‘There has been an error,’ she stated firmly, ‘no doubt just some clerical matter, but important nevertheless. I really should not be here.’
‘So you remarked yesterday,’ Miss Scarsdale replied, ‘in order, I had supposed, to attempt to evade being made an example of.’
‘Quite,’ Thrift answered quickly. ‘I believe the error may have occurred because for some reason my car picked up Miss Chesham, from a professional enclave somewhere off the Great North Road, and when she was due to be transferred to your van at the colliery, I was taken as well... in error.’
‘I see,’ Miss Scarsdale stated blandly.
‘Perhaps you could check your records?’ Thrift asked.
‘Your paperwork has been delayed,’ Miss Scarsdale replied, ‘but will hopefully arrive with the afternoon post. You know how it is in these rural districts, perhaps?’
‘I do indeed,’ Thrift replied as hope began to well up inside her. ‘Why, at my uncle’s estates, Lord Moncrieff being my uncle you understand, sometimes the post does not arrive at all until midday.’
‘Deplorable,’ Miss Scarsdale agreed, for the first time speaking as one equal to another, and Thrift’s hope rose higher still, so that she found herself on the edge of tears with relief as she answered.
‘I am to be removed then? Without delay?’
‘Certainly,’ Miss Scarsdale went on, ‘if there has been an error, and with the profuse apologies of both myself, my staff, and the department. Given your father’s position... but tell me, what is your opinion of my little establishment?’
Thrift suppressed a little smile. Miss Scarsdale’s now sounded distinctly worried. Determined to choose her words carefully before speaking, she made a brief adjustment to the lace of one cuff and folded her hands in her lap.
‘While I entirely understand the difficulties you must find yourself under in the education and correction of girls who have allowed themselves... who have... that is to say, given in to their baser instinct, I do feel that one or two minor criticisms might be made.’
‘Such as?’
‘If I may speak frankly?’
‘Pray do.’
Thrift cleared her throat.
‘Then I shall, frankly. First, even allowing for the fallen state of these unfortunate women I feel that the regime imposed here is unduly harsh.’
‘Harsh?’
‘Yes, Miss Scarsdale, harsh. I really do think that it is impossible for even the most common of girls to manage under so severe a regime, let alone a Lady. Please do not misunderstand me, I do not question the necessity of the imposition of discipline, especially in the case of the ill-educated who perhaps are best suited to physical correction, but I do feel that discipline should be applied only with strict attention to justice.’
‘Justice?’
‘Yes, I am sorry to use strong words, but no other fits the case. To take only one example. The practise of punishing she who is last to be ready in the morning. Not only is it inevitable that one or other among us must be last, but an unfair advantage is given to those of the lower orders, who, lacking both means and full sensibilities as to their modesty, have fewer and simpler clothes. Thus it becomes close to inevitable that she who is of highest place, and thus least suited to what is a most unpleasant and degrading means of punishment, will be beaten, not to mention having to carry out the revolting, and quite inappropriate, task of cleaning the pots, which in turn ensures that she will be late for the morning meal, and therefore beaten again!’
‘You were beaten again this morning?’
‘Yes! Six times I have been beaten since arriving here, in the space of a single day, the first by yourself that I might be made an object lesson to the others, which is something I feel compelled to report to the Ministry, and the remaining five because I was unable to catch up with the others during the course of the morning routine, while I was also obliged to maintain punishment position for the full duration of morning lessons, three hours!’
‘I will make a note of your remarks,’ Miss Scarsdale stated, reaching for a pad and stylus. ‘Do go on.’
‘That is the extent of my complaint,’ Thrift responded, ‘at least, in so far as discipline is concerned.’
‘There any other matters you wish to bring to my attention?’
