Alice Under Discipline, Part 1

by Garth ToynTanen

  Alice’s stepmother, for her part, could hardly suppress her glee: This after all the natural culmination of all those months of scheming, planning and preparation. At least it was the culmination of this part of her plan for her stepdaughter’s future - her longer-term aims for young Alice she was yet to entirely identify; her desires were, it had to be said, somewhat complex where her stepdaughter was concerned.

  For now, though, it was enough to know that having got Alice to this point she could be confident that she would from now on be spending her days sitting here in this spirit-stifling atmosphere, dressed in a genuine school uniform and under the strict supervision of a genuine old-time schoolmarm. Most days for Alice would now consist of eight hours of performing written impositions - copying dictionary pages, writing lines by the thousands - and punctuated only by breaks spent with her pert little nose pressed into the corner. Then of course there would undoubtedly be one or two intensive sessions of corporal discipline, for example on those occasions when Mrs Larkspear might consider her posture to be less than perfect.

  And of course, should Alice protest her treatment and put to use that foul language that she knew the girl to be still capable of on occasion Alice would soon find herself sucking on a bar of soap for a while as punishment. “A clean mouth is a sweet mouth” as Daphne Larkspear was fond of remarking. She could already see in her mind’s eye her young Alice buried deep in some written imposition while anticipating a bitter bar of soap for lunch or dinner... or both!.

  “Do you like your new desk? A little cramped I’ll admit, but we’ll get you on a good reducing diet and I’m sure that’ll help. I’ve been thinking for some time that you could do with shedding a few excess pounds; you have to admit that you’re getting a little... shall we say... on the plump side? I’ll have to have a word with doctor Ecclestone, see if she can’t design you a diet or perhaps get her clinic’s dietician to come up with something suitable - not too much in the way of rich food, if you get where I’m coming from.”

  Alice thought she knew where her stepmother was ‘coming from’ all right. The woman was clearly hard at work even now, devising yet another way to control her life, brewing up yet another way to make her suffer in the guise of ‘doing what was best’ for her. Not content with having her dress like some nerdy retarded escapee from a time warped Catholic convent school, squeezing her figure into an underdeveloped flat-chested silhouette, the woman now wanted to turn her into an anorexic gawky twiglet.

  Well she wasn’t going to stand for it! Nor was she going to squeeze herself in at that desk, as much as her stepmother might stand there tapping its seat with the tip of her cane, the curled-handle length of bamboo, or what ever it was, that she had taken of late to carrying around with her. She was just going to tell her stepmother so when the door behind her again opened, accompanied as before by the rattle of the handle, squeal of the ancient hinges and the discordant metallic clatter of a bunch of keys and the corresponding chatter of the lock.

  Alice remembered how the door had locked itself with a notable clunk behind them when they had first entered. Alice had noticed her stepmother had made something of a show of slamming the door shut behind them. Had it not been for the unspoken finality with which her stepmother had ushered her across the ‘classroom’ threshold and the ‘lock-and-key’ one-way security implied by that action she might well have made a dash for it by now; so dismayed was she at this turn of events. But she almost instinctively knew that without her stepmother’s bunch of keys in her hands she would have got no further than uselessly twisting the big old brass door knob. And she had already learned the futility of trying to wrestle her stepmother’s keys from her; they never left the end of the chain that was attached to that sturdy leather belt the hateful woman usually wore around the waist of her riding britches or jodhpurs. Now, though, the heavy timber door lay swung aside.

  For a split second, though startled, Alice turned as if to make for the open doorway... And then halted, mid-step. The door may well have been swung back, but the way back was anything but clear: The figure that stood blocking her putative path, though shorter in stature than her stepmother, possessed a natural air of authority whole orders of magnitude greater... and a voice of pure, commanding, cut lead crystal that sent Alice obediently scuttling to the waiting school desk like a well trained pet.

  This woman, this newcomer, had an automatically dominating presence that just exuded control, a presence that seemed to instantly fill the room with that one final missing ingredient. What had been, a fleeting moment before, merely a room in an English country house that happened to be furnished with some of the fittings typical of a school classroom - and to contain a teenage girl dressed up in some sort of school uniform - had been instantly transformed into a proper and disciplined working classroom, and Alice into a simpering schoolgirl.

  Eyes of deep periwinkle blue sparkled coldly under brows, as dark as her lashes and were somewhat too deep-set either side of a nose that tended towards the beak-like to be thought conventionally attractive, though there was something decidedly magnetic there. A generous mouth, that seemed too youthful when juxtaposed with the pince-nez spectacles perched on high on the bridge of her nose, was painted a little too red for a porridge-like, pale near porcelain complexion that looked as if to have never been exposed to the sun.

  “You must be Alice Lamberton: It’s so good to see you out of those ridiculous clothes you were wearing in the photographs your stepmother showed me a while back and into a proper school uniform. Well, the first thing we will have to agree on is that name - Alice Lamberton. It is going to be Alice Lamberton no longer - it is going to be Alice Marchment from now on. As I understand it, in addition to my duties as your private home tutor - I prefer the term ‘teacher’ by the way, although you will address me as ma’am or Miss Daphne - your stepmother wants me to help her prepare a case for your adoption; something I have had a little experience in. You will find there will be many changes around here, now that I have arrived, not least of which will be your being required to learn to address your stepmother as ‘Mother’ in preparation for the adoption proceedings.”

