School Reunion Year 3 Page 4

  ‘Bridge, won’t be back till ten,’ replied Lyn without interest and, clearly unable to think of anything better to do with a few precious hours of privacy, turned her face back to the idiot box in the corner, which as usual was showing a witless daytime soap. ‘Get me a cup of coffee, will you?’

  To her surprise Arthur replied with a crisp and very final, ‘No,’ and instead he drew up a straight-backed chair and sat facing her. Had she been less self-obsessed Lyn, dressed in a creased T-shirt and jeans, might have detected the change in his demeanour and steely note to his voice.

  ‘No,’ repeated Arthur grimly, reaching to turn off the TV, ‘we are going to have a long overdue chat.’

  ‘Hey, I was watching that.’ Indignantly Lyn reached for the remote, only to find her wrist held in an unwaveringly strong grip.

  ‘Be quiet and listen, woman,’ Arthur said. He didn’t shout - assertion not aggression, his tutor had stressed - but for once he was determined to be heard uninterrupted. ‘Things are going to change around here,’ he continued, fixing Lyn with a penetrating stare. ‘For a start, I’m going to begin behaving like the head of this household and less like a doormat, and you,’ Lyn was staring open-mouthed, ‘are going to improve your attitude, pay some attention to personal grooming and pull your weight. Oh, and by the way, you could stand to lose a pound or two. And as of this weekend we are once more looking at houses to buy, I want us to be away from here and living our own lives within three months.’

  ‘You can’t talk to me like that,’ snapped his wife, recovering her spiteful tongue.

  ‘I can and will,’ Arthur countered. ‘And once we’ve moved you’ll see your mother once, and once only, each week. I’m sick of her baleful, petty bourgeois 1950s influence. If you got out and socialised a bit more, picked up with some of your old mates instead of flopping in front of the box every night, you might find a more positive role model than a frustrated middle-aged woman who thinks of nothing except bridge and the sales.

  ‘Look at yourself,’ he went on. ‘You slop around this house, revert to acting like a twelve-year-old every time your mother’s within earshot and never have a good word for anyone, least of all me. Has it made you happy? Well,’ he pressed, raising his voice, ‘has it?’

  A cold, sick feeling crawled into Lyn’s stomach and started to claw its way to her soul; slowly but decisively a horrible truth was dawning. ‘No,’ she whispered after a seemingly interminable pause. ‘I’m not happy; I can’t remember when I last was, probably on our honeymoon. Right now I’m bored witless, fed up with my mother, permanently cross with you and it’s not even your fault. I’m a cow most of the time and we’re both miserable.’

  Gaining confidence she continued. ‘It started out so well, Arthur. I made an effort, tried to look good, I was so pleased to have a man that wanted to marry me but then it all seemed to go wrong.’

  ‘You were attractive,’ Arthur responded kindly, ‘still could be.’

  ‘Think so?’ Lyn sounded doubtful. ‘I suppose we could try to sort this out, move out, make a new beginning, get our marriage properly back on its feet. All right, let’s start next week.’

  ‘No,’ said Arthur again, a note of anger entering his voice, ‘we’ll start now.’

  Lyn’s words were out of her mouth before she’d even considered them, a sort of oral autopilot. ‘Don’t tell me what to do, you wimp. Since when did you become Mr Macho?’ Immediately she regretted the offensive outburst, for as Arthur rose stony-faced to his feet she knew with an awful certainty that she’d finally gone too far, the worm had turned. In a flash and none too considerately he’d grabbed her, sat back down on the chair and draped his errant spouse unceremoniously across his knee.

  ‘Get off of me, Arthur, I said get off,’ shouted Lyn, but deaf to her protests he trapped her calves with one leg, pinned her hands behind her and with a strength neither of them ever imagined he possessed, wrenched her jeans and knickers to her knees. Lyn felt a stark chill of apprehension course through her veins, Arthur had never got so physical before and she was scared.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, oh no, you can’t imagine you’re going to spank me!’ she shrieked, realisation dawning. ‘I’m a grown woman; you’ve always been so gentle.’