‘Yes, as it happens, there are, the facilities, and in particular the sanitary arrangements which definitely might bear improvement. Why, in our bedroom we do not have so much as a faucet, let alone hot water. I fully realise that this is a House of Shame, and also that the level of amenity to which I am accustomed is well above the usual, but here you would seem to be deliberately living in conditions more typical of the age of the first King Albert rather than the second. Is it not absurd to use pots? There is plumbing, after all, of a high standard, and the patent cleansing system in the sluice room alone must have cost as much as a dozen convenient facilities. It also has hot water, as I discovered to my cost. Nor do I deem it necessary to lock the girls into the dormitory at night. Are not the confines of the house sufficient?’
‘We have had one or two difficulties with girls who resent their confinement in the past.’
‘Perhaps, but you have bars on the windows in the lower storey, and the wall around the grounds must be all of twelve feet high! In any event, a Lady, however far she has fallen, could surely expect a room of her own, with appropriate facilities? And the same is true for the conditions under which we have taken our meals. Surely a separate table for those of quality could be provided, although perhaps in the circumstances Miss Chesham, as a professional girl of respectable background, might be permitted to sit with you and me. An assistant might then be told off to wait on us, which is surely only suitable? Or possibly one of the other girls. Sally-Anne Porter appears sensible, and steady, and is presumably experienced in the relevant skills, taverner’s daughter as she is. Also, a service of suitable china and cutlery would surely not be too much to ask? And at the least two covers, a main dish and perhaps a dessert, if frugality is to be our watchword. On which subject, I am uncertain as to what may be traditional in Yorkshire, or as to what may be thought suitable for common people, and yet I have always been given to understand that even the least among Englishwomen may expect a plate of good roast beef at least once a week. Is this not the boast of our most worthy Prime Minister? Preparation is also an issue, and while I can not fault the hygiene of the kitchens, I do feel that the employment of a cook should be within the means of an establishment of this size.’
Thrift drew her breath, thinking of what else she could say while the opportunity presented itself, and was about to go on when Miss Scarsdale reached out to press a bell on her desk. Postponing the remainder of her tirade for later, she put a question.
‘I trust you will put matters in hand without delay?’
‘None whatsoever, I assure you,’ Miss Scarsdale answered, even as the study door opened.
Thrift turned to see two of the chaperones behind her, both stern faced and silent, both with their straps held in powerful hands. Miss Scarsdale spoke again.
‘Thrift here is in a bumptious mood, and clearly needs to work off a little surplus energy, perhaps also a little surplus fat, to look at her. It would also seem that my object lesson of yesterday was inadequate. See to it, would you?’
All the righteous satisfaction that had been building up in Thrift during the conversation had drained away as the Supervisor spoke, and she was left gaping in horror, and once more filled with consternation and fear as the two chaperones stepped forward and seized her by the arms. She was lifted, and pulled from the room, babbling incoherent demands and apologies, all muddled together in a string of words of which not the slightest notice was taken. They took her outside, to the back lawn, via the schoolroom, from where on of the chaperones collected a bright red pennon on a stick, and stopped in the centr
e of the lawn.
‘Strip,’ one of the chaperone’s ordered. ‘Naked, everything off.’
Despite her fear and confusion, Thrift had already begun to bend, expecting to be beaten as before. She even managed to stifle her outrage at the command and began to undress. Miss Scarsdale quite evidently did not believe her story, which left her with no choice but to do what she was told, for fear of her punishments being escalated, something the probable consequences of which she knew only too well. Yet there had to be some way out of her awful situation.
The chaperones watched patiently as Thrift stripped and piled her clothes on a convenient sundial. At last she was stark naked and shivering in the cool afternoon air, acutely embarrassed by her nudity, as always, yet in sullen acceptance of it and buoyed up by the thought of how she might make her persecutors suffer when she was finally released. The red pennon was passed to her, and the chaperone pointed up between the bare branches of a line of trees to where the ridge of the valley side was visible beyond, as a rough line running a great distance in either direction, save for one point a little way along where a flat-topped eminence lifted against the sky.
