School Reunion Year 2

by Laurel Aspen

  ‘Bright lights, big city, too much for a country girl, eh?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t be that patronising, but yeah, to a degree.’

  ‘So what happens now?’ asked Jake. ‘She’s still popular enough with the public, good for another few shows, surely?’

  ‘Possibly, but if she keeps pissing off the producer I don’t know if there’ll be one,’ Tom disclosed.

  Georgie was miserable. All around her the crew were arranging to meet later for a farewell drink. Last time she’d been in the thick of the party, but this time around the star of the show was pointedly getting the cold shoulder.

  Which, she admitted to herself glumly, was probably no more than Ms Georgina Parsons deserved. During the first series of Gardening for Greenhorns, the prime-time show which had raced up the ratings and garnered a pile of awards, no one had a bad word to say about the sassy new presenter. Georgie had been popular precisely because she was ordinary, natural and unstuffy, the very antitheses of most TV faces who regarded themselves as more important than the subjects they introduced. She was always happy to muck in with the crew, not afraid to get her hands dirty, exactly the same qualities that soon persuaded viewers to take her to their hearts.

  But somewhere amid agents and publicity wonks Georgie had lost control of her life. Morosely she walked among the cameras and lights that scattered the garden centre where she’d begun her career just a few years before. Outwardly Georgie looked fine; pretty damn good, in fact, resulting in countless men who’d never so much as picked up a trowel before and had now, suddenly, discovered an interest in horticulture and were glued to the box every Thursday evening.

  This was in no small measure down to her carefree and relaxed attitude to clothing. Georgie didn’t like to be restricted while she worked; short shorts and skimpy vests showed her toned figure to its best advantage. Years of manual work in the open air had honed her female frame far better than any expensive gym ever could. True, some female columnists had bitched that her breasts were too big to go without a bra, but the man on the local omnibus reckoned this was just jealously. Georgie was a tantalising ‘girl next door’ shape, a real woman, not some snooty anorexic. The sort of girl a bloke might just stand a chance with down the pub. The public loved her for it and within months she couldn’t go anywhere without being recognised.

  Throughout it all her long-term boyfriend, Darren, had been a rock; calm, cool-headed, always there in the background to keep her grounded with a hug and some sound advice.

  Oh right, said a voice in Georgie’s head, her personal Jiminy Cricket, and look how you repaid him. A very public grope with some weasley soap star. And don’t just blame the booze; you were getting above yourself for weeks before that. All, unfortunately but demonstrably, true. Georgie was miserable.

  ‘Can oi’ ‘ave a word?’

  A familiar rural burr interrupted her self-pitying introspection. ‘I’m busy,’ she snapped, functioning on autopilot.

  ‘Now.’ The speaker was clearly not prepared to accept ‘no’ for an answer.

  Georgie looked up, shocked at the tone. It was Seth Gurney, technical advisor to the gardening programme, but more importantly Georgie’s mentor since she had begun in the green fingers business.

  Georgie was bright, but no academic. She’d not had a dad and it had been Seth’s fatherly figure who’d overseen her apprenticeship at the garden centre where she would no doubt have happily gone on working if chance had not intervened. One weekend a TV producer, out buying trees for his new second home in the country, had asked her advice, been mightily impressed by her ready smile and lively personality and, well, the rest is broadcasting history.

  The TV crew still used the same garden centre as a convenient location for some shots. Sprawling over several acres, in one distant corner there sat a large, secluded potting shed, and it was here that Seth led her.

  The familiar smell of creosote and clay pots greeted Georgie reassuringly as they crossed the threshold. ‘Well?’ she enquired shortly of Seth, turning to face him.

  Seth took his time responding. ‘Ask a Somerset man a question and it’ll be ten minutes afor ye get an answer,’ runs the old saying, ‘but when it comes, ‘twill be brilliant.’

  Stretching a point, perhaps, but Seth knew the virtues of taking things slowly. Carefully and deliberately he seated his hardy old body onto a wooden stool, fixed Georgie with a gimlet gaze, and spoke carefully. ‘You tell me? Spoiled young madam.’