  ‘Right, woman,’ Arthur snarled, his voice heavy with menace, ‘if assertion won’t work we’ll try aggression.’ Dangling helplessly, nose inches from the carpet, bare feet scarcely touching the floor, she had no idea what he was talking about. That said, it didn’t take a genius to work out what was about to happen and conflicting confusingly with her anger and fear she felt the putative stirrings of another emotion - one she’d not experienced for ages - sexual arousal.

  ‘This is eighteen months overdue,’ growled Arthur, raising his hand to shoulder height and bringing it cracking down into the centre of her defenceless rump, ‘but never mind, better late than never, you’re going to get the spanking of your life.’ Oblivious to her shrieks and wails Arthur doggedly spanked on and on, nearly two years of unrelieved frustration slipping away as he methodically turned her unfortunate bum from pink to red to crimson. Gradually aware that his arm was aching and his stinging palm had become a similar hue to Lyn’s squirming burning bottom, Arthur simply shrugged, picked up a sturdy hairbrush from her handbag and resumed his self-appointed task.

  Time and time again the brush impacted, rippling Lyn’s formerly porcelain skin, sending shockwaves of sensation throughout her lower body. Eventually she ceased to wriggle and squirm in his determined grip, stopped squealing and lay prostrate and defeated across his lap, whimpering pitifully as the backs of her milky-white thighs were subjected to a similar series of ringing slaps.

  At last, tired, with his long pent-up anger temporarily assuaged, Arthur ceased Lyn’s chastisement, tossed the hairbrush to one side and rested his palms upon a pair of burnished globes that positively radiated heat. Momentarily his fingers strayed to the junction of her thighs, delving into her moist, warm sex. With a guttural sigh the like of which he never heard her make before, Lyn pushed her haunches back onto the questing digits, nether lips gaping pink and wet in mute invitation.

  ‘Ow, my poor bum,’ she moaned, ‘I won’t be able to sit for a week,’ this lament partly contradicted by a hungry glint in her eyes and a knowing smile on her face. ‘You should,’ she continued, slipping to her knees in front of him, wincing theatrically as her punished posterior came into contact with her heels, ‘have done that a long time ago, Mr Not-So-Meek.’

  Arthur opened his mouth to reply, but his words were lost in a sharp intake of breath as Lyn deftly drew down the zip of his trousers. For the next five ecstatic minutes Lyn, with a skill he’d never guessed she possessed, took him in her mouth, something she had refused outright to do up until now. At the end of which, just when Arthur thought he could contain his seed no longer, she released his cock and pulled him onto the sofa.

  ‘Ow…’ Her scalded rump flashed a message of pain as it slid across the leather, but Lyn was not to be distracted. Pulling him down between her widespread and accommodating thighs with an animal urgency she whispered the last words either would utter for the next ten minutes, ‘I’d like to be fucked good and hard, now please, Mr Meek.’ Which she most assuredly was.

  Some time later, temporarily sated but just as determined as before, Arthur led Lyn naked, but for a pair of high heels he found lost and lonely in a cupboard, back into the front room.

  ‘Ten minutes corner time,’ he said in a firm but not unkind voice, and stood his chastened but thrilled wife, hands on head, bottom still blush-red and welted by the edge of the brush, in an alcove facing the wall. Helping himself to a beer from the fridge he sat and contemplated his handiwork.

  ‘Okay, young lady,’ he said at length, ‘I think we’ve both learned something this evening, so in future this is how it’s going to be…

  ‘One visit to or from your mother each week, the remaining evenings being given over to time with friends, visits t
o restaurants, the cinema and theatre.

  ‘A complete change of wardrobe to something befitting a twenty-two-year-old girl, not a middle-aged matron. This will include the reintroduction of skirts and dresses, sticking those dammed tights in the bin in favour of stockings, and several pairs of high heels the better to display your lovely legs to your husband’s satisfaction and enjoyment.

  ‘You’ll start tomorrow with a shopping list of my devising and when I get home in the evening you, Lyn, will be waiting dressed as per my emailed instructions. There will be no arguments, no nagging and if you get out of line expect to be on the receiving end of a new domestic discipline regime firmly based upon CP.’

  At the end of which lengthy lecture Lyn meekly said, ‘Yes, Arthur,’ and followed him timidly back to their bedroom where her bottom was further chafed against the sheets.

  The following week saw much consternation in the hitherto moribund stockbroker belt household; Arthur’s boss was coming to dinner.