  The voice had a soft lilting highland Scots accent to it, but came with a hard no-nonsense edge that could be hardened at will and that broached no defiance. It was a voice that just oozed overbearing dominance, a commanding voice that one naturally felt driven to obey unquestioningly. “Now, get your self seated in the left hand desk over there; let’s have you sitting up straight ...and with your hands on your head if you please! We’ll have a chat about you not curtsying to your betters later.”

  Already believing herself to have arrived at the very acme of consternation, Alice couldn’t hope to stifle the gasp with which she involuntarily greeted the next unexpected development. The surprises and outrages - especially the outrages - were arriving thick and fast now, certainly in far too rapid a succession to allow for the maintenance of anything resembling self-composure.

  Alice’s palm leapt to cover her mouth, as, like it or not, a shocked slurp of stifling chalk-dusted air rushed into a cod-fish mouth set wide with equal parts fascination, dismay and empathy. The resultant huff-huffing was audible to all present, amplified and highlighted by the lively telltale acoustics of the bare-walled room, teasing even broader smiles from her stepmother and the hard-faced teacher woman and unintentionally adding to the discomfiture of one other now present. Not that Alice herself was immune to the squirming her short-lived unvoiced comment had produced in that other. It was the empathy component of that triad of responses that caused her the most anguish, not any form of ‘there-but-for-the-grace’ sympathetic guilt; it was the cold hearted selfish pain of seeing her own shame in all its purpose engineered humiliation reflected back at her as if from a mirror. But this was a living, feeling mirror she was looking at... a future in reflection... her own pathetic, sad future, unless she could learn once more to stand up for herself as she once
had, before this damn nightmare started.

  With great aplomb - as if conjuring a rabbit from a hat - the tweedy, stern Mrs Daphne Larkspear had produced from behind her back a red-apple-cheeked young girl, whose complexion was the epitome of embarrassed blushing English rose, leading her by the wrist and urging her forward with a patronising pat on the rump that lingered a little too long for both girls’ comfort. Despite the girl’s mode of dress and certain other aspects of her appearance and demeanour that argued otherwise, Alice immediately estimated this newcomer to be of around her own age, as judged from the girl’s physical development.

  That first impression ‘conjurer’s rabbit’ analogy held its ground. To Alice’s shock-numbed mind the girl certainly had the look of a hypnotised rabbit alright, in those wide innocently submissive eyes of hers. The girl’s long and pretty chestnut brown curls had been tamed by being tightly plaited in a pair of near waist-length pig-tails, tied at their ends with bows of bottle-green and grey diagonally striped ribbons, yet somehow had steadfastly held on to a modicum of the hair’s original character.

  The pert young new arrival’s firm little chin was gently and prettily cleft, the dimple exaggerated just a little where it was tucked in, the girl carrying her head tilted submissively forward as far as the high, unforgiving stiff collar of her long sleeve striped school blouse would allow, as if consumed by the utmost shame. This newcomer shuffled forward rather than stepped when ushered in, her eyes averted and head bowed as if terrified of eye contact, even with her fellow ‘pupil’, perhaps even more so. The tiny-stepped gait, Alice realised, was most likely the result of the girl being encased, under her too-brief school uniform skirt, in a pair of those awful school bloomers such as Alice herself had been forced into, with their legs linked by a short fabric tether.

  The girl’s slender hands were adorned by dainty cotton gloves and when not being yanked at by her schoolmarm mistress, were kept compliantly clasped in front of her flat-fronted school skirt with its fan of stitch-down pleats swinging cutely at the rear. The girl’s gloves, Alice observed with astonished empathic awkwardness, were ridiculously dainty childish doll-like things that fastened at the wrists by means of a white cotton-covered button and hoop affair. just shy of the girl’s tight, as-starched-as-card green and white striped blouse cuffs. Silver metal clips, small neat versions of the type sometimes used to attach dog leads to their collars, were sewn to tags on the insides of the wrists of these gloves and had been linked together in manner reminiscent of a pair of manacles. The fabric was snowy and possessed of a particularly honest fine-weave virginal whiteness, a quality that could only be equalled by the little frilled white pinafore that the girl had tied over her otherwise relatively conventional schoolgirl attire of skirt, blouse and button-fronted cardigan.

  The latter hypocritically pseudo-protective adornment - for there seemed little in prospect that looked to call for what amounted to a serving apron - was very nearly the most outstanding feature of the girl’s embarrassing attire. A traditionally styled bib pinafore, its abbreviated little A-line flounced apron not quite covering the school skirt below and its bodice open at the sides, its man-made fabric’s engineered satin sheen was only ever in danger of being out-dazzled by the overhead fluorescent light tubes themselves. A large embroidered school-style insignia, motto and crest design stretched smoothly over the contoured rise of one breast. The latter at least served to differentiate the perceived, if archaic, image of schoolgirl ‘domestic science’ training from that of working maidservant. The frilled lacy trim, though - particularly the generously broad scalloped frill edging along the shoulder straps which tended to drape in upturned scallop shell lace bunches over the gently puffed shoulders of the girl’s school blouse - definitely did more than just hint at domestic servitude.

