by Susan Thomas
"Lady Freckleton, Mrs Whaley would be grateful if you would join her now."
She had immediately felt her heart rate increase and her mouth go dry. Graham had squeezed her hand and told her she would be fine but she didn't feel fine, not one bit. She remembered standing and the murmurs of support from the others at the table but not who had said what. As she walked towards the back stage area she was aware of other ladies, as finely dressed as she was, also rising and walking in the same direction. There had been no jeering or nasty comments. Every table she passed chipped in its share of supportive comments, but she had also known they would expect her four, with whatever was chosen, to be as hard as possible.
Mrs Whaley was the wife of the compère. Calm, motherly almost, she was very pleasant to them all but particularly to her and poor Michelle who was so young.
"Now then Ladies I know how difficult some of you find all this and I am sure that you Michelle and you Emma must be really feeling this now, but don't worry. We've all been through it and nobody will be unpleasant. The gentlemen may enjoy the show but they will remain gentlemen." She looked a little roguish as she turned to the nervous Emma and the very nervous Michelle. "You two ladies may expect your husbands to be particularly er... frisky tonight. Nothing sets our men's juices going more than accountability evenings."
There was laughter and a few risqué comments but all the while the six women were undressing and hanging their clothing up in small open wardrobes. Emma recalled her hesitation at undoing her bra and removing it. It wasn't the other women she was bothered about, it was walking out in front of everybody else. She had never been stark naked in public like that. When they had all disrobed Mrs Whaley got them into their order of penalties with Michelle at the front, as she had only had one and was most nervous, and Aileen at the rear joking and laughing all the while.
Now Emma could barely remember much about it all she had been so nervous. The lights were a blessing as she hadn't really been able to see the audience that well. There hadn't been any jeering or lewdness at their nudity, just one tasteless joke about Michelle that had been crushed by the audience and Mr Whaley, but just walking out in front of everyone, band, waiters, waitresses and all the other members had been horrible. She had felt so exposed and wanted to cover herself but she knew the protocol - hands by her sides except when being punished.
The punishment had not been fun at the time. She supposed when you were in the audience it was all very stimulating, but walking starkers to that bench and going over it had been the scariest thing she could recall doing in a long while. The bench had been surprisingly comfortable and well designed. The bar to hold on to, and she had really held on hard, had been warm from Michelle and Jane, and it was then that it dawned on her just how amazing this was. Here she was stark naked about to be caned in front of all her neighbours. Then the cane had struck.
She gasped so hard it was as if she had tried to suck all the air out of the ballroom. The pain was deep, agonising, intense and so very hot. She had pushed her head down on the bench and grasped the bar even harder. Then the next stroke had crashed against her bottom. She had cried out just like Michelle and had been ashamed for she was forty-two, twenty years older than Michelle. She wriggled on the bench and had found it hard to stay still for the third stroke which had sent her bottom writhing and a cry of pain hurtling into the air. She felt the start of tears and had risked letting go to dash them away, ashamed of herself, just getting her hand back in time for the fourth fierce stroke to cut deeply into her bottom and wringing yet another cry for her.
She remembered feeling very shaky when standing up again and for a moment had wondered if she was about to faint, but she had pulled herself together as the audience applauded. They were always especially appreciative to first timers but hadn't been able to pull her hands away from her bottom as she was supposed to do. The ferocious hot throbbing pain of her welts was beyond anything she had experienced so far. The House of Guardians used a lesser cane while Graham only an ordinary school-type one. The thing used at Accountability was far nastier. She had helped Aileen by removing one or two bits of birch stuck on her bottom and shuddered at its state, vowing never to get more than two penalties in any one quarter. As she got dressed she had still felt shaky but when they got home... boy that had been a night. Graham had told her that fear could be a potent aphrodisiac and he was right. She had never been so randy, and he had matched her. Thank God Kate had already gone to bed!
Lady Freckleton shook her head to clear her mind and got back to dressing. It was Michelle Riley's birthday today. The girl was twenty-three but to her looked younger. She had been invited to attend Michelle's birthday spanking. Apparently this was a Chapel Island ritual that every woman member had to get. She hadn't known about it before as it wasn't in the manual but it had developed as a custom which was now almost set in tablets of stone. An American member had introduced the idea and it was popular.
Kate had gone off somewhere on her bike and so she was free to just leave in her golf cart and go to the other end of the island to the Riley home. James Riley was thirty-five, of working class origin. He had left school at sixteen but just sold his business for £50,000,000. He didn't look as if he had any intention of doing anything else at present other than enjoy his attractive wife.
The Riley house was very pleasant and already a good few of her neighbours were present sipping on the inevitable champagne and gossiping. Apparently Aileen Dunbar had already been given another penalty for being a little too tipsy in public. Then Michelle came in looking absolutely beautiful in a young demure way. They all sang Happy Birthday and toasted her while she blushingly accepted gifts from all. Candles on the cake were blown out and while two maids served coffee or champagne and cake, Michelle went over to her husband for the birthday spanking.
