Alice Under Discipline, Part 1

by Garth ToynTanen

  Downstairs at that very same instant Alice Lamberton was hurrying through the room that her father had always referred to as ‘the drawing room’. The walls were oak panelled and lined with book shelves filled with dusty, stuffy volumes Alice had never had much interest in - and that much, at least, hadn’t changed about her. To her left a pair of deep-set bay windows gave out onto formal gardens with beds of roses obsessively set out with an eye to symmetry and sweeping lawns edged with laurel hedges and twee miniature conifers. In the far distance the snaking line of chalk-scarred grass-topped hills with their scattered tufted stands of trees that made up the South Downs filled the horizon, putting in a fleeting appearance between the swaying poplars that marked out the furthest extent of the property.

  Tucked out of sight down between steep grassy banks, the river Arun demarcated the distant ancient limestone walls from the local village, forcing the broad sandy driveway to meander this way and that on its path to the bridge that led out to the road skirting the perimeter. The latter was an elderly chain-linked affair in the style of a medieval drawbridge installed by her great-grandfather shortly after his return from the Great War. Its cast iron chains could just be glimpsed out of one of the side panes, the black painted iron gates beyond just beginning to catch the first orange rays of the morning sun as it rose above the great oak that stood just to the east of the gateway. Walking determinedly and with purpose the pursed-lipped teenager headed straight for the side door that she knew gave out onto the narrow hallway which in turn led through to the side parlour and then on to what at one time had been the tradesman’s entrance, a small porch hidden away at the side of one wing of the imposing house.

  Having reached the parlour unchallenged, she paused, surprised. A goodly fire had been built in the grate and was enthusiastically blazing. Despite the day and age, an open fire was not that rare an event in itself about the house - several chimneys were still in operation and their fireplaces put to use in cold weather, augmenting the modern central heating system that struggled with the cobwebby early 19th century drafts. But this room was infrequently used, the grate rarely made up. A grunt came from behind her, a clearing of the throat. Startled, she spun around in shock, her eyes wide and her face flushing as pale as the frost that lay sparkling on the lawn outside.

  “And where do you think you’re going, young lady?” Karen Lamberton-Marchment’s haughty, educated and authoritative tone belied her youth. The double-barrelled name she thought lent her gravitas and for the time being she had decided to retain her late husband’s family adjunct, despite the Marchment name being both the older and the more prestigious. The title he had bought for her and she had already decided that she would retain that, even if she did one day revert to using her old name - Lady Marchment had a certain resonance to it.

  Nineteen years her husband’s junior on their wedding day, four years previously, she was still only twenty-five years of age - a rather young looking twenty-five at that, despite her favoured traditional, if not somewhat overly mature, mode of dress. The existence of his, then, fourteen year old offspring, at that time had hardly come in to the equation, the girl having long been packed off to boarding school and largely cared for over the holidays by her maternal grandmother, her father being obliged to travel far on wide on business much of the time. The same could not be said now, some four years on.

  What with the sudden shock demise of the girl’s father, after just three and a half years of marriage, the near-simultaneous death of the girl’s grandmother and then the coming to a close of the girl’s school career, some four months back, the existence of his now eighteen year old obstinate, arrogant and downright abrasive progeny was now very much part of the equation - a confounding, unbalancing and destabilising part.

  On the very rare occasions over the years that Alice had been home for the school holidays it had been bad enough, the girl’s father fawning over her and pandering to every wish. Now, what with Alice moping around the house all day in a state of almost permanent hangover... Well, although she received a more than generous income for supervising her ward, she couldn’t help but regard Alice as a burden, an intrusion into her own life. Still, Lady Lamberton-Marchment had to admit to herself that the girl wasn’t quite so arrogant nowadays, not since her plan had sprung into action, at least not until today. This, then, would be the first real test of the plausibility of her scheme.

  It had all taken a substantial amount of time trouble and effort to set up, but she had to admit to herself that there was a certain compensatory pleasure to be had in the prospect of curbing this independent and rather rebellious girl.

  “I just need to get out in the sun a while, that’s all. I mean... I’ve been in all month... Can’t I even go out in the garden now?” To the woman’s eye there was something faintly comical about the petulant pout that went along with the protestation. A delicately featured, slender, fey thing with a shortish blond pixie cut that was just on the verge of growing out and big walnut-brown eyes set in a gently tapering heart-shaped face; Alice Lamberton looked immature for her years as it was - even without the frustrated stamping of her foot.

  The gentle, almost overly pretty upturn to the tip of the girl’s nose coupled with those childish cow-like eyes invested her with a girlish obstinacy when angry and the thought suddenly struck the girl’s stepmother that dressed in the right way Alice could easily be taken for a girl at least four years younger than her calendar age. She made a mental note; it was an interesting notion, something she would have to look into doing something about at some point. Then there were the pink streaks the girl had had put in - she’d have to do something about those, too, at some stage.

