Alice Under Discipline, Part 1

by Garth ToynTanen

  “Sit up straight, young Alice - fingertips on shoulders, back straight and up on your haunches as I’ve shown you.” The woman’s voice sounded disarmingly cheerful yet still made Alice nervous, hesitant; for a few seconds she fumbled with the wooden nailbrush she had been scrubbing the floor with. “Och! Just leave the brush where it is, you silly thing.” It left Alice feeling stupid, being spoken to in this way. It wasn’t fair; she hadn’t always been so nervous, so awkward. This awful, dictatorial woman had made her this way - she was expert at leaving a person feeling idiotic, inadequate like this. Once she had been confident, self-assured; once she could have stood up for herself. Not any more.

  Red-faced and feeling suddenly close to tears Alice left the brush where it lay on its side and sat back on her heels. For some unaccountable reason she felt the need to brush down the front of her overall with her hands, flattening down both the button-through skirt and the white nylon pinafore she had on over it in a single downwards sweep of both hands, before raising her fingertips tentatively to her shoulders. “That’s better. Keep your back nice and straight mind - and get those shoulders and elbows back. That’s it; right back, as far as they can go. Good!”

  Alice felt the woman’s hand ruffle her hair behind the raised front of the maid’s cap. Her head bowed shyly, she caught sight of the woman’s tweed skirt and realised that the woman had had time to change at some point as well as presumably supervising Angel, her fellow ‘pupil’, in the schoolroom. It brought home to her how distorted her sense of time had become these past months - it was a frightening thought to realise she no longer knew exactly how many months.

  As the teacher leaned closer she recognized the close-fitting tailored panelled suit skirt that went with a matching jacket and that the woman often favoured when not in the dark ‘governess’ dress she usually wore for ‘lessons’. She could smell that ‘tweedy’ smell, the faint overtones of cigar smoke, the rather old-fashioned floral scent the woman favoured and even the leather of the heavy Scottish tawse that perpetually hung from the woman’s belt whatever her dress.

  She could hear the whisper-like muted rasping of her nylons, the papery swishing, sound of the woman’s nylon slip moving with her body and slithering beneath her blouse and suit and even the rubbery creak of her corset, girdle or corselet or whatever old-fashioned foundation garment had been today’s choice. Each new characteristic seemed to go to fuel a rising sense of tension in her stomach as it came into focus, her senses seeming painfully acute. Her heart, which she now realised had been pounding away in her ears for some considerable time prior to the woman’s return, thumped heavily in her chest as if about to explode and a dull sensation of dread began to drag at her, fighting against her efforts to maintain the erect posture the woman demanded.

  “Right, young Alice, pay attention! Angel, here is going to demonstrate a technique I have trained her in that you will find will come in useful when it comes to maintaining your stepmother’s boots and shoes, but particularly when it comes to getting that real mirror shine she likes to see on her boots. Wax and a cloth are all well and good, but when it comes to buffing-up such high quality vulcanised rubber as you will have encountered used in her exclusive custom fashion Wellingtons, something softer, more delicate and moist is required...”

  The woman had broken off abruptly, in mid sentence, and Alice felt her blood run cold. She could feel the woman’s eyes boring into her - something was wrong, but she didn’t know what. She could only remain demurely kneeling back on her haunches and await the outcome with her fingertips touching her shoulders and her head, her chin having initially risen when bidden to ‘pay attention’, again passively bowed.

  She had seen enough, though, to know that she had been mistaken about the jacket - a pale pink Merino wool twinset and a rope of pearls were the order of the day; though she had been right about the skirt. She had been right, too, about the woman’s ‘foundations’; though large-busted and cursed with a propensity to plumpness, the woman had managed to carve out for herself a notably waspish, if broad-hipped, silhouette, the triple-string rope of beads overhanging from an aggressively high, almost mountainous bustline.

  The woman’s companion, by contrast - the cowed and down-trodden Angel - had appeared positively flat-chested under her fully-buttoned Terylene long-sleeved grey school cardigan. The latter’s ‘V’ neck displayed a school tie knotted suffocatingly close about the high collar of her green and white striped school blouse.

