending me to a tutor in English that I might be able to converse with those present upon such occasions. It also explains why my proficiency in your language is so correct and extensive – even if my tutor was unable to prevent me speaking it without the thick accent you hear that was already too far ingrained for him to alter. “My utter lack of s****l passion for him, together with any fond feeling is another reason I took back the name of my parents after his death,” she finished. The older man’s cheeks flushed a little at her volunteering of such personal information and she smiled at his discomfort with her mention of that “sexless” marriage. “You are not comfortable with such talk,” she observed. “This does you credit. But you will find I am a very forthright young woman and, now that I am also a very wealthy one, I find my security and new confidence allows me to speak my mind. I warn you in advance because I will not hesitate to take you to task should you be less than diligent in the duties I expect from you during your four-week trial period.” His cheeks flushed a little more at the way she emphasized the word “trial” and seemed to be talking down to him, but he remained silent. “This brings me to the point I was making originally,” she went on, seemingly completely at her ease as she took the commanding role in their conversation prior, though he could not have known it, to adopting that same position in his life further down the line. “As I explained during our meetings with each other,” she continued; “I am not looking simply for a temporary…” She appeared to be searching for the correct word. Then, finally, latching onto a description he sensed was not her first choice: “…assistant …but a long-term presence in my home and an arrangement that will be mutually beneficial for both of us – if you come to see your future here with me.” “The f**k I do!” ran his thoughts as it struck him again that her emphasis on the word “Assistant” seemed to indicate she had another word in mind and that he would not be too thrilled to hear it. A word, it struck him, she thought he might take exception to her using. Though he had no idea at this time of just what that word might have been. And would hardly have been likely to take too great an exception to it if he did – so marked was his desperation for something likely to give him some respite that he might at least attempt to restore his fortunes. “I am, you will come to find,” she went on, “a private person and, aside from visitors from my Temple in Orpington at certain times, enjoy my own company to read and listen to music or watch a film.” As his cheeks reddened at having heard her virtually describe him as a non-person who would not interfere with her desire for solitude, and for all his bitterness at being in such a dependent position – outright anger for the wife who had precipitated his fall – he also recognised the younger woman offered him a lifeline; even if, naturally, he saw it as more temporary than a commitment to spending his future with her. “I will also require you to accompany me to the shops and act as my driver on those occasions when, not being a driver myself, I am in need of one to chauffeur me in the car of my late-husband.” *** And so he had begun his first week in her home and retired each evening to his quarters above the garage. From a Civil Servant at a reasonably high executive level, he was acting as a young Pakistani woman’s de facto servant. And it would soon become worse. Much, much, worse…