The enema tubing was briskly removed. A rubber-sheathed fingertip and firm thumb found and held Miranda’s left nipple. The peaking strawberry of flesh was tweaked and teased in an expert pincer. The right nipple responded with alacrity. Soon, both nipples strained achingly as they rose up, an angry shade of crimson, from their smooth, creamy burgeoning mounds of flesh. Miranda clamped her thighs together tightly. It was a gesture of both defiance and resistance.
‘Over onto your tummy,’ rasped Matron.
‘Why? I haven’t —’
Smack. The soft buttocks joggled under the firm slap.
‘Silence,’ Matron thundered. ‘Obey without question. Over.’
Miranda rolled over, presenting her naked bottom up to her tormentor. Inside her, the enema was taking effect. She pressed her legs together anxiously, welding them at ankle, knee and inner thigh. A shiver ran down her dimpled spine as a length of the rubber tubing brushed her rounded buttocks, coming to rest across the swell of their softly swelling mounds.
‘I am going to break you, my girl. Spoiled little bitch. All those chances. Wasted. Thrown away. Look at you. Pretty. Rich. Titled. I never had those assets.’
The tone was one of controlled anger. Chillingly vehement. Miranda tasted the sour tang of fear in her mouth.
‘You will learn, bitch. And make a good pupil. I’ve seen the signs. I shall relish tutoring you.’
Miranda panicked. The monster had detected her unwilling response to the domination and was now set to ruthlessly exploit this at both her leisure and will.
‘But look who is on top? Eh?’
The sadistic tone had an edge of rising triumph in it that startled Miranda. The rubber tubing lay dangerously still across her skin.
‘Me. And you will quickly learn that I…’
A telephone rang shrilly. Matron paused in mid-sentence, fumed impatiently and, turning savagely on her heel, strode across the san to a locked cup board. Selecting a key from the large bunch on her leather belt, she unlocked and opened the cupboard door.
All telephones in the Academy were locked out of sight and reach of the girls. As an extra precaution, the phone number had been erased from every dial.
Miranda lay, seething with indignation yet cowed into fearful submission, naked and face down on the examination couch. The length of rubber tubing remained draped over the soft contours of her generous buttocks, resting on her taut, satin smooth skin, potent yet inert, full of the delicious threat it both posed and promised. The Matron grunted into the phone, replaced the receiver and locked it away in the cupboard. She turned to Miranda, fingering the key in her strong fingers.
‘Go to the toilet. Then get dressed. I will attend to you later. In fact,’ she pondered aloud as Miranda ran across to squat down with relief on the toilet, ‘I will see you…’ Matron paused, savouring the tension her delay created. The awful moments stretched to a full minute until Miranda almost screamed. ‘I will need to see you twice a day from now on. Come back just before supper. I will deal with you more thoroughly then.’
Miranda pulled up her brief white shorts and struggled into the tight cotton vest. It both moulded and squashed her full bosom as the taut fabric embraced her.
She left the san deep in thought. It was not just her immediate fate, the imminent pain and humiliation that awaited her, which troubled her. It was the vigorous sense of injustice. Matron was emerging as a sadistic bully with a terrific chip on her shoulder. The powerful inferiority complex she had just unintentionally revealed fuelled her hunger for discipline and thirst for punishment. Miranda reflected upon the fact that the regime at the Academy was strict and severe enough. To be so ruthlessly abused was, to her sense of fair play, abhorrent. Something would have to be done, a small voice inside her insisted.
Miranda drew upon twelve generations of noble birth, and her chivalrous flame flickered, as did her fierce pride. She suddenly knew that she had the courage, the right and indeed the duty to challenge and curtail Matron’s nasty bullying. Bullying which went far beyond the admittedly bizarre punishment schedules of the Academy.
‘My goodness, Miranda. We are looking thoughtful.’ Miss Frobisher smiled warmly.
Miranda looked up guiltily and smiled, flushing heavily. She had almost walked straight past Miss Frobisher, the poetry and art tutor with the exquisite hands, without offering the required courtesy of a polite greeting.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Frobisher. Good morning,’ Miranda said hastily, anxious not to give offence to this pleasant woman.
‘And a very good morning to you, my dear,’ replied Miss Frobisher, smiling to show that she had overlooked the unintentional lapse of good manners. ‘Not planning or plotting naughty deeds, I trust?’ she added gently, fluttering her shapely, slender hands gracefully.