  Angel’s brief grey pleated-back wrap-around school gym-skirt now danced about the midpoint of thighs that looked a little too thin as a result of the strict diet she had been placed on and that had stolen, too, from her hips and bottom with the result that her waist had all but disappeared. Her long, once coltish, legs still seemed to go on forever from where they sprouted from the white anklets and bottle-green flat-soled T-bar buckled school shoes, but had lost much of the sensuality she would have gained at adolescence and instead now lent her a gawky and awkward ‘outgrown’ appearance that bordered on the knock-kneed. The latter was not helped by the fact that neither Angel nor Alice herself had been allowed to shave nor otherwise depilate their legs since this whole ‘home-schooling thing had started’ and a light peachy blond fuzz now caught the light and drew the eye from what contours remained. The two beautiful long plaits she had arrived with had long since become the sort of boyishly-short side-parted style the teacher favoured, the natural ringlet-prone curl crushed out of existence by repeated applications of perming lotion with the result that the poor things hair had become dry and brittle.

  All in all, this girl - Angel - now undoubtedly embodied the sort of juvenile image the once-disgraced teacher had probably been hankering for all along. Alice could only thank her good luck - what there was of it - that as yet her stepmother had not let this woman entirely have her own way with her in that she had at least thus far been allowed to retain her figure, though all her clothing was designed to play-down if not fully disguise her curves. All this, though Alice had expected. After all she did see - and was with - Angel every single day, even though she had never been allowed to speak to Angel, nor the girl to her. What she hadn’t expected to see was Angel carrying before her, out from her body so as not to dirty her school uniform, a pair of potentially highly glossed, stylish exclusive designer Wellingtons, similar to one of the pairs her stepmother owned, but in a bright eye-catching pink. Strangely, while one boot had looked near enough pristine, if in need of a good polish, the other was splattered and speckled with mud - dollops adhering to the thick vulcanised rubber sole and threatening to fall at any minute.

  The latter, when she had glimpsed it, had put Alice in fear of her freshly scrubbed floor, lest she have to repeat the tediously back-breaking task she had only just completed. And she had only just completed the imposition when the woman had walked in. The squeaking of the door hinges had almost perfectly been in synchronism with her scrubbing at the last couple of square inches - in fact the timing had been uncanny. Now of course doubts were setting in and adding to the sickening feeling of panic fluttering in her tummy. The woman had murmured quite encouragingly when she had initially glanced about, but had she now seen something, some mark or blemish she had missed. Alice couldn’t believe there could have been anything she had overlooked.

  After all she had worked her way systematically across the room with her nose practically to the floor, always in fear of the ever-present CCTV webcam system and the knowledge that the images were always instantly available on her stepmother’s laptop and were relayed to her smart-phone, if working around the stables or, indeed, out riding. But then again; why had the woman broken off so abruptly and what the earth was she staring at, craning over like that?

  It was as the woman bent over her that the fluttering, building, sensation of anxiety Alice had been experiencing hit a crescendo. For a moment Alice felt as if she were about to faint. Then an even clammier sense of drea
d suddenly gripped her - one born more of realisation than of simple fear, whether rational or irrational. It arose suddenly, along with a sensation akin to a cold steel vice tightening around her heart, chilling it to a standstill, while simultaneously a heavy weight, abruptly bearing down on her chest, refused to suffer her to breathe. A panicky thought flustered its way through her brain: How long had she been working, scrubbing away in here? Was her medication wearing off? Was that why she was feeling so nervous, so... so... jittery? Was she due to have another couple of those tablets?

