Three Accounts
(Edited by Verity)
From Miss Svenson
The café at The Victoria and Albert Museum a few weeks ago – that’s where she found us. We were sitting out by the water feature, Miss Prendergast and I, in the vast courtyard. Being a balmy March the early afternoon sun split our table diagonally across. This beautiful inner core is a thoroughly convenient space for our weekly catch-up; for me because the rear staircase of The V & A takes one right into The National Art Library – that day I’d been gathering more information on Goya’s dark period (well, even darker than usual period) for my dissertation, I think – and for Miss Prendergast because this corner of London is cluttered with the independent boutiques and bookshops she adores.
Miss Prendergast was telling me in hushed tones – not that hushed; it’s thrilling sometimes to feel we may be overheard – about how she was longing to deal with a trainee manager at her branch of Barclays: “Go to Interview Room Three, make sure the blinds are closed, remove your jacket, your shoes, your trousers and pants and wait for me there! And when I’m ready I’m going to bend you over and give you such a smacked bottom that you’ll …“
We’d been only semi-aware of the vaguely familiar girl at the next table, but on the words “smacked bottom” her papers went flying in all directions. Fanned densely written sides of A4. She blames the wind, freak and instantaneous, but Miss Prendergast is adamant that all mishap would have been avoided had her attention been on her own table rather than ours. She was almost lifting her own bottom off the seat to catch our words apparently. A volley of urgent squeaks and her desperate lunges between the tables prompted a few of us to join her in the chase. I know how I’d feel if my hours of hard work were escaping into the skies above South Kensington. All notes gathered together, perhaps our maternal instincts took over. Well, the sweetly round-faced lamb was standing there, her lower lip trembling, on the verge. Miss Prendergast hastened off to get her a restorative white wine, and a glass each for us. At my insistence the girl decamped to our table, so I helped her pack her two lumpy cloth bags, one proclaiming in colourful letters I’ve got ART. It turned out I did recognise her. She attends one of the same classes I do, Expressionist to Abstract, and also finds the lecturer a complete mystery. As easy to follow, I suggested, as the directions for flat-pack furniture – and I’m Scandanavian! She seemed to like that one, and her giggles were infectious.
Miss Prendergast, apologising for the long queue, arrived as the young lady, Verity, and I were chuckling over one of my DIY disasters. Well, not so young, though – thirty-one. Single, staying with a friend in Finchley, missing her horse in Scotland, and holding a tentative job offer from one of the East End galleries should she get a First. The chatter flowed cheerfully between us and ate up the time.
Just as Miss Prendergast finished the last of the olives and I was contemplating another hour or two in the Library, Verity gathered her courage. Her voice dipped and faltered, giving away her attempt to sound casual: “I’m not being nosey but was that, er, a story? Or for real? About” (a cracked cough) “the smacked bottom? You know, smacking that man’s bottom?”
From Miss Prendergast
It was my idea to ask her to sign an agreement. Hardly a legal document, and we wouldn’t want it to be, but it made the process more real. Drew it out delectably: I, Verity Brooker, rescind complete responsibility to Miss Svenson and Miss Prendergast, for a full period of three hours, on Saturday 5th May, to implement any correctional measures over my person as they see fit. And so on.
Teaming up with Elsa Svenson has opened my eyes, in so many ways. Not only is she fast becoming one of my closest friends but our adventures together leave me eager. Eager for more of something I had no idea was missing. I was shy at first, a touch embarrassed to be in the room while she was dealing with a male visitor. One of her most regular guests is a scruffy oaf named Pipkin – hmmm – who seems to be able to absorb spanking and tawsing of industrial quantities. Just before his third visit within the space of a month Elsa had hinted that she’d be mightily grateful if I could take over for a little while, just with the hand-spanking, to let her action hand recover. I was unsure; would I hurt Pipkin, in the wrong way, or, worse, not hurt him? Would he see straight through me? Miss Svenson came straight back with the assertion that I wouldn’t know until I tried and that the object of the game wasn’t to win a BAFTA. But after the first dozen or so uncertain slaps, once I was into my stride, the zone as Elsa calls it, I felt like a natural. And I didn’t want to give him back, let him off my lap. Miss Svenson reckoned she’d never seen the naughty toad squirm as much, to the extent that at one point she’d had to step to the side of the chair and clamp his slender legs firmly between hers.
