Yes again a nar­row race and a dif­fi­cult choice.. all sto­ries are very good… but as we all know it can only be one winner.

This years win­ner is the ninth sto­ry by Caractacus!

Con­grat­u­la­tions to you Car­ac­ta­cus, you can con­tact me to arrange to receive the prize.

The run­ners up are  Robert with sto­ry six and Andrew M with sto­ry eight.

Thank you very much to all who participated.

All entries will be judged by three inde­pen­dent experts and the win­ner will be announced in a few days.
A huge thank to all par­tic­i­pants and good luck to all!

The Sev­enth Floor
(by Verity)

Rou­tine is impor­tant to most of us, but to Miss Sven­son, more than most. It helps her know that all is right with the world. She catch­es the 7.50am train with­out fail even though as the chief of Mar­ket­ing & Devel­op­ment, the entire Sev­enth Floor, she could amble in at any time she chose and nobody would raise an eye­brow. Per­haps they wouldn’t dare. 

She uses the hour-long jour­ney through com­muter land pro­duc­tive­ly – run­ning over the day ahead, cir­cling phras­es in pre­sen­ta­tions that peo­ple have giv­en her, answer­ing emails from naughty nephews (no rea­son ever to give up on that side of her life) and updates the lon­don­spank­ingser­vice web­site. Some­times for a few brief min­utes before they arrive at Water­loo she dozes, but she has the knack of know­ing just when her lap­top is about to slip too far for­ward and runs the risk of tum­bling to its death. 

She likes the fact that she recog­nis­es half the peo­ple in the car­riage; the elder­ly man with the brown brogues and equal­ly pol­ished red face who some­times grins at her, and though he’s had that smart­phone at least six months, han­dles it as though an unex­plod­ed bomb; the vague-look­ing woman with the out-of-con­trol ringlets and the fur­rowed fore­head who devours clas­sic lit­er­a­ture, at least one doorstep of a book a week (she must be one of these eter­nal stu­dents) – Elsa’s often tried to guess her age and has come back with any­thing from late twen­ties to mid-for­ties, or whether she has chil­dren, or an earnest and aca­d­e­m­ic lover maybe; the girl with the brown hair tucked into an infi­nite vari­ety of design­er caps and hats, snap­py train­ers, long slen­der legs always in jeans, who often has to stand because she gets on a cou­ple of stops after Elsa, then does very lit­tle oth­er than gawp nosi­ly around the car­riage, ear­phones feed­ing tin­ny music to her brain. When­ev­er she sus­pends from a grabrail above Miss Sven­son some­where, Elsa is tempt­ed to ask her to make prop­er use of vol­ume con­trol on her machine; and the tou­sled but quite attrac­tive lad who always seems to be in the same tee shirt and once-white trousers – he can’t have only one set of work­clothes real­ly – his trade adver­tised by the bespat­tered colours top to toe … per­haps he dec­o­rates the man­sions of rock stars and foot­ballers. If that is the case, maybe he par­ties with them too — he looks per­ma­nent­ly exhausted. 

It’s Tues­day morn­ing and Elsa has had a frus­trat­ing cou­ple of hours deal­ing with a graph­ic design­er who doesn’t seem to want to design, two hours she could have been using for more impor­tant things.

The girl’s arrival over the thresh­old of Miss Svenson’s office is announced not by a knock but by a cough. That imme­di­ate­ly irri­tates her. 

“Can I help you?”

“Sor­ry Miss Sven­son, but I was told to come to your office. I’m Clara by the way.”

“Well I don’t recall arrang­ing any­thing, so if you don’t mind . . “

“No, it was Mrs Macpher­son – she’s my boss, in Dis­tri­b­u­tion. She said she’d email you. I’m one of her sec­re­taries you see.”

“Yes, well, I might have fig­ured that out. But I’ll ask again, what can I do for you?”

“Well it’s a bit embar­rass­ing but, you see, Mrs Macpher­son is real­ly cross with me, coz she says I’m not putting any effort in, but I am, but not enough, and she said she hap­pens to know that you, er, have your ways. A spe­cial way. And you cor­rect things. Well, people.”

“If that’s the case, sure­ly it’s for Mrs Macpher­son to sort this out. I’ve nev­er even seen you before, let alone have any inter­est in whether or not you’re putting in appro­pri­ate effort. So if you don’t mind, please give Mrs Macpher­son my regards.”

Miss Sven­son turns to the screen and begins to think about some invoic­es she needs to check and approve. Anoth­er cough from the door­way, more insis­tent this time. 

“What now?” Elsa bristles. 

“But Miss Sven­son, Mrs Macpher­son said that you’re the only one who can real­ly deal with me. And I mustn’t come back till I’ve got dealt with. Properly.”

Elsa looks at her direct­ly for the first time. “You have thir­ty sec­onds to tell me exact­ly what you’re talk­ing about or to leave. Oth­er­wise I’ll call Security.”

“Well, I already said, it’s embarrassing.”

A with­er­ing look spurs Clara on. “But I’ve got to be strong and just do it – I know that you pun­ish peo­ple. Er, that you smack them. That you make them go over your knee some­times and then er smack their bot­toms and that it real­ly hurts but is so good for them and, well, I just real­ly want . . “

As if to rein­force the point, Clara turns, bends for­ward so that her not unat­trac­tive pos­te­ri­or is pre­sent­ed to Miss Sven­son. With one hand she smooths the taut­ness of the black dress over her bot­tom, then lifts her hand and gives it a slap.”

“Young woman – Clara, did you say? – what I may or may not do in my pri­vate life, and only with con­sent­ing friends or col­leagues, stays pri­vate. And you wav­ing your rump at me like a prim­i­tive baboon might do is not nec­es­sar­i­ly going to get you what you want either. Though with some, men par­tic­u­lar­ly, it may well of course. I’m extreme­ly busy and don’t have time to mess around. Please leave now, go back to where you came from and get on with some work. ”

A defeat­ed look reg­is­ters in Clara’s eyes for a moment, only to be replaced with a wicked­ly sly smile — mis­chief writ­ten across her face. She looks around, sees an antique book­case – one of Miss Svenson’s fam­i­ly heir­looms though she doesn’t know that – and aims a harsh lit­tle kick at its base with the toe of her stilet­to. “For Christ’s sake! Thanks a bloody bunch! Bloody bloody shit!”
Anoth­er kick, this time hard­er – is that a chip now out of that carved leg? –
and anoth­er sly grin. Dar­ing her. 

In that instant all around Clara changes. She hears Miss Sven­son calm­ly tell her to go to the door of the out­er office, lock it and pull down the blind. From that instruc­tion until the first slap rings out, every­thing hap­pens in silence. She sees Elsa switch her mobile to silent and set the large phone on her desk to divert. Clara’s heart rat­tles as the oth­er woman takes an upright chair from the fur­thest cor­ner and places it delib­er­ate­ly in the cen­tre of the room, a plump cush­ion on its seat. With­out rush­ing, Elsa sits down and shifts posi­tion once or twice until she’s absolute­ly comfortable.

Clara feels Miss Svenson’s hand on her wrist guid­ing her, steer­ing her around to the left hand side. It’s not a tight grip but it leaves no doubts. The move­ment con­tin­ues, takes the wrist over the wait­ing lap, beyond, and almost to the floor the oth­er side so that Clara, hav­ing no choice but to fol­low it, is brought top­pling across Miss Svenson’s knees. A hand touch­es her bot­tom through her dress as though assess­ing it, mea­sur­ing, steadi­ly pulls back, and the spank­ing begins. 

Three min­utes in and she’s not so sto­ical. One or two of the smacks have elicit­ed lit­tle grunts, or a sup­pressed whim­per, and one foot knocks against the floor at the more sting­ing vol­leys. Miss Sven­son is find­ing her rhythm, tak­ing her arm high­er and slic­ing across the tar­get with the skill of the ten­nis play­er she used to be. Clara’s leg is flinch­ing unashamed­ly now, with a pro­nounced pad­dling of the feet every time Elsa accel­er­ates for a few sec­onds. The hand on her waist only pins her more secure­ly but her uncon­trolled move­ments do Miss Svenson’s work for her; the back of her pleat­ed dress ris­es inch by inch until it flops for­ward over Clara’s upper body leav­ing her under­wear exposed, fash­ion­able black pants with a del­i­cate pas­tel frou frou trim.

Miss Sven­son paus­es to let the sec­re­tary feel her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, the cool air across the seat of her knick­ers. And then con­tin­ues with greater resolve, slap after slap after roast­ing slap. The cheeks that dim­ple out below the line of the fab­ric are radi­at­ing a blotchy pink. To admire the work in progress Elsa, with­out cer­e­mo­ny, hooks the fin­gers of both hands under the waist­band stretch­es the mate­r­i­al wide and effort­less­ly slips Clara’s panties down a few inch­es. They are let rest at the lev­el her tan hold-up stock­ings begin.

The deep sniff deters Elsa not one iota. She does rest a hand light­ly on each but­tock first, stroking in a cir­cu­lar motions, feel­ing the warmth, pinch­ing the skin between thumbs and fore­fin­gers. When she judges that Clara is ready to know how it feels, a bare bot­tom spank­ing at the hands of Elsa Sven­son, she begins.

The feet drum on the floor, the abdomen weaves and lit­tle gasps echo around the office, shrill and breathy. To secure her Miss Sven­son sim­ply loops one leg over Clara’s calves and tucks them in towards her. The poor girl is scis­sored in a hold a wrestler wouldn’t escape and the hid­ing con­tin­ues. In between inter­minable bursts of slaps Clara is con­scious that her hair has fall­en for­ward and is touch­ing the floor– but she doesn’t care any more.

Even­tu­al­ly after long min­utes the grip on her is relaxed, she’s stood up and gen­tly manoeu­vred into the cor­ner, told to stay there fac­ing the wall. The sound of the chair being lift­ed and placed back down. Foot­steps at the far side of the office, a cup­board door open­ing, the move­ment of objects inside, search­ing maybe, and the door clos­ing. Foot­steps return­ing, the chair mov­ing again, right next to her, then she’s told to turn around. On the cush­ion is a thick brown leather strap. Miss Sven­son picks it up and taps it a few times on the palm of her hand. 

“Come over here … Feet just here, yes. Bend right over, please, over the back of the chair and place your hands flat on the cush­ion. Bot­tom right up!”

“Please Miss Sven­son, I think I’ve had enough. But thanks. Thank you for spank­ing me.”

“Clara! If you come to my office, unin­vit­ed, take my valu­able time, and ask me to deal with you to fix a prob­lem, pro­voke me with a sil­ly tem­per tantrum, then I shall deal with you. In the way that I wish to deal with you. I shall decide when you’ve had enough. I’m going to give you four sets of twelve strokes now, with this three-tailed tawse, two sets from each side. We’ll see how you get on. And then you’re going to go back across my knee so that I can spank you some more. Is that clear my dear? Now lean right over please!”

And so Clara finds her­self bend­ing for­ward, hot bot­tom high in the air, under­wear still stretched just below her cheeks, wait­ing to feel the first stroke.

Miss Sven­son makes real inroads with her work­load that after­noon and, on a whim, decides to pay a rare trip to The Fourth Floor, most par­tic­u­lar­ly Dis­tri­b­u­tion. She’s inter­est­ed to meet Mrs Macpher­son and per­haps let her know the tear­ful and pen­i­tent state in which her sec­re­tary was even­tu­al­ly allowed to wrig­gle from her lap and tot­ter off towards the lift. 

No sign of Clara in the main recep­tion area but Miss Sven­son is greet­ed by a very per­son­able sec­re­tary, Gina. When she asks if Mrs Macpher­son can spare her five min­utes Gina is clear­ly puzzled. 

“Mrs Mac’s on sec­ond­ment. To Tokyo. Anoth­er com­pa­ny. Com­ing back though. Went four months ago.” 

As though to be sure her­self, Gina takes one of the in-house com­pa­ny mag­a­zines from the dis­play rack on the desk, flicks through to page 20 and shows Elsa a tiny arti­cle announc­ing spe­cial appoint­ments and retire­ments. “See . . still with us, but out the pic­ture at the mo. Can’t wait for her to come back, mind.”

The fol­low­ing morn­ing it’s 8.00am and Miss Sven­son looks up as the train takes a live­ly jolt for­ward from the sta­tion. Yes, her hand still throbs a lit­tle but all is right with the world; the elder­ly man is oppo­site her, painstak­ing­ly typ­ing a text, cor­rec­tion by cor­rec­tion. The per­pet­u­al stu­dent is engrossed in her bat­tered copy of ‘Jane Eyre’ and the chub­by young man’s head lolls for­ward in sleep, over the col­lar of his paint-smeared tee shirt. Nobody miss­ing. The girl in jeans and gar­ish train­ers today sports an Armani cap. She’s at the far end of the car­riage, but at least she’s got a seat today. She sits awk­ward­ly, though, as though try­ing to keep one cheek lift­ed an inch away from the seat. At that moment she looks up, catch­es Miss Sven­son watch­ing her; a sly smile turns imme­di­ate­ly to a ram­pant blush as she stares straight back down at her magazine. 

That smile. It couldn’t. The same smile — Mrs Macpherson’s sec­re­tary, the smile that had made Elsa so cross! Clara’s smile. Yes­ter­day. But, no, not real­ly pos­si­ble is it. Elsa stares, though, and makes the changes in her mind – jeans off now, cap lift­ed (let’s throw that from the train win­dow), hair set free, yes, now shoul­der-length – put her in a smart black dress and waspish high heels , and — devi­ous lit­tle minx! But this girl can’t even work at our place, Elsa tells her­self, rac­ing for­ward, I’d bet any mon­ey on that. Could she have fol­lowed her to the office maybe? But, most of all, how on earth did she know that if she were to present her bot­tom to Miss Sven­son like that, on a plat­ter, well, there was such a strong chance it would soon find itself being smacked into the mid­dle of next week? Ques­tions tum­ble over themselves.

It’s Elsa’s turn to smile – you think you have a sore behind now, my girl . . well, you just wait! There’s plen­ty more where that one came from — by the time I get all the answers, and I will, every sin­gle one, young lady, your bot­tom will be … As though hear­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, Clara winces ever so slight­ly and shifts position. 

Sarah’s Sur­prise (by K Morgan)
The girl on recep­tion rolled her eyes. “Old Prendergast’s been on the phone. She says you’ve got to go straight up…Did you have a good holiday?”
Sarah nod­ded. “Great — except for hav­ing to come back.”

She had been expect­ing the sum­mons by her boss. Bol­shy air con­trollers had delayed the flight home and it was eleven the pre­vi­ous night before she put her key in the door. That was nor­mal bed­time, but after a cou­ple of glass­es of wine to unwind, it was near­ly one when she turned in. The extra time in bed that morn­ing was worth it, even if it meant a tick­ing off — if you could call it that. It would con­sist of lis­ten­ing to him tell her not to be late and, once she flut­tered her eye­lids, giv­ing him a detailed descrip­tion of her hol­i­day. He was a soft touch and she had him where she want­ed him. The only bad part would be get­ting past his assis­tant, Miss Pren­der­gast. That woman nev­er smiled.

Sarah looked at her watch and pressed the top-floor but­ton in the lift. It was ten past ten, which was late even by her stan­dards. Admir­ing her per­fec­tion in the mir­rored wall, she prac­tised her pout and squirt­ed on some of her boss’s favourite per­fume. By the time the sin­gle ring announced her arrival, she was ready. She marched into the main office, but came to a halt. Miss Pren­der­gast, the woman who nev­er smiled, was smiling.

“You’re expect­ed, Sarah,” she said and licked her lips.

Sarah forced a smile in return. She knocked on her boss’s door and went in with­out being invit­ed. “I know. I’m sor­ry I’m late, Mr…” She checked the name­plate on the still open door. It was the right office, but the wrong per­son in it.
“You must be Sarah. Come in and sit down. I’m Miss Svenson.”

Sarah sat on the oppo­site side of the desk, on what she usu­al­ly joked was the hot seat.
“I sup­pose I’ve to thank you for mak­ing my job eas­i­er, Sarah.”
“I’m sorry?”

“We’ve been restruc­tured while you’ve been away. I’ve tak­en over from Mr Col­lier — he’s gone to our Ger­man divi­sion. In fact, you prob­a­bly flew over him on your way back from hol­i­day. It seems he has a much bet­ter deal than I do. You see, he is there to recruit, while I am here to reduce. There are to be redun­dan­cies, I’m afraid.”