‘See the great pile of rocks against the skyline?’ the chaperone asked.
‘Yes,’ Thrift answered weakly.
‘That is King Alfred’s Seat. You have an hour to reach it, climb to the summit and wave the flag, for which we will be watching, and return.’
‘Naked!?’ Thrift demanded, and squeaked as the strap smacked down on the back of her leg.
‘Silence! Do you never learn? You will run to King Alfred’s Seat, wave the flag, and return. You will then be given a stroke of my strap for every minute you are late.’
‘But, Miss... I pray... what of men? I might be seen! I might...’
‘Then you had better run fast.’
The chaperone pressed the button at the top of her stop watch, which began to tick. Still Thrift hesitated, her whole body trembling in her embarrassment and fear.
‘I would run, if I were you,’ the other chaperone advised. ‘One or two girls have been known to save their hides, but never one carrying as much spare lard as you.’
Still Thrift hesitated, her emotions torn a dozen ways, only for the first woman to land a thunderous crack of the strap full across her bottom, sending her scuttling across the lawn with her cheeks clutched in her hands and the women’s laughter ringing behind. As she ran for an arched gate in the high wall, what the chaperone had said about her body was making the prospect of her exposure worse still. Not only was it utterly hypocritical, when the woman weighed perhaps twice what Thrift did, but was grossly unfair, with Thrift’s corset trained waist small even by the standards of her peers, for all her ample bottom and full chest.
It still stung, and no less for the certain knowledge that men found her figure desirable. If anything that made it worse, and as she peered anxiously through the ivy draped bars of the gate she was thinking of coarse, lust-filled men, their cocks ready for her body, just as Dr Molloy’s had been when he took her virginity, and yet there was the thought of the strap...
She pulled at the gate, to find it locked. For a moment she thought it was merely stiff and was tugging frantically at the bars, until she realised that the rattling noise it was making was the catch. She turned back, realising a wicked trick had been played on her as she saw one of the chaperones approaching, strap in one hand, a large iron key ring in the other. The woman was in no hurry, taking her time with the gate and sending Thrift through it with yet another smack to her smarting bottom.
Suddenly she was out on the open moor, with no more than the row of windblown beeches that sheltered the house to cover her on either side, and the open hillside in front. As the key turned in the lock behind her she ran, first with one hand over her breasts, also clutching the flag, the other pressed to the mound of her quim, then, as she slipped on something squashy, both free, with her boobs bouncing wildly and her bottom wobbling behind, across turf cut short by sheep and littered with their droppings, which she quickly realised was what she had trodden in.
Before she’d gone fifty yards she was gasping, but the awful vulnerability of being naked kept her going, at an uneven, staggering run, across ground that grew quickly steeper, and rougher. The rock seemed an impossible distance ahead, and above, while her legs were aching and her body was prickly with sweat in no time at all. At last she stopped to rest panting with her hands on her knees, before her embarrassment and fear got the better of her.
She staggered on, through patches of dead, brown bracken that scratched her calves and spiked her feet, across areas of open rock where she had to jump across fissures in the pale grey stone, over tumbles of boulder and scree which frequently forced her to move in a crawl, making her all the more aware of her naked bottom and unprotected quim.
Yet she saw not a single human being, only sheep, and once a yellow painted van moving along the valley road. Even the chaperones back on the lawn were hidden by trees, but she knew they were there, straps in their hands, just waiting for the moment she could be beaten. With no idea of the passage of time, she could only force herself on, higher, and higher, ever more grateful that nobody was there to watch her, until at last she hauled herself painfully onto the windswept crest of King Alfred’s seat, with the bulk of Whernside rising beyond, to find a group of men seated among tussock grass no more than a dozen yards away, drinking from dark brown bottles and eating pies.
