The Spanking Writers

The impatient message over the loudspeakers cut through the quiet air in the bookstore:

Eva, call 251. Eva, please call 251.

But Eva was a naughty girl, for a few minutes later, the voice shrilled again, half weary, half annoyed:

Could Eva *please* call extension 251. Thank you.

She must have responded to this second call, for we were spared the third announcement:

Eva! Report immediately to the manager’s office.

She hadn’t called because she’d been afraid of the scolding that would inevitably follow. Not to have done so had made matters much, much worse. Downcast, she took the escalator up from the non-fiction section; went through the door marked ‘Private’. Knocked, and was called in.

“And why didn’t you call when you were asked to, young lady?”

“Because. Because… I’m sorry, sir.”

The manager would make an example of her: the tannoy would be flicked back on before her punishment commenced. The sharp retort of the strap would echo six times across the building. Other assistants would wince at their friend’s squeals, some remembering their own toe-touching moments. And the shoppers would look up from their browsing and realise quite how much effort went into maintaining the store’s impeccable reputation for quality.

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My train to London was quite hideously late. The axles overheated, the power lines were down, and there were no free platforms at the terminus. The carriages were crammed full of irate travellers; the catering ran out; the lavatories blocked.

I’d overheard the lass opposite me - a student, perhaps, returning home? - calling her parents early in the journey to plan their rendezvous. They’d be waiting for her on the platform. Cuddles and hugs would be the order of the day, no doubt.

She then lost herself in her DVD, quite oblivious to the world around her. About five minutes after we’d been due to arrive - and a good hour before we did - her phone trilled loudly.

“No, we’re late….” “Very late, I think…” “I’m sorry. I thought you’d check…” “I think there’s a coffee shop…”

And then came a long pause, followed by a sniffle, and a “I’m really sorry” leading to an “I should have been more thoughtful”. Cue tears, to be wiped away after she’d finished the call.

I so wanted to offer her some consolation, to tell her I understood. After all, daddy had no doubt finished by telling her she’d go straight to her room when they got home, and she knew exactly what would happen there.

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In addition to the events I described last week, there were all kinds of other naughtiness happening in the family of Lady Susan Townley, where there were six girls looked after by two governesses:

My brothers’ tutor had a bad time, but so had our two governesses. The worst of it was that no alliance was possible between them, one being German, the other French. Their aim seemed to be to keep the two “schoolrooms” apart, that there might be no collision between its members.

This scheme of theirs it became our object in life to defeat. We used to get out of windows and perform the most extraordinary feats of roof-climbing to get access to each other. We exchanged surreptitious notes when we passed in the lanes, for, of course, no communication was allowed between the walking parties, making assignations in impossible places.

We even ran away - one of my sisters and I were gone for a whole day once. We took a train for the neighbouring watering-place and passed a blissful day on the sands, eating biscuits and jam, which provisions we had stolen with infinite difficulty from the larder.

When I was a kid, one of my most persistent fantasies was being one of many sisters and brothers, growing up in a wealthy household with several strict tutors and governesses. (The fantasy of an only child, I daresay.) I never thought that somebody really got to experience the sort of stern routines and wild hijinks that I imagined.

Running away for a day, to eat jam sandwiches on a beach is exactly the sort of thing I could see myself doing.

Of course, in my fantasies, my sisters and I got punished whenever we came up with clever schemes to fool the tutors. This didn’t make us behave better: we simply proceeded on to the next trick. Otherwise, there would be no more spanking, and I couldn’t live with that even in a fantasy world.

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Hotel bar the other night. The rather delightful lady at the next table turned to me and apologised for any disturbance that her charges were causing. They were on a school trip, she explained: “seeing Europe” in a month. In fact, the youngsters were impeccably behaved.

That said, one of her fellow teachers kept checking up on the whereabouts of some of the party. Were they under suspicion of sneaking out for a furtive cigarette, I wondered? Had any of them boldly ordered booze at the bar, to be smuggled upstairs?

My imagination ran riot later. He’d conduct a room check: the hotel would have issued him with a master key to open the various doors. He’d knock loudly before entering: even that wouldn’t give Lisa and Vicky, two of the most senior girls, time to disperse the clouds of smoke, or hide the empty bottles.

They’d have been lectured at the start of the trip in no uncertain terms about the consequences of breaking the clearly-set-out rules. Reminded, on a regular basis. A ‘final final’ warning issued to all after some shenanigans the previous weekend in Paris: confirmation that the usual school punishments would apply for breaking the usual school regulations.

“I’m so very disappointed in you. Of all the girls I’d have imagined having to punish on this trip, you would have been the very last.” He’d leave them for a moment, telling them that by the time he returned, he’d expect them to be in position to be caned. Kneeling on the bed beside each other. Shoulders down, arms outstretched, pyjama bottoms down and backsides up.

It would take him a few minutes - to find his cane, to find his female colleague, and for her in turn to find her cane.

The girls would be ready on their return: he’d position himself to the side of one, right-handed, whilst his left-handed fellow disciplinarian measured out the rattan from the far side of the other. “Smoking always results in six strokes of the cane,” he’d remind them, before laying the first red strip across Lisa. His colleague would go next, paralleling his line across Vicky.

Then simultaneously. Then Vicky. Lisa. Simultaneous. Up to four each. He’d notice them holding hands: he’d choose to ignore it.

Vicky, Vicky. Lisa. Lisa.

He’d pause, allowing the girls a moment to try, in vain, to compose themselves. And then the best friends would hear the next dread sentence. “And drinking alcohol, too, always results in six strokes. Would you care to swap positions, Mrs Sandton?”