Sarah’s jaw dropped. “What…I’m not being made redun­dant, am I?”

“Of course, you aren’t. Just because you’re late, it doesn’t mean you are the first in line for redundancy…And I’ve heard you’re often late, aren’t you?”
“Well, I suppose…I mean…”

“You don’t get made redun­dant for com­ing to work when you want — you get fired.”
Sarah need­ed the job to pay off her hol­i­day and oth­er debts. She felt sick. “I’m sorry…”
“So you said when you burst in. Lucky for you, I pride myself on being fair and I know how dif­fi­cult it will be to get some­thing else. So, I’m giv­ing you an option.”
There was hope and Sarah smiled. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it was short-lived.

“If you resign, it’ll look bet­ter on your appli­ca­tion forms. You see, the com­pa­ny will not need to dis­close the rea­sons behind your depar­ture when asked for a reference.”
“Please, Miss Sven­son. It was late when I got back yesterday.”
“And the oth­er times?”

Sarah looked with plead­ing eyes at her new boss. Her heart was pound­ing. The lie-in that morn­ing was about to become very cost­ly. “Please, Miss Sven­son. I real­ly need the job.”
Miss Sven­son did not respond and stared at the desk. It was a bad sign. The con­tin­u­ing silence proved too much for Sarah.
“Please, Miss Svenson.”

Her new boss looked her in the eye. “There is anoth­er alter­na­tive, but I am not offer­ing it for your ben­e­fit. If you resign or are dis­missed, then some­body might miss out on a com­pen­sa­tion pay­ment. It would be unfair for any­one to suf­fer because of you, wouldn’t it?”
Sarah nodded.

“I shall warn you now, the alter­na­tive is not pleas­ant. Do you wish to hear it?”
“Yes, please.”

“It is six strokes of my belt across your bare backside.”
Sarah gasped. Glanc­ing down, she could see her belt was made of black patent leather. She had one like it and knew it to be light and soft. The shiny side might sting a lit­tle, but there was no way it would hurt. “I accept.”
“You said that very quick­ly. I will warn you again, it will not be pleas­ant. Are you sure?”
“Yes, Miss Svenson.”

“Very well. This will remain an issue between the two of us and I shall not tell any­one of it. If you change your mind at any time, just say so. You retain the option to resign. All you need do is tell me to stop. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Miss Svenson.”

Sarah had no qualms about bar­ing her back­side to anoth­er woman and she closed her eyes on think­ing about her nar­row escape. When she opened them, it was to see her new boss with­draw a two-foot long strip of leather from the desk draw­er. Like her waist belt, this was black and shiny, but it was nei­ther light nor soft.

“Good God,” she said and felt faint. The belt was three inch­es wide and had a line of six holes near the end. There was no doubt they were there to increase the pain.
“Do you still wish to accept the alternative?”

She had no choice. She was wor­ried what her voice would sound like if she spoke, so she nod­ded. Her eyes remained fixed on the vicious strap.
“After the sixth stroke lands…are you lis­ten­ing to me?”
Sarah glanced up and nod­ded again, before resum­ing her stare.

“After the sixth stroke lands, you will remain in posi­tion until you have thanked me. I shall give you five min­utes to recov­er and then you may go to the toi­lets to com­pose your­self. If you are not back at your desk with­in forty min­utes of leav­ing this room, I shall expect your res­ig­na­tion. Is that clear?”

“Yes…” She cleared her throat. “Yes, Miss Svenson.”
“As you can imag­ine, this is going to be painful. You must not speak to me while you are being dis­ci­plined, but I’ll remind you that you can stop it any time…Now, would you like Miss Pren­der­gast to wit­ness the process.”
“Def­i­nite­ly not, thank you.”

“Then, lift your skirt and lie across my desk. Keep your legs straight and together.”

Sarah had nev­er felt so vul­ner­a­ble. She closed her eyes as her knick­ers were teased down. There was a strange feel­ing in her back­side, as if it were antic­i­pat­ing the first blow.

“Your tan lines make an excel­lent tar­get,” Miss Sven­son said and came around to slide a blot­ting pad across the desk. “If you would raise your head for me, please. It’s just to catch your tears…Now reach for­ward and take a firm grip on the edge of the desk.”

Sarah grit­ted her teeth. She was expect­ing it to hurt and it did. It hurt like hell. The fero­cious smart was phe­nom­e­nal and sur­viv­ing anoth­er five like the first seemed impos­si­ble. She was still fight­ing to catch her breath when the sec­ond stroke land­ed and the thought went through her mind to put an end to it. She was com­plete­ly help­less for the first time in her life. Then the real­i­sa­tion set in how she would be just as help­less with­out a job. The third stroke arrived before she had come to a deci­sion and the fourth land­ed imme­di­ate­ly after­wards, caus­ing her to yelp. The shock was too great and she start­ed cry­ing, while still breath­less. She gripped the edge of the desk even hard­er. The fifth blow arrived after a lengthy wait and she began shak­ing. It meant there was only one more and, for the first time, she willed it to land. This it did across the cen­tre of her but­tocks. She screwed her eyes up. “Dear God,” she pant­ed. Sob­bing, she accept­ed an offered tis­sue, while still across the desk.

Miss Sven­son spoke. “If I learn of any fur­ther trans­gres­sion, you know the option that awaits you. In your own time, do you have any­thing to tell me before I allow you to stand?”
“Just a minute, please, Miss Sven­son,” Sarah gasped and wiped her eyes with the tis­sue. It took a cou­ple of min­utes for the shak­ing to sub­side and her breath­ing to return to normal.
“I’m still wait­ing, Sarah. Now, what do you have to say?”

Sarah took a deep breath and gripped the edge of the desk again. “I skipped off work before my hol­i­day, as well, Miss Svenson.”

The sec­re­taries tale

by Car­ac­ta­cus

Giles returned to his form as usu­al after lunch,it was Fri­day after­noon and he was look­ing for­ward to the end of the day. Giles expect­ed his form tutor, miss Jones to go through her usu­al rou­tine and dis­miss the class for lessons.
Miss Jones was read­ing from a note, she then looked at Giles and announced to the class that Giles Black was to report to miss Sven­son imme­di­ate­ly. The whole class went silent, Giles was mor­ti­fied, why was he being sent to miss sven­son? he knew he had­n’t done any­thing wrong. It was com­mon knowl­edge how­ev­er that miss sven­son only sum­moned boys to her office after lunch to cane them.

Giles stood up, he heard the chair legs screech across the floor as it slid back­wards. The noise broke the unnerv­ing silence, his legs felt like jel­ly and he strug­gled to walk to the door. Giles felt the twen­ty pairs of eyes of his class mates fol­low him to the door.
As Giles start­ed the long trudge towards miss Sven­sons study he felt the but­ter­flies in his stom­ach increas­ing, he kept say­ing to him­self “calm down, you’ve done noth­ing wrong it must be a mis­take”. He reached the door to the study, it was a large wood­en 6 pan­elled door made of a very old look­ing wood.

Giles had nev­er been beyond that door before nev­er mind caned, he was a fifth for­mer and had avoid­ed all forms of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment all his life. “fifth for­m­ers rarely received the cane so it must be a mis­take” he said to himself.
He could­n’t deny though there was a cer­tain curios­i­ty about receiv­ing a can­ing, I mean was it true that miss Sven­son pulled down your trousers before can­ing. Giles had seen many boys return­ing cry­ing and had noticed a few in the show­ers with neat sym­met­ri­cal stripes upon their bottoms.

He knocked on the door very gin­ger­ly hop­ing she would­n’t hear it. An adja­cent door opened and out came miss Sven­sons sec­re­tary. Miss Carlisle was a new sec­re­tary, young, around twen­ty years old. She had a warm pret­ty face and was dressed very smart­ly . A neat white blouse, black skirt and black tights..

Miss Carlisle smiled at Giles and said miss Sven­son would return soon, she ush­ered Giles to take a seat on the bench placed out­side her study. The warm smile reas­sured Giles that he was­n’t in any trou­ble so he relaxed a little.
Miss Heather the art teacher came by and asked Giles why he was there, he start­ed to reply when he heard miss sven­sons foot­steps march­ing down the cor­ri­dor. Miss Sven­son was dressed in a very smart tweed suit . tai­lored per­fect­ly to her lady­like fig­ure. She was an attrac­tive yet fright­en­ing site.

Miss Sven­son glanced side­ways at Giles then loud­ly announced” not now miss Heather I have some can­ing to do”. Giles heart sank as miss Sven­son dis­ap­peared into her office. Giles heart was rac­ing. he noticed an illu­mi­nat­ed sign beside the door became lit “wait” said the sign and Giles was trans­fixed upon the sign. 

The sign changed to green and the words “enter” were illu­mi­nat­ed. Giles could bare­ly stand let alone walk. When he reached for the big brass door knob the sweat on his hand almost made it slide off.
The study was larg­er than he imag­ined, he noticed large glass front­ed book­cas­es sur­round­ing the room. A Per­sian rug adorned the floor and in the mid­dle sat a desk with miss Sven­son seat­ed behind it. Miss Sven­son looked up, she was so much more attrac­tive close up. Giles could smell a strong smell of pol­ish , he was entranced by the bright sun­rays stream­ing through the large study win­dows. He felt he was meant to be there 

A thou­sand thoughts were run­ning through Giles’s head, was he real­ly going to find out what a can­ing was like, would it hurt?. He was con­fused, exit­ed, ner­vous. Miss Sven­son spoke calm­ly “it has been report­ed to me that you Giles black were seen spit­ting into the opened win­dow of the girls toi­let this lunchtime” Giles was dumb­found­ed, he had been play­ing foot­ball all lunchtime. “how do you plead” barked miss Sven­son. Giles gulped he uttered the words “not guilty”
“Explain your­self” replied miss sven­son. And so Giles gave a long account of his lunchtime foot­ball activities.

Miss sven­son sat back and lis­tened, then at the end of Giles account she spoke gen­tly. “do you know, every boy sent to me for a can­ing has a good rea­son why they should­n’t be caned” “if I believed any of you I feel dis­ci­pline would break down in my school”
.
Miss Sven­son smiled leant into her inter­com and said “bring in my cane and pun­ish­ment book please miss Carlisle. Giles froze , he heard miss Carlisle enter from the rear door. Miss Sven­son stood up and asked Giles to turn around. Giles turned around, there in front of him was miss Carlisle clutch­ing a long crook han­dled cane, it was a pale brown colour with red tape wrapped around at 30 cm inter­vals. Miss Carlisle had bright red fin­ger nail var­nish on, it framed the cane beau­ti­ful­ly. Giles could not take his eyes off of the cane, he was mes­merised , sure­ly that could­n’t hurt much. Miss sven­son ordered Giles to take three paces for­ward. He did as he was asked, he was now stand­ing in the mid­dle of the rug.

Giles had no idea what was about to hap­pen, though he knew he would do what­ev­er miss Sven­son asked of him. “kneel on the floor she com­mand­ed. He knelt down and looked into miss Carlisle’s pret­ty face. Miss Carlisle gave him a lit­tle wink, as if to reas­sure him it was going to be alright. “lean for­ward and touch your head on the floor “com­mand­ed miss svenson.

Giles knelt for­ward, sud­den­ly his bot­tom felt exposed for the entire school to see “Swish ” went the cane as it whis­tled through the air “Spit­ting is a dis­gust­ing habit young man “said miss Sven­son ” six of the best”

This time the swish was close­ly fol­lowed by the ear split­ting sound of the canes impact “argh­h­hh” the noise came form Giles mouth. Anoth­er swish and anoth­er longer argh­hh,. The pain was incred­i­ble, he could­n’t take anoth­er and yet he was try­ing to stick his bot­tom fur­ther in the direc­tion of miss Sven­son. Swish, swish, two more strokes and Giles was now mak­ing one long argh­h­hh. swish the fifth stroke fell, and the a pause. “Now for the gate “bel­lowed miss sven­son. Swish and the sixth stroke criss crossed the first five.

Giles felt he could not move, the pain was such that he remained kneel­ing. Miss Carlisle put her arms around Giles shoul­ders and eased him to his feet. He looked at miss Sven­son, her face expressed a sat­is­fac­tion of jus­tice deliv­ered “thank you miss” said Giles . Miss Sven­son gen­tly nod­ded and Giles turned towards the door. Although Giles bot­tom was on fire he felt a cer­tain calm­ness com­ing over him­self. Did he real­ly just enjoy that caning?

At this point miss heather burst through the door “sor­ry miss Sven­son but I have to inter­rupt you” miss heather looked very angry. She point­ed at miss Carlisle “this women has been fab­ri­cat­ing sto­ries in order to get boys caned” she exclaimed, The room fell quite. Miss Sven­son looked at miss Carlisle, her face turned crim­son red. “well” boomed miss Sven­son “have you any­thing to say” silence remained. “Pack up your things and leave imme­di­ate­ly” said miss Sven­son. Miss Carlisle final­ly spoke “Please miss Sven­son I need this job.“Too late now said miss sven­son “the dam­age is done”

“Please miss Sven­son, you could cane me like you have all the boys I lied about”. Miss Sven­son looked at miss Heather, she nod­ded her head in approval. very well said miss Sven­son. She asked Giles to bring a large wood­en chair into the cen­tre of the room. He did as he was asked then stood back to enjoy the unfold­ing drama.

“Bend over the chair and put your hands flat on the seat” exclaimed miss Sven­son. Miss Carlisle slow­ly walked towards the chair, ele­gant­ly she bent over the chair, she appeared to be enjoy­ing the the­atre of the event. This time miss Sven­son returned to her chair, lent back and looked up at the large wood­en clock. The tick­ing was the only sound to break the silence.

Giles looked at the clock 3.27 indi­cat­ed the hands, what was the delay he thought?.Giles was stand­ing direct­ly behind miss Carslisle, her bot­tom raised high in the air, neat­ly caressed by a tight black skirt. This time Giles noticed a small tai­lored split in the skirt just dis­play­ing a hint of flesh. Miss Carlisle was wear­ing stock­ings, he scanned her cloth­ing and could now make out the out­line of her sus­pender straps.

Giles bot­tom was throb­bing but his heart was rac­ing, his mouth went dry with the antic­i­pa­tion of the events unfold­ing. they wait­ed for what seemed an eter­ni­ty . you had to admire miss Carlisle,s dis­ci­pline in remain­ing motionless.
The bell sound­ed for end of school, “Please hold miss Carlisle’s hands” miss Sven­son ush­ered to miss Heather. “Giles please open the door” . Miss Sven­son took up posi­tion behind miss Carlisle and flexed her cane. She rubbed chalk on the cane then wait­ed till the school start­ed to stream past her office, she slipped of her shoes and took two quick steps for­ward, swing­ing the cane into miss Carlisle’s bottom.“Thwack” the noise broke the silence. miss Carlisle let out a large squeal

.All the school was soon alert­ed to what was hap­pen­ing, a crowd start­ed to appear out­side miss Sven­sons study. Thwack went the sec­ond stroke, miss Carlisle tried to get up but miss Heather held on firm. Thwack as the third stroke fell and the cry became loud­er. She now had three sym­met­ri­cal white chalk lines even­ly spaced across her bot­tom. Thwack, Thwack went the fourth and fifth stroke. You had to admire miss Sven­sons hand­i­work, she was a skilled caner.

Just as before, the sixth stroke criss crossed the pre­vi­ous five, mak­ing a per­fect 5 bar gate. Miss Carlisle cried open­ly through­out the can­ing. Winc­ing loud­ly each time the cane landed

Miss Sven­son looked up and announced to the gath­er­ing crowd con­gre­gat­ing in the cor­ri­dor that miss Carlisle would be caned at 3.30 pre­cise­ly on each and every after­noon next week. “You may go” she announced to Giles, and miss heather. “Miss Carlisle, you had best stay in posi­tion till you can com­pose yourself”

And so as the sun­light con­tin­ued to stream in through the large win­dows, the scene was com­plet­ed. Miss sven­son returned to her desk to car­ry on her work, miss Carlisle remained bent over for a full ten min­utes before she was able to leave the study. 

Miss Elsa Svenson’s “World Of Reparation.”

