A Mother's painful Duty

Part 3

By Cate


 When the Spanish maid carried the second suitcase out to Dr Mappamundi's little car she had a smirk on her face and Emily hated her for it.    The hood of the car was up and the handle on the passenger door was still broken, so the maid had to lift the bag over the door onto the seat.   When Dr Mappamundi came down the stairs she was wearing no makeup and it was plain she had been crying again.   Shamefacedly, she kissed Emily on the cheek, then turned to speak to Mrs Armstrong who pointedly ignored her, turning to arrange the lilies on the massive hall table.   Dr Mappamundi's shoulders slumped in defeat, then she turned and went out to her car.   Before Emily could follow, Mrs Armstrong turned decisively and  pushed shut the massive door, leaving the hall in its usual semi-darkness, only lit by a stair window.   The crackle-surfaced oil paintings retired again into the gloom and the row of ivory elephants, the colour of decaying teeth, were still on their long march into the darkness below the stairs.
"Thank goodness," Mrs Armstrong said.  " Well, nobody can say I have not done my best with her."

Dr Mappamundi appeared to have totally forgotten that Mommy never believed herself to be wrong and that when she made her mind up there was no more to be said.    Hysterics and crying were not going to make any difference.   It was worse than when any of the maids had been sacked.   At least none of them had gone so far as to go down on their knees before Mommy.  But that is what Dr Mappamundi had done, pulling despairingly at Mrs Armstrong's skirt and then had collapsed moaning on the ground until Mommy had forced her to her feet and given her a stinging slap across her cheek.  Dr Mappamundi's humiliating departure from the house had been almost as great a shock as her arrival, Emily thought as she followed her mother up the broad staircase.  Outside, the little sportscar had crunched down the drive with a final, defiant spurt of gravel and an autumn gale lashed the trees of the driveway.   A grim ivory warrior sneered at Emily from the window embrasure on the stairs.
  
 Emily remembered that warm morning  late in the Summer.  Dr Mappamundi had left the top of the little red sports car down as it stood on the gravel overnight.   As Emily tried to open the passenger door, Dr Mappamundi said airily "I think the handle's broken, Emily, just climb over "
Emily, wearing a skirt, did not find this easy and Dr Mappamundi zoomed off, spraying gravel from the driveway onto the lawn, while Emily still had one leg hooked over the little door and was trying to arrange her tender bottom onto the leather bucket seat.   In some ways it had been very pleasant having Dr Mappamundi staying in the house, although  Emily found that the discussions between her mother and Dr Mappamundi were  usually  a little abstruse..   Dr Mappamundi now swung the little car gaily down the wide, tree lined boulevard, swerved to avoid a refuse lorry, mounted the pavement for a few yards and demolished a two-year old sapling before regaining the road.

This morning she was wearing a dark red suit and a white blouse with discreet red polka dots.   Not everyone could wear red high heels, but Dr Mappamundi managed it with aplomb. Emily was surprised her mother had not commented, as she would have done with Emily and, after all, Mrs Armstrong had certainly now placed herself in loco parentis to Dr Mappamundi.
"Emily," Dr Mappamundi said, as she negotiated one of the narrow side streets near the university,  "You're very quiet."
"Am I?" Emily said.
Dr Knapp glanced at her quizzically
"Did something happen last night?"
"Such as what?" Emily asked.
"Oh, come, Emily, don't play the innocent with me."    
"I  h..heard you and Mommy having an argument downstairs," Emily said."I was in bed, remember..You were discussing...."
" Wittegenstein, yes," Dr Mappamundi said impatiently. ""Of what we do not know, therefore we may not speak."     But we do know what goes on in that house, don't we."
"Did...did Mommy spank you," Emily asked.   "I heard you cry out."
"Yes, I lost the argument and your Mom spanked me..I have no complaint.   I was in the wrong and she totally demolished my foolish arguments. She "brought me to book" as she so delightfully puts it."
"Dr Mappamundi, believe me truly, I'm so sorry,"
 Her professor made in impatient gesture as she reversed awkwardly into a parking spot and helped Emily out the door on the driver's side, leaving the car at a forty-five degree angle to the kerb.
"No, Emily, I've accepted her right to do that.   Don't ask me why.    You know we are both now firmly in her charge.  But Emily, please say that's all you heard.?"
"I thought I heard you crying - after Mommy went to bed..."
"And?"
"And I. ..I came to talk to you."
"Oh my God, I knew it," Dr Mappamundi said. 
She looked back at the car
"Do you think it'll do?   Oh, to Hell with it"
She leaned over the car to lift a pile of essays and Emily couldn't help looking at her shapely bottom which in turn reminded her of the professor's first visit to the house.  
"Emily, we can't discuss this properly now.   Let me see, I have a free period at half two - can you come to my study then?"
"I...I don,t really want to talk about it," Emily said.
"Please, Emily," Dr Mappamundi said. "This is monstrously unfair to you.   I really am your friend Emily.   Perhaps we can help each other in this."