‘Oh, no, Miss Frobisher.’ Miranda blushed.
Miranda had taken a very strong liking to this fey, winsome 34-year-old tutor. Delicately beautiful, she taught the girls in an inspired way, encouraging them and rewarding their efforts with praise. Miranda had been informed by many of the girls that Miss Frobisher, though an art tutor, helped everyone with maths and other hateful subjects they struggled to master. But like all the other members of staff, the beautiful Miss Frobisher administered discipline when it was necessary to do so, never flinching from her duties to chastise the naughty, the disobedient or the wayward. Appropriately, she put her beautiful hands to effective purpose. The girls often whispered that a spanking from Miss Frobisher was a memorable one.
‘Down to your chores and allotted duties, my dear. Don’t be late,’ the pleasant woman said, smiling warmly.
Miranda turned to watch her stride off down along the corridor, her soft cashmere dress clinging lovingly to her shapely hips and thighs. Miss Frobisher had a subtle charm, Miranda suddenly realised, and a quiet, understated beauty.
Down in the kitchen she joined Jaya at the pots and pans. Neither spoke as the supervisor prowled by continuously, strap at the ready. The arduous morning dragged on slowly, the brooding cloud of the impending Chair and Quarter Exercise casting a dark shadow over their minds.
‘What is this Chair, exactly?’ Miranda whispered at length, breaking the oppressive silence.
‘Of course, you don’t know. Didn’t Mrs Boydd-Black explain?’ Jaya sighed.
‘No. She only explained the coloured band system. You know. Green for newcomers. Then red, and finally gold.’
‘When you were in her study, didn’t you see that ugly old chair?’
‘Yes, I think I did.’
‘That’s the brute. And a Quarter Exercise means …’
Jaya was ordered to stop talking by the supervisor who fingered her strap menacingly. Obediently, both girls bent down and resumed their tasks, elbows deep in the frothy, warm suds.
At roughly eleven o’clock, Miranda had to go to her singing lesson. There were five other girls in the class, one blueband and four redbands. Their tutor, Madame Nina, was in an impatient, tetchy mood. The impending Chair and Quarter Exercise seemed to be unsettling everyone, Miranda reasoned. In the airy drawing room, gathered around the piano, Madame Nina hurried the six assembled girls through their chansons.
Singing in French was held by Mrs Boydd-Black to improve the girls’ accents. Singing in French was held by the girls to be a bore. Madame Nina had her work cut out for her, but proved equal to the task.
Miranda thought the singing lessons trivial, but wisely kept her views to herself. France to her meant going to the races at Saint-Cloud, or attending exclusive and expensive Parisian night spots…
‘Non, non, non!’ snapped Madame Nina. ‘C-sharp.’
One of the redbands steadied herself at the piano and tried the elusive note again. Her efforts were unsuccessful.
‘Encore,’ said Madame Nina impatiently.
‘Lah,’ sang the girl, again missing her key.
Madame Nina tut-tutted petulantly, rose from her seat at the piano and stood directly behind the nervous girl. Pul
ling down the anxious redband’s white shorts with a single jerk, the music teacher gazed at the top half of the naked bottom her action had revealed. Miranda noticed how the taut elastic waistband bit into the double hemisphere of pillowy flesh as it tightly encircled and embraced the pliant softness of the half-exposed rump.
Smack. The small, firm hand of the music tutor spanked the bunched cheeks of the luckless redband.
‘Lah,’ the timorous girl quavered.
Smack. The ivory orbs pinked.
‘Lah.’ Too high, Miranda mused. Too high.
Smack. Reddish crimson stole across the superb buttocks like a spreading flame.
‘Lah.’ It was C-sharp at last.
Miranda watched the punished cheeks disappear behind their veil of white cotton as Madame Nina roughly pulled the shorts back up over the freshly spanked bottom. She did so with a sigh of exasperation, then resumed her seat before the piano.
Three short, shrill bells sounded. They seemed to reverberate around the bright, airy drawing room.
‘Vite, vite!’ Madame Nina hissed, chivvying her charges out into the cool corridor.
It was time, Miranda realised, for the Chair and the Quarter Exercise.