  ‘Now hang on…’ Georgie began, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,’ said Seth gruffly. ‘I suppose you’m think I’m just a stupid ol’ country man who can’t see what’s goin’ on?’ The question was obviously rhetorical, as with a cough he continued. ‘They’ll control you if you let ‘em,’ he said enigmatically, then added, almost as a sequester, ‘’Twas better with Darren.’

  ‘Yes,’ Georgie had agreed almost before she knew what she was saying. Damn, she thought crossly, her voice sounded like a whiney brat’s. What more was there to add? Wise old Seth had summed up her predicament in just a few well-honed sentences.

  ‘I’ve blown it though, haven’t I?’ she added, the weight of the world on her shoulders.

  ‘Not irredeemably,’ said the ever-pointed Seth, who would never use six short words if one long one would suffice. ‘Go see him, he’ll have calmed down by now. Explain, say yer sorry.’

  Yeah, Georgie mused silently, she could swallow her pride and try it.

  ‘But first you’d better go and apologise to the film crew for bein’ such a mare all bloody week.’

  ‘What? You surely don’t expect me to go out there and?’

  ‘If you’m want to make it roight,’ Seth cut in firmly.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Hm,’ Seth pondered calmly, ‘I recall how we used to sort things out a few years ago, when you were still a headstrong teenager.’

  ‘I don’t know what you…’ Georgie began indignantly, but she’d a horrible premonition that she did.

  Suddenly Seth’s arm shot out, grasping her wrist with a grip of iron. Old enough to be a pensioner he may have been, but as more than one mouthy young gun had cause to find out in the pub, a lifetime of toil on the land - and a spell in the Parachute regiment during the Aden crisis - had wrought Seth into a man of considerable strength. Georgie was strong too, capable of hefting a hundredweight sack of peat on her shoulder in one swing, but protest and struggle as she might there was no escape.

  ‘Take ‘em down,’ he ordered gruffly.

  Georgie knew what was coming now, right enough, and a less than welcome feeling of deja vu enveloped her. All the pleading in the world couldn’t save the girl once Seth’s mind was made up.

  Reluctantly she slid her jeans to her knees, revealing broad hips and a bum that, whilst not petite, was taut and shapely. With a grunt from him and a shriek from her, Georgie was dragged across Seth’s knees. Just as hard work had formed her figure, so years of manual labour had hardened the horny hands of this son of the soil. In a trice Georgie’s head was forced down and her bottom presented in a most undignified manner, a position she recalled only too well from her time as an apprentice when more than once Seth had walloped her lazy posterior.

  Crack!

  Down came Seth’s hand, and again and again. No gentle lover’s warm up, this was spanking as punishment not foreplay, and the tanning of Georgie’s hide set to be a prolonged one. She kicked, she struggled, she shouted, but the shed was too far from the film crew for anyone to hear, and if they had heard anything then no doubt most would have wished more strength to Seth’s arm.

  After five minutes the pain in her blazing nates was becoming unbearable. Shamed and humiliated, Georgie felt tears pricking at her eyes. She howled in anguish but Seth’s only response was to tug her knickers deep into the valley of her suffering bottom and apply his hand to the sensitive crease where thighs meet buttock cheeks, ensuring she’d not sit comfor
tably for several days.

  Apparently satisfied with this work in progress, Seth abruptly ceased spanking the unfortunate Georgie and pushed her from his lap. She tumbled onto her knees on the dusty floor where, all dignity long since relinquished, her hands flew to her blazing rear and began frantically massaging the hot, sore cheeks. Eyes red from crying, make-up smudged across her cheeks, she looked far different from the overconfident young woman who’d so publicly cuckolded her boyfriend.

  ‘I’m sorry, Seth,’ she whispered between snivels, crying both at the pain in her posterior and her evident disgrace.

  ‘Well, that’s a start,’ Seth replied grudgingly, ‘but don’t think I’ve finished with you yet, young wench.’

  ‘No, Seth, no,’ Georgie was now shamefully reduced to pleading and begging, ‘I can’t take no more.’ As her predicament deepened so her rural accent reasserted its primacy.

  To neither of their surprise Seth ignored this plea; he’d heard it all before, several times. For him her heartfelt words conjured up a pleasant mental image of an eighteen-year-old Georgie, caught smoking when she should have been weeding. Stood in the corner of this very same shed, shorts around her knees, bottom already burnished pink, eyes as wide as saucers as she watched him pull the worn leather belt from the loops of his trousers. Unable to move, like a rabbit transfixed by the sight of a fox.