I’d asked Elsa a couple of times whether any girls numbered among her clients. No, well, rarely. So I wasn’t holding my breath – until Verity landed in our laps. Over our laps.
The personable, unlucky-in-love and well-rounded Verity. Not quite overweight but at just five foot four her generous poundage can’t help but make for a full bosom and a pendulous bottom. The kind of bottom that surprises every time she manages to coax and squeeze it in to her tight frayed jeans. And almost as enticing, a lightly freckled face and fair hair that fights, against its boss’s wishes, to form a fringe. There’s definitely something about Verity; cuteness, yes, but enthusiasm too. Not pushy — enough modesty — but a quietly determined grabber of life.
The first couple of chats we had, the three of us, after the time her essay notes had taken flight felt real cat and mouse stuff. Elsa was convinced that this young lady would be begging at some point to know more, and begging again after that to have her bottom smacked. I wasn’t so sure but she made me promise not to raise the topic. Verity must come to us, cross the line on her own. And, you’ve guessed; Miss Svenson one, Miss Prendergast nil. After wandering through all sorts of topics, even taking in hottest boybands (I still say The Bay City Rollers though I was shouted down), Verity had nowhere else to hide. Silence. Fumbling. Looking towards each of us in turn. Then,
“So – oh, I know what I was going to ask you. You know you said that, er, what was it? . . that you’d actually spanked people? . . you weren’t meaning as a sort of fantasy, in their heads? Well, your heads? But actually for real?”
“Y‑e-ssss?” Elsa matched the drawn-out word with a quizzical twinkle in her eye.
“Um, well, what’s it like then?”
“How do you mean?”, feigning slight surprise.
“No, no, sorry, not to do it I mean . . I mean, well, to be spanked?”
I relished a mistress at the height of her craft.
“Verity … are you trying to tell me that you have never, in your life, had your bottom smacked?”
“Sorry. No! Well, yes . . No – nearly. But not, no. Not smacked.”
Professional interviewers will tell you that with the right questioning you can lead a candidate anywhere, tap the deepest streams of honesty. With nervous giggles and a couple of false starts Verity released a trickle of information and ideas. Her interest in spanking wasn’t a new thing to her. Soon a river, then a flood. As with many people perhaps it had been with her all her life. Certainly from the age of seven when the ‘nearly’ had happened.
She’d been cheeky to her teacher, Miss Terry – that was very credible – and had been asked to wait behind while the rest of the class went out to play. By chance another teacher, a Mrs Jones, had walked in to collect some books. The dialogue between the two teachers sounded more in keeping with a couple of pantomime dames; vamping it up, asking each other repeatedly if there was any way on earth one might cure pupils of cheek.
“I know!” exclaimed Miss Terry, who was perched on the front rim of her desk.
Without warning her two strong but gentle hands had connected with Verity’s waist, scooped her bodily into the air and deposited her over the broad lap waiting for her. And by all accounts Miss Terry’s lap was broad.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking Mrs Jones?”
“I do believe I am Miss Terry. But do carry on, please, don’t let me stop your train of thought.”
“Well, I’m thinking to myself that this is exactly the sort of girl that might benefit from a smacked bottom.”
“That’s uncanny. Just what I was thinking Miss Terry!”
But to Verity’s, now aching, regret she never found out whether or not Miss Terry intended to tie action to her words. Shock and a cocktail of other emotions had overwhelmed. Tears coursed her cheeks unchecked and there was an urgent knotting sensation in her stomach. To raise her bottom, Miss Terry’s warm hand had slipped effortlessly under Verity’s tummy, cupping and lifting at the same time. Terrified butterflies straining inside her. Tumbling around each other. Then, involuntarily, as she gave in, fierce embarrassment. Much more shameful than the tears at the tips of her nose and chin. She really had wet herself.