When Winston Churchill spoke of the ‘welcome sparkle brought by Providence into a time of bleakness’ on 2 June, 1953, Coronation Day, he was heard to add, ‘In these times when the present is hard and the future veiled.’
Miranda’s Uncle Teddy had been within earshot of the grand old man and the words were often repeated by Uncle Teddy on subsequent visits to Sandstones. Miranda, a mere elf as Uncle Teddy achieved his anecdotage, would often sit at his knees during nuts and port and overhear the famous phrase. Now, as she walked towards the Chair, she was to come to know the full meaning of the great man’s remarks.
For the first time in her gilded eighteen years, her present was hard. Very hard. And her future was veiled. Before the Quarter Exercise was over, a corner of that veil would have been lifted. What chilling possibilities would be glimpsed, she brooded anxiously as she walked in solemn single file towards Mrs Boydd-Black’s study. Pulse aflutter, she entered the room.
With the entire community of the expectant staff and subdued girls fully assembled, the double doors were silently but firmly closed. On a square of pale blue carpet woven with a thin but intricate silver leaf pattern, the beast of a seventeenth-century, hand-carved, mahogany chair stood gleaming in a shaft of shimmering gold autumnal sunshine. A splendid polished sheen managed to wink with a dull, evil malignancy from the dark wood.
Head bent in shame, an anxious Clarissa presented the picture of penitence. The headmistress, in a loud check, stood with her back turned to the gathered women and girls. She remained silent, continuing to stare out wistfully across the breadth of shaven swards of lawns and prinked terraces.
Miranda, relieved to see that Clarissa was fully dressed, or at least as fully dressed as her regulation uniform of brief vest and white shorts permitted, breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Whatever this Chair business, and the Quarter Exercise meant, it clearly wasn’t going to involve any physical chastisement.
Miranda felt a pang of disappointment and a sense of relief. The pang came from a sense of loss. Watching Clarissa being whipped would have given her a curious and satisfying thrill. The sudden sense of relief came from the realisation that she was not to have her darker desires met. Such was the state of turmoil, confusion and uncertainty within Miranda that in her disappointment lay her relief. Clarissa was to receive nothing more than a tongue lashing, a verbal reprimand. Thus it was that Miranda was consoling herself when Mrs Boydd-Black turned to address all present.
‘I do thank you for coming along so promptly. Punctuality is a virtue the Academy places something of a premium on.’
Innocuous enough, thought Miranda.
‘There are many virtues to aspire to just as there are many vices to avoid.’
Miranda relaxed a little more. Goodness, she sighed to herself silently. She’s just going to talk and talk for ages. All this hype over a public ticking off for Clarissa. How bogus.
‘One of your number has lapsed. I will spare you the squalid details and I forbid any further speculation as to the exact nature of the gross transgression. The wretched girl involved…’
All eyes fixed on Clarissa, who sought refuge in staring down at the carpet. Miranda saw the small, white-stockinged foot trace the silver leaf pattern with the delicacy of a ballerina.
‘Head up, Clarissa. That’s better,’ the head-mistress barked. ‘I repeat, the wretched girl has confessed promptly and so I will not insist on the Half Exercise which the nature of her lapse fully warrants. A Chair with Quarter Exercise will suffice,’ she concluded grimly.
Imperceptibly, the girls shuffled in their white socks.
‘To the Chair, Clarissa,’ came the command.
Clarissa hesitated, then stooped and plucked off her white ankle socks. As she wriggled out of her white shorts, a knot of fearful expectation tightened in Miranda’s belly. Clarissa’s plump, rounded bosoms bounced free as the vest came up over her shoulders and off over her mane of thick, tousled hair. Her pale face was flushed after the sudden exertion of stripping off. Utterly naked now and trembling slightly, Clarissa approached the Chair.
Miranda felt her palms turning clammy and damp. Her lips felt dry and her tongue felt thick in her suddenly sour mouth. Clarissa clambered into an ungaily kneeling position on the wide seat of the Chair, presenting her back, buttocks and small pink heels to the assembled throng. Then, stretching up, she leaned right up and over the tall backpiece of the wooden Chair, disappearing behind the slab of carved wood so that her head, shoulders and arms were completely hidden from view. Miranda saw that Clarissa’s beautiful naked buttocks were now completely exposed as they remained high up in the air, presented fully for whatever chastisement they were destined to suffer. The unhappy girl supported herself on her knees and straining thighs. The position was both uncomfortable and very, very humiliating. And how unpleasant and insupportable, Miranda shuddered, to have one’s head, arms, shoulders and breasts — one’s whole upper torso — stretched over the hard wooden edge of the horrendous Chair.