A nov­el of fiction.
By: Andrew Morgan

Episode one: The Interview

Wednes­day morn­ing had been ardu­ous and fraught with annoy­ances that began very ear­ly. The clocks changed that morn­ing as a pre­lude to sum­mer, and day­light sav­ings time her­ald­ed a domi­no effect of delayed appoint­ments, main­ly caused by those who hadn’t pre­pared ade­quate­ly for its arrival. Even the day­light was an hour late today, Miss Sven­son pon­dered. Tar­di­ness not even she had the pow­er to cor­rect. The irony was not lost on her as she sat wait­ing impa­tient­ly for her last inter­vie­wee to arrive. Fifty min­utes late and unbe­liev­ably, not even a phone call. She glanced at the small antique clock, which looked slight­ly out of place on her mod­ern desk and found some solace in the reg­u­lar­i­ty of the metal­lic tick tock sound. She was an old fash­ioned woman at heart.

A small puff of air waft­ed through the open glass door into her win­dowed office, briefly dis­turb­ing the neat­ly stacked sheaf of resumes on her desk. She was a woman of clar­i­ty and per­cep­tion who saw through peo­ple with ease. She noticed every­thing. Look­ing up from her papers, she watched with inter­est as the hand­some young man hur­ried down the cor­ri­dor towards her, brief case under his arm, blond hair tou­sled over his fore­head and tie askew. His suit was some­what wrin­kled and ill fit­ting. A tad too small as if he he’d grown out of it. He was sweat­ing a lit­tle and very out of breath.

“I’m so sor­ry I’m late,” he pant­ed dab­bing a cot­ton hand­ker­chief to his brow “I do apol­o­gize, the agency just called me this morn­ing and I had to scram­ble. I got here as fast as I could”. He gushed for­ward, hand thrust out ready to shake. I’m Rod­ney, are you Mrs. Swanton?”
“Miss Sven­son” she cor­rect­ed him, eying the out­stretched palm with dubi­ous cau­tion, it still held the damp hand­ker­chief in it. She couldn’t decide whether to be amused or irri­tat­ed, but either way her face was impas­sive. She placed the pen she had been writ­ing with delib­er­ate­ly down on the desk par­al­lel to her writ­ing pad and looked him up and down. Ignor­ing his prof­fered hand she ges­tured him to take a seat in the chair oppo­site her desk. She made a men­tal note to check his “late­ness sto­ry” with the agency. None of the oth­ers she’d seen yes­ter­day had been late.
Stand­ing there look­ing at the han­ky in his own hand Rod­ney was sud­den­ly uncom­fort­able real­iz­ing how sil­ly he must look. He retract­ed it quick­ly and in doing so acci­dent­ly rapped his knuck­les on the cor­ner of the desk caus­ing the han­ky to fall to the floor. Winc­ing but try­ing not to show it, he bent over to pick it up. He whisked it out of sight into his pock­et and sat down awk­ward­ly cross­ing his legs. The pants were def­i­nite­ly too tight. He had only been in her office for a minute but already this woman com­plete­ly unnerved him. 

Miss Sven­son had nev­er employed a male sec­re­tary before and she wouldn’t usu­al­ly enter­tain such an idea in her line of busi­ness, but the pre­vi­ous can­di­dates had lacked the expe­ri­ence she was seek­ing and sev­er­al things in his resume intrigued her. His last name for one.
“Over­lapp!” she announced curt­ly. Hear­ing his name said in that tone star­tled him enough to sit bolt upright. “That’s an unusu­al sur­name, have you ever researched its geneal­o­gy?“ This first ques­tion caught him off guard. “Well, no, not real­ly”. I think it’s Hun­gar­i­an or Swedish or some­thing. It’s usu­al­ly spelled with an umlaut on the O, but my lap­top doesn’t have that char­ac­ter set so I had to do with­out. I didn’t think any­one would notice.” 

“Hmm.” she mur­mured, “It says here that you have had exten­sive expe­ri­ence of man­ag­ing the appoint­ment book for a Fam­i­ly Ther­a­py Prac­tice?” “Yes I have he pro­claimed enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, I was with Doc­tor Allopa for six full months and she had a very busy prac­tice. I always kept her client appoint­ments on track. I would think this job would very much be the same?”

The inter­view con­tin­ued for some thir­ty min­utes dur­ing which time she asked numer­ous ques­tions about his expe­ri­ence and was quite pleased with the answers he gave. But there was one par­tic­u­lar ques­tion on her mind. “Rod­ney?” she asked, “what inter­ests you about this job? You do under­stand the nature of the busi­ness I’m in don’t you? The kind of ther­a­py I do? I’m assum­ing you did your due dili­gence and looked me up online before you came to inter­view didn’t you?” This caught him off guard, “Oh yes Miss Sven­son,” he fibbed, I’m extreme­ly inter­est­ed in this field of work, and I think I could learn a lot under your guid­ance. She gave a wry smile. Rod­ney took that to mean things were going his way so he thought he’d bol­ster her impres­sion of him by adding… “Well as you know, its a dif­fi­cult job mar­ket out there and there aren’t too many posi­tions like this for younger men with my lev­el of expe­ri­ence, I’m hop­ing some­one of your stature and promi­nence would take me under their wing so to speak.” “Well, you are right about that,” she said qui­et­ly under her breath, “not many jobs like this at all.” Take you under my wing? She thought to her­self. Be care­ful of what you wish for, you might just get it.

He was obvi­ous­ly bright and quick wit­ted, and his attempt at hon­est dis­clo­sure was endear­ing if not a lit­tle manip­u­la­tive, and, if he could indeed type 80 words a minute as his resume said, and if real­ly did have excep­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion­al skills, she was lean­ing towards offer­ing him a pro­ba­tion­ary peri­od. There was just one thing she need­ed to do before mak­ing her deci­sion. “Rod­ney, would you mind giv­ing me just a minute and wait in the adjoin­ing room, I need to make a brief phone call.”

He stood in the room next door and could see her through the glass as she paced the floor, talk­ing intent­ly on the phone. She had closed her door so he could not hear the con­ver­sa­tion but he could see her clear­ly. She had been sit­ting before, so now stand­ing and turn­ing he was sud­den­ly struck by how dis­arm­ing­ly attrac­tive she was. Her blonde hair pulled back tight­ly into a bun, her white silk blouse but­toned to the top and a small cameo brooch off­set­ting the line of her neck. The blouse was tai­lored, starched, and it tapered with con­form­ing darts under her ample bust line and then tucked neat­ly into the waist­band of her black knee length skirt. The skirt could not pos­si­bly have fol­lowed her con­tours more per­fect­ly. As she turned her back to him he noticed its pin stripes run­ning ver­ti­cal­ly down and curv­ing out­wards like small rip­ples on a pond as they framed her shape­ly rear. The term “Har­mon­ic Con­ver­gence” popped into his head as he fixed his gaze on the split hem. She wore stock­ings with a sin­gle black seam that lined the back of each leg. Each seam dis­ap­peared into the heel of a shiny black stilet­to shoe. My good­ness those legs, he thought, she must spend a lot of time in the gym to stay so fit, his mind wan­dered back to thoughts of a beau­ti­ful PE teacher he had a crush on when he was a school boy. He remem­bered her pen­chant for pom­mel hors­es and plim­soles. Why am I think­ing of that? he asked him­self silent­ly, the room appeared to warm a lit­tle and he found him­self loos­en­ing his tie. Unsure how long he had been lost in rever­ie he glanced up only do find Miss Sven­son star­ing right at him through the glass. His face flushed with embar­rass­ment and a feel­ing of “being caught red hand­ed” sent adren­a­lin rush­ing through his body. He took a deep breath try­ing not to look so guilty. Sure­ly she couldn’t pos­si­bly know where his thoughts had been could she? Her pierc­ing eyes lin­gered on him a few moments longer then dis­tract­ed by some­thing the per­son on the oth­er end of the phone was say­ing, she retract­ed her gaze, nod­ded her head twice as if an agree­ment had been reached, then frown­ing slight­ly she put down the phone. She looked serious.

He watched her walk into the room. “So” she began, “you’d like this job would you?” A wave of relief came over him. “Yes, absolute­ly, I’d love to work for you, and I’m avail­able immediately?”
“Right then, fol­low me, there is some­thing I need to show you first, and a cou­ple of things we need to dis­cuss before we make that final deci­sion. It’s almost in the bag, he thought smil­ing inwardly.

She strode ahead lead­ing him down the bright cor­ri­dor and out through the door to the street. They crossed a small a court­yard with cob­ble­stones, passed an arch and emerged into a mews. Ascend­ing the stone steps to an old Vic­to­ri­an style city home, they paused at a tall black lac­quered wood­en door and she insert­ed a key. “These are my “Pri­vate” offices she said. “No one comes here except myself, my clients, and invit­ed guests.” He was intrigued.

Once inside it was like enter­ing anoth­er era. It was a size­able house with an oval mar­ble entry­way, a cir­cu­lar stair­case wind­ing up to the left and a wide cor­ri­dor with dark teak walls lead­ing straight ahead. Numer­ous rooms with closed doors lined each side. Despite the mar­ble, the house felt warm and sophis­ti­cat­ed yet home­ly. It was almost mas­cu­line with a fem­i­nine ambiance. It was dim­ly lit with amber glow­ing fix­tures. Elec­tric light­ing for sure, but designed to give a low glow and feel­ing of the warmth of can­dle­light. “This is my study,” she said open­ing one of the heavy teak doors, “it’s the room where I con­duct my ther­a­py ses­sions.“ It was inviting.

17th cen­tu­ry art hung in sev­er­al places on the walls, each piece framed with the thick gold leaf coat­ed wood­en frames they used in those days. The vault­ed ceil­ings were curved and the car­pet­ing was plush, absorb­ing the sounds of the room almost com­plete­ly. A large chester­field sofa and two match­ing high-sided arm­chairs made a U shape around a thick glass topped cof­fee table. They faced a sub­stan­tial well-used brick fire­place. Her antique cher­ry wood­en desk with black leather inlay stood out from one side of the room with its bowed gold­en claw foot legs sup­port­ing its sol­id weight. A large wing backed Queen Anne leather chair sat wait­ing behind the desk. By far the most impos­ing piece of fur­ni­ture in the room was an enor­mous dou­ble door armoire that stood at least sev­en feet tall and was wider than any wardrobe he had seen before. It looked cen­turies old yet gave him the impres­sion of being cus­tom built for some spe­cif­ic pur­pose. If pressed to describe the room, the words that would spring to mind would be “invit­ing­ly aus­tere.” Odd­ly there were two pieces of fur­ni­ture that seemed rather out of place as if they’d been moved in here from their usu­al loca­tion in oth­er rooms. One was a plush red vel­vet cov­ered straight-backed din­ing chair; the oth­er was an ordi­nary kitchen stool. The stool was tucked in a cor­ner, and the chair was sit­u­at­ed promi­nent­ly in the cen­ter of the room direct­ly under a chandelier.

“All right Rod­ney,” she began. “Down to busi­ness. This is my place of work, but it’s also my sanc­tu­ary. I come here to think and often don’t wish to be dis­turbed. Your job work­ing for me would be mul­ti­fac­eted. Yes there is an admin­is­tra­tive side to it: keep­ing the books, answer­ing the phone, fil­ter­ing my email, mon­i­tor­ing the web­site etc., but because of the nature of my busi­ness, “You did say you’d researched and under­stood clear­ly what it is I do here didn’t you?” “Yes absolute­ly Miss Sven­son.” “Good, well as I was say­ing, because of the nature of my busi­ness I need some­one I can trust to be dis­crete and diplo­mat­ic on the phone when arrang­ing appoint­ments with my clients. I need that per­son to be hon­est, dili­gent and always on-time. I don’t tol­er­ate excus­es, and most of all I ask for com­plete truth­ful­ness from my employ­ees. In return I pro­vide a secure job, a salary far above the mar­ket norm, and a con­ge­nial struc­tured envi­ron­ment to work in. How does that sound to you?”

“Well, Miss Sven­son, Elsa, is it alright if I call you by your first name?”

“No it cer­tain­ly is not, I pre­fer for­mal­i­ty here and expect respect at all times so please always addressed me as “Miss Sven­son.” Is that under­stood? “Yes, yes Miss Sven­son,” I didn’t mean to be dis­re­spect­ful. It sounds more than fair and I would very much like to accept this job with you.”

“Alright, then there is only one thing stand­ing in our way and that’s to ascer­tain whether you real­ly are all those things you described.”

“First­ly I need to inform you that the phone call I made was to the agency. My very good friend Alma, Mrs. Mater as you may know her, owns and man­ages it and she knows me extreme­ly well. I asked her what she thought of you and she said she liked you, and that she sent you to me because despite your lim­it­ed expe­ri­ence and some weak­ness­es she thought you were worth the effort. She felt quite strong­ly that with “my kind of direc­tion” you could be mold­ed into a valu­able employ­ee. When I asked what weak­ness­es, she said that you have a ten­den­cy to get ahead of your­self and make mis­takes but instead of admit­ting to them as a mature per­son would, you attempt to cov­er them up with small fab­ri­ca­tions and avoid­ance, and it gets you into trou­ble. The term “sweep­ing them under the car­pet” was men­tioned. Is this true? Rod­ney was sur­prised by the direct­ness of her voice and the pin­point accu­ra­cy of her vol­ley. She didn’t mince words. He didn’t quite know what to say? “Well I, ah, um, I think that if you… I mean to say… per­haps I’m a lit­tle uh,” she cut his mum­bling short with a hand ges­ture. “Well then let me ask you this,” she con­tin­ued. “Alma tells me that she arranged this inter­view for you two days ago, which is the same time she booked it with me. But you said when you arrived, 50 min­utes late, you had only been called this morn­ing. Would you be spec­u­lat­ing that my friend is not being truth­ful with me?“ Rod­ney was not enjoy­ing this line of ques­tion­ing at all. It was embar­rass­ing and his face showed it. She was stand­ing there with her arms crossed look­ing point­ed­ly at him for an answer but the only thing that came from his mouth was the sound of a deep intake of breath. He was about to try to say some­thing in his defense, but before he could she loosed anoth­er broad­side… “And anoth­er thing Rod­ney, you’ve said that you com­plete­ly under­stand the line of busi­ness that I am in. You’ve researched it so you feel con­fi­dent work­ing in this are­na, cor­rect?” “Well, yes, I mean well not exact­ly, I mean I’ve worked for a ther­a­pist before so I know what’s involved….” Again she stopped him… “Real­ly? do you? But if you only got called this morn­ing and you were in such a rush to get here how could you pos­si­bly have had the time to research any­thing?” Rod­ney was mor­ti­fied, he felt so small he didn’t know which way turn. She had him locked up in log­ic from which there was no escape. He was too embar­rassed to look direct­ly at her. He looked down at his shoes, shuf­fled his feet, tried putting his hands in his pock­ets and tak­ing them out again, it felt like he was 13 years old again and in trouble.

“Well let’s try one more thing then” she said. “Why don’t you go to the armoire and open it, I think things will be much clear­er for you if you do.” Abashed but thank­ful for the momen­tary reprieve from her scruti­ny, he did as he was told. Feel­ing her eyes bor­ing into the back of his head, he marched over to the impos­ing piece of fur­ni­ture, grasped the two wrought Iron han­dles at the same time and swung both doors wide open. What he saw inside made him take two steps back and gasp. On the inside of each door was a neat row of British school canes in per­fect par­al­lel lines just like bil­liard cues. The left door held straight ones and the right door held crooked han­dled ones. Nine on each side in groups of three, each held in place by sprung met­al clips. There was a num­ber engraved in large numer­als above each one. They also dif­fered in size. Three short, three medi­ums, three very long on each side, and they got notice­ably thick­er the fur­ther down the row they were.

In the cen­ter of the armoire were rows of hooks from which hung an array of oth­er imple­ments of dis­ci­pline. It was over­whelm­ing but at first glance it seemed like a gun aficionado’s col­lec­tion but instead of arms there were Pad­dles and Straps, Hair­brush­es and Rulers. The wardrobe was a disciplinarian’s dream and a “schoolboy’s” worst nightmare. 

He turned to her com­plete­ly lost for words. Unable to utter a sound he sim­ply looked at her trans­fixed mouth wide open.