  She wanted to look up, implore the woman with her eyes to notice what was happening to her and yet feared to do so even more than she feared the consequences of missing her drug schedule. A strangely ‘spiky’, jagged sort of agitation began to overcome her, niggling and needling her to jump up and just run and run and run - blindly, anywhere. But ‘anywhere’ in this space meant perhaps eight or ten brisk paces to the nearest wall or a secure heavy iron door, which in any case only gave out onto the ‘schoolroom’, or perhaps, to duck in flustered desperation behind the huge wingback armchair that dominated centre stage along with its associated restraint-festooned footstool. The latter course of action would be particularly futile and only likely to generate hilarity - and earn her a good, hard caning once she had been given time to calm down. But then again she wouldn’t calm down - how could she be expected to calm down without her medication?

  She was sure she had begun shaking by the time the woman next spoke, but the woman’s voice instantly put paid to further introspection. And it had nothing to do with the cleanliness or otherwise of the floor - not that that would be much compensation as it was to turn out.

  “What’s this? Why is your cuff unbuttoned? That is not just a work dress or overall, you know; you should consider it as part of a uniform. By now you should have learnt to view your dress or overall or whatever, your cap and your apron as just as much constituting a uniform as the school uniform your stepmother and I have you wear for lessons. Uniforms help define our station in life, you know; they are important to maintaining the social fabric. This happens to be part of your uniform and uniforms have to be worn as prescribed - that’s what it is all about; discipline. And no one, but NO ONE, gave you permission to undo your cuff... did they?”

  “N.n.no Miss Daphne”

  “Do it up at once, you stupid little girl!” The woman hadn’t raised her voice, it still retained that lilting Scots silkiness, nor had she changed her superficially jovial attitude; she had simply placed a little extra emphasis on the word ‘stupid’. Somehow that fact made it all the more disconcerting to Alice. She had rolled the sleeve up from the hand with which she had grasped the nailbrush - just a little, just enough to minimise the risk of soiling the cuff while scrubbing the floor. The cuff had dropped down anyway once she had knelt up - as she had known it would, but she had expected to have had time to quickly re-fasten it before it became discovered, surreptitiously out of sight of the webcams scattered around. As it was she had been caught by surprise and just plain forgot.

  She had had the cane for getting her cuffs dirty before, despite the fact that the bri-nylon (for that was what it said on the label) was eminently washable - wasn’t that supposed to be the point of it, the ‘practicality’? She hadn’t wanted to get the cane again for that reason. It was one of those irksome things sent to try her, that the overall she had been given had long sleeves and yet had to remain spotless. It was worse now that she had been compelled to wear an apron over the top - the nylon pinafore was the snowiest of snow white and showed every tiny speckle. And the work didn’t help. Whether scrubbing floors, cleaning toilets or scrubbing and painstakingly polishing her stepmother’s rubber boots, it was all equally filthy work. And it was all, cynically, somehow justified under the banner of domestic ‘education’.

  Red-faced, Alice hastily refastened the glassy button at her wrist and quickly returned her fingertips to her shoulders, pinching her shoulder blades together as best she was able and straightening her spine. It was a posture as uncomfortable as it was humiliating.

  “That’s better, hen. We’ll make a domestic of you yet!”

  Alice bristled: a ‘domestic’ was the lowest denomination of household servant, something below the housekeeper and even the stable girls - or stable maids as her stepmother preferred to refer to them as nowadays. At the same time the sensation of anxiety was continuing to rise in her like a seething cauldron of bubbling molten laver and a heavy feeling of despondency was settling, layer upon layer, weighing her down. It was all she could do to stop herself toppling forwards in a heap at the woman’s feet. The woman’s next words, though, did at least lift that dreadful fear of punishment that was threatening to freeze her blood in her veins, if only temporarily - and there was always the chance that the woman would later forget. It had happened before, if only rarely; and it was such a little thing, a little teeny-weeny thing.

  “We’ll deal with the issue of uniform infringements later. For now I want you to watch this little demonstration Angel is going to perform for you.” She turned to the girl who was standing a couple of paces behind her, a pink Wellington boot held upside-down by its foot in each hand. “Angel, put the boots down here, if you will, hen.” She indicated a place on the floor between the armchair and the footstool, waggling a finger to show exactly where. Angel did as ordered, her skirt riding up as she bent, displaying the usual - if nowadays somewhat reduced - expanse of snug interlocked polyester-cotton school knickers, the bottle-green fabric puckering deep within the cleft of her bottom. Alice could see that the leg elastics still managed to bite quite cruelly into the girl’s thighs, despite the latter’s slenderness, and the narrow but strong strip of fabric that ran between the two rubber-lined openings like some manufacturers mistake was pulled tight by the movement as her knees parted.