‘A Quarter Exercise. As we are approximately twenty-five, that makes a team of six. But I think five will suffice for the punishment squad.’
So that’s what a Quarter Exercise means, Miranda thought. Gosh! Imagine having the entire assembly line up to thrash you!
The headmistress called out five names. Miranda, her horror tinged with curiosity and a vague delight, heard her name among them. The three other girls, together with Matron and Miranda, were invited to approach the large, leather-topped desk and pick up table tennis bats.
In her slightly trembling hand, Miranda’s felt heavy and somewhat cumbersome. It was of average size, covered on both sides with a thin coating of soft, dimpled latex. The bat had a short, stubby handle. Suddenly, Miranda found herself trying to calculate the surface area of her bat. Was it two times pi times the radius or pi times the radius squared? Avoiding the imminent horrors, her mind sought refuge in trying to focus on the problem of multiplying twenty-two over seven times the radius of her bat. But her eyes were drawn inexorably towards Clarissa’s beautifully rounded, pale bottom that bulged generously, invitingly, as it awaited its punishment.
‘Approach the Chair,’ boomed Mrs Boydd-Black in a businesslike tone that failed to conceal her thickening excitement.
The appointed five obeyed, bearing down in silent menace upon the soft, exposed nakedness of the doomed girl.
‘Position One. Two strokes each. Punish her soundly,’ came the grim admonishment.
Miranda watched breathlessly as a blue armband, a slim girl with whom she had not yet actually spoken, stepped up, stood square to the Chair, raised her bat up — paused — and brought it down vigorously once, twice, quickly and sharply across the perfectly rounded bare cheeks. Clarissa hissed. The slim girl then held the bat out behind the back of
the Chair, an inch away from Clarissa’s lips. Miranda thrilled inwardly as she both saw and heard the punished girl meekly kiss the instrument of her torment.
The second member of the punishment squad stepped forward. Again, a girl with whom Miranda had exchanged few, if any words. Weighing the bat momentarily, she paused, then raised it up again to swipe it down in a vicious twinkling. Crack. Crack.
A faint, pinkish blush now tinged the deep, ivory cream of Clarissa’s velvet flesh. Miranda winced as the soft, pliant skin momentarily flattened, squashed down into cruel submission as it yielded to the ruthless blows. Again, the striking surface of the bat was thrust behind the tall back of the Chair. Again, Miranda heard and saw Clarissa submit to it with a soft, reluctant kiss.
The third in line was Matron. She strode forward briskly and brought her table tennis bat down with two unerring, resounding splats. The reddening cheeks wobbled under the stinging onslaught, and as Clarissa kissed the dimpled latex with her dry, parted lips, Miranda stepped up and assumed her position.
Gazing down, she saw Clarissa’s white toes curled up in fearful expectation. How unseemly and how ungaily it must be to sustain such a humiliating posture, she thought sorrowfully. The strain of maintaining the awkward stance was beginning to tell, she noticed, in the taut sinews of the smooth, curved thighs.
Poor, poor Clarissa. The repeated strokes of the table tennis bats were leaving pink blotches to com memorate their brief, stinging visits to the large, naked buttocks. Miranda gulped as she saw the dimpled imprints of the cruel latex. Swallowing hard, and trying desperately to ignore the flicker of excitement that unfurled in her belly and between her thighs, she judged the distance between herself and the half-kneeling, half-squatting miscreant.
Raising up her heavy bat, she cracked it down, loudly but lightly, across the wobbling left buttock. The firm bat almost bounced off the rounded cheek of springy, spongey flesh. Clarissa sighed. Again, the bat was drawn up, only to fall quickly to crack foursquare against the luscious cheek. Splat. The tiny white toes curled and uncurled in a pathetic reflex spasm. Miranda blushed. She had intended it to be a light, glancing swipe but the peculiarly intense excitement of the moment had high-jacked her sense of timing and clouded her judgement. The stroke had been a stinger.
The Academy Page 7