  A huge, broad bow secured the pinafore at the rear of the girl’s waist and the whole came close to that Alice had once come across on the internet in an old Russian girl’s school class photograph someone had posted - it was with no little shame that she recalled the way in which she had burst out laughing then, back there in the safety of her school’s ‘computer science’ room. It had been mocking, high-pitched peals of laughter she had let rip with, out loud side-splitting belly-laughs that had been echoed by her classmates once they too had viewed the image, shared the joke. Well she was sharing the joke from the other side now - albeit by proxy, though linked through a common path - and she was not at all sure she still appreciated the humour in the situation. After all; this, too, was all too close for comfort to a reflection of herself - foreseen as if a vision projected from some parallel future. And how much louder would her ex-classmates laugh then, if they were to see the outcome and that girl standing there, looking as if close to tears, was the loud-mouthed, self opinionated Alice Lamberton they had known so well; the class rebel tamed at last.

  But maids - French or otherwise - wore caps of various flavours on their dainty heads, frilled, plain, high fronted or mob-caps, but all well understood badges of servitude. Those Russian schoolgirls had worn ribbons in their hair or on top of their heads. This girl, though, was crowned by that unmistakable symbol of past-times British private boarding school education or the elite French or Swiss young lady’s finishing school of similar vintage.

  A straw boater sat squarely on her pretty, forward-tilted, head, a broad, diagonally striped bottle-green and grey ribbon encircling its crown. This adornment was interrupted towards its centre at the front of the hat by yet another cloth shield-shaped reproduction of that ‘school insignia thing’ that Alice had already learned to hate so much and terminated at the rear in two equally broad, long fluttering tails. The latter, having clearly been ironed to death and as disciplined as their wearer, lay with just the subtlest tending to curvature at their edges plumb between the limits drawn by the girl’s waist-length pigtails, each coming to a neat forked terminus mid-way down the girl’s back.

  Having been deflated by this new development and having somehow managed to crush her adult-sized if petit frame into the confines of the awful, humiliating little Victorian-style school desk, Alice, couldn’t help but catch sight of her reflection in the mirror to her side and the other that was set to the front of the ‘classroom’. Compelled in this manner to involuntarily examine herself from all sides in juxtaposition with this poor newcomer, she could only frown at her reflection in hopeless despair. She had been made a joke of, a comedic caricature of her former self and a travesty of the traditional image of the English boarding school schoolgirl - and through her introduction to this, as yet nameless, newcomer it had been made clear to her that there was worse to come. It was subtle but it worked - she felt crushed, just as her stepmother and her school mistress friend had intended,

  The woman bringing up the rear and whose voice had had such an immediate impact on the stunned young Alice was dressed every bit in the manner one might imagine of an authentic traditional school mistress. True there was no mortar board and gown to be seen but the suit she had arrived in earlier that day had since been discarded in favour of a very conservative crisp cotton dress in a dense, almost black, shade of navy blue. With its pleated bodice constraining a substantial bustline, fitted waist and its long sleeves finished off in deep cuffs, each fastening with three inline buttons, the woman’s dress seemed to signify authority in of itself, seemingly lending a certain legitimacy to the woman’s intended role as a dominant force in control of a pair of cowed teenage girls.

  There were subtle psychological methods at work here that even Alice was aware of at some level. There was a sort of ingrained respect for the authority of a certain kind of uniform, just as the kind of childish school uniform skirt, blouse, tie and little cardigan that Alice had on had seemed to immediately undermine any authority or self confidence Alice had retained. And there was definitely something of the character of a uniform about this woman’s mode of dress, Alice realised. It made no bones about who was in charge. It w
as generally true within the hierarchical structure of society that where uniforms were concerned the darker the colour, the more authority the wearer; and that choice of navy definitely signified more power. The contrasting white cuffs and high-buttoning white collar definitely gave the woman’s dress the look of a uniform, almost an institutional, medical air.

  The latter was an impression that was strengthened by the belt that cinched the woman’s waist. This was a three inch wide navy blue elasticated shirred belt that fastened with a large silver buckle of the ball and clasp type once commonly seen adorning the uniforms of hospital matrons or ward sisters in which one side hooked into the other. A bunch of keys hung on a silver link chain from a metal slide-clip on the woman’s belt on one side and what Alice already knew to be a Scottish tawse, a double tongued leather strap whose only use was to instil discipline, hung from the other.

  The woman strutted rather than walked across the room, smiling conspiratorially at Alice’s stepmother as she swept past. The two women briefly swapped haughtily-nodded acknowledgements back and forth between them - but little more than that. It was as if both were too aloof to deign to give anything more; as if any form of voiced greeting passing between them would have been seen by each as something vulgar, something redundant - and made so by some kind of instinctive mutual understanding. Either that, or taken as a sign of subservience or weakness.