  As the now profusely perspiring Alice Lamberton looked on Angel withdrew, having been told to “pop your apron on over your school uniform, that’s a good child; then skip back here and sit yourself down on the footstool”. Almost as if Alice did not exist and without a further word Daphne Larkspear sauntered across to the wingback chair and, pausing to smooth down her tailored tweed skirt, slumped down in its depths. Shuffling forward to perch on the edge of its seat, brushing aside the straps and the head harness Alice had fallen foul of earlier in the day, she began unbuckling her high heeled court shoes, the darker reinforced heels of her fully-fitted stockings coming into view as she stretched out first one leg and then the other.

  “Angel! Come, help me on with my boots, child. Alice; you just watch and take note from Angel, hen. She’s a good little boot-licker - aren’t’ you hen”.

  “Yes Miss Daphne.”

  Alice could see the other girl’s face colouring even though now partially side-on to the girl. Angel having shuffled across, tying her pinafore over her school uniform as she went, was now squatting on the footstool at her teacher’s feet, flattening out her pinafore across her lap as she settled herself.

  “Make sure you don’t get any mess on your apron, or there’ll be trouble.”

  “Yes, Miss Daphne.” The girl was so contrite, Alice thought; it was embarrassing. She actually felt embarrassed for the girl, despite her own predicament, kneeling like some dumb idiot. And that term ‘boot licker’ - surely she must have misheard that? But she couldn’t afford to be so empathetic; she was beginning to shiver now. And the stomach cramps were starting. The latter, she had been told, where a psychosomatic manifestation of her anxiety and brought on by her fear of withdrawal, but they always felt real enough to her.

  With a growing mishmash of fear, anxiety, dread and real physical pain going through her head and her brain feeling now as if on fire Alice looked on, shivering from head to foot, as Angel helped the overbearing woman on with her boots, the moulded rubber conforming closely to the woman’s attractively appointed calves. Then came the real horror, so far as Ali
ce was concerned...

  It sounded innocent enough: “Now show young Alice how you clean my boots Angel; how it should be done when one respects one’s betters.” But there was no cloth in Angel’s hands, nor wax waiting in a tin by her side. Instead there was a pair of well-fitted pink Wellington boots cradled in a fawning teenage girl’s lap, the girl’s soft hands dutifully cupped and supporting the heels lest any mark mare the pristine whiteness of her frill-laden nylon pinafore. Daphne Larkspear, having settled back to sink into the loving caress of the deeply upholstered armchair had now stretched out her long stocking-clad legs, interlocking her finger’s carelessly behind her head and trifling with a tendril that had dared escape from her tightly pinned bun.

  Alice watched as the woman languidly lifted one leg from the girl’s lap, a dark stocking seam momentarily showing, and placed her foot on the floor alongside the footstool. The tall glossy pink boot on that foot was the pristine one, the one that looked never to have been worn. The other, the one that now remained in the girls lap, by contrast was filthy; mud and what looked to be a caked pudding of horse muck and other farmyard detritus all threaded through with a matting of fermenting composted hay entirely filled the vulcanised rubber treads of the sole.

  When the girl raised the boot to her mouth Alice still, at some level, thought it was some sort of sick joke being played out at her expense. Even when the girl, craning her neck, begun planting little butterfly kisses on the rubber uppers and around the toe she thought it was a jest. When Angel began licking and lapping the worst of the mud splatters from the boot’s leg, Alice convinced herself it was a sprinkling of chocolate, perhaps with a little spread melted chocolate as well for good measure - she still expected the two of them to jump up and laugh hystericaly at any moment. Such was the unthinkable enormity of what she was watching.