She was immediately returned to ground level, consoled and led to the PE store by Mrs Jones to be left with some fresh pants – horrible baggy ones –
and deeply confused pangs for what might have been.
And here we are, Verity and I, on a Saturday morning, steaming mugs of coffee in our hands, and the signed agreement to one side, waiting for Miss Svenson to enter.
From Verity
OMG, this is unreal. I know I’m here, bodily, in Miss Svenson’s study, but my mind is struggling with the idea. My legs carried me on to the 8.33 at London Bridge and then walked me round and round Penge so that I wasn’t early. So my body is responsible for this situation is it?
Miss Prendergast seems to understand why I’m finding small talk uncharacteristically difficult and is doing her best to relax me with her friendly questioning. My eyes are moving alternately between her and the brass door handle, expecting it to turn. Now. No, perhaps now.
I’ve just missed it because the door has opened and closed and Miss Svenson is in the room with us. She’s smiling.
“Verity! Good morning. How lovely – you’re wearing what we suggested. I’m pleased.”
If you’re wondering, a pale pink blouse, a pleated skirt (Miss Svenson had said black or navy, but charcoal is all I have in a fuller style), white socks – yuck! – and flat-soled dark shoes. My hair’s in two bunches which Miss Prendergast helped me with when I arrived. I was impressed she could do it without taking off her black gloves.
“Right. Maybe you’d be kind enough to fetch my chair for me, and place it in
front of the bureau, just here.”
Miss Svenson, just to the side of her elegant kidney-shaped desk, is pointing to the centre of the carpet. My body – my body again – is leaping to attention, swinging my chair round, back legs first, towards the middle of the room. Miss Prendergast’s hand is checking my arm, though, causing the chair to lurch.
“No Verity. Miss Svenson specifically said her chair. That’s your chair. Dear oh dear.”
This seems to prompt a flicker of amusement between the two friends. I’m apologising and slowing down. Now carefully edging round. A couple of steadying breaths. Then guiding the chair, gingerly, to avoid the radiator and the obstacles, till it comes to rest on the precise spot.
“Thank you, much better.”
Seated, Miss Svenson’s eyeline is below mine. I’m being moved closer, with a fingertip pressure on my right wrist. We bump lightly as I reach her but this is obviously where she wants me, standing, my thigh resting imperceptibly against hers. Through the tautness of her skirt it declares itself a warm but unyielding thigh.
“Now, Verity, so that there are no surprises I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen to you today.”
Her soft voice has a sing-song quality.
“When I’m ready – and only when I’m ready – I’m going to put you across my knee. Here.”
With the back of her hand, a discrete glide, she’s indicating her tidy lap. Wowee – corporal punishment for dummies.
“And then I’m going to spank you, with my hand. And I’m going to keep spanking you. For as long as I feel like it. And I’m in the mood for it to be long, oh yes! . . This is what we call the warming-up. Because then I shall ask Miss Prendergast to undress you – take away the skirt and pull down the underwear. And I shall smack your bare bottom. Really smack it.”
There’s a teasing breeze, possibly from the direction of the window, on the back of my leg. A feather coolness, now behind my upper thigh, now playing over the surface of my bottom. But this breeze has fingers because I can feel them solicitously adjusting the line the elastic of my panties forms at one leg, just below my cheek. Her touch is the lightest, but utterly controlling.
“We’ll give you plenty of little breaks – don’t you worry. Time to recover yourself.”
I’m looking into her face for a sign but have to turn away. Her words bubble on, hypnotically, and I’m concentrating on the beautiful line of pearls around her neck. Miss Prendergast is leaning forward in her seat, as though she wants to miss nothing. Her expression is focused.
My wrist is being taken, and is leading me forward again. This time the trajectory is placing my nose inches from the carpet. I feel my feet bracing, the other side of Miss Svenson and it dawns on me that my bottom, angled, is the highest point of me. Alone and vulnerable in the air.