  Where Alice had got the denim jeans from was a bit of a mystery; she thought she had taken all Alice’s pairs from her in exchange for all the little favours she did her stepdaughter, which pretty much came down to doling out what was in the packet in her pocket. Judging from the uncertainty in Alice’s step, the slight tremor in her hands and the quaver in her voice it wouldn’t be long before that pair would be helping to fuel the old wood burning stove that sat in what once had been the servant’s scullery. The thought occurred that it would perhaps be a suitably pertinent lesson for Alice to have to take them down to the stove herself, if all went well now - she could watch them burn through the little mica viewing port, along with another of those posters from her room, as a reminder of what stubbornness brings.

  The jeans must have been down the bottom of one of the linen baskets - she must have missed them somehow, although Alice clearly hadn’t. But if there was one saving grace it was that dear Alice was at least wearing one of those button-through cardigans that she had procured for her, albeit worn over a plain white tennis shirt - but that was the last of those that Alice had on and she’d take it off her next time. Those awful tee-shirts the girl had once owned were all gone now anyhow.

  A second saving grace was that vaporous, semi-vacuous look that repeatedly came over the girl’s face, clouding her eyes with incomprehension. It told volumes; it said that this gambit was indeed going to work. And it had been a gambit - the girl could have easily walked out, summoned help, gathered all sorts of well meaning busybodies to her cause. But that wasn’t going to happen now, she could tell; in a way she had already won. She had won that very first day young Alice had first backed down and surrendered to one of her restrictions in exchange for her medication. There had been many small triumphs since then of course, but it was the magnitude of this coming victory that would make the difference. After this, if all went well, young sweet Alice would find herself, here, in her own house, brought to heel in a manner she could hardly have dreamt of. She would come to see the strap, hairbrush and the cane - once she introduced them, as she fully intended to in time - as lesser punishments in comparison; and that after all was the point of this charade.

  “You’re not going anywhere, Alice.”

  The girl looked p
ale, jittery, shrugging in faux dismissive rebellion but with little real commitment evident: “I can’t take any more of this nonsense - I mean, where’s all my stuff, all the things you keep taking off me? I’m not a little girl to be ‘grounded’, just because you don’t like the people I mix with... You know what? You can just do your worst as far as I’m concerned. I’m off out - and that’s all there is to it!”

  “Who with exactly? Certainly not with that fiancé of yours; he’s in the clink, which is where you are lucky not to have ended up in. And all your old school friends live up at the other end of the country, near that pampering, pandering waste of money holiday camp your father called a school. Some ‘school’ that was, they didn’t even have a school uniform let alone any semblance of discipline; not like the place I attended.”

  “I don’t care... Perhaps I’ll just go out for a walk then, around the grounds; they are my grounds you know - or they will be once I’m twenty one - along with this house. That’s how long you’ve got, just a little less than three years; then I’ll have you out on your ear. Right, then: I’m out of here! See you later, alligator.”

  “I don’t think so... do you? Or would you like me to toss this packet on the fire?”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “Wouldn’t I? Just you watch me, then.”

  “You couldn’t do it... You wouldn’t dare; it would make me ill if I didn’t get my prescription, you wouldn’t risk it. You’re bluffing, you silly cow; I’m going for a walk around the gardens, maybe a little sojourn into town.” Turning the brass lever handle, the springs squeaking hoarsely, the girl stepped out into the glass-sided porch, pausing as somewhere out in the near distance a bout of gruff barking and baying suddenly started up.

  “Tyson and Soldier Boy are out there, don’t forget. You step out that door without me at your side and they are likely to consider you an intruder - they still don’t know you yet. I don’t think they’d hurt you - but who knows. And you know how scared you are of dogs anyway.” ‘Tyson’ and ‘Solder Boy’ were her two Staffordshire cross bull terriers, bought her by her husband to provide her with an extra blanket of security for when he had to travel shortly before his ‘passing’. Crossed with what was another matter; there was more than a suspicion of pit-bull about the pair, certainly enough to make their legitimacy questionable under the UK’s Dangerous Dogs Act’. For a moment the woman smiled sympathetically at her pasty-faced fear-struck stepdaughter, before, her expression hardening, she went on:

  “Now, come back in here and sit down at the table - I shan’t warn you again... AT ONCE, YOUNG LADY!!!”

  Alice Lamberton jumped. Her stepmother could be stern - and she hated the woman’s habit of referring to her as ‘young lady’ - but she had never shouted at her like that before. She knew she had to be strong but she was already beginning to shake like a leaf as she tentatively reached for the handle of the outer door.

  “Right then... Just you watch this...” Tight lipped, but with a determined smile on her attractively made-up face Alice Lamberton’s stepmother stepped across to the blazing open coal fire. A white, square cardboard pack dangled loosely from her long fingers, swinging to and fro dangerously from its corner, the stern woman’s manicured nails glinting in a pearlescent shade of pink in the flickering firelight and drawing the girl’s disbelieving gaze to the pharmacist’s label. The latter was printed in bold blue but appeared black in the orange-red glow of the coals - nevertheless it was plain enough to identify the package to Alice’s desperate and now pleading eyes. Never had a teenage girl’s attitude changed so rapidly.