Most were facing in the other direction, but her instinctive scream of surprise alerted those who were not already staring, and every face had been turned to look at her, young and old and in-between, handsome and ugly and foolish and wise, every mouth agape, every eye fixed on her naked body. She had frozen in shock, but only for an instant, and then she was frantically waving the flag, and gone, scrambling down the pile of rock with desperate speed, heedless of grazes.
The instant her feet touched grass she ran, helter-skelter down the hillside, expecting at any moment to be tripped and brought down, then roundly used, the men taking her one after another, in her mouth and up her bottom as well as in her quim, to leave her soiled with their seed cream as well as the sheep’s dung that littered the ground and was already smeared over her bottom and legs where she had fallen in the ascent.
Yet the terrible moment never came, and when she finally plucked up the courage to look back, it was to find only two of them visible, and those on the crest of King Alfred’s Seat, now far above her. She slowed, gasping for breath and sobbing out her emotions. She was running sweat, her hair matted in her face, her chest heaving, her throat tight and dry. Ahead, maybe half the distance she had come, the lawn of Weathercote House was clearly visible between the trunks of the beeches, with the two chaperones standing patiently, side-by-side.
She forced herself forward, her muscles burning with the strain, into a shambling run. The sweat was running down between her cheeks, making her bottom itch and keeping the thought of her coming beating right at the front of her mind, while her boobs were starting to smart from the constant bouncing, and her nipples were stiff with the sharp wind now blowing right into her face. Three times she fell, once on her face, to smear one plump breast with yellowish brown sheep dung, but each time she was back on her feet in an instant, staggering on, until at last she reaching the gate, to collapse panting against the iron bars.
It was still locked, and the chaperone with the key came forward even more slowly than before, and paused to check her watch before opening it. Thrift fell through, lurching onwards to the lawn, where she flopped to her knees, gasping for breath, her entire body aching, too far gone even to think of the display she was making from the rear, with her quim stuck out towards the two women behind her and her big, sweaty cheeks wide to show off the rude little hole between.
She had dropped the flag, and her lewd position was brought sharply back to her as the rounded shaft was
pressed to her sweat-slick anus, and up, wringing a shocked cry from her lips as she was penetrated, and a second as the thick piece of wood was pushed deep up her rectum. One of the women laughed, and Thrift turned to find them both looking down on her. One held a flask, and both were ruddy cheeked with drink. Her mouth came open in automatic protest, only to shut as she thought better of it.
‘How... how did I do?’ she panted. ‘How much time has elapsed?’
The chaperone with the stop watch drew it from a pocket of her dress and depressed the button.
‘One hour, and twenty-five minutes,’ she stated.
Thrift hung her head with a despairing sob. The other woman cursed and dug into her own pocket, pulling out a crown piece, which she passed to her companion, then spoke.
‘I’d never have thought it, not with such a fat one!’
‘More muscle than fat,’ the other replied, extending a booted foot to prod at Thrift’s thigh. ‘Get up, girl, if you want your punishment done before the others come out.’
‘I’m to beat her, remember,’ the first said, ‘that was the agreement. I’ll do her on her back, I think, and you can hold her legs.’
The other nodded and snapped her fingers to Thrift, who managed to stand and follow as they started towards a grove of yews. As she went, she was acutely conscious of the red flag protruding from between her buttocks, but didn’t dare to pull it out. Her sole consolation was that nobody was looking, and that was abruptly snatched away as she heard a voice behind her, calling out to the chaperones. They turned, and so did Thrift, to find four more of their number emerging from the building, with the girls trouping behind in line. Her heart sank.
‘In there,’ the woman who had stuck the flag up Thrift’s bottom ordered. ‘Climb on and wait for us.’
With a single meek nod in response, Thrift hurried on, between a gap in the yews, to find herself in a perfectly circular area of grass with a squat stone structure at the centre. It was old, encrusted with grey and yellow lichens, with the carved cherubs at each corner worn almost beyond recognition and the inscriptions illegible, but there was no mistaking what it was, a tomb.
Schooled for Service Page 5