  ‘Sir Maurice,’ said his mother-in-law, Audrey, ‘I’m sure that name rings a bell.’

  ‘He says he knew your late husband, even met you socially a few times a decade or so back,’ revealed Arthur.

  ‘Of course, the bankers’ annual dinner-dance,’ Audrey continued wistfully, her face softening at the recall and Arthur musing that if she wasn’t such a bitch she would be a very attractive woman. ‘Tall, distinguished, used to be in the army.’

  Dismissing her mother’s suggestion to get the caterers in, Lyn, displaying an energy and enthusiasm unseen since their courting days, took charge of the hospitality arrangements. Come the evening, and following lengthy preparations during which outfits were selected, discarded then tried once more, both women appeared dressed to the nines to greet their eminent guest.

  ‘Steady on,’ protested Arthur, who would once have been a bag of nerves prior to such an occasion, but was now relaxed and casually confident, ‘it’s only my boss, not visiting royalty.’

  Despite which Sir Maurice proved to be charm and charisma personified. Complimenting both women lavishly on their appearance he proved a composed and amiable dinner guest, with a fund of amusing and interesting anecdotes culled from an action-packed life. Guest and senior hostess shared much in common, both born in adjuncts of the Commonwealth, he in India, she in Kenya. Both brought up largely by nannies then subjected to the less than tender mercies of Catholic boarding schools with robust attitudes to discipline. The feminism her peers had so enthusiastically embraced held no appeal to Audrey, who to their amazement had extolled the virtues of stereotypical households from a prior generation; fantasy families where husbands wore the trousers and ruled the roost. Since her benchmark of all that was to be desired in a man remained mired somewhere in the 1930s it was hardly surprising poor, thoroughly modern Arthur had failed to measure up in her estimation. In short, she espoused the sort of views and opinions which Sir Maurice, an educated and not wholly unenlightened ex-military man, could find little to argue with.

  Over coffee Sir Maurice turned to Arthur and winked discretely, and needing no further prompt the younger man immediately took his cue.

  ‘Lyn and I are just popping out for a stroll to catch a breath of fresh air,’ Arthur said to Audrey, whose eyes widened at the decisive tone of his instruction and the newly acquired confidence with which he delivered it. ‘We’ll be gone for about an hour. It seems Sir Maurice and you have much in common and plenty to discuss together.’ Upon which concluding statement he turned to Lyn, to whom this turn of events was totally unexpected, but having adopted the habit of unquestioning obedience to her husband’s bidding allowed herself to be gently but firmly led from the room.

  ‘Now then, Audrey,’ said Sir Maurice, once they were quite alone together, ‘your ravishing physical appearance doesn’t seem to have altered a jot in the decade since I last saw you, but,’ dismissively he waved away her coquettish protests, ‘I regret I can’t vouch the same for your personality.’

  A look of anger flashed across the woman’s face. ‘Sir Maurice, how dare you?’ she snapped. ‘And in my home, too?’

  ‘Hush, woman, I most certainly do dare. You’ve contributed to making one of my prize employees most unhappy and I won’t stand for it. Fortunately, and dare I be so immodest as to say it, with guidance from myself, I think he’s already well on the way to resolving his current matrimonial difficulties.’

  ‘You mean…?’

  ‘Having regained a satisfactory degree of control over his life he and Lyn will shortly be moving from here.’ Sir Maurice softened his tone. ‘Which, I appreciate, will leave you alone.’ The look of dismay and apprehension on her face confirmed his evaluation of the likely effects of such a change. ‘Not a situation that suits, is it?’ he continued rhetorically. ‘Married young, straight from home and always used to having a man about the house, eh?’

  Audrey nodded, completely thrown off balance by the rapid turn of events.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be like that, of course. Forgive an old soldier whose no great romantic, but if you’re interested I’d be pleased to take a crack at taking you on. There’d be lots of travel, plenty of high society socialising, and I hope,’ his eyes twinkled, ‘an active sex life.’

