“Please... You don’t understand... I have to have my medication - now... Right now... Please...” The teenager’s voice trailed off as she watched her stepmother quietly reach across to retrieve the wood-backed hairbrush that she had earlier left on the side table. Her eyes widened in disbelief as the woman, locking her in her determined gaze, began to casually slap the flat back of the hairbrush against the palm of her hand before then patting her lap in a gesture that Alice somehow instantly recognised, despite it being something well outside her realm of experience.
“Yes Alice; I’m quite well aware that you need your medication - that is why you are going to do exactly as you’re told. Don’t worry, you’ll get the dose the doctor prescribed, but first we are going to have a little chat; I’m sorry, but it’s the only way I can get you to listen to me.”
“But... I, I need it now! NOW!”
Biting her lip she stamped her foot in frustration, immediately becoming angry with herself at the childish image she was portraying in that action and instantly reminded of that word embroidered on the housecoat her stepmother now had her in: ‘delinquent’.
“If you shout like that again you will get nothing. Now say you’re sorry... come on. I mean it; if you want your medication you will apologise immediately, young lady!” Karen Lamberton-Marchment’s voice was calm, steady but determined, the emphasis being placed on that last part, ‘young lady’. Her dark eyes glinted with intent in the firelight, fixing her stepdaughter with her stare and seemingly daring her to defiance.
Her limbs shaking like dried stems in the breeze, her stomach cramping and her nerves stretched like gut strings, beads of sweat breaking out all over her forehead, it took only a moment’s consideration for Alice to yet again swallow her pride: “Okay, okay. I’m sorry I shouted.”
“And you won’t do it again - will you?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
“No... Say: I promise”
“Okay... I promise... But... I really do need it, now... I really, really do.” Alice couldn’t believe the pleading in her own voice now, the pathetic almost grovelling tone that was entering her speech. She hated herself for it - but she was beginning to hate her stepmother even more, for bringing her to this point. But then she wasn’t to know that this point was only the beginning as far as Karen Lamberton-Marchment was concerned, merely the jumping-off point for the long journey ahead she had mapped out for young Alice.
“And you will get it, too, if you’re good, as I said. But first of all, let’s get you out of that housecoat for the time being. Unbutton it, slip it off and leave it over the back of that armchair over there where you found it earlier - folding it neatly first... Come on hurry along; the quicker you do it the quicker you will get your medication... Good - now, come over here and lie across my lap.”
Up to that point Alice had been complying quite briskly, only too glad to rid herself of the embarrassingly dowdy and over-warm garment. Now standing there in front of her stepmother clad in that embarrassingly undersized tennis dress with its tiny flap of a skirt struggling to cover the old-fashioned acetate and Elastane knickers she had on, she could only stare aghast and open-mouthed in disbelief as the woman again tapped her lap meaningfully with her palm. The woman had to be joking - except that she could see that she very much wasn’t. She wanted to say no, so very, very much. She could feel her cheeks burning in embarrassment as the ever mounting effects of withdrawal eat away at her resolve, eroding her self-respect.
“Come along, just pop yourself over my lap and then it will all be over - we’ll have a little chat regarding what we can do about your education and getting you back on academic track and then I’ll pop up to the office and get your medication for you.”
Karen Lamberton-Marchment didn’t intend this, Alice’s first taste of corporal punishment, to be anything other than mild. It was supposed to be little more than symbolic, a little ritualistic affair designed to start off the process of creating the type of mindset in her stepdaughter she wanted the girl to have. At least that had been her intention.
With Alice lying prone across her lap in the traditional manner of old she quickly flipped up the little flap of fabric that constituted the tennis dress’s skirt, bringing down the hairbrush several times in fairly rapid succession across the seat of the girl’s knickers. Other than for the last strike, which she made a little harder - her intention being to leave a modicum of residual stinging across the girl’s behind to bring home the message that she had just been punished like a schoolchild across her stepmother’s lap - she employed barely enough force to bring much more than a little yelp from the girl’s lips. Then something seemed to overcome her: Instead of letting Alice up as she had intended, she settled down into a rhythm: Again and again, at well spaced measured intervals, she brought the hairbrush crashing down across her stepdaughter’s full pert bottom, rapidly reddening the girl’s soft flesh, each slap of wood on girl-flesh harder than that preceding it.
Poor Alice: Despite her determination to remain stoic and defiant to the end, having been caught by surprise by the sudden ramping-up of the severity of this onslaught she found herself instinctively twisting this way and that and doing and saying anything to get away from the blows raining down on her behind, but all to no avail. Her stepmother’s surprisingly strong arm held her firmly in position while she methodically covered every inch of her rounded bottom cheeks with well judged smacks of the hairbrush until Alice could take no more of the fiery torment - but still it continued.
Ordinarily Karen Lamberton-Marchment’s view was that such a punishment is never truly effective unless taken to the point that the offender is broken down, reduced to tears and left bawling her eyes out. But the purpose here was supposed to have been not one of correction per se but rather to impress upon the girl her authority to impose such a correction - if and when it became necessary - and to encourage Alice to begin to see corporal punishment as the routine part of her life she fully intended it would become. The sting in the tail on this occasion had been intended to be all psychological.