  “No... Don’t... No, no!!!” Alice’s eyes, wild with anger and now topped up with dread, widened still further in sheer horror as the nondescript packet casually tumbled from her stepmother’s fingers. The flames flared up immediately the slim package hit the coals, as if the packet had been pre-soaked in some accelerant such as petrol or ethyl alcohol, leaving little scope for rescue, despite Alice’s frantic dash to her stepmother’s side. The effect on Alice was as immediate as it was traumatic, the girl immediately breaking down in tears and dropping to her knees at the fireside, adopting a posture almost that of fervent prayer.

  “Hush, hush, dear.” Alice’s stepmother’s hand dropped to her side, stroking her stepdaughter’s brow lovingly, despite the animosity she felt inside. “I think that’s enough to make my point, don’t you?”

  “B, b... But what am I going to do now?” Alice was spluttering between sobs, her previously defiant tone now replaced by one of hushed and deflated defeat. Her huge Audrey Hepburn eyes were peering up at her triumphant stepmother as if a frightened young puppy dog looking for reassurance, glimmering in the firelight and reflecting back the image of Karen Lamberton-Marchment in all its impressively domineering gravitas.

  As always the older woman’s dark hair was swept up into a practical bun that seemed a little at odds with her youth, little ringlet tendrils tucked back behind her ears softening the look. From where young Alice now knelt, looking up, the woman’s breasts seemed to tower over her aggressively, seemingly larger than life and straining outward against the buttons of her white, shirt-collared blouse. If anything the swell of her stepmother’s jutting bustline seemed somewhat over-emphasised from that angle, juxtaposed as it was above a tightly belted black satin knee length pencil skirt that cinched a trim waist and that girded broad out-welling hips and buttocks already augmented by the old-fashioned girdle the woman favoured.

  Along with the woman’s expensive glossy black seamed stockings and patent stilettos that caught the light every time she shifted her weight or shuffled her feet, the effect of this almost burlesque imagery for some reason came across as deeply intimidating to the rebellious teenager. It was an effect that was somehow emphasised still further by Alice catching the scent her stepmother had on, rich feminine and undoubtedly expensive - and undoubtedly paid for from out of her trust fund, from that part set aside as a regular allowance up to the age of twenty-one and intended to pave the way for her through university.

  It was all a far cry from the woman’s other favoured mode of dress and the slightly horsey smell that came with the skin-tight hound’s-tooth riding breeches and the green rubber Wellingtons she wore whenever visiting the stables but not actually intending to ride. She’d had the cheek to add the cleaning of those boots of hers to the list of chores she thought Alice should help with now she was back at home, citing that job as being outside of her housekeeper’s usual remit and her own time as being too short and too valuable to take care of the task herself. Not that the woman ever did anything other than swanning around about the estate and fussing over her horses.

  But then Alice herself was no paragon of virtue where physical labour was concerned; ‘work ethic’ had never entered her vocabulary. She had certainly not done much to date as regards those ‘chores’ she was forever being assigned, other than perhaps recently when she had allowed herself on occasion to be persuaded to carry the washing-up out to the housekeeper after tea. And even this much had been under protest; not so much with ‘good grace’ as with grimacing petulance. As for cleaning the bloody woman’s boots - and under the nose of the housekeeper, so she might ‘keep an eye on her’ - no way!

  The very thought made her angry, yet the sight of that packet now reduced to ashes in the grate, the yellowish capsules bubbling and bursting from their foil trays in little eruptions of oozing plastic dotted with blackening powder, now tempered that anger with a depressive sense of hopeless despair. “W, w ,what am I going to do now?” she reiterated, momentarily attempting to snatch one of the less damaged foil trays from the flames before withdrawing her hand in pain as the curling foil itself seemed to ignite all at once, spurting little jets of bluish flame in all directions.

  “Not to worry, my dear - the doctor said she’d be calling past again in a week’s time; I’m sure she’ll be happy to renew your prescription if you ask nic
ely enough. Of course you’re going to have to explain how you came to drop the packet in the fire in the first place...”

  “You threw it in there; that’s how - and I’m going to tell her so...” Alice had cut in, her voice starting to wail with emotion, only to be cut off in mid flow herself, her stepmother’s tone hardening with annoyance at the interruption:

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea - do you? She won’t believe you. Most likely she’ll think it is evidence of what she calls ‘drug induced psychosis’ caused by that muck you got yourself addicted to. I had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get her to agree to your being treated at home, not to mention keeping your name away from the police. You could have easily ended up ‘inside’ like that ‘dealer’ and that drug-pushing boyfriend of yours, you know. As it is, the slightest excuse and she’ll have you ‘banged-up’ in that clinic of hers; and you don’t want that.

  If they get you ‘sectioned’ as it’s termed, committed to one of those places, it is not the same as being handed a prison sentence you know. There is no definite period set - and they can come up with all sorts of reasons to keep you there. You might never get out - or if you do you’ll likely be too old to care.” It was a scare tactic of course - but one she had calculated was bound to work. Looking down at her stepdaughter’s tearful eyes, ghostly white complexion and the worried wrinkling of her otherwise smooth youthful brow - the latter making Alice now appear almost haggard in the fire’s glow - she could see that it had indeed hit the mark.