She moved towards him and put her hand on his shoul­der. “Close your mouth Rod­ney it’s impo­lite to gape,” she whis­pered, her voice so close to his red blush­ing ear he could feel her breath on his neck. “I can see by the look on your face I have my answer. You are at lib­er­ty to leave now if you wish.”

Every part of his con­scious­ness was impelling him to “Bolt for the door,” but inex­plic­a­bly he didn’t. His mind said go but some­thing vis­cer­al was com­pelling him to stay put. 

Almost two full min­utes elapsed in silence and he sim­ply stood immo­bile. “Well” said Miss Sven­son, break­ing the silence, “you seem to be caught at an impasse, a dilem­ma for sure. Let me help clar­i­fy your choic­es and you can decide from there what to do. Hear me out before you say any­thing more. Once I’ve fin­ished I’m going to let your actions speak for you, then I’ll let my actions speak for both of us.” He nod­ded his assent. “Here is the way I see it” she began. “I like you Rod­ney, despite your obvi­ous short­com­ings” I think you are a good boy at heart, and I trust my friend Alma’s instincts. If I do take you in hand and give you the right direc­tion, you could indeed become a fine upstand­ing man and an excel­lent employ­ee, so I am will­ing to take a chance on you. But only under the fol­low­ing understanding”.
“You came here today very late with­out the cour­tesy of call­ing to inform me, and when you arrived you lied about why. You were unpre­pared for the inter­view and you lied about that too. On top of that I have doubts about your per­son­al hygiene. Offer­ing me that soiled hand­ker­chief deba­cle was quite dis­gust­ing, and your attire will need to be attend­ed to if you are to rep­re­sent me here. A suit that fits and is prop­er­ly cleaned and pressed shows matu­ri­ty as well as a mod­icum of self-aware­ness. As I said before, truth­ful­ness is para­mount in my book, yet you seem to think “fib­bing” is accept­able behav­ior. You lack self-dis­ci­pline Rod­ney, and in my expe­ri­ence peo­ple who lack “Self” dis­ci­pline need oth­ers with stronger char­ac­ters than them­selves to pro­vide that dis­ci­pline. I lieu of that they spend their lives direc­tion­less and rarely achieve their poten­tial. I’m offer­ing you my guid­ance and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to grow Rod­ney, but it will take effort on your part. Pay close atten­tion to my words now. This is what I do. I’m a pro­fes­sion­al. I help peo­ple change. Peo­ple pay a lot of mon­ey for my guid­ance and cor­rec­tion­al exper­tise, and you young man have hap­pened upon it by chance. I hope you under­stand the oppor­tu­ni­ty that lies in front of you as well as its intrin­sic value.”

Rod­ney remained trans­fixed. Some­thing in him stirred. He was vis­cer­al­ly attract­ed to her direct­ness, her clar­i­ty. He felt small and ashamed yet strange­ly com­pli­ant. He began to under­stand that the offer she pre­sent­ed was not sim­ply a job, but a path. Clear direc­tion from a stranger he had just met, but one who seemed to under­stand him bet­ter than he knew himself.

“You need dis­ci­pline Rod­ney, and right now you need to be “Dis­ci­plined”. Not tomor­row or some time in the future, but start­ing right this minute. I said your next actions, not words, would be your answer, but they will in fact also be the defin­ing moment that starts to shape your future. So it comes down to one of two choic­es, you either walk through that door and leave, or you turn in the oth­er direc­tion, walk to the armoire, take the num­ber 12 cane from its place and bring it here to me. If you decide on the lat­ter I believe you under­stand full well what that implies.” 

The next moments were a blur. Not because of the speed of his actions, in fact every­thing seemed to hap­pen in slow motion, but because he real­ly couldn’t remem­ber how one moment he could be stand­ing there lis­ten­ing to her seduc­tive com­mand­ing voice and the next he was pen­i­tent­ly hand­ing her the crooked han­dle cane she had request­ed with both hands. Obvi­ous­ly he had come to some kind of sub­con­scious deci­sion that led him to this point. It came as no sur­prise to her how­ev­er. She had rec­og­nized his char­ac­ter the moment he set foot in her office. It was just a mat­ter of lead­ing him down her well-trav­eled. She was now in the role she had embod­ied for years. That of “Pro­fes­sion­al Disciplinarian.”

“So you’ve made your choice. Very well.“

“First­ly “ she said, “let’s broach the issues of clean­li­ness and attire. Take that awful hand­ker­chief out of your pock­et, unfold it so it’s just two lay­ers thick and hold it in the palm of your hand. Stretch your arm out to me at shoul­der height.” He did so very ner­vous­ly. He’d seen it at school, but he had nev­er per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment before. She brought the cane up, looked him right in the eye and said, “You deserve this young man, let this be a les­son to you.” With that she brought the cane down across his palm with a resound­ing thwack. He real­ly wasn’t ready for how much it would actu­al­ly hurt. “Ouch” he exclaimed loud­ly, “ouch Miss” his auto­mat­ic reac­tion was to shake his hand back and forth rapid­ly and blow on it. The dis­placed hand­ker­chief float­ed to the floor. “Pick it up she com­mand­ed, with your oth­er hand.” He kept blow­ing on his right hand as if that could ease the sting, and bent over to pick up the han­ky with his left as instruct­ed. As he did so he was imme­di­ate­ly aware of the tight­ness of his trousers stretch­ing over his but­tocks and how his jack­et rode up his back slight­ly, reveal­ing his taught back­side. Miss Sven­son was one step ahead of him, she had been wait­ing for this moment and before he could adjust his stance she raised the cane high in the air and brought it down smart­ly across the cen­ter of his bot­tom. Thwack… Yow, he almost jumped in the air land­ing bolt upright clasp­ing the han­ky over his head like an Olympic torch car­ri­er. He did a lit­tle uncon­trol­lable dance, shift­ing weight from foot to foot as a sec­ond wave of pain seemed to sear across his bot­tom. “Hold out your left hand” she said, “and be thank­ful that your hand­ker­chief and your trousers are pro­vid­ing you some pro­tec­tion. I assure you, you are about to learn a valu­able les­son.” He held the han­ky out as far away from him­self as he could, palm stiffly upwards, but this time he knew what he was in for. It was a sober­ing thought. She wait­ed till he was com­posed. Swish, thwack, ouch, and the han­ky once again float­ed to the floor. “Bend down slow­ly and pick it up she said again… with your oth­er hand, and, keep your feet togeth­er and bend at the knees.” He did as he was told. No sur­pris­es now, he knew exact­ly what was com­ing and he wasn’t to be dis­ap­point­ed. Tight trousers meant his but­tocks pro­trud­ed promi­nent­ly, his jack­et rose up and the fab­ric cov­er­ing his bot­tom offered lit­tle pro­tec­tion, just a clear­er tar­get. Feet togeth­er meant a prop­er dis­ci­pli­nary posi­tion, and bend­ing at the knees prof­fered his bot­tom to her as if ask­ing for it. Again the cane came down across his bot­tom equal­ly on both cheeks but this time half an inch low­er. Yow. He couldn’t stop him­self from utter­ing that yell, and he jumped up to per­form his lit­tle dance again. She allowed him that indis­cre­tion for now but he would soon learn how to hold his posi­tion with­out con­stant direc­tion. For now her instruc­tions rang out clear­ly. “Hold your hand out again please,” she said, “you know what to do now. You are learn­ing the order of things.” “Your hand please…”

Three cane strokes on each hand and six across his bot­tom. She had done it slow­ly and method­i­cal­ly giv­ing him enough time in between each stroke to feel the sear as it land­ed. Each sting­ing sharply then sub­sid­ing and blend­ing into pure heat after it struck. He was beside him­self stand­ing very uncom­fort­ably not want­i­ng to tear up, and need­ing des­per­ate­ly to rub his bot­tom. At one point he had reached back to feel it, per­haps sub­con­scious­ly to pro­tect it, but that only brought atten­tion to his sore hands as well. She had imme­di­ate­ly put a stop to that and instruct­ed him to remove his hands and to main­tain the posi­tion. She had been so accu­rate as to lad­der the cane strokes per­fect­ly with­in a six-inch sec­tion of his bot­tom. Not one stroke had over­lapped, and as bad as his bot­tom was hurt­ing, both of his hands hurt worse. In any event it may have been his pride that took the biggest hit.

“Rod­ney,” she said. “Take the cane and put it back.” Relieved that it was over, he did as he was told. Walk­ing gin­ger­ly towards the cab­i­net he could feel where his trousers rubbed his welt­ed skin. He placed the cane into its hold­er and with a gen­tle click it was back where it belonged. I’m throw­ing that damned hand­ker­chief away as soon as I leave here, he thought to himself.” 

He turned to walk back and she stopped him with her author­i­ta­tive voice. “Please bring me the white Ivory han­dled hair­brush from the shelf on the left.” His heart sank and a pang of dread ran through his body as he stopped in his tracks. It’s not over, he realized.
His mind was rac­ing so fast he didn’t have time to admire the beau­ti­ful hand craft­ed design this antique brush had been blessed with. All he knew was that it was sol­id, heavy, and had a long handle.

“Miss Sven­son” he began to stut­ter, “I real­ly think I’ve under­stood your point, and it’s obvi­ous­ly not nec­es­sary to… “ “Rod­ney!” she cut him off once again with her curt exple­tive, “this is my province, not yours, its not up to you to say when we are fin­ished, that is entire­ly my pre­rog­a­tive. Believe me we are not fin­ished. Now come over and stand next to this chair, we need to deal with the ques­tion of your tar­di­ness and your lies.”

“I’m sure you’re think­ing your pun­ish­ment has been harsh but I assure you has not. Yet. The cane you just felt was one of my short­er lighter ones, and I allowed you to retain the pro­tec­tion of your pants and indeed that hand­ker­chief. I believe you under­stood the point I was mak­ing? In fact I was quite lenient with the strength of which I caned you. Even though it may have felt hard to you, you received it at only quar­ter of the strength I am able to deliv­er should I choose to. You are sim­ply not used to being pun­ished. What I want­ed was for you to expe­ri­ence Cor­po­ral Pun­ish­ment in the tra­di­tion­al sense the way you would have in school, had they done their jobs prop­er­ly and caught you out. Now I’m going to have you expe­ri­ence “domes­tic dis­ci­pline” as your moth­er should have done at home. You seem to have man­aged to go through your entire youth get­ting away with any­thing you want­ed to, using your boy­ish charms and smile to avoid the reper­cus­sions most peo­ple expe­ri­ence. That means you nev­er grew up. Well now you are a young adult, and it needs to stop”

His protests had fall­en on deaf ears so he gave up his argu­ment. He had no defense. She was right, he’d fibbed, lied. Twen­ty min­utes ago those two con­cepts had seemed worlds apart but he now knew they were one and the same thing in her eyes. She sat on the chair and looked up at him. He glanced down at her lap try­ing to avoid those pierc­ing eyes and strict demeanor. From his van­tage point her skirt seemed taut as she smoothed it down with both of her hands ready­ing it for him. She adjust­ed her sit­ting posi­tion by draw­ing her legs up straight and par­al­lel, knees togeth­er, heels togeth­er. Her skirt rose up above the knee line reveal­ing those beau­ti­ful stockinged legs and as she part­ed her knees just slight­ly it stretched even tighter form­ing an iron­ing board like plat­form over which he would soon be arched. She took the hair­brush from his hand and told him to remove his jack­et, fold it neat­ly, and place it over the back of the sofa,” she said. “Now come here and stand to my right,” she com­mand­ed. “Clasp your hands togeth­er and place them on top of your head.” He did as he was told with­out ques­tion. She placed the brush on her lap for a moment and turned her tor­so toward him. Grasp­ing his belt buck­le in both hands she undid it, then his top trouser but­ton, and then she unzipped his fly. With a quick tug his trousers fell to his ankles. Give me your wrist she said, and as he did so she clasped it in an iron grip. He felt a hand on the back of his upper thighs push­ing him for­ward at the same time as she tugged on his wrist, he was imme­di­ate­ly pulled off bal­ance as he land­ed rough­ly across her knees. Now the sight of her tight lap had been replaced with a view of only her ankles and high-heeled shoes. His nose was only a few inch­es off the thick car­pet, as were his feet. 

He had lit­tle time to think about how embar­rass­ing this posi­tion was. She began to scold him imme­di­ate­ly. “Rod­ney, you told me lies to my face and you got caught plain and sim­ple, and in my book that makes you a very, very naughty boy. You need a wake up call, lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly, and you are going to get a thor­ough spank­ing on your bare bot­tom. Do you under­stand me young man? Answer me quick­ly when I ask you a ques­tion. “Yes Miss Sven­son” he mum­bled from some­where down below her. Loud­er and clear­er please she admon­ished, YES MISS SVENSON he almost shout­ed. “That’s much better.” 

With that she pulled his under­pants down over his upturned bot­tom and yanked them harsh­ly all the way to his ankles. Not want­i­ng his shirt­tail to be in the way of what was to come, she rolled it neat­ly up past the small of his back. There, that’s bet­ter, she thought, a per­fect­ly round bare bot­tom ready and wait­ing, there would be no pro­tec­tion now. She couldn’t help admir­ing the shape that only youth could offer as she glanced at her pre­vi­ous hand­i­work, six well spaced red stripes, not too deep not too light. A mes­sage sent and a mes­sage received. Now he was about to receive anoth­er mes­sage, loud and clear. She took her time, know­ing that the more he wait­ed in antic­i­pa­tion the more the les­son would sink in when deliv­ered. She placed the palm of her hand light­ly on the cen­ter of his bot­tom and he flinched gasp­ing at the light touch. Miss Sven­son want­ed him to know what a thor­ough spank­ing was all about. In her eyes he was just anoth­er naughty lit­tle boy in a grown man’s body being made to take his right­ful posi­tion across a strong woman’s knee. Help­less, con­trite and obe­di­ent. This time she wouldn’t stop until he felt true remorse.

And so it began. The first group­ing of swats was placed delib­er­ate­ly across the cen­ter of his bot­tom exact­ly where the cane strokes had land­ed. They were timed rhyth­mi­cal­ly, they were hard, and judg­ing by his reac­tion, they felt excru­ci­at­ing. She knew the pain the can­ing had inflict­ed had had suf­fi­cient time to sub­side and that any­thing land­ing on the same spot would be felt twice as much. She was right. Rodney’s head reared up, his back arched and his pelvis ground into her lap but there was nowhere for his bot­tom go to escape the sting­ing rain. Her tech­nique was expert. Her arm high in the air bring­ing the brush down swift­ly and just at the end of the stroke she’d whip her wrist so that the brush cracked down sharply. Time and time again it descend­ed onto Rodney’s blaz­ing bot­tom. Miss Sven­son wield­ed the hair­brush with absolute pre­ci­sion and con­vic­tion, and the sol­id ivory hair­brush was the per­fect instru­ment to make her point.

Time and again the room resound­ed with a loud SMACK, SMACK, SMACK, and each time the brush was raised it left behind an ever-red­den­ing oval mark. When each part of his bot­tom was red enough for her sat­is­fac­tion, she moved the tar­get to fresh ground. One cheek at a time in an alter­nat­ing pat­tern till his entire bot­tom was flam­ing red and very sore. Even the tops of the backs of his legs were unmer­ci­ful­ly attend­ed to.

From the moment the spank­ing had start­ed, Rod­ney was unable to stop writhing and wrig­gling over her lap so she sim­ply grabbed his right wrist, bent it across the small of his back and held him firm­ly in place with a strength and tech­nique that came from years of expe­ri­ence. He was in anoth­er world where ratio­nal thought no longer mat­tered. All that went through his mind was how to sur­vive the spank­ing with­out burst­ing into tears. If that was his goal, then he was in for a bat­tle of wills because it was entire­ly Miss Svenson’s inten­tion to make him cry. He need­ed to be put in touch with his deep­er feel­ings. She had the upper hand, the strength and all the time in the world. As the spank­ing con­tin­ued it became hard­er and hard­er to main­tain his sto­ic atti­tude. As the min­utes ticked by and the swats con­tin­ued to fall, his breath start­ed come in huge intakes of air fol­lowed by gasps and squeals, and the sounds he made filled the air and sound­ed like sweet music to Miss Svenson’s ears.