Emma had expected it would be little light pats over Michelle's dress, but not so. The invited guests were a mixture of both men and women but to Emma's astonishment Michelle kicked off her shoes, and undoing her pretty dress slipped out of it. She undoubtedly had a gorgeous figure clad now in a lovely matching lingerie set - bra, knickers, garter belt and stockings. Emma wondered where she had got it. It was lacy white with a beautiful silk pink material threaded through the bra, knickers and garter belt. Only the stockings were plain white though 'plain' undervalued their exquisite beauty.
Michelle, with a shy smile at her husband, slowly unfastened her stockings from the garter belt but left them on and then slid her knickers down equally slowly. Taking her gently by the arm James arranged her over his lap and then announced to their guests that as Michelle was now twenty-three she would get twenty-three birthday smacks.
"And one to grow on," chanted some of the guests.
Emma noticed the two bruised lines where she had been caned at Accountability. Then the spanking began. It certainly wasn't a punishment spanking like Graham gave her which always left her in tears but it was no token spanking either.
Smack! The first one made her bottom ripple gently and left a nice mark and it proceeded from there. Michelle gave little yelps and ow noises as her bottom turned first light pink but then gradually darker and darker. The assembled guests chanted the count, "One, two, three..." all the while joking and calling for James to spank harder while Michele yelped back that he was to not make it any harder. Her delightful bottom was definitely a good shade of red as the "one to grow on" smacked down hard to great applause. Michelle stood, leaving her knickers down, and turning to James kissed him passionately. The assembled guests loved it and called for the couple to retire upstairs for a while but Michelle went very red and started re-dressing.
Emma watching realised she too was going to have to do this when her birthday came... thank God Kate would be away at university by then.
Chapter 4
Dad was throwing a leaving-school party for me over and above the leavers' ball. I don't have many friends as we have moved so much but I invited all the old ones I do have plus the
new from my last school. My dad organised a big party on the mainland with my old friends coming back to the island to stay for a couple of days. In the meanwhile I enjoyed being free of school and study and enjoyed the facilities of the island. I was off to the Marina one morning where David, a fit young instructor, had promised to teach me the rudiments of dinghy sailing, when I saw the girl. There was no shortage of girls who were children of members but none of my age or boys either, so when I saw her I skidded to a halt beside her and said hello.
She looked up from her book. "Hello. Oh, know you I'm sure. Aren't you Lady Freckleton's daughter?
"Yes, how did you know?"
"I'm a waitress and I've seen you with her."
I noticed that she was reading Milton's Paradise Lost and wondered what kind of waitress read stuff like that, but perhaps she was a temp. I sat down next to her and asked the obvious question as to why she was out near the marina reading when she was a waitress. It was her day off she told me and I jumped at the chance to actually have a girl my own age to chat to outside of all the tensions of school. Her name was Claire and I was delighted to have found her.
"Fancy a swim in the pool?"
She looked embarrassed and came out with a lame excuse that she didn't have a costume. I offered her one of mine and she agreed, looking very worried. I couldn't work out why. She was off duty and when with me quite entitled to swim in either of the wonderful pools.
In the changing room I noticed that she made sure she faced me but she didn't notice the mirror behind her and in that I could see six red lines across her bottom. That was clearly why she was so reluctant to go swimming but the costume I gave her more or less covered her bottom so she relaxed and we had a good time. All the time we swam, dived and chatted I pondered those marks. They were red and raised slightly and looked like train tracks, each of the marks started on one cheek jumped over and continued on the other. I didn't know much about corporal punishment but from my history lessons I guessed she had been caned. I wanted to know more but didn't dare ask directly in case she clammed up, so just got her talking about her job.
She told me she wasn't clever enough for university (Paradise Lost?!) and couldn't get a job locally so had applied for the job here as it offered accommodation. Apparently it was fairly Spartan but clean and the food was good. Not all the staff lived in, lots came from the nearest mainland and were brought across on the ferry. She went on about being a waitress. She had to wear a uniform which consisted of a very short and very tight black skirt, fine black tights, flat black shoes, a long-sleeved white blouse and a Paisley pattern waistcoat. She told me the discipline was very strict but didn't explain how. The waitresses were not allowed to bend down while serving, they had to bend their knee if they needed to get lower and were made to line up before going on duty for uniform and hand inspections. Frau Weber, a German lady was in charge of the waitresses and her husband Herr Weber the waiters. She said Frau Weber was a martinet and I wondered if it was she that had put those six lines on Claire's bottom.
I treated her to pizza and ice cream and we made arrangements to meet up when she was next off duty. My conversation with Claire convinced me that I must get into the intranet and it didn't take long for an opportunity to come up. Chapel Island members are always having each other around for dinners and other events, all very sociable, so when my parents announced they were going out to dine I did my pizza and Dad's wine thing.