The smacks are measured, part of a pattern, but each one has its own character almost. Occasionally one doesn’t connect so squarely and is more of a thud or a slip, a wasted shot. Most are anything but wasted, though, and every ten smacks or so one really penetrates my defences and makes me gasp with its intensity. They progress, three on one cheek, three on the other. Sets of thirty – counting helps me bear them a bit – interspersed with sharp angry volleys, unpredictable, a dozen or so wallops delivered hard and fast to any point of my bottom that gets in the way as I squirm to avoid them.
Then more sets, and more, carry me on.
I’m not sure I can take much more. My knickers, stretched to breaking, connect my knees at ungainly angles – like a ligature, in powder blue. One shoe has come off and my white-socked foot is making jerky curls in the air to the regular thwack of the leather-soled slipper. My poor bottom. It’s a fleshy pressure pad, drawing the heat relentlessly in to a tight core. Looks-wise – I’ve been allowed to study it when Miss Prendergast has taken me over to the mirror – it’s a cushion-shaped patchwork of graded reds and pinks. They spread all over and round to the sides.
The pain is many-layered I’m realising. The immediate bursts soon dissipate but they stoke a fire below which pulsates; at the deepest level it has a compulsive edge. And in between, other heats, some nagging, some urgent.
And the flurry is stopping. Miss Svenson’s hands are massaging again, over the harder areas of skin. Lightly at first and then insistently, preparing me for yet more perhaps.
“She’s doing ever so well, Miss Svenson, don’t you think?”
“She certainly is Miss Prendergast. Wriggles a bit – and sounds a bit like a tennis player– but, yes, doing very well.”
“Do you think we should try her with what we do to the big boys sometimes? I’ll support her if you like … ”
I’m being helped up by Miss Prendergast and turned to face the bookshelves. The silence itself is cooling before I hear Miss Svenson quietly opening a cupboard the other side of the study. The chink and bump of a large hollow receptacle being moved. Light knocks from inside it, wooden almost.
Without warning Miss Prendergast’s deft fingers are undoing the fastenings of my blouse. Beginning with the one above my cleavage, down to the last, below my belly button.
“Thank you Verity, very helpful”; unconsciously I’m angling my right shoulder for her. And the blouse is being folded squarely and placed on the chair my skirt rests on. I’m standing in front of her now in only bra, socks and one shoe — panties at half-mast. Feeling a bit silly. Working behind me in one movement she’s unclipping and removing my bra from me. With the confidence of a farrier she lifts my left calf in a perpendicular motion intentionally tipping me, forcing me to balance against her shoulder. The shoe is off – clump! — and her thumb and little finger stretch the elastane top of my sock wide, pivot back, gliding it downwards, inside out and off. The same again with the other sock. Without hesitation, she’s kneeling directly in front of me, taking the front triangle of my knickers, scrunching the material in one hand, and shimmying them down. I’m having to sidestep out quickly or risk toppling over.
She’s turning me again, this time towards Miss Svenson. In Miss Svenson’s hand, held horizontally for me to admire is a thin crook-handled cane. We’re looking at each other for a few seconds. Again Miss Svenson has the hint of a smile – otherwise, a picture of serenity.
“It would be wrong if we didn’t let you experience the cane . . just a taster. Twelve strokes. I know you can take it.”
I feel a bit fluttery, unsure how to stand, what is expected. In any case Miss Prendergast now occupies the centre of the carpet.
In answer, “Place your hands on Miss Prendergast’s shoulders, Verity please.”
A very odd posture. I’m looking at the back of Miss Prendergast’s jacket, tailored, dark brown, stylishly heavy buttons. No sooner are my palms meeting the smooth padded wool, though, than Miss Prendergast is taking my wrists and tucking them towards her chest. The momentum is letting her fold my upper arms under hers, so that I’m being made to perform a backward embrace on her, my jawline touching her cheek. I notice her soft skin smells faintly of soap, an old-fashioned and rather good soap.