She knew it was the right moment. She could tell when he was on the brink. She start­ed scold­ing him as she spanked. “You have been a very, very naughty boy Rod­ney, you need to change your ways. You have become accus­tomed to get­ting away with your fibs and indis­cre­tions, but now you see what hap­pens when naughty boys get found out. This pun­ish­ment has been long over­due.” She con­tin­ued to spank him, and Rodney’s gasps began to change tone to a dis­cern­able whine. His body lan­guage seemed to alter accord­ing­ly. Instead of sto­ic and resilient, it start­ed to feel accept­ing and con­trite. She knew she was get­ting very close. 

“You have dif­fi­cul­ty admit­ting when you are wrong don’t you Rod­ney?” Swat! “Answer me young man” Swat. I’m wait­ing,” Swat. A small voice emanat­ed from some­where near her feet “ Yes”. Swat… “Yes what?” “Yes Miss Sven­son” “What Rod­ney, I can’t hear you. “ “Miss Sven­son”, he said, “ I, I, can’t admit when I’m wrong.” “Good we’re get­ting some­where,” she said, “well now you are about to. I want to hear you apol­o­gize to me in your own words do you under­stand?” “Yes Miss Sven­son. “Loud­er”… “YES MISS SVENSON.” And with that, the spank­ing ceased. His bare bot­tom was crim­son red all over and the flam­ing heat ema­nat­ing from it was intense. She trans­ferred the brush to her oth­er hand and put her free palm soft­ly on his bot­tom. Feel­ing the gen­tle­ness of the moment he stopped writhing and he let out a deep breath, almost melt­ing with relief. She still held him firm­ly in place and even adjust­ed his body a lit­tle over her lap to force his head clos­er to the ground and caus­ing his bot­tom to rise high­er. The mes­sage was clear. She could spank again at any moment.
“I’m wait­ing,” she said, “what do you have to say for yourself?”

“I’m sor­ry Miss Sven­son” I’m tru­ly sor­ry. He sur­prised him­self with the depth at which he meant it. The apol­o­gy didn’t come just from his mouth it came from some­where deep with­in his chest and he let out a slight sob. “Yes” she said. “What are you sor­ry for?” Anoth­er sob, I’m sor­ry he sniffed catch­ing a lump in his throat, I’m sor­ry I told you lies. I’m real­ly sor­ry I dis­ap­point­ed you,” I’m real­ly sor­ry I… I…, and then the flood­gates opened. It was as if years of pent up guilt and emo­tion all came pour­ing out at one time. His sobs turned into deep rhyth­mic cry­ing and the tears began to flow. They streamed down his face and onto the car­pet below. She con­tin­ued to rest her hand on his flam­ing bot­tom as she felt the con­tri­tion in his deep sobs course through her own body. 

“Now Rod­ney” I want to make sure you real­ly mean what you say so I’m going to give you twen­ty more very hard swats, and after each one I want you to apol­o­gize to me out loud so we can clear the air. I want you to say these very words. “I’m sor­ry Miss Sven­son, I have been a naughty boy and I lied to you. I promise I won’t do it again.” Say it for me now! …. Swat. Owww. I’m sor­ry Miss Sven­son, I’ve been a naughty boy and I lied to you. I promise I won’t do it again.” SWAT… I’m sor­ry Miss Sven­son…. I’m sor­ry Miss Sven­son… I’m sor­ry Miss Sven­son…. he began to cry again and didn’t stop until long after it was over…. 

———-
It was almost evening as Rod­ney round­ed the cor­ner and walked slow­ly down the street on his way home. The sounds of the traf­fic and pedes­tri­ans seemed crisper some­how, clear­er, and the lights of the city seemed to have more colour to them. He round­ed the cor­ner and descend­ed the steps lead­ing to the Under­ground Tube Sta­tion. He felt the warm rush of tun­nel air whoosh over his face, pushed for­ward by the train as it screeched to a halt at the plat­form. He board­ed. Near­ly all the seats were tak­en so he decid­ed to stand. Tuck­ing his brief­case under his left arm he reached up to grasp the looped strap to hold on. Ouch he exclaimed loud­ly and let go as he felt the sen­sa­tion in his hand. He quick­ly trans­ferred the case to his oth­er arm and held on with his free hand, “Ouch again, that one hurt too. Sev­er­al eyes looked at him. He noticed some­one had vacat­ed a seat next to an attrac­tive young woman so he took the oppor­tu­ni­ty, half smil­ing at her as he sat down. “Ouch”, he exclaimed invol­un­tar­i­ly and stood right back up again. “Are you OK?” she asked frown­ing. “Yes, yes I’m fine” he gasped sit­ting gin­ger­ly down again “Thank you for ask­ing.” He was about to say “Just a lit­tle back trou­ble” but he thought bet­ter of it. He was done with mak­ing up sto­ries. “How was your day?,” she asked, wish­ing to engage him in con­ver­sa­tion. “Oh fair­ly unevent­ful real­ly. Well actu­al­ly I did land a rather good job today.” ”Real­ly? Well that’s not unevent­ful is it?” she said, “that’s some­thing spe­cial, con­grat­u­la­tions you should go out and cel­e­brate tonight, when do you start?” “Oh, tomor­row morn­ing. But I don’t think I’ll be out late tonight, got to get a good night’s sleep, ear­ly start and all that.” “True” she said, you want to make a good impres­sion with the boss on your first day don’t you? He looked at her, shift­ed his weight slight­ly and winced. “Yes, you’re absolute­ly right, best not to be late on my first day.” 

To be continued…..

Claire’s pun­ish­ment: The Tam­ing of the Naughty Secretary

By Roger

Part 1: Listening

Claire, the senior sec­re­tary of Sven­son Indus­tries, and her intern Tony, sat side by side on the hard bench out­side Miss Svenson’s office, shift­ing from bot­tom cheek to bot­tom cheek in dis­com­fort and antic­i­pa­tion, not look­ing one anoth­er in the eye. The heavy door cut off most of the sound, but they could hear the love­ly alto of Miss Prendergast’s voice in coun­ter­point with the slight­ly high­er ele­gant tones of Miss Sven­son. As Claire con­tem­plat­ed her impend­ing fate, it seemed to her that her bot­tom became a larg­er part of her, more sen­si­tive, almost the cen­tre of her being. Her heart jumped into her mouth as the door swung open and Miss Pren­der­gast emerged look­ing seri­ous and determined.

“Miss Sven­son will see Tony first. Claire, please stay where you are until I call you.”

“Yes Miss Prendergast”

Tony only gulped, stood up, and was ush­ered with a hand under the elbow into the office. The door swung shut, and Claire heard Miss S speak­ing in clear­ly severe tones for sev­er­al min­utes, with short gaps when Tony pre­sum­ably replied qui­et­ly. Then a silence ………………fol­lowed by the unmis­tak­able sound of a strong female hand smack­ing a naked bot­tom. Claire could not help but feel even more excit­ed at the famil­iar and stim­u­lat­ing sound, and tried to con­trol her feel­ings by count­ing the spanks…. 24, anoth­er set of 24, and anoth­er and anoth­er, then a change of rhythm and more rapid syn­co­pat­ed smacks. Miss Pren­der­gast had joined in! He was get­ting a dou­ble spank­ing over both ladies’ knees! The squeals and gasps of Tony’s dis­com­fort – and no won­der after what Claire had done to him just a quar­ter of an hour ear­li­er – became more urgent after the sec­ond batch of 24, but mut­ed to stran­gled grunts after a sharp inter­ven­tion by Miss Svenson’s voice. At last the spank­ing stopped. Per­haps that would be it – after all Miss Sven­son must have seen that his bot­tom was already sore from before………

——————————————————————————-

Part 2: Remembering

Claire’s mind wan­dered, remem­ber­ing the recent scene in her office with renewed excit­ing effect. She had always had a thing about Tony since he first inter­viewed, and dai­ly expo­sure had increased her inter­est, but giv­en her incli­na­tions, that inter­est was par­tic­u­lar­ly sparked by his love­ly round bot­tom, which she had ached to spank – and caress. At last a fail­ure to com­plete an impor­tant report gave her a good rea­son to imple­ment the estab­lished Cor­po­ral Pun­ish­ment pol­i­cy of Sven­son Indus­tries, which Tony had signed up to.

“ Tony, you have been very lazy, and I will have to work most of the night on this report if I am not to get in trou­ble with Miss Sven­son. I am going to make sure that is does not hap­pen again, by giv­ing you a sound spank­ing here and now!”

“Oh please Miss Claire, I have been doing my best, it’s the first real mistake”

“No, I am sor­ry, it’s too late for apolo­gies. Take off your shoes and trousers now and come and stand next to my chair”

Slow­ly, Tony had com­plied, and came to stand red faced next to where she sat with her knees prim­ly togeth­er. She reached out and took the waist­band of his under­pants in her hand. A swift down­ward move­ment and they were around his ankles and she was pre­sent­ed with her sec­ond favourite view. Tony’s hands moved to cov­er himself.

“Hands on your head now boy!”

“Bend right over my knee, and keep still!”

Tony had bent, and at last she had that bot­tom in view and under her con­trol. Sup­press­ing the desire to stroke it she had begun to spank vig­or­ous­ly, and lost her­self in the joy of spank­ing the bare, soft but resilient flesh. She could not remem­ber how long this had gone on, but she came to her sens­es when her hand began to get real­ly sore. She had indulged her­self by run­ning both hands over his bot­tom and giv­ing each cheek a few squeezes. Con­trol­ling her­self with dif­fi­cul­ty, she reached under the chair where she had placed her favourite hair­brush. She pushed Tony off her right thigh, tugged her skirt up and clamped her right leg over his, and began to spank crisply with the hair­brush, alter­nat­ing cheeks. …..nine, ten, eleven, twelve!!! Tony stiff­ened, bucked and squealed, but she had him firm­ly under con­trol. Then she took his left bot­tom cheek in her left hand, and pulled it up, expos­ing the sweet spot in the crease – six smart smacks had him jump­ing under her deli­cious­ly, as if she were rid­ing a recal­ci­trant pony and stay­ing in con­trol. Then the same on the right side, and it was over, Tony gasp­ing and shim­my­ing, she on a fan­tas­tic high as she looked down on the red globes — and that would have to do, there was too much noise and she was push­ing the enve­lope of her author­i­ty using the hairbrush.

But she had – unfor­tu­nate­ly for her – not been able to leave it at that, which would have been just arguably with­in her author­i­ty. She had had to have more.

“Stand up Tony, take off your shirt and bend over my desk!” “Good, now grip the far side, part your legs and stand on tip­toe! That’s right – a bit wider, high­er, good. I can see every­thing now, you know!”

“Yes, Miss Claire”

“Now, I am going to give you 12 strokes of the cane just to make sure you have learned your lesson!”

“Please, Miss Claire, I have nev­er been caned before! I’m not sure I can take it”

“Well, I am sor­ry, it’s that or a real­ly bad report for Miss Pren­der­gast, and that would mean even more spank­ing from her and then for sure a can­ing from Miss Svenson!!”

“All right, Miss, please cane me your­self then.”

“Good boy! Make sure you stay in posi­tion – if you move I will give you extra strokes! Deep breath now!” She flexed the cane, tapped it on the glow­ing right cheek, moved a lit­tle back to make sure there was no wrap-around, then flicked the cane in with as much wrist as she could manage.

SSSSssth­wick­kkk – oh how his bot­tom vibrat­ed – SSSSssth­wock­kkk right in the mid­dle, what a wob­ble, Craaaack­kkk – in the crease, oh how he had jumped and squealed SSSSssth­wick­kkk, SSSSssth­wock­kkk, Thwaaack­kkk, SSSSssth­wick­kkk, SSSSssth­wick­kkk –five fast ones across the low­er mid­dle of his cheeks, the tip spray­ing about as he writhed and jumped up and down. It had been fan­tas­tic; she could not imag­ine why she had not done this before to some­one, she could do it all day! Chang­ing sides, she had decid­ed to prac­tice her back­hand: SSSSssth­wick­kkk – high up left, a bit weak, SSSSssth­wick­kkk – wow! Much bet­ter, a direct hit on the sweet spot, SSSSssth­wick­kkk – oh dear a bit of thigh over­lap and a loud cry from Tony, who was strug­gling to stay in place by this time. Then it had been back to his left side for the last stroke.

“What do they tra­di­tion­al­ly say about the last stroke, Tony?”

“I don’t know Miss Claire “

“Think boy, or I will start again…”

“Maybe the last stroke is the hard­est Miss?

“YES” SSSSssth­waaack­kkk – owowow!

“Now stand up and face the wall: think about your behav­iour and how to improve for 5 minutes!”

“Yes, Miss Claire” said Tony as he moved over to the wall, dis­play­ing a red and striped sore bottom.

Even then it might have been all right, she could have got away with it – but by this time she had been fly­ing and could not help her­self. Com­ing to stand very close behind Tony, she had begun to caress his red bot­tom avid­ly, get­ting more and more car­ried away. Her heart had been pound­ing and her breath­ing short. Leav­ing her right hand roam­ing those dear globes, she slid her left hand slow­ly around his flank until it must sure­ly soon touch……………..

But at that very moment, in burst Miss Pren­der­gast! Oh NO! NO!

“Claire, what ARE you doing?” cried Miss Pren­der­gast, “I can’t believe what I just saw – don’t you realise this could be seen as harass­ment? It could real­ly harm the company’s rep­u­ta­tion! And what are these? Cane marks?? “

“Yes, Miss Prendergast”

“Right, Claire, come here,” said Miss Pren­der­gast, sit­ting square­ly on the chair so recent­ly occu­pied by Claire her­self. She pulled Claire over her lap, and in a trice her skirt was up, her panties pulled up to reveal the low­er part of her full bot­tom cheeks, and under Tony’s wide-eyed gaze Miss Prendergast’s left hand rained spanks down on her bottom.

But then Miss Pren­der­gast said “ This is not doing enough — get up Claire, I am going to take you and Tony to Miss Svenson!!!”

And so here she was,

Wait­ing, lis­ten­ing and hop­ing – for a mild pun­ish­ment. Or per­haps not?

————————————————————————————-

Part 3 Won­der­ing and waiting

Claire could hard­ly keep still where she sat, wait­ing, wait­ing, always the worst and best.

Silence. Phew, just a hand spank­ing. She could cope with that, per­haps it was even desir­able, although not quite the same as being spanked by a man.

But then the silence was bro­ken by what was clear­ly a com­mand from Miss S. Ten sec­onds lat­er, Claire heard a firm Thwack! Fol­lowed by a sharp cry. Oh no, the strap or Miss Svenson’s favourite tawse!! Thwack, Ow, Thwack aargh, thwack nnngh, Thwack, Thwack, Thwack, thwack owooowow – a sen­si­tive spot struck?- thwack oooh, Thwack grrrrh, Thwwaack nnnngh, Thwack aaaaaa­howowow. Twelve hard strokes on the bare!

Anoth­er brief silence, then Miss Sven­son, quite a long speech, then Miss Pren­der­gast, and all was quiet.

What would hap­pen now?

Her heart was in her mouth, for she knew she was in for at least the same treat­ment. Would Miss Sven­son make him bend over or lie on the bench for one of her famous can­ings? Or was it all over? She could not decide what she wanted.

Her whole being was illu­mi­nat­ed by the expe­ri­ence so far, she was float­ing in inter­nal space, could she take a thrash­ing as well?

The answer came as the door swung open and Tony emerged, red faced and tear­ful, fol­lowed close­ly by Miss Pren­der­gast. OMG, not the cane then!!! Sure­ly she could take the tawse with­out whinging?

“Claire,” said Miss Pren­der­gast stern­ly, “Miss Sven­son will see you now.”