Now looking into the girl’s eyes, Alice having clambered to her feet, reading the defeat now residing there, Karen Lamberton-Marchment could see she had been more than successful. She had gone well beyond that point. This and certain similar procedures she had planned for the near future would suffice for now. It would be the scholastic side of the disciplinary regime she had planned for Alice that would break the girl. She herself would start the process but she accepted it would be Mrs Daphne Larkspear who would complete the task; that woman would, she felt sure, given a free rein break Alice entirely once she was passed into her hands.
If Alice was to be schooled at home then there could be no finer ‘home tutor’ in all of Christendom than her old ex-teacher; that much had been decided upon now. But there was still much to be arranged, not least of which was the provision of a suitable school room in which young Alice’s education might be continued and extended. And then there would have to be some sort of alternative sleeping arrangements made to replace the girl’s present bedroom - some amenity preferably kept apart from the running of the house per se, more closely linked to the schoolroom and more amenable to certain supervisory measures she was minded to put into place. She knew well Mrs Larkspear’s views on the matter: Mrs Larkspear favoured what she enthusiastically referred to as a philosophy of ‘total immersion’, by which she inferred that the setup should approximate as closely as possible the workings and atmosphere of a strict girl’s boarding school and that within that ‘world within a world’ the girl’s day was to be regimented down to the tiniest detail.
The later principle was to extend to Alice’s mode of dress, which was to be prescribed to the letter from the skin outwards taking into account of all activities and eventualities and was of course to be only that thought suitable for a girl undergoing stric
t scholastic discipline. Mrs Larkspear was adamant it had to be a genuine school uniform, though that description did not necessarily imply it needed to be ‘of the time’ nor that all the features needed to be taken from the uniform of any one particular school, since it would likely have to be bespoke to some degree in any case.
What was important - according to Daphne Larkspear - was that a girl’s school uniform, in such a situation where discipline was to be to the fore, should play down the girl’s personality and scope for individuality while encouraging the idea of conformity and submission to authority. A good school uniform should be, in her words, ‘repressive, restrictive, humbling and all-enveloping while smart and pleasing to the eye of the onlooker - by which she meant that it, the uniform - or rather the girl in it - should appeal to her particular and singular tastes. The finished article, as she understood it, might well end up constituting an amalgam of stylistic influences but Mrs Larkspear had a definite vision in mind and the problem well in hand and she was minded to leave that particular quandary to her.
Meanwhile the problem of locating a suitable site for the schoolroom persisted and was hers - Karen Lamberton-Marchment’s - and hers alone. But the house was extensive, sprawling and not short of seldom-used rooms, disused storehouses and locked and bolted cobwebbed attic quarters. It was the latter, once the province of the servants back in the era when such a household would have numbered many more staff than family members, which she determined she would explore first.
CHAPTER 3
DESIGNING A ROOM WITH A VIEW TO SCHOOLING
Turning the key in the lock and easing open the heavy wooden door, the first impression was one of stale, dry oppressively over-warm stuffiness. Swinging back the door Karen Lamberton-Marchment coughed as an invasive cloud of dislodged dust swirled up. Bringing a hanky quickly to her mouth and nose, forming a sort of makeshift mask, she tentatively ventured in, pressing on with determination through the still twisting eddy of grey smoke-like particles. The latter slow-motion whirlwind cloud hung in the air as if reluctant to settle now awakened, the floating motes of time’s sediment darkening the first of a parallel series of three steeply angled shafts of light that lined the length of the space like broad yet intangible yellowish-grey spars and that presently represented the only source of illumination.
That there was so little fresh air was hardly surprising; the row of three rectangular portrait windows that provided that sparse illumination were shut tight and were sited so high up in the side wall as to be well out of reach even if jumping with arms stretched aloft - rather childishly, Karen Lamberton-Marchment tried, kicking up yet more dust in the process and triggering yet another coughing fit. Additionally, there seemed no other source of ventilation apparent other than the door through which she had just entered. Though the walls rose perpendicularly and the high ceiling consisted of a flat plane of discoloured plasterwork, the wood-framed windows with their three by four matrix of wooden surround panes were angled inward, reflecting the slope of the roof outside. Their lowest panels tucked back out of sight, other than if viewed from the far side of the room and then only if on tiptoe, they loomed from within their recesses like a row of stern, bespectacled invigilating schoolmaster. The latter notion had come unbidden and yet quite naturally; hands on hips Alice’s stepmother smiled to herself “...or schoolmistresses”, she added out loud.
While the upper row of panes could be hinged inwards to provide ventilation this could be achieved only by means of an angled brass eye and arm affair mounted at the very top of each window frame. A long dark-wood pole with a brass hook mounted at its end, provided for that very purpose, was standing propped in one corner. Well, that would have to go, she thought. Just out of interest she took up the heavy pole and awkwardly engaging its hook through one of the brass rings she tugged but to no avail, not even the catch mechanism would move, let alone the window open. She moved to the next window and then the next in turn, banging the head of the pole against the wall, the frames and the glass in her clumsy manoeuvring and thanking her lucky stars that the antiquated glass was so thick and sturdy while briskly sidestepping to dodge the thick flakes of dislodged old paint that showered down.