  ‘Why, this is all so very sudden,’ gasped Audrey, wide-eyed in unfeigned amazement. ‘I mean, of course I’m flattered and, well, certainly interested, Maurice, but…’ and once more anger flared within her, ‘…what do you mean about my supposedly making Arthur and Lyn miserable? I’ve opened my house to them, and…’

  ‘Closed your mind to just about everything else,’ Sir Maurice bluntly concluded the statement. ‘You’re a fine looking woman, Audrey, but you need to be kept up to scratch. A firm hand has been lacking, so a firm hand you shall have. Henceforth, if you accept my offer I’ll expect an immediate improvement in demeanour.’

  In the face of such remarkable candour Audrey remained transfixed, face white with open-mouthed astonishment. Unable or unwillingly to gainsay such a masterful display words had, for once, utterly failed her.

  Relentlessly pursuing his advantage, Sir Maurice pressed briskly on. ‘Your late husband kept a riding-crop, didn’t he, Audrey? Don’t bother to deny it, your face contradicts whatever prevarication you were about to attempt. Go and fetch it.’

  Finally finding her voice, Audrey was about to damn him to hell when suddenly an image from the past came involuntarily into her mind. Deja vu, she had indeed been here before when a different but every bit as masculine voice issued an almost identical ultimatum. On that and many previous occasions she’d readily obeyed, accepting the pained posterior that she knew only too well to be an inevitable but short-term consequence, all the while yearning for the full-blooded passion that invariably followed. ‘Yes Maurice,’ she said quietly and head bowed, high heels clicking on the parquet, hurried from the room in search of the long neglected but carefully preserved rod of correction.

  Sir Maurice allowed himself the luxury of a smile of satisfaction, hurriedly reverting to a stern and commanding countenance as, eyes downcast, Audrey returned to the lounge. In outstretched, trembling hands she held a slender leather-covered wand.

  ‘Splendid,’ said Maurice, taking the crop from her and swishing it through the air approvingly. ‘Glad to see you’ve decided to acquiesce to the natural order of things. However, as regards your initial recalcitrance a little corner time seems appropriate for such a haughty vixen. You will stand over there, facing the wall, hands on head, and I shall pour myself a libation of your rather fine single malt.’

  As the evening sun filtered through the adjacent French windows Maurice sat contentedly, sipping scotch and savouring the immediate view. Good posture, he mused approvingly, and a trim waist; wouldn’t be out of place on a woman a generation her junior. Lustrous shoulder length black hair that was cut into a fashionable bob, perfectly painted pink pearlescent nails, smart turnout all round. Slowly he ran his eyes down the straight back and over the mature curves of
her still pert hindquarters. Further still roved his gaze, past the hem of a well-tailored mauve skirt, past the fine hollows at the back of her knees, down to trim ankles and the exactly aligned high heels of her fashionable court shoes.

  Stocking seams straight and perfectly parallel, too. Hmm, Sir Maurice became aware of an insistent stirring down below, it had been a long time since he’d seen a woman in fully-fashioned nylons. Beneath the material of her skirt the faintest suggestion of suspender fastenings was visible on each thigh. Enough daydreaming, though, Sir Maurice was as stern a taskmaster with himself as with any employee, high time he got down to the pleasurable business ahead.

  ‘Raise your skirt,’ he commanded curtly.

  Audrey had been a surrendered wife long before late twentieth century post-feminists coined the term. Which is not to say that she willingly, nor even quietly, accepted her fate. Her apprehension was genuine enough; previous experience of the crop’s affect was still vivid in her memory and, notwithstanding such practical concerns, Audrey was well aware of her necessary part in the CP ritual; to protest, struggle and generally bewail her fate prior to presenting and permitting as directed. How could Sir Maurice ultimately bask in conquering triumph if she first didn’t provide him with a worthy challenge?

  ‘Sir Maurice, really, this has gone quite far enough,’ she said. ‘I have indulged you thus far because I admire a man who speaks his mind, but I certainly don’t intend to display myself in such a vulgar manner.’

  ‘Nonsense, woman, this is no less than you deserve and you know it. Stop dissembling, you’ll only make matters worse for yourself.’

  Now with rather less wind in her sails than before, Audrey attempted a last ditch defence. ‘All right, I admit in retrospect I may have been less than fair to my daughter and her husband, and to him rather rude, in fact. However, I assure you I’m quite capable of mending my ways without any,’ she hesitated, nervously searching for the appropriate words, ‘physical intervention.’