  As if to prove history does indeed repeat itself, he reprised the performance, a pair of stout braces ensuring his breeches at least remained in place.

  A shiver of dread ran through Georgie, as the grouchy old gardener slowly doubled up the well-worn leather and cracked it against his weathered palm. She recalled only too clearly the scalding havoc Seth’s belt could wreak upon a young woman’s already thoroughly spanked rear.

  ‘Kneel on the stool, hands on head and get those knickers down, girl,’ Seth commanded peremptorily.

  ‘Please Seth, I’m not your trainee,’ Georgie protested.

  ‘True enough, this time’s different,’ he agreed, ‘you’re not a callow maid no more, but a grown woman, and that insolent arse will take six hard licks of my belt while I tells you what yer gonna do to sort this mess out.’

  Without further preamble the old countryman drew back his sinewy arm and delivered the first stroke, hard across the upper crown of her buttocks. The impact of his hand had hurt, but that was nothing compared to the torture the strop brought to Georgie’s suffering arse as he struck a second time. A parallel band of torment drew a shriek from her lips as she writhed upon the stool, and struggling for balance it took all of Georgie’s self-control to retain her position and keep her hands on her head.

  Seth paused; two livid welts were beginning to imprint themselves across her magnificent haunches. Half the red-blooded males in the country would have paid handsomely to swop places with the wise old countryman, yet he took little pleasure in his self-appointed task. Seth had kept a weather eye on the lass since her father had walked out when she was only twelve years old. Headstrong she might be, but he knew Georgie to be good at heart, and there was still a chance she’d come out tops if he could persuade her to heed some sage advice. An extreme teaching method it might be, and far from politically correct, but Seth was a firm believer in a well-tanned hide to bring a girl back into line.

  ‘First you’ll apologise to the crew for…’

  Whack!

  ‘…playing up. Then you’ll…’

  Crack!

  ‘…go an’ see Darren to…’

  Slap!

  ‘…ask ‘is forgiveness, and…’

  Wop!

  ‘…make it roight.’

  ‘Ooooh,’ she gasped.

  ‘Now then,’ grasping her arms he helped Georgie, her shoulders shaking with sobs, buttocks now transformed into a crimson sunset-red, unsteadily to her feet, and steered her into a dusty corner. ‘Youm can stand there for fifteen minutes. ‘No rubbing,’ his unforgiving fingers delivered two sharp slaps to her thighs as Georgie’s hand tentatively inched towards her welted moons, ‘and think on.’

  Seth refastened his belt and left the shed.

  Half an hour later Georgie left the shed too, eyes bright but moist and red-rimmed, her make-up repaired as best she could, and walked purposefully but stiffly across the lot.

  As the crew loaded the final items of equipment into the van she delivered a heartfelt apology for her behaviour, which came across so sincerely, quite like the guileless friendly girl of a year before, in fact, that Georgie was immediately invited to join them all at the pub to drink and make up.

  Although most sat after a hot and tiring day, Georgie remained standing throughout as she sipped her pint, only too glad to be one of the team once more. On the other side of the bar Jake and Tom observed her transformation keenly.

  ‘You know,’ mused Tom, ‘if I didn’t know better I’d say there stands a girl who’s had her naughty little bottom smacked.’

  ‘Arse bloody well whipped, if you ask me,’ replied Jake, who appeared curiously well versed in such matters. ‘Notice how any sort of movement seems to make her wince.’

  ‘And when she thinks no one’s looking,’ Tom added, ‘our Georgie keeps surreptitiously rubbing her bum. Couldn’t happen in this day an age, though.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it,’ responded Jake. ‘They do things differently down in the country, and old Seth over there has definitely got a smile on his face.’

  ‘You think the two things are related?’

  ‘Without a doubt, mate.’

  ‘She’s certainly back to being the lovely girl we used to know.’

  ‘Wonder if she’ll get back with her bloke as well,’ pondered Tom.

  ‘You know, now her stroppy attitude’s gone, if she doesn’t I might be tempted to chat her up myself,’ mused Jake.