It was a task seemingly reminiscent of some sort of surreal fairground game and the thought broadened her smile as yet again her efforts proved futile and the final window failed to budge. All three had clearly become sealed in place through years of disuse and decade after decade of sloppy over painting, the latter evidenced by some of the paint chips that had fluttered down and that were fully the thickness of a workman’s thumbnail. The pole would go anyway, she decided - she could see no reason for spending good money freeing off or perhaps replacing those frames and hinges and so the thing was superfluous anyhow.
Looking around she decided that this must once have been some sort of store room. Certainly, having windows that looked out on nothing other than an expanse of sky was hardly conducive to pleasant occupation - and even that view, due to the degree of recessing, was only available if standing with one’s back against the opposite wall. It was however perfectly conducive to focus the concentration if one was to be confronted with some onerous or particularly tedious task or imposition and in danger of becoming distracted - there could be no lazy window-gazing daydreaming in here.
The walls were quite bare and with a snap of inspiration she decided they would remain that way, perhaps with a lick of white paint - no, not even that... Something even more nondescript was required - beige... a shade of light beige... There should be beige lino to match, to cover the wooden flooring; and in exactly the same shade. And the furnishings? It should be simple; a desk and chair combination slap bang in the centre, facing forwards, another, larger, office style desk with drawers either side at the far end and an easel or wall-mounted blackboard, or indeed both.
Her first thought, looking around, was of traditionally-dark wood construction; a bench seat attached to the smaller desk and wooden tops for both. It was that notion of beige paintwork and flooring that changed her mind. Wood grain could be interesting to look at, distracting to the mind. Formica on the other hand... The desks, at least, would be surfaced with beige Formica, then. Formica was practical, clean and hygienic and it provided a nice impersonal if not downright institutional air - she liked that idea. No, not plain beige - there would be a fine ruled repeating crosshatch patterning embedded in it, made up of subtly darker and lighter lines.
One would want to try to count the squares, subconsciously search for patterns that are just not there. One would find it monotonous to look at, yet one’s attention would be inexorably drawn to it in a manner that would quite quickly become intolerably irritating, if not concentrating on one’s work. It would make it particularly galling if that work happened to consist of mind numbingly tedious, repetitive mental drudgery - memories of punishment line-writing impositions at school came crashing back; the thought of nuns walking up and down rows of desks as girls scribbled away in silence made her shiver and shudder unpleasantly inside. Perhaps it shouldn’t be an integral bench seat fitted to the smaller desk that should be provided after all, but rather a hard, upright, high-backed wooden or metal-framed chair, finished in Formica to match the desk and set before it... So many decisions; but she was enjoying mulling them over all the same.
All that thought about the mental drudgery of punishment line-writing brought her to think of the punishment aspect embodied in the concept of a ‘home school room’. Along with unending hours performing written impositions - writing lines by the thousands, copying dictionary pages, nonsense verse and tedious rambling Latin treatises on subjects of no interest even if one had a grasp of Latin - there would always be that other punishment so beloved of stern school mistresses and implacable governesses alike: that of corner standing. But what of a purpose-built room put aside specifically for carrying out such punishment exercises, more particularly for the deliciously humiliating chastisement of corner
standing? Something devised with the aim of easing the teacher’s lot by simplifying the necessary chore of supervision - or even making superfluous that duty altogether - while at the same time acting to augment the effect of the correction on the miscreant.
Strictly speaking the term ‘space’ would have been a better description of the image that instantly began feverishly fermenting in her imagination; certainly the nomenclature ‘room’ seemed overgenerous. For corner standing one merely required a corner and enough space to accommodate the miscreant’s standing - or indeed kneeling - in it, no more than that. A space little larger than a corner cupboard would suffice if of sufficient height. There were all those little motion sensor devices one could purchase nowadays to guard against intruders, not to mention motion-activated web-cams designed for a similar purpose that might be pressed into service to watch over young Alice. Why, with a little thought it could even be arranged for any sign of non-compliance on behalf of her pretty miscreant be flagged up to her via her smart phone if she were out riding or in the stables and/or an alarm might be sent to the redoubtable Mrs Larkspear - who undoubtedly would be only too keen to come running, cane in hand to deal with any untoward fidgeting.
With such a setup Alice could be instructed to stand as motionless as a statue, nose presented to the corner, arms pressed close to her sides like a guardsman standing to attention and left to think about becoming the sweet, demure and hopelessly submissive thing both she and Daphne Larkspear willed her be without any - or very little at any rate - supervisory effort on either of their behalves. Correctly set up and the slightest movement would be enough to cause a brief video clip to be saved to the laptop computer she kept in her study. But would that be enough? Now that her mind was running its creative tendrils around the idea all manner of devilish refinements were popping up.
Alice Under Discipline, Part 1 Page 4