————————————————————————————-

Part 4 Spanked at last

Lat­er she was unable to remem­ber enter­ing Miss Svenson’s office: some­how she had float­ed in, bliss­ful­ly unaware of her sur­round­ings in her excit­ed and appre­hen­sive state.
Miss Svenson’s voice cut through her rever­ie. Her fine blue eyes looked direct­ly in Claire’s.
“Claire, I am most dis­ap­point­ed to hear what Miss Pren­der­gast has told me, which Tony has con­firmed while I was pun­ish­ing him. You are an excel­lent senior sec­re­tary, but your judge­ment has desert­ed you bad­ly this time. First, you have exceed­ed your author­i­ty by apply­ing the cane to an intern’s bot­tom. Worse still, you have been detect­ed act­ing in a way that could be inter­pret­ed as sex­u­al harass­ment if Tony were so inclined. You are for­tu­nate that he seems not to want to take this action. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“ I don’t know, Miss Sven­son. He deserved to be pun­ished ……and then I got car­ried away.”
“Yes indeed, and you have to hope that I don’t get “car­ried away”, or you will not be sit­ting com­fort­ably for a very long time!”
With that Miss Sven­son moved to her desk chair, which was already in the mid­dle of the room, and sat down firm­ly, look­ing stern­ly at Claire. “Come here, Claire – no, stand on my left, just by my knees. Now, get over my knees and keep your bot­tom up high!”
Claire obeyed, slid­ing over Miss Svenson’s silk clad thighs, right over, land­ing with her head down, two hands on the floor and her bot­tom at the high­est point. Cool air flowed over her thighs as her skirt was raised – she felt a fris­son of excite­ment, which peaked again as Miss Sven­son pulled down her panties expos­ing her bare bot­tom com­plete­ly for the first time today. What a feel­ing! There was ful­fil­ment in this expo­sure; a shud­der of com­plete sub­mis­sion went through her.
Then it began, Miss Svenson’s hand crash­ing down, first on one cheek then the oth­er, then a set of smacks on one side, then the oth­er, on and on. Oh, how it stung, but she did not want it to stop! After what seemed like many min­utes she felt anoth­er pair of knees – Miss Pren­der­gast! – and sud­den­ly she was being spanked by both ladies, and no longer with their hands but with very stingy slip­pers. This was no longer so nice, oh how it stung, her bot­tom moved this way and that to escape the awful stings, but Miss Sven­son placed a firm hand in the mid­dle of her back and smacked on and on. Claire began to real­ly suf­fer, she was approach­ing her lim­it sure­ly, her face felt red and sweat broke our on her fore­head. She began to wail as the hard­est slip­per­ing of her life built and built and reached a crescen­do of rapid whacks. At last it stopped, leav­ing Claire gasp­ing and pant­i­ng, her bot­tom mov­ing to and fro as if remem­ber­ing the sting.
“I think we did a good job there, Miss Pren­der­gast,” said Miss Svenson.
“Yes, Miss Sven­son, I real­ly enjoyed using that slip­per! But I don’t think Claire did!” said Miss Prendergast.
“ I hope not, Claire is here to learn prop­er behav­iour, not to enjoy her­self, so we must be quite severe today. Miss Pren­der­gast, could you please get me that nice spank­ing strap – yes, the thick leather one?” said Miss Svenson.
Claire felt Miss Prendergast’s knees with­draw, while Miss Svenson’s hand remained firm­ly in the small of her back, and her glow­ing bot­tom faced the ceil­ing, her panties now on one ankle as she had kicked so much. Ow! She was sore, and there was no sign of the final tawsing yet.
“Thank you Miss Pren­der­gast. 48 strokes!!” she heard Miss Sven­son say, then her back arched and her legs flailed as the hard spank­ing strap smacked into her soft bot­tom cheeks, one, two – four — six — ten — twelve times very fast and hard. Miss Sven­son was not hold­ing back.
“This is too much! Miss Pren­der­gast, please hold Claire’s ankles for me. I shall have to start again. 48 new strokes.” Said Miss Svenson.
“Of course, Miss Sven­son.” Miss Pren­der­gast had to get down on her knees to get a good grip on Claire’s ele­gant ankles. “Nice stock­ings, Claire!” she said. She had a won­der­ful view of the full length of Claire’s stock­ing clad long slim legs, with the broad­er, fem­i­nine but slim, expanse of bright red bot­tom cheeks above, divid­ed by a deli­cious­ly dark deep mys­te­ri­ous crevice. Miss Sven­son began the over-the –knee strap­ping again: “48 strokes!!” If any­thing these strokes were even hard­er, and Miss Pren­der­gast had to take a firm grip to keep Claire’s legs under con­trol, enjoy­ing the won­der­ful view of the flex­ing, rip­pling, bound­ing, bounc­ing bot­tom being beat­en as it’s own­er deserved.

From Miss Svenson’s point of view, the love­ly shaped red bot­tom bucked and writhed as she applied the strap, left right, left­left­left, rightrightright, left right, 24, 30, 36, 40, 45. Tak­ing a deep breath she raised her arm real­ly high over her head, and brought the strap own on the same spot on Claire’s left bot­tom cheek once, twice, thrice. “Forty eight hard strokes, Claire! Well tak­en” she declared.

Claire was not in a fit state to appre­ci­ate this, she had had to grit her teeth from at least stroke num­ber 20, and the sore spot where the last three strokes had land­ed was the only thing in her mind now. 

Claire felt Miss Svenson’s hand glide over the sur­face of her bot­tom. She knew that Miss Sven­son was using her great expe­ri­ence to judge how much more she could take. No longer quite so keen to be spanked, she half hoped it was over, but knew real­ly that it could not be.

“Stand up, Claire!” Miss Sven­son ordered. Stum­bling, on slight­ly wob­bly legs, Claire stood upright.
“Go and stand in the cor­ner and think about how to improve your behav­iour. In a posi­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty, you have to know how to con­trol your impuls­es. I do not want such a thing to ever hap­pen again, and I intend to pun­ish you accord­ing­ly,” said Miss Svenson.
Claire moved to the cor­ner, and knew to put her hands on her head.
“I think we should have her skirt up so that we can see her bot­tom,” said Miss Prendergast.
“Absolute­ly, naughty girls do not deserved the dig­ni­ty of a cov­ered bot­tom in the mid­dle of a thrash­ing” cried Miss Sven­son. Miss Pren­der­gast moved swift­ly over to Claire and pulled up her skirt. “I think it may have to come off, Miss Sven­son, there’s noth­ing to tuck it in to” she opined. “Very well, Miss Pren­der­gast, please remove the skirt – and she may as well step out of those panties as well.”
Claire felt cool air again as her skirt was unzipped and slid down silk­i­ly. As Miss Pren­der­gast stood up next to her hold­ing the fold­ed skirt, she whis­pered, “I’m a bit hot, could you take off my blouse too?” Miss Pren­der­gast arched her eye­brows at this, but a touch of a smile flick­ered over her lips: “ I think the tail of this blouse may also get in the way, Miss Sven­son, so I shall remove it”. Claire felt cool fin­gers reach around and unbut­ton her blouse, slip­ping it over her shoul­ders. Claire stood in her cor­ner, hands on head, naked apart from her brassiere. It was not embar­rass­ing, it was a nat­ur­al part of her sub­mit­ting to what she knew to be a deserved pun­ish­ment by some­one who cared for her and her career prospects.
The two ladies con­versed in low tones over by Miss Svenson’s desk, while Claire stood with her well-spanked bot­tom in full view, feel­ing the throb and swell down there, and try­ing to think about bet­ter behav­iour, and how not to get car­ried away with Tony in the office.
“What do you think, Miss Sven­son, has she had enough pun­ish­ment?” said Miss Prendergast.
“No, no, not at all, that was just a warm up. I still have to pun­ish her for the can­ing and the harass­ment offences” was Miss Svenson’s reply. “Claire, I am now going to give you the tawse for exceed­ing your author­i­ty and can­ing an intern. Stand in front of the chair, bend right over and put your hands on the seat. And do not move while I am pun­ish­ing you.”
When it came, Claire was not sur­prised, she had expect­ed to get tawsed, but a fris­son of anx­i­ety pulsed through her nev­er­the­less – Miss Sven­son was being so severe today. She moved to the chair, bent over with her legs togeth­er and took a firm grip and wait­ed – for what seemed a very long time.
“Excel­lent, Claire,” said Miss Sven­son, “I like to see such obe­di­ence, “Miss Pren­der­gast, tawses like this one is were real­ly invent­ed to be used on the hands in Scot­tish schools, but I find it works very well on the bot­tom too. Twen­ty-four strokes Claire: I want you to count each stroke, and thank me for pun­ish­ing you, and I want to hear from you what you will do about avoid­ing abuse of author­i­ty in future.”
Claire with­stood the temp­ta­tion to say that Tony had only got twelve…….. and then Miss Sven­son was next to her on her right, and then…. And then her bot­tom explod­ed with sharp anguish as the first well-swung stroke land­ed and the twin tails bit her left cheek. ‘Owowow – owow, One! Miss Sven­son, thank you Miss Sven­son, owow. Oh! Ow! Oooh! I will nev­er use the cane again with­out permission…..Two Miss Sven­son, thank you Miss Sven­son, owowow AAAghOWOW I promise nev­er to abuse my authority!.…..Three! Miss Sven­son, thank you Miss Sven­son, oh please Miss I promise nev­er to do it again………”

Miss Pren­der­gast watched in admi­ra­tion as Miss Sven­son swung the tawse left-hand­ed, with some snap but sure­ly not real­ly full force. Nev­er­the­less the soft bot­tom flat­tened under each tawse stroke, and the soft flesh rever­ber­at­ed as the room rever­ber­at­ed with Claire’s cries and protes­ta­tions of impend­ing improve­ment. The beau­ti­ful red bot­tom was twist­ing side­ways a bit as a nat­ur­al avoid­ance but its own­er was hold­ing it in place, using her mind to remain obe­di­ent and take her due. What a won­der­ful exam­ple of the ben­e­fits of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment deliv­ered firm­ly but fair­ly, she thought. Claire was sure­ly not enjoy­ing her­self quite so much any more, and learn­ing a salu­tary lesson!

Owowow – owow, Ten! Miss Sven­son, thank you Miss Sven­son, oooo aaaah!. OW! Ow! Oooh! OW Eleven Miss Sven­son, thank you Miss Sven­son, OWOW Twelve! Miss Sven­son, thank you Miss Sven­son, I promise nev­er to over­step the mark ever ever again, owow……….

Claire’s mind was in a whirl, but focused entire­ly on sur­viv­ing the pain and prov­ing to Miss Sven­son that she real­ly would improve. She did not want anoth­er 24 of these! The blows did not come fast, but too fast to allow her to prop­er­ly com­pose her­self, so it got hard­er and hard­er not to move and hard­er to remem­ber to say the right thing. Grit­ting her teeth she tried to sup­press the urge to twist away or to jump up and down on her toes. Oh how it hurt! – her bot­tom felt on fire, but that’s eigh­teen now, sure­ly she can take six more — OWOWOW! Against her will and bet­ter judge­ment she jumped up and her hands flew to her left cheek where the nine­teenth stroke had struck hard­er than all before. Hop­ping up and down she caught a glimpse of Miss Svenson’s face, a mix­ture of dis­ap­proval but also of amused supe­ri­or­i­ty. Miss Sven­son well knew when a pun­ish­ment was being effective.

“ Claire, you have five strokes more to go, but I shall now give you six extra for dis­obey­ing me and get­ting up dur­ing pun­ish­ment!” the firm voice of Miss Sven­son told her. “Miss Pren­der­gast, to avoid fur­ther prob­lems, please hold her hands and keep her bent over.”

Claire bent again, and found her­self fac­ing direct­ly into Miss Prendergast’s décol­letage as she stood in front of her, and took her wrists firm­ly in hers, and could smell the delight­ful per­fume that she wore. With her height­ened sens­es she found this a star­tling expe­ri­ence. But this pleas­ant inter­lude was sharply inter­rupt­ed as Miss Sven­son began to wield the tawse again. Claire entered a new lev­el of pain as the blows came faster, but some­thing won­der­ful hap­pened, she seemed to be able to rise above the pain and feel the joy of sub­mis­sion and obe­di­ence as she bab­bled out her good inten­tions and apolo­gies. The tawse rose and fell in one blur – it must have been eleven strokes, or did it go on for longer – Claire had lost count, and Miss Sven­son had obvi­ous­ly decid­ed on a hard fast set of strokes and did not hold her to account.

————————————————————————————-

Part 5. Caned after all

“Well done, Claire, I hope that has taught you a les­son,” said Miss Sven­son, “Go and stand in the cor­ner again with your hands on your head. Do not touch your bottom!”
Claire stood up and proud­ly walked to the cor­ner, her red bot­tom swing­ing to and fro. She had come through that with fly­ing colours she thought, and had only jumped up once. She pressed her nose to the cool plas­ter, oh how she wished that cool­ness could touch her throb­bing bot­tom! She ached to rub her well whacked pos­te­ri­or, but did not dare. Now that the inten­si­ty of the tawsing was over, part of her was glad it was over and she could leave soon and splash some water on the siz­zling sur­faces, but part of her did not want the expe­ri­ence to stop. Per­haps if she did rub her bot­tom??? But that would mean the cane, and she did not want that!
At that, Miss Svenson’s mobile rang, and after a short con­ver­sa­tion she said, “I shall have to go and attend to this mat­ter. It will only take five min­utes. Claire, you stay where you are until I get back, Miss Pren­der­gast will make sure you behave yourself.”
The five min­utes seemed like an hour to Claire. All she want­ed was to hear Miss Svenson’s final lec­ture and get back to see how Tony was.
At last the door opened and Miss Sven­son returned.
“What do you have to say to me Claire?” said Miss Svenson.
Claire had had time to com­pose a speech. “That I am real­ly sor­ry for my behav­iour and will do my best to be a per­fect sec­re­tary for you from now on. I promise to keep to the rules of the com­pa­ny cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment scheme, which only allows me to spank, and not on the bare. I will refer all more seri­ous cas­es to Miss Pren­der­gast or your­self. I will also nev­er mis­be­have with an intern or employ­ee again.”
“Indeed you will not, and to make quite sure I am now going to cane you for your near-harass­ment behav­iour!” said Miss Svenson.
Claire’s heart beat faster and she shift­ed from foot to foot. “Oh please, Miss Sven­son, I have been pun­ished a lot, I thought that was for every­thing. Please, Please not the cane!” she cried.
“I am sor­ry, Claire, you must be pun­ished prop­er­ly. Lie down on the pun­ish­ment bench and keep still”
Deject­ed­ly, Claire did as she was told, and soon her lithe form was draped along the pun­ish­ment bench, with the glow­ing red moons of her bot­tom cheeks square­ly in the mid­dle, await­ing the cane.
She did not have long to wait.
“Twen­ty four strokes, Claire. Please count them and thank me each time. Then I will expect a more con­vinc­ing state­ment from you!”
Before Claire could col­lect her­self or reply, the first stroke land­ed right in the mid­dle of the pre­sent­ed bottom.
Claire jumped and squealed at the new sharp pain, like a burst of light or sit­ting on a red-hot bar. Belat­ed­ly she shout­ed “One, one Miss Sven­son, thank you Miss Sven­son”, the sec­ond stoke arriv­ing as she said Sven­son so that the name was spo­ken at a much high­er pitch, fol­lowed by the next ”Thank you Miss Sven­son, TWO, owowowow please Miss Sven­son, I am so sorr———OWowow THREE, Thank you Miss Sven­son, aaaaah­howow FOUR! Thank you Miss Sven­son! Owooooowow FIVE, Thank you Miss Sven­son, aaaaaowowowow SIX Thank you Miss Svenson……………………………………….”