  ‘Get on with you, how’s a country girl going to take to your flat in Fulham?’

  ‘S’pose you’re right. Nice chassis, though.’

  ‘Aye, lads like a lass they can get hold of,’ observed Tom.

  ‘No,’ Jake gasped with mock incredulity, ‘and I thought they switched on because of an interest in gardening!’

  The following weekend, still walking a little gingerly, Georgie walks up to the door of Darren’s cottage. She knocks twice and almost instantly the door is opened. Wordlessly, Darren greets her with a basilisk stare.

  ‘Don’t look too pleased to see me.’ Georgie makes a clumsy attempt at humour, desperate to defuse the difficult confrontation.

  ‘I’m not,’ replies her former beau, and begins to close the door and with it all her longed for hopes of reconciliation.

  ‘No, wait Darren, please let me come in, I’ve got something to tell you and something to give…’

  Unknown to Georgie her visit to this proud, modest, good-looking man isn’t wholly unexpected. Seth may be old-fashioned, but he knows how to use the telephone in order to act as a craggy cupid in pursuit of abetting true love. Thus the taciturn Darren already has an inkling of the purpose of Georgie’s visit, but he’s damned if he’ll let on. Truth is, he still cares for Georgie just as much as she does him, secretly hoping and just as fervently for a rapprochement. However, like Seth, Darren remains a traditionalist at heart, and sees no reason why Georgie’s transgression should go unpunished. After all, he reasons, if her fame continues he’ll be taking a backseat to a partner who’s not only constantly in the public domain, but earning at least twenty times as much as him. A bloke has to retain some pride, after all.

  The pair proceed to the front room, its furnishings happily familiar to Georgie, who’s prompted to recall all sorts of amorous romps within these walls. Pointedly Darren remains standing. No chance of a cosy chat, she thinks; she’ll just have to go for it.

  ‘Look,’ Georgie stammers, suddenly and uncharacteristically hesitant, gaze downcast, twisting a long and slender object in a brown paper bag between her hands. ‘There’s no easy way to say this. I know I did wrong. I got stupid and conceited and bigh
eaded. I pissed off a lot of people who’d been good to me, but worst of all I hurt someone I love. I can’t change the past, but Darren,’ her voice trembles with emotion, ‘I’m really, truly sorry. Nothing like this’ll ever happen again, I promise.’ Georgie pauses and looks up anxiously. Darren’s gaze has softened but he remains silent and stares back at her, expectantly. She takes a deep breath. ‘I have learned my lesson, honestly, but I can understand you might not believe that, so,’ reluctantly she proffers the strange parcel, ‘I deserve to be punished and, well, this might help.’

  The faintest trace of a smile illuminates Darren’s face, and taking the parcel he unwraps it slowly and deliberately to reveal a stout bamboo cane. Georgie expects him to register shock and amazement, yet he appears curiously unsurprised, swishing the pliant rod experimentally through the air, producing a rushing sound which makes her shiver with anticipation. Strangely her fear is tempered by another equally physical emotion, a rush of heat to the loins that brings a simultaneous blush to her pretty face. Georgie is submitting herself totally to the not-so-tender mercies of this strong young man, and the very idea is sufficient to stimulate a surge of sexual arousal.

  Darren moves a step forward, takes her in his muscular arms and hugs her tightly to him, kisses her tenderly on the cheek then quickly relinquishes his grip. ‘Thank you, Georgie,’ he says calmly, ‘I’ve known you long enough to be certain that apology was sincere. I shall punish you now, with the cane on your bare behind, but once it’s over we’ll put our troubles in the past and move on.’

  ‘Yes, Darren.’ Georgie’s voice is barely audible, choked by a mixture of relief and trepidation.

  ‘Now then,’ Darren becomes brisk and businesslike, ‘I think we’ll have you bent over the back of the sofa.’

  Swiftly Georgie moves to obey, and as she does so he savours the sight of her, clad simply in a figure-hugging T-shirt, no make-up save for a slash of bright red lipstick to counterpoint her shoulder-length blonde tresses. Darren’s appreciative glance travels over her ample curves, past a knee-length flowing skirt to high-heeled sandals, a welcome addition to Georgie’s sartorial repertoire, and painted toenails, another new item he can cheerfully live with.