Although Miss Prendergast is stooping slightly I’m having to strain to a tiptoe just to reach the ground. She’s around four inches taller than I am. As she stands to her proper height I now understand the purpose of the position I’m in; dangling in midair with my roasting bottom thrust provocatively outwards, that’s the purpose. But Miss Prendergast hasn’t finished and leans forward, bending from her waist, angling me higher. I’m worrying that my centre of gravity might topple us right over, but apparently not. With a final flourish she’s sticking her bottom out. Right out. I’m a wobbling beacon atop a brown-suited mountain.
Miss Svenson is taking time to position herself. Each time she adjusts her stance she calibrates again with three quick taps, one-two-three, to my right buttock. I can feel now at each check that the tip of the cane is finding precisely the same spot, just inside the far edge of the well-worked crimson oblong.
Miss Svenson’s voice has warm-edged authority: “We’ll take these slowly, Verity, as you’re new to this, in sets of four. And if you wriggle too much, well . . I may just have to add more strokes.”
Right on cue Miss Prendergast rotates her hips back, round, in two or three huge arcs. Naturally my hips and bottom have no choice but to follow the movements beneath me, exaggerating them, in what can only be described as wickedly audacious wriggling. A fine time for pantomime . .
“Right you are, my girl. Fourteen strokes it is!”
More taps to perfect the line of her swing. An age is passing before I can sense her pulling taut, backward, higher. She’s releasing. Now! A clean whistle, a crack and I’m feeling that I’ve been cut in half. More excruciating than anything, ever. A shriek is tearing the air – is it mine?
“Take your time my dear. Breathe deeply. Recover. Absolutely no rush. We can do these one at a time, not a problem . . you tell me when you’re ready for the next one.”
“Are you comfortable enough there Miss Prendergast?” Miss Prendergast’s upbeat voice is affirming somewhere near my ear that she, like Miss Svenson, is in this for the long haul.
I’m waiting now for the third stroke and realise I’m squeezing Miss Prendergast’s shoulders tightly. I force myself to consciously relax and hear myself croaking permission for the next stroke to fall. Light taps, almost soothing on my left cheek, and then a viciously high-pitched hiss and crack. Torture! I swallow a breathy howl, and am rocking back and forth through the limited inches allowed to me. My moans are quiet and, I sense, acceptable to Miss Svenson and Miss Prendergast.
The fourth stroke now, and it’s less intense. Maybe I really can take this. Pain, yes, but very bearable.
How wrong; I’m too quick in saying I’m ready for stroke number five. The taps are cursory and the cut severe, enveloped in deadly accuracy. A new agony. Fierce. I’m sobbing now.
Miss Svenson is stepping round to the other side of us, and Miss Prendergast tilts and angles me afresh. But I’m a survivor – one stroke at a time. And I’m grateful I can determine the pace. A good couple of minutes I give myself between each of the last few.
Just two more to go.
Jeepers creepers that hurt! Right in the crease below my left buttock, and I know I’m trembling with the acute shock.
“Well done, Verity. I’m proud of you. You’re a brave girl. Just one more now and then Miss Prendergast will put you down and get the cold cream. And a glass of wine maybe.”
I’m sure this is going to be royalty among cane strokes. So, gritting my teeth, whispering assent, stiffening my body and preparing for something horribly real. The cane sings in the air and I scream. A real guttural scream — subsiding as quickly as it happened, leaving me whimpering to myself. In slow motion now, Miss Svenson’s reassuring hands are on my waist to steady me as my feet connect with the ground again. Blistering hurt and exhilarating triumph.
My first instinct as I‘m stepping on to the platform at London Bridge is to turn my phone on – can’t believe I’ve been nearly four hours without it. It’s beeping into life and announcing an sms. Sender: Elsa Svenson: I’m clicking, I’m clicking, resenting the micro-seconds it’s taking to load. Then, on the screen, in silver-grey: A date for your diary . . Sat 16 Jun. Are you free? ES x
I’m grinning uncontrollably. And the tumbling butterflies begin again.