Claire had got her­self under con­trol after the shock of the first two strokes. She even dared a peek at Miss Sven­son, she looked so mag­nif­i­cent, such a bril­liant caner. Despite the painful strokes assail­ing her bot­tom, Claire found time to admire how Miss Sven­son con­cen­trat­ed on the tar­get, bent her knees and brought the cane down in a smooth accel­er­at­ing arc. Claire her­self was not in this league, but maybe with more prac­tice on ….. OH! that real­ly hurt, TWELVE, she had got to twelve, sure­ly she could make it to twen­ty-four, that was half way. She had bet­ter con­cen­trate on rid­ing the pain of each stroke and think­ing of what to say. OW EIGHTEEN, Thank you Miss Sven­son!! NINETEEN, Thank you Miss Sven­son. TWENTY Thank you Miss Sven­son. Claire was not a com­plete stranger to the cane; she had had a six stroke can­ing from Miss Sven­son dur­ing her pro­ba­tion, and twelve strokes once when she made her only major admin­is­tra­tive mis­take and lost the com­pa­ny a con­tract. But this was fur­ther than she had ever gone down the path blazed by the cane in her body and mind, Oh how it hurt, but some­how she did not want it to stop – the sharp spikes of pain were hard to bear, but she was being trans­port­ed to a new lev­el of expe­ri­ence. TWENTY-THREE Thank you Miss Sven­son! TWENTY-FOUR THANK YOU MISS SVENSON!!!
It was over. She had tak­en a deserved pun­ish­ment, and she felt fan­tas­tic, almost euphoric.
“Claire, I am wait­ing!” she heard Miss Sven­son say. “NO, don’t get up – stay right where you are.”
“ I am very sor­ry for mis­be­hav­ing with my intern, Miss Sven­son, it won’t hap­pen again. But it was only nat­ur­al, he is such an attrac­tive young……..”
“Claire, I can’t believe what I am hear­ing! I want no excus­es from you! Miss Pren­der­gast, do you think she has learnt this les­son properly?”
“Well, she has tak­en a lot of pun­ish­ment, Miss Sven­son, but that did not seem very contrite.”
“Indeed, Miss Pren­der­gast, I agree.”
With a nod to Miss Pren­der­gast, Miss Sven­son strode for­ward and picked up the cane again.
“I shall give you twen­ty-four more strokes of the cane, Claire, and when I am fin­ished I expect a prop­er apol­o­gy with no excuses!”
“Oh, please Miss Sven­son, I am real­ly sor­ry I tried to excuse my behav­iour, it was not permissible”
Miss Sven­son flexed her cane and swished it through the air.
“Claire, do not speak again until you can apol­o­gise prop­er­ly. Miss Pren­der­gast, you may need to hold her down for these strokes”
Claire felt Miss Prendergast’s hands press light­ly but firm­ly between her shoul­der blades.
And then she was caned.
And caned.
And caned……………

Spank­ing Sto­ry Com­pe­ti­tion 2013 – ‘The Gold­en Age of Edu­ca­tion,’ by Robert:

“Yes, Porter, Miss Sven­son will see you now. Knock on her study door and await per­mis­sion to enter.”

At first it had mere­ly piqued her inter­est as a quaint perk of Lucy Spencer’s new job as school sec­re­tary, study­ing the pen­sive coun­te­nance of each fresh mis­cre­ant as he or she entered the small office, a brief yet delight­ful pre­lude to the pupil sub­mit­ting to the Head­mistress’ par­tic­u­lar brand of tra­di­tion­al cor­po­ral discipline.

Yet thrice dai­ly for the past sev­en days Lucy had wit­nessed this pre­cur­sor to pun­ish­ment and, increas­ing­ly drawn to the thrilling per­cus­sive cho­rus of each suc­ces­sive thrash­ing that she could hear from the adjoin­ing room, it had by now con­sumed her every wak­ing thought.

In idle moments Lucy could not now help but hark back to that day a decade ago, when her own Form Mis­tress had held her firm­ly over her knee and admin­is­tered what Lucy had then con­sid­ered to be quite a Vic­to­ri­an spank­ing. Yet the vim and vigour with which Miss Sven­son deft­ly applied cor­rec­tion forced Lucy to con­cede her own expe­ri­ence had been a mere pat-a-cake pun­ish­ment by comparison!

Such was the secretary’s new-found fix­a­tion, when the Head­mistress’ duties took her away from her office Lucy would sur­rep­ti­tious­ly slip into Miss Svenson’s study. Once inside, she indulged the urge to trace a fin­ger­tip across the glossy sheen of each pol­ished leather strap and pad­dle hang­ing along the wall. This rich, sen­su­al prompt allowed Lucy to relive the sym­phon­ic lick­ety-split slaps an imple­ment had so recent­ly afford­ed her – Oh Miss Sven­son, if music be the food of love, play on! — when she had won­dered what sweet tor­ment its recip­i­ent endured behind the closed door, as she pre­tend­ed to remain demure and dis­in­ter­est­ed, typ­ing up min­utes at her desk.

One lov­ing­ly hand-craft­ed arte­fact in par­tic­u­lar, a red leather Three Pence Strap, increas­ing­ly appealed to Lucy’s hith­er­to latent dis­ci­pli­nary sen­si­bil­i­ties. The young woman could not help but pon­der over how many upturned pupils’ bot­toms had assumed its deli­cious­ly deep crim­son hue, fol­low­ing a pro­longed thwack­ing from the Head­mistress. An invol­un­tar­i­ly mis­chie­vous smile would illu­mi­nate her pret­ty fea­tures at such times, as Lucy recog­nised the extent to which these deli­cious­ly deca­dent mus­ings had aroused her.

Today, how­ev­er, was of par­tic­u­lar­ly spe­cial inter­est, for the pupil in ques­tion was not only cap­tain of the rug­by team, he was wide­ly con­sid­ered a cer­tain­ty to be the next Head Boy; that was until Rupert Porter had been caught in the girls’ dor­mi­to­ry after lights out!

So great had been his fall from grace, Miss Sven­son felt utter­ly com­pelled to make an extreme exam­ple of the boy. First­ly, in order to com­pound his shame, Porter had been ordered to attend lessons that day attired in the school ‘pun­ish­ment kilt,’ as opposed to reg­u­la­tion school trousers, so all would be acute­ly aware of what was about to befall him. And it was an ill-kept secret that this once too-proud youth, who until now had parad­ed his dev­il­ish­ly hand­some form around the school like some strut­ting cock­er­el, had been forced to sport a pet­ti­coat and match­ing lace-trimmed satin French knick­ers beneath his tar­tan pleats. For as Miss Sven­son had con­clud­ed with a cru­el smirk at the recent staff meet­ing: “If he is that keen to get into girls’ knick­ers then I will duly oblige him!”

As Lucy eyed the crest­fall­en boy now stood before her, she absent-mind­ed­ly licked her upper lip and rel­ished the prospect of what she must sure­ly soon over­hear: an over-the-knee spank­ing and strap­ping, fol­lowed by a delight­ful­ly for­mal and severe 24-stroke thrash­ing with the cane . And the young woman sti­fled a gig­gle at the unmis­take­able rus­tle and swish of frou-frou from beneath Porter’s sway­ing kilt, as he made for Miss Svenson’s study door.

The sec­re­tary attempt­ed to busy her­self, but it was a futile attempt at dis­trac­tion and her heart flut­tered but­ter­fly-like as the recur­ring temp­ta­tion coursed through her veins. In her mind’s eye Lucy could vivid­ly pic­ture Porter’s bare and peachy-pert bot­tom all a‑quiver in expec­ta­tion of what was to ensue. And as the first refresh­ing­ly sharp palm slaps resound­ed beyond the four walls of the Head­mistress’ sanc­tum, Lucy found her­self irre­sistibly drawn to the study door, like a moth to a flame.

Oh, how her heart now gal­loped like a wild horse over the hills, as Lucy recog­nised the sweet intox­i­cat­ing thwack of the Three Pence Strap, its glo­ri­ous­ly whip­py impact hav­ing already reduced Porter to such endear­ing sobs for mer­cy. And the sec­re­tary sensed the slight invol­un­tary undu­la­tion of her hips in time with this metro­nom­ic and mes­mer­ic melody of pun­ish­ment, ema­nat­ing from just beyond the closed door at which she now stood.

Lucy pos­i­tive­ly swooned as she over­heard Porter sob: “Six, thank-you Miss,” as the deli­cious ‘swish’ and ‘thwip’ of the cane seared yet anoth­er livid stripe across the boy’s ten­der seat. But then for a moment all became eeri­ly qui­et. Sure­ly Miss Sven­son had not suc­cumbed to the pupil’s pleas and ceased the pun­ish­ment with but a mere quar­ter of the strokes exe­cut­ed? A frown briefly cloud­ed Lucy’s sweet fea­tures and, in her dis­ap­point­ment, her full red lips pursed into quite an adorable lit­tle pout.

“Miss Spencer! Stop loi­ter­ing in the door­frame and enter my study imme­di­ate­ly.” The unmis­tak­ably clipped and icy tones of Miss Sven­son broached no quar­ter for dis­sent and a rather flus­tered and flushed-faced Lucy duly obeyed, her gaze low­ered to the gleam of her patent leather court shoes as she entered the room.

In an instant, Miss Sven­son flashed her steely glare upon the for­lorn Porter, sim­i­lar­ly head-bowed as she addressed him: “You, boy, are to return to your class, but I would sug­gest you con­sid­er this inter­rup­tion a mere inter­lude. You will spend a fur­ther day attired in your kilt­ed uni­form, before report­ing to me at 3pm sharp tomor­row after­noon, so we may draw this mat­ter to a more sat­is­fac­to­ry con­clu­sion. Close the door behind you.”

The clear dis­plea­sure indeli­bly etched across the irked Head­mistress’ fea­tures froze the errant sec­re­tary where she stood, now all too acute­ly aware that her fool­ish­ness had placed her in quite a predica­ment: the posi­tion of every naughty pupil who had ever been sum­moned to Miss Svenson’s study!

“Miss Spencer, whilst I appre­ci­ate you are a new­com­er to this estab­lish­ment, it can­not have escaped your notice that as Head­mistress, I pre­fer to run this school in accor­dance with prin­ci­ples from the Gold­en Age of Edu­ca­tion, now so sad­ly frowned upon else­where in the mod­ern sys­tem,”  explained Miss Sven­son. “I firm­ly believe eti­quette and pro­to­col are vital ele­ments under­pin­ning all sit­u­a­tions of any val­ue, and nev­er more so than when the occa­sion aris­es for me to admin­is­ter cor­po­ral punishment.

“By lurk­ing in my door­way and eaves-drop­ping on the sacred rit­u­als of a whip­ping, you have com­plete­ly under­mined the very set­ting I have strived to cre­ate,” con­tin­ued the Head­mistress , “and the con­se­quences of your rude inter­rup­tion are that Porter has been denied the oppor­tu­ni­ty to achieve the state of atone­ment he craves. That in itself is unfor­giv­ably self­ish of you, Miss Spencer.”

The young woman flinched as she received her scold­ing, for she instinc­tive­ly recog­nised the irrev­o­ca­ble truth of Miss Svenson’s sting­ing words. And this ‘vocal spank­ing’ had yet to run its course. “Fur­ther­more, Miss Spencer, and per­haps even more seri­ous­ly, you have denied me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­duct my duties as Head­mistress in the man­ner I see fit and I believe mere words them­selves are insuf­fi­cient to con­vey the sever­i­ty of this offence.”

With that, Miss Sven­son rose from her seat and sashayed with such allur­ing and effort­less fem­i­nine ele­gance to the line of leather imple­ments hang­ing silent­ly in atten­dance along the far wall. And with the swift con­fi­dence of the expert, she made her imme­di­ate selec­tion, return­ing to her ebony leather Empire chair with Three Pence Strap in hand.

As she reclined once more with such regal poise, a shaft of sum­mer sun­light added a gold­en, haloed glow to Miss Svenson’s lus­cious blonde locks. And in that moment it appeared to Lucy that the Head­mistress’ unde­ni­able author­i­ty was such that it must have been ordained by some deity.

“I assume, hav­ing reached the age of 21, you now con­sid­er your­self far too mature to receive the atten­tions of this fine rel­ic from the afore­men­tioned Gold­en Age,’ taunt­ed Miss Sven­son. “But I can assure you, Miss Spencer, if you act like a naughty lit­tle spank-girl at this estab­lish­ment, then that is pre­cise­ly how you will be treat­ed.” And with a crooked index fin­ger, she beck­oned the young woman towards her. It was all Lucy could do but meek­ly com­ply. “Miss Spencer, you may now assume the position.”

Gid­dy with the real­i­sa­tion of what was to occur, Lucy’s move­ments were by now as un-coor­di­nat­ed as her ran­dom thoughts, but she some­how man­aged to com­pose her­self suf­fi­cient­ly to stand at the Head­mistress’ side and bend from her trim waist until her palms touched the floor. And as she set­tled her own shape­ly form into Miss Svenson’s sump­tu­ous lap, the young woman rel­ished this deli­cious­ly inti­mate moment.

The Head­mistress swift­ly whipped up her secretary’s light, flighty skirt and smiled a silent appre­ci­a­tion of the most charm­ing ‘tar­get area’ that greet­ed her, so ele­gant­ly framed by the young lady’s stock­ing tops and sus­pender belt. Miss Sven­son afford­ed her­self the plea­sure of allow­ing her palm to glide briefly across this most aes­thet­i­cal­ly appeal­ing behind, with a touch as gen­tle as a lover’s caress, as Lucy’s beat­ing heart frol­icked lamb-like in trep­i­da­tion – and curi­ous antic­i­pa­tion – of what she was about to receive.

In the instant Lucy allowed her mus­cles to momen­tar­i­ly relax, Miss Sven­son com­menced the pun­ish­ment with con­sid­er­able gus­to and cus­tom­ary aplomb, spank­ing each ripe sphere alter­nate­ly with a rapid tat­too of sharp sting­ing slaps. The invig­o­rat­ing sen­sa­tion prompt­ed Lucy’s rouged lips to form a per­fect cir­cle, as time and again on impact she emit­ted and almost inaudi­ble “Oh!” And much to Miss Svenson’s plea­sure, a glo­ri­ous pink tinge to rival any sun­set had already been applied to the lus­cious but­tocks at her mercy.

The sec­re­tary man­aged to sum­mon suf­fi­cient resolve to endure her hand-spank­ing in a man­ner her Head­mistress found most impres­sive. Although as Miss Sven­son reached for the strap, she knew such resolve was about to be sore­ly test­ed in every respect!

‘Thwip!’ ‘Thwap!’ ‘Thwip!’ ‘Thwap!’ – Oh, how Lucy now moaned with gay aban­don, as the hefty strap lashed its scorch­ing tor­ment across her already ten­der seat, each stroke deliv­ered with such sat­is­fy­ing pre­ci­sion by Miss Sven­son, across the cen­tral ‘sweet spot.’ And as the thrash­ing inten­si­fied, the young woman achieved an almost dream­like state, where­by she could no longer tell where her own body end­ed and that of Miss Svenson’s began: it was as if spanker and span­kee had tru­ly become as one, until the heav­en­ly pro­ceed­ings reached a nat­ur­al ces­sa­tion, a crescen­do of whip­ping where both woman were breath­less and all pas­sion for pun­ish­ment spent.

The melod­ic lilt with which Miss Sven­son now addressed Lucy, as she stood strug­gling to regain her com­po­sure, was received as grate­ful­ly as a sooth­ing balm:  “I am extreme­ly proud of you, Miss Spencer, you endured your pun­ish­ment with great for­ti­tude and I now believe you pos­sess all the attrib­ut­es nec­es­sary to become a high­ly-val­ued mem­ber of my staff.”

With that, Miss Sven­son offered to be kissed the immac­u­late­ly-man­i­cured hand that had so fresh­ly whipped the young sec­re­tary and as Lucy pressed her ruby lips to the flesh, every fibre of her being was flood­ed with ado­ra­tion for the indomitable Miss Svenson.

Miss Sven­son’s Admin Assis­tant Atti­tude Adjustment
By David 

It was ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing and Miss Sven­son sat at her desk, a hot cup of cof­fee to hand and her jour­nal plan­ner for the week on her desk.
Miss Sven­son had a busy week ahead of her, with plen­ty of naughty boys and girls to keep in check with plen­ty of bot­toms to spank and an accu­rate jour­nal was crit­i­cal to the smooth run­ning of her busi­ness. She took a sip of the cof­fee and opened the cov­er, then flick­ing the pages until she came to the day in hand.
The day in hand was as bare as the bot­toms Miss Sven­son was accus­tomed to deal­ing with. Purs­ing her lips, Miss Sven­son flicked through the remain­ing days of the week and saw that they too had no appoint­ments listed.
She pressed the inter­com but­ton and said “Jane, be so good as to come in here right away”.
The door to Miss Sven­son’s office opened and her sec­re­tary Jane entered, a young rather ditzy thing, a lit­tle plump but with a pleas­ant man­ner. Her atten­tion to detail was a lit­tle lack­ing however.
“My jour­nal, said Miss Sven­son “is com­plete­ly emp­ty, you were sup­posed to have got me up to date for the com­ing week and now i have no idea who i am see­ing today, let alone tomor­row. What is the explanation?”

“Well i was busy rear­rang­ing the fur­ni­ture on Fri­day for you and ran out of time, i had made arrange­ments and had to leave a lit­tle ear­ly. It’s not the end of the world; I’ve got the appoint­ments on some scraps of paper. No need to fly off the han­dle for God’s sake.”