I had been amazed that dad's intranet had not frozen me out when I kept getting the wrong password but no one seemed to have noticed at all. I thought that a bit of a weakness. I sat there trying to think like Dad and how his passwords worked. All the birthdays and dates of birth of relatives had been exhausted, but rather than trying more combinations I sat jotting down possible ideas. Chewing my pencil I leant back in the chair to think and found myself looking at dad's bookcase. It was full, as usual, with maths, economics and law books as well as boring stuff about management. But there on the shelf at eye level was a very strange book. I pulled it down. The Destruction of Harris 459 by Callum Lafrenze. It was a novel. Dad doesn't read novels. Newspapers, technical journals and other boring stuff is his usual fare. So what was this?
I opened it and on the first page was the title and author all over again but then I noticed something. Above the first letter of each word and the numbers there was a faint pencil mark and right at the end a question mark. No! Surely it really couldn't be that simple?
I wrote them down exactly as they were: TDoH459? Then went to the login box shoved in his membership number I'd got last time and stuck in the TDoH459? To my honest astonishment it let me straight in.
There was a lot to see and I controlled myself and went first to my father's island account. He had far more money than I imagined in the account. I knew he was obscenely rewarded for what he did but this was just his island account! I checked mine and found it quite correct and since I didn't spend much it too was healthy although not in dad's league.
I knew what I was doing - procrastinating. Now I'd got here I was scared as to what I was going to find. I compromised and looked up the Servants and Support Staff section. There I discovered that all staff had been carefully screened and had signed strict confidentiality agreements but it didn't touch on why they needed to sign one. I then read that under no circumstances must members punish any member of staff themselves. That made me nervous and if you think about the implications you'll see why. I thought about the six marks on Claire's bottom and skipped down to Waitresses.
There was masses of stuff - uniforms, behaviour, training, what they might or might not be asked to do, and punishments. Punishments. My heart began to race as I read the mistress in charge (Frau Weber?) was permitted to use corporal correction, up to twelve strokes of the 'ordinary' cane. I sat there stunned. Yes I know all sorts of clues had been thrown my way but here it was in unambiguous black and white. If I was a waitress I could well be on the receiving end of such treatment and I wasn't at all sure how I felt about that.
So what had Claire done to earn her six strokes? Of course that wasn't there but I determined I was going to find out. What about waiters? I skipped to that section and found that the waiters were not routinely punished as the girls were. They could be offered corporal correction as an alternative to dismissal but any sexual harassment of the girls would result in instant dismissal unless the girl offered them the alternative of corporal correction. That was an interesting clause I thought. Finally I could procrastinate no longer and went to the section headed Wives.
I found myself trembling as I read without knowing why. I learnt that every wife on the island had signed a letter of request to her husband, asking him to be her head of household and to use corporal correction on her when necessary. Following that the woman concerned was tested with some sort of psychological profiling test devised by a university. If she cleared that hurdle the couple would be extensively interviewed and if they got through those admitted to the waiting list to buy a property on the island.
Once here on Chapel Island the husband was the head of the household and could chastise his wife but she was also subject to penalty points issued by the Guardians. My error with the bike riding couldn't earn me a penalty point as I wasn't a member but Mum was punished for it. She had three strokes from the Guardians and three from Dad. I couldn't read any more I was trembling all over. This was so weird. Why was mum doing it?
I got up and walked around drinking wine and trying to calm myself. Frankly I couldn't understand why I was trembling. Mum was clearly very happy here on the island and Dad is no brute. It was also clear that no woman would be admitted unless she definitely wanted this, whatever this was. The walk around and the wine calmed me. I had to find out more before my parents returned so I went back and started again.
This time I read about the Accountability sessions at the quarterly dinner-dances. Dear God, no wonder mum was nervous! I tried to imagine me going out stark naked to get my bum whacked and failed, bu
t Mum had done it. Wow! But to balance that, look what she'd been like when she got home and I had only seen them before they got to their suite. I was finding all this overwhelming so decided to quit and do an internet search about women or wives who liked to be dominated.
---oOo---
In a room without windows worked a small group of men, all in the uniform of the Guardians. The door was marked Surveillance. One noted some activity and called over to his supervisor.
"The Freckleton girl has got in."
"Right. Activate her room surveillance. I'll report to the chief."
A short time later The Five were aware that the girl had accessed the members' intranet and looked forward to receiving reports of her reactions.
Chapter 5
Claire and I were getting on well. She may claim she wasn't clever enough for university but I could tell that wasn't true and she had a good education behind her. She had different strengths to me. I'm really like Dad and good at maths, science and economics whereas she was more arts based, particularly English. During her time off we spent our time together and Dad kindly got Frau Weber to give her the day off for my school leaving bash. The party was great fun, lively but within the bounds of acceptable, and then I had my old friends stay over on the island. Now I was not just legally an adult but also no longer a schoolgirl (I would have preferred a sixth-form college to do A-Levels but Dad had insisted on a school with a sixth-form.)