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Looking up from my coffee in the lounge of a rather nice hotel, my gaze happened to fall on the lift opposite. Or more precisely, on its occupants: five smartly-dressed young women, eyes downcast, studiously avoiding each other’s glance.

The duty officer at the punishment centre would have a similar view, no doubt. The girls for the 3 p.m. birchings would arrive in dribs and drabs over the preceding quarter hour or so. (After all, it really wouldn’t do to be late).

They’d be shown into the special lift - programmed to take them not up to the higher floors of the building, but directly down to the basement and the punishment rooms.

The doors of the lift would remain open until all of the day’s batch of offenders had arrived. Open, so that the world passing by en route to their offices could look in and see them, and reflect on the punishments that were about to befall such badly-behaved girls.

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Flicking through the TV channels, bored. Sport, soaps, property, sport, music, property, soaps. And then the screen that showed a school gymnasium. No pupils. Just, set out evenly around the room, three vaulting horses and three trestle-like beams.

It would be set like this every Friday night – it’d be one of the tasks for the students serving a detention after school that evening. They’d work in silence, some knowing from personal experience how the room would be used the following morning, others giving thanks that their teacher had given them a mere detention and not the dreaded Saturday detention.

For the Saturday detention girls would end their morning in here. They’d have worked for several hours in PE kit, cleaning and tidying the school; painting, mowing, polishing. Knowing that the gym awaited. Being led there at the stroke of midday.

They’d line up at the side of the room, backs to the wall. Names would be read out; the girls concerned would step forward. On command, they would remove their skirts and knickers, and take up position. The vaulting horses would each take two girls, one over either side, to be tawsed. The beams would be reserved for any girl who’d misbehaved (oh-so-foolishly) during the Detention; they’d be tied in place for a hard caning.

Once every position was taken, the Headmaster and his Deputy would walk around the room, administering the requisite strokes. And once each of the girls had been punished, they would be sent to stand in line once more, to rub their bottoms and avert their eyes whilst the next miscreants took their place.

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A few posts ago I wrote about “Indiscretions of Lady Susan” by Lady Susan Townley, which had beckoned to me with its promising title. The lady’s family history was very interesting indeed, but the nicest part of the book came when she moved on to writing about her own childhood:

As I have said, we were nine children, and we fell naturally into 3 groups. There were “the boys”, who went to school and had a holiday tutor; “the girls”, my three elder sisters, who had a schoolroom to themselves and a German governess, and “the babies”, of whom I was the eldest, who had a lower schoolroom and a French governess.

We were certainly the naughtiest children I have met in fact or fiction…

I remember that on one occasion the tutor, out of temper with my youngest brother, took him into a secluded part of the garden, and tying him to a tree, laid into him with a riding-whip… The two elder boys, helpless witnesses of this act of barbarity, secretly vowed vengeance. On the following day they invited the tutor to go for a row on the Avon…

When in the middle of the river, they threw the oars overboard and quietly took the cork out of the bottom of the boat which, of course, began to fill. Then they waved a cheerful “so long” to the terrified man, and jumping into the water swam ashore, leaving him to what he supposed was a watery end. The air-compartments, however, kept the boat afloat, and when they considered he had been sufficiently punished, they brought him in.

For some reason but known to himself, he never reported them.

Oh, but in my fantasies he did.

Or better yet, Father was watching from the window, unnoticed by any of the participants. Midway through the adventure, he rang for the parlour maid.

“Bring me my cane,” he said. “And as soon as my sons come back, kindly ask them to join me in the library.”

As each of the boys bent over the library steps for six of the best, they relected tearfully that at least they’d had their revenge.

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Walking down a London street, I saw a girl - seventeen years old or thereabouts - talking to a businessman in a crisp suit. He was smiling and affable. Her face was frozen in what she obviously hoped was an expression of polite interest, but her body language said plainly that she would be out of this conversation as soon as it was acceptable.

I think the businessman was her father’s associate from work. He’s been to dinner a few times, knows the girl very well. When she got onto the train this morning, heading for London instead of school, she had no idea she would walk into him while enjoying her stroll past swish shops.

She wanted to dash into a shop to hide, but he noticed and hailed her first. Will he tell Daddy that he saw her in the street? Would it be wise to tell him the truth, “My father doesn’t know I’m in London today, please don’t tell him.” No, impossible; grown-ups have a bizarre unspoken agreement about these things.

What if she said, “Please don’t tell Daddy you saw me; he’ll going to give me a whipping if he knows I was in London today.” No, that’s pathetic; she can’t let him know that she still gets spanked.

Act cool. Act polite. Act as though you’re supposed to be here. He won’t question it, or mention it to Daddy, or think about it at all five minutes after your part.

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Our friend Martha is incorrigible. A group of kinky friends had dinner recently in Belgo, Covent Garden’s ever-enjoyable Belgian restaurant. One of the choices on the menu read:

Spit roasted Belgian chicken or duck

Martha amended hers with her biro, with an ever-so-unsubtle comma:

Spit roasted Belgian, chicken or duck

One hopes the maitre d’ caught her on CCTV, and has her escorted into a back room to be whipped on her next visit… (Interestingly, the staff all dress as monks. I’m picturing some dark cell, with the Abbot called in to hear her pleas for forgiveness and then administer the thrashing).

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While Abel was enjoying his Cypriot holiday, he kept me entertained with naughty emails and postcards. Here’s one of these, which has alighted from the plane this morning:

On the back he wrote:

Apparently, moments after this was taken, the girls were arrested for indecency, taken to the police station, showered then birched!

Yes, I’m sure that’s exactly what happened, my love.

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