“Jane’, said Miss Sven­son stern­ly, “Your incom­pe­tence is one mat­ter, your imper­ti­nence, quite anoth­er and both shall be dealt with this morning”
Miss Sven­son strode to her cup­board, opened the door and perused the con­tents for a minute before select­ing some choice items. She returned and laid the imple­ments on the table in front of the sec­re­tary. A slip­per, a ruler, a pad­dle, a birch, a cane and a tawse.
“And of course’ said Miss Sven­son, “not for­get­ting imple­ment of choice, my hand”
Jane was vis­i­bly uncom­fort­able “Please Miss Sven­son, I’m so sor­ry I was rude, please just dock my pay and it won’t hap­pen again, I’ll stay late tonight to get that jour­nal up to date.”
“A tem­po­rary reduc­tion in wages will not suf­fice” opined Miss Sven­son “but a tem­po­rary inabil­i­ty to sit down with­out think­ing on your behav­iour and con­duct will fit the bill. You are for­tu­nate Miss Pren­der­gast is not vis­it­ing today, or you would be dwelling on your con­duct for some time!”
Miss Sven­son strode over to her desk and pulled the chair back some dis­tance before sit­ting her­self down.
“Come over here Jane”, Miss Sven­son said in a mea­sured tone “And stand by me.”
Jane stepped gin­ger­ly over to the desk; she had heard enough cry­ing and wail­ing from her this office to know that her boss was mas­ter­ful with all these imple­ments. Now she would get to feel, rather than hear exact­ly how masterful.
“Now Girl, remove your skirt now and bend over my lap”

Jane slow­ly removed her skirt, fold­ing it and putting it on the desk before she lay across Miss Sven­son’s lap
“I am going to start as always, with my hand. This serves many pur­pos­es; it warms up both your bot­tom and my hand and pre­pares both your mind and your bot­tom for the firmer and harsh­er pun­ish­ments that will fol­low with my implements”
“When i ask you to count a stroke, you will say sim­ply the num­ber of strokes received fol­lowed by ‘Thank you Miss’. Fail­ure to count cor­rect­ly and fail­ure to remem­ber to address me prop­er­ly will see the counter reset to zero. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I mean Yes Miss Sven­son” said the hap­less Jane.
“Very well, we begin” and with that Miss Sven­son rhyth­mi­cal­ly start­ed swat­ting Jane’s but­tocks with her hand, left and right, across the entire­ty of both buttocks.
Jane wrig­gled but made no sound.
“Good girl, said Miss Sven­son, “That was thir­ty by hand, I shall now deliv­er a fur­ther thir­ty by hand, but first stand up and pull your knick­ers down to your knees”

Jane did as she was bid and was then pulled back gen­tly across the lap.
Miss Sven­son com­menced the sec­ond set of thir­ty, a lit­tle firmer now and with the mea­gre pro­tec­tion of the knick­ers gone, Jane start­ed to moan and cry a lit­tle as each stroke of the hand connected.
“…and thir­ty” said Miss Sven­son. “Now go and stand in the cor­ner. Face away from me, with your hands on your head and do not move until i tell you to.”

With the knick­ers restrict­ing her stride, Jane wad­dled over to the cor­ner that Miss Sven­son had indi­cat­ed and put her hands on her head as she had been told.
After a minute, Miss Sven­son moved up behind her and pulled the knick­ers done to her ankles, mak­ing her step out of them.
“Come back to my lap now” and with trep­i­da­tion, Jane returned to the position.
“I shall now give you a slip­per­ing; i pre­fer this tra­di­tion­al gym plim­soll, lots of flex but also some weight to it”. 

“I shall give you twen­ty swats, no, twen­ty on each but­tock I think” and with­out fur­ther ado she start­ed the next lay­er of punishment.
The hand spank­ing on her bare but­tocks had been one thing, but this took things up a notch, the inten­si­ty of each swat build­ing up until Jane thought she could take it now more.
But as fierce as the sting­ing was, the forty swats soon end­ed and the throb­bing very, very slow­ly start­ed to recede.
“Back to the cor­ner with you for the moment” and Jane did as she was instructed.
After some min­utes in this rather embar­rass­ing posi­tion, Miss Sven­son coughed “Ahem.”

“Now” mut­tered Miss Sven­son, “I want you to go over to the desk, bend­ing over and plac­ing your hands square on the top of the desk.”
Jane bent over as com­mand­ed, the imple­ments Miss Sven­son had placed on the table now right in front of her and soon, worse, to be behind her.…
The Pad­dle was select­ed and Miss Sven­son thwacked it against her hand. “I will give you twen­ty strokes with this pad­dle and as direct­ed before, I wish you to count each one for me.
“Yes Miss Sven­son”, Thwack! “One, Thank You Miss” The pad­dle was wield­ed again and again, each one mak­ing Jane gasp a lit­tle more than the last.
“Fif­teen, thank you Miss.”
The strokes ceased. “My dear, you have let the moment get away from you, that was the six­teenth stroke of the pad­dle, I am afraid we must start once again”
Jane let out a wail and start­ed all over again, Thwack! “One, Thank You Miss” Thwack! “Two, thank you Miss…” before too long, mer­ci­ful­ly she found her­self say­ing “Twen­ty, Thank You Miss”

“Back to the cor­ner with you as before” she was told.
Her bot­tom felt as if it was on fire now, she did not need to be able to see it to know it must be a very dark red now.
“Time is against me this morn­ing” said Miss Sven­son wist­ful­ly, “Soon I must pun­ish oth­ers and I cer­tain­ly don’t wish to over exert myself. I shall save the delights of the birch and tawse for anoth­er les­son per­haps. But before we go, it would be remiss of me not to give you some strokes of the cane. Stand in the mid­dle of the room, bend over and clutch your ankles”
Jane once again did as she was told, as she took hold of her ankles she felt so very exposed and prayed for this to be over soon. She would nev­er make a mis­take with her admin again, she was sure.
Miss Sven­son select­ed a medi­um width cane and swished it around for dra­mat­ic effect, not­ing the flinch­es from her secretary.
“I shall give you six strokes, please count as before.”

“Yes Miss Sven­son”, Thwack! “One, Thank You Miss” she gasped, the pad­dle had lit up her whole bot­tom, but the cane was a total­ly dif­fer­ent sen­sa­tion, sharp and focused. 

Thwack! “Two, Thank You Miss” 

Thwack! “Three, Thank You Miss” 

Thwack! “Four, Thank You Miss” 

Thwack! “Five, Thank You Miss” 

Thwack! “Six, Thank You Miss”
Jane let out a sob, her behind ablaze now and all because she had left work ear­ly with­out doing what Miss Sven­son paid her for.
She was direct­ed into the cor­ner again to con­tem­plate her rude­ness and slop­py work.

Miss Sven­son glanced at the clock, ten min­utes to nine and the prob­a­ble arrival of her first vis­i­tor of the day, She looked in the cor­ner at the crim­son back­side before her, reflect­ing in a job well done, a bot­tom well spanked and a sec­re­tary who might be relied upon to be more effi­cient in future. 

Well, unless she let her stan­dards slip deliberately…

Fenel­la’s Caning
by James
Elsa Sven­son, or Elsie Rod­well as she was known to her fam­i­ly, the queen of cul­ture jour­nal­ists was retir­ing. Her col­umn, “A Night on the Town with Elsa Sven­son”, appeared each week in The Cap­i­tal Review, and was packed full of news and gos­sip about the Lon­don cul­ture scene; no book launch or open­ing night par­ty had been com­plete with­out Elsa, glass of red wine in one hand and cig­a­rette in the oth­er, pas­sion­ate­ly debat­ing what­ev­er the cur­rent hot top­ic was. Now Elsa was hand­ing over to Fenel­la Fortes­cue-Smyth, the daugh­ter of The Review’s own­er, Lady Fortes­cue-Smyth. Most peo­ple thought Fenel­la had got the job through nepo­tism but Elsa, as always, had a con­trary view. Elsa had a high opin­ion of Fenel­la despite, or maybe because of, a rocky start to their work­ing relationship.

Of course there had been par­ties and din­ners to cel­e­brate Elsa’s retire­ment, but she end­ed her last work­ing day by tak­ing close col­leagues for a cou­ple of drinks at their friend­ly, albeit scruffy, office local. After­wards she left the pub and went back to the desert­ed office to take down the pic­tures and memen­to’s that dec­o­rat­ed her office (she had cleared her draw­ers and fil­ing cab­i­net days ago). Sit­ting in her office chair for the last time, she put her feet up on the desk and thought back over the years. She mused over how seem­ing­ly chance events had dri­ven the direc­tion of her life. 

Young Elsie Black­stock, the daugh­ter of a labour­er from Sev­en Sis­ters, was bright and deter­mined; unusu­al­ly for those days, she had gone to uni­ver­si­ty and then came back to Sev­en Sis­ters to teach Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, rapid­ly becom­ing head­mistress of the boys’ sec­ondary school. She had cared for her boys, pushed them to achieve their poten­tial, and did­n’t tol­er­ate bad behav­iour. There was a cane in the head­mistress’s study and it was­n’t there for dec­o­ra­tion. Her career had been her life and love had come late; but she had been bowled over when love came to her. Miss Black­stock became Mrs Rod­well, the wife of a intel­li­gent artis­tic young solic­i­tor. When she left her post as Head­mistress, with some sad­ness, the school gave her an affec­tion­ate send-off. Some wag in the Old Boys Club even had an engraved sil­ver band fit­ted on her cane and she was pre­sent­ed with it along with more seri­ous farewell gifts. The new­ly-weds set up home in Crys­tal Palace.

Then came the sad and tough years. Her hus­band of six months became ill and Elsie cared for him until he died. Now with­out a hus­band or an income, she was forced to take any job and became the sec­re­tary to the Penge mag­is­trate’s court cor­rec­tion depart­ment over­see­ing the admin­is­tra­tive paper­work for the cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment of con­vict­ed offend­ers. One day the duty police offi­cer didn’t turn up to give a pun­ish­ment. Elsie stepped in; she had not lost her touch with a cane but the for­get­ful duty offi­cer had lost his job!

Fill­ing in forms and thrash­ing pet­ty crim­i­nals was not how Elsie had fore­seen her life to be, but she did­n’t com­plain and just got on with it. She sus­tained her inter­est in the Arts by the occa­sion­al evening at West End the­atres and some­times a vis­it to the Nation­al Gallery when she had a day off. It was on one of these vis­its to the gallery that she made the acquain­tance of Lady Fortes­cue-Smyth. Elsie was gaz­ing at The Annun­ci­a­tion by Fra Fil­ip­po Lip­pi, she loved the seri­ous­ness and beau­ty of the Archangel and of the young Mary who was imme­di­ate­ly ready to sub­mit to the will of God, com­bined with the almost friv­o­lous way in which God responds to Mary’s trust­ing accep­tance by hurl­ing a dove towards her wait­ing womb from a hand that is just vis­i­ble at the top of the can­vas. Lady Fortes­cue-Smyth, who Elsie had only seen at a dis­tance sit­ting on the mag­is­trates bench and had nev­er spo­ken to, clapped Elsie on the back, “It’s Mrs Rod­well isn’t it? Now who would have thought the mar­tinet of Penge Penal Insti­tute spends her after­noons off in art gal­leries?” she laughed with an easy friend­li­ness in her voice “Come and have a pot of tea with me”. They became friends and that is how Elsie Rod­well became “Elsa Sven­son”: Lady Fortes­cue-Smyth asked Elsie to write occa­sion­al cul­ture arti­cles for The Cap­i­tal Review and the col­umn just took off of its own accord like a seed grow­ing in fer­tile ground.

When Elsa’s feet were well and tru­ely under the table, some years after she stopped work­ing at the mag­is­trates’ court, she was giv­en her own office at The Cap­i­tal Review’s build­ing which she dec­o­rat­ed with things that were spe­cial to her: pho­tographs of Har­ry Rod­well, her fam­i­ly and of her old school. Some­how the cane crept into the office and hung from the pic­ture rail just behind the door. It raised a few laughs among her colleagues.

Elsa was estab­lished and in her prime as a jour­nal­ist when Lady Fortes­cue-Smyth asked Elsa if she would take her daugh­ter, Fenel­la, under her wing as an intern cum sec­re­tary. The girls was bright but lazy and, if truth be told, a lit­tle spoilt by the atten­tion of being a news­pa­per magnate’s daugh­ter. Elsa took her task seri­ous­ly: she gave Fenel­la sim­ple tasks and the girl made a mess of them; she gave the girl plum assign­ments and told her exact­ly what to do and she turned in slop­py copy. Elsa, the for­mer head­mistress, soon iden­ti­fied that the prob­lem was not a lack of abil­i­ty but sim­ply that Fenel­la was used to hav­ing her mess­es cleared up by some­body else.

Elsa stopped giv­ing Fenel­la jobs that involved writ­ing or think­ing and treat­ed her as a not too bright sec­re­tary. That ran­kled Fenel­la and the rela­tion­ship between the two dete­ri­o­rat­ed (caus­ing Elsa at least some dis­com­fort because this was the daugh­ter of her employ­er, patron and friend). Mat­ters came to a head one evening when Fenel­la, who had been giv­en Elsa’s review of a play at the Old Vic to type up, announced that she had lost the orig­i­nal draft and so had not typed it up.

Elsa had advised, reproached and com­plained to Fenel­la many times before. This time she told her exact­ly what she thought of her behav­ior and, for the first time, told her how it sick­ened her to see some­body so bright and priv­i­leged squan­der their tal­ent and that the bright boys at her old school would give their right arms for Fenella’s oppor­tu­ni­ties. Some­how Elsa became an head­mistress again; she took the cane down from the pic­ture rail, grabbed Fenel­la by the col­lar of her jack­et, bent her over the desk and pulled down her knick­ers. By that time the office was emp­ty and nobo­by heard the six swish­es, cracks and sharp gasps of pain that were fol­lowed by tears. When the tears sub­sided there was an awk­ward silence. Elsa was think­ing “What on earth came over me?”. The girl broke the silence by mum­bling that she was sor­ry and left. 

The next morn­ing Elsa came in to the office with a heavy heart, she had the spent the night reproach­ing her­self for that flash of tem­per: she had no right, she was not the girl’s moth­er. She felt that there could no longer be a place for her at The Cap­i­tal Review ‑not the end of the world, but she felt a bond with the place. Elsa was an habit­u­al ear­ly ris­er and always first into the office. Not today, she was sur­prised to hear some­body else mov­ing about. Fenel­la had “found” the miss­ing draft and come in very ear­ly to type it up. She came into Elsa’s office and said “Good morn­ing Elsa” and hand­ed over the copy and, apart for apol­o­giz­ing for the delay, behaved as if noth­ing unto­ward had hap­pened the evening before. Elsa wait­ed all day a vis­it from Lady Fortes­cue-Smyth to dis­miss her. When Lady Fortes­cue-Smyth did pop her head around the door, it was to dis­cuss a forth­com­ing fea­ture arti­cle. Elsa tried to inter­rupt her flow to talk about what had hap­pened the pre­vi­ous evening, but failed.

In the fol­low­ing weeks Fenel­la Fortes­cue-Smyth was a changed girl. She became a respon­si­ble sec­re­tary and Elsa began to entrust her with lit­tle writ­ing jobs again; Fenel­la was a hun­gry pupil devour­ing the knowl­edge and skill of her teacher. After a few months she left the intern­ship to get a job as a jour­nal­ist on anoth­er paper out­side the fam­i­ly empire. She was away from The Cap­i­tal Review for some five years; Elsa watched her mature as a writer. In fact it was Elsa who sug­gest­ed Fenel­la take over her col­umn when retire­ment beckoned.

The qui­et few min­utes sit­ting in her office chair had been enough. Elsa was just about to get up and her coat when she sensed some­body behind her. She smelt per­fume and two hands gen­tly cov­ered her eyes and she heard Fenella’s laugh­ter and felt a kiss on her hair. Fenel­la put a bot­tle of good qual­i­ty Bor­deaux on the desk, “Thought you might enjoy this when you get home” and looked up at the pic­ture rail behind the door, she took the cane down and put it on the desk with a shy smile “Thank you for every­thing you did for me”.