Emily had one lecture with her friend that morning, but she studiously avoided eye contact.    Dr Mappamundi was less than usually concentrated, although she could often be lured away from the subject in hand by some of the more mischievous students, particularly the female ones.    A discussion on Kant and Hegel took a couple of side trips in which Dr Mappamundi's monthly periods and the merits of waxing rather than shaving one's legs were elegantly touched upon.   Emily's mind was so far astray that she had later to be recalled twice by the lecturer in her English Literature class.    At the time appointed she tapped rather timidly on the massive oak door of Dr Mappamundi's study. When bade to enter she found Dr Mappamundi in her leather armchair, in her stocking feet, one foot balanced on the thigh of her other leg while she massaged her toes gently.   Her  discarded red shoes with the four inch heels stood together on the desk on a volume of "De Summa Theologica."   The rest of the desk was covered with files and books and Dr Mappamundi swept them imperiously to one side.
"Emily," she said gravely, "If you know nothing - fine.   However, if you do you must prepare yourself for anything your mother may ask you."
"But I haven't done anything wrong," Emily wailed.
"I'm not for a moment saying anyone has done anything wrong, Emily," Dr Mappamundi said in her closely reasoned way  "I do hope you won't think so.    However your mother is quite likely to punish you severely if she thinks you know anything.  She will prove you to be in the wrong and will not let you jeopardise her position in any way."
"I know," Emily wailed in despair.
Dr Mappamundi reached across the desk and took the girl's hands in hers
"Tell me, Emily."
"I went into your room last night.    I'm sorry, but you were making a funny noise - I thought I  heard you sobbing."
 Dr Mappamundi's face was paler than before.	
"The door was slightly ajar.   I only looked in.   And as soon...."Emily began to sob, "as soon as I   s..saw I wasn't...wanted.I...went away."
"Emily,  to put it bluntly, you saw your mother and I... not to put too fine a point on it, you saw her on top of me, isn't that it?"
Emily nodded in dumb misery.

Dr Mappamundi rose and crossed the room gracefully, on the balls of her feet like a dancer, to collect a coffee percolator and two cups.   When she had poured the coffee she appeared to be considering very carefully what she was going to say.
"Last week,  Emily, the first time I came to see your mother, you heard me beg her for mercy....."
Emily nodded.
"And you were there, dear Emily, to witness my humiliation.  Somehow...I just about got through it.    And there was a certain perverse..." here Dr Mappamundi broke off and began biting the knuckle of her left thumb, a characteristic habit when she was considering a knotty philosophical problem..
"Last night, Emily, your mother took me beyond the point of no return. I was frantic, begging her for clemency but this time I was terrified as well. "
Again Dr Mappamundi was silent, deep in thought.
"She made me another of her famous propositions.   But first she questioned me closely."
"I don't understand," Emily said.
"She suspected, well more than suspected, and by judicious questioning she established to her satisfaction...." here Dr Mappamundi paused again and made a steeple of  her hands as if taking a break for prayer.   She could sometimes be maddeningly slow to come to the point and was always so conscious of the need for what she called "cogent reasoning" and "provable propositions" 
"The fact is, Emily, that she made me admit what I think she already knew ... that I..    well, I had a...a  multiple orgasm while I was across her knees last week.   Please don't look so shocked, Emily, you know what an orgasm is."
Emily nodded dumbly.
"I'm not a lesbian, Emily.   I did experiment a little as a student and had a brief fling with a female lecturer, but then," she shrugged her beautiful shoulders and spread her hands as if in supplication "doesn't everyone?"
Emily stared at her open-mouthed.
"Perhaps not" Dr Mappamundi said.  "Anyway, Emily, I did not initiate anything, so please don't be so cool towards me.   Have you ever succeeded in resisting your mother?"
" No, but this is...such a shock!".."
"Emily, how shall I put this?   Your mother is..."
"What?"
 "She is ... not inexperienced."
"My God," Emily buried her head in her hands.
Dr Mappamundi had a dreamy look on her face.   She crossed her arms in front of her and appeared to caress her neat breasts in their warmth.
"I have to tell you this, Emily," she said.   "Your mother is a fabulous lover."
Emily stared in disbelief.
"A somewhat selfish one, perhaps,"  Dr Mappamundi studied her long red fingernails for a moment,  " but so superbly sensitive to...to  her own needs... goading, spurring on, as it were... "Dr Mappamundi gulped, ".. that she can  drive a lover wild, yes, wild in simply trying to...to satisfy her desires.   The overwhelming need to...to give her pleasure then becomes one's supreme desire, a desire that is translated into.... Oh, God!."
Dr Mappamundi  was for once lost for words, swallowed and licked her dry lips and appeared embarrassed at the way her voice had thickened.  
"So is it..... going to continue?" Emily asked.
Dr Mappamundi thirstily drained the cold dregs of her coffee
"If only it would," she said  wistfully, taking her red heels from the desk."but she has  given me no indication, in spite of my entreaties, that  I may merit a permanent place in her bed.".  Dr Mappamundi crossed her left leg over her right thigh and slipped on the shoe, then reached for the other one. "For the past week I have had to behave as I were her wilful daughter. " She slipped the other shoe on, then stretched out her feet to inspect them. "Now  I fear I may be just her tart!"

